November 17, 2010
Israel Braces For The Iranian Rain Of Fire
November 5, 2010: The head of Israeli military intelligence warned his political superiors that the next major war Israel encountered would likely result in much higher Israeli casualties, especially to civilians. There is also growing concern about Russia selling advanced anti-aircraft systems to Syria, which could pass them on to Iran.
All this could be traced back to preparations Iran has been making for over a decade. Using their oil wealth, and weapons smuggling network, Iran has armed Syria, Hezbollah (the Shia militia in southern Lebanon) and Hamas (the Palestinian terrorist group that runs Gaza) with over 50,000 rockets, plus numerous other weapons. Most of the rockets are short range (about 10 kilometers), but several thousand have a much longer reach, and can hit targets throughout Israel. The Iranian master plan is for Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran to simultaneously fire as many missiles and rockets into Israel as they can. Even if there are no ground forces to follow up such an attack, the casualties (civilian and military) in Israel would be seen as a great Islamic victory, and would demoralize the Israelis. While Israeli defensive moves could do great damage to Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, Iran considers it a reasonable plan. Hezbollah, Syria and Hamas are not so sure, but Iran already has all the rockets and missiles in place.
Israeli military planners have seen this coming. Over the last three years, Israel has been revising its civil defense plans, and how to deal with the growing arsenal of rockets and ballistic missiles aimed at it. The latest change is the announcement that the military is dispersing its stocks of supplies, equipment and spare parts to a larger number of (better protected) locations.
The basic defense plan assumes a future war with Syria, and gives the local officials an idea of what to expect. Currently, the Israelis estimate that there would be as many as 3,300 Israeli casualties (including up to 200 dead) if Syria tried to use its long range missiles against Israel. If the Syrians used chemical warheads, Israeli casualties could be as high as 16,000. Over 200,000 Israelis would be left homeless, and it's believed about a 100,000 would seek to leave the country.
Israel now assumes that Iran would also fire some of its ballistic missiles as well, armed with conventional warheads. But the big danger is Syria, which is a client state of Iran. Syria has underground storage and launch facilities for its arsenal of over a thousand SCUD missiles. Armed with half ton high explosive and cluster bomb warheads, the missiles have ranges of 500-700 kilometers. Syria also has some 90 older Russian Frog-7 missiles (70 kilometer range, half ton warhead) and 210 more modern Russian SS-21 missiles (120 kilometer range, half ton warhead) operating with mobile launchers. There are also 60 mobile SCUD launchers. The Syrians have a large network of camouflaged launching sites for the mobile launchers. Iran and North Korea have helped Syria build underground SCUD manufacturing and maintenance facilities. The Syrian missiles are meant to hit Israeli airfields, missile launching sites and nuclear weapons sites, as well as population centers. Syria hopes to do enough damage with a missile strike to cripple Israeli combat capability.
Israel has long been aware of the Syrian capabilities and any war with Syria would probably result in some interesting attacks on the Syrian missile network. The SCUD is a liquid fuel missile and takes half an hour or more to fuel and ready for launch. So underground facilities are a major defensive measure against an alert and astute opponent like Israel.
But Syria has been adding a lot of solid fuel ballistic missiles to its inventory, and recently transferred some of these to Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Syria would likely coordinate an attack on Israel. Hamas, in Gaza, is a semi-client of Iran, and might be persuaded to join in as well.
No unclassified government planning documents have discussed what Israel would do in response to such an attack, but in the past, Israel has threatened to use nukes against anyone who fired chemical weapons at Israel (which does not have any chemical weapons). But current plans appear to try and keep it non-nuclear for as long as possible.
November 14, 2010
Addressing our homegrown enemies By CAROLINE B. GLICK
Column One: Addressing our homegrown enemies
By CAROLINE B. GLICK, The Jerusalem Post
November 12, 2010
To remain free, free societies must shed our politically correct
shackles and address this growing menace to everything we hold dear.
This week we learned that Nazareth is an al-Qaida hub. Sheikh Nazem
Abu Salim Sahfe, the Israeli imam of the Shihab al-Din mosque in the
city, was indicted on Sunday for promoting and recruiting for global
jihad and calling on his followers to harm non-Muslims.
Among the other plots born of Sahfe’s sermons was the murder of cab
driver Yefim Weinstein last November. Sahfe’s followers also plotted
to assassinate Pope Benedict XVI during his trip to Israel last year.
They torched Christian tour buses. They abducted and stabbed a pizza
delivery man. Two of his disciples were arrested in Kenya en route to
joining the al-Qaida forces in Somalia.
With his indictment, Sahfe joins a growing list of jihadists born and
bred in Israel and in free societies around the world who have
rejected their societies and embraced the cause of Islamic global
domination. The most prominent member of this group among US citizens
today is the American-born al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki.
US authorities describe Awlaki as the world’s most dangerous man. His
jihadist track record is staggering. It seems that there has been no
major attack in the US or Britain including the September 11 attacks
and the July 7 attacks in London in which Awlaki has not played a
role.
Sahfe and Awlaki, like nearly all the prominent jihadists in the West,
are men of privilege. Their personal histories are a refutation of the
popular Western tale that jihad is born of frustration, poverty and
ignorance. Both men, like almost every prominent Western jihadist, are
university graduates.
So, too, their stories belie the Western fantasy that adherence to the
cause of jihad is spawned by poverty. These men and their colleagues
are the sons of wealthy or of comfortable middle class families. They
have never known privation.
Armed with their material comforts, university degrees and native
knowledge of the ways of democracy and the habits of freedom, these
men chose to become jihadists. They chose submission to Islam over
liberal democratic rights because that is what they prefer. They are
idealists.
This means that all the standard Western pabulums about the need to
expand welfare benefits for Muslims or abstain from enforcing the laws
against their communities, or to give mosques immunity from
surveillance and closure, or to seek to co-opt jihadist leaders by
treating them like credible Muslim voices, are wrong and
counterproductive. These programs do not neutralize their supremacist
intentions or actions. They embolden the Western Islamic supremacists
by signaling to them that they are winning. Their Western societies
are no match for them.
IN RECENT weeks we have seen a number of statements by establishment
political leaders in Europe indicating that they are willing to
consider abandoning these politically correct bromides. German
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement last month that “multiculturalism
has utterly failed,” for instance, is widely perceived as a watershed
event.
And in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, former British
prime minister Tony Blair acknowledged that there is a problem with
unassimilated Muslims in Britain. As he put it, anti-immigration
sentiment is not general but particular. It relates, Blair admitted,
to “the failure of one part of the Muslim community to resolve and
create an identity that is both British and Muslim.”
Blair acknowledged that it is due to the European establishment’s
refusal to acknowledge the problem of growing Islamic supremacism in
Europe that so many millions of Europeans are today ditching the
establishment and its politically correct orthodoxies and voting for
anti-establishment politicians who are willing to address the problem.
He called for a continent-wide approach to immigration whose goal
would be to prevent jihadists from exploiting the system to overthrow
it.
Moves like Merkel’s and Blair’s are insufficient. But the very fact
that enough Europeans are willing to break the PC barrier to force
these leaders to acknowledge and perhaps address the challenges of
unassimilated, supremacist Muslim minorities means that Europe is
taking the first steps towards addressing the challenges that jihadist
Islam poses to its security, culture and civilization. Perhaps most
emblematic of this change was the Merkel government’s recent move to
finally close the mosque in Hamburg where the September 11 plotters
met and planned their acts of war against the US.
Disturbingly, the establishments in the two countries most actively
targeted by global jihad the US and Israel remain in deep denial
about the challenges of homegrown jihadist fifth columnists. The US
remains in denial even though the majority of recent jihadist attacks
and attempted attacks against the US were carried out by American
citizens.
The US’s denial of the nature of the jihadist threat was demonstrated
in all of its politically correct glory this week with President
Barack Obama’s address to Indian students at St. Xavier University in
Mumbai. In response to a student’s query about his view of jihad and
jihadists, Obama praised Islam as “one of the world’s great
religions.” He went on to claim that the overwhelming majority of
Muslims view Islam as a religion of “peace, justice, fairness and
tolerance.”
Obama’s message was not only deceptive and off point, it was deeply
insensitive to his audience. Two years ago this month, Mumbai was the
site of a massive jihadist commando attack against targets throughout
the city, and the city is still grappling with the wounds of that
attack.
Obama’s statement also ignored the US’s contribution to that attack.
The suspected mastermind of the Mumbai massacres was a US citizen
named David Coleman Headley from Obama’s hometown of Chicago.
Moreover, Headley (formerly Daood Sayed Gilani) served for many years
as a double agent. A convicted drug dealer, he was sent to Pakistan as
a Drug Enforcement Agency agent. While there, he trained at
Lashkar-e-Taibe jihadist training camps.
Obama failed to note that perhaps due to his work at the DEA, US law
enforcement officials ignored testimonies from two of Headley’s former
wives in 2005 and 2007 that he was a member of Lashkar-e-Taibe, the
India-focused Pakistani al-Qaida affiliate run by Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Rather than address these issues, or the fact that the US has refused
Indian extradition requests for Headley, Obama vacuously told students
that it is the job of young people from all religions to reject
extremism and violence.
Headley, of course, is just one of many American jihadists who has
enjoined the fruits of America’s politically correct denial of the
homegrown Islamic threat. In the months following the September 11
attacks, the US Department of the Army actively courted Awlaki as part
of its Muslim outreach program. Awlaki, then George Washington
University’s Muslim chaplain, was wooed despite his documented links
to three of the September 11 hijackers.
AS ISRAELIS wake up to the reality of al-Qaida in Nazareth, our
leftist establishment remains in denial about it role in enabling this
reality. Sahfe’s Shihab al-Din mosque was established as a
triumphalist mosque adjacent to the Church of the Annunciation in the
lead up to the millennium. At the time, the Vatican launched a vocal
protest against its construction.
In the hopes of winning over the likes of Sahfe, then-prime minister
Ehud Barak and then-foreign minister and public security minister
Shlomo Ben-Ami rejected the Vatican’s objections. They even donated
the land for the mosque from the Israel Lands Authority.
Safhe returned the favor by interrupting Pope John Paul II’s homily at
the Church of the Annunciation during his March 2000 visit with a call
to prayer. Months later, the Shihab al-Din mosque was one of the focal
points for inciting the anti-Jewish riots in the Arab sector in
October 2000.
Today, leftist judges together with leftist politicians and opinion
makers block all efforts by politicians and the public to acknowledge
and address the growing lawlessness and jihadist bent of Israel’s
Muslim minority. Fear of the politically correct Supreme Court has
deterred authorities from outlawing the Islamic Movement. Efforts to
contend with illegal land seizures and building have been blocked by
the leftist media, pressure groups largely sponsored by the New Israel
Fund and the courts. Even symbolic measures like the government’s
recent bid to require non-Jewish immigrants to pledge loyalty to the
state have been viciously attacked by Israel’s leftist establishment
as fascist and racist.
But as Europe is belatedly acknowledging, these politically correct
commissars must be sidelined if the free world is to withstand the
growing threat of homegrown jihad.
What this means for Israel is that the political and legal space has
to be found to speedily embark on the law enforcement equivalent of a
counterinsurgency operation. Israel must enforce its laws with as much
zeal and commitment in the Muslim sector as it does in the Jewish
sector. This means that Shihab al-Din and other jihadist mosques have
to be closed.
It means that jihadist groups like the Islamic Movement have to be
outlawed and its leaders have to be tried for treason and other
relevant offenses. The same is true for all Arab leaders, political
groupings and social organizations that promote the destruction of
Israel.
Building and zoning laws must be enforced. State lands that have been
seized must be taken back, if necessary by force, including with the
involvement of the IDF.
So, too, Jewish rights have to be protected. Like Muslims, Jews have
the right to buy land and homes throughout the country. Jews who wish
to live in Muslim-majority communities must enjoy the protection of
the law just as Muslims who live in Tel Aviv and Upper Nazareth do.
By the same token, the government must embark on a campaign to win
back the loyalty of its Muslim citizens. It must empower leaders who
embrace their identity as Israelis and seek the integration of Israeli
Muslims into the wider society. Authorities must ensure that Israeli
Muslims who wish to integrate are not discriminated against by Jews or
intimidated by other Muslims.
Over the past couple of weeks, IDF commanders have spoken at length
about the nature of the war to come. Their remarks have concentrated
on what is already largely recognized that Israel’s home front will
be targeted by long-range missiles.
Disappointingly, they ignored the most significant new threat facing
the home front today: The likelihood that Israel’s external foes will
receive active assistance from its Muslim citizens.
Nearly a decade after the September 11 attacks, global jihad remains
the central threat to the West, and not because of its popularity in
western Pakistan. It remains the central threat to the free world
because of its popularity among the Muslims in the free world.
To remain free, free societies must shed our politically correct
shackles and address this growing menace to everything we hold dear.
By CAROLINE B. GLICK, The Jerusalem Post
November 12, 2010
To remain free, free societies must shed our politically correct
shackles and address this growing menace to everything we hold dear.
This week we learned that Nazareth is an al-Qaida hub. Sheikh Nazem
Abu Salim Sahfe, the Israeli imam of the Shihab al-Din mosque in the
city, was indicted on Sunday for promoting and recruiting for global
jihad and calling on his followers to harm non-Muslims.
Among the other plots born of Sahfe’s sermons was the murder of cab
driver Yefim Weinstein last November. Sahfe’s followers also plotted
to assassinate Pope Benedict XVI during his trip to Israel last year.
They torched Christian tour buses. They abducted and stabbed a pizza
delivery man. Two of his disciples were arrested in Kenya en route to
joining the al-Qaida forces in Somalia.
With his indictment, Sahfe joins a growing list of jihadists born and
bred in Israel and in free societies around the world who have
rejected their societies and embraced the cause of Islamic global
domination. The most prominent member of this group among US citizens
today is the American-born al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki.
US authorities describe Awlaki as the world’s most dangerous man. His
jihadist track record is staggering. It seems that there has been no
major attack in the US or Britain including the September 11 attacks
and the July 7 attacks in London in which Awlaki has not played a
role.
Sahfe and Awlaki, like nearly all the prominent jihadists in the West,
are men of privilege. Their personal histories are a refutation of the
popular Western tale that jihad is born of frustration, poverty and
ignorance. Both men, like almost every prominent Western jihadist, are
university graduates.
So, too, their stories belie the Western fantasy that adherence to the
cause of jihad is spawned by poverty. These men and their colleagues
are the sons of wealthy or of comfortable middle class families. They
have never known privation.
Armed with their material comforts, university degrees and native
knowledge of the ways of democracy and the habits of freedom, these
men chose to become jihadists. They chose submission to Islam over
liberal democratic rights because that is what they prefer. They are
idealists.
This means that all the standard Western pabulums about the need to
expand welfare benefits for Muslims or abstain from enforcing the laws
against their communities, or to give mosques immunity from
surveillance and closure, or to seek to co-opt jihadist leaders by
treating them like credible Muslim voices, are wrong and
counterproductive. These programs do not neutralize their supremacist
intentions or actions. They embolden the Western Islamic supremacists
by signaling to them that they are winning. Their Western societies
are no match for them.
IN RECENT weeks we have seen a number of statements by establishment
political leaders in Europe indicating that they are willing to
consider abandoning these politically correct bromides. German
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement last month that “multiculturalism
has utterly failed,” for instance, is widely perceived as a watershed
event.
And in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, former British
prime minister Tony Blair acknowledged that there is a problem with
unassimilated Muslims in Britain. As he put it, anti-immigration
sentiment is not general but particular. It relates, Blair admitted,
to “the failure of one part of the Muslim community to resolve and
create an identity that is both British and Muslim.”
Blair acknowledged that it is due to the European establishment’s
refusal to acknowledge the problem of growing Islamic supremacism in
Europe that so many millions of Europeans are today ditching the
establishment and its politically correct orthodoxies and voting for
anti-establishment politicians who are willing to address the problem.
He called for a continent-wide approach to immigration whose goal
would be to prevent jihadists from exploiting the system to overthrow
it.
Moves like Merkel’s and Blair’s are insufficient. But the very fact
that enough Europeans are willing to break the PC barrier to force
these leaders to acknowledge and perhaps address the challenges of
unassimilated, supremacist Muslim minorities means that Europe is
taking the first steps towards addressing the challenges that jihadist
Islam poses to its security, culture and civilization. Perhaps most
emblematic of this change was the Merkel government’s recent move to
finally close the mosque in Hamburg where the September 11 plotters
met and planned their acts of war against the US.
Disturbingly, the establishments in the two countries most actively
targeted by global jihad the US and Israel remain in deep denial
about the challenges of homegrown jihadist fifth columnists. The US
remains in denial even though the majority of recent jihadist attacks
and attempted attacks against the US were carried out by American
citizens.
The US’s denial of the nature of the jihadist threat was demonstrated
in all of its politically correct glory this week with President
Barack Obama’s address to Indian students at St. Xavier University in
Mumbai. In response to a student’s query about his view of jihad and
jihadists, Obama praised Islam as “one of the world’s great
religions.” He went on to claim that the overwhelming majority of
Muslims view Islam as a religion of “peace, justice, fairness and
tolerance.”
Obama’s message was not only deceptive and off point, it was deeply
insensitive to his audience. Two years ago this month, Mumbai was the
site of a massive jihadist commando attack against targets throughout
the city, and the city is still grappling with the wounds of that
attack.
Obama’s statement also ignored the US’s contribution to that attack.
The suspected mastermind of the Mumbai massacres was a US citizen
named David Coleman Headley from Obama’s hometown of Chicago.
Moreover, Headley (formerly Daood Sayed Gilani) served for many years
as a double agent. A convicted drug dealer, he was sent to Pakistan as
a Drug Enforcement Agency agent. While there, he trained at
Lashkar-e-Taibe jihadist training camps.
Obama failed to note that perhaps due to his work at the DEA, US law
enforcement officials ignored testimonies from two of Headley’s former
wives in 2005 and 2007 that he was a member of Lashkar-e-Taibe, the
India-focused Pakistani al-Qaida affiliate run by Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
Rather than address these issues, or the fact that the US has refused
Indian extradition requests for Headley, Obama vacuously told students
that it is the job of young people from all religions to reject
extremism and violence.
Headley, of course, is just one of many American jihadists who has
enjoined the fruits of America’s politically correct denial of the
homegrown Islamic threat. In the months following the September 11
attacks, the US Department of the Army actively courted Awlaki as part
of its Muslim outreach program. Awlaki, then George Washington
University’s Muslim chaplain, was wooed despite his documented links
to three of the September 11 hijackers.
AS ISRAELIS wake up to the reality of al-Qaida in Nazareth, our
leftist establishment remains in denial about it role in enabling this
reality. Sahfe’s Shihab al-Din mosque was established as a
triumphalist mosque adjacent to the Church of the Annunciation in the
lead up to the millennium. At the time, the Vatican launched a vocal
protest against its construction.
In the hopes of winning over the likes of Sahfe, then-prime minister
Ehud Barak and then-foreign minister and public security minister
Shlomo Ben-Ami rejected the Vatican’s objections. They even donated
the land for the mosque from the Israel Lands Authority.
Safhe returned the favor by interrupting Pope John Paul II’s homily at
the Church of the Annunciation during his March 2000 visit with a call
to prayer. Months later, the Shihab al-Din mosque was one of the focal
points for inciting the anti-Jewish riots in the Arab sector in
October 2000.
Today, leftist judges together with leftist politicians and opinion
makers block all efforts by politicians and the public to acknowledge
and address the growing lawlessness and jihadist bent of Israel’s
Muslim minority. Fear of the politically correct Supreme Court has
deterred authorities from outlawing the Islamic Movement. Efforts to
contend with illegal land seizures and building have been blocked by
the leftist media, pressure groups largely sponsored by the New Israel
Fund and the courts. Even symbolic measures like the government’s
recent bid to require non-Jewish immigrants to pledge loyalty to the
state have been viciously attacked by Israel’s leftist establishment
as fascist and racist.
But as Europe is belatedly acknowledging, these politically correct
commissars must be sidelined if the free world is to withstand the
growing threat of homegrown jihad.
What this means for Israel is that the political and legal space has
to be found to speedily embark on the law enforcement equivalent of a
counterinsurgency operation. Israel must enforce its laws with as much
zeal and commitment in the Muslim sector as it does in the Jewish
sector. This means that Shihab al-Din and other jihadist mosques have
to be closed.
It means that jihadist groups like the Islamic Movement have to be
outlawed and its leaders have to be tried for treason and other
relevant offenses. The same is true for all Arab leaders, political
groupings and social organizations that promote the destruction of
Israel.
Building and zoning laws must be enforced. State lands that have been
seized must be taken back, if necessary by force, including with the
involvement of the IDF.
So, too, Jewish rights have to be protected. Like Muslims, Jews have
the right to buy land and homes throughout the country. Jews who wish
to live in Muslim-majority communities must enjoy the protection of
the law just as Muslims who live in Tel Aviv and Upper Nazareth do.
By the same token, the government must embark on a campaign to win
back the loyalty of its Muslim citizens. It must empower leaders who
embrace their identity as Israelis and seek the integration of Israeli
Muslims into the wider society. Authorities must ensure that Israeli
Muslims who wish to integrate are not discriminated against by Jews or
intimidated by other Muslims.
Over the past couple of weeks, IDF commanders have spoken at length
about the nature of the war to come. Their remarks have concentrated
on what is already largely recognized that Israel’s home front will
be targeted by long-range missiles.
Disappointingly, they ignored the most significant new threat facing
the home front today: The likelihood that Israel’s external foes will
receive active assistance from its Muslim citizens.
Nearly a decade after the September 11 attacks, global jihad remains
the central threat to the West, and not because of its popularity in
western Pakistan. It remains the central threat to the free world
because of its popularity among the Muslims in the free world.
To remain free, free societies must shed our politically correct
shackles and address this growing menace to everything we hold dear.
November 12, 2010
Is There Life After America?: By Moshe Feiglin
27 Cheshvan, 5771
Nov. 4, '10
Translated from the Makor Rishon newspaper
The tremendous significance that Israel's Right attaches to last week's elections in the US attests to the fact that the Right also pins most of its hopes on America. In other words, both the Right and Left in Israel suffer from the same delusion. For both sides of the political spectrum, everything depends upon our relations with the US - and not on our relations with ourselves, with the justness of our cause - and with our G-d.
The "pragmatic" perspective that disconnects destiny from existence is what ultimately prevents us from understanding reality and dealing with its challenges.
From a strategic perspective, the political process in the US does not have much importance for Israel. The building moratorium in Yesha began a short time after Rabin took office in 1992. Since then, we have been busy adjusting the height of the flames, while the situation has steadily deteriorated. Now, there is also a building moratorium in Jerusalem - even though officially, no such thing exists.
Obama did not create the problem. The problem is completely home-grown. We created it and the US pressure that accompanies it. True, Obama has intensified the problem and treats us less gently. But his behavior is actually helpful because it indicates which way America is headed - an indication that pragmatists like us insist on ignoring. Instead we look to the mid-term elections in Washington for salvation.
There are more than enough signs that the curtain is closing on America. If someone would have told us ten years ago that within less than a decade it would not be Israelis stuffing dollars into their mattresses but Americans rushing to buy the shekel, would we have believed him? If we had been told that within a decade the Governor of the Bank of Israel would be buying dollars in an effort to maintain the value of the American currency, would we have taken that information seriously?
What happened to the Soviet Empire, the British Empire and all the empires throughout history is beginning to happen to America. It is simply a historical rule to which the American Empire is also subject.
Obama has hastened the pace of this process but he did not create it. Thus, his decline will not prevent it. The very fact that the majority of Americans so enthusiastically voted for the man whose entire being symbolizes the complete opposite of the values that brought about the establishment of the United States, indicates the deep rot that has spread through American society. The inevitable economic collapse that Obama is inflicting upon America is nothing more than a symptom of the moral rot.
Significant sections of the American population are still motivated by the values of America's founding fathers. But they have no real ability to stop the crumbling of their society. The Hispanic immigration on the one hand and the Islamic pressure on the other have forced America to face a challenge that it cannot overcome. "Multi-culturalism has failed," explained Angela Merkel. In America, multi-culturalism is in the Oval Office.
In these very days, when America is pulling out of Iraq with its tail between its legs and when it is already clear that it will suffer a similar defeat in Afghanistan, we can say that Bin Laden defeated Bush - in a big way. He defeated Bush, which just goes to show that the defeat is not Democratic or Republican. The defeat is American, the product of values that cannot face conflict with a religion or an enemy that is not a nation-state.
Where is Israel in this state of affairs? Clearly, nobody in Israel's Foreign Ministry, in its plush universities, in Israeli politics or its generously-funded think tanks is even attempting to think about what will happen when we wake up one morning and America will simply not be there. For them, this would be tantamount to a religious person considering the ludicrous possibility that there is no G-d.
But that is exactly what will happen. First, America will not be there for Israel. And then it will not be there at all. It will collapse or turn into something reminiscent of Argentina.
All the important institutions that are supposed to warn us of this eventuality will fail miserably. That's how it is with institutions. By their very nature, they cannot think out of the box. They will scoff at the type of article that you are reading now, just like they scoffed at everyone who warned that rockets would be flying into Ashkelon. Afterwards they will explain why they were right nevertheless or they will ignore their failure. The people who were paid fat salaries to prepare us for the new reality - and instead left us off-guard and helpless - will write glorious autobiographies and run for the Knesset.
So, despite all the warning signs, America's collapse will catch us completely by surprise. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, like the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is impossible to know when it will happen. But one way or another it will happen - and Israel should plan ahead and free itself now of its dependence on America.
How will we manage without the American veto in the UN Security Council? Maybe we should pre-empt that problem and simply resign from the UN? Don't we have other strategic allies?
How do we fight without American weapons? Has anybody thought of the fact that in any case, we will not have American spare parts after a certain point? Did the recent F-35 deal take that into account?
In other words, instead of beginning to free ourselves from the sinking Titanic, we have added another rope that ties us to it. Simply because our pragmatism leaves no room for strategic thinking.
Nov. 4, '10
Translated from the Makor Rishon newspaper
The tremendous significance that Israel's Right attaches to last week's elections in the US attests to the fact that the Right also pins most of its hopes on America. In other words, both the Right and Left in Israel suffer from the same delusion. For both sides of the political spectrum, everything depends upon our relations with the US - and not on our relations with ourselves, with the justness of our cause - and with our G-d.
The "pragmatic" perspective that disconnects destiny from existence is what ultimately prevents us from understanding reality and dealing with its challenges.
From a strategic perspective, the political process in the US does not have much importance for Israel. The building moratorium in Yesha began a short time after Rabin took office in 1992. Since then, we have been busy adjusting the height of the flames, while the situation has steadily deteriorated. Now, there is also a building moratorium in Jerusalem - even though officially, no such thing exists.
Obama did not create the problem. The problem is completely home-grown. We created it and the US pressure that accompanies it. True, Obama has intensified the problem and treats us less gently. But his behavior is actually helpful because it indicates which way America is headed - an indication that pragmatists like us insist on ignoring. Instead we look to the mid-term elections in Washington for salvation.
There are more than enough signs that the curtain is closing on America. If someone would have told us ten years ago that within less than a decade it would not be Israelis stuffing dollars into their mattresses but Americans rushing to buy the shekel, would we have believed him? If we had been told that within a decade the Governor of the Bank of Israel would be buying dollars in an effort to maintain the value of the American currency, would we have taken that information seriously?
What happened to the Soviet Empire, the British Empire and all the empires throughout history is beginning to happen to America. It is simply a historical rule to which the American Empire is also subject.
Obama has hastened the pace of this process but he did not create it. Thus, his decline will not prevent it. The very fact that the majority of Americans so enthusiastically voted for the man whose entire being symbolizes the complete opposite of the values that brought about the establishment of the United States, indicates the deep rot that has spread through American society. The inevitable economic collapse that Obama is inflicting upon America is nothing more than a symptom of the moral rot.
Significant sections of the American population are still motivated by the values of America's founding fathers. But they have no real ability to stop the crumbling of their society. The Hispanic immigration on the one hand and the Islamic pressure on the other have forced America to face a challenge that it cannot overcome. "Multi-culturalism has failed," explained Angela Merkel. In America, multi-culturalism is in the Oval Office.
In these very days, when America is pulling out of Iraq with its tail between its legs and when it is already clear that it will suffer a similar defeat in Afghanistan, we can say that Bin Laden defeated Bush - in a big way. He defeated Bush, which just goes to show that the defeat is not Democratic or Republican. The defeat is American, the product of values that cannot face conflict with a religion or an enemy that is not a nation-state.
Where is Israel in this state of affairs? Clearly, nobody in Israel's Foreign Ministry, in its plush universities, in Israeli politics or its generously-funded think tanks is even attempting to think about what will happen when we wake up one morning and America will simply not be there. For them, this would be tantamount to a religious person considering the ludicrous possibility that there is no G-d.
But that is exactly what will happen. First, America will not be there for Israel. And then it will not be there at all. It will collapse or turn into something reminiscent of Argentina.
All the important institutions that are supposed to warn us of this eventuality will fail miserably. That's how it is with institutions. By their very nature, they cannot think out of the box. They will scoff at the type of article that you are reading now, just like they scoffed at everyone who warned that rockets would be flying into Ashkelon. Afterwards they will explain why they were right nevertheless or they will ignore their failure. The people who were paid fat salaries to prepare us for the new reality - and instead left us off-guard and helpless - will write glorious autobiographies and run for the Knesset.
So, despite all the warning signs, America's collapse will catch us completely by surprise. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, like the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is impossible to know when it will happen. But one way or another it will happen - and Israel should plan ahead and free itself now of its dependence on America.
How will we manage without the American veto in the UN Security Council? Maybe we should pre-empt that problem and simply resign from the UN? Don't we have other strategic allies?
How do we fight without American weapons? Has anybody thought of the fact that in any case, we will not have American spare parts after a certain point? Did the recent F-35 deal take that into account?
In other words, instead of beginning to free ourselves from the sinking Titanic, we have added another rope that ties us to it. Simply because our pragmatism leaves no room for strategic thinking.
November 8, 2010
On Kahane anniversary, Ben-Ari remembers his rabbi
By GIL HOFFMAN
11/05/2010 03:53
In interview with the 'Post', National Union MK says Lieberman no disciple of Kahane, Obama a "hostile enemy of Israel and the Jewish people."
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman understands some of former MK Meir Kahane’s concerns, but he is emphatically not the successor of the right-wing firebrand who was murdered 20 years ago Friday, National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari told The Jerusalem Post in an interview marking the anniversary.
Ben-Ari last year became the first outspoken follower of Kahane to get elected since the Kach Party was banned, as racist, from running for reelection in 1988. He blasted Lieberman for sharing some of the views of opposition leader Tzipi Livni on the need to divide Israel due to a demographic threat.
RELATED:
Ben-Ari asks UN to probe US for war crimes
Police use stun grenades to disperse Umm el-Fahm protest
“Lieberman understands the problem [with Israeli Arabs] and the electoral asset of [Kahane’s] viewpoint,” Ben-Ari said. “Polls showed Kach winning at least six seats in 1988 when it was not allowed to run. But Lieberman’s solutions are not far from Livni’s on the demographic issue. He is not a follower of the rabbi. He talks about exchanging territory. Kahane wouldn’t even say what [National Union MK Arye] Eldad does – that Jordan is Palestine. All of Jordan is part of the Land of Israel.”
Kahane was shot dead in New York by El-Sayyid Nosair. He gained fame for encouraging Jews to defend themselves from New York street thugs, for being one of the leaders of the effort to free Soviet Jewry, and then for pushing for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel in his four tumultuous years in the Knesset from 1984 to 1988.
Ben-Ari, 47, a former yeshiva teacher with a PhD in Land of Israel Studies, caused a stir two weeks ago when he wrote United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urging him to form a probe to investigate the actions of the American military in Iraq that the WikiLeaks website alleged were war crimes.
Ben-Ari said Kahane should be remembered as a different kind of leader, one who, unlike those who saw Israel as a shelter, believed Israel existed to spread the message that God rules the world and that Jews must reiterate that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.
“This impacts everything we do,” Ben-Ari said. “For example, the letter to the UN secretary-general.
Some say, how can we fight the US when it’s so big? Kahane said God is great and America is nothing. I don’t mean to mock or harm the US, but we aren’t the slave of any empire.”
Ben-Ari recalled Kahane’s emphasis on Jewish brotherhood, noting that he had grown up with Holocaust consciousness and spoken about “never again.” He said Kahane had made a point of wearing a kippa in places that others wouldn’t in Brooklyn and had not been afraid to take on the USSR – “again, little old him against a supposedly mighty empire.”
Ben-Ari said he had wanted to make a point of attending the memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin at the Knesset in order to send a message that even though Kahane obviously would have opposed everything Rabin did, he did not support killing Jews. But Ben-Ari missed the ceremony because his daughter was born the day before.
The MK called US President Barack Obama “a hostile enemy of Israel and the Jewish people” and said that if due to Obama’s pressure, Netanyahu renewed the freeze in Judea and Samaria, his party would protest and put pressure on Lieberman and Habayit Hayehudi to leave the coalition.
Regarding Iran, Ben-Ari said he believed Israel should ignore the Iranian threat, because it was the world’s problem, and stop talking about it so much.
“If we pay attention to the barking dog, it will bark more, but if the world realizes it’s not for us, maybe they will finally take action against Iran,” he said.
11/05/2010 03:53
In interview with the 'Post', National Union MK says Lieberman no disciple of Kahane, Obama a "hostile enemy of Israel and the Jewish people."
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman understands some of former MK Meir Kahane’s concerns, but he is emphatically not the successor of the right-wing firebrand who was murdered 20 years ago Friday, National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari told The Jerusalem Post in an interview marking the anniversary.
Ben-Ari last year became the first outspoken follower of Kahane to get elected since the Kach Party was banned, as racist, from running for reelection in 1988. He blasted Lieberman for sharing some of the views of opposition leader Tzipi Livni on the need to divide Israel due to a demographic threat.
RELATED:
Ben-Ari asks UN to probe US for war crimes
Police use stun grenades to disperse Umm el-Fahm protest
“Lieberman understands the problem [with Israeli Arabs] and the electoral asset of [Kahane’s] viewpoint,” Ben-Ari said. “Polls showed Kach winning at least six seats in 1988 when it was not allowed to run. But Lieberman’s solutions are not far from Livni’s on the demographic issue. He is not a follower of the rabbi. He talks about exchanging territory. Kahane wouldn’t even say what [National Union MK Arye] Eldad does – that Jordan is Palestine. All of Jordan is part of the Land of Israel.”
Kahane was shot dead in New York by El-Sayyid Nosair. He gained fame for encouraging Jews to defend themselves from New York street thugs, for being one of the leaders of the effort to free Soviet Jewry, and then for pushing for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel in his four tumultuous years in the Knesset from 1984 to 1988.
Ben-Ari, 47, a former yeshiva teacher with a PhD in Land of Israel Studies, caused a stir two weeks ago when he wrote United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urging him to form a probe to investigate the actions of the American military in Iraq that the WikiLeaks website alleged were war crimes.
Ben-Ari said Kahane should be remembered as a different kind of leader, one who, unlike those who saw Israel as a shelter, believed Israel existed to spread the message that God rules the world and that Jews must reiterate that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.
“This impacts everything we do,” Ben-Ari said. “For example, the letter to the UN secretary-general.
Some say, how can we fight the US when it’s so big? Kahane said God is great and America is nothing. I don’t mean to mock or harm the US, but we aren’t the slave of any empire.”
Ben-Ari recalled Kahane’s emphasis on Jewish brotherhood, noting that he had grown up with Holocaust consciousness and spoken about “never again.” He said Kahane had made a point of wearing a kippa in places that others wouldn’t in Brooklyn and had not been afraid to take on the USSR – “again, little old him against a supposedly mighty empire.”
Ben-Ari said he had wanted to make a point of attending the memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin at the Knesset in order to send a message that even though Kahane obviously would have opposed everything Rabin did, he did not support killing Jews. But Ben-Ari missed the ceremony because his daughter was born the day before.
The MK called US President Barack Obama “a hostile enemy of Israel and the Jewish people” and said that if due to Obama’s pressure, Netanyahu renewed the freeze in Judea and Samaria, his party would protest and put pressure on Lieberman and Habayit Hayehudi to leave the coalition.
Regarding Iran, Ben-Ari said he believed Israel should ignore the Iranian threat, because it was the world’s problem, and stop talking about it so much.
“If we pay attention to the barking dog, it will bark more, but if the world realizes it’s not for us, maybe they will finally take action against Iran,” he said.
November 7, 2010
Rabbi Meir Kahane’s last speech urging American Jews to make emergency Aliyah
Rabbi Meir Kahane’s last speech urging American Jews to make emergency Aliyah (excerpts of speech) November 5, 1990 – Cheshvan, 18, 5751
I was born in this country, and I can’t recall ever, in my life, as much open and vicious Jew-hatred as I have seen in our time right now, in this country. I travel around from city to city, and in every city Jews tell me it is unbearable. Attacks upon synagogues, attacks upon Jews, all of which are of course buried. Because the synagogue doesn’t want it to be know. The ADL wants to report “there were 55 incidents this year in the United States”, when actually, there were 55 incidents in one hour in the United States. On radio programs which I am on – the telephone calls – open, open (anti-Semitism).
Two Reasons for Increased Anti-Semitism
What has happened? What has happened in natural terms? Of course, in divine terms, the Almighty is ending it for us. But what is happening in natural terms? Two basic changes have taken place in this country over the last twenty years. It began slowly, now it is reaching its crescendo. We have seen the death of what I call the “Auschwitz syndrome”. What is the “Auschwitz syndrome”? After World War II, it was hard to be an anti-Semite, even for an anti-Semite. It was just difficult. And then the years passed – ten years, twenty years, twenty-five years, thirty years, and a generation arose which was not born at that time. And the “Auschwitz syndrome” began to fade away, and the guilt began to fade away. No matter how many Holocaust programs were shown on television, every year they had less and less impact. Indeed, they reach a point whereby they encourage anti-Semitism, whereupon the anti-Semite says: “ Hey, you know, I know Jews, and the Nazis, and they were probably right.” That’s what happens today. It fades away. And to help things along, there was the rise of a strong Israel. Suddenly, Israel was winning. And that allowed the anti-Semite to cut the albatross. Now it was OK. You see, the Jew are Nazis, and they persecute the Palestinians, and now it was OK. So the “Auschwitz syndrome” faded, and it’s gone for all practical purposes. And you hear people speak about the holocaust that the Israelis are perpetrating upon the Palestinians. A Holocaust…So all the Israelis and all the Jews who ever called me a Nazi and didn’t realize that when you call a Jew a Nazi, you cheapen the Holocaust. And you cheapen the concept of Nazi, which is a very unique thing. And by you calling a second Jew a Nazi, what you are telling the world is” Jews can also be Nazis. Foolish people and tiny dwarfs and pygmies, grasshoppers.
So the “Auschwitz syndrome” is gone. And another thing has happened. After World War II, and until perhaps ten years ago, the American people lived in an economic luxury such as we have not seen ever in world history. No Roman emperor lived as well as the average American did from World War II on, until fairly recently. Life was good. And when life is good, the anti-Semite hates Jews quietly. It’s not a big deal to him. He hates Jews, but he’s too interested in the Monday night football game. I myself am amazed that so many people are here tonight that don’t want to see the Giants massacre the Colts…
The Economic Crises
So when times are good and he has his job, he has his beer and he has his TV set, he has everything – he hates Jews, but it’s not that important to him. But as the economic sands of time begin to run out, and as things get bad and they get worse and suddenly there is a chill, there is a fear. I can sense a fear in this country – people are afraid of what is going to happen, and they have every right to fear it. This is a country which is on the verge of economic horror, horror. In two years they expect the national debt to go from 3.7 trillion to 5 trillion dollars, so they work for months and months – this fiasco between Congress and this administration – and they say, “we are going to cut 500 million dollars in five years”. Five years! It is a joke – It’s a drop in the bucket. This is a country which is dying because the thing that was saving it was the fact that the Japanese are buying Rockefeller Center, Rockefeller Plaza – don’t be angry. If they stopped buying it, no one is going to cover the national debt. And they are stopping.
The dollar is a weak dollar today. Can you imagine: The Israeli shekel has held its own against the dollar now for a year. Don’t clap! It doesn’t mean that the Israeli shekel is strong. The shekel is weak; the dollar is just as weak. The Japanese don’t want dollars anymore, they want German marks. And they’re investing now in South Korea, Thailand, Singapore. The banks here are shaking, they’re tottering. In their greed, in the 1960’s and 70’s, they gave loans to anybody. The Congo came – you want money, take the money. Mexico came – take 100 million dollars – take, take it, take. Suddenly, the Congo couldn’t pay back. If that’s what a banker is…did he expect the Congo to ever pay back in total? So hundreds of millions of bad loans are being held by major banks: Chase Manhattan, Citicorp – and they are in deep, deep trouble today. And on top of that, suddenly the real estate market has collapsed and they are now holding several more hundred million dollars of bad mortgages. That’s the tragedy. That’s why suddenly, there’s a hurry talk bout Chase merging with City.
There’s a myth that your money is insured for $100,000. If the FDIC had 60 cents for every hundred dollars that you have, I’ll swim back to Israel. There is a myth that they are going to bail out the Savings & Loan with 40 billion dollars. If they can make it with less than half a trillion, it will be a miracle.
So for years, the new economists said, “Don’t worry about deficits, it doesn’t matter. Deficits don’t matter? I know that when my bank account is in deficit, it matters to me. The bank calls me up and says, “Rav Kahane, we have a little problem. Would you like to come and cover it?” A city can go a little deeper into debt than I can, and a state deeper yet, and a country can go a little deeper yet; but, in the end you have to pay the piper. So, America has lived beyond its means – extra credit, credit cards – and give anybody credit, give kids credit cards – anybody. Now it’s time to pay the piper, there is no money, there is no money. And should the economic collapse come it is the Jew who will be blamed. It is the Jew. You can hear it already. You can small it in the air.
The Racial tension – In all Colors
I was on a radio program in Chicago. Every single caller blamed the Gulf oil crisis on the Jews. Every single call. What you have now is the getting together of all these crises – the economic crisis, the racial crisis – and there is a serious racial crisis in the country. It’s a serious one. It is a dangerous one. Whites hate Blacks and Blacks hate Whites and they both hate Jews. It is a terrible, terrible thing. It’s not just Whites and Blacks. Now in the West, it’s the Hispanics and the Anglos – tremendous crises, which only proves all the more the myth of the melting pot. Uh nechtiga tag –what melting pot? A melting pot is fine until there is a terrible crisis and then two “objects’ occupy the same job at the same time. That’s a law of physics, which I’ve changed a bit…
So it’s not an accident that Jesse Helms is now putting on TV ads talking about the unfairness of quotas. Quotas are unfair. Of course, that is his trump card. People are angry about quotas and affirmative action, etc. And Blacks are angry. You think that Blacks have no argument? You think they are all bad? – that everything the Blacks do is wrong? You think that Bob Grant is your kind of guy? G-d forbid! This Jew-hating fascist type. That he says something good many, many times –you’re right. You think that bad people don’t often say correct things? Of course they do – but watch him, watch him and be careful of such people! People who are anti-Black will always be anti-Jewish too. One doesn’t have to love Farrakhan or Jesse Jackson to realize that he should be careful of racism of all kinds – White and Black – be careful, because we get stuck in the middle. Because the Whites and Blacks hate us both.
The Pre-War Depression: Not a Criteria
We have a serious problem – the economic crisis cannot be averted. There is no way. This country is in for terrible, terrible times. People tell me in the depression it was also bad. It’s true. But first of all, who knows what would have happened in this country if World War II had not ended the depression? If you think that Roosevelt ended it, you don’t know history. World War II ended it. It gave jobs finally, but more to the point, it was a different era back then. The American people at that time were a much stronger people in character. Today, after 40-50 years of good life and soft life, and the materialistic life, people are into themselves. Unbelievable ego. Everything is me, me – my life, my body, my-me, my-mine. People are incapable today of making sacrifices and that’s the great, great difference between today and what happened in the depression. The person who is fairly poor and gets poorer – not so terrible. The person who has it and lost it becomes a wild animal, a raging animal. He’ll not accept it and will look for a scapegoat. He’ll look for some target to blame. We Jews are the most visible, the most highly visible in terms of power, in terms of money. Of course, Wasps have more money than Jews have. Certainly, Jews are not into U.S. Steel and banking and so on, and the real, real money is not Jewish money, but that doesn’t matter because Jews are in those professions that are most visible.
How to Gauge anti-Semitism: Go to a Bar
So in the bars, it sits the jealousy and the envy of the Jews which leads to hate. The tragedy as I’ve said a million times is that the average Jewish leader in this country has no idea what people say ago about Jews in bars, because the average Jew doesn’t go into a bar – and he should; he should be compelled to go into a bar. Every rabbi before getting “smicha”, before being ordained, should be compelled to go into a bar and find out what the real world is like. It isn’t a joke. I’m serious. To hide in some little ghetto, you never know what the world is. They hate us with a passion out there, with a virulence which is frightening to see and to hear. On every radio program I go on, I hear, “why should we give you guys three billion dollars a year”? Anytime some fellow from the Israeli consulate is asked that question, he comes up with the answer, “well, we help you too, etc.” Baloney! The only way to get rid of that question is to answer as I do, “I don’t want the money! I want Israel to be a free enterprise state and allow private enterprise to flourish and then we don’t want your money, I don’t want your charity.” So, that of course gets rid of the question, but it doesn’t get rid of the anti-Semite. He’ll go home mutter in his beer and pretzels. He’s still there. He’s still there.
Role of the Prophet – To See It and say It
The rabbis tell us that G-d told Moses and Aaron. “I’ll make you Jewish leaders on one condition that if they throw stones at you, you’ll accept it.” Rather to be pelted with stones and not with dollars. That’s what a Jewish leader has to be! Say the bitter truth, even though they won’t like you. They won’t like you; they’ll attack you, but tell the Jews the truth if you love them. If you love Jews, tell them the things which will make them angry, but which can save their lives. That’s what you have to do! Think carefully about what I’m saying, and that is why we created this group called ZEERO, Zionist Emergency Evacuation Rescue Organization. It’s a name that provokes. And we hope that as we spread this idea it will provoke Jewish leaders to attack so we can debate the controversy that arises. People will say he’s right; he’s wrong, and so on. Of course, this is probably the worst thing you can ever tell any Jewish leader, any Federation leader – that he should leave here, and go to Israel. What’ill do there? .
The rabbis say: “Who is wise? He who sees the future”. It’s no big deal to see “today.” A Jewish leader has to see tomorrow.
Living in Israel – Difficult; Living Elsewhere – Impossible
It is coming here! It is coming here! Friday night I spoke in Brooklyn in shul, and I had to walk through Bensonhurst, a white neighborhood – nice people, because they’re white…Watching the people, the kids, you can smell the violence, you can see the hate, you can see the envy – frustrated, bored, looking for action. You can see it. Those are the potential mobs. And G-d forbid, we will see it. So ZEERO is a very serious project of Kach, and I mean a serious one. And I know how hard it is to go to Israel – it is really hard. Hard to make a living. My son goes into the army every single year. It’s dangerous and so on. All of it is true. Everything that’s all true. That’s all true. It’s hard to live in Israel, but it will be impossible to live here, and if we go to Israel, at least there we can change the country. Of course we can change it and make it better and make it tremendous and make it safe. Of curse we can do that if we have the power in the government, but here there is nothing you can do to change it, it’s out of our hands. We are a minority and we are strangers here. We’re stranger in this land, no matter how many years we’ve been here.
It’s not an accident that so few German Jews survived the camps. The Polish Jew did better. Why? Because the Polish Jew wasn’t surprised. It didn’t shock him that gentiles could behave like this. It didn’t surprise him, so he wasn’t shattered inside, he wasn’t’ broken. But the German Jew was psychologically shattered. How could this be? I’m a German. I’m a German. How could it be? How can you do this to me? The Pole knew he was a Jew. The German was broken because his whole illusion was shattered. And that’s how the American Jew lives. “I’m an American”. It’s the gentile who will teach you so quickly that you’re a Jew.
It’s no just in the bars, in the working class bars the anti-Semitism that you see. When you see the news media and their attitude towards Israel; it’s not anti-Israel – it’s anti-Semitism. Do you know why they hate Jews? Because among intellectuals there is a jealousy of Jews. When Truman Capote, the famous author, a sickness, a disease who represents all that is sick about Western culture – when he spoke about the publishing business being a Jewish mafia – you can see the jealousy. [He writes] how Jews are over represented in publishing, in broadcast, in movies, etc. Of course it’s so – they have talent. Untalented people don’t like to think it is because of talent. They like to think they run it because their friends, their uncles, their aunts and so on and so forth. The hate runs across the board. You can see Peter Jennings’ anti-Semitism. You can see it! And when I hold press conferences in Israel and I see them sitting around, you can watch them all – the hatred.
November 5, 2010
FIRST US TARGETED ASSASSINATION IN GAZA PRE-EMPTS NEXT AL QAEDA OFFENSIVE
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 4, 2010, 1:18 PM (GMT+02:00)
A missile fired from an American warship in the Mediterranean hit the car in which Muhammad Jamal A-Namnam, 27, was driving in the heart of Gaza City Wednesday, Nov. 3 and killed him, debkafile's exclusive counter-terror sources report. Namnam was an operational commander of the Army of Islam, Al-Qaeda's Palestinian cell in the Gaza Strip. He was on a mission on behalf of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - AQAP to plan, organize and execute the next wave of terrorist attacks on US targets after last week's air package bomb plot.
According to our sources, the Palestinian cell members were planning to infiltrate northern Sinai from the Gaza strip over the coming weekend and strike American personnel serving with the Multinational Force and Observers Organization - MFO, which is under American command and is stationed at North Camp, El Gorah, 37 kilometers southeast of El-Arish.
In a coordinated operation, Al Qaeda fighters hiding up in the mountains of central Sinai were to have attacked US Marines and Air Force troops stationed at the South Camp in Naama Bay, Sharm el Sheikh.
The twin attacks were scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 7, or the following day.
The twin attacks were scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 7, or the following day.
Our sources say that, just as US-Saudi intelligence cooperation led to the interception of package bombs from Yemen last week, so too US intelligence-sharing with Egypt and Israel foiled a major Al-Qaeda terrorist attack on American personnel in Sinai. Egyptian intelligence picked up on Namnam's scouting forays of US forces and discovered him caching weapons and explosives ready for the Al Qaeda strike force's arrival from Gaza.
Israeli intelligence tracked Namnam's movements in Gaza City. It is quite likely, said a high-ranking Western military source in the Middle East, Thursday, Nov. 4, that the Israelis pinpointed Namnam for targeting by the US ship-borne missile that killed him.
Hamas security sources in Gaza now suspect that Israel had its own reasons for permitting new cars to be imported to the Gaza Strip for the first time in two years, knowing that they would be commandeered for the personal use of the chiefs of armed organizations, including Namnam. They believe Israel planted tracking devices in those vehicles.
The Palestinian sources also say that the blast which killed the Army of Islam man was unusually powerful and reverberated through most of the enclave. Witnesses denied sighting Israeli UAVs or other aircraft over the skies of Gaza.
The Al Qaeda operative's death by a US missile is the first American targeted assassination in the Gaza Strip against an Al Qaeda target. Up until now, US missions of this kind took place in Iraq, Yemen and Somalia.
debkafile's military sources report that, even after the abrupt passing of Al Qaeda's operational commander in the Gaza Strip, the two MFO camps in Sinai remain on high terror alert. The Al Qaeda cell or cells assigned to hit the South Camp in Sharm el Sheikh are still at large, the objects of a massive manhunt by Egyptian forces. It is also feared that Namnam's own cells could split and sections head out to North Camp in northern Sinai to complete his mission.
November 4, 2010
Feiglin on Freedom, Darwin, Obama and Jewish Identity
This week, Moshe Feiglin was invited to speak at two major Likud meetings. The first was a gathering to support Likud Central Committee member, Dr. Gabi Avital, who was dismissed from his position as Head Scientist of the Ministry of Education after he suggested expanding mandatory science studies to include theories for creation other than Darwin's evolution theory. The second gathering was a "Tea Party" organized by former Likud MK Michael Kleiner under the heading: Saying No to Obama. Both gatherings were well-attended by major Likud figures and commanded much media attention. The following is a summary of Moshe Feiglin's words at these two gatherings. -
In Support of Dr. Avital
The fundamental questions behind Dr. Avital's dismissal are: Is the State of Israel a free state? Is it a state of liberty and freedom of thought? As a believing man, I do not feel threatened by the evolution theory for two reasons: For one, it is clear to me that aside from kindergarteners, nobody else can really learn the story of Creation on its simple level. On the other hand, Darwin's theory is no more than a theory that must be able to withstand the critique of common sense.
To me, for example, it is not clear where exactly in the Darwinist chain of development man cultivated the ability to differentiate between good and bad. In other words, from what animal, specifically, did we inherit morality? Obviously, Darwin's theory cannot explain that and actually - under the surface - claims that there is no such thing. That is the secret of the appeal that Darwin has had for humanity ever since it was introduced. It frees man of the chains of morality. What fun to be cultured monkeys, free of any limits or moral concerns.
There were those who took Darwin's theory to its ultimate conclusion and claimed that there really is no such thing as morality. It is all just a fabrication of the elites, they claimed, based on personal interest. From there, the path to the racial doctrine of the Nazis was short.
The enlightened witch hunt organized against Dr. Avital could not have been written better by George Orwell, himself. It was the thought police at their finest.
It would be worthwhile for the enlightened tyranny that forcibly sealed its ears and scurried to fire the scientist who merely suggested that students learn additional theories - to remember that there is no Nazism without Darwinism. This does not mean that Darwinism should be censored. On the contrary, it is important to learn as much as possible. But in this case, the religious fanaticism, darkness and threat hovering over man's liberty and freedom of thought do not emanate from the dismissed, but rather from the dismissers.
Moshe Feiglin's Remarks at Michael Kleiner's Tea Party
The Boston Tea Party was a major milestone on the way to the independence of the American colonies. Let us pray that this small tea party will also be a milestone on the way to an independent Israel.
In order to say no to Obama, we have to be able to say yes to ourselves. For the past ten years, Manhigut Yehudit has been explaining that the State of Israel must be a truly Jewish state. We asserted that the loss of our Jewish identity is the main cause of our diplomatic collapse. It was difficult for people to listen. It is much easier to declare that we are a Jewish state but in practice to disengage from any practical obligation toward our Jewish essence. It is more comfortable to forget our Jewish identity and to build an imitation of other nations; the Singapore of the Middle East, in the words of Peres.
We didn't want to hear this message from Manhigut Yehudit - so now we are hearing it from Abu Mazen and from more and more nations of the world that do not accept the right of self definition of the Jewish nation. Currently, Israel recognizes the "Palestinian" nation and its right to a state in the heart of the Land of Israel, but this non-nation does not recognize the Jewish nation and is not willing to accept Jewish rights for any type of sovereignty in the Land of Israel - or in any other place on the face of the earth.
But how can we complain about Abu Mazen for not recognizing Israel as a Jewish state when we have abandoned the holiest place for the Jewish Nation - the Temple Mount - to control of the Moslem wakf? How can we complain about Abu Mazen when we allow the remnants of the first and second Temples to be strewn about on the Temple Mount as so much rubbish? If we are complacent when our state turns its back on the foundations of our national identity, what can we expect from the nations of the world?
If we want to say no to Obama, we must first say yes - to a truly Jewish state.
November 3, 2010
Anti-Gay, Xtian, Feminist....
The story, as reported by Israel21c:
...Israel's party capital won praise for its tolerant attitudes and thriving gay culture and Lonely Planet also says "Thanks to its university and museums, it is also the greenhouse for Israel's growing art, film and music scenes."
"Scratch underneath the surface and Tel Aviv, or TLV, reveals itself as a truly diverse 21st-century Mediterranean hub. By far the most international city in Israel, Tel Aviv is also home to a large gay community, a kind of San Francisco in the Middle East," Lonely Planet says.
This summer, the prestigious National Geographic Magazine named Tel Aviv as one of the world's top ten beach cities, dubbing it "Miami Beach on the Med." It was also voted the third best city in Africa and the Middle East by the New York-based Travel + Leisure Magazine; one of the world's top "Party Cities" by Forbes Magazine and the Lonely Planet Travel Guide; and was included in the Louis Vuitton 2010 European Cities Guide.
November 2, 2010
Double Standard Watch: Moonbats against Israel - Alan M. Dershowitz
It must be the summer heat, but the moonbats seem to be loonier than ever when it comes to Israel and Jews.
By - Alan M. Dershowitz
Oliver Stone urges us to see the positive side of Hitler and Ahmadinejad, while imitating his two heroes by railing against Jewish control of the media. (To his credit, Stone has apologized for his bigoted statements, but Meg Ryan has refused to apologize for canceling a scheduled visit to the Jerusalem Film Festival, even after learning that the festival has promoted pro-Palestinian and pro-peace films for years.) Doctors Without Borders suddenly erects borders when it comes to Israeli doctors who flew to the Congo to treat 50 local villagers who had been severely burned. The Israeli volunteers worked around the clock, treated the burn victims and trained local doctors to perform skin grafts, and donated tons of medical equipment. But the bigoted Doctors Without Borders refused to work with them and treated them "as though we were occupiers."
This should not surprise people who have been following Doctors Without Borders over the years. Dr. Marie Pierre Allie, President of the french branch of the organization, said that Israel's self defense actions in Gaza were actually worse than the Darfur genocide in the Sudan. Only a blind moonbat could even make such a comparison! As one critic put it well, these are doctors with borders but without scruples.
J Street, a leftist organization that pretends to be pro Israel, puts out a television ad suggesting that I am against peace between Israel and the Arabs and that I agree with Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin in opposing the two state solution and supporting expansion of civilian settlements. When told that this was a lie, the head of J Street publicly acknowledged that, "He [Dershowitz] does support the notion of a two-state solution," but he has kept his mendacious ad unchanged.
Radical leftists, who support the expansion of rape law to cover obtaining sex by fraud, rail against Israel when Israel actually enacts such a law and applies it. An Israeli court sentenced a married Arab man to several months in prison for having sex with a woman after claiming that he was an unmarried Jew interested in marrying her. The Israeli courts had previously applied this law to Jewish men who had perpetrated comparable frauds. Though I personally think these sex-fraud law are seriously misguided (except in extreme cases such as lying about AIDS), I find it hypocritical in the extreme for radical leftists, who generally favor such laws, to use them as a club against the Jewish state and only the Jewish state.
A fifth-rate French university has canceled a writer's conference that was supposed to deal with "writing today in the Mediterranean Region: exchanges and tensions," because some unnamed participants refused to take part in a dialogue that included an Israeli Jewish author. This university, Provence Aix Marseille, would have been lucky to attract any accomplished Israeli authors, but the conference could not go forward because the president of the school, to his credit, would not allow a conference to be held by bigots who would exclude others on the ground of religion or national origin.
There are moonbats on the other side as well. A racist Israeli rabbi wrote a book authorizing the killing of non Jews, but not of Jews, who endanger the state of Israel. The Israeli government has indicted him for racial incitement. And other moonbat rabbis are trying to take control over all conversions to Judaism and declare people who are converted by conservative or reform rabbis to be non Jewish. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, opposes any conversion rules that would divide and alienate Jews around the world, but some rabbis insist on claiming a monopoly on deciding who is and who is not a Jew.
I'm afraid that the summer heat alone does not explain these moonbats. Absurdly extremist views regarding Israel and the Jewish people seem to rear their ugly heads throughout the year, regardless of the temperature. And speaking of temperature, Claire Short, the former Secretary of State for International Development in the UK Labour Government, has declared that Israel will cause the end of the human race. No, she was not relying on the Biblical Apocalypse, but rather on the absurd claim that because the Jewish nation diverts the world's attention from the problem of global warming, it is causing a climate apocalypse. Not China, the United States or other large polluters, but tiny Israel, which is one of the most environmentally conscious nations in the world, is now being blamed for global warming by this moonbat.
How should rational people deal with these kinds of brain warp? No rational arguments, no hard facts, no appeals to truth seem to affect the biases of these extremists. Nonetheless, all people of good will must keep fighting for truth and rationality, even - perhaps especially - when it comes to the Jewish state and the Jewish people.
By - Alan M. Dershowitz
Oliver Stone urges us to see the positive side of Hitler and Ahmadinejad, while imitating his two heroes by railing against Jewish control of the media. (To his credit, Stone has apologized for his bigoted statements, but Meg Ryan has refused to apologize for canceling a scheduled visit to the Jerusalem Film Festival, even after learning that the festival has promoted pro-Palestinian and pro-peace films for years.) Doctors Without Borders suddenly erects borders when it comes to Israeli doctors who flew to the Congo to treat 50 local villagers who had been severely burned. The Israeli volunteers worked around the clock, treated the burn victims and trained local doctors to perform skin grafts, and donated tons of medical equipment. But the bigoted Doctors Without Borders refused to work with them and treated them "as though we were occupiers."
This should not surprise people who have been following Doctors Without Borders over the years. Dr. Marie Pierre Allie, President of the french branch of the organization, said that Israel's self defense actions in Gaza were actually worse than the Darfur genocide in the Sudan. Only a blind moonbat could even make such a comparison! As one critic put it well, these are doctors with borders but without scruples.
J Street, a leftist organization that pretends to be pro Israel, puts out a television ad suggesting that I am against peace between Israel and the Arabs and that I agree with Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin in opposing the two state solution and supporting expansion of civilian settlements. When told that this was a lie, the head of J Street publicly acknowledged that, "He [Dershowitz] does support the notion of a two-state solution," but he has kept his mendacious ad unchanged.
Radical leftists, who support the expansion of rape law to cover obtaining sex by fraud, rail against Israel when Israel actually enacts such a law and applies it. An Israeli court sentenced a married Arab man to several months in prison for having sex with a woman after claiming that he was an unmarried Jew interested in marrying her. The Israeli courts had previously applied this law to Jewish men who had perpetrated comparable frauds. Though I personally think these sex-fraud law are seriously misguided (except in extreme cases such as lying about AIDS), I find it hypocritical in the extreme for radical leftists, who generally favor such laws, to use them as a club against the Jewish state and only the Jewish state.
A fifth-rate French university has canceled a writer's conference that was supposed to deal with "writing today in the Mediterranean Region: exchanges and tensions," because some unnamed participants refused to take part in a dialogue that included an Israeli Jewish author. This university, Provence Aix Marseille, would have been lucky to attract any accomplished Israeli authors, but the conference could not go forward because the president of the school, to his credit, would not allow a conference to be held by bigots who would exclude others on the ground of religion or national origin.
There are moonbats on the other side as well. A racist Israeli rabbi wrote a book authorizing the killing of non Jews, but not of Jews, who endanger the state of Israel. The Israeli government has indicted him for racial incitement. And other moonbat rabbis are trying to take control over all conversions to Judaism and declare people who are converted by conservative or reform rabbis to be non Jewish. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, opposes any conversion rules that would divide and alienate Jews around the world, but some rabbis insist on claiming a monopoly on deciding who is and who is not a Jew.
I'm afraid that the summer heat alone does not explain these moonbats. Absurdly extremist views regarding Israel and the Jewish people seem to rear their ugly heads throughout the year, regardless of the temperature. And speaking of temperature, Claire Short, the former Secretary of State for International Development in the UK Labour Government, has declared that Israel will cause the end of the human race. No, she was not relying on the Biblical Apocalypse, but rather on the absurd claim that because the Jewish nation diverts the world's attention from the problem of global warming, it is causing a climate apocalypse. Not China, the United States or other large polluters, but tiny Israel, which is one of the most environmentally conscious nations in the world, is now being blamed for global warming by this moonbat.
How should rational people deal with these kinds of brain warp? No rational arguments, no hard facts, no appeals to truth seem to affect the biases of these extremists. Nonetheless, all people of good will must keep fighting for truth and rationality, even - perhaps especially - when it comes to the Jewish state and the Jewish people.
November 1, 2010
Zionism's ZOA Pushes to Make all Campus Critisism of Israel Illegal
(CHICAGO) - What effect will Tuesday’s midterm elections have on US-Israel relations?
Let us count the ways, starting with the impact of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on American college and university campuses.
A new and much more conservative Congress will bring us changes we don’t want to believe in. A recent news release from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) offers a clue on what we can expect.
Morton Klein, ZOA’s director (pictured above), was downright giddy over what he terms a major victory in his six year fight to expand the US Civil Rights anti-bullying provision.
What prompted Klein’s giddiness was a statement issued this week by US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who announced that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act now includes new guidelines that will bring increased protection for disabled and LGBT students from bullying and discrimination.
Klein’s ZOA organization may also be concerned with other groups affected by the new provisions, but to ZOA the real benefit comes to the state of Israel.
The ZOA descrubes itself as the oldest and one of the largest pro-Israel organization in the US. Just how pro-Israel is ZOA is evident from the line up of speakers at the group’s Annual Louis B. Brandeis Award Dinner, October 29.
Keynoters were William Kristol, founding editor of the Weekly Standard, regular Fox TV panelist and co-founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel, and Gary Bauer, co-founder of Christians United for Israel and president of American Values. Special remarks at the dinner were delivered by Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Danny Danon.
Just how will tougher provisions in the Civil Rights Act fit Klein’s prime mission to push his Zionist agenda?
In Secretary Arnie Duncan’s announcement, along with protection for LGBT and disabled students, there is now an added category of students who gain protection under Title VI: Members of any religious group that has “shared ethnic characteristics”.
Eyal Mazor warns in a posting on the Jewish Voices for Peace blog, Muzzle Watch, that Title VI’s addition of ”shared ethnic characteristics” should be a concern to anyone concerned about, or working to preserve, the right of students to organize for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel on American campuses.
Let us count the ways, starting with the impact of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on American college and university campuses.
A new and much more conservative Congress will bring us changes we don’t want to believe in. A recent news release from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) offers a clue on what we can expect.
Morton Klein, ZOA’s director (pictured above), was downright giddy over what he terms a major victory in his six year fight to expand the US Civil Rights anti-bullying provision.
What prompted Klein’s giddiness was a statement issued this week by US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who announced that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act now includes new guidelines that will bring increased protection for disabled and LGBT students from bullying and discrimination.
Klein’s ZOA organization may also be concerned with other groups affected by the new provisions, but to ZOA the real benefit comes to the state of Israel.
The ZOA descrubes itself as the oldest and one of the largest pro-Israel organization in the US. Just how pro-Israel is ZOA is evident from the line up of speakers at the group’s Annual Louis B. Brandeis Award Dinner, October 29.
Keynoters were William Kristol, founding editor of the Weekly Standard, regular Fox TV panelist and co-founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel, and Gary Bauer, co-founder of Christians United for Israel and president of American Values. Special remarks at the dinner were delivered by Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Danny Danon.
Just how will tougher provisions in the Civil Rights Act fit Klein’s prime mission to push his Zionist agenda?
In Secretary Arnie Duncan’s announcement, along with protection for LGBT and disabled students, there is now an added category of students who gain protection under Title VI: Members of any religious group that has “shared ethnic characteristics”.
Eyal Mazor warns in a posting on the Jewish Voices for Peace blog, Muzzle Watch, that Title VI’s addition of ”shared ethnic characteristics” should be a concern to anyone concerned about, or working to preserve, the right of students to organize for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel on American campuses.
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