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April 2012

The Raheb-Herzog Affair “A Former German President Wants to Honor an Antisemitic Pastor” by Malcolm Lowe

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3021/raheb-herzog-affair

“[Pastor Raheb’s]words correspond to half-truths or no truths at all.” While on the one hand many of these churches have issued official statements deploring the Christian history of denigration and demonization of Jews, on the other hand they foster and fawn upon Protestant clerics who denigrate and demonize the State of Israel.

When the German concern Media Control announced the four winners of its 2011 German Media Prize (Deutscher Medienpreis) on January 13, 2012, the choice of the fourth, Lutheran Pastor Mitri Raheb of Bethlehem, provoked a storm of hundreds of protests.

Why such a fuss? After all, even the Nobel Peace Prize is a nonsense prize if you can get it for giving a speech in Cairo. There is a website in Germany, Kulturpreise.de, that catalogues hundreds of such awards; Raheb already held some of them.

The primary cause of the protests was that a former federal German president, Prof. Roman Herzog, had agreed to come and laud the prize winners on February 24. More generally, the affair brought into the open the seething conflict between two contradictory tendencies in churches worldwide, but especially in German Protestant churches.

While on the one hand, many of these churches have issued official statements deploring the Christian history of denigration and demonization of Jews, on the other, they foster and fawn upon Palestinian clerics who denigrate and demonize the State of Israel.

Often, of course, it is distinct groups within a church that promote the one tendency or the other. When the same individual does both, it requires a considerable measure of cognitive dissonance or hypocrisy. The Raheb-Herzog Affair has provided a defining moment in this struggle.

THE JAMIE GLAZOV SHOWS

Islamic Apologists vs. Nonie Darwish — on The Jamie Glazov Show
by Frontpagemag.com
Tensions get hot on Frontpage’s radio show.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/18/the-devil-we-don%E2%80%99t-know-on-the-jamie-glazov-show-tuesday-april-17-8pm-pacific-1/
The Question of Obama’s “Brilliance” — on The Glazov Gang
by Jamie Glazov
Dwight Schultz, Georgette Gelbard and Tommi Trudeau mix it up on Frontpage’s television show.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/04/18/the-question-of-obamas-brilliance-on-the-glazov-gang/

DANIEL PIPES: CARTOON MISSIONARIES

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296202/islam-s-cartoon-missionaries-daniel-pipes Comic books as a method of missionizing for Islam (da’wa)? Yes. One year ago, Harvard University hosted a workshop to teach comic-book artists how to address Americans’ “unease with Islam and the Middle East.” And later this week, Georgetown University will air a PBS documentary, Wham! Bam! Islam!, celebrating a comic book called The […]

VICTOR SHARPE: SCRATCH “PALESTINE” ANYWHERE AND YOU’LL FIND ISRAEL

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11801/pub_detail.asp In Rolf Hochuth’s play, The Representative, there is a line in Act 1, Scene 1, which goes as follows: “Cursed are the peacemakers.” Peace is a reality between states that are friendly towards each other. They, after all, do not need to make peace; it already exists through the certainty of mutual friendship. But […]

PAUL DRIESSEN: GREENBACKS ENERGY BOONDOGGLE

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11802,css.print/pub_detail.asp
Having had it with $4-per-gallon gasoline and the Obama Administration’s squandering billions of taxpayer dollars on phony “green” energy schemes, angry voters have told their senators “Enough!”
Their calls provided sufficient spinal implants in enough senators to defeat three proposals to extend the wind energy “production tax credit” (PTC). The credit gives wind project developers taxpayer greenbacks whenever they generate high-priced electricity, even if there is no market for the power at the time it’s generated. Worse, the PTC is paid on top of other subsidies, fast-tracking of wind projects through environmental review processes, and exemptions from endangered species, migratory bird and other laws.
Confronted by the gale of public outrage, Senate Democrats tried a new tack.
They offered an amendment that would eliminate various tax deductions for five major oil companies, turn the supposed new revenue stream into more subsidies for wind turbine, solar panel and electric car makers – and use any leftover crumbs to “pay down” the skyrocketing budget deficit they helped engineer.
The ploy needed 60 votes – but got only 51, despite President Obama’s vocal support. “Members of Congress,” the president said, “can stand with big oil companies, or with the American people.”

HOT PICKS FROM FSM

* VIDEOS * TODAY’S HOT PICKS *

1. VIDEO: Darrell Issa: Secret Service Incident Likely Not The First – Secret Service scandal rocks Obama Colombia trip
2. VIDEO: Afghanistan Ambassador: Withdrawing Prematurely Could Lead to ‘Another 9/11
3. VIDEO: CBS News: Stimulus Jobs Going To Foreign Workers
4. VIDEO: Obama’s Treas Sec: Women’s Job Loss Numbers “Meaningless Way” To Look At Economy
5. Obama Family Tax Shelter – First family transfers wealth, avoids taxes
6. VIDEO: Secret Weapon: How Economic Terrorism Brought Down the U.S. Stock Market and Why It Can Happen Again
7. Jeb Bush: Obama Caved to Political Pressure on Trade – President missed several opportunities… to secure quick passage of trade agreements … which together would have created thousands of jobs…
8. Obama Administration Leaks ANOTHER Israeli Defense Secret
9. Obama paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, White House confirms
10. VIDEO: Hitler And Mahatma Gandhi Talk

HERBERT LONDON: CHINESE STRATEGIC VISION

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11800/pub_detail.asp It has been widely reported that the Chinese government is providing loans andoutright grants to Latin American and African nations for the construction of schools, clinics, power plants, and even soccer stadiums. The Chinese have flexed their economic prowess across the globe generating approval in many quartersand raised eyebrows and concerns in some diplomatic […]

SOEREN KERN; US SENDS ANTI-ISRAEL ADVISOR TO ANTI-SEMITIC SWEDEN

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3014/hannah-rosenthal-ilmar-reepalu-malmo

The problem of anti-Semitism in Sweden is so widespread that the Simon Wiesenthal Center has advised Jews to avoid travelling to the country altogether: ” There have been dozens of incidents reported to the authorities but have not resulted in arrests or convictions for hate crimes.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s controversial anti-Semitism advisor, Hannah Rosenthal, will be visiting Sweden on April 24 to meet with Ilmar Reepalu, the famously anti-Israel mayor of the city of Malmö.

According to the American embassy in Stockholm, Rosenthal has been following the rise of anti-Semitism in Malmö for some time and wants to make sure that there are no politicians in the area that encourage discrimination, racism or hatred for Jews.

Rosenthal’s visit to Sweden is likely to amount to little more than an empty photo opportunity. This is because Rosenthal and Reepalu are both self-styled “progressives” who hold the insidious belief that Jews are to blame for anti-Semitism because of their support for Israel.

GIL RONEN: THE OUTRAGEOUS DEFAMATION OF LT. COLONEL SHALOM EISNER

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/154822

‘We’ve Gone Mad,’ Says Leading Pundit Maariv’s Ben-Dror Yemini says the press cooperated with anarchists in
attacking Lt. Col. Eisner.

“We’ve Gone Mad” – that was the caption over an op-ed piece by
Maariv’s Ben-Dror Yemini, a leading opinion-shaper, Tuesday morning.
The op-ed describes the way Israel’s press has cooperated with
pro-Hamas European anarchists in defaming Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner,
because of a single act of violence against a Danish anarchist.
The five-second-long video segment in which Eisner can be seen pushing
the magazine of his gun into the Dane’s face has been shown in Israeli
media over and over again, in “loops,” hundreds of times in the past
few days.
“It’s been a long time since we had an event that made it possible to
portray Israel as a monster,” Yemini wrote sarcastically. “No ‘Cast
Lead,’ no massacre in Jenin, not even a mini-intifada. The promises of
a ‘million man march’ toward Israel’s border melted into nothingness,
the flotillas stopped coming, even the mass flytilla turned out to be
bogus. Nada… And then it happened. It may have seemed for a moment
that Israel was successful in hiding the fact that it is a monster –
but then the plot was exposed. The ultimate proof was given in a
seconds-long segment showing IDF officer Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner
striking a Danish ‘cyclist’ with his gun.”

MARILYN PENN: UNEARNED SYMPATHY

http://politicalmavens.com/

In an article referencing the anomie of young people like Henry Wachtel, the teenager who beat his mother to death last week, Ginia Bellafante suggests that it’s impossible “to view Mr. Wachtel’s tragedy apart from the life that the film suggests – one in which parents are absent, opportunities seem meager and the resulting freedoms feel joyless in the wake of so much anxiety about a precarious future.” (NYTimes 4/15/12 The film is “Our Time,” a cinema verite short in which Henry Wachtel had a leading role. It appeared at the Cannes Film Festival last year and deals with middle class teens in New York who are not part of the affluent life style and high achievement of kids prominently in view in this city of 1 percenters. As I read this article, I thought back to previous generations of teenagers – immigrants who came to this country without the language or the means to survive – who not only survived but excelled; teenagers who got drafted into the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War – some never to return, some to return as physical or mental basket cases, many of whom overcame their crippling disabilities to resume their lives or bravely create new ones. I thought of the words “so much anxiety” to describe kids who have a roof over their heads, a means of support, educational opportunities, no draft in sight and in Henry’s case, a mother who lived with and cared for him.