Love of the Land: Israeli Demonstrations (1999)

Israeli Demonstrations (1999)

Today's Golden Oldie is from December 1999. Ten years ago this month.

Question: What should the citizens of a democracy do when their government ignores the will of the people?

Answer 1: When the government willingly defies the will of the people, the citizens should demonstrate against the government and its policies.

Answer 2: When, the government ignores the will of the peoplebecause of outside pressures, the citizens should demonstrate against the government and its policies in order to support it.

As it was in 1999 with the Golan Heights issue, so it is now in 2009, with the Obama Settlement Freeze. It's the dilemma of democracy in a small and beleaguered country.

Love of the Land: Israeli Demonstrations (1999)

Love of the Land: the Promise to Abraham

the Promise to Abraham

The Bible quote is from the first of the five books of Moses. The King James translation renders the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 as:

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

In my recent American speaking tour I discovered that the folks who once believed that George W. was either demonic or stupid now have perfect faith in Obama as a glowing Messianic figure.

I thought I'd do a cartoon about President Obama's surprising string of failures, but these days any criticism of the politician from Chicago is a violation of Political Correctness ...and an invitation to being called a racist!!?!

So I did this cartoon about "playing it safe".

Your thoughts?

Love of the Land: the Promise to Abraham

Love of the Land: Delivery Systems (1994)

Delivery Systems (1994)

Today's Golden Oldie is from 15 years ago this month. It was drawn in December of 1994.

The subject of the cartoon was the use of "exploding suicide belts" for terrorists. Previously, the danger came from booby-trapped devices and bomb-laden vehicles. The advent of using willing stooges had, as pointed out in the cartoon, certain advantages for the Palestinian Terrorist organizations.

* * *These days, of course, the IslamoFascists are developing newer delivery systems for their murderous missions. I refer, of course, to the looming threat of Iranian nukes deliverable by Iranian missiles.

The American administration does not seem overly concerned by the situation, except for its worrying about any Israeli move to prevent the attack planned to "wipe Israel off the map".

Love of the Land: Delivery Systems (1994)

Love of the Land: American Politics (1980)

American Politics (1980)

Today's Golden Oldie is from October 1980.

The cartoon was about Jimmy Carter who was on the campaign trail for a bid at a second term as U.S. President. He lost.

With Obama we now face an American President who treats the repression of Iranian demonstrators as an internal Iranian affair while taking a stern and personal interest in the question of where Jews may or may not be allowed to live in the city of Jerusalem!?!! This Presidency does not feel the need to hide its double-standard support of the "Palestinian" cause behind empty pro-Israel promises.

It will be interesting to see if Obama will, like Jimmy Carter, turn out to be a one-term wonder.

Love of the Land: American Politics (1980)

Love of the Land: Turkey

Turkey

What has happened to the Turkish-Israeli Alliance?

According to the Muslim Media Network:

"TEL AVIV — Turkey was said to have suspended up to $1 billion in proposed Israeli defense projects after canceling a major air exercise with Israel.

A leading Israeli defense analyst said the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has decided to end defense and military cooperation with Israel. Analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the Turkish Defense Ministry has shelved a range of proposed Israeli projects.

“New deals worth tens and hundreds of millions of dollars offered by Israel’s defense industries to the Turkish Army, as well as cooperation with Turkish colleagues, are being put on hold or cancelled altogether,” Ben-Yishai said in a report." -more

According to Barry Rubin:

The Turkey-Israel alliance is over.
"After two decades plus of close cooperation, the Turkish government is no longer interested in maintaining close cooperation with Israel nor is it—for all practical purposes—willing to do anything much to maintain its good relations with Israel.

The U.S.-Turkish alliance, which goes back about six decades, is also over but much less visibly so, though the two relationships are interlinked.

And that’s one important point in the first development. If the Turkish government was really concerned about protecting the kind of tight links with America that have existed for so long, it would be far more cautious about jettisoning the old policy toward Israel." -more

Love of the Land: Turkey

Love of the Land: Face It

Face It

It is time for America and the Obama administration to open their eyes and face up to the significance of the successful Fort Hood Islamist suicide attack. Here's an interesting analysis of the current situation by Robert Spencer:

"Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, murdered twelve people and wounded twenty-one inside Fort Hood in Texas yesterday, while, according to eyewitnesses, “shouting something in Arabic while he was shooting.” Investigators are scratching their heads and expressing puzzlement about why he did it. According to NPR, “the motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear, officials said.” The Washington Post agreed: “The motive remains unclear, although some sources reported the suspect is opposed to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and upset about an imminent deployment.” The Huffington Post spun faster, asserting that “there is no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab.”

Yet there was, and what’s more, Major Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened – and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored."-more

Love of the Land: Face It

Love of the Land: Start Worrying (1994)

Start Worrying (1994)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done 15 years ago for in November of 1994.

The Islamist attack at Fort Hood should have been a wake-up call about the growing threat from Radical Islam in America. But apparently it hasn't. Here's a Politically Correct Time Mag report on the successful and bloody Islamist suicide attack on American soldiers, in an American army base, on American soil:

"Determining whether Hasan's actions were inspired by religious fervor (he reportedly said "Allahu akbar" before opening fire), his exposure to the mental trauma of the soldiers he counseled or other unknown factors may be impossible. Currently Hasan is in intensive care at a San Antonio hospital, breathing without a respirator. But given his mental state, even he may not know what caused him to kill.

At least for now, the Army is more worried about how the world is reacting to Hasan's actions than an explanation for them. "I'm concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers," General George Casey, the Army's top officer, said Sunday on CNN. "And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that." -more

Love of the Land: Start Worrying (1994)

Love of the Land: Head Check

Head Check

The sentiments expressed in today's Dry Bones cartoon are being expressed by bloggers all over the net. Here's a piece fromNewsRealBlog that's worth reading:

"A Muslim fanatic with an Internet site praising Islamic suicide bombers as defenders of their comrades is a Major in the U.S. Army with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry. And it’s not as though the army didn’t know that he was a Muslim fanatic and supporter of the Islamic jihad against the West. He was under investigation for six months because of his anti-American, jihadist rantings. He did not want to be deployed. He wanted to be discharged.

But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was this possible? But it was. And so, after calling America the “aggressor” in Afghanistan and Iraq this Muslim jihadist traitor army officer picks up his semi-automatic weapons and heads for the center at Ft. Hood where soldiers are being deployed to fight the jihadists in Afghanistan to conduct his massacre. Yet this morning the Fox News Channel chiron says “Investigators search for a motive in the Ft. Hood killings.” Is everybody out of their mind?" -more

Love of the Land: Head Check

Love of the Land: Clinton and the Stormy Weather (1998)

Clinton and the Stormy Weather (1998)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done in 1998.

I returned to Israel a few days ago in time to say hi and goodbye to the LSW (long suffering wife) who took off for a two week vacation and family visit in NYC and New Jersey.

My return coincided with the Clinton visit (Hillary, not Bill) and the sudden pounding of the country with violent rain storms. I've spent the past few days with my nose pressed to the window pane, watching the storm outside, and sipping a mug of hot coffee. Here in the Holy Land, rain is a blessing ...but highways and basements are being flooded.

There's something about Israeli rain storms that makes me feel closer to the land, and I just didn't feel very political. Which is why I searched for something about sudden storms for today's Golden Oldie . I found this 1998 cartoon about being hit by a sudden blustery storm ...strangely tho', it's also about meeting with Clinton (Bill not Hillary) and about demands for Israeli concessions!

Go figure.

Love of the Land: Clinton and the Stormy Weather (1998)

Love of the Land: International Justice (1998)

International Justice (1998)

Today's Golden Oldie is from ten years (11) ago this month. July 1998.

Saying that Israel is judged by a double standard is a waste of time. We know it. They know it. So in this cartoon I tried to wring a wry laugh out of the unfair and ugly situation.

A classic goal of much of Jewish Humor.

Taken from Love of the Land: International Justice (1998)

Israel Matzav: Israel and US nearing a deal on 'settlement' growth

Israel and US nearing a deal on 'settlement' growth

The Los Angeles Times reports that Israel and the United States are nearing a deal that would define the 'natural growth' of 'settlements' to allow some growth to take place. The Times does not sound very pleased about it.

After weeks of talks, U.S. officials have signaled that they are close to an agreement with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that could open the way to a resumption of high-level peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. Former Sen. George J. Mitchell, Obama's envoy for Middle East peace, said this week that he hoped for a U.S.-Israeli accord "very soon."

The talks have focused on two issues the Israelis raise to argue against a complete halt to settlement growth, officials say.

Read All at :

Israel Matzav: Israel and US nearing a deal on 'settlement' growth

Israel Matzav: US bill for Durban II: $814,000

US bill for Durban II: $814,000

The United States paid $814,000 for its share of the hatefest known as "Durban II," according to a report in Thursday's Jerusalem Post.

The gathering, dubbed "Durban II," has cost $5.3 million, including preparatory conferences, spokesman Ramu Damodaran told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.

About $1.6m. of that has come from direct donations from individual countries, but the lion's share - $3.7m. - was funded from the regular budget of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Damodaran said.

Read All in :

Israel Matzav: US bill for Durban II: $814,000

ESSER AGAROTH - Just Say No

Just Say No

Our leaders must clearly tell US that two-state solution not in our best interest.

Yoel Meltzer
29 Nissan 5796/April 23, 2009

With the American leadership intensifying its demand that Israel accept the “two-state solution,” the slogan “just say no” used by former first lady Nancy Reagan as part of the 1980s campaign against adolescent drug abuse keeps popping into my head. Although perhaps overly simplistic, many argue that her words went a long way in raising awareness to the problem. At this time, our present leadership would do well to adopt the same slogan.

Esser Agaroth - Just Say No

U.S. FOREIGN AID TO THE PALESTINIANS - TIME TO STOP !

U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians-Time To Stop!

The Gaza Aid Package

Time to Rethink U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Palestinians

by James Phillips

The Obama Administration has announced a huge aid package of $900 million to help ease the humanitarian plight of Palestinians in Gaza and to shore up the bankrupt Palestinian Authority (PA). This surge of soft power is aimed at strengthening Palestinian moderates and helping to clear the way for revived Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. But as long as Hamas remains free to rain rockets down on Israel, these ambitions remain little more than wishful thinking.

Since the 1993 Oslo peace accords, the U.S. has showered $2.2 billion in bilateral aid on the Palestinians, in addition to more than $3.4 billion for humanitarian aid funneled to the Palestinians through dysfunctional U.N. organizations since 1950. This aid has:

Subsidized the welfare of Palestinian refugees;

Contributed to a culture of victimization and shrill anti-Israeli and anti-Western radicalism; and

Freed up some Palestinian groups to focus on destroying Israel rather than on providing for and advancing the long-term interests of the Palestinian people.

Given the searing economic crisis that the United States presently faces, the Obama Administration should:

Significantly reduce these overly ambitious aid goals;

Halt the funding of U.N. agencies that do not adequately screen their workers for terrorist connections or permit external audits; and

Tighten restrictions on the disbursement of aid to ensure that the aid will not be diverted for hostile purposes.

A Soft-Headed Soft Power Approach to Middle East Peace

Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Obama Administration's pledge of $900 million in aid at an international donors conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The aid package includes $300 million for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, $200 million in budget support for the PA, and $400 million to support the PA's Palestinian Reform and Development Plan in the West Bank.

The Obama Administration maintains that this massive aid package will not end up in the pockets of Hamas and other terrorist groups. It plans to funnel assistance through the PA, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. But the PA remains a weak and problematic institution hobbled by corruption, despite recent reforms. And U.N. agencies often have their own agenda as well as an anti-American and anti-Israeli tilt.

The largest U.N. body involved with facilitating aid to the Palestinians is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), a notoriously opaque and dysfunctional institution that has been infiltrated by Hamas supporters and other Palestinian radicals.[1]Even though it receives over a third of a billion dollars in international funding every year, and despite recurrent reports of inefficiency and corruption, UNRWA is not externally or publicly audited. Such lack of accountability is particularly troubling for an organization that has been chronically dogged by controversy.

There are numerous reports documenting that UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas terrorists. According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), at least 16 UNRWA staff had been detained by Israeli authorities for security-related crimes, and three had been convicted in military courts of terrorism-related activities.[2]UNRWA's leadership has admitted in the past that Hamas, which the U.S. government has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, has been able to infiltrate the U.N. agency. Peter Hansen, then-commissioner-general of UNRWA, sparked a political storm in 2004 when he remarked in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas, as a political organization, does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another."[3]

Specific examples of radicals working for UNRWA are readily available. For instance, Said Sayyam, the Hamas minister of interior, worked as a teacher at UNRWA schools in Gaza, while the headmaster of another UNRWA school, Awas al-Qiq, was the leader of a cell that build rockets for the Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Several other UNRWA employees left their jobs to run in the 2006 Palestinian elections as Hamas candidates. Despite the fact that the United States is the biggest single donor to UNRWA, that agency continues to resist reform and refuses external audits of its operations. Incredibly, the UNRWA Web site that includes information on its "Special Gaza Appeal" instructs donors to send money through the Commercial Bank of Syria, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for money laundering and suspected involvement in moving money to terrorist groups.[4] Clearly, the UNRWA bureaucracy takes an extremely lax attitude on fighting terrorism and should not be trusted to handle aid provided by the U.S. government.

No Taxpayer Subsidies for Terrorist Groups

Given the penetration of UNRWA and other NGOs by terrorist groups, the United States must be absolutely sure that its aid does not end up being diverted. Congressman Mark Kirk (R-IL) has warned that "to route $900 million to this area, and let's say that Hamas was only able to steal 10 percent of that, we would still become Hamas's second-largest funder after Iran."[5]

Congress needs to scrutinize the Obama Administration's aid plans to make sure that there is absolutely no chance that funds provided by American taxpayers end up being pocketed by members of terrorist groups--a development that would violate section 301c of the Foreign Assistance Act. The Senate should pull funding for UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority from the $410 billion spending bill currently before Congress. And both houses of Congress should hold hearings and exercise their oversight powers to make sure that future aid to the Palestinians is dispensed on a more modest scale via closely vetted NGOs, not through corrupted U.N. bodies operating at cross-purposes with U.S. foreign policy goals.

James Phillips is Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation.

[1]See Nile Gardiner and James Phillips, "Congress Should Withhold Funding from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA)," Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 987, February 6, 2006, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/MiddleEast/wm987.cfm.

[2]U.S. Government Accountability Office, Department of State and United Nations Relief and Works Agency Actions to Implement Section 301(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, GAO-04-276R UNRWA, November 17, 2003, p. 28, at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04276r.pdf (March 9, 2009).

[3]Sean Gordon, "Members of Hamas 'on UN Payroll,'" National Post, October 4, 2004.

[4]Claudia Rosett, "Can We Give to Gaza Without Giving to Hamas?" Forbes, March 5, 2009.

[5]Joel Mowbray, "Lawmakers Worry Whether U.S. Can Keep Gaza Aid Away From Hamas," Fox News, March 2, 2009, at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/02/lawmakers-worry-gaza-aid-away-hamas/ (March 9, 2009).

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

A WORLD WITHOUT AMERICA

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

"a world without America"

October 22, 2008

Wake up to Iran's Dark Dream to Disable U.S.

James Carafano, PhD,

Clifford D. May

Which world leader is on record musing about "a world without America" — a goal he calls "attainable"? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Until recently, it was possible to believe that whatever Ahmadinejad's intentions, Iran was a long way from acquiring the capabilities it needs to achieve its goals. But a blue-ribbon commission has reported to Congress on what appears to be an Iranian drive to obtain the means to carry out an EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) attack.

An EMP attack is produced by launching a ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon attached — and detonating it high above the Earth. This produces a massive pulse of ionized particles that could damage or even wipe out many electrical and information systems. Such an attack would disrupt telecommunications, banking and finance, fuel and energy, food and water supplies, emergency and government services and much more, threatening millions of lives.

We've seen a blacked-out Southeast Texas in the wake of Hurricane Ike. We've seen New Orleans after Katrina. Now imagine that scenario over most of the continental United States. There would be a "world without America" — at least as we know it.

No one disputes that Iran is developing a robust long-range missile force. Few question that Ahmadinejad's regime is working on nuclear weapons development. Less well known is that Iran has conducted missile tests from sea-based platforms, detonating warheads at the high-point of the missile trajectory, rather than the aim point over the target. These facts have now been documented in official government reports.

Connect the dots, and you find the picture of a workable research program for developing a covert means to deliver an EMP attack against the United States.

A short-range ballistic missile could be carried on one of the thousands of commercial freighters sailing under "flags of convenience" that sail around U.S. waters every day. Without ever piquing the interest of the Navy, the Coast Guard, or the Customs and Border Protection, that ship could sail within range and deliver its payload over American territory. Even a modest warhead placed at the right spot over the East Coast could take down 75 percent of the electrical grid.

The genius of such a covert attack is that it doesn't come with an obvious "return address." The ship might be registered in Liberia. The crew might be Lebanese. The ship might disappear into the night — or be scuttled quietly.

Another advantage for a would-be attacker is the bang that can be achieved for the buck. An EMP attack would allow an enemy to wreak an enormous amount of destruction for a modest investment. It would mean no electricity, no food on the shelves, no phone, no fuel deliveries. Life would look more like the barter system of the 19th century, not to mention the millions that would die from traffic accidents, fires, failed hospital equipment, disease and the other chaos that would result from such an attack.

A lot can be done to deal with this terrible threat. For starters, we need to build comprehensive missile defenses that can shoot missiles down fired anywhere shortly after they lift off. We also need to develop national plans to mitigate vulnerabilities to an EMP attack and recover quickly from a strike if one does occur.

America, however, also needs to dust-off its nuclear deterrent. Of all the nations that could pull off an EMP attack or hand that capacity to a transnational terrorist group, Iran is the only country that has directly threatened to destroy the United States. While much America's infrastructure is vulnerable to EMP, the nuclear strike force is not. We need to inform Iran that if an EMP attack were unleashed on America, Iran could well be held responsible and suffer massive nuclear retaliation.

Perhaps deterrence won't work. Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis argues that to a devout believer in Ayatollah Khomeini's apocalyptic ideology, mutually assured destruction may be "more an inducement than a deterrent." Still, it's worth making it clear that a steep price will be paid for such an attack.

In the end, President Reagan was right: Massive retaliation is not a morally supportable option when there are real alternatives. Comprehensive missile defenses, vigorous counter-proliferation programs, and making U.S. infrastructure more resilient are really the best ways to protect and defend the nation. The next president needs to make these a priority.

Indeed, demonstrating that America takes the threat seriously is perhaps the best message we could send to Ahmadinejad and those he represents.

Article first ran on The Houston Chronicle - Copyright 2008.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is a leading expert in defense affaires, intelligence, military operations and strategy, and homeland security at the Heritage Foundation. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

You can find this online at: http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.1532/pub_detail.asp

COPYRIGHT 2008 FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS INC.