The other Lieberman makes his move

Lieberman: Gaza must be cut off

The Gaza Strip must be completely cut off from Israel, and it should be declared a "hostile entity," Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Thursday in a new plan he unveiled.

According to Lieberman, Israel should bomb Gaza after every Kassam rocket strike, cancel visitation rights to Palestinian prisoners until kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit is released, and immediately cease contacts with [the] Palestinian Authority Chairman...
[Jerusalem Post]

"Battered Nation Syndrome"

Battered Nation Syndrome -Michael Freund

It was 40 years ago that tiny little Israel, facing destruction at the hands of its enemies, miraculously emerged triumphant from the 1967 Six Day War.

Existential fear quickly dissolved into breathtaking joy as the Jewish state decisively vanquished its foes, reuniting Jerusalem and reclaiming large swathes of our ancient homeland. Our adversaries, who had gleefully pledged to feed us to the fish in the Mediterranean Sea, were forced to look on as their troops beat a hasty retreat.

The stunning victory of 1967 had all the markings of Divine intervention. It was a gift from Heaven to a besieged and beleaguered people. After nearly two millennia we were reunited at last with the cradle of Jewish civilization, and with the heart of the nation, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

And yet, it seems, four decades later, many Israelis still just cannot forgive themselves for winning.

[P]arts of the Israeli public and its leadership are suffering from what I refer to as "Battered Nation Syndrome." Like a victim of ongoing domestic abuse, the advocates of surrender to the Palestinians cannot muster the wherewithal to hit back at the abuser. All the hallmarks of the syndrome are there.

Naturally, this distorted world-view results in an almost obsessive focus on Israel's perceived faults as lying at the root of the conflict with our neighbors.

[I]t is time to break out of this collective funk and start viewing the world the way it really is. Israel neither asked for war nor initiated it in 1967, so let's stop acting like we did.

We do not owe the Arabs anything for defeating them, and we certainly do not need to give them any further territory from which to attack us.

They tried to kill us. We won. Get over it.

[Jerusalem Post]

Sderot: ghost town

Hamas Victory in Sderot - Zalman Shoval

There is no greater triumph for our enemies (and no better way to cool off any desire to reach peace with us) than the depressing sight of residents evacuated from the Israeli town of Sderot. In their wild imagination, our enemies can already see the next step: Sderot first, then Ashkelon, and later, who knows, maybe even Tel Aviv.
(Ynet News)

Sderot Is Us - Ari Shavit

Sderot is the litmus test that will teach us what we can expect in the future. The struggle for Sderot should be viewed as a struggle for Israeli sovereignty.
Sderot is all of us. We rise and fall with Sderot.
(Ha'aretz)

Covert strategies

U.S. Working to Sabotage Iran Nuke Program - Sheila MacVicar and Ashley Velie

"Industrial sabotage is a way to stop the program, without military action, without fingerprints on the operation, and really, it is ideal, if it works," says Mark Fitzpatrick, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State...

Senior government representatives pointed to the case of the exploding power supplies. Installed at the pilot enrichment facility at Natanz in April 2006, the power supplies blew up, destroying 50 centrifuges.

(CBS News)

Accuracy

Pinpoint Accuracy Is Key to Israel Air Force's Gaza Strikes - Yaakov Katz

Since the IDF began its operation in Gaza last week - aimed at stopping Palestinian rocket attacks on Sderot - it has been generally successful in keeping its strikes precise and on target. Cars carrying terrorists were bombed in the middle of streets and buildings housing weapons warehouses and factories were leveled.

An international outcry - usually quick to come - was nowhere to be heard.
(Jerusalem Post)

Islam by numbers

25% of US Muslim teens: Suicide attacks ok

One in four younger US Muslims say suicide bombings to defend their religion are acceptable at least in some circumstances, though most Muslim Americans overwhelmingly reject the tactic and are critical of Islamic extremism and al-Qaida, a poll says.

[O]nly one in four [adult Muslims] consider the US struggle against terrorism a sincere attempt to curtail international terror. Only 40 percent said they believe Arab men carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

[Associated Press]

Poignant quote

Israel's UN Ambassador: Moderate Muslims Not Doing Enough to Curtail Terrorism

Israel's UN ambassador accused moderate Muslim and Arab leaders of standing by in "eerie silence" while Islamic extremists terrorize people around the world.

"We live in a world where, when Christians kill Muslims, it's a crusade. When Jews kill Muslims, it's a massacre. When Muslims kill Muslims, it's the weather channel. Nobody cares," Ambassador Dan Gillerman said.
(AP/International Herald Tribune)

George Orwell visits Tehran

Police, Improperly Clad Women Clash In Tehran
Iranian police officers clashed with women who were not dressed according to the Islamic dress code.

[MEMRI]

Abandoning women

The Subjection of Islamic Women - Christina Hoff Sommers

The subjection of women in Muslim societies is today very much in the public eye. Accounts of lashings, stonings, and honor killings are regularly in the news.

One might expect that by now American feminist groups would be organizing protests against such glaring injustices, joining forces with the valiant Muslim women who are working to change their societies. This is not happening.

The reasons are rooted in the worldview of the women who shape the concerns and activities of contemporary American feminism. That worldview is antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, and wary of femininty.

The good news is that Muslim women are not waiting around for Western feminists to rescue them.
(Weekly Standard)

UPDATE:

Female Suicide Bombers "Eagerly Await" IDF Soldiers in Gaza - Ali Waked
Islamic Jihad on Sunday released a video clip in which a high-ranking Jihad official said that his organization has prepared dozens of female suicide bombers who were eager to blow themselves up along with IDF troops if Israel was to enter and operate in Gaza.
(Ynet News)

Satan is jealous

Is Gaza Worse Off than Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia? - Shmuel Rosner

The Gaza Strip is burning, drifting into chaos, turning into hell...

If America is counting on the Palestinian Presidential Guard to maintain law and order in Gaza, it must be hallucinating.

No [one] in his right mind would ask to send an international force to calm things in Gaza, as was done in Lebanon after the summer war.

The so-called "benchmarks" for Israel and the Palestinian Authority - laid out by Condoleezza Rice seem like a joke: No Israeli leader can agree to the opening of a "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank, which could spread the infighting.
(Slate)

Sacred date

Prelude to the Six Days - Charles Krauthammer

There has hardly been a Middle East peace plan in the past 40 years - including the current Saudi version - that does not demand a return to the status quo of June 4, 1967. Why is that date so sacred? Because it was the day before the outbreak of the Six-Day War in which Israel scored one of the most stunning victories of the 20th century. The Arabs have spent four decades trying to undo its consequences.

[Israelis remember that despite being] in possession of no occupied territories whatsoever, the entire Arab world was furiously preparing Israel's imminent extinction. And the world did nothing.
(Washington Post)

A blind eye

Palestinian Rockets Ignored Abroad - Yitzhak Benhorin

Palestinian rocket attacks on Sderot have received very little coverage in world media, despite the heavy barrages that have been going on for the past three days.

Only when Israel began to respond to the attacks by aerial bombings, cannons and tanks did this part of the world receive attention from the American media.
(Ynet News)

Glick: Olmert can't defend Israel

Sleepless in Sderot...a school building hit by Kassam rocket

The master politician and us -Caroline Glick

The decision to deploy a few tanks in northern Gaza on Thursday, like the decision to send a few planes to bomb a few targets over Gaza, is not part of an overall strategy aimed at defending southern Israel from rocket and mortar fire. Olmert is cynically exploiting the IDF.

Rather than give the military an order to defeat our enemies, Olmert, like Barak before him, has ordered the IDF to perform a sound and light show for the public which demands that the government defend it.

Olmert's refusal to order a serious strike in Gaza has brought about the effective abrogation of Israeli sovereignty over Sderot and the Western Negev. It is impossible to speak of Israel as a properly functioning, sovereign state when its citizens are forced to flee their homes because their government refuses to protect their lives and property.
[Jersualem Post]

Jerusalem Day

Images from Jerusalem Day Parade on May 16

Photos by Jacob Richman

1967 Six Day War -Daryl Temkin, Ph.D.

[Jerusalem Day] marking the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem, is commemorated by one of the most beautiful and moving ceremonies one can imagine.

The main streets of Jerusalem's center city are closed to traffic. Tens of thousands of young and old fill the streets briskly waving hundreds of full size Israeli flags, and musicians are posed every few blocks with loud speakers filling the air with their songs.

As the musicians play popular Jewish melodies, the streets become a dance stage for well choreographed circle dances and line dances. The joyous group singing on the street and the intense community dancing is a unique sight.

UPDATE:

Tolerating hypocrisy in Jerusalem -Caroline Glick

Last week the EU-financed Peace Now organization held an "Alternative Jerusalem Day" ceremony in which it called for Israel to renounce its sovereignty over half of the city in the interests of peace.

Why anyone would believe that an Israeli surrender of the eternal capital of the Jewish people to Hamas will lead to peace is anyone's guess. It seems particularly fatuous in light of the blatantly unpeaceful results of Israel's 2005 Peace Now-supported surrender of Gaza to Hamas, its 2000 Peace Now-supported surrender of south Lebanon to Hizbullah, and the Peace Now-supported Barak government's offer to surrender the Temple Mount and other parts of Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat in 2000.

[Jerusalem Post]

Shaking up Persian delusions of grandeur

Bolton: Attack Iran before it gets bomb

Iran should be attacked - as a last resort - before it develops nuclear weapons, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton was quoted as saying.

Bolton told the Daily Telegraph that the European Union has to "get more serious" about Iran following its failure to halt Iran's uranium enrichment program...

The risks involved in using force, Bolton said, would be less severe than those of accepting a nuclear Iran. "Imagine what it would be like with a nuclear Iran. Imagine the influence Iran could have over the entire region..."

[Jerusalem Post]

'Bush may strike Iran near end of term' -Steve Linde

While arguing that economic sanctions against Teheran still have a chance of bearing fruit, a top strategic expert [Brandeis University's Shai Feldman, pictured above] predicted on Tuesday that the Bush administration could conduct a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities toward the end of its term in office.

"My feeling is that it will act in the last months of the administration, mostly because I think that they are inclined to try to give the other options the fullest possible chance."

[Jerusalem Post]

"Terrorist Disneyland"

Rohan Gunaratna

Iraq a "terrorist Disneyland" if U.S. goes -Mark Trevelyan

A U.S. troop pullout from Iraq would leave the country as a potent launchpad for international terrorism and Washington would be forced to go back in within a couple of years [Rohan Gunaratna] a leading al Qaeda expert said...
(Reuters)

Untangling Iraq

The Great Circle of Enmity - Fouad Ajami

The State of Israel is a year away from its 60th anniversary, and still the Arab imagination denies Israel's legitimacy.

Iraq, a state that gives pride of place to the Shiites (and the Kurds) is still an oddity in the Arab landscape. For well over a millennium, the Shiite Arabs have not governed; they have been the stepchildren of the Arab world.

Sunni Arab[s] insist that their animus toward this new Iraq derives from their opposition to the American presence. This is plain hypocrisy, for vast stretches of the Arab world are within the orbit of American power. [T]he American presence dates back decades.
(U.S. News)

Sharansky on Iran

Dissidents Unite! - Sonny Bunch

Sharansky points to Iran as a society that, like the Soviet Union before it, is rotting from the inside - a termite-infested house just waiting to collapse.

He calls Iran "almost a classic example of how in one generation a country of true believers could turn into a country of doublethinkers," a term (borrowed from 1984) for those who no longer believe in the ideals of a totalitarian regime but are afraid to voice their disagreement.
(Weekly Standard)

4 missing terrorists in New Jersey

Lessons from the Fort Dix Six - Mary Habeck

[R]eports [from the Fort Dix investigation] describe a video showing "ten young men" firing weapons, yet only six were arrested. This is not over.
(National Review)

Avineri on responsibility

Until They Accept Responsibility - Shlomo Avineri

To this day, no book in Arabic has raised the question of whether the Arabs erred in rejecting the [1948] compromise UN partition plan.

It is for this reason that the Palestinians' customary comparison between the Nakba [Arabic: "catastrophe" referring to the establishment of Israel] and the Holocaust is so outrageous. Did the Jews of Germany and Europe declare war on Germany? Were the world's Jews offered a compromise that they rejected?

There will be no true compromise between Israel and the Palestinians without a readiness on their part to admit that they, too, are responsible for what happened to them in 1948.

(Ha'aretz)

Terror goes Latin: border security

Hizbullah Builds a Western Base - Pablo Gato and Robert Windrem

The Iranian-backed Hizbullah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the U.S. and ready to die to prove it.

U.S. officials fear the poorly patrolled Tri-border region could make it easy for Hizbullah terrorists to infiltrate the southern U.S. border.

The CIA singles out the Mexican border as an especially inviting target for Hizbullah operatives.
(MSNBC)

UPDATE:

Hizbullah Has Spread Throughout Latin America - Pablo Gato and Robert Windrem
On their web page, Hizbullah militants in Venezuela call their fight against the United States a "holy war" and post photographs of would-be suicide terrorists with masks and bombs.
There are also web sites for Hizbullah in Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, and most other Latin American countries. In October, homemade bombs were left in front of the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, which is next to a school. Police arrested a student carrying Hizbullah propaganda in Spanish.
(NBC News)

VideoBite: Terror does Disney

This video has caused quite a stir.
Finally the US press seems to notice the sleaze
that passes as entertainment on Palestinian television.
The Mickey Mouse lookalike probably accounts for all the outrage.
The moral:

Don't mess with Disney!
http://www.pmw.org.il/asx/PMW_MickeyMouseClone.asx

UPDATE:

A Better Mousetrap - Michael Goodwin

You hear it all the time: If only the Israelis and Palestinians would make peace, the rest of the world would follow. The next time you hear it, remember that the Palestinian version of Mickey Mouse preaches death to Jews and Americans. There can be no peace...
(New York Daily News)

How many other plots?

Six Foreign-Born "Radical Islamists" Charged in Plot to Strike Ft. Dix Army Base - Josh Meyer and Erika Hayasaki

Six foreign-born "radical Islamists" charged Tuesday in a plot to attack the Ft. Dix Army base in New Jersey were trying to buy AK-47 and M-16 rifles when they were arrested, and posed a serious terrorist threat, authorities said. The men allegedly had discussed trying to kill hundreds of people on the base with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The suspects include three brothers, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, a Turkish national, a Jordanian, and a former Yugoslavian.

FBI special agent P. Weis said, "We had a group that was forming a platoon to take on an army. They identified their target, they did their reconnaissance. They had maps. And they were in the process of buying weapons."
(Los Angeles Times)

UPDATE:

Symposium: Jihad in Jersey

-Daniel Pipes

[M]ercifully, terrorists can be counted on to make dumb mistakes. I established an honorary "Stupid Terrorists Club" in 2005; its founding members gained entry with such acts as having returned to retrieve the deposit on a van they had used to blow up a building, not wearing a car seat belt while transporting terrorist gear, or ordering $3,300 (in American dollars) worth of airline-related goods with an overdrawn credit card.

This new group of six joined the Club by dint of its sending a jihadi DVD to a store be copied commercially and choosing as its target Fort Dix, a hardened military installation.

[National Review]

Defining Victory

Lessons from Israel's Lebanon War Resonate Globally - Ilene R. Prusher

Last week's Winograd Commission report on the war provides a window into what may be an increasingly insurmountable task facing modern democracies: winning war, regardless of military superiority.

The traditional scorecards used to tally winners and losers, experts say, were designed for a battlefield that is fading into obsolescence.
(Christian Science Monitor)

New US counter-terrorism strategy: Israeli doggies

Antiterror dogs have sharp nose for bombs - Josh Richman

Eight Israeli-trained, bomb-sniffing antiterrorism dogs have been deployed in the Bay Area under a pilot program backed by state Homeland Security officials and a Southern California nonprofit group [Pups for Peace].
(Inside Bay Area)

Moderate Muslims on the march

300,000 Muslims march to reject Turkey's slide

towards Islamic radicalism in an
April 14th march in Ankara

On April 29th, 700,000 Muslims marched for

the same cause in Istanbul

Good news: Americans understand

Poll Finds U.S. Support for Israel Soaring

American public support for Israel in the face of its enemies is at a five-year high, a poll found.

About three-quarters of those polled said the United States should not resume sending aid to the Palestinian Authority until the Hamas-led government recognizes Israel.
(JTA/Jerusalem Post)

Mazel Tov: new French leader has Jewish lineage

French Jews Celebrate Sarkozy Victory -Rina Bassist

Optimistic and celebratory, Jewish groups were quick to offer congratulations to Nicolas Sarkozy after his victory in French presidential elections. The former interior minister was seen by Jewish voters as a friend to Israel and an important figure in the fight against anti-Semitism.
(Australian Jewish News)

Nicholas Sarkozy, New President of France: Past and Future -Raanan Eliaz

Sarkozy’s mother was born to the Mallah family, one of the oldest Jewish families of Salonika, Greece.

In a 2004 interview, Sarkozy stated, "Every Jew carries within him a fear passed down through generations, and he knows that if one day he will not feel safe in his country, there will always be a place that would welcome him. And this is Israel.”
(European Jewish Press)

Rice: devil with the red dress on

Iranian Minister Avoids Dinner with Secretary of State Rice

Iran's foreign minister abruptly left a dinner where he was to sit opposite U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, complaining that a red dress worn by an entertainer was too revealing.

"I am not sure which woman he was afraid of, the woman in the red dress or the secretary of state," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
(Reuters)

Banned by PBS: Videobite

The documentary the PBS does not want you to see.
Watch the trailer:

http://www.freethefilm.net/images/Trailer.wmv
and learn more about this controversy

UPDATE:

PBS Network Nixes Bombshell "Islam" Flick - Roger L. Simon
The first thing that attracted me to Martyn Burke's "Islam vs. Islamists" was that PBS had suppressed it.

Our Public Broadcasting Service, an organization supported by taxpayer money, is practicing the most obvious censorship. PBS is operating here in the manner of similar institutions in the former Soviet Union and in modern Iran - financing artists and then withholding distribution of their work when it is not deemed ideologically "correct."

(New York Post)

Popular books in Jordon

A bookshop's window display in Amman, Jordan,
featuring Arabic versions of Hitler's Mein Kampf and
Carter's ''Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.''

Source: The David Project

creator of the documentary "The Forgotten Refugees" about Jewish exiles

from Arab lands

Deadly cease-fire

Israel and Jihadist Threats - Editorial

Abbas and Hamas are currently demanding that Israel extend the Gaza "cease-fire" to the West Bank and end its successful anti-terror operations there. It's a deal that no Israeli government could possibly agree to.
(Washington Times)