Saturday, September 15, 2012

Home About Contact Us Bookstore Donate Columnists Subscribe Pamphlets Horowitz Archives FPM Archives The Point Muslims Show Respect for Religion by Attacking Pope If there’s one consistent element in the media’s coverage of the Mohammed riots, it’s that Muslims are sensitive darlings who get very upset when religion is offended. All they really want is for everyone to respect religion… their religion. Some 1,000 demonstrators marched from Tripoli’s Al-Mansouri Mosque to nearby Nour Square following Friday prayers, shouting slogans against the U.S. and Pope Benedict XVI, who began a three-day visit to Lebanon. They tore down posters and banners welcoming the pope that had been put in place by Saad Hariri’s Future Movement. The demonstrators ignored warning shots fired by police, and tried unsuccessfully to make their way to the Tripoli Serail, which is close to Nour Square, hurling stones at policemen blocking their path. Some demonstrators also beat policemen with wooden and steel sticks. Finding themselves unable to storm the Serail, the protesters headed some 500 meters down the road to a KFC/Hardee’s outlet, setting the establishment on fire. They also set four delivery mopeds ablaze. The Pope has a rather important role in Catholicism, but that’s okay because the only religious figure that Muslims expect everyone to respect is Mohammed. If Christians pulled down posters with Koranic verses on them, there would be more riots and murders. But because they didn’t have access to the Pope, they fell back on the usual Muslim protest outlet, burning a fried chicken franchise. KFC Akbar. Is it something that the Pope did or said? Not in the least. “I have come to Lebanon as a pilgrim of peace,” the pope said upon his arrival in Beirut. “As a friend of God and as a friend of men.” Earlier, speaking to reporters aboard his plane, the pope called for an end to weapons imports to Syria and called them a sin. Syria’s rebels have appealed for weapons shipments to help them fight the regime. He also praised the Arab Spring uprisings, which have ousted four long-time dictators. The attacks on the Pope are plain and simple Islamic intolerance of all religion, but their own. That is what is behind these protesters and this intolerance should be directly addressed. Naturally Muslim religious intolerance was not limited to Christianity. On the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, Muslims engaged in their usual antics on the site that they had occupied and transformed into the Al Aqsa Mosque, cursing, screaming and throwing stones. Jerusalem police clashed with hundreds of Muslim youth Friday after they left prayers atop the Temple Mount in the direction of the Damascus Gate. Police said the rioters were on their way to the US consulate, In a rare move, the US State Department on Thursday issued a travel warning for Jerusalem, urging American citizens to “defer nonessential travel and exercise caution.” Muslim demands that people respect their religion might have some credibility if they showed equal respect for the religions of others. by Daniel Greenfield | September 14, 2012 | Comments (5) | Read More » Islamists Attack Peacekeepers in Sinai


The headquarters of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in the Sinai was attacked on Friday night by dozens of Bedouin Salafi gunmen, Israel’s Channel 2 News reported. Dozens of gunmen, in some 50 vehicles, surrounded the base and then 60-70 of them burst in, storming into the base amid heavy gunfire.
First reports of the attack surfaced a little after 8 p.m. local time. Half-an-hour later, Channel 2 reported that Egyptian troops in 11 armored vehicles had arrived at the base, to try to help to restore order.

Friday, September 14, 2012

Muslim Commemoration of 9/11

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought”
"Israel Hayom”, September 14, 2012, http://bit.ly/PfHtdm

Islamic terrorism has been part of the American story, since the first (1801-1805) and the second (1815) US wars against Libya, Tunisia and Algeria-based Muslim pirates.  Anti-US Islamic terrorism has been fueled by Islam's imperialistic vision, inflamed by core American values - irrespective of American national security policy - systematically and deliberately targeting innocent Americans in the US and abroad.
Premeditated Islamic terrorism, accompanied by "We are all bin Laden
chanting, marked the 11th anniversary of 9/11in Libya and Egypt.  It erupted irrespective of the crucial role played by the US in the toppling of Qaddafi and Mubarak, the rough US pressure on Israel and the financial and political US support of the Palestinian Authority.  The US Ambassador to Libya and his three staff members were murdered, and rocket propelled grenades destroyed the Consulate in Benghazi. The US Embassies in Cairo and Sana'a were stormed, and US flags were burned in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Gaza, etc.  Libyan, Egyptian and Yemenite security forces were alerted, but did not prevent the assault.

A "Palestinian Spring": A Renewed Fatah Bid to Remove Fayyad

Khaled Abu Toameh

Palestinians noticed that in many cities, Fatah activists were organizing and leading the anti-Fayyad protests. Palestinian Security forces had been instructed not to prevent the protesters from burning posters and effigies of Fayyad.
It is no secret that Fatah has long been trying to get rid of Fayyad who, its representatives argue, had been imposed on the Palestinians by the Americans and Europeans.

Abbas and Fatah have been trying for years to replace Fayyad with one of their own so that they could regain control over the Palestinian Authority's finances.

The US and most Western donors have repeatedly made it clear to Abbas that removing Fayyad from his post would prompt them to reconsider financial aid to the Palestinians.
Fatah leaders in the West Bank were hoping that the street protests would force Fayyad to resign. But the prime minister's refusal to succumb to the immense pressure (and threats) has left most of these leaders deeply disappointed.

Even After Deadly Attack, U.S. Kowtows to Islam

Even After Deadly Attack, U.S. Kowtows to Islam

Two historic attacks on U.S. territory marked the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and what happened? The Obama administration surrendered our constitutional principles.
The first was a "blasphemy" riot that breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, whereupon thugs burned the American flag and hoisted in its place the traditional black flag of Islam that flies over al-Qaida and other jihad movements.

The second was a military-style assault against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, believed to have been mounted by a militia known as Ansar al-Sharia ("Partisans of Islamic Law"), which formed in the U.S.-supported anti-Gadhafi revolution. Christopher Stevens, U.S. ambassador to Libya and former point man to the al-Qaida-linked revolutionaries, and three staff members were killed. Five more Americans were wounded, and the American outpost burned under another black flag of jihad.
An obscure, made-in-the-USA movie critical of Muhammad has been blamed for "causing" these attacks. In fact, it is people in Egypt and Libya who committed these two unprovoked acts of war to mark the 9/11 anniversary. The official response?

"Rosh Hashanah"

here comes a time for putting aside worldly matters, as vastly significant as they seem these days.  A time for looking inward and for acknowledging the kingship of the Almighty.  That time approaches with Rosh Hashana, which begins Sunday at evening and lasts until Tuesday night.
 

Credit: Hebrewpodcasts
 
As we are judged, we must accept accountability for our behavior, pray for a good and sweet year to come, and acknowledge that our future is in the hands of Hashem.  The 100 blasts of the shofar that we hear each day serve to awaken us; they, too, are a cry to Heaven.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Help! Israel Is Trying to Defend Itself

Hisham Jarallah

As far as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are concerned, it all started when Israel fired back. And they want the rest of the world to adopt this line. Sadly, there is no shortage of naïve people in the West who share this argument. These terrorists are causing more harm to the Palestinians than anyone else. But the two parties would like to see the terror attacks continue so that they can have an excuse to denounce Israel whenever the IDF fires back.
The Palestinians' two illegitimate governments have once again denounced Israeli "aggression" against the "helpless" residents of the Gaza Strip.

Such denunciations always come after the Israel Defense Forces succeed in foiling a terror attack from the Gaza Strip or fire back at terrorists who launch rockets and missiles at Israeli targets.

The Hamas government, which sometimes turns a blind eye to anti-Israel terror attacks, is usually the first to condemn Israel whenever the IDF fires back or takes action to thwart the firing of rockets and missiles.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Opening Statement by PM Netanyahu at the Joint Press Conference with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov

http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Events/Pages/eventbulgari110912.aspx
 
I want to welcome you, my good friends, Prime Minister Borissov, Boyko, and 
your delegation, to Israel.  This is our second Government to Government 
meeting.  It expresses a real friendship.  Now that friendship was there 
before we began these series of meetings, because we have a human bridge in 
the many Jews who came from Bulgaria and the example of courage and 
principle of Bulgaria, Bulgarians in Sophia in World War Two during the 
Holocaust.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Barack Obama Vs. Mitt Romney: 10 Big Differences Going "Forward"

Elder of Ziyon

972mag's Noam Sheizaf brings us a fantastic example of how Arabs will never accept the existence of Jews as equals in the Middle East.

A Jordanian "anti-normalization" group put out a notice to ban all "Zionists" from traveling to Jordan to attend an after-party with a popular Lebanese band called Mashrou Leila (that recently canceled a gig opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Beirut because the RHCP are playing in Israel.) Apparently, many anti-Zionist Israelis are big fans of the band.

Obama More Unpopular in Israel than 4 Years Ago




In 2008, 49 percent of Israelis supported McCain and 31 percent of Israelis supported Obama. In 2012, Obama is down to 21 percent support while Romney is at 48 percent.
The difference clearly down not come down to Romney’s popularity. Nor is it about Obama’s Muslim roots. It is very clearly about his foreign policy. But it’s also about Israel’s more conservative voting demographics.

Israelis have hardly any gender gap when it comes to Obama. He ranks at 21 percent with women and 23 percent with men– so that in a reversal, more Israeli women than men dislike Obama. Among conservative voters, Obama polls between 5 and 7 percent. Among voters to the left, he polls at 41 percent, which should also tell you how badly the Israeli left has shrunk that these voters have only a marginal impact on the national average.

Monday, September 10, 2012

"A Huge Problem, A Huge Fight"

Many people -- certainly outside of the country, but also right here -- are unaware of the land theft by Arabs that is taking place in Israel.  It is occurring in Judea and Samaria, and in the Negev.
 
This is a problem of huge dimensions.  In the main, it is being addressed by a splendid organization called Regavim -- http://www.regavim.org.il/en/index.php/about-us/about-us -- which describes itself as a social movement established to promote a Jewish Zionist agenda for the State of Israel.

Next Year in Jerusalem

Sultan Knish

At the climax of the Yom Kippur services, and the conclusion of the Jewish High Holy Days, some two weeks from now, millions of Jews around the world will cry out, "Next Year in Jerusalem", expressing their hope for a final redemption.


There is a similar faith at the heart of the DNC's amended platform which states, "Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations."

Like the Jews praying for Jerusalem, the DNC's platform supports a Jerusalem as Israel's capital that is not a material Jerusalem, but a spiritual Jerusalem, a place that will come into being only when the messiah of the peace process has come and the terrorists have put down their guns and after twenty or two thousand or twenty thousand years have agreed to some final status agreement that falls short of making full territorial claims on the capital of Jerusalem.

Sunday, September 09, 2012

Abbas, Temple Denial, and the Distortion of History


 
As an example of what the insightful commentator Melanie Phillips referred to as a "dialogue of the demented" in her book The World Turned Upside Down, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently continued a long tradition of attempting to de-Judaize Jerusalem by expressing his mendacious notion that "Jerusalem's identity is Arab, and the city's and Christian holy sites must be protected from Israeli threats."  The same scholar of history who wrote a doctoral dissertation that questioned the extent and truthfulness of the Holocaust was now making his own historical claim that there has never been a Jewish presence and history in the world's holiest city.
 
Israeli archeology and biblical links to Jerusalem, and specifically the Temple Mount, "will not undermine the fact that the city will forever be Arabic, Islamic and Christian," Abbas crowed, adding that "there will be no peace or stability before our beloved city and eternal capital is liberated from occupation and settlement," suggesting that even Jerusalem itself is in fact occupied and that it was, and still is, the capital of a putative Palestinian state.  This airbrushing out of a Jewish presence from Jerusalem -- in fact, all of Palestine -- is not a new message for Abbas, of course.  In 2000 he expressed similar contempt for the idea that a Jewish temple had ever existed on the Temple Mount and that, even if it had existed, the offenses committed by Israel against the Palestinians negated any claim Jews might have enjoyed, absent their perfidy.  "Anyone who wants to forget the past [i.e., the Israelis] cannot come and claim that the [Jewish] temple is situated beneath the Haram," he asserted in a 2000 article in Kul Al-Arab, an Israeli Arabic-language weekly newspaper.  "They demand that we forget what happened 50 years ago to the refugees ... while at the same time they claim that 2000 years ago they had a temple. I challenge the assertion that this is so. But even if it is so, we do not accept it, because it is not logical for someone who wants a practical peace."
 
In characterizing East Jerusalem -- or any part of Jerusalem, for that matter -- as territory that Israel "occupies" but over which it enjoys no sovereignty, Abbas (and the Obama administration's State Department, too) is misreading, once again, the content and purpose of 1967's U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 that suggested an Israeli withdrawal "from territories" it acquired in the Six-Day War.  Critics of Israeli policy who either willfully misread or deliberately obscure the resolution's purpose say that the Jewish State is in violation of 242 by continuing to occupy the West Bank and Jerusalem, including what is mistakenly now referred to as "Arab" East Jerusalem.  But the drafters of Resolution 242 were very precise in creating the statute's language, and they never considered Jerusalem to have been "occupied" by Israel after the Six-Day War.  Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Arthur Goldberg, one of the resolution's authors, made this very clear when he wrote some years later that "Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate[.] ... At no time in [my] many speeches [before the U.N.] did I refer to East Jerusalem as occupied territory."
 
Along with their unwavering and various demands, including a "right of return" of all refugees and sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the Palestinians now insist that Jerusalem must be divided to give them a capital in its eastern portion as the location of their new state.  That view is troubling because it reveals a pattern in which Arabs endow Jerusalem with intense significance to serve purposes of political expediency.  In fact, observed scholar of Islam and Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes, "[a]n historical survey shows that the stature of the city, and the emotions surrounding it, inevitably rises for Muslims when Jerusalem has political significance. Conversely, when the utility of Jerusalem expires, so does its status and the passions about it."  When Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank and purged Jerusalem of its Jews from 1949 to 1967, for example, Jerusalem's stature declined.  But Israel's recapture of the territory in 1967 changed the political landscape, including an Arab desire for Jerusalem, suggesting to Dr. Pipes that "the Muslim interest lies not so much in controlling Jerusalem as it does in denying control over the city to anyone else."
 
Dore Gold, Israel's U.N. ambassador from 1997 to 1999, observed in his book, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City, how many in the Muslim world, and even some individuals in the West, have begun a sinister process aimed at establishing a spiritual as well as political presence in Jerusalem for Islam, while simultaneously diminishing Jewish historical links to the city.  Gold believes that this trend began at the 2000 Camp David meetings, when Yasser Arafat first stated loudly and publicly his breathtaking belief that there had never been a Jewish temple at the Temple Mount.  Arafat, according to Gold,  thereby tossed  "a stone of historical lies into a lake and its ripples spread all over the Middle East. 'Temple Denial' became a common theme at seminars in the UAE or in Jordan in the years that followed. European professors joined this anti-biblical trend."
 
Ever since Camp David, the Palestinians have been relentless in creating a false impression of how important Jerusalem is to them, while, at the same time, they have de-Judaized Jerusalem and tried to obscure the Jewish relationship with and continuing presence in the holy city -- something Middle East scholar Martin Kramer has called their desire to effect "a reversal of history."
 
Writing in al-Hayat al-Jadida, in March of 2009, for instance, Dr. Tayseer Al-Tamimi, PA chief justice of religious court and chairman of supreme council of Islamic law, absurdly claimed that "Jerusalem is the religious, political and spiritual capital of Palestine," meaning a Palestinian Palestine, and that "the Jews have no rights to it."  But the true danger of the Palestinian thinking about Jerusalem -- and, indeed, about all of the Palestine that they covet, including Israel itself -- was crystallized in Yasser Arafat's own view that he expressed in a July 2000 edition of al-Hayat al-Jadida.  "I will not agree to any sovereign presence in Jerusalem," he wrote, referring to the thorny issue of who, Israel or the Palestinians, would have sovereignty of the Holy Basin -- "neither in the Armenian quarter, nor in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, neither in Via De La Rosa, nor in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They can occupy us by force, because we are weaker now, but in two years, ten years, or one hundred years, there will be someone who will liberate Jerusalem [from them]."
 
"Liberating" Jerusalem, of course, does not mean transforming it into a pluralistic, open city where members of three major faiths can live freely and practice their religions openly.  Liberating Jerusalem for the Palestinians would be more in keeping with the type of liberation that Transjordan's Arab League effected when they burned and looted the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem in 1948; expelled and killed its hapless Jewish population; destroyed some 58 synagogues, many hundreds of years old; unearthed gravestones from the history-laden Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives and used them for latrine pavers; and barred any Jew from praying at the Western Wall or entering the Temple Mount.  That same predilection to destroy religious property was on display again shortly after Camp David, when a crazed Palestinian mob took sledgehammers to Joseph's Tomb, a Jewish holy site, and completely obliterated it as Palestinian policemen stood idly by and watched.
 
More to the point, Abbas's accusations that Israel threatens or cannot coexist with Muslim and Christian traditions is a most outrageous charge -- not only because Israeli archeologists are fastidious in methodology and practice, but also, given what is happening currently atop the Temple Mount itself -- one of the world's richest archeological and historical sites.  Indeed, this tragedy is something that the Muslim world, not the Israelis, should have to answer for.
 
Scholars and archeologists remember, for instance, the howls of outrage that arose from the Arab world in February 2007, when Israeli authorities initiated a project to rebuild a ramp to the Mugrabi Gate, an entrance to the Temple Mount plaza and the Al Aqsa Mosque platform that had been damaged in an earlier storm.  Riots and protests began immediately, with accusations against Israel coming from throughout the Arab world for its "scheme" and treachery in digging under and threatening to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque itself.  The committee of Muslim scholars in Jordan's Islamic Action Front, for one, "urge[d] ... jihad to liberate Al Aqsa and save it from destruction and sabotage from Jewish usurpers" -- a spurious claim, since construction was taking place well outside the Mount platform, some 100 meters from the mosque, and clearly posed no possible threat.  It is also an oft-repeated charge, suggests Israeli columnist Nadav Shragrai, frequently used by Arabs against Israel as a way of inciting hatred toward Jews for their perfidiousness and guile.  This he calls the "Protect the Al Aqsa Mosque" blood libel -- a propaganda tool that has been used since the 1920s to cause mistrust of Jews when the then-Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hitler's Middle East ally, exhorted Muslims everywhere to defend Islamic holy places in  Jerusalem from the pernicious Jews, causing riots, bloodshed, and 133 Jewish deaths.
 
And while riots ensued in recent years when Israelis initiated a carefully supervised reconstruction project near the Temple Mount, the Islamic Waqf, the Muslim guardians of the Judaism's holiest site, have felt no compunction in brutally gouging the historic surfaces when it suited their own purposes, either in 2007 when they created a deep trench or as they did in 1999 when they opened a gaping hole -- in what is known as Solomon's Stables -- 18,000 square feet in area and 36 feet deep, for new mosques.  Most seriously, 13,000 tons of rubble from that criminal dig, containing rich archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods, was scattered clandestinely in the Kidron Valley dump without any professional archeological oversight and before experts could evaluate any unearthed items of significance.
 
The Arab world's own complicity in playing fast and loose with history, and obscuring the actual "facts on the ground" in their attempt to create a historical narrative conforming to their political agenda, makes Abbas's accusations against Jews bent on the undermining of Muslim and Christian holy sites all the more disingenuous.  In yet another example of "turnspeak," the Arab world has accused Israel of the misdeeds, lies about history, and destruction of a nationhood that they themselves are committing.  It is part of a relentless and continuing effort to delegitimize Israel and finally eliminate it through a false historical narrative that is repeated in Palestinian schoolbooks, in sermons, in the Arab press, in Middle Eastern study centers at universities, and in the politicized scholarship and dialogue generated by Israel-haters, anti-Semites, and Palestinian apologists around the world -- something Shragai has aptly called a "tissue of lies."
 
Dr. Richard L. Cravatts, author of Genocidal Liberalism: The University's Jihad Against Israel & Jews, is president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
 
 
Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., President
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

Reflections of a Diaspora Jew on Zionism, America and the Fate of the Jews

David Horowitz 

Editors’ note: In the following speech accepting the Ben Hecht Award for Outstanding Journalism from the Zionist Organization of America, David Horowitz notes that he wants everything that the Zionists want–a muscular Israel willing and able to defy the growing Jew hatred in the world; a Jewish State “armed to the teeth” and ready to use its military; an Israel augmented by the addition of its historical birthright of Judea and Samaria. Yet the paradox is that until now, Horowitz notes, he has never considered himself a Zionist in the sense that Theodor Herzl and other founders used that term. Herzl’s dream was that a Jewish homeland would “normalize” the Jewish people in the eyes of an historically hostile world, end their persecution, and “solve” the “Jewish problem.” Horowitz states that he always considered this possibility to be a “fairy tale” because of his understanding of the way envy and hatred operate on the international scene, especially with the advent of “Third Worldism.” In addition to becoming a refuge, Israel also became a magnet for homocidal intentions. The events of 9/11 changed everything.

PICTURES: Rockets from Gaza Destroy House in Netivot

idfspokesperson
Last night, a house was destroyed in Netivot (a city of 26,500 residents) after a rocket hit its living room. The following are pictures demonstrating the damage inflicted to the house.
Damage to Netivot caused by a rocket
Since the beginning of 2012, more than 455 rockets have hit Israel. Over the past 9 days of September more than 10 rockets hit southern Israel, triggering alarms in the nearby communities.

Due to the heavy threat to the lives of Israeli civilians, school has been canceled for more than 40,000 children in Beer Sheva.

The IDF will not tolerate any attempt by terrorist groups to target Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers, and will continue to operate against those who use terror against the State of Israel. The Hamas terror organization is solely responsible for any terrorist activity emanating from the Gaza Strip.

Salafists’ ‘Credit” for Missile Attack Bares Rift with Hamas

Salafist terrorists’ claim for the missile attack Saturday night exposes a growing difficulty for Hamas to maintain control over the Gaza.
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
First Publish: 9/9/2012

Grad hits Be'er Sheva
Grad hits Be'er Sheva

Salafist terrorists’ claim of launching missile attacks on southern Israel Saturday night exposes a growing difficulty for Hamas to maintain control over the Gaza.
One house suffered a direct hit from the Gran missile and sustained heavy damage. Another rocket landed in an open area in Be’er Sheva, Israel’s seventh largest city. Be’er Sheva shut down its school system Sunday morning in the wake of the latest attack.
"We claim responsibility for firing two rockets on Friday against the region of Sdot Negev," said the statement signed by the hard-line Islamist splinter group called the Mujahedeen Shura Council and reported by the French AFP news agency.