(Read more…)

By Isaac Kfir * MERIA

The study examines how the United States has come to deal with Afghanistan-Pakistan, a key foreign policy challenge for the Obama administration. It focuses on President Obama’s new policy known as AfPak, the Kerry-Lugar Act, and other U.S. initiatives adopted since 2009 in order to help stabilize the situation in South Asia. The author concludes by arguing that the new initiatives will not substantially improve the situation in Pakistan, because they fail to address the country’s core problem: lack of strong democratic institutions.
(Read more…)

By Ted Belman

Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, US Army (Ret) comments on Israeli and Middle East Options

On 9/11, Americans were attacked and the World Trade Center’s destroyed along with the deaths of almost 3,000 innocents in New York, Washington D.C. and over the fields of Western Pennsylvania. It was pre-emptive attack and a horrific unthinkable act that arose from great and thorough planning of al Qaeda and its radical Islamists followers. At this point in history, Israel is facing such a dilemma as it seriously contemplates the consequences of a threatened nuclear/missile and ground attack from Iran and her proxies. Does Israel act preemptively to potentially protect its territory and six million citizens and potentially precipitate a full-on regional conflict or anxiously wait while Iran inches closer to nuclear launch capabilities and follows through with its threats of “Death to Israel?”

Herbert London warns Iran’s Influence on Iraq Growing
(Read more…)

In support of similar right wing parties in Europe, I have always said, “If we can fight for our culture i.e. a Jewish state, the Europeans have the right to do likewise. For Wilders, his culture includes anybody but Islam. Good on him. We are called racist and so is Wilders. Any difference?

“many of our politicians in Europe are simply afraid; they are appeasers… There is a lot of fear and a lot of political correctness, and the only way to deal with this is to stand up and not be afraid and not allow yourself to be intimidated.” Wilders

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) Geert Wilders, of the PVV (Party for Freedom) in the Netherlands, is on trial in his native Holland, charged with five counts of discrimination against Muslims and similar offenses. He says that it’s not he who’s on trial, but his “freedom of speech” – and that at stake are traditional European freedoms.

In an exclusive interview with IsraelNationalRadio’s Yishai Fleisher on Monday, Wilders said,

“I’m fighting for one thing: the perservation of our culture, which is based on Christianity, Judaism and humanism - and not on Islam… While Islamization of our society grows, the political elite looks in the other direction and ignores the real problem, namely, the impending loss of our freedom. I am fighting not against Moslems, but against the influx of a totalitarian ideology called Islam.”

(Read more…)

Move for absentee voting prompts fire across the political spectrum

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yisrael Beiteinu head Avigdor Lieberman announced Monday that they intend to promote a bill that would let Israeli citizens vote from abroad in Knesset elections. The parallel announcements appeared to be coordinated.

Coalition parties Shas and Labor oppose the bill, as do many opposition parties.

Kadima filed a no-confidence motion against the government over its intention “to enable people not living in Israel to vote in the elections and determine the fate of those living here.”[..]

If Israel lets ex-pats vote, what’s to stop enfranchising all Jews? By Gideon Levy

THREE CHEERS FOR LIEBERMAN

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Israel Our Home party, says, “It’s time to forget our obsession of “territory in exchange for peace; all future agreements must be based on ‘peace in exchange for peace.’”

Speaking at a party faction meeting on Monday, Lieberman said, “Peace is in fact our heart’s desire, but it is not more important than Israel’s existence as the state of the Jewish people or than lasting security for its citizens. We extend our hand in peace to enemies, but as long as they choose the path of war, we must be firm, return battle, and defeat the enemy. We must strive for victory instead of talking about possible compromise, interpreted as weakness by our enemies.
(Read more…)

National Review Online Symposium

As the Geert Wilders case goes into pre-trial, National Review Online asked our experts: Is there any legitimate reason he’s in court? What are the implications of such a trial being held, nevermind its outcome?

BAT YE’OR
Geert Wilders is a hero for those countless Europeans who cherish a free and democratic Europe — a Europe proud of its Judeo-Christian and humanistic values, its civilization, and its achievements in the field of human rights. But this is not today’s Europe. In today’s Europe, synagogues, Jewish schools, clubs, and cemeteries need to be guarded — as if going to a Jewish school or praying in a synagogue were a crime punishable by death as in Nazi-occupied Europe. Intellectuals, scholars, and those who protest the creeping Eurabization of culture and society are threatened, boycotted by their colleagues, thrown out of their jobs, forced to leave their families and go into hiding, or obliged to live with bodyguards. Wilders has devoted his life to freeing Europe from Eurabia’s clutches. To this titanic struggle he has sacrificed the security of his life and the joys of family. Threatened by a desert whirlwind blowing hatred upon Europe from the south, spending days and nights shielded by bodyguards, persecuted and tormented by his feckless Eurabian opponents, Geert Wilders incarnates the free soul of an unbending Europe.

— Bat Ye’or is author, most recently, of Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis.

Continue for Paul Marshall, Daniel Pipes, Nina Shea et al

Quick- articulate - likable - fiery - rational - beautiful - informed - knowledgeable - personable - humorous.

When asked if Obama can win in 2012 she said that if he declared war on Iran and came out in support of Israel “which I would like him to do”, he could win. Otherwise, no way.

Notice she is also wearing the flag pin showing the flags of Israel and the USA. Smart politics when 2/3 of Americans support Israel.

Posted by Bill Levinson

The following one-sentence definition was part of a circulated E-mail we received, and it is the best we have ever seen. With proper rewording, it applies to the IDF as well.

A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America” for an amount of “up to and including my life.”

“Culture matters. Race doesn’t.”
by Bill Levinson

The Third World is well known for voting against Israel in the United Nations General Assembly, and it is time to discuss the previously unmentioned elephant in the living room. These countries resent people of Euro-American background, and Jews in particular, because they remind them of the cultural inferiority that relegates their people to short lives of disease, poverty, violence, and abject squalor. Although no civilized person would say, as Pat Robertson did, that Haitians did “something” to deserve a catastrophic earthquake, Lawrence Harrison’s “Haiti and the Voodoo Curse” shows what Haitian culture has done to make the country among the poorest on earth while neighbors like the Dominican Republic and Barbados enjoy rising standards of living. (Read more…)

This Album memorializes the arrival of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in May of 1944.

It is the only one of its kind, and it is solely due to this album that we have a visual history of what occurred in the Auschwitz-Birchenau death camp.

The album was discovered after the war by an Auschwitz survivor, Lily Jacob, who donated it to Yad Vashem in 1980.

Please pass this around, to help assure that people will continue to bear witness to this evil legacy.

Click here to view the Auschwitz Album

Prospects for Arab-Israeli Regional Cooperation

Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom

• Regional cooperation begins with resuming negotiations with the Palestinians. In the interests of achieving a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace, Israel sees the economic domain as one of the cornerstones of good relations.
• Political dialogue with our Palestinian partners is critical, but it will not be furthered by allowing a settlement freeze to be imposed as a precondition to negotiation. Nor will it be advanced by a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood.
• Beyond the Palestinian question, the largest obstacle to regional peace is the current Iranian regime, which continues to do everything in its power to undermine the moderate regimes in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and the good relations that Israel might have with Muslim and Arab countries.
• If Syria is transferring missiles to Hizbullah, then Syria cannot be serious about making peace. Although Syrian rhetoric is full of references to that country’s willingness to negotiate, Syrian support and financing of terrorist organizations belie the claim. Still, Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated clearly that he is willing to resume negotiations with Syria without preconditions.

(Read more…)

The more I think about America’s attempts to bring democracy with all its values to Islamic countries and in particular like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, I come to the conclusion its a lost cause. Forget nation building. So I very much appreciated the following article.

David Solway makes a similar point in Charity Begins at Home. He argues for limiting our foreign aid to people who are our friends and otherwise to spend the money on the poor at home.

DL Adams,  The American Thinker

(Read more…)

[Robert Costa] The Corner

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blasted the Obama administration on Saturday night during her 45-minute keynote address at the inaugural national “tea party” convention in Nashville. Palin said the president must “stop lecturing and start listening” and questioned whether Obama’s 2008 campaign theme was succeeding:

“How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?” she asked, to cheers. “It’s time they stop blaming everyone else.”

America is “ready for another revolution,” Palin said. The tea-party movement, she added, “is about the people” and “it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” (Palin, interestingly, gave the speech without one.) The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee also urged the GOP “to absorb as much of the Tea Party as possible.” The Tea Party, she said, “is the future of politics.” It is “inspiring,” she said, “to see real people, not politicos, inside-the-beltway professionals, come out, stand up, and speak out for common-sense conservative principles.” In a sign of her support, Palin pledged to give her compensation from the appearance (reportedly $100,000) “right back to the cause.”
(Read more…)

Pakistan: Muslim lawyers group threatens to “burn alive” anyone who defends murdered 12-year-old Christian

Teenage girl buried alive in Turkey for talking to boys

Your Sharia raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl

Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was 13-years-old, and she cried for mercy. This was after she was raped by three men, tried under Sharia law by al-Shabab in Somalia, and had her sentence for adultery handed down. They took her to a football stadium, put her in a hole up to her neck, and with an audience of over 1,000 to watch, 50 men threw stones at her. When she stopped moving, nurses went to check her pulse. She was still alive. So they put her back in the hole, and continued the stoning. She died in that hole back in October 2008.

We can’t hope to save all these Muslim victims but we can hope to save ourselves. Muslims should be barred from the civilized world. Even if they are “moderates” they show allegiance to such barbarity by remaining Muslims.

See what Wikipedia has to say. Note what countries support in law.

By Ted Belman

You would think that Netanyahu had his hands full with the freeze and Iran, but no he has been busy with various initiatives.

1. He has a record of removing red tape. Now he is revolutionizing the approval of building permits.

The approved reform defines three tracks for receiving construction permits. The “permit-free” track will give immediate approval for small projects like construction of fences up to 2 meters high, addition of industrial air conditioners and installation of solar panels. The “short track” for projects like the closing of a porch, addition of a pergola and other small scale construction will take no more than 45 days. The “full track” for larger projects, like construction of a new building or bridge, will not take more than 90 days.

(Read more…)

Roee Nahmias, YNET

Two Israeli missile boats reportedly passed through the Suez Canal Thursday morning, according to Arab media reports over the weekend.

Egyptian authorities reportedly adopted strict security measures to ensure the ships’ safety. According to the reports, the two Navy ships traveled through the canal en route to the Red Sea.

Israel Navy ship (Archive Photo: IDF Spokesman’s Office)

The sources did not provide the exact ultimate destination of the missile boats. However, Egyptian maritime sources quoted in the Arab media estimated that both ships were headed to the Persian Gulf and may reach it within four days. The veracity of these estimates is unclear.
(Read more…)

Benny Morris talk stirs uproar at Cambridge

BY JONNY PAUL, JPOST

LONDON – The Israel Society at Cambridge University has succumbed to pressure and canceled a talk by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev historian Benny Morris after protesters accused him of “Islamophobia” and “racism.”

Morris was scheduled to speak to students at the university on Thursday, but following a campaign led by anti-Israel activist Ben White the Israel Society canceled the talk. Instead Morris was invited to speak at an event hosted by the university’s Department of Political and International Studies.
(Read more…)

(Read more…)

U.S. professor becomes first Jew to win ‘Arab Nobel Prize’
By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz

An American professor has become the first Jew to win the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine, popularly known as the “Arab Nobel Prize.”

Stanford professor Ronald Levy, who heads the university’s Oncology department, told Haaretz that as an American Jew married to an Israeli it never crossed his mind that he might win the Saudi-financed competition.

“I didn’t think there was much chance, and I forgot about it,” Levy said. “It’s an Arab country, and I didn?t think they are likely to pick a Jew.”
(Read more…)