Re-elect Obama and then you find out whether we still have a nation. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Contortions abound! (See 1b below.)
Let's hear the other side! (See 1c below.)
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More commentary on exploitation by America's two top scam artists - Sharpton and Jackson.
No matter the circumstance it generally gets down to one simple matter - extricating or making money out of a tragedy. Truth be damned.
Wake up America! Stand up to these two clowns and their followers.(See 2 below.)
See PJTV: | |
Political strategist Matthew Dowd used the Trayvon Martin tragedy to attack Christians, and some media outlets even refer to the shooter, George Zimmerman, as a "white Hispanic." Steve Green, Scott Ott and Bill Whittle discuss these and other examples of how the mainstream media and the race-baiting left are using the Trayvon Martin tragedy to promote division within America.
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The Fed keeps sucking it up so the house of cards will not fall. (See 3 below.)
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Will Sharpton and Jackson be part of this crusade as well? Probably not because they know they can always extort money from Jewish Liberals.
At least we know Rev. Wright has lent his support. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)HURT: Obama’s ‘flexibility’ to lie after election
Turns out he’s not Kenyan after all. He’s KGB. All this time, people were worried that President Obama was born in Africa and that his radical agenda had been crafted by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky on the streets of Chicago’s South Side.ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Now we know his real radical hidden agenda is in service of the Kremlin.
Mr. Obama reached the darkest low of his presidency this week in South Korea when he was caught on an unseen mic plotting with the leader of one of our oldest adversaries to thwart the will of American voters and advance the interests of enemies who want to see the world’s last remaining beacon of freedom finally destroyed.
“On these issues — but particularly missile defense — this can be solved,” he tells Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, like in a scene from a Cold War spy movie.
But, Mr. Obama explains to his handler, he needs more time, and he needs to get into a position where he is no longer answerable to American voters.
“This is my last election,” he says. “After my election, I have more flexibility.”
Speaking in robotic Russian spy-speak, Mr. Medvedev promises to convey the message to incoming President Vladimir Putin: “I understand. I transmit this information to Vladimir.”
Not since the tapes of Richard Nixon has a U.S. president been caught uttering such sinister words in an unguarded moment. And, one could easily argue, Mr. Obama’s dishonest scheming puts Nixon to shame because it is American voters — not his political enemies — he is selling down the river.
It was particularly chilling to hear Obama’s words of betrayal uttered in such a familiar voice that has served to raise the hopes and inspire the dreams of so many of us. It is now official: We fell for a complete and total lie.
His cold, calculating message reveals a deep dishonesty many of us still did not dream Mr. Obama was capable of. It is a duplicity in allegiance unthinkable for an elected American president. Literally, he overrides the interests of American voters who will go to the polls with those of Moscow and Tehran, with whom he will deal after his re-election.
Understandably, our longest-standing and most steadfast friends in Poland and Israel shuddered with every deceitful word.
The question now is, Mr. President, what other secret deals have you made with our foreign enemies? What other tricks do you have up your sleeve that you plan to jump on us after you have been re-elected and we no longer have something you want?
Of course, don’t expect the press to ask any such questions. They largely laughed off the matter. “No shock or awe there,” Bloomberg News actually wrote in an editorial.
The stridently liberal and increasingly irrelevant Washington Post barely covered the story, except as just another technical goof-up with a microphone. The paper actually compared the incident to then-President George W. Bush inadvertently being caught calling a New York Times reporter a nasty name.
It is this incestuous and deeply un-American collusion between the press and Mr. Obama that gave the president the astonishing bravado to come out the next day and joke about the incident by asking: “Are the mics on?”
How do you say “hilarious” in Russian?
Is it any wonder so many people still do not believe Mr. Obama or the press when they say his birth certificate is real and he was born in the U.S.?
1a)Will President Obama - if Re-elected - Increase Pressure on Israel?
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) today called on the Obama administration to answer whether or not anyone in the administration asked any Arab or Palestinian leaders for "space" so that the administration can be more "flexible" after the election?
Last night on the Anderson Cooper's AC360 show, CNN contributor Ari Fleischer asked this question of Stephanie Cutter, Pres. Obama's 2012 deputy campaign manager. She refused to answer.
"President Obama's plea for space with Russian President Medvedev makes me wonder if he has done something similar with any Arab or Palestinian leaders," said Matt Brooks, the Executive Director of the RJC. "Given the President's worrisome track record on Israel, it's clear he wants to ratchet up pressure on Israel, but he doesn't want to lose the Jewish vote. The American Jewish community and Israel's friends in this country deserve to know whether President Obama has indicated to Arab or Palestinian leaders that if they give him space now, he will be more "flexible" with Israel after the election."
1b)Obamacare at the Court: Contortions All Around
More than any Supreme Court case in memory, the health care lawsuit has produced a tangle of constitutional positioning, with both the Obama administration and its challengers at various points contradicting themselves and making arguments they can’t possibly believe. There is plenty of blame for this situation to go around: You can blame the lawyers and politicians on both sides; you can even, in some respects, blame the Supreme Court justices themselves. But, whoever is responsible, it’s clear that the two-year litigation marathon over health care has served to cloud and confuse what should have been a fairly straightforward constitutional debate.
Consider the question that the Court took up on its first day of oral arguments: Should the justices decide the case now or wait until April 2015, when the first penalties for refusing to buy health insurance are due? The technical question is whether an 1867 law concerning taxes—the Anti-Injunction Act—should keep the Court from considering the health care suit until those who refuse to buy health insurance have been hit with a penalty. In order to decide this question, the Court has to determine whether the penalty associated with the individual mandate is or isn’t a tax. And that question has tied both the administration and its challengers in knots.
During the congressional debate, Democrats insisted that the health care mandate wasn’t a tax, while Republicans were equally vehement that it was a tax. Then, as soon as the ink was dry on the bill, both sides rushed into court and switched positions in light of their litigation strategies: Republicans decided the mandate clearly wasn’t a tax and was therefore not authorized by Article I of the Constitution, which allows Congress to pass tax laws; and the administration decided the mandate was a tax and was therefore both justified by Article I of the Constitution and protected from immediate legal challenge by the Anti-Injunction Act. Then the administration switched positions again and announced that the penalty for refusing to buy health insurance was a tax in the sense of being authorized by Congress’s taxing power, but wasn’t a tax for the purpose of preventing the Court from hearing lawsuits now rather than in 2015. As Justice Samuel Alito told the solicitor general on the first day of oral arguments: “General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax.”
This final contortion was driven by the hyper-legalistic scrutiny to which the Court is subjecting the health care law. In the minds of the justices, their decision to hold a historic three days of oral arguments may have been a sign of the meticulous consideration that they want to give to every detail in the case. But the result has been to force the administration’s lawyers to make transparently self-contradicting arguments. Couldn’t the justices have simply skipped ahead to the obvious conclusion that—as Justice Stephen Breyer suggested at oral arguments—the case doesn’t fit within the spirit or letter of the 1867 law? Indeed, since this seemed to be the consensus view among the justices, it’s not clear why they needed a full day of argument and scores of briefs on a point neither side asked the Court to address in the first place.
For more evidence of the contorted nature of the debate, consider the central issue in the case: the question of whether the health care mandate can be justified by Congress’s constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. The mandate’s challengers, led by Randy Barnett of Georgetown University, chose this line of argument because it was the one most likely to appeal to the conservative justices on the Court. The argument, in a nutshell, is that Congress unconstitutionally invaded states’ rights by passing the mandate. The catch, however, is that most conservative opponents of the health care law don’t believe this at all: They think that neither Congress nor the states can compel people to buy health insurance. But, since Barnett and the other challengers accurately calculated that none of the Court’s conservative justices would buy this argument, they declined to advance it. (The candid, but radical, argument that both federal and state health care mandates violate the liberty of contract by “[c]oercing commercial transactions” seems to appear in only one of the Supreme Court briefs—the one filed by the libertarian Institute for Justice.)
Some states are now contemplating the possibility of devising alternatives to the federal mandate if the Supreme Court strikes it down—alternatives that sound suspiciously like state-level versions of the federal mandate. If these laws pass, you can bet that some of the same pro-business groups that are currently challenging the federal mandate as a violation of states’ rights will rush back to court to challenge the new mandates as a threat to national uniformity.
The Supreme Court can go a long way toward putting an end to this mess with a clear ruling along the following lines: The suits can proceed, because the penalty for not buying health insurance isn’t a tax; and Congress has the power to impose a penalty on people who refuse to buy health insurance, because that decision has massive effects on interstate commerce. Still, even if the Court ends up at this point after all, it will be a shame that it took two years of unnecessarily contorted legal debate to get there.
Jeffrey Rosen is the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. This article originally appeared in the April 19, 2012 issue of the magazine.
1c)Why the health-care law might stand at the Supreme Court
This much is clear after two hours of Supreme Court arguments over the constitutionality of the individual mandate, which I was in the room to hear: The president's health-care bill won't rise or fall on a question of law, but on how the majority of justices define the health-care market.
The mandate requires all individuals above a certain income level to obtain health-care coverage. The National Federation of Independent Business and 26 states challenged the mandate as unconstitutional, arguing that Congress does not have the power to force individuals to buy private products. The government, for example, has the power to regulate the kind of muffler your car has, but it cannot force you to buy a car in the first place. Health-care should be no different — a point made forcefully at various times by Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito. If the government can mandate the purchase of health care, Scalia said, “what else can’t it do?”
Justice Stephen Breyer appeared to see the mandate and the market from a completely different point of view. Breyer at one point suggested that everyone automatically becomes a participant in the heatlh-care market as soon as they're born. Because no human being can escape illness, Breyer said, everyone will at some point require medical services; this includes those who cannot pay or those who lack insurance. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who embraced the same vision of the health-care market, argued that a person's refusal to buy health insurance is actually a choice to pass on potential health-care costs, and “they're making the rest of us pay for it.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan appeared on board with their fellow Democratic appointees.
Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy were obviously troubled by the prospect of an all-powerful federal government. “All bets are off,” Roberts said, if the court signs off on Congress's constitutional power to force individual purchases of health insurance.
Both also seemed at points receptive — albeit grudgingly — to arguments that the market for health care is unique and requires special consideration. Kennedy in particular seemed to soften near the end of the hearing, acknowledging the problem of the millions who are uninsured and pondering out loud about how the government could address that.
Predicting how justices will vote is always risky business. But I'd say there is still a good chance that the mandate is upheld by a 5-4 or 6-3 vote, with Kennedy in the majority in the first scenario and Kennedy and Roberts part of the six-justice majority in the latter.
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2)Exploitation of a tragic death
By Chad Groening and Charlie Butts -
The black community is being criticized for allowing some of its leaders to exploit the tragic death of a teenager in Florida.
The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that eyewitnesses have verified what shooting suspect George Zimmerman has claimed -- that he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in self-defense last month. Law enforcement authorities in Sanford, Florida, told the newspaper that witnesses have corroborated most of Zimmerman's account that Martin punched him, jumped on top of him, and began slamming his head on the sidewalk, leaving him bloody and battered.
Jerome Hudson is a spokesman of Project 21 - The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives. He says liberal black activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton clearly did not wait for the facts before stirring up anger against Zimmerman.
"The left has grabbed onto this situation -- and it is on purpose," he tells OneNewsNow. "His death is being used for all the wrong reasons. His mother is moving to trademark his name. They're dancing on his grave."
The Sentinel's report says an attorney for Martin's mother confirmed she had filed trademark applications for two slogans -- "Justice for Trayvon" and "I Am Trayvon" -- that could be used for such things as DVDs and CDs.
Hudson adds that he would not be surprised if President Obama sees this tragedy as a way of firing up his black voter base.
"I do have to agree with Newt Gingrich -- Why would the president make such a pointed comment about Trayvon Martin when he said 'If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon'? This is definitely being used for racial, resentment reasons," states the Project 21 spokesman, "and I don't put campaign and political expediency beyond it."
Hudson says the tragic death of this young man has been turned into a racial powder keg.
Jerome Hudson is a spokesman of Project 21 - The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives. He says liberal black activists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton clearly did not wait for the facts before stirring up anger against Zimmerman.
"The left has grabbed onto this situation -- and it is on purpose," he tells OneNewsNow. "His death is being used for all the wrong reasons. His mother is moving to trademark his name. They're dancing on his grave."
The Sentinel's report says an attorney for Martin's mother confirmed she had filed trademark applications for two slogans -- "Justice for Trayvon" and "I Am Trayvon" -- that could be used for such things as DVDs and CDs.
Hudson adds that he would not be surprised if President Obama sees this tragedy as a way of firing up his black voter base.
"I do have to agree with Newt Gingrich -- Why would the president make such a pointed comment about Trayvon Martin when he said 'If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon'? This is definitely being used for racial, resentment reasons," states the Project 21 spokesman, "and I don't put campaign and political expediency beyond it."
Hudson says the tragic death of this young man has been turned into a racial powder keg.
An 'insulting' display
Clenard Childress, a spokesman for L.E.A.R.N. and founder of Black Genocide.org, tells OneNewsNow that while his heart goes out to the Martin family, he cannot stomach the duplicity of black leaders like Jackson and Sharpton. (Listen to audio report)
"... To hear Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton basically point out the innocence of this individual and the civil rights of this individual -- when both of these men support the slaughter of the innocent in the womb -- is extremely hypocritical," he states.
Childress says that saddens him -- and that he finds it "quite insulting."
"[For them to] ignore the 1,786 African-American, defenseless, innocent babies who are mutilated and killed in the womb, whose civil rights have been denied and the American dream they have been disenfranchised from -- for [Jackson and Sharpton] to do this is extremely hypocritical."
In the eyes of Childress, the two civil right leaders are endorsing the taking of an innocent life in the womb at a time when African-Americans represent 12 percent of the population -- but 36 percent of abortions take the lives of African-American babies.
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3)WSJ: Fed Buying 61 Percent of US Debt
By Julie Crawshaw and Forrest Jones
The Federal Reserve is propping up the entire U.S. economy by buying 61 percent of the government debt issued by the Treasury Department, a trend that cannot last, Lawrence Goodman, a former Treasury official and current president of the Center for Financial Stability, writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion article published Wednesday.
"Last year the Fed purchased a stunning 61 percent of the total net Treasury issuance
up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis," Goodman writes.
Goodman also warns that U.S. economy and markets are “at risk for a sharp correction” if conditions aren’t “normalized.”
"This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits."
The U.S. government is growing increasingly more dependent on borrowing to finance itself, with net issuance of Treasury securities hitting 8.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on average per annum, more than double levels before the crisis.
Fed intervention in the government debt market makes demand for Treasury bonds appear higher than it really is, as foreign creditors and other investors have fled U.S. government debt instruments and are looking elsewhere until the government makes serious attempts to curb spending and narrow its gaping deficits.
Goodman notes that foreign investors like Japan and China that once scooped up U.S. debt are shunning it. In 2009, such foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to 6 percent of GDP and has since falled by over eighty percent to a paltry 0.9 percent.
Without foreign buyers and a shrinking base of U.S. corporate and bank buyers, the Treasury has had to resort to the Federal Reserve itself to make the purchases. The Fed purchasing not only makes up the shortfall, but can keep long term interest rates artificially low.
"The Fed is in effect subsidizing U.S. government spending and borrowing via expansion of its balance sheet and massive purchases of Treasury bonds. This keeps Treasury interest rates abnormally low, camouflaging the true size of the budget deficit," Goodman writes.
"Similarly, the Fed is providing preferential credit to the U.S. government and covering a rapidly widening gap between Treasury's need to borrow and a more limited willingness among market participants to supply Treasury with credit."
Political bickering on both sides of the aisle has prevented politicians from cutting spending and undertaking fiscal reform.
Arguing over the role of tax hikes versus spending cuts hit a fever pitch in 2011, when both sides in Congress waited until the last minute to agree to terms surrounding lifting the government's debt ceiling.
Should fiscal bickering return, expect investors in U.S. debt who are not employed at the Federal Reserve to take note, other experts say.
"If people dig in, the polarization will get worse, and that could be the worst outcome for markets," says Eric Stein, vice president and portfolio manager at Eaton Vance in Boston, according to Reuters.
© 2012 Moneynews. All rights reserved
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4)The Global March to Jerusalem - Part III [1]
"... To hear Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton basically point out the innocence of this individual and the civil rights of this individual -- when both of these men support the slaughter of the innocent in the womb -- is extremely hypocritical," he states.
Childress says that saddens him -- and that he finds it "quite insulting."
"[For them to] ignore the 1,786 African-American, defenseless, innocent babies who are mutilated and killed in the womb, whose civil rights have been denied and the American dream they have been disenfranchised from -- for [Jackson and Sharpton] to do this is extremely hypocritical."
In the eyes of Childress, the two civil right leaders are endorsing the taking of an innocent life in the womb at a time when African-Americans represent 12 percent of the population -- but 36 percent of abortions take the lives of African-American babies.
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3)WSJ: Fed Buying 61 Percent of US Debt
By Julie Crawshaw and Forrest Jones
The Federal Reserve is propping up the entire U.S. economy by buying 61 percent of the government debt issued by the Treasury Department, a trend that cannot last, Lawrence Goodman, a former Treasury official and current president of the Center for Financial Stability, writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion article published Wednesday.
"Last year the Fed purchased a stunning 61 percent of the total net Treasury issuance
up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis," Goodman writes.
Goodman also warns that U.S. economy and markets are “at risk for a sharp correction” if conditions aren’t “normalized.”
"This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits."
The U.S. government is growing increasingly more dependent on borrowing to finance itself, with net issuance of Treasury securities hitting 8.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on average per annum, more than double levels before the crisis.
Fed intervention in the government debt market makes demand for Treasury bonds appear higher than it really is, as foreign creditors and other investors have fled U.S. government debt instruments and are looking elsewhere until the government makes serious attempts to curb spending and narrow its gaping deficits.
Goodman notes that foreign investors like Japan and China that once scooped up U.S. debt are shunning it. In 2009, such foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to 6 percent of GDP and has since falled by over eighty percent to a paltry 0.9 percent.
Without foreign buyers and a shrinking base of U.S. corporate and bank buyers, the Treasury has had to resort to the Federal Reserve itself to make the purchases. The Fed purchasing not only makes up the shortfall, but can keep long term interest rates artificially low.
"The Fed is in effect subsidizing U.S. government spending and borrowing via expansion of its balance sheet and massive purchases of Treasury bonds. This keeps Treasury interest rates abnormally low, camouflaging the true size of the budget deficit," Goodman writes.
"Similarly, the Fed is providing preferential credit to the U.S. government and covering a rapidly widening gap between Treasury's need to borrow and a more limited willingness among market participants to supply Treasury with credit."
Political bickering on both sides of the aisle has prevented politicians from cutting spending and undertaking fiscal reform.
Arguing over the role of tax hikes versus spending cuts hit a fever pitch in 2011, when both sides in Congress waited until the last minute to agree to terms surrounding lifting the government's debt ceiling.
Should fiscal bickering return, expect investors in U.S. debt who are not employed at the Federal Reserve to take note, other experts say.
"If people dig in, the polarization will get worse, and that could be the worst outcome for markets," says Eric Stein, vice president and portfolio manager at Eaton Vance in Boston, according to Reuters.
© 2012 Moneynews. All rights reserved
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4)The Global March to Jerusalem - Part III [1]
The Global March to Jerusalem, scheduled for March 30, 2012, is an anti-Israel publicity stunt that aims to have a million people marching on Israel's borders from surrounding countries - Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt - with the goal of reaching Jerusalem and highlighting the so-called "Judaization of Jerusalem."
Islam's Tenuous Connection to Jerusalem
March 28, 2012 | Eli E. Hertz
Despite 1,300 years of Muslim Arab rule, Jerusalem was never the capital of an Arab entity. Oddly, the PLO's National Covenant, written in 1964, never mentioned Jerusalem. Only after Israel regained control of the entire city did the PLO "update" its Covenant to include Jerusalem.
Overall, the role of Jerusalem in Islam is best understood as the outcome of political pressure impacting on religious belief.
Mohammed, who founded Islam in 622 CE, was born and raised in present-day Saudi Arabia, he never set foot in Jerusalem.
His connection to the city came years after his death when the Dome of the Rock shrine and the al-Aqsa mosque were built in 688 and 691, respectively, their construction spurred by political and religious rivalries. In 638 CE, the Caliph (or successor to Mohammed) Omar and his invading armies captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire. One reason they wanted to erect a holy structure in Jerusalem was to proclaim Islam's supremacy over Christianity and its most important shrine, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
More important was the power struggle within Islam itself. The Damascus-based Umayyad Caliphs who controlled Jerusalem wanted to establish an alternative holy site if their rivals blocked access to Mecca. That was important because the Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca was (and remains today) one of the Five Pillars of Islam. As a result, they built what became known as the Dome of the Rock shrine and the adjacent mosque.
To enhance the prestige of the "substitute Mecca," the Jerusalem mosque was named "al-Aqsa." It means "the furthest mosque" in Arabic, but has far broader implications, since it is the same phrase used in a key passage of the Quran called "The Night Journey." In that passage, Mohammed arrives at "al-Aqsa" on a winged steed accompanied by the Archangel Gabriel, from there they ascend into heaven for a divine meeting with Allah, after which Mohammed returns to Mecca. Naming the Jerusalem mosque "al-Aqsa" was an attempt to say the Dome of the Rock was the very spot from which Mohammed ascended to heaven, thus tying Jerusalem to divine revelation in Islamic belief. The problem however is, that Mohammed died in the year 632, nearly 50 years before the first construction of the "al-Aqsa" Mosque was completed.
Jerusalem never replaced the importance of Mecca in the Islamic world. When the Umayyad dynasty fell in 750, Jerusalem also fell into near obscurity for 350 years, until the Crusades. During those centuries, many Islamic sites in Jerusalem fell into disrepair and in 1016 the Dome of the Rock collapsed.
Still, for 1,300 years, various Islamic dynasties (Syrian, Egyptian, and Turkish) continued to govern Jerusalem as part of their overall control of the Land of Israel, disrupted only by the Crusaders. What is amazing is that over that period, not one Islamic dynasty ever made Jerusalem its capital. By the 19th century, Jerusalem had been so neglected by Islamic rulers that several prominent Western writers who visited Jerusalem were moved to write about it. French writer Gustav Flaubert, for example, found "ruins everywhere" during his visit in 1850 when it was part of the Turkish Empire (1516-1917). Seventeen years later Mark Twain wrote that Jerusalem had "become a pauper village."
Indeed, Jerusalem's importance in the Islamic world only appears evident when non-Muslims (including the Crusaders, the British, and the Jews) control or capture the city. Only at those points in history did Islamic leaders claim Jerusalem as their third most holy city after Mecca and Medina. That was again the case in 1967, when Israel captured Jordanian-controlled East Jerusalem (and the Old City) during the 1967 Six-Day War.
[1] To see more about The Global March to Jerusalem Click Here.
For the entire Jerusalem pamphlet and notes, please Click Here.
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