http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/democracy-is-not-the-answer/ To understand how we got to the point that spending hundreds of millions of dollars to support a government run by people who have been at war with us for almost a century is a policy that most foreign policy experts endorse, it helps to take a brief trip back in time. In the […]
http://bit.ly/XcKUDD On the eve of President Obama’s visit to Israel, the American constituent is concerned about his attitude towards Israel, as reported by the March 4, 2013 issue of The Hill, one of the two newspapers on Capitol Hill. According to The Hill, which features a Pulse Opinion Research poll, “The President’s support for Israel […]
http://www.meforum.org/3466/islam-terrorism-denial Over three years after Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, the classification of his crime remains in dispute. In its wisdom, the Department of Defense, supported by law enforcement, politicians, journalists, and academics, deems the killing of thirteen and wounding of forty-three to be “workplace violence.” For example, […]
The Catholic Church has chosen a new Pope and the caterwauling of non adherents that are disappointed that the Church rejects “liberation theology” is sickening. Would they have preferred a Pope from the Maryknoll Catholic movement? Their good job as missionaries obscures the fact that for years they acted as a radical, pro-Soviet, pro Communist, anti-Israel movement in the church. Or how about the Berrigan Brothers? Daniel and Phillip were both priests who were radicals and put on the most wanted list for their vandalism and destruction of government property including draft boards where they poured blood on official documents.
Let me say at the outset. I like and respect my fellow “infidels ” as Catholics are called by the Jihads. My own life has intersected in many ways with Catholics.
My father left Europe and went to Bolivia, a Catholic nation which offered refuge to more Jews than Canada. My brother and I were born there and like the thousands upon thousands of Jews who found a life in the Catholic nations of South America we were treated well and with respect for our heritage and religion. We attended a Catholic school there where the only transgression was an occasional tug at my pig tails….mostly carried out by my kid brother and his friends.
I do not want to revisit the dark days of the Vatican and the Jews of Europe. I prefer to remember the roles of many priests who helped to save and hide Jews. Priests like Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, ( J. P. Gallagher’s book The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican )a real life Irish Catholic priest who saved thousands of Jews and Allied prisoners of war in Nazi occupied Rome. I think of Catholics like Irena Sendler, Odoardo Focherini, a journalist, Père Marie-Benoît, born Pierre Péteul, was a Capuchin Franciscan friar, Monsignor Francesco Repetto in Genoa, Reverend Bruno Reynders (Pere Bruno) a Catholic Belgian Monk, Frank Foley a British secret service agent….. only a handful of the heroic Catholics who risked all to save thousands of Jews.
The role of Irish Catholics who piloted ships and planes to Palestine is epic. Prominent Catholics in America such as Hugh Carey, Paul O’Dwyer, and his brother NY’s 100th Mayor William O’Dwyer (who organized the first Israel Day Parade in New York) openly supported Zionism and the advent of Israel.
Less known is the role of the late Francis Cardinal Spellman, Catholic Archbishop of New York, who influenced the United Nations decision in 1949 to admit Israel to UN membership.(http://archive.jta.org/article/1964/05/12/3076861/cardinal-spellmans-aid-in-admission-of-israel-to-un-disclosed) In 1949, Charles Silver, president of Beth Israel Hospital, former president of the New York City Board of Educationhe asked Cardinal Spellman to issue a statement supporting Israel’s application for membership in the United Nations. Cardinal Spellman replied: “I will do something that may mean a great deal more. ” What Cardinal Spellman did, according to Mr. Silver, was to contact Latin American and other delegations with a suggestion that they vote for Israel’s admission. When the vote was taken, in May of 1949, it was 37 to 12 in favor of Israel’s application.
My husband graduated from the Jesuit St. Peter’s College in Jersey City where he never encountered anything but sensitivity and empathy and a deep sorrow for the Holocaust. The late Cardinal O’Connor, who lit a candle in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on every anniversary of Kristallnacht, left a sickbed with fever to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1988 an event memorialized with bells, candles and prayers in Catholic churches throughout America. A few months later I was honored to be a guest at a dinner at the private residence behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral where the cardinal expressed his commitment to Jews and Israel.
We may not agree with some of their doctrinal convictions…but they do not chop heads of dissidents, they don’t erupt into violent orgies at perceived insults. They are beleaguered by the same jihadists that are driving Christians out of the Middle east and harassing them in every Moslem country in the world.
I welcome, respect and salute the choice…their choice of Pope and I pray that he continues the crucial work of reconciliation and amity between Jews and Catholics that is so critical to our survival.
rsk
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2448/Why-Does-Obama-Need-1-6-Billion-Bullets.aspx Dear Mainstream Media, Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama went off his teleprompter and added a couple of sentences to the text of a speech about expanding the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. Over rolling applause, the soon-to-be president of the United States said: “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order […]
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3727 Ahead of his visit to the Holy Land next week, U.S. President Barack Obama decided to grant an exclusive interview to leading Israeli anchorwoman Yoni Levi. The 25-minute one-on-one was taped on Wednesday at the White House and broadcast Thursday night, with Hebrew subtitles, on Channel 2. A few days ago, when Channel 10 […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/israel_has_a_government_mr_president.html
That’s something to remember when you arrive there next week.
Israel has a government, elected by its people in a free, fair, open and democratic election. Multiple parties representing widely divergent points of view met a wildly diverse electorate through free media and open debate. This is no stultified two-party affair with a libertarian insurgency.
Israel will be the only country you visit in the region, this time or any other, that has a fully democratic system. Do not be swayed by the “apartheid” slander. Citizens of Israel are Jews, Moslems, Christians, and Druze, each with religious and non-religious elements. Their background is Ethiopian, Russian, North and South American, European, and derived from every country of the Arab world plus Persia; watch Rita before you go. There are left and right-wingers, socialists and capitalists. (Surprise: some of the socialists are right wing and some of the capitalists are left wing, since left and right in Israel are not only economic values, but relate to land and security. Some of the security hawks are economic leftists.) Every single one of them has a vote — and they use it.
Remember, the Palestinians could have had that, too. Or could they? Abbas’s single elected term ran out in January 2009; people who stay after that are dictators, not “elected leaders.” Journalists and protests against PA corruption are stifled with an increasingly heavy hand. Hamas is overtly intolerant of the Christian minority in Gaza, and the West Bank’s Christians are leaving as well; the brave ones talk about why. A key Palestinian demand is that territory they may one day have for a state must be Judenrein. Why would they think you would find that acceptable?
THIS BOOK OFFERS AN ASTOUNDING LACK OF HISTORICITY: FOR EXAMPLE “Among other things, he reminds us of an oft-forgotten truth: the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict pre-date the ascendancy of radical Islam.” REALLY? IT IS THE OTHER WAY AROUND…THE ENTIRE CONFLICT IS A RESULT OF CENTURIES OF ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITISM AND JIHAD….READ ANDREW BOSTOM’S “THE LEGACY OF ISLAMIC ANTI SEMITISM-FROM SACRED TEXTS TO SOLEMN HISTORY.”
SECOND HE OFFERS THE FOLLOWING BLATHER:”….Unfortunately, after having set the stage at great length and very informatively for a discussion of the Jewish future, Eizenstat seems to run out of steam. In “Final Thoughts,” his peroration to the reader, he advocates nothing more original than a “two-state solution,” increased tolerance in Israel for internal dissent, new approaches toward dealing with Israel’s Arab minority…”
THE GUY DID WORK FOR JIMMY CARTER SO SKIP THIS BOOK…..RSK
http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/6140/features/eizenstat-on-the-jewish-future/
Stuart E. Eizenstat is, for many in the Jewish community, a household name—and deservedly so. Since his appearance on the national scene in 1976 as Jimmy Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser, Eizenstat has been U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, an Under Secretary of State, and a Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. When Bill Clinton was president, Eizenstat led negotiations with Switzerland, Germany, and Austria for the return of Jewish property to descendants of Holocaust victims; he is currently co-chair of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute. Eizenstat’s experience as a participant in many of the international dramas of the past four decades and his intimate familiarity with Jewish affairs have left him well prepared to write a big book with the title The Future of the Jews: How Global Forces are Impacting the Jewish People, Israel, and Its Relationship with the United States.
The strongest chapter of this volume—the opening chapter, “A New Multipolar World”—consists of a country-by-country survey of changing economic, social, political, and military conditions in seven countries and regions (including China, of which he offers a superb analysis) that are increasingly important to both the United States and Israel. Eizenstat clearly intends to underscore, from the very beginning, the fact that Israel must pay heed to its major ally’s foreign policy goals as it seeks to cultivate better relationships with these emerging powers.
The plot of The Future of the Jews thickens when, in subsequent chapters, Eizenstat evokes the dangers posed to Israel (and to Jews generally) by a radicalized Islam, globalization, anti-Semitism, and the continued campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. Eizenstat brings an insider’s perspective to his analysis. Among other things, he reminds us of an oft-forgotten truth: the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict pre-date the ascendancy of radical Islam.
The Jewish Egyptian Revival Passover marks the day on which God liberated the people of Israel from Pharaoh’s rule. So there is no small irony in noting that three millennia after the Exodus, emancipated Jews in Western countries expressed their unique national identity by building synagogues in the Pharaonic style. The first Egyptian-style building of […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/03/ten_key_points_on_islamic_blasphemy_law.html
There is an intensifying, global campaign to impose Islamic blasphemy law on non-Muslims, including those living outside Islamdom, in non-Muslim societies.
What follows are ten key points on the doctrinal origins and practical implications of this global campaign:
1) According to the Sunna (the traditions of Muhammad and the early Muslim community), by using foul language against the Muslim prophet Muhammad, Allah, or Islam, the non-Muslim transgressors put themselves on a war footing against Muslims, and their lives became licit (such as the poet Kaab b. al-Ashraf, who composed poems denigrating Muhammad, and was assassinated). [see 1.1, 1.2, 1.3]
2) This “offense” was then constructed and legitimated by Muslim jurists when Islam was politically, militarily and economically dominant, so that it was expected that the non-Muslims under Islamic rule would not denigrate the religion of Islam, nor cast aspersions on its major figures or institutions. [see 2.1, 2.2,2.3]
3) The jurists saw any such denigration as an unacceptable hostile act, punishable by death, automatically, as per three of the main Sunni schools of Islamic Law (Maliki, Shafii, Hanbali), and the major Shiite schools. According to the fourth major school of Sunni Islamic law, the Hanafi, the punishment of a non-Muslim guilty of blasphemy is left to the discretion of a Muslim judge. The death penalty was in fact most often applied by the Hanafis. (see 3.1, 3.2) Qadi Iyad (d. 1149), the great Almoravid jurist, captured the doctrine’s animating Muslim supremacism in his seminal Ash-Shifa, which includes one of the most authoritative analyses of Islamic blasphemy law’s treatment of non-Muslims, ever written: “Once Islam was firmly established and Allah had given it victory over all other religions, any such detractor that the Muslims had power over and whose affair is well-known, was put to death.”
