The mainstream Western view of the election is bizarre and very damaging. In this fantasy, Aboul Fatouh is portrayed as the liberal candidate. If he wins, everything will be just fine and dandy. You can go back to sleep.
What evidence is adduced for this picture? Basically, none. The idea is that his moderation was proven because he defied the Brotherhood to run for the office. Yet the reality is the exact opposite. The Brotherhood refused to run a candidate at a time when it was following a cautious strategy, wanting to show that it wasn’t seeking total power and could co-habit—at least for five years—with a non-Islamist president.
By declaring his candidacy, Aboul Fatouh was in fact taking a more radical approach. Later, when the Brotherhood felt more confident after winning almost half the parliamentary seats it became more aggressive. (Read more…)
In 1936, The Atlantic published a prescient article titled Jews in trouble. It began as follows;
By LUDWIG LEWISOHN
ONE of the most excellent of my Christian friends (the greater number of my older friends are such) could finally hold in no longer. ‘Your people are in trouble!’ There was a tinge of over-eagerness in his tone; there was the faint shadow of something akin to the triumph of one who can say, ‘I told you so.’ He had, in fact, never told me anything. But an unspoken implication had hung in the air between us (as it has between other Christian friends and me) for years. The implication could be phrased somewhat as follows: ‘You had become quite one of ourselves; we never thought of you as different. Did you have, as it were, to leave us and identify yourself so wholly with this people which, whatever its virtues and whatever be the merits of the case, does always create friction and commotion? Where there is so much smoke, there must be some fire. Did you have both to fan that flame and to leap into it?’
The president fears confronting Assad because of the effect it might have on his nuclear diplomacy.
By JOHN BOLTON, WSJ
Despite months of negotiations by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and extensive Security Council deliberations, hostilities in Syria continue. Although overall violence is down slightly and the council has increased U.N. observers to 300, the civilian death toll continues to rise. Syria’s dictatorship ignores Mr. Annan’s “cease fire,” and Bashar al-Assad himself shows no signs of stepping down.
President Obama seems paralyzed for two basic reasons: First, he is committed to a U.N. process almost certainly doomed to failure; and second, he fears taking on the real nemesis in Syria, namely Iran’s ayatollahs. (Read more…)
The ongoing rivalry between PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas and his young challenger Mohammad Dahlan is an open secret on the Palestinian street. What may, however, come as a surprise, is the involvement of Saudi Arabia in the internal Palestinian struggle for power. Recently, the kingdom has dramatically decreased its subsidies to the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, Abbas is almost never invited to visit any of the Gulf Emirates or Saudi Arabia. Dahlan, on the other hand, is known to have a home base in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as well as a special relationship with Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia. (Read more…)
Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak are facing another of the periodic opposition campaigns to unseat them – this time by pressure for an early election a year before its October, 2013 date. New faces have joined the opposition lineup. They are focused on challenging the current government’s credentials for leading an Israeli attack to preempt a nuclear Iran. These two goals are interchangeable. However, before the campaign peaks, DEBKAfile’s analysts report it has begun to backfire.
The newcomer to the anti-government ranks is the party registered Sunday, April 29, by ex-broadcaster Yair Lapid as “Yesh Atid” (There is a Future). His potential partners are former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former chief of staff Gaby Ashkenazi. They are all casting about for a political base, together or apart, from which to tip over the current government. Incumbent President Shimon Peres cheers them on from the wings. (Read more…)
We should, for example, provide money for a strike fund; provide secure communications equipment and training on how to use it, and airlift WIMAX wifi transmitters that can provide internet service to all regions currently under a regime-ordered communications-blackout. Why? Because it is in our national security interest to do so.
Thirty-two years ago this week, on April 24, eight U.S. servicemen died in the southeastern desert of Iran when their mission to rescue 52 Americans held captive by the revolutionary regime in Tehran was aborted by President Jimmy Carter.
Operation Eagle Claw was one of the first missions conducted by the recently-formed Delta Force. Depending on whose account you read, it was either an unlucky masterpiece of complex planning or a desperate attempt to save a doomed presidency that never should have been given the green light in the first place. (Read more…)
Harvard wouldn’t let Wallace Brand speak at their One State West of the Jordan Conference because his state was the Jewish one, so he purchased an ad in their newspaper for Israel’s birthday. Kudos to a proud Zionist Harvard alumnus.
This ad appears in the Harvard Crimson today:
1 State West of the Jordan
Students at Harvard should know that there are actually three solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
First there is a “one [Arab majority] state” solution, in which the Jewish Israelis would become unwelcome guests in their own National Home, and the Jews in the Diaspora, such as in Toulouse, lose the only place on earth they could go to and not be in a minority. (Read more…)
I beg you, Please listen to the beautiful voice of Yedida Freilich as she tells us the Bloody Truth about the UN and Israel.
Also watch her as she condemns the UN approval of non-member status for the Palestinians in the wake of the blizzard of rockets they fired at Israel leading up to The Gaza OP. I titled it BRILLIANT AND BEAUTIFUL
Finally I would ask you to visit Israpundit regularly to get up to the minute news on Israel/US relations
Here Is a Real Star.
Kate Smith was born and grew up in Columbia, Missouri. In early 1940, Kate Smith, a fiercely patriotic American, and the biggest star on radio, was deeply worried about her country.
She asked Irving Berlin if he could give her a song that would re-ignite the spirit of American patriotism and faith. He said he had a song that he had written in 1917, but never used it.
How many times must the political left slander Israel and malign Jewish values before American Jews finally admit that it is fundamentally antisemitic? Evidence of Jew-hatred on the left abounds, and yet liberals often deny its existence or, worse, rationalize it as a response to Jewish particularism. Then there are those Jews who peddle hateful anti-Israel rhetoric themselves and who serve to shield their radical compatriots from accusations of bigotry. Progressive extremists disparage Israel in the vilest terms and support Islamists who preach genocide, but deny charges of antisemitism by pointing to leftist Jews who do the same. How can they be antisemitic, they ask, when even some Jews denigrate Israel and support the Palestinians? Unfortunately, many liberals fail to see the nuanced disingenuity of the question and, thereby, excuse radical hatred through ignorance or naiveté. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the trivialization of reported antisemitism within Occupy Wall Street (“OWS”).
A top official in President Harry Truman’s State Department threatened to stoke anti-Semitism by publicizing documents that would “do great harm to the Jews” as retribution for the establishment of an independent State of Israel, according to newly unearthed diplomatic cables.
As Jews across the globe celebrate Israeli Independence Day today, the cables reveal that, despite public overtures, the U.S. was highly wary of Israel’s creation. They also provide definitive proof of what experts describe as a profound anti-Israel and anti-Semitic bias at the highest levels of the U.S. government. (Read more…)
I recently reported on a Resolution passed unanimously by the Florida Senate and Legislature in which it unanimously recognized Israel’s legal right to Judea and Samaria.
Now two of my friends from Toronto retained Howard Grief, who happens to be a member of the Quebec Bar, to draft the following petition to the Canadian Parliament.
PETITION TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS OF CANADA
FOR THE REAFFIRMATION OF JEWISH LEGAL RIGHTS TO THE LAND OF ISRAEL AND FORMER MANDATED PALESTINE PREVIOUSLY ASSENTED TO BY CANADA IN 1922
To the House of Commons in Parliament Assembled:
We the undersigned, citizens of Canada, submit the following Petition to the Honourable Members for their due deliberation and approval: (Read more…)
As the Obama Administration tries to hammer together an American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the body count from his disastrous retreat from Iraq is swiftly rising. Last week alone there were fourteen car bombings orchestrated by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose goal has always been a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. The bombings, which received only light coverage in a media unwilling to talk about anything that might show their candidate in a bad light, are only one of the fracture points.
A united Iraq died a few days after the withdrawal. The only people who still believe in the fiction of a centrally governed Iraq are holding down desks in the State Department. There are several Iraqs now. There is Iran’s Iraq, the one overseen by Tehran’s puppet in Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki. Then there is Iraqi Kurdistan which stands on the verge of declaring its independence, an act that will touch off a violent territorial dispute accompanied by ethnic cleansing. (Read more…)
Militant Islam has far more in common with Nazism and Communism than it does with any genuine religious faith. All three have two common elements: (1) the openly stated intention to rule the entire world and (2) a claim to the right to deport, oppress, re-educate, or exterminate those who do not fit into their regimes. Militant Islam can, despite the lessons of 1939-1945 as well as the Holodomor (genocide by starvation of Ukrainians), China’s Cultural Revolution, Stalin’s Great Purge, and the killing fields of Cambodia, promote this agenda today by masquerading as a religion, with all the legal and social protections that this implies.
Militant Islam Says It Will Dominate the World (Read more…)
The panicky response by Israel’s leaders to the Eisner episode will only serve to encourage pernicious ‘protest tourism’ by pampered radicals.
Nor do the gods appear in warrior’s armor clad
To strike them down with sword and spear
Those whom they would destroy
They first make mad – Bharthari, 7th century (translated from the Sanskrit)
“Protestors are slowly upping the ante, with slogans becoming more daring day by day,” observed Mohamad Masri, a political scientist at the Centre for Strategic Studies at Jordan University.
In the streets of Amman, rumours abound of misspent public funds involving three corruption scandals – namely, allegations surrounding the state-owned National Resources Investment and Development Corporation (Mawared), the illegal licensing of a Dead Sea casino, and the Jordan Petroleum Refinery.
“Unfortunately the protests have failed to garner momentum: the opposition is fragmented, different groups have too many different grievances,” remarked activist Tareq Zureikat. The pro-democracy movement is a mix of tribal Jordanians, leftists and IAF followers. (Read more…)
Posted by Ted Belman @ 10:16 am ET |Plink|Trackback|Comments Off| 618 views
Yisrael Beytenu fired the opening shot for the Knesset’s summer session, submitting the first of many “Tal Law” alternatives expected in the coming months.
The Tal Law – declared illegal by the High Court of Justice in February – provided the legal framework for ultra-Orthodox men to defer IDF service indefinitely.
He also called on legislators from across the political spectrum to support the proposed bill.
“All groups, organizations and people involved in this issue should contact all MKs from Likud, Labor, Kadima, Independence, National Union, Habayit Hayehudi and Meretz and demand they support our proposal,” Liberman added. “No gimmicks, no excuses. Whoever wants everyone to serve in the army should just come and vote.” (Read more…)
Since 1948 till today, the Arab states have been in a state of war with Israel. There were four major wars (1948-56-67-73) and many more military conflicts. And till 1979, there were no formal relations between any Arab country and Israel.
The first breakthrough came in 1979 after the signing of the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. With this agreement, Egypt achieved what they couldn’t achieve by war. They got back the Sinai Peninsula. And in later years, we saw diplomatic relations between Israel and another four Arab countries (Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia). The relations were strained during the Palestinians’ Intifada (uprising). Later on, two Gulf states had the first contact between any of the Gulf states and Israel since 1948 with the opening of trade representation offices in Qatar and Oman. Jerusalem is important to all Abrahamic religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity), so, why Jerusalem is dividing people of different faiths rather than bringing them together? (Read more…)
The Jewish community’s largest “defense” organization, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has adopted a policy, consistent with the progressive agenda, not to speak up much about the global tsunami of Muslim anti-Semitism, but instead to campaign against “Islamophobia.”
This while FBI statistics show that hate crimes against Jews in America are five times the number of hate crimes against Muslims. The rationale for this policy, as the ADL’s chief, Abe Foxman, told the Boston Jewish Advocate, is that “[y]ou can’t fight the fight against anti-Semitism without fighting against bigotry. … You cannot ask people to stand with you unless you are ready to stand with them.” (Read more…)
The Likud would win more than twice as many mandates as any other party if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu advanced the next general election, according to a Smith Research poll sponsored by The Jerusalem Post this week.
Netanyahu said in interviews this week that he had no intention of advancing the election, which is set for October 22, 2013. The poll of 500 respondents representing a statistical sample of the Jewish and Arab adult population in Israel was taken on Sunday and Monday and had a had a 4.5 percentage point margin of error.
Likud would win 31 seats, followed by Labor and Yisrael Beytenu with 15 each, Kadima with 13, former journalist Yair Lapid’s new Atid Party with 11, Shas eight, United Torah Judaism six, National Union four, and Habayit Hayehudi and Meretz three each. The three Arab parties together would win 11 mandates. (Read more…)
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