Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Is Morsi Preparing for War?


Is Morsi Preparing for War?

Evelyn Gordon  

When the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate won Egypt’s presidential elections, the comforting theory pronounced by diplomats and pundits worldwide was that power would force the Brotherhood to moderate its views: Once in power, its first priority would have to be rescuing Egypt’s shattered economy, and this would force it to avoid radical steps liable to antagonize Western donors.

That power isn’t moderating the Brotherhood is crystal clear already: Within two months of taking office, President Mohamed Morsi had already blatantly violated the cardinal principle of the peace treaty with Israel–the demilitarization of Sinai–by sending tanks into the area near the Israeli border without first obtaining Israel’s permission. But now it turns out the Brotherhood also doesn’t care about the economy. It’s only Morsi’s third month in office, and he is already negotiating to spend hundreds of millions of dollars he doesn’t have on something that won’t help the economy one whit: two state-of-the-art submarines from Germany.

The price tag for a new German submarine is about $510 million, meaning two would cost over $1 billion. Thus Morsi is planning to waste more than a fifth of the $4.8 billion loan he just requested from the International Monetary Fund not on helping Egypt’s economy–the ostensible purpose for which he sought the money–but on acquiring expensive military equipment for which Egypt has no conceivable need: It isn’t currently facing a maritime threat from any country or terrorist organization, nor is there reason to think it will in the future.

Or to put it another way, Morsi plans to blow the entirety of the $1 billion debt relief package he is now negotiating with Washington on military hardware rather than helping Egypt’s economy.

The first obvious conclusion from this fact is that neither Washington nor the IMF should approve the requested aid. There might be valid reasons for giving Egypt aid to rebuild its economy. But there are none at all for giving it money to purchase state-of-the-art submarines.

Far more worrying, however, is the issue of why Egypt even wants these subs–because the only possible purpose they could serve is for use against Israel.

Granted, the two countries are officially at peace. But Egypt’s army has continued to view Israel as its principal enemy, and to train accordingly, throughout the decades since the treaty was signed in 1979. Moreover, Israel is the only country in the region that has a state-of-the-art submarine force itself: It recently took possession of its fourth German-built sub, and has two more on order. Taken together, those two facts make it hard to envision any other purpose an Egyptian submarine fleet could rationally serve.

And when you add in Morsi’s move to remilitarize Sinai, the final conclusion from the submarine deal becomes inescapable: Morsi’s top priority isn’t rehabilitating Egypt’s economy, but preparing for war with Israel.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/09/10/is-morsi-preparing-for-war/

Evergreen State — a total immersion experience


Evergreen State — a total immersion experience

'Israeli settlement' built on Evergreen campus by "TESC Divest!" student group
‘Israeli settlement’ built on Evergreen campus by “TESC Divest!” student group

Recently I wrote a couple of posts about Rachel Corrie (here and here). I was particularly interested in what prompted her to go to Gaza with theInternational Solidarity Movement [ISM], a group which sends idealistic young Westerners to serve as human shields for Hamas or PLO guerrillas in the front lines of the low-intensity Arab war against the Jewish state.

A few of these ‘internationals’ have been seriously hurt, or, like Corrie, killed, sacrifices on the altar of anti-Israel propaganda.

How does it happen that young people are prepared to risk everything for a cause which, by any logic, is not theirs; and which, as causes go, is not especially pressing (the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza or Judea/Samaria are better off in every way than Palestinians in Lebanon, Copts in Egypt, Sunnis in Syria, etc.)?

The answer is that there are well-tuned systems set up on many of our campuses which recruit, process and send students off in service of the Palestinian Cause. These machines have a permanent nucleus of a few dedicated faculty members, which is orbited closely by student organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Student Association, Jewish Voice for Peace, and more.

There are also peripheral groups that support the projects of the central players, usually because of a perception of shared ‘colonial oppression’ — this sometimes includes LGBT groups, immigrants’ rights organizations, etc.

Students drawn into these psycho-political cyclotrons are insulated from all other voices, and what begins as a concern for human rights is amplified by contact with more and more extreme expressions of anti-Israel ideology until they fly off, completely one-dimensional, often white-hot with hatred for the Jewish ‘colonialists’, prepared to cooperate if need be with murderous terrorists because of their perception of the overwhelming justice and need of their Cause.

The Evergreen State College [TESC] of Olympia, Washington, where Rachel Corrie was recruited, has provided a disproportionate number of ISM volunteers. As I wrote before, faculty members Steve Niva and (former faculty) Simona Sharoni were mentioned several times in Corrie’s diaries as important influences on her decision to go to Gaza.

If we look at the overall environment of Evergreen, perhaps we can understand the way today’s Corries are submerged in the Palestinian narrative and Israel-hating ideology. A student group called “TESC Divest!” — which, for some reason does not appear in the list of official student organizations on TESC’s website — is the center of several boycott-divestment-sanctions [BDS] projects, as well as various “informational” activities and events.

TESC Divest! probably represents the majority of the students and faculty at Evergreen. For example, in 2010, Evergreen students voted to pass two BDS resolutions with huge majorities, both over 70%. And here is a list of faculty and staff that endorsed them:

Anne Fischel, Ph.D, Communication
Anita Lenges, Ph.D, Curriculum and Instruction
Bob Woods, M.F.A. Sculpture
Carolyn Prouty, D.V.M., Veterinary Medicine
Davi Zielinski Koska, Evergreen Staff, Community Activist
E.J. Zita, Ph.D., Physics
Elizabeth Williamson, Ph.D., English Literature
Erik Thuesen, Ph.D., Biological Sciences
Gillies Malnarich, Co-Director of the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education
Jean Eberhardt, Evergreen Staff — [advisor mentioned in Rachel Corrie Diaries -- ed.]
Jon Davies, Ed.D
Jose Gomez, J.D. from Harvard Law School
Judith Gabriele
Larry Mosqueda, Ph.D., Political Science,
Laurie Meeker, M.F.A., Film Production
Lin Nelson, Ph.D., Spanish
Liza Rognas, M.A., Information Resources and Library Science,
Lori Blewett, Ph.D., Speech Communication
Marianne Hoepli
Michael Vavrus, Ph.D., Instructional Development and Technology
Paul McMillin, M.L.I.S., Library and Information Science
Peter Bohmer, Ph.D., Economics
Ruth Hayes, M.F.A., Experimental Animation
Sarah Ryan, M.A., Labor and Industrial Relations
Savvina Chowdhury, Ph.D., Economics
Susan Preciso, M.A., English
Ted Whitesell, Ph.D., Geography
Therese Saliba, Ph.D., English; Fulbright Scholar, 1995
Tony Zaragoza, Doctoral Studies, American Studies
Zahid Shariff, Doctor of Public Administration
Zoltan Grossman, Ph.D., Geography
And here are student organizations that also endorsed the resolutions:
Student of Color Union (SOC-U) — [because we are all colonized -- ed.]
Black Student Union (BSU) — [because Palestinians aren't racists -- ed.]
Native Student Alliance (NSA)
Women of Color Coalition (WOCC)
Asian Pacific Islander Coalition (APIC)
Synergy
Evergreen Bike Shop — [because Palestinians are green -- ed.]
Counter Point Journal (CxPJ)
Mideast Solidarity Project (MSP)
Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO)
Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)
Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA)
Developing Ecological Agriculture Practices (DEAP)
Women’s Resource Center (WRC) — [because Palestinians are feminists -- ed.]
Evergreen Queer Alliance (EQA) — [because Palestinians are LGBT-friendly -- ed.]
Hip Hop Congress
Evergreen State College is a total immersion experience — immersion in anti-Israel propaganda.


http://fresnozionism.org/2012/09/evergreen-state-a-total-immersion-experience/

End Palestinian oppression by their brothers


End Palestinian oppression by their brothers

Reader Michael Kupfer recommended this short video, and it sums up in a nutshell what we all know to be true – that the Palestinians are treated far worse by their own Arab brothers than by anything that Israel is claimed to do.  Yet the international community and media cannot and will not internalize this.  This video might go a small way to correcting this view.

Michael also sent me another slightly satirical video about the bomb-shelter building business in the south.  Its vision is a bit simplistic but is nevertheless accurate, and it can be seen for example in relation to yesterday’s post about the Grad attacks on Netivot and Beer Sheva.

http://anneinpt.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/end-palestinian-oppression-by-their-brothers/

The world is starting to understand


The world is starting to understand

Eli Hazan

On July 10, 1996, shortly after he was elected prime minister the first time, Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress. During that speech, Netanyahu pointed a finger at anti-democratic regimes in the Middle East, specifically calling the Iranian government a despotic, militant and fanatic regime, and warned that if Iran obtained nuclear weapons it would pose a danger not just to Israel but also to the Middle East and the entire world.

Leftists in Israel, still stunned by the knockout blow delivered by Netanyahu to Shimon Peres and the realization that the Oslo peace process was not a top priority for the people of Israel but rather the opposite, criticized Netanyahu's speech in an exaggerated fashion. They even argued that Netanyahu was dreaming, partly because he claimed that his government was promoting a long-term process of reducing generous American financial aid by increasing Israel's economic independence.

The years have passed and the same leftists who then scorned statements against Iranian armament now criticize statements calling for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Also, the contempt shown toward declaring Israel's economic independence has turned into disdain for the policies that Netanyahu took as finance minister, policies that included practical steps to achieve that independence. We should not forget that today we face a reality in which the economic crisis in America is making it harder for the U.S. to finance its friends. Israel is therefore being forced, in any case, to turn to economic policies that do not rely on foreign government funding, creating the reality of private foreign investment. Netanyahu's vision on this matter will become reality, no matter what.

Netanyahu's speech from July 1996 is very relevant today. This is because Western nations, which in the past did nothing about Iran's statements and actions regarding nuclearization, have recently come to understand that we are facing a decisive moment of truth. For economic reasons, not all countries are ready to adopt firm policies, even as the U.S., Britain and Germany are acting to strengthen economic sanctions on Iran. This unwillingness is mainly due to the foreign policies of Russia, China and North Korea. But the action taken by the Canadian government, which cut its diplomatic relationship with Iran, was a very meaningful first step, a type of crossing the diplomatic rubicon. The Canadians, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, apparently understand better than anyone the Iranian threat, leading them to take this unusual step, which was desirable from Israel's view.

Canada is not considered around the world as equal to the U.S., but its power and role in international relations should not be overlooked. Canada, for example, was one of the founders of NATO and played a main role in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The Canadian economy is one of the strongest in the world and Canada plays a considerable role in the U.N., even though it is not a permanent member of the Security Council. The most important component is Canada's close relationship with the U.S., it is almost as if they are twins. It is therefore possible that Canada is a pioneer, paving the way for other countries.

Does this mean that Israel should abandon the option of attacking Iran? Of course not. But if major countries of the world adopt Canada's policy on Iran, Israel will have to reconsider. This is exactly what Netanyahu's goal was in his July 1996 speech, that the world would understand and act, for the sake of Israel, the Middle East, and mainly itself.


http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2539

Egyptian newspaper: How Jews control the world


Egyptian newspaper: How Jews control the world

From Egypt's El Balad, one of the types of articles that seem to be multiplying under the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Egypt.

It goes into great detail into how Jews are taking over the world:

The close intellectual and spiritual cooperation between the Jews and the British shows their desire to capture the world, and then this cooperation extended to include the United States. 

Here are their steps and protocols to achieve this control: 

1 - the destruction of any community authority for the benefit of state power 

2 - reducing the power of States to increase the authority of the United Nations 

3 - put the United Nations authority in the hands of the five permanent members of the Security Council and to have Jews achieve control of the governments of these countries 

Here are their steps to destroy the authority of society: 

1 - a culture of equality between men and women, so men lose their sense of ownership of the family 

2 - fight and destroy the marriage relationship and family authority and make the man and women as a means of producing children to be taken over by state care so the identity of the individual is only as determined by the state. 

3 - to justify adultery. 

4 - laws on child protection to reduce the power of family and inciting children to disrespect authority of the father or the mother or the family and freedom from any community limitations. 

5 - insulting the clergy and ridicule them and show them that they are hypocrites, and incite young people not to obey them. 

6 - to prevent beatings or any means of punishment of children in schools so teachers lose their prestige and their ability to control them, and the children are brought up to disrespect anyone. 

7 - stripping tribal elders of their material and moral powers

8 - Revolution on popular fashion "folk"; new forms of clothing fashion so citizens lose values ​​of cultural identity. 

9 - looting ancient cultures from the minds of the people and replace them with stories and Western films. 

10 - rewrite history to guide peoples' cultures, including the historic Islamic stories of our Ancestors and sayings of the Prophet (peace be upon him). 

11 - the establishment of parties and political groups that are pro-religious Jews and America, and support for access to the rule, which in turn works to achieve indirect occupation by Jews of America.

I'm not sure whether El-Balad is a state-run newspaper, but its been a while since I saw such raw anti-semitism so explicit in an Egyptian media outlet outside of religious sermons.

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/09/egyptian-newspaper-how-jews-control.html

Imagining a Post-Israel Middle East


Imagining a Post-Israel Middle East

By Daniel Greenfield 

Let us suppose for a moment that all the people who boycott Israeli products, boo Israeli orchestras and deliver long speeches at the UN got their wish and the Middle East was suddenly a Post-Israel place. While in the real world this would be a violently genocidal event, let us imagine that the whole thing was settled peacefully with the Saudis paying every Israeli one million dollars to get on a plane and leave. The Israelis took the deal and within a month there wasn’t a single Jew to be found anywhere from Eilat to the Golan Heights and from Tel Aviv to Arad.

As the last El Al plane takes off, circles over Ben Gurion Airport and heads to the South Pole, the one place on earth where there are no mosques, no suicide bombers and no cartoon riots, which is to become the new Jewish homeland, all the passionate Keffiyah-wearers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, can finally breathe a sigh of relief at having managed to make another spot on earth Judenrein before wondering what comes next. And what does come next in the Post-Israel Middle East?

Sure all the “refugees” can swarm in from Jordan and Lebanon to their “homeland,” before turning around and going back to their refugee camps where the UNRWA takes care of them, feeds them and educates their children. Jordan and Lebanon also have something that the brand new state of disaster known as Palestine does not have… jobs.

Jordan and Lebanon aren’t the best places on earth, or even in the Middle East, but they’re marginally functional compared to the Palestinian Authority, a corrupt welfare state funded by the US and EU and run by men with Soviet doctorates in revisionist history and no experience doing anything but putting out press releases after their latest terrorist attack.

The ancestors of the “refugees,” who show up waving house keys on the evening news every few days, came to Israel looking for jobs when the British Empire replaced the Ottoman Empire. Since then they have been going where the jobs are, anywhere from Detroit to Kuwait City, which gave them the boot after they allied with Saddam Hussein. They aren’t interested in returning unless there are jobs waiting for them.

The indigenous Zionist colonialists will leave behind factories and hospitals, lush orchards and even crocodile farms. But they also left behind greenhouses in Gaza that were turned into terrorist training grounds. Infrastructure doesn’t create jobs, even when someone else builds it for you and shows you how to use it.  It’s what you do with the infrastructure that counts.

The US and the EU poured fortunes into industrial parks that were supposed to provide jobs and make peace rewarding. And then there’s the casino that was supposed to lure wealthy Israelis to gamble the night away, but instead became a terrorist rocket launch site and got shut down by the Israeli Air Force.

The Palestinian economy consists mostly of foreign aid with a side order of tax revenues paid by a few businessmen and construction workers who mostly have jobs building Israeli settlements. When that last El Al plane heads to the South Pole to build Zion on Ice, all those jobs will be gone and the foreign aid will go too.

The Palestinian Authority and its army of fake refugees collected foreign aid only because they could point to Israel as the bully keeping them down. But without Jews to terrorize, the aid from the Muslim world will vanish in a flash, and without Jews to complain about, so will the aid from the United Nations and the European Union, leaving the Palestinian Authority as busted as its casino.

Most of the population of the Palestinian Authority will leave within a year or two in search of work, leaving the area as barren as it was in the 19th century under Ottoman rule. The terrorist groups will also move on to sell their services in new regional conflicts, starting fights in Syria, Egypt and Jordan, which will roll in and claim the territory.

In five years there will be no such place as Palestine, just fond memories of a country that never really existed being exchanged by old men over cups of bitter coffee as they wax nostalgic for their days of fighting for “Falasteen.” Bombs will occasionally go off, but the targets will be the Jordanian or Egyptian soldiers patrolling the ruins of Tel Aviv or the dirty flea markets of Jerusalem.

And the rest of the region? Jordan will probably fall to anyone who wants to claim it sooner or later. Sooner, if the United States decides to abandon it. The Muslim Brotherhood will try to merge Egypt and Syria. Their efforts will work out about as well as the brief period when Egypt and Syria were merged into the United Arab Republic.

For the most part everything will keep on going the way it would have anyway. Iran and the Gulfies will hiss threats at each other over the Persian Gulf (Arabian Gulf if you’re in Doha or Riyadh). Shiites will go on killing Sunnis. Salafis will go on killing everyone else. One government will fall to be replaced by another and then be overthrown in its own time. The Egyptians will riot and starve, in no particular order.

Everyone will gather after Friday prayers to shout, “Death to America,” even though American food is the only thing keeping them alive. A few of the bearded yellers will forget and shout, “Death to Israel,” only to be reminded that there is no more Israel. And then they will remember that the joy they felt when that last El Al plane took off was mixed with sadness because those burly farmers and soldiers, truck drivers and politicians, who beat them in war and peace, also gave them a temporary sense of purpose and unity.

Getting rid of the Jewish State will not make the region more stable, heal any wounds, deter terrorism or improve the life of even a single Muslim. The killings will go on and so will the tyrannies. All the old crimes and atrocities will continue without the illusion that they are being done for the greater purpose of destroying the collaborators of the Zionist Entity.

The Middle East will not change without Israel. It will be the exact same place that it always was. Unlike George Bailey, Israel did not make the Middle East better. Nor did it make it worse. Israel did nothing to the Middle East. It just tried to survive living in the middle of it and showed everyone else what was possible.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/daniel-greenfield/imagining-a-post-israel-middle-east/

Democratic platform abandons pro-Israel positions on borders, refugees, Hamas


Democratic platform abandons pro-Israel positions on borders, refugees, Hamas

Leo Rennert

If you rely only on mainstream media, you might think that the Democratic Party's plank on Israel ended up solidly pro-Israel, notwithstanding a raucous dispute over Jerusalem.  After all, the delegates restored language on Jerusalem as the capital of Israel -- or so the chair ruled even though the decibel count on the voice vote fell short of the required two-thirds margin.  But the final upshot nevertheless was to reaffirm a pro-Israel stance that the party had adopted in previous presidential-election cycles.  Thus, going into the final 2012 campaign laps, the Democrats are again fully supportive of Israel.

If that's your view, you are wrong, wrong, and wrong -- on three issues that rank as important as the future of Jerusalem.

Four years ago, the Democratic Party took a firm stance against Hamas, the terrorist group which now rules Gaza.  The 2008 platform called for complete isolation of Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist and abides by past agreements.  Since Hamas is publicly opposed to any such transformation, this made it clear that Democrats were committed to keep Hamas in full pariah status.

In the new 2012 platform, the anti-Hamas language is completely gone.  Hamas remains a mortal threat to Israel, but the Democratic Party now sees no need to line up with Israel on this existential issue.  Never mind that Hamas comprises half of the Palestinian equation, the party of President Obama has nothing to say about it.

In 2008, the Democratic platform took an unequivocal position against a "right of return" to Israel for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants.  The 2008 draft declared that Palestinian refugees instead would have to be resettled in a future Palestinian state - not in Israel.

That language also has been completely dropped from this year's platform.  Gone is the Democratic Party's awareness that a Palestinian "right of return" to Israel would deal a demographic death blow to the Jewish state.  Another existential pro-Israel stand ends up tossed in the dustbin of Democratic Party history.

Four years ago, the platform affirmed a solemn U.S. commitment -- spelled out in a letter by President George W. Bush to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon -- that Israel could not be expected to withdraw to the pre-1967 armistice lines in any final peace deal.  The 2008 plank on borders made it clear that any such retreat would leave Israel highly vulnerable and threaten its very survival.  The 2008 language echoed a widely used term that any such withdrawal would saddle Israel with  "Auschwitz borders."

The language on borders now is gone.

The Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., adopted a platform that turns its back on three Israeli existential imperatives - on dealing with Palestinian terrorism, on achieving secure and recognized borders, and on preventing a flood of Palestinians from swamping the Jewish state.

On all these issues, the Democratic Party - once a forceful Israel supporter - stands now silent, opening the way for President Obama to pressure Israel for more concessions and compromises if he wins a second term.



http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/democratic_platform_abandons_pro-israel_positions_on_borders_refugees_hamas.html

There are No Prayers in Migron's Synagogue this Shabbat


There are No Prayers in Migron's Synagogue this Shabbat

The desolate synagogue in Migron stands testimony to the instinct for self destruction of the Israeli left. The writer fears for the aftereffects of Migron.

Giulio Meotti

The wonderful village of Migro is laid waste.

Is there a next one? Givat Assaf? Amona? Then what?

The police made Migron “jüdenrein”. The tragic lesson of Gush Katif has proven to be correct. The settlers’ public has been so traumatized that in Migron it looked impotent and mute. Dozens of heroic families lost their homes and the state retreated from a strategic peak. The surprising thing is that it was all very easy. The Palestinian Arabs could not have done it better.

After Migron, some fear that everything else in Samaria risks going down in a slow process. The new building contradicts that, but it is obvious that the ethnic cleansing of “the settlers” is the only one that the world applauds.

To the Israeli psyche, the heartland of Judea and Samaria has an aura of crimson and the notion of removing all Jews from areas handed over to “Palestine”has become a legitimate plan even in some of the rightist camp.

What happened in Migron had already been experienced by the Jews during the first phase of the Holocaust, when there was the Jews’ “resettlement” from outlying communities to the large ghettos. Now the Arabs have free access to “state-owned land”, while the Jews remain cooped up in their chicken-pens waiting for slaughter or eviction.

This dramatic and traumatic process of retreat began on April 23,1982, when Israeli soldiers descended on the Jewish community of Yamit not to defend it, but to destroy it.

What did Israel get back in thirty years of “shalom achzav”, the peace of disappointment?

Yamit? Jihadists and Muslim Brothers.

Lebanon? Hizbullah and the abandonment of the Christian allies.

Gaza? Hamas and 14.000 rockets.

Oslo? A stretch of Jewish ruins and 2.000 dead.

The “rule of law” was an excuse to tear down places like Migron.

Gush Katif was perfectly “legal”. The real reason may be another: to destroy the bigger settlements one has to begin with the outposts.

If the outposts’ enterprise will be defeated, any other “established”community in Judea and Samaria can be the next in line. These communities cannot survive without the outposts and the renewed Jewish life around them. The cynical policy says: “Let them fall and waste away by themselves, the more their lack of security increases, the faster they will themselves abandon their homes”.

After Migron and Beit El’s Ulpana, they hoped, no new government allocations will be given for roads, water pipes, electricity or sewage systems for Jews in Judea and Samaria. Since no private person can afford such outlays, the ghettoization of the Jews will squeeze them. It’s an ethnic cleansing through economic measures. 

No government land will be allocated. Again, the idea is simple:since the Jews cannot acquire private land for fear of terrorist violence directed against the sellers, the Israeli government withholds from the Jews their last reserve.

How a state that destroyed Migron can justify Karnei Shomron,Emanuel, Yakir, Nofim and Kedumim? And Eli, Shilo, Ofra, Psagot and Maaleh Levonah?

It will take years to understand the damage Oslo did to the country. Since then, some of the Israeli leaders argued that just as in war one must be prepared to suffer losses, so too “peace” extracts a bloody price.

The first stage in this process of self-immolation in Western Eretz Israel began with an attack on language. If it’s Jewish, then it’s Judea and Samaria. If it’s West Bank or Palestine, those are justifications forsaying “Jews stole it”.

Then the process of self-destruction continued when Israel adopted the official mantra: “There is no military solution, only a political solution!”.

Israel then accepted being humiliated at the US administrations’ door, ready to accept the American supervision on Jewish building in Eretz Yisrael - all this in consideration for the loan guarantees and to further the “peace process”. The race became irreversible when Israel allowed masked hatchet-bearing murderers be eligible for the “Palestinian”police force. The Jews gave the Arabs the guns to kill innocent civilians.

Is Migron and Gush Katif the sign that we are witnessing the major cataclysm of Israel’s history? The loss of Judea and Samaria and a return to the borders of 1967, in which the Arabs can eliminate the state. They will utilize every inch of “liberated” soil as a springboard to the rest, phase by phase, until Israel is so tiny that the Arabs will be able to dismantle it altogether. The Arab-Palestinian parliament will legislate its own “Law of Return” for the Arabs who left in 1948.

By then, it will be too late. And the “Permanent solution” will be transformed into Israel’s “Final Solution”.

The iconic symbol of the retreat’s process is the Palestinian mob tearing down the traffic signal for Joseph’s Tomb. Their dark glittering eyes and bold faces were telling their desires of turning the Mediterranean red with Jewish blood and erecting a “Palestine” on the ruins of Israel.

Only in Israel, Jews expel Jews.

Onlyin Israel, Jews blow up synagogues.

Why is the transfer of 350.000 Jews from Judea and Samaria realistic and the transfer of Arabs not? Are Jews made of a different material?

Things don’t look very promising.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12157#.UE1gJmjyYcg

New Study: 'Preparing for a Post Israel Middle East'


New Study: 'Preparing for a Post Israel Middle East'

The paper with the above title concludes that Israel is a strategic liability for the United States, continuing an insidious and well-planned erosion of US support for the Zionist state.

Ted Belman
According to Franklin Lamb, Foreign Policy Journal, the pro-Israel Community is all hot and bothered by an alleged new study:

“It’s a paper entitled “Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East”, an 82-page analysis that concludes that the American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors conclude that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations with  Arab and Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community.”

The existence of such a study, even in draft form, is hard to credit as no corroborating evidence has been supplied. But what is certain is that the Arabs have long wanted Israel eradicated from the Middle East and that Lamb has been a notorious shill for them. See here and here and here. The same can be said of elements in the State Department, academia and current and past administrations.

This alleged study simply amplifies Obama’s intention from day one. The New York Times reported in April 2010, that Obama Speech Signals a U.S. Shift on Middle East.

When Mr. Obama declared that resolving the long-running Middle East dispute was a “vital national security interest of the United States,” he was highlighting a change that has resulted from a lengthy debate among his top officials over how best to balance support for Israel against other American interests.

[..] “Mr. Obama said conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up ‘costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure’ drawing an explicit link between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American soldiers as they battle Islamic extremism and terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

To show that Obama was not alone in this, it buttressed his message by quoting from Sec’y Rice, Gen Patraeus and Martin Indyk. It might just as well have quoted from The Baker Report, Z Brzezinski and Sec’y Clinton.
Actually this shift was a long time in coming. There have always been voices in the  administration that viewed Israel as a liability rather than an asset.

Richard Holbrooke pointed this out in his recent article, “Washington’s Battle Over Israel’s Birth,” He quotes Secretary of Defense James Forrestal who made his case for non-recognition by saying “There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other. Why don’t you face up to the realities” Holbrooke concluded:

[To] this day, many think that Marshall and Lovett were right on the merits and that domestic politics was the real reason for Truman’s decision. Israel, they argue, has been nothing but trouble for the United States.”

Then as now, Israel was opposed by the substantial anti-Zionist faction among leading Jews, [including] the publishers of both the Post and the New York Times.”

The problem that these anti-Zionist forces and their running-mates had, was that the American people strongly supported Israel and AIPAC was too powerful to take on. So they developed a plan to undermine AIPAC and discredit Israel.

The first salvo of which was the indictment of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman of AIPAC in 2005 for espionage related charges. The case was dropped four years later, but the damage had been done to them and to AIPAC. To show how politically motivated the charges were, James Kirchick wrote in WSJ,

“If the offense were really criminal, half the Beltway press corps could be indicted. Mr. Franklin’s mishandling of classified documents deserved sanction, but 12 years in jail is far worse than the misdemeanor and fine meted out to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger for stuffing secret documents in his clothing.”

Then, in 2007, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by Mearsheimer and Walt, was published. Its central thesis was that, but for domestic politics, the US would have abandoned Israel long ago. They viewed the Israel lobby, AIPAC, as far too influential for America’s good. Israel was a liability rather than an asset. They totally ignored the vast power of the Saudi Lobby.

An alternative to AIPAC was needed to counter or undermine its influence, so in April 2008, J Street was formed. George Soros backed them as he did Obama.

It was necessary to cast J-Street as pro-Israel so the term had to be redefined. Thomas FriedmanJeffrey Goldberg and Jeremy Ben-Ami each took up the challenge. I took their arguments to task in "Redefining What It Means to be Pro-Israel".

Thus the groundwork was laid for Obama’s “tough love”. He is not just undermining and  weakening Israel in the name of being “pro-Israel” he is also attempting to undermine the support of the American people for Israel by suggesting that a settlement of the dispute satisfactory to the Arabs is in America’s strategic interest or that Israel’s intransigence is costing “US blood and treasure”.

The object of his exercise is to develop “normal US relations with Arab and Muslim countries”, as the paper sets out.

Obama did not wait for his planned attack on Israel to begin doing so.  His first telephone call after his inauguration was to Mahmud Abbas.  His first foreign visit was to Egypt in June 2009 where he delivered his Cairo speech, titled “A New Beginning”, in which he praised Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood in an unprecedented and an ahistorical manner.

Contrary to the wishes of Mubarak, Obama insisted that the Muslim Brotherhood be invited, notwithstanding that Mubarak had banned them. Mubarak himself chose not to attend. A year and a half year later, Obama threw him under the bus and supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt.

In 2011, Obama joined forces with Qatar and Saudi Arabia in order to bring down secular Gadaffi of Libya. He was killed later in the year.  According to theTelegraph UK, the Muslim Brotherhood expects to take power in this week’s upcoming elections just as their counterparts did in Tunisia and Egypt.

In line with all these moves, Obama has embraced Islamist Erdogan as his new best friend despite the fact that Erdogan has moved Turkey from being a friend of Israel to being a vociferous enemy of Israel, Barry Rubin wonders why:

“The fundamental problem with Erdogan is despite being embraced by the United States, he is an enemy of the United States, the West more generally, and Israel. He is on the side of radical, anti-American Islamists who want to wipe Israel off the map. So angry and passionate is Erdogan’s loathing of Israel that the leader of the opposition mockingly but pointedly asked if the prime minister wanted to go to war with the Jewish state.

“In contrast, the list of Erdogan’s dearest friends includes Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, the repressive Sudanese dictatorship, and Syria (formerly the regime there; now the Islamist portions of the opposition).”

It should be no surprise to Rubin because that’s where Obama has been positioning the US.

Erdogan is no longer friends with Syria or Iran and is working with Obama to topple the secular Assad of Syria and replace him with another MB government under his wing.  This objective is proving harder than originally thought, even with the considerable assistance of Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

It would appear then that Obama is succeeding in his goal of achieving normal relations with the Arab world by giving it what it wants. But the MB is not kowtowing to him as he might have expected. The tail is wagging the dog.

Not only has he embraced the MB abroad he has embraced them at home also. So much so, that a stalwart five Congressmen, led by Rep Michelle Bachmann, asked for an investigation of whether US security was jeopardized as a result.. They received no support and were attacked for so doing even by their own party. Apparently the establishment of both parties is not prepared to challenge Obama on his new found friend”.

For some 12 years now, the Organization of the Islamic Countries (OIC) has been pushing the UN to criminalize the defamation of religion. The US resisted such blandishments and defended free speech. In March of last year, a compromise was arrived at. Resolution 16/18 of the Human Rights Council which deplores religious intolerance but doesn’t limit speech, was passed. 

This was a vast improvement over the demand to criminalize defamation of religion.  The US should have left it at that. Instead, she hosted a conference in December of last year on measures to combat religious “intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization”, thereby putting the whole matter in play again. No matter how you slice it, any “measures” will involve the limiting of free speech.

Then in the Spring of this year, the Obama Administration began rapidly  revising  federal counter-terrorism training materials in order to eliminate references to Jihad and Islam. The Islamists, it appears, have used their influence to bring about this dramatic change.  They even have succeeded in limiting what the FBI can say to its agents.

In the first three years of his administration, Obama has openly undercut Israel in the peace process and showed great disrespect to PM Netanyahu.  He cancelled the assurances given by Pres Bush to Israel in 2004 which included secure borders, no right of return to Israel, and no return to ’67 lines.

He came out strongly against all settlement construction, demanded a construction freeze, and refused to acknowledge that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel or even that Jerusalem was in Israel.

Finally he proposed that the settlement be based on the ’67 lines with minor mutually agreed adjustments. This was totally in line with the demands of his new friends headed by Saudi Arabia.

Having gotten away with all this with little political damage, thanks in part to J-street and the main stream media, he instigated a change in the Democratic Party platform.  The new platform, was silent on Jerusalem, silent on where the refugees must return to and silent on Hamas,

The previous platform provided “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel…It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths”, “refugees” should be settled in a future Palestinian state, not in Israel and “The United States and its Quartet partners should continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by past agreements.”

The new platform also removed the commitment to maintain Israel’s military superiority.

In effect, these omissions removed traditional support for Israel’s positions, thereby aligning the American position with that of the Palestinian Authority,

The new platform also removed reference to God.

So loud and angry was the reaction expressed by the media and ordinary Americans that Obama did damage control by asking that the wording on God and Jerusalem be restored. Such  amendment required a 2/3 majority vote. The Chairman had to put it to a vote three times in the hope of getting it passed. He finally declared it passed, though the lack of a 2/3 majority was clearly evident. The Democrats reacted with a chorus of boos.
What remained of the original amendments was that there were no longer assurances about what Hamas must do before acceptance, that the Palestinian refugees need not return only to Palestine and that the Democrats were no longer prepared to ensure Israeli military superiority.

The most threatening of these omissions was the one on refugees. Israel has long maintained, with full support from left and right, that there will be no return to Israel by the refugees. She considers it an existential threat and thus non-negotiable. The Democrats, led by Obama, couldn’t care less.

Finally, Obama has opposed Israel in every way possible to prevent her from attacking Iran. In the latest outrage, Obama assured Iran that if Israel attacked, the US would not be complicit and that if Iran would not attack US forces, the US would not join Israel in the attack.

As a result of Obama’s policies, Israel finds itself surrounded by countries ruled by a hostile Muslim Brotherhood from Tunisia to Turkey which are supported by Obama, alone in its fight against the Iranian bomb and friendless in the peace process.

It seems the anti-Israel constituencies in the US are making progress.

It takes great optimism or belief in the Almighty to be confident that Israel, a nation of seven million, can stand up to the hostile forces arraigned against it, including this administration, and avoid its eradication.
But confident, I remain.


http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12159#.UE1eaWjyYcg

The "Two Jerusalems" Myth


The "Two Jerusalems" Myth

Jerusalem has always been one city, the one the Jews are connected to through the millenia of history.

Eli E. Hertz

Palestinian Arabs have nurtured a myth that historically there were two Jerusalems - an Arab 'East Jerusalem' and a Jewish 'West Jerusalem.'

Jerusalem was never an Arab city; Jews have held a majority in Jerusalem since 1870, and 'east-west' is a geographic, not political designation. It is no different than claiming the Eastern shore of Maryland should be a separate political entity from the rest of the state.

With an overall population of nearly 800,000 today, separating East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem is as viable and acceptable as the notion of splitting Berlin into two cities again, or separating East Harlem from the rest of Manhattan.

Arab claims to Jerusalem, a Jewish city by all definitions, reflect the "what's-mine-is-mine, what's-yours-is-mine" mentality underlying Palestinian Arab concepts of how to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. That concept is also expressed in the demand for the 'Right of Return,' not just in Jerusalem - Israel's capital, but 'inside the Green Line' as well.

Allthough uniting the city transformed all of Jerusalem into the largest city in Israel and a bustling metropolis, even moderate Palestinian Arab leaders reject the idea of a united city. Their minimal demand for “just East Jerusalem” really means the Jewish holy sites (including the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall), which Arabs have failed to protect, and the return of neighborhoods that house a significant percentage of Jerusalem’s present-day Jewish population.
Most of those neighborhoods in the city are built on rock-strewn empty land around the city that was in the public domain for the past 44 years.

Destroying History

Arabs deny the bond between Jews and Jerusalem; they sabotage and destroy archaeological evidence, even at the holiest place in Judaism – the Temple Mount.
Arabs continually denied the legitimacy of the Jewish people’s connection to Jerusalem.

Arafat and other Arab leaders insisted - Abbas did it just recently - that there never were Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount. They also claimed the Western Wall was really an Islamic holy site to which Muslims have historical rights. Putting rhetoric into action, Islamic clerics who manage the Temple Mount have demonstrated flagrant disrespect and contempt for the archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence.

Between 1999 and 2001, the Muslim Waqf removed and dumped more than 13,000 tons of what it termed rubble from the Mount and its substructure, including archaeological remains from the Jerusalem First and Second Temple periods, which Israelis found at dumping sites.

During construction of a new underground mosque in a subterranean hall believed to date back to the time of Herod, and the paving of an “open air” mosque elsewhere on the Temple Mount, the Waqf barred the Israel Antiquities Authority from supervising, or even observing, work. When archaeological finds from any period – Jewish or otherwise – are uncovered in the course of construction work, the Authority is mandated by law to supervise and observe everywhere in Israel – legislation that dates back to 1922 and documented in the international accord of the League of Nations – the “Mandate for Palestine.” 

Such gross disregard for the pre-Islamic Jewish heritage of Jerusalem – particularly on Judaism’s holiest historic site – is a far more insidious form of the same Islamic intolerance that motivated the Taliban to demolish two gigantic pre-Islamic statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Afghanistan..

Arab attitudes have not changed since the words below were written over 100 years ago, when the name Palestine was used to denote the Jewish link to the land. :

THE JEWS IN JERUSALEM by Edwin S. Wallace, former U.S. Consul, Constantinople, Published by Cosmopolitan Magazine – 1898

(Excerpts)

“It is hardly exact to call Palestine “the Land,” or Jerusalem “the City, of the Jews” to-day. But Palestine is the land of Judaism and its chief city is beyond doubt the world’s capital of this particular form of religious belief.

“In this City of the Jews, where the Jewish population outnumbers all others three to one, the Jew has few rights that the Mohammedan or average Christian is bound to respect.”

(For more, see http://www.mythsandfacts.org/)

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12145

Vote Against G-d and Jerusalem - Vote Obama


Vote Against G-d and Jerusalem - Vote Obama

This is what we posted yesterday:" Look at the party platform, Jewish Democrats, and see what you are and are not voting for. Then think about it." It looks as though they did. G-d is back, so is Jerusalem.

Ronn Torossian

It is all very clear and quite simple – ff you listened carefully  to President Obama. He says what he thinks quite clearly. He is supremely confident (arrogant), and one simply has to listen to his language to know what his actions will be.

Analyze some of the changes to the presidential elections' platform presented to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Tuesday:

There is no commitment to Jerusalem's status as Israel's capital.

In 2008, the DNC platform included the following:

"The United States and its Quartet partners should continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist, and abides by past agreements. Sustained American leadership for peace and security will require patient efforts and the personal commitment of the President of the United States. The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel. All understand that it is unrealistic to expect the outcome of final status negotiations to be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths".

That paragraph is gone in 2012. This year’s platform makes no mention of Jerusalem, and is consistent with previous Obama talk regarding moving of the borders.

The status of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is something which is non-negotiable – and the platform change is consistent with the Obama administration viewpoints on Jerusalem (it is not Israel’s capital), borders (negotiations should start at the 1949 armistice lines), and settlements (they should be frozen).

The DNC Obama platform also removed language which speaks of isolating Hamas, and while the previous platform called for Palestinian refugees to be settled in a future Palestinian state — and explicitly not in Israel — the 2012 platform makes no mention of the "refugee" issue.

Even uber-liberal Alan Dershowitz had to acknowledge that it’s a problem , commenting “…I think the omissions are troubling — particularly the omission about the Palestinian refugee issue and Hamas are, I think, deeply troubling.”

Obama has been the most anti-Israel candidate ever to occupy the White House, so perhaps it’s not surprising - after all, the two are connected -  that while the 2008 DNC platform mentioned God 100 times, the 2012 platform doesn't mention God at all.

In 2008, the party platform read: “We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential”

That plank has been rewritten to remove the phrase "God-given." Fitting for a man who believes government provides for people, rather than them creating with hard work, as entrepreneurs did. As Obama said, “You didn’t build that” – he believes government did.

Given Obama’s anti-Israel and other anti-God stances, it is perhaps justified that God’s name was dropped from the platform.

Obama, during the 2008 campaign, told “Joe the Plumber” that he needed to “spread the wealth around” – clearly that “wealth” means socialist values – which are ungodly, don’t extend to Israel and are not the American Way.

It should be quite clear for all voters that this election is really about choices and core values – about the economy, religion, foreign policy and the direction of America.

American Jews voting Obama are voting against Jerusalem being the capital city of our people,  since King David set it up as such more than 3,000 years ago.

I'd rather be a Jew with Jerusalem as the capital of Israel than an Obama supporter without Jerusalem.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12141#.UE1dS2jyYcg