http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6859 The one thing common to all New Year’s resolutions is that they are based on the fantasy of a brighter future. Though the aim to lose weight or make a career move is neither unreasonable nor necessarily unattainable, the reason it involves fantasy is twofold. In the first place, the unconscious, underlying goal of […]
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/12/bibis-choice/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=98c29a35a4-Mosaic_2013_12_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-98c29a35a4-41165129
“Releasing terrorists in return for continued peace negotiations with the Palestinians is bad enough; accepting another settlement freeze would amount to saying: we have no right to be here. ”
The release of unrepentant Jew-killers from Israeli prisons to keep the engine of the peace process running has left many, even those sympathetic with the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, angrily wondering why Prime Minister Netanyahu did not accept a settlement freeze instead. There is a good reason, even for those not generally sympathetic to the Jewish presence: unlike the other concessions, a settlement freeze implicitly concedes Israel’s chief negotiating positions before even sitting down at the table.
The first thing to say is that the position Israel was put in by Secretary of State John Kerry and the Palestinians was fundamentally unjust. Israel is forced to make sacrifices even for the “privilege” of participating in peace negotiations to whose ultimate goal is “painful sacrifices” by Israel. In Israel, politicians talk about paying “the price” for peace. Kerry has put a price on paying the price: a value-added tax on peace.
Moreover, if the occupation were so terrible (or real) one would think Abbas would be in a hurry to get to the bargaining table without any preliminaries. This suggests Abbas is not in such a hurry to get an “end of the occupation” so much as particular tactical wins. Moreover, the fact that a top priority for Abbas is the release of mass murders so they can be feted and remunerated shows that “peace” is not vaguely on the horizon, regardless of whether a Kerry diplomatic achievement is. If Bibi partied down with Jewish terrorist Baruch Goldstein, it would be the end of his career.
http://www.romirowsky.com/14215/state-of-failure ‘If you build it, they will come,” was the line that made Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams famous, as his Ray Kinsella was called upon to build a baseball field that would allow Shoeless Joe Jackson and the seven other players banned in the 1919 Black Sox scandal to play again. The […]
http://torahmusings.com/2013/12/was-the-conservative-decline-inevitable-a-baal-teshuvas-perspective/ “Nowhere is [the] rapid collapse [of non-Orthodox American Judaism] more visible than in the Conservative movement, which is practically imploding before our eyes,” writes Rabbi Daniel Gordis in the current issue of The Jewish Review of Books. “In 1971, 41 percent of American Jews affiliated with the Conservative movement, then the largest of the movements. By the […]
http://leebsmarketforecast.com/content/the_complete_investor/committing-citycide-new-york-seattle-voters-embrace-fiscal-destruction As the Big Apple’s tax base shrinks, its municipal costs skyrocket, increasing the urgency that it get its financial house in order. So I’ll make a bold prediction: New Yorkers may someday regret electing a man who says he does not believe in the free market system. “Everything you heard about me is true…I […]
http://letthemfight.blogspot.com/2013_12_29_archive.html The controversy ignited by the latest story emanating from the decaying carcass that is the New York Times and it’s writer, David Kirkpatrick, playing the amateur philologist on NBC’s “Meet the Press“, magnifies the ludicrousness of political discourse in the second decade of this twenty first century. In one of the most nauseating displays […]
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304591604579290350851300782 As he came to the end of his awful year Barack Obama gave an awful speech. The president thinks America has inequality issues. What it has—what he has—is an envy problem. I’ll get to the point in a moment, but first a word about the speech’s awfulness. To illustrate the evils of income inequality, […]
Dumping irrationality as a national strategy US Secretary of State John Kerry will arrive in Israel for his 14th visit this week. And to assure that his stay will be a happy one, Saturday night the government approved the release of 26 more Palestinian mass murderers from prison. This will please Kerry because today a […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4112/islamization-britain In May, new census data published by the British government showed that Islam is set to become the dominant religion in Britain within the next generation. On being informed that the girl did not want to get married, Mohammed Shahid Akhtar, Imam of Birmingham’s Central Jamia Masjid Ghamkol Sharif Mosque, said, “She’s 14. By […]
There are so many persons of the year worthy of respect, admiration and support. In Israel the persons of the year are the Jewish residents of Hebron the biblical first capital of the Jewish people. In spite of hardship, danger, hostility from neighbors, a vile Western media, one sided “negotiations” and Israeli leftists…they remain and they persist. They continue that miraculous link between Abraham and Sarah that has made our survival as a people possible in spite of every effort to extinguish our faith. When David Wilder, the spokesmen for the Jewish community in Hebron speaks of his city, he does not cite the incoveniences and difficulties of daily life. He calls it a privilege to live there.
hebron-day-trip-10David Wilder at home in Hebron
