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September 2012

LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS: HEZBOLLAH SUPPORTER FRANKLIN LAMB URGING US TO FORGE ISRAEL-FREE MIDDLE EAST….SEE NOTE PLEASE

Hezbollah Supporter Franklin Lamb Urging the US to Forge Israel-Free Mid-East I POSTED THAT PIECE BY LAMB AND HAVE NOW SCRUBBED IT…KUDOS TO LORI LOWENTHAL MARCUS FOR DISCLOSING THE TRUTH ABOUT LAMB…..RSK There is an article in the August 28th edition of Foreign Policy Journal entitled, “US Preparing for a Post-Israel Middle East.” The source […]

FIELD OF DREAMS? ISRAEL’S NATURAL GAS DISCOVERY: TOBIAS BUCK

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1dbda574-f16d-11e1-a553-00144feabdc0.html#axzz25UZhSSvt

After decades of importing every drop of fuel, Israel has struck it rich, uncovering vast reserves of natural gas in the Mediterranean

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The black and yellow helicopter heads north from Tel Aviv, passing over empty beaches, a yacht harbour and a string of sprawling seafront residences that house some of Israel’s wealthiest families. After a few minutes the pilot makes a sharp turn to the left and steers his ageing Bell 412 towards the open sea.

For more than half an hour, all there is to see is the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Then suddenly a hulking mass of brightly painted steel rises from the midday haze. Towering more than 100m above the water, this is the Sedco Express, a drilling rig that has been operating in this stretch of ocean for almost three years. As the helicopter touches down on the landing pad, we see a small blue and white Star of David flag fluttering in the wind. It is the only sign that the Sedco Express sits atop one of the greatest treasures that Israel has ever found. Far below, connected to the rig by a slender steel pipe that runs through 1,700m of ocean and another 4,500m of rock and sand, lies a vast reservoir of natural gas known as the Tamar field.

The men on board the Sedco Express are busy testing the field’s multiple wells in preparation for the long-awaited day next April, when a US-Israeli consortium will start pumping the gas onshore. With reserves of almost 10 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the Tamar field is a hugely valuable asset for the Israeli economy. Discovered in January 2009, it was the biggest gas find in the world that year, and by far the biggest ever made in Israeli waters. But the record held for barely two years. In December 2010, Tamar was dwarfed by the discovery of the Leviathan gasfield some 20 miles farther east – the largest deepwater gas reservoir found anywhere in the world over the past decade. The two fields, together with a string of smaller discoveries, will cover Israel’s domestic demand for gas for at least the next 25 years, and still leave hundreds of billions of cubic feet for sale abroad. The government take from the gasfields alone is forecast to reach at least $140bn over the next three decades – a staggering sum for a relatively small economy such as Israel’s.

HANAN ASHRAWI’S LIES AND DECEPTION

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/no-cats-in-america-for-hanan-ashrawi/

“Clearly, Israel will raise the question in all serious negotiation that may in time be conducted over the rights of the Palestinians…. Israel’s arguments take approximately the following form: “It is true that we Israelis brought about the exodus of the Arabs from their land in the war of 1948… and that we took control of their property. In return however you Arabs caused the expulsion of a like number of Jews from Arab countries since 1948 until today. Most of these went to Israel after you seized control of their property in one way or another. What happened, therefore, is merely a kind of ‘population and property transfer,’ the consequences of which both sides have to bear. Thus Israel gathers in the Jews from Arab countries and the Arab countries are obliged in turn to settle the Palestinians within their own borders and work towards a solution of the problem.”

Now we know: there is no such thing as Jewish refugees from Arab countries. You heard it from no less than Hanan Ashrawi, PLO executive member and spokesperson.Here is what Ashrawi wrote in an article printed in a number of Arab media outlets:

“The claim that Jews who emigrated to Israel, which is supposed to be their homeland, are “refugees” who were uprooted from their homelands is a form of deception and delusion.”

Denial is a river in Egypt, but it’s also, sadly, the default position of many Arabs and Muslims when it comes to facts they would rather not acknowledge. The Holocaust? It didn’t happen. Israel? It doesn’t exist — not on Arab maps, anyway. Jewish refugees from Arab countries? They left willingly. Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism? A fabrication. (Arabs and Jews have always lived in harmony, haven’t they?) “There are no cats in America“, sang the delusional mice migrants.

What is new about Hanan Ashrawi’s assertion is that she is probably the most senior Palestinian official to have made it in over 60 years.

Her motivation? Alarm, even desperation. The Palestinian monopoly on victimhood is being challenged. Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, is stepping up his campaign to raise awareness of the Jewish refugee issue. He will be holding a conference this coming weekend in Israel ; he will be taking the issue to New York for the next UN General Assembly meeting on September 21.

Dear reader, I won’t waste your time trying to prove to you that Ashrawi’s assertion is a bold-faced lie. Legal experts will point to the fact that the UN Agency for refugees (UNHCR) recognized Jews fleeing Arab countries on two occasions as bona fide refugees. A cursory look at the blog Point of No Return will provide plenty of evidence that Jews interned, persecuted, intimidated, expelled with nothing but the shirts on their backs, and housed in makeshift camps, were indeed refugees. A glance at Ayalon’s new Facebook page “I am a Refugee“ will show you documents forbidding Jews from returning to their countries of birth, shipfuls of refugees from Libya and video testimonies from Jews thrown out of Egypt and Iraq.

EDWARD ALEXANDER:Double Review: ‘Millions of Jews to Rescue’ and ‘Herbert Hoover and the Jews’

http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/09/03/double-review-%E2%80%98millions-of-jews-to-rescue%E2%80%99-and-%E2%80%98herbert-hoover-and-the-jews%E2%80%99-review/#

Herbert Hoover and the Jews: The Origins of the “Jewish Vote” and Bipartisan Support for Israel, by Sonja Schoepf Wentling and Rafael Medoff (Washington: Wyman Institute, 2012).

Millions of Jews to Rescue: A Bergson Group Leader’s Account of the Campaign to Save Jews from the Holocaust, by Samuel Merlin. Edited and annotated by Rafael Medoff (Washington: Wyman Institute, 2012).

One of my earliest childhood memories is politically tainted. In November 1944, when I was not yet eight, my father assigned me to distribute “Vote for FDR” leaflets near (probably illegally near) a Brooklyn polling station. It was not a task that required courage. In my Brownsville neighborhood, it would have been easier to find a Jew who ate pork than one who would deny Roosevelt a fourth term as president in favor of Republican Thomas Dewey. Every segment of American Jewry embraced Roosevelt. From right to left, east European to German, working class to middle class, Jews adored the Commander in Chief of the war against Hitler. Rabbi Stephen Wise, the most important American Jewish leader of the time, said that American Jews “rightly look up to [FDR], revere him, and love him…No one would more deeply sorrow than I…if this feeling of Jewish homage…should be changed.” Wise sycophantically (Jeremiah might have said, idolatrously) referred to FDR as “the All Highest.”

Yet the record of Roosevelt’s administration with regard to the European Jews being hunted and murdered by Nazism was shameful. Wise himself wrote to a colleague in 1933 that “FDR has not lifted a finger on behalf of the Jews of Germany.” Indeed, ever since the publication of David Wyman’s Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-41 (1968), and Henry Feingold’s The Politics of Rescue (1970), it has been common knowledge that although the U.S. under FDR admitted more Jewish refugees than other Western nations between 1933 and 1945 its record was actually worse than theirs. “American ability to absorb immigration,” Wyman wrote, “was vastly greater than that of the small European countries …Viewed in relation to capacity, the English, Dutch, French and others …were more generous than the United States.”