I apologize to my readers — assuming there are any still left these days — for not posting anything new for the past six weeks. Work has been busy, my home life even busier, so I haven't had the time or cheshek (desire) to add to this site. However, I have kept track of some articles that I thought should be read and I'm posting some excerpts and links here:
From Jews Wake Up! by Caroline Glick:
When the history of our times is written, this
week will be remembered as the week that Washington decided to let the
Islamic Republic of Iran go nuclear. Hopefully it will also be
remembered as the moment the Jews arose and refused to allow Iran to go
nuclear.
With the publication of the recommendations of the Iraq Study
Group chaired by former US secretary of state James Baker III and
former congressman Lee Hamilton, the debate about the war in Iraq
changed. From a war for victory against Islamofascism and for democracy
and freedom, the war became reduced to a conflict to be managed by
appeasing the US's sworn enemies in the interests of stability, and at
the expense of America's allies.
Baker and his associates claim that the US cannot win the war
in Iraq and so the US must negotiate with its primary enemies in Iraq
and throughout the world — Iran and Syria — in the hopes that they will
be persuaded to hold their fire for long enough to facilitate an
"honorable" American retreat from the country.
Like his unsupported assertion that the US cannot win in Iraq,
Baker also asserts — in the face of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary — that Iran and Syria share America's "interest in avoiding
chaos in Iraq." Because of this supposed shared interest, Baker
maintains that with the proper incentives, Iran and Syria can be
persuaded to cooperate with a US withdrawal from Iraq ahead of the 2008
presidential primaries.
The main incentive Baker advocates offering is Israel.
From On a Wing and a Prayer (Debra Burlingame, The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2006):
Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Those
are the words that started it all. Six bearded imams are said to have
shouted them out while offering evening prayers as they and 141 other
passengers waited at the gate for their flight out of Minneapolis
International Airport. It was three days before Thanksgiving. Allahu Akbar: God is great.
Initial media reports of the
incident did not include the disturbing details about what happened
after they boarded US Airways flight 300, but the story quickly went
national with provocative headlines: "Six Muslims Ejected from US Air
Flight for Praying." Yes, they were praying--but let's be clear about
this. The very last human sound on the cockpit voice recorder of United
flight 93 before it screamed into the ground at 580 miles per hour is
the sound of male voices shouting "Allahu Akbar" in a moment of religious ecstasy.
They, too, were praying. The
passengers and crew of flight 93 lost their valiant fight to take back
the plane just one hour and 20 minutes after it pushed back from the
gate. Until the hijackers stormed the cockpit door, they were just a
handful of Middle Eastern-looking men on their way to sunny California.
So, yes, let's be exceedingly clear about the whole matter. Some 3,000
men, women and children are dead because the unassuming people on those
airplanes did not look at them and see murderers. Or dangerous Arabs.
Or fanatical Muslims. They saw a few guys in chinos.
...Given that Islamic terrorists
continue their obsession with turning airplanes into weapons of mass
destruction, it is nothing short of obscene that these six religious
leaders — fresh from attending a conference of the North American Imams
Federation, featuring discussions on "Imams and Politics" and "Imams
and the Media" — chose to turn that airport into a stage and that
airplane into a prop in the service of their need for grievance
theater. The reality is, these passengers endured a frightening
3 1/2-hour ordeal, which included a front-to-back sweep of the aircraft
with a bomb-sniffing dog, in order to advance the provocative agenda of
these imams in, of all the inappropriate places after 9/11, U.S.
airports.
"Allahu Akbar" was just the
opening act. After boarding, they did not take their assigned seats but
dispersed to seats in the first row of first class, in the midcabin
exit rows and in the rear — the exact configuration of the 9/11
execution teams. The head of the group, seated closest to the cockpit,
and two others asked for a seatbelt extension, kept on board for obese
people. A heavy metal buckle at the end of a long strap, it can easily
be used as a lethal weapon. The three men rolled them up and placed
them on the floor under their seats. And lest this entire incident be
written off as simple cultural ignorance, a frightened Arabic-speaking
passenger pulled aside a crew member and translated the imams'
suspicious conversations, which included angry denunciations of
Americans, furious grumblings about U.S. foreign policy, Osama Bin
Laden and "killing Saddam."
Jimmy (AKA Dhimmi) Carter has a new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that is replete with decades-old lies and myths about the Middle East.
From Carter's Calumny by Mitchell Bard:
By titling his book as he has, Jimmy Carter is not merely being provocative to sell books, he appears to be giving aid and comfort to the new anti-Semites whose goal since the 2001 UN World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, has been to link Israel to apartheid South Africa.
Curiously enough, if you read through almost the entire book, which persistently accuses Israel of apartheid acts, you arrive at page 189, where he specifically contradicts the entire thesis by stating, “The driving purpose for the forced separation of the two peoples is unlike that in South Africa.” In fact, the only tangential support for the title of the book is an anonymous quotation from an Israeli lamenting the treatment of Palestinians.
It is clear from the beginning, however, that facts are of little concern to Carter who sees Israel as “the tiny vortex around which swirl the winds of hatred, intolerance, and bloodshed.” It is certainly true that Israel is subject to these winds, the question is why he blames the victim. Why doesn’t he see the Islamist rejection of a Jewish presence in the region as the problem, or the unwillingness of the Palestinians to accept a two-state solution?
Read the whole thing. Bard tears him apart.
From A Culture of Violence by Evelyn Gordon (The Jerusalem Post, November 29, 2006):
Virtually not a day has passed recently without some famous person declaring that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key to solving all the problems of the Muslim world — from Kofi Annan ("As long as the Palestinians live under occupation…so long will passions everywhere be inflamed") through Henry Kissinger ("a restarted Palestinian peace process should play a significant role" in resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis) to Tony Blair (an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is "the core" of any effort to resolve other Middle East problems and defeat "global extremism.")
It is astonishing that so many intelligent people could seriously espouse such an obvious falsehood. Do they really believe that Sunni Muslims and Shi'ite Muslims — whose views on Israel are identical — are slaughtering each other in Iraq because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Or that anti-Syrian politicians in Lebanon — who are no less anti-Israel than the pro-Syrian sort — are being assassinated by Syria and threatened with a coup by Hizbullah because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
That Arab Muslims are committing genocide against black Muslims in Sudan because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
That Taliban Muslims are murdering non-Taliban Muslims in Afghanistan because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
That Chechen Muslims took Russian schoolchildren hostage in Beslan because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
That Muslims and Hindus are killing each other in Kashmir because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
That Muslims worldwide rioted over Danish cartoons because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The list could go on for pages.
But the theory of Israeli-Palestinian centrality is not only false, it is dangerous — because it prevents the world from addressing the real root cause of all these conflicts, including the Israeli-Palestinian one: a widespread culture in the Muslim world that views violence and threats of violence as legitimate means of resolving disputes.
From What the Islamists Have Learned by Michael Novak (The Weekly Standard, November 22, 2006):
If I were an Islamist, a terrorist, a sworn foe of democracy, here is what I think I would have learned from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is what I would write down in my hard-earned manual of instruction:
By the will of Allah, in all wars to come, may it prepare our brave martyrs for combat operations!
Today, the purpose of war is sharply political, not military; psychological, not physical. The main purpose of war is to dominate the way the enemy imagines and thinks about the war. Warfare is not, these days, won on a grand field of battle. Nor is it won by the force that wins series after series of military victories. Nor is triumph assured by killing far higher numbers of the enemy. The physical side of warfare no longer holds precedence.
The primary battlefield today lies in the minds of opposing publics.
From Our Unceasing Ambivalence by Shelby Steele (The Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2006):
...For every reason, from the humanitarian to the geopolitical to the military, Iraq is a war that America must win in the hegemonic, even colonial, sense. It is a test of our civilization's commitment to the good against the alluring notion of menace-as-power that has gripped so much of the Muslim world. Today America is a danger to the world in its own right, not because we are a powerful bully but because we don't fully accept who we are. We rush to war as a superpower protecting the world from menace, then leave the battle before winning as a show of what, humility? We confuse our enemies, discouraging them one minute and encouraging them the next.
(via Solomonia)
