Tag: Israel

The sideshow of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress

12:01 pm

The report notes the increasing flood of Democrats who say they will boycott Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next month. It also makes this cogent point:

In a sane world, as soon as Netanyahu expressed an interest in speaking, Boehner and McConnell could have responded to both the Prime Minister and our President and said it was a fine idea, set up a time and moved forward. If Obama didn’t want this to be a mess and conceivably even find a way to turn it into an advantage, he could have extended an offer to meet privately with Bibi before the speech or even show up at it with him. That would have presented a unified front between two allies for the rest of the world and the whole thing could have been a done deal by now. There’s nothing remarkable about a world leader making a speech in Washington. It’s pretty much what the place exists for.

While the House Republicans have worked this event for their own political advantages, their invitation to Netanyahu did no harm to American interests or our ally. Obama and the Democrats however have done everything they can to push back politically, even though their push back apparently threatens our ally while damaging our interests in the Middle East.

To put it another way, ask yourself whose actions are doing real harm to the diplomatic relations between the United States and Israel? Who is rejecting an ally and refusing to talk or listen to him?

Update: Check out this very pointed column noting the different reactions of the President and the Democrats to two identical invitations from Congress: “A Jew and a Catholic were invited to Congress…”

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Senate Democrats consider boycotting Israeli leader’s speech

12:03 pm

Whose side are they on? When polled, almost no Democratic senator would commit to attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint speech to Congress in March.

Essentially, these partisan hacks are telling us that they are willing to put their party ahead of the nation and the threat from Islam. I think every liberal Jew who has voted with knee-jerk regularity for Democratic politicians should read this very closely and open their eyes.

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What Gazans really think about Hamas

4:12 pm

A real journalist went to Gaza and the West Bank and rather than retype the crap that Hamas was feeding him, he interviewed the Palestinians there and found out what they really think of Hamas and its attacks on Israel. And it ain’t good.

This one quote sums it up nicely:

“Don’t get fooled. Gazans are not in love with Israel yet, but they do not want to fight Israel anymore. We do not want to embrace Israel; we just want to live normally without wars. We want to live and work in Israel like we used to. We are under Hamas occupation, and if you ask most of us, we would rather be under Israeli occupation, instead. I would welcome Netanyahu to rule Gaza so long as Hamas leaves, and I think most Gazans feel the same way. We miss the days when we were able to work inside Israel and make good money, we miss the security and calm Israel provided when it was here, but politically speaking, we just think of it as the better of two evils: Israel and Hamas.”

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When did humans begin using fire?

10:21 am

A cave in Israel suggests that the human use of fire began around 350,000 years ago.

The researchers examined artifacts previously excavated from the site, which are mostly flint tools for cutting and scraping, and flint debris created in their manufacture. To determine when fire became a routine part of the lives of the cave dwellers, the team looked at flints from about 100 layers of sediments in the lowermost 16 meters of the cave deposits.

In layers older than roughly 350,000 years, almost none of the flints are burned. But in every layer after that, many flints show signs of exposure to fire: red or black coloration, cracking, and small round depressions where fragments known as pot lids flaked off from the stone. Wildfires are rare in caves, so the fires that burned the Tabun flints were probably controlled by ancestral humans, according to the authors. The scientists argue that the jump in the frequency of burnt flints represents the time when ancestral humans learned to control fire, either by kindling it or by keeping it burning between natural wildfires.

There are enormous uncertainties here, but the data also appears to match with what has been found in Europe. The problem however is that this date is long after humans had already migrated to colder climates, which means that they were somehow surviving for a long time in these hostile environments without fire, something that is puzzling.

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Back from Israel

6:29 pm

After almost 24 hours of travel I am back from my trip to Israel. I have a lot to do to catch up, plus I am doing a radio appearance tonight on WCCO-am in Minnesota, but posting should resume no later than tomorrow.

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What the Middle East conflict looks like from inside Israel

12:34 am

As I am in Israel this week visiting family, I have had an opportunity to get a feel for the political and cultural atmosphere of the Middle East. Granted, this “feel” is very superficial and subjective, but it is nonetheless instructive, as I am viewing the situation not as a resident but as an outsider who always favors freedom and justice in any political conflict.

Anyway, my sense of the situation here comes from two immediate sources, one cultural and the second personal. First the cultural.
» Read more

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Heading to Israel

6:50 am

This morning I will be boarding a plane to begin the long tedious airplane flight from Tucson to Jerusalem, Israel, arriving there Thursday afternoon. I might post along the way, but there are no guarantees.

For the next week I will once again be staying with my brother and sister-in-law in their apartment in the west bank settlement of Alon Shvut. It was here at the bus stop just outside the settlement, where Palestinians and Israelis routinely gather to either catch the bus or hitchhike a ride to Jerusalem, that three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped by Hamas operatives, sparking the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip. Then, just a few weeks ago an Arab terrorist when on a killing spree at this bus stop, killing one young woman before the guard at the settlement gate ran down the hill to shoot him.

I might post my impressions of the situation while I am there, or it might have to wait until I return. It depends on my schedule and my desire to work while visiting family. Yesterday’s attack in a Jewish synagogue, once again by Hamas operatives, killing five people whose only crime was that they were praying peacefully, might also touch my family directly, as I think that one of the rabbis killed was a friend of my brother, his wife, and their children. I will find out more when I get there.

Meanwhile, there were Arab celebrations in various locations in Gaza, the West Bank, and even in Jerusalem, congratulating these killers for their barbarous acts.

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Hamas cedes some Gaza control to Fatah

10:04 am

In what appears to be evidence that the recent Israeli Gaza effort did significant damage to Hamas, the terrorist organization has agreed to give the Palestinian Authority some control once again in the administration of Gaza.

Hamas and Fatah leaders said that the agreement reached on Thursday calls for the PA government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, to “immediately” assume its responsibilities in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian sources said that the agreement allows the PA to take control over the border crossings in the Gaza Strip, including the Rafah terminal. Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, announced that the Palestinian Authority government would soon manage all the border crossings in the Gaza Strip.

A second quote gives as some idea of the corrupt patronage of these two organizations:
» Read more

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Using government funding to finance antisemitism at UCLA

10:49 am

A three year study has found that federal funds are underwriting “one-sided, antisemitic programming that masquerades as scholarship,” at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Criticizing Israel in scholarship is perfectly legitimate. It appears here that much of this criticism has morphed into hatred for Jews in general, paid for by the federal government.

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The American professors who think Israel is the only evil in the Middle East

10:45 am

Want to know which American professors are demanding an academic boycott of Israel? Here is a list.

Even as Islamic radicals and nations commit genocide against Christians, Jews, and Muslims, these so-called intellectuals only have anger at Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and the only place in the Middle East where Christians, Jews, and Muslims can freely practice their religion and be full citizens. As the article notes,

“How can professors who are so biased against the Jewish state accurately or fairly teach students about Israel or the Arab-Israel conflict?” asked Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, AMCHA Initiative co-founder and faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Students who wish to become better educated without subjecting themselves to anti-Israel bias, or possibly even antisemitic rhetoric, may want to check which faculty members from their university are signatories before registering.”

By signing their names to this boycott, they reveal themselves to either be willfully ignorant of the complexity of the situation, or outright anti-semites.

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The deadly Israeli house strikes again

3:11 pm

There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its brick and mortar are combined together, the house, whether it is one of those modest one story hilltop affairs or a five floor apartment building complete with hot and cold running water, becomes far more dangerous than anything green and glowing that comes out of the Iranian centrifuges.

Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don’t impress anyone in Europe or in Washington. Genocide is a minor matter when in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment.

Read it all. It will make you shiver in fear at the terror produced by Israeli contractors.

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“International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.”

5:24 pm

Guess who that “familiar villain” happens to be. It shouldn’t surprise you, though it horrifies me that this is happening again, in the west, in civilized society, and among the so-called intellectual elites of the U.S. and Europe.

If you are really serious about understanding what has been going on in the Middle East these past few months, make sure you read the entire article, carefully, and slowly. The conclusion will tell you a great deal about what is going to happen in the coming years. The fact that most intellectuals in the West will be caught with their pants down when it does happen can best be summed up by how that conclusion begins:

Because a gap has opened here between the way things are and the way they are described, opinions are wrong and policies are wrong, and observers are regularly blindsided by events. Such things have happened before. In the years leading to the breakdown of Soviet Communism in 1991, as the Russia expert Leon Aron wrote in a 2011 essay for Foreign Policy, “virtually no Western expert, scholar, official, or politician foresaw the impending collapse of the Soviet Union.” The empire had been rotting for years and the signs were there, but the people who were supposed to be seeing and reporting them failed and when the superpower imploded everyone was surprised.

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“For the Israelis, this time is different.”

9:59 pm

“Hamas has exacted a high price from Israel these past weeks. But it has also awakened a sleeping giant. The question now is whether the Palestinian cause is furthered, or dramatically weakened, by the fear this war has created.”

Read the whole thing. Combine this new Israeli resolve with the public relations disaster this war has been for Hamas and it seems obvious that there will be no easy concessions from the Israelis in any negotiations for years. And that I consider a good thing: The Israelis, as well as a good part of the civilized world, have finally realized that there is no point negotiating with someone who wants to kill you. Only when the Palestinians and the Arabs finally honestly and sincerely accept the presence of Israel will there be any chance for a negotiated settlement. And I don’t expect this anytime soon.

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What’s next in Gaza if Hamas rejects peace

9:50 pm

If Hamas continues to reject a proposed peace plan negotiated by Egypt, Israel is likely to return to Gaza with a much broader offensive.

A broader ground offensive can take multiple forms, and its scope can vary as well. On one end of the spectrum is a smaller operation that can last a few weeks, in which ground forces seize Gaza, deliver a powerful blow to Hamas’s military assets, and withdraw.

On the other end of the spectrum is an operation that would last at least about a year, in which ground units would spread out and go after all of Hamas’s guerrilla cells. Several intermediate options exist, too. Targets would include the remainder of Hamas’s weapons storage facilities, command and control sites, regional battalions, and its junior and senior leaders from its armed wing.

I hope Israel goes for the broadest most aggressive plan. The most humanitarian thing that could be done for the people in Gaza would be to remove Hamas and free them from its tyrannical, insane, and vicious rule.

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Iraqi Muslims celebrate persecution of Christians

9:31 am

The bigoted religion of peace: An Christian Iraqi refugee describes how the Muslims in Mosel celebrated the arrival of ISIS and the expulsion of Christians.

An Iraqi Christian who fled for his life from Mosul says that his Muslim neighbors welcomed the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq (ISIS) and told him “this land belongs to Islam.”

“We left Mosul because ISIS came to the city. The (Sunni) people of Mosul embraced ISIS, and drove the Christians out of the city,” the unnamed Christian refugee, who reportedly fled from Mosul to Lebanon, told Lebanese LBC/LDC TV in a July 30 interview translated by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

And then there’s this: A mob of Muslims on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem force the closure of that site to Jews.

Watch the video below the fold and tell me who you think is bigoted and expressing hatred. As one of the Jews notes with humor near the beginnin of the video, “Look, three Jews, how many Arabs; they are calling to G-d, they are praying to G-d because of us, it’s wonderful. You see what we did?”

Things get more and more heated, beginning around 9:00, as they begin to approach the Temple Mount itself. Note that all these guys are doing is trying to take a tour of the site.
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An Hamas officer, captured by Israel, admits he led the kidnapping and murder operation of three Israeli teenagers

7:35 pm

Israel has captured the man who was in charge of the operation that kidnapped and then murdered three Israeli teenagers, who also admits that (surprise!) he is a squad commander for Hamas in Gaza.

So, let’s get this straight. Hamas organizes the killing of Israeli children. Hamas launches rockets from schools so that Arab children are endangered. Hamas also prevents Gaza citizens and their families from seeking safety during war. And Hamas also calls for the genocide of all Jews, women and children included.

But Israel is the one condemned for committing war crimes? As Thomas Sowell recently noted, “In an age when scientists are creating artificial intelligence, too many of our educational institutions seem to be creating artificial stupidity.”

Even the most superficial but honest observer of the Gaza War would have conclude that Hamas is just one step removed from a child abuser. And since when do we as civilized people lend aid and comfort to child abusers?

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