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At 83 Bill Cosby may be tired but I am not tired of Bill Cosby.
Cosby is a wise and funny man who tells it like his own race, no all peoples, need(s) to hear it and not the soft pap and kool aid crap they get from Liberals. (See 1 and 1a and below.)
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This morning I was privileged to be on a conference call with a very senior former Israeli Diplomat and now private citizen but still adviser to Netanyahu and other Israelis very much involved in running and defending the country.
He talked about where Israel goes from here now that the peace talks have abruptly ended.
"First, before I begin commenting on his briefing,, I would like to state that I do not question Sec. Kerry's intentions and his hard efforts to bring an accommodation between Israel and The Palestinians. What I question is his wisdom and some of his impromptu comments that have inadvertently, at the very least, given comfort to the Palestinians and driven a further wedge between achieving this Administration's stated goal."
Now what did this Israel professional have to say [ ] my own comments:
He began by emphasizing how important recognition of Israel as the legitimate state of the Jewish people is. Why? Because if the Palestinians do not, then after some agreement they can, and would, come back and ask for more concessions etc. [If you read The Haj and study Arab negotiating styles they are unlike the West. In the West you have contracts/agreements that generally end further negotiations. Arab culture and tribal mentality is generally agree and then seek more. Not meant as a slur just a fact of how their culture drives them in negotiations. my comments]
As for the settlement issue, the excuse Abbas used to end the talks pertained to an established neighborhood in Jerusalem that would remain part of The State of Israel. Second, settlements was never an issue with Egypt and third, the Palestinians continue to build in territory that is theirs and will remain so should they achieve formal statehood status. So the settlement issue has always been a ruse. [ and became a trap which Obama and Kerry fell into - my comments]
The speaker's belief is Abbas never truly intended to reach a negotiated deal with Israel and refused to agree to the negotiating framework which included discussing the renunciation of their claim that Israel had no right to exist as a stand alone nation.
Obama never got from Abbas what he sought even though Obama was generous in asking Abbas to give him a list of what he wanted.
Furthermore, when Abbas sought to establish a state outside the negotiations that made any further forward movement difficult if not impossible.
Finally, Abbas' overtures linking Fatah to Hamas became completely unacceptable because Hamas is recognized, virtually throughout the sane world, as a terrorist organization. To this day Hamas adheres to the statement they seek the destruction of Israel and back it up with random rocket attacks from land in Gaza, Israel previously ceded to Hamas in the failed land for peace swap.
Furthermore, Hamas recently assisted those living in Gaza to attack Egypt and it was not long ago when Hamas aided others to destroy a Coptic Church.
The idea of Israel negotiating with Hamas or any of their administrative designates is not going to happen notwithstanding the pressure Israel knows will bear down on them to do so.
[Perhaps Kerry does not understand the historical significance of Jerusalem to the Jewish people. As a private citizen that is a luxury he is entitled to. As Secretary of The United States such possible lack of empathy is, at the very least, unacceptable.
Furthermore there are misguided extremely Liberal Jews who have their own misbegotten agenda - my comments and See 2 and 2a below.]
Israel is prepared for a continuance of attacks on their deligitimization. It will fail, so Israel is prepared to bide their time , hope Abbas comes to his senses for the sake of his own people and have the courage to cut his ties with terrorists.
Finally, going back to the settlement issue, the speaker pointed out that in negotiations between heads of state trivial matters of neighborhoods are not commonly part of their discussion. It is not meaty enough to deserve such. Therefore, again, our speaker suggested Abbas never had the intention of walking the walk.
[My takeaway from this conference call is that Israeli leaders understand the world will blame them because it is easier to extract concessions from democracies than dictatorships and from Jews, most of all, because of their minority status..
But, for this very reason, this is why The State of Israel is so important.
That said, Netanyahu may never be able to accomplish his stated goal, which I believe he is sincere about, ie. a two state solutions. Why? Because the Palestinians must bring the kind of leadership to the table that is truly willing to tackle the hard issues and stand against the terrorists within their midst - my comments. (See 2b and 2c below.)]
I liken Abbas and the failed Peace Negotiations to the situation in our own nation where the leadership of certain segments of our own society are cowed by the vocal radicals and are afraid to speak out. I know this was a fact in Meg Heap's successful campaign and is true of Jolene Byrne's effort to become President of The Chatham County Board of Education and it was thus, in Birmingham when merchants were afraid to desegregate because of the pressures brought upon them by white radicals. To his credit, Emil Hess of Parisian, was willing to lead the way as was Mayor Allen and Dick Rich in Atlanta. The abuse they received was great but they were men of stature and I will list my father as being among the few who came forth and fought to do what was right.
This is why I have posted Bill Cosby's comments again.
Though he is beyond the reach of the Sharptons, Jacksons and other radicals who use racial oppression to line their pockets, and shake down corporations and, lamentably, our own president for political gain,
Nevertheless, it still takes courage for Cosby to speak out as he has and continues to because he is on the right side of history. Cosby, Tom Sowell, Capt. West and Dr. Ben Carson, among others, are the ones who truly care about the future of their race and their words should be inspirational but, as I have pointed out before, the minute Conservative Blacks refuse to drink the Liberal Kool Aid they are attacked for being UncleToms. And now we have the Black Rep. from Miss. attacking Sen. McConnell etc..
How sad indeed.
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Now, another wedge issue Obama, Reid and Pelosi have used to take focus off their miserable failed policies and mismanagement . Democrats have another fraudulent issue, along with the war on women etc., to use as their campaign cudgel.
Most Americans, capable of reasoning, are beginning to wake up and catch on so I suspect these contrived wedge issues will boomerang come Nov. (See 3, and 3a below.)
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Dick
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reasonable salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks as though retirement was a bad idea, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.
I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sister wives and daughters for their family "honour"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offence; of Muslims murdering Christians and Jews because they aren't "believers";
I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate.
I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.
I'm really tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the
government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their
problems.
I'm also tired and fed up with seeing young men and women in their teens and early 20s be-deck themselves in tattoos and face studs, thereby making themselves un-employable and claiming money from the Government.
" I'm 83 and I'm tired. If you don't forward this you are part of the problem".
1a) Muslim Brotherhood Member Rapes Boy for Supporting Anti-Brotherhood Revolution
A young boy in Egypt, apparently no more than six-years-old, was recently raped by a Muslim Brotherhood member “angered” at the child for singing praises to Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, widely seen in Egypt as the hero of the revolution that saw the ousting of Muhammad Morsi and the Brotherhood in July 2013, and likely Egypt’s next president.
The details, including video interviews with the boy (whose face appears alternatively blotted out or hidden by his hands to protect his identity and dignity) and his father and mother, recently appeared on Egyptian journalist Wael Ibrashi’s television program (the same program that exposed Egypt’s “first sex-slave marriage” and how women were drinking camel urine in connection with Islamic teachings).
The story goes as follows: One day when the boy was singing praises to Sisi near his home, a neighbor, Ahmed Abu Sa ‘id (the Brotherhood member), called him over and took him to a nearby shed, saying he needed help with something. Once inside, Sa‘id locked the door, began tearing the boy’s pants off and raped him, saying, “You’re always holding pictures of this Sisi and singing his praises. Come, I’ll humiliate and break you—and your Sisi.”
The boy started screaming aloud, until the man was finished and released him. According to his mother, “I heard him crying and left my work [in the field] and ran up to meet him. He was holding his pants up. I thought some kids had beaten him!”… (She bursts into inarticulate tears when describing what actually did happen to him.)
When the mother tried to confront her son’s rapist, he and his crew beat her on the head with iron rods.
According to the boy’s father, Ahmed Abu Sa‘id is a well-known Brotherhood member, living in the neighborhood, who often appeared with leading MB members back when Morsi was in power. Sa‘id often tried to enlist the support of the boy’s father but he refused.
Similarly, the raped boy’s mother said that Sa‘id’s wife also tried to buy her support, and once offered her a considerable amount of money—much more than she was earning working in the field—to go and support the Brotherhood “sit ins” in Rabia (where rape, torture, and mass murder were taking place).
In other words, constant refusals from the boy’s family to join and/or support the Brotherhood earned the Sa‘id family’s wrath—culminating with the boy’s rape and degradation, for daring to sing songs in praise of Sisi and the anti-Brotherhood revolution. And now Sa‘id and his Brotherhood allies are threatening the boy’s family to keep silent about the rape, or else.
Of course, none of this should be surprising, as it conforms to earlier Brotherhood patterns. For example, back in December 2012, when Egyptians in mass first rose against Muhammad Morsi, Fox News reported that “Egypt’s embattled Muslim Brotherhood regime is paying gangs of thugs to rape women and beat men who gather in Tahrir Square to protest the power grab of President Mohamed Morsi, say activists.”
This is to say nothing of the fact that, under Brotherhood leadership, rape in Egypt skyrocketed.
More broadly speaking and beyond the issue of rape, during Egypt’s presidential elections back in June 2012 (and as I reported here), Islamist parties in general and the Muslim Brotherhood in particular made perfectly clear that they would do anything—lie, cheat, steal, threaten, beat, and kill—to get what they want, for example:
• One man “beat his pregnant wife to death upon learning that she had not voted for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Muhammad Morsi.” According to police reports, “despite her pleas,” the husband “battered and bruised” her after discovering she had voted for Ahmed Shafiq, the other candidate. She died later in the hospital “from injuries sustained.”
• Another 52-year-old man and “supporter of Morsi” slapped his mother for voting for Shafiq. The man took his elderly mother to the voting booth, informing her that she must vote for Morsi; after she voted, he pressed her to confirm that she did in fact vote for him—only to be told that she did not. The man “lost his temper” and slapped her in front of the other voters and electoral supervisors.
• Based on the Brotherhood’s own directives, whole segments of Coptic Christians were prevented from voting. According to Al Ahram, in Upper Egypt, where millions of Copts live, “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote.”
• A peasant farmer was “stabbed” by a “supporter of Morsi,” simply for putting up a picture of the secular Shafiq on his motorcycle—reminiscent of the recent rape of the boy singing praises to Sisi.
In or out of power, then, the Muslim Brotherhood continues exposing its true colors—at least to those not colorblind.
2) J Street’s Phony Liberalism
J Street lacks moral compass, moral clarity and moral coherence. Its so called progressive posture amplifies the malaise and intellectual shallowness now endemic in the so called liberal body politic--especially in all too many left-wing Jewish Americans.
By: Professor Elihu D. Richter MD MPH
Today, April 30, the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations meets to decide whether J Street should become a member of this exclusive Club. A positive decision will do nothing either for Israel or for the liberal progressive values J Street purports to promote.
Over the years, J Street has branded itself as the voice of progressive liberal supporters of Israel. But examination of the evidence suggests its record is anything but progressive and liberal.
There is a tradition of Jewish participation and leadership in matters of social justice around the world –in keeping with the norms of Pikuah Nefesh, and some would say, Tikun Olam. In keeping with this tradition, it would therefore seem appropriate to ask what J Street’s positions and activities have been on the core values of life, respect for life and human dignity as they apply to today’s worst horror stories?
These core values of life, respect for human life and dignity are embedded in international law, human rights and universal justice world wide. There is a responsibility to prevent such injustices and protect those subject to such threats to live and human dignity.
Yet, genocide, genocidal massacres, mass rapes, genocidal terror, and other assaults on life and human dignity are very much part of the current landscape.
I am referring to the horrendous acts of genocide and mass rapes in the Congo and the Central African Republic over the past years, (5 million dead) and Darfur (400,000 dead?), and North Korea (1,000,000 or more from forced starvation and more), the continued repression of Tibetans by China, the rampages of Muslim terrorists against Christians in Nigeria, the discrimination, persecution and threats against Copts in Egypt and other Christian groups in Iran, Iraq and Pakistan, and the Bahai in Iran and of course, the mass butchery in Syria (150,000 dead and 2.5 million refugees).
J Street has been loudly silent on Iran’s suppression of human rights, its some 100,000 executions of its own citizens, its support for genocidal terror, its race to achieve nuclear capacity and its incitement to genocide—its use of stonings to kill women for so-called sexual crimes, and fact that Iran has the highest per capita rate of executions in the world, with more than 140 since Rouhami came to power.
Its silence on Iranian incitement to genocide against Jews and Israel makes it a complicit bystander to this crime against humanity as specified by the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Yet J Street has consistently opposed stronger sanctions against Iran.
I am unable to find any sign of a leadership role for J Street– or even as a straggler–in the fight against the persecution of women throughout much of the Islamic world, (female genital mutilation, stonings, bigamy, forced child marriages, execution for so called sexual crimes).
Were J Street truly a progressive voice for a peace based on the most basic of human rights, its leadership would be in the forefront of addressing these issues.
Let me suggest: J Street is not about building bridges, but driving wedges–between Israel and the world, between Israel and the American Jewish Community, between Jews within the American Jewish Community and between Israel and the surrounding Arab world.
J Street appears to have no interest in promoting peace based on respect for life, live and let live and human dignity and freedom–in the Middle East or anywhere else. It is an organization with many naive members— led by cynical and opportunistic operatives who see no problem with taking positions which undermine and destabilize Israel, the one democracy in the Middle East.
Were J Street truly a progressive voice for peace, its leadership would be in the forefront of addressing the real issues of concern for liberals and progressives. So far the record shows it is a bystander.
Were I a sociologist, I would suggest that the spell that Jeremy Ben-Ami’s J Street has on its deluded followers in the 21st century reminds one of the spell Shabbatai Zvi’s false messianism had on his witless followers in the 17th century.
Jeremy Ben-Ami is the Noel Airman for the Marjorie Morningstars of our time.
J Street is a bystander to the mega ethical issues of our time. J Street lacks moral compass, moral clarity and moral coherence. Its so called progressive posture amplifies the malaise and intellectual shallowness now endemic in the so called liberal body politic–especially in all too many left-wing Jewish Americans: Values Are Declared but not Acted Upon. To the degree that this malaise and intellectual shallowness is so pervasive in Jewish youth, it poses an existential danger to American Jewry.
About the Author: Prof. Elihu D. Richter MD MPH is head of the Genocide Prevention Program and Injury Prevention Center and Director of the Jerusalem Center for Genocide Prevention. He is the retired head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine and the Injury Prevention Center at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine. In recent years he has been working on epidemiologic models for prediction and prevention of genocide, mass atrocities and terror, with specific emphasis on the cause-effect relationship between hate language and incitement and these outcomes.
2a) The Three Little Kosher Pigs
It is always amusing to see the look on the faces of fellow American Jews when they discover that I am a Republican. Lacking originality, they typically say, “A Republican Jewish woman? Now that’s an oxymoron!” Well no, not at all. Sadly, Israel has become a partisan issue. But it is the Republicans who are her staunchest supporters. Yet ironically, the vast majority of American Jews, whose progressive values are flaunted with elitist moral authority, have found a home in the Democrat party -- the one whose members boo any mention of God and Jerusalem and whose policy makers formulate plans and strategies that are simply dangerous for Israel.
As we finish celebrating Passover during which time we remember our peoples’ exodus from bondage in Egypt to a life of freedom in Israel and observe Yom Hashoah -- Holocaust Remembrance Day -- it is an appropriate time to reflect on the state of Jewish Zionism in America. What does it say about a people who align themselves with political organizations that at best feign support for Israel for fundraising purposes but in reality take measures that could possibly harm that country’s long-term survival? In the face of existential dangers including growing Islamic fundamentalist death threats that are ignored around the world (including in the UN, EU and US) and growing apathy of Jews in the diaspora, perhaps a brief history of the Jewish peoples’ struggles against anti-Semitism is worth a revisit.
A modern version of Jewish history can be analyzed through the lens of the Three Little Pigs. In the Jewish version of this fable, the Jewish people are the three pigs (the kosher version, of course) looking to build a home to live as Jews in peace. The anti-Semites are the big bad wolf (of which there is no shortage) intent on ripping the pigs from their homes and destroying them. The Jews in ancient times built houses of straw that were blown away by anti-Semitic wolves during the Roman Empire, the Spanish Inquisition, and centuries-old pogroms. By the time they reached the shores of Europe in the later part of the 20th century, Jews built wooden homes believing themselves safe to practice their religion among the wolves in sheep’s clothing. We all know how that ended.
In the Jewish version of the story, the third pig represents two brothers that I’ll call Cain and Abel. Abel smartly moved to the land of Israel. The Jews in Israel learned their lessons of history, recognized their responsibility as God’s Chosen People, and built homes of bricks. And every time the big bad wolf attempted to climb down the chimney and destroy them, they further fortified their cities with concrete walls and missile defense systems. After thousands of years of wandering the global desert, they understood the gift – and obligation – bestowed upon them by God. To call these Jews survivors would be an understatement.
Cain moved to the U.S. and presents quite a different story indeed. American Jews have not learned the lessons of history and ignore their responsibilities to God and the Jewish people as a whole. Instead of building houses of bricks they have chosen to build a “big tent.” They emulate their European ancestors who focused so intently on assimilating into society that they could not see the fires of the Holocaust burning around them. They worship false idols and pray at the Torah of abortion rights, environmentalism, and socialism much the way the Jewish people fell for the golden calf while waiting for Moses to descend Mt. Sinai with God’s Commandments. Like their ancestors, American Jews may find themselves forced to wander a desert of secular empty activism in the hopes of one day returning to their homeland if they do not wake up to the dangers surrounding them. A big tent is no way to survive when big bad wolves are looking to destroy you.
Sadly, in my metaphorical version of this fable, the wolf’s role is played not just by self-avowed anti-Semites. Sure, there are plenty of anti-Semites and it is certainly distressing when you find them living in the same Jewish home as the rest of us. They are the wolves in sheep’s clothing and have formed pro-Israel sounding groups like J Street, B’tselem, National Israel Fund, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Peace Now among others. But make no mistake; these groups are enemies of the Jewish people and Israel.
There are also Jewish Americans who claim to be pro-Israel but who support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign and use terms like “occupier” and “colonizer” to describe the Jewish homeland. Peter Beinart is an example of someone with this psychosis. And of course, there are Jewish Americans who proudly wear their emblazoned anti-Semitism like the yellow stars of the Holocaust including Noam Chomsky, Max Blumenthal, and Norman Finkelstein.
But more ominous and dangerous are the mainstream Jewish organizations -- funded and supported by a great many American Jews -- that are actually pro-Israel. Unfortunately, many of these organizations are led by Jews who are naïve and misguided at best, delusional and power-hungry at worst. These groups for some unfathomable reason believe that building a big tent will save Israel and the rest of us from the dangerous wolves that salivate and pace around us waiting to pounce at the first possible moment.
AIPAC comes to mind as it proved itself useless last year by remaining silent in the face of the Hagel nomination, allowed itself to be used by the Obama administration in a political ploy to gain support for a military intervention in the Syrian civil war, and fumbled the fight for additional sanctions on Iran as it caved to political pressure. This organization invites foes of Israel into its big tent with claims of access and influence (aka self-serving political expediency).
This week, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs announced its support to include J Street in a bid to join the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. In justifying their decision to support inclusion of a group that not only embraces BDSers under its big tent but that supports negotiations with the terrorist organization Hamas (whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel). JCPA’s president proudly stated, “They’re an important part of the Jewish community. They fit in the picture of a big tent, which is the kind of community we believe in strongly.” What’s next, an invitation to CAIR?
Alas, the insanity does not end there. The UJA-Federations and Jewish Community Relations Council, organizers of the annual Salute to Israel Parade, are mired in their own “open tent” controversy as they continue to double down on the horrific decision to include three anti-Israel, pro-BDS groups in that parade. One group, Partners for Progressive Israel, believes that American Jews “should refuse to purchase any goods or services, including tourism services, made in or by the settlements.” Another, New Israel Fund, has itself funded BDS campaigns that reject Israel’s legitimacy. The third organization, B’Tselem, not only produced a video shown at Israel Apartheid Week on college campuses across the world, its chair has publicly called for “effective sanctions” against Israel. It is a major grantee of NIF.
Speaking of college campuses, there is a new movement afoot among the nation’s Hillels equivalent to the big tent (with J Street at the helm). It is called “Open Hillel” and results from the liberal worship that permeates intellectual discourse and that is strangling Jewish hearts and minds. These lost souls insist on free speech notwithstanding the fact that they wind up inviting anti-Israel hate speech into their big tent. Unfathomably, these same misguided Jews allow pro-Israel speakers to be shouted down -- all in the name of what they or the local Islamist agitators claim to be politically-correct speech. From NYU and Northeastern where Students for Justice in Palestine scare and intimidate Jewish students by serving them eviction notices in the purported safety of their dorms (these are far from the metaphorical houses of bricks that their Israeli brethren erected) to Vassar, Cornell, the University of Michigan, and Brandeis, the pro-BDS movement is outpacing any pro-Israel group that attempts to make inroads.
So where does this big tent lead for not only American Jews but Israeli Jews as well? While the story of Cain slaying Abel is not entirely analogous, it may however, foretell an unintended consequence for Israelis. Liberal worshipping American Jews may feel good seemingly taking the higher road and proving their politically correct bona fides. They may even stupidly and narcissistically believe, like Michael Bloomberg, that their self-serving decisions and dictates are their golden ticket to heaven (so did Willy Wonka characters Veruca, Mike Teavee, Violet, and Augustus, and where did that get them?).
But golden idol worship has proven to result in one thing and it does not bode well for the Jewish people as a whole. Dangerously, the decisions of the Jews in the diaspora to open their big tent to their enemies -- whether wolves in sheep’s clothing or just plain wolves -- may have a horrific result on their brethren living safely -- for now -- in Israel.One brother’s good intentions may very well result in the accidental slaying of the other brother. For when the wolf blows the tent down, all that huffing and puffing will be felt the world over and there may not be another pig’s house left to run to.
2b) Israeli intelligence: Assad concealing chemical capability
Israeli intelligence is afraid that the regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria is acting to conceal a small percentage of the chemical weapons in its possession, while misleading the international community. This assessment joins similar ones heard in the past two weeks from intelligence sources in the United States and Great Britain, and which have been cited in the international media.
The deal for the dismantling of the chemical weapons was achieved, under American and Russian pressure, in the summer of 2013, following the massacre perpetrated by the government, in which about 1,500 civilians were killed in neighborhoods controlled by organizations of Syrian rebels in east Damascus. The Syrian regime was forced to accept the agreement, in light of the threat by the United States to attack military targets in Syria from the air, in punishment for the slaughter. To date about 92 percent of the Syrian chemical weapons arsenals have been dismantled, and the means for producing and launching such weapons are also being destroyed. Assad's regime missed a second deadline on Sunday, April 27, for the destruction of its arsenal.
However, recently the West received intelligence information, which appears quite reliable, indicating that the regime is nevertheless making an attempt to maintain residual chemical capability for itself, apparently for the purpose of warning the opposition in the country’s civil war, which is now in its fourth year. In recent months there have also been reliable reports of a renewed use by the regime of chemical weapons against rebels and against civilians in rebel-controlled neighborhoods.
As opposed to the massacre last August, recently there has been use of chemical weapons that neutralize but do not kill. From several regions in Syria it was reported that the Syrian air force is dropping chlorine bombs on populated areas, in order to rid them of rebels. Israel sees the use of these bombs as evidence of the government’s difficulty in conducting ground operations against the rebels, and its choice of using what it considers relatively moderate methods, from dropping bombs from planes (including the widespread use of incendiary bombs from planes) to the firing of missiles and rockets.
Despite increasing reports of the use of chemical weapons, the Israeli defense establishment has no intention at this stage of reversing the decision to discontinue the manufacture and distribution of gas masks for civilians. At the start of this year the cabinet froze the plan to distribute them, due to the assessment by Military Intelligence that there has been a significant decline in the risk that chemical weapons will be used against Israel, after the agreement to dismantle the weapons arsenals in Syria.
Israeli intelligence believes that the Assad regime has no interest in a conflict with Israel at present, and certainly not in crossing as blatant a red line as the use of chemical weapons against it. Nor has there been any evidence that Syria is transferring chemical weapons to Hezbollah, although the Assad regime continues to try to transfer other advanced weapons systems to the Lebanese organization, including anti-aircraft missiles and surface-to-sea missiles.
A senior military source admitted this week in a conversation with Haaretz that the intelligence community has amended its assessments of the chances of survival of the Assad regime, compared to the estimates two years ago to the effect that the regime was approaching its end. The source said that the regime does in fact look more stable than a year ago, and in many regions has succeeded in checking the progress of the rebels, thanks to assistance from Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.
The senior source added that as opposed to the situation a year or two ago, the Israeli defense establishment no longer considers the commitment to bring down the regime in Damascus as necessarily positive for Israel. One reason is that it is now clear that if Assad falls, the dominant factors among the rebels will be extremist Islamic organizations, some of which are identified with Al Qaida. “Morally speaking, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Assad is a war criminal who is murdering tens of thousands of civilians. But in terms of security, it’s not that we have positive expectations of those likely to replace him,” he said.
He said that it is not Israel that will determine the outcome of the internal war being waged in Syria, “but it’s clear that in terms of the balance of deterrence, it’s easier for us when we’re dealing with an official address in Damascus, rather than a chaos of gangs as in Somalia.”
Recently, the violence in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has been accompanied by increased anti-Israel propaganda in the U.S. and international media. The Palestinians have been successful yet again in blaming Israel for the recent cycle of violence by distorting the perception of events in the region. In order to counteract this negatively skewed portrait of Israel, we provide these responses to the most prevalent charges being made by the Palestinians. Many of these answers can be applied to a variety of anti-Israel charges expressed in different forms. Please use them in the following ways to help the hazbarah (public relations) effort:
1. Talk to ten people about the actual situation in Israel.
2. Monitor your local media and correct – through letters to the editor/television producer – any factual errors and propaganda that is advanced as an impartial analysis of the situation.
3. Share these talking points and encourage others to join this effort supporting the State of Israel.
A. The Mitchell Commission Report recommends a total freeze on Israeli settlements, labeling them as “provocative” to the Palestinians during this time.
1. There is no moral equivalence between Palestinian violence and Israeli settlements. “Settlement activity” is a non-violent enterprise, comprised of building and construction activity.
2. Israel and the Palestinians included the question of the settlements as one of the five “final status” issues in the 1993 Oslo Accords. These five issues were the most difficult to resolve, and thus were to be concluded through negotiations after various intermediary, confidence-building steps.
3. In July 2000 at the Camp David Summit, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the most sweeping, painful Israeli concessions in order to achieve an end to the conflict with the Palestinians. Barak offered to consolidate the settlements, ceding to the Palestinians up to 98 percent of the West Bank, and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected these offers, and did not engage in negotiations. Instead, he called for the Palestinian Authority to plan, mobilize for, and implement violence against Israel, according to Palestinian Communications Minister Imad Al-Falouji, who boasted about this plan in December 2000.
B. Palestinian Claim: Israel is slaughtering innocent Palestinian children.
1. Children on both sides of the conflict have been killed in the violence. Any child's death is a tragedy, and the Jewish people mourn the loss of all lives – but especially those of children. However, the underlying causes of these deaths are different on the Palestinian side and the Israeli side.
2. Throughout the present conflict, the Palestinian Authority has encouraged children to participate as combatants against Israelis. Children as young as 5 years old are trained in paramilitary youth groups and summer camps and are indoctrinated to hate Israelis and Jews via the PA-controlled media and school curriculum. They are told that they will become “martyrs” if they die fighting the Israelis, that they will ascend to heaven, and that their family will be monetarily compensated for their “heroism.”
3. The PA has deliberately employed a strategy that uses children as human shields to attack previously agreed-upon Israeli military positions in a 4-stage battle formation. The American Academy of Pediatrics has condemned this deliberate use of children in battle by the PA.
4. While the majority of injured Palestinian children have been cynically used as human shields or combatants, others have been injured during Israeli retaliations to Palestinian military attacks. These deaths would not have occurred if the Palestinians did not initiate attacks against negotiated Israeli positions, Israeli settlements, Israeli towns and villages within the pre-1967 borders, or innocent Israeli civilians. Israel has not initiated any attack, but only has retaliated against PA installations that are used as staging areas for attacks against Israel. These include PA police stations that are used to launch mortar attacks against Israeli towns and villages, or the Voice of Palestine radio station that incites anti-Israel violence.
5. Israeli children have been killed in deliberate terror attacks against innocent civilians. In some cases, Israeli children themselves have been the intentional targets of these attacks. For example, the murders of 10-month old Shelhevet Pass, who was shot in the head by a PA police sniper, and two 14-year old boys, Yosef (Yossi) Ish-Ran and Ya'acov (Kobi) Mandell, who were beaten to death and their bodies mutilated in a cave outside Tekoa.
C. Palestinian Claim: Israel is violating the Oslo Accords by illegally entering into “Area A” (area under Palestinian civil and military control).
1. All sovereign countries have the right and the responsibility to protect and defend their citizens. Israel is exercising this responsibility, in order to ensure that Israeli citizens are safe and free to participate fully in a democratic society.
2. Israel and the Palestinians committed in signed documents to resolve any disagreements through negotiations, and not on the battlefield. Israel fulfilled these commitments by withdrawing its troops from agreed-upon areas and re-deploying others until further negotiations determined their next positions. These Israeli actions are in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which state that a final peace accord should be based on the principle of “land for peace,” but does not outline how much land.
3. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat committed to renounce violence, counteract terrorism, promote a peaceful and democratic society, cooperate with Israeli security, arrest, prosecute and jail individuals suspected of perpetuating terrorist activity, reduce anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement, and facilitate co-existence with the State of Israel. The PA has violated every one of these commitments.
4. Israel's temporary incursions into “Area A” are only in response to PA attacks against sovereign Israeli territory or Israeli citizens. The objectives are limited, the targets are well defined, and Israel has withdrawn fully in each occasion. These attacks are analogous to mortar attacks on U.S. territory or U.S. citizens from Canada or Mexico.
D. Palestinian Claim: This is a random, spontaneous, popular uprising, and therefore PA Chairman Yasser Arafat cannot control or halt the violence.
1. This violence is not spontaneous. According to Palestinian Communications Minister Imad Al-Falouji, Arafat ordered the PA to plan and implement this cycle of violence after rejecting Israel's concessions at the July 2000 Camp David Summit.
2. This violence is not random. Each act of violence falls into one of the following areas, and is part of a strategy to gain Israeli concessions through violence, instead of at the negotiation table.
Israeli settlements that were identified to be dismantled by former Israeli Prime Minister Barak as part of his Camp David concessions, or Israeli citizens living in those settlements.
Various portions of Jerusalem, such as the southern neighborhood of Gilo that borders the PA-controlled areas, or the internal neighborhood of Mea Shearim in the heart of the city.
Areas within Israel's sovereign territory that are located in narrowest portion of the country, where the majority of the population lives. This includes the towns of Hadera, Kfar Saba, and other places where terrorist bombs have been detonated.
Israeli towns and villages close to the Gaza Strip, within sovereign Israeli territory, at a steadily increasing distance from PA areas.
Israeli military positions in the West Bank or Gaza Strip that were agreed upon in the signed Israeli/Palestinian documents. These positions would have been removed under Prime Minister Barak's proposed Camp David concessions that Arafat rejected.
3. This violence is not popular. Unlike the Intifada that began in 1987, support for this cycle of violence does not permeate Palestinian society. The violence is perpetrated by the Tanzim, trained, paramilitary youth that are associated with Yasser Arafat's Al-Fatah group; members of the Palestinian police; and the poorest, most disenfranchised segments of Palestinian society. The Palestinian middle class is not participating in the violence.
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3) Flop: Federal Minimum Wage Bill Goes Nowhere in Senate
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Raising the minimum wage has been a White House pet project for months. And yet today Senate Democrats came exactly six votes shy of moving forward with a bill that would raise the hourly federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 over a30 month period. The official tally was 54-42 (they needed 60 votes to get past cloture) and as expected, most lawmakers voted the party line; only Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) joined Democrats to advance the measure:
Raising the minimum wage is wildly popular with the public. Hence why Senate Democrats aren’t squandering a golden opportunity to verbally pummel their Republican colleagues. Indeed, the Senate Majority Leader has already -- and yet again -- invoked the Koch brothers as the primary reason for why every Senate Republican but one refused to endorse the legislation: that is, two billionaire brothers had bought their votes.
But of course he says nothing about how raising the minimum wage could do more harm than good. After all, the (nonpartisan) Congressional Budget Office came out with a study this year estimating that raising the federal minimum wage could cost somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 American jobs:
It’s also worth noting that the vast majority of workers earning the minimum wage are part-time students from middle class families -- i.e., not poor Americans -- as the Heritage Foundation reported in 2013:
But Democrats, of course, will not be deterred. They know they can score political points by upbraiding Republicans for voting against their job-crushing, albeit popular, Senate bill. This coming minimum wage hike fight, in other words, was always a win-win for them politically, no matter the outcome.
3a) Dennis Prager’s CRITICAL OPINION OF THE PRESIDENT
TRUST IS GONE
I have been broadcasting for 31 years and writing for longer than that. I do not recall ever saying on radio or in print that a president is doing lasting damage to our country. I did not like the presidencies of Jimmy Carter (the last Democrat I voted for) or Bill Clinton. Nor did I care for the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush. In modern political parlance “compassionate” is a euphemism for ever-expanding government.
But I have never written or broadcast that our country was being seriously damaged by a president.So it is with great sadness that I write that President Barack Obama has done and continues to do major damage toAmerica . The only question is whether this can ever be undone.This is equally true domestically and internationally. Domestically, his policies have had a grave impact on the American economy. He has overseen the weakest recovery from a recession in modern American history. He has mired the country in unprecedented levels of debt: about $6.5 trillion “ that is 6,500 billion “ in five years (this after calling his predecessor “unpatriotic” for adding nearly $5 trillion in eight years).
He has fashioned a country in which more Americans now receive government aid “ means-tested, let alone non-means-tested “ than work full-time. He has no method of paying for this debt other than printing more money “ thereby surreptitiously taxing everyone through inflation, including the poor he claims to be helping, and cheapening the dollar to the point that some countries are talking about another reserve currency “ and saddling the next generations with enormous debts.
With his 2,500-page Affordable Care Act he has made it impossible for hundreds of thousands, soon millions, of Americans to keep their individual or employer-sponsored group health insurance; he has stymied American medical innovation with an utterly destructive tax on medical devices; and he has caused hundreds of thousands of workers to lose full-time jobs because of the health-care costs imposed by Obamacare on employers.
His Internal Revenue Service used its unparalleled power to stymie political dissent. No one has been held accountable. His ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered by terrorists in Benghazi , Libya. No one has been blamed. The only blame the Obama administration has leveled was on a videomaker in Californiawho had nothing to do with the assault. In this president”s White House the buck stops nowhere.
Among presidents in modern American history, he has also been a uniquely divisive force. It began with his forcing Obamacare through Congress “the only major legislation in American history to be passed with no votes from the opposition party.
Though he has had a unique opportunity to do so, he has not only not helped heal racial tensions, he has exacerbated them. His intrusions into the Trayvon Martin affair If I had a son, he”d look like Trayvon”) and into the confrontation between a white police officer and a black Harvard professor (the police “acted stupidly”) were unwarranted, irresponsible, demagogic, and, most of all, divisive.
He should have been reassuring black Americans that America is in fact the least racist country in the world “ something he should know as well as anybody, having been raised only by whites and being the first (halfbreed) black elected the leader of a white-majority nation. Instead, he echoed the inflammatory speech of professional race-baiters such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. He has also divided the country by economic class, using classic Marxist language against “the rich” and “corporate profits.”
Regarding America in the world, he has been, if possible, even more damaging. The United States is at its weakest, has fewer allies, and has less military and diplomatic influence than at any time since before World War II.
One wonders if there is a remaining ally nation that trusts him. And worse, no American enemy fears him. If you are a free movement (the democratic Iranian and Syrian oppositions) or a free country (Israel), you have little or no reason to believe that you have a steadfast ally in the United States. Even non-democratic allies no longer trust America . Barack Obama has alienated our most important and longest standing Arab allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both the anti-Muslim Brotherhood and the anti-Iran Arab states have lost respect for him. And his complete withdrawal of American troops from Iraq has left that country with weekly bloodbaths.
Virtually nothing Barack Obama has done has left America or the world better since he became president. Nearly everything he has touched has been made worse.He did, however, promise before the 2008 election that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” That is the one promise he has kept.What does it take for the American people to "WAKE UP"
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