Bibi and Merkel Despise Each Other - but Only if You Read the Times

Leo Rennert

The New York Times, along with most other Western media, has kept up a drumbeat of criticism of Israel's decision to build 3,000 more housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with planning and zoning work on an area known as E-1 that links East Jerusalem and the nearby Jewish town of Maale Adumim, population 40,000.

So it comes as no surprise that the Times would eagerly await a summit in Berlin between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Dec. 5-6.  Germany disappointed Israel by abstaining from a U.N. vote to grant statehood recognition to "Palestine" -- instead of casting an outright "no" vote.  Merkel long has differed with Israel on settlements, and the summit was widely anticipated as an event dominated by this issue.

Stakelbeck Reporting from Israel

ERICK STAKELBECK December 7, 2012

If you've been following our work for the past three years, you know that when the Stakelbeck on Terror team goes international, we bring home the goods. From interviewing Al Qaeda-linked global terrorists and notorious Islamic radicals to exposing the Muslim Brotherhood network in Europe and the explosion (no pun intended) of sharia enclaves in Britain and Germany, when we go global, we go all out.

Forget sitting in an air-conditioned think tank inside the Beltway-there's no substitute for getting on the ground to give you an up-close, intimate look at what's really going on in the West's struggle against radical Islamists.

Hangin’ on rekaB Street: The Stupefaction of the West

Richard Landes  

I’d like to introduce a new term: rekaB Street. That’s Baker Street spelled backwards, and it represents the opposite of Sherlock Holmes’ approach: rather than notice the anomalies and detect evidence of criminal or shameful activity that people have deliberately tried to conceal, residents of rekaB Street systematically ignore any clues that violate the expectations/demands of their preconceived narrative, sweeping aside the anomalies and highlighting precisely what has been created to mislead. It is, in a sense, a process of stupefaction.
RekaB Street exists in many fields.
In a sense, Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, focuses on the problem, in particular, on the resistance to anomalies that contradict the paradigm. He cites a study by Bruner and Postman about how the resistance to anomalies that violate expectations can be so strong that people can literally not see that a deck has some playing cards with red spades and black hearts. The authors note the psychological discomfort felt by people confronting these anomalies (which their minds literally do not want to see).

Britain's NHS: Not So Healthy

Samuel Westrop

Britain's nationalized health service has been funding a television station whose presenters preach hatred against Jews, women and the West. There will always be groups out there trying to destroy us, but does that mean we should be financially supporting their work?

Ramadan TV, a platform for Islamist hate-preachers, refers to NHS North East London & The City as one of its sponsors[1]. In response to a Freedom of Information request, it has emerged that the NHS funded the television channel to the tune of £3,200[2]. Contrary to the claims of the station, the NHS is quick to claim that it does "not sponsor Ramadan TV, but we work with them during this time to produce programmes with a health promotion message in an effective way to our target group"[3].

"Rights Spelled Clear"

As promised, a different sort of posting here: legal and historical background that is essential to understanding Jewish rights in the land. 

 

 

 

This review will be succinct, with links to informational sites for those who wish to know more. 

 

It is important to save and share this material, as it provides data critical for properly defending Israel.  Emphasis has been added to certain key phrases.

 

As always, I welcome serious questions.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

With the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Second Jewish Commonwealth came to an end.  From then until modern times, what had been Judah, and was renamed Palestina by the Romans, was only an appendage to one empire or another, never an independent country.

After the war: Notes from Israel

 Jihad Watch
One day after the end of hostilities in Gaza. I arrived in Israel. I made a few notes, which I am planning to publish on Jihad Watch. But first I think that our readers need to read my interview with Knesset member Faina Kirschenbaum, which covers the entire current problems of the Middle East.
Joseph Zaalishvili: Thank you, Ms. Kirshenbaum, for your time. A few days ago, Operation Pillar of Cloud ended. The terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as Iranian authorities and major figures of the Islamic world claim that the last military operation proves the collapse of the Israeli Defence Force. In their view, the State of Israel cannot defend itself, and the ceasefire is supposedly proof of this.
Many political forces in Israel have criticized the government, saying that it was too early to end the military operation.

THE MYTH OF THE "OCCUPIED" TERRITORIES: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

Professor Louis Rene Beres

April 6, 2002

NewsWithViews.com

The following article was written by Professor Beres in June 1992.

____________________________

Media references to territories administered by Israel since the June 1967 war now routinely describe them as "occupied." Yet, this description conveniently overlooks the pertinent history of these lands, especially the authentic Israeli claims supported by international law, the unwitting manner in which West Bank and Gaza fell into Israel's hands after sustained Arab aggression and the overwhelming security considerations involved. Contrary to widely disseminated but wholly erroneous allegations; a sovereign State of Palestine did not exist before 1967 or 1948; a State of Palestine was not promised by authoritative UN Security Council Resolution 242; indeed, a State of Palestine has never existed.

The Tunnels of Gaza

The tunnels of Gaza are a lifeline of the underground economy but also a death trap. For many Palestinians, they have come to symbolize ingenuity and the dream of mobility.

By James Verini

Photograph by Paolo Pellegrin

 

Editor’s note: As this issue went to press, the conflict in Gaza escalated. Hamas and other groups stepped up rocket fire on Israel, and the Israel Defense Forces launched an air and sea assault on Gaza, targeting the Hamas leadership and sites containing rockets and other weapons, along with civil government and media offices. Israel also extensively bombed the smuggling tunnels in Rafah.


For as long as they worked in the smuggling tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip, Samir and his brother Yussef suspected they might one day die in them. When Yussef did die, on a cold night in 2011, his end came much as they’d imagined it might, under a crushing hail of earth.

Annexation and Withdrawal: A Modest Proposal

Author:

Brandon Marlonhttp://www.algemeiner.com/2012/12/04/annexation-and-withdrawal-a-modest-proposal/

MenashhpalestineState of IsraelUNunited nationswest bankWithdrawal

Map of Ancient Israel

When is enough really enough? For the State of Israel, apparently, still not yet.

Israeli military occupation over the “West Bank” is a 45-year-old mistake and must now end with Israel’s official annexation of the Jewish heartland. There should also be a withdrawal, not from any land but from the United Nations.

For the sake of Jewish identity, heritage, and history – and of Israeli security and survivability – Israel should immediately assert sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and west Menasheh), granting Palestinian Arabs the dignified options of permanent residency status or emigration with compensation.

Behind the Veil of Islamophobia

The murder of Shaima Alawadi isn’t a sign of increasing prejudice, but of writers’ credulousness

By Michael Moynihan


Less than a month after the controversial killing of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old immigrant who fled her native Iraq in 1993, was found in her California home bludgeoned with a tire iron, breathing but barely alive. Next to her brutalized body was a terrifying letter: “Go back to your country you terrorist.” According to Alawadi’s 17-year-old daughter, Fatima, this wasn’t the first racist threat made against the family. A few weeks before the assault, a note left on the family’s car was blunt: “This is my country, go back to yours, terrorist.”

Slaughtering America's Golden Goose

Nonie Darwish

Immigrants in America are being told they must deny their appreciation of the capitalist system that brought them here in the first place. They are told to hate the white people; those who do not are shamed as traitors to their race. It is crushing to see an American leader talk about "redistribution of wealth" under the guise of "fairness." This kind of political talk is more suited to Haiti or Egypt, but never America. The U.S. government is on its way to becoming the nightmare totalitarian system from which we immigrants tried to escape.

If America opens its borders without restrictions, more than half the world's population will come here. It is America's capitalist system that is still a dream come true to many who are happy to leave their stagnant, dysfunctional economies, burdened with both class envy and the redistribution by government bureaucrats of hard-earned money. Many immigrants risked their lives to trade their substandard, government-run health insurance for life in America, where hard work is rewarded with a better standard of living for most of its people than anywhere ever before.

Murdoch’s cogent question

Sarah Honig

Who says many of the more upwardly mobile and thoroughly assimilated American Jews are at best dormant Jews? Who says they are estranged Jews, disdainfully detached from the Jewish collective? Who says they couldn’t care less about Jewish solidarity, to say nothing of Jewish national interests?
 

 Did they not rush to pillory Murdoch for asking on Twitter: “Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?”
 

 But Murdoch, unawares, struck a raw nerve when he appeared to obliquely suggest the existence of Jewish-controlled media. Talk of Jewish control, potentially lending credence to canards about Jewish cabals, impacts directly on the standing of American Jews in American society. This, in contrast to Israel’s dispensable self-preservation, is something that can send them howling indignantly on the warpath.

Get out the candles!

David Wilder
December 04, 2012

The cards seem to be falling, almost as planned. Our Arab neighbors asked the international anti-Israel organization, otherwise known as the United Nations, for recognition in their efforts to delete Israel from the world map. They approached the number one warrior, General Assembly, who consulted with his Defense cabinet, the Security council, which vetoed the idea, realizing the negative consequences. So the General decided to go it alone. As such, palestine was created by General Assembly and his friends.

 Raymond Ibrahim

Note: I share this post to demonstrate the cultural war Israel faces every day-this kind of thinking  cannot be negotiated, it can only be defeated!

Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.
 
Missed in the West, Qaradawi made this declaration two years ago on his popular Arabic program, Al-Sharia wa Al-Haya (“Sharia and Life”), broadcast by al-Jazeera to an estimated audience of 60 million worldwide.

 

Towards the end of the show, the host asked Qaradawi what he thought about the fact that Sheikh Ahmad Hassoun, the grand mufti of Syria, had earlier said to an American delegation:  “If [Muslim prophet] Muhammad asked me to reject Christianity or Judaism, I would have rejected him.” Visibly agitated, Qaradawi erupted as follows:

Egyptian Government Forces Roller Hockey Team to Cancel Game Against Israel

 Daniel Greenfield


Muslim bigotry. It’s not just hateful, it’s also deeply petty.

The Egyptian national roller hockey team on Friday boycotted a world championship game against Israel, reportedly on orders of Sports Minister Amer Farouq, who said he didn’t recognize Israel as a state, Israel Sports 5 reported on Sunday.

Two Egyptian players informed the Israeli captain that their team would not show up and that the squad would forfeit the match. According to the players, Farouq called after the match was announced and threatened to pull funding for Egyptian roller hockey should the team take the rink against Israel. Farouq reportedly added that he did not recognize Israel as a state and therefore would not allow the competition to take place. 

MAPS: Projections of the Israeli offer at Camp David, the Israeli offer to Palestinians in December 2000, the Bridging Proposal of US President Clinton and the Israeli Offer of January 2001

http://www.mideastweb.org/lastmaps.htm

Beginning in July 2000, Palestinians and Israelis tried to negotiate a permanent peace settlement with active American help, first at Camp David, and in December of 2000 in Washington. The Israelis and Palestinians continued negotiations in January 2001 at Taba. Because no maps of offers  were published, various claims were made about what was offered. "Palestinian sources" published maps that supposedly showed that Israelis had offered non-contiguous "Bantustans" with US approval. Israelis claimed that PM Barak had made a "generous offer." In  Dennis Ross in "The Missing Peace, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004, US negotiator Dennis Ross published maps that support the Israeli version.

Israel's irrationality is our fault

Israel's actions in expanding settlements is a direct result of being maligned and bullied by the international community, writes Executive Editor Raheem Kassam

Britain diminishes in stature by maligning its ally in Israel

Raheem Kassam, Executive Editor

On 3 December 2012

Britain has a major problem and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is clearly tied up in knots about it.

On the one hand, you have a strong and legitimate will to solve the issue of Palestinian statehood. The problem isn't going away and last week's UN General Assembly vote cemented the fact that the international community wants, sooner rather than later, the Palestinian state to come into its own.

But in doing this in such a manner, decades of negotiations have effectively been defenestrated.

Many have argued that this is a good thing. After all, where have decades of negotiations led? Frankly, nowhere.

Dear Mr. Yehoshua, Hamas are Terrorists

letter to the famous leftist Israeli man of letters, who has asked Israel to strike a deal with Hamas.

MP Fiamma Nirenstein

Hon. Fiamma Nirenstein is the Vice-President of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Chair of the Committee for the Inquiry into Antisemitism in the Italian Chamber of Deputies

Il Giornale, November 27th, 2012, sent to ArutzSheva  in translation by the author

A. B. Yehoshua is a great author and a long standing friend of mine. Despite an old, very interesting book of his about Zionism, Bouli, as everyone calls him, is truly a Zionist, who only sees in politics what his highly talented artistic dreams point out for him; fiction rather than reality is his specialty.

So when yesterday, he asked Israel to strike a deal with Hamas on La Stampa, he repeated the same mistakes he’s made a thousand times in the conviction that in order to make peace with the Arabs just ask them, say please and give them a good gift - that would suffice.

For some strange reason the whole ideology factor totally eludes him, which in the case of Hamas is certainly of paramount importance. It’s not that Bibi Netanyahu, as Yeoshua likes to say, gave Hamas the title of “terror organization” rather than “foe”, shunning in this way any possible agreements: no, Hamas is a terrorist group as per the International declaration.

The Ironic Mahmoud Abbas

 MyRightWord

From his 'speech of triumph' in Ramallah:

"You have proof that you are stronger than the occupation, because you are Palestinians... stronger than the settlements, because you are Palestinians...One day, a young Palestinian will raise the Palestinian flag over Jerusalem,” he vowed, “the eternal capital of the state of Palestine!”

Ma'an has it as

East Jerusalem is now secured as the capital of the Palestinian state, he said,

Wafa's version:

Abbas affirmed that Jerusalem will always be the capital of Palestine and said that this recognition changes the situation on ground.

Op-Ed: GA Resolution for Pal. Statehood Lacks Legal Authority

 Eli E. Hertz
The United Nations General Assembly Resolution for limited Palestinian statehood lacks legal authority. Here is why.

A host of resolutions passed annually by the General Assembly are not legally binding documents by any measure.
One needs only to read Article 10 of the UN Charter:

“The General Assembly may discuss any questions or any matters within the scope of the present Charter or relating to the powers and functions of any organs provided for in the present Charter, and, except as provided in Article 12, may make recommendations to the Members of the United Nations or to the Security Council or to both on any such questions or matters” [italics by author].

"So-Far, So-Good"

Other obligations prevent me from reviewing background on our historical and legal rights to the land today.  But I do not want to let the day go by without an update on the "Abbas-UN" situation:

And as I write, it is, so-far, so-good, because I'm seeing no backtracking on Israeli government announcements.  The contrary, actually.

In several quarters the Israeli response to Abbas's move at the UN elicited surprise because just days ago a decision had been made -- which I wrote about -- to keep a low profile and wait and see how matters progressed. 

It seems clear to me that what turned the situation about was not the fact that Abbas went to the General Assembly, but the outrageous way in which he spoke about Israel from that podium.  It likely pushed a lot of buttons. (If you see Netanyahu's statement to the Cabinet, link below, he alludes to this.)

Netanyahu's New Shield: Yitzhak Rabin

MyRightWord 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Sunday, 2 December 2012), made the following remarks at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting:

"The response to the attack on Zionism and the State of Israel must reinforce and underscore the implementation of the settlement plan in all areas in which the Government decides regarding settlement.

These are not my words. These are the words of the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and this is the language of the Cabinet's 1975 decision in the wake of the UN decision that equated Zionism with racism. Today we are building and we will continue to build in Jerusalem and in all areas that are on the map of the strategic interests of the State of Israel.

Expert: Israel Should Let the PA Collapse

by Elad Benari

First Publish: 12/2/2012

Prof Efraim Inbar

Yoni Kempinski

Israel should let the Palestinian Authority collapse, particularly in the wake of its unilateral statehood bid at the United Nations, says Professor Efraim Inbar.
Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) at Bar-Ilan University, was interviewed by the Besheva Hebrew-language weekly this week. The interview was published several hours before the United Nations voted to upgrade the Palestinian Authority to a non-member observer state.
Besheva: Mahmoud Abbas is going to the UN to request the status of a non-member state. How do you view this move?
Inbar: "I'm not too upset by it. The Palestinian Authority is a fictional entity. It continues to exist only because of the IDF, and if we are not there, Hamas will take over take the place. I'm not sure it is right for us to continue to support the Palestinian Authority. We should let it fall apart. "

"On the Cusp"

Matters are just unfolding with regard to the UN vote on Palestinian state status, and almost certainly tomorrow will bring more.  Here I will provide an overview:

 

On Thursday, Abbas secured from the General Assembly precisely what I had written about -- the PLO delegation was voted the status of non-member observer status.  There were 138 states that supported the motion, nine that opposed and 41 that abstained. 

 

The legal consequences of this are minimal -- including with regard to the International Criminal Court (about which I'll have more to say soon).