Muslim American: "Profile Me...Please"

In the video above, Asra Nomani, a Muslim American, advocates religious profiling in airport security

VideoBite 1947: 10 Minute History Lesson

Nov 29, 1947: The Story of a Vote

Eyewitness accounts of the November 1947 UN vote to partition Mandate Palestine into two states

[Aish HaTorah]

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Stranger than Fiction: Iranian Airport sports Jewish Star

Iran Outraged as Star of David Revealed on Airport -Nayef Zidani

A satellite image of Tehran airport taken by Google Earth [pictured above] has outraged Iranian government officials as it reveals a Star of David on the roof of the headquarters of the national carrier Iran Air.

Iranian media explained that the building was constructed by Israeli engineers during the time of the Shah.
(Al-Arabiya)
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Palestinian National Band: music of hate

Group that Sings about Destruction of Israel Named National Band by Abbas

-Itamar Marcus & Nan Jacques Zilberdik

The Alashekeen song and dance group that has recently performed hate and violence promotion songs in the Palestinian Authority, has been honored and turned into an official Palestinian national band by decree of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
(Palestinian Media Watch)
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WikiLeaks Reveals that Arabs pressed US to hit Iran

Saudi Arabia Urges U.S. to Attack Iran Nukes -Ian Black & Simon Tisdall

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the U.S. to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program, according to leaked U.S. diplomatic cables that describe how other Arab allies have secretly agitated for military action against Tehran. 

"He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with U.S. Gen. David Petraeus in April 2008.

The leaked U.S. cables also reveal that officials in Jordan and Bahrain have openly called for Iran's nuclear program to be stopped by any means, including military.
(Guardian-UK)


Arab States Scorn "Evil" Iran -Ian Black

Leaked U.S. State Department cables catalogue a litany of complaints from the Saudis and smaller Gulf states, as well as Egypt, Jordan and others, on issues from Tehran's nuclear ambitions, to its involvement in Iraq and support for Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Palestinian Hamas. "You as Persians have no business meddling in Arab matters," Saudi King Abdullah was quoted as telling Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran's foreign minister. Abdullah declared: "May God prevent us from falling victim to their evil. We have had correct relations over the years, but the bottom line is that they cannot be trusted."

Abu Dhabi's crown prince and deputy commander of the UAE armed forces, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, referred to Iran as an "existential threat" and even suggested that the U.S. should send in ground forces if air strikes were not enough to "take out" Iranian nuclear targets. The UAE foreign minister is described as viewing "Iran as a huge problem that goes far beyond nuclear capabilities....Iranian support for terrorism is broader than just Hamas and Hizbullah. Iran has influence in Afghanistan, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and Africa."
(Guardian-UK)


Israel Tried to Coordinate Gaza War with Abbas -Barak Ravid

Israel tried to coordinate the 2009 Gaza war with the Palestinian Authority, classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks said, but both the PA and Egypt refused to take over Gaza in case of a Hamas defeat.
(Ha'aretz)
 
 
WikiLeaks Vindicate Israel -Yaakov Katz

WikiLeaks may have done Israel a service, presenting Arab leaders as more extreme in their remarks than Israeli leaders regarding the danger involved in allowing Iran to continue with its nuclear program.
(Jerusalem Post) 
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UPDATE: 

WikiLeaks Tell Us That Linkage Was Nonsense -Jennifer Rubin

The Obama team over and over again has made the argument that progress on the Palestinian conflict was essential to obtaining the help of the Arab states in confronting Iran's nuclear threat. We know that this is simply and completely false. The documents show that the Arab states were hounding the administration to take action against Iran.
(Commentary)
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Beautiful Gaza

Where's the Gaza Siege? -Roni Shaked

"Is this the Gaza we have been hearing about?" asked a Sudanese official who arrived about a month ago on the "Viva Palestina" aid convoy and was quoted by Palestinian news agency Maan.

"Where is the siege? I don't see it in Gaza. I wish Sudan's residents could live under the conditions of the Gaza siege," he added.
(Ynet News)
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Israel's Western Wall Heats Up

Western Wall Feud Heightens Israeli-Palestinian Tensions -Isabel Kershner

The prime minister of Israel strongly denounced a Palestinian Authority paper that denies any Jewish connection to the Western Wall, the iconic holy site and place of Jewish worship in the Old City of Jerusalem, describing the report as "reprehensible and scandalous." The episode appeared to signal a worsening atmosphere after a two-month hiatus in peace talks. Netanyahu's statement referred to a long article that appeared in Arabic on the Information Ministry Web site of the Western-backed Palestinian government.

The Western Wall is a remnant of the retaining wall of a plateau revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, the site where their ancient temples once stood. The Palestinian paper denying any Jewish historical connection with the site was written by Al-Mutawakel Taha, an Information Ministry official. In it, he stated that "the Al Buraq Wall is the western wall of Al Aksa, which the Zionist occupation falsely claims ownership of and calls the Wailing Wall or Kotel."

Palestinian officials have often denied claims of Jewish heritage in Jerusalem. Netanyahu said the Western Wall "has been the Jewish people's most sacred place for almost 2,000 years, since the destruction of the Second Temple." He added that the Palestinian Authority's denial of a Jewish link "calls into serious question its intentions of reaching a peace agreement, the foundations of which are coexistence and mutual recognition." Netanyahu called on the authority's leaders to disavow the document.
(New York Times)


Palestinians: We Won't Give Up a Single Stone

PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that the Wall is part of occupied eastern Jerusalem and that its historic, cultural, and religious characteristics must not be changed, Al-Hayat reported.
(MEMRI)


Western Wall Not Jewish Says Palestinian Official -Diaa Hadid

An official Palestinian report claiming that a key Jewish holy site - Jerusalem's Western Wall - has no religious significance to Jews evoked an angry response from Israelis. Decades of archaeology have shown that the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, was a retaining wall of the compound where the two biblical Jewish Temples stood 20 centuries ago. The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam's third-holiest site, is built atop the ruins. Al-Mutawakil Taha, deputy minister of information in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, said his study published on a Palestinian government website reflected the official Palestinian position.
(AP-Arab News-Saudi Arabia)


PA Study on Jerusalem's Western Wall a "Moderate" Outrage -Editorial

The PA's information ministry this week released an official "study" declaring that the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City - revered for 2,000 years as one of Judaism's holiest sites - isn't Jewish at all. In fact, claims the report by a senior ministry official, it is nothing more than the western wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and has only been a worship site for Jews since World War I - and then, only because of "Muslim tolerance."

This, it should be noted, isn't coming from Hamas. It emanates from the same "moderate" Palestinians whom President Obama and the rest of the world embrace, make concessions to, and trust with Israel's long-term security. What is contemptible is that those efforts increasingly are being endorsed by the world at large.

The whole point of this ongoing exercise is to erase any Jewish connection with the biblical Land of Israel - with an eye toward negating the modern state of Israel's existence.
(New York Post)
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Muslim Moderate Hero Condems Anti-Semitism

Tarek Fatah

Moderate Muslim Author Condemns Virulent Anti-Semitism Infiltrating Islam
-Barbara Yaffe

In his newly published book, The Jew Is Not My Enemy, Toronto author Tarek Fatah, 61, founder and former head of the Muslim Canadian Congress, argues that if Muslims in the Middle East have anyone to blame for their plight it's their own political and religious leaders. "Despite my solidarity with the Palestinian cause, I denounce anti-Semitism and refuse to hate either Israel or the Jewish people," says the Pakistani-born journalist, who immigrated to Canada from Saudi Arabia in 1987.

"By any rational standard, Muslims and Jews should have been, and could be, partners." Their faiths are similar, he says, and more unites than divides them. His book is a condemnation of the virulent anti-Semitism that has infiltrated Islam, a "medieval madness that is creating monsters within the Muslim community."

Muslims are told early and often by clerics and in religious tracts that Jews are the descendants of pigs and apes and the brothers of monkeys, that they annually sacrifice people to drink their blood. This nonsense has only been fueled by the spread of Wahhabism, courtesy of a wealthy "Saudi hate machine." He says clerics regularly close Friday prayers with a call to arms to defeat the Jews. By contrast, he notes, Jewish scriptures and teachings do not feature anti-Muslim preachings.
(Vancouver Sun-Canada)

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Climbing the Ladder But Not Ascending

Peace Process to Nowhere -Elliott Abrams & Michael Singh

A stand-alone border agreement is a mirage.

For Israelis, more important than where the border lies is what lies beyond it - what security arrangements will be put in place to prevent a barrage of rockets originating from the West Bank, as they now do from Gaza?
(Foreign Policy)


Bad Ideas Come from Bad Premises -Bret Stephens

The consistent willingness of Western news organizations to downplay stories about Palestinian illiberalism and thuggery goes far to explain why so much of the world misdiagnoses the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Settlements are a convenient alibi: They foster the illusion that the conflict can be resolved by Israeli territorial concessions alone. But if that were true, Gaza would have turned peaceful the moment settlements were withdrawn five years ago. The opposite happened.
(Wall Street Journal)
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Cyberattack worm used on Iran called a "Digital Warhead"



The Stuxnet cyber attack on Iran began with the use of a flash drive like the one above. 
The extent of the damage to the Iranian nuke program is unknown. 



Worm Can Deal Double Blow to Iran's Nuclear Program -John Markoff

German software engineer Ralph Langner, who in September was the first to report that the Stuxnet computer worm was apparently designed to sabotage targets in Iran, said that the program contained two separate "digital warheads," designed to disable both Iranian centrifuges used to enrich uranium and steam turbines at the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

He described two different attack modules that are designed to run on different industrial controllers made by Siemens. "It appears that warhead one and warhead two were deployed in combination as an all-out cyberstrike against the Iranian nuclear program," he wrote.
(New York Times)


UPDATES:

Iran's Nuclear Program Reportedly Struggling - Glenn Kessler

Iran's nuclear program has experienced serious problems, including unexplained fluctuations in the performance of the thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium, leading to a temporary shutdown. Speculation immediately centered on the Stuxnet worm, a computer virus that some researchers say was designed to target Iran's centrifuge machines so that they spin out of control.
(Washington Post)
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Report Suggests Problems with Iran's Nuclear Effort -William J. Broad

International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors reported that when visiting the main Iranian enrichment plant at Natanz on Nov. 16, they found that engineers had stopped feeding uranium into the long rows of centrifuges. Six days later, Iran said it had restarted the process.

Independent experts suggested that the computer worm suspected of being aimed at Iran's nuclear program had caused the machines to break down. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said the new disclosures made incapacitation from the Stuxnet worm "sound more credible."

American officials have not claimed responsibility for the worm, but they do say the Obama administration has stepped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran's nuclear program.
(New York Times)
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Pointed at Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv May Be Front Line of Next Conflict

Tel Aviv is likely to be on the front lines in the next large military confrontation, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, the head of Military Intelligence, warned the Israeli Cabinet.
 
"The quiet should not fool us," Yadlin said. "Our enemies are getting stronger and arming." "Iran's tentacles extend to all those who are working against Israel," he said. "In the next confrontation there is a likelihood that more than one front may erupt, and Tel Aviv will be turned into the front lines."
(Jerusalem Post)
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VideoBite: Saturday Night Live Hits Airport Security

The video above sports from SNL's recent dig at US airport security
CONTENT WARNING: Strong sexual inuendo

MidEast Conflict Is Not About Land

Never Again? -Leon De Winter

In A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism, Giulio Meotti, an Italian author and journalist, has written a monumental study of pain and grief, of mourning and remembrance, of hatred and love. Meotti makes clear that he considers Palestinian terrorism and Arab hatred of Israel and the Jews the continuation of Nazi anti-Semitism.

He shows that Palestinian and Arab rhetoric is focused on Jews - not just Israelis. The dream of the Islamists is to destroy the Jewish people, not just the sliver of land called Israel.

Meotti's list of murderous anti-Semitism by Palestinian leaders and media is exhausting. But it is a list the Western media ignore as it would destroy the prevailing narrative that the Mideast conflict is about land and Palestinian suffering. It isn't. It is about that old sickness, Jew-hatred. Meotti writes of "more than 150 suicide attacks carried out, plus more than 500 prevented. It's a black hole that in 15 years swallowed up 1,557 people and left 17,000 injured."

This 400-page study of Jewish love of life is indispensable for anybody who wants to understand Israel's position in the world and the tragic position of the Jews in history. There is the story of Massoud Mahlouf Allon. "He was mutilated, bludgeoned and beaten to death while giving poor Palestinians the blankets he had collected from Israelis," Meotti recounts. Or the disabled Arnad, who was blown up in the seat of his motorized wheelchair in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market.

This book doesn't dumb down evil. It doesn't try to understand terrorists as victims of their socio-economic circumstances, doesn't miscategorize them as poor or uneducated (they are often middle class) or driven allegedly to despair by the very same people they murdered. No, in A New Shoah, the terrorists remain what they are, the executors of a hate-filled religious ideology.
(Wall Street Journal)
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MidEast Cooperation behind the headlines

Scientists Dig Below Dead Sea to Probe Earth's History

An international team of scientists has begun drilling deep below the Dead Sea [pictured] in an effort to extract material that could provide an unusual look at Earth's history over the past 500,000 years.

The project aims to examine the layers of sediment left behind beneath the lowest place on Earth over the course of millions of years, providing clues about shifting weather patterns, seismic activity and climate change.

The governments of Israel and Jordan as well as the Palestinian Authority are co-operating with the project.
(Telegraph-UK)
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US Airport security is "theatre"

How Israelis Secure Airports -Michael J. Totten

While air travel terrorists have yet to use the same weapon twice, U.S. Transportation Security Administration agents look for the item the most recent terrorist used. Security officials should pay less attention to objects, and more attention to people. The Israelis do.

Israelis don't use security theater to make passengers feel like they're safe. They use real security measures to ensure that travelers actually are safe.

Even when suicide bombers exploded themselves almost daily in Israeli cities, not a single one managed to get through that airport.
(New York Post)
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Don't touch my junk -Charles Krauthammer

[T]he entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives - when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone.

The ultimate idiocy is the full-body screening of the pilot. The pilot doesn't need a bomb or box cutter to bring down a plane. All he has to do is drive it into the water, like the EgyptAir pilot who crashed his plane off Nantucket while intoning "I rely on God," killing all on board.

But we must not bring that up. We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. 
So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.
[Washington Post]
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Note: The partisan video above takes a low shot at "liberals," but the point is too valuable not to post. 

Obama: Promises, Promises

Struggling to Conclude Settlement Freeze Pact -Crispian Balme

Talks between Israeli and U.S. officials aimed at reviving Middle East peace negotiations have hit snags over incentives promised by Washington to persuade Israel to resume a freeze of Jewish settlement building. An Israeli official said the U.S. appeared reluctant to commit to paper all the promises Netanyahu says he was offered verbally last week.

Netanyahu's coalition allies demanded a written pledge from the U.S. to make clear the building freeze did not include east Jerusalem and to spell out there would be no U.S. pressure for any subsequent moratoria.

The Israeli official said there appeared to be a disconnect between the White House and State Department, with Obama unhappy that Clinton had offered so much.
(Reuters)


U.S. Statement on East Jerusalem Hard to Come By -Tovah Lazaroff

[F]ormer American ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer said [that] it was highly unlikely that a clear written commitment would be made.
(Jerusalem Post)


Settlement Subtleties -Gil Troy

Reducing the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the settlements is an act of historical vandalism, defaming the memory of nearly 30,000 Israelis, very few of whom died in settlement-related violence - most of whom died because of the continuing Arab refusal to accept Israel's existence. Obsessing about the settlements blames Israel while absolving the Palestinians of responsibility. It is a form of racism, condescendingly treating the Palestinians as if they are not accountable for their deeds and words.

It ignores the fact that Israel withdrew from 25 settlements in Gaza and Samaria in 2005, then endured thousands of rocket attacks and a Gaza takeover by Hamas, whose charter targets the entire Jewish state - and the Jewish people. It overlooks the fact that when Yasser Arafat led his people away from the Oslo negotiations back toward terror in 2000, Palestinians blew up Jerusalem buses, Tel Aviv felafel stands and Haifa cafes, treating all of Israel as a "settlement."

Traditionally, when countries fight, the winner keeps the territory. I challenge my historian colleagues to name one example when a country won a defensive war, then voluntarily returned the territory it conquered, if it had a prior claim to the land.
The writer is professor of history at McGill University and a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
(Jerusalem Post)
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VideoBite: Dennis Prager: MidEast Made Easy

The video above features author Dennis Prager presenting the Middle East conflict succcinctly

US Gov will now protect Jews on College Campuses

US Government To Protect Jewish Students From Harassment

After a six-year campaign, the U.S. Department of Education announced that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will now be interpreted and enforced to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic harassment, intimidation and discrimination. 

In October 2004, the ZOA filed a Title VI complaint with OCR on behalf of Jewish students at the University of California, Irvine.  The complaint alleged that students had been subjected to years of anti-Semitic harassment, intimidation and discrimination that the university knew about but failed to redress. 

Morton A. Klein, ZOA’s National President said, “when Jewish students are being harassed or intimidated, or facing a hostile anti-Semitic school environment, their schools will no longer be able to ignore the problem, or make token efforts to redress it.  There will now be financial and other consequences under federal law if colleges and universities do not respond to end the anti-Semitic harassment and prevent it from recurring."
[ZOA]
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Tobin: 'Clinton/Obama clueless'

Netanyahu Chooses the Lesser of Two Evils -Jonathan S. Tobin [pictured below]

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may be among the last people on Planet Earth to fail to understand that PA leader Mahmoud Abbas has neither the will nor the interest in signing a peace accord, no matter where Israel's borders are drawn. 

As much as Netanyahu would have been justified in bluntly and publicly telling Obama and Clinton that their demand for another freeze was wrong, that would have meant putting his country in the position to be accused of saying "no" to peace.
(Commentary)


Over to You, Mr. Abbas -Editorial

With Israel on board, in step rather than in friction with Washington, it is Abbas who should come under pressure to compromise - and to take positions that give his people, and ours, the opportunity for genuine reconciliation and a secure future.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Will Lebanon be taken over by Hizbullah?

Is Nasrallah's Hizbullah planning a coup? 

Hizbullah May Be Planning Lebanon Coup -Anshel Pfeffer

A report by a UN panel probing the assassination of former Lebanon Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which may indict top Hizbullah officials, could lead to Lebanon being taken over by Hizbullah, Army Radio quoted IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi as saying.

(Ha'aretz)

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