Comments on Reads 6/30 III

LittleGreenFootballs: IDF to deploy floating OR’s

Ynet:

The IDF and Navy are on high alert ahead of the nearing Gaza flotilla. Fearing an attempt to stop the sail from reaching the Strip would result in casualties, the military has decided to convert mess halls on two missile boats into operating rooms, in order to treat casualties at sea.
Ynet learned Thursday that the decision stemmed from the lessons learned from the first flotilla and the military's desire to offer immediate medical attention for the injured – if there are any.

Once again showing the high standard the IDF and Navy hold themselves too, particularly in light of the inevitable harsh international media scrutiny that will accompany any action against the participants in illegal flotilla.

FP: To reiterate: appeasing the world and getting them to like Israel is a losing strategy; neither is it sustainable, nor will it be effective. The only winning strategy is to be feared and respected by defeating enemies. Israel cannot appease its way to existence, no matter how hard it tries.

LittleGreenFootaballs: US designates Israel as a country to ‘promote, produce or protect’ terrorists

This is what I talk about when I say that Obama likes to be in the middle. For him, in order to be a neutral middle man, he has to treat both sides the same. It isn't, as some have thought, that he wants to elevate the Palestinians, but that he wants to put them on the level playing field with Israel. Even if that means treating Israel (and Israelis) as if they are the same as Hamas. Israel tends to "to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members."?

the Obama administration is currently listing Israel among 36 "specially designated countries" it believes "have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members."

From the DHS report Supervision of Aliens Commensurate with Risk:

In addition to the Terrorist Watchlist screening, ICE uses a Third Agency Check (TAC) to screen aliens from specially designated countries (SDCs) that have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members (see appendix D for a list of SDCs)

And in appendix D Israel is listed with Afghanistan, Territories of Gaza West Bank, Iran and Iraq among others.

FP: When they created DHS I predicted it would be an incompetent bureaucratic dinosaur that will suck huge amount of money for eggregious incompetence. Check out next.

Nigerian flies N.Y. to L.A. with old boarding pass not in his name

A Nigerian man flew from New York to Los Angeles using an expired boarding pass that belonged to someone else, media outlets reported Thursday morning. Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi reportedly boarded Virgin American Flight 415 at New York's JFK International Airport bound for Los Angeles on Friday.
At this time, investigators are suggesting that Noibi is a tourist rather than a terrorist. Noibi apparently went through and cleared the physical screening process, but no one caught the invalid travel documents. It wasn't until after the flight took off that attendants realized an extra passenger was on board, officials said. During the flight, crew members asked Noibi for his boarding pass and, after hesitating, he handed over a boarding pass from the day before, KTLA quotes FBI officials as confirming. That boarding pass had another person's name on it.
Noibi allegedly told the crew that the pass was outdated because he had missed that flight a day earlier. The man whose name was on the boarding pass later told FBI officials that the document had disappeared from his back pocket when he arrived at JFK International Airport on June 23.

On arrival in Los Angeles, Noibi left the airport without being detained. He was arrested after he returned to LAX on Wednesday and attempted to board a Delta flight bound for Atlanta, again using an expired boarding pass, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told KTLA.
Noibi allegedly told authorities he was traveling to Los Angeles to recruit people for his software business. A search of Noibi's bags at LAX turned up more than 10 boarding passes with various individuals' names, none of which were his own, FBI officials said.

FP: That’s what patting children and 95 year old ladies gets you. What’s the TSA budget, again?

Mark Halperin Suspended From MSNBC for Using Crude Slur Against President Barack Obama

Time magazine editor-at-large Mark Halperin has been suspended as MSNBC's senior political analyst after he called President Barack Obama a "dick" on Morning Joe Thursday morning.
"Mark Halperin's comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst," said the network in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

FP: Doesn’t he have enough experience to know you can’t tell the truth on TV?

Why is Congress a millionaires club?

The evidence is clear: Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Congress and don't believe their representatives share their priorities.
There's plenty of room for debate over whether Congress shares voters' priorities on political and policy issues. But when it comes to personal priorities, at least, voters have good reason to be skeptical of Congress. Most members of Congress simply don't share in the average American experience.
National unemployment has lingered above 8 percent for longer than 28 straight months. Congress, meanwhile, is a club that consists of 245 millionaires. Based on 2009 data, there are currently 66 in the Senate and 179 in the House (among current voting members). So while just 1 percent of Americans are millionaires, 66 percent of senators are millionaires, as are 41 percent of House members.

FP: Decadence is associated with decline.

Europe must be ready for Arab reform long haul: Polish FM

To support process of democracy-building, Warsaw has proposed the creation of an "autonomous and abundantly financed" European foundation or endowment for democracy, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told foreign journalists in Warsaw.
"Transforming a 500 million Arab, Muslim world towards democracy will not take a couple of years -- it will take a couple of decades at least," Sikorski observed.
"We need an instrument, an institution that will help them irrespective of changes of regimes there and changes of governments here," he said, while expressing optimism about developments, especially in Tunisia.

FP: The West is pouring more money down the drain, accelerating its demise via both bankruptcy and funding what will ultimately continue to be the enemies of civilization.

Elder of Ziyon: Abbas to delay "unity talks" until after....September

From AP: Two Palestinian officials say President Mahmoud Abbas is inclined to put off talks on a unity government with rival Hamas until after a U.N. vote this fall on Palestinian statehood.
The officials say Abbas fears running into difficulties with the West over an alliance with the Islamic militant group. This suggests he may have underestimated international opposition when he reconciled with Hamas in May.
The Palestinian officials said Thursday that Abbas wants to focus for now on getting U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue.

FP: What did I tell you? So: give them a state, later to be taken over by Hamas. What could go wrong?

Comments on Reads 6/30 II

U.S. engaging with Muslim Brotherhood

The Obama administration's outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood may be no big departure from the State Department's existing policy, but it will probably do little to reassure Jewish voters skeptical about the president's stand on Israel:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that the Obama administration was pursuing an approach of “limited contacts” with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood — a policy, she said, that has “existed on and off for about five or six years.”
In a press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Clinton said the upcoming elections in Egypt had given the U.S. a stake in engaging with the Islamist group, which had been banned under ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
“We believe, given the changing political landscape in Egypt, that it is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful and committed to nonviolence that intend to compete for the parliament and the presidency, and we welcome, therefore, dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us,” . Clinton said.

FP: More idiotic than Jimmy Carter (see next). But nah, Obama has nothing to be concerned about the Jews (see second next). They’ll vote Obama like good liberals.

Ehud Rosen: Who Is Behind the Second Gaza Flotilla?

The second flotilla is coordinated by Muhammad Sawalha, a senior UK-based Muslim Brotherhood figure connected to Hamas. Many of the participating organizations can be directly linked with the Union of Good (UoG), a coalition of European charities affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which in 2008 was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury for transferring funds to Hamas. The UoG was initiated by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on a global scale, shortly after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000.
For the Brotherhood, two chief centers of organization can be clearly seen. On the European and global scene, the centrality of its UK-based activists is once again demonstrated, while in the Middle East, its Jordanian branch is noticeable.

FP: Here’s the usual US wishful delusions:

The Brotherhood long ago renounced violence as a means to achieve political change in Egypt, and is not regarded by Washington as a foreign terrorist organization. But other sympathetic groups, such as Hamas, which identifies the Brotherhood as its spiritual guide, have not renounced violence against the state of Israel.

Let’s engage them.

Robert Wistrich: Anti-Semitism and the American College Campus

The highly polemical tone of the [Yale] debate has, in my view, obscured some more important and wider issues about American campuses, not least of which is the question of why the academic study of anti-Semitism has come so late to the United States.
The 2007 appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia University was an example of a lax approach to anti-Semitism. One possible explanation is that American Jewry, following its highly successful integration into postwar American society, initially had no special interest in highlighting a phenomenon that might underline its “otherness” to an uncomfortable degree or recall the hostility it had once encountered. Until fairly recently, most American Jews have shared the unwarranted assumption that anti-Semitism greatly declined in the West following the Holocaust. This was partly true in the United States, but much less so elsewhere … The truth today is that, for many American Jews, anti-Semitism is no longer something that happens far from home. It belongs not to only an endemically tainted Christian European culture, nor to the jihadist radicalism of the predominantly Muslim Middle East. It is, in its own way, as American as apple pie.
…
Norwood’s scholarly paper shows how, once again, in our own day, administrative indifference has become visible on campus. Anti-Semitism intertwined with anti-Zionism (and even with homegrown anti-Americanism) is being widely propagated, whether by Nation of Islam speakers, pro-Palestinian advocates or leftist agitators. One deleterious consequence is the creation of an increasingly toxic atmosphere (sometimes reinforced in the classroom by virulently anti-Israel professors) in which Jewish students feel threatened and intimidated. In truth, this pattern (with ups and downs) has been present for many years. As a young student at Stanford in the late 1960s, I remember having being stunned by the extremely anti-Jewish rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael and other Black Power demagogues on Californian campuses. In the 1980s and ’90s, Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam followers went even further in their anti-white racism and brazen anti-Semitism.

FP: Those who forget the past are doomed to relive it.

Soeren Kern: The Netherlands Cuts Funding from Anti-Israel NGOs

Debate over the issue heated up on June 15, when the heads of major Dutch NGOs were asked to testify at a special hearing convened by the Dutch Parliament "to discuss the activity of NGOs in Israel and Palestine." According to a transcript of the event obtained by the Jerusalem Post, lawmakers heard the managers of leading Dutch NGOs defend BDS activities against Israel, as well as advocacy for a "one-state solution" for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
During questioning, the director of the Hague-based Catholic Organization for Relief and Development Aid (Cordaid), René Grotenhuis, defended BDS as "legitimate" because "it is important that people in Palestine look for ways to resist occupation, and it is a nonviolent way to do so."
The director of the Utrecht-based Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO), Marinus Verweij, said he believes that "the two-state solution is not the basic assumption for peace."
At the hearing, it also emerged that Oxfam Novib, the Dutch affiliate of Oxfam International, provided funds to the Dutch NGO "Stop de Bezeting" (Stop the Occupation). The group's founder, the anti-Israel activist Greta Duisenberg, is famous for her participation in demonstrations calling for Jews to be gassed. She has also accused the Israelis of blood libel and trafficking in human organs.

FP: Speaking of anti-semitism… And note the Catholic NGO.

PowerLine: Lead? Who, Me?

Sometimes the things Obama says are so breathtakingly hypocritical, or–this is the other possibility–stupid, that it is hard to know what to make of them. Now, he realizes that “one of the most important and urgent things we can do for the economy” is “reduc[e] our nation’s deficit.” Really? Just when did he figure that out? Because in February of this year, he offered a budget for FY 2012 that contemplated, even based on the ridiculously rosy assumptions embedded in the numbers, burgeoning deficits as far as the eye could see. I wrote about that budget here, as well as on several other occasions. It is worth reproducing this graphic, taken directly from Obama’s FY 2012 budget proposal, which shows that, once again using the most optimistic possible assumptions, he intended to add more than $7 trillion in new debt between FY 2012 and FY 2021
…
We could continue with Obama’s performance today, but there is little point. It was a typical exercise in evasion of responsibility.

FP: America down the drain.

CAMERA: Dutch Journalists Abandon Flotilla

NGO Monitor has translated a Dutch news story about a number of its journalists gathered on Corfu to participate in the flotilla who have decided the project is not for them. Under the headline "Pers vertrouwt Gazaboot niet" ("The Press Doesn't Trust Gaza Boat") the story recounts tensions between organizers and journalists seeking information about flotilla participants, funding and other issues. The account notes:

Eric Beauchemin (47), a journalist for the ‘Wereldomroep’ (Dutch World Broadcast station): “I’ve been doing this work for 25 years, but never have I seen a more closed organization. When we would ask critical questions they would accuse us of being unprofessional. Restrictions were imposed on us that hadn’t been agreed upon beforehand. We were prohibited from telling which island we were on, even though they had promised we could.
The same reporter said of the activist participants: "Their gullibility is shocking. They are blinded by idealism.”

There was also reportedly dismay at the appearance of an operative with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, Amin Abou Rashed, though assurances had been given there would be no such Hamas connections.

FP: It is not just ideology that drives them, it is anti-semitism too. The important question is will the Western media stop promoting or whitewashing such activities based on their realization of the underlying nature of the participants? If I had to bet, I would say no.

Michael Young on Obama and America's Demise

Obama's America prefers to ignore the Middle East

The debate over America's global decline rages on. However, in one context there is less disagreement. As we know it, the American-dominated order, or what we can call Pax Americana, in the Middle East seems to be on its last legs, even if the military power of the United States will remain unrivalled for some time to come.Three events last week highlighted Washington's economic challenges, which are also psychological.

President Barack Obama announced that he would withdraw 30,000 troops from Afghanistan in the coming year, a first step towards ending the American military presence in the country. On the same day, the Congressional Budget Office released a report warning that without deep cuts in federal health and retirement programmes or sharp tax increases, America's national debt would exceed annual GDP by 2021.

And days later, talks between Congressional Republicans and Democrats to increase the US debt ceiling broke down, amid discord over tax increases. Republicans reject raising taxes. Instead, they appear amenable to saving money by slicing into military spending, traditionally a sacred cow for the party.
...
Under Mr Obama, that swagger has all but evaporated. This was evident in the president's speeches in Ankara and Cairo, but also in his general detachment from the region. Despite an early pledge to push for successful Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations, the president has little immersed himself personally in regional affairs. Even Mr Obama's dispatch of more troops to Afghanistan last year came with an escape clause, as he set this summer as the deadline for commencing a pullout. The president has repeatedly hinted that the Middle East is a headache he prefers to leave to subordinates.

Today, the combination of economic necessity and Mr Obama's inclination to end, or at least substantially downgrade, America's commitment to the Middle East, is provoking a fundamental shift in official American attitudes. Yet the growing isolationism in America today is dissimilar to anything we've seen before - for instance the national self-doubt of the mid-1970s after Vietnam, which was exacerbated by years of economic stagnation and inflation.

Even during the days of President Jimmy Carter, often regarded, fairly or not, as a yardstick for failed leadership, the US never lost its sense of underlying purpose. There was a strategy guiding foreign affairs, and it was containment of the Soviet Union. Today, it is difficult to discern what Mr Obama's strategy is, perhaps because he doesn't have one. Everywhere, people are wondering what America stands for; nowhere is this truer than in the Middle East.

FP: America will learn--something shehardly ever does--that retreats out of weakness invite attacks by enemies; attempts at "engagement" only reinforce them. A PowerLine reader's comment on the last, pathetic Obama speech exposing stupid propaganda and rank incompetence put it just right:

What we are seeing in that press conference is a man who is unwilling to or incapable of updating his ideological beliefs on the basis of new (adverse) information on the validity of those beliefs. He is not arguing with the Republicans/conservatives/libertarians, he is arguing with reality. The scary part (for us) is that he thinks he might win that argument.

As to those who still have delusions that there is anything good in the demise of America, reality is already teaching them otherwise too.

Claire Berlinski on Turkish Law and Sharia

For Tommy De Seno: Notes on the Turkish Legal System and Islamic Law

Tommy asked me:

I'd like to know if secular but majority Muslim countries like Turkey and Indonesia use Sharia Law in their civil or criminal code, or if they have separate proceedings to handle matters involving questions of Sharia.  Maybe Claire Berlinski can help me out?

The Turkish legal system has nothing to do with Sharia. (By the way, the phrase "Sharia law" is redundant; it's like saying "Roman law law," but this is a pedant's quibble.)

As I explain here, Turkey’s institutions are weak for distinct historical reasons:

In 1922, the new Republican assembly of Turkey overthrew the House of Osman, assuming its authority. Atatürk purged the bureaucracy of its Ottoman elements and radically Westernized the education system. Even the Ottoman script was replaced with a Latin one, cutting off every Turk born thereafter from 600 years of Ottoman culture and signaling the alignment of the Republic with Europe, not the Muslim East. Islamic courts were abolished and replaced with a secular legal apparatus modeled word-for-word on the Swiss, German, and Italian civil and penal codes.
The development of these institutions in Europe, however, was accompanied by centuries of coterminous social and cultural evolution; and while the later Ottoman sultans engaged, often vigorously, in Westernization, Turkish institutional reform came haltingly, if at all. Atatürk’s reforms were by no means a commensurate process; if so, he would not have famously declared them to be “for the people, despite the people.” The Turkish state—hypertrophied under Atatürk’s étatist rule—has since tended to suppress the growth of the non-state institutions, such as a free press, that work in tandem with parliaments, bureaucracies, and legal systems to ensure their efficacy.

In Part II of that piece--which I wrote a while ago but which I think holds up pretty well--I explain some of the ramifications of this:

Take the issue of contract law. When I moved to Turkey, about four years ago, I shared an apartment with another foreigner. Our rental contract was dollar-denominated, which is common here; it protects both landlord and tenant against the lira’s fluctuations. The language of our contract was perfectly clear, and so is the language of Turkish rental law. Both our contract and the law said that we could neither be evicted without cause nor subjected to an arbitrary rent increase.
Then the dollar began to fall. Our landlord was unhappy. He wanted more money.
“You can’t have it,” we told him politely. “You signed a contract.”
This meant nothing to him. The contract, in his view, was irrelevant, because the deal was unfair: he hadn’t known, after all, that the dollar would go down. We hired an attorney to call him and explain to him that he had no legal case. This did not impress him. He grew increasingly agitated. His harassment, finally, prompted us to go to the police. They were indifferent. Another lawyer, a friend, kindly offered to have our landlord “taken to the sea.” This, in his considered legal judgment, was the best way to solve the problem. He meant it. We appreciated the thought, but decided we’d rather just move.
It is anecdotal evidence, but everyone who lives here will agree that this story is not atypical. It illustrates an important point: in Turkey, contracts do not enjoy the same status that they do in America or Europe. The contract law, on the books, looks perfectly modern; indeed, it was copied from European contract law. But you cannot copy a mentality, and a contract is only valuable if it is viewed by all parties and the justice system as binding and enforceable.

I should add that the Westernization of the Turkish legal system actually began quite some time before Atatürk; the Tanzimat reformers were greatly impressed, for example, by the Napoleonic code; and if I recall rightly the attempt to bring Turkey under a Western-style constitution dates at least to the Charter of Alliance (Sened-i Ittifak), in 1808; that restricted the Sultan’s exercise of power and delegated authority to the Senate. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Turkish constitutional lawyers.) So no point looking to Sharia to try to understand what's going on here. Like everything in Turkey, the legal system here is its own unique Turkish thing, shaped by a very particular history.

Next thing I'd add is that Islamic jurisprudence is an incredibly complicated subject. Anyone who casually refers to Sharia as if it were a unitary thing, applied everywhere in Islamic history in the same way, may be dismissed out of hand as so manifestly not knowing what he's talking about that you may as well just switch the channel. Don't trust another word out of his mouth. I mean, scholars spend years, literally, trying to master the subtleties of the 1858 Ottoman land code.  What I know about Indonesian jurisprudence is enough to know that there is a massive literature about it and that I would assume it is as complex a subject as Ottoman or Safavid law--or for that matter the Napoleonic code or British common law.So how does an intelligent person regard the prospect of the imposition of Islamic law in the United States? By saying, "We have American law. That's the law of the land. If you wish to practice your own law in addition to that as a matter of conscience, that's fine with us, so long as you don't break any American laws."

I'm fine with cases in which both parties agree, contractually, to settle certain kinds of dispute by arbitration with appeal to Islamic law (or by appeal to any principles they like), so long as those principles don't contradict American laws. But once it gets to arbitration, good luck deciding what Islamic law is--there's not a whole lot of agreement about that, historically speaking.

Your Honor, my client appeals to the classical Maliki view on water rights.
Objection! My client notes that in the Hanifi tradition there is never any obligation incumbent upon the water owner!

You'll probably want a really sharp American lawyer working out the details of that contract before it winds up in arbitration.

If you tell me that according to Islamic law you must stone your adulterous wife to death, well, you know the quote ascribed to General Napier. "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

He was speaking of a Hindu practice, mind you.

Comments on News 6/30 I

PM: Iron Dome system crucial to peace with Palestinians

Netanyahu says anti-missile system must be deployed along border of future Palestinian state, is keen on obtaining US help for buying more.

FP: Do you discern what I discern? Leaving the West Bank under the delusion that Iron Dome can address the missiles that will inevitably follow. This will turn central Israel into Sderot. It is suicidal.

Friends of Israel to PM: Accept Obama terms, restart talks

In apparent criticism of Netanyahu, Ronald Lauder reportedly warns Israel against favoring internal politics at expense of its int'l standing.

FP: American (rich) Jews strike again. With such friends, who needs enemies? Obama must be congratulating himself in private.

Elder of Ziyon: New "Day of Rage" in Egypt

Meanwhile, a prominent Egyptian cleric has declared that the people killed in the Egyptian protests earlier this year are not martyrs. Sheikh Osman said the rebels were demanding democratic rule and that this is not a religious issue. They were against injustice and deprivation, but that has nothing to do with Islam. "We ask God to forgive them."
This may be the same Sheikh Osman who declared two years ago that Egypt can slaughter millions of pigs to head off a swine flu scare - because all pigs were just Jews cursed by Allah.

FP: Making sure that fighting to stop injustice and deprivation is not confused with Islam.

North Korea to Head U.N. Conference on Disarmament

On Tuesday, the United Nations again made itself an international laughing stock – except perhaps to the American taxpayers who continue to foot 22 percent of the bill – by appointing North Korea chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. That would be the same North Korea that, according to an article this week by Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has “twice tested nuclear weapons…is developing missiles to carry them…has built facilities capable of producing highly enriched uranium for more nuclear weapons” and has defied a U.N. arms embargo by exporting weapons and sensitive technologies to rogue regimes.

FP: Iran heading a conference on racism, North Korea one on disarmament. The PostWest.

Comments on Reads 6/29 I

Poll: PA Arabs Would Chance Confrontation if State is Declared

A poll showed that 76% of PA Arabs believe that if an Arab state is recognized in September, the PA must have sovereignty in all of Yesha.
A poll of Israelis and PA Arabs released Tuesday shows that half of Israelis believe that the chances of the UN recognizing a 23rd Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Yerushalayim were low – but 30% said that if such a state were declared, Israel should immediately begin negotiations with it and if there are none, Israel should not make any changes on the ground.
However, 76% of PA Arabs believe there isn't much to talk about. They said that if an Arab state is recognized in September, the PA must move to impose its sovereignty in all of Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem – even at the cost of ensuing conflict.
Among the moves the large majority of PA Arabs would expect from their government would be the stationing of PA soldiers in Area C, which according to the Oslo Accords is supposed to be under full Israeli military and political control, and the construction of a new airport in the Jordan Valley, near Jericho. The PA army should also be prepared to take control of the Allenby Bridge crossing into Jordan, the respondents said.

FP: This is simply the logical conclusion of indoctrination from childhood with the false Naqba narrative and the Islamic incitement with genocidal hatred of Israel. All the noise about negotiation and peace is meaningless as long as that continues. The only chance for peace is to (1) stop incitement/indoctrination completely and verifiably (2) substitute the historically correct narrative in the education system (3) freeze everything for at least 2-3 generations (3) assess effectiveness and negotiate with non-indoctrinated generations. Anything else is just grinding water. Will never happen.

University of Haifa Law professor: 'We are not a Zionist Institution'

The dean of the Faculty of Law, Professor Niva Elkin-Koren, defended the decision and wrote on the faculty's Facebook page: "The national anthem is not sung at every university or college graduation ceremony. The decision not to sing Hatikvah at the ceremony reflects the need to differentiate between what belongs to the state, and what is merely civilian in nature. The purpose of the graduation ceremony is to mark an academic achievement in an academic institution that people attend for research and learning. Universities are not state property, but rather the property of science."
Professor Elkin-Koren continued, "State control of all aspects of civilian life, including science and culture, does not leave room for creative civilian activity. In the special case of Israel, such an environment hampers the possibility of working together with non-Jews (not only with Arabs, but with other non-Jewish immigrants and ultra-orthodox Jews who are not Zionists).
…
Israel's Channel One TV station displayed a Faculty of Law internal email written by Professor Ali Zaltsberger, in which he denounced the university's distancing from the faculty's decision. "The university's announcement sounds to me like appeasement and political weakness of an academic institution in the face of an anti-democratic regime. The university is not a Zionist institution, and is not obligated to sing the national anthem."

FP: Heh, heh. Who would you say it’s appeasing and politically weak here, the university? My alma mater is full of useful idiots afraid of Arab students. Not to mention that they are frustrated wannabe politicians who are playing politics from the safety and status of their academic shield.

CAMERA: Muslim Brotherhood Supporting al-Awa?

Mohammed Salim al-Awa is an Islamist who regards the entirety of Israel as part of the Muslim-controlled waqf and seeks its dissolution.
He wants Jews to live on Muslim-controlled settlements that they cannot leave without permission.
He regards Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel signed in 1979 as a hudna or cease-fire and wants the treaty torn up.
He wants Egypt to serve as a base of operations for terror attacks against Israel.
He wants Egypt to form an alliance with Iran.
He wants the Iranian Revolution to serve as the model for the Egyptian Revolution.
He wants Coptic churches to be routinely inspected for weapons.
He wants Egypt to cancel its economic agreements with the United States even if that means Egyptians go hungry.
With this agenda, Al-Awa has apparently been annointed as the Muslim Brotherhood’s “undeclared nominee” for the upcoming election.
In an article
published on Sunday June 26, Al-Masry Al Youm, a privately-owned newspaper in Egypt, cites a number of experts on Islamist movements in Egypt. One expert, Ammar Ali Hassan, stated “There is a high possibility that Awa is the Brotherhood's secret nominee, and he may even be backed by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).”
People ignore al-Awa’s candidacy at their own risk.

FP: Predictable. He is certainly more representative of Egypt than the so-called liberal youths. And the MB are shrewd practitioners of taquiyah, which is easy with a gullible, wishful thinking, declining West.

Ben Smith:DNC chair denies Jewish support erosion

DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz denied today that Jewish Democrats are uncomfortable with President Obama.
"What was reported today is not what I am experiencing as I travel the country. The Democratic Party is a natural fit for American Jews, and as I travel the country I'm finding there’s great enthusiasm for President Obama," said Wasserman-Schultz in a statement to POLITICO. "There is tremendous support among activists, volunteers and donors in the Jewish community for the President, and claims otherwise are just wishful thinking from partisan Republicans who are putting politics above policy."
"As the first Jewish female Member of Congress from Florida, I'm proud to bring my love of Israel to work with me everyday. I can attest that in my work in the Jewish community I see great confidence in the President’s strong record of support for a safe and secure Jewish State of Israel," she said.
…
Per Ben's Jewish Democrats story, Jon Chait thinks that the unilateral Palestinian push for statehood at the U.N. will change the calculus for President Obama:

On the other hand, it's worth keeping in mind that some sequencing is going to alter the dynamic. In September, the Palestinian Authority is going to unilaterally push for statehood. The United States plans to oppose that. So, starting in a few months, Obama's administration will be in the position of standing with Israel and against most of the world. That should significantly alter the perception that Obama is constantly needling Israel.

FP: Ben Smith is a trumpet for the administration and Wasserman says what is expected of her, but I would hardly be surprised if what she says is true. Most American Jews are hopeless. If you believe Chait, I have a bridge in Brooklyn and a tower in Paris to sell you.

Lee Smith: Minority Report

By establishing a Jewish majority in Palestine, Israel distinguished itself from other Middle East minority groups, which suffer physical fear and intellectual confusion, even if they hold power.
At a recent event in Dearborn, Mich., a crowd welcomed Syria’s ambassador to Washington, Imad Mustapha, who led a rally on behalf of his country’s President Bashar al-Assad. The scene was outrageous for a number of reasons, including that these were American citizens gathered in support of a regime responsible for the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. But perhaps even more notable was the tragedy at the heart of the scene: These Syrian-Americans—Christians and members of Muslim minority sects like the Alawites, Druze, and Ismailis—are still writhing from their emotional experience as Middle Eastern minorities. No matter how far they get from the region, they are plagued with a vulnerability that leaves them terrified, angry, and often crazy.
And what they throw into sharp relief is a larger lesson: Among all the minorities of the Middle East, only the Jews have escaped this unhealthy condition, thanks to the fact that for over 60 years now they have had their own state and can defend themselves against their adversaries. Theodor Herzl asserted that Israel would allow the Jews to live like normal people, and as it turns out—contrary to what nearly all Arabs, most Europeans, and many Israelis believe—he has largely been proven right.
...
The price of being a dhimmi is not just physical fear but intellectual confusion and moral corruption. Arab nationalism is largely the work of ideologues drawn from Middle Eastern minorities like the Syrian theorist of Baathism Michel ’Aflaq, who was Greek Orthodox. Arab identity, at least in its earliest iterations, was largely a product of the minorities’ desire to hide their sectarian identities from the Sunni majority. The minorities believed they had a better chance of blending in as part of one massive super-tribe, the Arabs, when as Christians or members of heterodox Shia sects like Alawites they were vulnerable. Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father and Syria’s former president, embraced Arab nationalism in order to legitimize his rule over Syria’s Sunni majority and protect his Alawite community. The present uprising in Syria shows that the thread is starting to become undone—sectarianism is starting to rear its head, and the minorities are terrified of the mostly Sunni opposition in the streets of Syrian cities.
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How did the Middle East’s Jewish minority escape this sickness? The state of Israel. Of all the Middle Eastern states carved up in the aftermath of World War I, Israel is the sole success story—politically, economically, socially, and technologically. Moreover, it has safeguarded the lives of a regional minority with minimal oppression of and maximum participation by other groups who are also citizens of the state. By establishing a Jewish majority in Palestine, Israel distinguished itself from other regional minority groups that succeeded in gaining control of a state while remaining minorities, like the Alawites in Syria, whose record has been one of stagnation, oppression, and plunder.

FP: What Diaspora Jews fail to comprehend, at their peril.

James Taranto: Dr. Bacevich's Quackery

If you think American kids are ignorant about history, wait till you get a load of this historian.Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, has an innovative foreign-policy theory. "At periodic intervals," he argues in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece, "the American body politic" succumbs to "war fever," which he defines as "a sort of delirium" whose symptoms are "delusions of grandeur and demented behavior."

FP: Academia is chockfull of such quackers and they are both a cause and a consequence of Western decline.

Comments on Reads 6/28 II

IDF’s Cyber-Commander Prepares Internet Assault

"Computers and keyboards are the weapons, Facebook and Twitter are the battlefields. It is there that we fight, each and every day." The fighting words come from First Lieutenant Sasha Dratwa, 25, who heads IDF’s elite “new media” unit. Dratwa, who replaced Lt. Aliza Landes, ws interviewed by Jonatan Urich in the IDF’s website.
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"The tools are infinite," Dratwa told the IDF Website. "The question is not whether we should be there but how we should be there. I came to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit mainly to make noise. I want the world to see the reality of the IDF, through channels on which it is not used to getting that. We are going to surprise visitors from around the world who will be able to browse their personal computer and see an IDF that is different from what they view on their television screens in their family room."
Dratwa came in with a long list of precise tasks that he wants to adopt and implement immediately. "We need to use tablets and smart phones in order to immediately reach the general public," Dratwa said. "We don't have time for a long chain of approvals, we have to strike while the iron is hot - to be determined, fast and focused."
Dratwa said that he intends to show, already in the coming months, the IDF's face "as the world has never seen it before." As part of this, he is already promoting new media work in French and Arabic, along with strengthening and improving work in English. And what next? Twitter in Arabic and the massive entry of the IDF into new media work in fluent Hebrew – because the Israeli population apparently also needs to be strengthened.

FP: There is nothing wrong with this and, in fact, it should have started many years ago. However, the notion that this will now eliminate or even reduce the hostility to Israel in the world is an illusion. The hostility is not rational and, therefore, not amenable to reason. Israel should not strive so hard to be liked, but feared and respected, and that it can do only by self-assurance and vanquishing its enemies. Trying to convince them of the righeousness of Israel and the IDF will not achieve much.

PLO Against Bnei Menashe

The Palestinian Authority on Monday chided Israel for its decision to help 7,000 Jews from northeast India make aliyah to Israel.
According to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news service, PA spokesman Ghassan Khatib said the Israeli decision was “in line with Israel’s policy to bring non-Israeli Jews to Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people.” Meanwhile, he added, Israel prevents the “Palestinians” from returning to their homeland to live there

FP: This proves it’s all about the 67 borders, right? Along this path expect Israel to start restricting aliyah so as not to offend the Obama administration, the UN, the Quartet and the the EU. That’s the logical conclusion of appeasing the Arabs to appease the West.

Report: Israel-Turkey Ties Warming Up

The newspaper cited a senior Turkish Foreign Ministry diplomat, who was quoted as saying, “Israel’s approach to mending fences with Turkey has never interrupted since the Mavi Marmara incident.”
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Furthermore, another report published in the Hürriyet on Monday revealed that Netanyahu had accepted Turkey’s request for an apology over the Marmara incident, but backed out on three separate occasions due to fear his coalition might fall.
The report, which was not confirmed elsewhere, cited information leaked from secret meetings between Turkish and Israeli officials. A Turkish diplomat told the Hürriyet that a “number of contacts at the technical level took place” over the issue, but noted that “our position has never changed.”

FP: Yet another cave-in by Netanyahu that I predicted, and another one Israel will live to regret. The Turkey that had good relations with Israel for strategic reasons is no more and the Israeli government is delusional about the ability to bring it back. Even if relations are warmer, Turkey is fundamentally hostile and can no longer be trusted when push comes to shove (and can lure Israel into a false sense of security). The Islamist nature of present Turkey is clear even in its domestic policies—Clare Berlinski (Turkey's Dred Scott Case).

Elder of Ziyon: Hamas/Fatah "unity" comatose

From YNet:

Senior Hamas member Mahmoud al-Zahar said Tuesday that the reconciliation efforts between his organization and Fatah have come to a dead end. According to al-Zahar, the bone of contention revolves around the structure of the PLO, government and legislative council. Al-Zahar also denied reports stating that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal traveled to Turkey last week in order to resolve their differences.
In an interview with Jordanian newspaper al-Dustur, al-Zahar blamed Fatah for "taking actions opposite to what was agreed upon." Fatah, he added, is trying to unilaterally impose facts on the ground and "If this continues, we will unable to form a unity government." Despite statements to the contrary, Fatah and Hamas have been unable to bridge any political gap which would see a unity government come to fruition.

FP: I tend to be more suspicious—couldn’t this be a trick to enable Abbas to return to negotiations without the baggage of Hamas, in return for international pressure on Israel for concessions? The only reason I would dismiss this possibility is the nature of the Palestinians—they are probably unable to reach agreement even when it's in their interest to do so.

Israel Matzav on Israel's Jimmy Carter

I already wrote about Shimon Peres' disgraceful and subversive behavior, his main responsibility for Oslo and his not only inability to recognize the enormity of his blunder, but also his serving as an useful idiot by continuing to push it and to undermine government policy (see my earlier Israel's Jimmy Carter).

Israel Matzav (Saint Shimon the Untouchable):

Israeli President Shimon Peres - who never won a single national election - has suddenly become an untouchable saint in his old age. Writing in the Shmuel Katz blog, David Isaac postulates that Peres' newfound popularity has to do with his being the last man standing from the State's founding generation. Isaac also reminds us of some reasons why Peres doesn't quite deserve the sainthood.

But the Israelis seem to have forgotten the reasons they didn’t like the man and he’s now treated with reverence – an untouchable according to MK Aryeh Eldad. Even though he continues to behave just as subversively as president as he did in every other position he held.

His dastardly character must have been evident early on because Moshe Sharett, Israel’s prime minister (1953-1955), wrote in his personal diary: “I have stated that I totally and utterly reject Peres and consider his rise to prominence a malignant, immoral disgrace. I will rend my clothes in mourning for the State if I see him become a minister in the Israeli government ….”

Sharett was a good judge of bad character. Over his career, Peres has made it a habit to undermine Israel’s duly elected governments. Most recently, he did it with the current one. Mr. Obama created a great deal of sturm and drang by calling for Israel to withdraw to the ’67 lines. But less reported was that Mr. Peres reinforced that this was a good idea in a meeting with Obama six weeks before.

Funny that I don't recall reading that story in any of the English mainstream media either here or abroad. The story was broken by Shimon Shiffer of Yediot and as far as I am aware it was only published on their Hebrew site and not on the English one. (Aaron Lerner of IMRA translated it to English).

Maybe Eldad is right. Maybe we should refer to Peres as Saint Shimon the Untouchable. Unbelievable.

The Tailor (VIDEO)

(h/t Elder of Ziyon)

Comments on Reads 6/28

Caroline Glck: The Invisible Palestinians

There is no doubt that Noam Schalit is acting as he is because he wants to get his son home alive. But there is also no doubt that by pressuring Netanyahu and the government and accusing them of being responsible for his son's captivity, Noam Schalit is only making things worse.
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Hamas's leaders view Schalit's illegal incarceration and the anguish it causes in Israel as a source of pride for the movement and Palestinian society as a whole. It views the release of terrorists as a means of strengthening the jihadist movement politically and militarily.
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On Sunday, Netanyahu admitted that the pressure worked. Netanyahu did in fact agree to what had been Hamas's demands for the release of more than a thousand terrorists for Schalit and Hamas didn't even bother responding to the offer. On Monday, Hamas said that Netanyahu's offer was too low.
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In their refusal to recognize that they are hurting their son by directing their anger at the government rather than the Palestinians and their international supporters, the Schalits are unconscionably egged on by the media. As Yediot marked the fifth anniversary of Gilad's internment with their celebrity solitary confinement stunt, Maariv marked the fifth anniversary by interviewing 25 celebrities about their activism on behalf of Schalit.
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The explanation is that like the rest of the Left - in Israel and worldwide - the media hold Israel responsible for Hamas's imprisonment of Schalit because they perceive the Arabs generally and the Palestinians specifically as objects rather than actors. The only actors they see are Israel and the US.
Just as the international Left sends ships to aid and comfort Palestinian terrorists in Gaza to fight the so-called "occupation" which ended six years ago, so the Israeli media says the government is holding Gilad Schalit hostage. In both cases, the Palestinians are invisible, and inert.
To its credit, after five years of inaction, last Thursday, the Red Cross finally asked Hamas to prove Schalit is still alive. Gazans reacted to the move by attacking the Red Cross office in Gaza. This major story received little mention in the media. And that makes sense. How can they cover a story about a group of people they can't be bothered to notice?

FP: You can’t buy brains at the supermarket. I have argued for a long time that stupidity is not a winning strategy in negotiation. As to the media’s objectifying the Palestinians, it is simple: once you assume that they are in the right and Israel is in the wrong, the Palestinians are justified in everything they do until Israel stops the wrong. The rest is conversation.
There is one other factor active here: those hostile to Israel (pro-Palestinian they are not) know that the Palestinian don’t give a hoot about them (they deem them useful idiots) and so any demands on the Palestinians will be either ignored, condemned or, worse, attacked, as the Red Cross learned. Israel, however, is another matter, as Netanyahu’s caving has, again, demonstrated.

UNESCO censures Israel over Mughrabi Bridge

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee decided to accept a petition by Jordan and issued an official censure of Israel over the archeological excavations near the Mughrabi Gate in the Jerusalem's Old City. UNESCO's censure calls for the immediate cessation of all renovation work done on the Mughrabi Gate bridge, which leads from the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem to the to the al-Aqsa Mosque and Temple Mount.
Israel and Jordan had previously agreed that the existing bridge must be razed for safety reasons. Israel plans to build a new bridge on the site.
Jordan's petition was also signed by Egypt, Iraq and Bahrain. The decision was carried with a unanimous vote by UNESCO 21-member nations. Australia, Switzerland, Brazil and Mexico voiced their reservations over the strong anti-Israel language used in the resolution, but did not oppose it in the vote.
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Israel's ambassador to UNESCO Nimrod Barkan, which has an observer's status, attempted to address the committee, but Egypt objected and he was denied the floor.
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Jerusalem sources told the newspaper Israel was "shocked" and "furious" over Jordan's scheme. "The Jordanians lied to us and to the Americans in an unbelievable way… The most astonishing thing is they don't even mention the agreement between Israel and Jordan," Barkan said.

FP: The new Egypt and Jordan – with whom we have “peace”. Israel is shocked that they lied?? They’re Arabs!!
And Arabs hijacking UN institutions to attack Israel while the civilized world does little or nothing is now routine in the PostWest.

Israel Trumps the Arab World

DOHA: There is no doubt that Israel is superior to all Arab countries in the sphere of Information Technology, a comparative study between Arab nations and Israel on ‘Scientific Research and Patent Rights Compared’ conducted by Dr Khalid Said Rubaia, a Palestinian researcher at American Arab University in Palestine, says.
Israel spends 4.7 percent of its total GDP on scientific research, which is the highest in the world. However, Arab states are spending 0.2 percent of their total incomes and Asian Arab countries around 0.5 percent of their incomes on research, said the report.
Regarding patent rights, Israel has registered 16,805 patents. However, Arab countries have only 836 patents which is 5 percent of what Israel has.
Israel spends 0.8-1 percent of the total expenditure of the world on research work and Arab states spend 0.4 percent. It means Israel spends more than double that spent by Arab countries in this field.
Israel spends 4.7 percent of its income on research. However, Arab countries spend 0.2 percent of their total income on the same. United States spends about 2.7 percent of its income, UK 1.8 and Germany 2.6 percent on research work.
Asian Arab countries spend less than 0.1 percent of their total income on research work which is five times less than African countries which are spending 0.5 percent of their total income, according to a Unesco report. Arab countries spend about half of Israel though their GDP soared 11 times that of Israel and the area is more than 649 times.
Regarding per capita expenditure on scientific research, Israel stands at the number one position by spending $1272.8 per capita. United States ranks second with $1205.9 and Japan third by spending $1153.3. However, the Arab countries ranked hundred times less than Israel by spending an average of $14.7 annually per capita.And the oil rich Asian Arab countries spend $11.9 per capita which is equal to African poor countries whose per capita expenditure reached $9.4.

FP: Research is hardly necessary to know that. But hey, Israel does not deserve to exist and let’s create another Arab state in its place.

$1 Billion That Nobody Wants

Politicians in Washington hardly let a few minutes go by without mentioning how broke the government is. So, it's a little surprising that they've created a stash of more than $1 billion that almost no one wants.
Unused dollar coins have been quietly piling up in Federal Reserve vaults in breathtaking numbers, thanks to a government program that has required their production since 2007. And even though the neglected mountain of money recently grew past the $1 billion mark, the U.S. Mint will keep making more and more of the coins under a congressional mandate. The pile of idle coins, which so far cost $300 million to manufacture, could double by the time the program ends in 2016, the Federal Reserve told Congress last year.
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It was easier for the bill's sponsor, then-Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), to move the presidential coin bill forward if it didn't displace other dollar coins honoring Sacagawea, the teenage Native American guide to Lewis and Clark. The deal: The mint would be required to make a quota of Sacagawea coins. Currently, the law says 20 percent of dollar coins made must have Sacagawea on them.
So, there are now about 1.2 billion dollar-coin "assets" chilling in Federal Reserve vaults, unloved and bearing no interest. By the time the presidential coin series finishes, and there are coins honoring all past presidents, there could be 2 billion.

FP: Your tax money at work. America wasting away.

Comments on Reads 6/27 II

Lynch survivor: I saw murder in their eyes

The realization that he was in hostile territory, he said, came "just as I made the turn, I figured out that I made a mistake, but I didn't realize how big the issue was. This is Jerusalem. This is home."
"Immediately when I made the turn a 12-year-old boy started screaming 'Jew, Jew'. Each time he called out dozens more people arrived." That is when they started throwing rocks and cement blocks into the car.
Nachshon recalled how during the lynch he searched among his assailants for "children or young people, I tried to look them in the eyes and find an ounce of humanity in them but all I could see was murder in heir eyes. I felt my life would be over at any minute."

FP: Let’s give them a state.

CAMERA: Washington Post's Yelena Bonner Obit. Erases Israel

The Washington Post’s extensive obituary about prominent Soviet-era human rights activist Yelena Bonner expunged her pro-Israel stances and denunciations of antisemitism. It focused on the struggle by Bonner and her late husband Andrei Sakharov (both father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and later Noble Peace Prize winner) against Soviet repression. But by omitting mention of their support for Israel and the Jewish people, the obituary resembled a print version of one of those Stalinist-era group photos of Kremlin leaders from which purged commissars were excised ex post facto.

FP: Dejudaization. About par for mainstream media.

Egypt's pro-democracy activists feel their grip slipping

Sensing the revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak is slipping from their grasp, activists and opposition groups are pressuring the ruling military council to postpone Egypt's elections in September amid fears that Islamists and members of the former regime will gain too much power.
The attempt by fledgling political parties to win more time to organize coincides with a renewed push to draft a new constitution before the parliamentary elections so that no political bloc, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, will have unchecked influence to set the laws of the land.
The pressing concern among independents and secularists is that the Brotherhood, the nation's largest and best-organized party, may win about 25% of the seats in parliament and control even more through a coalition. This could give the organization the power to infuse the new constitution with conservative Islamic ideals to limit rights for women and non-Muslims.
"The Brotherhood is tyrannical in its opinions and views, and I think they will take the side of the Islamist businessmen who fund it and have strict Islamic ideologies," said Khalid Sayed, a member of the Jan. 25 Youth Coalition. "Whatever constitution they might form would not fulfill the demands of Egyptians for civil rights and democracy."
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But given the lack of a unifying vision from secular and youth parties growing out of the revolution, the Brotherhood is likely to remain the nation's dominant political voice.
"Egyptians sympathize with the Brotherhood not only because of the group's use of religious slogans, but also because it's a self-financed organization whose members stand in contrast to their competitors," political analyst Amr Chobaki wrote in the newspaper Al Masry al Youm. "Unless Egypt can produce a civilian political current born out of domestic political, economic and cultural concerns, the Brotherhood will continue to be the chief political power in Egypt."

FP: The so-called democratic youth never had the grip.

Simon Rocker: Interview: Benny Morris

A two-state solution may be "reasonable and just", along the lines drawn by President Clinton 11 years ago, he believes; but the Palestinians are not interested in it. His scepticism has a particular edge since he was always considered a man of the left - he was jailed for refusing to do military service in the West Bank in 1988.
"I have been pessimistic since the year 2000 when in effect the Palestinians rejected a reasonable offer of peace by Ehud Barak and a slightly better offer by Clinton in December 2000," he says. "From that point on, the Palestinians displayed a disinterest in peace and a two-state solution. What they want is all of Palestine. And so whether you have negotiations or not, their end game is Israel's elimination."
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"The diplomatic position of Israel has deteriorated steadily over the past few years and especially in the last two years under Netanyahu," he argues. "He is not considered by the world community as a credible peace partner. He doesn't do the right things or say the right things or even make the right bodily gestures. He doesn't seem really to be interested in peace."

FP: Proof that the original claim by the Israeli right that Oslo would be an irreparable strategic blunder was correct: bring Arafat and his ilk from Tunisia in view of Israel again and you guarantee a renewed hope for victory and the stages plan. And if the Palestinians are interested only in the whole of Israel, why is Netanyahu deemed not a partner for peace and what good will it do if he freezes the building in settlements?

U.N. Chief Endorses U.S.-Bashing ‘Anti-Terror’ Conference Hosted by Iran

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has come under fire for apparently endorsing an “anti-terrorism conference” hosted by Iran, at which the United States and Israel repeatedly were attacked and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reprised his 9/11 conspiracy claims.
Also attending the two-day event this past weekend in Tehran were leaders of three of the top six recipients of U.S. aid in fiscal year 2010 – Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

FP: The US is actually funding its own demise (see also next).

Cost of air conditioning for U.S. troops in MidEast more than NASA budget

The United States spends $20.2 billion annually on air conditioning for troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan — more than NASA's entire budget, NPR reported.
In fact, the same amount of money that keeps soldiers cool is the amount the G-8 has committed to helping the fledgling democracies in Tunisia and Egypt.

FP: All down the drain in vain, while the economy collapses.

Comments on News 6/27 I

JOSHUAPUNDIT: The 'Human Rights' Community Refuses To Call For Gilad Shalit's Release

The 'Human Rights' community issued a statement today that's morally despicable, considering the harsh criticism given to Israel at every opportunity by the groups who signed on to it.
There's nothing condemning Hamas for engaging in kidnapping and holding a human being for ransom, and no call whatsoever for his release. The only thing they're calling for is for a slight improvement in the conditions under which he's being held, saying that Hamas should enable him to communicate with his family and should grant him access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, things that any civilized society understands,which ought to tell you something about Hamas or about the 'Palestinian Authority', which not only hasn't called for Shalit's release but said that they were going to assume the role of holding him hostage as part of the Hamas-Fatah unity agreement, so they could get in on some of the ransom.
These so-called human rights groups claim to care about international law, but are strangely silent about it being against international law to raid a sovereign state to kidnap its citizens.
By doing so, they're revealing their true agenda, and are signing on to the Hamas position that there's no difference between Gilad Shalit and the 'Palestinian' terrorists held in Israeli jails.

FP: The economic, political and social bankruptcy of the West is underlied by an almost total moral bankruptcy. Civilization is, for all practical purposes, disappearing (see the Mark Steyn video on the corruption of human rights I posted earlier).

Former US Ambassador Joining Flotilla to Gaza

A former US ambassador to Ecuador is joining the flotilla to Hamas-controlled Gaza despite State Department warning it is irresponsible.

FP: The US elite is increasingly resembling European elite when it comes to hostility to Israel. That’s predictable, as that’s the almost universal scapegoating reaction to crisis: blame the Jews.

8-year-old Afghan tricked into suicide bombing

Of the many desperate, sadistic tactics deployed by insurgents in Afghanistan, this is surely among the worst ever recorded: Authorities say that an 8-year-old girl was tricked into carrying a concealed bomb close to a police vehicle, where it was remotely detonated, the Associated Press reports. Only she died.
The incident occurred in a remote village called Uwshi, in the Charchino District, said Fazal Ahmad Shirzad, the police chief of Uruzguan Province.
Shirzad told the New York Times he believes that the girl was completely unaware that the bag that she had been given by Taliban insurgents held a bomb.

FP: The US has wasted all those resources to negotiate a peace with these nice guys.

Shin Bet cracks top Palestinian terror cell

Security forces arrest nearly two dozen PFLP operatives running terrorist cells near Jerusalem; were planning on kidnapping IDF soldiers, shootings, and bombings; many had previously served in Israeli prisons.

FP: See my earlier comment that whatever the Shalit deal, it will endanger Israel.

Fayyad to Israel: Give Us Freedom or Right to Vote

PA Prime Minister calls on Israel to give PA Arabs "freedom or right to vote", in what sounds almost a request for Israeli citizenship.

FP: Israel’s dilemma, of its own making to a degree: Oslo.

PM rules journalists covering flotilla not to be sanctioned

Foreign Press Association welcomes Netanyahu's decision to drop plans to deport and ban journalists covering the Gaza flotilla.

FP: Spineless, as usual. But no good deed will go unpunished—just watch.

Comments on Reads 6/26 III

Elder of Ziyon: The "moderate" Palestinian Arabs add FOUR new preconditions for talks

From Ma'an:

The Palestinian Authority passed on four official demands to the Mideast Quartet for discussion in upcoming meetings, PLO official Saeb Erekat told Saudi newspaper Al-Watan on Friday.

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Demand #1, complete halt to all "settlement" activity (which of course includes Jerusalem) was never a precondition of talks before 2008.
Demand #2, the 1967 borders as a basis for negotiations, was similarly never a precondition - it was what the PLO wanted as a result.
Demand #3, EU support for Fatah to be reconciled with unrepentant terror organization Hamas, directly contravenes the Quartet position on Hamas. Hamas' statements since the "unity" agreement proves that it has no interest in living at peace with Israel so this demand proves that the official PLO position is that they prefer Hamas to peace.
Demand #4, support for a unilateral state, is literally a demand to rip up the entire Oslo process.
And the "acknowledgement" he is asking from the EU is pretty much self-contradictory - if the PLO gets recognition as a state then the point of peace talks is moot. It also implies that if such a state was declared tomorrow, it would not be at peace with Israel.

FP: What is important about this: Demands #1 and #2 are courtesy of Obama; demand #3 has practically been accepted by the EU, they did not have a chance to persuade the US to support it yet, because a meeting was postponed by US to delay that. So, as I have been arguing, Israel is essentially negotiating with the West which has adopted the Palestinian positions. This cannot end well.

The U.N. Prepares for Durban III

On Wednesday, the U.N. General Assembly elected Iran one of its vice presidents and Qatar as president, each for a year-long term starting in September. At one and the same time the Obama State Department has been blanketing the airwaves with speeches on this administration’s love affair with the UN under the title “principled engagement.” But with Wednesday’s U.N. elections, what kind of principles might the Obama administration be talking about?
In theory, the mission of the General Assembly includes making “recommendations for the purpose of…assisting in the realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” But that’s only in theory
In practice, though, the Qatari president of the General Assembly, and his new right-hand, Iran, have something else in mind. In their first couple of weeks on the job, they will have two contentious orders of business – the U.N.’s Durban III racist “anti-racism” conference scheduled for September 22, 2011 and the Palestinian effort to seek statehood without having to accept a Jewish state. There are now some very clear indications of their strategy.
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In case you’re wondering, the resolution that hands Iran and its friends a veto over the selection of anti-racism advocates who will be permitted to speak at Durban III was adopted by the General Assembly without a peep from Obama administration delegates.
Principled engagement, U.N. style.

FP: The problem is less Iran and Qatar and more the Obama administration. The US is not so slowly turning into a funder, silent supporter and facilitator of anti-semitism and terrorism and is now as responsible for Western demise as the Europeans.

Israel Matzav: Shalit's release for 'Palestinian statehood'?

France is pushing a tradeoff between the release of kidnapped IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit and a vote in favor of 'Palestinian statehood' at the UN in September.
He did not directly link Schalit’s release to France’s position on the Palestinian bid for unilaterally declared statehood, but he did say that it would help.

FP: So predictable. I had argued the Euros will do this thing quite a while ago. It’s hard to beat the French on idiocy. And another example of the West negotiating for the palestinians

'Arab uprisings may pave way for extremism'

Prominent Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali warns “the threat of radical Islam to all of us, particularly Israel and America, is not just a military threat."

FP: May pave way? Isn’t it obvious already?

'Fatah asked Sharon to prevent voting in J’lem in 2006'

Former top White House aide Elliott Abrams tells ‘Post’ that former PM refused request made by PA who were fearful of losing election to Hamas.

FP: Election or no election, the real problem is not the election, but the underlying Palestinian preference for Hamas, which the PA request makes clear.

Comments on Reads 6/26 II

Leslie Gelb: 'Mission Accomplished'

America's political leaders and foreign policy experts who dragged us into wars from Afghanistan to Iraq, to Libya, and perhaps next to Iran, always make the same mistakes. They grossly overestimate America's power to solve problems internal to other nations, and they always grossly underestimate the necessity of others dealing with their own problems. Thus, they drag us into one war after another, and then never believe it's safe to get out. They never think about problems in the United States. Listening to them, you'd believe America was the foreign country. America has survived this arrogance and ignorance in the past because we have been so strong at home, so pragmatic in meeting our problems, and so vibrant economically. But as President Obama reminded us once again, now is not the time for another nation-building crusade abroad, but rather for nation-building here at home. My main regret about Obama's speech on Wednesday was that for the umpteenth time he raised this flag about restoring our domestic economy—without beginning to tell us how he would fight and win that crucial war.

FP: How dominant powers decline (see next).

What has the war in Afghanistan really achieved?

At least 60 people died in a suicide bombing just 25 miles from Kabul yesterday. In a few days' time, a report on Afghanistan from the International Crisis Group will say that violence and the billions of dollars in international aid have brought wealthy officials and insurgents together. As a result, "the economy is increasingly dominated by a criminal oligarchy of politically connected businessmen".
The negatives column in the Afghan war's balance sheet does not get any shorter. So far, the conflict has lasted nine years, eight months and 17 days, cost the lives of 2,547 coalition troops, and between 14,000 and 34,000 civilians, created millions of refugees, and opened up a black hole in Western economies that has sucked in more $500bn dollars. Afghanistan costs the US around $10bn (£6.3bn) a month; and Britain will pay £4.5bn this year.
Such is the change in mood that the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has openly admitted the prospect of parleying with the Taliban, the very people we went to war to remove. Sources have told The Independent on Sunday these are, at present, talks about talks, but have involved middle-ranking officials from the State Department and CIA on the US side (initially brokered by the German ambassador), and Tayeb Agha, former chef-de-cabinet of Mullah Omar, on the Taliban side.

FP: Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Ask the French, the Soviets, indeed, anybody who tried to tackle Afghanistan. Lost cause. Smack them and get out is the only way.

CiF Watch: Alice Walker and the audacity of useful idiocy

To contextualize Alice Walker’s explanation for participating in the “Freedom Flotilla II” (Alice Walker: Why I’m joining the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, Guardian, June 25) you need to read her moral reasoning here: “I feel that the Israel that many Jews dreamed of having – that one is gone. That’s demolished. I think it’s time for people to accept that. Because what you have now is something that is so frightening. Israel is as frightening to many of us as Germany used to be.”
To equate the democratic Jewish state with Nazi Germany is more than stupid, it's unimaginably cruel – a simply grotesque moral inversion of the worst order.

FP: The problem is not just Alice Walker. It’s that this idiocy is widespread and keeps spreading (see next). It is part and parcel of Western collapse.

Kevin Myers: How can do-gooders possibly think that Gaza is the primary centre of injustice in Middle East?

What is it about Israel that prompts such a widespread departure from common sense, reason and moral reality? As another insane flotilla prepares to butt across the Mediterranean bringing "aid" to the "beleaguered" people of Gaza, in its midst travelling the MV Saoirse, does it never occur to all the hysterical anti-Israeli activists in Ireland that this is like worrying about the steaks being burnt on the barbecue, as a forest fire sweeps towards your back garden?
I took part in a discussion about the Middle East last weekend in the Dalkey Books Festival. It was surreal. Not merely was I the only pro-Israeli person in the panel of four, but the chairwoman of the session, Olivia O'Leary, also felt obliged to throw in her three-ha'pence worth.
Israeli settlers on the West Bank were on stolen land, she sniffed. Palestinians in their refugee camps had title deeds to the ancient properties. The UN had repeatedly condemned Israel. Brian Keenan, who was held hostage by Arab terrorists for four years, then detailed Israeli human-rights abuses, to loud cheers.
Israel -- and its sole defender on the panel (is mise) -- were then roundly attacked by members of the audience. But what was most striking about the audience's contributions was the raw emotion: they seemed to loathe Israel.
But how can anyone possibly think that Gaza is the primary centre of injustice in the Middle East?
The colossal western intellectual dissonance between evidence and perception on the subject of Israel at this point in history can perhaps only be explained by anthropologists.
This dissonance is perhaps at its most acute in Ireland, where no empirical proof seems capable of changing people's minds. Israel, just about the only country in the entire region where Arabs are not rising up against their rulers, is also the only country that the Irish chattering classes unite in condemning. Rather pathetic, really.

FP: The Jews have always been the traditional scapegoat as the root of the whole world’s problems. There is no cost to it. I mean, it’s much easier to dump on the Jews than deal with one’s own problems and who better know this than the Irish?

Claire Berlinski: The Sound of Turkey Clapping

And hysterical—and ugly—the election campaign was, marked by terrorist attacks, including one on the prime minister’s convoy; the release of sex tapes starring opposition leaders; blackmail; vulgar anti-Semitic rhetoric; insane conspiracy theory upon insane conspiracy theory; a scandal revealing the rigging of college entrance exams; the arrests of more military officers on charges of coup plotting (these arrests have been going on for years); threats by leading Kurdish politicians to set the country ablaze; serious efforts by Kurdish terrorists to do precisely that; growing Internet and press censorship; the last-minute discovery of 10 million new voters on the electoral rolls, only half of whom could even remotely be explained by Turkey’s changing demography; and noise, constant noise. It had become difficult even to imagine five minutes without the sound of loudspeakers blaring from campaign buses, or the prime minister’s bellowing voice, mute only for a few notable minutes when at one rally his teleprompter failed, leaving him staring speechless into the void.

FP: A splendid reliable NATO member. Let’s admit them into EU.

Wall Street and Republican lawmakers thwart US financial reforms

Only 30 rules have been finalised from 380 drawn up under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act

FP: Even with the 380 rules implemented I doubt that the running amok financial sector can be prevented from further destroying the economy—simply because the rules are never the necessary ones. The US is becoming a kleptocracy, similar to those in the former Soviet satellites.

Did I or didn't I tell you that Netanyahu is all talk?

Daniel Pipes (Israel: Part Itself from the Palestinians?):

Ha'aretz is admittedly not the most reliable source but if one believes Barak Ravid's report on what Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told his cabinet two days ago, June 21, it has important implications. According to Ravid, he

surprised many of the participants in the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday when he embarked on a monologue praising the idea of parting from the Palestinians and in relinquishing portions of the West Bank. Netanyahu said the number of Palestinians and Jews between the Jordan River and the sea "is irrelevant" and that it's more important to "preserve a solid Jewish majority inside the State of Israel."

Ravid quotes him saying of the Palestinians: "I have no wish to annex them into Israel. I want to separate from them so that they will not be Israeli citizens. I am interested that there be a solid Jewish majority inside the State of Israel." He adds that prime ministerial aides "asked all those present in the room to avoid disseminating the details" because of their sensitivity, while the Prime Minister's Office "refused to respond to questions on the issue or provide any quotes about the statements."

Comment: I sympathize with this statement, having watched Lebanon fall apart because the Christians there had territorial ambitions and accordingly lost their majority. Land is an asset, all the more so when ancestral, but if it comes with resident enemies, it is not worth the price.

FP: If true, it would be entirely consistent with Netanyahu's record of talking a big deal and then caving in. I reiterated that more than once.
I sympathize with Pipes' sympathy. Unfortunately, there is no way to "get rid" of the land without  providing a platform for the Palestinian next stage in their stages plan.
Furthermore, it would be the third time that Israel abandons land under pressure and without a strategy, signaling major weakness and inducing interpretations of final victory for the Arabs, now supported by the whole world. Not sustainable.
The rest is conversation. 

Collected links

David Rieff: Saints Go Marching In

Evangelical Leaders See Secularism as Greater Threat Than Islam

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Illiberal Foreign Policy

Lee Smith: The Heights

Dore Gold: ‘Land Swaps’ and the 1967 Lines

Stephen Law: A field guide to bullshit

CAMERA: Inciting in Plain Sight

Jackson Diehl: Why is Obama so tough on Israel and timid on Syria

Warren Kozak: What If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path

Barry Rubin: Understanding Hamas, A Detailed Assessment

Rebecca Steinfeld: Birth Right

Shimon Shapira: Hizbullah’s Veneration of Iranian Leader Ali Khamenei

Michael J. Totten: The Palestinians of 1967