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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Over 100 shopping malls across America could be targeted by terrorists


Audio: Mega-Terror Attack Predicted in American Shopping Malls


Over 100 shopping malls across America could be targeted by terrorists.
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7/28/2014, 11:10 AM

A7 Radio's "The Tamar Yonah Show" with Tamar Yonah
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"The target will be shopping malls. The method will be with explosive devices meant to inflict suffering and death and to wound as many as possible."     
Dr. Jim Garrow is a 2009 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. His work saving baby girls from gendercide in China came to international attention as did his rather elite network of schools across China.  He worked in Intelligence in the US government, and says that according to his contacts, a huge mega-terror attack in America is to take place.  He joins Tamar on her show and talks about his past, his present connections with intelligence sources, and his firm belief that in the future, a mega-terror attack will take place in American shopping malls across the continent.
According to a send-out of his:
"Intelligence Rumblings:

I have avoided sharing certain information because I took an oath and will not break that oath. I am skating on the edge today because of information that I would be derelict in my duty if I did not share it. Islamists currently in the country, aided by those who have recently arrived via the southern sieve we call a border and those who boldly came on aircraft in a variety of disguises have a purpose in their criminality. Be warned, this is not for the faint of heart.

The target will be shopping malls. The method will be with explosive devices meant to inflict suffering and death and to wound as many as possible. This is terrorism in its lowest form. The purpose is to inflict fear in the hearts of Americans through this targeting of where we go to shop and relax.

The date will be a significant one for the Islamists. The event will happen simultaneously across America at hundreds of locations (note the number). The police, DHS, and security services throughout the nation should be warned and take appropriate action.

Why release this on Facebook? It turns out that the necessary agencies are reading my stuff. Why make phone calls when this gets the news out in a speedy fashion to all of them in an instant message.

Be warned, my sources on this are impeccable. I lay my 100% record of reliability on the line.- Dr. Jim Garrow
Jul 25, 2014"
For archived shows, visit the Tamar Yonah page and visit her award winning blog
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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

“The big mistake(s) Kerry made”.........


Published on July 29, 2014
U.S. MIDDLE EAST POLICYMalice or Incompetence?
John Kerry’s ceasefire proposal for Gaza has probably destroyed what remained of the United States’ influence in the Middle East, at least for the duration of this administration’s tenure.
After a hectic day yesterday spent in large part seeing off my son, daughter-in-law, and two-year-old grandson on a two-year sojourn in Berlin, I hastened this morning to my keyboard to comment on perhaps the most noteworthy piece of U.S. diplomatic idiocy in the Middle East that I’ve witnessed in several years (which is really saying something). It had been on my mind since expressing the essence of the matter to Richard Aldous on TAI’s weekly podcast in the morning, and repeating it privately over the telephone to a fellow editor (of a weekly) who is not an area expert and so has been calling me episodically but regularly over the past decade to get my take on various matters. So, thus rehearsed, I was ready to let fly at 7:30 AM when, to my shock, I found that I had been beaten into print by, of all people, David Ignatius.
Why do I put it that way? Because in recent years I have rarely agreed with Ignatius’s take on just about anything. But in today’s “The big mistake Kerry made” I find little to criticize. He’s got the essence:
Kerry’s error has been to put so much emphasis on achieving a quick halt to the bloodshed that he has solidified the role of Hamas, the intractable, unpopular Islamist group that leads Gaza, along with the two hard-line Islamist nations that are its key supporters, Qatar and Turkey.  In the process, he has undercut not simply the Israelis but also the Egyptians and the Fatah movement that runs the Palestinian Authority, all of which want to see an end to Hamas rule in Gaza… Any deal that reinforces Hamas’s stranglehold—rather than building a path toward change of government, elections and eventual disarmament—is misconceived.
Given Ignatius’s exquisite cultivation of sources inside Democratic administrations, he is no doubt relying on documentary evidence and assistance in knowing some details of recent goings-on not readily available to me. Who—in the White House would be my guess—provided Ignatius his catalysts I’d rather not speculate about; suffice it to say that competitive intra-administration leaking, that venerable Washington political sport, is alive and well—which is why I often tell out-of-town audiences that Washington is one of the few cities in the world where sound travels faster than light.
Now, there are a lot of people who wrongly believe that the Obama Administration, not to exclude the President himself, is resolutely anti-Israel and pro-Muslim Brotherhood. The Middle East and South Asia are not the only places where one can find brain-addled conspiracy theorists, after all. But Ignatius doesn’t think Kerry’s mistake is born of malice aforethought toward Israel, so that leaves us with what can only be called incompetence (though Ignatius does not use the term… must protect that access). I agree that it’s not malice, but it is incompetence of a kind and on a scale that tars John Kerry as the dumbest Secretary of State in my lifetime.
Let me elaborate just a bit, and try to provide some perspective here. As Ignatius notes, Kerry went first to Cairo in his quest for a quick ceasefire, but found that the Egyptians could not budge Hamas. Why this surprised him I can’t imagine: Doesn’t he know that this is not Mubarak’s Egypt anymore, where a long-standing double-gaming gambit once provided some indirect U.S. entry into Hamasistan? This is post-Morsi, al-Sisi Egypt, and the Egyptian double game is over. That’s good in that it makes Egypt and Israel effective allies at weakening Hamas, but the drawback is that Cairo can no longer serve as an effective transmission belt for the insertion of U.S. sticks and carrots.  So chalk up that flight as a waste of aviation fuel.
Then worse still: Kerry ministered to arguably the world’s foremost anti-Semite, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (Richard Cohen’s piece today, “Erdogan’s anti-Semitic fetish”, also leaves me bereft of criticism in the face of another Washington Post columnist who also regularly irritates me.) There are rumors that another Gazan flotilla will be launched, this time with the Turkish Navy as guardian. I hope this isn’t true, because no good can come of it.
And then worst of all: Kerry presents Israel with a draft of a ceasefire agreement that puts Hamas on the same level as Israel, and demeans Fatah and the PA, with which Israel is bound up in a legal if highly imperfect relationship; that would give Hamas the politically life-sustaining prize it seeks in the form of an “open borders” concession it can characterize as helping the people of Gaza; and that would prevent Israel from finishing the work of destroying the deadly tunnel network under the border.
A ceasefire under those terms would enable Hamas to resupply its war machine, bringing in unlimited numbers of missiles and mortars—and concrete, too, to rebuild and expand the tunnel network. It would enable Hamas to begin the next phase of conflict, in which it targets Israeli civilians while using Gazan civilians as human shields, at a time of its choosing. It would mean that all the IDF killed in this conflict would have died in vain.
Now, I have never been a particular fan of the current Israeli Prime Minister or his party, but no Israeli government could have stomached an outrageous document like that. That such a document, encompassing such a wildly wrongheaded view, could ever have been produced, let alone submitted to the cabinet in Jerusalem, effectively puts an end to U.S. influence on Israel for the duration of this Administration. What little trust endured after the blunders of the first term and the misconceived “peace process” initiative of the second term is now gone. And when the U.S. government loses the ability to influence Israel, those Arab parties that want something to do with Israel—but not too much in public—lose interest in Washington. Thus ditto U.S. influence in Cairo and Riyadh, and probably in Amman and Ramallah, too.
Think what this means in historical perspective. In past post-disengagement crises over Gaza, the U.S. Secretary of State was the big guy on the block. U.S. influence relied on our having the money and the biggest guns, true—and we still have those. But it relied more on having suasive reputational power with nearly every actor on the regional diplomatic stage. It relied as much or more, in other words, on the highly efficient and effective shadow of U.S. power, to quote Acheson, than on the power itself. We may have used Egypt’s table a few times in the past, but it was our game that was being played on that table. Now John Kerry, with Barack Obama’s fulsome help, has reduced the U.S. position to that of a message carrier for Hamas via Doha and Ankara. We have fallen from being the undisputed master of ceremonies to creeping around the region as a second-echelon go-between—and a failed one at that. (At a time like this a former State Department employee can barely resist quoting Elmer Fudd: “Oh, d’hawwah.”)
The disaster that is this Gazan War is not entirely, or even mainly, the fault of the Obama Administration, however. The nadir of U.S. influence reflects significant changes in regional realities as well as its own vast diplomatic malpractice. It reflects, for example, the fact that recent Israeli governments, by accelerating land grabs in the West Bank and raising new and, one suspects, deliberately obstacular demands on Palestinian Authority negotiators, have pushed ever more Palestinians into immoderate desperation. Insofar as U.S. policyis guilty of causing the present distress, it is the George W. Bush Administration’s doing, not the Obama Administration’s. Why?
Because it was the Bush Administration, flush with the willful delusions of the “forward strategy for freedom”, that sanctioned Hamas’s participation in the 2006 elections, even though those elections were predicated on the framework of the September 1993 Oslo Accords, which Hamas has always rejected outright and completely. Hamas only won those elections with plurality, not majority, vote counts because of Fatah’s political incompetence, true; but it never should have been permitted to participate in the first place. Then followed a slow-moving multilateral plot to dispossess Hamas of its victory, but Hamas preempted the plot with a bloody coup—and that’s what got this murderous, vicious bunch of fanatics ensconced in Gaza in the first place.
Please understand the main point: Hamas’s present position was contingent, not necessary and certainly not inevitable. Since U.S. policy had a significant share in causing this problem (along with others, yes, of course), which has paralyzed every attempt to make political progress among the protagonists as well as sired horrific violence, we arguably have some responsibility for solving it—for getting rid of this scourge. So why is John Kerry doing precisely the opposite?
It is a sad day when I applaud the failure of an initiative by an American Secretary of State, just as it’s a weird day when I applaud David Ignatius.  It’s just one of those days, I guess.

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Open Letter to the World --- World: this time they’re coming for you too!




Dear World,


My people, the Jews, are an ancient race. We’ve been here longer than just about any other nation, and we fully intend to stick around: let’s be perfectly clear on that point. Our collective memory stretches back far and is filled with the blood of our forefathers, unimaginable devastations, and incredible suffering. Most of us grow up learning about these horrors; in fact my children are now old enough and are asking questions like “Why do they hate us so much?” They are also learning, but failing to comprehend, about the genocide of the Holocaust which happened not very long ago and resulted in a loss to our people we have yet to recover from physically and psychologically. We don’t live in the past like our enemies do however, as is clearly evidenced by the tremendous amount of science, technology, art, medicine and industry the Jews produce, but we do remember. We will always remember.
We remember slavery in Egypt; we remember the Babylonians and the exile and horrors they inflicted upon us; we remember the Greeks and their attempt to force Hellenization upon us on pain of death (they burned alive our greatest sages wrapped in Torah scrolls); we remember the Romans and their brutality and forced exile; we remember the crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, forced conversions, blood libels, scapegoating, slanders and countless other persecutions. We remember how you’ve blamed us – and continue to do so – for practically every malady on Earth. Let’s not forget the charge of deicide lopped on to everything else.
We remember how Britain sank ships of Jews off the coast of Israel; Jews who survived the Holocaust and had nowhere else to go, while forcing imposed quotas on the number of Jews allowed into our homeland. We remember while imposing these quotas they opened the doors to floods of Arabs pouring in from all over the region quota-free, Arabs who now claim they’ve been there “since time immemorial.”
We remember world, how you stood by and watched as one third of our defenseless nation was slaughtered, gassed, and burned in ovens only 70 years ago.
– It behooves me at this juncture, as a dear friend correctly pointed out, to state that we also remember the world is filled with tremendous amounts of goodness and good people and that our people also owe an extraordinary debt of gratitude to many people and nations for doing exactly the opposite of what is described above; people who risked their own lives to save Jews; Cyrus and the Persian Empire, countries like The Netherlands and Denmark and its King Christian X, who defied oppression and hatred, and stood in solidarity with all humanity.  People like Wallenberg and Sugihara.  We will also never forget them and their love.  It is my fervent prayer that such a love for all people become globally pervasive and that all weapons and hatred are eradicated for good soon.
I often ask those who exhibit anti-Semitic tendencies how many Jews they think are in the world, the typical answer ranges between 500 million and one billion (I’ve received these answers numerous times): there are only between 13-16 million of us. You’ve done an outstanding  job of culling our numbers throughout the millennia.
Despite all your efforts at exterminating us, we’ve managed to contribute more to this world on a per capita basis than any other nation or people inhistory. We continue to do this in our homeland and in the diaspora today. Our contributions to humanity have been incalculable. One needs only to look at the roster of Jews who’ve been awarded Nobel Prizes and to realize that 0.02% of the world’s population has garnered 20% of the prestigious awards to begin to understand the magnitude of our contribution.
That’s only the tip of the iceberg. You can thank Jews for everything from drip irrigation, hydroponic technology, cellular phone technology, instant messaging, and tremendous breakthroughs in science and medicine down to most of the superheroes we love, many of our favorite toys like GI Joe, Mr. Potato Head, and Curious George. We have produced some of the greatest filmmakers, musicians and entertainers, some of the finest doctors and lawyers, and have excelled in practically every field known to man. The list could fill volumes. We gave Monotheism to the world, and the two most populous religions – Christianity and Islam – have both been directly and heavily influenced by Judaism and the Torah. I am not ashamed in the slightest to say that world owes the Jewish people a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Like I said, though we remember vividly our past, we live for today and the future and continue to create and to give. It pains me to say that Israel’s neighbors in the region despite having orders of magnitude more population and in many cases practically unlimited oil money, can not claim even a fraction of these achievements as their people are suppressed under brutal regimes and kept in a backwards society.
As thanks, you’ve systematically humiliated my people in practically every place they’ve lived for thousands of years of our diaspora existence. For example, in many Muslim countries my people were not allowed outside when it rained, lest they taint the water. They were subjected to racist dimhi laws which were designed to single out and degrade non-Muslims. In Europe you made us wear gold stars or identifying symbols at times so that you could clearly identify the objects of your unbridled hatred; at other times in history you didn’t allow us to hold any professional positions yet levied incredible taxes on us and even kidnapped members of our community for ransom when the taxes weren’t enough, knowing full well the value we place on each and every life and the incredible lengths we’d go to save a life (something our enemy today is still exploiting). The list of wrongs perpetrated against our tiny nation can very unfortunately also fill volumes. You’ve done everything and anything to make our lives miserable.
Throughout this journey of ages we have clung to one hope over any other. We have prayed for one thing at every wedding, at every joyous occasion, at every Passover seder, during every prayer that is said thrice daily, on the walls of our homes, in our hearts and minds no matter where we’ve dispersed. We have dreamed of our return to Jerusalem, to Zion, where our nation was born and where we flourished independently of your hatred. This has been our singular national aspiration.
66 years ago, after 2,000 years of suffering, praying, crying, and hoping and against all odds, we finally realized that dream. Israel: a place that according to all accounts had lain barren during the entirety of our exile. A parched piece of desert, scarcely populated that had not seen any country or state since the kingdoms of ancient Israel. The Jews have transformed that desert wasteland into a blooming paradise; the only place on earth where the desert is receding, a place of freedom for all people regardless of race or religion (including 1.5 million Muslims and Arabs who participate in every sector of society), an economic powerhouse, a center for learning and advancement in all the forms of science and industry and a bastion for the advancement of humanity. We have been able to revive our language (the only time this has occurred in history) and have reunited our scattered people from every corner of the earth into a place where we can live freely as Jews, without having to worry about persecution – or so we thought.
This seems to have enraged much of the world as evidenced by the fact that our fledgling nation was attacked by five nations’ armies the day after we declared our independence and who have waged an unending smear campaign against our people from the first day. 

The fact that we reclaimed our tiny piece of land, which is smaller than New Jersey, and which had no such thing as a “Palestinian people” or Palestinian country, seems to have so enraged you, world, that we’ve been fighting for our very existence from that first day until now, physically and ideologically.
You seem to be totally fixated on us. You’ve singled us out in the kangaroo courts of the UN for unending reprimands and censures as we act to defend ourselves from genocidal barbarians, while turning a blind eye to atrocities committed all over the world. You hold us to a ridiculous and absurd double-standard, so much so that I question your morality, world.
Today my people are faced with the next empire that seeks to wipe us out. Here’s the difference though, and I hope you heed my warning, world: this time they’re coming for you too.

Radical Islam has spread across the world, and will stop at nothing short of complete global domination. One of the greatest problems we face today is that you’re too blind, naïve, or duplicitous to realize this and are busy cowering in fear rather than standing up for what’s right. Part of the problem is that you suckle on the oily teats of countries who stand for backwardness, slavery, chauvinism, homophobia, racism, actual apartheid, global dominion, barbarianism and chaos.
Our enemies would have you think they are battling for lines on a map, or to protect themselves; they are not. They seek nothing short of our complete extinction, and it burns to watch you stand by yet again, and even worse, lay the blame on us once again. It burns.
They say we are committing genocide when defending ourselves, while they daily call for the genocide of the Jews, while their charter calls for our murder and denies our very right to exist, while our army goes to extraordinary measures to try and save innocent lives and has taken more steps at safeguarding civilians than any other army in history.
They call us terrorists, yet they try and unfortunately all too often succeed at butchering my people in the most heinous and gruesome ways imaginable. Jews do not hijack planes. Jews do not murder Olympic athletes. Jews do not blow up buses and cafes. Jews do not threaten and kill those who insult us, our prophets or our faith. The audacity of the claim is infuriating.
They compare us to Nazis, yet in an unfathomable irony and in one breath deny the Holocaust and praise Hitler for what he did to us, all the while planning our extinction and how to “finish the job” Hitler started. They fly Nazi flags over their homes and pray for the day where none of us are left. Have you lost your mind, world?
They claim we are an apartheid state, yet the exact opposite is true. Not only do they practice full apartheid against Jews in almost all their lands, but have been systematically eradicating the Middle East’s Christian population for years. Yesterday saw the expulsion of one of the oldest Christian communities in the world from Mosul and the subsequent burning down of a 1,800 year old church. The Copts in Egypt are under siege, the Christians of Lebanon and Syria are all but gone, and Christians are being tortured, murdered and kidnapped in Nigeria and Sudan en masse. Israel grants full rights to all citizens regardless of race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. Do any of the women’s advocates and gay rights advocates falling over themselves to condemn Israel not see the hypocrisy of protesting the only country in the area that doesn’t kill gays and relegate women to the status of chattel?
800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands in 1948. Expelled. Again. They have been fully absorbed into Israeli society. The only refugee population to ever not be absorbed are the “Palestinian” Arabs, who have been refused for 70 years any rights to absorption or naturalization by Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, their supposed “brothers and sisters,” despite the vastness of their borders, in order to keep them as political pawns against Israel. Make no mistake about it, the desperate situation these people are in was manufactured by their supposed brothers and sisters in order to create this very problem and to use them as tools of propaganda against Israel.
The 1.5 million Muslims and Arabs that live in Israel have more rights and freedoms than in any other Muslim country in the world. They are members of parliament and the Supreme Court, they are national beauty pageant winners and professors, they are officers in the police force and the military, and are found in every profession and sector of Israeli life. Walk through practically any Israeli city or town and you will see Arabs and Muslims living and moving about freely. I guarantee you that were a Jew to try and walk through most any Arab neighborhood today, they would not make it out alive. How dare you accuse us of being an apartheid state?
We watch as the Arab world commits true crimes against humanity in Syria with over 200,000 killed under the butcher, Assad. We see hundreds of thousands killed in Egypt, Algeria, Libya and elsewhere. We see Sunnis and Shi’as massacre each other all over the Middle East. We see radical Muslims in every corner of the Earth perpetrate barbarous acts of terror in the name of their religion.
We’ve seen the Western countries and Israel’s supposed allies indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of Arabs and Muslims in the name of fighting terror, but there are no flotillas for any of them. There are no global protests when Muslims murder Muslims in far greater numbers than the totality of all casualties resulting from all of Israel’s wars combined. There are no angry mobs of Arabs and Muslims the world over rioting and foaming at the mouth at the injustice of it all, and sadly we know it’s because they can’t blame the Jews.
We see the pro-Palestine protests for “peace” being held around the world by Arabs, Muslims, neo-nazis, and left-wing extremists (groups who have ostensibly absolutely nothing in common and are diametrically opposed in all ways except for their lusty hatred towards Jews and Israel) chanting “death to the Jews,” or “Gas the Jews,” in a variety of colorful ways while throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks, rioting, destroying public and private property, burning Jewish businesses and creating chaos and destruction. We see synagogues being besieged and attempts to harm the Jews inside physically in France. They totally seem peace-loving and to want peace. We see the global spike in anti Semitic acts of violence. We see it and it makes this Jew stand taller and prouder that we have Israel today.
We don’t indoctrinate our kids to hate, they do this from birth. Our textbooks do not teach hatred, theirs do. We don’t praise death, they do. We don’t send our kids to terrorist training schools, they do. We don’t take pictures of our kids in suicide vest costumes, they do. We don’t have children’s shows extolling the murder of their people, they do. We don’t have Rabbis getting up and advocating for the total annihilation of their people, their Imams do. We don’t deliberately put our women and children in harm’s way in order to create photo ops for the world press, they do. We don’t beat our people trying to flee for safety, they do. We don’t send in photographers before paramedics, they do. We don’t fake images of the dead, or even worse, use the bloody images of Jews who were torn to pieces by Arab terrorists while sleeping, and claim them to be murdered Palestinians, they do. We don’t parade our dead in front of the world, we bury them with dignity and with streams of quiet tears. We don’t use schools, hospitals, ambulances, UN vehicles and private homes as bases for waging terror, they do.
We call people, text them, drop leaflets, map out safe areas to run to, and even send warning “knocks” before striking. They send people to the rooftops by force to act as martyrs. We send our women and children to safety, they strap their babies on themselves and send 12 year olds at our soldiers with suicide belts. We build bomb shelters in most homes and in every city, they use 800,000 tons of concrete meant for infrastructure to build tunnels to infiltrate, murder and kidnap civilians. We set up field hospitals for Gazans, and we’ve even treated terrorists who the very same day tried to kill us. Where is your moral equivocation, world?
Do we make mistakes? Of course. Do we regret our mistakes? Of course. We’ve seen the gruesome images of dead children and families. It pains us greatly that Hamas and other terror organizations have done this to their own people and are using it to wage a propaganda war against Israel. War is disgusting.  The vast majority of us want nothing to do with war and death.  We would simply like to live in peace and tranquility and to raise our children in such a manner, and I believe this applies to all “sides.” Do we dance in the streets and hand out candies when we dispose of our enemies? Do we hold up three finger salutes celebrating the murder of innocent children? Never. Yet time and time again, world, you blame us. You point the finger at us and tell us we are to blame for these problems.
I for one couldn’t care less what you think anymore, dear world, I’ve had quite enough of your hatred, hypocrisy and double-standards. I hope that my people and my country feel the same. As I look through the lens of history, I see what you have done to the Jews and I know what you are trying to do once again. 

We are not fooled, we’ve seen this all before too many times. We remember. It’s different this time though: my people can defend themselves once again, and we’re going to do it no matter what you say or how mad you get. 

We will never again march like sheep to the slaughter. We will never again allow you to determine our fate. We will live. We will continue to do the absolute best we can as a nation. We will continue to share our imagination, creativity and intelligence with you, despite yourselves. Maybe one day you will recognize us for all the good we’ve done, maybe you won’t. Like I said, I couldn’t care less what you think anymore. Am Yisrael Chai.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Kerry’s disastrous intervention in the current fighting demonstrated the utter and complete incoherence of the position that he has carved out for the United States


Contentions

Kerry v. Israel: Why It Gets Personal

After delivering demands to Israel that amounted to an American surrender to Hamas, in a speech delivered this morning Kerry said that “demilitarization” of Gaza was a necessary element of hopes for peace. He’s right about that, but after seeking to hamstring Israeli efforts to halt Hamas rocket fire and to eliminate the tunnel network they use to store their arsenal and to launch cross-border attacks on Israeli targets, the umbrage that administration figures are expressing about the reaction to the secretary’s behavior is unjustified.
The fact that it has become personal between Kerry and Israel does neither country any good and that is why even though the anger in the Jewish state at the secretary was universal, Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., rightly sought to disassociate his government from any personal attacks on Kerry today. But as with previous tiffs in which the administration expressed anger about criticism of the secretary, the focus on defending Kerry’s honor or good intentions is beside the point. Though he continues to pose as the tireless worker for peace that is being unfairly targeted for his even-handed approach, it’s time to realize that Kerry actually deserves a not inconsiderable share of the blame for the situation.
Even if we are to credit Kerry, as Dermer suggests, for his good intentions, the secretary deserves every bit of the opprobrium that has been leveled at him by Israelis from the right to the left.
Kerry’s disastrous intervention in the current fighting demonstrated the utter and complete incoherence of the position that he has carved out for the United States. On the one hand, Kerry has prioritized the effort to create a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But by seeking to save Hamas by granting it concessions in the form of open borders rather than forcing the demilitarization that he belatedly endorsed, Kerry is making such a peace deal impossible.
The depth of the contradictions here are hard to comprehend. On the one hand, following President Obama’s lead, Kerry has praised Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas endlessly as a true partner for peace even though the PA chief has repeatedly turned down chances to negotiate seriously. But by seeking to place constraints on Israeli military actions directed at degrading Hamas’s capability to launch terror attacks, Kerry is actually undermining Abbas. His cease-fire proposal wasn’t so much an insult to Israel as it was to the PA. Though publicly condemning Israeli actions, it’s no secret that Abbas is hoping that the Jewish state will remove his on-again-off-again rival/partner in the Palestinian government from the scene. By endorsing the proposal for a cease-fire that came from Hamas allies Qatar and Turkey, Kerry stabbed Abbas in the back.
But the incompetence didn’t begin with one ill-considered piece of diplomatic ineptitude. It must be understood that nothing that is going on today—including the grievous casualty toll inside Gaza—would have happened had not Kerry single-handedly forced both Abbas and the Israelis into a negotiation that both knew would only lead to disaster. Throughout the nine months during which the secretary orchestrated a new round of peace talks between Israel and the PA, the administration was warned that the problem wasn’t just that the effort couldn’t succeed so long as the Palestinians were divided between Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas. It was that once the failure occurred, it would provide a justification for a new round of violence in the same manner that past such efforts had done. Kerry not only ignored those warnings but raised the stakes by personally speaking about a third intifada happening if the two sides didn’t do as he bid. Those who pointed out that this was a self-fulfilling prophecy were denounced as insufficiently supportive of peace. But the reality is that Kerry not only set the stage for this new outbreak, he more or less gave Hamas a green light to go ahead and start shooting.
The only common threads in Kerry’s diplomatic endeavors have been his enormous self-regard and a clear animus for the Netanyahu government. Either of these foibles would be forgivable if Kerry were focused on actions that would advance a two-state solution. But by pushing for a settlement when Abbas was unable to comply and then disingenuously blaming his failure on Israel, Kerry hurt the PA and set back any chance for peace. Once Hamas escalated the current fighting, he again took his eye off the ball and focused entirely on pushing for a cease-fire that would enhance the Islamists’ prestige and marginalize the Palestinians that he had championed.
Israelis who are forced to seek refuge in bomb shelters from Hamas missiles or await terror attacks from Gaza tunnels may be forgiven for losing patience with Kerry’s self-righteous lectures about casualties and human rights. But the attention given the anger he has generated there ought not to divert us from his record of failure. On Iran, Syria, and Russia, Kerry has done little to advance U.S. interests or to protect human rights. But with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he has done worse than that. Having set the region up for conflict, he is now doing everything possible to ensure that the violence will continue at some point in the future by allowing Hamas to survive and even claim victory. Seen from that perspective, his good intentions and the insults being thrown his way from Israelis are mere footnotes to a historic legacy of failure.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

RAZED WHOLE TOWNS - KILLED 150,000 +....

From reading the international and national news you would probably never have known that last Thursday and Friday alone, over 700 people were killed in Syria at the hands of jihadists and pro-Assad forces. Muslim on Muslim, Arab on Arab, human on human, whatever you like to think of it as - Western media is doing an awful job of reporting these abhorrent incidences - and I think I know why.

My colleague Jonathan Spyer from the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and fellow at the Middle East Forum (full disclosure: a position I also hold) noted it best today when he wrote: 
"More than 700 people killed in Syria on Thursday and Friday, in the bloodiest two days of the conflict until now. A woman was executed for adultery in Raqqa. None of the above were killed by Jews, however. This presumably explains the total lack of interest by the western media, (and of course by the Islamist/far-left crowd who have been attacking synagogues and so on in Europe in recent days.)"
Yes the preoccupation with how many Muslims are killed by Jews, rather than how many are suffering at the hands of their fellow countrymen/co-religionists is a stark reminder of how natural it is for most people to still focus their attentions on Israel and theJewish people respectively. Indeed it is this "everyday anti-Semitism" that leads the Guardian to depict the MH17 disaster in the same cartoon as that criticising Israel's operation in Gaza as if there were some link, and indeed which forces thousands of 'pro-Palestinian' activists onto the streets of London [link] to demonstrate against Israel - but not so much against ISIS or Bashar al-Assad.
The Asharq al Awsat newspaper reported on Sunday: 
More than 700 people were killed in Syria over the course of Thursday and Friday, in what activists say were the bloodiest 48 hours of fighting in the conflict to date.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Rami Abdul Rahman, told Asharq Al-Awsat that this was the first time casualties had topped 700 in the space of two days since the conflict began in 2011. He contrasted the violence to the gas attack in the Ghouta region close to Damascus last year, which he said killed around 500 people.
The UK-based SOHR tracks casualties on both sides of the Syrian conflict by collating reports from a network of observers on the ground in the country.
The final toll was announced after the SOHR reported that 270 people had been killed in fighting between pro-Syrian government forces and militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), when the latter seized the Shaar gas field east of the city of Homs on Friday.
And yet our radios, televisions, and streets are filled with people seekings to condemn and deplore Israel and sometimes even 'the Jews'.
Is it any wonder then, that France feels it has to ban so-called 'pro-Palestinian' rallies?


Finally, the French are ahead of the world on something: recognising anti-Semitism for what it really is… a looming and constant threat to an entire people, furthered by the media, and tacitly endorsed by an unassuming, do-gooder, left-leaning army of full time "activists".

Friday, July 25, 2014

Israeli Official: There Will Be No Ceasefire

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For the first time since Israeli troops entered Gaza in the current “Operation Protective Edge”, Israel decided on Thursday to widen the goals of its offensive, Israeli website Ma’ariv quoted unnamed senior officials in the Israeli security establishment as saying.
Israel’s cabinet was expected to convene Wednesday night to green-light a widening of the military operation in Gaza. Widening the offensive could entail entering deeper into Gaza. On Thursday, Israel rejected a proposal by Hamas to hold a humanitarian truce lasting several days.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon catapulted the operation’s stated goals to a new level when he said, “The end result of this conflict needs to be clear: Terror doesn’t pay. This terrorist entity needs to be disarmed.” Ya’alon echoed comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday evening, who also spoke of “disarming” Hamas.
Officials in Israel’s security establishment also assess that Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif will oppose any attempt to reach a ceasefire – even if the terror organization’s diplomatic wing agrees.
According to the official, from an Israeli perspective, implementing a ceasefire at this point would only bring about a partial resolution. Israel has caused damage to the tunnel infrastructure of Hamas, but on the other hand the terror organization maintains the ability to fire rockets into Israel, has caused a relatively high number of IDF casualties – including one missing soldier presumed dead, as well as triggered a two-day ban on international flights in and out of the country.
Implementing a ceasefire now would further send the wrong message to other terror groups like Hezbollah, and indicate that Israel cannot really cope with terror groups armed with rockets and anti-tank missiles.
The IDF spokesperson said on Thursday afternoon that during the last 24 hours the military attacked ninety terror targets, including hidden rocket launchers, lookout posts, and mortar infrastructure. In the early morning hours, soldiers from the Paratroopers Brigade identified two terrorists emerging from a tunnel. They were captured for interrogation.

Two rows of Gazan captives wearing only underwear and shoes, on their knees in the sand, are shown in an image posted on Facebook by Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz. They were stripped of their clothes in order to ensure they were not carrying weapons. Photo: Facebook.
Paratroopers in the southern Gaza Strip identified a terrorist wearing an explosive vest. They opened fire and confirmed a hit. Two other tunnel openings were found near where the incident took place. Elsewhere in Gaza, IDF troops identified several armed terrorists and fired a shell at them, reporting that the target was hit.
Also on Thursday morning, three anti-tank missiles were fired at IDF forces from within the Wafa hospital building which had already been targeted by the IDF on Wednesday. During the fire exchange, two terrorists were killed. The IAF fired at the building from where the anti-tank missiles were launched, and at a building adjacent to the hospital which was used as a storage facility and control center for Hamas.
So far, the IDF has found 31 tunnels and completely destroyed nine of them. Additionally, on Wednesday, 150 Palestinian militants in the southern Gaza Strip surrendered to IDF troops near Rafah. It is not clear, however, whether all of the Palestinians were Hamas members.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

The Jews have one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. They could drive the Palestinians into the sea any time they wanted to...



 AS Israel is under attack from Hamas in the Gaza strip and BDS -- Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions -- right here in America, Bill Whittle makes the historical and moral case for Israel, and shows just who, indeed, are the tyrants and aggressors in the Middle East.
 TRANSCRIPT:
Even before the recent Israeli ground and air operations in Gaza, the BDS movement – that would stand for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – was gaining traction… not just in France, or Germany, or Oman: right here in America. 
BDS is being sold – as everything evil and stupid is being sold these days – as a moral good. The argument goes like this: Israel, a nation formed in response to the cold, concrete reality of extermination, has let its economic and military power go to its head. They, now, are the oppressors; they now are Goliath in a main battle tank facing a brave Palestinian David with a rock in his hand; they now are the racists. They now – Israel – are the Nazis. 
Are they?
Here is Israel at the time of its formation by the United Nations in 1948. Actually, you can’t see it on this map because it’s so small – smaller than the state of New Jersey. 
On that same year, the Arab nations surrounding the new country attacked what was then mostly small farming communities and tried to drive the Jews into the sea. 
But The Israelis won. 
The Arabs tried it again in 1967. The Jews beat them again. Then, in 1973, the Arabs tried again, launching a sneak attack on the holiest Jewish holiday – and the Jews won again. 
Israel’s territorial gains did not come from Israel attacking the Arabs. They came from Israel being attacked by the Arabs. 
And Israel has always tried to give the land back in exchange for peace, as it did when it voluntarily returned the Sinai Peninsula – which is bigger than Israel itself – back to the Egyptians who had tried to attack them from the Sinai, and likewise, they gave the Gaza Strip back to the Palestinians who had attacked them – from the Gaza strip. 
Since then, thousands – thousands! -- of rockets and mortars have been fired into Israel from schoolyards and orphanages and hospitals in -- Gaza. 
How many rockets and mortars would you allow to fall on your house by neighbors that have been swearing to kill you for 65 years? How many times will someone keep hitting you before you hit back? 
The Palestinians daily call for the Jews to be driven into the sea. The Jews have one of the most sophisticated militaries in the world. They could drive the Palestinians into the sea any time they wanted to. They don’t.
The instant that Hamas or Hezbollah get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they will do with it what they do every day with their rocks and mortars and missiles. They will use it. On Israel. The Israelis have an estimated 500 nuclear weapons and could destroy the Arabs any time they chose. They don’t. 
Those are not Nazis. Those are moral, civilized people.
Israel is an island of civilization in a sea of barbarity, and that is why it is being targeted. Uncomfortable with those words, “civilization” and “barbarity?” Well, in Israel women can do whatever they please – including leading the state of Israel. In the surrounding Arab nations women are treated as chattel. They’re just property: useful for creating sons and carrying things. 
In Israel, homosexuals are tolerated and celebrated as individuals – why, just as if they were real people! In the surrounding Muslim nations they are hung from construction cranes in public squares. In Israel, scientists at the University of Haifa are studying In-homogeneous tachyon dynamics. The latest scientific invention in the Arab world is a buzzer that goes off when a Muslim falls asleep against his prayer rug. 
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was used, in the main successfully, against racist South Africa. Racist South Africa used brutal force to suppress people along racial lines. 
Israel, on the other hand, is the only nation in the entire Middle East where Arabs have a free and fair vote. Israel allows Israelis of any ethnicity to be elected to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament – including Arabs. So: If you’re in favor of equal rights for women, legal protections for homosexuals, advances in science, the arts and medicine, and political access and personal rights guaranteed by law -- you definitely should support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – for every nation in the region EXCEPT Israel.

Finally, I’ll just say this – because this is really what drives this whole thing. It is absolutely true that criticizing the actions of the State of Israel is not in itself anti-Semitism. Israel is as subject to criticism and condemnation as any other nation on earth. 
But you cannot understand Israel’s actions without understanding the pervasive, unrelenting, hate that surrounds that outpost of civilization. From Hezbollah rockets made in Iran, to BDS sanctions made in Berkeley and Santa Monica, the attacks on this country and its people cannot be understood without getting to the bedrock essence of the nasty, petty, small and mean-spirited emotion that drives anti-Semitism.
And that emotion is Envy. 
Genesis, Chapter 26, verses 12 through 16: 
And Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds and many servants, so that the Philistines envied him. (Now the Philistines had stopped and filled with earth all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father.) And Aby melech said to Isaac, “Go away from us, for you are much mightier than we.”
That was thousands of years before there was a religion called Islam. And when the Israelis, as a gesture of peace and goodwill, turned over the Gaza Strip in 2005 the first thing these modern-day philistines did was smash the windows of the greenhouses that had been handed to them by other people’s labor. Once again, they filled wells in the desert with sand. 
Prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, by far the safest home the Jews have ever known was here in America. No doubt there was anti-Semitism here, but with a few exceptions it was golf-course anti-Semitism: disgraceful, but a long, long way from the pogroms and the death camps. Why was America such a safe home for the Jews? Well, because up until very recently --- 2008 let’s say – envy was not admired here in America. “Coveting” wasn’t sold here as a virtue, either. 
So, to the American Jews who voted in huge numbers for the man who was personal friends of Palestinian terrorist – Rhashid Khalidi – to babysit his children – to the American Jews that watched and supported Occupy Wall Street as it smashed crystal windows and denounced Jewish bankers; to the American Jews who continue to vote for an ever more powerful state when no one in the world has more to fear from powerful states like the National Socialist German Workers Party or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; to those American Jews who watched through the 1930’s and 40s and ask, “how could they have let that happen?” I would simply say, “How can you let this happen? Why do so many of you vote for this to happen – pay for it to happen?” 
Tea Party Conservatives, like me – genuine friends of Israel and the Jewish people – look at you and think “It’s obvious you’ve lost your minds. Have you lost your souls as well?”