Long Live Israel!
Hooray for President Harry Truman who recognized your liberation in spite of threats and pleas from his advisers and State Department. My safety and that of my children and grandchildren and Jews everywhere in the world is contingent on your survival. May you be blessed as you approach 65 and may you be spared “Obamacare” in the coming year.
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2012/4/26/main-feature/1/independence-day/e
Every spring, within a single week, Israel commemorates Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron, and Yom Ha’atzma’ut. These days revisit the core drama of the modern Jewish experience: the Holocaust, the losses suffered by Israel in its early wars, and the country’s present independence. These days are also among the most controversial in the Israeli calendar.
With adjustments for Shabbat, Independence Day is celebrated on May 14. Certain ultra-religious Jews have long protested the occasion. The Neturei Karta have declared it a “day of mourning for Torah-faithful Jews” and burn Israeli flags in protest. The next day, May 15, is commemorated by Palestinians as “Nakba Day,” the day of “catastrophe.” It is entirely negative: It mourns Palestinian dispossession at the hands of the Jews rather than celebrating any idea of Palestinian nationalism. Nakba Day speaks volumes about Palestinian political psychology.
There are also protests against Independence Day from within Israel, from Israeli Arabs—that is, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship—and leftist Israelis who want Israel to be a “state for all its citizens.” This critique parallels the criticism of Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah”: The state, say the critics, celebrates the experience of the majority and further alienates the minority.
Independence Day is especially vexing to non-Israeli leftist commentators, who see in it a means of repression. One journalist recently said, “If I was [sic] a Palestinian citizen of the state, I don’t think I would want to participate in the torch-lighting. I would also find the inclusion of Arabs to be dishonest, a way of whitewashing the reality of life here as a minority. . . . Independence and freedom here mean independence and freedom for Jews.”
The Left’s Jihad Denial — on The Glazov Gang
by Frontpagemag.com
Leftist film producer Tommi Trudeau joins Dwight Schultz and Evan Sayet on the gang — and the battle breaks out.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/26/the-lefts-jihad-denial-on-the-glazov-gang/
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11551#.T5ac19maLTo
The 100% Sharia-Compliant Iranian EMP Nuclear Weapon From Mark Langfan
Much has been, and will be, said about the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei’s February 2012 informal speech to a group of Iranian nuclear scientist’s wherein he is translated in English to have said:
“There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous,” the Leader said.
(4/8/12 PressTV, “Iran never seeks to produce, maintain, use nuclear weapons: Lawmaker” http://www.presstv.ir/detail/235155.html)
Most importantly, the United States apparently gave great gravitas and optimistic meaning to Khamenei’s informal talk. I
n direct response, in the run-up to the latest round of P5+1 talks in Istanbul, the US Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton characterized the “grave sin” statement as the very basis of the P5+1 Talks by stating, “We are meeting with the Iranians to discuss how to translate what is stated belief into a plan of action.”
Consequently, in the follow-up it continues to appear that the recent Istanbul P5+1 Nuclear Talks and its progeny, if not the very P5+1-Iranian Nuclear “Plan of Action” itself, are elementally based on Khamenei’s “grave sin” informal comment.
Well, before one gets too rapt in the Iranian religious untouchable that “Nuclear weapons are a “grave sin”” , 1938 Munichesque euphoria, one should remember that back in 2006, Mullah Mohsen Gharavian, a disciple of the ultra-conservative Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, widely regarded as the cleric closest to Iran’s new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, issued an actual religious fatwa that it is “only natural” to have nuclear bombs as a “countermeasure” against other nuclear powers. (2/16/06 The Telegraph, “Iranian fatwa approves use of nuclear weapons” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/1510900/Iranian-fatwa-approves-use-of-nuclear-weapons.html)
Instead of killing people, the new nuclear bomb burns out all the electronic equipment and the modern defense systems that rely on electronics through the nuclear generation of Electromagnetic Pulse (“EMP Nuclear Weapon”).
So at a minimum, there seems to be some “religious” disagreement in Shiite theological circles over how many angels can dance on the head of a Uranium 235 nucleus.
However, even taking Ayatollah Khamenei’s words at full face value, and believing them to be the “final word of Iranian law” to mean that having a “destructive” nuclear weapon like the one dropped on Hiroshima is a “great sin,” a totally new type of game-changer modern nuclear bomb has been invented that doesn’t kill any human beings or animals or destroy buildings.
Instead of killing people, the new nuclear bomb burns out all the electronic equipment and the modern defense systems that rely on electronics through the nuclear generation of Electromagnetic Pulse (“EMP Nuclear Weapon”).
http://www.timesofisrael.com/remembering-the-man-who-battled-israels-most-formidable-enemy-the-mosquito/
ISRAEL TURNS 64
The man who battled Israel’s most formidable enemy — the mosquito. Israel Kligler is one of the reasons Israel exists. So why have you never heard of him?
Ninety-two years ago, a diminutive and determined young scientist stepped from a boat onto a “notoriously malarious” patch of Levantine land and into the middle of a losing war against a tiny, deadly enemy ravaging the population. Israel Kligler – university professor, Zionist and public health pioneer – played an outsize role in defeating malaria in Palestine beginning in the 1920s. Countering the mosquito-borne disease was not a minor medical success but a crucial victory that paved the way for the growth of Jewish settlement and the eventual establishment of the State of Israel.
Today, Kligler and his role in Israel’s history have been forgotten. April 25 is a fitting date to remember him: This year, it happens to be both the eve of Israel’s Independence Day and World Malaria Day, marked every year by the UN’s World Health Organization. Thanks in large part to Kligler’s efforts, malaria was eradicated in Israel, but the global battle against the disease has been remarkably unsuccessful: Every year, according to the WHO, malaria infects 216 million people and kills 655,000.
Kligler has a small number of vocal boosters, and they believe his success should both earn him a place in the Zionist pantheon and be studied anew as the world continues to grapple with the disease he confronted nearly a century ago.
Born in what is now Romania in 1888, Kligler moved with his parents to New York City when he was 9. In 1920, having completed a doctorate in public health in New York and research on malaria in South America, he gave up a promising academic career in the US and arrived instead in British-ruled Palestine, committed to putting his scientific knowledge at the service of the Zionist project.
He found a land devastated by malaria. The illness was, a British report said in 1921, “by far the most important disease in Palestine.” Much of the territory Jews had purchased for settlement was in lowlands infested with malaria — that was one of the main reasons it was available — and the disease was decimating the ranks of the Zionist pioneers and the country’s other inhabitants. Some settlements had been abandoned altogether as a result.
One visitor in 1902 remarked that the Turkish soldiers at one border garrison had to be replaced monthly because all would contract malaria in little over a week. A report from 1917, the year the British arrived, noted that Palestine was “notoriously malarious,” and an estimated 90 percent of British soldiers at the town of Beisan — today’s Beit She’an, in the Jordan Valley — were ill within 10 days.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/25/obama-embraces-islam/
“The Islamist parties in Egypt and elsewhere are promoting democracy simply as a means of consolidating their power. They see the process as a ratchet effect, with every gain they make as one more step toward erecting a Shariah-based theocracy. Increased power will not lead – and in fact, never has led – to moderation, but to further demands to implement their blueprint for Koranic rule. The model is the Iranian Revolution, in which a brief period of openness was followed by the ascent of Islamic hard-liners who snuffed out any hint of liberty and executed those who had the nerve to differ.To anyone who believes in the Western concept of freedom, Islamism by its nature cannot be legitimate. The White House needs to answer the question: If Islamism is a legitimate political movement, should it come to America, and if so, how soon?”
The Obama administration is doing its utmost to promote the fortunes of the Islamist parties in Egypt. A State Department official declared that with the rise of these radical groups after the Arab Spring, “people who once might have gone into al Qaeda see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.” They see this as a victory. The problem is, so do the terrorists.
Last year, the White House began peddling the line that the uprisings in the Middle East were a repudiation of the al Qaeda model of seeking change through terrorism. The argument was that while America opposed violent extremism, the rise of nonviolent radical movements was just fine, and even commendable. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri quickly dismissed this claim, saying that from the terrorists’ point of view, it didn’t matter whether an Islamist victory came through violence or not. The means were unimportant except as they related to the end state: the imposition of hard-line Shariah-based laws and policies.
From Zawahri’s point of view, it makes no difference whether the caliphate is born of the ballot, bomb or bullet. The important thing is the victory of Islamism, which the White House also seems to endorse.
The notion that there is a legitimate form of Islamism reflects a serious intellectual failing on the part of the Obama administration. President Obama seems to believe the Islamists are legitimized simply by participating in the political process. Some argue that the demands of electoral politics will moderate the Islamist parties, whose members will evolve from stern-eyed theocrats into social reformers. Others believe the only path to modernity is through embracing the Muslim Brotherhood’s barbarous values.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/19627-Qualifications-for-the-new-Walter-Duranty-Prize.html
Qualifications for the new Walter Duranty Prize
There’s a new journalism prize, The Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity. PJ Media and The New Criterion will award the Prize annually “for what our readers consider the most egregious example of dishonest reporting for the fiscal year.” The initial judges include Peter Collier, Roger Kimball, Cliff May, Ron Radosh, Glenn Reynolds, Claudia Rosett, and Roger L. Simon. Roger Simon writes, “Since this is a new prize the committee also solicits your suggestions on how we should carry on our work and any other suggestions regarding the Walter Duranty Prize.”
There’s certainly enough expertise on the panel to reach such a choice. I suggest the following criteria:
1. In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be reporting on a foreign country. Walter Duranty’s infamous whitewashing of the starvation and death of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-3 will be hard to exceed, but there are enough terrible instances of widespread state brutality today that journalists who espouse the state line or distort the facts should be the priority.
http://newmediajournal.us/indx.php/item/5357
The President, The Holocaust & The Redemption of Elie Wiesel
My good friend, Charlie, alerted me to a recent article in the American Thinkerdealing with President Obama’s Holocaust Day tribute. Rather than my reinventing the wheel, let’s begin by reviewing some excerpts from Leo Rennert’s essay…
During the last three years, President Obama did not visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. But today, he did; and promptly gave a self-serving campaign speech for Jewish votes.The president had with him as escort and introducer Elie Wiesel and lavishly praised the Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor for his unrelenting campaign to keep the memory of the Holocaust front and center…
But Wiesel did not reciprocate. Instead, determined to tell truth to power, he admonished Obama for not doing nearly enough to confront Assad’s atrocities in Syria and Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s development of nuclear weapons and threats to wipe Israel off the map.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1784 The utterly irreplaceable There is a saying in Hebrew, usually used in relation to layoffs in the workplace: “Graveyards are full of people who were deemed ‘irreplaceable.’” The idea behind this characteristic tidbit of witty cynicism is that no matter how valuable an employee, there is always someone around who will be capable of […]
http://www.wnd.com/2012/04/meet-the-men-who-dreamed-of-israel/print/
His descriptions of playing on the white-hot sand dunes of pre-state Tel Aviv are mesmerizing. To have seen the still-forming Jewish state in 1920, a short generation after Herzl, must have been sublime.
Benzion Netanyahu was there.
An immigrant from eastern Europe (his father was smart enough to heed the warnings and leave the continent), young Benzion – who of course would go on to raise an iconic family in the state of Israel – saw up close the challenges faced by a growing number of Jews longing for a safe refuge from the millennia-old anti-Semitism that has plagued this peculiar people since biblical days.
Here’s the best part: Benzion is still with us (he just turned 102), and his latest book (you read that correctly) has just been released: “The Founding Fathers of Zionism.”
A collection of profiles of five men who helped promote the idea of statehood for the exiled Jews, “The Founding Fathers of Zionism” has the feel of putting the reader “right there.” In fact, the profiles were mostly written years ago, and Netanyahu’s personal interaction with Ze’ev Jabotinsky puts flesh on the old bones.
Some of the profile subjects are familiar, such as the famous Theodor Herzl. The Austrian Jew spent the last years of his life devoting himself to rallying support for a Jewish state by networking. He predicted the establishment of the state and was very close in his prediction.
Indeed, in his profile of Herzl (as with the others), Netanyahu presents the most nuanced discussion of the challenges facing the Jews in this endeavor – the information in “The Founding Fathers of Zionism” is highly relevant even for those who oppose Israel today.
“With genius simplicity,” Netanyahu writes of Herzl, “he derived his conclusions from the universally known fact that every attempt by the Jews at infiltration had ended in failure because they had never possessed the right of national settlement. Therefore, it was necessary to reverse the order: it was necessary first to secure the right to national settlement, only after which the attempt at immigration will not end in failure. Therefore, before the moment comes when this right is secured, Herzl opposed any infiltration.”
The remaining profiles – of Leo Pinsker, Jabotinsky, Max Nordau and Israel Zangwill – offer each man’s unique perspectives on the difficulties facing Jews in Europe, especially those who saw the rising tidal wave of anti-Semitism. In short, they fairly shouted their warnings that unless the Jews had a state of their own in which they could defend themselves, all would be lost.
