Obama's Dangerous Consistency

Caroline Glick

9/22/2012

 

On Tuesday, Egypt's chief prosecutor issued arrest warrants against eight US citizens.
Their purported crimes relate either to their reported involvement in the production of the Internet movie critical of Islam that has received so much attention over the past 10 days, or to other alleged anti-Islamic activities.


One of the US citizens indicted is a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity.
According to the Associated Press, Egypt's general prosecution issued a statement announcing that the eight US citizens have been indicted on charges of insulting and publicly attacking Islam, spreading false information, and harming Egyptian national unity.

BBC Backs Down; Threats of Physical Violence

Soeren Kern

Islam is "a legitimate subject of historical inquiry. I think there's a degree to which Muslims, far more than Christians, have felt that the foundation myths of their religion are somehow historical fact, and it seems to me that they're clearly not." Tom Holland, author, Islam: The Untold Story, cancelled by BBC, after threats.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has cancelled the screening of a controversial documentary about the history of Islam after the presenter was threatened with physical violence.

The private screening was to take place, followed by a debate, at the BBC's headquarters in London on September 13 before an audience of historians and opinion shapers.
"Islam: The Untold Story" is a documentary by historian Tom Holland, a well-known British author, who examines the origins of Islam and argues that there is little written historical evidence to verify claims about the Muslim prophet Mohammed and the origins of Islam.

Benny Morris on why he's written his last word on the Israel-Arab conflict‏

The historian, best known for exposing IDF atrocities from 1948, now says it's the Palestinians who are not interested in a two-state solution.

By Coby Ben-Simhon

Benny Morris at his home in the Elah Valley. Photo by Yanai Yechiel

After 30 years, he’s giving up. “This is the last book I will write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” declares historian Benny Morris, sitting on the balcony of his home, overlooking distant lush hilltops covered with cypresses and pines. A pioneer in researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one of the most prominent Israeli historians of his generation, he has had his fill of the exhausting and bloody cycle that he has documented for the past three decades. “The decades of studying the conflict, which led to nine books, left me with a feeling of deep despair. I’ve done all I can,” he says. “I’ve written enough about a conflict that has no solution, mainly due to the Palestinians’ consistent rejection of a solution of two states for two peoples.” 

Abbas Proposes Canceling Oslo Accords

Over the weekend, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas proposed cancelling the Oslo Accords.

By David Lev

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas

AFP photo

 

Palestinian Authority head, Mahmoud Abbas, proposed cancelling the Oslo Accords with Israel at a weekend meeting of the PA leadership, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) told AFP on Tuesday.

PLO Executive Committee member Wassel Abu Yusef said Abbas raised the idea of "cancelling the Oslo agreement as well as the associated economic and security arrangements," at the meeting on Saturday and Sunday.

Romney: What He Knows About Palestine That Bush and Rice Would Not Acknowledge

Maggie
One of the most refreshing pieces of news in a long time in the U.S. is that Mitt Romney clearly understands that a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine will never happen. Why? Because Palestine will not accept Israel’s right to exist. It’s that simple. George Bush would not acknowledge that fact. Condoleeza Rice wouldn’t acknowledge the fact. The Palestinian Authority and Hamas can fix the problem – not the U.S., not Russia, not the Arab League.

Mitt Romney

The website Mother Jones released a recording of Romney’s remarks made at a private fundraiser. Jimmy Carter’s grandson with the assistance of Mother Jones comumnist, David Corn, secretly recorded the event.
According to M-Jones, Romney said this:

“I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say there’s just no way.”
[S]o what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem…and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”

Then the Leftist website went on to translate:

Romney was indicating he did not believe in the peace process and, as president, would aim to postpone significant action

If Mother Jones can translate, so can I. Romney didn’t “indicate,” he would postpone significant action, he acknowledged there would be no significant action for a two-state solution without the Palestinian Authority and Hamas accepting Israel’s right to exist. The U.S. cannot make it happen, nor Russia.

Twenty-eight years later, it’s finally 1984

theoptimisticconservative 

In 1975, there were political billboards around America proclaiming portentously that 1984 was only nine years away.  The reference, of course, was to George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the novel of a collectivized, indoctrinated human future, which high-school students had been reading since it was published in 1949.

The year 1984, by Gregorian reckoning, came and went, and Americans seemed to have dodged the Nineteen-Eighty-Four bullet.  We weren’t being interned for reeducation by a Ministry of Love.  Although conservative, constitutionalist, limited-government ideas came under relentless attack in the mainstream media and the academy, those who expressed the ideas remained free to do so.  (They in fact became freer with the lifting under Reagan of the genuinely Orwellian-named “Fairness Doctrine.”)

Romney Tells the Key Truth Needed to Comprehend the Israel-Palestinian Conflict

This article was published on PJMedia.

By Barry Rubin

So much has the debate been shifted “that what thirty years ago was a common-sense given is now considered a landmark breakthrough.” Victor Davis Hanson

You see, here’s what you have to do. You’ve got to take the most basic logical statements—the ones absolutely necessary to understand reality—and rule them out of bounds. For example, there’s nothing wrong with the economy. To say so is, well, racist. And there’s nothing wrong with a government policy that refuses to control the country’s borders. To say so is, well, racist. In fact, you can’t criticize this U.S. government at all because to do so is, well, racist.

And you can’t point out that America’s problem in the Middle East is not due to an obscure video on You-Tube but to a massive revolutionary Islamist movement determined to destroy American influence in the region, take over every country there, smash the Christians, subordinate the women, impose a dictatorship, and commit genocide against Israel. Yep, you got it! Racist again!

The Meaning of the Egypt-Israel Cross-Border Attack

Barry Rubin

A 35-man seemingly bedouin terrorist team invaded an Egyptian army base in eastern Sinai, stole a truck and armored personnel carrier, and tried to crash the Israel border gate. They killed about 16 Egyptian soldiers but those who tried to cross the border--at least five--were quickly wiped out by Israeli forces.

 

You will be reading a lot of accounts of this event mostly saying the same things. But what’s really important?

 

--The incompetence of the Egyptian military. That a whole platoon size unit of terrorists--one of the largest such forces every assembled for such an attack--could plan, organize, and come together without warning for the Egyptian army speaks poorly for its intelligence capability. That they could break into a base doesn’t bode well for the Egyptian military's competence. Presumably one reason why they wanted Egyptian vehicles--as happened with uniforms on a previous occasion--is to make Israeli soldiers hesitate to shoot or to end up getting Israelis to mistakenly kill Egyptians and set off a wider conflict.

Obama’s Betrayal of Israel

Joseph Puder

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) may very well have told Jewish leaders who came to him pleading for his help in the rescue of the trapped Jews of Europe in the early 1940s something similar to what was uttered by President Barack Obama last March at the AIPAC conference in Washington: “There should not be a shred of doubt by now: when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”

Like his Democratic Party predecessor, Obama has expressed comforting words to Jewish leaders, but has refrained from taking decisive action that would substantiate his words.

An example of which is the last round of sanctions against Iran that were brought to the President’s desk in December 2011 by Senators Menendez (D) and Kirk (R), and endorsed in the Senate 100-0, that President Obama sought to change the language of and diminish its intent.

Herzl and the Holocaust

Elise Cooper

I viewed the new movie It is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl, on the eve of the Jewish New Year and Yom Kippur, among the holiest days for the Jews. It is written by Richard Trank and Marvin Hier, narrated by Ben Kingsley, and stars Christoph Waltz as Herzl's voice.  Viewers will learn about one of the most prominent figures in modern Jewish history and the similarities of his life with today's issues.

When is Censorship not Censorship?

Censorship is such an ambiguous thing. How does one define it really? It’s like trying to give a name to a cloud or a flower or an administration telling a private company that they really need to censor something.

But luckily our free speech allows the media to explain to us why censoring people they think should be censored really isn’t censorship at all. Here’s Chuck Todd of NBC, an abbreviation that people didn’t always laugh at the way they’ve been doing these last few years.

To clarify, the WH did not ask YouTube to pull the video; they asked YouTube to review the video to see if it violated their policies
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) September 14, 2012

Days of Awe Begin Sunday Evening with the New Year Holiday

Arutz Sheva Staff

The Jewish People begin the High Holydays, or Days of Awe, on Sunday evening, on the first of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, ushering in the year 5773 with nearly a month of special days: Two days of Rosh Hashannah on Monday and Tuesday, the Fast of Gedaliah on Wednesday and then Shabbat Shuva, the Sabbath of Repentance. 

Narrative Wars: Slap the Honey Boo Boos with Truthaganda

Zombie
 

Memo to non-leftist bloggers, reporters, and culture-shapers: TAKE THE GODDAMN GLOVES OFF.

This campaign just got real. From right now until election day, no holds are barred.
The mainstream media has dropped all pretense of impartiality. Their behavior in response to the latest Mideast crisis was blatant, outrageous — and effective. When the world erupted on September 11 and the Obama administration groveled at the feet of our barbarian attackers, the major news outlets — knowing that this was a disastrous turn of events for the Obama campaign which could not be spun in his favor — decided the only solution was to brazenly change the subject to a fabricated peripheral side issue: that Romney had committed some kind of “gaffe” by criticizing the government’s weak-kneed response.