http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=282937 Student’s mouth stapled in ‘anti-Semitic attack’ Michigan State Jewish student attacked at party, knocked unconscious; ADL “horrified by violent assault.” PHOTO: TWITPIC A Jewish student at Michigan State University said he was attacked at an off-campus party in what he is calling a hate crime. Just before the assault, which broke his jaw, Zach […]
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/germany-maintained-contacts-with-palestinians-after-munich-massacre-a-852322-druck.html
Germany’s Secret Contacts to Palestinian Terrorists By Felix Bohr, Gunther Latsch and Klaus Wiegrefe
Eleven Israelis and one German police officer died in the Munich massacre of 1972, when Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage at the Olympics. Now, government documents suggest that Germany maintained secret contacts with the organizers of the attack for years afterward and appeased the Palestinians to prevent further bloodshed on German soil.
In the busy streets of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, hardly anyone noticed the three Buick sedans that came to a stop just before the corner of Rue Verdun. Several couples got out of the cars. They were dressed casually and looked like tourists. Some of the people were in fact wearing blonde wigs and women’s clothing, which wasn’t recognizable from a distance.
In fact, the couples were all men, members of an Israeli special forces unit operating in enemy territory.
At about 1:30 a.m., they entered an apartment building. They rushed up the stairs to the upper floors, pulled Uzi submachine guns and explosives out from under their baggy clothing and received a radio message from their commander ordering them to blow open the doors to several apartments. They immediately opened fire, shooting and killing Abu Youssef, Kamal Nasser and Kamal Adwan, three senior officials with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Youssef’s wife and a female neighbor were also killed.
At the time, Operation Spring of Youth, carried out by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and the Israeli army in the early morning hours of April 10, 1973, was probably the most spectacular counterterrorism operation in the history of the Jewish state. After the attack, the men fled in their Buicks to the Beirut sea front, where they boarded inflatable boats and were taken back out to a waiting speedboat. The episode was vividly portrayed as a high-speed escape in the dead of night in director Steven Spielberg’s film “Munich.”
‘New Basis of Trust’
Operation Spring of Youth was part of a revenge campaign the Israelis waged against the backers of the Munich massacre of Sept. 5-6, 1972. Black September, a terrorist group with ties to the PLO, had killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches in an attack during the Munich Olympics. After the Lebanon operation, the government in Tel Aviv gave the returning Israeli elite troops a hero’s welcome.
Walter Nowak, 48, the then German ambassador to Lebanon, condemned the Israeli action, saying that the dead Palestinians were among the most “rational and responsible” members of the PLO. A day after the retaliatory strike, the outraged diplomat wrote a letter to government authorities in Bonn, the then-German capital, saying that it was “not to be ruled out” that the Israelis had killed Abu Youssef and the others to hinder the peace process in the Middle East. “Those who don’t want to negotiate are bothered by those they might be expected to face in negotiations,” he wrote.
Nowak’s idiosyncratic assessment stemmed from the mission the ambassador was pursuing at the time. Nowak had met with Abu Youssef, one of the founders of Black September, about a week before his death. In the two-hour conversation, he offered Abu Youssef and other backers of the Munich attack the prospect of creating “a new basis of trust” between them and the German government. There was even talk of a secret meeting in Cairo between then Foreign Minister Walter Scheel, a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), and Abu Youssef.
The Munich attack had occurred only six months earlier. Despite the still-vivid images of masked terrorists on the balconies of the Olympic Village and a burned-out helicopter on the tarmac at the NATO airbase at Fürstenfeldbruck, there was already active but secret diplomatic communication between Germans and Palestinians. West German representatives were talking to men like Abu Youssef, Ali Salameh and Amin al-Hindi, all of them masterminds of the Munich murders. Even the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), which is obligated to prosecute criminals, was involved in meetings, according to documents in the Political Archives of the German Foreign Ministry and the Federal Archive in the western city of Koblenz, which SPIEGEL has now analyzed.
The motives were plain. Bonn knew that the Palestinians craved international recognition. Any contact with West German representatives, even in secret, upgraded the PLO’s status as an institution. In return, the government of then Chancellor Willy Brandt and Vice-Chancellor Walter Scheel hoped to protect Germany from further attacks. But the price they had to pay in return appears to have been high.
Spirit of Appeasement
In the coming weeks, during events to mark the 40th anniversary of the attack, the question will once again be raised as to why the German courts never tried any of the perpetrators or backers of the Munich massacre. The documents that are now available suggest one answer in particular: West Germany didn’t want to call them to account.
In the first few weeks after the attack, German government offices in Bonn were imbued with a spirit of appeasement. From the Israeli perspective, it felt like a bitter irony of history that it involved Munich — a city that became a symbol of the Western powers’ appeasement of Hitler after the Munich Agreement permitting Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland was signed there in 1938.
Although the Munich attack involved multiple murders, the language in the files oddly downplays what happened there. Then-Chancellor Brandt is quoted as saying that the Olympic massacre was a “crazy incident,” while Paul Frank, a state secretary in the Foreign Ministry, refers to it simply as the “events in Munich.” Diplomats and senior Interior Ministry officials upgraded the status of Black September by calling it a “resistance group” — as if its acts of terror had been directed against Hitler and not Israeli civilians.
At the Foreign Ministry, in particular, some officials were apparently very sympathetic to the Palestinians. Walter Nowak, the German ambassador to Lebanon, once told Abu Youssef that the Germans were a people “with a substantial number of refugees,” because of the fact that ethnic Germans had been expelled from parts of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II. (Nowak himself was born in Silesia, which is now part of Poland, back when it belonged to Germany.) This, he added, made them more understanding of the Palestinian situation than other nations.
A number of comments even create the impression that it wasn’t only Black September but also the Israelis who had committed murder in West Germany. According to speaking notes for Foreign Minister Scheel dated October 1972, the parties in the Middle East conflict had a tendency to take their disputes to noninvolved countries. It was up to Bonn to defend itself against such actions “by both sides of the conflict” (emphasis in the original).
‘The Munich Chapter Was Closed’
At the time, there were widespread fears of further attacks. The intelligence services regularly reported on plans to hijack German airliners. In most cases, they warned that hijackings could be used to secure the release of the three Olympic killers who had survived the firefight with the police in Fürstenfeldbruck.
And then, on Oct. 29, the warnings became reality. A group of PLO terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa flight en route to Frankfurt. The Bavarian state government immediately released the three prisoners, who were flown to Libya via Zagreb.
Paul Frank, the senior Foreign Ministry official, told the Libyan ambassador with relief that, from Germany’s standpoint, “the Munich chapter was closed” as a result of the release. The German government chose not to request the extradition of the three terrorists from Libya. In a memo to the Chancellery, Frank wrote: “We should be pleased that the whole thing has calmed down sufficiently.”
Home The media is not “completely” monolithic in what it strongly believes, but it “almost” is. The difference between “almost” and “completely” is FOX NEWS or it was. But FOX now seems to be melding into that ideological middle where history is ignored and relativism is a value. “Fair and Balanced” is fast becoming more […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3314/obama-iran
LIKE THE PROVERBIAL GIRL WITH A CURL….WHEN DERSH IS GOOD HE IS VERY GOOD, WHEN HE IS BAD, AS IN DEFENDING THE 2 STATE DISSOLUTION FOR ISRAEL, AND VOTING FOR AND PUBLICLY SUPPORTING OBAMA HE IS HORRIBLE AND LOSES ALL CREDIBILITY….RSK
It is now become clear that neither diplomacy nor sanctions will halt the Iranian march toward nuclear weapons. Iran is today stronger diplomatically than it has been in years, as evidenced by the meeting of the nonaligned nations in Tehran. Iran is neither isolated nor alone in a world in which nonaligned nations form a majority at the United Nations.
The sanctions, while hurting the Iranian economy and making life more difficult for the average Iranian, are having zero impact on the Iranian nuclear program, which according to objective intelligence reports, is gathering steam and moving even more quickly toward its ultimate goal of a nuclear weapon that will be a game changer. An Iranian nuclear weapon will end any dream of nonproliferation. It will protect Iran’s surrogate terrorists, such as Hezbollah, under a formidable nuclear umbrella. And it will make an eventual nuclear war more likely. That is why President Obama rightfully took the containment option off the table and put the preventive military option squarely on it.
Although I support President Obama’s policy with regard to the Iranian nuclear threat, I think he must take one further step if the combination of diplomacy and sanctions are ever to work. That step is to communicate to Iran—unequivocally and without any room for misunderstanding—that the Obama Administration will never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
President Obama has already made this point, but not in a way that the Iranians understand and believe. Language matters, and President Obama must now use language that commits him, in the eyes of the Iranians, to keep his promise that he will, if necessary, use military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Only if the Iranians truly believe that they will never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons will the combination of diplomacy and sanctions work. The message has to be this: Look, sanctions hurt. Diplomatic isolation from first world powers is costly. So why incur this pain and cost if you know you will never be able to achieve your goal?
Not only must the Iranians believe that the United States will, as a last resort, use its overwhelming air power to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but the Israeli leadership must also believe that the Iranians believe it. Only then will Israel forbear from taking preventive self defense actions on its own.
If the Iranians and the Israelis were to believe believe President Obama’s assurances that, as he put it, “I don’t bluff,” there would be a real possibility that Iran would abandon its nuclear weapons program. But even if the mullahs were foolishly to challenge the United States, and continue with the weapons program, the Israelis would have an enhanced degree of confidence that Obama would keep his word and stop Iran before it reached its deadly goal.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/steven-plaut/a-just-verdict-in-the-rachel-corrie-case/
It is now official. Rachel Corrie, the patron saint of the pro-terror
radical Left and its Islamofascist allies, essentially committed
suicide in order to assist Palestinian terrorists. She was not killed
by Israel. Israel had no particular reason to want her dead (as
opposed to deported).
The Haifa District court just tossed out a petition by the clueless
parents of Corrie. They had sought damages and a court proclamation
that Israel was at fault in their daughter’s death. Instead, Judge
Oded Gershon made it very clear that Rachel Corrie, the
US-flag-burning groupie of Islamofascism, was responsible for her OWN
death. She intentionally placed herself in harm’s way in order to
interfere with Israeli military anti-terror operations in Gaza. She
did so in a place where Palestinian terrorists had fired at Israeli
troops just hours earlier. The Israeli troops were there to destroy
smuggling tunnels beneath residential buildings, tunnels used to
smuggle in explosives, missiles, and other weapons. Things used by
the Gazan terrorists to murder Jewish children and other living
things.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159403
New Site Brings Zionism to the YouTube Generation
Most Zionists don’t know what Zionism is really all about, says the head of a new video site called Zionism 101
Many people who love Israel freely use the term “Zionist” to describe themselves. But how many know what Zionism is really all about?
Not too many, according to David Isaac, of the web site Zionism 101. The current state of Zionist education – i.e. the teaching of the principles of Zionism, why there was a Zionist movement, what the various leaders of the movement represented, etc. – is woefully poor, and much of it has to do with the fact that even though the Zionist movement has progressed since its beginnings some 100 years ago, its “interface” to the public has lagged.
“A high level of Zionist knowledge among Jews and Christians is rare. Most don’t have even a rudimentary knowledge of the modern Zionist movement,” Isaac said.
Unfortunately, the Internet has not helped matters, said Isaac – with the same old-fashioned approach being transferred from the printed page to cyberspace. “The sites I’ve seen on Zionism are rather poor, very text-heavy, not very attractive,” Isaac said.
If there’s one thing educators have learned, it’s that students would much rather watch a movie than read a book – so Isaac, in an attempt to reach more people with the message of what Zionism is all about, has been developing a site called Zionism 101, which includes YouTube-style videos that make it easy to understand what the movement is all about.
The site is organized according to courses – 20 of them, on topics including Founding Fathers (with videos on Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and others), the origins of Zionism, movements in the Jewish world that attempted to supplant or replace Zionism, the Mandatory period in the Land of Israel, Christian Zionism, US-Israel relations, the story of Israel’s wars, the search for peace, and much more. The site is completely free (you just have to register), and most of the videos are just 5-10 minutes long. (The longest one currently on the site is about 20 minutes.)
The films are built from authentic period footage and photographs, offering students a window into the past. All films are original to the site, and are supplemented by timelines, selected writings and a bibliography for those who wish to extend their knowledge.
The site is great not only for those getting an “elementary education” in Zionism, Isaac said, but also for those who already know what Zionism is all about. “While Zionism 101 is primarily for those who want to learn the basics, more knowledgeable students will also find the site valuable as there are many details to the Zionist struggle known only by a few,” he said.
Isaac, executive director of Zionism 101, is an Assistant Editor at a national newspaper and has been working on Zionism 101 for several years, inspired by his good friend Herbert Zweibon, who passed away in 2011. Zweibon headed the Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI) organization, which tirelessly lobbied for Israeli security and worked to keep alive the legacy of Ze’ev Jabotinsky revisionist Zionist views.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/28/wholl-make-the-difference-in-november/print/
The most enthusiasm about this election is not coming from labor unions, paid volunteers or even traditional political party organizations. It’s coming from the Tea Party.
This grass-roots movement is made up of people from across the country who are sick and tired — some might say “fed up” — of seeing Washington fail, time and time again, to address the very real problems facing our nation.
This movement is drawing its energy from the very principles upon which our nation was founded: economic liberty, limited government and freedom. These principles, which do not seem to be shared by President Obama, must be restored to our national vocabulary if we are to restore America.
Don’t think they’re going to play a major role in this election? You haven’t been paying attention. Tea Party candidates across the country have scored upset victories, including Ted Yoho in Florida, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, and, in my home state, Ted Cruz. All ran strong, well-organized campaigns fueled by a non-establishment, anti-Washington message.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2477
Lebanon’s responsibilityIf what was reported in Haaretz yesterday is true, then I would like to commend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I am not referring here to the brouhaha surrounding his investment portfolio, but rather his alleged warning to the Lebanese government that it had better watch its step, or else.
On the investment portfolio, a scandal erupted when it emerged that Netanyahu had requested to shift some of his holdings. Though he did this through all the appropriate legal channels — and was given approval from the State Comptroller’s Office — opposition politicians seized upon the “incident” and were outraged. Ostensibly, they object to the fact that a person who is preparing for war in the near future shouldn’t be rushing to protect his stocks and bonds as a result of his assumption that the market is going to fluctuate.
Immediately, comparisons to former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz began to fly faster than the Hamas rockets that have been landing on southern Israel in honor of the start of the school year. Halutz shamed himself badly when the first thing he did after two Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah terrorists in August 2006 — the event that sparked the Second Lebanon War — was to phone his broker to sell his stock portfolio.
This is why Netanyahu withdrew his request to move his money around at this particular time. Too bad he didn’t anticipate the carryings on. He should have known it was going to ensue, especially now, with the whole country up in arms (no pun intended) over Iran.
Our Chances of Winning the Senate Just Got Brighter Carol Brown
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/08/our_chances_of_winning_the_senate_just_got_brighter.html#ixzz24q8h4BdZ
After a week of Senate pick-up despair, thanks to Todd Akin’s odd views of rape and reproductive biology, Republicans could use some good news. According to Real Clear Politics Senate races in seven states are currently in the toss up column. They are listed below with links to the candidates’ web sites.
Connecticut……LINDA MCMAHON http://www.lindaforsenate2012.com/home/
Indiana RICHARD MOURDOCK
http://richardmourdock.com/
Massachusetts SCOTT BROWN FOR US SENATE
http://www.scottbrown.com/s/welcome-let-america/
Montana DENNY REHBERG FOR US SENATE
Denny Rehberg (R) – Congressman, Ex-Lt. Gov., Ex-State Rep., Rancher & ’96 Nominee
North Dakota RICK BERG FOR SENATE
http://www.bergfornorthdakota.com/view/
Ohio JOSH MANDEL **** FOR SENATE
http://www.bergfornorthdakota.com/view/
Virginia GEORGE ALLEN (NOT TERRIFIC BUT ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN KAINE…RSK)
https://www.georgeallen.com/donate/google-campaign/?gclid=CMmg2OehirICFYk7OgodhE4A5g
http://yeshaviews.blogspot.com/
ABOUT MY E-PAL MARC PROWISOR: “I served as the Chief Army Security Coordinator for the Shilo Region in Israel from 1996 through 2006. This biblically significant area between Ramallah and Nablus (Shechem) was a hotbed of terrorism, plagued by acts of violence against Jews during my tenure. I was personally involved in defending against numerous terror attacks in this region. I continue to work in the Security field in hopes of continuing to defend and protect others from acts of terrorism. My views are based on my experiences as a Security Officer involved “ground level” against terrorism.Israel is under fire not only from relentless attacks from Arab terrorists, but also from the court of world opinion, which is essentially calling for Israel to stop, defending itself and to give up its heartland in Judea and Samaria.”
Cirque des Freaks
The Frenzy grows as the arena sport known as “American Election Day” approaches. One of the latest events connected to this which involves the Jewish world has to do with a group of so-called Jewish religious leaders who are out to prove, among other things, just how blind and ignorant many in the Jewish world can be. I consider their abuse and misuse of the term “rabbi” to border on the “spiritually criminal, but maybe that’s just me. In any case, I do not find it surprising.
The initiative of these “rabbis” is called “Rabbis for Obama”, and what makes it interesting is that you have some very anti-Israel figures in and around this group. Groups such as “Jewish Voice for Peace”, “14 Friends of Palestine”, and “the Council of American Islam Relations” are only a few of the anti-Israel organizations affiliated with this new “umbrella group”. Many of these “rabbis” use these labels and names to hide their anti-Israel activity, and I would have to say, connecting a label like “Rabbis for Obama” to President Obama’s campaign continues to add to the myth and illusion that the Obama administration actually cares for the security of Israel. The importance of this to Obama and his campaign is not the topic here, rather it is the fact that a group of supposed rabbis is attempting to dupe the naïve and misinformed Jewish world, once again, as to the intentions of this administration towards the state of Israel.
Appalling, you may say. Or you may not see it as appalling. Not yet. Please read on.
I say to you that the diaspora Jewish leadership, especially in the U.S. is deliberately misrepresenting the situation re: Israel’s relations with it’s Arab/Muslim neighbors, partially as a result of their own narrow political/personal interests and partially because of genuine, but misguided concern for the Jewish state.Don’t believe me, ask you neighborhood JCC, Conservative or Reform synagogue to host a speaker who has “right wing” opinions regarding Israel- or heaven forbid a Republican!
