Israpundit

by Jerry Gordon

At last, the truth about Heshem Islam, Muslim outreach aide to Defense Secretary Islam comes out. As we predicted his embroidered resume did not stand up to the light of day and he was asked to vacate his post at the Pentagon.

Our friend Stephen Coughlin, the Pentagon’s lone Islamic Law and Jihad Military doctrine expert is vindicated and will begin a new assignment at the conclusion of his current Joint staff agreement with the Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD). Perhaps the coups de grace for Mr. Islam were the revelations of Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project report that Islam had met with Syrian radicals and members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group in violation of national security.

Bravo to Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, Claudia Rosset of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy and Steve Emerson of The Investigative Project on Terrorism. Diane West of the Washington Times, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Andy Bostom all played a part in this riveting saga. We trust that we did as well by keeping a focus on the ‘l’affaire Coughlin’.

On the Congressional scene, Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) head of the bi-partisan Anti-Terror Caucus we are sure played an important role in requesting DoD answers about Coughlin.

Now for the ultimate woodshed discussion between SECDEF Bob Gates and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England resulting in the latter’s retirement for ‘good services’.

We hope that the National Defense Intelligence University proceeds with the publication of Coughlin’s important thesis and that the doctrine of the ‘long war’ will become part of required military training.

This proves that good sense and valued advocacy can win out in the war against cultural Jihad in America.

Now about those Wahhabi Muslim Military Chaplains? (more…)

comment by Jerry Gordon

Former US UN Ambassador, John Bolton, according to City Journal writer and former Time editor Stef Kanfer, is one of the last honest men around when he greeted him on the street in Manhattan last fall. Bolton replied that ‘there are others’. Bolton spoke at the annual Herzliyah Conference and may have been a precursor to the long-awaited Winograd Commission report due out the end of this month. Having been involved with the negotiations at the UN as US Ambassador during the Second Lebanon War, he knew the particulars of what was going on. As a result he virtually accused PM Olmert of ‘dissembling’ and Secretary of State Rice of ‘panicking’ after she watched the CNN news reports of alleged 28 deaths at Kana in Lebanon. Deaths of women and children that may have been ‘’staged” by Hezbolleh to capture the empathy of the world media. That caused her to accelerate the negotiations with the French UN Ambassador that resulted in UNSC Res. 1701. Here are Bolton’s main points:

“The Israeli military operation did not play a role in the talks on drafting UN Security Council Resolution 1701.”

“After the war, Olmert claimed that he launched the 11th-hour ground operation, in which 33 soldiers were killed, because the draft UN resolution that Israel received on August 11 was detrimental to its interests. The operation, he added, improved the resolution.

Bolton, however, rejected both assertions.”

“Rice exerted enormous pressure on me to reach an agreement already,” he said. “Until Kana, the U.S. wasn’t interested in another typical Middle Eastern cease-fire. We thought we would exploit the fighting to fundamentally change the situation, especially in Lebanon and Syria. But under the influence of her shock over Kana, the secretary of state changed her mind and only wanted an immediate end to the fire. That was the policy Rice dictated.”

So this was the ‘best deal’ that Livini and Olmert could get under the circumstances? Looks like Bolton may have inadvertently started the unraveling of the Olmert Kadima government by his storied honesty and truth telling.

Bolton: Final IDF op in Lebanon had no impact on UN truce talks
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents, January 21, 2008

John Bolton, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Second Lebanon War, rejects Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s version of he launched a failed ground offensive during the war’s final days. (more…)

Ted Belman and Jerry Gordon believe this is a great story. Read it and let us know.

Greg Sheridan, The Australian, foreign editor | January 19, 2008

IN a land of stark, powerful and sometimes bizarre images, as Israel is, perhaps the most ghostly for an Australian are the countless gum trees that populate Israel, the north especially.

Israelis brought in the gum trees to drain the swamps. Now they are not so sure whether the fast-growing and thirsty trees are an ecological plus or not. But these exotic Australian settlers in the land of the Bible are now too numerous to eradicate, and too beautiful.
(more…)

Comment by Jerry Gordon

Now that Avigdor Lieberman has left the Kadima Olmert coalition will Shas follow? Or will Olmert swap in United Torah in Y.B.’s place? Or will the unravellings of the rickety coalition begin its inevitable slide towards denouement when the long awaited final Winograd Commission report is issued at the end of January? Meanwhile, the PA- Olmert clique negotiations have come to a sorry pass given Fatah’s call for an international force to save its beleaguered Hamas brothers after the IDF ‘massacres’ in Gaza. Interesting how killing Hamas terrorists prompts solidarity in the Mukata in the ‘rump duchy of Ramallah’. This is a virtual certainty that any shelf agreement discussions with the PA is D.O.A. and the Annapolis kabuki dance is over. All this, before President Bush and Secretary Rice leave the Middle East. In the meantime, Israel still doesn’t have any leadership on the horizon, a point underscored in a Jerusalem Post column by Isi Liebler. As I noted in a posting on the Amb. Dore Gold interview, Israelis are ‘bewildered’, as we all are.

By Mazal Mualem, Haaretz Correspondent, and Haaretz Service, January 16, 2008

Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Lieberman announced his party’s departure from the coalition Wednesday morning, saying the rightist party would not tolerate negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the core issues of the conflict.

“We said clearly that if there would be negotiations on the core issues, we wouldn’t be in [the government,” Lieberman told a press conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning.

Lieberman, who served as strategic affairs minister in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, said peace talks must address the issue of transferring the Israeli Arab population to Palestinian control.

“From our point of view, the concept of land for peace is out of the question,” said Lieberman. “The principle must be exchanges of territory and population.”
(more…)

by Jerry Gordon, American Congress for Truth blog

Tomorrow’s Jerusalem Post will run a full page ad confronting President Bush and Secretary of State Condolezza Rice as they arrive in Jerusalem on their first leg of a Middle East Trip. A trip that both Palestinians and Israelis recognize as nothing more than a photo op as reported in a USA Today story. Nonetheless, the agenda contains a dismembering of Israel and division of Jerusalem. This ‘photo op’ follows the disgraceful Annapolis Conference held in late November, last year.

The most heartening thing about this JP ad is that many of ACT’s friends in the Christian Evangelical community are signatories:

Dr. Michael Evans, chairman of Churches United With Israel in Mr. Bush’s home state of Texas; Tennessee Pastor Robert Upton, a major figure in the powerful Pentacostal Congress; Pastor Jim Vineyard, whose press and internet opposition to Israeli territorial concessions has attracted national attention, and White House backyard neighbors US Army Brig. Gen. the Rev. James Hutchens of the Jerusalem Connection and Richard Hellman, head of Christians’ Israel Public Action Campaign, Capitol Hill’s best known pro-Israel Christian advocacy group

This ad sponsored by Herbert Zweibom of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI) in New York. (more…)