RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://stevenplaut.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html

Israel’s Mona Lisa Weapon
By Steven Plaut

She’s unforgettable, she’s a legend though…
It’s kinda incredible
— From “Mona Lisa” by Britney Spears

Meet Israel’s secret weapon against terrorism, code named “Mona
Lisa.” Not only is Mona Lisa an effective weapon against Arab
anti-Israel terrorism and Islamofascism, but also is one of the most
effective weapons in the Israeli arsenal against the guttersnipes
screaming about imaginary “Israel Apartheid.” Let us sit back and
watch in amusement as Hitlerjugend from the “Boycott and Divest from
Israel” movement and their fellow jihad travelers try to cope with our
Mona.

There are two critical things you need to know about this new
secret weapon. The first is that Mona Lisa is the real name of an
Israeli woman combat soldier. At her parents’ suggestion – she writes
it as a single word, Monalisa (Nat King Cole did the same!). The
second thing you need to know is that she is an Arab.

http://sarahhonig.com/2011/12/02/another-tack-the-selective-barking-of-hired-hounds/

Hysterical headlines and none-too-coincidentally promoted causes célèbres are more often than not revealed as having been much ado about nothing. But there are different sorts of superfluous fusses.

Some are grounded in crass sensationalism, motivated by pompous publicity-hounding, ratings-boosting and irrepressible rampant shallowness. The results can be dire even without malevolent premeditation.

Inevitably, however, the loudest screamers in any given media campaign are acutely aware of the underlying sham of their pose. They fabricate the fake with forethought aplenty. They intentionally orchestrate uproars against nonexistent provocations. Their much-ado-about-nothing isn’t born of vulgarity but by deliberate design.

The current case of the roundly reviled libel law is so blatant that it cannot but be ascribed to premeditation. It’d take gross ignorance not to realize that the recently enacted amendment changes nothing, that the 1998 amendment to the 1965 Defamation Law was in itself ludicrous, that the original amendment and its updated version both matter little. The very portrayal of the latest legislative adjustment as a freedom-suppressant is so wildly disproportionate that it reeks of manipulation and ill-will.

Iran May Target American Bases in Germany

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3317/iran-may-target-american-bases-in-germany

Iran is planning on attacking U.S. military airfields in Germany, to preempt a possible strike on Tehran, reports Germany’s Bild news source. Evidence of the plot was uncovered by federal investigation into a German businessman, on charges of “suspicion of espionage activities to sabotage,” who was working with Iran’s embassy in Berlin.

German Attorney General Harald Range confirmed the case on Thursday, stating the federal law enforcement had “launched an investigation and conducted operational measures.” This included a house search authorized by an investigating judge on Nov. 2.

Iranian terrorism expert Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh told the Jerusalem Post that the Islamic Republic’s terrorist operations are directed from their embassies. “He [the suspect] had contact to Iran’s Embassy – and was clearly a part of the Iranian terrorist cell that was led by the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Berlin,” Wahdat-Hagh said.

However, not all news reports confirm the plot. The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office told the Jerusalem Post that the businessman was not subject to an arrest warrant and that there are no “indications that in Germany an attack against US American installations was planned or will be planned.”

Relations between Germany and Iran have recently deteriorated. Nuclear negotiations with Iran are at a deadlock and the recent attack by Iranian protesters on Britain’s embassy prompted the recall of several European Union ambassadors, including Germany’s.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/
Kibbutz Sasa sits one mile from Israel’s Lebanese border. Founded in 1949, it is the site of the tomb of the second-century rabbi Levi ben Sisi. It hosts groves of fruit trees and a dairy farm and has 210 members. Kibbutz Sasa is also the home of the main factory of Plasan, a company that started out making hard plastic containers like garbage cans in 1985. For four years now, American soldiers have driven more safely in Iraq and Afghanistan, thanks to Kibbutz Sasa and Plasan’s CEO, Dani Ziv.

It was Ziv who, in the 1980s, urged the company to take up the manufacture of protective ballistic vests for soldiers and police. In 1989, Plasan won its first contract to make body armor for the Israel Defense Forces, and then for IDF vehicles. When war came to Afghanistan and then Iraq, orders went through the roof, especially from the United States. Plasan’s profits soared some 1,500 percent, from $23 million in 2003 to $330 million in 2007. Today they stand at over $500 million, with 90 percent of the company’s orders coming from Europe and the United States.

Plasan specializes in a very dense plastic composite product that affords ballistic protection without significantly adding to the weight of the vehicle. “Their work is exceptional,” says a senior Israeli defense industry executive about Plasan. “To convince the U.S. military that you are a reliable outfit is no mean feat. They did it all alone, without any help from a former ambassador or defense ministry director general.”

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4156222,00.html
Our president traveled to Jordan on Monday. If King Abdullah does not come to Jerusalem, Jerusalem comes to Abdullah. Secretly. Only thanks to the Jordanian news agency, which leaked word of the secret visit, we got to hear about it.

The truth is that it would not have been such a great disaster if we did not hear about it; it would not even amount to minor ignorance.

President Shimon Peres’ diplomatic meetings have no significance whatsoever, if we ignore for a moment the significance of the good feeling they bestow upon our president. Shimon Peres is addicted to secret meetings. They remind him of distant days where he cooked up sensational peace processes under the public’s nose. A meeting here, a quick concession there.

“The meeting was held at the king’s palace and bilateral issues were discussed,” the President’s Office said, toying with lofty worlds. The term “bilateralism” has an intoxicating diplomatic scent, as if real things are happening behind the curtain, yet in this case bilateralism can be summed up with “good morning your majesty” and “what would you like to drink.”

Nothing significant is happening in the Middle East at this time with the exception of the events in Cairo’s squares and on the streets of Syria.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/150340
Oped: Giulio Meotti Takes on The Economist

In a hardhitting article, Italian journalist Giulio Meotti documents the influential magazine’s subtle and not-so-subtle Israel bashing.

The Economist Cover

In contrast to most newsmagazines, like the moribund Time and Newsweek, The Economist has a circulation of 1.2 million copies weekly around the world. Its correspondents have entrance to decision-makers of all levels in Washington and Europe.

This most prestigious British weekly, extremely influential in elite circles in the US as well, prides itself on being neither right nor left. It has, in fact, endorsed candidates in Britain and the United States from both sides of the political divide.

But on the Middle East, The Economist has a radical anti-Israel agenda. For years, Jewish groups and media critics have aimed their fire at Israel bashers on CNN, the BBC, in The New York Times and cultural media outlets such as the London Review of Books.

But The Economist is more subtle about it. Economist editorials and feature articles are published anonymously, giving the impression of being much more reputable and sophisticated.

A recent article titled “The Bedouin Under Israeli Rule” went beyond the usual slant, accusing the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing and promoting the imperialist-colonialist narrative. The CAMERA media watchdog denounced the fact that “The Economist presents the Israeli government’s resettlement of Bedouin into cities as part of a program driven purely by ethnic chauvinism”.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/284698/rand-paul-libertarian-extremist-andrew-c-mccarthy
Rand Paul, Libertarian Extremist
He made John McCain look foolish, but did not make compelling arguments.
The Tea Party’s limited-government, constitutional heart is in the right place. But it needs much better guidance about how the Constitution works in wartime.
The defense-authorization bill currently under congressional consideration contains some unremarkable, largely redundant provisions about the treatment of enemy combatants. Naturally, the now-familiar alliance of leftists and libertarian extremists — self-proclaimed “constitutionalists” all — attacked with their signature “sky is falling” equanimity. On Wednesday, my column addressed some of the more hysterical arguments posited by Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano. The real action, however, was taking place on the Senate floor, where Tea Party favorite Rand Paul (R., Ky.) squared off against John McCain (R., Ariz.), leader of the Republican party’s transnational-progressive wing. Sen. McCain, along with another tranzy, Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), sponsored the detention provisions — which are thus collectively known as the McCain-Levin amendment.
Now, the fact that two progressives propose a bill does not necessarily make it wrong, but it can make their defense of it inscrutable. Video footage hyped by Reason magazine shows the folly of giving Senator McCain the laboring oar. He is a populist, out of his depth arguing constitutional issues. Perhaps more important, he is an enthusiastic believer in the alchemic power of “democracy” (or, at least, democratic processes such as elections and constitution-writing) to tame the most virulently anti-Western Islamic backwaters — no doubt owing to the fact that he seems less versed in Islamist ideology than he is in constitutional law.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=247818
Into the Fray: Surrendering sovereignty
By adopting a policy to avoid confrontations in which it can prevail, Israel may eventually find itself forced into one in which it cannot.

Our hope – a hope 2,000 years old – will not be lost: To be a free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem – From “Hatikva” (“The Hope”), Israel’s national anthem

Supreme power or authority; the authority of a state to govern itself; complete power to govern a country; the state of being a country with freedom to govern itself;

Definition of Sovereignty
– The Oxford Dictionary

Something is distinctly rotten in the State of Israel. The decision this week to delay – apparently indefinitely – the demolition and the replacement of the hazardous Mughrabi Bridge, linking the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, is a deeply disturbing sign. It is easy to downplay the significance of the decision; to present it as giving precedence to prudence over pride.

http://shmuelkatz.com/wordpress/ “Don’t despair, you will live to see a state in spite of these rascals,” said Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky to two young idealists, dejected after witnessing the behavior of the Leftwing Labor faction at the 17th Zionist congress in 1931.Jabotinsky was, of course, right. They did live to see a state. Unfortunately, what he […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.10948,css.print/pub_detail.asp As a child, I used to play with the neighbors across the street in one of the coolest sandboxes one could imagine. It was built into the landscape, with giant boulders lining the back and sides. Five kids could easily play in it, building sandcastles and manipulating bulldozers and dump trucks to their hearts […]