Iranian Sleeper Cells in the US?

On "24" the Araz family was part of an Iranian sleeper cell planning attacks on the US



A book that features an Iranian sleeper cell planning attacks on the US

 

 

Next 9/11: Iran's death squad is here -Reza Kahlili

 

Iran has infiltrated a team of Quds Force terrorist leaders into the United States to attack from within in 2013, according to a source. The source within the office of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the team is to create instability in America through terrorism should the U.S. fail to accept the regime’s illicit nuclear program, increase sanctions, confront Iran militarily or intervene in the Syrian civil war.

Members of the team each lead cells totaling about 50 terrorists already in the U.S.

Details of the terror plot, meant to disrupt the West, have been passed on to U.S. officials, who are taking countermeasures. The source said the team members, unlike the alleged Iranian operative Manssor Arbabsiar, who was arrested in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C. in 2011, are highly trained and sophisticated.

The team leaders are all senior Revolutionary Guard officers who were recruited for this specific mission nine years ago on the recommendation of the Quds Force commander, Qassem Soleimani, and with the approval of security advisers to Khamenei.

Most of the team members have been in America for a year; a few were successfully placed here about five years ago.

Information and pictures of potential targets have been submitted for Khamenei’s approval, the source added. They include high-voltage towers to create blackouts, cell towers, water supplies, public transportation and various other buildings belonging to the Defense Department and military.
[WorldNetDaily]

[Hat tip: Joe Smiga]

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Islamic Supersessionism

Islamic Supremacy Alive and Well -Diana Muir Appelbaum

Supersessionism refers to the belief that Christians have superseded Jews in a new covenant with God. [Note: not all Christian subscribe to this belief...some Christians maintain that both covenants are active]

Islam, too, sees itself as superseding all previous divine revelation but, unlike Christianity, which canonized the Old Testament embedding long centuries of pre-Christian history into the Christian narrative, Islam freely erases history itself.

Islamic supersession can be understood in two senses, as replacement and as erasure. Going forward, Islam will supplant all other faiths. But Islam also controls the time before the birth of Muhammad; it claims to have preexisted all other faiths with the Qur'an preexisting all other scripture. Because Islam has always existed, all children are born Muslim although their parents may rear them in another faith. The proof text is in the reported words of Muhammad: "Every child is born according to God's plan; then his parents make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian [Zoroastrian]."

The claim that Islam has always existed effectively erases all that went before Muhammad. The notion that Islam is the final, true faith, divinely ordained to rule everywhere, has driven Islamic imperialism for 1,400 years.

Supersessionist erasure can also be enacted on the landscape. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was superseded by the erection of the Dome of the Rock, bolstered by the myth of Muhammad's "Night Journey" to Jerusalem, erasing the pre-Islamic history of the temple and, with it, all Christian and Jewish claims. In later cases, however, sites are incorporated into Islam as symbols of Islamic imperial triumph. So it was when the great cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople, originally built in 360, was converted into a mosque by Sultan Mehmet II in 1453.

The fact that Christians and Jews continued to live under Muslim rule reinforced Islamic triumphalist beliefs because as "protected people" (dhimmis), they publicly acknowledged their legal and institutional inferiority to Muslims. But with the rise of European nationalism during the nineteenth century, Islam encountered Christians and eventually Jews who claimed political and religious equality with Muslims and even rights to sovereignty in lands that had hitherto been part of the domain of Islam. Christian or Jewish sovereignty and equality challenge Islamic supersessionism.
[Middle East Quarterly]
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Pink Floyd and Hamas

Too many psychedelic drugs may have clouded the judgment of Pink Floyd's Roger Waters

 

 

The above video highlights Roger Waters' flirtation with Hamas and Israel bashing

 

 

The Dark Side of Roger Waters 

 

Roger Waters, composer, lyricist, singer and bassist for rock mega-group Pink Floyd, has also become a "hero to genocidal terrorists" in his later life, notes watchdog group Eye on the UN.

For millions of people worldwide who hold Pink Floyd's music dear to their hearts - the video may be a cause for some serious reflection on whether being a musical genius says anything about a person's morals, historical judgment and political acumen.

[Virtual Jerusalem]

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Children Are Our Future

How Israelis and Hamas Comfort Their Children -Samuel Heilman

In a radio report on the BBC, a Gaza teacher describes the "therapy" provided for young Palestinian children traumatized by the eight days of war. To allow them to express their feelings, the little children were taken to a public square and lined up. Some were dressed in the green uniform of Hamas fighters and were "armed" with toy machine guns that they were encouraged to shoot in the air at Israelis. Then an Israeli flag was placed on the ground in front of them and set ablaze while all the youngsters stamped on it and screamed epithets of hatred toward Israel and Israelis, with the encouragement of their teachers.
   
This stands in sharp contrast to the children in the Hof Ashkelon region [of Israel] who were "welcomed by a clown and a man dressed as a panda bear who hugged them and danced with them." In these episodes, we can see the future. For the children of Gaza it is one in which hatred of the Israeli supersedes all else. For the children of Israel, it is a need to be taught again to smile in the face of trauma.
    
As long as the dream of a Palestinian boy is to lob bombs and rockets at Israelis, or Palestinian youngsters heal themselves by pretending to shoot Israelis and express loathing for them, there is neither hope for peace nor likelihood of a decent future for the Palestinian people. Those who encourage the Palestinians to see the source of their victimization in Israel are only paving the road to this dead end. The true enemy of the Palestinians is the hatred of Israel that they and others nurture and encourage.
The writer is a distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College, CUNY.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Obama Silent on Syrian Chemical Weapon Use

 

In the video above, President Obama promises dire consequences should Syria's Assad use chemical weapons.  Obama has been silent since such weapon use was reported on Christmas Day. 

 

Syrian Rebels Report 18 Cases of Chemical Attacks  -Roi Kais

 

Free Syrian Army official Louai Muqdad told Asharq al-Awsat: "The opposition recorded 18 separate cases of chemical weapons attacks in the outskirts of Damascus, Idlib, Homs and Hama."

He said Assad was using a new type of toxic gas and estimated that the Syrian regime had only recently obtained the new weapons.

 

Asharq al-Awsat further reported the commander of Syria's military police, Maj.-Gen. Abdulaziz al-Shalal, has defected and joined rebel forces.

(Ynet News)

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UPDATE:

Western Intelligence Sources Confirm Syria's Use of Paralyzing Chemical Agents
-Ron Ben-Yishai 

Over the past few months Syrian rebels have been reporting on the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. A few weeks ago Western intelligence sources learned that the rebels' reports were accurate.
    
A close examination of footage and other material by experts in the West proved that the regime's army has in fact been using paralyzing chemical agents for a few months now against the rebels and civilians who support them.
(Ynet News)
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Palestinian Strategy: Burning Bridges

Palestinians Burning their Bridges -Jonathan S. Tobin

The Palestinians have spent the last 20 years converting a strong Israeli majority in favor of the peace process into one that regards the whole concept as a dangerous fantasy.  

But rather than attempt to restart peace talks or to convince Israelis that the Palestinian goal is to end the conflict rather than to merely continue it on more advantageous terms, the Palestinians are planning on doubling down on their negative image. The PA plans to use its enhanced status at the UN to pursue specious charges of war crimes against Israelis in the International Criminal Court and advocate for sanctions and boycotts against the Jewish state.
   
While heightening Israel's isolation may seem like a smart thing to do in Ramallah, it won't do a thing to give the Palestinians a better life or to get them closer to peace or independence. By choosing to avoid the obvious path to peace, the Palestinians are burning their last bridges to the Israeli people.
(Commentary)
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How Christians Are Fairing in the MidEast

The Jerusalem Municipality distributes free Christmas trees to local Christians

Christianity Close to Extinction in the Middle East -Edward Malnick

Christianity faces being wiped out of the "biblical heartlands" in the Middle East because of mounting persecution of worshippers, according to a new report, entitled Christianophobia, by the Civitas think tank.

The report quotes estimates that between half and two-thirds of Christians in the Middle East have left the region or been killed in the past century.
     
It says the most common threat to Christians abroad is militant Islam, claiming that oppression in Muslim countries is often ignored because of a fear that criticism will be seen as "racism." It warns that converts from Islam face being killed in Saudi Arabia, Mauritania and Iran and risk severe legal penalties in other countries across the Middle East. 
(Telegraph-UK)
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The Sorry State of the Palestinian Movement

How the World Enabled 25 Years of Palestinian Decline
-Evelyn Gordon 

• After 25 years of fighting Israel in every possible way, all the Palestinians have to show for it is 25 years of steady decline. Despite massive international aid, Gaza's per capita GDP has remained virtually flat, totaling $817 in 1987 and $876 in 2010.
  
• To add insult to injury, neither terror nor diplomatic warfare succeeded in preventing Israel from flourishing over those years. The sadder part of the story is that none of this has managed to persuade the Palestinians that such tactics are self-defeating.
• Yet the international community has played a crucial role in enabling the Palestinians' counterproductive tactics, cushioning them from the consequences of their bad decisions with more than four times as much per capita aid as any other nation receives. Gaza's situation may not be rosy, but it outranks more than 110 countries in terms of both life expectancy and infant mortality.
• As long as international aid is keeping them relatively comfortable, Palestinians feel little incentive to change their tactics.
• Far worse, however, is that by offering the Palestinians almost unstinting diplomatic support while relentlessly criticizing Israel, the world feeds Palestinian fantasies that these tactics will someday succeed - that eventually, the world will force Israel to its knees. So why would Palestinians conclude that they are the ones who need to change their behavior?
  
• For all its vaunted concern for the Palestinians, it seems the international community would rather let them suffer another 25 years of steady decline than try to wean them from their failed strategies.

(Commentary)


Building Blocs -Editorial

While a strong majority of Israelis has consistently supported a two-state solution for well over a decade, Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank have remained unwavering in their irredentism and if anything have grown more extreme in their rejection of a Jewish state existing anywhere in "Palestine."

It is Palestinian intransigence, not Jewish building in consensus Jerusalem neighborhoods and settlement blocs, that is the real obstacle to a negotiated peace and a two-state solution. Most Israelis understand this.
(Jerusalem Post)


Salam Fayyad's Call for an "Economic Intifada"? -Khaled Abu Toameh

Salam Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, this week called for an economic intifada against Israel in response to Israel's decision to seize tax revenues belonging to the PA in order to cover Palestinian debts to the Israel Electric Company. Many Palestinians refuse to pay water, electricity and other bills because they believe the international community should be covering all their expenses. Others refuse to pay because they believe the money eventually falls into the hands of corrupt PA officials.

Fayyad is hoping that by calling for an economic intifada, he will succeed in diverting growing anger and frustration on the Palestinian street towards the Israelis. This has always been the PA's way of avoiding responsibility for anything that goes wrong.
(Gatestone Institute)


Nine UN Resolutions Against Israel, Silence about Syrian Attacks on Palestinians
-Elliott Abrams

On Dec. 18, the UN General Assembly adopted nine resolutions against Israel. [But] perhaps the most striking event in the Middle East this past week was the attack on a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. At the Yarmouk camp, roughly 100,000 Palestinians are said to have fled after air strikes that killed dozens of people. On this, the General Assembly is silent, while it repeats its litany of complaints against Israel.

The logical conclusion is that the UNGA isn't interested in Palestinians except as a weapon with which to attack Israel. When someone else acts, and actually attacks Palestinians, that's too bad but isn't of widespread interest.
(Council on Foreign Relations)


Palestinians Aim to Isolate Israel -Mohammed Daraghmeh

Palestinian officials are plotting a series of tough steps against Israel. Emboldened by their newly upgraded status at the United Nations, the Palestinians are talking of filing war crimes charges against Israel, staging mass demonstrations in the West Bank, encouraging the international community to impose sanctions, and ending the security cooperation that has helped preserve quiet in recent years.

The Palestinians also talk of increasing the "popular struggle," a term they use for demonstrations against Israeli soldiers.
(AP)


Israel: Palestinians Seeking Confrontation -Itamar Eichner

"Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is seeking to incite a confrontation with Israel," the Israel Foreign Ministry said, following the Palestinian leader's announcement that the PA will actively try to isolate Israel in the international community.
     
"The Palestinians' tragedy is that instead of dedicating efforts to building themselves, they are focusing on trying to harm Israel. Instead of building their future, they are immersed in attempts to ruin ours."
(Ynet News)
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Christian Reflection on Israel

Saturday People, Sunday People -Jennifer Rubin

Saturday People, Sunday People is a new, mesmerizing book by Lela Gilbert, subtitled "Israel Through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner." Gilbert is able to pierce a number of myths about the Jewish state and find the essence of a country that is not, contrary to the popular perception, consumed by war and death.
    
Israel's answer is to defy death by living joyously and intensely. She is transfixed by the celebratory spirit, the national love affair with music and the gritty determination to build, rebuild and thrive in spite of wars, terrorist attacks and, as she vividly describes, shelling by rockets.
    
Through personal experience, she demolishes the notion that Israel is an apartheid state. Indeed it is one of the few places in the Middle East in which Arabs and Jews intermingle in everything from politics to shopping.
(Washington Post)
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Crazies With Weapons

This cartoon speaks for itself



Family "Reunification" Deadly

Muhammed Mafarja, sleazeball jihadist who used Israel's liberal "family reunification" policy to spread carnage

Israeli Court Indicts Palestinian Bus Bomber -Yaniv Kubovich

The Tel Aviv District Court indicted Mohammed Mafarja [pictured], a Palestinian residing in Israel as part of the family reunification plan, who planted a bomb on a Tel Aviv bus on Nov. 21, wounding 28 people. Other Palestinians arrested for participating in the bombing, who were linked to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, were from the West Bank village of Beit Lakiya.
(Ha'aretz)
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How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Will End

Daniel Pipes call this "The Oslo handshake to nowhere"
Sep. 13, 1993: (L-R) Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, Yasir Arafat

Israel at Peace -Daniel Pipes, PhD

I am optimistic [Israel] will survive. Several reasons lead me to this conclusion.

First, Israel is strong. The country is characterized by military prowess, high technology capabilities, a strong economy, a booming energy sector, robust population growth, and cultural creativity. Over time, it grows increasingly more powerful than its enemies.

Second, Israelis show a historically unprecedented willingness to compromise. The Israelis' having returned a captured Sinai Peninsula three times to Egypt (in 1949, 1957, and 1982) has no parallel in the history of war and diplomacy. Nearly all the territories Israeli troops conquered in 1967, with the exception of historic Jerusalem, has been open for discussion since just a week after their seizure. In the history of warfare and negotiations, no victor has shown such a willingness as Israel to make "painful concessions" to reach a deal...

Third, no state of hostilities goes on forever. Circumstances change, new enemies appear, old angers dissipate, willpower grinds down. Even the longest lasting conflicts eventually get solved. The English and French states, for example, fought each other for over seven centuries before they finally reached an "Entente cordiale" in 1904, allying in the face of an emerging German foe and since then remaining steadfast (if irascible) allies. The Arab-Israeli conflict, one century old, also will not continue unendingly.

One has to wonder for how long the Palestinians and their supporters can sustain their goal of eliminating Israel. As the generation of 1948 refugees dies off, will its children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and further progeny continue to dream of a future in Jaffa or Haifa, rather than where they actually live? How long can they mortgage their lives to an ever-more remote irredentism?

Fourth, Palestinians will realize that blind devotion to extremist and rigid ideologies leads to a dead-end. This process has already begun. For example, interviews with extremist Palestinian leaders of an earlier era – Nayef Hawatmeh, Ahmed Jibril, Leila Khaled, and Mohammed Oudeh – shows how the passage of time has changed their perspectives and led to the acknowledgment of basic mistakes. Hawatmeh, leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, notes that "After 60 years, we are struggling for what we could have had in 1947. We have missed many historic opportunities." Oudeh, planner of the Olympic games attack in 1972 that killed 11 Israeli athletes, says that "maybe, just maybe, we should have shown some flexibility. Back in our days, it was 'the whole of Palestine or nothing.' But we should have accepted a Palestinian state next to Israel."

Hawatmeh and the others forwarded a nationalist agenda which time has passed by and that now has little appeal. The same, no doubt, will happen to today's favored ideology; however strong they are today, the Islamist forces of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hizbullah shall also lose their vitality one day, and their old men will express a similar remorse about opportunities missed.

So, yes, the conflict will come to an end.

Before an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was actually signed in 1979, it was assumed that this would lead to a general ending of the conflict because Egypt is the strongest enemy of Israel. That assessment turned out to be wrong because the signature of a military autocrat (Anwar el-Sadat) persuaded few others. For several years in the 1980s, I focused on the Syrian government, arguing that "The conflict will go on until Syria follows Israel's other three neighbors and resigns itself to Israel's existence; once this happens, the struggle will come to a rapid end." That also turned out to be wrong, for Damascus commands little loyalty among Islamists, professors of English, or members of the United Nations. Instead, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are key. When they tire of conflict, it will end.

The conflict will go on for about another generation and may be resolved in about the 2030s. This estimate is based on the assessment that the conflict was ripe for peace twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the Kuwait war and the Soviet collapse but was derailed by a combination of Israeli naiveté and Palestinian deceit. Only now, after a long and painful detour, have Israelis begun to figure out the mistakes of diplomacy they made in the Oslo Accords and succeeding efforts. Starting about now, it could take about twenty years for the correct path to lead to a breakthrough.

The Oslo process of 1993-2000 showed that compromise is not, in fact, a solution. As in most conflicts, the end of hostilities requires someone to lose and someone to win. The war terminates either when Arabs accept the sovereign Jewish state or when Israelis give up the Zionist project. It ultimately comes down to a raw question of which side will first crush the other's will. The alternatives are stark and dual; efforts at mitigation actually only postpone a resolution.

An Israeli victory destroys extremism and actually liberates the Palestinians from their present plight. Only when Palestinians give up on their anti-Zionist dream of destruction will they be able to invest their efforts to creating an attractive polity, economy, society, and culture. Only when Palestinians give up destroying can they build.

Each of us must do his part to make sure the conflict ends with a positive outcome.
[The Dorchester Review]
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UPDATE:

Israel's New Islamist Neighborhood -Reuel Marc Gerecht

Israel may one day be accepted by its Arab neighbors and by its most deadly foe, Iran - but only when Arab and Iranian Muslim identities allow for it. At best, that change is decades away.

Modern Islam's great internal tug of war, between the search for authenticity and the love of modernity, must quiet before the Israeli-Palestinian clash can end.
The writer, a former Middle East specialist at the CIA, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
(Wall Street Journal)
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Palistinian's Future Leadership

After Abbas -Jonathan Schanzer

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is 77, a heavy smoker, and an incessant traveler. In 2010 he was admitted six times to a Jordanian hospital for unspecified health reasons. This raises the inconvenient question: Who will follow in his footsteps? Right now, the answer is Hamas. According to Palestinian Basic Law, Article 37, if the presidency of the PA becomes vacant, "the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council shall temporarily assume the powers and duties of the Presidency." The current speaker is Hamas' Aziz Dweik.

Of course, succession does not always proceed according to law, and the PLO could still appoint someone from its own ranks. However, a power struggle is a recipe for another ugly clash between the PLO and Hamas. Abbas refuses to name a successor. He has no vice president and no heir apparent. 
The writer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department, is vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 
(Foreign Policy)
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Money for Morsi: Funding Egypt's Moslem Brotherhood

Major Lending Effort to Boost Egypt Faces Delays -Howard Schneider

The U.S. and a coalition of international lenders are pushing ahead with billions of dollars in loans for Egypt, despite the violent political turmoil, hoping to head off a destabilizing economic collapse.

The International Monetary Fund had hoped to move forward this month on a $4.8 billion loan for Egypt, but over the weekend, President Morsi reneged on imposing tax increases that the IMF had expected as a way to help bring down the country's budget deficit. On Tuesday, the IMF said that the Egyptian government asked to delay further work on the loan.
(Washington Post)
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Jerusalem: Division Impossible

 

This videobite is well done and informative

 

 



A Divided Jerusalem Will Not Stand - Nir Barkat (Wall Street Journal)

• Here in Jerusalem, we stand saddened and appalled by the EU ministers who condemn construction projects that are well within the municipal borders of Jerusalem, while ignoring calls from the leader of Hamas for the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.
  
• Isn't it ironic that many in Europe who recently celebrated 25 years of the reunification of Berlin are at the same time calling for the division of another capital on another continent?
  
• By 2030, the city's population will expand to one million residents from 800,000 today (33% Muslim, 2% Christian and 65% Jewish). Where does the world suggest we put these extra 200,000 residents?
  
• The expansion of Jerusalem's residential areas is essential for the natural growth of all segments of our population. It enables Jewish and Arab families alike to grow and remain in the city. The capital of a sovereign nation cannot be expected to freeze growth rather than provide housing to families of all faiths eager to make their lives there.
  
• As for "E-1," this land has always been considered the natural site for the expansion of contiguous neighborhoods of metropolitan Jerusalem. "E-1" strengthens Jerusalem. It does not impede peace in our region.
• Jerusalem has been and forever will be the heart and soul of the Jewish people. It is also the united and undivided capital of the State of Israel.
  
  The writer is the mayor of Jerusalem.

Twitter Assists Terror

Facebook Shuts Down Taliban Recruiting Account -Caitlin Dewey
   
Over the weekend, Facebook shut down a recruiting page for the Pakistani Taliban.

At the same time, Hamas' Twitter account, @alqassambrigade, has nearly 43,000 followers.
(Washington Post)
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UPDATE:


Is Twitter Above the Law? -David Brog 

Twitter must certainly recognize that not everyone is entitled to the privilege of a Twitter account. If a Mexican drug cartel used the site to brag about its latest mass beheadings, I suspect that Twitter would shut them down.

So why is Twitter allowing a terrorist group with American blood on its hands to operate freely on its service? The military wing of Hamas - the Ezzedeen al-Qassam Brigades - uses a twitter account to threaten Israeli civilians and brag about the missiles they fire at Israeli population centers. We are not talking about law-abiding citizens who sympathize with Hamas. Such independent advocacy is clearly and completely protected by the First Amendment. What we are talking about here is a page run by the terrorists themselves.

The U.S. government has designated Hamas as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It is illegal for any U.S. company to provide "material support" to such an organization.
(Roll Call)
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Clueless Tom

Clueless Tom Friedman of the New York Times

Do Israel's Defensive Measures Undermine Peace? -Dan Margalit

In his Dec. 7 column, New York Times writer Thomas Friedman made the strange claim that Israel's separation fence and its Iron Dome air defense system are hindrances to Israel, because they allow our leadership to feel like it doesn't have to make efforts to advance peace.
    
Friedman's claim is perplexing, as both the fence and Iron Dome are defensive in nature. They save lives.
    
By this logic, the prompt medical treatment of terror victims by Magen David Adom ambulances must undermine peace as well.   
(Israel Hayom)
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"The Deadly Israeli House"

Above, a dangerous, subversive activity.
Below, Daniel Greenfield displays a poignant pen, in this powerful indictment.

The Deadly Israeli House -Daniel Greenfield

There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its bricks 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 DC. Genocide is equally not worthy of attention when in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment downwind from Jerusalem.

Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it can't expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and filling it with Jews. Since the Sudanese Jews are as gone as the Jews of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and good old Afghanistan, the chances of Bashir the Butcher pulling off that trick are rather slim.

Due to the Muslim world's shortsightedness in driving out its Jews from Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad to Jerusalem, the ultimate weapon in international affairs is entirely controlled by the Jewish State. The Jewish State's stockpile of Jews should worry the international community far more than its hypothetical stockpiles of nuclear weapons. No one besides Israel, and possibly Saudi Arabia, cares much about the Iranian bomb. But when Israel builds a house, then the international community tears its clothes, wails, threatens to recall its ambassadors and boycott Israeli peaches.

You can spit on the White House carpets and steal all the gold in Greece. You can blow up anything you like and threaten anyone you will, but you had better not lift a drill near Gilgal, where Joshua and a few million escaped Hebrew slaves pitched their camp.

Some may think that genocide or nuclear weapons are the ultimate weapons, but as we see, time and time again, the ultimate weapon is a hammer and a fistful of nails in a Jewish hand. How can even the most talented Iranian nuclear scientist hope to compete with the humble tools of a Jewish carpenter?

Obama has yet to respond to the Muslim Brotherhood coup in Egypt. The gangs of paid rapists assaulting women in Tahrir Square on behalf of the Sharia state are nothing for the White House to worry about. Tunisian protesters against Islamist rule are losing their eyes, but Tunisian eyes come and go, Jewish houses are forever.

Everyone has their standards and he and the international community have theirs. There are things that we all cannot abide. And for all the Miss America answers about ending war, hunger and people who wear plaid in public, the one thing that everyone will stand up against or sit down in opposition to is the Israeli house.

White House officials are already insisting that Netanyahu "humiliated" Obama by authorizing the building of houses. This is the worst Israeli crime since two years ago when the city of Jerusalem passed some houses through one stage of a multi-stage approval process while Biden was visiting the country.

Hillary called it an insult and spent two hours yelling at Netanyahu over the phone. Axelrod declared it an affront. Biden was so furious that he refused to come down for dinner until an hour later. For weeks the media howled that Netanyahu had humiliated Obama through the dastardly act of allowing one of the country's mayors to approve housing while the sacred presence of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr was intersecting with Israeli airspace.

While Russia may threaten war against the United States, China may mock the United States at a ceremonial banquet in the White House, Iran and North Korea may play Obama for a fool, but only Israel has managed to achieve official recognition for "insulting and humiliating" Obama, without even trying, proving once again that the Jewish race is so talented that it often achieves things that other people may only dream of, without even realizing that they are doing it.

Now that Netanyahu has gone to the mattresses, literally, by authorizing new housing, the media has begun braying that Israel has humiliated Obama all over again. They say that every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. But every time an Israeli jackhammer roars, Obama stands, like that famous trash-mourning fake Indian, off Highway 1 between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, with a tear slowly making its way down one glistening cheek at the sight of another humiliating Israeli house.

According to the New York Times, which is never wrong, building more houses makes peace impossible. Peace, which is not in any way obstructed by rockets, suicide bombers, unilateral statehood bids and declarations of war, comes up against only one obstacle. The stout unyielding wall of the Israeli house. You can shell Israeli houses, bomb them and break inside to massacre the people living inside, but then after all that, Israel goes and builds more of those damn things.

Hamas shoots thousands of rockets and Israel builds thousands of houses. But Israeli houses generally stay where they're built, while Hamas rockets are as likely to kill Gazans as they are to put holes in the roofs of those dastardly houses. And in the arms race between houses and rockets, the Israelis appear to be winning. And that's not good for peace. If Israelis get the dangerous idea that they can just keep building houses and outlast all the talented rocketeers who spend their time with the Koran in front of one eye and the Anarchist's Cookbook in front of the other, then what hope is there for peace?

That is why no one cares much about Hamas rockets, which only kill Israelis, who most reasonable people in London, Paris and Brussels think have it coming anyway, but get into a foaming lather about an Israeli house. Killing Israelis has never been any obstacle to peace. Twenty years of killing Israelis has not dissuaded a single Israeli government from sitting down at the table to dicker with the terrorists. But an Israeli family living in a house is holding down territory that it will be harder to then cede to terrorists when the angels have blown their horns, the seas have all gone dry and peace is carried in on a golden platter by 72 virgins accompanied by their flying suicide bomber mates.

The problem is an old one. Pharaoh struggled with it. So did Hitler. And so does Hamas. What do you do when there are too many Jews living. The answer is usually obvious.

Click here for the full article
[The Sultan Knish]
[Hat Tip: Linda F]
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Assad's Chemical Weapons

Assad May Take Chemical Weapons with Him in a Retreat
-Mitch Ginsburg

Israeli experts noted that the movement of Syria's chemical weapons could well be defensive.

Assad might be seeking to keep the nerve agents out of the hands of rebels, who are said to be battling near one of his chemical weapons sites, and to ready them for transportation in the event that the president and his clan are forced to flee Damascus.
     
"I see the developments as a card he's holding against a slaughter at the hands of the Sunnis," said Ely Karmon, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the IDC Herzliya.
(Times of Israel)


Why Assad Won't Use His Chemical Weapons -Charles P. Blair

It remains doubtful that Damascus is at the point where the use of chemical weapons against rebels makes tactical or strategic sense.
   
Designed for use in large-scale, state-to-state warfare, Syria's chemical weapons are particularly unsuited for the urban fights that have characterized the civil war.
    
Close-quarters combat renders chemical weapons not only ineffective but counterproductive; with sarin or VX, a simple wind shift could turn the deadly agent against the Syrian military.
   
The greater threat remains terrorist acquisition of chemical weapons if the military loses control over relevant sites and facilities.
   
The good news is that few terrorist groups would actually be able to use any materials they acquired. Nerve agents require precision and perennial care. Absent the scientific expertise to maintain and replenish various precursors, many of the agents' purity rates will degrade.
    
Depending on how the particular precursor or agent is stored, its shelf-life could diminish rapidly.
The writer is senior fellow on state and non-state threats at the Federation of American Scientists.
(Foreign Policy)
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Christians Who 'Get It' on Israel

Christian Support of Israel -Editorial

Just two months ago, Jewish leaders were shocked by a letter signed by 15 leaders of mainstream Christian churches calling on Congress to reconsider aid provided to Israel because of alleged human rights violations.

That is why it is so refreshing to read the "Jerusalem Declaration" released this week by representatives of mainline Protestant churches calling themselves the Protestant Consultation on Israel and the Middle East (PCIME).

Representatives of Methodist, Anglican and Lutheran churches, among others, rightly noted that "the forces that refuse to tolerate the existence of a Jewish state are fiercely intolerant of other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East." The document cited Coptic Christians in Egypt and Assyrian Christians in Iraq as examples of religious minorities that are regularly persecuted at the hands of "aggressive Islamist movements." In contrast, Christian citizens of Israel "enjoy equal rights of citizenship and a good standard of living despite occasional frictions."
(Jerusalem Post)
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