Hizbullah-Iran Terror Strike Meant to Distract From Nuke Development

Jerusalem Post video highlighting the terror attack in Bulgaria

Screenshot of terror sleazeball dressed as an American tourist

The bus being carted away

Why Iran Is Targeting Israelis Abroad -Michael Widlanski 

     Hizbullah and Iran have been concentrating on generally "soft" targets away from Israel for two reasons: They're easier to hit than targets in Israel, and they make it harder for Israel to justify a direct reprisal on Iran or Hizbullah.

     Israeli strategists also believe that Iran and Hizbullah are using the attacks to force Israel to lose its focus on Iran, undermining Israel's drive to stop Iran's nuclear program.

     Israeli intelligence believes there are more Iranian-directed terror squads trying to attack Israelis.
(New York Post)
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Time for More Surgery -Hirsh Goodman

     In the early 1970s, a spate of attacks hit Israeli targets around the world, with the 1972 attack on the Israeli delegation to the Munich Olympics being only one of many examples. Prime minister Golda Meir entrusted Aaron Yariv, a former head of Military Intelligence, to deal with the issue. Her orders to Yariv, as he later recounted, were simple: Cut off the head of the snake, she said, and the body will die soon after, and with that gave him a mandate to go after the terrorist leadership wherever they may be.

     With systematic efficiency and in silence, Yariv's team surgically removed dozens of key international terror operatives, often on the soil of countries friendly to Israel. Boats sank, cars exploded, rifles fired backwards, grenades went off unexpectedly early, supposed businessmen died getting into their limousines on the streets of Paris and others fell onto the rails of oncoming subways.

    Now we have yet another cycle of international terror being directed against Israelis. So it's time for more surgery. Terror, unfortunately, is something we know a lot about. Let the professionals deal with the problem and the surgeons do their work.
The writer is a senior research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
(Jerusalem Post)
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UPDATE:

Holding Iran Accountable for Terrorist Attacks -Editorial
The Bulgaria bombing, in which five Israelis were killed, was the ninth plot pinned on Iran this year and the third this month. The string of attacks offers a stark answer to the question of whether the regime of Ayatollah Khamenei is prepared to compromise with the West.

The international response to Iran's terrorism should be far more vigorous than it has been so far. If Iran suffers no consequences from its acts of terrorism, they will continue.  
(Washington Post)

Behind the International Terrorism Campaign of Hizbullah and Iran
-Yoram Schweitzer

The deadly terrorist attack in Bulgaria is part of a combined, planned, and ongoing terror campaign waged by Iran and Hizbullah over the last year against Israeli and Jewish targets. The immediate background is the desire for revenge and the drive to create a balance of terror against Israel in light of what Iran and Hizbullah see as Israel's campaign against them.

It may be that Iran is determined to draw Israel into a harsh reaction against Hizbullah in Lebanon in response to terrorist attacks abroad. This would divert Israel from Iran, and perhaps even Syria. If an attack against an Israeli airplane results in the deaths of hundreds of Israelis, Israel would be forced to respond very harshly against Hizbullah in Lebanon and perhaps also against Iran.

Precisely for this reason it is best for Israel to respond at a time of its own choosing, in a targeted and covert fashion, against the perpetrators and those who dispatch them, rather than be drawn into a violent war.
(Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University)
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Missing An Opportunity...Again

Abba Eban famously oberved: "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity"

Israel Is in Good Shape -Barry Rubin

On the surface, the surge of revolutionary Islamism certainly looks bad for Israel, but [i]nternal battles will disrupt Arab armies and economies, reducing their ability to fight against Israel.

As for Iran, it has lost virtually all of its non-Shia Muslim assets, notably Hamas. In general, Arab Sunni Islamists don't like either Iran or Shia Muslims and are certainly not going to follow Tehran's lead. The big Middle East conflict of the future is not the Arab-Israeli but the Sunni-Shia one.

The Palestinians threw away the greatest opportunity they've ever had. The Obama administration was ready to become the most pro-Palestinian government in American history. Instead, the Palestinians refused to cooperate with Obama, rejecting his initiatives and refusing even to negotiate with Israel. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, the PA repeatedly showed the U.S. government that it was the intransigent party.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Clinton Visit Protested by Egyptian Christians

Christians demonstrated outside Mrs Clinton's hotel over U.S. support for the Islamist government

Clinton & Islamist President Morsi

Clinton and General Tantawi, the real leader in Egypt and currently the only thing restraining Islamist President Morsi from implementing Muslim Brotherhood policy

Hillary's motorcade pelted with tomatoes and shoes

Hillary Clinton was targeted by protesters who threw tomatoes and their own shoes at her motorcade during a visit to Egypt. Demonstrators also mockingly chanted 'Monica, Monica' in reference to Bill Clinton's extra-marital affair.

The Secretary of State was on her first trip to Egypt since the election of the country's new Islamist President, Mohammed Morsi.

During the protests in Alexandria, a tomato struck an Egyptian official in the face, and shoes and a water bottle landed near the armoured cars carrying Mrs Clinton's aides.

A senior State Department official said that neither Mrs Clinton nor her vehicle, which were around the corner from the incident, were struck by any of the projectiles.

She also met the country's top general, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, on Sunday to discuss Egypt's turbulent democratic transition as the military wrestles for influence with the new president. The meeting came a day after she met Mr Morsi, whose powers were clipped by the military days before he took office. Speaking after the meeting, Mr Tantawi said the army respected the presidency but would not be deterred from its role of 'protecting' Egypt.
[Daily Mail]
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Exclusion of Israel at Counter-Terror Conference Raises Concern -Michael Widlanski

Top U.S. administration officials have said they think Egypt's Brotherhood is moderate. In response, IDF Maj.-Gen. Amos Gilad observed, "[Egyptian President] Morsi says 'I want an Islamic caliphate (empire) whose capital is Jerusalem,' and what do they [the Americans] say: 'Don't believe him. He doesn't really mean it.' Well, he does mean it."
(Algemeiner)
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Israel's Anti-Trafficking Efforts Lauded

Israel Improves Human Trafficking Record -Nathan Guttman

From nailing pimps to cracking down on forced labor, Israel is doing a much better job of preventing so-called human trafficking, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of State.

Trumpeting successes like the convictions of a pimp who sold Eastern European women into sex slavery for $5,000, Israeli officials say they are proud to have made the top tier of an annual report on the issue, put out by the United States.

“We didn’t do this to satisfy the State Department,” said Rachel Gershuni, national anti-trafficking coordinator at Israel’s Ministry of Justice. “We did it because Israel thought it was the right thing to do.”

The upgrade means that, for the first time, the United States regards Israel among the countries actively fighting trafficking of people for prostitution and slavery and taking care of trafficking victims.
[The Forward]
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The French Get It Right

60 Years of Friendship between Israel and France - Joint Issue
These stamps commemorate the 60th anniversary of the first flight from Israel to France and of the State of Israel's independence. That flight symbolizes the beginning of the ties and cooperation that exist between the two countries.

France Penalizes Boycott of Israeli Products -Peter Martino

[T]he Supreme Court of France ruled that publicly calling for the boycott of Israeli products is a case of incitement to discrimination on the basis of nationality, and as such is illegal under French law.

France is the only country in Europe where calling for a boycott of Israeli products has been prohibited.

In France, calling for a boycott of Israeli products is treated in the same manner as would be a call for a boycott of Islamic products.

(Gatestone Institute)

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"The Islamist Ascendancy"

The Islamist ascendancy: What the Arab Spring has wrought
-Charles Krauthammer

Post-revolutionary Libya appears to have elected a relatively moderate pro-Western government. Good news, but tentative because Libya is less a country than an oil well with a long beach and myriad tribes. Popular allegiance to a central national authority is weak. Yet even if the government of Mahmoud Jibril is able to rein in the militias and establish a functioning democracy, it will be the Arab Spring exception.

Tunisia and Morocco, the most Westernized of all Arab countries, elected Islamist governments. Moderate, to be sure, but Islamist still. Egypt, the largest and most influential, has experienced an Islamist sweep. The Muslim Brotherhood didn’t just win the presidency. It won nearly half the seats in parliament, while more openly radical Islamists won 25 percent. Combined, they command more than 70 percent of parliament — enough to control the writing of a constitution (which is why the generals hastily dissolved parliament).

As for Syria, if and when Bashar al-Assad falls, the Brotherhood will almost certainly inherit power. Jordan could well be next. And the Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing (Hamas) already controls Gaza.

What does this mean? That the Arab Spring is a misnomer. This is an Islamist ascendancy, likely to dominate Arab politics for a generation.

Genuinely democratic rule may yet come to Arab lands. Radical Islam is the answer to nothing, as demonstrated by the repression, social backwardness and civil strife of Taliban Afghanistan, Islamist Sudan and clerical Iran.

The only thing we can be sure of today, however, is that Arab nationalism is dead and Islamism is its successor. This is what the Arab Spring has wrought. The beginning of wisdom is facing that difficult reality.
[Jewish World Review]
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Feminist Army

The Israel Defense Forces: First for Women -Nick Hopkins

The Israeli military is the most progressive in the world in terms of gender equality. Almost one-third of the force and 50% of its officers are female. Some 92% of roles are now open to women.

In the UK, only 13% of the armed forces are women, while there are only slightly more in the U.S. army (13.4%).
(Guardian-UK)
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With New Islamist President, Calls Emerge for Destruction of Pyramids



This ancient statue was destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001, complaining that the Buddhas represented polytheistic idols


The Islamist pyramid scheme -Editorial

Radical Muslims want to tear down Egypt’s pyramids and take over the world. The least the rest of us can do is take them seriously.

Islamist political victories in Egypt have invigorated the debate in certain circles over what to do with the country’s historical sites, or as the extremists call them, the symbols of pagan idolatry. The most pious Muslim theologians do not see the ancient statues, carvings and pyramids as important tourist destinations so much as affronts to their beliefs. Bahraini Sunni leader Abdal-Latif al-Mahmoud called on the Egyptians to “destroy the Pyramids..."

Others [in Egypt] plan to bring this same degree of common sense and tolerance to the rest of the world. This week a group called the United Muslim Nations International released a 23-page pamphlet entitled “The Global Islamic Civilization: The Power of a Nation Revived” which outlines a plan for Islamic world domination.

The group’s leader, Sheik Farook al-Mohammedi, writes in the plan that “Christianity should be destroyed and wiped from the face of the earth,” along with all faiths other than Islam. He maintains that “submission to Allah” will be the future of the “Islamic State of America” and “Eurabia” and other parts of the world not currently under the sway of Shariah.

Lest anyone dismiss the notion that any government would be so foolish as to destroy the only surviving ancient wonder of the world, the threat is real. The Taliban set the modern standard when they ruled Afghanistan. In 2001, they dynamited the monumental, 1,500-year-old Buddha statues carved into a mountain face at Bamiyan.
[The Washington Times]
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UPDATE:

The U.S.-Egyptian Relationship -Aaron David Miller

•Beneath the "isn't democracy wonderful (and messy)" platitudes emanating from the State Department, three fundamental contradictions are likely to keep America's ties with Egypt in the doldrums for some time to come.

•First, the democracy problem. The good news is that Egypt has competitive politics; the bad news is that the two forces that are competing - the military and the Muslim Brotherhood - are inherently undemocratic, perhaps even anti-democratic, both in structure and philosophy.

•Secretary of State Clinton can give rousing speeches in defense of democracy, but the Obama administration lacks real leverage, or at least leverage it's prepared to use. The $1.5 billion in U.S. military aid will continue to flow (for now) because without it we'll have no influence; and after providing so much aid to authoritarian Hosni Mubarak, how can we now cut assistance as Egypt tries to democratize?

•Second, the Israel problem. The intimacy of the U.S.-Egyptian relationship began as a direct result of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. If the Egypt-Israel relationship goes south (and it will), how do we expect to keep the U.S.-Egypt relationship on the rails?

•The military will abide by the letter of the treaty, but the spirit - comatose for some time now - may go into complete arrest as Egyptian public opinion plays a greater role in setting the tone on Israel. The bet is that as the anti-Israel rhetoric gets hotter, so will U.S. congressional reaction.

•Third, the Egyptians-hate-our-policy problem. In the latest Pew polls, 76% of Egyptians had an unfavorable view of the Obama administration; Shibley Telhami found that 85% had an unfavorable view of the U.S. in general. Support among our politicians and the public for aiding countries that criticize America is going to contract.
The writer is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.
(Los Angeles Times)

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Israeli Settlements are Legal

Settling Truths -Editorial

•Three legal experts on a government-appointed advisory body have concluded that the 45-year-old settlement project, which has reunited the Jewish people to land resonating with Jewish history dating back thousands of years, cannot in any way be construed as an international crime.

•Backed up by their intimate knowledge of international law, they argue that the British Mandate, which was ratified by the League of Nations, called for the creation of "a national home for the Jewish people" in the territory west of the Jordan River, including Judea and Samaria.

•The 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine never replaced the British Mandate since it was rejected by both the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee and by the states of the Arab League. While in the wake of Israel's War of Independence, Jordan seized control of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and parts of Jerusalem, Jordan's sovereignty was never recognized by the international community.

•Thus, the territory enjoys a unique status in international law as land that has never been unequivocally set aside for a specific people by the international community.

•While these conclusions might not succeed in convincing Israel's detractors that settlements are legal, at least the plain truth has now been reiterated - for the record.
(Jerusalem Post)
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UPDATES:

Settlements' Legality Won't Prevent Peace -Jonathan S. Tobin

The release of a report on the legality of Israel's presence in the West Bank commissioned by Prime Minister Netanyahu is being widely dismissed by critics of his government as well as those of the Jewish state. Opposition to the settlements is so deeply entrenched that there is no argument, no matter how grounded in logic or justice, that would persuade those committed to the myth settlements are the only obstacle to peace, that they are not illegal.

But those horrified by the fact that Israel is willing to assert that it has rights in the West Bank that are as worthy of respect as those of the Arabs, are not just wrong about the legal arguments. Their assumption that a belief in the settlements' legality makes a peace deal impossible is equally mistaken. The assertion of Jewish rights merely means Israel has a leg to stand on when negotiating the permanent status of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The Palestinians are unwilling to recognize Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. It is that reluctance to give up their opposition to Jewish sovereignty even inside the Green Line that prevents peace. So long as the Palestinians are encouraged to believe they can uproot all of the Jews, including those living in the Jewish settlement known as Tel Aviv, it won't matter what the legal scholars say.
(Commentary)
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Palestinians Defy West by Embracing Iran



This poster is a spoof.  The story below is, unfortunately, true.

Abbas to Attend Tehran Summit -Avi Issacharoff

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will visit Tehran in late August to attend a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, after he was invited by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Palestinian officials said.
(Ha'aretz)


Abbas Decision to Attend Iran Parley Irks Israel -Herb Keinon

Israeli officials slammed PA President Mahmoud Abbas for accepting an Iranian invitation to attend a conference in Tehran. "Abbas has to get off the fence and decide whom he is with," one official said. "He cannot on the one hand say he believes in peace and reconciliation, and on the other hand embrace Hamas and the Iranian leadership." The official said Abbas could not tell Israel he was a partner for peace "if he is a partner with these extreme elements."

One diplomatic official in Jerusalem said the question should not be as much why Abbas is attending, but rather why the Non-Aligned Movement is holding a meeting in Iran in the first place.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Presbyterian Christians Almost Pass Anti-Israel Resolution, While Their Fellow Christians Suffer Under Islam

A monastery in Mishtaya, Syria.  The Presbyterian's did not discuss the plight of their co-religionists in Syria.

U.S. Presbyterians Reject Israel Divestment

The Presbyterian General Assembly voted 333-331, with two abstentions, to reject a proposal Thursday to divest from three companies that do business with Israel. Major Jewish groups from across the political spectrum had lobbied furiously against the measure. The American Jewish Committee said the proposal demonized Israel and threatened Christian-Jewish relations.
(AP)

 
Syria's Threatened Christians -Daniel Brode, Roger Farhat & Daniel Nisman

Last month, Christian residents of the Syrian city of Qusayr received an ominous warning: Either join the Sunni-led opposition against Bashar al-Assad or leave. Soon after, thousands of Christians fled the town.

Throughout the years, Christians, like many other minorities in the region, have lent their support to those regimes that have guaranteed their security and religious freedom. Watching their once-shielding dictators fall like dominos across the region, Christians have suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of history. Faced by a rising tide of radical Sunni Islam, Christians in Iraq and Egypt have fled by the thousands.

In March, Islamist militants went door to door in neighborhoods of Homs, expelling local Christians. Of the more than 80,000 Christians who lived in Homs prior to the uprising, approximately 400 remain today. As rebel forces continue to chip away at Assad's control over the country, Syria's Christians continue to be expelled or held at the mercy of an increasingly extremist Sunni opposition.
(New York Times)
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UPDATES:

Yes, It's Personal -Editorial

The one continuous message many Presbyterian leaders have sent in the run-up to the vote in Pittsburgh, is that it's nothing personal. They say they really have a deep respect for the Jewish community and that they hope these measures will promote a lasting peace. Sorry, but we don't buy that...

To lay the blame for the failed peace effort squarely at Israel's feet is to ignore way too many facts on the ground, not to mention facts of history. And to banter the word "apartheid" around, is nothing more than incitement by the Presbyterian Church USA.

This is personal to the Jewish world, and the PC (USA) needs to know that.
(Jewish Chronicle-Pittsburgh)
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U.S. Presbyterians Boycott Israeli Cosmetics Company Ahava -Ran Dagoni

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA voted 457 to 180 to boycott Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories Ltd. and Hadiklaim Israel Date Growers Co-operative Ltd.

One delegate said he opposed the boycott because his dermatologist highly recommended Ahava products.
(Globes)
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Bizzaro Palestinian Claims on Arafat Death

Suha Arafat, who refuses to release her husband's French medical records, nonetheless is calling for an exhumation of his body, in a bizarre attempt to pin Arafat's death on Israel.  Arafat is thought by some to have died from AIDS contracted from homosexual affairs. Until Mrs. Arafat releases the medical records, speculation on his diagnosis will continue...and Palestinians will continue to spread bizarre rumors to demonize Israel.

"Polonium Found on Arafat's Clothing Was Planted" -Yaakov Lappin

The high levels of the radioactive poison polonium reportedly found on the belongings of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat indicate that the toxin was planted on them long after his death, Dr. Ely Karmon of the Institute for Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya said.

Polonium has a half-life of 138 days, "meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months." Yet, eight years after Arafat's death, Swiss scientists reported finding polonium at high levels. "If it had been used for poisoning, minimal levels should be seen now. Yet much higher levels were found. Someone planted the polonium much later."

Karmon also asked: "If Suha Arafat safeguarded these contaminated materials, why, after seven years, was she not poisoned too?"
(Jerusalem Post)
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UPDATES:

The Real Arafat Mystery… Where’s the Money?

[Y]ou [s]hould see story after story about Suha Arafat living the jet set lifestyle, shuttling between homes in France and Malta, all funded by the ill-gotten gains of Palestinian corruption. But you don't.

You don't hear how, after Arafat's death, Palestinian Authority leaders reportedly agreed to pay Suha $22 million a year out of secret accounts.

You don't hear how at one time Suha had stayed in the luxury Bristol Paris Hotel and had rented an entire floor for herself and her assistants at a cost of $16,000 a night.

You don't hear about the money-laundering investigation conducted by French authorities into Suha's finances.

You don't even hear about the warrant issued by Tunisian authorities seeking to question Suha in connection with the theft of money intended to fund a school.

And, despite her current protestations that she wants the truth to prevail and seeks to learn the cause of Arafat's death, at the time of his illness, Suha would not even allow medical testing to be done. In fact, Palestinian leaders tried to bribe her into allowing them access to Arafat, at one point offering her $2 million which she rejected.

In the meantime, Finance Minister Nabil Kassis recently announced that the Palestinian Authority could not pay their employees and said the PA financial crisis is "the worst" in three years. This is true despite the fact that international donors, including the United States, have given the PA billions of dollars over the years.

Therefore, one has to ask what happened to the PA money? Where does Suha Arafat get the money to live her lavish lifestyle? And... Where's the coverage?
[CAMERA]
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Israel: We Never Physically Harmed Arafat -Daniel Estrin

A former Israeli official denied that Israel poisoned Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, as France prepared to begin an investigation into his possible murder. Dov Weisglass, chief of staff to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the time of Arafat's death in 2004, said Israel had no reason to physically harm the Palestinian leader, who was confined to his headquarters in Ramallah for the last two years of his life.

"We did not physically hurt him when Arafat was in his prime...so all the more so we had no interest in this kind of activity when he was politically sidelined," Weisglass told Israel's Army Radio.

When Palestinian doctors said Arafat was very ill and needed to be evacuated for treatment in France, Sharon immediately agreed, so Israel could not be accused of exacerbating his illness.
(AP)


Arafat Probe Is Fuel for Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theorists -Jonathan Kay

It's tempting to think that the French investigation finally will put to rest conspiracy theories about Israel's involvement in Arafat's death. But history counsels otherwise. Conspiracy theories are never extinguished by official investigations. Furthermore, conspiracy theorists have a special fondness for Jews, and Zionist Jews in particular.
(National Post-Canada)

Has Shamir Been Vindicated?

Yitzhak Shamir, of blessed memory, whose legacy includes the airlifting of 14,000 Ethiopian Jews

Yitzhak Shamir's Perspective -Daniel Gordis

•About a year ago, I was standing with Yitzhak Shamir's son, Yair, at a reception in Tel Aviv. At the end of our conversation, Yair said to me: "People ask, 'Must the sword devour forever?' And the answer is 'Yes, it will.'" I was dumbstruck. In the American, suburban home in which I was raised, we were taught that war was an aberration. Conflict is solvable.

•Yair's startling comment, one his father surely would have made, was a reminder of what has undoubtedly been the single most difficult dimension of making aliyah - learning to accept, however grudgingly, that the moral assumptions of my old life are wholly inapplicable to the place my family now calls home. The Middle East is not a Hebrew-speaking version of the comfortable, safe, suburban Baltimore in which I'd been raised. I had moved, Yair unintentionally reminded me, from the land of Jeffersonian optimism to the land of hard-edged biblical realism.

•Ours is not the world that Shamir and his generation inherited. Ours is a world in which the Jews are secure, and largely safe, in no small measure as a result of what those men and women did. Are we foolish enough to imagine that the British relinquished their hold on the colonies because early colonial Americans signed petitions? American Revolutionary heroes knew exactly what Shamir and others knew: The British would leave when the costs became too high.

•Yitzhak Shamir knew what he had seen, both in Europe and then in the Arab world, and he knew what it meant. He was no less ambivalent about the Arabs than he was about the Poles and refused to vote for Begin's peace treaty with Egypt. He thought Israel was paying far too high a price. Today, with the Muslim Brotherhood's rise to power in Cairo and with Israel now missing the Sinai as a buffer, is it possible that he was right?
The writer is Senior Vice President at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.
(Tablet)

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Back Handed Compliment: Hamas Official Admits That Killing Was Too Brutal for Israeli Agents

Experts: Israel Didn't Kill Hamas Man in Damascus -Yaakov Lappin

Israel was not behind the assassination of Hamas operative Kamal Ranaja in Damascus, Israeli security experts told the Jerusalem Post.

Former senior Mossad member Rami Igra said, "Practically, it's not reasonable that Israel or a Western country would settle accounts with a man like this, at this stage, in Syria....He's not important enough....With certainty I can say, it was not Israel."
(Jerusalem Post)


Damascus Hit "Too Cruel for Mossad" -Smadar Peri

Arab media reported that Kamal Ranaja suffered a particularly brutal death. Assassins broke into his apartment, interrogated him under torture and murdered him. They then cut off his head, placed the severed body parts in a closet and set the apartment on fire.

"The Mossad would have killed him differently, this was not its MO," said Mohamed Hifawi, a member of the Local Coordination Committees in Syria on behalf of Hamas. "Israeli assassins would have done it quicker and cleaner and would not have wasted time needlessly abusing the body."

"The way the body was mutilated and the attempt to burn the house are all methods that point to the involvement of the (Syrian) security forces," he told AFP.
(Ynet News)
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Great Start for Egyptian Pres

Perpetrator of the first World Trade Center bombing.  The new President of Egypt seeks his release, probably in exchange for keeping the peace treaty with Israel.

Egypt's New Leader Wants U.S. to Release Convicted Sheik -David D. Kirkpatrick

In a televised speech to tens of thousands of supporters in Tahrir Square, President-elect Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood promised to work for the release of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian-born militant Islamist convicted after the 1993 World Trade Center attack of plotting to bomb several New York City landmarks.
(New York Times)
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Obama's spectacular failure -Caroline Glick

By calling for Rahman's release, Morsi has aligned himself and his government with the US's worst enemies. By calling for Rahman's release during his unofficial inauguration ceremony, Morsi signaled that he cares more about winning the acclaim of the most violent, America-hating jihadists in the world than with cultivating good relations with America.

And in response to Morsi's supreme act of unfriendliness, US President Barack Obama invited Morsi to visit him at the White House.
[Jewish World Review]
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Palestinian Victimhood and The Anatomy of a Photo

The above video makes the case that media is easy manipulated by Palestinian propaganda

Myths & The Fabrication of Palestinian History



Palestinians exploit Jesus in a bizarre narrative



Golda Meir: "There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was not as though there was a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."
As quoted in The Washington Post (16 June 1969)

Fabricating Palestinian History -David Bukay

The vast literature proving the historic Jewish connection to the Land of Israel has been extensively manipulated and distorted as part of the Palestinian politics of nationalism.

Propaganda, indoctrination, and socialization, are essential parts of the strategy and tactics of asserting Palestinian nationhood. By appropriating to themselves the values, traditions, and historical facts that belong to the Jews, Palestinians have managed to fabricate a "legitimate" history and political traditions out of nothing while denying those of Israel.

Rewriting the history of the Land of Israel by erasing Jewish history and replacing it with a fabricated Palestinian history is a central goal of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The Palestinian leaders claim lineage from ancient history, describing the Canaanites as their direct ancestors. In the words of the PA president Mahmoud Abbas: "We said to him [Netanyahu], when he claimed the Jews have a historical right dating back to 3000 years B.C.E., we say that the nation of Palestine upon the land of Canaan had a 7,000-year history. This is the truth that must be said: Netanyahu, you are incidental in history. We are the people of history. We are the owners of history."

Palestinian scholars and media have touted the claim that the Palestinian Arab nation has been rooted in its land for thousands of years since the human settlement of the "Arab-Palestinian-Canaanite" city of Jericho—the oldest city in the history of human civilization. In their claim, the history and heritage of Jericho confirm the Arab-Palestinian-Canaanite narrative concerning the entire Palestinian land, from the sea to the river, and negate the false Zionist narrative. Jericho allegedly proves that the Palestinian nation is the most ancient and earliest of all, whose roots are the most deeply dug into history.

Palestinians also declared themselves to have been the center of historical events and peoples found in the Bible in the form of the Edomites, Amorites, Midianites, Amalekites, Ibrahim bin Azar (biblical Abraham), and al-Khadir (Prophet Elijah).

To claim that Palestinians are the original inhabitants of the Land of Israel not only goes against secular history and scientific knowledge, but it also flies in the face of Islamic religious history. Not only do the Islamic scriptures recognize the unique Jewish claims to the Land of Israel, but there is no reference whatsoever to any Palestinian people dwelling on any land called Filastin during any part of Islamic history until the twentieth century.

Another Palestinian tactic is aimed at co-opting Christianity. For the PA leaders, Jesus is defined as a Palestinian who preached Islam, thus denying not only Jewish history and Christian legitimacy but also strengthening ancient Palestinian history. Jesus is a shahid, a holy martyr of Islam, the only Palestinian prophet, and the first Palestinian shahid who was tortured in this land.

Palestinian Arabs, as opposed to Arabic-speaking residents, have not been in the area west of the Jordan River from the Islamic occupation, from the Ottoman Empire, or even from British rule since 1917. No Palestinian state has ever existed, and so, no Palestinian people has ever been robbed of its land. There is no language or dialect known as Palestinian; there is no Palestinian culture distinct from that of surrounding Arab ones; and there has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians at any time in history. For these reasons, Palestinians have been driven to fabricate a past by denying and expropriating that of Jews and Israel.

Only after the Palestinian leadership comes to terms with Israel's legitimacy and recognizes it as a Jewish state can one begin discussing the emergence of a Palestinian state that lives in peace beside the State of Israel.

David Bukay is a lecturer at the School of Political Science in the University of Haifa.

[Middle East Quarterly]

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UPDATE:

Fabricating Palestinian History -Shaul Bartal

The tactic of denying a Jewish past to sites and holy places in the Land of Israel is of relatively recent vintage. Both in 1925 and again in 1950, Palestine's Supreme Muslim Council recognized the Temple Mount as a holy site for Jews in its A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif: "Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which 'David built there an altar unto the Lord.'"

The Western Wall, the place at which Jews have prayed for millennia, has been renamed by Muslims the Wall of al-Buraq after the tethering place of the horse on which the prophet Muhammad rode in his night flight to "the farthest mosque." [But t]he Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-66) reaffirmed Jewish rights to worship at the wall, and three centuries later, the Muslim ruler Ibrahim Pasha (son of Egypt's viceroy Muhammad Ali) issued a decree regarding the site that allowed Jews "to pay visits to it as of old."
The writer is a lecturer on Palestinian affairs at Bar-Ilan University.
(Middle East Quarterly)
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Who Lost Egypt?

Supporters of Mohamed Morsi

Who Lost Egypt? -Bret Stephens

•Don't console yourself with the belief that the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is merely symbolic, since the army still has the guns: The examples of revolutionary Iran and present-day Turkey show how easily the conscripts can be bought, the noncoms wooed and the officers purged.

•Don't console yourself with the idea that now the Islamists will have to prove themselves capable of governing the country. The Brotherhood is the most successful social organization in the Arab world. Its leaders are politically skillful, economically literate and strategically patient.

•Don't console yourself with the expectation that the Brotherhood will play by the democratic rules that brought it to power. "Democracy is like a streetcar," Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's Islamist prime minister, observed long ago. "When you come to your stop you get off."

•Don't console yourself, finally, with hope that Egypt will remain a responsible, status quo player on the international scene. By degrees, Egypt under the Brotherhood will seek to arm Hamas and remilitarize the Sinai. By degrees, it will seek to extract concessions from the U.S. as the price of its good behavior. By degrees, it will make radical alliances in the Middle East and beyond.

•Who lost Egypt? The Egyptians, obviously. They chose - albeit by a narrow margin - a party that offers Islamic stultification as the solution to every political and personal problem. By the time they come to regret their choice, they won't be in a position to change it.
(Wall Street Journal)
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Associated Press Promotes Sexy Terrorists

Terror chic [with rocks in hand] being promoted by the AP

Outrageous: AP turns terrorists into "art"

It's bad enough that wire services stage photos and pretend that they are news. But this takes it to another level - it is at attempt to elevate terrorism into art under the thin guise that it is news. It is romanticizing terror.

AP is a disgusting organization.
[Elder of Ziyon]

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Israel's Green Initiatives

The video above highlights Israel's green technology initiatives