While major portions of the Olmert government have been entangled in large scale corruption cases, they continue to enjoy immunity from prosecution. Meanwhile it is the true Zionists, the people who have opposed the destruction the corrupt Kadima Mafia have wrought in Israel who are facing the legal fury of the courts and regularly experience numerous abuses by a judicial and law enforcement system dominated by a left wing judiciary and a police apparatus beholden to the government.

Here are only two cases.

August 10th 2005, -- Before the expulsion of the Jews of Gush Katif, -- Miriam and Yaron Adler arrived at the house of Miriam's father, Rabbi Ze'ev Mishkoff. Between 2 and 3 in the morning, Yasam police dressed in civilian clothing burst into rabbi mishkoff's house and presented them with an order to leave sa'nur, their home. The order was a fax copy and not the original document and thus had no legal validity. Miriam and Yaron had been one of the first families in Sa'Nur and stated that their home was here and that they were not going to leave it.

The following is described in Miriam's own words. "Two weeks before the deportation we were arrested in the middle of the night in my parents' home, where we were visiting: Six policemen burst into the house, without uniforms, identification tags, or police IDs. They shoved us and hit us and my father and my mother, who has a heart condition. They smashed my father's spectacles, pushed my mother with such force that she suffered from hemorrhages beneath the skin, and confiscated all weapons they found (though all were licensed). I was dragged and beaten down three flights of stairs, without shoes and without the head covering which is mandatory for Orthodox Jews. These thuggish policemen cursed me in a way that I don't wish to repeat. Humiliation continued in the police station. No-one removed my hand-cuffs. I was not permitted to cover my head, and I was not examined by a doctor even though I complained of pains and demanded it. As I stood there I saw the thugs who had attacked me writing an arrest report, coordinating their testimony all the while."

Miriam is barely over 5 feet tall. She was charged with assaulting five police officers. Miriam sued the police but the case was closed within two days on the grounds of "A Lack of Public Interest."

Miriam Adler, a mother of 6, has refused a lawyer and refused to recognize the legitimacy of the court. On June 6th at the Russian Compound at 8:30 AM, the case will be heard by Judge Ron Alexander. As in typical, her case has already been postponed many times. Those who can are encouraged to attend and show their support. For further information contact Anat Livni 05-77-394-736 in Hebrew. Her husband can be contacted at yakov_livni@bezeqint.net


Jeffrey Seath is a United States citizen from North Carolina, the son of a Jewish father and a Cherokee mother, a hunter with a number of legal weapons. His father's dying wish was that he become a Jew. A year ago Jeffrey Seath arrived in Israel to study Hebrew and convert, taking the name Shmuel Zatam. He brought one of his rifles that he intended to present as a gift to the army. Because he had developed friendships with some Jewish nationalists, he was accused of being part of some Jewish underground and charged with planning to use the rifle to murder Arabs. No actual proof was ever presented for this. Increasingly spurious claims were made by the prosecution including digging up a cartoon about Olmert on a computer owned by the owner of the house he was living in.

He has been held in prison for nearly a year and has yet to receive a verdict. Jeffrey does not understand Hebrew and has not been regularly provided with an English translator and is unable to comprehend the court proceedings. Judge Bracha Bar Ziv has missed multiple court dates further prolonging the case. The prosecutor has been replaced more than once.

He has not been able to receive clothing including changes of socks and underwear until very recently and has lost over 30 pounds. He has begun experiences chest pains and migraines. At 40 years old, his hair has already whitened. Though several judges have stated that there is no evidence that he ever intended to cause harm to anyone, the new prosecutor has demanded that he be sentenced to several years in jail.

His case will next be heard June 20th, 7:30 in Haifa. Letters can be written to him at Shmuel Zetham #1230524
Kele Shikma
Ezor Ta'asiya Tsfoni (northern industrial zone)
P.O. Box 17
Ashkelon, Israel

It is the soldiers who fight the wars on the battlefields and the politicians who squander their victories in conference rooms and at lavish banquets. The military and political history of the United States for over two centuries is a history of wars that had to be refought and victories that turned into truces and retreats when politicians had the chance to work their magic on them.

The failure by politicians to finish the War in Iraq during the Gulf War led to it being refought now. The failure to settle the basic questions in Europe after WW1 led to WW2. The failure to make the Allied Intervention in Russia count and force back the Bolsheviks led to the Cold War.

On Memorial Day it is appropriate to remember that forgotten war, for the soldiers who died there and the cause that was lost and the lessons it holds for us.



In 1918, two expeditions of US troops, the American Expeditionary Force Siberia and the Polar Bear Expedition entered Russia and left within a year or two-- leaving several hundred dead behind them as well many more crippled for life. When compared to the conditions that would break the German army decades later fighting much further West-- the relatively light casualties and performance of American troops was nothing short of spectacular. Much like Iraq however, it was not seen that way at the time.

1918 and 1919 were crucial years. They were the years of the closing gate. The last years when the chance to break the Bolshevik hold on Russia was still possible. The last chance to ward off the murders of millions and a global war that might have ended in the nuclear annihilation of mankind.

The 15,000 American forces stationed in Russia did not lack for courage, they did however lack a mission beyond the kind of peacekeeping and reconstruction role US troops found themselves in when stationed in Iraq. President Wilson had determined that the United States was to remain neutral but as in Vietnam and as in Iraq, American forces once again found themselves trapped dealing with the corrupt and bandit ridden 'friendly' government that was the only alternative to the Bolsheviks and the ruthless and murderous Bolshevik forces adept at ambushes, blending in with the civilian population and guerrilla warfare.

Under orders to protect the railways from constant Bolshevik terrorist sabotage and Cossack bandit raids, American troops found themselves forced to fight both sides, the Communists and the Cossack bandits of General Semenoff, at the same time. Like the 'White Mice' in Vietnam or the Iraqi police, the Cossack forces represented the only alternative to the Communist enemy yet were themselves so rotten, corrupt and vicious that they were utterly useless for fighting the enemy and good for nothing except terrorizing civilians and lining their own pockets. The failure to establish a government and a military force worth fighting for, doomed the cause of freedom in Russia, in Vietnam and likely in Iraq as well.

The failure to give American troops a meaningful combat role, left US troops on the defensive, trying to protect civilian infrastructure against all sides in an increasingly chaotic conflict where they could not seize the advantage or act decisively. A description that could suit either the US forces in Iraq or Russia.

In Russia, President Wilson's idealism and determination to end war, squandered an opportunity that might have greatly changed the face of the 20th century. Had the United States committed itself to defeating the Bolshevik forces while bringing an orderly command to Anti-Bolshevik forces, most of whom were little better than thugs and bandits, instead of resisting the French, Japanese and British agenda-- the Soviet Union might have been crushed in the cradle before it ever emerged to threaten the world.

After 9/11, the United States had the chance to lead a genuine war against Islamic terrorism. In Iraq, the United States had the chance to bring Iran-- the world's largest sponsor of terrorism-- to heel. That opportunity has been squandered time and time again by diplomacy and by determinedly keeping US forces in a defensive role where they're free to take casualties but have to worry about court martials and demonization when they actually step over a line in fighting back against their attackers.

President Wilson and President Bush are in many ways fundamentally different men but they both share an idealistic belief in creating a better world. Unfortunately neither of them could understand that we cannot create a better world, only a better nation and when we do that, we contribute to the world as a whole. War is a means for subduing enemies who threaten us before they can become more grievous threats. The failure to subdue the Bolsheviks carried a terrible place and might have carried a more terrible one still. It is unknown what price will be paid for a failure to subdue a nuclear Iran.

Hundreds of men died in the frozen lands of Siberia and are today mostly forgotten. We remember the dead so that the living might remember.

The controversy surrounding the "Woman to Woman" Conference in Jerusalem has once again raised the reality that the alliance between Evangelical Christian and Orthodox Jews is a troubled one in many ways. Part of the problem is that while there is plenty of enthusiasm and emotion on both sides, there is little understanding of one another.

Some segments of Orthodox Jewish and Conservative Christian theology have provided for elements of dispensationalism toward one another. Yet that dispensationalism recognizes the partial legitimacy of each other but not fully-- which is as it should be. Authentic monotheistic religions cannot grant equal legitimacy to other religions. The problem rests in what we do about it. Judaism is a non-competitive religion that seeks to perfect one people and achieve salvation within that community. Christianity aggressively evangelizes and seeks converts, often by any means necessary.

Many Christians dismiss Jewish concerns about missionizing and missionary activity as a relic of past persecutions by the Catholic Church. While that past is certainly part of the issue, the problem is that it never truly ended. The problem is not merely in the past, it is in the present.

If events like the rabbinic ruling against Bridges of Peace seem to betray paranoia over missionizing, it is all too well grounded in the habitually deceptive and abusive tactics practiced by missionaries against Jews. Examples include phony teen centers like the JAM Center in Jerusalem which is aimed at teenagers. It includes missionaries dressing up as Orthodox Jews and passing themselves off as Orthodox Jews. It includes people disguised this way coming to new Russian immigrants coming to Israel and offering their children free schooling or camps where they are then pressured to accept Jesus. It includes using child missionaries to target children. It includes the creation of phony Jewish organizations which disguise and hide their true affiliation. It includes the creation of groups like Jews for Jesus that functions in a way indistinguishable from cults like the Moonie Church. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to missionary activity.

I don't believe that the majority of Christians are aware of approve of these actions but they are nevertheless carried out on a regular basis and backed by major organizations and churches. As long as this goes on, there is going to be a perfectly understandable second guessing and double checking on the part of Jews when dealing with Christian organizations-- because what these methods have in common is not only their destructiveness but their deceptiveness. The way in which they disguise what they are. That kind of deceptiveness colors dealings with Christian organizations in general because it becomes hard to know what is really for real.

It's hard to trust people who on the one hand embrace you and on the other hand take part in deceptive activities designed to destroy your people. For many centuries, Jews have dodged back and forth between Christian and Muslim lands, when the persecution got too bad in one or the other-- choosing to temporarily ally with the religion of less persecution. That is still where we are now.

Islam remains the greater threat to the Jewish people but that is only because Islam employs force. Christians groups do not employ force but they do employ subterfuge and though they may think that their purpose is noble-- it remains destructive. If a hundred thousand Jews are lost to murder or conversion, the effect on the next generation is the same. A sizable portion of the Jewish people have been lost.

For as long as missionary activity directed at Jews continues, overtly or covertly, then Jews are forced to walk the razor's edge, dealing with Christian groups for survival's sake while maintaining enough distance to minimize the losses taken at their hands. This is a dreadful arrangement and a devil's bargain and I don't believe it's the one either Christians or Jews would choose.

Yet for as long as Christian organizations talk about their love for Israel while engaging in missionary activity against Jews-- it is the only arrangement that will exist.

I realize quite well that Christians don't see it this way. Witnessing and sharing the gospel are meant to be kind acts.

Evangelical Christians have shown love toward Israel and Jews but there is a gap that arises between what Christians refer to as the golden and the silver rule. The Christian golden rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" with what the Christians refer to as the Silver Rule and the Jews as Hillel's Rule, "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man."

The "Golden Rule" allows someone to blindly force something unwanted onto you while Hillel's Rule is a more useful means of maintaining harmony between peoples because it avoids doing noxious things to one another-- simply because you would want it done to you. But would Christians really?

There are Christian websites that proclaim plans to evangelize every Jew in Israel by 2020. How would Christians feel if another religion boasted such plans for Christians?

How would Christians feel if Muslims set up a group of mock Christian churches and a mock Christianity called Prophetic Christianity targeting authentic Christians and attempted to convert Christians to Islam by telling them that only by accepting Mohammed as the final prophet, would they become Completed Christians.

These "Churches" would be overseen by Imams who would call themselves Ministers and would be specifically selected from Christian converts to Islam to preach a form of Islam thinly disguised as Christianity. These "Churches" would feature celebrations of Islamicised Christmas' and Easter's centering on Mohammed.

Christians should ask themselves how they would feel about such Mosques disguised as Churches and Imams disguised as Ministers. Yet Christian groups have invested billions of dollars over the years in doing precisely this very thing to Jews. How do you think we feel about it?

What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow man. It is a very simple principle. There is a very hard century now upon us. A century of blood and flame, of steel and stone thrown down and the great nations of the past toppling before a dark and merciless horde.

To survive that we will need alliances. Not merely between Christians and Jews but with Hindus and Atheists and Sikhs and peoples whose beliefs are genuinely alien and even repulsive to us. We will have to do that if we want to survive. Not only Israel but America and the remainder of the world that has still not fallen under the shadow of Islam. We will either stand together or die apart.

No alliance is perfect and the Christian Jewish alliance has been based on what we want to believe, rather than what is real and true. Real alliances are based in truth. We do not share a religion but we do share a recognition that we are both targets and if we wish our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live as proud peoples in their own lands, rather than slaves under the Dar Al-Islam, then we had better learn to do each other no harm-- before the true harm comes upon us all.

Mordechai who was from tribe of Binyamin is called a Yehudi. A member of Yehuda. so this seems a contradiction but the Gemara tells us that anyone who rejects idolatry merits being called a Yehudi. So too it was with Chanaya, Mishael and Azaryah (who in one view in the Gemara were not from Yehuda).

Why specifically Yehuda? Malchut Yehuda did not sink into idolatry when Malchut Yisrael did. The same Gemara that discusses this in Sotah also discusses Yehuda and Tamar. It tells us that Yehuda merited to have two letters of Hashem's name added to his own (from birth as a prophecy) because he repented in public by declaring that Tamar spoke the truth and thus sanctifying Hashem's name. While Yosef received only one letter because he only restrained himself in private.

Mordechai and Chanaya, Mishael and Azaryah all rejected idolatry in public and risked their lives for it-- while in exile. In doing so they helped pave the way for the first exile. For Yisrael or Yosef to become Yehudim-- it would take a public repentance and a public stance against idolatry. The return of the other tribes who have sunk into idolatry requires that they become Yehudim through public repentance and the rejection and abandonment of idolatry.

David HaMelech was fated to descend from Yehuda's repentance. The public repentance of the remaining tribes and their transformation from Yisrael to Yehudim brings the coming of David HaMelech's descendant, Moshiach. The missing 'Hey' of Yosef or Yisrael remains the failure to recognize Hashem.

The Gemara tells us that Tamar's call to Yehuda 'Haker' recognize is not merely to recognize who the items belong to but recognize who saw what he did and who sees all things, namely Hashem. Yehuda had gone down from his brothers after the sale of Yosef, intermarried, produced unworthy children and finally degraded himself by descending to a prostitute, an alien woman. Much as his descendants David Hamelech and Shlomo Hamelech would do after him. Public repentance redeemed Yehuda and David Hamelech. Through repentance, the house of Yehuda and the house of David was rebuilt. The final redemption requires transforming the house of Yisrael into the house of Yehuda and the transformation of Yisrael into Yehuda to restore Malchut David. That can only be done through public repentance. For Yisrael to recognize G-d and reject idolatry. Only then can Israel be redeemed.

Welcome to Gaza. In this short video you can see a small part of the chaos fracturing Gaza. Highlights include a Palestinian Arab man stating: "We Pray That Israel Will Come Back and Rule Us Again."

More videos on this topic can be seen in the Cannibalism in Gaza series. Part 1 Part 2

* France Leads the Way by Encouraging Muslims to Leave. Who would have thought France would be setting an example that America and Israel need to follow.

New French President Nicolas Sarkozy made immigration a central issue of his campaign. Now, his new minister for immigration and national identity says its time to start paying immigrants to leave the country.

France’s new Immigration, Integration and National Identity Minister, Brice Hortefeux toured Charles de Gaulle airport on his first day on the job. He has said he intends to pay more immigrants to return home.

France is home to over 5 million immigrants — and the new conservative-led government doesn’t plan on making things any more comfortable for them. While the new regime in Paris is determined to curb illegal immigration, it is also looking to encourage legal migrants to reconsider their decision to stay in France — by paying them to go back home.

The issue of encouraging Arab immigration from Israel has been a touchy one with calls for Transfer being made outright illegal, but the Israeli government found it entirely legal to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its Jewish population. Transfer remains the only realistic solution to the demographic and terrorist threat Israel faces. It's also the only real solution to the problem of massive illegal immigrants within American borders.

* Muslim Taxi Drivers are denying access to the Blind in Australia.

* IsraPundit writes on the anger at the continuing barrage of Sderot.

Young passionate, Noam Bedein in his Sderot Media Center video blasting around the blogosphere by me and others has a segment with him pointing to the wreckage of Kassem rocket tail fins that have fallen on Sderot wreaking death, destruction and havoc among the residents, especially the children. On each tail fin is a message and autograph from the killers; Hamas and Islamic Jihad ,in Arabic. I’m sure that we could get those messages translated so the death threats become palpable to viewers here in North America.

This would incidentally be an excellent idea for a website.

* RightTruth Covers some of the latest doings in the Middle East.

SpaceRamblings writes that Ron Paul has been voted the Greatest Man in Human History.
* Lemon Lime Moon has a new meme titled What Are You Reading Right Now

My own answer is.

"The train ground through the tunnel, sparks lifting its wheels off the rails momentarily before gravity slammed them back down again."

Tory Leader David Cameron spent two days living with a Muslim family. He reemerged back into the fresh air to write an article about what he learned which ended with the following insight.

Here the picture is bleak: family breakdown, drugs, crime and incivility are part of the normal experience of modern Britain. Many British Asians see a society that hardly inspires them to integrate. Indeed, they see aspects of modern Britain which are a threat to the values they hold dear - values which we should all hold dear. Asian families and communities are incredibly strong and cohesive, and have a sense of civic responsibility which puts the rest of us to shame. Not for the first time, I found myself thinking that it is mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian way of life, not the other way around.

Read that again. Then read it one more time. Cameron is not a Labor leader but a Tory leader, the leader of what passes in Britain for the right and he proclaims that it's Britain which is defective and needs to learn to integrate with its Muslim immigrants. In short the message is surrender now and beat the rush.

When the contender for the leadership of the United Kingdom, that moldering remnant of the British Empire states that it's England which needs to learn to adapt to the enemy, what he's really stating is that the culture and values of the country he wishes to lead is of less value than that of the invaders.

At no point does David Cameron concede that it's things like the right of women to walk down the street in casual clothes without being beaten to a bloody pulp or the right of different religions to practice their beliefs and the right of daughters not to be murdered for their choice of husband that is a threat to the "strong cohesive asian families". He has only a brief offhanded criticism of Muslims. Instead his thrust is aimed at England. The leader of the traditionalist party spends paragraph after paragraph showing his contempt for native Britons and his humiliating sycophantic praise of the glories of Muslims.

It's another reminder that integration is a two-way street. If we want to remind ourselves of British values - hospitality, tolerance and generosity to name just three - there are plenty of British Muslims ready to show us what those things really mean.

Why one wonders is integration a two way street? But we cannot ask this as David Cameron has already assumed that it is so. And he's conceded the superiority of Islamic values. Certainly Alan Johnson could probably tell David Cameron something about Muslim hospitality, tolerance and generosity. Or those British prisoners in Saudi Arabia who were brutally tortured for months. But I rather doubt he's interested in listening.

Instead David Cameron has emerged with a 'comprehensive' program to build a more cohesive England. Does it focus on integrating Muslims? Not so much. It focuses instead of informing British people that they're drug ridden, uncivil filthy racists who aren't worthy of kissing the boots of the Sons of Mohammed who have generously agreed to move to their country, live on their dole and preach Jihad in their streets.

First, a concerted attack on racism and soft bigotry.

Ah you can't go without a concerted attack on racism and soft bigotry. Does that mean a crackdown on preachers who call for Jihad? Get real.

But many Muslims I've talked to about these issues are deeply offended by the use of the word 'Islamic' or 'Islamist' to describe the terrorist threat we face today.

Bigotry now means describing Islamic Terrorism as Islamic Terrorism. Once we've launched our concerted attack on bigots who describe Muslim terrorists as Muslim terrorists-- the problem will go away. Or at least we won't be able to talk about it. Not without running afoul of our War on Soft Bigotry.

The second priority for building cohesion in our country is more integration: people from different backgrounds sharing public services, neighbourhoods, social networks. As I found in Birmingham, this is something they naturally want to do, and local institutions - including religious ones - provide the opportunity.

Yes... naturally. And when race riots happen, that's just the public declaring how much they enjoy sharing public services and social networks together. Never mind that the end result of a Muslim takeover of a neighborhood is that not only native Britons but Hindus, Sikhs and Africans are either squeezed out or move toward a series of confrontations with the Muslims. But in David Cameron's magical world where the sky is pink and unicorns regularly crop the lawns, squeezing people together who can't stand each other's cultures and whose beliefs are entirely incompatible will make everyone love each other.

For example, those who say that faith-based schools hinder integration are wrong. The three Muslim children in the household I stayed with go to a local faith school - a Jewish faith school, which is massively oversubscribed, has a mixed roll with some 60 per cent of pupils from Muslim families, around a third from Birmingham's Jewish community and the rest a mixture of Christians and Sikhs

Which is entirely possible as the school in question is a Jewish school but how many Muslim schools can that particular trick work with? For that matter how many Muslim schools will even tolerate non-Muslims without trying to convert them or assault them? After all when the school teaches that they're the descendants of pigs and monkeys-- preaching tolerance becomes rather tricky.

But those are the uncomfortable realities of Islam. Instead David Cameron disdains the uncomfortable realities, decrying them as racism, in favor of lambasting his own countrymen for not living up to the standards of the drug dealing, bus exploding, raping, terrorizing, dole-living Muslim horde the country has imported and continues importing down its gullet at a terrific rate. His message instead is, Surrender to Islam now, integrate into their culture and religious institutions. Surrender now and beat the rush. After all-- in his view-- it's not as if there's anything British culture or nationality worth saving anyway.

Those who make apologies for Muslim culture must ultimately come to denigrate their own. Those who justify and advocate the Muslim invasion of their nation must see their nation as inherently worthless. David Cameron certainly does.

The handful standing now by the statue hold a hand-lettered sign reading "The Ron Paul REvolution". They're young and in their twenties. Most likely college students. One approaches me to ask me if I know who Ron Paul is.

"Yeah I do," I answer. "Are you Republicans?"

He shakes his head violently at the idea. "No we're just here to support Ron Paul."

"But he's running in the Republican primary."

"We want to see this country get out of Iraq," a girl next to him chimes in.

"But if you aren't Republicans then why are you campaigning for one candidate in a Republican primary?" I ask them.

"The voice of the people needs to be heard," he says. "Haliburton is just going to elect another Bush and continue the war against the world."

"So if Ron Paul wins the primary, would you vote for him in the general election?"

He hesitates and finally shrugs his shoulders. "Depends on who wins the Democratic primary."

"So you're campaigning for a candidate for a party you don't support and might not even vote for," I point out.

"Don't you want to get the country out of Iraq?" the girl demands.

"So basically the ends justify the means, including tampering with Republican primaries?" I say.

"People are dying every day. Ron Paul is making the Republicans face the music and answer the tough questions. More and more people are joining the Ron Paul revolution. We can't be stopped." His rant is clearly just getting started.

"Unless a better Democratic candidate comes along," I say.

"You can't stop us," the girl nearly shrieks.

"I wasn't trying to," I say and walk on.

A man in a red coverall reading 'Prayer Works' thrusts a flyer at me mumbling, "Christ." I avoid him easily and walk on.


* * *


The problem with viral phenomena is that they're inherently artificial. Consider the Hillary 1984 commercial created by the Obama campaign (which continues to lie about it to this day). Consider the Deanites and consider Ron Paul. For decades Ron Paul was one of a small constellation of nuts who believed in government conspiracies often verging on the racist fringe. The difference was that Ron Paul was a congressman.

The left hadn't been paying much attention to Ron Paul until 9/11 when a new alliance began to be formed between various fringe factions within America, which despised each other but hated the United States even more. From the far right to the far left, this new alliance brought together conspiracy theorists, left wing professors, far right racists along with their newfound Muslim terrorist allies. That witch's brew helped boost the 9/11 Denial movement. It has become a breeding ground for unifying general conspiracy theories into centralized ones, for Anti-Semitism and for support for fringe candidates.

As a racist, anti-semite and conspiracy nut, Ron Paul was almost made for this group. His opposition to Federal power and racism makes him a natural for the far right and his opposition to the War on Terror and isolationism makes him perfect for the left. He isn't a smart man but he doesn't need to be because it isn't his campaign. In the end all Ron Paul has to do is show up. The witches brew produces his campaign staff easily enough.

All it really takes to create a viral phenomenon on the internet is time and numbers. And when you don't have numbers, time will do. So long as you have people willing to create 500 Digg accounts and Digg every Ron Paul post, you can take over the entire election section with Ron Paul posts. you can repeat variations of this trick at social networking sites everywhere.

The last I wrote a post mentioning Ron Paul I immediately noticed a few incoming searches on Technocrati and Blogsearch for Ron Paul. This was followed shortly thereafter by comments in support of Ron Paul. This is a typical experience for many bloggers because in addition to Digg spamming, Ron Paul supporters spam blogs with statements of support for Ron Paul.

The support for Ron Paul is indeed a phenomenon, but not the one that his supporters like to pretend it is. It's the phenomenon that demonstrates that with enough time spent and enough obnoxious behavior you can get an obscure candidate noticed. What happens then is of course nothing. As with every movement there's a fanatic crowd that really believes Ron Paul will become the next Republican candidate for President. Most however are simply satisfied with vandalism to express their anger and frustration. If they've moved on from vandalizing statues to vandalizing the internet, it's simply because they've chosen a more efficient and legal form of vandalism.

The fanatic obsession of Ron Paul supporters has gotten him attention but not quite the kind they were banking on. ABC and MSNBC have both have to clean up comment forums and polls and most reporters are now more convinced than ever that Ron Paul is a fringe candidate associated with nuts and loons. On Digg anything with Ron Paul's name on it is routinely labeled spam, without a second look. Little Green Footballs pulled Ron Paul's name from its poll after continued spamming.

The Ron Paul phenomenon happens time and time again with fringe candidates whether it's Ross Perot or Howard Dean or Ralph Nader. It's also inevitably never a phenomenon that supports a genuinely worthwhile candidate. Instead it inevitably coalesces around candidates who not only shouldn't be elected President but shouldn't be elected dogcatcher. Howard Dean cleverly exploited his supporters to get him a top spot in the Democratic party. It's doubtful that Ron Paul has the brains to do anything with his fanatical fans because he is ultimately their creature. A fumbling candidate who mumbles tired rhetoric, a racist and fringe extremist who stumbled into a movement he has no real control over. It's a sad and pathetic sight.

During his fight against the Air Force, Weinstein has received widespread support and has been vilified. Here, he holds a letter of encouragement he received in January from the Jimmy Carter Foundation, with a handwritten note from the former president.

Mikey Weinstein has been in the news a lot lately, claiming to fight for the rights of Jewish Veterans and Air Force academy students. Now there's no doubt that there have been cases of Jewish and non-Jewish students and veterans discriminated against and harassed and even victimized by proselytizing, but anyone relying on Mikey Weinstein needs to take him with a grain of salt.

Mikey Weinstein is all too willing to utilize extreme rhetoric-- including shamelessly invoking the Holocaust with pronouncements like this, "As a Jew I confronted a situation through ears that still hear the cries of my people walking silently into the brick buildings that would reduce them to ash. I cannot stand still and let that happen to my country." This sentence is exploitative as hell considering the target and it leads into a paranoid rant that reveals Mikey Weinstein's real agenda.

Mikey Weinstein has heavily relied on his time working as a legal counsel in the Reagan White House, his photo of himself with Reagan and his repeated statements that he is a Republican and a Jew-- but the letter of support he holds up is from Jimmy Carter, America's most Anti-Semitic President currently doing his best to lobby for Hamas. The President who complained there were too many Jewish names on the Holocaust Memorial Council.

It doesn't exactly line up with Mikey Weinstein's claim to be the sworn defender of the Jewish people. And it gets worse. Consider these ugly and hysterical quotes from Mikey Weinstein's own blog.

"America now has a national religion whose tenets extend to a foreign policy that sees war in the Middle East as the fulfillment of its core mission

Those who have carried out this stealth operation, an imperious fascistic contagion growing for the last 30 years, have an agenda.

They knew they needed to change the institutions and expectations of Americans to ensure they would keep control. To that end they employed political operatives to build up the facade of respectability those ideas needed... That facade is what we today know as the NeoConservatives or “NeoCons.”

Organizing and planning far in advance with funding provided by corporations through those we now know as NeoCons, they laid out the stealth plan that has been followed until the present day.

Funding provided by those major corporations who put us in Iraq to augment their profits and ensure control of oil funded the NeoCons who wrote the orders taking us to the Middle East against all truth."

Put it all together and you've got chunks of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and the various nutjobs of the left. What you don't have is a Jew, a Republican or an American patriot. What you have is a regurgitation of conspiracy theories-- which use Neo-Cons as code words for Jews and accuse Christians and unstated others of a vast conspiracy to take over the government and start the War in Iraq for oil. It's par for the course at DailyKos and MoveOn.

This is the real face of Mikey Weinstein, a left wing political extremist-- who attempts to pass off his left wing activism under Republican and Jewish colors. There is real discrimination but Mikey Weinstein is exploiting those cases for his own agenda and any association with him or his organization will only serve the cause of those who hate America and who spread the hateful extremist conspiracy theories of the left wing. Some explicitly anti-semitic in nature.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation created by Mikey Weinstein featured former Ambassador Joseph Wilson as a the Guest of Honor at its dinner and includes him on its Advisory Board. Wilson had accused Israel of being behind the War in Iraq making statements such as, "it becomes increasingly apparent that this (the War in Iraq) was all done to make Sharon's life easier and that American soldiers are dying in order to enable Sharon to impose his terms upon the Palestinians that people will wonder why it is American boys and girls are dying for Israel."

It's hard to think of a statement more calculated to promote Anti-semitism in the US military than this one. It's beyond hypocritical and obscene for Mikey Weinstein to posture self-righteously as the defender of Jews in the military against Anti-semitism, when he honored and placed on his advisory board a man who provides fuel for ZOG and dual loyalty charges.

The simple reality is that Mikey Weinstein is not fighting for the Jews. He's not fighting for America. He's fighting to promote the agenda of the left wing of the Democratic party. The problem is real. He isn't.

Do you feel angry all the time? Do toy pigs, patterns in ice cream, women and anyone who believes differently than you fill you with uncontrollable rage? In this uniquely produced video from SultanKnish.blogspot.com, the solution is clear. Extra strength Prozac for Muslims.

But Seriously Folks

On a more serious note my Op-Ed Withdrawal: The Root Of Defeat is running in the Jewish Press this week and was mentioned in the Jewish Press blog.

IsraPundit reports on the Democratic Party beginning to lose the Jewish vote.

Via Daled Amos, a post from Gates of Vienna that discusses what it would be like if Sderot were in Brooklyn.

Lemon Lime Moon writes on the connection between Illegal immigrants in America and Palestinian terrorists.

Space Ramblings gives us the Ron Paul Guide to Making Yourself Hated in 30 Days.

And finally check out Yo's comic book, Evil Ehud and the Roborida Jew

KKL-JNF (Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael - Jewish National Fund) has been a great part of the reclamation and rebuilding of Israel. The left wing groups gaining power in Israel have managed to aggressively chip away at KKL-JNF's preservation of major parts of Israel's territory. Now a major attack is being launched. In the words of KKL-JNF's chairman:

"Over a period of 2000 years, Jews were dispersed and devoid of rights to land and a secure home as well as exposed to anti-Semitism, pogroms, deprivation and discrimination. The establishment of the Jewish State came to remedy this historical injustice that was brought upon the Jewish People. Every nation deserves a state of its own. So does the Jewish People. 57 years following Israel’s establishment, the process of evolving into a state has not yet been completed. That secure reality is still clouded by the potential end to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and being relegated to a fading historical episode. The recent court appeals seek to expropriate KKL-JNF’s land from the Jewish People and render their status as that of all other State lands.

If a Zionist entity in a Jewish state would not be allowed to be the owner of land to be designated for developing Jewish communities, what unique value does that state have?

All of KKL-JNF’s lands were purchased entirely with funds from Jews from all over the world. KKL owns some 2.5 million dunams (about 625,000 acres). Approximately 1,000,000 dunams (250,000 acres) were purchased by KKL-JNF with funds provided by world Jewry prior to the establishment of the State of Israel. Some 1,250,000 dunams (about 315,000 acres) were purchased by KKL-JNF in the early years of the State. Again, this was a purchase effected through contributions of Jews across the world. It was a financial transaction for all intents and purposes, which transferred full ownership of the pertinent lands over to KKL-JNF. The State of Israel has no part in that ownership. State-owned-lands need to be available for all of Israel’s citizens. KKL-JNF lands are assets that belong to the Jewish People for the purpose of achieving its objectives: securing the viability Israel as a Jewish state, strengthening and developing it and retaining its Jewish character.

Unfortunately, we have not yet reached the conclusion of the struggle to ensure having the State of Israel as a Jewish state in the Middle East living in peace with its neighbors and gaining recognition of its Jewish essence. KKL-JNF and its lands are an essential cornerstone in this struggle.

Today, KKL-JNF afforests Israel, prepares land to consolidate agricultural and urban settlement principally in peripheral areas, builds water reservoirs, rehabilitates rivers, preserves open spaces and carries out tens of hundreds of other activities to enhance the environment for the benefit of all Israel’s residents, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Given this, KKL-JNF views the appeals submitted by “Adela” – the Arab Center for Alternate Planning and other organizations, as an attempt to undermine the essential concept of land underpinning the Zionist enterprise and foundation of the State of Israel as a home for Jewish People. KKL-JNF is not on trial here but Zionism and the whole Zionist idea."

KKL-JNF is asking for comments: "According to a recent survey, more than 85 per cent of polled Israeli Jews said that the Jewish People is entitled to hold lands in Israel for the benefit of the Jewish People. Do you have an opinion? Please write to us stating your personal details and whether you identify with our cause and are willing to participate, when the time comes, in a forceful public pro-advocacy campaign to be launched soon around these issues."

Their email is hanab@kkl.org.il

25-year-old Julian Sofir, the prime suspect in the Tel Aviv murder of Arab taxi driver Taisir Karaki, was remanded for a further ten days in custody on Tuesday. The prime suspect, who claimed that he carried out the killing because the victim was an Arab, was also sent for psychological observation by the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski urged for Karaki’s family to be recognized as victims of terror and called on the Jerusalem Municipality’s welfare department to give financial aid to the family.

"The murder of a man just because he is an Arab is a terrorist act. I have asked the welfare department not just to keep in contact with the family but to give them all the necessary aid,” he said, adding that “the government must give them the same support as those who have been wounded in terrorist attacks."

Mayor Lupolianski is clearly and transparently wrong. The murder of a man because he is an Arab alone is not a terrorist act. That is conflating and confusing terrorism with bigotry and hate crimes. These may coexist but they are not at all the same thing. Nor should it mean that his family is entitled to benefits reserved for victims of terror-- who have a similar status to the families of soldiers killed in a war. Just as such money is not provided to victims of any other murders.

Karaki's murder is a serious crime. To call it a terrorist attack blurs the line with the very real and everyday terrorist threat Israel is facing. Simply killing someone out of racial prejudice is not a terrorist act. A terrorist act takes place as part of an organized campaign of terrorism by a faction against a group or a country. A Klansman murdering a black man during a period in which violence is being used by the Klan against black people is an act of terrorism. A random bigot murdering a black man is not an act of terrorism.

Terrorism is not an individual experience. It is the use of violence to intimidate, destroy and kill in order to terrorize a group or a government. It is not an act or a series of random acts-- motivated by prejudice. It is an organized violent campaign. A random killing is not an act of terrorism. Not unless you believe that his actions are part of a larger campaign by Israel against Arabs-- and giving him the label of terrorist plays precisely into the hands of those who make precisely that argument.

I'll append commentary by Freedom's Cost here because it lays out some of the usual arguments that come up in a case like this.

The fact that he was murdered because he is an Arab is indeed nothing short of a terrorist act. Racial, ethnic are religious crimes are terrorist acts by their very nature regardless of who the perpetrator may be (and however justified his/her mind might tell him/her that the particular murder is), regardless of who the victim might be.

No it most certainly is not. That kind of misidentification of terrorism is a gift to liberals and people working to minimize terrorism and reduce to anything that upsets people.

I have no doubt that had the reverse been the case, the Arab perpetrator would have been feted as a hero by the Palestinian press (print or otherwise) and his family would have received the usual honor and stipend to families of terrorists. Israel is different

Indeed Israel is different. Because the Arab world is conducting a campaign of extermination against Israel. The murders that occur as a result are part of a campaign of terrorism against Israel. There is no such Israeli campaign. That is why the term terrorism is entirely wrong here.

The murder of any innocent person whether because of skin color, because of creed, because of ethnicity, or because of political disagreement is a blight on society as a whole. I hope and pray that Julian Sofir, is locked up for a long time and made an unforgettable example of what terrorism by an Israeli Jew leads to!

As opposed to terrorism by an Arab? Here we get to the root of the fundamental phobia that drives Jewish liberalism. You can call it by many names, fear, self-hatred, a galut mentality; but it demands that we "make an unforgettable example of the Israeli Jew", it hastens to beat up our own side thoroughly and label the whole thing terrorism before anyone else can. It's also a good example of why we're losing the debate.

Sofir has handed a great excuse to those who will use his action to “avenge” themselves on Jews around the world. While hatred against Jews was never lacking, now those murderers those terrorist will claim they are only perpetrating their hateful acts to avenge a brother.

Ah now comes the inevitable 'excuse' part. As if Muslims hadn't been enthusiastically killing Jews long before there was even an IDF or an Israel or anything to avenge. Muslims will kill Jews regardless of what 'excuses' we give them. It doesn't matter whether they're claiming that they're avenging Karaki or the War in Lebanon or Sabra and Shatila or the supposed Jewish attempt to assassinate Mohammed. There will always be excuses. Why in the world are we still concerned with what excuses Muslims rely on to kill us?

Do we seriously think that we can convince Muslims or the world not to treat those excuses as legitimate? Why waste time beating ourselves up over giving Muslims excuses to kill us? Why feel guilty over the actions of one deranged man? Why does the ghost of Jabotinsky seem to hover every time a Jewish collumnist or blogger feels the need to wail over how many excuses we've now given our enemies to kill us?

The mindset of an entire society can be seen in what it teaches its children. In one of the broadcasts of the Hamas mouse Farfur-- Farfur is caught cheating on a school exam. Farfur excuses his actions saying, "Against my own will Abu Gazi, because the Jews destroyed my home, and when they destroyed my home I couldn't find my books and my notebooks."

The obvious thing the Arab world in general and Palestinian Arabs specifically have been teaching their children is to hate and kill Jews and Americans. The less obvious one is that they are not responsible for their failures-- America and the Jews are.

To understand the Arab mindset is to understand a culture that has yet to admit it lost a single war to Israel and treats its victories as defeats. A culture that at once takes pride in September 11th and in the next breath denies that Muslims were responsible. A culture that blames every single one of its problems from poverty, to the abuse of women and terrorism on Israel. There is a single common link in all these: responsibility.

Children in a responsible society grow up into adults who understand that actions have consequences and that our failures are ultimately our own fault and therefore that we can correct them. Children may initially view accepting responsibility for their own failures as punitive but it is actually empowering. When you understand that you are the source of your own failures, you can then position yourself to succeed. However when you are taught or come to believe that you have no power to succeed or fail-- then you sink into apathy as you cease trying to achieve.

In the West liberalism has done much to erode the success of Western nations and create cultures of dependency by teaching precisely that race and gender doom you to limitations by an oppressive system leaving you with no choice but to demand handouts in the form of affirmative action and work to "help your own". This kind of approach replaces the American work ethic with the perpetually aggrieved and clannish Third World work ethic that has made the business cultures of Africa, the Arab world and India the fantastic successes they are today.

Pushed even further it creates a welfare state, ghettos of the perpetually idle, certain that the reason they can't get a job is because they're being "kept down", a mindset ripe for explosions of violence. After all once you've been convinced that you're helpless to help yourself, violence is all that's left.

When a sense of responsibility is taken away from human beings-- their morality is also undercut. After all if you aren't responsible for your life, then right and wrong go by the wayside too. If you aren't responsible-- you aren't responsible period anymore. Without the belief in your own power to change your life for the better, all that remains is a bitter determination to keep others down by changing their lives for the worse.

From across the seas and oceans, the Muslim world comes to look like a billion Cho's, cradling guns and nursing dreams of violent vengeance-- certain that the real reason they're miserable isn't because of their own actions, but because of conspiracies against them.

The widespread belief in Jewish conspiracies in Russia and the Arab and Muslim world mark failed societies looking for excuses for their failure. Since they can't blame G-d as that would require admitting fault-- they instead blame the Jews. Whatever goes wrong, the blame can be put on America and Israel.

And Western liberals are more than happy to feed this diseased state of mind. A Human Rights Watch report on the Palestinians, dedicated entire paragraphs to accepting Palestinian Arab excuses for honor killings that blame Israel. A New York Times news report that described Arab men beating their wives, put the fault on Israeli crackdowns on the area. If Arab men beating their wives and murdering their daughters is Israel's fault-- then the sky really is the limit and Arab men never have to be responsible for anything they do. That is the self-destructive beauty of irresponsibility.

Responsibility means making a choice and accepting its consequences. Irresponsibility means making a choice and pretending you had no choice and assigning responsibility for it to someone else. Responsible societies advance the world. Irresponsible ones, whether it's Nazi Germany heaving with conspiracy theories that blamed all the world for Germany's misery but Germany itself, or Communism built on justifying a tyrannical dictatorship by blaming everything on class structure or a modern Muslim world that refuses to accept the consequences of its own failures and strive to do better-- are a poison.

The rhetoric of deflected responsibility they preach is attractive to many looking to escape living a responsible life. The grievances they nurture among their own people regularly explodes into violence. The societies themselves remain poisonous wells of hate, frustration and rage because being unable to admit responsibility, they are also unable to change.

Irresponsible societies become cancers. Expansionist irresponsible societies are virulently dangerous. Fanaticism becomes commonplace because the extreme is the sole center of authority in a world with no choices and thus no grey areas. Their members will willingly embrace death because they cannot see that life is a series of choices, rather than an abyss above an imaginary paradise. Unable to admit their choices, they are also unable to admit anyone else's choices and are driven to destroy and dismantle free societies where people may choose into totalitarian systems where no one may choose and everyone is as devoid of free will as they themselves are.

Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.

Now Roman is to Roman More hateful than a foe
And the Tribunes beard the high,
And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.

Horatio - Macaulay



The sentiments and the narrative here are of course universal ones-- the virtues, unity and military strength of a nation becoming corrupted by factionalism. The more the factions within a nation hate each other, the more eager they are to battle one another than the enemy.

A nation busy fighting itself cannot defeat the enemy. The surest way to victory is to create fifth columns, to divide a nation against itself and set itself to internal bickering. Israel fell both times because it was divided, because factions and kingdoms quarreled against each other, unable and unwilling to unite-- even against a common enemy. The most dreadful reason for that is that they hated each other more than they did the enemy.

When George Washington delivered his farewell address warning against factionalism, it was because he had already bitterly experienced the assaults conducted against him by former allies like Thomas Jefferson's faction and Thomas Paine. That factionalism crippled the United States going into the War of 1812, resulting in a near defeat. It escalated and eventually served to worsen and eventually contribute to the Civil War.

Factionalism helped delay US entry into WW2. It caused the American defeat in Vietnam. It gave us eight years of the Clinton Presidency which viewed conservatives, not Islamic terrorists as the real threat. Clinton's Democratic successors continued and continue to think that way after 9/11. To liberals the gravest threat that requires their immediate response did not come from Osama Bin Laden-- but from George W. Bush. Despite occasional outward gestures, that has not changed and has instead only grown more so.

The Democratic party had become so mired in factionalism that it was incapable of recognizing any threat that did not originate from the Rush Limbaugh show. That deliberate blindness cost the lives of thousands and yet nothing would be learned from that. If Liberals had invested a fraction of the effort into fighting terrorism that they invested in fighting the Republicans-- the cultural war at least would have been won. Instead they have done everything possible to undermine the War on Terror from spreading lies to smearing troops and serving as the PR corps for the terrorists.

In Israel the Labor socialists had repeatedly treated Zionists and Nationalists as the real enemy. During the resistance against British rule, their top figures including deceased former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, collaborated with the British authorities in informing and even kidnapping and torturing Irgun and Lehi members. During the start of the War of Independence, Ben Gurion ordered future Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin to open fire on the Altalena, a ship carrying a large cargo of arms along with future Prime Minister Menachem Begin-- because he had refused to comply with the socialist leadership's orders to hand over all arms on the ship-- rather than divide them.

It was the same old story when Rabin as Prime Minister now-- signed a deal with Yasir Arafat under the aegis of the Clinton Administration-- that set up Palestinian terrorist controlled territories within Israel's borders and treated the settlers with contempt-- even as his police brutally crushed protest rallies.

After Rabin's death, the campaign of hatred aimed at conservatives in Israel really took off. Offices belonging to the Likud were smashed and the media did its best to try and paint Netanyahu as being responsible for the assassination. Leah Rabin announced that she would rather that her children marry Arabs than settlers.

Even as the terrorism grew worse, Labor socialist Prime Ministers from Rabin to Peres to Barak continued a campaign of hate against the settlers, as if they-- rather than the terrorists these very same governments had invited into the country-- were to blame. That attitude reached its culmination under Sharon and Olmert with the forcible expulsion of thousands of Jews from their home so as to expand the territory of the terrorist Hamas state-- which employed the rubble of those destroyed homes as launching pads for the next wave of rockets pounding Israeli towns and villages.

As police brutality against the settlers escalated, the foreign funded peace activists-- who included Olmert's own wife and daughter and son-- engaged in increasingly violent provocations and protests. And the very same government which papered over the worst crimes of the police when it came to settler rallies, immediately shifted into condemnation when soldiers defended themselves against foreign pro-terrorist activists.

All the energy directed into internal warfare is energy directed away from national defense. The better the factions within a nation get at fighting each other, the less energy they have for fighting the enemy. "As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old." An army is not merely a tool, it is an assembly of citizens ready and willing to give their lives for a nation. When a nation's government and cultural elites send the message that fighting the enemy isn't worth dying for and is immoral in any case-- that army's morale drops until it becomes increasingly useless. Its generals become political generals just waiting to retire, write their books and perhaps go into politics.

Taxes increase as the factions maneuver and work to raise money for their campaigns against each other and to pay off the various sectors of the population whose support they wish to buy, e.g. unions, senior citizens, bureaucrats, minorities. Jobs vanish but this is of little concern to the factions which prefer a dependent citizenry over an active and prosperous one.

Immigration expands greatly as one or more of the factions see the new pool of prospective citizens as an appealing new gullible base for their voting pool. Thus Israel's secular governments have imported massive amounts of non-Jewish Russians to balance out the growth of the religious population and ignored assaults and anti-semitic attacks against religious Jews and finally destroyed the homes and economic and family lives of thousands of religious Jews-- with plans to destroy tens of thousands more.

In the United States the push to legalize illegal Mexican immigrants is building to a crescendo as many Democrats and Republicans believe that they have the potential to boost the voting base of one side or the other. The distortion of rhetoric has allowed the media to recreate the issue in terms of civil rights and hatred of immigrants-- rather than in common sense legality and illegality.

In Europe, socialists increasingly rely on a Muslim voting public and pander to it using populist Anti-American and Anti-Israel rhetoric, while opposing Anti-Terrorist measures in their own countries.

Factionalism ultimately destroys and disintegrates a country in the face of an enemy invasion. Islamic terrorists know this quite well, which is why they pander to the left, reciting material from Michael Moore films and forming ties with left wing college professors and intellectuals-- as they successfully exploit our domestic fifth column.

In Israel millions from the EU help to fund organizations like Peace Now dedicated to the dismantling of the State of Israel by undermining its national defense and expelling tens to hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes. In the United States millions more pour into the coffers of organizations like MoveOn from overseas funders like George Soros. Factionalism makes a country an easy target for the enemy.

A house divided against itself cannot stand. The potential to unite a nation exists by cutting the divisive elements out of the picture and appealing directly to the people. That requires a leadership with great integrity and incorruptibility that can transcend politics and deal fairly with all sectors of society and transcend corporate allegiances and old geographical alliances for a new way. The alternative becomes the inevitable battle Lincoln was forced to confront. Yet Lincoln's America only had to fight an internal enemy. Had the Republic been forced to fight both an internal and external enemy at the same time-- it would not have survived.

A house divided against itself cannot stand up to the enemy. It must either unite or be destroyed.

At Church Street, where there was once a cluster of makeshift memorials-- a tall sterile steel fence rings Ground Zero. At its front the sleek white entrance of the Path Stations sweeps outward. Underneath in the great pit of earth, earthmoving equipment passes back and forth.

The tattered posters, flags, faded roses, hand-lettered messages and signs are gone now. A sign warns that anything left behind will be removed. The fence is empty and clean, but for a handful of photos hung high--well above even my eye level-- so no one can possibly jot down a personal message on them. The photos are appropriately newsworthy. I see no shots of rubble or the towers. They are composed of human reactions. Saluting police officers, a volunteer with a sign offering shelter to any displaced person and with proper political correctness, Buddhist monks praying at a ceremony. All the "diverse communities" are represented. But the burning towers, the rubble and all the terrible reality of the day is kept at bay. Their memory is not welcome here.

Above these pictures hangs a large photo of a sad Muslim woman garbed in white. Unlike all the other photos, there is no context to connect it to September 11th. There is nothing visible around her that gives us any connection to the day or any sign that it was even taken then. This triumph of political correctness hangs over the abyss below. The abyss which has swallowed thousands of lives, hundreds of stories, the memorials and flags and banners of everyone who had come here and finally the memory of the attacks themselves.

A giant banner above the 21st Century store across the street proclaims, "REMEMBER MOTHER'S DAY." Tourists pose for each other, smiling gaily against the background of the fence. A camera phone is raised, a digital camera flashes, a smile is captured against unyielding steel. Chinese vendors peddle T-Shirts and trinkets from boxes set on shopping carts which they can quickly fold up and wheel away at the approach of the police. Plastic towers artificially manufactured to appear crystalline and book titled '9/11 Tragedy' sit limply on the boxes. No one buys.

Behind the tourists two 9/11 deniers brandish a yellow and red banner and shriek at the tourists. "False flag! False Flag! 9/11 is a lie!" The makeshift memorials are gone, but contrary to Port Authority regulations, the deniers have hung up posters all across the blue painted wooden barricade defending Osama Bin Laden. Words interlaced with photos proclaim, "Bin Laden Didn't Do It." Tourists stop to carefully read the posters. No one tears them down.

A vendor hawks bottles of tap water in used Perrier bottles. "Two dollars," he shouts, "two dollars for a bottle of cold water. Cold water on a hot day." Seeing that there are no takers, he lowers his asking price. "One dollar. Cold water, one dollar!"

I think of Gettysburg. I think of the American Cemetery at the Somme. I think of the places that are sacred to us where such things are not allowed. And then I think of the disco and the convent Auschwitz. Once upon a time we built our memorials in the aftermaths of great conflicts. Once upon a time we allowed the dead to rest in peace. The dead of 9/11 rest in the Fresh Kills landfill. We rush to build memorials and in doing so we forget to give meaning to the things we mean to memorialize.

For all our efforts commemorating the Holocaust, the world has remained silent each time the Muslim world endeavored to bring another one upon Israel and the Jewish people. For all our efforts building 9/11 memorials, we have yet to even acknowledge that it is the West's own tolerance of the enemies on its soil that gave rise to 9/11. The same enemies who plotted again recently to stage another attack at Fort Dix. The same enemies who shout hysterically while waving their banners at Ground Zero itself. Some are terrorists themselves. Some merely aid and abet them in protests and magazine articles. The rhetoric of Michael Moore finds its way into the broadcasts of Al Queda and Reuters photographers accompany the terrorists murdering American soldiers in Iraq. The more we tolerate, the more we are hated. The more we refrain from striking back, the more we are defeated.

At Ground Zero, the tourists pass back and forth reading the banners proclaiming Osama Bin Laden's innocence and go on their way. Not one curses. Not one shouts. Though they are illegal, not one tears them down. The eyes of the nation turn to Iraq but at Ground Zero, the battle has not yet ended. Instead it is being lost. A nation that cannot or will not protect its sacred places, will not in the end be able to protect anything else. A War on Terror fought while the enemies of America chant hatred at Ground Zero itself and politicians scrub clean the memory of the attacks themselves and replace it with the sanitized processed experience of sorrow itself, divorced from context and meaning-- is but a shadow war. A nation defending itself fights rooted in the cause of that war. At Ground Zero, the cause of war has been erased. What has replaced it is the visible presence of the political correctness and the enemy sympathizers hastening to cause the nation's defeat.

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

- The Democrats rushed into Congress like a victorious horde and now they sit weighed down under the same poor approval ratings as Bush. The Democrats had hoped to waste 2 years picking fights with Bush and then cakewalk to the Presidency in 08, but instead they're realizing that a congress which does nothing more than pick fights with the President and then lose them isn't going to have the support of anybody but the fringe of their own party-- and that fringe sees them as sellouts for pushing for a withdrawal date-- instead of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.

Accountability is no fun. For six years the Democrats played backseat driver and now their party is splintered between moderates and left wing radicals and have found themselves in power just in time to share the blame. While the radicals fight over who voted for the War in Iraq, the Democratic leadership tries to figure out how to do something remotely useful by next year-- before they're seen as part of the problem. Too late.


- The media has surprisingly covered the Hamas Mouse tale, but it's also done its best to cover up that TV show's call for world Islamic domination and misreported claims of the show's cancellation. The sheer wackiness of the high pitched mouse shrieking calls for murder accompanied by a perverted version of the Mouseketeers club served as a perverted funhouse mirror version of American popular culture-- helped insure that it would be reported. But it was ultimately the availability of the video that has helped keep the media honest.

5 or 10 years ago, the story would have been easily buried. Today, despite YouTube's attempt at pulling several Hamas Mickey videos, there are still dozens online and they contain the transcription of what was actually being said. Talking back to the media used to mean talking to a wall. Today talking back to the media is a lot easier with a platform like YouTube which has more daily visitors by far, than any major media outlet. Pile on the blogs and you can see the balance of power shifting.


- Christopher Hitchens has an excellent article taking a look at the Islamization of England with an unforgettable closing line.

"A recent poll by the Policy Exchange think tank captures the problem in one finding: 59 percent of British Muslims would prefer to live under British law rather than Shari'a; 28 percent would choose Shari'a. But among those 55 and older, only 17 percent prefer Shari'a, whereas in the 16-to-24 age group the figure rises to 37 percent. Almost exactly the same proportions apply when the question is whether or not a Muslim who converts to another faith should be put to death...

And there it all is: foaming, bearded preachers calling for crucifixion of unbelievers, for homosexuals to be thrown off mountaintops, for disobedient and "deficient" women to be beaten into submission, and for Jewish and Indian property and life to be destroyed. "You have to bomb the Indian businesses, and as for the Jews, you kill them physically," as one sermonizer, calling himself Sheikh al-Faisal, so prettily puts it. This stuff is being inculcated in small children—who are also informed that the age of consent should be nine years old, in honor of the prophet Muhammad's youngest spouse...

I find myself haunted by a challenge that was offered on the BBC by a Muslim activist named Anjem Choudary: a man who has praised the 9/11 murders as "magnificent" and proclaimed that "Britain belongs to Allah." When asked if he might prefer to move to a country which practices Shari'a, he replied: "Who says you own Britain anyway?" A question that will have to be answered one way or another."


- IsraPundit's Ted Belman comments on Victor Davis Hanson's The Islamic Threat is Not Going Away.

- At The Last Best Place, there's a roundup of coverage of Darfur in the Arab press.

- Shiloh Musings writes on Tipex at Eurovision.

- Maggie's Notebook rounds up news on the Democrats and Iraq

- Right Truth writes on efforts at shaming Pro-Illegal politicians

- Linda is still in the JIB Finals running so please go and vote for her

- JPix 7 is up at Temunot

- Finally Lemon Lime Moon writes on the media's distortion of history in describing Herod in Palestine.

As Shimon Peres has 'officially' announced that he is running for President-- the smear campaign has accordingly begun targeting Rabbi Lau-- his likely opponent in the race.

Labor MK Shelly Yachimovich, who had been heavily involved in framing President Moshe Katzav, warned Rabbi Lau not to run for the presidency stating, "He shouldn’t consider running." If he does run, she said, “incidents from the past” would come to light. Yachimovich did not explain what she was referring to, saying only that “things it’s better not to have revealed.”

Unsurprisingly the "revelations" involved charges of sexual harassment-- the very same thing that had been leveled to bring down President Katsav. The corrupt ruling coalition of Kadima and Labor are now acting as little better than organized crime. Determined to plant Peres in the President's chair-- they are using every ruthless and dirty trick to get him there.

Olmert and the rest of the Kadima Mafia attempted to force the Presidential vote to no longer be secret, so that MK's could be properly intimidated into voting for Peres. That means demonstrating that they can smear and destroy anyone who gets in their way. Yachimovich's threat is another demonstrating that the ruling coalition has stopped even bothering to pretend that they're anything more than mobsters.

Haaretz-- the organ of Labor, Israel's left-- ran an editorial titled "Rabbi Lau is unworthy", oily threatening; "One might have thought it sufficient for two presidents - Ezer Weizman and Moshe Katsav - to have ended their tenures in shame to convince Rabbi Israel Meir Lau to avoid proposing himself as a candidate for the position." One might have thought that the unnamed Haaretz editorial page editor was auditioning for The Godfather in this scene.

But Haaretz outdoes itself even further as its conclusion bemoaning the use of a secret ballot ,flatly warns, "The president will be elected by secret ballot in a few weeks, but the secrecy should not facilitate the selection of an unworthy candidate. If the country's MKs once again choose a president whose shortcomings are known to them, it could spell the end of the institution of the presidency. Rabbi Lau should refrain from presenting himself as a candidate, in order to avoid the ignominy. Each of the other candidates is better and more worthy than he."

Yes the 'ignominy." If the MK's don't fall in line this time and put Peres in office, we'll just absolish the entire institution of the Presidency and bring Rabbi Lau down anyway. We framed the President and brought him down because he beat Peres last time. This time if we don't get our way, we'll just dispose of the entire office. That is how gangsters talk and think.

The opening of the Haarez editorial nobly states, "it is appropriate for the head of state to express in his character and his record the values to which the state aspires..." And of course who better expresses the character of the state with his record than Shimon Peres who never once won an election and who narrowly escaped prison and who was despised by every single of his own political allies from Ben Gurion to Rabin.

No doubt once Rabbi Lau has chosen to "avoid the ignominy" of being framed by the gangsters currently running the country-- it'll be discovered that the other worthy candidates besides Peres have between them raped half of Tel Aviv and Shelly Yachimovich will step forward to claim that they all told her their stories. Just as when Moshe Katzav's brother stepped forward to defend him-- it was suddenly discovered that he had sexually harassed women too.

With Olmert and Kadima's exit demanded by the vast majority of the country, this gang of criminals continues to hang on to office by their fingernails, while ruthlessly threatening anyone who would remove them and restore the law of order. Allowing them to place Peres on the President's chair would create a severe obstacle for any future Israeli government. It would be the equivalent of making Jimmy Carter the permanent United States ambassador to the UN-- it would give Peres an enduring forum to use to support Arab terrorists and undermine Israel's efforts to fight them.

But they aren't even bothering to disguise what they are anymore. Consider the latest unreported scandal in which the police released a videotape, claiming that these were the instructions given to the police to use restraint during the forced evacuation of Amona.

As can be seen on this screenshot however-- the date on the video shows that it took place over a month after the events at Amona. In response to the revelation, did the police withdraw the videotape or issue an apology or state that there was a misunderstanding? Like I said, they're not bothering to pretend anymore.

Instead the Press Secretary for the Police in Yehuda and Shomron warned Dr. Itzhak Klein, who had pointed out the date discrepancy, that "his complaint bears a frankly provocative nature and slanders the good name of the police" and warned that legal action could be taken against him.

Like I said, they're not even bothering to pretend anymore. The only place left for the Kadima \ Labor leadership and its allies in the police force and bureaucracy is a prison cell.

Ever since World War II, the left has shamelessly demonstrated its willingness to fight Conservative Democrats, Liberals and Republicans over the USSR or Islamic Terrorism. Liberals have in turn worked hard to demonstrate the same thing since the Nixon Administration.

If liberals had directed a fraction of the vigor they have employed over the past 6 years fighting Bush against Islamic terrorism-- the war would have been won by now, at least on the cultural front. Instead they have spent whatever foreign affairs capital they have promoting and defending the terrorists from Syria to Gaza to Gitmo to Abu Ghaib. More tears have poured from their eyes over an Iraqi with women's underwear on his head than for all the victims of September 11th combined. Certainly more rage. You can reliably open the paper these days and expect to see columns and op-eds promoting any Islamic terrorist-- no matter how evil or monstrous.

Last week I opened the paper to find a university professor proclaiming that the United States made a grievous error in backing the Ethiopian effort to expel the UIC from Somalia-- which had busied itself in such entertainment as beheading any Somali watching soccer matches-- arguing that the UIC had brought stability to Somalia. The interviewer of course nodded along.

When the Catmeat Sheikh, Sheikh Hilaly was interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald, he was given an understanding and friendly forum to spew his hatred and bigotry dressed up in euphemisms explaining his Holocaust denial by saying; "I, like many researchers in the world, shy off the number of innocent victims that had been estimated at six million." No non-Muslim Holocaust denier would have been allowed to get away with that or given a photo op in a barbecue-- but even Holocaust denial can be justified so long as it comes from a Muslim terrorist.

This however has long since become par for the course. The nation's and the west's liberal cultural elites are only capable of seeing Republican enemies. Had Clinton and the Democrats dedicated a fraction of the effort they employed against the "militia threat" and the threat of right wing radio talk hosts against the budding Islamic terrorism that had already bombed the World Trade Center under Clinton's tenure-- 9/11 might never have happened. Instead they chose to continue a political war, to brand their political opposition as terrorists working to overthrow America and to employ law enforcement against them.

The shameful image of Border Patrol officers armed with automatic weapons settling a custody dispute against Cuban immigrants on behalf of Castro-- gives the lie to the Democratic party's pretensions at being civil libertarians. At Waco and Ruby Ridge and a dozen other places, the Clinton Administration demonstrated it could be ruthless and toss any pretense of moderation or civil rights out the window-- so long as the targets were affiliated or could be made to appear to be affiliated with the right.

Let there also be no pretense that the Democrats are not capable of fighting wars, based on little to no evidence, and without congressional approval. In Yugoslavia, Clinton fought an illegal war based on lies. He bombed civilian areas, including hospitals and civilian fuel oil depots and the Chinese Embassy. And the press cheered. They cheered even harder when the thugs and murderers of the KLA-- Al Queda's allies were armed and backed by the United States.

Once in Yugoslavia they ethnically cleansed towns, destroyed churches and began running drugs and trafficking in women. The thousands of civilians bombed by Clinton so the KLA could take power were swept under the rug. The phony genocide that never happened which Clinton used to justify the NATO invasion of Yugoslavia was swept under the rug. The deliberate bombing of the Chinese embassy was swept under the rug. The same media which reports on every anti-war protest when it comes to Iraq-- studiously ignored those same anti-war protesters when they were protesting the war in Yugoslavia.

We know then that Liberals and Democrats are fully capable of throwing civil rights out the window and abusing Federal power to pursue suspects and entire groups. We know they're capable of launching and fighting an illegal war that leaves a country in ruins while they walk away cheerfully whistling. We know all this because they did it as recently as a decade ago.

What we also know is that they won't act against Islamic terrorists-- not because they can't, but because they won't. Not because their lofty principles prevent them-- but because fighting Islamic terrorism is contrary to their desires, their politics and their worldview. If the utter uselessness and downright collaboration of Democrats and Liberals with Islamic terrorists stemmed from pacifism or a failure of nerve or idealism-- it would still make them unfit for government but it wouldn't make them treasonous. The demonstrated fact that they are capable of taking action-- but choose not to, is what does.

Let it be clear then what the Democratic opposition to the War on Terror is NOT about-- in order to understand what it indeed is about.

* It is not about freedom of the press - When Clinton fought his war in Yugoslavia, the press cheered it every step of the way, covered up the failures as best as they could and declared victory.

* It is not about legislation that impinges on civil liberties - From the DMCA to the CDA (which would have censored the internet), the CDA2 (when CDA1 was struck down by the Supreme Court) to the Carnivore backdoor on servers to roving wiretaps and deportations based on secret evidence, the Clinton Administration passed more legislation that impinges on civil liberties than the whole ridiculous ballyhooed Patriot Act.

* It is not about fighting a war without congressional approval or about fighting a war that severely impacts civilians or anything to do with fighting a war - Clinton did it and the Democratic party nodded its head and approved.

* It is not about using law enforcement to deprive people of their civil liberties - Clinton did it over and over again. It is not about invading their privacy. Clinton did it over and over again. It is not about sensitivity to minority groups, sending in Border Patrol agents against a Latino family to settle a custody dispute is about as sensitive as an episode of South Park.

Strip away all these justifications and you emerge with the simple truth. The Liberal and Democratic opposition to fighting a War against Islamic Terrorism is not rooted in any moral or civic objection. That leaves only one real possibility. Sympathy and support for the terrorists themselves. And for their aims.

“Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice,” socialist Segolene Royal told RTL radio.“It is my responsibility today to alert people to the risk of (his) candidature with regards to the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country. Pressed on whether there would be actual violence, Royal said: “I think so, I think so,” referring specifically to France’s volatile suburbs hit by widespread rioting in 2005.

Yet another illustration of how the left and liberals conveniently exploit terrorism and riots to their own advantage. Rather than having any real interest in stopping it, liberals run on a platform of security through appeasement-- warning that the alternative is even greater violence.

The slogan becomes, "Vote Liberal-- Vote Socialist, or Face the Rioting."

Elections by way of the mob has been an old tactic of the progressive side. Andrew Jackson was after all elected by the mob, that proceeded to trample and trash the White House. In the French Revolution, murderous mobs were capably employed to deal with "Enemies of the Revolution", intimidating anyone who might dare speak out against them.

During the Civil War Riots in New York, touched off by the Democratic Tammany Hall in order to sabotage the War and help elect a Democrat President-- mobs targeted Republicans and Republican editors, before going off to lynch blacks and hang police officers from streetlamps. These riots were not only confined to New York either, but took place in several Northern urban centers that were Democratic party strongholds.

As demographics changed, so did the rioting. In the second half of the 20th century, American Democrats would be more likely to rely on riots by blacks, rather than riots against blacks-- a sea change for a party that had spent a good deal of time in bed with the Klan.

In Europe where well fed burghers can be counted on less and less for a good riot and the generation of the 70's has grown up to hold government posts and places in the Euro-Bureaucracy-- but they've been replaced by a new population of Muslims that is happy enough to not only riot, but spread mayhem and death through terrorism.

In the age of Muslim Terror-- conservatives offer the defensive and offensive use of force-- while liberals preach that the only solution is to meet their grievances. When war efforts falter, the voices of liberals are more likely to be heard preaching appeasement. While the appeasement of course never succeeds-- it isn't meant to.

If conservatives respond to escalating violence with escalating force-- liberals respond with escalating appeasement. Violence is a condition they wish to prolong because it enables them to play 'Good Cop' warning that a failure to elect them will result in even greater violence. That is why liberals also inevitably make deals with groups and individuals that promote violence like CAIR or Al Sharpton-- because they make their position that they can limit violence or increase it more credible.

The essential liberal position holds that society as it is-- is evil and unjust and that violence against it, is directed by those who are oppressed by it. Violence is therefore righteous and it is the victims of violence who are at fault. This is not a condition that can be remedied by anything short of a Communist like transformation of society from one that serves individual ambitions, to a collective society that has rendered all individuality moot in favor of equality enforced by the state.

The ultimate purpose of liberalism is to bring about this transformation into a totalitarian socialist state. Violence is the means for achieving that transformation. To the progressives, violence by the disenfranchised and oppressed is the engine of social change. Only by voting for them-- can the violence be employed to bring about a real social transformation. Whether that violence is the violence of mobs ransacking the city in protest of having to fight a war on behalf of blacks or riots in the ghettoes-- whether it's suicide bombers in the London subway or rock throwers in the West Bank-- the left wing approach is to view that violence as a symptom of injustice which must be given in to in order to create a just society.

This is why they can never be permitted to hold office when facing violence from within. Electing people to public office whose mandate is with the rioters, the terrorists and the mobs is a certain death sentence for a nation and a form of electoral suicide. It's up to the French people to realize that.

If Shas decides to support Shimon Peres for President, the Shas party will have finally reached the lowest point of its deeply despicable history.

Shas, the party that is supposed to stand for Sefardi rights, will have gone along with the fraudulent railroading of Israel's first Sefardi President by the Olmert government and endorsed his replacement with Olmert ally, secular socialist Shimon Peres. While its leader Rabbi Ovadya Yosef, regularly fulminates against secular Jews and preaches hatred of secular Jews and Ashkenazim to the home crowd-- Shas has repeatedly made deals with them to keep the flow of Shekels coming to its institutions.

It was Shas which backed the Rabin government and which bears 'Direct Responsibility' for the passage of Oslo and every death by terrorists operating from the Palestinian territories since then. The blood money that flowed into Shas' institutions and Aryeh Deri's pockets were more than enough to salve their consciences. The only relevant halachic psak din that should be asked of Rabbi Ovadya Yosef is this, 'How many dead Jews are worth the funding of Shas schools?" "How many murdered, religious and secular, Ashkenazim and Sefardim, are worth the shekels Shas has received from the Left Wing politicians they have pledged their allegiance to?"

Shas' former leader Aryeh Deri has already spent time in jail for his crimes. Deri has already called for Shas to support Peres as "Hakarat Hatov". Peres has met with Rabbi Ovadya Yosef, but made no clear commitments yet. As is usual he is likely biding his time and considering offers. The alternatives would be clean honorable men like Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and Reuven Rivlin, but Rabbi Lau would have nothing to offer directly to Shas, while a vote for Peres would undoubtedly be handsomely repaid.

Meanwhile Eli Yishai, who has become the new Aryeh Deri, is all too willing to hint at every turn that Shas would support anything from the Disengagement to the release of Palestinian terrorists, if the price is right. While the current corrupt Sefardi Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, is set to replace Ovadya Yosef-- Shas cronies conduct a war against former Sefardi Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, a genuinely great and decent man, who has defied the authorities and campaigned courageously against the dirty politics of the Olmert government.

In the previous election, Rabbi Ovadya Yosef promised followers who voted for Shas that they would go to heaven. I can't speak for Shas voters, many of whom vote out of a religious duty or out of a belief that Shas is actually a party that supports Sefardi interests-- rather than supporting the interests of Shas party cronies-- but the Shas leadership is bound far down below.

The sad thing is that unlike the voters for a lot of Haredi parties who really don't care what happens to Israel, Shas voters are good decent people who are misled into voting for a party that provides them with some needed services, particularly when they are discriminated against by the Ashkenazi Haredi establishment-- but also exploits them and uses them for its own leaders' ambitions. There is little point in writing to criticize Ashkenazi Haredi parties whose voters will vote for them no matter what-- viewing it as a religious duty. There is a use in criticizing Shas which misleads many into thinking it's right wing and which co-ops votes by people who genuinely care about the security and survival of Israel and the Jewish people.