Oh, I just couldn't let this go by!

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Geoffff's Joint.}

MEMRI gives us this:

Iranian Official: The Jews Use Sorcery Against Iran

An Iranian regime official and a website close to the regime have recently accused the Jews of engaging in sorcery and of employing it against Iran.

Mehdi Taeb, who is close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and heads Khamenei's Ammar Base think tank, said in April 2013 that the Jews are the most powerful sorcerers in the world today, and that they have used their powers to attack Iran – for instance by turning the U.S. into their tool and getting it to impose sanctions on Iran, and also through attempts, albeit failed, to interfere in the 2009 elections. He added that while Iran has so far withstood their assaults, they have not yet used the full scope of their powers against it.  

In March 2013, the Rasanews.ir website, which is associated with the religious seminaries in Qom, posted an article about the status of sorcery and numerology in Jewish mysticism. According to this article, Jews cherish the knowledge of sorcery, pass it down from generation to generation, and believe that it can be used to control mankind, nature and even God's decisions.

The following are excerpts from Taeb's statements and from the article on Rasanews.ir. 

Mehdi Taeb, Official Close to Khamenei: 'So Far, [The Jews] Have Not Used The Full [Scope Of] Their Sorcery Against Us'

This deserves a very big Tip 'O the Kippa to the Elder of Ziyon.

Sorcery?

Really?

Sorcery, you say?

I have to tell you guys that writing this blog is not always fun, but then there are moments like this!

Every time that I think that the pure stupidity of anti-Jewish bias must have some limits I see a story like this one.

It's pure, unadulterated nonsense and hate and that's all it is.  Thirteen million Jews, four hundred million Arabs, one point five billion Muslims, and lots and lots of unadulterated nonsense and hatred.

We have to recognize and acknowledge that what the Jews in the Middle East are up against is not some principled resistance against alleged oppression, but oppression, itself.  Israel is a democratic Jewish country that is armed to the teeth primarily because so many of it's neighbors are vicious and irrational bigots who would slaughter those Jews - given half a chance - in a New York minute.

Decade upon decade upon decade Israel seeks reconciliation while maintaining self-defense and decade upon decade upon decade Israel gets spat at and maligned in the most vicious and cruel terms possible.  What makes it so much worse, though, is the fact that our false friends in the west at best think that they can negotiate with these morons and at worst blame us for the hatred toward us.

You want the truth?  You can't handle the truth.  Certainly Barack Obama would not recognize the truth on this matter if it walked up wearing a red dress and kicked him straight in the teeth.

The truth is that the Arab-Muslim world has maligned the Jews for centuries and continues to do so while seeking to murder us there.  The truth is also that the allegedly "enlightened west" tends to think that these murderous racists have a point and often supports them, as does Barack Obama who thinks that we have not searched our souls enough to determine if we want peace for ourselves and our children.

That's the truth.  That's the main truth that applies.

If you honestly think that this is about land, that tiny bit of land, then you are not looking at the conflict in a rational manner.  It's not about the "West Bank."  It's not about Jewish "settlers" in Judea.  It's about widespread and virulent and violent and theocratically-based genocidal Arab-Muslim racism against Jews and it's about a political movement (political Islam) throughout the Middle East that promotes that hatred and that has the support of the president of the United States.

I did not like president Bush the Second because, as a liberal Democrat, I opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Particularly Iraq.  But this does not change the fact that the current American administration, and its weak and stupid Jewish supporters, tend to think that the conflict is your fault.

It isn't.

Latest Times of Israel Post

Mike L.

Rethinking the Conflict

So few people speak obvious truths on this issue, but here’s one. There are about six million Jews with their backs to the Mediterranean surrounded by around four hundred million Arabs who do not want them there and many of those people are willing to use violence to get them to leave.

That is the most basic fundamental fact of the conflict and if you do not grasp that – if that truth is not central to your understanding – then you have no idea what is going on.

Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria stage Cairo sit-in

Mike L.

Written by Nadeen Shaker and published by ahromonline.

Gathering under a banner reading “don’t kill us twice,” Palestinian refugees began their open ended sit-in before the Palestinian embassy in Egypt on Tuesday morning, demanding to be recognised as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Children held signs spelling out the slogan while protestors broke out in various chants, including "down with the Ambassador." In the afternoon, protestors said they were threatened by police, who told them that “thugs” in the neighbourhood might attack them. Embassy bodyguards also secured the perimeters.

Frustrated over being denied refugee status by UNCHR, protestors, who previously lived in refugee camps in Syria, say that they should be given the same rights as Syrian refugees in Egypt.

“They [protestors] cannot register themselves as refugees. They can't put their children in schools. They’re not given healthcare nor do they have any kind of humanitarian services,” Hanine Hassan, organiser and Palestinian human rights activist said at the sit-in.

People often complain - and, yes, they are generally on the progressive-left - that Israel doesn't treat the local Arabs very well.  The truth of the matter, of course, is that no one treats the Arab colonists from Israel worse than the surrounding Arab states.  Those people are not living in refugee camps in Israel, but they are living in poverty and within camps all over the Arab world.  In Lebanon and Syria and Jordan and Egypt the Arabs from Judea and Samaria are treated like dirt.  Israel treats its Arab citizens far better than Arabs are treated anywhere else in the Arab world.  This is to say that Arabs in Israel have far more civil and political liberties than do their relatives anywhere under Arab rule.

Yet western morons scream to the heavens about how mean the
Jews ZionistsIsraelis are.

Syria is a bloody mess.  Egypt is an economic mess.  Saudi Arabia is perhaps the most racist and sexist country on the planet.  Iran is on the verge of getting nuclear weaponry and, yet, people still complain that the major problem in the region is that Jews are living in Judea.

The Obama administration is, if it is not malicious, something akin to worthless.  That whole part of the world is on fire with the notable exception of Israel, yet we still have Obama administration officials rotating through Jerusalem on a constant basis and complaining about Jewish settlements.

I think that it is pure anti-Jewish bigotry.

The real question to ask is why does the Obama administration justify anti-Jewish bigotry by going along with the kind of nonsense that we get from Abbas and the PA which says that any future terrorist, criminal entity that they control must be Judenrein?

What a disgrace.

A Letter From Israel

       elinor        אלינור   

                                                                                                                     

A Day in Jerusalem

I learned decades ago that decades before that, Jerusalemites who were arranging to meet downtown said We’ll meet at the traffic signal, for there was only one in the city. I have been absent from Jerusalem for yet a further decade, so when the opportunity to sign up for a Bus 99 two-hour tour of Jerusalem surfaced, I signed. Bus 99 is a hop-on/hop-off tourist attraction, although this one was privately hired.

The weather this week has been so different from the usual that I left home with opposing accouterments: sun hat, umbrella and sweater.  And the essential element, a book.  My bag was heavy, my spirits light. The bus will be a double-decker and I almost died of the cold on top of one once, in summer, in Copenhagen.  I have not, however, requested to sit up top.

All went well on the bus ride to Jerusalem until the road right up to the city, where the highway was clogged for about half an hour. I hadn’t noticed the lack of progress until the drivers of the three giant trucks that were blocking one lane of traffic were loudly and enthusiastically persuaded to relocate—or else.

In Jerusalem I took the new light-rail train to my old neighbourhood for a delicious lunch with an old friend, then rode it back downtown. It runs into only two areas and they haven't got it right just yet. The ticket machine offers many possibilities if you acquire the information in your chosen language; that took some convincing. I chose the ‘ticket and no receipt’ option; the machine produced a receipt and no ticket. At least if the cops had checked, they couldn't arrest me for not paying.

From downtown I walked cross-town forever until I came to the Dan Panorama Hotel, where Mrs Ditzy, organiser of the Tour of Jerusalem, had directed me to meet the other participants. Not so. The one person at the desk who seemed to know something instructed me to take the bus to the King David Hotel, about half-way back whence I came.  Already exhausted, I thought Hell with that, if I have to go back to the King David I will go directly to the bus with my home-town name on it. No—I'll figure it out. Undaunted, and all that.

The desk clerk offered to ring Mrs Ditzy's office and heard We're only open until 2 on Sunday. It’s three o’clock and they’re not open, he says. OK, I say, but I'm fairly sure it's Monday. A woman, chugging by in Jerusalem’s requisite hat, skirt and sneakers, hears us talking and asks if she can help. I snivel out a remarkably obtuse sentence.  Hold your anguish, says she, I'm taking that tour too and it starts right across the street. So why are you in this hotel? I like the toilets.  Understood.  She ushers me across a hugely wide and frantically busy street to meet up with a whole passel of skirted sneaker-wearers. Speaking English. Heaven. 

The bus, scheduled to leave at 15:45, arrives at 16:10. It's a huge red double-decker and the driver parks it half-on-the-sidewalk in the approved Jerusalem manner. We rush to get in and just when many of us are comfortably seated upstairs and down, a tiny old man rushes through, frantically yelling Get off the bus, get off the bussss!! You can't get on until you're checked off my list! GET OFF THE BUS!!! Must be Mr Ditzy. 

We descend to the sidewalk, trying to avoid eye-level ancient tree branches. As it happens, I land right under Mr Ditzy’s nose—or over it, as he comes up to my shoulder. He begins: BROWN!!! Where are Mr and Mrs BROWNNNNNN? A little old couple wriggles through the crowd and mounts the bus. SCHWARZ!! Where is SCHWARZZZ? Another couple, etc and so on. GOLDBERG!! MR GOLDBERG!!! Mr G nimbly leaps a garden railing to reach Mr D. I look down at his list and say Why don't you ask our names, then find them on the list? Oh no, he says with some horror, I can't do that. I believe him.

The next name is mine. Quietly I say I’m right here and he says You can get on now, gesturing like he's the Host with the Most, and I find a seat facing a charming couple who introduce themselves immediately. Within moments we discover a startling set of common experiences. They have relocated to Jerusalem only recently after visiting for many years; they have brilliant children doing wonderful things and I’m delighted to involve myself, although we are on a tour and we should be listening instead of laughing, I suppose.

In fact, we are the only ones laughing, the rest are trying to hear what the guide is saying. Her microphone goes off and on, off and on; the city is whizzing by and we are having great fun trying to put whole names to the ragged segments we are hearing.

We are shown the four corners of this beautiful city, glowing in the afternoon sun. I lived in Jerusalem for almost fifteen years so I find a number of opportunities to add my own arcane data: There are 57 steps from the street down to Mishkanot Sha’ananim, I climbed them every day when I worked there. That synagogue is the oldest in this area, someone once told me (irrefutable source). That restaurant was once—never mind, it’s an ugly story.

The enjoyable two-hour tour lasts for three hours. When it's over, I consider going out for dinner with my new friends and to my amazement, I decide I'd rather go home. Ninety minutes later I'm eating cheese out of my refrigerator.

Jerusalem is now enormous and exhausting, with uncountable traffic signals. I’m so glad I don’t live there anymore but I’d visit again in a heartbeat.

cross posted  Geoffff's Joint

Boston bomber's mother urged him to join Palestinians

Mike L. 

Written by the AP, published by Y-Net

Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the US government finally received details about the call...

In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a conversation between Tsarnaev and his mother vaguely discussing jihad, according to US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

The two discussed the possibility of Tsarnaev going to 'Palestine,' but he told his mother he didn't speak the language there, according to the officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the US.

Now that some time has passed and we've learned a little more about the Tsarnaev brothers would it be wrong and racist of me to suggest that these two gentlemen were Jihadis?

Is that out of line?, because I do not want to be racist.  Look, just because these two guys were initiated into an ideology that seeks the murder of westerners and Jews doesn't mean that we should be harsh about the matter.  There is no doubt in my mind that these two young Jihadis were perfectly fine and good people.  They obviously meant well.  They cared about their families and wanted what was best for everyone - accept for me, you, and our family and friends, who they wanted to kill for theological-political reasons.

But that's not their fault, really.  The only way to be fair to the innocent Tsarnaev brothers is for us to accept our guilt.  Their behavior is not their fault.  On the contrary, their behavior is our fault.  In fact, as I learn this morning, their behavior is even in some measure the fault of the Jewish people of the State of Israel.

For thirteen of the last fourteen centuries the Jews of the Middle East have been dhimmis under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism and if they had not freed themselves in the early-middle of the twentieth century there would be less reason for Jihadis like the Tsarnaev brothers to be angry.  As Jewish people who care about what is best for all of humanity - even if we do not give a shit about ourselves - the only conclusion that we can come to is that we were mistaken to free ourselves from slavery under Islam.

As most progressives would tell you, the real problem is that Jews are mean.  They wouldn't put it in quite those terms, but that is what they are saying.  In 1948, for no reason whatsoever, these militaristic and racist and imperialist and apartheid-like Holocaust survivors and their wives attacked a whole bunch of entirely innocent Arabs who wanted nothing more than to raise their Sacred Olive Groves in peace.  The Jews, or so we are told, ethnically cleansed the indigenous population from Jewish land.

The problem is/was that those pernicious Jews wanted to steal "all the land."  All of it!  Sure that land only represents a fragment of one percent of the land of the Middle East and it has been Jewish land for almost four thousand years and the Jews were willing to divide it and divide it again, but that doesn't change the fact that they insisted upon stealing all of it.  All of it, I say!

And look at what is going on now.  We have all these Jews with their backs to the Mediterranean, surrounded by a whole bunch of pissed off Arabs, and those Jews (wrongly) insist upon defending themselves.  This is unheard of in human history and it is simply unacceptable.  Within long-standing Muslim and European traditions Jews are not allowed to defend themselves and must be righteously condemned as aggressors, if not killed, whenever they do so.  It has always been like this and it must always stay like this.  I am not exactly sure why, but what I do know is that when the tiny Jewish minority in the Middle East does defend itself from the much larger Arab majority, it pisses off well-meaning white people in Europe and the United States.

So if it pisses off well-meaning white non-Muslim people, one can only imagine how the poor Tsarnaev brothers felt.

It's only been a few weeks since Barack Obama put his foot on Netanyahu's head in order to make him apologize for allowing the IDF to defend the country against
Jihadis "peace activists" in the Mavi Marmara affair and now look what happens!  Two perfectly fine young fellows in the United States kill people and maim a bunch of others because they are dissatisfied with the international order.

And who could blame them, really?

IAF strikes Gaza targets in response to rocket fire

Mike L.

By JPost.Com Staff

The Air Force struck a terror facility and weapons storage site in southern Gaza early Sunday in response to a rocket fired on the Sdot Negev Regional Council Saturday night.  

 The IDF Spokesperson's Office confirmed a precise hit on the target.  

 "The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israeli civilians, and will not allow for a return to the reality before Pillar of Defense where Israeli civilians are threatened," they said in a statement.

Rocket fire was continuous into southern Israel throughout the entirety of 2012, basically ruining the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who live there, even as the west and the United States pumped money into genocidal local Arab organizations.  It was only when Hamas and affiliates shot HUNDREDS of rockets into Israel in November of that year that Israel finally stood up and fought back.

The fact of the matter is that throughout 2012, as the Arab majority sought to murder innocent Jewish civilians, the international community did not care and our false friends on the left actually justified the violence toward us by claiming that we are guilty of horrific injustices toward the majority population.

What this story indicates is that the Netanyahu government may be willing to stand up for the Jewish people.  It's possible.  The craven apology to Turkey was a huge mistake and it will tend to increase hatred and hostility toward Jews because there is no reason for them not to take it as an admission of guilt.

It is an admission of guilt.

But Israel should not allow Arab violence toward Jews.  I suspect that we've had enough of that.  Fourteen hundred years might be considered quite enough and if the Arabs in Gaza want to shoot rockets at Jews then the Jews should fight back - for the purpose of winning.

See Ya Guys

Mike L.

 

You have to find time to go out and "smell the roses" - as they say.

Not everything is a life-and-death struggle, for Chrissake.

Enjoy your lives, because what else is there?

Jew hatred at UN schools

Mike L.

Dan Calic at Y-Net writes:

For decades the conflict between Israel and the Arabs has remained unresolved. Time and again efforts have been made to find a solution and bring peace between the two sides. While Israel has a formal peace treaty in effect with two neighboring countries - Jordan and Egypt, relations in each case fall short of expectations.

The nagging issue affecting a long sought comprehensive breakthrough is the possibility of a Palestinian state. In order to facilitate this both sides have to be committed to live in peaceful coexistence with each other. While Israel has made it clear it deeply desires peace with all its neighbors, including the Palestinians, can the same be said of the Palestinians?

Information has recently come to light which suggests peace with Israel is not what they seek. In fact, their desire appears to be anything but.

A recently released video produced by the Center for Near East Policy Research examines Palestinian schools run by UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency). It reveals coexistence with Israel is not being taught to Palestinian children. Instead what they are learning is actually fomenting terror.

Created in 1949 specifically to deal with the "Palestinian refugees," UNRWA spends roughly $500 million each year on schools. It utilizes text books produced by the Palestinian Authority. The UN itself does not finance UNRWA. Primary financial support comes from US and European taxpayers.

A central theme in these text books is the so-called "right of return," which if allowed would eliminate the Jewish majority in Israel.

While other agencies work in Judea and Samaria, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, the video indicates UNRWA is the only agency which actively supports the right of return, and teaches it in the classroom.

Footage shows young Palestinian school children beginning their day by shouting out, "Glory and eternal life to the martyrs and the righteous, Jerusalem is ours, we will liberate it."

So the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is funded by American tax dollars and teaches little Arab kids in Israel that they should aspire to the destruction of the Jewish state.

I seeeeeeee.

Yes, not a day goes by wherein the pure stupidity doesn't leap from the page like a drag queen on ecstasy.

How are Jewish people supposed to feel about this, I wonder to myself aloud?

I really do not have too much to remark about this other than to put it on a platter and say, "This is your tax dollars at work.  You must be very proud."

Congratulations.

Israelis sign deals with Google, LinkedIn

Mike L.

Sagi Cohen at Y-Net writes:

Two Israeli startup companies have signed promising cooperation agreements with Google and LinkedIn.

The first company, Graduway, has developed an internal social network for universities, which derives information from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The alumni network allows the institution's graduates to keep in touch.

The company has signed a strategic agreement with LinkedIn, the professional social networking website which is valued at more than $18 billion and has some 200 million members.

The reason that I highlight this is because I have had more than enough of this nonsense about Israel becoming isolated because they are allegedly mean to the Arabs.  This is false.  Given fourteen centuries of racist Arab hostility towards the Jewish minority in the Middle East those Jews are practically saints, by any fair moral accounting.

I do not write a whole lot about Israel as the UpStart Nation, but I am always happy to see these kinds of stories.  The fact of the matter is that the Jewish people in the Middle East are doing far better than they have for thousands of years.  They are more secure, now, because they no longer live under dhimmitude.  Against all odds they have achieved a European level of economic development and did so while under constant fire from the hostile majority in the region.

The fact that Google and LinkedIn are cutting deals with Israelis is an indication that Israel is actually doing quite well.  It's a small example, but it is fairly representative of the larger trend.

In truth, Israel is doing very nicely and has more relationships, diplomatic and economic, now than it is had at any time in the past.  And now they are becoming an oil producing nation?

Good for them!

Israel Thrives.

While Your Kids Are Learning to Read

Mike L.

A Tip 'O the Kippa to Y-Net:

An al-Qaeda-affiliated terror group posted a video online showing about 20 children practicing firing pistols and guns in the group's training camp.  

Some of the children are so small the shock wave nearly knocks them over.

 

By the way, in case you did not notice, some of those those kids were crying "Alahu Akbkar" as they shot off their rifles.

{Fab.}

Introducing CAMERA on Campus

Mike L.

I recently received an email from Gilad Skolnick, the editor of Camera on Campus, introducing us to their fine work so I thought that I would share.  I have also added a link on our growing blogroll.

From their website:

CAMERA on the College Campus

Increasingly, campuses have been the scene of propagandistic assaults on Israel. Distorted literature, extreme speakers and false, inflammatory images are all too common, creating harmful misperceptions of Israel. This hostile environment can be intimidating to students seeking fair and objective information on Middle East issues.

Increasingly, campuses have been the scenes of propagandistic assaults on Israel. Distorted literature, extreme speakers, and false, inflammatory images are all too common, creating harmful mis-perceptions of Israel. These hostile environments can be intimidating to students seeking fair and objective information on Middle East issues. CAMERA provides assistance to students through the CAMERA Campus Activist Project (CCAP) and CAMERA Fellows Program. This includes guidance in finding and connecting with speakers or films, planning and creating events, funding for student groups, and addressing Middle East distortions in campus publications, fliers, rallies and classroom teaching. Students are provided with the support for bravely and publicly defending Israel against hostility and distortions on campus.

CAMERA's Core Values:

1. An unshakeable belief in the causes of Zionism and Israel

CAMERA knows that strong Zionists do not have to be Jewish- that anyone, anywhere can help to strengthen the Zionist core. We understand, and communicate to our students, that knowledge of the facts and the truth can empower anyone, regardless of race, location, or ethnicity, to stand up for Israel, even in a sea of dissent or apathy.

2. The absolute necessity for truth telling regarding Israel and for confronting lies at every turn

CAMERA knows that training students to write effective articles, letters-to-the-editor, and op-eds is imperative in voicing an accurate, pro-Israel message. Our students’ writing has single-handedly promoted accurate, Zionist coverage of the situation in and around Israel on many campuses. Our students confront inaccuracy in the classroom, in the paper, and on the campus quad.

Our philosophy on speaking openly for Israel enables students to network with activists all over the country, and they recommend our programs to others.

3. The truth must be spoken publicly, with knowledge and confidence

CAMERA is determined to tell the truth of all aspects of the situation in Israel and the Middle East, whether or not they are pleasant for the audience to hear. CAMERA teaches our students that even little-known topics should be covered and understood by the public, especially by the newest generations of leaders- America’s college students. Our students are willing to stand up and educate others about difficult topics, because they are armed with the facts and can therefore not be intimidated into silence.

Obama Administration demands release of terrorists

Mike L. 

{Originally published at the Times of Israel.}

Yuval Bagno at the Jerusalem Post writes:

After the Knesset discussed America’s demand that Israel release terrorists as a good will gesture to the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday, Deputy Minister Ofir Akunis promised that there is no government decision to release the terrorists and that the government is against any such release.

He called for the return to peace talks without pre-conditions while emphasizing that the West Bank is not conquered territory but the birthright of the Jewish nation.

Knesset MK Orit Struk from the Bayit Yehudi party said, “the demand is shocking, not just because the peace talks must begin without preconditions, and not just because of the danger that these terrorists will return to terrorist activity once they are released, but because the release of terrorists is an energizing shot of encouragement to terror and terrorists.”

“Every release like this,” she continued, “causes potential terrorists to make the decision to become one, because they see that they will be given support.”

Struk added, “is the America that is asking Israel to release terrorists the same America that has carried the flag in the struggle against terrorism and who recently experienced the hands of terror in their house?!”

Not a day goes by, I tell you, wherein Obama administration stupidity doesn’t just leap from the page like a drag queen on ecstasy.

So, according to the Jerusalem Post the Obama administration has demanded (requested?) that Israel release a bunch of Jihadis and murderers as a good will gesture to… Jihadis and murderers. For some crazy reason Israel seems to be hedging.

I can’t imagine why? But, then, I can’t imagine that the Obama administration would be as revolting as it is and, yet, still maintain the loyalty of American Jewish “progressives.” I honestly do not know what to say. It’s just shocking. Flabbergasting. Incomprehensible.

Is it even necessary to point out the obvious fact that releasing Jihadis and murderers who seek to kill Jews is maybe not such a great idea? And are we actually to believe that the local Arabs are so oppressed that they refuse to accept even discussing their autonomy unless Israel does things like release Jihadis and murderers?

This is a sick and evil game and if you believe for one second that anything good is going to come from these obviously wrong-headed Obama administration efforts then you’re just a sucker. I have to say, my contempt for this administration has yet to find its ceiling, but the only reason that I even have this contempt is because of their behavior. There’s an idiot on another board, a committed Democrat, that likes to refer to Obama administration critics as people suffering from something that he calls Obama Derangement Syndrome, which is exactly what Bush supporters said about Bush critics. The implication is that one would have to be absolutely crazy to oppose this administration’s policies despite the fact that Obama supports the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent organization of both al-Qaeda and Hamas.

I would submit, however, that it is perhaps not in the best interest of the United States, nor the American people, nor our allies, to actually support terrorism and make no mistake, but this administration clearly supports terrorism. I know that some of these Super-Sophisticated Genius Jews will claim that supporting terrorism is not supporting terrorism, but something else entirely, but I would argue that A = A and that supporting terrorism means supporting terrorism.

The Obama administration is telling Israel that you guys must release a bunch of Jihadis and murderers in order to appease the Jihadis and murderers that the Obama administration insists that Israel must negotiate with. This is despite the fact that these same Jihadis and murderers have never accepted a state for themselves in peace next to Israel and have no intention of doing so anytime in the future. The Jihadis and murderers of the Fatah and the PLO, like the Jihadis and murderers of Hamas and like the Jihadis and murderers of Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihad and all these various backwards, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic organizations, which together ride under the banner of political Islam, are not going to be placated no matter what Israel does.

If you were to line up every single Jewish Israeli and have them, one by one, kiss the naked feet of Muhammed Morsi and Barack Obama, Egypt will still not accept the existence of Israel precisely because Egypt is run by the Brotherhood and the Brotherhood is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and of the west, in general. For Barack Obama, who is the leader of the western world (sort-of… maybe) to demand that Israel release a bunch of Jihadis and murderers as a good-will gesture to Jihadis and murderers is either entirely malicious or simply the very depths of stupidity.

I am going with the very depths of stupidity.

I have all sorts of friends on-line and in the real world who would tell me that the Obama administration is not dumb, not in the least, but that what it is is malicious. I have never believed that Barack Obama is malicious. What I continue to maintain is that Obama is not nearly so intelligent as they always told us he is and that he is heavily influenced by the kind of post-colonial ideology peddled by people such as Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, and Noam Chomsky. Which it to say, he probably honestly believes that if only Israel would obey his commands then everything will work out better then if you refuse.

All I can say as an American Jew who cares about the well-being of the Jewish State of Israel is that if Barack Obama claims that it’s raining you should feel free to prance in the sunshine with your ponies and unicorns.

As I say, not a day goes by wherein Obama administration stupidity doesn’t just leap from the page like a drag queen on ecstasy.

I wonder what the Stupidity of the Day will be tomorrow?

Latest Times of Israel Piece

Obama Administration demands release of terrorists

Not a day goes by, I tell you, wherein Obama administration stupidity doesn’t just leap from the page like a drag queen on ecstasy.

So, according to the Jerusalem Post the Obama administration has demanded (requested?) that Israel release a bunch of Jihadis and murderers as a good will gesture to… Jihadis and murderers. For some crazy reason Israel seems to be hedging.

I can’t imagine why?

Ziontruth Has Some Words

Mike L.

ziontruth April 23, 2013 at 10:22 AM 

"I don't really quite understand why Israel does this kind of thing." - Mike L.

Let's just say Zionism's work is only half done.

One half was to get the Jews out of the ghetto. Inasmuch as the Jewish nation now has a state of its own, even if a sizable portion of the nation is in the Diaspora, we can say this mission is accomplished.

The other half is to get the ghetto out of the Jews—the mentality that was necessary in stateless, defenseless life but is now a dead weight, nay, a millstone, hanging over the Jewish nation's neck. This goal has advanced quite a lot among the Israeli Jewish populace, thanks in great part to Arab aggression—give credit where it's due—but has yet to seep up to the levels of the mainstream media and the policymaking leadership.

I don't know when, but it's only a matter of time.

This is a brilliant comment.  It is brief, concise, on-point, true, and no one else is saying it.

Ziontruth rightly claims that the purpose of Zionism is/was to get the Jew out of the ghetto and the ghetto out of the Jew.

That's a perfect formulation.  That is absolutely correct.

I would say that we have done a terrific job of getting the Jew out of the ghetto, but getting the ghetto out of the Jew is an entirely different matter.

There is a deep irony here because just as anti-Jewish racists constantly complain about American Jewish power, American Jewish leadership, with a few notable exceptions, does little more than keep as quiet as little church mice.  When the Hagel nomination came up the major Jewish organizations, such as AIPAC, barely even twitched.  Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America made a stand, but he was almost alone,

I think that we are too reserved and fearful.  This is my impression as a person who cares and who has been watching the long Arab war against the Jews for a number of years now.   If Israel or the Jewish people had any major influence over the US government don't you think that Washington would have finally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel by now?

I think so.

The bottom line for me - the thing that matters most - is that people must understand that the Jews of the Middle East are a people under siege.  Sure, they're cranking out life-saving technology and medicine and various computer widgets and lawyers and Natalie Portmans, but they do so while surrounded by 400 million Arabs who, for the most part, do not want them there.  The Israelis do all the amazing things that the Israelis do even as much of the Arab majority population screams for their blood.

Diaspora Jewry, on the other hand, is weak because we tend to accept the "Palestinian narrative" as the foundation of the conversation.  Jews in the diaspora could help turn around the cognitive/propaganda war against the Jews of the Middle East if we would stop using the very terms created by our enemies.

Palestinian hunger striker reaches deal for release

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Geoffff's Joint and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}

RAMALLAH, West Bank - A Palestinian prisoner whose hunger strike had stoked weeks of protests in the West Bank ended his eight-month on-off fast on Tuesday in exchange for early release by Israel, Palestinian officials said.

Israeli and Palestinian officials had feared that had Samer Essawi, 32, died because of refusing food, it might have led to mass unrest.

At least six Palestinian protesters were wounded in February in clashes with IDF soldiers after another Palestinian died while being interrogated in an Israeli jail. The clashes were fueled by the worsening health of Essawi and other prisoners.

Under a deal signed by Essawi and a military prosecutor, he will serve eight more months for violating bail conditions from an earlier release, the officials said, announcing he had ended the strike.

He will then be allowed to go to his Jerusalem home, Qadura Fares, head of the Palestinian prisoner organization, told Reuters.

Israel convicted Essawi of opening fire on an Israeli bus in 2002, but released him in 2011 along with more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Schalit.

So let me see if I understand this correctly.

In 2002 this maniac shot up a bus in an effort to kill a bunch of Jews.  Since then he sat in prison until he was one of the five gazillion criminals and murders and Jihadis that Israel released for Gilad.   And now he's back in prison for another eight months for violating bail conditions, but Israel is considering giving him an early release if he would eat?

Once again, how can anyone have writer's block when the pure stupidity piles up this high and this fast on a daily basis?

The guy shot up an Israeli bus, for crying out loud.  I do not know about you guys, but where I come from if someone takes a gun and goes down to the road and shoots at a bus full of people (was it a school bus?) they pretty much go away forever.  They don't get exchanged for kidnap victims.  And if they refuse to eat that's basically their problem.

I don't really quite understand why Israel does this kind of thing.  Israel is the most maligned country on the planet and, yet, it is constantly begging the world for some kind of pat on the head for noble little gestures like this.  Israel gives up the Sinai and it gets back hatred.  Israel gives up the Gaza and it gets back ten thousand Kassam and Katyusha rockets.  People try to kill Jews in the Jewish State and they get released for diplomatic reasons.

Look, I was thrilled when Gilad Shalit was released from whatever Gazan hell-hole that they subjected him to, but there is no reason to release this maniac - and, yes, anyone who fires a gun at a bus is a maniac.

It's as if Israel, if not the Jewish people more generally, are so desperate for some kind of acceptance by the world that they will do anything for a pat on the head, but it simply never works.  Releasing criminals and murderers because they refuse to eat, and thereby potentially sparking riots by their misguided and heavily propagandized compatriots on the outside, is beyond foolish.

It is suicidal.

Kerry Compares Violent Jihadis to the Victims in Boston

Mike L. 

At Istanbul, Secretary of State makes jarring comparison between Boston Marathon terror victims, IHH terror activists killed by Israel.

Speaking at Istanbul, Turkey, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made a jarring comparison between the victims of the Boston Marathon terror bombs and terror activists from the IHH group who were killed when they attacked IDF forces aboard the Mavi Marmara in 2010.

Kerry told his hosts in Turkey that he understands the pain of the families whose loved ones were killed aboard the Marmara – and added that he can understand their pain well, having just dealt with the families whose loved ones were slain in Boston.

Kerry said in his speech that he hopes the Israeli apology will lead to a thawing of Israel-Turkey relations.

The problem here is not just that Obama's foreign policy is pro-Islamist and entirely unjust to the Jews of the Middle East, but that we go along with it like the dumb little lemmings that we are.

For John Kerry to even think to compare the dead in Boston to the Jihadis aboard the Mavi Marmara is probably the most vile case of false moral equivalency that have I heard in an exceedingly long time - perhaps ever.  The picture below is a picture of one of the "peace activists" aboard the Mavi Marmara.

We have to understand that when it comes to the Jewish people and when it comes to Middle East foreign policy the Obama administration does not only not know what the hell it is doing, but they honestly believe that Jewish self-defense is a form of aggression.  This administration seems deeply enamored of the old medieval view that the only good Jew is a weak and defenseless Jew.

How else can we understand the fact that our new Secretary of State has just compared murderous anti-Semitic Jihadis to the completely innocent victims in Boston?

It's one thing to have voted for Barack Obama - I did, after all - but it's another thing entirely to continue supporting an obviously anti-Semitic regime.  It was bad enough that Obama wrecked whatever potential that there may have been in the peace process and then blamed Israel for the predictable outcome of his own foreign policy stupidity, but this is just way, way beyond anything that can possibly be justified.

This is more than an insult.  John Kerry has just stood on foreign soil and literally compared Jihadis who seek to murder Jews and Americans with the Jewish and American innocent victims of the Jihad.  This is how lacking in understanding this administration is.  This is how bigoted and racist this administration is.

It's just appalling, but so many diaspora Jews (particularly progressive-left Jews) are much like the proverbial frog in a pot of hot water slowly bring raised to a boil.  Sadly enough, there seems to be nothing that will awaken them from their vegetable torpor.

If Barack Obama were to go on national television and piss on the Israeli flag while singing Hatikvah in backwards Latin, progressive "Zionists" would still tell us what a considerate and intelligent man Barack Obama is and how he is the very best friend that the State of Israel has ever had.

And John Kerry is just vile.

{Oh, and by the way, I voted for him, as well.  I even phone-banked for the guy.  Silly me.}

Op-Ed: Islamicized Sweden Has Declared War on the Jews

By Giulio Meotti 

Violence dominates the streets and a Jew in Sweden today feels like a Jew in Berlin in the '20s.

In 2003, Azzam Tamimi, a Hamas member from Hevron, delivered a sermon at the Great Mosque in Stockholm, expressing support for suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. Outside the mosque, militants distributed leaflets containing calls to "liquidate the Jews in Palestine in the name of Allah".

Why did the Swedish authorities allow this Arab anti-Semite to deliver a homicidal sermon in their capital's main mosque if not to help foment a new war against the Jewish people?

Ten years later, and Sweden, long famed as a shelter for U.S. draft resisters, Arab immigrants, political refugees and other exiles, has become one of the most anti-Semitic countries in the world.

A recent poll found that 68 percent of Swedes have a negative opinion of Israel. No other nation in the West has a higher anti-Semitic public opinion. Everyone is welcome today in Sweden, except the Jews.

France and the UK registered many more anti-Semitic incidents than Sweden last year, but Sweden, like the Netherlands, is a kind of laboratory of Europe's general trend.

The Jews of Malmö, a community of about 1,500 in a city of 300,000 led by an anti-Semite like Reepalu, is a microcosm of what is happening elsewhere in the West.

In Sweden, which has one of the largest Muslim communities in Europe, the Jewish communities spend 25 per cent of their funds on security measures. It is a ghettoized and dying community.

Violence dominates the streets and a Jew in Sweden today feels like a Jew in Berlin in the '20s.

A Swedish mayor working to stop anti-Israel propaganda from being sold at a municipal cultural center was just phisically assaulted. Mats Green, mayor of Jonkoping, was wounded outside his home by two men who struck him and kicked him. His "guilt"? Trying to stop the sale of T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Burn, Israel, burn” at the Book Cafe, a shop operating inside a city-owned cultural center.

Not only is Swedish culture deeply anti-Zionist (Swedish bestselling author Henning Mankell was part of the pro-Hamas Flottilla), but also Sweden's political mainstream is imbued with anti-Semitism.

Omar Mustafa, a member of the Social Democratic Party’s governing board, called Sweden to send fighter planes to bomb Israel. In the same week another politician, Alexander Kieding of the Swedish Democrats party, an alderman in the Stockholm suburb of Jarna, declared that the Holocaust may have never happened and that “Israel inflated the number” of victims.

The European Jewish Congress has warned that the Jewish community living in the Swedish City of Malmo is in grave danger. Police presence is essential to enable Malmo’s Jews to celebrate any ritual in public and in safety. Last year, when the world remembered the infamous Nazi pogrom of Kristallnacht, in Malmö and Helsingborg, the manifestations took place without Jews, since the event had become a playground for gays, Muslims and leftists.

The Swedish government funds anti-Semitic publications without any shame - like the anti-Israel booklet "Colonialism and Apartheid – the Israeli occupation in Palestine", funded by the authorities in the sum of $104,600, under the guise of "humanitarian aid". The brochure accuses Israel of racism, ethnic cleansing and segregation, and calls for a boycott of the Jewish State.

The national religious authorities promote anti-Israel hate. The Kyrkomötet - the Church Assembly of the Church of Sweden - has just called for a boycott of Israeli products manufactured in Judea and Samaria. Archbishop Karl G. Hammar, heading the Swedish Lutheran Church, was among the first Western Protestant leaders to call for a boycott.

The press too is totally lost to anti-Semitism. Swedish liberal publications are unilaterally imbued with anti-Jewish sentiment, but the conservative Svenska Dagbladet too published articles that invoked the image of Jews as child murderers. We can count an infinite number of anti-Semitic publications in the Swedish press which can challenge the hate of Nazi papers like Der Sturmer or the Soviet Pravda.

Economically, Sweden has passed many boycott initiatives against the Jewish State. A large Swedish pension fund divested from Elbit over the latter’s role in building Israel’s security fence. Meanwhile, the Ethical Council of four Swedish buffer pension funds urged Motorola “to pull out of the Israeli-occupied territories in the West Bank” or face divestment.

Unfortunately, many Swedish Jewish leaders have capitulated to the ghetto mentality as well.

When popular daily Aftonbladet falsely charged the IDF of harvesting Palestinians Arabs' organs and Israel asked the Swedish government to issue a condemnation, Lena Posner, head of the Jewish community in Stockholm and president of the Official Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden, declared: "Israel caused all this mess."

There is something rank and sour in Sweden. You see it from the artistic exhibitions, just as you could during the Nazi era.

The Martin Bryder Gallery in Lund displayed a vile "ash-painting" which used Jewish human remains stolen from the Majdanek Nazi death camp. Jewish cremated ashes for a postmodern artistic exhibition in the Islamicizied Sweden.

Previously, a Swedish Christian Art exhibition depicted Israelis as gun-toting rats devouring the “Holey(sic) Land”.

The Nazis used such dehumanization techniques to lay the groundwork for the physical extermination of those labelled “pests”, the Jews. The same is happening in Sweden.

During the Second intifada, a Swedish museum displayed an artist's work eulogizing the Palestinian suicide bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who killed 20 Israelis at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, with a small ship carrying a picture of Jaradat, sailing in a rectangular pool filled with red-colored water, and accompanied by a piece of Bach's music.

An Arab waiter at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa brought Jaradat a menu and took her order. The Swedish terrorist 'heroine' ate calmly, watching the Israeli families unaware that they were eating their last meal and taking their last breaths. Then she blew herself up. All that remained of nineteen people—including five children, along with fathers and mothers and grandparents—was a pile of indistinguishable body parts.

If he were looking at his country today, a country which has declared war on the Jewish people, Swedish legend Raoul Wallenberg would say: "If I had a grave, I'd be turning over in it".

{Oh, joy.}

UC Berkeley Votes in Favor of BDS

Mike L. 

The Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) voted 11-9 to divest from companies affiliated with the IDF on Thursday, the Daily Californian reported. 

ASUC is made up of the elected representatives of the UC Berkeley student body.

According to the Daily Californian, the heated debate began Wednesday evening and carried on for 10 hours, continuing into Thursday. Hundreds of UC Berkeley students, faculty and community members engaged in a contentious debate regarding the bill, SB 160.

SB 160, authored by Student Action Senator George Kadifa, calls the UC system a “complicit third party” in what is called Israel’s “illegal occupation and ensuing human rights abuses” and seeks the divestment of more than $14 million in ASUC and UC assets from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Cement Roadstone Holdings.

According to the bill, these companies provide equipment, materials and technology to the Israeli military, including bulldozers and biometric identification systems.

The final vote, which occurred just before 5:30 a.m., was met with cheering, stomping and cries of joy by supporters of the bill, the Daily Californian reported.

What we need to realize is that the significance of these various BDS votes around the country, and on the campuses, is less whether the specific vote wins or loses, but that the very effort creates hatred among young Americans towards Israel and therefore, in some measure, hatred toward Jews.

It's less significant that the the University of California Santa Barbara votes down BDS, or that Berkeley votes in favor.

What matters is that millions of western youth are being trained to despise Jews.

They may vote up or down according to their particular beliefs or culture or campus, but the real significance is that the entire thing is creating hatred towards our family in Israel and toward your children and grandchildren.

I would not be too quick to jump and up and down, applauding like a monkey, when we win some of these fights, because the damage is already done.  One reason that the damage gets done is because when we use the language created by anti-Zionists - language that includes terms like "West Bank" for Judea and Samaria or the "Occupation" with the Big "O" - then we are already condemning Israel before the conversation even gets started.

For decades progressive-left Jews, both Israeli and diaspora, have been using terminology created by our enemies to discuss an issue that is vital to our lives.  We use language that assumes the guilt of our family and friends in Israel embedded within the conversation itself.  This is a huge mistake and one that almost never gets talked about.

I think that we need to discuss it, very much so.  Not only because some of this terminology puts us back on our heals from the get-go, but that very same terminology is neither historically accurate, nor fairly representative of facts on the ground.

We need to rethink this entire conversation and we need to do so beginning with our most fundamental terms.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Mike L.



Boston mourns and wonders about the truth.

Boston Hospital Trained by Israel to Respond to Terror

Mike L. 

A doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital, where most of the victims of the Boston Marathon Terror attack received medical treatment, claimed that an Israeli team helped train them to respond to these kinds of terror attacks. During the Boston Marathon this year, two explosions took place which resulted in the murder of three people and the injury of at least 183 others. One of the victims was a Chinese national who studied at Boston University, while other victims included a 29-year-old restaurant manager and an eight-year-old child. An additional 13 people suffered from severe limb loss.

Were it not for Israeli training, the medical team at Massachusetts General Hospital might have been less prepared to deal with this situation. According to Alasdair Conn, Chief of Emergency Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, “About two years ago in actual fact we asked the Israelis to come across and they helped us set up our disaster team so that we could respond in this kind of manner. A few years ago we wanted to upgrade our emergency response to things like explosions, and unfortunately Israel was dealing with several types of [these incidents] a year… and we had to upgrade our response.”

Dr. Conn compared the scene of the Boston Marathon Terror attack to what one would witness in Israel during the Second Intifada period or in Baghdad. The situation in Boston was that atrocious. Rabbi Mayer Sarchi from Boston Chabad, who was at the scene of the crime, proclaimed, “People just started running away from the centre, from the finish line. I’ve never seen any thing like this before—-the nature of the carnage you can’t really articulate it in words. It was unreal.”

This is part of an email that I received from United With Israel.

After Boston attack: US Muslims reliving post 9-11 experience

Mike L. 

{Cross-posted at Geoffff's Joint and Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers.}

Muslims in the US are living in fear, praying that those responsible for the bombings in Boston will be apprehended and shown to be non-Muslim. Over the last few days, reports of harassment of Arabs and Muslims have been coming up throughout the US, especially at places of employment and in schools.

Apprehensions were raised among Arabs and Muslims after the New York Post published the photos of two Muslim teens, who the paper's headlines claimed, were wanted by authorities for questioning in relation to the Boston bombings.

A short time after the attack, the main headline on the newspaper’s site had stated that at least 12 people had been killed and that the main suspect was a Saudi who had been arrested by Boston Police. Law enforcement quickly denied the reports, saying they had not arrested a Saudi national, or anyone else.

The link above is to a Y-Net article, but the Boston Globe is reporting that two Chechen immigrants, brothers, are suspects for the attack in Boston.

I know that some people are crowing that these people are Muslim.

Speaking for myself, I have no intention of using this space to slander Muslims because of this.

The Jewish people in the Middle East have lived under Islamic supremacy for thirteen of the last fourteen centuries.  That's an historical fact, but it does not mean that we need to stir the pot and start screaming our heads off.

I still want to know more about what was behind this and why they did it - if they did it. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was apparently shot dead by the cops, but until such a time as his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, starts screaming "Alahu Akbar!" and "Death to America!" I am emphatically NOT going to go under the assumption that this was a Jihadi attack.

It might very well have been, but I do not know that to be the case and the fact of the matter remains that the Muslim population in the United States is a small minority and if they have fears of persecution, those fears should be considered and not denigrated.

Nonetheless, I have considerable faith in the American public and I do not believe for one second that Americans will launch into to some anti-Muslim frenzy.  We didn't after 9-11 and we're not going to do so now.

2 rockets hit open area in Eshkol Regional Council

Mike L. 

Two rockets were fired Thursday from the Gaza Strip and exploded in open areas in the Eshkol Regional Council.  

No injuries or damage were reported. The hits were at approximately 11 pm, but no red alert was sounded.  

Two rockets hit Eilat on Wednesday, most likely launched from Sinai. No one was injured though the rockets hit residential areas. The Iron Dome in Eilat detected the launches but did not intercept the rockets.

I wonder how many rockets the United States would allow to be shot at its people and onto its land?

How many rockets would China or Russia put up with, I wonder?

The only reason that the Arab colonists in Israel continue to shoot rockets in the hope of murdering Jews is because Israel allows the Arab colonists to shoot rockets in the hope of murdering Jews.

The reason that Israel allows the Arab colonists to shoot rockets in the hope of murdering Jews is because the west, including the Obama administration, have made it very clear that Jewish self-defense against such rocket fire is entirely unacceptable.

Israel needs to make its "allies" understand that Arab efforts at murdering Jews will simply not be allowed.  Just why the west has no problem with Arab efforts to murder Jews is another question entirely, but whatever the answer to that question, Israeli-Jewish leadership must make them understand that it is not perpetually open-season on the Jewish people.

It is not always, and forever, Jew-Hunting Season in the Middle East and Israel absolutely must make this clear to everyone, including their alleged friends.

Gaza Arabs Celebrate Boston Marathon Attack with Dance, Candies

Mike L.

Shortly after the bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, the Arabs of Gaza danced in the streets, handing out candies to passersby, Israel News Agency reported. 

Mohammad al-Chalabi, head of a Jordanian Salafi group, said on Tuesday that he was “happy to see the horror in America’ after the explosions in Boston,” the Daily Mail reported. “American blood isn’t more precious than Muslim blood,” al-Chalabi added. “Let the Americans feel the pain we endured by their armies occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and killing our people there,”

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Somalia’s Al Shabaab mocked the blast victims on its official Twitter feed, and used the attack as an opportunity to criticize U.S. policy. “The #BostonBombings are just a tiny fraction of what US soldiers inflict upon millions of innocent Muslims across the globe on a daily basis,” read one tweet.

Whatever one makes of the fashionable post-colonial view that the Jews and the west deserve vitriol, if not violence, for being mean to others there is no question that neither westerners, nor Jews, hand out candy when people are murdered.

Period.

Kerry: 2 state solution may be dead within 2 years

Mike L.

“I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting,” US secretary of state tells House Foreign Affairs Committee.

US Secretary of State John Kerry warned on Wednesday that the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be dead within two years.

“I believe the window for a two-state solution is shutting,” Kerry told the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. “I think we have some period of time, a year, a year-and-a-half, or two years or it’s over.”

The secretary of state’s comments come amid a renewed US drive to rekindle direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, which have been largely frozen since late 2008.

US President Barack Obama – along with Kerry – visited Israel last month to speak with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Kerry returned again last week for further meetings, and promised to come back shortly.

He is scheduled to unveil a plan soon to improve the Palestinian economy in hopes that it would help the Palestinians return to the table.

John Kerry is an intellectual lemming.  There is no "window" for the two-state solution.  The two-state solution can be achieved, however long it takes, so long as the parties involved want a two-state solution.

Kerry's notion that we have only about two years is entirely arbitrary.  And the very idea that the Arab settlers need to be bribed in order to accept sovereignty on Jewish land is absolutely ridiculous.  I thought that these people were oppressed?  What kind of oppression is it when those who suffer under the boot of that oppression refuse their own freedom unless Israel and the west offers them financial incentives to do so?

You guys are being taken for a ride, but at least the people who read here and who participate here tend to know that.

If Kerry and Obama want to make history by concluding a peace deal between the Arab colonists and the indigenous Jews they could do so, but it will require pressuring the Arabs, not the Jews, for the simple reason that the Jews have already agreed to two states for two peoples going all the way back to 1937.  Yet against all reason the Obama administration still thinks that pressuring the Jews to accept what we've always accepted, while throwing money at the local Arabs, who have never accepted a state for themselves in peace next to Israel, is a good idea.

And that's the point.

The only thing that's killing the two-state solution is Arab racism against Jews.  Were it not for the fact that the Arabs refuse to allow Jews to live in any future state in Judea and Samaria they could have come to a negotiated conclusion of hostilities long ago.  The fact that local Arab dictator Mahmoud Abbas uses the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria as his excuse not to negotiate should awaken us all to the malicious anti-Jewish racism at the very core of the Arab political movement in opposition to social justice for the Jews in the Middle East.

The Arab colonial movement is anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, anti-American, anti-women, anti-gay, anti-liberal, and anti-democratic, yet we continue to play games with these people as if they are serious about peace.  They aren't.

What they want is victory and the sooner that we understand that - the sooner that Barack Obama figures that out - the better off we will all be.

Letter from Israel

       elinor        אלינור   

                                                                                                                        

Learning Hebrew II

Summer stopped my first ulpan right in its tracks.  Teachers and students scattered, leaving only the administrators to tidy up the remnants of disorder.  Remember being called to the office?  I was called to the office, feeling unbelievable adolescent angst and telling myself There’s nothing they can do to me, I’m an adult and I know a good lawyer.

Never anticipate a bad moment:  Elinor, the principal said, You are invited to further study at what we call a professional ulpan where you will learn to write a CV and how to get through a job interview successfully.  Ha.  I used to write professional CVs and I will never survive an interview in Hebrew, but thank you and I’d be delighted. 

This ulpan was located right at the entrance to Jerusalem in the same building as something important and handy—I think it was an emergency clinic—but it never got in our way.

The all-women class was much more homogeneous than the first one:  half Iranian, half Russian and me.  Most of the Iranians had lived through somewhat the same treatment as the Russians; the competition between the two factions was rife.  If only I had understood Russian or Farsi, I could have written two books.

Few of the Russians spoke English or owned up to doing so.  The Iranians had no time for me, except for one lovely young woman who was determined to stop scrubbing floors for a living and return to her profession, accountancy.  Oh, I said, too bad the Iranians treated you so shabbily.  Not just them, she said with some scorn, showing me her hands.  Further chats disclosed her ten years of ‘Iranian gulag’ treatment; she was denied her license to practise.  Her pharmacist husband lost his job as well and they worked at whatever they could find to support themselves and their small child.  Ultimately they both became house cleaners—and very good ones too, she assured me.

The class began with everyday elements that I didn’t need to be taught, like how to write a cheque.  Amongst many new immigrants from eastern Europe and the Soviet sector, the universal perception of cheque-books seemed to be that as long as there were pages, there was money in the bank.  I suppose living in a dictatorship robs one of some of the fun we take for granted, like bank overdrafts and significant debt. 

I was amazed at the lesson on the Israeli political system which that year had fielded an enormous number of parties—even more than I’d left in Canada, which makes the USA look like they’re not even trying.  The instructions on how to vote in an arrangement where only the party and not the candidate is chosen fascinated all of us, as my fellow students had never voted other than the solitary Party line.  And then—and then—the parties are not named on the ballots, but denoted by one or two Hebrew letters.  Could they make it more difficult?  Rhetorical question.

A voice kept interrupting the teacher with how it was in Russia.  One interruption, then another, then a third and I began to perceive that this voice was kindly offering a comparative study of the two political systems.  My impatience mounted until I called out We are not here to study the Russian political system—although it is without doubt fascinating—so please let the teacher teach.  I received a look of pure hate from the owner of the voice which I was dismayed to note belonged to Olga.  The teacher, who should have interrupted the interruptions much earlier, finally said Elinor is right, let us proceed.  Oh boy, that’ll go over well.  Thanks a heap.

Olga, dear Olga, was built like a chest of drawers, easily distinguished from her fellow immigrants.  At an earlier stage I’d overheard her describing, in her basic Hebrew, a recent experience she’d had in a hospital, concerning a relative. 

The bell rang and like a gang of teenagers, we ran out of doors to congregate in the courtyard.  I hadn’t noticed that my Iranian friend had not accompanied me; I was busy trying to cadge a light for my cigarette.  I went from one knot to another but the knots untied as I approached.  I didn’t understand until I looked at the entrance to the building.  Olga steamed out, shoulders raised, hands clenched.  The crowd melted into the bushes, the windows, the air.  I was alone.

I am not only a pacifist, I’m a coward.  I have never been struck or otherwise damaged by another human being and I was not prepared to start then.  I gave thought to the emergency clinic being so handy.

Olga chugged toward me.  WHY? She demanded, Why you no let me talk?  I started to whimper: Olga, we’re not here to…Olga, you take up our learning time…Olga…Olga—how is your mother?  The sun came out.  Olga bestowed a gold-toothed smile upon me and said She much better.  You so nice for to ask. 

See?  Miracles happen.

cross posted   Geoffff's Joint