Egyptian "Honor": Brothers Butcher Mother, Sister, and Aunt

Raymond Ibrahim  

A day before, a Muslim man in Germany beheaded his wife in front of his six children – while screaming "Allahu Akbar!" or, "Allah is Greater!" – " throwing her dismembered head from the roof of their apartment."

According to yesterday's edition of Youm7, two brothers in a village in Assuit, Egypt, slaughtered their mother, sister, and aunt, "after discovering their sister's actions were contrary to morality."

After chaos erupted in the house, including gunfire, local police surrounded and broke into the home, only to find the aunt, Saida Muhammad Mukhtar, 55-years-old and a housewife, "with her head sliced off"; the mother, Amina Ahmed Muhammad, also 55 and a housewife, found "drowned in blood by the entrance of the house"; and the sister, Sana Mukhtar, 39-years-old and a widow, found butchered in a room.

Economic Warfare against Iran

Avi Jorisch  

What is less understood is Tehran's abuse of the financial sector, banks, front companies, and other deceptive techniques to evade controls responsible countries have instituted to stop it from achieving nuclearization.

The world is aware of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons and its sponsorship of terrorist organizations. What is less understood is Tehran's abuse of the financial sector, banks, front companies, and other deceptive techniques to evade the controls responsible countries have instituted to stop it from achieving nuclearization. Yet it is precisely these techniques that make Iran vulnerable to economic warfare, and such warfare, if deployed intelligently and strategically, could hurt the regime where it is weakest—its pocketbook.

Securing Uranium Ore

Iran is scouring the earth in search of countries that possess uranium deposits, searching in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Iranian engineers have reportedly mapped out all of the world's uranium deposits to assess countries most likely to sell them the coveted mineral. Iran has reportedly decided that Congo, Nigeria, Senegal, and Zimbabwe are the countries with uranium most likely to do business with it.

If Iran secures large quantities of uranium that can ultimately be converted into yellowcake, this would likely be the nail in the coffin in preventing Iran from achieving nuclearization. Policymakers around the world must be vigilant in tracking Iran's efforts to secure uranium

Terror Victim's Family "Resolved to Fight Injustice"

IPT News


http://www.investigativeproject.org/3615/terror-victim-family-resolved-to-fight-injustice

Just before the explosion, Yekutiel Wultz saw the man flash "an evil smile." Wultz, known as "Tuly," was eating with his son Daniel outside a food stand at Tel Aviv's Central bus station in April, 2006.

The smiling man, Sami Salim Khamad, was sent by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and blew himself up an instant later. Eleven people would be killed, including Daniel Wultz. The South Florida resident died four weeks later after enduring respiratory problems, gangrene, infections, shock and other injuries caused by shrapnel. He went through 200 units of blood.

He was 16 years old.

uly Wultz was severely injured, but survived. He remains hampered physically and emotionally. There's a constant ringing in his ears. His mobility is limited. And his mind repeatedly flashes back to his son's murder.

"I suffer nightmares, also what I call 'daymares,'" he said in an interview. "I can be in a traffic light and all of a sudden everything flashes back. I can't move … It's constant. It's something I have to live with."

Taking the offensive at UN

Op-ed: Even against overwhelming odds, Israel’s UN mission can boast impressive achievements
Daniel Nisman

 

“Oom Shmoom.” Ask any Israeli politician, university lecturer, or taxi driver on their opinion of the United Nations, and odds are - that’s the response you’ll get. The pejorative term is Hebrew slang for "United Nothing," and has come to epitomize the Israeli mentality towards the UN ever since it was coined by David Ben Gurion 60 years ago. 

 

For a select group of Israeli diplomats, however, the UN is not only the frontline in the fight for their nation's legitimacy, but a crucial venue for promoting age old Jewish values of Tikkun Olam (fixing the world.) They are the men and women of Israel's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, tasked with waging some of Israel's toughest diplomatic battles. Utilizing a potent mix of expertise, experience, and classic Israeli "chutzpah," they often emerge victorious – even against overwhelming odds.
Members of Israel's modest-sized mission (fewer than 20 diplomats and advisers) can be found in nearly every UN committee, sponsoring resolutions, vying for top positions, and promoting Israel's interests on topics that range far beyond the Arab-Israeli conflict. In 2007, the Mission sponsored a resolution on agricultural technology eventually co-sponsored by more than 100 countries, an astounding feat for Israel.
That resolution has since been reaffirmed three times. Other members can be heard sharing Israeli expertise in committees dealing with international law, counter-terrorism, global sustainable development, and even UN budgetary issues.
Recently, Israel was elected to the executive board of the UN Development Program, an influential agency that operates in more than 170 nations with a budget of over one billion USD. The Mission's human rights expert was elected for a chairing position in the Commission on the Status of Women's communications working group. Other Mission members currently hold leadership positions within the Economic and Social Council's subcommittees on forests and activities of non-governmental organizations (NGOs.) In 2013, Israel will to ascend to the executive board of UNICEF, the UN children's fund.
In the UN lobby, Israeli-sponsored exhibits and seminars are a common sight. On the 50th anniversary of the Adolf Eichmann trial, Minister Yossi Peled and Elie Wiesel spoke to the UN on the lessons of the Holocaust. The event came days after the Mission hosted its annual autism awareness day seminar, inviting Israeli artists and experts to address the UN for the fourth straight year.

Consumed with Jew hatred

Op-ed: How is it that German and Austrian leaders can expend so much energy decrying Israel?
Benjamin Weinthal

 

Late last month, European officials accused the Israelis of exaggerating the threat of a nuclear Iran, and called for Germans to boycott Israeli goods.

Austrian defense minister Norbert Darabos and Albrecht Schröter, mayor of the German town of Jena, both Social Democrats, made their remarks as the United States and its allies were heading into negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

In an interview with the Austrian daily Die Presse, Darabos accused the Israelis of using the danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon to deflect attention from their domestic problems. Meanwhile, Schröter signed a petition from the left-wing Christian peace group Pax Christi calling for a wide-ranging boycott of Israeli products in response to the construction of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories. On Monday he expressed the same view in an opinion article in Thüringische Landeszeitung.

To his credit, conservative Austrian foreign minister Michael Spindelegger said Mr. Darabos’ position does not represent the policies of the national government, but Darabos nonetheless remains defense minister, and social democratic Chancellor Werner Faymann shows no sign of disciplining or dismissing him.

Towards A New Jewish Mindset

Yoel Meltzer
 
One of the most intriguing personalities to recently throw his name into the political ring is 40-year-old Naftali Bennett. A literal success story in various fields, his impressive resume includes the company commander of an elite army unit, the co-founder and CEO of a successful high-tech company, the Chief of Staff for Benjamin Netanyahu while he was the opposition leader, the CEO of the Yesha Council, the co-founder of the MyIsrael national movement and the founder of the Yisraelim movement. In addition, for the last six months he has been promoting a plan for Israel to start increasing sovereignty over Judea and Samaria by formally annexing “Area C”. No wonder his announcement to officially enter politics has caught the interest of many observers in Israel.

In order to clarify some of his intentions I recently conducted the following brief phone interview with Naftali.

Yoel Meltzer (YM): Following months of political speculation, rumors and short-lived announcements, you finally decided to run for the head of The Jewish Home party (Ha-Bayit Ha-Yehudi, formerly Mafdal) in the party’s upcoming internal primaries. With all the options open before you, why did you choose this one? After all, wouldn’t it have been easier to simply join the Likud?

Naftali Bennett (NB): The national camp is effectively gone. The Likud used to be the national camp and many from the religious Zionist community, myself included, worked very hard to turn Netanyahu into Prime Minister. However, once he was elected everything changed: Ehud Barak became Defense Minister in charge of Judea and Samaria and then there was the building freeze for 350,000 Israelis. The fundamental problem is that when it matters most, no one pays any attention to us and unfortunately this isn’t going to change.

Moreover, the reason that the big national religious move within the Likud has failed is because fundamentally it’s an attempt to take over a party with an existing DNA in order to instill within it a totally different DNA. This simply won’t succeed.

Therefore what we need to do is to create one big national camp, with a core from The Jewish Home, together with partners who are traditional and secular in order to build the national camp back up again. That’s our only option. Right now all we have is three seats in the Knesset and that’s why there is not one religious Zionist MK in any decision-making forum or in any key position; not Defense Minister, not Foreign Minister, not Finance Minister and not Prime Minister. We don’t even have any member in the shminiya (the inner “kitchen cabinet” of the government). It’s like we’re nothing. We’re not taken into consideration and the only way for this to change is to become a very strong power. I’m talking about 15 seats in the Knesset, which will enable us to lead and not only be the gabbai on the sidelines.

A New Front: Samaria Jews to Become ‘Facebook Warriors’

Jews from Judea and Samaria learn to take their cause to social networks.

By Maayana Miskin

Preparing for Facebook 'battle' (illustrative)

Flash 90

Facebook and other social networks have long been not only places for friends to connect, but also political fronts in which ideas are debated as often – if not more so – than in traditional forums.

The Samaria Residents Council has unveiled plans to help Judea and Samaria Jews use social networks to make their case. A new course with expert lecturers will teach them to make use of sites to reach their fellow Israelis directly, with no media middlemen.

“Sometimes a picture of a local event, a sunset, or just daily life can break down many of the barriers and stigmas that still exist in Israeli society,” said course director Itai Shkolnik.

Existential Questions Facing the Muslim World

Harold Rhode  

Until Muslims once again allow themselves to ask questions and engage in critical examination, they are disabling themselves from accomplishing as much as they otherwise might.

Many parts of the world, such as Korea, China, and India - basically medieval kingdoms fifty or sixty years ago -- are now among the pacesetters of the modern world, both producing, and improving on, existing inventions. The Muslim world, however, often better off than these countries just half a century ago, has remained as it was, or has even, in many instances, deteriorated.

This inertia in the Islamic world seems to stem not from any genetic limitations, or even religious ones, but purely from Islamic culture.

Although one can gain some insight into Islamic culture from books and other written material, if one is to really understand the Muslim world, there is no substitute for sitting in coffee or tea houses, spending time with Muslims, and asking them questions in their own surroundings and in their own languages. A result of these approaches would seem to indicate, with respect, some of the factors citizens of the Arab and Muslim world might wish to consider to use their extraordinary talents even more fully:

The Ability to Question: Western culture is predicated on questioning: inquiring of authorities how they came to the conclusions they reached -- a concept from the ancient Greek word "historayn," to learn by asking. Although in the Shiite world questioning occurs among religious authorities and the educated elite, in the Sunni world, for centuries, asking questions of those more learned or in positions of authority has been unacceptable. Until Muslims once again allow themselves to ask questions and engage in critical examination, they are disabling themselves from accomplishing as much as they otherwise might.

The Role of the Individual vs. the Role of the Group: In much of the Muslim world, people are often seen not as individuals but as members of particular families, clans, tribes, ethnic groups, or religions. In the Muslim and Arab world, a problem between two people can become a problem between two families, with the individual becoming a "soldier" in the ensuing feud. What an individual might think personally – who is right and who is wrong – becomes irrelevant, fostering a mindset that obstructs the impersonal and dispassionate analytic thinking that defines the modern world.

Ted Belman

I want to make a number of points that few if any are making about Netanyahu’s proposal for the Ulpana demolition order.

1. If he can arrange for 50 homes to be built in Beit El, why doesn’t he do it in any event. What is he waiting for.

2. He said: “It is always possible to resolve this through legislation, but that comes with a price, including in the international arena.” and “The bill could be disqualified by the Court and cause problems internationally, which would result in the outpost being evacuated and damage to the entire settlement enterprise”. Why is he so worried about what the reaction in the “international area” will be? How can the international community react more to such legislation than it will to 50 more homes? And on what basis will they get upset? That the Knesset over ruled the Court? That’s not a war crime, its democracy. Why is he more worried about the world than he is about his constituency but for whom he wouldn’t be Prime Minister.

 

What he is saying is shocking. He is saying that if we anger the intervational community, they can force the removal of the entire settlement and further damage the settlement enterprise. The suggestion that they have so much power is shocking.

Dawud Walid, the Quran and Jews

Daniel E. Rogell
IPT News
June 4, 2012
http://www.investigativeproject.org/3608/dawud-walid-the-quran-and-jews

 

The Council of American Islamic Relations [CAIR] may tout itself as an "organization that challenges stereotypes of Islam and Muslims," and as group that was formed "to challenge anti-Muslim discrimination nationwide." But in fighting the good fight against hate, at least one of its regional leaders demonizes Jews as the source of Muslims' problems.

"Who are those who incurred the wrath of Allah?" CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid asked in a May 25 sermon at the Islamic Organization of North America mosque in Warren, Mich. "They are the Jews, they are the Jews," he answered himself in Arabic.

Aside from being one of CAIR's most visible spokesmen, Walid appears frequently in the media and has traveled abroad at least twice on trips paid by the State Department. During a 2010 trip to Mali, for example, he criticized treatment of Muslim Americans after 9/11, saying they "have been subjected to increased discrimination from racial and religious profiling by law enforcement." And he cast the 2009 shooting death of a Detroit imam as unjust, even though the imam refused orders to lay down his weapon and surrender, and then opened fire first after a police dog was sent in to subdue him.

If it isn't the Jews incurring Allah's wrath by disobeying him, the hands of the pro-Israel lobby are undermining American Muslims and Palestinians alike, Walid claimed in his sermon.

The Socialist Rabbi Who Taught Obama About Israel

Yid With Lid

This past Tuesday, President Obama declared that he probably know more about Judaism than any other president because he read about it. He then suggested that he should not be questioned about his commitment to the Jewish state because “all his friends in Chicago were Jewish.”

That might very well be true. The question is which Jews?

As pointed out by author Peter Beinart in his book The Crisis of Zionism, ( in which he criticizes modern Zionism as a conservative tool):

But Obama was not embedded in the Jewish world; he was embedded in one specific Jewish world — a world of Jews who in the 1960s had opposed segregation and the Vietnam War and after 1967 applied the same liberal democratic principles when it came to Israel. Woven into the life stories of many of the Jews who most influenced the young Barack Obama was a bitter estrangement from the see-no-evil Zionism of the American Jewish establishment. In Chicago, those Jews constituted a geographic and moral community, a community that bred in Obama a specific, and subversive, vision of American Jewish identity and of the Jewish state. And at the heart of it all was Arnold Jacob Wolf.A Reform Rabbi, Wolf spent 20 years as the leader of K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Temple that is located across the street from the Obamas former home in Chicago.

Rabbi Wolfe subscribed to the blame Israel first policy of American Progressivism, and someone who, like the future president was active with the Democratic Socialists of America.

According to Wolf he joined domestic terrorists Ayers and Dohrn as one of the first to host “coffees” introduce 1996 candidate for Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama, to the community.

"I was certainly (hosting) one of the first," said Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, rabbi emeritus at Chicago's KAM Isaiah Israel--located across the street from the Obama home.

"There were several every week," he recalled on Tuesday night when we spoke. "I remember what I said to him: 'Someday you are going to be vice president of the United States.' He laughed and said, 'Why not president?''

Upon the death of Rabbi Wolf in December 2008, President Elect Obama wrote

Jerusalem or al-Quds? The European Union’s Choice

Bat Ye'or (June 2012)

Originally appeared in the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism vol.3 #2, 2011

The overwhelming effect of the international campaign of defamation and delegitimization of Israel does not easily allow identifying where the blows come from, nor its original source. Yet the operations and strategic center of this widespread war that seeks to replace Jerusalem with al-Quds is the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC, formally called Islamic Conference), which brings together Muslim countries and those with a Muslim majority.

Created in 1969, this gigantic multinational religious organization declares that it is rooted in the Koran and Sunna. It includes a large number of subsidiary committees as well as various organizations embracing theological, legal, and political sectors. Since 2000, the OIC stated in many documents that its mission is to speak for the Ummah, the worldwide Muslim community, which also includes those Muslims who emigrated to the West. It claims to be their protector, with a particular responsibility toward those living in Europe, since they are exposed to the immoral customs and ideas of non-Muslims. The OIC constantly castigates these customs and ideas as “Islamophobia,” making every effort to have it penalized in the international courts and by European governments. Countless international networks of multiculturalism, pro-immigration, and anti-Zionism, financed by European governments and the European Union, are totally devoted to it and act as its sounding board within Western societies. Those promoting the line blaming the West and the victimization of the Palestinians feed from its sap. In Europe its lobbies spread its arguments, and benefit in the universities and at the international level from maximum media exposure as they operate with the tacit approval of European governments and churches, which provide them with unofficial, opaque financing.¹ This Euro-OIC cooperation takes place through countless dialogue networks, partnerships, and associations that preach diversity and multiculturalism and that generally invoke the noble motives of “peace, justice and human rights.” Drawn from human rights platitudes, these ideals incorporate the principles of Jihad and dhimmitude, imperceptible for a European public unaware of them.

Race Matters...To Racists

• Derek Hunter
   
  Jun 03, 2012

In February 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said America is a “nation of cowards” on race because we don’t talk about. So let’s talk about it.
Voter ID
Progressives are up in arms over the prospect of voters being required to show something at the polls they must show regularly to function as a productive member of society – a photo ID. It’s because progressives, particularly progressive Democrats, have a vested interest in preventing as many people as possible, especially minorities, from becoming productive members of society.

Productive members of society – and those who aspire to be – don’t need or want government to do for them what they can do for themselves. The socialists, communists, fascists and anarchists – in other words, progressives – obviously don’t have the support to win elections. They must find many votes beyond their core supporters to survive. So they attempt to manipulate minorities.

They play the race card. They attempt to convince them Republicans, particularly conservatives, are racists.

Never mind only a few generations ago, it was Democrats who were lynching black people in the South, turning water cannons on them, toying with the idea of using eugenics to eliminate them and, always, trying to prevent them from voting. Since the party of slavery couldn’t own the bodies of black people anymore, it turned to trying to own their minds.

UCSD Students: Sign AMCHA Initiative Petition Condemning Campus Anti-Semitism, Anti-Israelism

The AMCHA Initiative has a new petition out condemning UCSD’s administration for ignoring the concerns of Jewish students on campus. If you’re Jewish and go to UCSD, I highly suggest you sign it.

Here’s the letter:

Dear Chancellor Fox, Vice Chancellor Rue, and President Yudof:

 

We are Jewish students at UCSD who are deeply dismayed and offended that the following UCSD academic departments and administrative offices were listed as Endorsers and Sponsors of the Muslim Students Association’s “Justice in Palestine Week: 21st Century Apartheid” (See posters here), which took place 5/14 – 5/17:

 

African American Studies Minor
Critical Gender Studies
Chican@/Latin@ Arts and Humanities Minor
Ethnic Studies Department
Cross Cultural Center

 

As in previous years, the MSA’s week of events included numerous speakers and exhibits that demonized Israel through rhetoric and imagery deemed anti-Semitic by the U.S. State Department and promoted efforts to harm the Jewish state through boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns.

One Jewish state for all

Ruthie Blum

Given the number of times the Israeli government has banged its head against brick walls (and security fences), is it any wonder that it has lost its marbles? The latest case in point was Thursday morning’s “goodwill gesture” from Israel to the Palestinian Authority and "Hamastan." This involved exhuming the bodies of 91 terrorists buried in Israel and transferring their remains back to the West Bank and Gaza from whence they hailed. There they were shrouded in Palestinian flags and welcomed home as “martyrs.”  Each of these paragons of Palestinian virtue had slaughtered innocent Israelis in restaurants, buses, hotels and shopping malls. Now that they’re back among the people who laud them for their actions, their families will be able to visit their graves, and school children will be taught lessons on their “heroism.”

Welfare for Fake Palestinian ‘Refugees’

Daniel Greenfield
on Jun 1st, 2012

Each century brings forth its own patriots. Once upon a time we had Patrick Henry, today we have Senator Patrick Leahy, who declared in the Senate that his opposition to an amendment that would distinguish how much of the UNRWA’s funding goes to actual refugees versus fake refugees was a patriotic act.

“I always look at what is in the United States’  interest first and foremost, and this would hurt the United States’  interests,” Senator Leahy stated firmly. It is of course difficult to find as compelling a national interest as the UNRWA, a refugee agency created exclusively for the benefit of five million Arabs, approximately 30,000 of whom are actual refugees, but all of whom hate the United States.

Senator Leahy, who could not discover a national interest in the Balanced Budget Amendment, drilling for oil in ANWR or detaining Muslim terrorists, all of which he voted against; finally discovered a binding national interest 5,500 miles away in Jordan, where “refugee camps” like Baqa’a (pop. 80,000), which are virtually indistinguishable from local towns and cities, complete with block after block of residential homes, stores and markets, multi-story office buildings, schools, hospitals and assorted infrastructure, must not be looked at too closely.

Divergent Path on Israel Helps Lobby Group Grow

WASHINGTON — There was a time not so long ago when political contributions from Americans supportive of Israel inevitably veered toward those Congressional candidates who were the most hawkish and outspoken in defending Israel and its security.

No longer. While aggressive defenders of Israel still dominate the debate, more moderate voices in the Jewish community — led by J Street, a Washington lobbying group — are expanding their ability to generate money and political capital for pro-Israel candidates who favor a less confrontational approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues.

This week, J Street is expected to land one of its biggest names when it announces its endorsement of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the veteran Democrat from California who is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, an important forum for Middle East intelligence. With Ms. Feinstein’s acceptance of J Street’s endorsement, the group’s political action committee plans to raise at least $100,000 for her re-election bid, the officials said.

Rabbis to EU Ambassador: Torah Doesn't Allow Giving Up Land

Israeli rabbis meet EU Ambassador Andrew Standley, explain that the Torah absolutely forbids giving land to Arabs.

 

By Elad Benari

Rabbis meet with EU Ambassador

Rabbinical Congress for Peace

 

A senior delegation of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace (RCP) met on Tuesday with Ambassador Andrew Standley, the Head of the European Union in Israel, to present the Torah view on the issue of giving up land to the Arabs.

The rabbis made it clear that the majority of rabbis in Israel and abroad are of the opinion that it is absolutely forbidden, according to Jewish law, to give up an inch of the Promised Land to the Arabs.

The rabbis also cited the halakha in the Jewish Code of Law Chapter 329, that the sanctity of life overrides all other considerations and giving up land has proven more than once that it leads to violence, bloodshed and instability.

“As rabbis we are committed to peace and to promoting peace, but a true and lasting peace, not one that will blow up in our faces before the ink of the agreement has a chance to dry,” they told the ambassador.

The Cause of Europeans' Attitude Towards Israel

Peter Martino  •  May 30, 2012 

Unfortunately, the Belgian attitude seems to be predominant in Europe today. Jewish religious practices are morally equated with intolerant Islamic behavior – but the Muslims are condoned while the Jews are criticized and the Jewish state is morally equated with Iran. The truth is deliberately misrepresented.

Last April, Belgium's Justice Minister, Annemie Turtelboom, and its Foreign Minister, Didier Reynders, went on an official visit to Morocco, where they had an appointment with Morocco's Prime Minister, Abdelilah Benkirane, the leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party.

Benkirane refused to address Ms. Turtelboom because she is a woman; he talked exclusively to Mr Reynders. Benkirane's misogynous views are rooted in Koranic verses expressing contempt for women, considered only half the worth of men.

After Ms. Turtelboom had returned home, she admitted that although she had felt insulted, she had deliberately not responded to the humiliation to "avoid a diplomatic row." Indignant female Belgian parliamentarians of Moroccan origin demanded that the Belgian government protest the treatment of the minister. But both the minister and the government preferred to remain quiet and forget the incident.

When Israel had a champion at the UN

PETER COLLIER

Kirkpatrick defended Israel with unyielding critique of UN, charging anti-Israel diplomacy ‘has nothing to do with peace."

Photo: REUTERS

Jeane Kirkpatrick experienced an epiphany shortly after Ronald Reagan appointed her America’s permanent representative at the UN in 1981 when Israel’s ambassador Yehuda Blum came to her office for his first official visit.

She had been appalled during the previous four years by what she regarded as the Carter administration’s contemptuous attitude toward the Jewish state, and particularly by the way that preceding UN ambassadors Andrew Young and Donald McHenry had, respectively, criticized the Jewish state as “stubborn and intransigent” (and met secretly with the PLO representative), and voted for Resolution 465 condemning Israel’s occupation of “Arab territories including Jerusalem.”

 But she didn’t realize how deeply these attitudes had penetrated the US mission until she saw the way the career foreign service officers she inherited from the previous administration dismissively referred to Blum by his first name and rudely interrupted him on this first visit. She sternly pointed out to them that Blum was a Holocaust survivor who spoke nine languages, and angrily ordered them out of the room.