Dividing Nations At The Olympics

What is it about judo and the Middle East? First, Iran decided to leave their judo champion home, osenstibly because he had an iffy tummy, more probably because he was the only Iranian competitor in danger of facing an Israeli. Now, the Lebanese judo team has decided that they can't train while looking at the Israeli judo team. And the Olympic officials have decided to accomodate them, erecting screens across the gym.

This is, frankly, disgusting. It is part of an ongoing attempt to portray Israel as a uniquely transgressive nation, one which can be freely discriminated against, with accomodation from the Games themselves. And it is already being defended by anti-Israel voices such as Ben White's, and compared to boycotts against apartheid South Africa. The Olympics have made their message loud and clear this year, first through refusing to honor the memories of the Israeli athletes murdered in 1972, and now through giving in to the political posturing of Lebanon. At an event supposedly dedicated to allowing nations to meet without political burdens, in an open spirit of athletic dedication and competition, Israel, and no other nation, is being delegitimized by her enemies, with the cooperation of the IOC.

A Spectacular Post From Chas Newkey-Burden

This is something so good I just had to repost it immediately, and get it out to as many people as possible. Over at Oy Va Goy, Chas Newkey-Burden takes apart the inherent anti-Semitism of the common anti-Israel plaint that after the Shoah, the world has the right to demand more moral behavior from Jews than others.

Newkey-Burden writes: Let us strip the “they-of-all-people” argument down to its very basics: gentiles telling Jews that we killed six million of your people and that as a result it is you, not us, who have lessons to learn; that it is you, not us, who need to clean up your act. It is an argument of atrocious, spiteful insanity. Do not accept it; turn it back on those who offer it. For it is us, not you, who should know better.


Read the whole thing here.

Romney Recognizes Jerusalem

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives and Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.}

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has made a point during his trip to Israel to recognize that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state. The Jerusalem Post reports:

After the speech, in comments he made before meeting the prime minister for the second time that day, for dinner, Romney made it a point to refer to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, putting distance between him and the Obama administration, whose spokesmen in recent weeks have been unable to name Israel’s capital.

This represents a very distinct contrast to the Obama administration which holds the Jewish state in such contempt, and thus the Jewish people in such contempt, that it will not even recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. How can we possibly think of Obama as a friend of Israel when he will not even recognize its capital? And what's worse, of course, is that he pretended to do so when he was running for president in 2008. In 2008 Barack Obama stood up before the Jewish people and claimed:

Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.

So, Obama recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and then, elected to the presidency, he changed his mind. In other words, he lied to us about something as central to the hearts of the Jewish people as the status of the ancient city of Jerusalem and he did so in a way that was blatant, callous, and obvious... yet he still expects you to support him.

The fact that Obama lied was revealed as early as March, 2010, during Joe Biden's visit to that country. When the Israeli Interior Ministry announced approval for 1,600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of north-eastern Jerusalem, suddenly not only did the Obama administration no longer consider Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel which must remain undivided, but his people said that the announcement was an "insult" and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly harangued Benjamin Netanyahu on a 45 minute phone call over the issue.

The Obama administration publicly, loudly, and in a manner intended to demonstrate "daylight" between the United States and the Jewish state told the world, particularly the Arab and Muslim worlds, that the status of Jerusalem was entirely up for grabs. Just as Obama voided 3,500 years of Jewish history in his 2009 Cairo speech when he claimed that the founding of Israel was due to the Holocaust, rather than to the long, long history of Jewish people on that land, so he voids 3,500 years of Jewish history now by implying that the capital of the Jewish nation may, or may not, actually be Jewish.

If the Palestinians had not demonstrated their ongoing intention to destroy the Jewish state of Israel through never accepting a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one, I might not mind if Israel felt itself so gracious as to give away Jewish land for yet another Arab state. Unfortunately the Palestinians have well-demonstrated their ongoing malice because they absolutely refuse a negotiated conclusion of hostilities. That being the case, their viciously corrupt and anti-Semitic leadership should be allowed no sovereignty in the Jewish city of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish nation long before London, Paris, or New York even existed as cities. This matters not one whit to Barack Obama who has so little respect or friendship for the Jewish people that he lied to us when he said that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of the Jewish state.

He lied directly to our faces.

Perhaps Romney can do better.

No Sh*t! Israeli toilet wins acclaim

An Israeli greentech company, Paulee Cleantech has been awarded a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant of $110,000 for their invention of a remarkable new toilet. The innovative toilet needs no water and generates its own power to turn waste into sterile, odorless compost.

Over 1.1 billion people in the world today are without access to a toilet. It has been estimated that 80 percent of human waste is released untreated into rivers and streams

Oded Halperin, one of the company’s original investors, speaking to Israel 21C describes the tolilets design:

"For the solid waste, which also can include toilet paper, we are mixing it with our chemical formula for not more than 30 seconds and it will turn immediately into odorless, sterile fertilizer. The fertilizer will be automatically dropped into a removable canister where it can be collected from time to time and than be used for field and/or home crops. The liquid waste will be sterilized separately in another reservoir, and then pumped up to flush the toilet – powered by heat energy created from the solid-waste process and stored in a battery. According to the still-secret drawings of the patent-pending device, the internally created heat would even power a light inside the stall. "

“We are one of only very, very few Israeli companies that have received any grants from this foundation,” Halperin points out

In addition, the Ramat Gan-based company is considering opportunities for raising funds from private and strategic investors as it looks to widen its potential applications to hygienic solutions for trains, airplanes, boats, motor homes and other modes of transportation."

Will Ashkelon be Sacramento's newest Sister City?

Sacramento is considering adding Ashkelon to its sister city program.
Ashkelon is more than just beautiful beaches. Its a ancient city with a richly diverse heritage.

From the Jewish Virtual library:

Ashkelon is built upon the ruins of past civilizations. This was one of five Philistine city-states (along with Gath, Gaza, Ekron and Ashdod). The city also plays a role in biblical history as the place where Delilah cut Samson's hair to sap his strength (Judges XIV-XVI). Ashkelon was also a great trading center because it lay along the Via Maris, the route linking Egypt with Syria and Mesopotamia.

The city was first settled at the end of the third millennium B.C.E. It was conquered by the Philistines in the second half of the 12th century. After the Israelite conquest of the rest of the area, the two peoples engaged in several hundred years of conflict. After King Saul was slain by the Philistines, David lamented:

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph. (II Samuel 1:20)

Even after David defeated the Philistines in much of the rest of the country, he could not dislodge them from Ashkelon. This was finally accomplished by the Assyrian conqueror Tiglath-Pileser III in 734 B.C.E. After roughly 600 years in the region, the Philistines disappeared forever.

The city passed through the hands of the region's subsequent invaders before enjoying a renaissance under the Greeks and Romans. After the Jews, under the leadership of the Maccabeans, overthrew the Greeks in the 2nd century, Ashkelon became an autonomous city. It is believed that Ashkelon was the birthplace of Herod (in 37 B.C.E.), who enlarged and beautified the city, constructing a summer house, palaces and an aqueduct. Under the Romans, Ashkelon was also granted the rare privilege of being exempt from taxes. It became a flourishing trade center and, in particular, a major wine producer.

The city became a Christian city in the Byzantine period and was captured by the Muslims in 638 C.E. The Crusaders came next in 1153, but were defeated by Saladin. Richard the Lion Heart led the Crusaders back, but they were eventually driven out in 1280 by Sultan Baybars. The city was then abandoned until 1948 when the Jews of the new State of Israel began to rebuild it. Ashkelon was reestablished as an Israeli city in 1953.

Why would anyone object to adding Ashkelon to the growing family of Sacramento's Sister cities, which include Manila, San Juan de Oriente, Nicaragua, Liestal, Switzerland and Hamilton, New Zealand?

Mr. Binder Clips said it best.

"Its the Jews, stupid"

The same "its the occupation" cru that protests regularly at Costco and Bed Bath and Beyond for daring to sell Soda Stream and Ahava found themselves in a quandary here. Ashkelon isn't "occupied"- its well within the green line. How could they distort history and manipulate truth to accommodate their "I hate anything Israeli" goals?

They couldn't. Easy enough. So they just invented a new name to provide cover.

And what are the stated objections of this newly formed group, consisting of the exact same members of all the local "I hate Israel" groups?

Their "logic" approaches world salad. From their website (Sorry, I don't link to hate sites)

Ashkelon discriminates against its own citizens and against Sacramentans on the basis of religion, ethnicity, and national origin.

I've been to Ashkelon. I fondly remember the glorious beaches, the caves at Bet Guvrin and the breakfast buffet at the Dan hotel. (who knew halvah came in so many varieties?) At no point was my Californian heritage or religion, ethnicity or national origin ever questioned.

**********
Whats really going on in Ashkelon:
From Der Spiegel

When a Palestinian woman gave birth to twins in an Ashkelon hospital she experiences what it is like to be the target of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Best line from the article (but please read it in its entirety):

Dr. Shmuel Zangen, the director of the hospital's neonatal unit, doesn't care who he treats. "As a doctor, I enjoy the privilege of not having to think about it," he says. "It certainly is odd that we take care of Palestinian children while they shoot at us. It's the sort of thing that only happens in the Middle East."

***************
What can you do? Drop a line to the Sacramento mayor and city Council members. Tell them you support having Ashkelon as a sister city to Sacramento.

aashby@cityofsacramento.org, ssheedy@cityofsacramento.org, scohn@cityofsacramento.org, rkfong@cityofsacramento.org, jschenirer@cityofsacramento.org, KMcCarty@cityofsacramento.org, dfong@cityofsacramento.org, bpannell@cityofsacramento.org, mayor@cityofsacramento.org,

Please plan on attending the August 14, 2012, 6pm City Council meeting when the Ashkelon proposal is scheduled to be heard.

Mapping Judaism : a fascinating chart from the Economist

Not only is Israel the spiritual center of the Jewish people, it is now the geographic center as well.

From the Economist (h/t Bob)

Mapping the world's Jewish population and migration patterns

JUDAISM is enjoying an unexpected revival, according to a special report to be published in this week’s Economist. The map and chart below show where the biggest Jewish populations live and how this has changed over the past century. In 1939, Jews numbered 16.5m people, up from 10.6m in 1900. By the end of the second world war, the Nazis had wiped out one-third of them, sweeping away a thousand years of Jewish civilisation in central and eastern Europe. The death toll might have been even higher, but a flurry of pogroms that started 60 years earlier across the then-tsarist empire had sent waves of Jewish emigrants westward. By the time Hitler struck, some 6m Jews were safe in North and South America and in Britain, with 3m more living in the Soviet Union. From 1948, most of the Jews of north Africa and the Levant emigrated. The break-up of the Soviet Union brought the latest big wave of Jewish migration to Israel in the early 1990s.

The Wheels on the bus : Veolia BDS fail in Sonoma

By 5:00, the line was snaking out the door of the Santa Rosa Hearing room. BDS'ers worked the line, distributing talking points.



Their ultimate goal last night was to convince the Sonoma Commission on Human Rights to issue a recommendation urging the county to cancel a contract with transportation giant Veolia.

By the time the hearing of the Sonoma Commission on Human rights began, the 95 person hearing room and an adjacent overflow room were filled to capacity. A petulant Allison Deger (Formerly from UC Berkeley's SJP, now an editor at Mondoweiss) arrived late, and was locked out. Her repeated attempts to sneak in were thwarted by a security guard. Eventually, as people came and went, everyone was allowed in and given a chance to participate.

It was clear from the very beginning that the Commissions' mandate was human rights in Sonoma county- and that they did not have jurisdiction on foreign policy issues, nor did they have the resources to full investigate complex international allegations. To the credit of the Commission, there were willing to hear both sides. The North Coast Coalition for Palestine was given a half hour to present their program, followed by 45 minutes of public comment. Then Veolia presented their side, again followed by public comment.

Nick Walrath and his mother Therese Mughannam-Walrath speaking for the North Coast Coalition for Palestine repeated the same tired and discredited lies we've heard so often. Therese claimed that Palestinians were literally "driven out" of the land to "make room for Jews" and spoke of Jew- only roads. Anna Baltzer from the US campaign and Dalit Baum of Global Exchange also presented. Remarkably, when asked about the second Intifada, Dalit Baum managed to speak for nearly five minutes without mentioning the campaign of terror launched upon Israeli civilians. Nearly 10,000 Israeli casualties were swept under the rug as if they didn’t exist.

Many of the anti-Israel speakers were seasoned activists. Jane Jewell, Hassan Fouda, Tom Pessah, Allison Deger, Sydney Levy, Dalit Baum, Deppen Webber, Anna Rogers, and Henry Norr all contributed to the noise level. Strangely, Henry Norr spent much of his allotted time proclaiming his Judaism. Yes, this is the man who spent last Yom Kippur- the holiest day in the Jewish calendar- hosting an anti-Israel film at a church in Fremont. Clearly a man who embraces his religious heritage. The anti- Israel cru commuted in from as far away as Yolo county, with Dave Mandel and Mikos Fabersunne making an appearance fresh from their Veolia BDS fail in Davis.

Allan Moldawer and Ruth Otte from Veolia initially used their time to introduce information on their company. Veolia is non-political. Instead, they asserted “We are passionate about getting people where they need to be. We offer essential services to human beings.” Importantly, Veolia has been in Sonoma County for 22 years, operating and maintaining 49 buses and 29 paratransit vehicles. 81 unionized employees of Veolia live and work in Sonoma.

The Veolia team was also able to expose the shoddiness of the BDSer’s research, exposing their lies about the Jerusalem Light Rail system.

From the BDS presentation materials:

“The tramway links West Jerusalem to illegal Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. The tramway cements Israel's hold on occupied east Jerusalem and ties the settlements even more firmly into the State of Israel.... Veolia published an advertisement recruiting operators for the tramway requiring Hebrew to be mother tongue standard, no mention of Arabic, a clear indication that the tramway was expected to be used primarily by Jewish Israelis, not Palestinians. Full army or civic service is also required ie: no Palestinians. Since passengers have to pay for tickets local observers reported that few Palestinians do indeed use the tramway"

This information was blatantly false, Veolia asserted. One half of the Light rail engineers employed by Veolia are Palestinians. There are 6 stops in Jewish areas, and 6 stops in non Jewish areas. Surveys of customer satisfaction show 74.5% of Palestinians are satisfied with the Light Rail system. Israeli support was at 58%. Signage in the system is in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

It was easy to disprove the claims of segregation with photos like this:



Perhaps most importantly, Veolia exposed the real nature of the North Coast Coalition, and of the entire BDS agenda. This “movement” is neither about peace nor justice. Rather it is a coordinated worldwide effort to attack companies doing business in Israel regardless of the nature of the business or whether the business is meeting essential human needs It’s a failing movement. In spite of the claims to the contrary, not one Veolia Contract has been cancelled anywhere because of BDS.

And there was still more public comment. The anti-Israel cru pulled out their favorite canards once again- the long discredited accusations of Jews-only roads, of ethnic cleansing, of apartheid and segregation. And the pro-Israel community spoke of the complexity of the issue, how divisive it was to their community, and how ultimately, with failing schools, hunger and homelessness in Sonoma, this discussion simply wasn’t an appropriate use of the Commissions limited time. The Commission was reminded, time and again, of the real goal of BDS Movement - the end of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and its replacement with an Arab-majority state in all the territories of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Ultimately, the Sonoma County board of Supervisors , and not the Human Right Commission have final say over whether or not the Veolia contract is renewed. Though the Veolia contract is not up for renewal until 2014, it is clear the BDS’ers were anxious for a much needed victory to prop up their failing movement. It appears that this is yet another BDS fail.

UPDATE

The invariable "even when we lose we win" statement can be found in the "J Weekly"

“We came out of this meeting feeling very positive,” said (Lois) Pearlman, one of the NCCP’s Jewish members. “By the end of the meeting, there were four commissioners who at least felt it was worth investigating, worth learning more.”

More on Nazism and the Brotherhood

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives and Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.}

When we think about the rise of radical Islam in the Middle East and the Obama administration's bolstering of that movement, particularly in Egypt, it is helpful to know some history of the Brotherhood and its connection to Nazi ideology.

As I have mentioned many times on this blog Matthias Küntzel (author of Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11) is among the foremost scholars working on this question. Below is a bit of a 2008 interview (pdf) which should be required reading for anyone who intends to form an opinion on the Brotherhood:

Bridges between early Islamism and late Nazism

Alan Johnson: In your book you show that from the 1930s to the mid 1940s there was a growth of ‘personal contacts and ideological affinities between early Islamism and late Nazism.’ Let’s talk about two people who acted as bridges between an older, doctrinal or Koranic anti-Judaism and a modern political and Islamist antiSemitism, influenced by Nazism: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, and Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. First, who was Haj Amin al-Husseini and what was his central achievement?

The first thing to understand, and it is virtually never mentioned in the mass media, is the "personal contacts and ideological affinities between early Islamism and late Nazism."

This is a key point that must be addressed because we need to know just who these people are that the Obama administration is helping into power in Egypt. The fact of the matter, however much they may pose as "moderate" for a gullible western audience, is that the Brotherhood is a fascist movement, heavily influenced by European fascism of the early-middle twentieth century.

Matthias Küntzel: The main achievement of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was to combine the Jew-hatred of ancient Islam with modern antiSemitism into a new and persuasive rhetoric. I discovered a speech he gave in 1937 with the title, ‘Jewry and Islam.’ Here, he intermingled modern anti-Semitism the stories of very early Islam, going back and forth from the 7th and the 20th centuries, and connecting both kinds of Jew-hatred. This was something new.

So the Mufti, who is the father of Palestinian nationalism, merged early Islamic Jew Hatred with the Nazi variety during the 1930s.

When Churchill visited Jerusalem in March 1921, just before the British Mandate, he was given a petition by the then Palestinian leadership which was very antisemitic. But it was a purely European anti-Semitism – about the alleged Jewish responsibility for the First World War, about how later Jews incited the Russian Revolution and so on. It was ridiculous and no Muslim of that time would have been able to understand any of this, because it was really a précis of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion! This was not the way to mobilise the Arab masses. It was the Mufti who realised this. He was always a special case in this regard. High ranking Muslims at this time rarely wanted to mobilise masses, but Haj Amin al-Husseini
did. Indeed it was a mass mobilisation that in 1921 led to his appointment as Mufti,against other Jerusalem notables.

The Mufti combined Nazi anti-Semitism with traditional Islamic Jew Hatred and used both to "mobilize the masses" in the 1920s. It was the Arab riots and revolts throughout the 1920s and 1930s that led the British to issue the infamous White Paper restricting Jewish immigration to mandated Palestine directly during the Holocaust.

Here was a modern feature – the mobilisation of masses to rescue your position. To this end he invented a form of Islamic anti-Semitism which was able to reach the illiterate masses by recruiting their religious feelings and by repeating the antiJewish verses from the Koran and Hadith again and again. Thus, we find for the first time in about 100 years the famous Hadith about the stones and the trees that want to kill Jews – a Hadith which constitutes today a part of the Hamas Charter – mentioned in the Mufti’s speech of 1937.

The Mufti was the most important founder of modern Islamic anti-Semitism and this achievement – with all its after-effects – is more important than his role during the Nazi time. Amin el-Husseini is often reduced to this time. But I think that what he did before and after this period of time was much more important. Before, he created the new antisemitic rhetoric, the rhetoric the Islamists would spread. Between 1946 and 1948, he played a key role in mobilising the Arab world against Israel. Sometimes individuals can change a lot, and the Mufti was by far the best-known representative of the Muslim world at that time, among other things because of his broadcasting of pro-Nazi and antisemitic sermons into the Middle East during the war over the Berlin short wave transmitter. He pursued his passion after May 8, 1945 and stirred up a specifically antisemitic hatred against the Jews in Palestine and Israel.

There is much more to this interview and I very much recommend that it be read in full. I may continue this little exercise going forward, but for the moment the purpose is simply to point out... to insist, really... that the Muslim Brotherhood has historical connections to Nazi ideology and that we must bare this in mind when we consider the US-Brotherhood connection under the Obama administration.

The point, it should be understood, is not that Barack Obama intends to support an Islamic variant of fascism in today's Middle East. I have to go on the assumption that he has no such intention. Instead there are two possible explanations for Obama's behavior, ignorance and / or the sincere belief that either the Brotherhood has moderated itself or that bringing it into power will serve to moderate it.

Sometimes pundits will say that the Muslim Brotherhood has given up on the violent Jihad with the obvious implication being that there is nothing to fear from them. If that is the case, however, how is it that the Brotherhood calls for a renewed Caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital?

One of my foremost criticisms of the progressive-left, and particularly the Jewish left, is their insensibility concerning the rise of radical Islam. They are almost entirely incapable of discussing what is perhaps the foremost international political development of our time for reasons that amount to social cowardice.

This makes standard progressive-left, including standard "progressive Zionist," opinions on the Arab-Israel conflict almost entirely worthless because they fail to take into account the fact that it is radical Islam, itself, which is driving the conflict. The reason that there is no peace is not because Jews are building housing for themselves in Judea, but because the Arab world absolutely refuses to allow Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land and they do so for religious reasons.

You may ignore it, but ignorance will not make it go away.

What Occupation?

A lie told a million times is still a lie. We're heard the anti-Israel memes so often. Apartheid state. Ethnic Cleansing. Illegal occupation. According to the Levy report, they're simply not true.

From Dore Gold in Israel Hayom: The Levy Report and the 'occupation' narrative

Looking back over the last two weeks, what appeared to hit a raw nerve with critics of the report of Justice Edmond Levy's committee was not what it had to say about the specific issues for which it was appointed, like zoning and planning in the West Bank, but rather with how it dealt with the broader narrative for describing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This became evident in how the reaction focused on the report's conclusion that "the classical laws of 'occupation' as set out in the relevant international conventions cannot be considered applicable to … Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria."

How did Justice Levy, who recently retired from Israel's Supreme Court, reach this conclusion along with his two colleagues? They argued that the Israeli presence in the West Bank was unique, sui generis, because there was no previously recognized sovereign there when it was captured by the Israel Defense Forces during the Six-Day War in 1967. The Jordanian declaration of sovereignty in 1950 had been rejected by the Arab states and the international community, as a whole, except for Britain and Pakistan.

Moreover, as the Levy Report points out, the Jewish people still had residual historical and legal rights in the West Bank emanating from the British Mandate that were never cancelled, but rather were preserved by the U.N. Charter, under Article 80 — the famous “Palestine Clause” that was drafted, in part, to guarantee continuity with respect to Jewish rights from the League of Nations.

There were other issues that made the Israeli presence in the West Bank unique. With the advent of the Oslo Agreements in the 1990s, there was no longer an Israeli military government over the Palestinian population. Indeed, the famous 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on occupied territories stipulates that an Occupying Power is bound to its terms “to the extent that such a Power exercises the function of government in such territory (Article 6).”

Yet the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, in accordance with the Oslo Accords, also made the situation complex: as a result, some functions of government were retained by the IDF, other functions were exercised by the Palestinians, and there were also shared powers. In other words, the situation on the ground in the West Bank was not black and white, which allowed moral judgments to be easily made about a continuing Israeli occupation. True, the Palestinians did not have an independent state, but they could not be considered to be under "occupation" when at the same time they were being ruled first by Yasser Arafat and then by his successor, Mahmoud Abbas.

Read it all here

Just One Minute.

The 2012 Olympics will last 24,480 minutes. Devoting one minute to the memory of the murdered Israeli athletes is not too much to ask.

Yet the International Olympic committee (IOC) simply doesn't care. Over 101,000 people from all over the world have signed a petition that originated with Ankie Spitzer, wife of murdered Olympian Andrei Spitzer. There has been twitter campaigns (Want to help the cause? Use the hashtag #justoneminute)There have been youtubes. There is a facebook page. The U.S. Senate, the German Bundestag, members of the Canadian and Australian and British parliaments, the Israeli government, Jewish organizations throughout the world have all urged the IOC to hold a moment of silence. Even President Obama joined the campaign. “We absolutely support the campaign for a minute of silence at the Olympics to honor the Israeli athletes killed in Munich,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor declared.

From "Jewish Blood is cheap" by Deborah E. Lipstadt

Why the IOC refusal? The Olympic Committee’s official explanation is that the games are apolitical. The families were repeatedly told by long-time IOC President Juan Samaranch that the Olympic movement avoided political issues. He seemed to have forgotten that at the 1996 opening ceremony he spoke about the Bosnian war. Politics were also present at the 2002 games, which opened with a minute of silence for the victims of 9/11.

The families have also been told that a commemoration of this sort was inappropriate at the opening of such a celebratory event. However, the IOC has memorialized other athletes who died “in the line of duty.” At the 2010 winter games, for example, there was a moment of silence to commemorate an athlete who died in a training accident.

The IOC’s explanation is nothing more than a pathetic excuse. The athletes who were murdered were from Israel and were Jews—that is why they aren’t being remembered. The only conclusion one can draw is that Jewish blood is cheap, too cheap to risk upsetting a bloc of Arab nations and other countries that oppose Israel and its policies.

I have long inveighed against the tendency of some Jews to see anti-Semitism behind every action that is critical of Israel or of Jews. In recent years some Jews have been inclined to hurl accusations of anti-Semitism even when they are entirely inappropriate. By repeatedly crying out, they risk making others stop listening—especially when the cry is true.

Here the charge is absolutely accurate. This was the greatest tragedy to ever occur during the Olympic Games. Yet the IOC has made it quite clear that these victims are not worth 60 seconds. Imagine for a moment that these athletes had been from the United States, Canada, Australia, or even Germany. No one would think twice about commemorating them. But these athletes came from a country and a people who somehow deserve to be victims. Their lost lives are apparently not worth a minute.

Bob Costas, NBC sportscaster and lead anchor for the London Games, recognizes the injustice. "I intend to note that the IOC denied the request," Costas said. "Many people find that denial more than puzzling but insensitive. "

Having tweeted, like, shared, is there anything more we can do?
Why, yes. There's this suggestion from the "just one Minute" facebook page

Create Just One Minute in YOUR own TOWN

WHERE:
Main Square OR City Hall OR Jewish Place
Just one place, please! Stay together!

WHEN:
Check your timezone at 7 p.m. (London Time)

WHAT:
One day before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London 2012, join us, bring your spirit; hold one minute of silence to remember eleven athletes brutally murdered at the Olympic Games of Munich 1972, just for being Jews:

David Berger, 28 years old, weightlifter;
Ze'ev Friedman, 28 years old, weightlifter;
Yossef Gutfreund, 40 years old, Greco-Roman wrestling referee;
Eliezer Halfin, 24 years old, wrestler;
Yossef Romano, 31 years old, weightlifter;
Amitzur Shapira, 40 years old, athletics coach;
Kehat Shorr, 53 years old, shooting sport coach;
Mark Slavin, 18 years old, wrestler;
André Spitzer, 27 years old, fencing coach;
Yakov Springer, 51 years old, Olympic weightlifting judge;
Moshe Weinberg, 33 years old, Greco-Roman wrestling coach.

Anti-Semitism is a crime against humanity.

Bay area, Lets remember the athletes that the IOC has forgotten. We'll supply the details as we figure them out.

July 24 is Palestinian cultural day in Alameda county

Last month, a proclamation to declare June 5 “Palestinian Cultural Day” in Alameda County was pulled off the agenda by Nate Miley, president of the county’s Board of Supervisors. An alternative resolution was proposed, and the anti-Israeli Lobbyists were persuaded to give up their "Jews as Palestinians" argument, and their denial of Jewish peoplehood.

The new resolution proposed by the Board of Supervisors follows;

WHEREAS, Palestinians trace their roots back to the historic land of Palestine and profess many faiths; and

WHEREAS, Palestinian culture is presented through books, poetry, music, dance, oral history, folktales, proverbs, and handicrafts made with cross~stitch embroidery patterns that often display ethnic or regional identity and honor a rich cultural legacy from centuries past that are important symbols of Palestinian culture; and

WHEREAS, Palestinians have embraced for over 2,000 years core values such as love of family, commitment to education, hospitality, and reverence for land, community
empowerment, strong sense of justice and they now share these values with the residents of Alameda County; and

WHEREAS, Palestinian residents of Alameda County now number approximately 20,000 and continue to make major contributions to the County in the fields of arts and culture, community organizing, student activism, law and medicine, and are valued members of the community as small business owners; and

WHEREAS, Palestinians living in Almeda County will hold the first annual Palestinian Cultural Day that honors the local Palestinian community and its contributions to the County's civic life as well as the historical and cultural contributions of Palestinians throughout the world; and, now therefore be it

PROCLAIMED that this Board of Supervisors, County of Alameda, State of California does hereby proclaim ]uly 24, 2012 as "Palestinian Cultural day" and recognizes the contributions of the local Palestinian population to Alameda County residents and communities.

Nate Miley, President Keith Carson, Vice President
Supervisor, Fourth District Supervisor, Fifth District


Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Scott Haggerty
Supervisor, First District


Richard Valle
Supervisor, Second District

Wilma Chan
Supervisor, Third District

The UN doesn't agree with this, of course, and UNRWA defines Palestians as "people whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948" - hardly 2,000 years. At least the current proclamation doesn't have the Alameda County Board of Suervisors mistakenly defining what it means to be a Jew.

Its a compromise I can live with.


The Arab Community is happy, too. Their announcement follows

After persistant meetings and discussions with the Board of Supervisors, including Board President, Nate Miley (who pulled the Proclamation from the Agenda last month), a final agreement has been made to move forward with the proclamation after a minor amendment was made in the proclamation's language. The Buena Vista United Methodist Church and the Arab Cultural and Community Center are thrilled with the progress made and would like to invite you witness members of the ACCC receive this historic Proclamation at the Board of Supervisors meeting this Tuesday July 24th, 2012 at 10:30am. A Dessert reception will follow at the park across the street from the county courthouse.

To those attending on Tuesday: We ask that you wear any traditional Palestinian items you may hav (kuffiyeh, Toub, symbolic shirts..etc!)... We want to stand out!

We'd also like to give a very special thank you to the Buena Vista United Methodist Church for all their hard work and dedication in helping us to arrange these important meetings, and to those of you who sent all those emails and made phone calls urging them to approve this important proclamation.

Symbolic shirts? Like these?

I Surrender!

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives and Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.}

To My Jihadi Friends:

I surrender!

You have been in the Jew Killing Business for, what?, 1,400 years now? I must say, I think that you've done a splendid job. Just look at the Middle East. This huge expanse of land and the Jews only occupy some fraction of one percent of it. If you guys had not been so vigilant in your genocidal attempts against us, who knows how much of that land we might be living on today?

That is, you've done an exceptional job of keeping our numbers artificially low and you should be commended for your efforts. I'm sure that Big Daddy Allah is very proud of your work.

Oh, and by the way, I have to say that I find the argument that you made yesterday in Bulgaria to be quite compelling. Nicely done. Well said.

In any case, I surrender! I give up! Take me, I'm yours!

To My Progressive Friends:

I want to thank you for telling little Jewish kids that the reason that Jihadis seek to kill us is because we're mean to the Palestinians and that if only we would stop being mean to the Palestinians then they would stop trying to kill us. This is the message that you guys have been sending us for decades and I appreciate it very much. It's necessary for Jewish people to understand that the reason that Jihadis seek to kill us is because we aren't nice enough and that we need to redouble our efforts at niceness.

It's particularly important that Jewish children understand this.

I fully understand your moral superiority to the Jewish state of Israel, if not to Jewish people, in general, and will do what I can to make the bad Jews be more like the good Jews.

To the Good Jews:

The good Jews are my absolute favorite Jews.

These are Jewish liberals or progressives or leftists (or whatever) who agree with progressives, in general, that the real problem here is not the Jihadis (who they barely even acknowledge the existence of because to do so would make one a racist, a vile "Islamophobe"), but bad Jews.

The good Jews understand, along with progressives, that the problem is not radical Islam or Islamism or the Jihad... or any of that... but bad Jews who must be stopped at all costs. The problem is not anti-Jewish incitement emanating from throughout the Muslim Middle East, but Avigdor Lieberman.

Were it not for Avigdor Lieberman or Benjamin Netanyahu or the Likud there would be peace now and therefore what is necessary is excoriating these people and dragging their names and reputations through the mud and driving them out of public life by any means necessary, including, but not limited to, defamation of character.

So, I surrender.

You guys are right.

The Jihadis are right that Jews are the children of apes and pigs and need to be slaughtered wherever we might be found.

The progressives are right, with their profound sense of history, that the reason that the Jihadis seek to kill us is because we're mean to the Palestinians. If we weren't mean to the Palestinians the Jihadis would be as gentle as narcophied lambs.

And progressive Jews are right that the real problem is those Jews over there, the bad Jews. The Jews who believe in Jewish self-defense. The Jews who are willing to stand up for the Jewish people. Those Jews who insist upon living in Judea. Those Jews give all the rest of us a bad name, so it's no wonder that our non-Jewish progressive friends blame us for the violence against us because clearly we deserve it... but that's because of the bad Jews!

{'Scuse me. Must go throw up, now.}

From IsraellyCool- Have authorities identified the Bulgarian suicide bomber?

From our friends at Israellycool

Bulgarian media on Thursday named the suicide bomber who blew up a bus full of Israeli tourists, killing five Israelis and a local bus driver, in the Black Sea resort of Burgas on Wednesday as Mehdi Ghezali.

There was no independent confirmation of the veracity of the information. The reports surfaced soon after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had publicly accused Hezbollah, directed by Iran, of responsibility for the bombing. The Prime Minister’s Office made no comment on the reports.

The Bulgarian reports, rapidly picked up by Hebrew media, posited various versions of how the bomber had detonated the bomb, including the suggestion that the bomber had not intended to die in the blast, but may have wanted to place the bomb on the bus and flee.

Ghezali was reportedly a Swedish citizen, with Algerian and Finnish origins. He had been held at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detainment camp on Cuba from 2002 to 2004, having previously studied at a Muslim religious school and mosque in Britain, and traveled to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Following a lobbying effort by Swedish prime minister Göran Persson, Guantanamo authorities recommended Ghezali be transferred to another country for continued detainment, and he was handed over to Swedish authorities in 2004. The Swedish government did not press charges.

He was also reportedly among 12 foreigners captured trying to cross into Afghanistan in 2009.

This information has NOT been confirmed.

UPDATE
From The Times of Israel:

The five Israelis killed in Wednesday’s terror attack in Burgas were named on Thursday evening as Amir Menashe, 27; Itzik Kolengi, 27; Maor Harush, 26; Elior Priess, 26; and Kochava Shriki, 42.

The five fatalities from the attack were set to be flown home on Thursday evening. A ceremony was being planned for their arrival, with Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov set to represent the government.

Channel 2 reported that Menashe and Kolengi were childhood friends who traveled to Bulgaria with their wives, who were both injured in the attack. The Kolengis had celebrated the birth of their first daughter four months ago and planned a long weekend away without the child, who was left in the care of her grandparents.
Galit Kolengi was seriously injured in the explosion that killed her husband and and was to be flown back to Israel Thursday night. Natalie Menashe was lightly injured in the blast.

Harush and Priess were both from Acre. When news of the attack reached the Harush home, family members hoped for the best, but their hopes were dashed when they were asked by authorities to provide DNA samples.

In the hours following the explosion Itzik Shriki, who was lightly injured in the attack, searched for his wife until the terrible truth of her fate became clear. She was taken to a hospital in Sofia, without him being told. According to Channel 2, the couple had recently succeeded in becoming expectant parents after several years of frustrated attempts.

“Two of them have gone, she and her baby,” wailed Yael Mored, Shriki’s sister. “They just went for three days of holiday and now she will come back in a coffin.”
Itzik Kolengi was to be buried in Petah Tikva’s Segula cemetery on Friday at 10.30. Amir Menashe was to be buried in the same cemetery an hour later.

Aftermath of the Burgas terror bombing

Buddhists and Muslims in conflict in Burma? Burn an American flag in Gaza

From Ma'an

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Dozens of Palestinians protested in Gaza City on Wednesday slamming world inaction over violence against Muslims in Burma.

The demonstrators burnt American and Burmese flags and photos of Burma’s president Thein Sein.

"We stand here in front of the UN headquarters which did nothing to what the Muslims are being exposed to," a spokesman of the protesters said.

"We stand in Palestine in support of the Muslims of whom more than 2,000 were killed and more than 90,000 were displaced while the media is busy with other issues."

He called on the international community to stop what he called the “genocide” against Muslims, urging Arab and Muslim leaders to condemn the crimes.

Thousands of Rohingya Muslims were displaced after sectarian violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state last month.

Tension between the mostly stateless Rohingya Muslims and majority Buddhists flared into violence that killed at least 80 people last month.

Many Rohingya Muslims have lived in the state for generations but are not recognized as citizens of Myanmar

There has been an upsurge in hate speech on the web directed against Buddhists, including this baffling piece from Pakistan.

Israeli Tourists targeted in Bulgaria

Breaking News.

Earlier today, a bus filled with Israeli tourists on holiday in Bulgaria exploded. Preliminary reports indicate at least 3 dead, and dozens injured.

While its clearly too early to know for certain what caused the explosion (I suppose its possible that parked buses in Bulgaria routinely explode), I can't help but remember other bus attacks targeting Israelis.


Egged bus No. 32A June 18, 2002


Egged Bus 19 January 29, 2004


Egged bus No. 37 in Haifa March 5, 2003

Today, incidently, is the 18th anniversary of Iran-sponsored bombing of Jewish center in Argentina

From J POST:

Three Israelis were killed and many injured when a suicide bomber blew up an Israeli tourist bus at the airport of the Bulgarian city of Burgas on Wednesday, the 18th anniversary of the Iran-sponsored attack on the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The bus was carrying Israeli tourists who landed in Bulgaria at a 4:45 p.m, and was meant to take them to Bulgaria's Sunny Beach resort. Two adjacent buses were also damaged in the blast.

More details as they become available

UPDATE

Some news outlets are reporting 7 dead, now.

UPDATE

from Haaretz
The bombing in Bulgaria on Wednesday was committed by a suicide bomber and not by a charge planted in the bus beforehand as believed at first, a senior official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry told Haaretz on Thursday.

The estimate was bolstered by comments made by Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Metodiev Borisov as saying that chances were that the bombing was perpetrated by a suicide bomber.

Eight people were killed in the bombing, six of them Israeli tourists, one of them the Bulgarian bus driver, with authorities estimating that the eighth may be the terrorist who perpetrated the attack. An additional 32 Israelis were wounded in the attack.

The Bulgarian police said that footage from airport security cameras captured the suspect roaming the airport for at least one hour, the Bulgarian news agency Novinite reported. According to the report he was a long-haired Caucasian in sportswear.

The body suspected as belonging to the terrorist had a U.S. passport issued in Michigan – apparently fake.

Barack Obama's Defamation of the Jews

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives and Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.}

Obama's inclination to defame the Jews of the Middle East seems almost instinctive and done without any reflection or even conscious malice.

Obama says 'failed' to push Mideast peace

In interview with ABC7, US president says he feels he hasn’t been able to achieve desired progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace process. 'Parties have to want it as well,' he says

The direct quote from the Y-Net article is this:

"I have not been able to move the peace process forward in the Middle East the way I wanted."

"It's something we focused on very early. But the truth of the matter is that the parties, they've got to want it as well."

Barack Obama believes that neither side wants peace.

That is precisely what he is saying in the quote above. "The parties, they've got to want it as well."

So, what does this message convey to the world? It tells the world that the reason that there is no end to the Long Arab War against the Jews is because even the Jews do not want an end to their own persecution. We apparently have not done enough in the way of serious "self-reflection" as Obama has recommended of us in the past.

The good news is that this might indicate that Obama is washing his hands of the matter. One can certainly hope, although I wouldn't count on it. When I voted for Obama I thought that he could possibly bring about peace between Arab and Jew in the Middle East. At the time I was still suffering under the Oslo Delusion and thought that if Israel made the right kind of concessions then the Palestinians would agree to an end of hostilities in a two-state solution.

I could not have been more wrong.

Be that as it may, it still must be acknowledged that the Jewish people do want peace. The Palestinians have refused offer after offer for a state for themselves, going back to the Peel Commission Report of 1937, long before they even called themselves "Palestinians." Yet this American president tells us that we don't really want peace.

And you're still going to vote for this guy, eh?

It makes me begin to wonder just what diaspora "progressive" Jews actually think about the Jewish people? I am a diaspora liberal Jew by any meaningful definition of the word "liberal," but I no longer consider myself a progressive. The progressive movement gives anti-Semitic anti-Zionists a seat at the progressive table and that means that self-respecting Jews should probably go elsewhere. That has been my choice, at any rate.

But, my point is that diaspora Jews, even liberal diaspora Jews, will probably not even recognize when they have been insulted by the president of the United States. I consider it a pretty substantial insult, actually. He does not believe that YOU honestly want peace or, at the very least, that our Israeli brothers and sisters do.

One of my persistent themes has been the necessity of acknowledging the obvious. It is obvious that Barack Obama has not much in the way of respect for, or understanding of, or affection for, the Jewish people as a whole. If he did he would not defame the Jews of the Middle East by claiming that they, and by obvious extension we, do not want peace.

My question is this:

Are you going to object or do you actually agree?

My suspicion is that most "progressive" Jews actually agree.

Am I wrong?

Obama Administration Supports Jew Hatred in the Middle East

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives and Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill.}

At this point it should be well beyond dispute that the Obama administration supports the Muslim Brotherhood, the foremost anti-Semitic organization on the planet with historical and ideological roots that go to Nazi Germany. In a recent joint press conference with Brotherhood Foreign Minister Amr, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this:

I have come to Cairo to reaffirm the strong support of the United States for the Egyptian people and for your democratic transition.

Yes. How nice. The Obama administration is telling the world that the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is a good thing because it happened through democratic means. Of course, it is also true that Adolph Hitler came to power via democratic means, as well. The obvious conclusion is that mere voting does not a democracy make and that we should not be in the business of promoting fascism even if the fascist organization in question comes to power through the voting booth.

And lest one think that I exaggerate in regard the Brotherhood and that they are really a moderate organization, I will refer you to this video of a Mursi campaign rally in which the participants screamed for the conquest of Jerusalem.





Clinton continues:

In close consultation with the United States Congress, the Obama Administration is preparing to provide budget support to help Egypt stabilize its economy and to use debt relief to foster innovation, growth, and job creation. As Egypt takes these steps to shore up your economy, we will support you with international financial institutions and other donors.

We are also focused on increasing trade, investment, and entrepreneurship to create jobs and are ready to make available $250 million in loan guarantees to Egyptian small-and-medium-sized businesses. We are sending a high-level delegation of American businesses in early September to explore new investment and trade opportunities, and we will be creating the U.S.-Egypt Enterprise Fund. We’ll launch that fund with $60 million.

In other words, not only has the Obama administration helped bring the Muslim Brotherhood into power in Egypt, it is prepared, during difficult economic times, to fork over American tax dollars to it, as well.

Second, the President and I discussed the importance of keeping Egypt’s democratic transition moving forward, and I commended him on his pledge to serve all Egyptians, including women and minorities and to protect the rights of all Egyptians.

Is this an example of that three dimensional chess that Barack Obama is allegedly playing? The Muslim Brotherhood is devoted to al-Sharia and the Sharia is most certainly not compatible with women's rights, with the rights of Gay people to live free from harassment, nor compatible with the rights of Jews, Christians, and other dhimmis to live free in a Sharia state. Thus when Clinton talks about President Mursi protecting the rights of all Egyptians she must mean under a system that is entirely incompatible with the ideology of the very organization that they helped bring to power. We already have reports, as I pointed out yesterday, that the Muslim Brotherhood suppressed the Christian vote in Egypt at gunpoint, yet Clinton has the temerity to talk about the Brotherhood as if they have some secular democratic commitment to social justice and human rights. They don't.

More than three decades ago, Egypt and Israel signed a treaty that has allowed a generation to grow up without knowing war.

This is entirely false or can only be taken as true if one does not consider violence against Jews to be violence at all. An entire generation of Egyptians and Israelis have not grown up without knowing war and it is scandalous that Clinton would say so. Only the Egyptians of this generation have grown up without knowing war. The Jews of the Middle East, however, remain entirely under siege and are suffering under a war of aggression against them that has been ongoing since the 1920s. Did Hillary forget the Second Terror War (intifada) that the Palestinians launched against the Jews of the Middle East? Has she forgotten the ten thousand Qassams and Katyusha rockets that Hamas and Islamic Jihad rained upon the heads of Israelis since Israel ethnically cleansed every Jew out of Gaza, as insisted upon by the international left?

Or are we to believe that violence against Jews somehow does not count as violence?

We believe America’s shared strategic interest with Egypt far outnumber our differences.

Shared strategic interest? The Egyptians just voted in the Muslim Brotherhood which is the parent organization of al-Qaeda, which the administration claims to be at war with. Just what strategic interests can the United States share with an organization devoted to the restoration of the Caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital? Just what strategic interests can the United States share with an organization that is the parent of al-Qaeda which killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11?

The bottom line is that the Obama administration helped bring the Muslim Brotherhood into power and continues to support an organization with a long history of fascism, terrorism, and Jew Hatred. Obama met with the Brotherhood in the spring of '09 when they were still a relatively insignificant force in world politics.   Obama made a point of inviting the Brotherhood to his Cairo speech, wherein he threw 3,000 years of Jewish history out the window by suggesting that Israel is the result of the Holocaust. Obama cleared the way for the rise of the Brotherhood in Egypt by rallying for the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Obama interfered in Egyptian internal politics on the side of the Brotherhood in their struggle with the Egyptian military.  And now Obama is giving the Brotherhood an extensive financial package in order to maintain power in that country.

And, despite all this, the Obama administration, and the progressive-left, more generally, still expects Jewish people, the very target of Muslim Brotherhood malice, to support them in their efforts and in their reelection campaign.  I can think of nothing more foolish than to do so, yet I am also well aware that the majority of American "progressive" Jews will support this president no matter what he does, always finding excuses for the very worst of his behavior toward the Jews of the Middle East.

What a disgrace.

Supporting fascism, even if it happens to be Islamic fascism, is not the liberal thing to do.

"Teach your children hatred for the enemies of Islam"

Jerusalem, our city of light, of gold, of peace has been the beating heart of Jewish life for thousands of years. The organizers of the failed Global march to Jerusalem- a proposed attempt to surround and invade the city earlier this year -objected to the "Judiazation" of Jerusalem. They needn't have worried. Its a done deal. Jerusalem is mentioned in the Tanakh 669 times.

What historic significance does Jerusalem have to the Muslim people?

From Mordechai Kedar

Islamization was practiced on places as well as persons: Mecca and the holy stone - al-Ka'bah - were holy sites of the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the Great Mosque of Istanbul were erected on the sites of Christian-Byzantine churches - two of the better known examples of how Islam treats sanctuaries of other faiths.

Jerusalem, too, underwent the process of Islamization: at first Muhammad attempted to convince the Jews near Medina to join his young community, and, by way of persuasion, established the direction of prayer (kiblah) to be to the north, towards Jerusalem, in keeping with Jewish practice; but after he failed in this attempt he turned against the Jews, killed many of them, and directed the kiblah southward, towards Mecca.

Muhammad's abandonment of Jerusalem explains the fact that this city is not mentioned even once in the Koran. After Palestine was occupied by the Muslims, its capital was Ramlah, 30 miles to the west of Jerusalem, signifying that Jerusalem meant nothing to them.

Its not the Judiazation of Jerusalem we should worry about- its quite the opposite. Kedar continues:

Another aim of the Islamization of Jerusalem was to undermine the legitimacy of the older religions, Judaism and Christianity, which consider Jerusalem to be a holy city. Islam is presented as the only legitimate religion, destined to replace the other two, because they had changed and distorted the Word of God, each in its turn.

Though Judaism and Christianity can exist side by side in Jerusalem, Islam regards both of them as betrayals of Allah and his teachings, and has always done, and will continue to do, all in its power to expel both of them from this city.

We've seen evidence of this attempted undermining of the heritage of Jerusalem in the weeks prior to the Global march, with the Arab press falling all over itself reporting on "Extremist settlers" "storming" Al Aqsa. The propaganda war is continuing.

The Palestine Foundation Pakistan (sorry- I don't link to hate sites) includes amongst their '100 ways" to liberate the Aqsa Mosque these choice bits of advice:

*Women should teach their children the lesson of jihad and martyrdom in the way of Allah because Palestine can be liberated by this way.

*To make slogans about Aqsa mosque for e.g.: As long as I am alive, I shall not allow Aqsa mosque’s desolation, Aqsa Mosque is in danger, Aqsa is not alone, Quds belongs to us, This is our mosque and not the place of idols, O Aqsa Mosque, our lives and properties are sacrificed on you.

*To educate your children about the conspiracies of Zionism and ensure your children participate in anti-Zionist activities.

*To teach your children hatred for enemies of Islam.

Teaching martyrdom, jihad and hatred as community values. This makes me tremble with fear for the future generations. Pray for the children fed on hatred and for the Israeli children who will someday face them.

A Slice of Life from Olympia Washington

A slice of life from Olympia, Washington.

From an article in Moment Magazine

Rabbis Yohanna Kinberg and Seth Goldstein moved to Olympia,Washington attracted by the city's community justice values. Goldstein became the rabbi at the Reconstructionist Temple Beth Hatfiloh, and Kinberg took a position at Temple B’nai Torah, a Reform temple in nearby Bellevue.

Like many Jews, Kinberg was sharply critical of certain Israeli policies, but maintained a strong personal connection to Israel. But after the Olympia Food Co-op decided behind closed doors to boycott Israeli products, tensions in the community reached a boiling point. Other Washington food co-ops in Port Townsend and Seattle and others in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Davis and Sacramento California, have proposed boycotts that failed when brought to a vote. But in Olympia, none of the three local congregational rabbis even knew a boycott was on the table. Rabbi Cheski Edelman of Olympia’s Chabad center declared “The only way it can get passed is behind closed doors.”

"The conversation about Israel has become so one-sided, says Kinberg, that any pro-Israel sentiment is rejected out of hand. Even so, she and her husband were shocked when in 2009 their eight-year-old son told them about a lesson he had learned in class. The couple had enrolled him at Lincoln Options Elementary School, an alternative program within the public school system. It’s the same elementary school that Corrie attended, and where, in fifth grade, she gave an speech against hunger and child suffering. “They were talking to us about Rachel Corrie,” he told her, “and how Israelis murdered her on purpose and drove over her with a bulldozer.” He said, “I felt so embarrassed and ashamed to be Israeli.”

The full article, written by Emily K. Alhadeff can be found here

Break the Palestinian Veto over Israel

Mike L.

{Cross-Posted at Israel Thrives and Geoffff's Joint Bar and Grill.}

It is a commonplace in discussing the Arab-Israel conflict that Israel can be two of three things. It can be:

1) a Jewish state

2) a democratic state

or

3) a state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

What it cannot be, however, is all three. This makes eminent sense, but what tends to go unspoken is the fact that those who promote this view also tend to give the Palestinians a veto on Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. That is, if the Palestinians refuse to negotiate and if they refuse to give up their efforts to kill Jews for the purposes of eventually destroying the Jewish state, then the status quo will continue indefinitely.

If the status quo continues indefinitely, this means that the Palestinians can then condemn Israel as non-democratic. It will have been the Palestinians themselves, through their unwillingness to accept a state in peace next to the Jewish one that will be the cause of the continued status quo, but the western world, and particularly the western left, will tend to blame Israel, nonetheless.

This being the case, what is necessary is not a further round of useless talks with Palestinians who have no interest in ending the conflict short of actual victory over their Jewish victims, but for a unilateral declaration of Israel's final borders.

The Palestinians, as well as much of the larger Arab and Muslim world, is holding the Jews of the Middle East hostage.  For theological reasons they simply cannot accept Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land because that land was previously conquered by Islam and therefore is considered a permanent part of the Umma.  The western left, meanwhile, will continue to hold the Jews of the Middle East responsible for their own persecution and will continue to provide venues for anti-Semitic anti-Zionists to undermine the well-being of Jewish people the world over.

Thus the only thing that Israel can do is to take matters into its own hands and declare its final borders, leaving sufficient space for whatever criminal-terrorist entity that the Palestinians create for themselves.  This will not end the conflict, of course, but it will maintain Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, which is something that all of us, left, right, and center, who care about the Jewish people, want.

Many will argue that the withdrawal from Gaza demonstrates that such withdrawals are counterproductive to Israeli security and they will cite the ten thousand rockets that have fallen on Israeli heads since that withdrawal.  Their point is undeniable, but the truth of it does not mean that we must allow the Palestinians to have a veto over the nature of the state of Israel.  Israel always maintains its rights to self-defense and any violence coming at it from Palestinian areas should be met with sufficient force to put down that violence, no matter how the world community reacts. Much of the world, as recent experience shows, does not consider violence against Jews to actually be violence and thus they consider Jewish self-defense to be Jewish aggression.

This is most common on the progressive-left, sadly.

Nevertheless, it is long past time for Israel to free itself. After 13 centuries of second and third class citizenship under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism, followed by one hundred years of war, the Jews of the Middle East have the right to be left the hell alone. Their freedom, however, can only come about through their action.

Israel needs to free itself at last.

{The Palestinians can have Ramallah.}

Another Landmark and Barack Obama's Incoherent Foreign Policy

Mike L.

{Cross-posted at Israel Thrives and Geoffff's Joint Bar and Grill.}

Every so often something pops onto the political horizon that represents a type of landmark in my political thinking. For me the last big one, before Obama's invitation to Islamist Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi, was the Mavi Marmara episode. At the time I found it exceedingly difficult to accept the fact that western progressives were literally, physically, and financially joining with actual Jihadis for the purpose of confronting Jews on the high seas in order to break the blockade of Gaza, thereby assisting Hamas.

For so many years I was a liberal and a progressive and a Democrat, so when I realized that the progressive movement was making a home of itself for anti-Semitic anti-Zionists it was something of a shock. The Mavi Marmara became a sort-of personal landmark. A symbol. It represents the fact that the progressive-left is not a friend to the Jewish people and therefore Jewish people need to move on politically. This is one of my fundamental convictions. I do not require that people share this conviction in order to participate on Israel Thrives because the blog is not about projecting a political ideology.  It is about providing a forum for discussion among people who care about Israel. It is about thinking aloud.  I may have political views, but the very last thing in this world that I want is to enforce a political ideology.

It is for this reason that we are welcoming to people throughout the political spectrum. The only people that are not welcome on IT are anti-Zionists or Israel Haters. Other than that we are welcoming to all sorts of viewpoints, so long as one remains collegial, more or less.

But, I have to say, this most recent thing... Barack Obama's invitation to Mohamed Mursi to visit the White House... represents another landmark. From a symbolic standpoint this is just huge. I cannot know what Obama is thinking, and maybe he honestly does believe that when radical groups take power they tend to moderate, but it should be axiomatic that one does not promote the well-being and legitimacy of one's enemies. From a basic geo-political standpoint, you promote the well-being of your allies and undermine the well-being of your enemies.

Is that not obvious?

Therefore, what are we to make of the fact that the Obama administration has been supportive of the Muslim brotherhood since before the Cairo speech? The Muslim Brotherhood is an enemy of the Jewish people and of the Jewish state, yet it is a friend to the Obama administration. If this will not give progressive-left American Jewry pause concerning the Obama administration then I cannot begin to think of what might.

It also, however, demonstrates a fundamental incoherence in Barack Obama's foreign policy. Obama tells the world that the United States is at war with al-Qaeda, yet he is welcoming to the Brotherhood which is the parent organization of the very organization that Obama claims to be at war with. I'm sorry, but this policy is just entirely incoherent and nonsensical. One cannot be "at war" with Qaeda and yet friendly with the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaeda derives from the Brotherhood, as does Hamas.

Some may suggest that Barack Obama is a sort-of foreign policy genius who is playing three dimensional chess with America's adversaries. Who knows? Maybe Obama does, in fact, think that supporting one's enemies is a super-sophisticated trick wherein to undermine them. But I very much doubt it. I do not know what is behind Obama's support for the Muslim Brotherhood. What I do know is that he is supportive of the organization and the organization, itself, is both riddled with race hatred toward Jews and hostility toward the Jewish state of Israel.

And, yet, most American Jews will continue to support this president.

What are we to make of that, I wonder?

To MD Rabbi Alam, the story of Avremel Zelmanowitz, one of the Jews who died on 9/11

To MD Rabbi Alam: Here's the story of one of the Jews that perished in the World Trade Center. Avremel (Abe) Zelmanowitz z"l. Read it and learn. Read it and know. Read it and remember.

Avremel (Abe) Zelmanowitz was 55, and an observant Jew. His friend and collegue Ed Beyea was forty-two. Both worked at Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield as program analysts on the 27th floor of One World Trade Center. Ed was a quadriplegic who became disabled after a diving accident at age twenty-one. Avremel and Ed had worked together for twelve years. They traded books and tapes and played chess together. Avremel was a master carpenter; he built Ed a cigar stand and a book stand so that he would be able to read in bed.

Rather than join the thousands fleeing the the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the terror attack, Avremel Zelmanowitz chose to stay with his friend Ed. They waited together for a medical team to aid in Ed's evacuation. The team never arrived.

From his sister in law Chavie Zelmanowitz (sister-in-law), as told to Bayla Sheva Brenner

"He didn’t stay to die; he stayed to help. That was his intention. It was a friendship that culminated with this extraordinary act."

From Israel National News

"In the days that followed, as the two families searched for information about Avremel and Ed, the media learned about Avremel's selfless act, and the story began to spread all over the world. President Bush, in his national prayer address to the American people, referred to Avremel's act of loving kindness as one of the many "eloquent acts of sacrifice" that were demonstrated by Americans during this crisis. Avremel's family received letters from people all over the world who were moved and inspired by his love and loyalty to his friend. The most poignant were letters from disabled people and/or their caretakers. One woman wrote, "Do you realize what a miracle Abe was for his coworker? Loneliness and fear can't exist if you share love with someone."

Democratic candidate for Missouri Secretary of State: 9/11 truther and anti- Semite

Don't you just know that the headlines of the conspiracy theorist blogs will just scream out 'Rabbi: "No Jews killed in 9/11 attacks"'

MD Rabbi (Yep- that’s his name) Alam born November 20, 1974 in Khulna, Bangladesh is a 2012 candidate for Missouri Secretary of State. He's a bizarre individual.
From the Washington Free Beacon

A Democratic Party caucus chairman vying to become Missouri’s next secretary of state is a 9/11 Truther who has associated with a radical Muslim cleric and trafficked in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
MD Rabbi Alam is an Obama campaign ally and Missouri-based Democratic activist who chairs the National Democratic Party Asian American Caucus (NDPAAC), a Democratic National Committee-sponsored organization that liaises with Asian minorities.
Alam, who was born in Bangladesh, served as a “satellite campaign manager” for then-candidate Barack Obama and the Democratic Party during the 2008 elections, and has since been invited to the White House.
Alam has speculated about Jewish involvement in the September 11th terrorist attacks and participated in an event with a Muslim cleric who has accused Israel of terrorism and alleged that the U.S. invented the HIV disease.
“Why [was] 9/11 was a official holidy [sic] for all jewish [sic] people worked in the the [sic] WTC?” Alam asked in an Internet discussion titled, “Was 9/11 a conspiracy?” Alam went on to tout the 9/11 Truther film Loose Change 9/11, and challenged readers to “tell me how many of the Jewish people died on the 9/11 tragedy?”

In actuality, between 200 and 400 Jews died on 9/11, including over 100 Israeli nationals.

From The US state department:

A total of 2,071 occupants of the World Trade Center died on September 11, among the 2,749 victims of the WTC attacks. According to an article in the October 11, 2001, Wall Street Journal, roughly 1,700 people had listed the religion of a person missing in the WTC attacks; approximately 10% were Jewish. A later article, in the September 5, 2002, Jewish Week, states, "based on the list of names, biographical information compiled by The New York Times, and information from records at the Medical Examiner's Office, there were at least 400 victims either confirmed or strongly believed to be Jewish." This would be approximately 15% of the total victims of the WTC attacks. A partial list of 390 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died (out of 658 in the company) lists 49 Jewish memorial services, which is between 12% and 13%.

This 10-15% estimate of Jewish fatalities tracks closely with the percentage of Jews living in the New York area. According to the 2002 American Jewish Year Book, 9% of the population of New York State, where 64% of the WTC victims lived, is Jewish. A 2002 study estimated that New York City's population was 12% Jewish. Forty-three percent of the WTC victims lived in New York City. Thus, the number of Jewish victims correlates very closely with the number of Jewish residents in New York. If 4,000 Jews had not reported for work on September 11, the number of Jewish victims would have been much lower than 10-15%.

UPDATE

Following the Free Beacon’s report on MD Rabbi Alam, a Democratic official and Obama campaign alumnus vying to become Missouri’s next Secretary of State, the candidate offered his apologies when confronted by a Jewish website.

According to a report by the Yiddish-named Voz Iz Neias (What is News) website:

After being emailed and seeing evidence that, in fact, Jews were killed in this national tragedy, Mr. Alam offered his apologies and explained that he had been convinced by the material he had read on the internet regarding the issue.

Alam was then put in touch with other people who personally knew other Jewish 9-11 victims.

Alam then expressed some outrage that such misinformation could appear and promised that he would confront those sources. He requested that VINNEWS convey his sincere apologies to those who have been hurt by his initial claims.