By BARRY RUBIN, JPOST

Here is one of my favorite stories explaining how the Middle East works as told by the famed Egyptian journalist Muhammad Hussanein Heikal. Like all of Heikal’s stories, it may or may not be true, which is also part of the lesson being taught.

When Muammar Gaddafi first became Libya’s ruler, Heikal was dispatched to meet and evaluate him by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. After returning to Cairo, Heikal was quickly ushered into the president’s office.

“Well,” said Nasser, “what do you think of Gaddafi?”

“He’s a disaster! A catastrophe!”

“Why,” asked the president, “is he against us?”

“Oh no, far worse than that,” Heikal claims to have replied, “he’s for us and he really believes all the stuff we are saying!”
(Read more…)

Law enforcement officers enforce all laws impartially. Stalinst thugs enforce selected laws selectively.
by Bill Levinson

The Wall Street Journal reported that Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Central Intelligence Agency for alleged abuses of captured terror suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. We remind our readers that the U.S. Constitution says only that torture cannot be used to (1) extract a confession, such as putting somebody to the “ordinary and extraordinary question” (ordinary and extraordinary referring to the degree of torture), or (2) as a punishment (such as breaking on the wheel, branding, or burning at the stake). It does not say that, if a terrorist has buried a woman alive (as depicted in “Dirty Harry”), you cannot beat him with a steel-cored rubber hose until he tells you where she is, although the resulting implied confession must not be used against him in court. Deadly physical force, and by implication lesser force that would under normal circumstances constitute aggravated assault, can legally be used to prevent or terminate a violent crime that is still in progress.

We are sure that Mr. Holder agrees that a civilized country’s laws must apply to all: high and low, rich and poor, Republican and Democrat alike. Enforcement of a country’s laws against one segment of society but not another is characteristic of Third World dictatorships, banana republics, and military juntas that prosecute, purge, and even execute former regime members for real or imaginary crimes. It was standard practice, for example, for the contending factions in England’s civil wars to behead rival leaders (e.g. Queen Jane, King Charles II) as “traitors,” and France’s revolutionaries did the same thing to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Eric Holder’s position is, however, that he must investigate the methods that the Central Intelligence Agency used to protect the United States from repetitions of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. If so, he must also investigate Barack Obama’s campaign for voter intimidation and for what looks a lot like illegal gambling over the Internet–an activity to which Barack Obama personally signed his name. Attorney General Holder’s decision on this matter will show whether is an impartial enforcer of our nation’s laws, or a Stalinist thug who orchestrates purges and show trials of prior “regime” members. (Read more…)

By Ted Belman

We all know how Israel began its statehood as a socialist endeavour. Over the years the Histradut, Israel’s Labor Union, held Israel in a stranglehold. It was only a few decades ago that Israel was experiencing crippling inflation and high unemployment. Now Israel is the toast of the town, at least in innovation and entrepreneurship. How did we get from there to here.

In a major article, Silicon Israel, George Gilder explains. Here’s an excerpt.

In under 25 years—starting from those first modest tax reforms of the mid-1980s—Israel has accomplished the most overwhelming transformation in the history of economics, from a nondescript laggard in the industrial world to a luminous first. Today, on a per-capita basis, Israel far leads the world in research and technological creativity. Between 1991 and 2000, even before the big reform of 2005, Israel’s annual venture-capital outlays, nearly all private, rose nearly 60-fold, from $58 million to $3.3 billion; companies launched by Israeli venture funds rose from 100 to 800; and Israel’s information-technology revenues rose from $1.6 billion to $12.5 billion. By 1999, Israel ranked second only to the United States in invested private-equity capital as a share of GDP. And it led the world in the share of its growth attributable to high-tech ventures: 70 percent.
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JPOST

[The famous photo of Adolf Hitler sitting with Grand Mufti Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini.]

The publicly funded Multicultural Center’s (Werkstatt der Kulturen) decision to remove educational panels of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, who was an ally of Adolf Hitler, from a planned exhibit, sparked outrage on Thursday among a district mayor, the curator of the exhibit, and the Berlin Jewish community.

The curator, Karl Rössler, told The Jerusalem Post that it is a “scandal” that the director of the Werkstatt, Philippa Ebéné, sought to censor the exhibit.
(Read more…)

By Dore Gold.

For over two decades, Iran has been identified in various U.S. official reports as the most prominent state-supporter of terrorism in the world. Its terrorist arm, Hizbullah, struck at the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 American servicemen; it also bombed the French military headquarters at the same time. It unleashed attacks on Western embassies in Kuwait, and held Western hostages for years in Lebanon.

Recently, Iran has directly supported insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan with arms and training against U.S. and allied forces. Iran has vastly expanded its security ties in Latin America, especially with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who has allowed Hizbullah to run freely in his country. True, given this background, in Western capitals one can hear the refrain that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons is “unacceptable,” but there is little sense of urgency that is behind those statements.
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By Ted Belman

The Saudi Plan was introduced prior to the Iraq War. After the war began, the Roadmap was unveiled which included the Saudi Plan and now we are stuck with it.

In the article which follows written just after the Roadmap was introduced, I reasoned that the Saudi Plan was really the State Department Plan negotiated for the Saudi support for the US invasion.

A Unifying Theory

Palestine for Iraq

We’ve been had. After Bush’s June speech, we rejoiced. We were home free. No such luck.

Bush has made a Faustian bargain. He has sold America’s soul, Israel, to the devil, Saudi Arabia. What is that bargain? I’ll give you Palestine, you give me Iraq.
(Read more…)

AngloRaanana

· It’s an ill wind that blows no good, they say and of course they’re right and there are all sorts of moral complexities involved when it comes to trading in arms and materiel. The not so GN is that war is a part of life. The GN is that the restrictions placed on the sale of weaponry by Israel are very tightly controlled. That said, the Indian press reports that Rafael Armament Development Authority has closed a huge deal with the Indian Army to supply advanced anti-aircraft systems with a range of up to 45 kilometers . The contract, worth $1 billion, involves the provision of Spyder low-level quick-reaction surface-to-air missile systems capable of engaging aircraft, helicopters, unmanned air vehicles, drones and precision-guided munitions.
(Read more…)

Comment by Ted Belman
Crowley kept repeating the following

The point here is ultimately, we have to find a way back to negotiations, and we have to have confidence that when those negotiations start, that all of the parties – the Israelis, the Palestinians, the rest of the region – is invested in this peace process.

Recent rhetoric has set the goal as getting back to negotiations rather than getting a freeze. This interview makes it clearer than ever. Not only has this become the object of the exercise but all must be confident that the exercise will make progress.

Of course if the PA continues to insist on a full settlement freeze, then the freeze is front and centre again. But so are Netanyahu’s conditions namely recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and the demilitarization of the new state.

If the PA was sincere about being ready to compromise there is no need for a freeze as a deal could be struck within months. If Israel agrees to a freeze she will be putting herself in an untenable position. The longer the Arabs delay, the more untenable the freeze becomes.

I do not accept for a moment that an “exit strategy” is needed for a temporary freeze. If the freeze is stipulated to be temporary or for a finite duration then on its expiry there is no freeze in place and no need for an exit strategy. An exit strategy is only needed when the “temporary freeze” keeps renewing itself save for the exit. Thus it may as well be a permanent freeze subject to an exit strategy. I suspect it is only styled as temporary to make it more palatable.

Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary, Daily Press Briefing
August 27, 2009
(Read more…)

By Yoram Ettinger, FrontPageMag

The idea that a Palestinian state can lead to enduring peace in the Middle East has become a diplomatic obsession for American policy makers. Bringing such a state into being has become the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail. In fact, however, a Palestinian state would not only fail to bring peace and stability to the region, but would make it an even more dangerous place than it already is. And ironically, given its adamant backing for a government that would have been led by Yasser Arafat and now would be headed by Abu Mazen, U.S. support for the creation of “Palestine,” which would immediately ally itself with and become a client of rivals and enemies of America such as Iran, would harm American, Israeli, and even Arab interests.
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By Matthew M. Hausman

Recent polls show that many Jewish Democrats disagree with President Obama’s MidEast policies. Incredibly, though, most continue to support the President generally, further evidencing the failure of liberal Jews to consider Israel a primary concern. This failure enables left-wing revisionists using misleading polls and flawed studies to lay claim to the soul of the Jewish mainstream. In particular, J Street commissions polls by an ideologically simpatico polling source, who crafts questions so as to influence the answers. J Street then asserts that the polls are objective and representative of widespread Jewish opinion. This dishonesty is reminiscent of the revisionism used by left-of-center parties in Israel to smear their opponents for political gain before and during the War of Independence.

Interestingly, the Obama Administration’s duplicitous Mideast policies, employ the same revisionism, as evidenced by the President’s speech in Cairo, where he delivered a revisionist rendering of Jewish and Middle East history.
(Read more…)

By Ted Belman

The following two articles are the most recent on the freeze and differ on the details. Rest assured that not all the details are being made public or will be.. And as we know, the devil is in the details.

What we do know for sure is that Netanyahu turned his back on the people who recommended him for PM and turned his back on the policies that got him elected, when he sought first Kadimah and then Labour to join his government.

He gave Barak the Defense portfolio thereby putting Barak in charge of Judea and Samaria. Thus Barak has the power over settlement construction. He has sworn to uproot the 24 “unlawful” outposts within two months
(Read more…)

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, (IsraelNN.com)

The Tamar gas field, 50 miles off the Haifa coast, keeps getting bigger with every report, and the gas discovery now is estimated to be the world’s largest in 18 months. The Scotland-based Wood Mackenzie research and consulting firm assessed the value of the field at $8 billion, approximately double that of local analysts.

The latest upside projection comes less than two weeks after another revised estimate that the reserves are 16 percent higher than previously thought.

Changing gas prices could make the gas worth anywhere between $3.5-$17 billion in the future, and partners in the offshore project are preparing for the first deliveries of gas in 2012. They have approved expenditures of $230 million for equipment and services to be provided by Noble Energy, a partner in the project, along with Israeli firms Delek Drilling, Avner Oil and Gas and Isramco.
(Read more…)

Poll: Netanyahu on slippery slope and unilateral freeze improper, oppose freeze

Dr. Aaron Lerner, IMRA

With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu meeting in London with US Mideast mediator George Mitchell, a poll carried out this Sunday through Monday by Maagar Mohot Survey Institute (headed by Professor Yitzchak Katz) finds Israeli Jews oppose (52%:33%) a settlement freeze in Judea and Samaria and E. Jerusalem in return for Arab gestures such as the opening of various Israeli representation offices or granting of permission for Israeli flights to fly over Saudi Arabia on the way to the Far East. Respondents warned (47%:25%) that once Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu formally agrees to a settlement freeze President Obama will pressure him to continue the freeze indefinitely regardless of what the Arabs do.
(Read more…)

On August 28th, Gilad Shalit will celebrate his 23rd birthday. However, instead of celebrating his birthday with family and friends, Gilad Shalit will be ‘celebrating’ his birthday in terrorist captivity in Gaza, courtesy of the terrorist group Hamas.

In order to raise awareness of Gilad Shalit’s story and to get support for his immediate release, various groups have organized “Tweet4Shalit”, which will take place from Wednesday, August 26th at midnight until Thursday, August 27th.

The goal is to make “Tweet4Shalit” into an event where thousands of people will tweet the hashtag #GiladShalit on Twitter and make Gilad a top 10 Twitter “Trending Topic.”

For more information about “Tweet4Shalit,” click here.

Please take part in this important event.

posted by Daled Amos

Report: Israel to freeze settlements in exchange for tougher Iran sanctions
By Haaretz Service and Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama is close to breaking the stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians by getting Israel to agree to a partial settlement freeze in exchange for a tougher U.S. stand against Iran’s nuclear program, the British Guardian reported.

The report, which cites U.S., European, Israeli and Palestinian officials, said that Obama will be ready to announce the resumption of long-stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians by the end of September.

“The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not,” the Guardian quoted one official close to the negotiations as saying.

In exchange for Israel agreeing to a partial and temporary settlement freeze, the U.S., Britain and France would push the United Nations Security Council to expand sanctions on Iran to include its oil and gas industry, the report said.

Israel is also seeking normalization with Arab states, which would include the right for El Al to fly within Arab states’ airspace, the establishment of trade offices and embassies and an end to the ban on travelers with Israeli stamps in their passports.
(Read more…)

The inimitable Sultan Knish takes on The Big Israel Lie

There are two interconnected lies that reside at the heart of any American discussion about Israel. The first lie is that the road to peace in the Middle East lies through Israel. The second lie is that Israel controls American policy toward itself. Those lies are not the product of ignorance or misunderstanding, they are the product of an effective propaganda campaign by the unofficial suit and tie spokesmen of the Saudi lobby who dominate American policy in the Middle East. The goal of that campaign has been to make Israel seem like the axis on which the Middle East and America turn, in order to put Israel on the firing line. And it is a campaign that has been wickedly successful up until now.

And ends with,

The Big Israel Lie is that Israel is powerful in Washington and mighty in the Middle East. The real truth is that Israel is a tiny country that commands emotional affinity from a limited percentage of Jews and Christians, whose diplomacy abroad is clumsy, and whose regional influence is small, whose military is handicapped by liberal handwringing and whose leaders would rather negotiate than fight… until there is no other choice.

This lie is meant to make Israel seem strong, in order to place it at the center of every problem and turn it into the nail that needs to be hammered down for everything to stand straight. But the easiest way to clear up the lie is to simply look at the reality of the Middle East and see that Israel vanishes beneath a single fingernail

[All in all, well done, Meridor]
‘We All See the Clock Ticking’

In an interview with SPIEGEL, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor, 62, speaks about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to Berlin, the chances for a new peace process in the Middle East and why the world can’t let Iran get its hands on nuclear weapons.

SPIEGEL: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting George Mitchell, the United States’ special envoy to the Middle East, this Monday in London before coming to Berlin on Wednesday. Will we see a very confident and relaxed Benjamin Netanyahu or a politician whose hardline policies have put him under a lot of pressure?
(Read more…)

DIVORCE AGREEMENT

THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL PUT AND IT’S BY A YOUNG PERSON, A STUDENT!

To American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists, Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950′s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:
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Herb keinon, THE JERUSALEM POST

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu emerged from his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown Tuesday afternoon in London saying that Israel and the US were trying to come up with “a bridging formula” that would allow the launching of the peace process, while at the same time enabling normal life in the settlements.

Netanyahu said that one could not expect Israel to allow a population of 250,000 residents of the territories to live there without new schools, kindergartens, or homes for their families.

“This is different from grabbing land,” Netanyahu said during a press conference at 10 Downing Street following the meeting.
(Read more…)

Daily Presidential Tracking PollTuesday, August25

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 29% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11. Today is the President’s fourth straight day with an Approval Index rating in negative double digits (see trends).

This morning, both the White House and the Congressional Budget Office offered revised federal budget projections showing higher deficits than anticipated earlier this year. Voters say cutting the deficit should be the President’s most important priority. Health care reform ranks a distant second. At the same time, voters overwhelmingly say deficit reduction is the least likely of the President’s priorities to be achieved. Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters believe President Obama’s policies have driven up the deficit.
(Read more…)