harmonicminer

Jerusalem Post, via Yoni

Israel is likely to face advanced Iranian weaponry, long-range rockets, large missile silos and dozens of kilometers of underground tunnels connecting open fields with urban centers in the event of a future conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, according to the latest Israeli assessments.

Since Operation Cast Lead ended almost a year ago, Hamas has increased its weapons smuggling and today operates hundreds of tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor. It has smuggled in dozens of long-range Iranian-made rockets that can reach Tel Aviv as well as advanced anti-aircraft missiles and anti-tank missiles.

Hamas is believed to have a significant number of shoulder-launched anti-tank missiles and 9M113 Konkurs, which have a range of four kilometers and are capable of penetrating heavy armor.

In addition, Hamas is believed to have today a few thousand rockets, including several hundred with a range of 40 kilometers and several dozen with a range of between 60 and 80 km. Intelligence assessments are that Hamas smuggled the missiles into the Gaza Strip through tunnels, possibly in several components.

Iran already supplies Hamas with 122mm Katyusha rockets that are smuggled into Gaza in several pieces and then assembled by Hamas engineers.

One of the main lessons Hamas learned from Cast Lead was the need to reinforce its defenses and as a result has invested efforts in digging additional tunnels, which connect open fields with homes belonging to key operatives as well as command centers.

The idea is to enable freedom of movement for the operatives between different battlefields, which it found difficult during Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza earlier this year.

Hamas has also increased its use of civilian infrastructure, particularly mosques, which the terror group already used quite extensively for storage and launching rockets during the operation. Hamas is believed to have taken control of almost 80 percent of the mosques in Gaza, using them to store weapons and set up command-and-control centers.

Hamas, is “padding” itself as well by setting up its command centers in large apartment buildings. This way, it believes, the IDF will not attack them by air, and will need to send ground forces deep into the population centers, where it will lose its technological advantage.

In addition, Hamas is hoping to increase the effectiveness of its rocket capability during a future conflict and has created large missile silos.

Hamas has also recently increased its efforts to dig what the IDF calls “offensive tunnels” close to the border with Israel, which the terror group could use to infiltrate into Israel and kidnap soldiers.

These tunnels are believed to be of strategic value for Hamas, which would only use them for large-scale attacks and high-value targets.

Abbas accuses Obama of doing ‘nothing’ for peace in the Middle East

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday accused US President Barack Obama of doing “nothing” to achieve peace in the Middle East. Speaking to Argentinian newspaper Clarin, Abbas said he hoped that Obama would “take a more important role in the future.”

He went on to say that the Palestinian people were awaiting US pressure on Israel, “so that it respects international law and takes up the Road Map,” stressing that the peace process could not be restarted without a halt to settlement construction.

When asked what he was willing to concede for peace, Abbas told Clarin that the Palestinian people had “already made concessions.”

He opined that the current government, with Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister and Avigdor Lieberman as foreign minister, “is not seeking peace,” though he said that 73 percent of Israelis were in favor of peace.

What Abbas wants, of course, is for Obama to be tougher on his (putatively) only friend in the Middle East, Israel, than he is on actual opponents, like Iran, Syria or Hisbullah.

If we needed any reminder of the fact, this illustrates the basic dynamic of all Middle East peace negotiations.  Israel, which has always been the attacked party, must give up land and options that were legitimately earned in acts of national self-defense from Arab aggression, self-defense against incredible odds.  In the meantime, Palestine doesn’t have to give up anything, including the intent to see the end of Israel as a Jewish nation.

Prediction:  Obama will be no more successful than any of his predecessors at convincing Palestinians that their best interests lie in normalizing relations with Israel, with reporting and fighting against the terrorists in their number, and with going about the business of building a functioning economy, without the ridiculous and unachievable destruction of Israel.  Palestinians have exactly the same opportunity now that Israel had 60 years ago, to build something out of nothing in the desert.  Further, they have a potential partner, Israel, which would help, if Palestinians could control their hatred of the Jews.  I’m not holding my breath.

In the meantime, Obama brings a student council president level of understanding to a negotiation where world class diplomats have tried and failed.  I won’t blame him for failing.  I will blame him if he manages to cripple Israel while he is busy failing to engineer an unlikely peace.

My niece married a man from Lebanon. They lived in Lebanon for awhile after they were married, and his family taught her how to prepare Lebanese food, including hummus.  And I have to say it, the stuff is delicious.  But the evil Israelis, not content with stealing Palestine from the people who stole it from the people who stole it from them, have begun making hummus themselves, and worse, making money on it.  So, in a last ditch effort to assert their bragging rights to intellectual property, some Lebanese chefs prepare massive plate of hummus.

Lebanese chefs prepared a massive plate of hummus weighing over two tons Saturday that broke a world record organizers said was previously held by Israel – a bid to reaffirm proprietorship over the popular Middle Eastern dip.

“Come and fight for your bite, you know you’re right!” was the slogan for the event – part of a simmering war over regional cuisine between Lebanon and Israel, which have had tense political relations for decades.

Lebanese businessmen accuse Israel of stealing a host of traditional Middle Eastern dishes, particularly hummus, and marketing them worldwide as Israeli.

“Lebanon is trying to win a battle against Israel by registering this new Guinness World Record and telling the whole world that hummus is a Lebanese product, its part of our traditions,” said Fady Jreissati, vice president of operations at International Fairs and Promotions group, the event’s organizer.

Hummus – made from mashed chickpeas, sesame paste, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic – has been eaten in the Middle East for centuries. Its exact origin is unknown, though it’s generally seen as an Arab dish.

But it is also immensely popular in Israel – served in everyday meals and at many restaurants – and its popularity is growing around the globe.

Of course, the declaration of recipe infringement hardly rises to the level of, say, the Soviet “invention” of the 57 Chevy, not to mention half the other cars invented in the West.

I think the entire discussion of who owns the rights to hummus is…. wait for it….. humorous.

Maybe if Hamas and Hizbullah were more interested in hummus, and less fascinated by homicide, we could hope for harmony in Haifa.

Perhaps Netanyahu could send them a nice copy of “The Joy of Cooking.”

Obama is negotiating with Iran, without preconditions, apparently, as he said he would during the campaign. Sometimes we wish he wouldn’t keep his promises.

But Israel isn’t fooled.

Long strident in its calls for tougher international action over Iran’s nuclear program, Israel has fallen silent as world powers try to convert last week’s talks with Tehran into a lasting deal.

Israeli officials have declined comment on Thursday’s meeting in Geneva, which yielded agreements to open a newly disclosed Iranian uranium enrichment site to inspection and follow-up negotiations.

Former defense minister Shaul Mofaz, however, told Israel Radio on Sunday that he did not see Iran’s recent cooperation as any other than a “strategy of buying time.”
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“The chance of the Iranians agreeing to a complete halt of the nuclear program looks relatively slim, in my view,” Mofaz said. “Theirs is a strategy of buying time.”

“Therefore, in my view, moving to a next stage of harsher sanctions, in global partnership, and with an emphasis on Russia and China, is inevitable.” Mofaz told Israel Radio. “My assessment is that 2010 will be the year of sanctions on Iran.”

Under the previous government, Mofaz was Israel’s strategic liaison with the United States and set a core demand that any deal with Iran rule out uranium enrichment on its soil.

That stance could be challenged by Iran’s offer, at the Geneva talks, to send low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France for further processing and then re-import it to fuel a U.N.-monitored Tehran reactor to produce medical isotopes.

It seems likely that Obama knows that Israel was on a countdown to military action, and this was the only way he could forestall it, by making it politically harder for Israel to attack when Iran is “negotiating.”  Of course, unlike Obama’s vocabulary, Israel’s includes the word hudna.

It’s really interesting how these multi-cultural types operate.  They are always the first to tell us that other cultures are different, don’t have the same values as ours, that words don’t translate directly between different languages with different cultural assumptions, that we really can’t understand other cultures in the terms of our own…

And then when Iran offers to “negotiate” with the possibility of an “agreement” if terms can be met, the multi-cultural negotiators (that would be the Obama administration) act like they’re contemplating signing a manufacturing contract with Dupont or Boeing, complete with penalty clauses and mutual understanding.

The problem in this case, of course, is that in case of failure to comply, by all parties, to any agreement that is reached with Iran, it is Israel that will pay the penalty.

My recommendation to Israel, for what it’s worth:  instead of getting stuck with the penalty clause later, it might be better to consider some penalty claws now.

It seems now that it has become common for Russia To Spend More on Purchasing Arms Abroad.

The Ministry of Defense is looking at the armory and equipment produced by foreign manufacturers. After the war in August 2008, there were many discussions about purchasing Israeli unmanned aircraft systems. The systems were purchased without much buzz. Shooting equipment for some of the Special Forces departments is purchased abroad. Recently it was reported that a Mistral-class helicopter carriers may be purchased in France.

I’m especially interested in the notion of Russia buying arms from Israel.  Just consider what it would mean if Israel became a major supplier for Russia.   Israel is known for making cutting edge weapons systems, both in small arms and more high-tech items.  It would be very interesting if Russia became dependent on Israel for some items it found essential for its own military.  That would be bound to affect the Russian participation in Middle East matters….  and Russia’s recent slightly harder stand towards Iranian nukes may be evidence of that.

It bears watching.

Here’s a very interesting article discussing a find of Coins with Joseph’s name found in Egypt

Archeologists have discovered ancient Egyptian coins bearing the name and image of the biblical Joseph, Cairo’s Al Ahram newspaper recently reported. Excerpts provided by MEMRI show that the coins were discovered among a multitude of unsorted artifacts stored at the Museum of Egypt.

According to the report, the significance of the find is that archeologists have found scientific evidence countering the claim held by some historians that coins were not used for trade in ancient Egypt, and that this was done through barter instead.

The period in which Joseph was regarded to have lived in Egypt matches the minting of the coins in the cache, researchers said.

“A thorough examination revealed that the coins bore the year in which they were minted and their value, or effigies of the pharaohs [who ruled] at the time of their minting. Some of the coins are from the time when Joseph lived in Egypt, and bear his name and portrait,” said the report.
…..
“Studies by Dr. Thabet’s team have revealed that what most archeologists took for a kind of charm, and others took for an ornament or adornment, is actually a coin. Several [facts led them to this conclusion]: first, [the fact that] many such coins have been found at various [archeological sites], and also [the fact that] they are round or oval in shape, and have two faces: one with an inscription, called the inscribed face, and one with an image, called the engraved face – just like the coins we use today,” the report added.

One of the comments to the article says that these weren’t “coins” but “protection amulets.”  One can only wonder where the commenter keeps his time machine.

It would make sense that Joseph’s image would have been used for such things sometimes, since he was number two for many years in the Egyptian hierarchy, second only to Pharoah himself, and essentially acted as Pharoah’s surrogate, according to the Biblical record. 

More humorous, in a dark sort of way, was this comment:

But since HAMAS insists that this country was never Jewish, the obvious conclusion is that Joseph went to Egypt from Brooklyn, perhaps from Boro Park. Now it all becomes clear; there is really no quarrel between us at all. Joseph was the first Lubavicher Rebbe.

That really would explain a lot, since I’ve known several people from Brooklyn who would sell their own brother.

Vicious Jew-Hatred Wins Center Stage at UC Irvine

To see a firsthand example of Islamic fundamentalist anti-Semitism, you need look no further than the University of California, Irvine.The campus’ Muslim Student Union is nationally infamous for their annual anti-Israel week (which they unsuccessfully christen “Palestine Awareness” week) and for the vitriolic anti-Semitic language of some of their speakers.

This comes as no surprise, of course. In most modern universities, disdain for Israel is more or less de rigueur. Israel is routinely compared to apartheid South Africa, deemed racist (with UN connivance, of course, at “human rights” conferences dominated by Islamist nations), and even compared to Nazi Germany.

When will anti-Semitism show up as a topic during “Justice Week” at a university near you? Probably not anytime soon, because injustices done to Jews or Israelis appear to be “stealthed,” and just don’t show up on the academic radar.

IN the Jerusalem Post, there is a review of Jimmy Carter’s latest screed unveiling his “peace plan” for the region, and the ignorance or duplicity that underlies it. Jimmy Carter: we can have peace (without you) in the Holy Land

COULD IT be that Jimmy Carter’s ideals are formulated by the number of zeros before the decimal on the contributions to the Carter Center by oil-rich Gulf States? These same states do not now, nor will they ever, allow Jews to worship freely within their borders no matter how much land Israel relinquishes. It is then surprising and hypocritical to call Israel an “apartheid state” and to infer that the region’s only democratic country is an obstacle to peace – thus the only solution to the Middle East conflict is through intervention.Carter’s final plea is for President Barack Obama to “shape a comprehensive peace effort between Israel and the Palestinians…then use persuasion and enticements to reach these reasonable goals with the full backing of other members of the International Quartet and the Arab nations.”

It is likely he would call on The Elders for their expertise. The best thing President Obama could do is completely ignore Jimmy Carter and his plan.

Read the whole thing. It details Carter’s falsehoods in describing the facts on the ground and his relationship with the players.  The man is a buffoon and a liar, and a useful idiot for the Saudis, who bankroll him.

I wonder if Obama will condemn Carter for “bearing false witness.”

NAH.

The sentences for so called “honor killings” in Islamic nations are so light, when they are imposed at all, as to be an insult to the value of human life. In this case, a Gazan father killed his 27 yr old daughter by beating her to death with a chain over 40 minutes,  for using a cell phone to talk to a man.

In such killings, a woman’s life is taken by male relatives who suspect her of inappropriate conduct. Such killings are still widespread in the Middle East, where a woman’s perceived misconduct can hurt the standing of a family and where tradition says the “stain” can only be removed by shedding her blood.

Traditionally, assailants have received light sentences, but the killing of Najjar shocked even activists used to detailing such crimes.

Mezan and the PCHR said that Najjar’s father used an iron chain to beat her, while also kicking and punching her for about 40 minutes until she died of a fatal blow to the head, said Mezan and the PCHR.

“It’s shocking,” said Samir Zakout of Mezan. “But it’s not surprising because killers know they won’t be punished harshly.”

In the West Bank and Gaza, “honor killing” assailants serve between six months and three years in prison, said Mona Shawa of PCHR.

In Jordan, officials said Wednesday they have set up special tribunals to deal with honor killings, hoping to speed up trials.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch reported Wednesday that the Syrian government abolished a law that waived punishment for some honor killings and now allows judges to sentence perpetrators to at least two years jail.

This is simply beyond sad and horrifying. And it is a measure of how very far the world view of Islam is from that of the West.

However, do not expect “justice week” at your local university to have “honor killing” as a topic.  They’ll be too busy bashing Israel for defending itself.  Or maybe being concerned about global warming or something really important like that. 

One of our very best reporters, Michael Totten, reports that Culture War Replaces Missile War

Hezbollah launched thousands of Katyusha rockets into Northern Israel and forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee south toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. South Lebanon was punished much more thoroughly than Northern Israel, but the Palestinians in Gaza nevertheless took Hezbollah’s Baghdad Bob–style boasts of “divine victory” seriously. Hamas ramped up its own rocket war until fed-up Israelis gave Gaza the South Lebanon treatment this past December and January.

Hamas is a bit slower to learn than was Hezbollah, but seven long months after the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead, the rockets out of Gaza have finally stopped. Israelis will no longer put up with indiscriminate attacks on their houses and schools. Many Palestinians in Gaza have likewise had their fill of Hamas’s self-destructive campaign of “resistance.”

The New York Times reports that Hamas has decided to wage a “culture war” instead of a rocket war because, as one leader put it, “the fighters needed a break and the people needed a break.”

Movies, plays, art exhibitions, and poems are Hamas’s new weapons. Hamas supporters, though, aren’t the only Palestinians in Gaza using art as a weapon. Said al-Bettar skewers Hamas every night at Gaza City’s Shawa cultural center in his popular play The Women of Gaza and the Patience of Job. “We were the victims of a big lie,” he says about the doctrine of armed “resistance.”

The Israeli intelligence official I spoke to deserves some credit for predicting the replacement of terrorist war with missile war. Hamas and Islamic Jihad had already fired rockets at Israel, but they hadn’t fired many, and neither the recent Gaza war nor the Second Lebanon War had yet started.

Since then a pattern has emerged that should be obvious to anybody with eyes to see, whether they’re an intelligence official or not. After Israeli soldiers withdraw from occupied territory, Israeli civilians are shot at with rockets from inside that territory. Another pattern has just been made clear. After Israelis shoot back, the rockets stop flying.

It has been years since Hezbollah has dared to fire rockets at Israel or start anything else on the border. Hamas no longer dares to fire rockets at Israel either.

Israelis remain under pressure to withdraw from the West Bank. They almost certainly will withdraw from most of the West Bank eventually. Few, though, are in the mood to do so right now since they were shot at from Gaza and Lebanon after they withdrew from those places. They see the pattern even if others don’t.

It’s possible, of course, that West Bank Palestinians will never fire a significant number of rockets, if any, at Israel. They seem more sensible in general than Gazans. Hamas leaders in Gaza also talk to Hamas leaders in Ramallah, Nablus, and Hebron. I think it’s safe to say that the West Bank isn’t hearing any “divine victory” nonsense from Gaza right now.

Then again, Gazans proved themselves incapable of learning from Hezbollah’s mistakes. And the New York Times says Hamas wants to acquire longer-range missiles. So who knows?

This much, though, is all but certain: if a rocket war erupts between Israel and the West Bank, Israelis will respond as they did in Gaza and Lebanon. The jury is still out on whether the Arab world has learned the recent relevant lessons, but there shouldn’t be any doubt that Israelis have. Rocket war doesn’t work, but the military solution to rocket war does.

This phrase, “The jury is still out on whether the Arab world has learned the recent relevant lessons,” is the core of the matter. Islamic warriors have always had the notion that somehow they were blessed by Allah and absolutely guaranteed to win at some point, as long as they just didn’t give up.  Islamic military teaching allows for “peace treaties,” of a sort, but makes it clear that, when fighting the infidel, they are to be used only to rest, rearm, and get ready to go at it again.

For my part, I am glad that Hamas is making bad plays instead of bombs, if indeed that is the case.  But what I know is that Islamic war fighters have a LONG memory.  They take the long view.  They are willing to wait a generation or more for the right time to strike.

And there’s this:  “Gazans proved themselves incapable of learning from Hezbollah’s mistakes.”  In Islamic understanding, proof of whether Allah was with you in war is simple, and has nothing whatsoever to do with some kind of Augustinian-style concept of just war.  The proof is if you win.  If you don’t win, Allah was not with you.  Simple.  So Gazans could not learn from Hezbollah’s mistakes for a simple reason: they assumed that Allah was not with Hezbollah (Iranian proxies) but would be with the Gazans.  Think of Sunnis figuring that, of course, Allah would not bless the efforts of those misguided Shiites.

So the Gazans had to find out for themselves, the hard way, that Allah wasn’t blessing their war either.  Not this year, at least.

But two things to remember:

1)  Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas have given up forever.   Their entire world view simply does not make room for permanent peace and adjustment to new conditions.  Jihad is forever.  It’s just delayed, sometimes.  Jihad interrupted.

2)  Iran and other Islamic powers, by virtue of their continued existence, will learn nothing from the defeat of any OTHER Islamic power.  I’m not talking about “secular” Islamic states, which use Islam to mollify a believing populace, but are themselves essentially cynical in their pursuit of power, such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, or even Syria.  Syria and Libya can both be seen to have pulled back from the brink of what they perceived as their own possible destruction.  And even Syria is still trying to make trouble occasionally….  but carefully, carefully.  The big problems are Iran, and possibly Pakistan (if the extremists succeed in a takeover…  Pakistan is a really hard one to figure out), as well as Saudi Arabia (which funds more terrorism-at-a-distance than anyone, directly and indirectly).

Do you get from this that the immediate threat is Iran?  If you do, you’re probably right.  And the point:  Iran’s ruling mullahs will learn nothing from the defeat of any other Islamic entity.

The longer term threat, even if we deal successfully with Iran (or Israel does it for us) has to be Pakistan, or, worse yet, an alliance of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.  An axis like that, controlled by Wahabist fundamentalists, would have money and LOTS of nukes.  That means that we MUST win in Afghanistan, defined as removing the pressure on Pakistan from Islamic extremists.  If Pakistan stays controlled by cynical, relatively secular powers, we win.  If Pakistan is taken over by a wave of Islamic extremism (as opposed to the expanding middle class now growing in the cities), we’ll have a huge problem, in the form of as many as 70 nuclear weapons in the hands of whackos with direct terrorist ties.

So stabilizing Afghanistan is our goal, and will be our contribution to Pakistani stability.

Given that Obama has abdicated any responsibility to deal with iran, we’d better hope that Israel does, and soon.  There are, of course, people who disagree.  (Being anti-Israel creates strange bedfellows, doesn’t it?)  I find it likely, however, that Israel’s intelligence estimates on the real state of the Iranian nuclear bomb program are better than anyone else’s.  And they have a stake in the accuracy of those estimates that is shared by no one else.

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick says that Obama’s statements on Israel/Palestine, North Korea and Iran are irrational because they ignore facts on the gound:

Netanyahu’s speech was an eloquent, rational and at times impassioned defense of Israel. For Israeli ears, after years of former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni’s continuous assaults on Israeli rights, and their strident defenses of capitulation to the Palestinians and the Syrians, Netanyahu’s address was a breath of fresh air. But it is hard to see how it could have possibly had any lasting impact on Obama or his advisers.

To be moved by rational argument, a person has to be open to rational discourse. And what we have witnessed over the past week with the Obama administration’s reactions to both North Korea’s nuclear brinksmanship and Iran’s sham elections is that its foreign policy is not informed by rationality but by the president’s morally relative, post-modern ideology. In this anti-intellectual and anti-rational climate, Netanyahu’s speech has little chance of making a lasting impact on the White House.

Of course, there is hardly such a thing as a “fact” to the more extreme post-modern moral relativists, and certainly no such thing as “right and wrong,” except when it comes to carbon cap and trade, of course.

Read the whole thing, where Ms. Glick very clearly makes her case.

Palestinian family kills son for ‘collaborating with Israel’

In the first incident of its kind, a Palestinian family has killed its 15-year-old son in the West Bank after accusing him of “collaboration” with Israel.

The boy’s body was discovered near Kalkilya on Wednesday.

The Palestinian Authority security forces announced that they have arrested a number of the boy’s family members in connection with the killing.

The victim was identified as Raed Wael Sawalha.

PA security sources said the suspects confessed to the killing, claiming that they decided to kill Masalha because of his alleged connections with the Israeli authorities.

Sawalha is the youngest Palestinian to be killed on suspicion of “collaboration” with Israel.

Hundreds of other suspected collaborators have also been killed by Palestinians over the past few years.

The boy’s body was discovered in the basement of a house in his village of Hijjah in the Kalkilya area.

A preliminary investigation launched by PA security forces revealed that Sawalha had been brutally tortured before he was hanged to death.

Villagers initially believed that the boy had either committed suicide or hanged himself accidentally while playing with friends.

Gen. Adnan Damiri, spokesman for the PA security forces in the West Bank, said the perpetrators were all members of the boy’s family, including the father, uncle and cousin.

He expressed outrage over the crime and pledged that those involved would be brought to trial and punished.

I don’t know what it can mean to call this murder “the first incident of its kind” when the article admits that “Hundreds of other suspected collaborators have also been killed by Palestinians over the past few years.”

Maybe it’s the first time the entire family has gotten in on performing its civic duty.

Question: how many Israelis have been murdered by other Israelis for collaborating with Palestine?

Learning to understand Obama. Lesson ONE

Obama said he told Abbas the Palestinians must find a way to halt the incitement of anti-Israeli sentiments that are sometimes expressed in schools, mosques and public arenas. “All those things are impediments to peace,” Obama said.

Translation: please don’t be so public about your hatred of Israel, because you’re making it really, really hard for me to convince anyone that you have any interest in peace whatsoever, let alone a desire to live peacefully with Israel in a separate Palestinian state.

 
Obama, like predecessor George W. Bush, embraces a multifaceted Mideast peace plan that calls for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The president refused to set a timetable for such a nation but also noted he has not been slow to get involved in meeting with both sides and pushing the international community for help.

“We can’t continue with the drift, with the increased fear and resentment on both sides, the sense of hopelessness around the situation that we’ve seen for many years now,” Obama said. “We need to get this thing back on track.”

Translation: we have to work really, really hard to get Israel to give land back to the people who want them dead, because those same people promise to be nice after that. (Except, of course, that they never made such a promise, and never will.)

Abbas is working to repackage a 2002 Saudi Arabian plan that called for Israel to give up land it has occupied since the 1967 war in exchange for normalized relations with Arab countries. Abbas gave Obama a document that would keep intact that requirement and also offer a way to monitor a required Israeli freeze on all settlement activity, a timetable for Israeli withdrawal and a realization of a two-state solution.

In other words, if it weren’t for those nasty Israeli settlements, all would be peace and joy in Palestine.

Sure.

President Obama has made it clear that he has no intent of taking any serious action to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and that if Israel does take such action, he will blame Israel, not Iran. Caroline Glick reports. (much more at the link, all worth reading)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit with US President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday was a baptism of fire for the new premier. What emerged from the meeting is that Obama’s priorities regarding Iran, Israel and the Arab world are diametrically opposed to Israel’s priorities.

During his ad hoc press conference with Netanyahu, Obama made clear that he will not lift a finger to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And acting as Obama’s surrogate, for the past two weeks CIA Director Leon Panetta has made clear that Obama expects Israel to also sit on its thumbs as Iran develops the means to destroy it.

It’s becoming apparent that Obama is bluffing on a busted flush. He has no hole cards (at least that he’s willing to use), and he has no plans to do anything serious to deter or prevent either North Korea or Iran from becoming full-fledged nuclear threats complete with delivery systems. At the same time, he is reducing our commitment to missile defense, and weakening our military commitment to proven technologies that could defend us and our allies.

Iran will not bomb Jerusalem, which it considers to be a “holy city,” but Tel Aviv, Haifa, etc., are obvious targets.  And with its surrogates Hamas and Hizbullah, Iran has ways of getting the bombs into Israel without being the obvious launch site….  just enough to maintain “implausible deniability,” which would not prevent an Israeli response, futile though that response would be to save Israel.  About three or four bombs, and in essence there is no nation of Israel, at least none that could resist the following onslaught of conventional forces rolling in from its neighbors.

The other nations in the Middle East, mostly Sunni, are not in favor of a nuclear armed Iran, but they have even fewer options to do anything about it than Israel.  If Israel does attack Iran to delay its acquisition of nuclear arms, the muslim nations around it will cry publicly, and cheer privately.  They know that Israel presents no danger to them, while Iran clearly does, especially a nuclear Iran.

We are on the cusp of a moral decision, nationally, not very different from the run-up to the Holocaust.   Obama will have to do more than talk and threaten.  He must act, decisively, and soon.  If he does not, Israel cannot be blamed for doing what it must simply to survive.

I hope and pray that, even if he does not care about Israel directly, Obama will recognize the enormous support Israel has in the USA, and realize what a political disaster it will be for him if Israel is destroyed on his watch.

It seems that there is no story where the demands of art cannot be impressed into the service of politically correct “creativity,” and this “SAMSON” AND OPERATIC INSANITY appears to be on the same general plain as a crucifix in urine, or maybe a star of David in pig blood.

In Belgium, a government-funded opera company is presenting a bizarre reworking of the Biblical story of Samson and Delilah. This “updated” version of a nineteenth century Saint-Saens melodrama depicts Samson as a Palestinian “freedom fighter”, not an Israelite, and portrays Delilah as a despicable Israeli agent, not a Philistine temptress.

In the climax of the production, Samson straps on a suicide vest and blows-up the Israeli “oppressors.” This politically-correct operatic indulgence follows announced plans by La Scala—on of the world’s most prestigious opera-houses—to produce a full-scale musical version of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and by the Shanghai opera to offer a lavish, five hour singing-and-dancing adaptation of Marx’s “Das Kapital.” As the composer Franz Liszt once aptly observed: “All music is an insane asylum, but opera is the wing for incurables.”

Just a couple of observations, and a plug:

It WOULD be a government-funded opera company producing this trash. What private company would do it with the intent of making a profit? Of course, the Saudis will fund nearly anything that puts Israel and Jews in a bad light, and I’m just guessing that, much like Washington D.C., the Belgian government and lobbying apparatus is full of people on the Saudi payroll, who seem to own 1 out of 3 former congress critters and state department drudges.

As far as a Jewish Delilah goes, it would make more sense to cast Tokyo Rose as General MacArthur’s secret lover.

And the plug. The REAL story of Samson and Delilah, a story about sex and violence, and yet rated G.    “God Brings Down The House” is a particular show stopper.  At the link, just click the cover of Samson and Delilah, and then at the linked site you can play excerpts of the tunes.  Eat your heart out, Belgium.