http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ “The entity is already here. Its czars are running things in D.C., and its judges are dismantling both constitutional government and democratic elections. It creates a crisis and then makes sure that it doesn’t go to waste. It has excellent design skills and terrible planning skills. It has all the money in the world […]
www.geraldahonigman.com On August 9th, Turkey’s Islamist government’s Foreign Minister engaged in some mathematical chutzpah. Follow the excerpts below from Istanbul’s Today’s Zaman to get a hint at what I mean… Ahmet Davutoðlu said Turkey would not be opposed to a possible autonomous Kurdish region in Syria following the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, if […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443404004577580913026070278.html?KEYWORDS=FOUAD+AJAMI
The sight of Hillary Clinton cutting a rug on the dance floor this week in South Africa gives away the moral obtuseness of America’s chief diplomat. That image will tell the people of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo, under attack by a merciless regime, all they need to know about the heartlessness of U.S. foreign policy.
True authority over foreign affairs has been vested in the White House, and for that matter, in the Obama campaign apparatus. All the great decisions on foreign policy—Iraq and Afghanistan, the struggle raging in Syria, the challenge posed by the Iranian regime—have been subjugated to the needs of the campaign. All that is left for Mrs. Clinton is the pomp and ceremony and hectic travel schedule.
Much has been made of her time in the air. She is now officially the most traveled secretary of state in American history. She has logged, by one recent count, 843,458 miles and visited 102 countries. (This was before her recent African swing; doubtless her handlers will revise the figures.) In one dispatch, it was breakfast in Vietnam, lunch in Laos, dinner in Cambodia. Officially, she’s always the life of the party.
This is foreign policy trivialized. If Harry Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, was “present at the creation” of the post-World War II order of states, historians who bother with Mrs. Clinton will judge her as marking time, a witness to the erosion of U.S. authority in the international order.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/could-israel-safely-deter-a-nuclear-iran/260947/ Whatever their current disagreements on the reasonableness of further sanctions, Washington and Jerusalem have now both indicatedthat they may be willing to use military options against Iran. After all, sanctions have apparently not convinced Tehran to abandon their nuclear efforts, and rejecting the military option altogether could leave Israel vulnerable. At the same time, […]
The Last Berber Jews As a child, the French filmmaker Kamal Hachkar learned the Berber language from his grandparents in Tinghir, a Berber oasis city east of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco. As an adult he discovered that the now exclusively Muslim town once had a substantial Jewish community. In Hachkar’s film Tinghir-Jerusalem, Echoes from […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/moshe-dann/israel-policy-forum-the-network-of-intrigue/ A recent letter to PM Netanyahu opposing the Levy Report organized by the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) and signed by 40 critics of Jewish communities built in Judea and Samaria (“settlements”) received wide media attention. With perhaps a few exceptions, those who signed the letter did not read the report, since it was only […]
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=280738
Poof! Suddenly Jordanian nationals were transformed into a ‘Palestinian nation, Jordanian territory into a ‘Palestinian homeland’.
Alchemy: a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation
– The Oxford Dictionary
I do not think there is a Palestinian nation at all. I think there is an Arab nation. I think it’s a colonialist invention – a Palestinian nation. When were there any Palestinians? Where did they come from? I think there is an Arab nation.
– Azmi Bashara
The Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation…. The Palestinian people believe in Arab unity. In order to contribute their share toward the attainment of that objective, however, they must, at the present stage of their struggle, safeguard their Palestinian identity and develop their consciousness of that identity.
– The Palestinian National Charter
A recent op-ed article in The New York Times by Dani Dayan, chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, titled, “Israel’s Settlers Are Here to Stay,” reignited the debate on the viability and desirability of the two-state solution.
Plausible perils
In it, Dayan correctly points out something that should be evident to any unbiased observer of the events of the past two decades: “The insertion of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan would be a recipe for disaster.”
He warns that “the new state [would become] a hotbed of extremism. And any peace agreement would collapse… Israel would then be forced to recapture the area.”
This is not an implausible scenario, given the precedent of the Hezbollah takeover of Lebanon, the seizure of power by Hamas in Gaza, and the ever-tightening grip of assorted Islamists on Sinai. In the absence of persuasive arguments to the contrary, there is no reason – other than unsubstantiated hope and unfounded optimism – that a similar fate would not – sooner or later – befall the “West Bank,” were the IDF to evacuate it.
The question then arises: Why would any rational person embrace a policy that so clearly threatens to wreak tragedy on Israelis and Palestinians alike?
Transparent trickery
In the course of modern history mankind has often been afflicted by political perspectives and policy prescriptions that were manifestly misguided, and by doctrinal dogmas that were demonstrably disastrous. Few, however, have been so transparent in their undisguised trickery as what has come to be known as the “two-state-solution” (or TSS).
Based on the flawed and failed notion of land-for-peace, whose validity has repeatedly been disproven, but somehow never discredited and certainly never discarded, it has inexplicably monopolized the debate on the Israel-Arab conflict in general, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict in particular, for decades.
What makes the dominance of the TSS-approach so difficult to fathom is that it is not anchored to empirical fact or to logical consistency, and that the Arabs openly admit that it is nothing but subterfuge.
This assertion cannot be dismissed as some radical right-wing rant. It is the unavoidable conclusion that emerges from the deeds, declarations and documents of the Palestinians.
Nationhood as alchemy
To understand how unmoored the TSS-approach is from fact and logic, consider how devoid of substance the key elements which allegedly underpin it are, such as the “Palestinian nation” and “Palestinian homeland.”
To illustrate this seemingly far-reaching assertion, suppose for a moment that the Arabs had not launched the war of annihilation against Israel in 1967. Who then would have been the Palestinians? More important, what would have been Palestine? At the time, the Arab Palestinians resident in the “West Bank” were not stateless.
Until 1988, all were Jordanian citizens.
Moreover, the 1964 version of the Palestinian National Charter explicitly proclaimed, not only that the “West Bank” was not part of the Palestinian homeland, but that it was part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. (Article 24). Don’t take my word for it. Check it.
So had the Arabs not launched a war of annihilation against Israel, the Arab residents of the “West Bank” would have been Jordanians, and territory of the “West Bank” would have been Jordan.
Of course, this leaves unanswered the previously posed question of who the Palestinians would have been, and where Palestine would have been. Let me urge patience. There will be more on that later.
After all, the Arabs did launch their overtly genocidal aggression against the Jewish state, which resulted in spectacular failure.
From this mixture of defeat and disappointment, “a seemingly magical process of transformation/creation” began to emerge before our very eyes. Poof! As if by some mysterious alchemist mechanism, Jordanian nationals were transformed into a “Palestinian nation” and Jordanian territory was transformed into a “Palestinian homeland.”
Palestine is where the Jews are
On May 27, 1967, barely a week before the outbreak of the Six Day War, Ahmed Shukairy, Yasser Arafat’s predecessor as chairman of the PLO, bellowed: “D-Day is approaching. The Arabs have waited 19 years for this and will not flinch from the war of liberation.”
I LIKE LINDA McMAHON BEST FOR TWO REASONS…SHE’S SMART, SHE HAS A GOOD SENSE ON THE ECONOMY, AND I LOATHE THE PEOPLE WHO BASH HER WHILE THEY ACCEPTED A DISREPUTABLE CREEP LIKE CHRIS DODD. HOWEVER, ON ISRAEL…THE ARE ALL FOOLISH BY SUPPORTING THE TWO STATE DISSOLUTION…AND FRANKLY, FOR ME, THAT’S THE LITMUS TEST ON ISRAEL…..RSK
The 2012 Election: the race for the senate
Posted by JLedgeron August 7, 2012in
On Tuesday, August 14, Connecticut voters will go to the polls in a primary election to choose the Democrat and Republican candidates for the next United States Senator to fill the seat held by Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is retiring at the end of his term. Much of the candidates’ rhetoric has focused on the economy – but we wanted to know more about their stance on foreign affairs – specifically, on issues related to the Middle East.We posed the same set of questions to two Democrat and two Republican candidates for Senate in the upcoming primary. Congressman Chris Murphy (Democrat), Linda McMahon (Republican) and Chris Shays responded. At press time, the Ledger had not heard back from Susan Bysiewicz (Democrat). Here is what they had to say.With this issue, the Ledger begins its election 2012 coverage. In addition to our interviews with the candidates for Senate, the Ledger’s elections coverage will include a look at the Congressional race in District 5 – the seat being vacated by Chris Murphy – as well as key local races.
LEDGER: You are seeking to fill the Senate seat soon to be vacated by Joe Lieberman – who is certainly one of Israel’s staunchest supporters on the Hill. How would you describe your own support for Israel?http://www.jewishledger.com/2012/08/the-2012-election-the-race-for-the-senate/layout-1-3/
MURPHY: I’m proud to be a very proud supporter of the U.S./Israel relationship. As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee I’ve been at the table since we’ve made some very important decisions during a very dangerous time for Israel — and we have stood by them in the fight to keep Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, and the fight to aid them in their protection against a growing instability in the region. I’m excited to be able to elevate my voice on behalf of the Israeli partnership with the United States and I intend to be a very strong voice for Israel and being a similarly strong advocate for this key relationship.
McMAHON: Israel is an important foundation of stability and democracy in the Middle East. The U.S. and Israel share common principles and a strong commitment to eradicating terrorism. Israel has been a resolute ally, and the United States should stand ready to assist our friends to promote peace, defeat terrorism, and prevent hostile countries that sponsor terrorism from obtaining nuclear weapons.
I believe the U.S.-Israel alliance remains critical as the two countries face an array of shared threats from a potentially nuclear-armed Iran, to the expanding military capabilities of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel is finding it increasingly difficult – and expensive – to meet these challenges. With the increased unrest in the Arab region, we must remain vigilant in our cooperation.
Maintaining the U.S.-Israeli security agreement, which pledges to provide Israel with $30 billion in military assistance through 2017, is vital to ensuring that Israel maintains its qualitative military edge over those adversaries that threaten the Jewish state and actively work to undermine U.S. interests in the region. While budgetary times are tight here at home, I support the President’s FY 2013 request for $3.1 billion of security assistance to Israel. Approximately 75 percent of that money will return to the United States helping to support American jobs while supporting our democratic allies in the Middle East.
Additionally, I favor legislation such as the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act of 2012, which states that it is U.S. policy to: (1) reaffirm the commitment to Israel’s security as a Jewish state, (2) provide Israel with the military capabilities to defend itself and help preserve its qualitative military edge, (3) expand military and civilian cooperation, (4) assist in a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that results in two states living side by side in peace and security, and (5) encourage Israel’s neighbors to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. The bill also expresses the sense of Congress that the United States should take specified actions to assist in Israel’s defense.
I completely support Israel’s right to defend itself against all threats from both state and non-state actors, and I view any attack on Israel as an attack on the United States. Israel has the right to exist and live in peace just like every other nation in the world. That right must be recognized by its neighbors in the region, and the United States must encourage other nations to form public alliances with Israel to counter threats from its neighbors, like Iran, that refuse such recognition.
SHAYS: I have been and continue to be one of Israel’s strongest supporters. When I was a member of Congress, I traveled to Israel on numerous occasions, met with most of its leaders and demonstrated a firm commitment to Israeli goals and aspirations. I co-sponsored legislation to: recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and locate the American embassy in Jerusalem; support Israel’s right to protect itself by building a fence; fully fund foreign aid to Israel; prohibit direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority unless a criteria of peaceful conditions are met.
WHETHER YOU ARE A FAN OR NOT, IT’S NICE TO KNOW…..MY LATE MOTHER DIED CONTENT IN THE”KNOWLEDGE” THAT GREGORY PECK WAS JEWISH (HE WASN’T) BUT I NEVER CHOSE TO TELL HER….RSK Play Ball: The Jewish Boys of Summer take the field Posted by Suzy Iarussoon July 18, 2012in www.jewishledger.com By Suzy Iarusso ~ With the […]
www.ClimateDepot.com
Climate Depot’s Marc Morano statement: “Rep. Paul Ryan has an awesome energy & climate record. It will be so refreshing to have a VP candidate who actually understands how warmists like Jamse Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, & Kevin Trenberth have perverted science and turned it into pure politics”
Nice Pick! Romney’s VP Candidate Paul Ryan: Climatologists ‘Intentionally Mislead The Public On Climate Change’ — Ryan: ‘The CRU (Climategate) e-mail scandal reveals a perversion of the scientific method, where data were manipulated to support a predetermined conclusion’
Romney chose well! Special Report about Paul Ryan on Global Warming — ‘According to his voting record on energy and oil, Ryan is about as conservative as they come’
The VP candidate Ryan and Climategate — He understands Climategate perfectly!
Climate Depot’s Morano Response: Rep. Paul Ryan understood that the Climategate scandal revealed activist scientists bent on protecting the global warming narrative at all costs. No amount of sham Penn State or Lord Oxburgh or Muir Russell investigations can change that. The fact is, the global warming industry pretended to investigate itself and of course it pretended to have found no wrongdoing.
‘Ryan is an avid outdoorsman, is for a clean environment & for resource conservation programs. He says protecting environment go hand in hand with our efforts to expand our economy’
