harmonicminer

Not having anything brilliant to say today (why should today be different than any other day?), I defer to George Will, in his piece titled Israel’s Netanyahu Poised to Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Sites

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it had to use mostly small arms to repel attacks by six Arab armies. Today, however, Israel feels, and is, more menaced than it was then, or has been since. Hence the potentially world-shaking decision that will be made here, probably within two years.

To understand the man who will make it, begin with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program is integral to stopping the worldwide campaign to reverse 1948. It is, he says, a campaign to “put the Jew back to the status of a being that couldn’t defend himself — a perfect victim.”

Today’s Middle East, he says, reflects two developments. One is the rise of Iran and militant Islam since the 1979 revolution, which led to al-Qaida, Hamas, and Hezbollah. The other development is the multiplying threat of missile warfare.

Now Israel faces a third threat, the campaign to delegitimize it in order to extinguish its capacity for self-defense.

After two uniquely perilous millennia for Jews, the creation of Israel meant, Netanyahu says, “the capacity for self-defense restored to the Jewish people.” But note, he says, the reflexive worldwide chorus of condemnation when Israel responded with force to rocket barrages from Gaza and from southern Lebanon. There is, he believes, a crystallizing consensus that “Israel is not allowed to exercise self-defense.”

From 1948 through 1973, he says, enemies tried to “eliminate Israel by conventional warfare.” Having failed, they tried to demoralize and paralyze Israel with suicide bombers and other terrorism. “We put up a fence,” Netanyahu says. “Now they have rockets that go over the fence.” Israel’s military, which has stressed offense as a solution to the nation’s lack of strategic depth, now stresses missile defense.

That, however, cannot cope with Hamas’ tens of thousands of rockets in Gaza and Hezbollah’s 60,000 in southern Lebanon. There, U.N. resolution 1701, promulgated after the 2006 war, has been predictably farcical. This was supposed to inhibit the arming of Hezbollah and prevent its operations south of the Litani River.

Since 2006, Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal has tripled and its operations mock resolution 1701. Hezbollah, learning from Hamas, now places rockets near schools and hospitals, certain that Israel’s next response to indiscriminate aggression will turn the world media into a force multiplier for the aggressors.

Any Israeli self-defense anywhere is automatically judged “disproportionate.” Israel knows this as it watches Iran.

Last year was Barack Obama’s wasted year of “engaging” Iran. This led to sanctions that are unlikely to ever become sufficiently potent. With Russia, China, and Turkey being uncooperative, Iran is hardly “isolated.” The Iranian democracy movement probably cannot quickly achieve regime change. It took Solidarity 10 years to do so against a Polish regime less brutally repressive than Iran’s.

Hillary Clinton’s words about extending a “defense umbrella over the region” imply, to Israelis, fatalism about a nuclear Iran. As for deterrence working against a nuclear-armed regime steeped in an ideology of martyrdom, remember: In 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini said: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.”

You say, that was long ago? Israel says, this is now:

Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, says Israel is the “enemy of God.” Tehran, proclaiming that the Holocaust never happened and vowing to complete it, sent an ambassador to Poland who in 2006 wanted to measure the ovens at Auschwitz to prove them inadequate for genocide. Iran’s former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered a “moderate” by people for whom believing is seeing, calls Israel a “one-bomb country.”

If Iran were to “wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” as it vows to do, it would, Netanyahu believes, achieve a regional “dominance not seen since Alexander.” Netanyahu does not say Israel will, if necessary, act alone to prevent this. Or does he?

He says CIA Director Leon Panetta is “about right” in saying Iran can be a nuclear power in two years. He says 1948 meant this: “For the first time in 2,000 years, a sovereign Jewish people could defend itself against attack.” And he says: “The tragic history of the powerlessness of our people explains why the Jewish people need a sovereign power of self-defense.” If Israel strikes Iran, the world will not be able to say it was not warned.

Egypt restricts marriage to Israelis

Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court upheld a ruling on Saturday, that orders the country’s Interior Ministry to strip citizenship from Egyptians married to Israeli women.

The court said that the Interior Ministry should present each marriage case to the Cabinet on an individual basis. The Cabinet will then rule on whether to strip the Egyptian of his citizenship, taking into consideration whether a man married an Israeli Arab or a Jew when making its decision to revoke citizenship.

Saturday’s decision, which cannot be appealed, comes more than year after a lower court ruled that the Interior Ministry, which deals with citizenship documents, must implement the 1976 article of the citizenship law. That bill revokes citizenship of Egyptians who married Israelis who have served in the army or embrace Zionism as an ideology. The Interior Ministry appealed that ruling.

The lawyer who brought the original suit to court, Nabih el-Wahsh, celebrated Saturday’s ruling, saying it “is aimed at protecting Egyptian youth and Egypt’s national security.”

The government has not released figures of Egyptians married to Israeli women, but some estimates put the number around 30,000.

Israeli officials said they had no comment on Saturday’s ruling.

Somehow, I doubt that the UN Human Rights commission, the National Organization for Women, and liberal feminists everywhere will be any more forthcoming. 

Now, imagine if Israeli women who married Egyptians automatically lost their Israeli citizenship. 

Feminists everywhere would be deeply indignant.

As always, essentially ANY insult aimed at Israel is merely business as usual, even though the reverse would suddently become an intolerable outrage.

This article at Powerlineblog is difficult to summarize. It is a post about an article by Noah Pollak which is reviewing another article by Peter Beinart. I think it’s well worth your time, however, because of the way it explains the disconnect between American liberal Jews, liberals in Israel, American liberalism in general, and the facts on the ground in Israel, which are becoming clearer and clearer to even liberal non-Arab Israelis.  This is a quote from the article by Noah Pollack, discussing Beinart’s article and perspective, all of which is being discussed at Powerline at the link above.

Operation Defensive Shield in 2003, the Hezbollah war, and the Hamas war should have been moments in which liberal Zionists stepped forward to say: Israel took the risks for peace that we demanded. Israel committed itself to a diplomatic process, offered a Palestinian state, and withdrew from Lebanon and Gaza. The terrorists who attack Israel will find no defenders among us. Instead, talk of war crimes filled the airwaves, investigations were demanded, arrest warrants for Israeli officials issued, and now Peter Beinart says that he must question Zionism because civilians were killed in Gaza. Carried away by his own moral indignation, he never asks two fundamental questions: who started the war, and why was it fought from civilian areas?. . . .

Because the history of the peace process repudiates so many of liberalism’s most cherished premises, liberalism is increasingly repudiating Israel, and doing so in a perfectly logical fashion: with people like Beinart now saying that Israel is not in fact an admirable country and that it deserves to be thrown out of the company of liberal nations. In this way, the failure of the liberal vision is transformed from being a verdict on liberalism to being a verdict on Israel. . . .

The distilled pleading of Beinart is merely a series of demands that Israelis refuse to learn from experience: how dare they allow any hostility to Arabs creep into their politics; how dare they vote for Avigdor Lieberman, a populist who plays to the less-than-perfectly liberal Russian immigrants; how dare they lose faith in the peace process and the liberal hopefulness that animated it. Most important: how dare they upset the comfortable ideological existence of American Jews, whose acceptability to their liberal peers depends in no small degree on their willingness to join in pillorying Israel over the failure of the peace process — a failure, alas, that is not Israel’s but liberalism’s.

This is just a sample. Click the link at the top and read the whole thing. Highly recommended.

From the Drudge Report, headlines, May 31, 2010:

Israel faces int'l fury over flotilla...
Bloody raid...
Israel: Passengers were armed, 'no peace activists'...
Video...
Turkey warns of 'consequences'...
Israel in eye of storm...
Thousands protest, clashes in Athens...
Paris: Demonstrators tried to break into Israeli embassy...
Netanyahu defends...
Crisis...

From the Drudge Report, headlines, May 31, 2010, in an alternate universe:

Palestinians faces int'l fury over flotilla...
Bloody set-up...
Hamas: Passengers were armed, 'no peace activists'...
Video...
Turkey warns of 'consequences'...
Iran in eye of storm...
Thousands protest, clashes in Athens...
Paris: Demonstrators tried to break into Iranian embassy...
Amadinejad defends...
Crisis...

We have come to this – instant global condemnation of Israel every time an incident occurs.  Israel is now officially presumed guilty until proven innocent.  Not many facts are yet known about this incident, but in our world today facts are little more than an annoyance.  No, what seems to matter most is to lay the blame on Israel.

And a sitting U.S. President has become a part of the condemnation chorus virtually from the day he took office.  All the while the terror-sponsoring state of Iran, whose own President has sworn to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, rushes full tilt toward becoming a nuclear power. And when they do I imagine our president’s reaction will be to bow a little deeper to Amadinejad, and he’ll wag his finger a little longer at Netanyahu.  Madness.

Mr President, your words and actions have emboldened not only our enemies but the enemies of one of our closest allies.  And at least in part, the blood shed today is on your hands.  Words have meaning, Mr. President.  You know that.  And your obvious lack of support for the State of Israel coupled with your failed attempts at diplomacy towards our enemies has made this world in which we live a less safe place.  This incident is just a drop in the bucket compared to what I fear is is coming.  And the headlines do not bode well for the State of Israel.

‘Hizbullah a division of Syrian army’

Israel has warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that any missile attack against Israel by Hizbullah would result in retaliation against Syria, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday.

According to the UK paper, Israel’s missive – sent earlier in April – defined Hizbullah as a “division of the Syrian army,” a military branch of Damascus in Lebanon.

The warning was reportedly delivered to Damascus by a third party.

Meanwhile on Sunday, Al-Hayat reported that Hizbullah minister Nawaf al-Moussawi had said Israel’s accusations against Syria were only a ploy meant to divert attention from its failure to relaunch peace talks with the Palestinians.

Last week, the Kuwait-based Al-Rai reported that Syria had transferred Scud missiles to Hizbullah. According to the report, the missiles were recently transferred to Lebanon, prompting a stern Israeli warning that it would consider attacking both Syrian and Lebanese targets in response.

Scud ballistic missiles have a longer range than the rockets previously used by Hizbullah against Israel, and can carry chemical warheads.

On Thursday, the Kuwaiti paper reported that Hizbullah had confirmed receiving a shipment of Scud missiles from Syria. “It’s only natural for Lebanon to have the means to defend itself against an Israeli attack,” Hizbullah official Hussein Haj Hassan told Al-Manar TV on Friday.

The Syrian leadership has consistently denied the charge.

On Saturday, Reuters quoted US officials as saying that while the “intent” to transfer ballistic missiles to Hizbullah existed, it was doubtful such a transfer had actually taken place.

Obama may be about to find out what happens when Israel senses, correctly, that Obama is abandoning it. When Israel no longer feels a significant pressure from the USA to restrain Israel’s enemies, we should expect Israel to take matters into its own hands.

If Obama is smart, he will make it clear to Syria that the USA will also consider a Hizbullah attack on Israel as a Syrian attack, and take steps accordingly.  He doesn’t have to do it publicly.  But he should do it diplomatically, even via “back-channels.”  And if he’s smart, he’ll find a way to let Israel know that he has done so.

But he may be blinded by his presuppositions.

Obama is, once again, giving away the store… or at least the markets in Tel Aviv, by trying to make nice with the implacable enemies of supposed allies.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Syria has transferred long-range Scud missiles to Hezbollah. There have been rumors about this for a few days, but now U.S. officials, who at first refused to confirm them, are saying that the transfer has occurred.

The Scuds are believed to have a range of more than 435 miles. This means that Hezbollah can now bomb Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from Lebanon. During the 2006 war, the rockets Hezbollah rained on Israel had a range of 20 to 60 miles.

I hope you’ll read the entire article at the link above, and ponder the situation a bit.

One can only wonder: exactly how much damage can Obama-style foreign policy do in four years?

If the Carter administration is any guide, a truly immense amount.

Obama remains deeply confused about who are our allies and friends, and who are our adversaries. One hopes he doesn’t stay in office long enough to be educated directly by the course of events, though the next administration is going to have a lot of pieces to pick up.

Yoni The Blogger is a veteran of Israeli Special Forces. He can’t talk about much of what he used to do.  He is unapologetic in his defense of Israel, appropriately so.  He knows things about what goes on in Israel that seem rarely reported in US media.  Here is his take on the recent “summit” of Obama and Netanyahu.

Yoni the Blogger

We have seen the way President Obama treated Prime Minister Netanyahu during the recent visit.

It is clear that if Obama can’t push the Prime Minister into doing what he wants him to do, then Obama would like to force regime change in Israel.

Bibi must, make up his mind if he wants to be the Prime Minister.

I have my doubts.

Bibi upon return to Israel had the rules of engagement for our soldier tightened. Our soldiers if they are in a bullet proof vehicle can no longer shoot at Palestinians that are throwing molotov cocktails at them, it is now even prohibited to fire warning shots in the air at stone throwing Palestinians.

I have learned that IAF pilots stationed in the south are prohibited from travel alone from Tel Arad to Beer Sheva because of the Israeli citizen Beduin shooting at Jewish cars.

Let us not forget the multiple dozens of Buses that came from the north and south full of Israeli Arabs wanting to riot at the Temple Mount along side there Palestinian brothers.

So here is my advise to Bibi.

1. Declare that due to the financial situation in America, Israel is canceling the aid from America

2. Israel must start of PR campaign with ads on American TV showing the value of Israel to America

3. Declare an end to the peace process and annex Judea and Samaria

4. Behind closed doors tell American Military and CIA we will no longer going to give intel to America if the administration is anti Israel . George the first and Webster

5. Tell all Israeli citizens that if Palestinians throw stones at them it is a crime not to return fire. Allow more Jews to own guns

6. Order the IDF to remove all illegal Arab building in all parts of Israel

7. Lastly order the Chief of Staff of the IDF to hit Iran as soon as possible using any and all of the weapons at the disposal of the IDF as the situation warrants.

I am not holding my breath for Bibi to do any of this because he has folded every time the going got tough.

It is clear that, among US presidents, Obama is rivaled only by Jimmy Carter in his disdain for Israel.  I expect that Israel is simply counting the days till the 2012 elections, and hoping for the best.

Netanyahu’s Hollow Victory? Pat Buchanan’s apparent hatred of Israel continues to masquerade as “conservative” foreign policy prescriptions.

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.”

With this defiant declaration, to a thunderous ovation at AIPAC, Benjamin Netanyahu informed the United States that East Jerusalem, taken from Jordan in the Six Day War, is not occupied land. It is Israeli land and Israel’s forever, and no Palestinian state will share Jerusalem. Israel alone decides what is built, and where, in the Holy City.

With his declaration and refusal to walk back the decision to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, which blew up the Biden mission, “Bibi” goes home a winner over Barack Obama.

But it is a temporary triumph and hollow victory — over Israel’s indispensable ally. For the clash revealed that the perceived vital interests of Israel now collide with vital U.S. interest in the Middle East.

Memo to Mr. Buchanan: land taken in wars of self-defense is legitimately kept. That is the time honored historical fact.  Live with it.  Jordan will certainly have to.  So will the “Palestinians,” who COULD easily have been resettled in Jordan, Syria, Egypt, et. al., after the failure of those nations to destroy Israel in war.  (Of course, those people have been denied the opportunity to live elsewhere, because each of those nations had something to gain from keeping the hatred of Israel alive…  or so they thought.   In any case, none of them wanted the war to be over until Israel was destroyed.)  If Jordan had not attacked Israel, along with many others, Israel would not be building settlements in Jerusalem today. Everyone will have to live with the consequences of their decisions, including those made decades ago by different governments.

But there is nothing illegitimate, nothing at all, about Israel keeping the land it won while defending itself (almost unsuccessfully so) in wars not of its making.

Memo to the rest of Israel’s neighbors: if you want to keep the land you have now, don’t attack again.

Memo to Obama:  Israel’s support in the USA is broad and deep.  You might want to remember that.  The honeymoon is over.  You might want to remember that, too. 

Here’s a nice read from the Christian Science Monitor on The unseen bias in Middle East reporting.

Of course, many of us have been able to see that bias for quite a long time, and not only in reporting about the Middle East. But it’s nice when other people notice it, too.

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.

Arabs happy Obama won… and that Bush’s man lost | Middle East | Jerusalem Post

Arab and Muslim reaction to incoming US President Barack Obama’s electoral victory around the globe has been largely optimistic, but some remain skeptical that Obama will bring significant change to the Middle East.

The excitement appears to be as much a celebration of Obama’s victory as of the perceived defeat of President George W. Bush – in the shape of his would-be Republican successor John McCain – whose foreign policies in the region have drawn widespread criticism from the Arab and Muslim world.

“Farewell racism, farewell tyranny, farewell wars and terrorism,” wrote Muhammad el-Said of Egypt Wednesday on the Facebook social networking site page entitled “The Arab campaign to support Obama…a necessity and a moral obligation.”

In rare praise, Syria’s state-run newspaper Al-Thawra said Thursday that it “extends its hand to Obama,” that his win “inspired” people around the world and that the American people should be congratulated for electing him.

One can only wonder how tangible was the “necessary and moral” support for Obama.  “The Arab campaign to support Obama” sounds like a possible source for all the “untraceable” donations that came into the Obama campaign via its validation-free online credit-card donation system.  Somehow, I suspect some of those donations came from Ali Baba…  or one of his friends.

Then there’s this, after the 9/11 attacks:

Let’s try to put this another way, for perspective.  What would have been the reaction of the American media and the Democrats if a Republican president-elect was hailed as a new beginning by an obviously racist, apartheid regime, maybe something like South Africa some years back?  Would Democrats and the media be talking about how this means the new president will be able to reach out and negotiate effectively with the racist regime?

SURE they would….

Ex-U.S. weapons hunter: Iran 2-5 years from bomb – Haaretz – Israel News

Iran is two years to five years away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon, the former head of the U.S. weapons-hunting team in Iraq said Wednesday.

But David Kay said the U.S. should not consider bombing Iranian nuclear facilities unless the weapon was about to be transferred to a terrorist group.

And we would know that how? This is like saying it’s fine for felons convicted of violent offenses to possess handguns, and we should only try to stop them with the force of law if they actually attempt another crime.

Anybody know where a person can buy used radiation counters, cheap?

Commencement ceremonies for terrorists.

The video included lengthy, detailed footage of a terrorist training camp situated somewhere in North Waziristan. As masked fighters pass in front of the camera, a nasheed song plays for viewers, imploring, “Look at the people of Allah, They came out to sacrifice their lives… They came out to shed their blood… No worry for home, no worry for land, no worry for lives they have. They are wise people who live in fear of Allah… Those who fight against the infidels are the mujahideen. Their dreams have come true.” Later, an unidentified narrator explains in Urdu: “In front of your eyes, these selected Muslim youths are preparing for jihad. Allah said, ‘Prepare to the greatest extent possible against the infidels.’ The Prophet said, ‘The power is in the shooting’—the power is in the shooting, the power is in the shooting… Today, [our enemies] are insulting the Quran. Today, they are insulting our Prophet Mohammed, and they kill Muslims wherever they want… So, according to the orders of Allah, it is our duty to prepare ourselves against the infidels and our responsibility… May Allah increase the passion for our religion among the Muslim youth, and may he grant us the strength to prepare ourselves to defend his religion.” To underline the purpose of the training offered at the camp, one of the masked recruits is shown sitting amongst his comrades and singing by himself in Urdu: “O’ infidels of the East and West, we have plans for you. We all must die, life is too short. You (Muslims) must act now, we are being oppressed. O’ soldiers of Islam, come here for jihad. O’ soldiers of Islam, come here for jihad.”

America’s Nervous Breakdown by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

The natural order of the world is chaos, not calm. Like it or not, for over a half-century the United States alone restrained nuclear bullies, kept the sea lanes free from outlaws, and corralled rogue nations. America alone could provide that deterrence because we produced a fourth of the world’s goods and services, and became the richest country in the history of civilization.

But the bill for years of massive borrowing for oil, for imported consumer goods, and for speculation has now has finally come due on Wall Street — and for the rest of us as well.

Should that heart of American financial power in New York falter — or even appear to falter — then eventually the sinews of the American military will likewise slacken. And then things could get ugly — real fast.

A Hamas MP:Clip Transcript

Following is an excerpt from a press conference held by Hamas MP Fathi Hammad, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on September 7, 2008:

Fathi Hammad: The approaching victory, about which we are talking, is not limited to Palestine. You are creating the ethos of victory for all Arabs and Muslims, and Allah willing, even on the global level. Why? Because Allah has chosen you to fight the people He hates most – the Jews. Allah said: “You shall find the worst enemies of the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.” In other words, the Jews, who number 15 million all over the world, are equivalent to 4.5 billion infidels in their corruption and their struggle against the religion of Islam. Therefore, our heroic prisoners who were arrested for killing Jews should know that by the grace of Allah, killing a single Jew is the same as killing 30 million Jews. Therefore, the reward of our martyrs is great, and your reward is also great.

There are about 80 Muslims for each Jew in the world.

I guess Mr. Hammad has never read Meditation XVII by John Donne

any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Negotiate away, Barack. Maybe you can hit ‘em over the head with a teleprompter.

CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is well known by students of the group as being sympathetic to terrorism and radical Islam, founded by people with ties to HAMAS, and an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Holy Land Foundation case resulting from attempts to illegaly fund HAMAS.

Now, CAIR is trying to shut down the distribution of a DVD about radical Islam, saying it violates election law.

A U.S. Muslim advocacy group Tuesday asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether a nonprofit group that distributed a controversial DVD about Islam in newspapers nationwide is a “front” for an Israel-based group with a stealth goal of helping Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

The promoters of “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” denied trying to promote any presidential campaign. They said it’s also incorrect to tie the DVD campaign to Jerusalem-based educational group Aish HaTorah International, although current and former employees are involved with the project.

The Council for American-Islamic Relations asked the FEC to investigate the DVD distribution, which targeted about 28 million households mostly in battleground election states.

Continue reading “CAIR, a terrorist sympathizing organization, tries to muzzle freedom of speech”