Enter your keyword

Friday, June 30, 2006

Kidnappings Demonstrate the Futility of Withdrawals and Disengagements

By On June 30, 2006


Terrorism is the use of violence to inspire terror. It is not meant to achieve military victories but to inflict terror on a population in order to break their will.

In 1992 terrorism won in Israel when Yitzchak Rabin under heavy international pressure surrendered to Yasir Arafat's PLO and signed agreements that allowed terrorists to set up an armed state within Israel's borders. When that state was set up what followed was a quantum increase in terrorism from its new base. Sensing victory the real war to destroy Israel began.

The myth Labor leaders like Rabin\Peres\Barak sold Israelis was that terrorism could be ended by signing an agreement and meeting some of the terrorist's demands. By the time the 21st century had dawned, that myth was dead. Negotiations with terrorists who used terrorism as a negotiating tactic resulted in only one thing, more terrorism.

The myth Likud leaders like Netanyahu\Sharon\Olmert sold Israelis was that terrorism could be cordoned off by a few limited withdrawals so the problem of the terrorist state created by Labor could be contained. Instead all they achieved was to hand over more territory to the enemy. When terrorists struck they carried out military operations that did not break the back of the enemy but inflicted limited damaged and resulted in international outrage. All this concealed the fact that they had no solution to offer but to retreat behind borders and try to keep the Palestinians at bay with the occasional military strike.

Labor's myth is dead and Likud's myth is dying hard. Disengagement from Gaza was to the Right what Oslo was to the Left. Their great gambit, their attempt to cowardly settle things with the least risk and the least effort. They all failed.

The kidnappings and murders of Israeli soldiers and civilians represents the Palestinian tactical answer to Olmert's Disengagement. Israel can build walls but the Palestinians will tunnel under them. Israel can withdraw its soldiers from Gaza and the Palestinians will kidnap them there leaving Israel the choice between watching its soldiers beheaded on television or launching military operations and returnings its soldiers back into Gaza. Once again the Palestinians have checkmated Israel.

Olmert's response has been to send in large numbers of troops as a show of force, to arrest top Hamas officials and then wait for negotiations. The problem with employing a show of force when it's a bluff is that the enemy has to credibly believe you're prepeared to carry out acts of force. After over a decade of retreats and surrenders, half-hearted military operations and concessions; bombing a power plant, a bridge and a lot of empty areas convinces no one that Israel is prepeared to go in and devastate Hamas. Israel is demonstrating what it can do, which is futile when the Palestinians know Israel won't do it.

For the last decades, under Labor and Likud, Israel's shows of force have been nothing more than attempts to cover their retreats. The Palestinians know it. Everyone knows it. All the Palestinians need to do is absorb some light casualties, wait for the international press to publish their photos of Palestinian children walking past the rubble and the diplomatic and international outcry to ensue and then collect their winnings at the negotiating table.

For the better part of the last century Jews in Israel have been fighting for their survival. For the last decade we've been losing. The path to victory does not lie in creating new ghettos behind tall walls or in trusting to our allies in Washington D.C. or in the Churches of the Christian Religious Right to save us, the usual tactics of Jews in Galut; but in ending a decade of retreats and fighting the war that has been declared on us until hostilities on the enemy side cease.

There is a story about a road that looks short but is actually long and a road that looks long but is actually short. In the hopes of finding a shortcut to the problem of Arab Terrorism, Israel has taken the long way around and arrived at the same destination as they would have by the short route, much weakened and battered, and facing the same choice. War or anhiliation. There is no other choice, there never was. Wars against an instatiable enemy are not ended by hiding or retreating, but in victory or ultimate defeat.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

If It Wasn't For All Those Dead Jews...

By On June 29, 2006


There's nothing like a dead Jew to ruin an otherwise perfectly good time. Just recently the media were celebrating that Hamas had agreed to recognize the State of Israel. Champagne was being uncorked in the halls of Washington D.C. and in the New York Times building. Everyone was cheerful. It was just like Christmas.

For months Hamas had painfully frustrated the numerous bureaucrats and eurocrats, talking heads and columnists, when they refused to fall into line. Not fall into line by ending terrorism and living in peace with Israel. No, they refused to lie and pretend to agree to peaceful co-existence and a two state solution.

The international community was baffled. They'd had a good run with Arafat playing it just this way. Hell Arafat had even invented the game. While Fatah terrorists shot a few Jews or blew up a pizzeria full of them, Arafat would celebrate the terrorists as martyrs for his own people, hold a press conference blaming Israel for the whole thing and then tell the White House that Israeli pressure was making him lose control over the extremists and he needed more money and breathing space to train his own Fatah terrorists to "police" them.

Even as the cemeteries of Israel expanded, Arafat appeared smiling and jolly at press conferences talking about peace and pretending the PLO really intended to settle down with Israel side by side. They miss those days in D.C. They miss them in Oslo and Brussels. It all worked so well because the Palestinian leadership wouldn't stop lying and wouldn't stop killing. Hamas won't stop killing but it won't lie and that has driven the international community batty.

How are they supposed to pressure Israel into making concessions for peace, when the other side keeps saying it has no interest in peace. Like frustrated children trying to get a ball down from a tree, the press and politicians have been jumping up and down to find any smidgen of evidence that Hamas was willing to negotiate a final solution with Israel.

First they began claiming that Hamas had moderate and extreme elements and the moderates wanted peace. As their argument went, if we just roll over for Hamas, its moderate wing will take over. Unfortunately though they looked high and low, checked the swamps and the lakes, they couldn't find any members of Hamas who would agree to negotiate with Israel for peaceful co-existence in a two-state solution.

There was sadness then in the halls of D.C. Hardened State Department aides wept openly at taxpayer subsidized lunches at expensive French restaurants. There was no joy in Brussels. America and Europe were forced to make frowning faces at the Palestinians, even as like jilted women they pleaded with them secretly to relent.

"Just accept Israel. We'll give you money. We'll give you guns. We'll give you land. We'll give you anything you want."

But the Hamas terrorists just folded their hands and shook their heads. They hadn't gotten to where they were today by recognizing Israel. After all Israel was already withdrawing without negotiations. Iran and the entire Muslim world was sending them money. What did they need the hated Great Satan for?

The diplomats promised them international recognition and lucrative business deals but Hamas prefers the recognition of Iran and Osama to press conferences in the Rose Garden with George and Tony. And as for lucrative business deals. Terrorism is the most lucrative business there is. You supply the suicide bombers and the devout Muslims of the world will supply the cash. All it takes is a steady supply of teenagers willing to blow themselves up. Deal? Deal.

True Hamas had made some concessions. They hired an image expert. They began pretending there was a distinction between Hamas's "military wing" and "political wing." Which is much like the distinction between the hand that holds the pistol and the other hand that reloads it. Then they offered up a truce.

Instantly the press and the politicians went wild. "PEACE," they cried. "PEACE. PEACE. PEACE!"

"No," said Hamas, "we said truce. You know the kind of thing where we pause to reload, shore up the infrastructure, ship in new weapons from Iran and then attack when we're ready."

"PEACE, PEACE," the international community cried in response, "YOU SAID PEACE. WE HEARD YOU."

After that Hamas stopped talking to them and the diplomats and the reporters slunk off sullenly, but still insisting there was a truce. Every time Hamas terrorists struck the media whistled looking in the other direction where there were much more interesting things to see like daisies or root canals. Every time Israel fought back, they would climb up on their high chairs and shriek.

"NO FAIR, TRUCE, YOU BROKE THE TRUCE. CHEATERS. YOU'RE MURDERING PALESTINIAN BABIES."

Finally their crowning moment came. Abbas, their little murderous lying hope, had come up with a ploy to produce a document in which finally Hamas would recognize some things. The details of what they recognized though were a little unclear. Fortunately Hamas was there to clear them up.

"You will not find one word in the document clearly stating the recognition of Israel as a state," said Abdul Rahman Zidan. "Recognizing Israel's physical existence is different from recognizing its legitimacy. Furthermore, the document does not renounce violence as a political tool, as demanded by the international community. Instead, the document says it will 'focus resistance' on the occupied territories."

Fortunately as far as Hamas is concerned all of Israel is Occupied Territory. While Westerners misread this as a statement that Hamas will limit its murdering to the more acceptable area of the territories where UN Resolutions 04654645 and X456464 have agreed it's more acceptable to murder Jews in, what Hamas is actually saying is it will go on killing Jews any place in Israel it darn well pleases.

"We accept a state in [territory occupied] in 1967, but we did not say we accept two states," said Salah Bardaweel, the Hamas Parliamentary leader.

So while the media crowed that by accepting a state in 1967 lands, Hamas had given up on the rest of Israel, Hamas was helpfully pointing out that it had done no such thing. It was taking the 1967 territories as a starting point.

Abbas' maneuver had been pure Arafat, a clever gambit meant to play both the Palestinians and the West. While the Palestinians would be signing on to a continuation of terrorism, the West would hear the joyous bells of peace and reconciliation. Arafat had pulled that trick many times and Abbas thought it would work once more. It almost did too.

The moment the declaration was signed the media insisted on hollering that peace was at hand. PEACE, PEACE, they began crying heedlessly again, HURRAY FOR PEACE. They wrung their hands over the Israeli tanks heading into Gaza, seeming utterly baffled that Israel would want to rescue its own citizens and soldiers held in enemy hands. Yet again dead Jews were ruining a perfectly good time for the diplomats and the politicians and their press corps.

It was a recurring motif for them. No sooner had they cooked up a new plan to carve up Israel, then the Palestinians would inconveniently bomb a bus in Jerusalem and Israel would retaliate. The lovers of peace, those men and women with such sensitive hearts that they bleed when a terrorist gets a hangnail but feel nothing when Israeli children are blown to pieces, found the dead Jews fantastically inconvenient. They called them Casualties of Peace and began referring to them as 'Dead Settlers' and 'Dead Soldiers' where Palestinian terrorists were 'Deceased Youths' and 'Slain Activists.'

Where Palestinian terrorists had families that would be interviewed holding up their pictures, Jews usually had none. The Jewish victims seemed to have been spawned from the sea. Sometimes they had names. Usually they didn't. Mostly they were just "20 Israelis killed in bus bombing" or "5 Settlers Dead in Roadside Shooting." To the media the Palestinians were human and eternally suffering. The Jews no more human than they were to the Nazis. A species of weed with subspecies like Settler and Soldier, who sometimes die, but are unmourned and whose primary nature is to be the weed that obstructs the growth of peace.

Now the media weeps again. Not for the dead but for another dream lost. Everywhere Hamas spokesmen insist on declaring to reporters that they have not recognized Israel. That they will never recognize Israel. That there will be no two state solution. Ever.

Like jilted lovers the reporters and diplomats retreat again to their IMacs half-heartedly trying to pound out copy insisting Hamas has recognized Israel and an era of peace would be at hand if only Israel pursued a diplomatic solution with the kidnappers.

In their hearts is a dying dream. A dream of a dismembered and eventually dismantled Israel giving way to the Palestinian utopia, which they are certain will form in its aftermath. And then Arabs and Muslims will no longer have any reason to resent Westerners. That Islamic extremism which takes the form of doing as Mohammed did unto others, will pass away, and the citizens of London and Paris, Oslo and Brussels will live in happy harmony with the millions of Algerians and Moroccans they imported for cheap labor, crowded into housing projects and forgot about until they start burning cars in Paris.

As they look now out their windows, to the east, towards Jerusalem, they can almost see it. And yet one thing frustrates their dream. The Marxist terrorists of Fatah, their first love Yasir, their Arab Che's fighting for socialism, dirty liberation movements in dirty Keffiyahs overturning the capitalism and globalization of the West have given way to Osama's and Hamas'. To Islamists who aren't killing in the name of socialism but in the name of Islam. Men with beards who have no interest in their recognition or their love or their aid. Only in murder and death.

They have been spurned. Harshly spurned and yet they struggle on blaming America and Israel, blaming the War on Terror, blaming everyone but the terrorists themselves. They mock the flag, the sue the anthem and still no swarthy dark eyed Muslims romance them with assurances of a common struggle against the Great Satan. And yet they cling still loyal, still bitter, still certain that their romance with the murderers of the Middle East would blossom, if only it wasn't for all those dead Jews.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

The Russian Sword at Israel's Throat

By On June 27, 2006


Russia's intentions towards Israel made the news recently when it announced arms sales to Syria and then to Hamas. It continues to provide assistance building up Iran's nuclear capabilities and hours before the US invasion was shipping weapons to Iraqi forces.

But there are less subtle things that don't make the evening news. Putin threw out the democratic reforms of Yeltsin's government and has returned to Russia's old imperialistic policies. The first step was to destroy any independent businessmen not in line with Putin's policies, including those who were associated with independent parties or ran independent television stations or newspapers, or those who merely owned businesses the Putin regime wanted.

This has already been done. The Russian press is under Putin's thumb. Key businesses are under government control now and are being used to control their international customers. Russia's oil and gas industry in particular has been leveraged against the independent Ukrainian government, against Georgia and many other former Soviet Republics to bring them into line. By controlling vast reserves of gas and oil, Russia is turning itself into a kind of Super-OPEC which uses their supply to influence and control other countries.

But it doesn't end with the former Soviet Republics. Americans may not realize it but a large number of their own gas stations may carry American brand names, but are actually owned by Lukoil. There are 1200 such stations now in the New York are alone. Lukoil has bought up Getty Petroleum and Mobil stations at the bargain basement price of only 55,000 dollars a station and that is only the first stage of its push into the American market. Senator Schumer stood together with Putin at the ceremony opening the new stations with Schumer praising the move as a means to gain independence from OPEC. What he fails to realize is that it now means dependence on Russia.

But we're far from done because Russia is also pushing its way into Israel. Last year as Minister in Sharon's government Ehud Olmert met with the President of Gazprom, the same illegally stolen company now state-owned which Moscow turned into a tool to pressure its former republics and even the European Union. Today the proposal on the table calls for Russia to lay an undersea gas pipeline from Turkey to Israel. The Russians have offered to cover the 1.5 Billion cost of building the pipeline...as long as they control it and can use it as leverage.

So while Russia is arming Israel's enemies, it is also looking for internal leverage. During the birth of Israel the USSR voted in the affirmative to create the State of Israel because they believed they would take it over. Indeed the USSR trained and financed a faction within Israel that stockpiled weapons in preparation for a Communist coup that never happened. Failing to make Israel their own, Russia instead backed the Arabs and Palestinian terrorists such as the PLO. Everything from Palestinian propaganda to training and equipment for the PLO came out of Moscow.

Much of the Palestinian leadership was trained in Moscow and still speaks Russian. Among them Yasir Arafat's brother and current PA President Abbas who received his doctorate at the Peoples' Friendship University. The Peoples' Friendship University was more accurately a place for foreign Marxist terrorists and guerrillas. A more famous graduate of it was Carlos the Jackal. Since then the PLO has had to change with the times becoming less Marxist and more Islamist and Russia has become less Communist and more capitalist, but the basic equation remains the same.

What has changed though is Russian immigration. The first tide of committed Russian Jews leaving Russia in the 70's and 80's, struggling against persecution and tyranny in order to live as Jews in a Jewish state, increasingly gave way to Russian immigrants leaving Russia for economic reasons, many of them non-Jewish or of mixed origin. To Jews Israel was a national homeland, to Russians it was a prosperous Western country offering generous benefits to new immigrants. All it took was a claim of a Jewish grandparent, somewhere.

Flash forward to the middle half of the first decade of the 21st century and Israel has its own Neo-Nazi organization, synagogues being desecrated with Swastikas and a cottage industry of white pride music. Troubled immigrant children are drawing pictures of Adolf Hitler and Livejournal pages feature racist thugs discussing how they beat up elderly Jews.

In 1989 Jewish Agency figures showed that 89 percent of Russians arriving were Jews and 6 percent non-Jews.By 1997 the numbers were 65 percent Jews to 45 percent non-Jews. Current figures suggest that of the current Russian immigration as much as 90 percent is non-Jewish and 40 percent of the overall Russian immigrants in Israel are not Halachically Jewish. Those numbers approach half a million.

What explains this tragic state of affairs. Simply there are a lot of interested parties who actively seek a large scale non-Jewish immigration to Israel.

The first is the American Christian Religious Right. Evangelicals run large programs featuring calls for donations to bring the children of Israel home. These of course first and foremost bring in donations to their own organizations. Evangelical Christians have indeed made widely publicized trips to bring Russian Jews to Israel. Many of these went on to join the 'Messianic' Churches that have sprung up like poisonous shrubs across Israel. Much as with the American form of Messianic Judaism, the actual congregations of the Israeli churches are mainly non-Jews. They do however serve as missionaries and as tools to establish a domestic presence in Israel for Evangelical Christians.

Secondly the Labor Party, Meretz, Shinui, Kadima and the usual secularists, some even among the right wing parties, who wanted to disconnect Israel from religion by bringing in large amounts of non-Jews. To their way of thinking the Russians would make good citizens without the deficit of religious attachments. That was also Ariel Sharon's position as well.

Thirdly the Russian political party Yisrael Beiteinu needs Russian votes to gain more power. More Russian votes require more immigrants to provide them and Yisrael Beiteinu doesn't care where it gets them. And so Yisrael Beiteinu has championed secular marriages and an irreligious society to match the goals of their large non-Jewish voting base.

Fourthly there is Russia itself. While Russia has always been opposed to Jewish immigration, Russian immigration creates what they see as a short term Russian diaspora that sends back money to families in Russia, which boosts the economy; similar to the position of Mexico on Mexican immigration to the US.

The new Russia's regime's approach to immigration is subtle. It does not interfere with Jewish immigration, instead it seeks to take control of Russian Jewish institutions both at home and abroad. Those institutions then go on to repeat the propaganda of the Russian government.

Putin began by destroying the power of independent businessmen leaving only those loyal to his policies, free. Those businessmen become further tools of Russian policy. They've gone on to purchase emigre Russian newspapers and radio stations in America and Israel, such as the Novoye Russkoye Slovo and the Russian Jewish edition of the Forward transforming them into mouthpieces for Russian propaganda. The media themselves become stepping stones for promoting candidates for political office in America and Israel such as Alec Brook-Krasny. The Russian Americans for Israel organization even put forward candidates for the World Jewish Congress. The captive media which marches to Moscow's beat becomes a means of controlling Russians and Russian Jews even outside of Russia and to leverage their votes to influence the politics of the countries they live in.

Along with the independent businessmen, Putin also demolished the independent Jewish community in Russia, replacing it with the Chabad run Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS, whose chief Rabbi, Rabbi Berel Lazar parrots Russian propaganda about there being no more Anti-Semitism in Russia even as Jews are being murdered in Anti-Semitic attacks. The FJC puts out statements glowingly speaking about Jews returning to Russia, as if that was a good thing, rather than a horror, and talking up conditions for Jews in Russia.

The largest Russian emigre population though remains in Israel. The KGB has always had a spy network in Israel piggybacked on Russian Jewish immigrants, which while inconvenient for Communism was convenient for the purposes of planting spies. That network has remained in place despite some arrests such as that of Professor Marcus Klinberg, a KGB officer who headed Israel's Israel Institute for Biological Research and Shabtai Kalmanovitch who managed to worm this way into the upper echelons of Israeli society hosting parties for IDF generals and government ministers.

The potential scale of that network though is umaginable running the gamut from frightened and jobless immigrants jotting down license numbers outside of embassies for a few shekels to an unknown high ranking spy in the Israeli Defense Ministry and compromised Knesset members. The KGB maintained links and ties and compromising information on tens of thousands of Russian emigres, for when the need should arise. Many of those leaving in the 70's even pressured into signing forms agreeing to pass on information to Russia, should they be asked to. Most were never asked and most would never follow through, but for some those papers were used to blackmail them in their new countries.

But the actual spies are the tip of the iceberg. The Russian population in Israel allows the Putin regime to influence Israeli politics as never before using a domestic voting bloc. While Russia undermines Israel politically and militarily Russian politicians and propogandists work to cement the emotional ties of the immigrants to their former country. Meanwhile the lucrative business ties between Russia and Israel allows Russian businessmen to buy and peddle influence in Israel at the behest of the Russian government. The Gazprom delegation to Israel featured Amos Yaron, the former Director General of Israel's Ministry of Defense. The last Gazprom negotiations resulted in a criminal investigation being launched against Ariel Sharon. The current one featured the Russians offering Olmert to make his close friend billionaire Benny Steinmetz their Israeli partner.

Thus Russia's strategy boils down to this.

External. A military and political alliance with Arab nations, providing them weapons and aid without any of America's restrictions. This pushes America into pressuring Israel in order to win back the Arabs, forcing Israel to look for a way out of the trap, but it's still a Russian trap at both ends.

Internal. Buying influence through business deals, gaining control of the media and fielding local political parties inside Israel. Espionage, influence peddling, propaganda. Jewish immigrants are lured back to Russia to service the growing Russian industries and those who remain in Israel are used to promote Russia's policies and propaganda so that Israel is spied on and torn apart from within.

Both ways the sword cuts, inside and outside, it's far more lethal than most understand and it only grows sharper with each passing day. Most believe that the fall of the USSR marked the end of Russia's campaign in the Middle East. The reality is it has only begun and it has now achieved a widespread penetration and destructive influence never dreamed of before.

Monday, June 26, 2006

Palestine's Act of War

By On June 26, 2006
"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

George W. Bush, Radio Address 10/5/2002

“With the help of Allah, we are pleased to say that we succeeded in developing over 20 different types of biological and chemical weapons, this after a three-year effort...We will surprise you with new weapons you have not faced until now. As soon as an IDF soldier sets foot on Gazan land, we will respond with a new weapon,”

Fatah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade 6/26/06



What you see above represents the parts of Israel, Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian ruling authorities, will be able to strike if Olmert retreats from the West Bank. The range includes Tel Aviv. And now Fatah has threatened rocket attacks equipped with chemical weapons.

Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons were what made the case for war. Fatah, which is the party of Palestinian President Abbas, has now claimed it has chemical weapons and is prepeared to use them. Saddam's Iraq fell in the summer of 2003. Exactly three years to the date today. The same date given by Fatah in its 'development' of chemical weapons. To this day the locations of Saddam's chemical weapons remain mostly unknown.

As fellow Arab Socialists, Fatah has always maintained close ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The Baath Party even created the Arab Liberation Front which is a terrorist group that is a part of the PLO, which was run by Fatah; linking Iraqi and Palestinian operations. The ALF distributed hundreds of millions of dollars from Saddam to Palestinian terrorist organizations. Both the ALF and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade represent the so-called 'rejectionist' sections of the PLO.

In 2003 after the fall of Saddam's government, Colonel Mounir Maqdah of Fatah who had funded terrorist attacks by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade sent Palestinian terrorists and suicide bombers to Iraq. While Bush was praising President Abbas, President Abbas' men were murdering US troops. The terrorists that the US helped train and arm went on to murder not only IDF soldiers but US Marines as well.

The mere possession of chemical weapons by Saddam was considered grounds for war. Fatah has now announced that not only does it have those weapons but that it intends to use them. If Saddam's weapons are shown to have made their way to Gaza, will the US be prepeared to back a war?

In any other country, in any other land, when a hostile neighboring regime comes to power and conducts attacks against your nation and then threatens to use chemical weapons, these are acts of war, which are justifiably met with a defensive war. Israel has every legal justification to conduct a war against Palestinian held areas of Israel, until Palestinian hostilities cease and the terrorists are disarmed.

George W. Bush said; "Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes."

The Palestinian government is entirely composed of terrorists. Its terrorists have repeatedly carried out attacks against civilians. Its entire guiding philosophy and religion is the celebration of terrorism.

Bush also said. "Any outlaw regime that has ties to terrorist groups or seeks to possess weapons of mass destruction is a grave danger to the civilised world and will be confronted."

No one is asking Bush to confront the terrorists but to step back and allow Israel which is threatened by them to do so.

Finally Bush said, "Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

Now he has to make that decision himself. Recently he stood and effusively praised President Abbas in the Rose Garden. It's time to make a choice. Politicians have long insisted that the Palestinians should have a state. Palestine. Now that state has shown over and over again what it will do. Even before actual statehood it is threatening to use chemical weapons. It is responsible for much of the terrorism in the region. The latest attack is an act of war backed by threats of weapons of mass destruction.

You're either with us or with the terrorists.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

America has Global Warming FEVER!!!

By On June 24, 2006


It began with that Academy Award winning actor Albert 'Fishbreath' Gore whose astounding film, 'An Incontinent Truth' revealed to us that in eight months and three days the entire planet will burst into flames if it's not immediately coated with asbestos and now all of America has Global Warming Fever.

Scientists who have done extensive research on the subject after they read about it in a New York Times editorial discovered that much of the world suffers from a hot phase known as 'Summer.' Archeological and anthropological records reveal that this phenomenon known as 'Summer' was recognized by ancient societies for thousands of years and often coincidences with plagues and famines. While the disgustingly well-off Westerns societies remain insulated from such phenomena by their adoption of exploitative measures such as prosperous democratic societies, vaccinations and scientific agriculture, much of the world continues to suffer through this plague of summer.

As you can see on our computer generated simulation (projected in 3D) portions of the world begin to heat up during the period known as 'Summer' or 'Saisona Inferna' in Ecuador. During this time temperatures can rise as high as 100 degree Fahrenheit or 520 degrees Kelvin. Scientists estimate on their pocket calculators that if 100 degree temperatures were to continue daily everyone would be forced to wear pith helmets and cotton clothing and polar bears would have to take jobs in air conditioned shopping malls to survive.

Liberals now are the most terrified they've ever been since the passage of the Patriot Act when they were afraid that the government would gain access to library lists and find out that they took out 'Foreign Relations for Dummies' three times last year alone. 4 out of 5 members of the Sierra Club report having nightmares about melting iceberg that can only be stemmed with dams made of non-biodegradeable materials. Daily viewings of 'An Incontinent Truth' have been accompanied with sales of adult diapers at the door as environmentalists soil themselves in terror at the sight of Al Gore's giant face proclaiming the end of mankind as we know it.

Still many incomprehensibly refuse to adopt his 'Atlantis' solution of using atom bombs to blow up all of human civilization while enclosing Berkeley in shrink wrap and sinking it underwater to perpetuate civilization and feed the dolphins. Still despite the naysayers, 'An Incontinent Truth' has grossed nearly 3 million dollars at the box office. And that's just from repeat viewings by the same 3000 people. However Al Gore isn't stopping there unveiling proposed plans to film a sequel, 'The Passion of Al Gore' in which he's brutally crucified and tortured by Jewish factory owners who blow smoke in his face. The only holdup so far is they can't find a cross big enough to accommodate him or have any idea how they'll get him off once he's up on it.

Sadly in all this hubbub and commotion, Gore and Co. are obscuring the real threat. In 800 thousand years the sun will go nova incinerating the earth and all of mankind with it. Stephen Hawking has pointed out this inconvenient, or even more inconvenient truth, out as well. Even more disturbingly our best research indicates that every human being living on earth today will die within a century. Our leaders have yet to address this pressing issue before they too die, to be possibly replaced by a ruling body of super-intelligent squirrels. While the environmentalists are obsessed with the lifespan of icebergs, they ignore the fact that no matter how the icebergs calve or don't calve, they too have only decades to live.

While the Sierra Club and the Nevada Club and the Andes Club insist on putting forward endless solutions for saving the earth, all of which involve growing lots of hemp, none of them will keep their minions alive when their paranoid delusions brought on by hemp smoking convince them that the only way out is to sell out their country to Islamic Terrorists so we can be saved from the wrath of the calving icebergs.

And all the while we discuss what sort of SUV Jesus would drive (Cadillac Escalade with On-Star), no one discusses what sort of motorcycle Buddha would want (Kawasaki Ninja) or what Mohammed wants for his birthday (Jihad gift certificate for 1 billion infidels dead), more black children are being murdered in Darfur because it's more politically correct to bomb White Serbians on behalf of White Muslim Bosnians than to bomb Arab Muslim Sudanese on behalf of Black Muslims, Animists and Christians; even though the Serbian genocides were a lie and the Sudanese government won't stop until it has massacred millions.

Such inconvenient truths are unfortunately too inconvenient for the people who get their morality from Noam Chomsky essays and their politics from Vermont bumper stickers. The corpses of entire villages ethnically cleansed, women with their arms chopped off and 6 year olds outfitted with guns and turned into killers are just as inconvenient for Liberals when they take place in the Sudan as in Iraq or the Palestinian Authority. Inconvenient facts, like Jesus' SUV, are in the eyes of the beholder. And the same people who soil themselves over calving icebergs have nothing to say about Communist China's large scale destruction of the environment or the fact that much of the pollution is actually coming from the third world, but turn into paragons of self-righteousness when confronted by an SUV. And then they fly off to visit relatives across the country without even checking to see if their jet plane is fueled by environmentally safe hemp.

Unlike Microsoft and Operating Systems or Carrot Top and Annoying, no one side has any monopoly on hypocrisy. Conservatives have spent decades arguing that there would be no environmental problems if buisnesses were allowed to do anything they want. Liberals have spent the time since 2001 arguing that there would be no terrorism if we just appeased the Arab world. There's a certain peculiar marketing genius in taking the cause of a problem and then trying to sell it as the solution. The kind of genius that should get you locked up or shot. The Conservative solution would give CEO's large profits they can use to buy crystal fountains and give us the 21st century equivalents of Thalidomide babies. The Liberal solution would give self-righteous jerks who hate their daddies a feeling of finally triumphing over everything that represents the hated patriarchy to them, and give us an endless parade of terrorist attacks.

The irony though is that when elected and given a chance to really tackle the problems Conservatives quickly shifted from flag-waving and rewards for Osama's head to multilateral diplomacy, international peacekeeping and nation building; a Democrat's solution. While when elected Liberals quickly shift from alarmist 'Sky is Falling' rhetoric to ignoring the problem altogether, an entirely Republican answer. So in the end it doesn't matter who you vote for. Most of the time it doesn't even matter if you vote. Much like Jury Duty, all we really need is to have a thousand random people assigned to vote while the rest can stay home and have another beer, and the averages will factor out the same anyway.

A thousand years ago devout Christians believed the world would end and only the righteous who tithed to the Church, scourged themselves, practiced chastity and ate no meat when they weren't supposed to would be saved. Today environmentalists believe the world will end and only the righteous who donate to the Sierra Club and affix the proper bumper stickers to their cars, practice Zero Population Growth and eat a strict Vegan diet will be saved when Gaea encompasses their spirits into its energysphere awaiting the rebirth of the New Atlantis.

The sad truth is whether the icebergs melt or a few million people die in Africa, the world will go on much as it always has. Millions are born and millions will die and go on dying. Few of us alive today will even live long enough to find out the consequences of the choices humanity made without really making and which no amount of bumper sticks could influence. And whether the oceans rise or Mohammed's Jihad gift certificate comes due, the cold comfort among all the global warming fever can be that we won't know how it ends anyway.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Divide and Conquer - How the Present Kadima Tyranny Took Power in Israel

By On June 21, 2006
Divide and conquer has always been historically and traditionally the tactic of the enemy. When Shechem raped Dina, his father offered the rest of the family lucrative business prospects if they went along with it. When the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, the tribe of Levi was set apart from being enslaved so that their vigorous energies would not be directed into resisting Pharaoh. When Amalek attacked, he cowardly struck at those who lagged behind.

But in each of those cases the Jews refused to be divided and thus conquered. The brothers of Dina fought for her and destroyed the city that had abducted her. From the Tribe of Levi came Moshe and Aaron, the liberators of Israel. When Amalek attacked some of the Jews, all the Jews led by Yehoshua fought Amalek and slaughtered them. Sadly this state of affairs didn't continue for long.

The divisions between Yehuda and Israel strengthened Edom and allowed first Babylon to strike one and then the other, and during the Second Temple infighting within the remains of Yehuda opened the door for Rome, descended of Edom, to get its foot in the door and eventually Israel. The same pattern continues today.

Kadima came to power by gathering elements from Labor and Likud, undermining those parties from within by sabotaging their primaries, and unifying the traitors of both parties into one party assembled from the shattered remnants of both.

The second stage of their assault though was in dividing and conquering Labor and Likud voters. To this end ethnic parties played a key role. Immigrant communities have traditionally voted for right parties like the Likud. Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas scooped up a large number of those voters by pretending to be right wing and concerned with Israel's security when in actually they're under the leadership of men like Avigdor Lieberman and Eli Yishai, who are corrupt to the core and have all the morals of a prison full of thieves.

Ethnic parties have long been the product of Israel's 'old boys network', corrupt bureaucracy and the general hostility of both to new immigrants. But of course like Tammany Hall, ethnic parties are the flipside of a system that keeps new immigrants down. Like Tammany Hall, parties like Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu claim to stand up for the rights of downtrodden immigrants. The reality is their whole existence is based on keeping Sefardim and Russian Jews down on their political plantations and beholden to their corrupt networks of influence.

No ethnic or racial party actually wants to empower the races and ethnicities they claim to represent. Shas and Israel Beiteinu, no more than Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton, want to see the emergence of communities of succesfull Russian Jews or Sefardim who don't need them anymore. Like Jackson and Sharpton their whole modus operandi is to emphasize oppression, offer themselves up as the brave fighters for equality and toss a few crumbs from the table to their supporters, while cutting their own deals with whoever is in power to deliver the votes in exchange for millions of shekels and power.

I could go into details of how corrupt both Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu are but it's a waste of breath. Their corruption is by now legendary. Both parties hide behind quasi-mystical icons who have little to do with the day to day running of the party and are in reality far more flawed than their myths suggest. Natan Sharansky for Yisrael Beiteinu and Rabbi Ovadya Yosef for Shas. The key purpose of those icons is to pretend that the parties stand for something more than they actually do, which is naked greed.

Next we have the Pensioner's Party, which helped deliver additional blows to Labor and Likud. The Pensioners Party was started by a former top intelligence official and all-around corrupt and dubious figure. It was a blatantly obvious attempt to cash in on the concerns of older people while delivering votes for Kadima. That is exactly what it did.

Next we have the fiascoes of the National Religious and Haredi parties which are perpetually divided and can never get along. Then we have Shinui whose voters mysteriously rebelled at the primary destroying Shinui and driving its votes to Kadima instead. And so it went.

The Arab parties suddenly found that many of their voters were moving over to Labor and Kadima too. A host of tiny right wing parties sprang up, none of whom managed to pass the threshold, but did conveniently add to the general chaos preventing many from figuring out who to vote for, even as the parties who should have joined together to oppose Kadima, instead fought among themselves.

Divide and conquer. Kadima did not democratically earn its mandates in the Knesset. It stole them first by illegally occupying the Prime Minister's seat. And then through an election full of sabotage, lies and dirty tricks. Kadima divided and conquered Israel's political landscape, as it is now plotting to do to the very earth of the land.

Kadima's policy of Divide and Conquer succeeded however because the divisions were all there. Rather than paying attention to the real enemy, everyone was too busy fighting among themselves. Religious against secular. Haredim agaist Religious Zionist and with each other. Religious Zionists with each other. Secular against secular. Labor against Labor. Likud against Likud. Russians against Sefardim. Sefardim against Secular and Haredim. And so on and so on and so forth.

And this was how the third temple burned.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Mercy to the Cruel is Cruelty to the Mercifull - Aid to the Palestinians is Murder to Jews

By On June 20, 2006


M16 weapons transferred to the Palestinian Authority, to President Abbas' bodyguard of terrorists were used in an attempt to murder Jewish girls. This is not the first time that weapons provided to the Palestinians for "security purposes" were turned against Israelis either. Each time weapons were provided to the Palestinian terrorists the media and politicians describe as police officers, soldiers or presidential bodyguard; those weapons are inevitably used in the service of terrorism, because whether it's Fatah or Hamas, the ruling authority of the Palestinians are always terrorists.

For over a decade the bleeding hearts who selectively bleed for every murderer with a bomb and gun have but whose hearts are closed to the suffering of their Jewish brothers have pushed aid as the solution. They have shoveled aid to the Palestinians. Aid to Indonesia which turned around and spent it on donations to Hamas. They have built factories for the Palestinians while the unemployment and poverty rater in Israel rose. They built schools for the Palestinians where they could teach their children the virtues of killing Jews while Palestinian rockets fell on Israel schools. And the government of Israel gave the Palestinians land. Land from which to launch those rockets, to build their bomb factories and train their killing squads. They gave, they gave and they gave and we bled.

Foreign aid pays for the salaries of 165,000 employees of the Palestinian Authority. That's 1 out of every4 adult males. Or 1 government worker to every 18 Palestinians. As I had written about before. Of course the PA doesn't remotely need 165,000 employees especially as they provide no services and the PA does nothing beyond employ the armed gangs of their security forces, carry on propaganda to the West and funnel money into secret bank accounts.

The foreign aid goes to pay those very same terrorists and armed gangs who shoot up the Palestinian Parliament when they don't get their cut, it also goes towards patronage that buys political allegiances of entire tribes and sections of Palestinian society. The war being waged against Israel requires a structure. Neither Fatah nor Hamas have any real government structure in place beyond borrowed titles. Their real structure resembled a street gang or a drug cartel. Unlike actual gangs though the PA has few profitable activities beyond squeezing their own people, and most of the Palestinian Christian businessmen have already left. The main aim and purpose of both Fatah and Hamas is a war with Israel and this requires money to finance their operations. The foreign aid being pumped into Palestinian areas provides the cash flow. No matter what it's officially directed to, what it really does is shore up whoever is in charge so they can pay off their foot soldiers, pay out patronage to their own top officials and buy weapons. The only activities any Palestinian government has ever engaged in.

The M16's provided to Abbas which were then turned around and used in an attempt to kill Jewish girls are only the most obvious way in which aid to the Palestinians is transformed into a weapon. Every dollar, pound, rupee and zloty poured into the PA finances the operations of a terrorist organization. All money provided to the PA is quickly transformed into bullets, bombs and shells. Mercy to the cruel is cruelty to the merciful. Not because the cruel do not deserve mercy as that they will even transform acts of mercy rendered to them into acts of cruelty.

Monday, June 19, 2006

Introducing Israel's New Superheroes - The X-Prime Ministers

By On June 19, 2006


"A new forum organized by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to meet for the first time on Monday: the Ex-Prime Ministers’ Club. The topic on the agenda: Iran."


Finally deliverance is at hand as the X-Prime Ministers snap into action! When Israel is in trouble they spring into action!

First up is Ehud Barak who can play the piano, speak Russian and show off his many medals. Additionally he possesses the mysterious superpower to conduct secret negotiations while lying about it to everyone's face.

Barak parachutes into Tehran disguised as a woman, meets with top Iranian officials and promises that Israel will allow itself to be nuked so long as nuclear weapons only fall outside the Green Line. Back at home Barak promises that he has made absolutely no deal with the Iranians. No one but no one believes him.

Next to take a whack at the problem comes Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu possesses the power to deliver excellent speeches while conducting multiple extramarital affairs, appearing utterly untrustworthy to everyone but the women and men who have crushes on him, and the fantastic superpower of having absolutely no backbone.

Netanyahu extends himself through space, wriggles into Tehran, delivers speeches that vow the Iranian government but has to flee frantically after seducing the Iranian President's wife.

Then Shimon Peres steps up to the plate. The eldest of the X-Prime Ministers, Peres has a fixed unwavering smile, can bore audiences for hours with ramblings about the nanotechnological future of the Middle East that make absolutely no sense, can quote Das Kapital by heart for romantic reasons and has the amazing superpower of falling madly in love with the enemies of the State of Israel.

Peres takes a train car filled with roses to Tehran, spreads a carpet of them underfoot and tries to woo the Iranian President with talk about building a Socialist future together and combining Israel and Iran into one country. He's promptly stoned by angry mobs, unfortunately he survives because none of them can get a single stone to stick to him.

With all the X-Prime Ministers expended but one it comes time to resort to Ariel Sharon lying comatose in his bed. Sharon has the power of being dead from the neck up and weighing more than King Kong from the neck down. He has the superhuman power to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and still come out on top always looking out for himself.

A zombie Ariel Sharon climbs out of bed and stomps across Jordan, Syria and Iraq and finally across the border into Iran eating sheep in his sleep to power himself. All weapons deployed by Iran against him are of absolutely no use sticking in his many layers of flab. Finally facing a drastic sheep shortage that would result in mass starvation, Iran detonates its nuclear weapons within its own borders in a massive act of national suicide bombing. Hours later his belly completely filled with radioactive sheep, a glowing Ariel Sharon staggers out of Iran leaving a trail of death wherever he goes accidentally turns right instead of left and becomes the second radioactive zombie President of France.

And this happily ends another adventure of that most intrepid band of heroes, the X-Prime Ministers. Tune in next week when they finally fuse their powers of incompetence, egotism and corruption together to destroy the entire country.

See you next tommorow kids. Same time. Same station.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

The Betrayers of the Flame

By On June 18, 2006


- The future Prime Minister of Israel is covered in lice on the lower decks of a prison boat headed for Siberia. The criminal gangs control most of the boat, killing the political prisoners, taking their clothes and shoes. A dying Jewish Communist who was the former assistant editor of Pravda asks him to sing him a song he remembers before he dies. The Lashuv song. Lashuv El Eretz Avoteinu. To Return to the Land of Our Fathers. The Hatikvah.

- In a Soviet Gulag when men were dying of the forced labor and the cold, when food and warm clothing were more precious than gold and hope was gone, a prisoner sat translating a copy of Leon Uris' Exodus. It is a mediocre book and unknown to him others in the USSR are engaged in the same task. When the translation is done it will be smuggled out again and circulated among those Russian Jews desperate for their homeland. Their true homeland.

- It is 1944 and a young Jewish girl is crossing the border into Hungary. Before she crosses over she passes on a poem and then she is gone. She had come out of Israel off a Kibbutz to warn Hungarian Jews about the Nazi death camps, to help her mother and to join up with the resistance. Instead she is captured by the SS, tortured and executed. Before her death she goes on carving poems into the walls of her cell. The words of the poem she passed on at the border were once known by every Israeli schoolchild. They take the form of a blessing.

Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame. Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart

The story of Israel, the story of the Jewish people, is the story of the struggle between those who fought and died to keep that flame burning and the betrayers of the flame. It is the same battle we have been fighting for thousands of years. We are still fighting it today until we have at long last come face to face with the enemy in our own ranks that truly represents the nullification of the flame.

Our enemies today in the ranks of Kadima, among varieties of Judaism so liberalized it has thrown out everything but a handful of customs, among Jews to assimilated their only connection to Judaism is a pronounced distaste are not motivated by a fire of their own, by a burning passion for anything; but by a moral, religious and nationalistic vacuum. We are no longer fighting the left. We are not combating an ideology. We are fighting arrogant men and women devoid of ideology who have no beliefs beyond their own careers and wallets. What they do is not in the name of Marxism or Socialism, Fascism or any known ideology. They represent the corrupt breakdown of all values to the point of anarchy where nothing exists anymore but criminal conspiracies with no further end than power and greed and no thought or concern for the consequences and the future.

The dream is dying. The dream a hundred thousand matches kindled into a great flame is in danger of going out. There is no longer a leadership. There is no longer one way. Name any national movement and it has splintered into many fragments. From the students of Jabotinsky to Religious Zionism from the followers of Kahane to the Haredi parties to the Labor party, the Kibbutz movement and even Shinui itself. All that remains are many quarreling factions who often as not fight as each other more vigorously than they do anyone else. Everything has fragmented into chaos. No one leads. Everyone contends. The flame that burned in those three I named above and in so many others. The flame is going out and the Betrayers of the Flame are winning.

Today Israel and the Jewish people face a choice. It is not between left and right or between religious and irreligious, Sefardi and Ashkenazi or any of the ethnic, political and social strains tearing apart Israel. It is between the darkness and the flame. It is a choice between lighting the match that burns in us and holding it with others to form the flame that is the Jewish nation or to go off apart into the darkness of apathy, self-interest and greed that Kadima and the Betrayers of the Flame represent.

The movements that formed Israel, even the Labor Zionists, held a dream for which any sacrifice was worthwhile. Right or wrong they pursued that dream. The forces that have taken over Israel now are the anti-thesis of all forms of Zionism, of all forms of belief. They represent cynical greed and a lust for power. They feed Israelis disillusionment, convince them that only fools and fanatics like the settlers sacrifice for Zionism and that smart men are only out for themselves, out to grab as much as they can, to live the high life at anyone else's expense. Olmert and Peres and the rest of the followers are the perfect patron saints for such a poisoned worldview. They are men who climbed to power despite their incompetence, their corruption and utter lack of merits. They are professional careerists who always land on their feet and care for no one but themselves.

The men and women who struggled and sacrificed to build Israel left behind comfortable lives for the hardships of Israel. The men and women who have taken over now shovel their accomplishments into the rubbish heap while proclaiming with their actions and attitudes that the only worthwhile goal is a comfortable life. They lead the way in selling out their country, in selling out their friends and colleagues, selling out their parties and government positions; and encourage the rest of the country to follow their example leading the people into the lowest imaginable depths. They go to each man and say to him that the match that burns must be put out, the flame dampened and replaced with the dark abyss of complete unbelief in anything at all.

They have set up gods of gold and silver in foreign bank accounts and when they pray it is not to Jerusalem, but to Brussels, Washington D.C. and Rome. They are the new Yerovams cutting apart the nation not in the name of any belief or cause but in the name of their own power. In that name they destroyed Gush Katif. In that name they have waged war on religion in Israel. In that name they plan to destroy Yehuda and Shomron. And they will go on to destroy every shred of belief, every ideology from the left to the right, every part of Judaism, root and branch, and ground under every man and woman who still believe in something, in anything at all. Because belief is a candle and their way requires an utter darkness in which none can see or judge the evils that they do.

With each step on the road they have destroyed from within, undermined and corrupted the major political parties, the major nationalistic and religious movements. They have no opposition and they rule now. With each person they make complicit in their actions, with each policeman or soldier who plays a part in forcing Jews out of their home, with each voter who votes for a corrupt party because he believes it makes no difference anyway; they spread their darkness into more souls. They corrupt more and more Israelis, they deaden their hearts and sink low their souls into a well of apathy, disillusionment and despair. Their greatest victory is when people stop caring. When they believe in nothing and only look for personal gain.

Their war against the settlers is not only a means of destroying the strongest source of belief and Zionism remaining in the State, but to deaden the hearts of the Israeli public to the abuse of Jews and to make the military and the public complicit in their crimes so that they will have to excuse the crimes, to excuse themselves.

We stand now on the brink of an annihilation few can comprehend. Not merely the atom of Iran or the knives and bullets of the Palestinians. Those will come in time and do their work when all the flames are dimmed and the people of Israel are no more than a mob and every man's hand is raised against his neighbor and none stand together and all die together yet alone. While the former rulers of Kadima eat at expensive restaurants in Brussels and Rome, the blood of the people they have led into darkness will cover the streets of Haifa and Tel Aviv. When the ethos of Kadima fully rules Israel, when the people of Israel know no emotions beyond hatred, greed and fear, then they will have become beasts as the nations which surround them; and just as a man who descends to the level of an animal can no longer command it, they too will no longer be able to overcome them in war and they will be slaughtered.

As once was so will be again unless the matches are held together to form a flame. Unless a national movement forms driven by men who believe in something who are prepared not just to sacrifice for it but to stand together for a greater cause. Who care nothing for power or position. Who cannot be bought off with ministries and government cars. Who cannot be silenced with threats and warnings of civil war. There are many still who have the match lit in them but they lack leadership and direction and the Betrayers of the Flame, the enemy that rules now in Zion, picks them off one by one.

If we continue to focus on the pointless divisions that generate the infighting we will fail. If we continue to fight one another so that a handful of leaders and activists can retain their positions we will fail. If any further proof of that is needed the fall of second Bais Hamikdash is ample evidence of where we are headed. There is no virtue in being right while the Bais burns. There is only virtue in preserving it.

The greatest challenge we face now is not Kadima, it is ourselves. It is not giving in to the darkness, to the disillusionment and despair that has been fed to us over the last decade. It is not merely to reflexively and reactively oppose Kadima but to take the initiative back and to take the country back from a corrupt leadership of ministers, rabbanim and activists. We must recognize both that we can win and that we can lose. To believe that we can't win or that we can't lose is to give in to different kinds of apathy and inaction. Both lead to darkness, to an extinguishing of the flame.

As in Chanukah if we can relight the sacred flame we will win. If we cannot then the exile awaits.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Olmert's Regime to American Jews: Support Withdrawal or Shut Up

By On June 15, 2006
"American Jews largely support Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's realignment plan and those who don't will be told to keep quiet so that the global Jewish community can maintain a united front, says Consul-General in New York Arye Mekel. "


Truly a reminder of the halycon days when Shulamit Aloni was the New York Consul and doing the best her rotten little heart could to suppress opposition to Oslo. Merkel claims the OU won't publically express its disagreement with the plan to expell hundreds of thousands of people forcibly from their homes which would merely be a continuation of the cowardice they displayed during Disegagement, making only a small protest when the harrassment had turned so bad Jews in Kippas were being singled out and taken off buses.

Merkel insists that American Jews respect the democratic choice of Israelis. He rather forgets that this democratic choice was about as democratic as your average Ugandan election. While defectors from Likud and Labor worked to sabotage their parties from within, a Prime Minister seized power from an election that had been won by the Likud party, not his own newly created Kadima party.

But finally I will quote the words of David Ben Gurion, Israel's first leader, on the subject. A view that was as prevalent once among secular politicians as it was among Rabbis.

"No Jew has the right to yield the rights of the Jewish People in Israel. No Jew has the authority to do so. No Jewish body has the authority to do so. Not even the entire Jewish People alive today has the right to yield any part of Israel.

It is the right of the Jewish People over the generations, a right that under no conditions can be cancelled. Even if Jews during a specific period proclaim they are relinquishing this right, they have neither the power nor the authority to deny it to future generations. No concession of this type is binding or obligates the Jewish People.

Our right to the country - the entire country - exists as an eternal right, and we shall not yield this historic right until its full and complete redemption is realized."


We too do not recognize and reject the actions of the current Israeli government. We grant them no legitimacy to make binding decisions on the entire Jewish people and on the heritage of the entire Jewish people. No matter what lies they tell and what deceits they practice they have no right to do so and will never have the right to do so.

When we sing "David Melech Yisrael Chai Ve'Kayam" "David King of Israel Lives" we are proclaiming again that ultimate rulership is vested not in the politicians their party members parade around with chants of "Ariel Melech Yisrael" or "Yitzchak Melech Yisrael" but in an ultimate kingship vested by God for which these politicians serve as merely caretakers, presumptuous caretakers who have overstepped their boundaries.

Those in Israel and America, Laymen and Rabbis, Organization Leaders and Ordinary Jews who subscribe to the myth that winning an election empowers a political party with the authority to squander the heritage of the Jewish people in the name of that false diety, Democracy, demonstrate just how little worth their faith is in the actual diety who gave that land to the Jewish people for all eternity. Those whose ultimate faith is placed in the infallible God of heaven and earth, rather than the all too fallible ballot box, wherever they may be will continue to oppose the actions of this corrupt and criminal government and not be lulled by the distortions and lies of its representatives.

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Biased Reporting About a Lakewood Bias Crime

By On June 13, 2006


Recently the Jewish community in Lakewood experienced a brutal sexual assault. When Elchonon Zimmerman saw Jamarr Dickerson, a strange teenager on his property, he tried to take a picture of him with his cell phone. There was a scuffle, people nearby arrived to assist the property owner who subdued the teenager. When police arrived they arrested Zimmerman charging him with assault.

This was just the beginning though as the NAACP held a press conference demanding that bias crime charges be lodged against everyone involved because there had been supposed shouts of racial slurs.

Now call me crazy but when a man gets into a scuffle with an intruder on his private property, the police should at the very least arrest the intruder as well as the homeowner. The NAACP has persistently refered to Jamarr Dickerson as a child, but Jamarr Dickerson is a fairly large 15 year old who could reasonably be mistaken for older. The Asbury Park Press however has repeatedly trumpeted the NAACP line without ever interviewing Rabbi Zimmerman or getting the other side of the story or even pretending to do so, but continues to suggest in every article that Dickerson was an innocent victim while implying that it's only Jewish influence that has created the irregularity that led to Zimmerman only being charged with assault, rather than a hate crime.

Now both sides agree on the following. Jamarr Dickerson was trespassing behind Rabbi Elchonon Zimmerman's home. Zimmerman attempted to take a photo of Dickerson with his cell phone. Zimmerman claims Dickerson tore the cell phone out of his hand and smashed it. Dickerson only claims he put up his hand to block it. Zimmerman subdued him and held him till the police arrived. The police describe this as an assault, the press describes this as a virtual lynch mob with a crowd gathering and attacking Dickerson, but the only injuries Dickerson had were minor cuts and bruises. As Yankel Rosenbaum could tell you, if he was still alive, when you're attacked by an angry mob, you don't get off with cuts and bruises, which are far more consistent with the minor scuffle Zimmerman describes. Dickerson himself admits that all that really happened was that he was held down, which is to be expected if you're trespassing and get into a fight with the property owner.

These are the actual facts. What has turned this into such a circus has been the claims of racial slurs being hurled at Dickerson. Now Zimmerman did not hurl any racial slurs. Supposedly some of the gathered men did. The NAACP wants an investigation to determine who in the crowd said anything to him and to arrest them all. I'd respect this position more if the NAACP equally applied it to black on white slurs. Of course they do not. The NAACP wants Zimmerman charged with a bias crime, but there is nothing biased in confronting an intruder on your property, especially after your community has suffered a horrific crime.

The entire discussion of race conveniently turns a fairly straightforward account with a minor discrepancy into a major case with racial heroes and villains. Strip away the races though and it becomes an ordinary enough dispute of a kind every town sees on and on between property owners and teenagers. Race though turns it into a narrative about racist Jews and the Black teenager victimized by them. And this is why injecting race into a legal situation distorts it out of all measure. The pungent media bias only finalizes the distorted narrative reporting one side's version of events as the absolute truth and transforming the ambiguity of an incident into a screenplay.

Monday, June 12, 2006

Puerto Rican Day Parade Welcomes Criminals

By On June 12, 2006


The Latin Kings are one of the most violent street gangs in the United States responsible for murders, arson drug dealing, kidnapping and a long list of violent crimes. In 1993 15 year old Jenna Gonzales was beaten so severely by Latin Kings members that she could only be identified by her dental records. Two RICO investigations have been launched resulting in the arrests of hundreds of Latin Kings members.

Today members of the Latin Kings gang marched in the Puerto Rican day parade. The New York Correction Department's Hispanic Society which was supposed to march behind the Kings made it clear that it was either them or the Kings. The parade organizers made their choice.

At the parade 50 people were arrested for disorderly conduct, including many in Latin Kings colors. Violence has long since been associated with the parade. Buisnesses along the parade route regularly board up their windows. The most notorious incident may have been in 2000 when women were sexually assaulted by gangs of laughing men but the parade annually produces its toll of violence. Last year saw an assault on a police officer, two stabbings and multiple arrests. None of it particularly unusual.

Why do such events keep recurring around the parade? The Latin Kings incident richly demonstrates why. When thugs are treated as heroes and role models, that ends up defining a community's values. Given a choice between a law enforcement fraternity and thugs, the parade chose the thugs. So did Bloomberg who in a typical bout of pandering stated that the city can't say who can or can't march in a parade. Oddly enough since it's the city that provides the permit I imagine the city would. At the very least Bloomberg might have borrowed some of the courage of Rudy Guliani and refused to march in a parade with criminals. But like most politicians Bloomberg prefers to patronize rather than lead, unless there's a bottom line to it.

In doing so Bloomberg like the parade organizers defined his values. Moral compromises in exchange for popularity. Pandering rather than leading. Treating criminals in minority communities differently and even fraternizing with them. All these things helped lead New York into the mess that Ed Koch and Rudy Guliani with difficulty pulled the city out of. And all of them are now returning again.

Leadership does not mean telling people what they want to hear but what they don't want to hear. For a long time now though people have been too afraid to speak and too easily intimidated. Seinfeld which made jokes about every culture had future airings of its episode about the Puerto Rican Day Parade censored by NBC. A Law and Order episode about the parade inspired an apology from NBC. The organizers by contrast have yet to apologize to the annual victims of violence from their parade. They have yet to apologize for endorsing a gang of murderers and drug dealers. Instead the Mayor lectures store owners that closing during the parade could be seen as insulting to Puerto Ricans. At this point closing during the parade is common sense. What is insulting to Puerto Ricans is when a community's heritage comes to be represented by criminals. And if it isn't insulting, then it should be.

The day that Hispanic police officers are welcome in the parade and gang members aren't is the day the parade will stop being rightfully associated with violence by New Yorkers.

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Zarqawi's Death No Reason to Celebrate

By On June 11, 2006


The United States is overeagerly patting itself on the back for finally getting Zarqawi after years of terrorist attacks. This was managed through tips from inside Al Queda itself and the Iraqi government has already announced that the 25 million dollar bounty will be paid to the sources.

None of this is any reason to celebrate. Zarqawi wasn't caught because of good intelligence work but because of a split between Osama Bin Laden and Zarqawi, between the Al Queda leadership in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Last month a meeting was held in an attempt to patch things over, the root of the dispute being whether Al Queda's terrorism should be focused on Western targets and American troops as Bin Laden wanted or equally against Shiite muslims. as Zarqawi has done. The contacts failed to resolve anything and as a result the Bin Laden side of the Al-Queda network handed over Zarqawi's location, disposing of an obstacle to what Bin Laden really wants which is to join with Shiite Muslims in a wide-scale Jihad against America, and getting a 25 million dollar paycheck for it which will be used to kill more American troops.

Now as we approach the point of hostilities with Iran the US has just removed the biggest obstacle to cooperation between Sunni and Shiite terrorist organizations in Iraq. The Mosque bombings will likely come to an end bringing with it a renewed campaign against American soldiers and the Iraqi government. Shiites in Iraq have focused their followers hatred for America even due to the Al-Queda bombings on their own mosques by claiming that Zarqawi was an American puppet. When the Bin Laden side of Al-Queda retakes control in Iraq, the Zarqawi phase of Al-Queda which saw the Jordanian hotel bombings and an all out war on Shiites, as an aberration that was a conspiracy of America and Israel, and move to unite and intensify a campaign against America under the aegis of Iran.

No reason to celebrate at all.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Thieves Without Ideology: Kadima Reveals its Intelectual Bankruptcy

By On June 09, 2006


Revelations that Kadima USA, the American branch of Israel's Kadima party, plagirized much of its platform word for word from the Texas Democratic party should be no great surprise. That is also how the Israeli Kadima party got its platform.

Shmuel Tamir, the Irgun fighter, prominent lawyer and former Justice Minister describes in his autobiography how he had started his own party back in 1972 and got a visit from Ariel Sharon who feigned interest in joining his party and took away a copy of its positions. They agreed to hold a joint press conference the next day announcing their union. Instead Sharon held his own press conference to announce the formation of his own party all based on positions quoted from Tamir's own document. Sharon's political party failed, but that same party platform was revived again for Kadima.

The reporting on KadimaUSA stealing its platform overlooks the fact that the original Kadima Israel is equally based on a stolen platform. If someone investigates Kadima France, they will likely also find that just like Kadima USA and Kadima Israel, its platform is stolen.

A reasonable person might wonder why a rising political party is so devoid of ideals that it can't lay out what it stands for but has to instead plagiarize its positions. The reason for that is that none of the Kadimas stands for absolutely anything. Kadima represented nothing more than an Israel version of Putin's own United Russia party. Both are government parties formed out of fragments of existing parties that illegally leveraged the leader's power to subvert Democracy and creating a party that do not represent any segment of the public or the nation but wholly serves the leadership.

Sharon formed Kadima to destroy any democratic political opposition and solidify his grip on power. Kadima USA and Kadima France and the other Kadimas are also imitations of Putin's policy of taking control of the Russian population outside of Russia with local organizations controlled by Russia. With international Kadimas, the Kadima leadership is intent on seizing political power in the diaspora and to recreate cloned versions of itself, equally devoid of ideals and identity.

It was a perfect fit when "Rabbi" Marc Schneier was appointed to lead KadimaUSA. Like Olmert himself, Marc Schenier is the perfect opportunist. Schneier has made a career at finding his way into the papers by pulling off publicity stunts, meetings with Anti-Semitic rap stars, with Louis Farrakhan, joint partnerships and press releases, all of it amounting to nothing. Like Kadima itself, Schneier has no real agenda beyond being famous and written about. He has made an ideal front man for an organization whose actual leadership will originate from Jerusalem not New York.

For the first time Israel and the American Jewish community risks being dominated by organizations that are neither left nor right, that are little more than criminal organizations. Gangs of thieves without ideology. The Tweed Ring and Tammany Hall with an Israeli accent, funded by rich businessmen, run by corrupt politicians with kickbacks going all the way down the ladder.

Tamir relates in his autobiography what happened after Sharon's blatant theft of his party platform.

Two weeks later, Sharon called: "You’re probably angry with me," Sharon chuckled. Tamir: "I’m stunned, astonished... "I’m surprised," Sharon told him. "The whole IDF knows that I’m contemptible and you didn’t know?"

Now Kadima has dismantled much of the IDF's command beginning with its top generals because they opposed Disengagement and disagreed with the further withdrawals from the West Bank, gravely endangering Israel on the eve of war with Iran. It has declared war on a major sector of Israel's population. Its policies not only endanger Israel's security but its economy. Kadima has taken into itself just about every careerist politician willing to sell out his country and his friends and his party for a dime. It is swiftly becoming a hydra spreading throughout Israel and the world. For Israel to survive, Kadima must die.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Rabbi Shlomo Goren: Liberator of Hevron

By On June 07, 2006


In these restored photos we can see the Maarat HaMachpelah from its days under Turkish and British rule. Jews were not allowed to ascend higher than the seventh step. The future Chief Rabbi of the IDF and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi and Brigadier General Rabbi Shlomo Goren was a student at the Hevron Yeshiva during the abortive Arab pogrom of 1936. At 17 he wrote a commentatry on the Rambam's Mishna Torah. At 18 he joined the Haganah to fight for independence.

During the war of 1967 Rabbi Goren followed behind the troops to bury and take care of the dead putting himself at great risk. He blew the shofar at the Western Wall of the former temple and proclaimed "We Have Liberated the City of God." After the liberation of Jerusalem, Rabbi Goren had demanded to be brought along to Hevron but he was nevertheless left behind.

Rabbi Goren proceeded on his own and mistakenly arrived in Hevron, a town of 80,000 Arabs that had driven out the Jews in bloody pogroms, on his own. A single short older man bearing a sefer torah liberating an ancient Jewish town. No one dared lay a hand on him. Rabbi Goren shot out the lock on the Maaret Hamachpelah and blew the Shofar as he had at the wall and after praying at the tomb of the forefathers he proclaimed that Hevron was and will be Jewish forever.

After the war Rabbi Goren championed prayers on the temple mount, called for the rebuilding of a synagogue on the Temple Mount that had existed before the 16th century, the removal of the mosque of omar, the so-called dome of the rock, and issued a psak din stating that soldiers were obligated to refuse any orders to evacuate Jewish towns and settlements.

May we merit to have men like Rabbi Goren leading us again in these dark times.









Photos taken from the Library of Congress by David

Monday, June 05, 2006

New Media Collaborates with Old Tyrannies

By On June 05, 2006


When it comes to the Chinese police state both the old and new media are more than happy to oblige. News Corp has helped the PRC build its digital wall. Microsoft has censored an MSN Spaces user's blog at the request of the Chinese authorities. Google has censored its chinese search engine so no troubling mentions of democracy or Taiwan come up. Yahoo though topped them all when it turned over information from a journalist's Yahoo email who had emailed comments from a newspaper staff meeting which which the Chinese government decided was classified information. The journalist went to jail through information provided by Yahoo.

When Yahoo chief Terry Semmel appeared at the All Things Digital conference he expected to discuss technology instead he was asked if he would similarly have collaborated with Nazi Germany. His reply was as follows.

"I don't know how I would have felt then."

All told I think we have a pretty good idea of what Mr. Semmel and the others would have done. The irony is that Silicon Valley is the home of an often rabid yuppified liberalism. Google has made 99 percent of its political donations to Democratic candidates. Bill Gates has pumped millions into the Democratic party. Yet their vaunted committment to liberalism consists mainly of opposing Republicans, just not of supporting democracy or freedom of speech in other countries. They want to feel good about themselves by donating to Howard Dean, nodding their heads to Moveon's tirades and drinking organic coffee, just not in taking a stand where it matters.

The National Journalists Union of the UK has announced a boycott of Yahoo. But ironically the Journalist's Union is boycotting Yahoo which turned over a journalist's information to China but not the PRC which actually jailed him. By contrast there are half a dozen boycotts against Israel brewing in the UK with anyone from researchers to linguists to architects clambering aboard to be part of the fun. But then as Terry Semmel could inform the Union boycotting the PRC would have actual financial consenquences while ordering their members to boycott a new media firm that doesn't really do individual buisness with their members anyway is a good show without any substance.

China, like the new media, is an old leftist institution, totalitarian in nature, changing itself into a purely capitalist institution and discarding even its left wing ideals in the process. There is little wonder that Yahoo and Google and the rest of the digetirati can relate to it. China is their big brother.

For all the posturing liberal corporate morals end at the checkbook just like conservative corporate ones do. The chief difference is that liberals maintain a pocket industry dedicated to convincing themselves otherwise. In the process the new digital media may take other forms of content but display the same amorality as the old. But organic coffee and paypal donations to left wing candidates can't disguise the fact that the new media boss is much like the old.

By all means boycott Yahoo, not for collaborating with with the chinese government, something Microsoft and Google do equally but for peeling back a layer of the liberal media hypocrisy on compromising integrity for profit.

Sunday, June 04, 2006

The Modern Day Heroes of Our People

By On June 04, 2006


Two weeks ago Tzippi Schlissel , the great-granddaughter of Rabbi Avraham HaCohen Kook became a grandmother herself. Her father was Rabbi Shlomo Raanan who was murdered in his home in Hevron in 1998. The Arab terrorist climbed through his window, stabbed him through the chest and went after his wife Chaya. The 64 year old Rabbi Raanan while bleeding to death followed after the terrorist to protect his wife. Rabbi Raanan struggled with him and was stabbed yet again but the terrorist fled. Rabbi Raanan died shortly afterwards.

His daughter, Tzippi Schlissel became a grandmother now days after she was forcibly expelled from her home in Hevron. The mother of 10 children, she had lived there with her husband Rabbi Yisrael Schlissel who taught in a Kollel there, before they were dragged out of their homes. When she was evicted her youngest daughter was ten months old. This was not the first time.

She was beaten and arrested in her own home on January 19th in Hevron at Mitzpeh Shalhevet, the neighborhood named after Shalhevet Pass the 10 month old baby killed by a Palestinian sniper. Her own 5 month old baby was taken away from her and the police dragged her along the ground, threw her in a car head first and closed the door on her foot leaving it to slam against her leg along the trip. All the way there she recited Tehilim. For that she was further charged with showing contempt for the police as one of those chapters of Tehilim was 106 containing, "For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit have they opened against me; they have spoken unto me with a lying tongue."

But even that was not the first time. Tzipi Schlissel had been at Yamit as a teenager, at the first time Jews were forcibly thrown out of their homes by their own government to make way for an Arab occupation. Almost twenty five years later she has continued the struggle. The World, the Israeli left and the Arabs are determined to drive people like her out. But away from the politicians and the pundits, the heads of organizations and committees, there are people like Tzipi Schlissel who are far more determined to stay.

"Rabbi Hisda exclaimed, "If only we had legs of iron to always follow you and learn from you!" [Berachot 41b] Similarly, on the national level, we need "legs of iron," powerful means to build up the physical aspects of the nation. Then we will have the spiritual strength to create a courageous national spirit. "And we will learn from you" — we will follow your path of Torah, and merit inheriting the Land through love and peace and inner strength. "Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit" [Zachariah 4:6]." Rabbi Avraham HaCohen Kook.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Violent Crime Continues to be Underreported

By On June 01, 2006
"Hevesi: Violent Crimes Underreported In NYS" Suffolk Life Newspapers, NY - May 31, 2006

7Online, NY - 19 minutes ago - State Comptroller Alan Hevesi publicly apologized Thursday for a remark about "putting a bullet between the president's eyes."

Popular

Blog Archive