neshumah

Breaking news Dreuz.info: CNN Israel fired all Jewish journalists | dreuz.info

2012-02-11T14:45:00.000-07:00

The Israeli branch of CNN, located in Jerusalem, is downsizing and has fired four Israeli Jewish journalists (out of a crew of 8),
and has retained only Arab journalists.

Thus: the Israel news from CNN will be biased toward the Arab viewpoint.

Breaking news Dreuz.info: CNN Israel fired all Jewish journalists | dreuz.info

Anti-Semitism is an Integral Part of British Culture - Op-Eds - Israel National News

2012-02-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

Interview series: Prof. Robert Wistrich, Director of Int'l Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Hebrew Univ.

"Anti-Semitism is embedded in British culture for a thousand years. Britain was the first to expel the Jews in 1290."

Terrific article & interview on British antisemitism, written by by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Chairman of the Board of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Anti-Semitism is an Integral Part of British Culture - Op-Eds - Israel National News

Azzam's threat found!

2011-12-20T08:45:00.002-07:00

Azzam's Genocidal Threat

for Wikipedians who have argued over this... He did indeed say this and the proof is here

Works and Days » ‘When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend’

2011-12-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

Works and Days » ‘When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend’

Invented Palestinians

2011-12-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

Another great post by Daniel Greenfield/Sultan Knish

A Badly Invented People

In the post-news environment, media no longer exists to report, it exists to disseminate glib talking points that sound good at first, but don't stand up to examination. Fact checks, one of the latest media gimmicks, have become another vector for disseminating talking points. So have media blogs which began repeating the same ridiculous thing over and over again.

Take the response to Gingrich's accurate statement that the Palestinian Arabs are an invented people. Aside from all the hysterical "sky is falling" nonsense, is the comparison between the Americans as an invented people and the Palestinian Arabs.

continued here

Palestinians invented

2011-12-11T09:03:00.001-07:00

From Daled Amos, with source material for Wikipedians.

We should thank Newt Gingrich for bringing up the fact that the term Palestinian as referring to Arabs is a recent invention, as reported in the New York Times:

Does Newt Gingrich believe in a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Democratic and Republican administrations since the 1990s have adopted that framework for peace in the Middle East, but Mr. Gingrich suggested that he might break with it, calling Palestinians an “invented” people and the current stalled peace process “delusional.”

Pity that Gingrich has backed down from the controversial statement.
But he needn't have.

Gingrich's statement is backed up by Zuheir Mohsen, a Palestinian leader of the pro-Syria faction of the PLO who March 1977 gave an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw...

continue:
Daled Amos: When Gingrich Says The "Palestinians" Were Invented--Maybe His Source Was...A Palestinian

The Palestinians Resurrect the Partition Plan

2011-11-28T08:23:00.001-07:00

The Palestinians Resurrect the Partition Plan

EXPLAINING WHY JERUSALEM IS NOT PALESTINIAN TERRITORY

Author: Dore Gold Dore Gold

Re: UN 1947 partition plan for Palestine.

Whoever thinks that U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 – the famous Partition Plan – from Nov. 29, 1947, is for historians of the Middle East alone, is not aware of the role that the 64-year-old resolution still plays to this very day. As Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. in 1999, I had to deal with an effort by the PLO observer to revive the territorial map of Resolution 181 as a substitute for U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967, which had served as the agreed basis of the peace process until then.

.....

Palestinian statements about Resolution 181 beginning in the 1990s, it is especially important to look at the letter Mahmoud Abbas gave to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-.Moon on Sept. 23 of this year, which requested that the U.N. accept a Palestinian state as a full member. Abbas notably based his request on Resolution 181 and didn’t write a word about Resolution 242.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2011/11/25/the-palestinians-resurrect-the-partition-plan/

Banned Speech at the Hyatt: Pamela Geller, "Truth is the New Hate Speech" - YouTube

2011-11-02T19:36:00.001-07:00

The Night that Abu Hasan Farted

2011-10-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

They recount that in the city of Kaukaban in Yemen there was a man named Abu Hasan of the Fadhli tribe who left the Bedouin life and became a townsman and the wealthiest of merchants. His wife died while both were young, and his friends pressed him to marry again.

Weary of their pressure, Abu Hasan entered into negotiations with the old women who procure matches, and married a woman as beautiful as the moon shining over the sea. To the wedding banquet he invited kith and kin, ulema and fakirs, friends and foes, and all of his acquaintances.

The whole house was thrown open to feasting: There were five different colors of rice, and sherbets of as many more; kid goats stuffed with walnuts, almonds, and pistachios; and a young camel roasted whole. So they ate and drank and made merry.

The bride was displayed in her seven dresses -- and one more -- to the women, who could not take their eyes off her. At last the bridegroom was summoned to the chamber where she sat enthroned. He rose slowly and with dignity from his divan; but in do doing, for he was over full of meat and drink, he let fly a great and terrible fart.

In fear for their lives, all the guests immediately turned to their neighbors and talked aloud, pretending to have heard nothing.

Mortified, Abu Hasan turned away from the bridal chamber and as if to answer a call of nature. He went down to the courtyard, saddled his mare, and rode off, weeping bitterly through the night.

In time he reached Lahej where he found a ship ready to sail for India; so he boarded, arriving ultimately at Calicut on the Malabar coast. Here he met with many Arabs, especially from Hadramaut, who recommended him to the King. This King (who was a Kafir) trusted him and advanced him to the captaincy of his bodyguard. He remained there ten years, in peace and happiness, but finally was overcome with homesickness. His longing to behold his native land was like that of a lover pining for his beloved; and it nearly cost him his life.

Finally he sneaked away without taking leave and made his way to Makalla in Hadramaut. Here he donned the rags of a dervish. Keeping his name and circumstances a secret, he set forth on foot for Kaukaban. He endured a thousand hardships of hunger, thirst, and fatigue; and braved a thousand dangers from lions, snakes, and ghouls.

Drawing near to his old home, he looked down upon it from the hills with brimming eyes, and said to himself, "They might recognize me, so I will wander about the outskirts and listen to what people are saying. May Allah grant that they do not remember what happened."

He listened carefully for seven nights and seven days, until it happened that, as he was sitting at the door of a hut, he heard the voice of a young girl saying, "Mother, tell me what day was I born on, for one of my companions wants to tell my fortune."

The mother answered, "My daughter, you were born on the very night when Abu Hasan farted."

No sooner had the listener heard these words than he rose up from the bench and fled, saying to himself, "Verily my fart has become a date! It will be remembered for ever and ever. "

He continued on his way, returning finally to India, where he remained in self exile until he died. May the mercy of Allah be upon him!

Source: The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night: A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, translated by Richard F. Burton vol. 5, pp. 135-137. Translation revised by D. L. Ashliman.

The History of the Middle East Conflict in 11 Minutes

2011-10-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

SKA Rosh Hashana 5772

2011-09-27T19:43:00.001-07:00

What Has Israel Ever Done For Peace? | HonestReporting

2011-09-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

What Has Israel Ever Done For Peace?

The War against Israel Rages On

2011-08-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

In the past 72 hours Israeli cities (Not military camps. Cities!) have been bombarded by over 84 rockets, killing six civilians and forcing one million Israelis into bomb shelters throughout southern Israel. This has not reached the news at all. No mention of this is on CNN, BBC or SKY.

Follow the situation at This Ongoing War site

Only Israel - great music and facts about Israel

2011-08-23T22:07:00.000-07:00

Israel: I Want to Know More of Your Life... I Want to Know More of You

2011-08-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

Islam, the religion of P....

2011-08-19T21:55:00.001-07:00

Science and Islam: Urine Proves Islam is the True Religion! - YouTube

Drop 8 Zeros

2011-08-09T20:35:00.001-07:00

DROP 8 ZEROS:

The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so we created a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms. Let's put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:

U.S. income: $2,170,000,000,000

Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)

It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can relate to. Therefore, let's remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the fictitious Jones family:

Total annual income for the Jones family: $21,700
Amount of money the Jones family spent: $38,200
Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Amount cut from the budget: $385

RealClearScience - Only 13% Female: Is Wikipedia Sexist, Too?

2011-08-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

RealClearScience - Only 13% Female: Is Wikipedia Sexist, Too?

President Obama Is No Longer Tethered To Reality - Yahoo! News

2011-07-31T09:32:00.000-07:00

By Peter Ferrara | Forbes
President Barack Obama's speech to the nation Monday night was highly disturbing. Because read carefully, it reveals a president wildly divorced from the fundamental realities of the nation he is supposed to be leading.

President Obama actually told America on national television that it is a nation "with a system in which the deck seems stacked against middle class Americans in favor of the wealthiest few." It is incomprehensible how a man serving as president of these United States could make such a fundamentally false assertion about his own country.

As I explain in my new book, America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, before Obama was even elected, official IRS data showed that for 2007 the top 1% of income earners paid more in federal income taxes than the bottom 95% combined. The top 1% paid 40.4% of all federal income taxes that year, almost twice their share of income. The middle fifth of income earners, the actual middle class, paid 4.7% of federal income taxes. Deck stacked against the middle class in favor of the wealthiest few?

(con't) President Obama Is No Longer Tethered To Reality - Yahoo! News

Not ready for his closeup: MSNBC would be wrong to hire Al Sharpton for a nightly hosting gig

2011-07-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

Not ready for his closeup: MSNBC would be wrong to hire Al Sharpton for a nightly hosting gig

sharp article on Sharpton.

RealClearWorld - Leadership-Starved EU Heads for Oblivion

2011-07-17T04:34:00.001-07:00

RealClearWorld - Leadership-Starved EU Heads for Oblivion

"Policy-makers are often drawn towards the cultivation of responsibility avoidance. However, EU functionaries have perfected the practice of responsibility avoidance and transformed it into an art form."

YouTube - ‪Chimp Memory Beats Humans'‬‏

2011-07-12T08:59:00.000-07:00

no more "You dumb ape!" .....

YouTube - ‪Chimp Memory Beats Humans'

‬‏

The Demagogic Style - National Review Online

2011-07-12T03:06:00.000-07:00

The Demagogic Style - National Review Online

best talking dog video ever

2011-06-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities

2011-05-22T07:40:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities

Israel and the Middle East

2011-05-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

Israel and the Middle East

Great source of material for Israel supporters! Great reading on the list.

Another Bite at the Apple: Hedegaard Found Guilty

2011-05-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

Another Bite at the Apple: Hedegaard Found Guilty

Assault on free speech in the so called free world.

Last week, Lars Hedegaard, president and founder of the Danish and International Free Press Societies was convicted of "hate speech" under Article 266 b of the Danish penal code and fined the equivalent of about $1000.

Apparently the Danish government's current position on free speech isn't the only thing rotten in Denmark. In what reeks of violation of the general proscription against double jeopardy from this American's perspective, it would seem Danish prosecutors are allowed to make multiple attacks against the same defendant on the same charges. Determined to convict Hedegaard, the prosecutor appealed the lower court's decision, and Hedegaard was retried on April 26, 2010, the same day he released his new book, Muhammed's Girls: Violence, Murder and Rape in the House of Islam.

Hedegaard will appeal, of course, "to the Supreme Court and – if that is denied – to the European Court of Human Rights," according to a released statement. Hedegaard will not give in, and so, who are the real losers in this case? According to Hedegaard:

"The real victims of this despicable case are freedom of speech and the tens of thousands of girls and women – Muslim as well as non-Muslim – whose plight may no longer be mentioned in my country for fear of legal prosecution and public denigration."

Noted feminist psychologist, Dr. Phyllis Chesler offers a similar perspective on Hedegaard's conviction.

See more here at the Legal Project. Of course the assault on free speech is invariably about Islam. Wake up, world! before it is too late!

Dore Gold on the push for Palestinian statehood at the UN

2011-05-02T09:31:00.000-07:00

Countdown to September: Israel, the Palestinians, and the UN General Assembly

by Dore Gold

*The public debate in Israel over the Palestinian plan to seek UN support for statehood in September is based on a fundamental misconception: the UN General Assembly cannot by itself establish or recognize a Palestinian state. It can admit new members to the UN only after they have been nominated first by the UN Security Council, where any of the five permanent members could veto the nomination.

*The current Palestinian effort at the UN, moreover, seems redundant. The UN General Assembly already recommended the creation of a Palestinian state on December 15, 1988, and has even insisted on the 1967 lines. The 1988 resolution was backed by 104 countries; only the U.S. and Israel opposed it. But this and other past resolutions (including one as recently as December 18, 2008) did not create a new legal reality, nor did they change anything on the ground.

*In 1998, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was confronted with a plan by Yasser Arafat to declare a state in 1999, the Israeli government warned that such a move would constitute "a substantive and fundamental violation of the Interim Agreement" between Israel and the Palestinians (the Oslo II agreement). It issued a formal statement saying that if such a violation occurred, then Israel would be entitled to take all necessary steps, including the application of Israeli law to settlement blocs and security zones in the West Bank.

*Oslo II clearly established that "Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the Permanent Status negotiations" (Article 31). The European Union actually signed Oslo II as a witness. Can EU countries then become active participants in changing the status of the territories whose fate is supposed to be determined only by negotiations?

*Israel must firmly oppose the September initiative in the General Assembly, even if the Palestinians already have the votes. It must make absolutely clear that this move is no less than a material breach of a core commitment in the Oslo Agreements, as the Israeli government asserted in 1998. Only a strong Israeli response will deter Abbas from going further down the road of unilateralism.

Please read the full article here

Hamas

2011-04-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

Hamas

The warnings still ring so true. Friends, please check out this site

2011-04-14T22:11:00.000-07:00

"For three years I have been imploring you,Jews of Poland, the crown of world Jewry, appealing to you, warning you unceasingly that the catastrophe is nigh. My hair has turned white and I have grown old over these years, for my heart is bleeding that you, dear brothers and sisters, do not see the volcano which will soon begin to spew forth its fires of destruction. I see a horrible vision. Time is growing short for you to be spared. I know you cannot see it, for you are troubled and confused by everyday concerns... Listen to my words at this... for time is running short."
--- Jabotinsky – to the Jews of Warsaw on Tisha b’Av 1938

part of the mission statement of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

YouTube - 'Arab Men Should Sexually Harass Israeli Woman As Resistance

2011-04-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

YouTube - 'Arab Men Should Sexually Harass Israeli Woman As Resistance

Muslim Student Attacks UN Rights Council for Anti-Israel Bias

2011-04-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

Very moving

Israeli Navy Uncovers Weaponry Intended for Terrorist Organization in th...

2011-03-21T13:04:00.000-07:00

And The Myth Goes On....

2011-03-18T10:18:00.001-07:00

In the middle east according to Walid Khalidi:

"A GENERAL THEME running through the Zionist account of the events between November 1947 and May 1948 is that orders were ''broadcast'' [his emphasis] to the Arabs to leave the country in order to pave the way for entry of the regular Arab armies." (Khalidi, 1959)

He, along with Childers, has the accent on the wrong "sil-ah'-buhl."

Khalidi, as well as Erskine Childers takes us down the primrose path, defining the "Zionist" enemy and creating a myth around the concept of this "broadcast of orders," claiming that it is central fiction that "Zionists" created as a cover for what he calls their "unconscionable" actions during the war that followed the partition.

The Jewish version of events has little or nothing to do with broadcasting, and much to do with the reasons for the exodus of the Arabs from parts of the Mandate. The Jewish contention was that many Arabs left the the Jewish-allocated sections of what was then "Palestine" because they were pressured to leave by their own [Arab] leadership, and that this was in fact a strategic move to clear the roads for the advance of the regular Arab armies, and to deny labor and services to the Jewish state in hopes of starving it economically, so it would be aborted when the British abandoned the Mandate. In the end this turned out to be a bad idea, since in the main Israel has refused to allow their return outside a comprehensive peace agreement, something the Arabs and Palestinian Arabs have chosen not to do.

Khalidi, as Childers, does not try to argue with these assertions but instead soldiers on to attempt to discredit and ridicule with primary emphasis on "broadcast orders".

Nafez Nazzal (Nazzal, 1978, pg 1) , Christopher Hitchens (Said and Hitchens, 1988, pgs 73-83) and numerous others have carried forward this initial error; if indeed it really is an error, as opposed to a simple deflection from the real issue; since the Israeli contention is hard to dispute '''on the merits'''. Khalidi demands proof of these "broadcasts," as does Childers, and Hitchens. The myth has been seeded and goes on and on...

Khalidi at least makes an attempt to provide something that could be used as a source for this accusation by fingering a "certain American Zionist by the name of Dr. Joseph Schechtman " for responsibility for this "elaborate story." He didn't make it easy to check his sources, since he gave not one quote, not one name of the so-called "pamphlets" in which he claimed this "story" made its "first elaborate appearance". Nor do we get one shred of evidence to substantiate the claim that this was a "general theme" in the "Zionist account of events."

Schechtman, a Russian Jew who emigrated to the U.S. in 1941 when he was fifty, was an historian, biographer and Zionist intellectual.   But to borrow a phrase, "I was intrigued", and using Khalidi's clues, despite errors * was able to track down Schechtman's two pamphlets and check Khalidi's claim. [A scanned version of the full pamphlet can be seen here or a text version of the just the section on the Arab flight can be seen here ]

One of many references often quoted, and quoted by Schechtman as evidence of Arab pressure to evacuate is an article in The Economist ** of October 2, 1948.   The precise quote from The Economist, purported to be by an eye-witness is 'Various factors influenced their [the Arabs'] decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that by far the most potent of these factors were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Committee urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit. The reason given was that upon the final withdrawal of the British the combined armies of the Arab states would invade Palestine and drive the Jews into the sea.' (Jewish Agency for Palestine (Schechtman) 1949, page 13)

This is the only mention of radio broadcasts in either of his 30-odd page pamphlets, and it was put forward as evidence of pressure [by Arabs], not evidence of radio broadcasts. It was a quote from a respectable news magazine of the time and not Schectman's words. There is nothing! at all in Schechtman's words that can even remotely be interpreted as creating an elaborate story of "radio broadcasts." (Jewish Agency for Palestine (Schechtman) 1949, pgs 8-14)

Here is what Schechtman actually says within the larger context:

...in an interview with a correspondent of the Beirut Arabic newspaper Telegraph on September 6, 1948, Emil Ghory, representative of the Arab Higher Committee at the meetings of the UN General Assembly stated: "The problem of the refugees is the direct result of the policy of resistance to partition and to the establishment of the Israeli State. This policy was unanimously adopted by the Arab Governments, and it is they who have to bear responsibility for the solution of the refugee problem."

Perhaps the clearest illustration of Arab evacuation by command is the Arab exodus from Haifa. "The London Economist "(October 2, 1948) quotes a British eye-witness to what happened. Despite the fact that the Jewish authorities "urged all Arabs to remain in Haifa and guaranteed them protection and security... the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 4,000 or 6,000 remained."

"Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that far the most potent of these factors were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive, urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit The reason given was that upon the final withdrawal of the British the combined armies of the Arab States would invade Palestine and drive the Jews into the sea.,, and it was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Israeli protection would be regarded as renegades. At that time the Palestinian Arabs still had some confidence in the ability of the Arab League to implement the promises of its spokesman."

All evidence seems to point to the fact that the mass exodus of the Arab population was deliberately stimulated to serve the political ends of the Arab leadership. The Arab masses were subjected to a heavy barrage of "atrocity propaganda" predicting their wholesale extermination by the advancing Jewish forces. They were exhorted to flee for their lives even though they were not immediately threatened. (Jewish Agency for Palestine (Schechtman) 1949, pgs 12-13)

Rather than deal with Schechtman's actual premise, Khalidi pursues the "broadcasts" issue and tells us that in 1959 that he went "through the files of the press releases of the Arab League," that he "privately examined" the archives of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. He went through a large volume of full texts published by The Arab League Secretariat of their assemblies and committees.   Mr Khalidi went on to examine newspapers in the Arab world, and chose three important newspapers to scour for evidence of these "broadcast orders" that he claims is of central importance to the Zionists' argument.

Childers later picks up where Khalidi left off in his article The Other Exodus ( article was originally published in the London weekly The Spectator of May 12, 1961).

Like Khalidi he begins as if he were going to argue the facts: "Israel claims that the Arabs left because they were ordered to, and deliberately incited into panic, by their own leaders who wanted the field cleared for the 1948 war. It is also argued that there would today be no Arab refugees if the Arab States had not attacked the new Jewish State on May 15, 1948 (though 800,000 had already fled before that date)."

This (with the exception of his numbers) seems to be true at first glance, but Israel does not claim that the Arabs left because of an order, broadcast or otherwise. After all, the hundreds of thousands that evacuated were not all soldiers under orders. In fact, as Schechtman clearly says as early as 1949, "The mass flight of the Palestine Arabs is a phenomenon for which no single explanation suffices."   (Schechtman article can be seen here.   See pgs 8-14) As for Childers' assertion that 800,000 refugees had already fled by May 15, this begs credulity, and typically he does not provide a source for it. [The majority of Palestinian Arabs left between June 11 and July 9, 1948 the period of a U.N. imposed truce (Anderson, p 20) and (p. 26) the UN Conciliation Committee considers the total number of refugees to be  711,000. According to Schechtman, 1952, (p 16) the total number of refugees 'could not have exceeded 600,000'.' Very few sources suggest that the total number of refugees exceeded 800,000. Therefore it is not really credible that 800,000 had already left by May 15. Even the highly partisan Ilan Pappe, (1992, p96) only gives an estimate of 380,000 by May 15.]

In fact it is often quite unclear where Khalidi and Childers get their information, since they are stingy with supporting references, if indeed they provide any. Often when they do provide detail, they get it wrong. For example in Childers' polemic Wordless Wish , ( pg 199, note 122) he says : "In a number of instances, quotations offered from Arab newspapers are found not   to exist at all, not even for suitable "reworking." An example is a much-used quote from Falastin for February 19, 1949; that was a Monday. Falastin was never printed on Mondays, and no such statement could be found in the paper on proximate other dates." Hmmm check the date, anyone? Would you believe, Saturday? With the help of the Internet these days, we can check such stuff out in moments. How tacky to be accusing others of making stuff up with made-up stuff as your evidence! [The text that Childer's couldn't bring himself to references was "The Arab states which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees." -- The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, Saturday, February 19, 1949]

While Khalidi fingered Schechtman, Childers fingers Leo Kohn, claiming he wrote "one of the first official pamphlets on the Arab refugees," and, in typical Childers' fashion when making an accusation, he does not name either the pamphlet nor the publisher, so it is virtually impossible to check. He gives us even fewer clues than Khalidi. Kohn, international lawyer and chaired professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, headed the Israel Delegation to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine in June, 1948. Kohn is drawn as an pompous buffoon by Childers, and is said to have pointed to the quote in his own (un-named) pamphlet to the same Economist article mentioned by Khalidi. Childers acknowledges the article but poo-poos it, saying it was "clear" that the quotation was a "second-hand account, inserted as that of an eye-witness" -- in other words, a lie, yet he provides no evidence or even argument to support this claim!    Finding this article is my next challenge. ***

Like Khalidi, Childers begins his investigation of the "broadcast evacuation orders".

"....I next decided to test the undocumented charge that the Arab evacuation orders were broadcast by Arab radio-which could be done thoroughly because the BBC monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a U.S. monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum......Examining every official Israeli statement about the Arab exodus, I was struck by the fact that no primary evidence of evacuation orders was ever produced."

He states flatly, "There was not a single order, or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948."

In The Spectator Correspondence, Khalidi claims that he also examined the same material independently and thus reports that he can confirm what Childers says, that is, that there was nothing that could be in any way interpreted as a broadcasted order. John Kimche in that same Correspondence is skeptical and asks "...how Mr Childers checked all the broadcasts, who monitored them and where, and whether there were really no gaps at all in these monitorings of all Middle East broadcasts in 1948?.....were they complete in every sense of the word, and were they checked by him in English or in the original Arabic?" He goes on to say that the material at the British museum was "ludicrously incomplete" and that "They do not cover even 10 percent of the broadcasts."

Zimmerman in his study entitled Radio propaganda in the Arab-Israeli War, 1948. was also skeptical and questioned the monitoring service: "Childers' claim that 'the BBC monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948 ', has been contradicted by the assistant editor of the monitoring service, who stated in a letter to the author (16.12.70): 'No one could ever claim to have monitored every single broadcast . . . Only a selection from what is actually listened to is transcribed, and only a selection of what is actually transcribed is published.'

Zimmerman then goes on to put up a handful of radio stations and dates that could be considered to contradict Childers' assertion that "There was not a single order, or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948." Zimmerman:

'After the Arab defeat in Tiberias, Sharq al Adna (20.4.48) announced that King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan had ordered `Arab forces to be sent immediately to Tiberias to evacuate Arab refugee families '.

Two days later,following the Jewish victory at Haifa, the same station suggested the existence of a plan when it reported: `Simultaneously the Arabs have started to evacuate this market area by sending women and children by sea to Acre.'

Radio Damascus (26.4.48), discussing the battle of Jaffa, was even more explicit: `Arab reinforcements arrive continuously in defence of the town, from which women and children are being evacuated.'

Zimmerman continues:

Another of Mr. Childers' assertions, that no Jewish station ` so much as hinted at any Arab evacuation orders ', does not tally with the record. When Arab broadcasts admitted the evacuation of Arab villages, the Haganah took up the subject and blamed the exodus on the invading Arab irregulars. On 21 April it accused `Arab gangs ' (the Haganah term for Arab irregulars) of being responsible for the evacuation of Arab villages. On 23 April it mentioned and criticized the ' evacuation of all Arab inhabitants [from Tiberias ? ] by order of the Arab higher authorities'. On 5 May, it also drew attention to the plight of the villagers of Sarafand who wanted to postpone their evacuation until their crops had been harvested. The British were also blamed for the Arab exodus. The 'Voice of Israel (9.11.48) asked the Arabs to remember ' that it was the British who advised them to evacuate the Arab population from the areas about to be occupied by Israeli forces '.

Zimmerman's is an excellent article and I encourage readers to check it out for themselves. (It can be read in its entirety here.) Zimmerman also makes the excellent point that "Mr. Childers contends that Jewish radio stations contributed their share to the Arab exodus by focusing attention on the flight and panic of Arabs.25 Interestingly, none of these broadcasts have been quoted in sufficient detail to allow the reader to appreciate the
point they were trying to make, namely that the Arab panic was caused by Arab irregulars." These vaguenesses of quoting seem to be endemic in the writings of Khalidi and Childers, and has of course been multiplied by those partisans who carry the propaganda forward.

In fact there is evidence of evacuation "instructions" etc in U.S. newspapers of the time, as early as 1946. In this article, for example, we are told that "In Cairo Abdul Rahman Azzam Pash, secretary-general of the Arab League, said some Arab leaders had proposed to transform the Holy Land into a battleground 'for their existence'. He said the proposals called for evacuation of all Arab women and children from Palestine to neighboring countries. (May 4, 1946)

Or a bit later in this one :

"Jewish Agency Charges Mufti Agents Behind Arab Stampede -- Jerusalem, April 26 (Palcor) - A spokesman for the Jewish Agency reiterated the charge that Mufti agents were willfully spreading panic among the Arabs and have set in motion a stampede from Jerusalem, Haifa, Tiberias and other towns in order to: 1) present the Jews as aggressors: 2) fan Arab youth into wild fighting fanaticism: 3) impress on the Arab states the need for sending their regular armies into Palestine; and 4) absolve such intervention before world public opinion.
(A similar charge was made by Moshe Shertok, Chief of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency in a statement to the Security Council last Friday.) (April 26, 1948)

{I left in the mention of Shertok, since Khalidi refers to him (Khalidi, p. 43) as evidence that there had been no mention of "orders" "In August–September 1948, Shertok (the Foreign Minister of the Provisional Government of Israel) exchanged letters with Count Bernadotte over the question of the Arab refugees. Shertok disclaimed Israeli responsibility for the refugees, but no Arab evacuation order was mentioned." Several months earlier, however, in April, Shertok had spoken of this to the Security Council. He had apparently said something to the effect that Mufti agents [Arab leaders] had purposefully ("willfully") "set in motion a stampede" ie the Arabs themselves were responsible for the flight, orders or no orders, broadcasted by radio or otherwise.}

Try reading the same article from The Economist with the contentious broadcasts line completely removed.

". . . During the subsequent days the Israeli authorities who were now in complete control of Haifa urged all Arabs to remain . . . and guaranteed them protection and security. So far as I know, most of the British civilian residents whose advice was asked by Arab friends told the latter they would be wise to stay. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. ..... The reason given was that upon the final withdrawal of the British the combined armies of the Arab states would invade Palestine and drive the Jews into the sea.

They did invade Palestine, and but for the grace of God did not drive the Jews into the sea. No doubt extraordinary emphasis on "orders" and "broadcasts" has more to do with the attempt to draw attention away from the actions of one particular side during the war that followed the partition, and place it on the other. Propaganda is made to make one side look bad, so we don't look too closely at the other. Diversionary tactics such as this has delayed solving the problem for over 60 years. The pot of hate, based on lies, half-truths and exaggeration is stirred and stirred again. It makes a fair solution to this problem for both peoples virtually an impossibility.

Biblio:

ANDERSON, H. D. (1951). The Arab refugee problem, how it can be solved; proposals submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations.
CHILDERS, E. (1971). The wordless wish: from citizen to refugees. North Dartmouth, Mass, Association of Arab-American University Graduates.
CHILDERS, E. B. (1963). The Other Exodus. Cairo, Information Dept.
COOKE, H. V., KIMCHE, J., CHILDERS, E. B., KHALIDI, W., ATIYAH, E., & CAIRNS, D. (1988). Appendix E: The Spectator Correspondence. Journal of Palestine Studies. 18, 51-70.
JEWISH AGENCY FOR PALESTINE. (1949). Arab refugees: facts and figures. New York, N.Y., Prepared by the Research Dept., Jewish Agency for Palestine.
KHALIDI, W. (1959). Why did the Palestinians leave?: an examination of the Zionist version of the exodus of 1948. s.l, s.n..
NAZZAL, N. (1978). The Palestinian exodus from Galilee, 1948. Beirut, Institute for Palestine Studies.
PAPPÉ, I. (1992). The making of the the Arab-Israeli conflict 1947-51. London, Tauris.
SAID, E. W., and HITCHENS, C. (1988). Blaming the victims: spurious scholarship and the Palestinian question. London, Verso.
ZIMMERMAN, J. (1974). Radio propaganda in the Arab-Israeli War, 1948. London, Institute of Contemporary History.

--------------------------------------------

* One major error was the publisher. Khalidi gave the publisher as the Israel Information Center, New York, when in fact they were published by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, New York. As the pamphlets did not list an author, and since Khalidi did not give us the name of these pamphlets, they were not easy to find.

** The Economist was a well respected news journal of the time, see: URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2009044 (subscription required)

***Another oddity about the Economist is its authorship policy. According to the magazine's website:
"The Economist is different from other publications not only because it offers a broad international perspective but also because it has no bylines. It is written anonymously, because it is a paper whose collective voice and personality matter more than the identities of individual journalists. This ensures a continuity of tradition and view which few other publications have matched." This makes this article hard to find as well.
------------------

IM Stokvis

LTC Allen West in support of Israel

2011-03-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

Khalidi and the Myth of the Myth of the Radio Broadcasts

2011-02-12T17:06:00.008-07:00

Special to Neshumah

One thing about those who are historians or who call themselves such, is that one expects that they should provide footnoted references for any assertions that they make, so we can check these assertions out, and thus be able to help us distinguish between real historical fact and research, and simple, or not so simple , propaganda. Sources and footnotes that can be checked for validity are the only criterion we can use to establish fact from fiction. The idea of Wikipedia, for example, is excellent because it requires sources. Unfortunately, there are not not near enough footnote-checkers in Wikipedia, particularly in areas where "propaganda" is rife, eg politics and areas of historical conflict. In such areas, there are many writers and re-writers of history, to draw upon. Are all equally reliable?

Recently I was reading some criticism of the academic and political writer Ali A. Mazrui, an Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at State University of Binghamton, and author. Ihechukwu Madubuike, a Nigerian fellow scholar and sharp critic of Mazrui writes,

"What is equally troubling is the intellectual dishonesty which the Professor parades about as a universal critic without bias, the pseudo scholarship which contains a large dose of contaminated ideological hypocrisy.

"Mazrui should be able to distinguish between literary criticism from pure propaganda or come out clean and tell us which one he is practicing. By not doing this Professor Mazrui undermines interpretative validity, professionalism and academic freedom." (1)

While this suggests that even in the field of literary criticism one can find propaganda, and the same question can be asked of other fields, particularly history. Is a particular author, whatever his credentials, engaging in scholarship, or in pseudo scholarship contaminated by ideological hypocrisy?

I was recently reading a book of essays entitled The Transformation of Palestine edited by I Abu-Lughod. The first sentence in the preface says "This book supports the Arab case in the conflict over Palestine. The presentation is non-polemical and factual....The Palestinian Arabs did not leave their homes voluntarily or in obedience to instructions from the governments of adjoining Arab states, They fled from fear of death." Blaming Israeli terrorism, Toynbee faults Israel propaganda. (xii-ix Arnold J. Toynbee)

Recently scholarship "in support of the Arab cause" has taken to referring to any Israeli version of events as the "Israeli narrative." This is an interesting use of the word "narrative" in the context of history, suggesting as it does, fiction. Is the Israeli "narrative" really fiction and myth, or is it in fact supported by the facts?

Take for example Walid Khalidi's essay entitled "Why did the Palestinians Leave, Revisited" which can be accessed here, and which continues to be repeated by others (eg see: Esber, pg 37 and Sa'di , Abu-Lughod and Childers)

The Khalidi article begins with a preface by an unnamed individual, returning this 1959 article to public attention and citing this common theme in anti-Israel discourse:

"The myth that the Palestinian exodus of 1948 was triggered by orders from the Arab leaders—a cornerstone of the official Israeli version of the 1948 war and intended to absolve it of responsibility for the refugee problem—dies hard,"

Later he calls this story "this central plank of the Israeli doctrine of 1948." The writer's thesis is that there exists an "official Israeli version" --that is to say, an official Israeli myth-- of the Palestinian Arab exodus in 1948 that claims it was triggered by Arab "orders." Khalidi and his fellows tell us that this myth (or "narrative") is used to shift responsibility and blame from Israel and the Jews, where it belongs, in their opinion, and instead lay it on the Palestinian Arabs, who were villagers and innocent victims of a campaign of terror and expulsion by the Jews. (Since all newspapers & historians of the time refer to the "Arabs" and the "Jews", I do so as well. Note: Khalidi refers instead to "Palestinians" and "Zionists")

Khalidi begins:

"A GENERAL THEME running through the Zionist account of the events between November 1947 and May 1948 is that orders were ''broadcast'' to the Arabs to leave the country in order to pave the way for entry of the regular Arab armies."

and he goes on,

"I can find no significant trace of this allegation in Zionist sources in 1948, although one would expect it to be made then."

I sure would like to see the actual quote in an official Israeli document(s) somewhere. Broadcast orders were a "general theme"? Yes, the Jews argued that the Arabs hold primary responsibility for the refugees since it was they who started belligerency.

But "broadcast orders?" Radio orders, or "broadcasted" some other way? Were these supposed to be military orders or instructions of the local muktars? We don't know, because we are not privy to any direct quote. If this were indeed a central plank, shouldn't Khalidi have provided us with at least one footnoted reference for a quotation that we could check? After all, it is central to his argument.

Khalidi says he can find no trace of this allegation in "Zionist" sources in 1948. That is, he says he can find no significant trace in Zionist sources? Why would the source necessarily be Zionist? Evidence of supposed broadcast orders should be valid from any reliable source, not merely Zionist sources .

I found a few newspaper references to Arab-sponsored evacuation in Google news archive, like this plan, in '46 from the Arab League: (2) Or this, from '48. (3) about Mufti "instructions". Does the Canadian Jewish Chronicle from 1948 qualify as a Zionist source?

Khalidi goes on to give some examples of some radio broadcast that did not mention this allegation that he says one would have expected to have been made then. He continues, "Shertok disclaimed Israeli responsibility for the refugees, but no Arab evacuation order was mentioned." Not Really. This (4) article demonstrates that Shertok did in fact mention an Arab evacuation order to the UN Security Council. Khalidi is flat wrong.

What is the explanation, he asks, that the Zionists did not mention this in 1948? He then answers his own question with the following explanation "It was only in 1949, when the Zionists realized that the problem of the Arab refugees was touching the conscience of the civilized world, that they decided to counter the damaging influence it was having on their cause." He has yet to provide us with the "Zionist" quote that says anything at all about radio broadcasts, but he has already provided us with the Zionist motive, made up of whole cloth. It is simply a slander.

Now he intends to finger the culprit that first made up this story, and to provide a clue as to where I might find a direct quote of this Israeli or Zionist central plank or general theme!

If I were to place my finger on a single person who is responsible for systematizing the story (if a single person was responsible for doing so), I would probably place it on a certain American Zionist by the name of Dr. Joseph Schechtman, a leading member of the Zionist revisionist wing. He is almost certainly responsible for the drafting of two mimeographed pamphlets which appeared in 1949 under the auspices of the Israel Information Center, New York, in which the evacuation order first makes an elaborate appearance. (pgs 43-44)

If he could, it would be Schechtman. He is "almost certainly" responsible for two 1949 (mimeographed! pamphlets) put out by the Israel Information Center* in New York. It was apparently an elaborate story, but we don't have the story or quote yet. Though we do have a motive and a Zionist to pin it on. We have two mimeo-ed untitled pamphlets from 1949 and auspices. I sent for Joseph Schechtman's 1952 book, "The Arab Refugee Problem" from inter-library loan. Turns out that this book is in its third edition, the first being two smaller publications. In his introduction Schechtman mentions the two publications that he made in 1949, and says this 1952 book is based on them.(4) So I eagerly searched for the elaborate story. Unfortunately, the only reference to radio broadcasts is one in Haifa, and for which Schechtman quotes one 1948 article in the Economist. Is this the elaborate story which is a "central plank in the Zionist narrative"? According to Schechtman, the Economist article read in part:

"Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is little doubt that by far the most potent of these factors were the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive (Committee) urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit...It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained...and accepted Israeli protection would be regarded as renegades." (Schechtman, 1952)

Is this the "elaborate story" made up by Schechtman? It could not be, as it is a a quote from The Economist. Is the article in The Economist mistaken? Possibly. Does the Jewish contention that the impetus for the evacuation came from the Arab side and not the Jewish side contingent upon this Economist article? Not really. Over the air or not over the air, there is plenty of evidence that the Arabs left in large part voluntarily and due to Arab provocation, or because they were "frightened by the war the Arab leadership brought upon them by the Arab leadership."

Schechtman goes on to support the main point regarding Haifa,

" On the second anniversary of the Haifa flight (April 27,1950) a careful review of what happened in Haifa was sent by the Arab National Committee of Haifa -1948 the central Arab authority in the city-to the heads of the Arab states." This memorandum read in part:

"...the removal of the Arab inhabitants from the town was voluntary and was carried out at our request. The Jewish representatives expressed their deep regret at this decision and the Jewish Mayor of Haifa, Shabtai Levy, adjourned the meeting of the Arab and Jewish delegations with a passionate appeal to the Arabs to reconsider their decision.

"'It seems', this revealing document continues, 'that the Jews intended to stop the evacuation in order to prove that the Haifa Arabs could live safely and securely under the Jewish rule...The Arab delegation proudly asked for the evacuation of the Arabs and their removal to the neighboring Arab countries....We are very glad to state that the Arabs guarded their honor and traditions with pride and greatness.'" (Schechtman, pg 10)

Khalidi continues:

To return to the order: Surely an order of such importance must be traceable somewhere? You do not ask the entire population of a country to leave without somebody debating the matter , without a decision somewhere being taken. I have gone through the files of the press releases of the Arab League. These releases include every important pronouncement made by the League at the time. There is no trace of an order.

But wait a minute! The only radio broadcast "story" reported (not invented, as implied by Khalidi) by Schechtman was with respect to the town of Haifa, not the entire population of a country. One story in one paper about what happened in one town is suddenly now the official "Zionist" version of what happened throughout Palestine during the war? I don't think so.

Jon Kimche, in the famous "Spectator correspondence," notes "The suggestion that the Israeli case rested on the existence of a broadcast order from the Arab leaders to the Palestinians is a myth invented and exploited by Professor Walid Khalidi..."

What started out as a suggestion is now a full-blown conspiracy theory, parroted throughout the literature of those who support the Arab cause. As Kimche has pointed out "There is now a mountain of independent evidence to show that the initiative for the Arab exodus came from the Arab side and not the Jews. (Spectator correspondence)

The Palestinian "narrative" of an invented story of radio broadcasts as an official Israeli version of the Arab exodus of 1948 is an excellent example of what Madubuike calls "intellectual dishonesty" & "pseudo scholarship contaminated by ideological hypocrisy." What kind of scholarship attempts to debunk a story that is neither quoted nor properly sourced? What kind of scholarship cites a single broadcast in one town, and then exaggerates this as the official version of the Arab exodus from the whole region? The finger of blame for this so-called "myth" was laid on Joseph Schechtman, when in fact Schechtman only reported on an Economist article that exists. In fact there is no proof at all that this is a "central plank" in the "official Zionist version." Khalidi gives not one quote from the Israeli government or Zionists to support that claim. It is not true that there is no mention of any evacuation orders at the time, as newspaper accounts of the time show. Khalidi's claim that Shertok never mentioned this is also wrong.

If this does not qualify as pseudo-scholarship I don't know what does. As Schechtman does in fact say in his 1952 book, "the flight of the Palestinian Arabs is a phenomenon for which no single explanation suffices." (Schechtman, 1952 pgs 4-6). This statement is intolerable, however, for the supporters of the Arab cause since it allows for at least some of the responsibility for the Nakba to fall on the shoulders of the neighboring Arabs, and the Palestinian Arabs themselves, which is intolerable for them. This blatant attempt to put the total blame for the Palestinian exodus on the Palestinian Jews ("Zionists") of the time is a wonderful example of intellectual dishonesty and propaganda masquerading as history.

=====
1.The Other in Literature, Ali Mazrui vs Christopher Okigbo by Ihechukwu Madubuike

2. Fight to the Death Urged by Arabs St Petersburg Times, May 4, 1946: "In Cairo Abdul Rahman Azzam Pash, secretary-general of the Arab League, said some Arab leaders had proposed to transform the Holy Land into a battleground 'for their existence'. He said the proposals called for evacuation of all Arab women and children from Palestine to neighboring countries.

3. Arab Villagers in Mass Exodus from Coastal Plain, Jews, Stand Guard over Abandoned Crops The Canadian Jewish Chronicle (Palcor) - Apr 2, 1948    "Sheik Abu Kishek, head of a prominent tribe in the Tel Aviv area, has been in Cairo, the Mufti's headquarters, for the past month, and reportedly got instructions to evacuate the area."

4. Jewish Agency Charges Mufti Agents Behind Arab Stampede -- The Canadian Jewish Chronicle (Palcor) -April 29, 1948- A spokesman for the Jewish Agency reiterated the charge that Mufti agents were willfully spreading panic among the Arabs and have set in motion a stampede from Jerusalem, Haifa, Tiberias and other towns in order to: 1) present the Jews as aggressors: 2) fan Arab youth into wild fighting fanaticism: 3) impress on the Arab states the need for sending their regular armies into Palestine; and 4) absolve such intervention before world public opinion. (A similar charge was made by Moshe Shertok, Chief of the Political Department to the Jewish Agency in a statement to the Security Council last Friday.)

(4) "This publication is an attempt to summarize the essential facts of the Arab refugee problem. Two similar attempts on a smaller scale --''Arab Refugees:Facts and Figures, and Resettlement Prospects for Arab Refugees -- were made by this author in 1949. Their favorable reception made necessary a second revised edition in 1950, which has since been exhausted. Numerous requests continue to come from libraries, universities, organizations and private individuals in the United States and abroad, The valuable publication,''The Arab Refugee Problem. How it can be solved, Proposals submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations. (New York December, 1951) was, to a considerable extent, based on the material contained in the above mention publication. This present edition, which the author now presents the public, is a third edition, rewritten and revised in the light of latest developments."

* Raphael Medoff, in his book , Baksheesh Diplomacy, 2001 (page 178) mentions these two, which he calls "lengthy pamphlets" as having been published by the Jewish Agency in New York,, and not the Israel Information Center.
Bibliography

* Ed Said and Christoper Hitchens, in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian    Question, Verso Books 1988 (ISBN 0-86091-887-4).
* Erskine Childers Wordless Wish: From Citizens to Refugees     ISBN-13: 9780937694220 : Assn of Arab-Amer Univ Graduates
* Spectator Correspondence
* Walid Khalidi    Why Did the Palestinians Leave, Revisited Journal of Palestine Studies (subscription) Winter 2005, Vol. 34, No. 2, Pages 42-54
* Rafael Medoff, 2001, Lexington Books p.182.   ''Baksheesh diplomacy: secret negotiations between American Jewish leaders and Arab officials on the eve of World War II''
* Abu-Lughod, ed. with foreword by Arnold J. Toynbee The Transformation of Palestine Northwestern University Press 1971.
* Joseph B. Schectman, The Arab Refugee Problem, The Philosophical Library, 1952
* Rosemarie M. Esber Under the cover of war: The Zionist expulsion of the Palestinians 2008
* Ihechukwu Madubuike .The Other in Literature, Ali Mazrui vs Christopher Okigbo
* Ahmad H. Sa'di & Lila Abu-Lughod, Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the claims of memory, 2007
* The Arab Refugee Problem: How it can be solved, Proposals Submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations" 1951. Various

--I.M. Stokvis, 2011.

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report » EXCLUSIVE: New US Homeland Security Advisor Head Of Organization With Ties To Global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas

2011-02-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

Can this be true?!

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report » EXCLUSIVE: New US Homeland Security Advisor Head Of Organization With Ties To Global Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas

Satire: Obama Advisor Doesn't Fear Muslim Takeover - of U.S. - Politics & Gov't - Israel News - Israel National News

2011-02-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

Satire: Obama Advisor Doesn't Fear Muslim Takeover - of U.S. - Politics & Gov't - Israel News - Israel National News

New Project: 1948 Middle East Articles in the public domain

2011-02-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

from the Toledo Blade March 12, 1948

Arabs Prepare 3-month Blitz on Jews after British Leave /

Leaders Expect to lose 'Million Men' to Stop Partition

Robert C Miller UP Correspondent

Arab leaders say they expect to lose "a million men" before the strife in Palestine is over.

They predict a three-month blitzkrieg beginning within 24 hours after the British give up their mandate in May. They say tanks, artillery and bombers will attack Jewish communities.
They have repeated their determination to resist to death "any force which tries to partition Palestine."

Six months ago such threats would have been ridiculed by Middle Eastern observers. Today they are being heeded and regarded as "possibilities"

Backed by Arab League

The Arab resistance to partition of Palestine is led by the Arab higher executive, a group of Palestinian Arabs headed by the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. It also has the complete support and backing of the Arab League composed of all the Moslem states in the Middle East.

Seldom in Moslem history has anything united the warring, bickering Arabs as has their opposition to partitioning. It has assumed all ed aspects of a holy war which their leaders swear they will fight until Zionism is eliminated and a "free, democratic state established in Palestine."

The Arabs are extremely bitter at the United Nations and the United States. They argue that America pressured the United Nations into voting partition and therefore the vote was not an honest parliamentary action.

Guerrilla Tactics

The Arabs have been conducting small-scale guerrilla raids on Jewis settlements and communications for the last few weeks. They plan to step up these activities in coming months.

Originally, Arab strategy was to arm quiety and prepare themselves during the winter months, but to give no indication of their strenthg. Then, once the British evacuated, they planned to close in with a series of suprise attacks and overwhelm the Jews.

Their propaganda, however, had a much greater reaction on the emotional Arabs than was expected. Immediately after the UN acted on partition, spontaneous riots broke out in Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East. These attacks tipped the Arab hand and the Jews immediately prepared for a long, tough fight.

Strategy Revised
The revised Arab strategy is to train in Syria and neighboring Arab countries, troops for guerrilla warfar. The training schedule has been completed for thousands of these men and they are now filtering across the border into Palestine. Headquarters of the Arab liveration army is near Nablus, deep in Arab territory and surrounded by rocky Samaritan Hills.

These troops are well equipped, armed with rifles, automatic weapons, grenades and machine guns. They are highly mobile units, designed for hit and run attacks on Jewish settlements in the outlying areas, for ambushes and raids on communications.

The Arabs hope pressure from these attacks will so weaken the Jewish economy and defenses that little effective resistance will be possible when they launch their all-out attack.

There is no shortage of volunteers for the Arab armies. Tribesmen from all over the Middle East have swarmed in to volunteer.

All the Arab nations have contributed large sums to the campaign, and arms are being supplied the Arab liberation army from government stores in each of the Arab countries.

Toledo Blade, March 12, 1948 Google News Archive

More Than Meets The Eye

2011-01-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

More Than Meets The Eye

Important investigative reporting concerning Chris Christie and Islam

N.J. Governor Chris Christie has been in the news a lot this past week after he nominated Sohail Mohammed for Superior Court Judge. What possible ramifications can this possibly have?

Chris Christie was sworn in as New Jersey's 55th Governor on January 19, 2010 and got right to work. He is out there trying to save his state, going head to head with the teachers union, cutting the budget and doing what he promised he would do when he was campaigning.

So when all the negative articles and blogs starting on January 14th about his appointment of a Muslim lawyer to the Superior Court of N.J. I had ask myself why? So, the guys a Muslim, so he defended alleged terrorists, so what - isn’t that what lawyers are supposed to do?

More... Click here

RealClearPolitics - Warfare of the Future

2011-01-03T08:01:00.000-07:00

RealClearPolitics - Warfare of the Future

Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum."

2010-12-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Euroshiur: Professor Robert Aumann - Middle Eastern Games

Abbas vows: No room for Israelis in Palestinian state

2010-12-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

Was there doubt in your mind? At last the Pallies tell the truth

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that when a Palestinian state is established, it will have no Israelis in it.

“We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it,” Abbas told reporters in Ramallah.

read all about it

I Am Israel - Documentary Film HD Version

2010-12-10T21:28:00.000-07:00

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, "Letter to President Mahmoud Abbas"

2010-12-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, "Letter to President Mahmoud Abbas"

The recognition of the Palestinian state is part of the Brazilian conviction that a process of negotiation that results in two states coexisting in peace and security is the best path to peace in the Middle East, the goal that interests all humanity. Brazil will always be ready to render any assistance necessary.

Column One: Why Latin America turned

2010-12-10T07:54:00.000-07:00

Column One: Why Latin America turned

Given the US policy trajectory, it is again obvious that the only one Israel can rely on to defend its interests is Israel.

You'll never guess who's frightened Obama is too weak

2010-12-09T22:09:00.001-07:00

Read Aaron Klein on WorldNetDaily:

Among Obama's concerning remarks:

* "The notion that prestige comes from holding these weapons, or that we can protect ourselves by picking and choosing which nations can have these weapons, is an illusion." – Obama in Moscow in August 2009.

* "No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons. That is why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons." – Obama in his address to the Muslim world from Cairo in June 2009.

You'll never guess who's frightened Obama is too weak

Why Turkey will emerge as leader of the Muslim world

2010-11-28T09:51:00.001-07:00

Why Turkey will emerge as leader of the Muslim world
By SONER CAGAPTAY
11/24/2010 23:04

The AKP is setting the stage for a total recalibration of Turkey’s global compass.

.....Turkey is a Muslim nation by origin – a feature shared perhaps only with partitioncreated Pakistan.
....
Turkey was created as an exclusive Muslim homeland through war, blood and tears. Unbeknownst to many outsiders, modern Turkey emerged not as a state of ethnic Turks, but of Ottoman Muslims who faced expulsion and extermination in Russia and the Balkan states. Almost half of Turkey’s 73 million citizens descend from such survivors of religious persecution. During the Ottoman Empire’s long territorial decline, millions of Turkish and non-Turkish Muslims living in Europe, Russia and the Caucasus fled persecution and sought refuge in modern-day Turkey.
.....

They succeeded, making Turkey a purely Muslim nation that had been born out of conflict with Christians. Religion’s saliency as ethnicity lasted into the post- Ottoman period: When modern Greece and Turkey exchanged their minority populations in 1924, Turkish- speaking Orthodox Christians from Anatolia were exchanged with Greek-speaking Muslims from Crete.
.....

Although Ataturk emphasized the unifying power of Turkish nationalism over religious identity, Turkishness never replaced Islam; rather, both identities overlapped. Ataturk managed to overlay the country’s deep Muslim identity with secular nationalism, but Turkey retained its Muslim core.
.....

AKP leader and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with his government, believe in Huntington’s clash of civilizations – only they choose to oppose the West. The AKP’s vision is shaped by Turkey’s philosopher- king, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who summarizes this position in his opus Strategic Depth, in which he writes that “Turkey’s traditionally good ties with the West... are a form of alienation” and that the AKP will correct the course of history, which has disenfranchised Muslims since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
.....
The AKP’s foreign-policy vision is not simply dualistic, but rather premised on Islam’s à la carte morals and selective outrage, and therein lies the real danger. One case in point is to compare the AKP’s differing stances toward Emir Kusturica and Omar al- Bashir. The former, a Bosnian film director who stood with the Yugoslav National Army as it slaughtered Bosnians in the 1990s, was recently driven out of Turkey by AKP-led protests, resulting in threats against his life – a victory for the victims of genocide in Bosnia. The latter, the Sudanese president indicted for genocide in the International Court of Justice, was gracefully hosted by the AKP in Turkey. Erdogan has said, “I know Bashir; he cannot commit genocide because Muslims do not commit genocide.”
.....
Like their close neighbors, the Russians, Turks have moved in lockstep with the powerful political, social and foreign-policy choices that their dominant elites have ushered in.
.....
In effect, the AKP’s steady mobilization of Turkish Muslim identity along with its close financial and ideological affinity with the nation’s new Islamist elites is setting the stage for a total recalibration of Turkey’s international compass.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and coauthor (with Scott Carpenter) of Nuanced Gestures: Regenerating the US-Turkey Partnership (2010).

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=196656

Issue 264 - UN Watch

2010-11-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

Why Israel is a Rogue State

Gabriel Latner

This is a war of ideals, and the other speakers here tonight are rightfully, idealists. I'm not. I'm a realist. I'm here to win. I have a single goal this evening -- to have at least a plurality of you walk out of the “Aye” door.

I face a singular challenge -- most, if not all, of you have already made up your minds. This issue is too polarizing for the vast majority of you not to already have a set opinion. I'd be willing to bet that half of you strongly support the motion, and half of you strongly oppose it.

I want to win, and we're destined for a tie. I'm tempted to do what my fellow speakers are going to do -- simply rehash every bad thing the Israeli government has ever done in an attempt to satisfy those of you who agree with them. And perhaps they'll even guilt one of you rare undecided into voting for the proposition, or more accurately, against Israel.

It would be so easy to twist the meaning and significance of international “laws” to make Israel look like a criminal state. But that's been done to death.

It would be easier still to play to your sympathy, with personalized stories of Palestinian suffering. And they can give very eloquent speeches on those issues.

But the truth is, that treating people badly, whether they're your citizens or an occupied nation, does not make a state “rogue.” If it did, Canada, the U.S., and Australia would all be rogue states based on how they treat their indigenous populations. Britain’s treatment of the Irish would easily qualify them to wear this sobriquet. These arguments, while emotionally satisfying, lack intellectual rigor.

More importantly, I just don't think we can win with those arguments. It won't change the numbers. Half of you will agree with them, half of you won't. So I'm going to try something different, something a little unorthodox.

I'm going to try and convince the die-hard Zionists and Israel supporters here tonight, to vote for the proposition. By the end of my speech I will have presented five pro-Israel arguments that show Israel is, if not a “rogue state,” than at least “roguish.”

Let me be clear. I will not be arguing that Israel is “bad.” I will not be arguing that it doesn’t deserve to exist. I won't be arguing that it behaves worse than every other country. I will only be arguing that Israel is “rogue.”

The word “rogue” has come to have exceptionally damning connotations. But the word itself is value-neutral. The Oxford English Dictionary defines rogue as “aberrant, anomalous; misplaced, occurring (esp. in isolation) at an unexpected place or time,” while a dictionary from a far greater institution gives this definition: “behaving in ways that are not expected or not normal, often in a destructive way.”

These definitions, and others, center on the idea of anomaly -- the unexpected or uncommon. Using this definition, a rogue state is one that acts in an unexpected, uncommon or aberrant manner. A state that behaves exactly like Israel.

The first argument is statistical. The fact that Israel is a Jewish state alone makes it anomalous enough to be dubbed a rogue state: There are 195 countries in the world. Some are Christian, some Muslim, some are secular. Israel is the only country in the world that is Jewish. Or, to speak mathmo for a moment, the chance of any randomly chosen state being Jewish is 0.0051%.* In comparison the chance of a UK lotto ticket winning at least £10 is 0.017% -- more than twice as likely. Israel’s Jewishness is a statistical aberration.

The second argument concerns Israel’s humanitarianism, in particular, Israel’s response to a refugee crisis. Not the Palestinian refugee crisis -- for I am sure that the other speakers will cover that -- but the issue of Darfurian refugees. Everyone knows that what happened and is still happening in Darfur is genocide, whether or not the UN and the Arab League will call it such. (I actually hoped that Mr. Massih would be able to speak about -- he's actually somewhat of an expert on the crisis in Darfur, in fact, it's his expertise that has called him away to represent the former dictator of Sudan while he is being investigated by the ICC.)

There has been a mass exodus from Darfur as the oppressed seek safety. They have not had much luck. Many have gone north to Egypt -- where they are treated despicably. The brave make a run through the desert in a bid to make it to Israel. Not only do they face the natural threats of the Sinai, they are also used for target practice by the Egyptian soldiers patrolling the border. Why would they take the risk?

Because in Israel they are treated with compassion -- they are treated as the refugees that they are – and perhaps Israel's cultural memory of genocide is to blame. The Israeli government has even gone so far as to grant several hundred Darfurian refugees citizenship. This alone sets Israel apart from the rest of the world.

But the real point of distinction is this: The IDF sends out soldiers and medics to patrol the Egyptian border. They are sent looking for refugees attempting to cross into Israel. Not to send them back into Egypt, but to save them from dehydration, heat exhaustion, and Egyptian bullets.

Compare that to the U.S.’s reaction to illegal immigration across their border with Mexico. The American government has arrested private individuals for giving water to border crossers who were dying of thirst -- and here the Israeli government is sending out its soldiers to save illegal immigrants. To call that sort of behaviour anomalous is an understatement.

My third argument is that the Israeli government engages in an activity which the rest of the world shuns -- it negotiates with terrorists. Forget the late PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, a man who died with blood all over his hands -- they're in the process of negotiating with terrorists as we speak. Yasser Abed Rabbo is one of the lead PLO negotiators that has been sent to the peace talks with Israel. Abed Rabbo also used to be a leader of the PFLP -- an organisation of “freedom fighters” that, under Abed Rabbo’s leadership, engaged in such freedom-promoting activities as killing 22 Israeli high school students.

And the Israeli government is sending delegates to sit at a table with this man, and talk about peace. And the world applauds. You would never see the Spanish government in peace talks with the leaders of the ETA -- the British government would never negotiate with Thomas Murphy. And if President Obama were to sit down and talk about peace with Osama Bin Laden, the world would view this as insanity. But Israel can do the exact same thing -- and earn international praise in the process. That is the dictionary definition of rogue -- behaving in a way that is unexpected, or not normal.

Another part of the dictionary definition is behaviour or activity “occurring at an unexpected place or time.” When you compare Israel to its regional neighbours, it becomes clear just how roguish Israel is. And here is the fourth argument: Israel has a better human rights record than any of its neighbours. At no point in history, has there ever been a liberal democratic state in the Middle East -- except for Israel. Of all the countries in the Middle East, Israel is the only one where the LGBT community enjoys even a small measure of equality.

In Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and Syria, homosexual conduct is punishable by flogging, imprisonment, or both. But homosexuals there get off pretty lightly compared to their counterparts in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, who are put to death. Israeli homosexuals can adopt, openly serve in the army, enter civil unions, and are protected by exceptionally strongly worded ant-discrimination legislation. Beats a death sentence. In fact, it beats America.

Israel’s protection of its citizens’ civil liberties has earned international recognition. Freedom House is an NGO that releases an annual report on democracy and civil liberties in each of the 195 countries in the world. It ranks each country as “Free,” “Partly Free,” or “Not Free.” In the Middle East, Israel is the only country that has earned designation as a “free” country. Not surprising given the level of freedom afforded to citizens in, say, Lebanon -- a country designated “partly free,” where there are laws against reporters criticizing not only the Lebanese government, but the Syrian regime as well. I’m hoping Ms. Booth will speak about this, given her experience working as a “journalist” for Iran.

Iran is a country given the rating of “not free,” putting it alongside China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Myanmar. In Iran, as Ms. Booth I hoped would have said in her speech, there is a special “Press Court” which prosecutes journalists for such heinous offences as criticizing the Ayatollah, reporting on stories damaging the “foundations of the Islamic republic,” using “suspicious (i.e., Western) sources,” or insulting Islam. Iran is the world leader in terms of jailed journalists, with 39 reporters (that we know of) in prison as of 2009. They also kicked out almost every Western journalist during the 2009 election. (I don't know if Ms Booth was affected by that.)

I guess we can’t really expect more from a theocracy. Which is what most countries in the Middle East are. Theocracies and autocracies. But Israel is the sole, the only, the rogue, democracy. Out of every country in the Middle East, only in Israel do anti-government protests and reporting go unquashed and uncensored.

I have one final argument -- the last nail in the opposition's coffin -- and it’s sitting right across the aisle. Mr. Ran Gidor’s presence here is the all evidence any of us should need to confidently call Israel a rogue state. For those of you who have never heard of him, Mr. Gidor is a political counsellor attached to Israel’s embassy in London. He’s the guy the Israeli government sent to represent them at the UN. He knows what he’s doing. And he’s here tonight. And it’s incredible.

Consider, for a moment, what his presence here means. The Israeli government has signed off, to allow one of their senior diplomatic representatives to participate in a debate on their very legitimacy. That’s remarkable.

Do you think for a minute, that any other country would do the same? If the Yale University Debating Society were to have a debate where the motion was “This house believes Britain is a racist, totalitarian state that has done irrevocable harm to the peoples of the world,” that Britain would allow any of its officials to participate? No.

Would China participate in a debate about the status of Taiwan? Never.

And there is no chance in hell that an American government official would ever be permitted to argue in a debate concerning its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

But Israel has sent Mr. Ran Gidor to argue tonight against a “journalist”-cum-reality TV star, and myself, a 19-year-old law student who is entirely unqualified to speak on the issue at hand.

Every government in the world should be laughing at Israel right now -- because it forgot Rule No. 1. You never add credence to crackpots by engaging with them. It's the same reason you won't see Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins debate David Icke. But Israel is doing precisely that. Once again, behaving in a way that is unexpected, or not normal. Behaving like a rogue state.

That's five arguments that have been directed at the supporters of Israel. But I have a minute or two left. And here's an argument for all of you – Israel wilfully and forcefully disregards international law. In 1981 Israel destroyed Osirak -- Sadam Hussein’s nuclear bomb lab. Every government in the world knew that Hussein was building a bomb. And they did nothing. Except for Israel. Yes, in doing so they broke international law and custom. But they also saved us all from a nuclear Iraq.

That rogue action should earn Israel a place of respect in the eyes of all freedom-loving peoples. But it hasn't. But tonight, while you listen to us prattle on, I want you to remember something: while you're here, Khomeini's Iran is working towards the Bomb. And if you're honest with yourself, you know that Israel is the only country that can, and will, do something about it. Israel will, out of necessity, act in a way that is the not the norm, and you'd better hope that they do it in a destructive manner. Any sane person would rather a rogue Israel than a Nuclear Iran. Except Ms. Booth.

The author, a Cambridge University law student, will be a 2011 intern with UN Watch.

Zionist Organization of America - Press Releases - ZOA: It's Troubling To See Jewish Leaders Defend.

2010-11-17T20:45:00.002-07:00

Morton Klein and ZOA take Soros down and rebukes prominent Jews who criticized Glenn Beck for telling it like it is. All nicely sourced and much in his (Soros') own words. Must read this denunciation of Soros and defense of Beck. Also follow the internal link to hear & watch the video of Soros.
Soros: 1944 (Nazi occupation) “was happiest time of my life … adventure … fun”

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed its concern over the strong criticism that a number of American Jewish leaders and other prominent Jews in recent days have directed at Fox broadcaster, Glenn Beck, for his criticism of Israel/U.S.-basher, financier George Soros, regarding his behavior in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944.
In that year, George Soros’ father obtained forged papers and bribed a government official to save his son, George, then 14 years old, by taking him in as his alleged godson under a falsified Christian identity. In this capacity, George Soros accompanied his fake godfather on his appointed rounds as a government official, confiscating property from Jews who were to be deported to their deaths in Auschwitz. George Soros later said that he felt no guilt, remorse or difficulty whatsoever for being in this situation. In fact, he wrote in a forward to his father’s book, “these ten months [of the Nazi occupation] were the happiest times of my life ... We led an adventurous life and we had fun together.”

ZOA on Soros

Jpost | Print Article

2010-11-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

Jpost | Print Article

Israel's academics protect the McCarthyites of Zionism - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

2010-11-06T08:15:00.001-07:00

Israel's academics protect the McCarthyites of Zionism - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

A considerable number of instructors in these departments teach their students that Israel is the spearhead of colonialism in the Middle East, that Zionism is a racist movement that supports expulsion and that the Law of Return is racist.

In the wake of reports that were compiled in regard to anti-Zionist slants in research and instruction in a number of the country's university social sciences faculties, and after students and teachers complained about being reprimanded and insulted when they voiced their opposition, on Tuesday the Knesset Education Committee debated the issue. Lo and behold, members of the Knesset - so protective of freedom of expression of this body - claimed that the discussion is not legitimate.

The very act of discussing academia at the Knesset, argued several MKs, including Haim Oron, Nitzan Horowitz, Ahmed Tibi, Raleb Majadele and Orit Zuaretz, is a violation of academic freedom. University heads who attended the session echoed the same sentiments.
.....

By Israel Harel

Arabs make development strides, challenges remain

2010-11-04T09:46:00.004-07:00

Arabs make development strides, challenges remain: UN

"Arab states make up five of the ten "top movers" in the Human Development Index (HDI) -- countries that have "made the greatest progress relative to their starting points on the HDI over the past 40 years," said a UN briefing on Arab states in the 2010 Human Development Report, which was released Thursday."

"Few Arab states have experienced in-depth democratization," it said, and though some states have multiparty systems, they "do not always equate to competitive multiparty democracy."

But, the briefing said, advances in other areas are still significant -- life expectancy in the Arab world, for instance, has risen from 51 years in 1970 to 69 years in 2010, and overall education enrollment has almost doubled to 64 percent in that period.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101104/wl_mideast_afp/mideastarabsdevelopmentrightsun

i was not able to find the evidence of the Palestinian Authority ("Palestinian People") as a demographic entity at this H.D.I., although it is listed as a member, so i went out and searched.

i will not speak to the depth of democratization but i will about life expectancy and overall education in the Palestinian territories from a credible source.

- life expectancy 73.945

- education 78.3%
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/PSE.html

given that the "development strides" praised for the Arab world were:

- 69 years life expectancy
- 64 percent for education

it appears the Palestinians are doing better than their Arab brethren

'Hizbullah making preparations to seize power in Beirut'

2010-11-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

'Hizbullah making preparations to seize power in Beirut'
from the JP

Group conducting simulations in case of Hariri indictments, 'Asharq Alawsat' reports; retired general says group could seize power in three days.

Hizbullah is preparing to seize power in Beirut should a UN tribunal implicate the group in the assassination of the country’s former prime minister Rafik Hariri, according to Lebanese sources quoted in Lebanon’s Asharq Alawsat newspaper on Tuesday.

The report said that the group was preparing for a “zero hour scenario” and was rehearsing its moves in the capital city.

Hizbullah, Amal and other pro-Syrian groups have been in close contact, coordinating a stand-by plan to take control of Beirut and the road to the South of the city, the paper said. The Christian and Sunni areas would also be neutralized.

The sources said that the groups were already assigning possible zones – who would control which areas – in a dayafter scenario.

According to the sources, Beirut would be divided into three zones of military control, assigned to Amal, Hizbullah and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

Alternative plans, they said, were being prepared by Hizbullah in the event the other groups could not control their zones.

“Zero hour” in the report apparently refers to a scenario in which the Lebanese capital descends into violence and leaves a security vacuum after the Hariri tribunal publishes its report and indictments are issued.

The report quoted retired Lebanese Brig.-Gen. Amin Hattit, who is known to be close to Hizbullah, as saying that many aspects of the plans were realistic.

He said that Hizbullah’s current strategy was to prevent strife, but if the group were unable to prevent an explosion of unrest, it would exploit the situation.

“Everyone knows that the temptation will be limited geographically to areas where there is a Shi’ite majority,” Hattit added, referring to areas of Beirut, the Bekaa Valley region, and the South of the country.

He concluded that “if this scenario does take place, Hizbullah would be able to seize power in three days, or a week at most,” and that the “era of Hariri in Lebanon” would end forever.

New Dept. of Homeland Security Advisor is an Islamist

2010-10-24T21:46:00.000-07:00

It appears that the fox is guarding the chicken coop:

New Dept. of Homeland Security Advisor is an Islamist

Pollard Push

2010-10-22T22:26:00.001-07:00

Must Read -- it is well past time for some good news here. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Pollard Push:

US angry at Netanyahu for being a Zionist « FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

2010-10-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

US angry at Netanyahu for being a Zionist « from FresnoZionism.org

A great analysis at an interesting blog. See also earlier:

http://fresnozionism.org/2010/10/a-unilateral-declaration-of-statehood/

Which goes along with John Bolton's article on WallStreet Journal and on Facebook if you have an account,
here: http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=77360816923#!/notes/john-r-bolton/the-wall-street-journal-obama-and-the-coming-palestinian-state/446018616462

I fear the worst.

Jews in England: From Expulsion (1290) to Readmission (1656)

2010-10-10T19:00:00.000-07:00

Jews in England: From Expulsion (1290) to Readmission (1656)

Michele Bachmann on Obama's 400M$ to Terrorists.

2010-10-10T12:00:00.003-07:00

So how's that Hope and Change thing working out for you?

dog park days

2010-10-09T22:18:00.000-07:00

IsraCampus.Org.il

2010-10-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

The Pathology of Jewish Anti-Semitism

By Steven Plaut at IsraCampus.Org.il

11/2/2010

It sounds like a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. And if only it were.

Jewish-anti-Semitism is a modern disease. In the twenty-first century the world is experiencing an explosion of it, a virtual plague. Among the most malicious and venomous of all bigots, the Jewish anti-Semites are at the forefront of each and every smear campaign against Israel and other Jews. Jews today are leaders in the campaigns to boycott and "divest from" Israel, including the Solidarity with Terrorists groups. They make pilgrimage to the terrorist camps of the Hamas and the Hezb-Allah, cheering on terrorist atrocities against Jews. They pioneered the smear campaign to paint Israel as an apartheid regime and denouncing Israel as equivalent to Nazi Germany is their favorite pastime.

Western campuses are crawling with them. Some of the Jewish anti-Semites even hold leadership positions in Hillel houses. Many others are tenured professors. An anti-Semitic Jewish judge chaired a UN commission demonizing Israel. A Jewish member of Britain's Parliament (Gerald Kaufman) compared Hamas terrorists to Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto and denounced Israel as a Nazi entity. And a shockingly large number of Jewish anti-Semites are Israelis or ex-Israelis.

Most Jews dismiss such people as "self-hating," but that term is misleading. These rogues do not hate themselves. Indeed they are masters of narcissism. They hate other Jews and wish them harm. These are not the assimilationists of Jewish descent who have simply lost interest in Jewish heritage, or those indifferent towards Jewish history and Israel. Anti-Semitic Jews often make a point out of waving their own Jewish "roots" as artillery support for their anti-Semitism. In some extreme cases they collaborate with Neo-Nazis, Islamist terrorists, and even Holocaust Deniers. No, that is not a misprint; there are today in the world Jewish Holocaust Deniers!

con't here

very well put, as usual with Plaut

'Z' WORD | The Company They Keep: Antisemitism's Fellow Travellers

2010-10-01T19:45:00.001-07:00

'Z' WORD | The Company They Keep: Antisemitism's Fellow Travellers

anthony julius | july 2008

" IN APRIL 2005, THREE Jewish members of the National Union of Students (NUS) executive in the United Kingdom resigned from their positions. One of them, Luciana Berger, the NUS "anti-racism convenor," explained her position to the union's conference:

"This year, a comment was made in a Student Union saying that burning down a synagogue is a rational act. When asked to comment, National Executive Committee members could not even bring themselves to condemn that statement. Over five months ago serious complaints were lodged about antisemitic comments made by an NEC member in a public meeting. There is yet to be any form of official response to these complaints. [...] While I accuse no one of antisemitism, this year NUS has been a bystander to Jew-hatred." [1]

The question arises, is it right to characterise as antisemitic those adverse stances towards Israel and the Zionist project that are derived from false facts, and / or are malicious, and / or are taken without regard to Jewish objections, and / or resonate with antisemitism's history and / or deploy antisemitic tropes? Mostly, the answer is "yes" - particularly when several of these features are combined. But in certain instances, the answer might be, "no" - or "not quite."

First, the affirmative answer might be a tactical mistake. It might be received as merely abusive - no more than a piece of name-calling. It often serves as a mere provocation, inviting the tedious riposte, "I am not an antisemite, indeed I deplore antisemitism, I am instead a partisan of the Palestinians, you are making a false accusation of antisemitism against me to squash my unanswerable case, etc." Why, then, take this step, one which almost always signals the end of any useful exchange of views, and instead inaugurates the trading of insults, the argument no longer being about the coherence of the stance, but instead about the respective moral character of its advocates and critics? [2]

Second, the affirmative answer might be premature. Antisemitic anti-Zionism is so much part of the zeitgeist, it is reasonable to assume that many of the people who draw upon its tropes do so without reflection. If they are open to correction when the provenance of their language is pointed out to them, they are not antisemites. Antisemites are obdurate in their Jew hatred. They display their antisemitism as much in their response to challenges to their discourse as in the discourse itself. They will respond, that is, with counter-accusations; there will no pause for self-interrogation. Further, these counter-accusations will tend to trade on the ugly characteristics typically attributed to Jews - the use of their power or money to silence truth-tellers, the exploitation of their historic suffering to gain present-day advantages, a ready resort to character-assassination or smear, and so on.

Finally, a "yes" risks lumping together two kinds of people. For the first kind, antisemitism determines their positions; they embrace Jew hatred; they acknowledge and welcome the antisemitism of others. For the second kind, antisemitism is not relevant to the positions that they take; they do not recoil from antisemitism when they encounter it; they are insensitive to the presence of antisemitism in their own positions or in the positions that they support. They may not be antisemites themselves, but they collude with antisemitism. They are often found defending antisemites - not guilty of the offence themselves, but quick to champion others who are guilty of it. The distinction I am drawing is between the culpable adoption of antisemitism and a culpable indifference towards it. Many "new anti-Zionists" bear this latter, lesser responsibility. They share space with antisemites, untroubled by the company that they keep; they comprise a species of "fellow traveller" ("bystander" does not quite do the vice justice), the kind of person ready to overlook or excuse everything that is vicious in the cause he supports, the protagonists he admires. "

Con't'Z' WORD | The Company They Keep: Antisemitism's Fellow Travellers"> here. This is a long article but very good. Next section: The Soviet Analogy
Julius has recently written a book entitled "Trials of the Diaspora" reviewed in the Telegraph here, favorably, and of course there are the unfavorable ones as well.

Why Is He Sending Them? - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online

2010-10-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

Why Is He Sending Them? - Charles Krauthammer - National Review Online

MI6 Attacked Jewish Refugee Ships After WWII - The Daily Beast

2010-09-25T23:37:00.000-07:00

MI6 Attacked Jewish Refugee Ships After WWII - The Daily Beast

Obama goes to church to hear a Muslim speaker!

2010-09-20T22:08:00.002-07:00

MSM is not reporting this. Not even Fox News. I fact-checked, and it is true.

WHY DOES THIS “CHRISTIAN” ALWAYS FLOCK TO HEAR THE "MUSLIM" MESSAGE? - by Brigitte de Maubec

Did Obama attend a Protestant church on Sunday because a pro-Palestinian Muslim was invited to speak?

(Sept. 20, 2010) — Yesterday, on Sunday, September 19, 2010, the Obama family attended church for only the third time in a year. They went on foot to the St. John’s Episcopal Church situated across the Lafayette Park.

But what is widely not reported by the White House and the MSM is that on that particular Sunday in that particular church, Dr. Ziad Asali, M.D., a Muslim, founder and president of the American Task Force on Palestine (see also this), was the guest speaker. He was there to speak on the subject of “Prospects of the two-state solution in the Middle-East.”

Obama goes to church to hear a Muslim speaker! | Read more at The Post & Email

RealClearPolitics - The Disarmament Delusion

2010-09-16T18:02:00.000-07:00

RealClearPolitics - The Disarmament Delusion

One Imam, Multiple Messages - National Review Online

2010-09-13T08:14:00.001-07:00

One Imam, Multiple Messages - National Review Online

Obama's Failed Middle East Policy :: Middle East Forum

2010-09-11T22:24:00.000-07:00

Obama's Failed Middle East Policy :: Middle East Forum

If An American President Were Muslim, Would we Care?

2010-09-10T08:30:00.007-07:00

At eMunah Magazine

By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

So Brian Williams asks President Obama what he thinks of the fact that one fifth all Americans believes he is a Muslim. The President gets defensive and sheepishly responds that this issue was put to bed during the campaign.

But let’s ask ourselves an honest question for a moment. If he were a Muslim, would it matter?

If An American President Were Muslim, Would we Care? | eMunah Magazine Read this wonderful article by Rabbi Boteach at eMunah . Section above is just a teaser...

2010-09-09T21:43:00.005-07:00

The supporters of Israel can write for the enemy, but the supporters of "Palestine" simply cannot. According to Wikipedia "It is the mark of good Wikipedia editors to be able to understand and present various POV, including those they find distasteful." By that definition, there are damned few on that side today that can be considered "good Wikipedia editors" Ramallite, was a worthy advocate/adversary, that is, he fought fair. But he does not appear to be editing anymore. Today it is a battlefield. There is no way in hell that the atmosphere at Wiki will contribute to wikilove, let alone ''world'' peace. Do we really need another battleground?

Wikipedia is supposed to be a place to share, not just knowledge, but understanding. It has become anything but... and one of the worst sections of it has to be in what is called the Israeli-Palestinian section. The reason it is so bad is because of the quality of the editors. No longer satisfied to try to achieve high standards of neutrality and honesty, editors attempt to meet the propaganda of one side with the propaganda of the other. But the pro-Israel side is highly under under represented in the area. There may be a lot of Israelis at Wikipedia, as some have claimed, but they are certainly not all editing historical and political articles. In the Israeli-Palestinian area, we are a mere handful against the hoards. We try to edit fairly but are faced with a wall of anti-Israel editors. Further, they are emboldened since they are so numerous, that they are quite willing to let their bias be known without fear of repercussions. [1.] For some reason or other, pro-Israel editors, generally labeled "Zionists," are immediately treated with suspicion and attacked. How is this done? Based on my investigations:

Step one) Identify the enemy (anyone who might edit in the area who has the odor of "Zionism" about him)

Step two) Intimidate him using insults and belittlement, in edit summaries and on the talk page. Revert him or her, suggesting they are a troll, or vandals.

Step three) Initiate personal contact through warnings and threats

Step four) Revert virtually everything the opponent writes, accusing him of bias, ignorance, or poor sourcing

Step five) call in ~~your friends~~ the troops . This is necessary because should you revert too often yourself, you may be accused of edit-warring and the plan would backfire. Canvassing must be done in a private way (emails, IRC, messaging) for the same reason. New users, however, may not be aware of these rules; and you can use the rule against them, should they openly ask some like-minded editors for help)

Step six) With the help of your friends the enemy is hammered enough to make an error, which renders him vulnerable to an administrative process.

Step seven) At the administrative process, all the friends come in and speak to how bad you are, and one or two on your side come in to speak on your behalf. Some of these friends are of course administrators as well, who while they are supposed to be fair, are sometimes frankly biased. Unbiased administrators are mostly unwilling to get involved and those who do will often be intimidated or threatened as well. So there is a very good chance that the hoards will achieve a victory here, and the enemy will at least have a black mark, get a small ban, or better yet, a large one.

Step eight) Always keep your enemy under your watch, by following him or her to virtually every page, reverting and challenging every point. Eventually the enemy will slip up, and more administrative action can be taken.

Step nine) While the enemy is topic or article banned, you insert your POV into as many of the contentious articles as possible.

Step ten) If the editor comes back after this, ~~(it is evidence that he should have his head examined)~~, you can accuse of edit-warring, and get another administrative action against him.

Eventually the enemy gets banned for contentious edits and you have the field to yourself! This is the situation these days. As shown by examples such as this, it is possible to delete any article that shows your cause in a bad light, or the other fella's (the I in the I-P conflict area) in a good light. This is just how it is these days.

I edited Wikipedia for a number of years, and the atmosphere now is the worst ever. Most honest warriors have given up and gone home on both sides. What is left is a handful of stalwarts and maybe one or two on their side (though frankly, not so sure about them) but in the main it is bunch of ideologues who battle people not ideas. It is fine to argue honestly, to make a real attempt to compromise to achieve neutrality. We cannot cherry-pick reality to make it fit our wishes. Using sources such as Finklestein to support a historical fact, is like asking that Amadinejad be considered an expert on the Holocaust. It is so bad there now, it is 1984 all over again.

Dershowitz on the Arab Lobby

2010-09-04T09:13:00.003-07:00

How to win friends and influence politicians

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
03/09/2010
The Arab lobby, which has no popular support and makes little effort to woo elected officials, profoundly impacts decision-making in the US democracy.

HOW THEN does a lobby with no popular support manage to exert influence in a democratic country? The secret is very simple. The Arab lobby in general and the Saudis in particular make little effort to influence popularly elected public officials, particularly legislators. Again, listen to Bard: “The Saudis have taken a different tact from the Israeli lobby, focusing a top-down rather than bottom-up approach to lobbying. As hired gun J. Crawford Cook wrote in laying out his proposed strategy for the kingdom, ‘Saudi Arabia has a need to influence the few that influence the many, rather than the need to influence the many to whom the few must respond.’” The primary means by which the Saudis exercise this influence is money. They spend enormous amounts of lucre to buy (or rent) former State Department officials, diplomats, White House aides and legislative leaders who become their elite lobbying corps. Far more insidiously, the Saudis let it be known that if current government officials want to be hired following their retirement from government service, they had better hew to the Saudi line while they are serving in the US government.

read on here

The Big Arab Lie: The Political Abuse of the Refugee Issue

2010-08-24T11:08:00.000-07:00

The Big Arab Lie: The Political Abuse of the Refugee Issue

The CAMERA decision on Wikipedia

2010-08-23T18:05:00.003-07:00

This was written as part of the CAMERA accusation back in May 2008:

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Wikilobby campaign is the latest, but as Wikipedians now have access to the entire Isra-paedia mail list archives, and plan to publish them more users will be revealed as belonging to this cabal that aimed to violate WP:CANVASS, meatpuppetry rules, and WP:NPOV to follow a pro-Israeli agenda. One admin has in turn threatened to block anyone who does so. Unlike the Durova/!! private mail scenario, these cannot be considered good faith emails in any capacity, but as evidence of planned assault on WP:NPOV. As this information is likely to published somewhere imminently, a lot of Wikipedia editors may be implicated here shortly. This needs review on this level now. (found here)

I will now rewrite it the way I (and some others) read this:
This was written as part of the CAMERA accusation:

"Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Wikilobby campaign is the latest, but as Wikipedians now have access to the entire Isra-paedia mail list archives, and plan to publish them more users will be revealed as belonging to this cabal that aimed to violate WP:CANVASS, meatpuppetry rules, and WP:NPOV to follow a pro-Israeli agenda. One admin has in turn threatened to block anyone who does so. Unlike the Durova/!! private mail scenario, these cannot be considered good faith emails in any capacity, but as evidence of planned assault on WP:NPOV. As this information is likely to published somewhere imminently, a lot of Wikipedia editors may be implicated here shortly. This needs review on this level now."

I don't believe these people made the case in the CAMERA case, excuse the pun. The decision ban people based on a private mailing list that was made public by the highly partisan group "Electronic Intifada" is really outrageous. The use of the word cabal is highly judgmental and ironic coming as it does from a group called the Electronic Intifada. It is also a highly charged word, but apparently the powers that were saw nothing offensive about it, seeing as how they were sitting comfortably in judgment, rather than being the judged. The group made an assumption about the original intent of the so-called "cabal" and they did not use the original CAMERA email which went out to ALL members of Wikipedia and was perfectly appropriate, just offering to help train people to help Israel get its voice heard in Wikipedia? What's wrong with that anyway? It is a party to a 2-way conflict, of course it is important that its voice is heard! Balance is part of NPOV.

There was never an assumption of good faith. Virtually all of the "offending" emails were written by one individual, yet any one who had edited Wikipedia was given long sentences. CAMERA and every editor that received an email after that first letter was held responsible for everything said in other peoples' emails. All sorts of people were "outed," as well as shamed for their views ("evidence of a planned assault on Wikipedia"). While some (more like 1) may have planned an "assault" - I don't think one recruit ever made it to Wikipedia. Too bad, since many were highly educated people who would have a lot to offer. People should be banned on the basis of their own behavior (at Wiki), not the basis of what they say off-Wiki, in privately leaked emails, on groups and forums, or with whom they associate. How chilling is that? That is what happened with that BAD CAMERA decision. I hope Wikipedia rethinks and reverses that decision.

CAMERA and Wikipedians for Palestine

2010-08-22T20:29:00.006-07:00

What is going on is reminiscent and indeed references the CAMERA decision in which it was alleged that : "Wikipedia has been targeted by an off-site astroturfing campaign, to get stealth administrators in place to manipulate encyclopedia content." CAMERA , the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Affairs, had sent out a call for Wikipedia volunteers much like WikiBias has done. The volunteers started an email group, called Israpedia, which was open and an Electronic Intifada (their name says it all) member joined and they got the emails too, which they ''leaked'' to Wikipedia.

Oh the Horrors! It was "frightening" and "subversive" and intended to "harm Wikipedia."

But when it was discovered that there was another group of Wikipedians, about 12 of them, who called themselves "Wik ipedians for Palestine" , no one seemed frightened or considered them "subversive," for some odd reason. This secret group had this to say about membership in it:

"In order to verify their status as both a Wikipedian in good standing and someone who is pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist, those wishing to join this group will be asked to provide their Wikipedia user ID."

o.O They have to prove that they are "anti-Zionist"? But, apparently, there is nothing really wrong with that.

Andre Oboler at ZionismontheWeb.com investigated and wrote about it at the time. It is well worth reading and thinking about as this case is being discussed on Wikipedia here and now

Oboler notes:

"The penalties imposed on members of the CAMERA group were harsh in part because it was argued that this was a new threat to Wikipedia and an example needed to be made. The feeling was that recruiting people from within grass roots advocacy organisations, enlisting experienced editors to help, and having the discussions outside of wikipedia could all contribute in a way that went against the nature of wikipedia. This was naive. Our research shows past attenpts, by Palestinian advocates, some of whom commented and pushed for sanctions in the CAMERA case, that meet all of these criteria. The admins considering the case found some of this information too, their attempts to investigate did the equivalent of starting the shredding machines. "

Absolutely zero came of it. It was never investigated. One or two people were asked if they were members and they said no. That was that.

Oboler also exposed user: Bangpound in this excellent investigative article as the member of Electronic Intifada who outed the email group. Turns out this editor was in the employ of that organization. Some are arguing today that an employee of an advocacy group should not be editing in the area, but the editor called Bangpound still contributes a little these days, under that name.

The twelve members of the Wikipedians for Palestine with their self-proclaimed anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian bias are no doubt still at Wikipedia. Some of them are most probably fellow editors at the discussion board, urging sanctions against others; some may be administrators, checkusers, even arbitrators.

Wikibias

2010-08-21T08:23:00.003-07:00

Israelis editing Wikipedia

By Wiki02138, on August 20th, 2010

Ha’aretz has noticed the need for more knowledgeable editors to work on Israel-related articles. They cite edit wars over whether the demonstrations against the security barrier at Bil’in should be described as “violent” and whether the Ariel University Center should be described as “the largest public college in Israel” or “the largest Israeli public college?” Or, at least, Ha’aretz has noticed that “the Israeli right” has noticed the need for better editing.

Arutz Sheva has the story, as does the New York Times. There is even a Youtube video.

Even The Guardian has the story, pointing out that the status of Jerusalem is “constantly altered” on Wikipedia. Is it or is it not the capital of Israel? (The best NPOV answer I have seen is that it is the de-facto capital of Israel. While I personally consider it the capital of Israel, the status is often challenged and showing both sides, as has been done in the past, is the only correct option for Wikipedia.)

According to The Guardian, “The organisiers of the Wikipedia courses are already planning a competition to find the “Best Zionist editor,” with a prize of a hot-air balloon trip over Israel.”

check out the site @ wikibias.com

Censorship as ‘Tolerance’ - Article - National Review Online

2010-08-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Censorship as ‘Tolerance’ - Article - National Review Online

companion article to the one below

Israel through European Eyes - Jerusalem Letters - Jewish Ideas Daily

2010-08-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

Israel through European Eyes - Jerusalem Letters - Jewish Ideas Daily

Do Gaza Flotillas Provide Material Support to Hamas?: If so, should those U.S. funders of the flotilla be subject to prosecution?

2010-08-16T05:33:00.001-07:00

Fascinating thought but not one likely to be supported by the Obama administration. After all, he is personal buddies with Rashid Khalidi.

Do Gaza Flotillas Provide Material Support to Hamas?: If so, should those U.S. funders of the flotilla be subject to prosecution?
by Jonathan Schanzer

Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy recently argued at National Review Online that the federal government has reason to investigate Rashid Khalidi, an activist Middle Eastern studies professor at Columbia University. What prompted this? Khalidi's efforts to raise $370,000 for a new sea vessel (to be named The Audacity of Hope, after President Barack Obama's second book) designed to break the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

As increasing numbers of pro-Palestinian activists try to break the blockade of Gaza, McCarthy's argument is worth exploring. Are these flotillas legal?

McCarthy notes that it is illegal for Americans "to furnish or fit out a vessel in the service of any foreign entity 'to cruise, or commit hostilities' against a nation with which the U.S. is at peace." Israel, of course, is an American ally that is imposing a policy in Gaza that Washington officially supports.

McCarthy also notes that the Logan Act prohibits U.S. citizens "from carrying on 'any correspondence or intercourse' with any foreign government… to 'defeat the measures of the United States.'" To this end, McCarthy then suggests that the Justice Department should investigate flotilla organizers' communications with the de facto Hamas government in Gaza, particularly if they seek to undermine U.S. policy.

In the end, it is McCarthy's third point that is the most convincing: The Justice Department, under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, could also investigate American flotilla organizers for providing material support to a terrorist group.

Read full article

Turkey Gases Kurds and the World is Silent| Jewish News From WorldJewishDaily.com

2010-08-15T05:28:00.001-07:00

Turkey Gases Kurds and the World is Silent|

While Israel is feeling the heat from multiple international probes into its May 31 commando raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, Turkey is now reported to have used chemical weapons against its Kurdish population, and yet the world remains silent.

Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper reports that German experts have confirmed Turkey’s use of chemical weapons against at least eight members of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters in September 2009.

The story has been covered in the Israeli and Armenian media, but has attracted scant attention elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Kurds are being killed with the help of Israeli-made spy drones as Israel maintains its high-level military cooperation with Turkey.

Meanwhile, Turkey is reportedly planning to transfer weapons to Hezbollah. Since Turkey has access to the latest Israeli and NATO technology, the next Israel-Hezbollah war could be that much more devastating.

As of yet, no calls for an investigation have been heard from the Western media, governments or the UN.

from the World Jewish Daily

George F. Will - Netanyahu's warning

2010-08-14T07:20:00.000-07:00

George F. Will - Netanyahu's warning

Charles Krauthammer - Sacrilege at Ground Zero

2010-08-13T19:31:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer - Sacrilege at Ground Zero

Barack Obama 57 State Remix

2010-08-12T10:58:00.000-07:00

The Point of No Return - Magazine - The Atlantic

2010-08-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

The Point of No Return - Magazine - The Atlantic

The real danger to Israel's civic society - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

2010-08-10T06:01:00.001-07:00

Democratic values are threatened most when they are invoked to stifle the very debate that embodies the essence of these values.
By Gerald Steinberg, Asher Fredman

Obama: Not the Great Stone Face - Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

2010-08-08T04:28:00.000-07:00

Obama: Not the Great Stone Face - Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

Older Gazans recall Israelis, youth sees only army - Yahoo! News

2010-08-06T05:03:00.002-07:00

Older Gazans recall Israelis, youth sees only army - Yahoo! News
This is sad but no doubt true. I have posted the entire article, something to think about.

by BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press Writer Ben Hubbard, Associated Press Writer – Fri Aug 6, 3:06 am ET

SHATI REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip – From his ramshackle Gaza home, Palestinian Sobhi Hamami, 61, fondly recalls the 23 years he worked on an Israeli kibbutz, where he learned Hebrew, swam in the pool with Israeli friends and celebrated holidays with his Jewish boss.

His son Mohammed, 21, sees Israelis differently: "They're the enemy," he says, "without exception."

This generational split slices through families across Gaza, where older people remember when jobs in Tel Aviv and contact with Israelis were a short drive away, while those under 25 have grown up locked in, seeing little from Israel but fighter planes and bombs.

Israel has been tightening restrictions on who can leave Gaza for nearly two decades, finally imposing a strict blockade with Egypt when the Islamic militant group Hamas overran the territory in 2007.

After its deadly May raid on an activist flotilla seeking to break the blockade, Israel allowed more consumer goods into the impoverished seaside strip. But outside of rare exceptions for medical patients, Israel says the travel ban will remain to keep out would-be attackers until Gaza is ruled by a government that doesn't seek Israel's destruction or consider Israeli civilians legitimate targets. Hamas rejects those conditions.

This means Gaza's youth — 68 percent of its 1.5 million residents are under 25 — have no contact with people outside, which critics warn could make them more susceptible to militant groups and calls to violence.

"We have a whole generation that has no chance to see the other, whether that other is an Israeli, a European, another Palestinian, anyone," said Hamdi Shaqqura of Gaza's Palestinian Center for Human Rights. "This will push people more and more toward self-containment, further from other communities, and widen the gap with Israel."

The gap is clear in the crowded streets of this refugee camp, from which hundreds of men once commuted to Israel daily for jobs in industry, agriculture and construction. Most are now middle-aged and haven't left Gaza in years. Still, they can recall Israeli towns in street-by-street detail and the names of Jewish colleagues, bosses and friends.

The elder Hamami spent what he considers the best 23 years of his life working on Israeli kibbutzim, or collective farms, near Gaza. He had his own room, took Hebrew classes, swam in the community pool with kibbutz members and danced at their parties.

"They were all my friends," he said, "from the old man to the child."

When asked about Israel, his son Mohammed sees "mass destruction and killing people," he said. "I've seen lots of houses destroyed and children killed."

Mohammed has never left Gaza nor met a Jew. He has childhood memories of Israeli soldiers storming the camp during the Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000, and clearly recalls Israel's three-week offensive last year to stop militant rocket fire on Israeli towns. The war killed 1,400 Gazans, many of them civilians, and left swaths of the strip in ruins. Thirteen Israelis also died.

Their politics also differ. The father thinks violence is self-defeating. His son supports those who fight Israel.

"As long as they are fighting the army, we have to support them," Mohammed said. "They fight the enemy that kills children and destroys homes."

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev defended the Gaza travel ban as protection against militant attacks and blamed Hamas' rhetoric for younger Gazans' negative views of the Jewish state.

"The Hamas regime in Gaza is constantly bombarding the younger generation with extreme violence and anti-Israeli propaganda that plays on traditional anti-Semitic themes, often describing Jews as Satanic," he said.

This prevents them from seeing the good Israel has done, he said, citing the withdrawal from its settlements in 2005 and its allowing thousands of Gazans to enter Israel for medical care.

Sari Bashi of the Israeli group Gisha, which advocates for Palestinian freedom of movement, said the lack of contact between Gazan and Israeli civilians leads to the "demonization" of Gazans in the Israeli mind. This she said, could lead to greater violence from the Israeli side.

"This separation is very dangerous for the future because if people in Gaza are not human beings, you can do pretty much anything to them," she said.

Moussa Himmo, 45, also from Shati camp, worked for years in a factory in Tel Aviv, eating and lodging with the Jewish owner's family, which sent him home on weekends with sweets for his children.

In 1990, during the first Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation, Israel arrested Himmo for throwing firebombs at an army jeep in Gaza and imprisoned him for three and a half years. He says he was repeatedly beaten. Still, upon entering Israel seven years later, he sought out his old boss, who embraced him like a prodigal son.

"He was a beautiful guy, with green eyes and curly hair," his former boss Nuriel Izhaki, 70, said of Himmo. "It was only because he was an honest guy and did clean work that I let him work here. I trusted him."

The men lost touch years ago. And both see no way to return to the old days. Izhaki blames Hamas for Gaza's woes, especially for holding Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit captive for four years.

"If they hold Gilad Schalit and don't let anyone visit him, how do they think life can be good for them?" he said.

Himmo, the Palestinian, said he doesn't believe Israelis want peace. "They think all Arabs are dangerous," he said. "The whole situation has changed and there is no way to go back."

The former boss of Hamami, the kibbutz worker, said Hamami was "like family." Strolling through the tree-lined community of Gvulot, Michael Adler, 70, pointed out many buildings Hamami helped build, including the dining hall and Adler's own home.

His wife, Daphna, remembered the local children liking Hamami's Gaza-style felafel.

They, too, had lost touch with their former employee. Now, they said, their children and grandchildren live in communities near the Gaza border that have been frequent targets of militant rockets.

"I don't see a solution in the near future," Adler said, suggesting that the only way out is for the sides to talk to each other.

"If we don't speak, what else do we have?" he said.

Book Review - Trials of the Diaspora - By Anthony Julius - NYTimes.com

2010-08-04T04:27:00.000-07:00

Book Review - Trials of the Diaspora - By Anthony Julius - NYTimes.com

Israel Publishes Gaza Travel Guidebook For Pro-Hamas Freedom Flotilla | Mere Rhetoric

2010-08-01T19:32:00.002-07:00

Very nice spoof and lots of real information and real pictures. Check out that Grand Palace Hotel, very grand!

FROM: Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
TO: Free Gaza Freedom Flotilla
RE: Gaza Tourism Guide

Dear Crazy People,

We’ve been given to understand that you intend to stage another media stunt, wherein you’re again going to float some empty ships – they may be full this time, they were mostly empty last time – in the general direction of the Gaza Strip. Your hope is apparently that your cameramen will capture the Israeli reaction and edit it into an overreaction or, failing that, simply reprint your feverish fantasies with slack-jawed credulity. Again.

Our problem isn’t so much that your goal involves obfuscating the millions of tons of food and aid we’ve delivered to Gaza civilians, which allowed Hamas to move money away from infrastructure and into weaponry, which led to more of our cities getting bombarded with rockets and missiles. It’s not even how, knowing that we deliver 15,000 tons of goods every week, your 10,000 tons of concrete isn’t exactly a shining testament to your good intentions. Not when just last week we handed over 810,209 liters of heavy duty diesel fuel, 21 truckloads of milk powder and baby food, 897 tons of cooking gas, 66 truckloads of fruits and vegetables, 51 truckloads of wheat, 27 truckloads of meat, chicken and fish products, 40 truckloads of dairy products, 117 truckloads of animal feed, 36 truckloads of hygiene products, 38 trucks of clothing, 22 trucks of sugar and 4 trucks of medicine and medical equipment. But again: not the issue.

Continue Reading @ Mere Rhetoric

Jobs at Wikipedia

2010-08-01T09:14:00.001-07:00

Job Openings/Community Department - Wikimedia Foundation

"This year, the Community Department will be hiring for a series of important senior and entry level positions. All positions will involve collaborating and communicating with Wikimedia project contributors and users intensively and publicly, grappling with many problems that no one has ever solved before, navigating technological and social challenges and opportunities, and dealing with a high level of complexity and uncertainty. Candidates should have extremely high levels of skill and comfort in communication (especially writing), qualitative and quantitative analysis, management and self-management. Candidates who are not already deeply immersed in online collaborative communities will have to show an aptitude for quickly gaining a deep understanding of our communities' technologies, practices, traditions and culture -- and to become trusted and productive members of the Wikimedia community and movement.

We are looking for candidates from all over the world. Wikimedia Foundation has a policy of hiring without regard to locale. If eventually accepted for a position, Wikimedia Foundation will assist with work visas and relocation costs."

Of course, the relocation is to San Fransisco, a beautiful, if politically f---ked up city.

also see here: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Job_openings

U.S. Military Learns to Fight Deadliest Weapons | Magazine

2010-08-01T03:36:00.000-07:00

U.S. Military Learns to Fight Deadliest Weapons | Magazine

Before you boycott Israel

2010-07-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

Nicely done!

YouTube - A story you won't see in the Arab Media

2010-07-29T06:12:00.002-07:00

In Arabic with Hebrew and English subtitles

Is Wikipedia biased against Israel?

2010-07-28T17:32:00.001-07:00

Allegations of Wikipedia bias

Allegations of Wikipedia disinformation have been around a long time. It is certainly inevitable as an encyclopedia that (mostly) anyone can edit. As early as 2005 John Seigenthaler Sr, a journalist and writer, wrote an editorial in USA Today excoriating Wikipedia for his false biography. His biography included the spurious accusation that Seigenthaler was "thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby."

Seigenthaler wrote:

When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people."

For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia.

Since 2005 and this notorious incident, Wikipedia has made some changes in its "Biography of Living People" policies essentially in order to avoid suits and legal problems; but its policies in contentious areas do very little to prevent racism or other forms of political bigotry, which remain very much there. Policies are in place, but are broad enough or unenforceable enough that there is plenty of "gossip," to put it kindly, masquerading as "fact" in Wikipedia today.

Liberal bias has long been asserted on Wikipedia. Matthew Sheffield, writing for the Washington Post, accused Wikipedia of having "tilted leftward." Indeed the bias was pronounced enough to prompt the creation of the conservative wiki called Conservapedia with its article called "Examples of Bias in Wikipedia"

John Farrell, writing for Cosmos Magazine in 2007 noted:

"An increasing number of academics - many of whom have helped edit the resource to maintain informal quality control - are concerned that Wikipedia is becoming a stronghold for cranks: people who anonymously submit and edit entries on pet subjects to bolster the credibility of highly questionable theories."

Equally concerning for some of us are the allegations that Wikipedia is anti-Israel, and that the "highly questionable theories" being pumped out are pumped out by "cranks" with axes to grind.

In 2008, David Shamah, writing for the Jerusalem Post in his article "The other side of Wikipedia, writes

As most of us have come to realize, it's too late for Wikipedia, as far as Israel is concerned. The "Npov" crowd (an acronym for the supposedly Neutral Point of View of Wikipedia editors) have basically installed themselves in the positions of editorial authority that control the site.
.....
So, for someone looking for the truth about Israel, Wikpedia is pretty much a dead end - it seems to carry only the "truth" as approved by the international Arab propaganda machine."

But is it merely Israel? Or is there an anti-Jewish bias as well? Stephen Dubner notes

"Also, FWIW, has anyone else noticed that Wikipedia entries often exhibit a rather serious interest in a subject’s religious background? particularly if the subject is Jewish?It turns out that Sergey Brin of Google has also noticed this."

And in fact, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in this 2007 interview, specifically fingers Wikipedia when asked if he has experienced antisemitism.

"'I’ve experienced it',he tells me. 'Usually it is fairly subtle. People harp on all media companies being run by Jewish executives, with the implication of a conspiracy.' As an example, he cites the entry about him in Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia that famously accepts submissions and edits from anyone. 'The Wikipedia page about me will be subtly edited in an anti-Semitic way,' he says."

Author Karen McQuillan, in a FrontPageMag article entitled ''Wikipedia's Jewish Problem'' describes the editing environment at Wikipedia:

Unless you like endless fighting with anti-Semites and Israel-haters, it is not pleasant to try to contribute to topics dealing with Israel. Major topics like Jerusalem or the Holocaust attract enough attention that destructive editors’ depredations are kept at a minimum.

Propaganda purporting to be reference material, such as "Israel and the Apartheid Analogy," is tolerated although it is against the rules.

This system has not worked well on Jewish or Israel related topics. As Larry Sanger points out, it is a system that is easily gamed by the malicious, abetted by a nerd culture that doesn’t understand proper supervision.

Recent articles bemoaning Wikipedia's Israeli coverage include articles in the left-wing Israeli paper, Ha'aretz "Wikipedia editors: Coverage of Israel 'problematic," in which author Cnaan Liphshiz notes that "[Wikipedia] Editors say world's fourth most popular Web site presents "problematic views on Hamas, Iran, Holocaust denial."

Haviv Gur, in the Jerusalem Post, describes the anti-Israel editors as "anti-Israel 'mobs'" and part of international campaign to erode Israel’s legitimacy" which is "slowly expanding its reach into the online encyclopedia Wikipedia..." adding,

However, in recent months, Israeli editors have sensed a growing presence of pro-Palestinian activists who have begun to develop ways to sidestep these controls. The result has been the introduction of narratives that question Israel’s legitimacy and advocate international legal and political action against the Jewish state.

These activists also use teams of like-minded editors working together to sustain debates about new edits ad infinitum, thus improving the chances that their changes will be accepted and preventing the removal of any claims they have added.

Other methods used by editors to push their political view into the encyclopedia include censorship and personal attacks.

In an article by Andre Oboler (a one-time editor in Wikipedia) and others, the authors show how biased editors can write articles and censor out criticism of a favored subject. "Yet Wikipedia as a system doesn't seem to know how to deal with this damage, or perhaps it is just that various admins don't want to get involved? Either way the system relies on people's honesty and continues to be broken as Palestinian advocates seek to exploit it," Oboler notes in an article in AISH.

As Matthew Sheffield says "What this means in practical terms is that people with enough determination to force their viewpoints on Wikipedia can do so."

Add to this numerous Arabs, Muslims, and Islamists along with garden-variety antisemites on Wikipedia and if you imagine that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict area in Wikipedia is rife with anti-Israel ("anti-Zionist") propaganda, and you would be right.

This anti-Israel bias has not escaped the notice of mainstream media, "leading" editors of Wikipedia or the government of Israel. One such editor of Wikipedia was invited to Israel by the Foreign Ministry.

In 2009, David Saranga from the Consulate General in New York, invited Wiki editor David Shankbone and a dozen or so American journalists to Israel in hopes of expanding their (the US media's) "one-dimensional view of Israel."

Saranga says Wikipedia is generally fair in regard to Israel. He is unfazed when he hears that the entry on Israel mentions the word "occupation" nine times, whereas the entry on the Palestinian People mentions "terror" only once. "It means only one thing: Israelis should be more active on Wikipedia. Instead of blaming it, they should go on the site much more, and try and change it."

Jimbo Wales also called on Israelis to join Wikipedia just last year.

Indeed Wikipedia could use an infusion of Israelis and pro-Israel Jews and others to counteract the Arab propaganda "mob," or at least to provide some balance to many of the articles. However, as Karen McQuillan noted above, it requires "endless fighting with anti-Semites and Israel-haters."

Wikipedia claims to be based on "Five Pillars" or fundamental principles. Presenting a neutral point of view, is one, and respectful interaction another. When it comes to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, neither is upheld. In fact, in this area, it is not even true as claimed that it is an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit." The leftist/Arab/anti-Israel/antisemitic majority pushes and shoves and elbows out and finally bans any editors who support a fair and balanced approach to the subject.

Wikipedia: The New History? « The Activist Network

2010-07-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia: The New History? « The Activist Network

Check out the Activist Network. But this story about Wikipedia and Israel is tops. Having once edited Wikipedian, I can tell you this story is right-on. If you have time, some writing ability, and the stomach for it, I urge you to go to Wikipedia and give them the real facts about Israel. Here is what the activist network
has to say:

The Not So Silent War of Words

There is an information war being held on the online battlefield of Wikipedia. Wikipedia.com is an online encyclopedia which is user-base driven and claims 65,000,000 monthly visits from unsuspecting information-seekers. It is also used as a dependable source for research in the mainstream media outlets on a huge range of topics, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other topic, it is so heated and has instigated its own online Wikipedia conflict, to a point where Wikipedia designated a special division called the IP (Israeli-Palestinian) Section to monitor edited information from contributing users.

The site works in a way that allows anyone with internet access and a user-name to edit Wikipedia articles. This means that although anyone can contribute, the contribution or editor is screened by the fellow editors of that article, not by Wikipedia. For example, if the majority of editors on a particular article are liberal, a conservative editor will be scrutinized and have difficulty retaining an edit before the majority liberal editors easily undo or re-edit.

Having said that, there is a certain amount of objectivity that is maintained in most articles, but many users are learning that when it comes to IP, Wikipedia is not objective or neutral, but filled with Palestinian sympathizers determined to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. They are using unethical tactics by Wikipedia standards to ensure the Israeli position is not presented in its articles. In fact, administrators who are supposed to be maintaining objectivity in IP articles are quick to block pro-Israel contributors and their edits for no legitimate reason.

It has gotten to a dangerous, out-of-hand situation simply because there are many more pro-Palestinian editors than Israel supporters. Lies are being disseminated virally. Thus, any pro-Israel contributor is easily labeled and dismissed as a biased source, while the Palestinian supporters hide behind their screens and continue to shape anti-Israel public opinion and rewrite history. For instance, if one looks up “Deir Yassin,” an article titled the “Deir Yassin Massacre” will be pulled up on Wikipedia. Deir Yassin by numerous accounts was not a massacre and many attempts to change the title were dismissed without giving any weight to the legitimate sources referenced. Clearly, the article itself is riddled with questionable facts and half truths, but the point is that one does not have to get beyond the title to see the bias. For more recent examples of the edit wars we are up against, take a look at the Gaza Flotilla article or the Helen Thomas article. You may be frustrated by what you read, but if you don’t remain apathetic you can actually do something about it.

You see, unlike other media outlets, there is no barrier to entry to Wikipedia, so in minutes you can get involved and make a difference. The more Wiki editors we are, the more impact we can have in countering the heavy anti-Israel slant. This is all you have to do to become an editor:

1) Log on to www.wikipedia.com

2) Click top right to create an account – which requires no personal information

3) Create a non-provocative user ID so as not to give credit to accusations of bias

4) Preferably begin by editing non-controversial articles so as to gain a respected reputation and avoid being labeled as a single purpose account. All edits must be sourced (see Wiki guidelines for acceptable sources)

5) Gradually begin edits on IP articles, taking great care to reference solid sources

Because Wikipedia is a numbers game, once there are enough pro Western editors working in tandem, the anti-Western folks and their sympathizers will hopefully be held to a higher standard of proof. Wikipedia is known to minimize pro-Israel editors relative to the pro-Palestinian editors and they have banned pro-Israel editors from the site without cause, so be sure to keep all correspondence civil so as not to give them an excuse.

If you have any technical questions about editing and more complex Wiki behaviors, or for short instructional seminars, please email....

Contact information at the site here. Go take a look around.

VDH's Private Papers:: The Psychology of Recession

2010-07-22T19:03:00.001-07:00

by the great Victor Davis Hanson in the National Review Online

I asked a businessman two weeks ago why he said that he was neither hiring nor buying new equipment. He started in on “rising taxes.”

“But wait,” I interrupted. I pointed out that income-tax hikes haven’t taken effect. The old FICA income caps are also still applicable. Healthcare surcharges haven’t hit us yet.

He countered with “regulations” and “bailouts.” I said, “Come on, get specific.” He offered up “cap and trade” and “the Chrysler creditors.” I parried with more demands that he tell me exactly how the federal government has suddenly curbed his profit margins, or how his electric bill had gone up since January 2009, or whether he had lost money on any investment because the government had violated a contract.

Exasperated, he talked now instead of more cosmic issues — the astronomical borrowing, the staggering national debt, and the new protectionism. I pressed again, “But aren’t interest rates historically low? Inflation is almost non-existent, isn’t it? New products are still comparatively cheap? Rents and new business property are at bargain-basement prices?”

This give-and-take went on for ten minutes; but you get the picture. Private enterprise is wary, hesitant, even frightened, but nevertheless hard pressed to demonstrate in concrete fashion how Obama has quite ruined them in just 18 months.

So why are a lot of cash-solvent financial firms, banks, and manufacturing companies not hiring, not expanding, and not buying new operating equipment as they did in past bottoming-out recessions?

Answer here.

Who Are Huwaida Arraf & Adam Shapiro? Gaza Flotilla Leaders Sheltered “Mike’s Bar” Homicide Bombers | Debbie Schlussel

2010-07-20T11:10:00.001-07:00

Debbie Schlussel blog. Always relevant.

Mideast Dispatch Archive: A nice new shopping mall opened today in Gaza: Will the media report on it?

2010-07-19T20:30:00.001-07:00

Check out the photos of the new mall with 5 star dining! poor Gaza

Must see.

Pat Condell on Ground Zero mosque: "Is it possible to be astonished, but not surprised?" - Jihad Watch

2010-07-17T07:30:00.001-07:00

Pat Condell on Ground Zero mosque: "Is it possible to be astonished, but not surprised?" - Jihad Watch

Must see this six minute video about the Islam and the Ground Zero Mosque.
Click here

Obama vs George

2010-07-15T10:35:00.002-07:00

Got this email and BY GEORGE, it is correct!

I will not say GWB was my favorite President; in fact he wasn’t even close to being one by a long shot. However, these questions are certainly legitimate but they continue to be ignored by the mainstream media when in the prior administration they would have been repeated a multitude of times on every station just to be sure everyone knew of it. When Bush mispronounced a word, he was touted as an ignorant jerk, yet when done by President Obama, you will never hear another word about it. Why is that?

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If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a TelePrompTer installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?

If George W. Bush had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take Laura Bush to a play in NYC, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia , would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the nonexistent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had stated that there were 58 (“I’ve been to 57 and have one more to go”) states in the United States , would you have said that he is clueless? Would you have asked yourself if he really knew anything about our Country or its history?

If George W. Bush would have flown all the way to Denmark to make a five minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him walking out his front door in Texas , would you have thought he was a self important, conceited, egotistical jerk?

If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?

If George W. Bush had misspelled the word "advice" would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoes as proof of what a dunce he is?

If George W. Bush repeatedly kept referring to and pronouncing the Marine “Corps” as if it were a dead corpse, would you have asked yourself if he was truly intelligent or just a puppet?

If George W. Bush had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he's a hypocrite?

If George W. Bush's administration had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11?

If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans , would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?

If George W. Bush had created the position of more than 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America , would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

Why is it okay for the media to condemn George W. Bush for a six minute delay in response to the first plane crash into the Trade Center while trying not to alarm kindergarten children, yet when Obama takes many weeks to respond to the Gulf Oil Spill disaster no one says a thing?

If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive? Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 15 months -- so you'll have two years and nine months to come up with an answer.

The Problem With Arab Denial

2010-07-14T06:30:00.002-07:00

Ari Lieberman for the ''Jewish News''

The Arabs have long been delusional. This terrific article reviews the Arab-Israeli wars and the Arab and Muslim connection with reality.

On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur Day, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated assault against Israel. Under cover of heavy artillery and aerial bombardment, the Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal and stormed Israel’s neglected Bar-Lev fortifications. Several hundred miles to the north, a thousand Syrian tanks accompanied by anti-tank guide missile squads crashed through the Golan Heights. Facing them were a mere 177 Israeli tanks.

After 18 days of bitter fighting, the picture on the ground appeared vastly different from those first precarious days. In the North, the Syrians were in full retreat. Their destroyed and abandoned tanks littered the Golan and the Israelis stood a mere 20 miles from Damascus. The situation for the Egyptians was no better. The bulk of their army was trapped and surrounded by the Israel Defense Forces and there was nothing to stop the Israelis from advancing on Cairo. In fact, the Arab situation was so dire that the Soviets threatened direct military intervention unless Israel stopped its offensive, prompting the U.S. to heighten DEFCON readiness and place its 6th Fleet on alert.

Strangely, October 6 is marked yearly as a holiday in Egypt. There are military parades and patriotic songs play over government controlled radio. Egyptians are taught that the Yom Kippur War, or as they call it, the Ramadan War, was an Egyptian victory. Despite the fact that their army was hopelessly trapped, despite the fact that the IDF was operating with impunity over a large swath of land in Africa, despite the fact that the Egyptians suffered tens of thousands dead and wounded, despite the fact that their Syrian allies suffered equal devastation and despite the fact that the Soviets had to bail them out (again), the Egyptians still call it a victory. Strange, indeed.

Fast-forward nine years. On June 6, 1982 the IDF invaded Lebanon. Within six days, its forces swept aside PLO and Syrian resistance and were on the outskirts of Beirut, trapping some 7,000 PLO fighters in the Lebanese capital. Within two months, the PLO was expelled from Lebanon and banished to scattered destinations throughout the Middle East. Their humiliating exit from the Lebanese capital was accompanied by celebratory gunfire as if they had achieved a glorious victory. So many bullets were fired into the air that dozens of Fatah terrorists were injured by falling lead. Yasser Arafat even compared the Battle of Beirut to the Battle of Stalingrad. Obviously, nobody had told Arafat that the Russians actually won that battle.

On July 12, 2006, twenty-four years after the First Lebanon War, Israel was again forced to fight a war in Lebanon, this time against a foe called Hezbollah. The war was sparked by a serious Hezbollah border provocation.

After 33 days of fighting, the IDF was in control of every single Lebanese village in the sub-Litani region (from Israel’s northern border to the Litani River near Tyre). Hezbollah lost a third of its elite fighting force and by some estimates, up to a thousand killed in action. Damage to Hezbollah’s infrastructure was equally severe and the billions the terrorist group and its Iranian sponsors spent in developing its military capabilities went up in smoke. Whole Shi’a neighborhoods were obliterated and, despite the passing of three years, the scars of war are still evident throughout Lebanon. Hezbollah was pushed away from the border and the organization was forced to allow the Lebanese Army to deploy there in its place, something its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed he would never allow. Pouring salt on Hezbollah’s wounds, UNFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) was enlarged and now included a big European contingent led by French and Italian troops. The new reality meant that Hezbollah could no longer operate with impunity in the sub-Litani region, as this would necessarily invite confrontation with the Lebanese Army and the Europeans. Moreover, Iran and Syria had hoped to utilize Hezbollah as a deterrent against any Israeli strike against those rogue countries. By prematurely provoking a fight with Israel without strategic purpose, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria exposed their hand and gained nothing. The Israeli home front absorbed the worst that Hezbollah had to offer and escaped relatively unscathed.

Political commentators, academics and defense analysts have, for the most part, recognized the Second Lebanon war as a strategic loss for Hezbollah and a victory for Israel. Indeed, Nasrallah himself, facing growing domestic criticism, admitted that he vastly underestimated the strength of Israel’s response and stated that he would not have provoked Israel had he known that it would lead to war. Yet shortly after offering this humbling statement, Nasrallah boasted (from his underground hideout) that Hezbollah had scored a “divine victory” over Israel.

What leader apologizes for and doubts the wisdom of starting a war that leads to “divine victory” for his people? Perhaps Michael Young of Lebanon’s “Daily Star” summed it up best when he wrote, “one dreads to imagine what Hezbollah would recognize as a military loss.”

In December 2008, just two years after Nasrallah’s colossal blunder, 26 years after the PLO’s humiliating Beirut expulsion and 35 years after Egypt’s disastrous Yom Kippur misadventure, Hamas decided that it, too, wanted to join the Arab humiliation club. It violated an agreed-upon ceasefire by unilaterally firing deadly rocket salvos at Israeli towns. In the three weeks of war that followed, Israel killed 709 Hamas combatants including senior commanders and bomb makers for losses of 9 IDF soldiers, a kill ratio of nearly 80 to 1. Hamas failed to hit a single Israeli tank and its “fighters” chose to run or surrender rather than fight. Yet in the midst of a smoldering Gaza with his guerilla fighters in tatters and scattering in different directions, Ismail Haniyeh emerged from his underground hospital bunker (after Israel had already left, of course) to declare victory over the Zionists.

Once again Israel had scored a major military and strategic victory and once again an Arab leader defied logic and reality by declaring victory over the “Zionist imperialists.”

Aside from being motivated by a hatred of anything not Islamic, these wars demonstrate another common theme: the Arabs live in a state of perpetual delusional fantasy. Their reality is so steeped in fantasy that it almost makes Disney’s Alice in Wonderland appear as reality. But there is logic behind this absurd, seemingly bizarre and irrational behavior.
The Islamic antagonists facing Israel and the West are indoctrinated in a convoluted mixture of radical Islam, extreme fanaticism and a depraved hatred of anything un-Islamic. Some refer to this as Islamofacism. Admitting defeat would require the Arabs to acknowledge that within a sixty-year span, they have been defeated nine times by the non-believing heretics. This, in turn, would undermine the core of their belief system. After all, how could Allah abandon them nine straight times? Unless of course, Allah doesn’t adhere to the corrupted form of Islam they espouse. That would mean that everything they were spoon-fed from birth, all the hate and religious fanaticism, was a lie and their sacrifices were in vain. No virgins awaited them in paradise.

Thus, denial runs deep in the Islamofacist mindset. Seemingly bizarre claims of “divine victory” or ludicrous comparisons with Stalingrad are more than empty rhetoric. They are coping mechanisms designed to deal with a reality they prefer to ignore. Until this bankrupted belief system is rejected by level-headed, moderate Muslims, the Arabs are likely to continue experiencing defeat and likely to continue proclaiming phantom victories while their people live in abject poverty and die by the tens of thousands.

read it at Yeshiva World