Displaying posts published in

January 2013

NIDRA POLLER: AND SUDDENLY IT’S WAR

http://dev.d-intl.com/en/articles/international/2013-01-17/and-suddenly-its-war%22Freedom

This is reminding us that things could change, our nations may be ready to defend themselves

PARIS. And suddenly it’s war! President François Holland announced early Friday evening that French troops had intervened in Mali and would stay as long as necessary. The military action came in response to an urgent request from Mali’s interim president Dioncounda Traoré whose army was unable to stop the advance of a column of some 1500 Islamists that had taken Konna and were heading for Mopti, a strategic town on the route to the capital, Bamako. Surprising enough in itself, this abrupt open-ended military operation ordered by the slow-moving socialist president offers a gold mine of lexical accuracy that should not be squandered. This war is upsetting the Arab Spring apple cart and tossing its fruits into a different basket.

I am not on the front lines… but then again, the front lines are everywhere today and that is what we might call the collateral benefits of this military operation and its enveloping narrative. The exact terms that are deliberately not used to describe the gentlemen of Hamas, Hizbullah, Muslim Brotherhood or the punks in Europe’s banlieues are now pinned on the jihadis who have been occupying the northern deserts of Mali. Unlike the Brotherhood and its multiple affiliates, these Islamists have not had a good press in France. Their brutality has been abundantly displayed: flogging adulterers, amputating thieves, imposing niqab, smashing up bars, restaurants, and music joints, tearing the tombs of Muslim saints in Timbuktu. They have always been shown in a scary light, their heads wrapped in scarves, weapons brandished. In fact, they look just like their fellow warriors in Libya, Syria, wherever. But somehow these religious extremists were not seen to have any redeeming features.

Still, the occupation dragged on and there was no audible call for quick action. Reports of an ECOWAS intervention scheduled for September were almost comical; as if the bad guys, duly informed of the timetable, would park their trucks, sit in the shade and palaver, patiently waiting for the big battle. Eight French hostages who worked for the French nuclear consortium AREVA have been in the hands of these thugs for over a year. This too was accepted with calm verging on boredom. No big mobilizations like the ones for French journalists kidnaped in Iraq. The Left doesn’t fancy the nuclear industry!

By the time the president announced that we are at war most TV channels were already in weekend mode, but the independent all-news BFM-TV has been covering the story non-stop. Here is the picture that emerges: with the exception of the president’s far left friends and foes—the Communists, Jean-Luc Melenchon, Noël Mamère of the Greens, and the anti-capitalists —political leaders across the board immediately declared their unambiguous support for the intervention. They also supported then President Sarkozy’s forceful leadership in the Libyan operation which actually fed into the Islamist offensive in Mali, but that is another story and we live in a time of disjointed narratives that will someday be joined. A host of specialists have appeared in the media and their opinions are close to unanimous.

MOSHE DANN:NINE COMMON MYTHS ABOUT ISRAEL

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=299820 1. The international community opposes Israel because it is an “ethnic nation-state.” A cover for Jew-hatred, this argument is applied only against Israel and the Jewish people. 2. Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank” of the Jordan River) belong to the “Palestinians.” By history and law (San Remo agreements, League of Nations’ decisions, British […]

GIL RONEN: MARK LANGFAN’S GRAPHIC THREAT MAP

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164336#.UPk_33y9KK0 New and Improved: Katyusha Rocket Threat Graphic New version of popular visual simulation showing Palestinian state menace features topographic overlay, water info. Mark Langfan’s Katyusha Rocket Range All over Israel article is one of Arutz Sheva‘s most popular articles ever, with a over 5,400 Facebook “recommends.” Additionally, Arutz Sheva has consistently featured Langfan’s graphic […]

CHARLIE SPIERING: WILLIAM AYERS WILL BE KEYNOTE SPEAKER NEXT MONTH AT TEACHER/EDUCATORS CONFERENCE!!!

http://washingtonexaminer.com/william-ayers-a-keynote-speaker-next-month-at-the-association-of-teacher-educators-conference/article/2518893

The Association of Teacher Educators has recruited Chicago professor – and former domestic terrorist – William Ayers to speak at their the 2013 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia which will be held next month.

William Ayers, a co-founder of the radical Weather Underground domestic terror group, was a key figure during the 2008 presidential campaign due to his Chicago ties to then-Senator Obama.

The organization’s executive director, David Ritchey, confirmed that Ayers would be a keynote speaker at the conference although he admitted that he wasn’t involved in the selection process.

Ritchey added that although Ayers was a controversial figure he had been invited due to his “work in the education field, apart from all the other stuff.”

The website biography makes no specific mention of Ayers’ controversial background, describing him as the “formerly Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago.”

The online biography also lists several of Ayers’ books, including Fugitive Days, which chronicles his activities as a radical domestic terrorist in the ’60s.

According to the website, the Association of Teacher Educators is a 90-year-old organization dedicated to “the improvement of teacher education for both school and campus-based teacher educators.”

The theme for the Annual Meeting this year is “Living and Learning across a Lifetime.”

CHOMSKY AND THE TERROR MASTERS: PAUL BOGDANOR

http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/01/17/chomsky-and-the-terror-masters/
Paul Bogdanor is the editor, with Edward Alexander, of The Jewish Divide Over Israel: Accusers and Defenders (Transaction Publishers, 2006), the most comprehensive reply to Jewish anti-Zionists ever published. He is currently writing a study of the Jewish rescue negotiations with the Nazis during the Holocaust in Hungary. Helives in England.

As a defamer of his fellow Jews, Noam Chomsky is in a class of his own. “Hitler’s conceptions,” he once wrote, “have struck a responsive chord in current Zionist commentary.” Israel, he added, is guilty of planning a “final solution” for humanity, an apocalypse from which “few will escape.” The world-famous MIT professor and far-left intellectual guru has described the PLO as “heroic,” while vilifying America’s Jewish community as “deeply totalitarian.” He has collaborated with Holocaust deniers, allowing them to publish and distribute his books, and he gave his endorsement to an antisemitic author (the late Israel Shahak) who alleged that observant Jews pray to the Devil.

But these efforts pale before the cause that has animated Chomsky for the past decade. That cause is solidarity with the blood-drenched perpetrators of Islamist terror.

The fact that Iran’s rulers want to annihilate Israel is not in dispute among informed people. The ayatollahs and their accessories have characterized the Jewish state as a “cancerous tumor” that must be “uprooted from the region,” a “dried, rotten tree that will collapse with a single storm,” a “filthy microbe,” a “stinking corpse,” a “germ of corruption” that “will be wiped off the face of the world.” But as Chomsky sees it, “Israel and the United States are both threatening Iran with destruction.” Iran, declares Chomsky, would be “crazy” not to build nuclear bombs to counter this threat.

In 2006, Chomsky visited Lebanon, where he basked in the warm affections of Hezbollah. These terrorists, he announced, are perfectly justified in keeping their arms (which include tens of thousands of rockets aimed at Israel’s civilian population) as a “deterrent to potential aggression.” Some may recall the uses to which Hezbollah’s weapons have already been put: the slaughter of hundreds of American peacekeepers, the destruction of American and Israeli embassies, the indiscriminate bombardment of Israeli towns and cities, the massacre of Jews as far afield as Argentina. Was it for this, one wonders, that Chomsky allowed himself to be filmed greeting leaders of Hezbollah as long-lost friends?

NADAV SHRAGAI: APPEASEMENT BEGETS TEMPORARY WARMTH FROM THE WHITE HOUSE…..SEE NOTE PLEASE

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3256

THEY LOVE US WHEN WE ARE WEAK. During the Oslo Process, Israel Felt Warmth From the White House. Then rivers of blood began to flow here.

BY THE TIME THE INK WAS DRY ON OSLO TERRORISM ESCALATED THROUGHOUT ISRAEL, ARABS ESCALATED THEIR DEMANDS AND IN THE WYE PLANTATION ALBRIGHT AND CLINTON PILED ON ISRAEL TO GIVE UP EVEN MORE…..RSK

If it had been up to U.S. President Barack Obama or even previous American presidents who were friendlier to Israel, Jerusalem would have been left sealed off and divided. If it had been up to the Americans, the United Nations would have controlled the Old City to this day; Israel would have been prevented from uniting Jerusalem; the alleyway at the Western Wall would still be as ridiculously narrow as it was during the British Mandate; the Golan Heights would have remained devoid of Jewish settlement; Israel would have been prevented from bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981; and David Ben-Gurion would have withdrawn from his “occupation” of the Negev in 1948.

If it were up to the U.S., it is very possible that the state of Hamastan would have extended not just throughout the south, but would have reached the gates of Kfar Saba, Netanya and Tel Aviv, and tens of thousands of Jews would have been expelled from their homes in Judea and Samaria in the same way they were expelled from Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip.

WES PRUDEN: A SECOND INAUGURATION AND THE THRILL IS GONE

http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5858 Like rekindled romances, presidential inaugurations are rarely much fun the second time around. Been there, done that, the bloom is off the rose, familiarity breeds boredom, et al. Barack Obama can’t believe that déjà vu comes even unto him. Four years ago, the nation’s capital was electric with excitement, the airports and Union Station […]

RICK RICHMAN: POLLING THE PALARABS

http://www.jidaily.com/61924?utm_source=Jewish+Ideas+Daily+Insider&utm_campaign=e7f96b7d72-Insider&utm_medium=email Over half of Palestinians would oppose a two-state solution, even if Israel withdrew from 97% of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to a recent opinion poll. Today Mahmoud Abbas begins the ninth year of his four-year term, having originally taken office on January 15, 2005, after a quickie election held a few […]

YOTAM ETTINGER: Obama’s Criticism of Netanyahu Exposes Palestinian Issue

http://send.hadavars.com/index.php?action=message&l=2096&c=15507&m=14007&s=a317a26441993bdd8f740ee9a6c71bce President Obama’s criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu – on the eve of the January 22, 2013 Israeli election – underlines the secondary role played by the Palestinian issue in shaping US-Israel strategic cooperation. Since March, 2009, Obama has systematically scorned Netanyahu’s policies on the Arab-Israeli conflict in general and the Palestinian issue, Jerusalem and […]

RUTHIE BLUM: NETANYAHU IS NOT THE CULPRIT

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3262 Netanyahu’s not the culprit “I have never heard a [U.S.] president talk about fear of Israel’s survival because of its own policies,” bemoaned former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at a conference in Tel Aviv on Thursday. “Is it in our interest to get into a blatant confrontation with the strongest man in the world?” […]