Monday 8 June 2009

Israel Matzav: Michael Ledeen on self-reliance

Israel Matzav: Michael Ledeen on self-reliance

Israel Matzav: Netanyahu to make major foreign policy address next Sunday

Netanyahu to make major foreign policy address next Sunday

Behaving more like an American President than like an Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu will make a major foreign policy address to lay out what the Jerusalem Post calls his 'peace vision' at Bar Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center next Sunday.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that National Security Council head Uzi Arad approached the BESA Center on Friday and asked if it would host the address. The BESA Center had been asking Netanyahu to come speak since his election in February.

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Israel Matzav: Netanyahu to make major foreign policy address next Sunday

Israel Matzav: Hezbullah: 'Hands off our weapons'

Israel Matzav: Hezbullah: 'Hands off our weapons'

Israel Matzav: Hamas converts 46 ambulances to military vehicles, misusing humanitarian aid

Hamas converts 46 ambulances to military vehicles, misusing humanitarian aid

I guess Hamas doesn't need ambulances.

PMW has documented the repeated use of foreign funding by both the PA and Hamas for terror and glorification of terror. The following is another case of well intended humanitarian assistance given to Palestinians that is appropriated for military or terror purposes
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Israel Matzav: Hamas converts 46 ambulances to military vehicles, misusing humanitarian aid

Israel Matzav: Clinton warns Ahmadinejad: 'Watch out for the crazy Jews'

Clinton warns Ahmadinejad: 'Watch out for the crazy Jews'

Appearing on ABC's This Week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel may strike pre-emptively against Iran's nuclear facilities should Israel feel threatened. She also warned of 'massive retaliation' should Iran attack Israel, supposedly the repetition of a position she advocated as a Presidential candidate last year. But if you watch what she says, you'll see that what she's actually threatening is an Israeli retaliation and not an American one.

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Israel Matzav: Clinton warns Ahmadinejad: 'Watch out for the crazy Jews'

Israel Matzav: UK supermarkets may be prosecuted for 'mislabeling' products' origin

UK supermarkets may be prosecuted for 'mislabeling' products' origin

'Palestinian activists' are seeking the prosecution of UK supermarkets for 'mislabeling' the origin of products that they claim were produced in 'settlements' located outside the 1949 armistice lines as either having come from Israel or from the 'West Bank' (the claim being that the latter term 'mistakenly' leads one to believe that the products were produced by 'Palestinians'

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Israel Matzav: UK supermarkets may be prosecuted for 'mislabeling' products' origin

Israel Matzav: The revenants' new best friend?

The revenants' new best friend?

Fifteen years ago, Shas chairman Aryeh Deri was the ultra-Orthodox community's darling of the Left. Deri himself seemed to believe in 'territorial compromise' and was close to Leftist icon Yossi Beilin, and Shas' spiritual mentor, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, publicized halachic opinions that stated that it is permitted to turn over land to the 'Palestinians' in order to save lives - allegedly at Deri's behest.
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Israel Matzav: The revenants' new best friend?

Israel Matzav: Video: Sportobama

Israel Matzav: Video: Sportobama

Israel Matzav: IDF foils kidnapping attempt near Karni crossing point; UPDATE: Suicide horses used

IDF foils kidnapping attempt near Karni crossing point; UPDATE: Suicide horses used

The IDF foiled an attempt by 'Palestinian' terrorists to kidnap a soldier near the Karni crossing point in the Gaza Strip this morning. Four terrorists were killed.

Israeli Defense Forces foiled a kidnapping attempt shortly after dawn Monday when Golani troops identified six to 10 terrorists armed with mortar shells and trying to cross the separation barrier near Karni under cover of early morning fog.

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Israel Matzav: IDF foils kidnapping attempt near Karni crossing point; UPDATE: Suicide horses used

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FAVOR

President Obama's Favor


08
Jun
2009

[Opening words of Ha-Rav on his radio show]

President Obama has truly done us a great favor, despite what many think, because when people give us trouble, it unites us. The Nation which dwells in the Land is not panicked by threats and dictates. There is obviously a dispute within the Nation of Israel whether to evacuate settlements but when a demand comes from Obama it infuriates many Jews. They say: "This is an inner dispute between us. He is going to tell us what to do?! Furthermore, he doesn't want us to expand existing houses to allow for natural growth. Where should we put our children? – outside in boxes!" The Nation of Israel is therefore strengthened, and he is in fact doing us a big favor.

This obviously does not mean that we do not take into account what the Americans say. But we need to understand: we need them and they need us. Do not think that the Americans help us because of loving-kindness. Everything is based on cost-benefit analysis. They give aid to where it will benefit them. They give us military help because they profit from it. There was once the "Rogers’ Plan" – it is always the same plan to expel us from parts of Eretz Yisrael but they change the name. Rogers said to Prime Minister Golda Meir: If you do not accept the plan, we will not provide you with weapons. Mrs. Golda Meir replied: We will live and see. In the end, they provided weapons. We do not need to panic. They need us just as we need them.

Regarding the money which we receive from the Americans, this is truly a shame and embarrassment which cannot be describe. Have we become beggars? Being a beggar is shameful when it is an individual and all-the-more-so when it is a nation. Why does an American need to provide me with a livelihood? We are an extremely wealthy Nation – the fifteenth wealthiest Nation in the world. We receive a few billion which is a negligible part of our budget. After the establishment of the State we did not have any money to buy weapons and to develop means to provide jobs – it wasn't good then – but I understand why we took money. But now, taking money from America is an illness. This is similar to the people who collect money at the Kotel and they are extremely wealthy. They continue to beg for money there because it is a sickness. There was once a beggar there and his brother said to him: "Stop. I will give you money to establish a business." The beggar said: "Do not judge your fellow until you walk in his shoes. Come to ask for Tzedakah with me at the Kotel and then we will talk." The brother put on rags and stood at the Kotel all day with his brother asking for Tzedakah. The beggar said: "We leave at five." At five o'clock, the beggar said: "It's five, let's go." At that exact moment, wealthy tourists were coming. The normal brother said: "After them." The beggar said to his brother: "You see. One day of collecting Tzedakah and you are already addicted." It is a sickness! And now this sickness has become a national sickness, so that we are asking the Americans for a small percentage of our budget. This is a desecration of Hashem's Name. We should be doing the exact opposite: calculating how much we have received from the Americans and tell them that we are so grateful for their financial aid and we will pay it back little-by-little.

Some people think that if the Americans pressure we have to bow to the pressure. This is incorrect. Since the American see that we are willing to bow to the pressure, they exert pressure. This is a known saying: One who makes himself into a sheep, the wolf will eat him. We must say to the American that we do not interfere in their matters and please do not interfere in ours. We are ready to take advice and to discuss, but please do not dictate to us.

In conclusion: a true story. A President of the US once said: You Jews must stop dreaming of the whole Land of Israel. Two Rabbis wrote him: Honorable President, we are accustomed to you, the Americans, interfering in our affairs and giving us advice all of the time as to what we should do. But it is a huge innovation for you to interfere as to what we should dream.

Therefore, we are informing you that we began to dream about returning to the Land of Israel and building the Land, "When Hashem will bring the exiles back to Zion, we will be like dreamers" (Tehillim 126:1), before your country existed. And now – Baruch Hashem – our dream is beginning to come to fruition. Therefore, we will certainly take into consideration what you say but we are not afraid of all sorts of pressure.
taken from :Torat HaRav Aviner

MONDOWEISS AGITPROP

Mondoweiss Agitprop

There's a lot of talk swirling around the blogosphere about a short video Max Blumenthal made last week in Jerusalem. Blumenthal purportedly wandered through downtown Jerusalem last week, the evening before Obama's Cairo speech, and recorded the sentiments of folks; the result he found and shows is that Jerusalemites have an obscene hatred of Obama the Nigger.

There's been a lot of discussion about how it's unfair to line up some inebriated teenagers (especially American ones who aren't allowed to buy liquor at home but can do so in Israel) and attribute their idiocy to Vox Populi; people who don't like Israel have countered by saying that what people say when they've drunk too much is indicative of what they think but don't say when they're sober (I agree on this, by the way).

My contribution to the discussion, if a discussion it is, is that Blumenthal's collection of interviewees is – at best – odd. He says he wandered through downtown, yet the video is made at two places only. One, Rivlin street, is the haunt of the American one-year-students crowd, though you can find tipsy European tourists there also, and of course some local Israelis. It's one block long, the whole street. The second place was Jaffa street near Ben Yehuda – indeed, the center of town – about a block away from Rivlin. And the whole time Blumenthal's camera was on, he never saw even one single Israeli? How likely is that?

Say you're interviewing the locals at Time Square about some matter, so as to figure out what Americans think. Inevitably, you'll come across a lot of tourists, it being Time Square, but what are the chances you'll find not a single card-carrying American? And if that happens, and you then post your video to Youtube to castigate America, what does that tell us about you?

I've been eying the folks at Mondoweiss for a while, wondering if they're worth some closer analysis; maybe they are, instead of Glenn Greenwald who is proving uninteresting for my purposes.
taken from :Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

THE LEICA FREEDOM TRAIN

THE LEICA FREEDOM TRAIN

A REMARKABLE STORY ABOUT HEROISM IN THE FACE OF DARKNESS:

THE LEICA FREEDOM TRAIN

The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera. It is a German product - precise,minimalist, and utterly efficient. Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty.

E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous photographic product, saved its Jews.And Ernst Leitz II, the steely-eyed Protestant patriarch who headed theclosely held firm as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the title, "the photography industry's Schindler.

"The 'Leica Freedom Train'

As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, askingfor his help in getting them and their families out of the country.As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited theirprofessional activities.

To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly establishedwhat has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "the Leica F reedom Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in t heguise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas.

Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kongand the United States . Leitz's a ctivities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned acrossGermany.

Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the ocean linerBremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry.*Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom - anew Leica.

The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out ofthis migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople,marketers and writers for the photographic press.

Keeping the story quiet

The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939,delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders.

By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America,thanks to the Leitzes' efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?Leitz Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflectedcredit on the newly resurgent Reich.

The company produced range-findersand other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz'ssingle biggest market for optical goods was the United States.

Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to helpJews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe.

Leitz's daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross intoSwitzerland. She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment inthe course of questioning.

She also fell under suspicion wh en she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women,who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s. (After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d'honneur des PalmsAcademic from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from theEuropean Academy in the 1970s.)

Why has no one told this story until now?According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, theLeitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts.

Only after thelast member of the Leitz family was dead did the "Leica Freedom Train"finally come to light.It is now the subject of a book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born Rabbi currently living in England.
taken from B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)

OBAMA'S BIZARRE ORATION ...

Obama's bizarre oration....

Speaking Flattery to Power

By
Barry Rubin *
June 5, 2009


Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo is one of the most bizarre orations ever made by a U.S. president, not a foreign policy statement but rather something invented by Obama, an international campaign speech, as if his main goal was to obtain votes in the next Egyptian primary.


That approach defined Obama’s basic themes: Islam’s great. America is good. We’re sorry. Be moderate (not that you haven’t always been that way). Let’s be friends.

Here, Obama followed the idea that if you want someone to like you agree with almost everything he says. Obama also gave, albeit with some minor variations, the speech that the leader of a Third World Muslim country might give, justifying it in advance by claiming America is a big Muslim country, after all.

Of course, the speech had tremendous—though temporary—appeal combined with its counterproductive strategic impact. It will make him more popular. It may well make America somewhat less unpopular. But its effect on Middle East issues and U.S. interests is another matter entirely.

The first problem is that Obama said many things factually quite untrue, some ridiculously so. Pages would be required to list all these inaccuracies.

The interesting question is whether Obama consciously lied or really believes it. I’d prefer him to be lying, because if he’s that ignorant then America and the world is in very deep trouble.

If he really believes Islam’s social role is so perfect, radical Islamists are a tiny minority, Palestinians have suffered hugely through no fault of their own, and so on, then he’s living in a fantasy world. Unfortunately, we are not.

The collision between reality and dream is going to be a terrible one. The second problem is the speech’s unnecessarily extreme one-sidedness. Obama portrays the West as the guilty party.

Despite a reference to September 11—even that presented as an American misdeed, unfair dislike of Islam resulting—he gave not a single example of Islamist or Muslim responsibility for anything wrong in the world. Obama could easily have made the same points in a balanced way: you’ve made mistakes; we’ve made mistakes. You’ve done things to us; we’ve done things to you. And having established that I respect you, let me tell you how Americans feel and what’s needed.

But that’s not how he chose to do it. So afraid was Obama of giving offense—and thus not maximizing his popularity-at-all–costs mission—he did the political equivalent of scoring an own-goal. President Bill Clinton said, “I feel your pain.” In effect, Obama declared, “We’re your pain.”So if Muslims are always the innocent victims, isn't Usama bin Ladin and others correct in saying that all the violence and terrorism to date has been just a "defensive Jihad" against external aggression and thus justifiable? Why should anything change simply because Obama has "admitted" this and asked to start over again?

When he cited examples of oppression, Obama listed only Bosnia (where he didn’t even mention the U.S. role in helping Muslims), along with Israel, and also the Muslim-on-Muslim violence in Darfur. He didn’t mention terrorist violence and mistreatement of non-Muslims by Muslims in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Sudan, the Gaza Strip, against Israel, Europe or even Egypt itself.

This is a hallmark of the kind of thinking dominating much contemporary Western thought extending something that works in their own societies-- where self-criticism, apology, and unilateral concessions really can lead to the other side forgiving and compromising--to places where it doesn't work.

In the Middle East if you say you’re to blame, that communicates to the other side that their cause is right and they're entitled to everything it wants. If you apologize, you’re weak. Sure, some relatively Westernized urban liberals will take what Obama said that way, I doubt whether radical states and political forces, as well as the masses, will do so.The main ingredient in the Obama speech was flattery.

There is a bumper sticker that says: Don’t apologize. Your friends don’t need to hear it and your enemies don’t care. Obama’s situation might be described as: Don’t grovel. It scares the hell out of your friends and convinces your enemies you owe them big time.As a result, the mainstream in the region will say, “We were right all the time. Obama admitted it!” While more extreme radicals say, “We’ve won and America’s surrendering.”

But if Obama, as it appears, is running to be the region’s favorite politician, he’ll find he—not to mention America’s allies--has to give up many more things to win that dubious honor. Third, Obama undermined the existing states.

True, to Obama's credit, he did talk about reform, democracy, and equal rights for women. Yet the speech suggests to listeners is: democracy plus Islam equals solution. If Islam is so perfect and has such a great record—except for a tiny minority of extremists—why shouldn’t it rule? And since the extremists are presumably al-Qaida, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarians in the audience must have found a lot to applaud.

How will this go over with the rulers Obama wants as allies? Finally, Obama played into the stereotype that Israel is the central political issue in the region. Others, of course, are happy to find the usual scapegoat.

An Associated Press headline reads, “Obama’s Islam Success Depends on Israel.” Is the entire “Muslim World” just waiting for Israel to stop building a few thousand apartment units a year before deciding that America is great, reform is needed, and moderation wise.

Obama’s phrases were carefully crafted. He called on Palestinians to stop violence, show their competence in administration, and accept a two-state solution, living in peace alongside Israel.

Hamas was commanded to be moderate. Yet he in no way seemed to condition Palestinians getting a state on their record. His administration may think this way but he didn’t make that clear.Middle Eastern ears won’t hear this aspect--which is part of the reason they may cheer the speech—in the way Washington policymakers intend.

Inasmuch as the United States now has more credibility for them it’s because they hope it will just force Israel to give without them having to do much. When this doesn’t happen, anger will set in, intensified by the fact that the president “said” the Palestinians are in the right and should have a state right away. Everything specific concerning Israel’s needs and demands--an end to incitement, security for Israel, end of terrorism, resettlement of refugees in Palestine—weren’t there.

While Israel was specifically said to violate previous agreements on the construction within settlements issue—an assertion that’s flat-out wrong—there was no hint that the Palestinians had done so. I can’t shake the image of Obama as the new kid in school, just moved into the neighborhood, fearful of bullies, who says anything to ingratiate himself and is ready to turn over his lunch money.

There’s a famous line in “Citizen Kane” where one characters says that it’s very easy to make a lot of money….If all you want to do is make a lot of money. It’s also easy to make a lot of popularity, if that’s all one wants to do.An American president has to do more, a lot more.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East (Routledge), The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).
MERIA is indexed in Index Islamicus and CSA Worldwide Political Science Abstracts. ISSN: 1565-8996.*Serving Readers Throughout the Middle East and in 100 Countries*All material: Copyright MERIA Journal.You must credit if quoting and ask permission to reprint.

taken from B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)


Shalom and Namaste: Jewish volunteers see a different side of Nepal - Haaretz - Israel News

Shalom and Namaste: Jewish volunteers see a different side of Nepal - Haaretz - Israel News

Chesler Chronicles » Obama Throws Muslim Women Under the Bus

Obama Throws Muslim Women Under the Bus

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed how the North American mainstream media has consistently been mainstreaming the subject of Islam and veiled Muslim women as a friendly, feel-good kinda subject, nothing to be afraid of, something that may be “different” but that we are obligated to understand and accept? Specifically, the mainstream pro-feminist/pro-human rights media are arguing that Muslim women in hijab are “choosing” to face-veil themselves or to wear headscarves for religious reasons–and since North America is comprised of immigrants in search of religious freedom, such acceptance is actually part of our own tradition. We must understand that some Muslim girls and women are hurt, offended when we assume that they have been forced to veil when that might not be the case. Some Muslim girls are also quite happily attending women-only proms; they view hijab as “liberating” them from the sex object treatment reserved for uncovered women.

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Chesler Chronicles » Obama Throws Muslim Women Under the Bus

HonestReporting - NBC, Obama & the Lessons of Buchenwald

NBC, Obama & the Lessons of Buchenwald

NBC's Tom Brokaw attempts to lead President Obama into Israel - Nazi comparisons.

In our previous communique, we dealt with the abuse of Holocaust imagery as a method of attacking Israel. False parallels are created between Jewish suffering and the Palestinian situation and, inevitably, Israelis are portrayed as Nazis as part of the effort to delegitimize and demonize the Israeli state.

Was this false parallel inside the mind of NBC's Tom Brokaw when he asked the following question in an exclusive interview with US President Obama at the Buchenwald concentration camp?

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HonestReportingNBC, Obama & the Lessons of Buchenwald

Israel Matzav: Flashback: U.S. Amb. Kurtzer: "US policy is the support that the President has given for the retention by Israel of major Israeli population centers"

Israel Matzav: Flashback: U.S. Amb. Kurtzer: "US policy is the support that the President has given for the retention by Israel of major Israeli population centers"
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