"Liberty is not a suicide pact. We should be done with the search for 'explanations' that dignify the hatreds, that attribute them to Western deeds and policies. We should see the new hatred dressed in religious garb for what it is: a war against the very order of contemporary life." Fouad Ajami

Wake-Up!

Memos From Rabbi Weissberg

Confronting Israel: President Obama's New Direction

Unreasonable Policy on "Settlements," Unserious Approach To Iranian Threat and Recklessness In Pursuit of the Two State Solution??

SHMULEY BOTEACH "[N]ow is the time for American Jewry to organize. From schools to universities to synagogues and JCCs, we must make it clear that when 78 percent of Jews voted for Obama and filled his campaign coffers with cash it was not in the expectation of biased policies against Israel. We're upset, disappointed and we won't take it. We'll march in the streets, write op-eds and blogs, and publish ads making it clear that America should be standing with the Middle East's only democracy and America's most reliable ally."

 ---- Iran's Quest For Nuclear Weapons ----

Iran's Friend in South America: Venezuela's Hugo Chávez: Christmas Eve 2005 Rant: "Christ-killers" Control the World

Funded by Iran, Syria has built a huge underground compound that includes 30 steel-reinforced concrete bunkers, production facilities, development labs and command posts for missiles that can cover the entire area of Israel. In contrast to mobile deployment systems that are easy prey to air attacks, the bunker system is designed to enable Syria to launch missiles against Israel before the Israel Air Force can take them out.

Syria's Quest For The Bomb

 --- Dec '08 - Operation Cast Lead And Its Aftermath - Israel Strikes To Stop Bombs ---

HAMAS Rockets & Mortars Slaming into Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod Becomes Unbearable: The Unilateral Gaza Withdrawal And Its Aftermath

Jun '07 - Hamas Overthrows Fatah -- Takes Gaza

11/06: Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin:" The situation in the Strip is not a flashing traffic light but a red, red, red, light."

Strategic balance shifts: Hamas-led Palestinian Authority acquires dozens of advanced, Russian-made, AT-14 Kornet anti-tank missiles with a range of 5.5 km. and a high level of accuracy.  Beyond impact on Israeli military ops, they could also target civilian sites

Jan '06 -  Palestinians Elect Iranian-Backed-Genocidal Hamas in a Landslide Victory. (CAIR's ties to Hamas.)

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Dore Gold: There is a simple lesson from the Gaza experience: the formula of full withdrawal backed up by the threat of punishing deterrence operations simply doesn't work. In the next stages, Israel must re-establish its doctrine of defensible borders, in accordance with its international legal rights under UN Security Council Resolution 242.  Yoel Marcus:  Israel must insist that the PA take responsibility and crack down on this strange octopus-like creature that has a foreign arm and a domestic arm, a military arm and a prisoner arm, with Khaled Mashaal waving his baton over all of them and orchestrating from Damascus.

Israel Celebrates 60 Years

May 14, 1948, 6:11p.m. - Despite overwhelming State Dept. opposition President Truman Recognizes Israel.  Clark Clifford, White House Counsel, Oval Office, May 12, 1948: "I fully understand and agree that vital national interests are involved. In an area as unstable as the Middle East, where there is not now and never has been any tradition of democratic government, it is important for the long-range security of our country, and indeed the world, that a nation committed to the democratic system be established there, one on which we can rely. The new Jewish state can be such a place. We should strengthen it in its infancy by prompt recognition."

Efraim Karsh: 1948, Israel, and the Palestinians

Barry Rubin: Self-Made Nakba

Sir Paul McCartney: Terror Target - Self-styled preacher of hate Omar Bakri, in his weekly Internet broadcast to fellow extremists from his home in Lebanon, claimed the former Beatle's decision to take part in the Jewish state's 60th anniversary celebrations had made him an enemy of all Muslims.
    "Paul McCartney is the enemy of every Muslim. We have what we call 'sacrifice' operatives who will not stand by while he joins in a celebration of their oppression."

--- Pres. Bush's 2008 Push For A Palestinian State ---

Palestinian Terrorist Massacres Israeli Seminary Students - Gaza's streets fill with joyous crowds of THOUSANDS, celebrate in mosques with prayers of thanksgiving and distribute sweets to passersby. Mahmoud Abbas’s official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper honors the killer.  84% of Palestinians support the attack.

This is The Palestinian Way.

Participate in the REMEMBER ONE PROJECT - Encourage Churches and Synagogues around the Country to take a moment to read about one of the victims

"Intellectual Decrepitude": Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group report -- who'd have thunk it: the road to peace in Iraq runs through Israel? Lazy thinking.  But that's what's going to happen.  Madness.

Here's hoping Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmation hearing testimony did not really mean to imply tolerating a nuclear Iran

Saudis Have Radicalized 80% of US Mosques

---- 2006 Lebanon War ----

---- Blaming Israel for Jihadist Rage ----

 Radical Islamists Make Anti-Semitism Work

Jew-hatred on campus:  ‘Global Zionist Conspiracy’ Libel: Harvard's Prof. Stephen Walt and U of C's Prof. John Mearsheimer in a Harvard Kennedy School of Government - Faculty Research Working Paper distort and lie their way to their claim that "Israel Lobby" machinations are causing the U.S. sacrifice our Nation's security.  CAIR's loving it.  Here's hoping the "Jewish/Israel Lobby" is up to countering THIS.

Harvard  shames itself by hosting Iran's Khatami - recap of the event.

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Failed Nominee Peddles a Conspiracy Theory - Editorial, (Washington Post)
Former ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. looked like a poor choice to chair the National Intelligence Council. A former envoy to Saudi Arabia and China, he suffered from an extreme case of clientitis on both accounts. In addition to chiding Beijing for not crushing the Tiananmen Square democracy protests sooner and offering sycophantic paeans to Saudi King "Abdullah the Great," Mr. Freeman headed a Saudi-funded Middle East advocacy group in Washington and served on the advisory board of a state-owned Chinese oil company.
    It wasn't until Mr. Freeman withdrew from consideration for the job, however, that it became clear just how bad a selection he was. Mr. Freeman issued a two-page screed on Tuesday in which he described himself as the victim of a shadowy and sinister "Lobby" which is "intent on enforcing adherence to the policies of a foreign government." Yes, Mr. Freeman was referring to Americans who support Israel - and his statement was a grotesque libel. For the record, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee took no formal position on Mr. Freeman's appointment and undertook no lobbying against him. According to Newsweek, Mr. Freeman's most formidable critic - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - was incensed by his position on dissent in China.
    Freeman describes "an inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for U.S. policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics." That will certainly be news to Israel's "ruling faction," which in the past few years has seen the U.S. government promote a Palestinian election that it opposed; refuse it weapons it might have used for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities; and adopt a policy of direct negotiations with a regime that denies the Holocaust and that promises to wipe Israel off the map.

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Former CIA analyst, Michael Scheuer, advances crackpot theories about "clandestine" Jewish efforts to control America.  He claims that Islamists are at war with the West over certain policies -- like U.S. support for Israel -- not its culture or values is not supported by the facts. (Even though Europe would throw Israel to the wolves -- that policy  isn't protecting them much -- and Israel-US relationship is not a one-way street.)  U.S. policy in the 1990s defended Muslims in Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, while pressing for Israeli withdrawals, through the Oslo process, for the sake of the Palestinians. And yet, al-Qaeda grew. Recently, Islamists slaughtered Nepalese workers in Iraq. They were not killed because of Nepalese policy (which opposes the U.S. on Iraq), but precisely because of who they were - non-Muslim Hindus. 

More of this lunacy: Ahmad Thomson, Muslim barrister who advises PM Blair: “Pressure was put on Tony Blair before the invasion. The way it works is that pressure is put on people to arrive at certain decisions. It is part of the Zionist plan and it is shaping events.”

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Robert Spencer: Israel, Front Line of the Global Jihad -- Bruce Thornton: Israel is the beleaguered Western salient in the frontlines of the war against jihad

Josef Joffe: Imagine that Israel never existed. Would the economic malaise and political repression that drive angry young men to become suicide bombers vanish?  Would the U.S., freed of its burdensome ally, suddenly find itself beloved throughout the Muslim world? Not likely.

 Everything depends on us getting this straight.

Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York: "It's fantasy land to think some change in Middle East policy would have an effect on the terrorists. For years, you had Bill Clinton focusing like a laser on an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, and did that discourage bin Laden from plotting to destroy us? These people want Israel eradicated, so there's no way you can accommodate them."

Al-Qaeda had for a decade become bolder because it thought the West lacked the stomach for a fight. When earlier attacks met with a less than resolute response from Washington, the fanatics kept raising the stakes all the way to that attack on the World Trade Center. It is also undeniable that sooner or later Saddam’s bloodthirsty regime had to be confronted.

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Witch Hunt Part One: Blaming Israel for Iraq War.  Witch Hunt Part Two - AIPAC

Bush: Israel no factor in Iraq, JTA,  01/07/2008: Israel had no role in bringing about the Iraq war, President Bush said. "None whatsoever," the U.S. leader said last week when asked by Yediot Achronot, Israel's largest daily, whether Israel had any involvement in his decision to invade Iraq.

"My decision was based upon U.S. intelligence, based upon the desire to provide security for our peoples and others," Bush said.

A number of Iraq war critics, most notably Stephen Walt of Harvard University and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, have said that Israel and the pro-Israel lobby were a driving force leading the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003.

Israel's Technology Creates an Investment Goliath - Donald Snyder, (FOXBusiness)

Israel, with fewer than 7 million people, has become a Goliath in the world of technology and medicine. It is third only to America and Canada in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq, ahead of economic powerhouses like Germany, England and China. Bruce Aust, executive vice president of Nasdaq , said 75 Israeli companies worth a total of $60 billion are listed.
    American troops use Israeli portable digital x-ray machines in Iraq and Afghanistan that don't require film for developing and are used in battlefield situations. "The quality of their post-doctorates in medicine, nanotechnology and software development is rather incredible," said Marc Stanley, a technology official at the U.S. Department of Commerce who is involved with fostering collaboration between American and Israeli technology companies. Experts attribute the nation's success to a confluence of cultural and systemic factors, such as Israel's highly educated and motivated immigrant population.

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, January 18, 2008]

Israel: The Overlooked Issues of 2007 - H.D.S. Greenway, (Boston Globe We all know the Israel of wars and precarious security, but what about Israel of the humming economy with 90 Israel-related companies on NASDAQ? What about Israeli films garnishing honors around the world: "Jellyfish" and "The Band's Visit" at Cannes, "Beaufort" in Berlin, "My Father My Lord" in Tribeca, "Sweet Mud" at Sundance, and "Aviva, My Love" in Shanghai?
    What of Israeli solar power in California that has been saving 2 million barrels of oil annually for nearly 20 years? What of Arava Valley high-tech agriculture, with exports exceeding $100 million? Natafim, the drip irrigation system patented by Kibbutz Hatzerim, is now a multinational conglomerate selling millions of systems throughout the world. What of the Israel that is taking in Darfur refugees, and what of the first Israeli-initiated UN resolution, calling upon countries to share agricultural technology with developing countries, adopted overwhelmingly in December? It's this other Israel that's underreported. [Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, January 1, 2008]

Exploring the Basic Forces of the Universe
On September 10, 2008, Tel Aviv University's Prof. Erez Etzion from the School of Physics and Astronomy will be in the control room of the new CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the border of France and Switzerland when the LHC is first turned on. Scientists are calling it the largest experiment in the world. It's taken about 6,000 researchers, $8 billion and ten years to build. Of the 50 countries that have participated in the project, Israel is among those which have made the greatest contributions. Tel Aviv University in particular has played an essential role in constructing equipment for the collider tunnel, dug deep inside the Swiss-French Alps. Prof. Etzion, an experimental physicist in high-energy research, expects the impact of the LHC to be greater than that of the first moon landing. "It is hard to grasp the dimensions of the practical benefits from this project," he says, "but we're expecting to explore the basic forces that hold the world together."  (PhysOrg.com)

[Courtesy -- Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Daily Alert, September 5, 2008]

If we as a people cannot find the strength and the courage to speak out against evil, or even to call evil by its name, then what hope is there that we can mount an effective defense against that evil?

David Meir-Levi's preface to Walid Shoebat

Foolish Idea: Dividing Jerusalem

David Frum: Since 2000, hoaxing has emerged as a major tool of Palestinian propaganda.  The U.S. website Second Draft has compiled documentary footage to reveal a startling series of faked funerals, staged gun battles, and professional weeping grandmothers.  They dub the Palestinian propaganda complex "Pallywood," and ask hard questions about the readiness - eagerness - of much of the world media to be deceived.

From PMW: On Official PA TV, PA religious leaders called for the murder of Jews until the Jewish people are annihilated as a necessary stage in history that should be carried out now.

Doomsday scenario: Al Qaeda terrorists setting their sights on Israel

ARAFAT's BEQUEST: a Death Cult and the Routinization of Terror --  If you want to know what's really at the heart of the Palestinian conflict with Israel  Go to Palestinian Children

Arafat Never Intended to Make Peace, Abbas? Funds suicides, Conditions non-violence.

ARAFAT APPROVED CONVOY ATTACK

Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other groups issue separate leaflets calling on the Palestinians to escalate the "struggle".   - - - Abu Amin, Islamic Jihad leader on the death of Daniel Wultz: "If we know there are Americans in a place we plan to attack...this would be a sign from Allah that this is a more blessed operation. Killing Americans and Jews in one operation - it can be great."

May 13, 2005, Friday’s Sermon, broadcast on TV, PA religious leader, Ibrahim Mudayris (Mudeiris): “The day will come and we shall rule America, Britain, we shall rule the entire world, except the Jews.”  He teaches that the Jews are so evil that they cannot be subjugated like the Christian countries, and therefore the only solution awaiting them is death – literally the extermination of every Jew.

PA leaders stole and financed terror with the largest transfer of aid funds ever.  Arafat's FORTUNE

One upshot: Increasing numbers of Palestinians blame U.S. and Israeli officials who calculated that a Palestinian dictatorship would make a better negotiating partner than a Palestinian democracy. (See: Arafat Robs the Palestine International Bank - Issam Abu Issa)

Republicans OFF THE RAILS: By donning an abaya in her visit to Saudi Arabia, Laura Bush legitimizes of the system of subjugating women that the garment embodies. 

Democrats OFF THE RAILS:  Top Dem fundraiser George Soros, Davos 2007 - U.S. needs "deNazification." DNC chooses terror-supporting Muslim cleric Husham al-Husainy to deliver the '07 winter meeting invocation.  Pres. Bill Clinton on Hamas. The ever-foolish, bought-off Jimmy Carter, an abject apologist for any mass murderer smart enough to hide behind a left-wing political cause Eulogizes Arafat -- Pres. Carter's shoddy book: “Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid” -- his twisted position on "the Israel lobby" (12/3/06 Meet The Press);  Mario Cuomo, Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, George Soros, General Anthony Zinni): "Pres. Bush went to war with Iraq to protect Israel and appease Jews"  More.  Short memories on the case for war in Iraq.  (Bush Lied? Really?)  2005 George Bush Mock Impeachment Turns Ugly.  2004 - Bush v Kerry.  2008 - Al Gore?

Church members force activist leadership of Presbyterian Church USA to STEP BACK from their War Against the Jews: At a time of particular peril for Christian Arabs, the Church hypocritically equated Israel with apartheid South Africa and called for divestment, met with Hizballah.  The head of the worldwide Anglican Church marks 9/11/04 praising Islam in Egypt’s Al-Azhar Mosque, scene of many rabid calls for jihad against infidels as that Church signs on to divestment. U.S. Episcopal Church's Anti-Israel Media Campaign.  World Council of Churches & United Church of Christ sign on to anti-Israel campaign.   YWCA: Israel = Nazi Germany.  The Academic Boycott of Israel: Why Britain?

D. Prager: "This is one of the morality-clarifying issues of our time.  To single out Israel for economic strangulation while that good nation fights for its life is an act of such immorality that holding that view precludes one form the title of 'good' or 'God-fearing,'  for if they are true to God, I am false to Him.  If they are good, I who support Israel am bad."

Brigitte Gabriel: The difference between the Arabic world and Israel is a difference in values and character. It’s barbarism verses civilization. It’s democracy verses dictatorship. It’s goodness verses evil.

Why -- while this serious problem continues to unfold -- do some in the "Jewish Establishment" wrong-headedly attack  some of the strongest supporters of Israel --  evangelical Christian Zionists.  (Also, the Catholic church has made strenuous efforts in recent years to remove the stain of anti-Jewish feeling from its doctrines.)