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BOOKS

ROBERT WOLFE: SETTLEMENTS ARE THE ISSUE

Wolfe – Settlements Are the Issue Robert Wolfe New English Review August 2011http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/93385/sec_id/93385
thanks to: LOVE OF THE LAND… http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com/

You often hear defenders of the Netanyahu government say, in opposition to demands for a settlement freeze, “Settlements are not the issue. The issue is the Palestinian refusal to accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.” The unspoken subtext behind this argument is that if only the Palestinians would accept the existence of Israel, the issue of the settlements could easily be resolved, with Israel retaining some and abandoning others. And it is certainly true that the Palestinians have never accepted the existence of Israel and have always found one pretext or another to avoid a peaceful resolution of the conflict, but even if the Palestinians would formally accept the Jewish state, it is far from clear that a compromise on the question of settlements is either possible or desirable.

In the first place, although some Palestinian negotiators have given the impression that they would accept Israeli retention of the large settlement blocs in return for the surrender of some Israeli territory elsewhere, the official Palestinian and Arab position has remained that Israel must withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, which are invariably referred to as the “1967 borders.” When the Palestinians ask individual countries to declare their support for the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, the boundaries of that state are always described as the “1967 borders.” All this creates the impression that one of the main reasons why the Palestinians are not interested in a negotiated settlement is precisely because they are not willing to accept the existence of any Israeli settlements, whether big or small, beyond the 1949 armistice lines. This impression is further reinforced by the repeated statements by Abbas and other Palestinian leaders that they do not intend to accept the presence of even one single Jew within the territory of their new Palestinian state.

YORAM ETTINGER: ISRAEL’S UNIQUE CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE UNITED STATES

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=875&r=1 Israel’s unique contribution to the US “Israel is responsible for over 600 modifications in the current generation of General Dynamics’ (GD) F-16 fighter aircrafts, providing General Dynamics a multi-billion dollar bonus in research and development, improving General Dynamic’s competitive edge in the global market, expanding U.S. employment and its export base and enhancing U.S. national security,” General […]

CAROLINE GLICK: CALLING THINGS BY THEIR PROPER NAME

http://jewishworldreview.com/1111/glick112511.php3

There is a price to be paid for calling an enemy an enemy. But there is an even greater price to be paid for failing to do so.

Next month, the US’s long campaign in Iraq will come to an end with the departure of the last US forces from the country. Amazingly, the approaching withdrawal date has fomented little discussion in the US. Few have weighed in on the likely consequences of US President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw on the US’s hard won gains in that country. After some six thousand Americans gave their lives in the struggle for Iraq and hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on the war, it is quite amazing that its conclusion is being met with disinterested yawns.

The general stupor was broken last week with The Weekly Standard’s publication of an article entitled, “Defeat in Iraq: President Obama’s decision to withdraw US troops is the mother of all disasters.” The article was written by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan and Marisa Cochrane Sullivan. The Kagans contributed to conceptualizing the successful US-counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, popularly known as “the surge,” that former president George W. Bush implemented in 2007.

THE SCOURGE OF CLIENTITIS: CAROLINE GLICK

http://townhall.com/columnists/carolineglick/2011/11/25/the_scourge_of_clientitis/print For many years, observers of the US State Department on both sides of the American political spectrum have agreed that State Department officials suffer from a malady referred to as “clientitis.” Clientitis is generally defined as a state of mind in which representatives of an organization confuse their roles. Rather than advance the cause […]

AND THE FAIR LAND……

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204323904577037921612867912.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop ‘For all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators.’ Any one whose labors take him into the far reaches of the country, as ours lately have done, is bound to mark how the years have made the land grow fruitful. […]

DAVID P. GOLDMAN: THE UNITED NATIONS….THE DEVIL’S JURY

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2607/united-nations-devil-jury In Stephen Vincent Benét’s story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” Satan called a jury of the damned composed of turncoats, traitors, and Blackbeard the Pirate, “with the stench of hell still upon them.” At the United Nations Human Rights Council, accusations against the Dutch political leader Geert Wilders will be heard by Chinese and […]

YISRAEL MEDAD: SHAMEFUL IN MANCHESTER

http://www.thejc.com/blogs/advis3r/shameful-in-manchester-0
There are more Jews living in Judea and Samaria than in the whole of the British Isles and yet the “Guardians” of British Jewry do not consider that a representative of the Jews of Judea and Samaria has any right to be heard at their big tent fest in Manchester next week. Maybe I should not be surprised since the good people of Manchester tried to hound out Efrat’s Chief Rabbi Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Shlita when he tried to speak there a few years back.
Yisrael Medad has written the following blog [http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2011/11/wineman-not-wise-man.html] which I reproduce with his written approval.
If you do not know, my presence at the Manchester Big Tent is prohibited as a speaker/presenter. The flap has flopped and I am out. There will be many people there as presenters, workshop facilitators, panelists and greeters.
I was personally “disinvited” although I am not sure that I ever was officially invited. I think my name was proposed at the organizing meeting last Thursday for I was told that opposition was strongly expressed by Board of Deputies head, Vivian Wineman, in that the feeling shared around the table, it would seem, was that I had insulted the gentlemen and ladies thereof.
Wineman, however, is truly the odd Jew in this situation.

DANIEL GREENFIELD: THE FUTURE OF EGYPT

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ In the wake of the latest instability everyone has an opinion on the future of Egypt. But the future of Egypt is the past, not the distant past of its pre-Arab culture, but a repetition of the last century. In a region that has never escaped from the past, history is not a road, […]

: LIESL SCHILLINGER: A REVIEW OF “HEDY’S FOLLY” BY RICHARD RHODES…THE REMARKABLE BIOGRAPHY OF HEDY LAMARR

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/11/20/hedy-lamarr-biography-hedy-s-folly-by-richard-rhodes-review.html
How the world’s most beautiful woman helped invent GPS, Wi-Fi, and a homing torpedo.

Actresses often long to turn director, but how many of them yearn to turn inventor? Given the success that the screen siren Hedy Lamarr achieved in that realm—revealed in Richard Rhodes’s fascinating biography, Hedy’s Folly—it’s a pity more of them don’t consider it.

In 1940, while acting alongside Jimmy Stewart and Judy Garland in the MGM musical Ziegfeld Girl, the 26-year-old Lamarr spent her free time devising a radio-controlled submarine missile-guidance system to help the U.S. Navy in World War II. What moved her to do this? “She didn’t drink and she didn’t like to party, so she took up inventing,” Rhodes explains. Of course, there was more to it than that. The torpedo was not the starlet’s only invention: she also came up with an antiaircraft shell with a proximity fuse, and a fizzing cube that could turn a plain glass of water into soda.

How did a woman who couldn’t spell (by some accounts) make such signif-icant contributions to science? Born Hedwig Kiesler into a refined Viennese Jewish family in 1914, she dropped out of high school to act on stage and screen. In 1931, when she was 16, the director Max Reinhardt cast her in the play The Weaker Sex and called her “the most beautiful woman in the world”—an epithet that stuck. Two years later, she attained notoriety for her memorable (if fleeting) nude scenes in a Czech art film called Ecstasy. The film horrified her parents but thrilled munitions mogul Fritz Mandl.

BRET STEPHENS: A REPUBLICAN FOREIGN POLICY….SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303936704576397391770753856.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop A Republican Foreign Policy Credibility—not consensus—should be the GOP’s watchword. STEPHENS MAKES GOOD POINTS BUT OMITS SOME CRITICAL ISSUES…A CANDIDATE SHOULD STATE FIRMLY WHO IS OUR ENEMY? WHAT IS THE IDEOLOGY THAT DRIVES TREASON AMONG SOME AMERICAN RESIDENTS AND CITIZENS? WHY DO OUR BORDERS REMAIN POROUS AND PERMIT AN INFLUX OF DRUG CARTEL CRIMINALS […]