Interdicting arms to Hezbollah? New report of Israeli air strikes in Syria

J.E. Dyer

IAF F-16I in professional pose

The latest report that the Israeli Air Force has conducted an attack in Syria comes not from the Syrian rebels but from U.S. officials.  Why our officials might be talking to the media about this is a separate topic.  More on it in a moment.

The attack
The information disclosed to the media is sketchy; it’s not even clear that the target was actually in Syria, as opposed to Lebanon.  I heard on Fox earlier this evening that people in Lebanon had reported seeing IAF aircraft overhead during the period in question (some time Thursday or Friday).  The statement(s) of U.S. officials indicate that we don’t think the IAF aircraft entered Syrian air space to conduct the attack.
The overall description of the Israeli strike package – an  aircraft group of limited size; no evidence of multiple, extended sorties; striking from a position over Lebanon – strengthens the case I laid out earlier this week that Israel is likely attacking arms shipments to Hezbollah rather than attacking installations in Syria.

Muslims Versus Islamists

Mona Charen | May 03, 2013

The Obama administration is quite worried about stereotyping Muslims as violence-prone terrorists. They fear that any acknowledgment that some Muslims commit acts of terror because they are religiously motivated (however twisted the terrorists' interpretation of Islam may be) is to encourage a backlash of intolerance (at best) and violence (at worst) against Muslim Americans.

It's not crazy to worry about anti-Muslim violence. There have been vicious attacks on innocent Muslims. Last November, a Queens, N.Y., man was stabbed six times as he stood outside his mosque by an attacker who shouted "F------ Muslim, I'll kill you." In the wake of the Boston bombing, a drunk Northern Virginia man reportedly attacked and broke the jaw of a cab driver (an Army reservist who served in Iraq and at Guantanamo) after snarling "If you're a Muslim, you're a (expletive) jihadist. You are just as bad as the rest of them."

The worst instance of what was probably intended as anti-Muslim violence was the August 2012 attack on a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Sikhs, who wear turbans, are frequently mistaken for Muslims. Wade Michael Page opened fire in the temple, killing six and wounding four (including a police officer) before turning the gun on himself. Page reportedly had links to white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.

Anti-Muslim bigotry clearly exists, as does bias against every other group or conceivable group in American society. Such bias is obviously misguided and counterproductive. It's also fairly uncommon.

Monty Hall's Best Deal

By David Suissa  

From the Jewish Journal

For over 30 years, starting in the early 1960s, Monty Hall hosted "Let's Make a Deal," one of the most popular game shows in television history. He was not only the show's impresario, he created and produced it, and today, at 91, he is still involved with its creative evolution.

But while Hall has fond memories of the thousands of "deals" he made on his show, when I met him for lunch the other day at the Hillcrest Country Club, he had other deals in mind.

In particular, he told me about a deal he made more than 75 years ago with a Jewish man named Max Freed.

Hall had dropped out of college after his first year because he couldn't afford to continue. He was living with his family in Winnipeg, a city of long winters in western Canada that attracted many Jews from Ukraine. The Hall clan spent many years struggling financially and living in close quarters.

Without the obfuscation, this is it. Don Forget the Apologetics: Progressive Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism

Matthew M. Hausman  http://www.israpundit.com/archives/54480  

In 1975 the United Nations General Assembly passed its infamous resolution equating Zionism with racism.  Although rescinded some years later, it established a plan for delegitimizing Israel by undermining Jewish national claims and rewriting history.  That plan continues today, finding expression in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (“BDS”) movement, the left-wing obsession to brand Israel an apartheid state, and the revisionist Palestinian narrative.  It is also enabled by a Jewish left that excuses progressive Israel bashers by falsely distinguishing anti-Zionism from Jew-hatred.  But denying that Jews are entitled to sovereignty in their homeland requires the suppression of Jewish history and acceptance of an incompatible national myth that has no factual foundation.  To deny Jews the basic right of self-determination is to denigrate their stature as an extant, ancient people; and treating them differently from all other nations on earth is indeed a form of antisemitism.

"The Flip Side"

Yesterday I wrote about certain things that PM Netanyahu said at the National Public Diplomacy Forum of the Foreign Ministry.  Today I want to look at some other things he said.

 

What I cited yesterday was what he himself emphasized, and what I felt was most important to share. But I would be remiss if I didn't also allude to this.

 

What he said was: "I want to solve the conflict with the Palestinians because I don't want a binational state."

 

http://news.yahoo.com/netanyahu-wants-deal-prevent-binational-state-181450882.html

 

What this implies is that, if the Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria are not separated from our population via a state of their own, they will ultimately be absorbed into Israel, affecting the Jewish nature of the state.

Survivors Languish as Claims Conference issues Unresolved

Isi Leibler
May 1, 2013
http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=4597

Shalom TV Interview from 2010 dealing with this topic.

Every day we hear additional heartbreaking stories depicting the appalling suffering of destitute elderly Holocaust survivors denied elementary needs such as food, medicine and other basic services to enable them to live out their remaining years with dignity.

Yet despite the public clamor, the Conference on Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference) has ignored appeals to consider temporarily freezing a number of projects and diverting the funds to survivors in desperate need of support.Every day we hear additional heartbreaking stories depicting the appalling suffering of destitute elderly Holocaust survivors denied elementary needs such as food, medicine and other basic services to enable them to live out their remaining years with dignity.

In addition, the scandal of the $57 million embezzled by Claims Conference employees seems unending.

French Ambassador to Israel: Hamas to Stay on E.U. Terror Blacklist

Avi Issacharoff | 05.01.13 
 

Hamas’s recent campaign to be removed from the European Union’s terror list is unlikely to succeed given its stance toward Israel, according to statements provided to The Tower by France’s ambassador to Israel Christophe Bigot.

Bigot told The Tower that “France’s position on Hamas is clear.” The Iran-backed terror group would have to meet conditions laid down by the Quartet – the mediating group made up of the United States, Russia, the E.U., and the United Nations – before France would agree to engage the organization. Those conditions include recognition of Israel, cessation of violence, and acceptance of agreements signed between the Palestinians and Israel.

"I Weep"

Sometimes it's impossible not to weep.

 

Yesterday morning, Evyatar Borovsky, 31, was knifed to death by a terrorist at the Tapuach Junction in Samaria.  Borovsky, who lived in near-by Yitzhar, was the father of five, the eldest of whom is seven. 

 

Credit: CIFWatch

 

Borovsky was praised at his funeral -- which was attended by thousands -- as an exemplary son, husband, and father, an actor, an intellectual, and a medical clown who loved to make people laugh. 

 

"My righteous son was killed just for being Jewish," said his father, "and now five children have no father."

 

In this picture, you see one of his sons mourning him.

Death to Churches Under Islam: A Study of the Coptic Church, Part II

Raymond Ibrahim

[Editor's note: The following is Part II of an essay originally published by The Inquisitr, with a comprehensive introduction by Wolff Bachner.  Part I can be read here.]

The Modern Era 

The sort of Muslim attacks on Christian churches described by the historian Maqrizi and conforming to the Conditions of Omar are reoccurring with increased frequency.  Again, while the patterns described above are occurring  all around the Muslim world—sometimes even in the West—modern day Egypt alone, with its significant Christian population, offers an abundance of recent examples.
After some 14 centuries of persecution and church attacks,E gypt’s Copts ushered in the 2011 new year by having one of their largest churches attacked: during midnight mass in the early hours of January 1, 2011, the Two Saints Coptic Church in Alexandria, crowded with hundreds of Christian worshipers praying for the new year, was bombed, leaving at least 23 dead and approximately 100 injured.

So, if your child finally found a “nice Jewish boy or girl” to marry …

South Florida Jews help unearth clues to genetic diseases
http://israel-commentary.org/?p=6465
Redacted from an article By Nicole Brochu, Staff Writer
Florida Sun Sentinel


South Florida has one of the world’s largest populations of Ashkenazis — Jews of Central and Eastern European descent — making it home to some potentially groundbreaking medical research. In Boca Raton, the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center is in the midst of a project, funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, to study local Ashkenazi Jews in the hopes of better understanding what causes Parkinson’s, and how to prevent it. At the University of South Florida, a study involving Ashkenazi women from the Miami area explored cultural and religious influences on colorectal cancer.

Unis tolerating intolerance

• The Australian
• May 01, 2013

IT says a great deal about the illiberal tendencies of parts of our academic community that the anti-Israeli boycott, divestment and sanctions movement - which often borders on the anti-Semitic - finds support in the humanities faculties of some of our universities.

Given the right of people to go about their legal business, and shop where they please, it is questionable that the University of NSW should even tolerate protests against a chocolate shop being established on its site. But it is beyond question that it should take action against protesters using blatantly racist and anti-Semitic language as part of these protests. We expect that, quite rightly, there would be forceful action to stamp out any vilification of, say, Muslim or Asian students. Yet seemingly the targeting of Israeli-linked companies and Jewish people throws up a confected moral quandary.

Benghazi Lies

ALAN CARUBA 

At an April 17 session before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the new Secretary of State, John Kerry, lightly dismissed the assassination of a U.S. ambassador and three security personnel in Benghazi, Libya, saying "I don't think anybody lied to anybody. And let's find out exactly, together, what happened, because we need -- we got a lot more important things to move on to and get done."

This has been the party line of the White House since the attack occurred on September 11, 2012. The initial response was to send out the hapless lackey, then-US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, to tell absurd lies about a video that incited the attack. Even the Libyan president dismissed that.
Operating on the belief that the longer the attack recedes into the past, the less likely it will be a political problem, the administration continues to stonewall. That's not going to happen. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), speaking on Fox News on April 27 promised "explosive" congressional hearings regarding the Benghazi attack, saying they are "coming soon."

Nakba – The Arab Self-Inflicted Catastrophe

Had There Been No Arab Aggression, There Would Be No Nakba

Eli E. Hertz | April 29, 2013

As the British began to dismantle their Mandate [The British Mandate] and leave western Palestine, Israel’s War of Independence began (November 30, 1947‑May 14, 1948). During the war, Palestinian Arabs became belligerents in the conflict, and by its end, rather than accept a Jewish state after five-and-a-half months of warfare, Palestinian Arabs called upon their brethren from seven surrounding countries to invade and crush the nascent Jewish state.

Six thousand Jews – 1 percent of Israel’s Jewish population – lost their lives during the War of Independence.

"No and No!!"

It gets more and more awful.  More disgusting.  More distorted.

 

The Times of Israel has the following headline this morning (emphasis added):

 

"In sea change, Arab League backs land swaps in peace talks"

 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-sea-change-arab-league-backs-land-swaps-in-peace-talks/

 

A sea change is defined as a marked change or a transformation.  But what we're looking at here is nothing of the sort.

The Brotherhood’s Man in London

Tam Hussein 

Interview with Zuheir Salem, spokesman for the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood

Syrian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Zuheir Salem. Source: Tam Hussein

Out of all the places to meet Zuheir Salem, the number two man of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood (SMB), a David Brent-style office in Alperton, north London, is probably the least expected. The office of the SMB is so elusive that even the security guard does not know what the SMB are or what they do. According to him, it is some sort of charity where lots of Middle Eastern-looking types come in for meetings and leave late. “I don’t ask any questions, boss—if you know what I mean,” he says with a knowing wink.

The Brothers Tsarnaev and the Danger Whose Name we Dare not Speak

Clarice Feldman

We now have had a number of terrorist attacks on the homeland -- though the administration often refers to them in ridiculous euphemisms like "workplace violence" -- and the behavior of the administration, including our lavishly funded FBI and Homeland Security Administration, and our richly rewarded media stars remains so predictable I've decided to spare you the time it takes to unravel the unending lies and poppycock we are regularly fed about these horrors, lies, and blundering that only increase our danger.

FINNISH POLITICIAN SALOLAINEN SAYS HE WAS MISQUOTED, REAFFIRMS PROTOCOL CLAIM AGAINST US JEWS, DEMANDS APOLOGY FROM WIESENTHAL CENTER………

KGS

 Doubling down on stupid.

In an op-ed piece published today at the Suomen Kuvalehti, Pertti Salolainen writes a whining screed depicting himself as ”a victim” over his statements (made last year on Finnish state TV) that fellow Kokoomus politician Ben Zyskowicz described as ”misguided choice of words’‘ which described Jews in America of having large influence over the media and money.

Lets first go to the video……….
His opening salvo in the op-ed is completely bogus:

PMW director on "Jewish 100" list

Itamar Marcus among "top 100 people

positively influencing Jewish life... or the state of Israel"

- list compiled by The Algemeiner newspaper  

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=8869

Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel speaking at The Algemeiner gala dinner announcing the "JEWISH 100" list.

Last week, The Algemeiner newspaper released its 'JEWISH 100' list of "the top 100 people positively influencing Jewish life." Among the "Jewish 100" is Palestinian Media Watch's director Itamar Marcus.

"You have been chosen," The Algemeiner wrote, "for your impactful work on behalf of the Jewish people and/or the state of Israel."

"PMW is an indispensable resource that makes it that much more difficult for Palestinian elements intent on harming Jews to succeed." [The Algemeiner, April 24, 2013]

Connecting the dots: Hezbollah, Iran’s web of plots

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL

Reports of foiled operations might stand as "tipping point" for EU to include Hezbollah on blacklist.

A bus is blown up during a controlled explosion by investigators probing Bulgaria terror attack Photo: reuters

As the European Union grapples with a ban of the Lebanese Shi’ite organization Hezbollah within its territory, reports emerged last week of foiled Iranian and Hezbollah terror and criminal plots against targets spanning Bulgaria, Nepal, Canada and the US.
Will the mushrooming patchwork of global terrorism push the EU to include Hezbollah in its terror list? An EU designation could deal a one-two punch to the Lebanese group and its chief proxy Iran.

France: Muslim screaming "Allahu akbar" slashes rabbi's throat; authorities searching for motive

Robert Spencer

Islamist Watch

Here's your motive, geniuses: Muhammad said that “the last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him” (Sahih Muslim 6985).

But the elites have already decided that the motive for such things can't possibly be found in Islamic texts and teachings, which are completely and utterly benign, and so they have to find the cause elsewhere. We see the same thing happening with the Boston jihad bombings.

Escapee from psychiatric hospital slashes rabbi, son with box-cutter outside Paris synagogue

April 23, 2013, PARIS (AP) — An escapee from a psychiatric institution slashed a rabbi and his son with a box-cutter on Tuesday, prompting witnesses to tackle and subdue the attacker after a chase through a Paris synagogue, officials said.

The rabbi, who is in his late 40s, was recovering from surgery for a neck injury and his 18 year-old son sustained lesser injuries in the attack north of a touristic shopping area near Paris’ gilded Opera Garnier, according to police and judicial officials and Richard Prasquier, who heads CRIF, France’s largest umbrella organization of Jewish groups.