Wednesday, June 30, 2010

dennis miller on Israel

Dennis Miller and the Jews

For those of you who don't like Dennis Miller, who is not Jewish, you may want to reconsider after reading his brilliant comments that follow.
For those who don't know, Dennis Miller is a comedian who had a show called Dennis Miller Live on HBO. Although he is not Jewish, he recently had the following to say about the Middle East situation:

'A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you Really need.

Here we go:

The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that:
There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like 'Wiccan,' 'Palestinian' sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in the 1967 war, Gaza was Owned by Egypt , the West Bank was owned by Jordan , and there were no 'Palestinians.'

As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians" weeping for their deep bond with their lost 'land' and 'nation.'

So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word ' Palestinian' any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone Points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are:
'Other Arabs Who Can't Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death.'
I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then:

'Adjacent Jew-Haters.' Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing: No, they don't. They could've had their own country. Any time in the last thirty years, especially several years ago at Camp David . But If you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks. And Chambers of
Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living.

That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel . They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course --that's where the real fun is -- but mostly they want Israel .

Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel - or 'The Zionist Entity' as their Textbooks call it -- for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab Countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something.

It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mid-East. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way,thanks a hell of a lot for that one.

Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five Million Jews.

Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a ack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals.

Really? Wow, what neat news. Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding.

My friend, Kevin Rooney, made a gorgeous point the other day: just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of ourse not. Or marshalling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab State into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of Innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting.

No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.

However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11th our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.

If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan .

My Israel resources

website www.forisrael.info
blog www.israelgreatest.blogspot.com

youtube videos
Efforts to weaken Israel
BDS Boycott Divest Sanction Israel vs Bracha, Din-Defeat, Shalom jewu 554
Top 10 lies about Israel lies 1-3 Jewu Rabbi Jonathan Ginsbrg jewu 556
Lies about Israel 4-10 Jewu Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg jewu 557
Disconnecting Jews from Israel via Khazars Jewu 521

Media,academic bias vs Israel

Tom Friedman Arabist lies in New York Times Jewu
Helen Thomas Resigns over "send Israeli Jews "back" to Poland and Germany Jewu 551
Times shows bias against Jewish tie to Jerusalem jewu 539 Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg
Refuting Kristof's March 17 NYT piece on Israel JewU 25
Mearsheimer/Walt -shoddy and anti-semitic? JewU 239

Israel light to the nations/Israel's rightsIsrael will save world: water Jewu 559 Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg
The Israel Test Gilder A Must read Jewu 529
Cases for Israel Jewu 558 Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg
Zionism-The Jewish people's right to Israel JewU 243
Israel's 59th birthday Happy birthday JewU 75
Israel: the greatest country JewU 32
What can we personally do to help Israel JewU 78
Bond to Israel with Israel Bonds JewU 266
Travel with us to Israel JewU 138


Palestinians/terror/Gaza
Turkish Terrorist flotilla bloodbath Jewu 548
Trading 1000 terrorists for Shalit? Jewu 546 Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg
Apartheid week? Promote Arab terrorism week Jewu 535
40 seconds for al jazeera on Hamas Terrorist killed
Purim and the right of Jewish self-defense Jewu 530
Responding to those protesting Israel Jewu 522
Israel settlements obstacles to peace? Jewu 498
Palestine/Israel peace challenge Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg Jewu 487
Gaza Aftermath Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg Jewu 476
Gaza Hamas trying to kill Jews Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg jewu 462
Palestinian refugees "return" wrong JewU 86
It's Not Israel's Fault JewU 19

UN/International
UN Goldstone report on Gaza predictably biased vs Israel Jewu 513
Pope's disappointing visit to Israel Jewu 489
Shameful British Boycott JewU 99


Pluralism
Rotem Knesset bill on conversion update Jewu 538
Rabbinate hurts Israel by thwarting converts aliyah jewu 509

US-Israel relations
Disgusting Obama administration tilt to murderers Jewu 537
Obama's Cairo speech good and bad Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg jewu 493
What's Wrong with Jimmy Carter's Book? JewU 97
AIPAC Crucial for America and the World JewU 81


IRAN

Key issue of the time:Iran Iran Iran JewU 212 Rabbi Jonathan
ancient egypt modern iran Jewu 540 Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg


Jewish/leftist anti-Israel forces
J Street exposed- new "pro" Israel group? Jewu 517
Has the American Rabbinate abandoned Israel? JewU 515
Leftist bizarre anti_Israel views Jewu 495
My report from the AIPAC proIsrael conference Jewu 418


CULTURE
Israel songs Jewish songs #7 Jewu 417
Intro to Judaism terms #14 Israel JewU 233




fightingt anti=Israel lies

TIP Emergency Media Center in Haifa
TIP Senior Advisor for Media Jennifer Packer, Israel Office Director Calev Ben-David, Project Manager Rachel Fishman on the front lines of the media war for Israel.

The Israel Project (TIP) team has been working around the clock to fight the media war for Israel.

As Israel fought to defend itself from Iran- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah and Hamas, TIP was literally on the front lines dealing with hundreds of journalists in Israel and thousands more around the world who were covering the conflict.

Hundreds of millions of people across the globe are making their decisions about Israel based on what they see in the media. From the terrorist who struck Seattle to heads of state around the world - what people see about Israel matters! TIP understands that it is critical for the world to understand that Israel has a right to defend itself from enemies who want to "wipe Israel off the map."

From TIP's emergency media center in the port city of Haifa, which was under almost constant attack by Hezbollah-fired rockets, and our offices in Jerusalem, Washington and New York, journalists received facts, sources, footage and other information that they needed to get their stories right.

TIP conducted ongoing polling on the conflict, distributed talking points that were used by top pro-Israel spokespeople on shows ranging from Larry King Live to the BBC and beyond, and distributed fact sheets to thousands of journalists on a daily basis. To support our critical work click here.

Israeli Minister Yitzhak Herzog Meets the Press at TIP Event in Haifa

Israeli Minister Yitzhak Herzog answers questions at TIP event in Haifa.

Israeli Minister Yitzhak Herzog gave a press briefing to a group of top journalists in Haifa as rockets fired into Israel caused more than a million people to live for weeks in bomb shelters or find temporary housing in other parts of Israel.

The media event, organized by TIP in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Communications Center, was attended by media outlets including AP, Reuters, CNN and ABC and was broadcast across the globe. Although the briefing was held underground to safeguard against missile attacks, the venue itself provided a panoramic view of the greater Haifa area, where hundreds of Hezbollah missiles have caused severe damage to city infrastructure and killed residents.

Minister Herzog toured the north to express solidarity with residents and local governments in the region. At the press briefing he answered tough questions from the media and stressed Israel’s desire for security in the north and true peace with its neighbors.

The event was seen both on TV and in print media. Our thanks to our partners in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for this successful event, especially Yossi Amrani and Zehavit Ben-Hillel, and to TIP Projects Manager Rachel Fishman, who set this up in record time - and between the wails of air-raid sirens!

TIP Takes Journalists to Haifa Police HQ for Briefing on Hezbollah
Presentation by members of Haifa's Police force inside Headquarters in downtown Haifa.

In order to focus attention on the Israeli home front, TIP's front-line media team in Haifa collaborated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Communications Center to arrange an exclusive visit for over 30 international journalists to Haifa's Police Headquarters.

There they received a comprehensive briefing on the situation from Northern District Police Commander Dan Ronen. Ronen stressed the human cost of the more than 1,000 Hezbollah-launched missiles that had landed in Israel during the two weeks preceding the briefing.

Haifa Police Chief Nir Meriesh focused on the plight of his city, which suffered the highest number of civilian fatalities and saw an exodus of nearly half of its residents. Bomb Squad Deputy Commander Michael Cardash gave a technical briefing on weaponry used by Hezbollah, including Katyusha rockets, Syrian-made 220 mm. rocket and Iranian-made long-range Fajr-3 missiles. Police officials also provided a display table filled with the actual remains of these missiles collected by police in previous weeks.

Journalists also received a demonstration of a robot bomb-defusing device used by police to handle unexploded ordnance. The presentation focused on the devastating effects of these weapons.

The journalists attending the tour also received exclusive TIP briefing packets on the war with Hezbollah, as well as a complimentary lunch, for which they were exceedingly grateful.

Our thanks again to the MFA Communications Center for partnering with TIP on this important event, and a very special thanks to the new National Police Spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld, who prepared comprehensive materials for the briefing and expressed enthusiasm about working with TIP on future projects.

Press Briefing with Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon
Ambassador Daniel Ayalon listens to questions from top reporters at a TIP press conference, which was covered live by CNN, C-SPAN and FOXNews .

Just as the violence in northern Israel broke out, The Israel Project hosted a packed press briefing with Israel's ambassador to the United States, Daniel Ayalon. The briefing attracted numerous journalists and media outlets from around the country, including AP, CNN, NBC, CBS and FOXNews.

Speaking before a room crowded with news cameras and high-level reporters, Ambassador Ayalon gave a brief summary of the current conflict in the Middle East and then answered a wide range of questions from the press. The briefing focused on the escalating violence and hostilities in northern Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Ambassador Ayalon was on TIP's platform when he announced the news that the first Hezbollah-fired rockets had hit Haifa. More than 700 press mentions of the news conference enabled viewers around the world to view the event on broadcast outlets such as the BBC and CNN International .

Clips from the event and Ambassador Ayalon’s quotes were used in scores of stories about the hostilities. Ambassador Ayalon has participated in past TIP events, including a town hall meeting on Capitol Hill. He is always an excellent spokesperson for Israel!

TIP in Sderot with Journalists
TIP Israel Director Calev Ben-David inside a school hit by a Qassam rocket. Though Israel gave up all of Gaza a year ago, Palestinian terrorists have not stopped their attacks on Israel.

After barrages of Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip fell on Sderot and other nearby communities in June, The Israel Project’s Israel Office Director Calev Ben-David guided a group of 35 journalists on a media tour of the town and the Gaza border area, arranged by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Public Affairs Department.

In Sderot, the group held a press conference with Mayor Eli Moyal, who spoke movingly about the ordeal Sderot residents have lived through. Just behind him were photos of the eight Israelis killed in Israel by Qassam rockets fired from Gaza. The journalists then paid a visit to the Sderot high school building hit by a Qassam rocket in July, in which tragedy was narrowly averted only because students were still in morning prayers at the time of the attack.

The media tour then stopped by the site of a hunger strike being conducted by several town residents, some of whom lost family members in Qassam attacks. The residents demanded the government take stronger action against the Gaza terror groups firing the rockets and expressed their pain and frustration in interviews with the journalists.

The group continued on to the Karni Checkpoint Crossing on the Gaza border, where the journalists received a briefing Israel Defense Forces and security officials about how Israel enables humanitarian aid to continue to flow into Gaza despite the terror attacks.

During the tour, Ben-David spoke with the journalists and assisted various official spokespeople, including MFA Spokesman Mark Regev, Government Press Office Director Danny Seaman and Israel Defense Forces spokespeople Capts. Jacob Dallal and Noa Meir. Our thanks to all of them for allowing TIP to take part in this vital hasbara effort.

TIP Reaches Out to the Arab World

Al-Jazeera’s New Israel Bureau Gets the Facts On High From TIP 'Intellicopter' Tour
Al-Jazeera Senior Producer Ghousoon Bisharat on the 'Intellicopter.'

Beginning in May 2007, Al-Jazeera will broadcast a new worldwide English-language news network completely separate from its Arabic operation that will compete with CNN and BBC-TV .

TIP-Israel made contact with the network's Jerusalem bureau while it was still in its formative stages and established good working relations with its senior personnel.

Al-Jazeera English staffers attended some of TIP’s pre-election events in March, and on April 26 the bureau’s senior members went up in TIP “Defensible Borders” Intellicopter tour, a two-hour guided helicopter tour that provided a bird's-eye view of Jerusalem, the security fence and the Gaza border. Joining the tour were Al-Jazeera-English Jerusalem Bureau Chief Tony Hedley (a veteran of AP and ABC-TV ), Senior Producer Ghousoon Bisharat and cameraman Adam Cohen.

The Al-Jazeera team responded positively to the flight briefing from TIP-IO Director Calev Ben-David and afterwards asked him to serve on occasion as a commentator representing the Israeli point of view when the network begins broadcasting.

TIP Brings Its Message to Jordanian Journalists
TIP-IO Director Calev Ben-David at Beit Berl with some of the Jordanian journalists participating in the mission.

In the first week of May, TIP’s Israel Office was engaged in educating and holding a dialogue with a group of Jordanian journalists visiting Israel for the first time. The encounter was part of TIP-IO’s ongoing collaboration with the Levinson International Institute at Beit Berl, which brought over the journalists for a two-week seminar in Israel.

As with its prior missions with Latin American and Russian journalists, the International Institute turned to The Israel Project to assist in its programming. This included lectures by TIP Israel Office Director Calev Ben-David about Israel and the media; Jerusalem Post reporter Khaled Abu Toameh about the challenges of truthful reporting on the Palestinian situation; Dr. Mordechai Kedar about the myths and realities in the Arab world; and blogging expert Lisa Goldman about using the Internet in societies with press restrictions.

For most of the Jordanian journalists, it was their first exposure to such messages and the sessions were filled with lively debate and discussion. We salute these brave journalists who came to Israel in the face of serious pressure by Jordanian press associations that advocated a complete boycott of Israel which led some of their colleagues to cancel their planned participation in the mission.

TIP Takes Off With Leading Arab-Italian Journalist
From left: Aaron Schachter, Valentina Allam, Magdi Allam and Dina Kraft on the Gaza border.

Magdi Allam, born in Egypt and raised in Italy, is one of the leading journalists in Italy today. He is deputy editor of Corriere della Sera, one of Italy's leading newspapers, and an Arab and Islamic Affairs commentator. Allam is an author as well as a prolific journalist and editor, consistently speaking out against Islamic extremism and in favor of tolerance, and in support of Israel.

Magdi Allam visited Israel in August to receive the 2006 Dan David Prize for his ceaseless work in fostering understanding and tolerance between cultures. During his visit, he was also hosted by The Israel Project at a dinner in Jerusalem and took a flight on the TIP Intellicopter.

Joining Allam on the Intellicopter flight were Dina Kraft, Israel correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and contributing reporter for The New York Times, and Aaron Schachter of the BBC/PBS web radio program “The World.” Both Kraft and Schachter conducted interviews with Allam during the trip.

Allam, who lives under full-time police protection in Italy, is one of Europe’s leading spokesmen against Islamic extremism. In March he appeared on a panel in Rome together with international peace activist and regular TIP speaker Nonie Darwish. Together they spoke out against the “culture of hate” fueling Arab terrorism. Allam has pledged to continue working with TIP as we expand our crucial efforts in the European arena.

Pakistani Journalist Gets the TIP View
From right-Pakistani journalist Imtiaz Gul; Calev Ben-David; Giora Bechor, MFA Asia Desk; Photographer Don Maclain; Israel Correspondent for The Independent ; Photographer Enrique Kirszenbaum; Pilot Ami Mamur.

Although Israel still has no diplomatic relations with Pakistan, it held its first talks last September to lay the groundwork for what may be an important strategic relationship for both countries.

There are no Pakistani media in Israel, but as a sign of a slow warming between the two nations, Pakistani journalist Imtiaz Gul of the Islamabad Friday News visited Israel in early August in a brief visit arranged by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As part of his program, Gul went up in The Israel Project’s Intellicopter for an aerial briefing of the security fence, Jerusalem and the northern border. The tour included discussion of the Iranian missile threat.

Along the way, Gul, who also works for the Voice of Germany radio station, interviewed TIP Israel Office Director Calev Ben-David on issues relating to Israeli security.

It’s safe to say that TIP’s first professional relationship with the Pakistani media has gotten off to a flying start!

Nonie Darwish Highlights TIP Jerusalem Event
Panel members (from left) Nonie Darwish, Nidra Poller and Isabel Kershner at TIP panel discussion in Jerusalem.

Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian-born daughter of a “shahid” (martyr) for the Palestinian cause who now speaks out against Arab terrorism and Islamic extremism and for Israel and the West, was the featured participant on a panel discussion on June 18, organized by The Israel Project’s Jerusalem office.

Darwish, who was visiting Israel from the United States, where she now lives, did several media interviews while visiting Israel. Darwish, founder of “Arabs for Israel,” also took the stage at a panel discussion organized by TIP-IO at Jerusalem’s Beit Shmuel Hall. The event was titled “Lethal Narratives: The Culture of Terror and Martyrdom” and also featured speakers such as Jerusalem Report Middle East Editor Isabel Kershner, author/lecturer Nidra Poller and TIP-IO Director Calev Ben-David. It attracted about 100 Jerusalemites for an evening of lively debate and discussion.

The event's implementation was helped greatly by the participation of The Israel Project's 10 Israel-based Media Fellows who worked with TIP-IO through August. Our thanks to them, to all the speakers and especially to the remarkable Nonie Darwish!

Tom Friedman NYT anti-Israel piece

Shame on you Tom Friedman

The answer toTom Friedman, and to everyone who said they agree with him. He may have
Zionist relatives, and he may be active in his Conservative synagogue, but
he still, in his widely-rea column, compared Tzahal to Haffez el Assad's
brutal massacre of thousands of his own people. I believe Friedman's ugly
comparison did irreparable harm to the State of Israel. No one can possibly
agree with an outrageous, egregious, insulting, defaming, pillorying
statement like that. Shame on you, Tom Friedman!!

The answer to Friedman:

*ISRAELI ARMY' AVOIDING HARM TO CIVILIANS*

British Army Col. Richard Kemp, commanded his country's forces in

Afghanistan in 2003, during his 30 years in the British Army, in which he

fought in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.During the

Gaza operation ten months ago, he asserted that the IDF was using all

possible caution to avoid harming civilians.



Kemp also testified before the UN Human Rights Council on the Goldstone

report, supporting the IDF. He told the special session: "Based on my

knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the

Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a

combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare ... Despite all
of

this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of

mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other
forces

in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error.

But mistakes are not war crimes... More than anything, the civilian

casualties were a consequence of Hamas' way of fighting. Hamas deliberatel=
y

tried to sacrifice their own civilians ... Israel had no choice apart from

defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets."


PS - the same can be said of the bogus humanitarians in the flotilla
recently.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Only Israel is working towards peace

Op-Ed: Only Israel making the effort toward peace
By Lee Rosenberg and Alan Solow · June 29, 2010

CHICAGO (JTA) -- Like the people and governments of Israel, the pro-Israel community in the United States has long sought a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through direct negotiations between the parties that would lead to a lasting peace agreement and Israel’s acceptance by all its neighbors.

The Israeli people dream of peace, and their governments have worked and sacrificed for it. As American supporters of Israel, we are committed to helping them make it a reality.

Since assuming office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pursued peace with Israel’s neighbors. Netanyahu declared his vision for peace -- for two states -- last June in a landmark speech at Bar-Ilan University, saying he supported the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state of Israel.

Underscoring Israel’s sincerity and willingness to make the most difficult choices in the pursuit of peace, a few months after his speech Netanyahu took another bold step, declaring a 10-month moratorium on all Israeli construction in the West Bank -- a concession that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called “unprecedented” in advance of negotiations.

Alongside political gestures, Israel also has taken significant steps to ensure that life improves for Palestinians in the West Bank, such as dismantling hundreds of West Bank roadblocks and checkpoints, and enabling greater freedom of movement between Palestinian cities. Israel’s cooperation also helped produce double-digit economic growth at a time of global recession.

While the current Israeli government, like its predecessors, has proven its desire for peace, the leader of the Palestinian Authority refuses to meet or even speak on the phone with his Israeli counterpart. Given Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to even sit down to speak face to face about a shared future, how can there be a chance for peace?

During his recent visit to the United States, President Abbas made several public appearances in which he expressed his desire for peace. Many of his comments were significant and noted as such. But words alone are not enough. Abbas still refuses to talk peace directly with Israel’s prime minister, despite American demands that he do so. Abbas has said that his strategy is not to make concessions in negotiations but to encourage the United States, and even more the international community, to pressure Israel for unilateral concessions.

Abbas rebuffed then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s sweeping offer in 2008, and like Yasser Arafat before him, refused to even engage in more serious deeper discussions with Israel, which leads us to today, when new preconditions and further refusals to talk with Israel sabotage the dream of peace to which we all aspire.

It’s not just Abbas’ refusal to talk that is problematic. In recent months, the PA has intensified its efforts to delegitimize Israel in the international arena and increased the incitement against Israel. By endorsing the Goldstone Report, the PA has pushed for senior Israeli leaders to be charged with war crimes. The PA also lobbied forcefully but unsuccessfully against Israel’s admission to the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In addition, the PA continues to name schools and streets after terrorists, including Dalal Mughrabi, who killed 37 civilians, and Yahya Ayyash, a suicide bombmaker who is responsible for hundreds of deaths. The PA media carries outrageous programs portraying Israel and Jews in the most negative ways. Rather than seeking to isolate Israel in the international arena and to incite its population to hatred of Israel, the PA needs to prepare its people for genuine peace.

On a topic as complicated and emotional as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is easy to get caught up in the day’s news cycle and forget the history of Israel’s actual effort, sacrifice and good will in the pursuit of peace.

As American friends of Israel we must, and we will, continue to remind our leaders about how badly Israel wants peace -- and how tragically the PA has only increased its demands and pulled away from the negotiating table.

In the interim, the United States and Israel are attempting to engage the PA through “proximity talks” -- a significant departure from direct talks of the past 20 years. The Palestinian leadership now is refusing to engage directly unless it gets Israel’s concessions in advance, and the PA pays no price for its obstinate stance.

Peace may be a dream, but it takes work and courageous leadership in real life to achieve it. Don’t blame Israel for the lack of progress.

(Lee Rosenberg is president of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and Alan Solow is chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations.)

Thomas Friedman New York Times buys into Arab narrative

Friedman"Because the risks to Israel's legitimacy of another war in Gaza, Lebanon or the West Bank in which Israel could be forced to kill even more civilians to squash rocket
attacks launched from schoolyards by fighters who wear no uniforms will be
staggering."
Someone might say-He is right. And even if he isn't, how can his passionate and skilled analysis of the situation be considered anything other than an attempt at
helping Israel? "
Because smart people can still be very foolish and very harmful.

What is incredibly depressing is to read how Jews buy into the narrative of the Arabs. What will be Israel's price if it does not fight back hard and punish the murderers? Many more dead Jews. This battle of fighting armed combatants dressed as civilians and shooting missiles from schools is a battle the west will fight for 100 years.
Of course there will be more wars, sadly killing civilians, and even more as the Arabs perceive the breach in the walls more and more through BDS, aided and abetted by perhaps well meaning, naive Jews, they will realize there is no downside to any kind of provocation, missiles, terrorism. Israel basically has no friends left except the US Congress, some Jews and evangelical christians. What is Israel supposed to do? You think there is anything it can do, short of leaving town, that will appease Hamas, Hezbollah, Ira, Muslim brotherhood etc?
Pinhas zealotry is called for now. I know many of you think you help Israel but asking her to be nicer. It is a calamatous course. Iran will get their nukes, thanks to Obama,
terrorists will continue their terror in Gaza and West Bank, and the world, including many Jews will try and handcuff Israel in responding. I just pray every day, Israelis who live in the midst of that nightmare, and understand the reality better than a bunch of suburban rabbis, or even a NYT columnist who can live and come home to his comfy abode away from it, stay strong. Joe Klein in Time says the answer is for Israeli to be less macho. Leonard Fein blames Israel for losing Turkey in the Forward,, even though it is clear Turkey has been turning Islamic for a few years, It goes on and on.
Israeli commanders, Shermeister and Col. Bentzi Gruber, said after Gaza every effort was made to spare civilians, including dropping leaflets and sending telephoned warnings to thousands of Gazans of impending attacks. They say Hamas used schools, mosques and homes as weapons depots, rocket-launching grounds and hiding places for fighters, turning them into legitimate targets. Gruber said his force of reservists operated in a complex battlefield. He said almost every other house his forces entered in the northern town of Beit Lahiya had been booby-trapped. He acknowledged that there may have been errors of judgment. Nevertheless, "we made an enormous effort, including endangering myself and my soldiers, in order not to kill others," he said."
British Army Col. Richard Kemp, who commanded his country's forces in Afghanistan in 2003, During his 30 years in the British Army, in which he fought in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan, . During the Gaza operation ten months ago, he asserted that the IDF was using all possible caution to avoid harming civilians.
Kemp also testified before the UN Human Rights Council on the Goldstone report, supporting the IDF. He told the special session: "Based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare ... Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes... More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas' way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians ... Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets."

Leonard Fein foolish to blame Israel for turkey

Leonard Fein, noted jewish leftist, blames israel for the problems with Turkey in his Forward column recently. Of course it is always blame Israel. The guy has no clue. After the Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, the Ottoman Empire fell apoart after WW 2. The military took over, installing a pro Western, secular muslim state. . That has changed. Tuyrkey is now in the Islamic camp. Fein has it 100% backwards, as the left always does on Israel. Turkey wants the Islamic camp-that is why it allowed the extremist muslim group to purposely incite violence.

Observations from Daily Alert from Council president's major jewish organizations:

Turkey's Islamic Revolution Paid for by Wealthy Islamists - Michael Rubin (Commentary)

* Turkey has changed. Gone permanently is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of Europe.
* Outside of public view, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul, now his foreign minister, presided over an influx of so-called Green Money - capital from Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Persian Gulf emirates, much of which ended up in AKP party coffers rather than in the public treasury.
* Between 2002 and 2003, money appeared in Turkey's financial system for which government reporting cannot account - an amount that increased from approximately $200 million to more than $4 billion. By 2006, Turkish economists estimated the Green Money infusion into the Turkish economy to be between $6 billion and $12 billion. Some Turkish intelligence officials privately suggest that Qatar is today the source of most subsidies for the AKP and its projects. Thus, Turkey's Islamic revolution was bought and paid for by wealthy Islamists.
* Erdogan equated degrees issued by Turkish madrassas - Islamic religious schools - with ordinary high school degrees. This bureaucratic sleight of hand enabled madrassa students to enter the university and qualify for government jobs without ever mastering or, in some cases, even being exposed to Western fundamentals. When such students still fumbled university entrance exams, the AKP provided them with a comparative bonus on their scores, justifying the move as affirmative action.
* As a NATO member, Turkey is privy to U.S. weaponry, tactics, and intelligence. Any provision of assistance to Turkey today, however, could be akin to transferring it to Hamas, Sudan, or Iran. Does President Obama really want to deliver the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to a hostile Turkey, as promised, in 2014?
* As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan quipped, "Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off."

The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

Nathan Guttman Forward
An e-mail blast sent out by The Israel Project, a pro-Israel advocacy group whose target audience is journalists covering the Middle East, highlighted Turkey’s military actions against the Kurdish minority in Northern Iraq, pointed to a report about the beheading of a Turkish Catholic leader and, under a photo of Erdogan shaking hands with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, listed events marking “Turkey’s changing posture towards Israel and the West.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee distributed an e-mail promoting a video depicting Erdogan alongside Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad as “The Three Terrors,” a takeoff on the famous Three Tenors — Domingo, Pavarotti and Carreras.

Monday, June 28, 2010

2010 election: who to support who is pro Israel

From Richard Baehr
J-Street has endorsed 58 candidates for senate or house so far, 57 of them Democrats
https://donate.jstreetpac.org/candidate/allcandidates

2 of the 3 Senate endorsements are for open seats. One is for Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who faces a serious challenge this year.
1. I think as a rule, we should never give money to any candidate endorsed by J-Street.
In the open seat races, there is no incumbency rule (e.g vote for the candidate who voted for foreign aid, )
so the two open seats are easy: we should support Republican Pat Toomey over Joe Sestak, in Pennsylvania. Sestak had a poor record on Israel votes in Congress. Toomey had a very good record on Israel votes when he was in Congress.
We should support Republican Roy Blunt in Missouri over Robin Carnahan. Blunt had a good voting record on Israel in Congress. Carnahan has no record, but obviously said something sweet to J-Street's ears.

2. We should not give big amounts to candidates who have little or no competition in their races. (e.g dick durbin, daniel inouye). Better to give to more candidates, and give bigger gifts in close races.

3. Of the 55 members of the House on the J-street list, these are the 17 who realclearpolitics.com rates as vulnerable this cycle (in alpahabetical order, as is the J-street list)
Russ Carnahan, Gerry Connolly, Bill Foster, Debbie Halvorson, Jim Himes, Rush Holt, Steve Kagen, Mary Jo Kilroy, Ron Kind, Dan Maffei, Betsy Markey, Chris Murphy, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tom Perriello, Carol Shea Porter, and John Yarmuth.

If we will be backing Joel Pollak (Schakowsky is not yet on the vulnerable list), then some of these 17 are worth opposing as well. Among those who standout for being very critical of Israel is Carol Shea Porter, a hard left member from New Hampshire.

There are other competitive Senate races, a few of which are open seats:
Florida: Marco Rubio has the best position paper on Israel of any member running. Much better than Crist or Meeks
Two incumbents who are facing challenges , and have good voting records on Israel: Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, and Richard Burr, Republican from North Carolina. Both are ahead by small margins.

In Kentucky, Rand Paul is not as much of a loon as his dad, and has authored a decent position paper on Israel . But I think he is still suspect. Jack Conway is his opponent.
Two other open Senate seats offer easy choices: In Ohio, Rob Portman had a perfect voting record on Israel in Congress. He is running against Lee Fisher who was never in Congress and has no record. This is a very close race. In Indiana, Dan Coats is expected to beat Brad Ellsworth easily. both had good voting records on Israel in Congress, but we should go with the winner to establish a link.

To date, we have given a bit over $12,000 to Democratss this cycle, and a bit over $10,000 to Republicans. I do not think in the end, that we have to exactly balance the amounts. Sad to say, but one party has become better than the other in the last few years on israel.

Two Democratic members of Congress stand out for having the courage to push back against Obama's pressure on Israel- Shelley Berkley of Nevada, , to whom we have already given this cycle and Eliot Engel of New York, who deserves support. . Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland , has also been good.

see no evil hear no evil speak no evil/ deaf dumb and blind

Jennifer Rubin
The administration, the Congress, and American Jewish groups continue the dance — pretending but not believing (unless Jewish leaders are entirely out to lunch) that Obama has a plan and the will to prevent the “unacceptable” (a nuclear-armed Iran). The Israelis meanwhile are left to consider: just how long do they dare wait before acting on their own to eliminate (or at least set back) the threat of nuclear attack on the Jewish state.

released terrorists return to terror

According to Israeli figures, 45% of released terrorists return to terrorism. The number is even higher among Hamas members, of whom 63% return to terrorism. Of the 400 terrorists released to gain the return of Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three IDF soldiers in 2004, 52% of those released returned to terrorism and are responsible for killing 27 Israelis.

We built a nation, they do nothing

shopping at the local mall - Leonie Lachmish

Dear friends and family,
On Wednesday, while Haim was sitting shiva for his Mother in Netania, we =
got the news that our local shopping centre, "Kenion Hutzot" ( a smaller =
version of Brent Cross) had suffered a direct missile hit. The words =
sound so clean: "suffer a hit". What it means is that families, =
teenagers, elderly people, you name it, who were strolling around the =
shopping centre or waiting for a medical appointment one second, were =
suddenly attacked by Palestinian terror.=20
=20
Today I had a doctor's appointment and went on to the Hutzot mall to the =
New Pharm pharmacy (New Pharm and Superpharm are our "Boots") on the =
ground floor but I was compelled to go up to the 2nd floor to see the =
miracle for myself because what happened there, or more to the point, =
what didn't happen there was nothing short of a miracle.
=20
As I gestured my offer to open my bag to the guard at the entrance to =
the mall as we always do as a matter of habit (I remember getting stared =
at by the guard at a store on a visit to London when I instinctively =
opened my bag at the entrance, forgetting he is there solely to check =
against potential thieves leaving the store), he smiled and gestured =
that that wasn't necessary and I suppose he and I were both thinking =
about the irony of checking people's bags when a rocket can soar in at =
any moment. =20

I went up in the glass-walled circular lift that the kids love riding =
and as I exited the lift, there were workmen busy renovating the health =
clinic which seemed to be functioning with a "business as usual" =
attitude. The entrance was re-adjusted because the direct entrance was =
cordoned off so as to allow the work to be done. I looked up and saw the =
roof as you see in the enclosed pix (supplied by Ashkelon Municipality) =
from the day of the attack. The roof is already partially repaired.
I stood there watching everyone getting on with the renovations and =
thought about the Israeli people, the Jewish people. Our enemies strive =
to destroy and we build. After 6 million of our people were annihilated, =
the remnant came to Palestine and rebuilt. They had every reason to want =
to blow up the entire world but they didn't. Instead, they built a =
country, they rebuilt families. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from the =
neighbouring Arab countries left everything and fled to Israel and were =
temporarily housed in tents or sheds until housing was built for =
everyone. Israel never had refugee camps, just maabarot, temporary =
makeshift housing for all the refugees - we called them immigrants.
60 years later, here we are, celebrating 60 years of independence and =
here they are, still crying about their refugees still in refugee camps, =
still putting their money and energies and education into hate and =
destruction.
In a week, maybe less, there will
be no sign that a rocket hit the =
Hutzot mall.
That's the difference between our spirit and theirs, our contribution to =
the world and theirs.
=20
But the miracle of what happened there is unfathomable. How, at any =
other angle, the missile would have injured hundreds and God Forbid, =
killed tens of people. How the injured are all out of danger. One doctor =
, Mirale Sidrer (don't know her mother's name), an immigrant from the =
former USSR, was seriously wounded and I understand her face has been =
damaged. The young mother (Avital bat Penina) and her toddler (Tair bat =
Avital) are out of danger, all their limbs in tact. The mother is being =
operated on today. May they and all the wounded have a full and speedy =
recovery.
The young girl at the cash desk in New Pharm told me the whole building =
shook and then there were a few seconds of total silence and then, where =
she was on the ground floor- suddenly, screaming, crying, fainting, =
panic to get out and disbelief that it was happening.
=20
I know we mustn't rely on miracles and just last week 2 Israelis were =
killed by direct hits of kassams, Jimmy Kdoshim in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, =
opposite Saad (near Netivot) and Shuli Katz who drove away from her =
kibbutz, Gvaram, in order to visit her sister in law further away (who =
was too scared to meet her in Ashkelon) and was hit in her =
sister-in-law's parking lot, but I think the outstanding miracles =
deserve to be advertised - pirsum haness.
=20
Being in the mall today reminded me that
-though the daily lives of many Israeli civilians of all ages are =
unacceptably abnormal, full of (legitimate and justified) fear and =
worry,
-though our neighbours really do want to kill us personally not just =
metaphorically and keep trying to do so (you get to feel that seven =
years of missiles, presently tens of rockets a day into our kibbutzim =
and towns are a subtle hint that your neighbours REALLY don't like you =
in a very personal way - and this after we've uprooted and evacuated =
every last Jew in the Gaza area AND changed our soap and deodorant)
-and although our government is pathetic (and that's a euphemism),=20
Someone up there is showing us that we, Am Yisrael, have reason to =
remain optimistic. =20
=20
Leonie (Lachmish)

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Israel will save world by improving water

the cases for Israel: liberal, conservative, religious, historical

US CONGRESS stands with Israel vis-a-vis flotilla

members of Congress have signed letters to President Obama that reaffirm the strong bonds between the United States and Israel. The letters also call on the president to use his veto power in the U.N. Security Council to prevent one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions from passing.

The Senate letter—signed by 87 senators—was spearheaded by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East and a vibrant democracy,” the letter reads. “Israel is also a partner to the United States on military and intelligence issues in this critical region. That is why it is our national interest to support Israel at a moment when Israel faces multiple threats from Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon and the current regime in Iran.”

The senators also called for the president to have the State Department and Treasury Department investigate the IHH—the Turkish group that sponsored the flotilla—for its ties to terrorism and determine whether the group should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

In the House, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), Rep. Gary Peters (D-MI) and 317 of their colleagues signed a letter to President Obama that further details the true intentions of the IHH and the Gaza flotilla. “The several dozen who attacked the Israeli soldiers were not peaceful aid workers, but extremists who sought to aid the Iran-backed terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza,” the letter says. The House version also notes the “sinister element of premeditated violence” demonstrated by the supposed humanitarian workers. And it recognizes that the Israeli soldiers “used necessary force as an act of self-defense and of last resort.” The House letter has not yet closed, and members are still able to add their signature to it. Ask your representative to sign this important letter if he/she hasn’t done so already.

These are trying times for Israel. We once again see the international community ignore the facts and rush to conclusions—seizing an opportunity to blame, isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state. However, thanks to your support and hard work, Congress is the only legislative body in the world to stand with Israel.

As you know, overwhelming bipartisan support isn’t commonplace in Washington, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It is only through the relationships that you have built with your members of Congress, educational work with candidates, our study seminars in Israel for members and their staffs, lobbying during Policy Conference and our day-to-day activities that it is possible for such a strong statement of support to emanate from Congress.

Lies they tell about Israel 1-3

Lies they tell about Israel 4-10

Liberal case for Israel

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

How US abandons Israel at UN for first time

U.S. Middle East Policy after the Gaza Flotilla Incident - Robert Satloff (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)

* Washington still has not made a public, ironclad commitment to prevent the UN from creating its own inquiry into the Gaza incident. And the U.S. did not stop the Security Council from adopting a condemn-first, ask-questions-later approach on the incident. By its own admission, the Security Council said it had no idea what actually happened on the Turkish vessel, but that did not stop it from issuing, with U.S. acquiescence, a presidential statement condemning Israel.

Gaza and hamas rockets

Easing the Gaza Blockade - Editorial
Israel has a responsibility to its citizens to stop the delivery of all weapons and rockets to Hamas, which continues to rocket Israeli cities and refuses to accept Israel's right to exist. Prime Minister Netanyahu has rightly refused to abandon the sea blockade of Gaza. He cannot do that until Hamas stops rocketing Israeli cities and towns. (New York Times)

Muslim soldiers attacking in USA

NYC Car Bomb Suspect Pleads Guilty, Calls Himself "a Muslim Soldier" - Tom Hays
Calling himself a Muslim soldier, a defiant Faisal Shahzad, 30, pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing. He described his effort to set off a bomb in an SUV he parked in Times Square on May 1, saying he chose the warm Saturday night because it would be crowded with people he could injure or kill. He said he conspired with the Pakistan Taliban, which provided more than $15,000 to fund his operation.
"It's a war. I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people," he said. He wanted to let the U.S. know that if it did not get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, halt drone attacks and stop meddling in Muslim lands, "we will be attacking [the] U.S." Shahzad, born in Pakistan, moved to the U.S. when he was 18.

Dangerous mosques building in USA

There is no doubt that according to American Law these mosques can be
built. The only issue is what will be taught and encouraged in them. Many will
be preaching the establishment of Shariyah law and hate towards Israel, Jews
and probably Christians as well. They will either be stopped under 'hate
speech' laws or they won't be stopped and violence will ensue from them
resulting in a mini-civil war which will break out in America. It's a simple
situation - stop them now or stop them later. Stop them now means to listen
to their sermons (no need to bug - the places are open to all) and
prosecute them on laws that prevent hate speech meant to incite and deport the
non-citizens who come to preach. Many will be peaceful and will focus on
non-political and non-Anti-American things and won't be a problem.
I was in LA this year at the shul with many Persians. They told me that
their fellow non-Jewish Iranians have stopped frequenting mosques because they
are so radicalized and preach anti-American sermons and they don't want to
be associated with such things.
We can fool ourselves into thinking that these mosques will all be just
fine examples of pluralism in America until we realize the truth - their goal
is to end pluralism in America.
If we wake up to it too late and have to fight it after violence ensues
then it will be much worse for the Moslems in America - most of whom don't
want to hear anti-American teachings and want to co-exist in a democratic
pluralistic country. They are the ones who need to stop any anti-American
activity in those mosques or they will suffer when the wrath of America comes
down on such hate speech. I hope they are successful and don't have to suffer
for what their co-religionists do in the name of radical Islam.

Monday, June 21, 2010

gaza easing up is a disaster

By BARRY RUBIN
06/21/2010 22:38

‘Easing’ the Gaza blockade will create a revolutionary, Iran-backed, genocidal and anti-Semitic Islamist statelet on the Mediterranean.

Talkbacks (15)

What does Israel give up? The entire strategy of trying to reduce Gaza’s economy and the rewards that Hamas can give its supporters. In other words, while Hamas’s military capacity is kept as low as possible, it can stay in power for decades. While this represents a considerable “retreat,” it is not so meaningful in practice since – as noted above – nobody is going to allow Israel to overthrow the regime in Gaza.

So this is the future: A revolutionary Islamist statelet, a long-term outpost of Iran, a base for spreading terrorism and subversion, a source for genocidal anti-Semitic propaganda has been established on the shores of the Mediterranean. For all practical purposes, one could have made this declaration two or four years ago. Now it is clear.

Some people might find the above paragraph controversial. But it is all obvious.

Hamas will be in power in the Gaza Strip for a long time. Who is going to remove it? It is a client of Iran. Certainly it is under embargo for arms, but it functions a lot like an independent state for practical purposes. It will return to war against Israel at the first opportunity. It teaches its people to kill Jews and to be terrorists.

That doesn’t mean all Gazans support it, but those who don’t can do nothing about it.

Moreover, the Hamas regime receives indirect aid because the Palestinian Authority pays much of its civil service, and Western projects are designed to help its people.

Yes, of course there are limits on what it can do, given its size and the pressure still put on by Egypt and Israel. But this is an accurate description. Putting it bluntly sounds harsh, but the reality is harsh.

And what could be more ironic than the fact that Western governments, frantic for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, have just helped put one more gigantic roadblock in the way? Even without Hamas ruling almost half of those under Palestinian rule, the PA probably wouldn’t be able to make peace. The consolidation of a Hamas state makes that inability a certainty.
The high price of coalition stability
Photo by: Ariel Jerozolimski/The Jerusalem Post)
The high price of coalition stability
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
06/21/2010 22:38

The main advocate for the latest capitulation was Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the serial bungler.
Talkbacks (22)


Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his colleagues are doing their best to put a pretty face on an ugly situation. After nearly three weeks of deliberations, Netanyahu and his government caved in to massive US pressure to ease, if not end, Israel’s blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

On Sunday the government announced that all economic sanctions on Gaza will be immediately lifted. Henceforth, Hamas-controlled Gaza will have an effectively open economic border with Israel. Israel will only prohibit the transfer of military material. Even dual-use items, like cement, will be allowed in if international officials claim that they are to be used in their humanitarian projects.

Netanyahu and his colleagues argue that these new concessions have now given Israel the international legitimacy it needs to maintain its naval blockade of the Gaza coast. But this is untrue. Even as he welcomed Netanyahu’s latest capitulation, US President Barack Obama made clear that he expects Israel to continue making unreciprocated concessions to Hamas.

Following the government’s announcement, the White House declared, “We will work with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, the Quartet and other international partners to ensure these arrangements are implemented as quickly and effectively as possible and to explore additional ways to improve the situation in Gaza, including greater freedom of movement and commerce between Gaza and the West Bank.”

In plain English that means that the administration doesn’t trust Israel. It will escalate its pressure on Israel by among other things, pressuring it to provide members of the illegal Hamas regime in Gaza greater access to Judea and Samaria.

AS IF anticipating its next capitulation, government spokesmen told the media that in addition to ending economic sanctions on Gaza, Israel is now considering permitting the EU to station inspectors at its land crossings into Gaza. That is, Israel is considering a move that will constitute a first step towards surrendering its sovereign control over its borders.

The economic sanctions the government is now cancelling were not simply legal, they were required by international law. Binding UN Security Council resolution 1373 requires states and non-state actors to deny support of any kind to terrorist organizations. And here, in a bid to win international “legitimacy” for its lawful blockade of Gaza, Israel has bowed to US pressure to unlawfully facilitate the economic prosperity of an area controlled by an illegal terrorist organization.

There is something pathetic about the Prime Minister’s office’s protestations that by bowing to White House pressure the nations of the world will now accept our right to defend ourselves from an Iranian-controlled terrorist organization committed to the genocide of the Jewish people. After all, we have heard these hollow words many times before.

This notion that unilateral Israeli capitulation to terrorists would bring Israel international “legitimacy” is of course how former prime minister Ariel Sharon justified his strategically indefensible decision to cede Gaza – and the international border between Gaza and Egypt – to Palestinian terrorists.

If they attack us after we leave, he claimed, we’ll have all the international support in the world to really destroy them.

Today, the government argues, all we have to do is sell them spaghetti and cilantro and the international community will suddenly rally to our side.

According to sources close to the cabinet, the main advocate for the latest capitulation was Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Barak is the serial bungler. Ten years ago, he argued that his decision to relinquish Israel’s security zone in south Lebanon to Hizbullah guaranteed that Israel would have international legitimacy to really take it to the Iranian proxy army if it dared to attack us after we left.

Barak is also the deep strategic thinker who brought us the Palestinian terror war.

Barak promised that if Yasser Arafat rejected his offer at Camp David and so demonstrated that his commitment to destroy the Jewish state trumped his interest in establishing a Palestinian state, that the international community would rally around Israel and we’d have all the international legitimacy we needed to defeat the PA.

And in the lead-up to the Mavi Marmara fiasco, it was reportedly Barak who decided it would be a terrific idea to outfit the naval commandos with paintball guns. Doing so, he promised would convince the Obama administration to support Israel against Hamas.

A key question that needs to be considered is what makes policymakers like Barak advance such colossally stupid and dangerous policies time after time.
Israel’s history since 1993, when then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and then foreign minister Shimon Peres opted to embrace Arafat and the PLO, bring thousands of PLO terrorists to the outskirts of Israel’s major cities and give them weapons and international legitimacy indicates that three factors come into play.

First there is the fact that many of Israel’s leading politicians are simply not that smart.

They are happy to be led by an ideologically radical media that have insisted since the 1980s that Israel must withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines.

Not only are they happy to be led by the media, they are loath to dispute its misrepresentation of reality. And so the second cause of serial bungling on the part of politicians like Barak is that they are, in the end, sheep, not leaders.

THE FINAL major cause of Israel’s strategic idiocy is corruption. On Monday morning, the police announced that they recommend indicting Sharon’s sons Omri and Gilad Sharon for soliciting bribes on behalf of their father.



There can be no doubt that Sharon’s alleged corruption and his fear of the far-left legal fraternity that investigated his alleged corruption played a significant role in his decision to abandon his campaign pledge to voters, toss strategic sanity to the seven winds, expel ten thousand Israelis from their homes and transfer the Gaza Strip lock, stock and barrel to Hamas and Fatah terrorists.

Like Sharon, Barak has been the subject of several corruption probes. Barak is also known to have had strong indirect connections to Schlaff. For instance, during his tenure as prime minister, Barak sent shock waves through the country when, with no prior warning, he announced that he was ceding Israel’s rights to the natural gas deposits discovered off the Gaza shore. Barak’s move precipitated a deal between the PA and British Gas to develop the gas deposits.



Barak and Sharon are only the tip of the iceberg
.

, investigations into his allegedly prolific business ties to Schlaff.

REGARDLESS OF whether these ties to agents of corruption are criminal or not, it is obvious that they have influenced the policy preferences of more than one major politician in Israel. And regardless of what stands behind his poor judgment, the fact is that it is this judgment that is driving Israel’s strategic direction.

It is also apparent, that Barak is being handsomely rewarded by the Obama administration for his actions.

Barak is currently on yet another junket to Washington where he is being given the red carpet treatment. While the premier is forced to conduct international diplomacy with Quartet chairman Tony Blair, Barak is feted by the White House, State Department and Pentagon on a regular basis. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Obama administration agreed to end its public campaign to overthrow the Netanyahu government in exchange for Netanyahu’s effective concession of control over national policy to Barak.

Barak has used this control to force the government to accede to every American demand. So far, he has convinced Netanyahu to take a back seat to Obama on Iran; to end Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria at least until September; to effectively ban Jewish construction in northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem; to embrace the cause of Palestinian statehood; to accept US mediated indirect negotiations with Fatah; and to pretend that the Obama administration is a credible ally to Israel.

Before heading to Washington, Barak reportedly gave Netanyahu an ultimatum: Either make massive concessions to Fatah that will allow Obama to claim victory in the peace process, or Labor will bolt the coalition.

So too, Barak is reportedly behind Netanyahu’s latest bid to bring Kadima, led by Tzipi Livni into his government.

Netanyahu and his spokesmen defend both Barak’s primacy in the government, and their interest in bringing Kadima into the coalition by noting that the Left’s partnership ensures political stability. If Labor were to bolt from the coalition, the government would be less likely to survive until the next scheduled election in 2013.

There is certainly truth to this assertion. With Labor inside the coalition, Kadima has no relevance.

So too, rightist parties are unable to bring down the coalition.

This would be a decisive argument if coalition stability enabled Netanyahu to govern more effectively. But the opposite is true.

Netanyahu knows the folly of his decisions.

He recognizes Obama’s hostility to Israel. He also knows that the US president is not going to do a thing to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Stability should be a means to an end, not an end unto itself. Netanyahu did not seek the premiership to achieve the goal of overseeing a stable government. He sought to lead the country to secure and strengthen it. As his latest concession to Barak makes clear, the price of governing stability is the abandonment of his leadership goals.

caroline@carolineglick.com

Rabbis can be misguided too

* icles

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June 20, 2010
When Bad Rabbis Happen to a Good People
By Stella Paul
Are you ready for Rabbis Gone Wild -- Boston Edition? In the latest installment of this tragicomedy, the progressive Jewish leadership of Massachusetts decides to break the arrogance barrier and set new records for dangerous egomania.

First, let's meet our cast: seventy distinguished rabbis in Greater Boston, including the Past President of Hebrew College. Boy, you could fell an ox with the collective weight of these worthies' credentials.

And now, the bloodcurdling story: On June 10, these seventy men and women publicly condemned and virtually excommunicated one of the finest American Jewish leaders and human rights activist alive today.

Why? Because Dr. Charles Jacobs has the chutzpah to present documented facts about the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Boston's increasingly infamous, radical-linked, Saudi-funded mega-mosque.

In a broadside entitled "An Open Letter to the Jewish Community," published in the Jewish Advocate, seventy rabbis signed their name to a letter demanding that "Mr. Jacobs discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters."

The rabbis then referenced the Torah portion in which Israelite scouts are struck by fear: "Because they succumbed to their fears, God condemned this generation to die in the wilderness. We refuse to allow Mr. Jacobs to spread his calumnies and paralyze our community in fear."

Way to go, rabbis! Stirring imagery! Biblical metaphor! Huge spiritual uplift! No, wait, that was my lunch.

To get the full flavor of the rabbis' epic stupidity, let's meet the victim of their "Jewish fatwa," Dr. Charles Jacobs. In the late '80s, Jacobs co-founded Boston's branch of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, to expose and combat media bias against Israel. A few years later, he founded, along with Christian and Muslim Africans, the American Anti-Slavery Group. Charles Jacobs was given the Boston Freedom Award by Coretta Scott King for his work helping to emancipate enslaved black Africans in Sudan.

In 2002, he founded The David Project, a powerhouse organization that trains college students to advocate for Israel and fight back against the demonization of Israel on campus. He currently heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group he founded in 2008 to protect American values from attack by radical Islamists and to support moderate Muslims. In 2007, Jacobs was named by The Forward as one of America's top 50 Jewish leaders.

So let me ask you, O Great Progressive Rabbis, this is the man you want to casually destroy? While you were risking nothing more than the stampede to the canapés at some interfaith blabberfest, Charles Jacobs was flying to Sudan to redeem slaves with money he raised and bring them to freedom.

While you were chasing the latest must-have fad in "social justice" and ignoring the rising storm of campus anti-Semitism, Charles Jacobs was doing the grunt work of establishing an organization on the ground to help besieged Jewish students tell the truth about Israel.

While you were playing patty-cake with Jew-hating imams, Charles Jacobs was investigating the facts about their disgusting affiliations and helping moderate Muslims stand up to the radical takeover of their institutions.

O Most Compassionate Ones, do we really have so many people like Charles Jacobs that you can afford to toss him in the trash?

Now let's look at the people you do like, those spicy characters you're staking your reputations on. They're all linked to Boston's mega-mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, which is run by the Muslim American Society, or as federal prosecutors like to call it, "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood."

The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) cavalcade includes its founder, MIT graduate Abdurahman Alamoudi, currently rotting in jail on a 23-year sentence for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist pranks; the loathsome Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, wart-faced "spiritual" leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who's banned from the U.S. but served as ISB Trustee; Osama Kandil, ISB Trust President, director of an Islamic charity designated as terrorist by the U.S. government; and Trustee Jamal Badawi, unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial who tells Boston Muslims they must live only under Sharia Law.

How do I know these facts? Because Charles Jacobs has worked doggedly to expose them, for which I'm immensely grateful. Now, Wise and Wonderful Rabbis, why aren't you grateful, too? Why aren't you saying, "Thank you, Dr. Charles Jacobs, for being our modern-day Paul Revere, the Boston hero who alerted us of invasion from a hostile power. Have an honorary degree on us!"

Instead, you flew into a rage at Jacobs' latest shocker: a video of Beantown's jihadi rock star, Imam Abdullah Farooq, instructing followers to "grab onto the gun and the sword. Don't be afraid to step out into this world and do your job." More chilling than Farooq's words is their context: urging Muslims to support two violent locals, "the Grey Lady of al-Qaeda," Aaafia Siddiqui, who's convicted of shooting FBI agents in Pakistan; and Tarek Mehana, the excitable Sudbury youngster arrested for plotting to murder shoppers in New England malls.

Does this Imam Farooq sound like the kind of fellow you want training your police force? Not unless you want police so "sensitive" they polish their badges while the next Tarek Mehana decides to give New England shoppers a side of bullets with their fries.

And that's why Jacobs' video criticized Governor Deval Patrick for publicly embracing Imam Farooq and accepting a $50,000 check of dubious origins from him to train police in "Muslim cultural sensitivities."

And for this act of supreme civic responsibility, you defame and slander Charles Jacobs? For this, you accuse him of a "destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community" and expose him and his family to potential dangers from vengeful Islamists? For this, you sear the Scarlet B of Bigot on his forehead and cast him into the cold?

Dear Loving and Highly Spiritually Evolved Progressive Rabbis, you're always yammering about dialoguing with "the other," right? So here's an "other" you might try dialoguing with: any Jew who has an ounce of sanity.

You know, all those nice people in your much-vaunted "community" who aren't willing to have their throats slit just because you insist it's the tolerant, hate-free thing to do.

Quick question, O Learned Ones: What are you going to do when jihad-crazed maniacs like Tarek Mehana come after your family with machine guns in the mall? Swat them with your diplomas? Teach them the finer points of Rashi? "Dialogue" on which of your limbs to chop off?

As for all you lovely lady rabbis on the list -- enjoy sermonizing in your burqa! And just hope your daughters don't have to endure the female bris ceremony.

Now, rabbis, I say this only out of the deepest concern for your mental health: Ask a doctor in your congregation to check if your Galloping Smug-itis has reached Stage 4 yet.

Because I'd like to think there's still hope for you. But you're making it really tough.

And by the way, nowhere in your job description can I find "will work to self-righteously deliver congregants into the hands of genocidal maniacs who conspire to shoot people in shopping malls."

You want me to pay dues for that? Two thousand dollars a year for you to hand me over to the Jew-hating nuts? I want my money back!

And please spare me your teary speeches about the Holocaust and your bus trips to the Holocaust Museum.

To you, Never Again apparently means Never Again Will We Bother to Flick An Eyelash In the Annoyingly Icky Direction of Genocidal Threats.

And finally, here's something you may never understand: One Charles Jacobs is worth more than seventy of you. Why? Because he fights for the truth.

Stella Paul blogs at StellaPundit.

Friday, June 18, 2010

The "Rabbis" who blame Israel first

The Rabbis who signed the Forward letter coming out next week are either ignorant liberal dupes, or purely anti-Israel. Their religion is liberalism, pacifism and not Judaism. Here is why

J Street is soliciting U.S. rabbis and rabbinical students to sign a “Rabbinic letter” expressing the hope that “the rhetoric and actions that feed fear and violence, emanating from both Israeli and Palestinian leaders, will soon give way to bold leadership.” The letter’s only specific suggestion is that Israel end its “counter-productive blockade of Gaza’s citizens.”

A large number of rabbis have already signed the letter and J Street plans to publish it in the Forward next week with a list of signers.

The problem in Gaza is not the Israeli blockade, but the fact that Gaza is currently ruled by a gang officially designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization, which is an Iranian proxy that took over Gaza in a bloody coup, is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, is in a state of war with Israel, and is smuggling weapons in order to attack it.

Israel has not only the right under international law but an obligation to its own citizens to impose a blockade to insure that nothing other than humanitarian goods are imported into Gaza -- unless and until Hamas ends its state of war. Many nations have and do so.

The signatory rabbis are relying on the Torah of Liberalism rather than that other one.

New footage released by the Foreign Ministry shows IHH leader Bulent Yildirim rallying dozens of passengers on board the Mavi Marmara as they chant 'millions of martyrs marching to Gaza!'

By Haaretz Service



The Foreign Ministry released a new video on Friday in which the leader of the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, Bulent Yildirim, is seen on board the Gaza flotilla's ship the Mavi Marmara, telling dozens of activists to throw Israeli commandos overboard if they attempt to board the ship.

"If they board our ship, we will throw them into the sea, Allah willing!" says Yildirim, the head of the Turkish pro-Palestinian group that sent an aid flotilla to Gaza last month.

The video was shot on board the Mavi Marmara on May 30 by one of the passengers before the Israel Defense Forces raided the ship and killed nine Turkish activists during clashes.





"If we show fear, they will win once again….we don't want to be recorded in Allah's book as cowards," says Yildirim in the video, as dozens of passengers are seen chanting ""millions of martyrs marching to Gaza!"

"They (Israel) are so weak that for 4-5 days they have been engaging in propaganda (against us)…they have been humiliated in front of the whole world… now they are saying that they will launch a fleet (against us)… that they will send the commandos here (to the ship)."

"And we say: 'If you send the commandos, we will throw you down from here and you will be humiliated in front of the whole world," Yildirim tells the passengers.

On Wednesday, Israel added the IHH to its terror watch list following the events of the Gaza-bound flotilla.

IHH told members of the European Parliament it has assembled six ships for its next flotilla and asked others to join its effort to break through Israel's blockade of Gaza.
Why Do the Peace Activists Ignore the Violence of Hamas? - Lindy McDowell
Gaza, where the flotilla boats were headed, is under the control of the terrorist grouping Hamas which has been responsible for pounding Israeli towns (and Israeli civilians) with increasingly sophisticated missiles for years. It was to protect Israeli families from Hamas suicide bombers that Israel began erecting its security fence in 2002.
In 2005 Israel (in the interests of peace) moved out of Gaza. The thanks it got were even more rockets (often supplied by Iran) raining down on its civilian population courtesy of Hamas, which charmingly declares itself dedicated to wiping the Israeli people off the face of the earth. Israel, understandably, has insisted on monitoring what materials go into Gaza and, thus, what (potentially lethal) materials Hamas could have access to. All of us in the West live in countries which maintain a similar right to ensure the safety of their own civilian populations. Most countries have reasons why they would not be confident to leave this role up to the international community. Israel has at least six million extra reasons. (Belfast Telegraph-UK)
A Flotilla of Demonization - Dvir Abramovich
The speed and intensity by which the world recklessly rushed to blame Israel, and only Israel over the flotilla incident, and the scale and venom of the reaction, has left me speechless. I don't know how to depict a world that clamors to indict Israel while exonerating its enemies, that uses double standards in promoting false and baseless accusations, and that has forgotten history so as to use the language of the Holocaust to portray Israelis as the epitome of evil. I don't know what to make of a world that is silent when Israelis die in homicidal bombings or rocket attacks. But beyond the actual incident, the blistering demonization, and delegitimization of Israel, and the viciousness of such vilification by the media, and international governments who should know better, is mind-blowing.
How many journalists have explained that both Israel and Egypt have imposed a naval blockade of Gaza, and that Israel did so to prevent the re-arming of the Iranian-backed Hamas? How many journalists have written about Gaza being used as a base for the launching of thousands of rockets into Israeli towns in a murderous and relentless war of attrition? How many journalists have alerted readers to the brutal Hamas regime in Gaza that violently puts down any political opponents and is slowly imposing fundamentalist Islamic law? (Sydney Morning Herald-Australia)
Gaza Activists Were Pawns in a Much Bigger Turkish Power Game - Stephen King
For a generation to whom Vietnam and South Africa are either faint memories or battles only read about in history books, Palestine is the most perfect cause. For rebels looking for a cause, Israel makes a classic enemy. Being a Jewish state makes it racist, right? Aren't its most vociferous supporters in the U.S.? What more is there to know? Only the Holocaust prevents even respectable opinion in Ireland from labeling Israel a fascist state. And it helps that Gaza seems so much more winnable than the Tibetan fight for autonomy.
These individuals who joined 400 Turkish Islamists on a voyage to break the Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza came, they said, on a genuine, if misguided, attempt to relieve Gaza's suffering. But for the Turkish activists who drove the mission, the flotilla was all part of a much bigger game - a premeditated provocation by a gang of wannabe martyrs bent on violent confrontation and on realigning Turkey away from the West. The impression that Israel/Palestine is the root of all the Middle East's problems is as misguided as it is pervasive. The conflict with Israel merely serves as an effective cover for the region's collective failure to build stable, just and prosperous societies. (Irish Examiner)
Other Issues

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Ex-Spain PM: If Israel goes down, we all go down

Ex-Spain PM: If Israel goes down, we all go down

In Times op-ed, José Maria Aznar asks West to remember Israel its only ally in 'turbulent' region


José Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, published an opinion article with the London Times Thursday saying the world must support Israel because "if it goes down, we all go down".



Aznar, who has joined the 'Friends of Israel' campaign to which David Trimble, a foreign observer taking part in Israel's flotilla raid probe, also belongs, calls on Europe to refuse to put up with cries to eliminate Israel as part of global Christian-Jewish cooperation.


Opposition
Lebanon, Turkey oppose Israeli raid probe / Yitzhak Benhorin
Diplomatic source tells Ynet only two Security Council members welcomed appointment of Turkel Committee. Politico website reports US was only member not to voice support for UN commission of inquiry
Full Story
"Anger over Gaza is a distraction. We cannot forget that Israel is the West’s best ally in a turbulent region," Aznar writes of the IDF's calamitous raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza on May 31.


"In an ideal world, the assault by Israeli commandos on the 'Mavi Marmara' would not have ended up with nine dead and a score wounded. In an ideal world, the soldiers would have been peacefully welcomed on to the ship."


Aznar also criticizes Turkey, to which the Marmara belonged, for placing Israel "in an impossible situation" in which it would have to either give up its security or face world condemnation.


The former prime minister calls on the world to "blow away the red mists of anger" and take a "reasonable and balanced approach" based on the fact that Israel was created by a decision of the UN and therefore unquestionably a legitimate state.


"Israel is a nation with deeply rooted democratic institutions. It is a dynamic and open society that has repeatedly excelled in culture, science and technology," he adds.


However, he says, "62 years after its creation, Israel is still fighting for its very survival. Punished with missiles raining from north and south, threatened with destruction by an Iran aiming to acquire nuclear weapons and pressed upon by friend and foe, Israel, it seems, is never to have a moment’s peace."


Aznar says the real threat to the region is extreme Islamism, "which sees Israel’s destruction as the fulfillment of its religious destiny and, simultaneously in the case of Iran, as an expression of its ambitions for regional hegemony".


"Both phenomena are threats that affect not only Israel, but also the wider West and the world at large," he adds.


Aznar concludes by saying that Israel is the West's first line of defense against the chaos set to erupt in the Middle East, and therefore must be protected.


"It is easy to blame Israel for all the evils in the Middle East," he writes. Some even act and talk as if a new understanding with the Muslim world could be achieved if only we were prepared to sacrifice the Jewish state on the altar. This would be folly."

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

How can anyone watch NBC?

The rabbi who outed Helen Thomas has so far received tens of thousands of hate emails. Th rabbi was a liberal Democrat, and a supporter of Obama. The always charming Keith Olbermann called the rabbi the 2nd worst person on earth last week. The rabbi says he is rethinking his politics.
How Obama helps Iran from Richard Baehr
Democratic Congressman Howard Berman, who was once reliably pro-Israel, has delayed Congressional action on Iran sanctions for over a year, on orders from the White House. Now a Conference committee of he House and Senate will likely offer exemptions to companies from China and Russia, two nations Obama bribed to support the weak U.N. sanctions just approved last week. Obama is offered praise by AIPAC for not allowing a tougher U.N resolution on Israel and the flotilla to be approved, when prior administrations would have killed such action with a veto. This President is post-American, committed to diluting U.S. power and sovereignty in order to gain acclaim from the enlightened views of the international community.
http://tinyurl.com/2bfkueo
The Obama team is making life easier for Iran. We rejoined the U.N Human Rights Council , and gave it legitimacy for its vicious , persistent , actions targeting Israel. The Obama team was cautious during the green revolution, offering no support to the dissidents after the election was stolen.

Frpm Barry Rubin

The Obama team can never utter anything positive about Israel or U.S Israel relations other than that we are committed to their security. The rest of the time, we get mush, or carefully worded statements, designed not to offend Arabs or Muslim nations, or outright criticism of Israel. When an Israeli bureaucrat announces approval of step 3 or 4 of a 7 step process for a new housing complex in Jerusalem, all hell breaks lose, and some in the Obama administration describe it as the most serious breach in the relationship in decades. As I said before, under Obama, America has switched sides in the conflict. The P.A is our protected ally, Israel is an annoyance and a problem. On the other hand, if you are an Arab or Muslim nation, there will never be any criticism from this Administration. Turkey's provocation with the armed flotilla ,and its no vote on the Iran sanctions at the Security Council is not criticized, but excused. Nor is Brazil criticized for its no vote. Syria can stiff us every day, but we keep claiming we are trying to move them away from Iran.
http://tinyurl.com/2vxcvsc

b. James Jones at the NSC seems to be the major Administration figure who has been pushing for allowing international tribunals to examine the flotilla incident. Now why may that be? His deputy for multi- lateral organizations is none other than Israel hating Samantha Power, often described as Obama's closest advisor on foreign policy. Ed Lasky and I wrote about what a horror Power was with regard to Israel during the 2008 campaign. Nobody who was carrying water for Obama in the "pro-Israel community" at the time seemed to care. There is little difference in international perspective in having Power in the White House or Reverend Wright.
http://tin

Turkish flotilla bloodbath

Boycott, diverst, sanction NO. Bracha Din Shalom

Monday, June 14, 2010

Even Saudi Arabai is better than Obama on Iran

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7148555.ece
Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites
Hugh Tomlinson

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

In full: Times investigation into Helmand fiasco
“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”

Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one.

The four main targets for any raid on Iran would be the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the gas storage development at Isfahan and the heavy-water reactor at Arak. Secondary targets include the lightwater reactor at Bushehr, which could produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.

The targets lie as far as 1,400 miles (2,250km) from Israel; the outer limits of their bombers’ range, even with aerial refuelling. An open corridor across northern Saudi Arabia would significantly shorten the distance. An airstrike would involve multiple waves of bombers, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest.

Passing over Iraq would require at least tacit agreement to the raid from Washington. So far, the Obama Administration has refused to give its approval as it pursues a diplomatic solution to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Military analysts say Israel has held back only because of this failure to secure consensus from America and Arab states. Military analysts doubt that an airstrike alone would be sufficient to knock out the key nuclear facilities, which are heavily fortified and deep underground or within mountains. However, if the latest sanctions prove ineffective the pressure from the Israelis on Washington to approve military action will intensify. Iran vowed to continue enriching uranium after the UN Security Council imposed its toughest sanctions yet in an effort to halt the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme, which Tehran claims is intended for civil energy purposes only. President Ahmadinejad has described the UN resolution as “a used handkerchief, which should be thrown in the dustbin”.

Israeli officials refused to comment yesterday on details for a raid on Iran, which the Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has refused to rule out. Questioned on the option of a Saudi flight path for Israeli bombers, Aharaon Zeevi Farkash, who headed military intelligence until 2006 and has been involved in war games simulating a strike on Iran, said: “I know that Saudi Arabia is even more afraid than Israel of an Iranian nuclear capacity.”

In 2007 Israel was reported to have used Turkish air space to attack a suspected nuclear reactor being built by Iran’s main regional ally, Syria. Although Turkey publicly protested against the “violation” of its air space, it is thought to have turned a blind eye in what many saw as a dry run for a strike on Iran’s far more substantial — and better-defended — nuclear sites.

Israeli intelligence experts say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are at least as worried as themselves and the West about an Iranian nuclear arsenal.Israel has sent missile-class warships and at least one submarine capable of launching a nuclear warhead through the Suez Canal for deployment in the Red Sea within the past year, as both a warning to Iran and in anticipation of a possible strike. Israeli newspapers reported last year that high-ranking officials, including the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have met their Saudi Arabian counterparts to discuss the Iranian issue. It was also reported that Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, met Saudi intelligence officials last year to gain assurances that Riyadh would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets violating Saudi airspace during the bombing run. Both governments have denied the reports.