Tuesday, September 28, 2010

best screeing method

> FINALLY - A Great Alternative to A Body Scan at Airports.
>
>>
>> The Israelis are developing an airport security device that eliminates the privacy concerns that come with full-body scanners at the airports.
>>
>> They have a booth that you can step into that will not X-ray you, but will detonate any explosive device you may have on you.
>>
>> They see this as a win-win for everyone and there would be none of this junk about racial profiling.
>>
>> This method would also eliminate the costs of a long and expensive trial. Justice would be quick and swift. Case Closed!
>>
>> You're in the airport terminal and you hear a muffled explosion.
>> Shortly thereafter, an announcement comes over the PA system...
>>
>> "Attention standby passengers - we now have a seat available on El Al flight number 386.

87 senators to Obama-Netanyahu did not walk away

Eighty-seven U.S. senators have already signed on to a letter, which was initially circulated only three days ago, calling on Obama to publicly pressure Abbas to continue with the direct peace talks begun Sept. 1 in Washington.

The senators sent the letter (PDF) to Obama on Monday. It stated that "Neither side should make threats to leave just as the talks are getting started," a thinly veiled reference to Abbas's multiple statements that he would leave the talks if the moratorium was not extended.

The senators also praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for staying at the table even though the beginning of the process was marred by violence.

"Following the brutal murder of four innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas militants at the start of the negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not abandon the talks," the senators wrote. "We also agree with you [Obama] that it is critical that all sides stay at the table."

Monday, September 27, 2010

from Rabbi Sholom Lewis

PM Netanyahu’s Speech at the UN General Assembly

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.
I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events.

Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942 , after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler's deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries. But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.

What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews.

You're wrong.

History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.

It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.
The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope.

The pace of progress is growing exponentially.
It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.

I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances - by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?
The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing - absolutely nothing - from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza . It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians - Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel , by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.

We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel . A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth.

What a perversion of justice. Delegates of the United Nations, Will you accept this farce?

Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.

If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel , this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why.

When Israel left Gaza , many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What self-defense?

The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us -my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!

Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen, All of Israel wants peace.

Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel , will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples - a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it.

We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel . This is the land of our forefathers.

Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem .

We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.

But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel .

That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza , another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.

We want peace.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran , that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.

Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong."

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachability of mankind" is for once proven wrong.

I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.
###

PM Netanyahu's UN speech

PM Netanyahu’s Speech at the UN General Assembly

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.
I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events.

Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942 , after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews. Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler's deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries. But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.

What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations! Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews.

You're wrong.

History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries. In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.

It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.
The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope.

The pace of progress is growing exponentially.
It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.

I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances - by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?
The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing - absolutely nothing - from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza . It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians - Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel , by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.

We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel . A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth.

What a perversion of justice. Delegates of the United Nations, Will you accept this farce?

Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.

If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel , this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why.

When Israel left Gaza , many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What self-defense?

The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us -my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!

Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen, All of Israel wants peace.

Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel , will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples - a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it.

We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel . This is the land of our forefathers.

Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem .

We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.

But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel .

That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza , another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.

We want peace.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran , that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.

Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong."

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachability of mankind" is for once proven wrong.

I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.
###

Sunday, September 26, 2010

My Rosh Sermon on Israel

For Zion's Sake I will not be Silent.

Rosh Hashanah 5771

Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg

Skokie Ill

www.ehnt.org


Shana Tova



The opening words of today’s Torah reading _Adonoi Nisah et avranham__ God tested Abraham. And from that moment until this, all of us know that personally in our lives as individuals and together as a people, we face tests. One of those great, historic tests of our people has come right now. I know there are a lot of different views out there about Israel, but I’m the rabbi, it’s my pulpit, I’ll tell you what I think. Of course you can have your own thoughts. Of course I’m right.

When God promised Abraham over 4,000 years ago that we were going to be a great people he promised that it was based also on acquiring the land of Israel. We jump ahead to today’s Haftarah, about the prophet Jeremiah many hundreds of years later. Jeremiah too says there’ll be a great future because we’ll be restored to the land. From that moment to this. From Abraham to this… 4,000 years, we’ve been a people intrinsically intertwined with the land of Israel. There has been not one moment in all of that history when we have not cared and dreamed and prayed for the land.

As we think about that today we know we face a great test. I want to talk to you about that test and that test is called the Israel Test. What George Gilbert this non-Jew says in his book is “so goes Israel, so goes all of Western civilization”. I want to explain why I think that is true. Because there is a world-wide effort today to delegitimize and therefore destroy Israel. It has initials, it’s called BDS. B stands for boycott. D stands for divest. S stands for sanctions. And that’s just the beginning –there is a world-wide effort on the part of hundreds of millions of people to destroy the State of Israel.

We also face not only that boycott, divestment and sanction effort, but one of the most tyrannical regimes in all of history will soon acquire nuclear weapons if that haven’t already. Yesterday it was revealed that there was a brand new secret site that they spent 100 million dollars protecting in Iran and that they will soon have nuclear weapons. They have the missiles that can reach Israel and all of Europe and soon here. And if you think that the Time Square bomber who failed will fail next time with a dirty bomb from Iran, or God forbid that gas main that blew up and destroyed who knows how many homes near San Fransisco, when that’s a dirty bomb from Iran, we know what the consequences will be.

Politicians think “ it’s the economy stupid” and it is for most people, we know that that too will pass. That America will eventually be restored to growth. But this is not something that we can say this too will pass. This is the most serious issue of our time. President Bush should have done something about it, he didn’t. President Obama should do something about it, he’s not going to. Iran is going to get nuclear bombs, there’s no containing it. We’re in for a different kind of world. Every single Arab country is begging us to stop it and we are not.

But that’s not the only issue that Israel faces. Of course what gets the most media play is the issue with the Palestinians. The rabbis of Chicago were just invited to attend a briefing with the local AIPAC Midwest director. He presented us with such a long list of threats that Israel’s facing right now that we all just turned to each other and said “when do we get the good news?” There wasn’t any good news. There’s going to be a real concerted effort in the United Nations to deny the best democracy in the world next to the United States, a place in the United Nations. Twenty-two tyrannical Arab regimes and sixty-five Muslim nations are going to lead the charge to really deny Israel a place at the United Nations this fall. We’ve got Iran and its surrogates Hezbollah and Hamas. Hamas we know shot 8,000 missiles to Israel. Hezbollah was revealed a couple of days ago has 15,000 missiles on the southern border where Israel vacated. Plus another 40 or 50 thousand missiles in Lebanon, violating the UN sanctions, aimed right at Israel. These peace talks, Abbas who is supposed to be our partner in peace said two days ago, there is no compromise. “We are going to send 5 million refugees to the land of Israel. I will not allow a Jewish state.” He won’t allow a Jewish state!!!. And he is supposed to be Israel’s peace trading partner. And Turkey, which for 70 years has been a secular country with very good relations with Israel. The last 8 years, under the radar screen, they have become an Islamic republic, an Islamic regime. They stirred up this whole flotilla event this summer as you know, successfully making Israel look like the bad guys when it was a set up al along. . And they are now pretty firmly in the Islamic camp.

And as we move forward from this we think about all the vicious anti-Semitic lies. You may know the book, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which was a vicious lie about a Jewish about to run the world. It’s now in Arabic and is one of the bestselling books if not the bestselling book in the Arabic world. And regularly there are Arabic leaders that talk about the Medieval blood libel that Jewish children chew Christian and Arabic children’s flesh and use it in our matzo and the most vicious lies told regularly in that part of the world.

Now why is that? Well there are actually Jews that say it is Israel’s fault. “If we only had better pr.” Now I don’t know what you think but I think the only thing Israel could possibly do to solve these problems, and it wouldn’t even solve them, it is simply to close shop and leave. As long as Israel’s there, there is nothing Israel can do. There is no amount of pr that can turn the tide of those who simply want Israel gone.

GAZA: Think about Israel’s simply moving out of Gaza and saying “here take Gaza make a country”. And what did Gaza did besides build luxury homes with American dollars? They shot 8,000 missiles at Israel. Until Israel’s mothers and daughters finally said to their boys, “protect us”. So Israel went in door to door with booby-trapped homes and tried to save every Arab life that they could and still the world responded with an inditement of Israel for war crimes. The chief British military officer who watched it eye to eye said “no country in the history of the world has fought more honorably and nobly as the Israel soldiers did and still their accused of war crimes”.

And so it’s not a question of pr, it is a question of simply those people, not all of them but a lot of them, don’t want Israel there. They’re very clear about that and it’s simply a question about whether the Jews are going to pack up and leave or stay and live in the land that God promised us. There is no nation in the world that has a better claim to that land than the Jewish people. Or to any land. What claim do we have to this land that we are standing on right now? What claim? What claim does Germany have to their land? Or Syria have to their land. Or France have to their land? The Jews have the best claim there is. The claim of God, the claim of the bible, the claim of 4,000 years of history, the claim of international law going back hundreds of years. And yet there is this effort. Israel alone singled out among all the nations of the world for this kind of relentless abuse.

So why is this happening is a good question. Why have Jews always suffered? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ll give you a couple of theories.

1. First of all, in this brilliant book “The Israel Test” and the other main book out this year by Dan Senor called “A Startup Nation” they both talk about the phenomenal economic miracle that is Israel. And let me just give you a couple of quotes. Here is what Gilder says, “The real case for Israel is as the leader of human civilization, technological progress and scientific advancement. Google, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, Ebay, the list goes on. The best kept secret is that we all live and die by the work of our Israeli teams. It’s much more than just outsourcing, call centers. What we do in Israel is unlike what we do anywhere else in the world. As a result of this technological leadership Israel has been the second fastest growing Western economy in 1990.” The Western economy that is growing faster than Israel right now, you won’t believe it, the West Bank. The West Bank has 8% growth last quarter, Israel has about 4.5% and the U.S. is 1.6. And so for all the suffering we here about, we know the reality. But Israel is the economic miracle. It’s leading the world in innovations. We’re going to have great emission electric cars in 20 years. You wanna know why? Because Israel is setting up their whole country right now as an experiment to do electric cars. If there’s gonna be enough water in the world to drink in 20 years, you wanna know why? Because of the breakthroughs in Israel in water desalinization projects. The people are gonna have enough food to eat in the next 20 years, you wanna know why? Because of Israeli agricultural botanists creating all sorts of innovations in agricultural development. The cell phone in your pocket, the computer on your desk, they wouldn’t be what they are without Israel. And the medicines in your medicine cabinet? It’s when people talk about boycotting Israel that you may have seen these lists which say okay do you really want to boycott Israel? Toss out your medicine, your cell phone, your computer, your electric cars, your water and the list goes on and on and on. Israel is a miracle today. It’s gonna save the world if it simply had enough time and energy to do so. People are jealous of all this. Simple as that.

2. And of course there’s the plain old anti-Semitism. I just saw this joke I had to tell you. A man on a beach in Paris sees a little girl about to be destroyed by a pit bull. So he grabbed the pit bull and has to kill the pit bull sadly to save this little girl. So all the people rush up and say, “Oh what a wonderful man, you must be a Persian. And I could see the headline – Persian saves little girl from mad dog. He says “I’m not a Persian” Well then the headline will say – Frenchman saves little girl from mad dog. He says, “I’m not a Frenchman” Well then it will say – European saves little girl from mad dog. I’m not a European. “Then what are you” “I’m an Israeli.” Well then the headlines gonna say – Man kills little girl’s pet dog.

And so we think about the way in which the world distorts the reality, the anti-Semitism that seems to be in play here. Israel is not perfect. I mentioned on Erev Rosh Hashanah some of the severe problems in Israel. And life is not perfect. War is messy. In fact, one of my favorite perspectives on this from Rabbi Yitz Greenberg who said something like “I think it’s fair to say that the Israeli army engages in a moral way 5% better than the rest of the world, but if it was 10% Israel would not exist. And so it’s a very difficult thing when you’re trying to defend your daughters and your wives and your mothers in a real world which is messy.

Now some of you may have seen this week the story in Time magazine. I wish I had a better cover for you but I got so mad that I ripped it in half. But if you’ve seen it it’s a blue cover with a Jewish star and it says Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace. Now, a lot of people are not going to read the article. They’re going to see this anti-Semitic headline. Of course the author got it completely backwards. Israel doesn’t care about peace? They gave 25 thousand square miles to Egypt and their oil wells for peace. They have peace with Jordan. Do you think tomorrow if Israel laid down its weapons there would be peace? There would be genocide. If the Arabs laid down their weapons tomorrow, what would there be? There’d be peace. Who doesn’t want peace? And the article goes on to use the most classic anti-Semitic lines imaginable. What is the most classic anti-Semitic line that we hear today? He Jew'd you down. Jews and money right? You know what this article is about? It says that Jews in Israel are so rich, they do want peace. Can you imagine? The Jews in Israel or so rich, they don’t want peace. That is what that article is about. Classic Anti-Semitism. The implications are overwhelming.

And you know a new thing happened this last month. Something that’s been below the radar screen that none of us have thought about but turns out to be a reality. That one of the most powerful lobbies in America, the always accuse the Jews right, turns out to be the Arab lobby. A new book by a man named Mitchell Bard called The Arab Lobby, the invisible alliance that undermines America’s interest in the Middle East. And he talks about what happens when you have ambassadors for 65 Muslim countries and all of their officials, you have ambassadors for 22 Arab states and all of their officials. They’re promised huge parachutes when they leave the foreign service. The president of the United States who leave office, they’re libraries are funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by Arab money. Saudi Arabia gives 20 million dollars for a center at Harvard and the list goes on and on and on. So Mitchell Bard is saying that the Saudi’s have had huge influence on the American culture and American life and it’s something that we simply have not paid much attention to.

3. But finally, I want to mention something that didn’t really dawn on me until I read this interesting book actually about science and paradigm shifts. This book was basically was about how when science has a particular paradigm of what’s true, whatever facts scientists come up with they fit in to that paradigm. And it’s only when there is a paradigm shift like to Euclidian geometry or Newtonian physics that the scientist are able to break through and see the truth. And the paradigm shift has changed about Israel. It clearly has. There was a time, a short time when the world said about Israel, “Oh those poor Jews, they deserve their homeland, they got slaughtered by the Nazi’s”. But what is the paradigm shift now? “Oh those mean Jews, they beat up those poor Arabs”. Have you seen a map of Israel lately? How small it is? Have you seen how wide it is? If you give up the West Bank which Israel is probably going to do if there’s peace and Gaza, Israel’s nine miles wide at one point. We used to have a map of 10 Israel’s fitting into Minnesota. Hundreds of Millions of square miles of Arab land, a billion Arabs, a billion Muslims and Israel is the bad guy simply trying to live in peace.

But we never despair. What do we do? We’ve been around a very long time and the good news is we’re not alone. We’ve got a lot of friends that understand the significance of Israel, the importance of Israel and the rightness of Israel. We’ve got to join hands with them. You know there was a very disturbing article during the summer by a guy named Beinart in the New York review of books. His thesis was that young Jews have turned away from Israel. And the way in which we should get them back is by turning away from Israel too a little bit so that we can win them over. And that was a very upsetting article and people debated hotly. Well guess what? He’s completely wrong. It’s not the facts. I know Brandeis sounds like Barnhart but there was a Brandies study out more recently which shows that whatever drop there is in allegiance to Israel among young Jews is explained simply generationally. And it will change over time. That actually when you ask most Jews do they feel the significance of Israel in their hearts, in their lives, does it make a difference to them, do they care if it exists or not, do they care if it’s healthy? Most Jews say yes. Now whichever one’s say no that’s an issue. And hopefully we can correct that through education and programs like birthright.

But we should never take Jewish support for Israel for granted and I’ll tell you why. I want to take you back to October 6, 1943. What was the situation that American Jewry faced on October 6, 1943? We were beginning to learn about the devastation of the Holocaust. So you know what happened that day? Four hundred rabbis went to Washington to try and beg President Roosevelt to do more to save Jewish lives. And you know, they didn’t get heard by him. Do you know why? Because Rabbi Steven Weiss said, “it’s a bunch of riff raff. They’re just causing trouble. Don’t Listen”. And so he never heard those 400 rabbis. They were turned away and we know what happened. Now it’s not their fault, it’s not his fault that 6 million Jews died. But what would have happened had they had an audience with the president and maybe perhaps something else would have been done. And today we have Jewish organizations that pretend to be pro Israel and pro peace, but are funded largely by enemies of Israel and work against Israel’s interests constantly.

So what do we do besides join hand with our friends? I want to tell you a little story about a friend of mine sitting here in the 3rd row who doesn’t live in Indiana but she got wind of an election going on in Indianapolis between a man who was backed by Louis Farrakhan he’s a Nation of Islam man named Carson. He’s the guy who claimed, turned out to be a lie, that racial epitats were shouted at him as he walked through a line at a Tea Party rally. . He got in because his grandmother died. He filed for her seat and nobody paid attention. And now we have a Farrakhan backed Muslim in the U.S. congress. And nobody would listen as she tried to raise a ruckus about this election. Doesn’t live in Indianapolis but was worried about this man and the seat he holds. Turns out he’s got an urbane sophisticated opponent, also an African American running against him, but nobody would pay any attention. But she’s a force of nature and pushed and pushed and pushed to get a hearing and I don’t know what’s going to happen but here’s one human being who said we’ve got to do something about this. This is a test for us. We have to awaken and be more politicaly active. The Arab lobby sure is.

I remember those nations who claimed neutrality in World War 2. Think about that for a minute. These are nations that could not decide who was right, Hitler or the U.S. A nation who says, I can’t figure out who’s right so I’m gonna stay neutral. Now even though that’s not why, they didn’t want to get run over by Hitler, imagine staying neutral in a situation like that. Well isn’t that what happens if we sit on the sidelines here because do you think that the enemies of justice and rightchousness and peace are sitting idly by? Do you think that they will do nothing while we do nothing? No. They work every minute on trying to perfect ways in which to hurt us and Israel. I talked to young guys who were spending their lives trying to figure out ways to help the CIA and the state department and congress tighten up our rules so things like the shoe bomber and the Time Square bomber and Al Qaeda getting here and infiltrating don’t happen.

But it takes all of us. There’s something called the Israel Project and you know what they found? It makes a huge difference if you talk to your neighbors. I know it may not seem like much, but every time you talk to your friends and make Israel’s case it actually makes a big difference statistically. Because then they maybe turn around and talk to somebody else and it’s something that we can do. How about getting educated about Israel. Sometimes you see these people and say oh Israel’s so nasty, Israel’s so this, we don’t have the information. Well you know what? It’s so easily available. I’ve got a website that is www.forisrael.info. I got mad one night so I made a new website trying to figure out something to do. I’ve also created a blog that says www.israelgreatest.blogspot.com. And www.luxurygaza.blogspot.com to counter the lie of the suffering gazans. I have 40 vieos on youtube on various aspects of the conflict. Watch them. youtube seach JewU Israel. And you know what? There are thousands of websites and thousands of blogs and thousands of organizations.

And if you think you’re just one person, that you can’t do it yourself, join a cause. Yesterday I talked about Rabbi Levine, today I’m gonna talk about Rabbi Weissberg. He’s being honored on Sunday at Touhy and Albany at 11 o’clock. They’re naming a street for him. You know what they should name a city for him. Twenty-eight years ago he started this group called Protect our Heritage. It’s the Midwest’s biggest pro Israel group today. They actually raise money and they seek out candidates for office and they say if you are pro Israel we’ll help you. You can join with groups like that. AIPAC is a membership based organization which tries to lobbey for Israel. We’ve got lots of people here in Zionist organizations and every time you join a Zionist organization that helps. How many Haddasah members do we have here? How many Namah members do we have? How many Ort members do we have? Now there agendas are not always political. But, activities like that plus the political activities do make a difference. And I think it’s time to say to our congressman “I know the economy is very important and I know it’s probably issues 1, 2, 3, and 4 but what are you going to do about Iran? I went to a fundraiser for one of our senatorial candidates and everybody there was asking him about the economy and I was getting so exasperated. Not one foreign policy issue, zip like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Well today it exists. So we can’t sit idly by.

We must transorm the BDS campaign, Boycott, Divest, Sanction to BDS Brcha=tell the blessings of Israel D Din-make the eneimies of peace accountable S while pursuing shalom.

And I know this may be offensive to some people but you know what? We’ve been good Jews for so long. You know what a good Jew is? A good Jew doesn’t cause trouble. A good Jew went to their death in the Holocaust and did nothing to stop it. A good Jew laid down and die for thousands of years through all the horrors. Well you know what, the world likes good Jews. The world did not shame us. They said, oh too bad about all those dead Jews. And you know what, once the state of Israel decided we’re not going to be good Jews anymore, we’re going to be bad Jews, we’re going to stand up and fight for ourselves and defend our daughters and defend our mothers, the world suddenly doesn’t like that. Well too bad. We’re gonna be bad Jews. We’re gonna say that we have the right to live like everyone else on this planet and besides that we believe that God has a special place for us. That there’s a reason for all of this suffering. There’s a reason. Because Israel is a light to the nations. I think it’s so clear based on the evidence of the last ten years how Israel can transform the world. Now these two books, The Israel Test and the book by Dan Senor disagree as too why Israel has been such an amazing nation. They have different theories. Whatever the theory is, it’s happening. And they could really save the world. I mean that little tiny country with seven million people is the second largest high tech startup nation in the world. They have more museums per capita, more books per capita, more scientific papers per capita, more poetry books per capita, more music groups per capita, but it’s the real innovations that are transforming the world. And so I want to close with just a couple of quick stories. First of all, Alan Dershowitz wrote a book called Chutzpah. In the book Chutzpah he talked about what it means to be a good Jew. Not causing any trouble and he’s got this picture of two Jews about to be shot by a firing squad, and the captain of the firing squad asked if they had a last wish. One says he’d like a blindfolf and the other shushes him, whispering, don’t cause any trouble!!!

About thirty years ago many of you gathered in this building to figure out what to do about the neo-Nazis wanting to march in Skokie-home to so many survivors. We gather today on the eve of the new Nazis about to acquire nuclear bombs and have stated the desire over and over to destroy Israel while denying the Holocaust.

One of the most meaningful 2 hours of my life occurred in 2003 when I sat around a table with President Bush and ten other rabbis at the White House. I don’t care what your politics are-you can’t helped but be moved sitting across the table from the President of the USA.We were supposed to meet for 20 minutes but he stayed 90. I knew we would probably each have a chance to say one thing to him. He spent most of the time talking about how worried he was about anti-Semitism and how he wanted to help Israel so badly. When it came to my turn I told him a story I had heard about a Jewish sergeant who liberated a Concentration Camp and came up to a starving Jew who had been liberated five minutes before . This soldier expected a hug. In Yiddish the inmate asked if he was Jewish and when he said yes, the inmate spit on him and said-you are all too late. President Bush looked at me and said-I promise you we won’t be too late. Well, the hour is very late, Iran is about to get nuclear weapons and promises to destroy Israel. Israel faces many grave tests and so do we. When the Torah tells us that 2 ½ of the 12 tribes did not care to enter the land of Israel Moses asked them Will your brothers go to war AND YOU DO NOTHING. I ask us Will our brothers face these grave tests alone and we do nothing. Let the shofar wake us up from our slumber. May it be God’s will._________________

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Flotilla bluff con job

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Responding to Time Magazine's antisemitism

Shalom CAMERA E-Mail Team:

Thank you and congratulations to everyone for the excellent work in responding to the outrageous September 13, 2010, Time Magazine cover and accompanying story. Many letter-writers contacted both Time and several of its advertisers. We want to update you on reactions
In the September 27 edition, Time noted it had received more than 1000 letters about the offensive cover and story, most of them protesting it. Nine letters were printed, two of which came from CAMERA's letter writing group!
A number of CAMERA letter-writers who wrote to managing editor Richard Stengel received brief, personal responses which did not address the bigoted and offensive cover, but thanked the writers for their "thoughts." He gave no indication that serious action would be taken to redress the message conveyed.
In addition, CAMERA letter-writers who contacted advertisers heard back from Starbucks, Intel and E*TRADE, all of whom appeared concerned about their products being associated with both the cover and the article. Intel was especially responsive; Chuck Molloy, of Intel's Corporate Communications Department, responded to a letter-writer both by phone and with the following email:
"The Time Magazine piece in no way reflects Intel's point of view regarding Israel. Additionally, the mechanisms that are in place to prevent ads appearing under controversial circumstances did not work and we are looking into this. I have taken the liberty of forwarding your message to the marketing people responsible for our advertising placement."
Another letter-writer received a phone call from a member of the E*TRADE "management team" expressing "sincere apologies for the article in Time Magazine."
(Please see "In Detail" below for contact information for both the advertisers appearing in our earlier Alert as well as all the rest of the advertisers appearing in the September 13 edition)
Obviously, Time's publication of a mere nine letters does not address the harm done by its inflammatory imagery and message promoting the bigoted notion that Israelis are indifferent to peace – as long as they're making money.
ACTION ITEMS to / Top / In Brief / Action Item
Please use the information in the alert as background for your own letter. Do not copy and paste directly from the alert and do not forward it to the media.

• Please contact Time's parent company Time Warner and tell the CEO that publishing nine letters does not begin to redress the damage the publication has done. One step toward offering the public a counterpoint to the misinformation spread would be for editors to run a cover story on the troubling global campaign to delegitimize Israel. This would include reporting on the pervasive anti-Jewish rhetoric in the Muslim and Arab world that demonizes the Jewish people and nation, promotes hatred and violence and helps thwart regional peace.
Contact Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Chairman and CEO, Time Warner, Inc.
Phone (212) 484-8000.
• Continue to contact Time's advertisers to express concerns about their associating their products and their reputation with a magazine that believes it can get away with marketing itself by playing on anti-Semitic and anti-Israel sentiment. (Below is a complete list of advertisers from the September 13 edition.)
• Please send blind copies (bcc) to letters@camera.org
IN DETAIL to / Top / In Brief / Action Item
The September 13, 2010 edition of Time, with its cover depicting a Star of David surrounding the headline "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace" and accompanying story, played on old stereotypes of Jews who care more about making money and enjoying hedonistic lifestyles than about anything else — as if sitting on the beach and yearning for peace are mutually exclusive. In reality, Israel cares a lot about making peace, but, understandably and appropriately, hasn't put its collective life on hold until that peace comes, a point made repeatedly in the published letters to the editor.
As many have noted, the article, while shallow and biased, wasn't as offensive as the cover — but for many, exposure to the cover was all they got. (Time has a print circulation of 4,000,000.) For his part, Karl Vick, the article's author and Jerusalem Bureau Chief, has distanced himself from the incendiary cover, blaming Time's editors for both the headline and the graphic. Interviewed on Shalom TV, he said: "It was not my title ... people who put together the covers [of magazines] are probably trying to be as provocative as they can ..."
In addition, Karl Vick has toured the northern West Bank and said he is considering a "sequel" to his article. If Vick does write a "sequel," instead of repeating the bias and superficiality of the first article, he should address — head on — the campaigns of hatred and delegitimazation of Israel emanating from Muslim and Arab media, mosques and political discourse.
Here are the advertisers already provided in our earlier Alert:
E*TRADE: Call 646-521-4300 and ask for Steven J. Freiberg, CEO; or email: Steven.freiberg@etrade.com
Intel: Call (408) 765-8080 and ask to speak to CEO Paul Otellini or submit a comment on their Corporate Responsibility "Contact Us" form: http://www.intel.com/about/corporateresponsibility/contactus/index.htm.
Rosetta Stone: Call or send an email to the Director of Public Relations Reilly Brennan at (703) 387-5863 or email rbrennan@rosettastone.com
Starbucks: Call 206-447-1575 and ask for Howard D. Schultz, Founder, Chairman, CEO and President; or call Starbucks Customer Relations at 1-800-23-LATTE; or fill out the "Contact Us" form and choose "Corporate Social Responsibility" at http://www.starbucks.com/customer-service/contact/company-information-form.
Here are the others that appeared in the September 13 edition:
AT&T: Call 210-821-4105 and ask for Randall L. Stephenson, Chairman, CEO, President and Chairman of Executive Committee or email: Maria Schnabel (Corporate Citizenship) at ms5974@att.com or Mark Siegel (Corporate Issues) at mark.a.siegel@att.com.
Barclay's Capital Investment Bank: Call U.S. offices at 404-262-4800 (Atlanta) or 617- 330- 5800 (Boston).
Bose: Call 508-879-7330 and ask for Chairman and CEO Amar G. Bose.
Bridgestone Tires: Fill out the "Contact Us" form at http://bridgestonetire.com/Index_BS_EN.aspx?src=contact
General Motors: Call: 313-556-5000 and ask for Chairman, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., CEO and Director or fill out the "Contact Us" form at www.gm.com/utilities/contact_us/contact.jsp?deep=form&advertising
Hilton Hotels (DoubleTree): Call 703-883-1000 and ask for President and CEO Christopher J. Nassetta or fill out the "Contact Us" form at http://doubletree1.hilton.com/en_us/dt/customersupport/feedback.do.
PNC Bank: Call 412-762-2000 and ask for James E. Rohr, Chairman and CEO or email corporate.communications@pnc.com.
Saab: Call 248-705-0604 (Cell) or 248-581-0856 (Office) and ask for Michele Tinson, Director, Communications, or fill out the "Contact Us" form at www.saabusa.com/saabjsp/contactus/.
Tempur-Pedic: Call 800-510-8323 and ask for CEO and President Mr. Dale E. Williams or email marketing@tempurpedic.com
Toyota: Call 310-468-4000 and ask for Group VP and CIO Barbra Cooper or fill out the "Contact Us" form at http://toyota.custhelp.com/app/utils/login_form/redirect/ask_intercept.
United HealthCare: Call 860-702-5000 and ask for President and CEO Gail K. Boudreaux.

Obama and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists

http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/?p=5862

The Nexus between Barack Obama and the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States
Eric Voogd - BibiReport.blogspot.com, September 21st, 2010

[Editor's Note: Please be sure to download the following two PDFs in connection with this VERY important article by Eric Voogd - The Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC has provided UCI with a one page the FAQ which sums up Shariah Law and the dangers to US Constitutional Law. A comprehensive (177 page) report has also been issued by CFSP (must read!) - “Shariah: The Threat to America” Share these very important documents with your friends, please. Time is of the essence.]

Since the events of 11 September 2001, Chicago has increasingly become a convergence point for annual meetings held by national Islamic organizations in the United States. Most recently in April 2010 in downtown Chicago, the 6th annual Council on American Islamic Relations event featured keynote speaker Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna. Previously in January 2010, the administration of Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton approved lifting visa ban on Ramadan to enter the United States. Ramadan is truly a charlatan selling snake oil, as he projects a smooth, sophisticated image intended to calm fears about Islamic jihad by duplicitously pretending it’s a figment of our imagination.

Tariq Ramadan is the face of Stealth Jihad. His methods lure the unwary, the uneducated into the spider's web of the Muslim Brotherhood. But, he is the Muslim Brotherhood, to the core, and espouses precisely the same ultimate objectives as Al Qaeda regarding the establishment of the Caliphate and imposition of Sharia law on us all. Al Qaeda does it by violence, while Ramadan does it by stealth and taqiyya. The objectives are exactly the same; only the timing and tactics are different. Our current national security has been so thoroughly penetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood enemy that they are no longer capable of making solid decisions to defend United States national security – this is one example, exactly the intended outcome.

At the end of September 2010, Chicago will become a destination point for the international community’s top Islamic representation which includes the entire top leadership of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) together with the top leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. HYPERLINK “http://www.oicun.org/9/20100727101615770.html” http://www.oicun.org/9/20100727101615770.html In a post 11 September 2001 world, the red flag warning should be most clear that the Muslim Brotherhood is a high level national security concern for both Israel and the United States. The leadership of the OIC, Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Brotherhood are meeting at the American Islamic College in Chicago on the 28 to 30th of September 2010.

The notable who’s who in attendance list includes the full panoply of OIC leadership, the Obama Administration’s OIC liaisons Sada Cumber from the Bush Administration, and Rashad Hussain from the current administration, Dalia Mogahed and Farah Pandith from State Department, as well as Siraj Wahhaj, Ahmed Rehab of CAIR, etc. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is not mentioned as attending; however, the upcoming conference features the Gallup group that he worked with previously. Nevertheless, Rauf could well attend quietly. This is a major meeting and initiative between the administration of Barack Hussein Obama, the Muslim Brotherhood here in the United States and the OIC. This international conference in Chicago has received virtually no attention by the main stream media in the United States. WHY?

Throughout Illinois and across the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood is growing in its strength and numbers under the current administration of Barack Hussein Obama. On Monday, 13 September 2010, the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC issued a report “Shariah: The Threat to America” written by the Team ‘B’ II. As noted within the preface of this 177 page report which is An Exercise in Competitive Analysis, “This study is the result of months of analysis, discussion and drafting by a group of top security policy experts concerned with the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time: the legal-political-military doctrine known within Islam as “shariah.” It is designed to provide a comprehensive and articulate “second opinion” on the official characterizations and assessments of this threat as put forth by the United States government.” By answering the following questions, we are able to soundly defeat the Muslim Brotherhood through a comprehensive action plan; however, this requires collective efforts of private citizens, local law enforcement, think tanks, state and federal government, and national security.

1. WHO is the Muslim Brotherhood?
2. WHAT do they target?
3. WHY do they target us?
4. HOW do they operate?
5. HOW do we counter, mitigate and respond?

Integral to examining and answering these questions, individuals must be cognizant of both Understanding and Explaining this comprehensive action plan for addressing the Muslim Brotherhood is as a War of Ideas, a War of Intelligence and a War of Education. From the US Government Exhibit 003-0085; 3:04-CR-240-G; US v. Holy Land Foundation, et al, the modus operandi of the Muslim Brotherhood is clearly defined as the following:

“The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

The Muslim Brotherhood was established in 1928 in Egypt. In 1963, the Muslim Brotherhood established a base in the United States. Today, the Muslim Brotherhood is a collection of some 70 national organizations of competing interests and desires. The inherent threat from radical, militant Islam is a clear and present danger to the Jewish and Christian community in the United States. The Muslim Brotherhood is an international terrorist organization. Thus, all individuals gathering at this conference in Chicago at the Islamic College of America at the end of September 2010 must understand the ramifications of the legal consequences outlined in 18 U.S.C 2339A-B:

(a) Prohibited Activities.—
(1) Unlawful conduct.— Whoever knowingly provides material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

The administration and legal team of Barack Hussein Obama surely must be aware of this federal statute.

The threat to the United States from radical Islamic jihad and Sharia is an ever present reality. The fact that the administration of Barack Hussein Obama is allowing this conference to take place in Chicago at the end of September 2010 signals red flag warnings at multiple levels. In order to soundly defeat the Muslim Brotherhood, this requires fully exposing the Muslim Brotherhood’s modus operandi in the United States. This effort calls upon private citizens, local law enforcement, think tanks, state and federal government officials, and the national security apparatus to jointly work together. Failure to act NOW creates conditions which allows for another attack on the magnitude of, or greater, witnessed on 11 September 2001 to happen yet again on United States soil. The Muslim Brotherhood and its acting agents have no place in the United States!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Ehud Barak: History Will Judge Obama on Nuclear Iran

Ehud Barak: History Will Judge Obama on Nuclear Iran

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Follow Israel news on and .

“History will judge this [Obama] administration when it comes to the end of its term whether Iran has nuclear weapons or not,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Fox News in an interview. He also said sanctions are not enough to stop Iran from reaching nuclear capability.




Speaking in an interview while visiting officials in Washington, the Defense Minister added, “We are not frightened by [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s statements, but we have to take seriously that a nuclear Iran” would begin an arms race in the Middle East and “encourage global jihad and intimidation. We have to consider what follows sanctions, which will not suffice.”

Barak estimated that Iran “technically” may be able to possess a nuclear weapon within a year and a half “if they break all the rules.” He explained the major problem is that Iran may “become immune” to a military strike by building several sites and protecting them by burying them deep underground.

Israel's peace partners want to destroy Israel

Song broadcast on PA TV:
Pull the trigger - redeem the country

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

PA TV broadcast a Palestinian dance group performing and singing about conquering Israel through war. The song describes Israelis as "despicable" and an "invading enemy" and declares that "the Palestinian revolution awaits [them]." Israeli cities Lod and Ramle as well as Jerusalem are presented as Palestinian cities to be liberated through "Jihad" by Palestinians who have "replaced bracelets with weapons." The song then calls to: "Pull the trigger."

The performance was broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV this week, two days before the latest round of peace talks.

The following is a transcript and description of the performance:

Band member recites a poem:
"Fight, brother, the flag will never be lowered,
the torches will never die out."
On [Mt.] Carmel (in Israel) and in the [Jordan] Valley,
we are rocks and streams.
In Lod (Israeli city) we are poems, and in Ramle (Israeli city) - grenades.
We, my brother, shall remain the revolution of the fighting nation."

Vocalist sings:
"The Zionists went out from [their] homelands,
compounding damage and enmity.
But the Palestinian revolution awaits [them].
The orchard called us to the [armed] struggle.
We replaced bracelets with weapons.
We attacked the despicable [Zionists].
This invading enemy is on the battlefield.
This is the day of consolation of Jihad.
Pull the trigger.
We shall redeem Jerusalem, Nablus and the country."
[PA TV (Fatah), Sept. 12, 2010]

Monday, September 20, 2010

Helen Thomas receiving lifetime achievement award from CAIR

Helen Thomas receiving lifetime achievement award from CAIR
By Bridget Johnson - 09/18/10 05:33 PM ET
The longtime White House correspondent who resigned from Hearst newspapers in June in the wake of comments she made about Israel will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR is honoring Helen Thomas, who is of Lebanese descent and now 90 years old, at its Leadership Conference and 16th Annual Fundraising Banquet on Oct. 9 in Arlington, Va.

Speakers will also include Oxford Islamic studies scholar Tariq Ramadan.

Thomas started at the White House as a reporter during the Kennedy administration. In a video interview captured at a White House Jewish heritage event for RabbiLIVE.com that spread quickly across the Internet, Thomas advised Israeli Jews to "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Poland, Germany, America and "everywhere else."

Muslim terror daily

today terror efforts
Chicago. Muslim fails in bomb plot at Wrigley and other spots in Chicago-dud bomb furnished by FBI
Amsterdam- Muslim terrorist arrested getting on plane

British mamzers

The British government used bombs and covert tactics to try to thwart the settlement of Palestine by post-World War II Jewish refugees, according to a new book by Keith Jeffery, titled "MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949." The British government has independently verified Jeffery's revelation. Jeffery, a historian from Northern Ireland, notes that his book was "published with the permission of the Secret Intelligence Service and the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office."
According to Jeffery, the British undertook the effort -- dubbed, oddly enough, Operation Embarrass -- in order to curry favor with oil-rich Arab states upset over the Jewish migration to the Middle East. The Daily Beast's Andrew Roberts broke the news of the book's disclosures.
MI6, Britain's secret intelligence service, planted explosives to disable ships before they could transport Jewish men, women and children from Europe to Palestine. Britain controlled Palestine at the time and, partly due to pressure from wartime Arab allies, adopted a policy of strictly limiting Jewish migration to British-controlled lands in the region. In May 1948, the British left and Israel declared independence.
In addition to the direct physical sabotage, Roberts notes, the British launched a disinformation and propaganda campaign to impede the settlement.
Launched on Feb. 14, 1947, Operation Embarrass operated with a budget equivalent to $47,000 -- not an insignificant amount at the time. It began by dispatching a team of agents to France. The spies -- traveling under the guise of yachtsmen -- planted bombs on five ships docked in Italian ports in the summer of 1947 and early 1948. One ship was destroyed, two damaged; the explosives were discovered on the other two ships before they were detonated. British authorities were able to escape responsibility because the Italian investigators ruled out the idea of British-sponsored attacks on the ships. Instead, the Italians believed the likely culprits were Arabs using British-made explosives.
According to Jeffery, "the primary consideration" of the mission was "that no proof could ever be established between positive action against this traffic and His Majesty's Government." In the event they were caught, British agents were under orders to claim that they'd been recruited in New York by anti-communist businessmen working "mainly in the oil and aircraft industries." Or as the Daily Beast's Roberts puts it, they were to "lay the blame on rich, right-wing, unnamed Americans."
At the time, the British controlled much of the land in Palestine, and the British government technically viewed the Jewish settlers to the region as illegal immigrants. Still, before these latest revelations, no one would have suspected that the British launched deliberate attacks on Jewish settlers.
All of which compounds the irony of the MI6 putting forward an attempt to undermine large-scale Jewish settlement in the region under the name Operation Embarrass. As the Daily Beast's Roberts writes, "The country that ought to be embarrassed by Operation Embarrass — indeed shamed — is Great Britain, which used explosives to try to stop truly humanitarian flotillas after the Holocaust, but now condemns embattled Israel for halting entirely politically inspired flotillas to Gaza despite her rights of legitimate self-defense."
(Photo: AP)

Absurd UN

At UN Rights Council, Israelis Are Left Standing in the Hall - Anne Bayefsky
Despite promises made by the administration that by joining the UN Human Rights Council the U.S. would not become part of the problem, U.S. Ambassador Eileen Donahoe chose to attend and fully participate in a meeting that deliberately excluded anyone representing the Jewish state. Israel is the only UN state not permitted to be a full member of any of the UN's five regional groups. Throughout the Human Rights Council sessions, these groups hold key planning meetings in which countries negotiate and share important information behind closed doors. Even the Palestinian Authority, though not a state, is permitted into the Asian regional group.
Israelis are allowed into the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) in some parts of the UN. But WEOG members have chosen to exclude them totally in all of their meetings associated with the Human Rights Council. While Israelis are left standing in the hall, this week for the first time Libya took its seat as a full-fledged Council member. (Fox News)

Even Clinton thinks talks are folly

velyn Gordon - 09.20.2010 - 9:51 AM
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a stunning admission last week that has garnered far too little attention. After a de rigueur assertion that the Israeli-Palestinian “status quo is unsustainable,” she added, “That doesn’t mean it can’t be sustained for a year, or a decade, or two or three.”
But if so, why the rush to solve the conflict now, when all signs indicate that a deal is unachievable and another round of failed talks could greatly worsen the situation?
One could simply say she’s wrong; the status quo is intolerable for suffering Palestinians. But the facts are on her side.
First, the territories are experiencing unprecedented economic growth. The World Bank reported last week that the West Bank economy grew 9 percent in the first half of this year, while Gaza (you remember — that giant Israeli prison locked in hopeless poverty and misery?) grew an incredible 16 percent. For the West Bank, this represents a second year of strong growth; last year’s was 8.5 percent.
The World Bank hastened to declare that we should never mind the facts; growth under occupation is unsustainable. And growth in Gaza (which isn’t occupied) might well be: it was artificially boosted by reconstruction after last year’s war and the abrupt easing of Israel’s blockade in May. But the West Bank’s two-year surge shows that economic reforms like those instituted by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, coupled with a sharp drop in terror that has let Israel greatly ease its restrictions on Palestinian movement, make long-term growth quite feasible.
Second, West Bankers have evidently learned a lesson from the second intifada: support for terror there is very low, making a resurgence that would upset the current calm unlikely. Indeed, during a visit this month to the Balata refugee camp, once “a hotbed of extremism,” a Haaretz reporter “was hard-pressed to find any passersby who were willing to express support for it.” As resident Imad Hassan explained, “What good did this [terror] do us?”
By contrast, the current calm is doing West Bankers a lot of good, and they’re clearly savoring it. As Haaretz reported following a Ramadan visit to Ramallah last month:
The one phrase not on the lips of local shoppers in their conversations with this Israeli reporter on Wednesday was “the occupation” — unlike during prior visits, when the occupation and the conflict with the Jews were regularly raised. These days, the hot topic is business. Peace negotiations, and even the Gaza Strip, are irrelevant.
In short, West Bankers, too, consider the status quo tolerable; they’re more concerned with business than “the occupation.”
One thing, however, could yet disrupt this status quo: as several CONTENTIONS contributors have noted, negotiations that collapse amid mutual recriminations have triggered violent explosions in the past, and could well do so again.
So to try to achieve an agreement that overwhelming majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians believe is currently unachievable, the Obama administration is risking the violent implosion of a status quo that it admits is sustainable for decades. That isn’t “smart diplomacy”; it’s the irresponsibility of a pyromaniac near a barrel of gunpowder.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Podcats of High Holiday sermons

Several of them talk about Israel, Especially Rosh hashanah day 2
6 High Holiday sermons 5771
ACTUAL High Holiday PODCASTS.

http://rabbiginsburg.podbean.com/2010/09 /13/moderation-vs-fanaticism/
My erev Rosh Hashanah sermon

http://rabbiginsburg.podbean.com/2010/09 /13/good-news-bad-news-american-jewry/
First day Rosh sermon

http://rabbiginsburg.podbean.com/2010/09 /13/for-zions-sake-i-will-not-be-silent/
The situation facing israel and our responsibility

Second day Rosh

http://rabbiginsburg.podbean.com/2010/09/19/kol-nidre-5771-leaving-5771-looking-forward/
Kol Nidre

http://rabbiginsburg.podbean.com/2010/09/19/yom-kippur-5771-why-are-we-here/
Yom Kippur morning

http://rabbiginsburg.podbean.com/2010/09/19/yizkor-5771-memories-and-time-left/
Yizkor sermon

Friday, September 17, 2010

Israeli society

Israeli Jewish women participate in the workforce in higher numbers than anywhere else in the Western world, Ha'aretz reports.

Unlike the inhabitants of Desperate Housewives' Wisteria Lane, you won't find most Israeli women shopping or sitting in nail salons during the weekday. For instance, seventy-one percent of Jewish Israeli women with three children are employed, compared to an OECD average of 44 percent. What's more, Israeli women have more children (three on average) than any other developed country. In short—Israeli women may be the most hardworking--or overworked--in the world.

According to Benny Pepperman, a researcher at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, the high rate of female workforce participation has been obscured until now by the fact that two other population groups—Haredi women and Arab women—work outside the home at much lower rates. Only 20 percent of Israeli Arab women work outside the home, as do 56 percent of ultra-Orthodox women. Many rely on welfare payments to make ends meet.

So why do Israeli women do it? Ha'aretz offers a few weak explanations, but overlooks the basic fact that is apparent to every Israeli tax-payer. Let's say an upper-middle class family, a doctor and his professor wife, earn 20,000 shekels a month (about $65,000 per year). If the husband earns the entire 20,000 and the wife stays home, their monthly take home pay is about 13,000 shekels. But if both the husband and wife work, each earning 10,000 shekels, their monthly disposable income is closer to 17,000 shekels. In other words, Israeli tax policy encourages mothers to work outside the home. How strange!

Not for Israeli women is the "mommy track"—the phenomenon of women with Ivy League degrees who opt to stay home with junior, as memorably described in the New York Times. Since the pioneering days, kibbutz women have worked alongside their male counterparts and left childcare to communal childrens' houses. Could the Israeli government policy be a continuation of this cultural attitude? Because the Israeli government is basically telling women to be "superwomen," juggling a job and an average of three kids.

While the characters on Desperate Housewives cheat on their spouses, divorce and remarry, all at great expense, Israelis are less likely to divorce than their OECD counterparts. Israeli husbands and wives need each other, tax-wise, more than spouses in other places. Could this be a hidden benefit of an onerous tax system?

Fein as having reached a new low in Jewish self-hatred.

quoting " Leonard Fein's equating Israel's democratically
elected officials, going back to June 11, 1967, with the "fascist"
Franco, the "dictator" Mussolini and the Nazis is beyond contempt.

Fein writes, "Artistic history offers rich precedent [to the boycottof
the Ariel Theatre]: The great cellist Pablo Casals was widely admired
for his steadfast refusal to go home to Catalonia so long as Spain was
under fascist rule. He refused to perform in any country that
recognized the Franco dictatorship (until accepting President
Kennedy’s invitation to perform at the White House in 1961). Or think
of the Italian patriot Arturo Toscanini, arguably the greatest
conductor of all time. While Mussolini ruled as Italy’s dictator, from
1922 to 1943, the Maestro famously refused to perform in his native
country. He denounced the Nazis’ treatment of Jewish musicians; he
refused to conduct at Austria’s Salzburg Festival because Jewish
conductor Bruno Walter’s performances there weren’t broadcast in
Germany. (And in the late 1930s he conducted at a festival in Lucerne
with an orchestra entirely composed of musicians who had fled German
persecution.)

"Casals and Toscanini were on the right side of history. So are those
who have added their names in support of the Ariel boycott."

You can read the full column in which Fein expresses his opinion about
the development of the city of Ariel and consequences that may flow
from that. This part of Fein's essay is not surprising given Fein's
oft-expressed political views. The comparison of Israel's leaders to
Franco, Mussolini and the Nazis reveals Fein as having reached a new
low in Jewish self-hatred."

Peace talks disaster

Jewish World Review Sept. 17, 2010 / 9 Tishrei, 5771
Israel, alone
By Caroline B. Glick








Netanyahu has effectively stifled Israel's defenders


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The current flurry of diplomatic activity is deeply disturbing. It isn't simply that the Obama administration has strong-armed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into participating in diplomatic theater with the PLO whose successful completion will leave Israel weaker and less defensible. It isn't merely that the newest "peace process" diverts our leadership's attention away from Iran and its nuclear weapons program.
The most disturbing aspect of the latest round of the diplomatic kabuki is that Israel's leaders and Israel's staunch friends in the US are enthusiastically participating in this dangerous project.
True, Netanyahu is in an unenviable position situated as he is between US President Barack Obama's rock and hard place. Instead of standing up to this hostile American leader, Netanyahu is desperately seeking a magical concession to get Obama off his back.
Netanyahu's preference for appeasement is both ironic and destructive. It is ironic because he has turned to appeasement at the very moment that the notion it is possible to appease Obama has self-destructed.
Ten months ago Netanyahu found what he hoped was a magic concession. Capitulating to Obama, the Jewish state's leader prohibited all Jewish building in Judea and Samaria for a period of ten months. This unprecedented move to discriminate against Jews was supposed to get Obama off Netanyahu's back. It didn't.
Obama's public demand this week that Netanyahu extend the abrogation of Jewish property rights shows he will not be appeased. There is no magic concession. Every concession to Obama — like every Israeli concession to the Arabs — is considered both permanent and a starting point for further concessions.
And so Netanyahu concedes more. Not only has he effectively agreed to extend the discriminatory ban on Jewish rights. Netanyahu has moved on to even more outrageous concessions. According to the Lebanese media, Netanyahu has agreed to surrender large swathes of the Golan Heights to Iran's Arab puppet, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. According to the reports, Netanyahu empowered Obama's emissary George Mitchell to present his offer to Assad in Damascus and even furnished Mitchell with detailed maps of his proposed surrender.
If Netanyahu thinks that this move will diminish US pressure for a full withdrawal from Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, he is in for an unpleasant surprise. Mitchell made this clear at his press conference Wednesday. Mitchell said the "two tracks can be complementary and mutually beneficial if we can proceed to a comprehensive peace on more than one track."
In plain English that means that the administration feels perfectly comfortable pressuring Israel to surrender to the Syrians and to the Palestinians at the same time.
Leaving aside the strategic insanity of surrender talks with Syria, it cannot be said too strongly that the talks with the Palestinians have absolutely no upside for Israel.
Many observers have pointed out that PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas is unlikely to make a deal. And this is probably true. With Hamas in charge in Gaza and widely supported in Judea and Samaria, Abbas will probably not risk signing a peace deal with Israel that will likely serve as his death warrant.
But the same observers who bemoan the poor chances for a treaty ignore the fact that the alternative — that Abbas signs a peace deal with Israel — would be a disaster for Israel. Any deal Israel signs with the PLO will make the country weaker. We know this because we have already signed deals with the PLO. And all of those deals made Israel weaker.
All the agreements between Israel and the PLO have been predicated on Israeli territorial surrenders and Palestinian promises of moderation. Israel has implemented its commitments and surrendered land to the PLO. The PLO has never abided by its commitment to moderate its behavior. To the contrary, the PLO's response to every agreement has been to escalate its political and terror war against Israel.
The Palestinian terror war that began in September 2000 was the direct result of the Oslo "peace" agreement of September 1993 that created the framework for Israeli land surrenders to the PLO, and the framework agreement's follow-on agreements. The terror attacks that have killed and wounded thousands of Israelis would never have happened — indeed they would have been inconceivable — had Israel not withdrawn from Gaza, Judea and Samaria in accordance with peace deals it signed with the PLO.
The track record of the past 17 years demonstrates that withdrawals are dangerous. But still the "peace deal" now on offer is predicated on withdrawals.
Obama and his advisors claim that these talks will improve Israel's relations with the wider Arab world. But again the last 17 years expose this claim as fatuous and wrong. Israeli land surrenders in exchange for pieces of paper have not convinced the Arab League member states to accept Israel as a permanent state in the Middle East. They have convinced Israel's Arab neighbors that Israel is weak and getting weaker. This in turn has signaled to the wider Arab world that its best bet is to join forces with the likes of Hamas and fund and otherwise actively support the war against the Jewish State.
Engaging in the phony "peace process" isn't only bad because there is little prospect for reaching and deal or because any potential deal would be a disaster for Israel. There are three additional reasons the government's decision to engage in this diplomatic psychodrama is terrible for Israel.
First, there is great harm in talking. Talking to Abbas and his deputies legitimizes a Palestinian leadership that is wholly committed to Israel's destruction. As Abbas and his mouthpieces make clear on a daily basis, they do not accept Israel's right to exist. They do not condemn or oppose the murder of Israelis by Palestinians. They will not accept a deal with Israel that leaves Israel in control over sufficient lands to defend itself from Palestinian or other Arab attacks in the future. And they will never end or abate their diplomatic war against Israel.
The very act of legitimizing the likes of Abbas expands their ability to wage diplomatic war on Israel.
Second, just as Netanyahu's magic concessions to the Americans are but a starting point for further magic concessions, so Israel's willingness to engage in talks with its Palestinian adversaries forces our leaders to concede still more important things to maintain them. For instance, today in the face of a clear Hamas terror offensive that has already claimed the lives of four Israelis and sent tens of thousands running for cover in bomb shelters, Israel is compelled to sit on its hands. An effective campaign against Palestinian jihadists would weaken the PLO because most Palestinians support the jihad against Israel. In the interest of "peace," Hamas is allowed to attack at will.
So simply by agreeing to talk with the Palestinians, the government has made it all but impossible to carry out its primary function — defending the country and its citizens from aggression.
The third reason that the talks are inherently against Israel's interests is because they undermine Israeli democracy. Consistent, multiyear polling shows that the public overwhelmingly rejects more withdrawals. The public rejects any compromise in Jerusalem. The public rejects maintaining prohibitions on Jewish building. The public rejects expelling Jews from their homes. And the public rejects withdrawing from the Golan Heights.
Recognizing this, the Obama administration has insisted that the content of the current talks remain hidden from the public. As far as Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mitchell are concerned, they are better judges of the prospects and wisdom of these talks than the Israeli public that will have to live with their consequences. By agreeing to these demands, Netanyahu is collaborating with a project that is inherently anti-democratic and harmful to Israel's political order.
There is another aspect of the current diplomatic season that is upsetting. This aspect involves the negotiations' deleterious role in shaping Israel's position and options in the US.
When Netanyahu announced he was caving to White House pressure and barring Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria last November, his defenders argued it was necessary given Obama's relative political strength at the time. But a lot has changed in the past ten months.
Today Obama is deeply unpopular. The Democrats are likely to lose their control over the House of Representatives, and at a minimum, their hold on the Senate will be diminished. Today Israel has nothing to gain and much to lose by bowing and scraping before Obama.
True, Obama's positions on issues relating to Israel are not likely to substantively change after November 2. But Obama's ability to implement his policies will be seriously constrained. Indeed, the anticipated Republican resurgence has already incapacitated him.
By playing along with Obama's sham peace talks, Netanyahu has made it difficult for Israel's supporters in the US to explain why these talks are dangerous and offer a counter-policy that is based on experience and reality. Even worse, Netanyahu has encouraged Israel's friends to support what Obama is doing.
This much was made clear by an article penned last week by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer titled, "Your move, Mr. Abbas."
Krauthammer is widely perceived by the American public as a firm supporter of Israel. His many readers — who by and large are not close observers of Middle East events — defer to his judgment.
Unfortunately, his latest column shows that trust is unfounded. Krauthammer wrote, "No serious player believes [Israel] can hang on forever to the West Bank."
Not only do many serious players believe Israel can — and indeed should — hang on forever to Judea and Samaria, most close observers of events in the Middle East recognize that the central lesson of the past 17 years is that Israel must hang on to Judea and Samaria. The partial territorial surrenders Israel conducted in the 1990s led to the murder of more than a thousand Israel. Ceding these areas entirely would imperil the country. Even Clinton acknowledged this week that the current situation can continue for thirty years. And as all close observers and serious players in the Middle East know, thirty years is tantamount to forever.
Given Krauthammer's tremendous influence in shaping public opinion and policy in the US, his arrogant and false portrayal of reality is debilitating. This is particularly true in the current electoral season where Americans are seriously questioning the received wisdom of their policy elite for the first time in a generation. Now not only will Israel's supporters need to battle the administration for the US to adopt a rational policy towards the Palestinians and Israel. They will need to battle their supposed allies on the Right.
But while devastating, Krauthammer's position is a side issue at the end of the day. Krauthammer is not the man charged with defending Israel. He's a newspaper columnist and television commentator.
The man charged with leading and defending Israel is Netanyahu. Netanyahu is the man who stood for election. Netanyahu is the man who is responsible for leading and defending this country. And Netanyahu is the man that is now leading us on a path to degradation and defeat.