Where would these folks get the idea J Street welcomes their radically anti-Israel beliefs? From a J Street founder, for one:
If we’re all wrong, if we’re all wrong and a collective Jewish presence in the Middle East can only survive by the sword, it cannot be accepted, it’s not about what we do. Sound familiar? They hate us for what we are, not what we do. If that’s true, then Israel really ain’t a very good idea.
Emphasis mine. That obscure quote suggesting Israel shouldn’t exist if she has to defend herself is from… the 2011 J Street conference.
Jennifer Rubin reports that Sherrod has already received more than $86,000 from J Street in a summary at her Washington Post blog:
This is the outfit that called on President Obama not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel, organized 54 of the most virulently anti-Israel House members to sign the “Gaza 54” letter urging a lifting of the Gaza blockade, provided assistance to Richard Goldstone (and opposition to a congressional resolution condemning the Goldstone Report) and voiced support for continued funding of UNESCO despite its admission of “Palestine” as a member state.
An old story that tells itself, or would if Western media weren’t so dedicated to portraying Israel as the villain in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
“Let it be understood far and near that after the war, the siege, the internal and external plots: we will not recognise Israel,” he told the cheering crowds.
Who is Agence France-Presse quoting here, some fringe Islamist? An Iranian cleric, or one of Iran’s Hezbollah puppets? Nah, that’s just the senior leader of Hamas, the elected band of murderous lunatics in charge of the Gaza Strip.
Ahead of its anniversary celebrations, Hamas reiterated its aim to recover all of historic Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River.
“We will cede none of it, and we will not recognise the so-called state of Israel,” a statement said on Monday, adding that its aim was to make Jerusalem the “capital of the state of Palestine” and pledging to work against Israel’s “methods of Judaisation” in the Holy City.
In 1949 and 1967, Israel successfully defended herself from her Arab neighbors’ attempts to destroy the Jewish homeland drawn up by the UN after WWII. Refugees in the territory Israel captured have been used as poker chips by their leaders and other Arab leaders for the better part of a century. Responding to international pressure, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. How much goodwill has that resulted in, five years later?
Processing peace
Umm… that’s another Hamas leader, Mahmoud Zahar, in an AP photo from Gaza City last week. Ol’ Mahmoud is celebrating the 23rd Hamasiversary by walking on an Israeli flag which reads “For sure will be destroyed. Israel” in Arabic. So far, the UN strategy of demanding that Israel give up ever more territory is working wonders! One snag: how brainless a diplomat do you have to be to work towards a “two-state solution” when one of those states insists the other cannot exist?
Little details to keep in mind when you hear about how Israel is stalling the Middle East peace process by not bending over far enough to accommodate the losers of a war that ended decades ago.
News this week of a planned terrorist attack spanning multiple Western nations should make us grateful that President Obama at least takes the Islamist threat seriously enough to authorize Predator strikes (even if he would never refer to it as “the Islamist threat”). As usual, The Long War Journal has the best coverage for this sort of thing.
The BBC also quotes former CIA officer Robert Baer as saying the plot may be “a reprisal from the [Taliban-allied] Haqqani network against the United States and Britain for the stepped-up aerial campaign in the tribal areas of Pakistan.” If such were true, it would imply a dangerous cycle where militants are constantly plotting revenge attacks on the West, while the West is constantly plotting attacks on militants to thwart their plans.
If America ceased Predator strikes against known terrorists in Pakistan, would Islamists cease planning terrorist attacks? That might be a serious question to consider – and reason for a more hesitant response to Islamist violence – if the world had been created yesterday.
Given the benefit of history, warnings of a “dangerous cycle” are hardly worth the pixels they occupy. Absent Predator strikes, Islamists would be “constantly plotting revenge” for:
When the representatives of classically liberal nations start equivocating our actions against terrorists with the attacks of terrorists on civilians, it’s time to stop and think about how much self-loathing is too much.
Iran has crossed a new nuclear threshold, but it’s one the Obama administration isn’t worried about.
[...]
“Because the Bush administration did such a good job of neutralizing the Bushehr reactor, we don’t view it as a proliferation threat,” said a White House official, who requested anonymity to discuss the issue freely.
Some experts, however, disagree. They warn that Iran could still use Bushehr to enhance its uranium enrichment program – located some 300 miles away at Natanz – that the U.N. Security Council is demanding be halted amid charges that it is part of a secret nuclear arms development project. Iran denies the allegation.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is hailing the country’s first domestically built drone bomber. The unmanned aircraft, unveiled Sunday, is the latest in a series of Iranian announcements of military advances.
Somehow I doubt President Obama’s assurances are having much impact on Israeli planning. Israel doesn’t have the luxury of being that stupid.
A defiant Israel enforced its 3-year-old blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza on Saturday, with naval commandos swiftly commandeering a Gaza-bound aid vessel carrying an Irish Nobel laureate and other activists and forcing it to head to an Israeli port instead.
The bloodless takeover stood in marked contrast to a deadly raid of another Gaza aid ship this week. However, it was unlikely to halt snowballing international outrage and demands that Israel lift or at least loosen the devastating closure that confines 1.5 million Palestinians to a small sliver of land and only allows in basic humanitarian goods.
Israel’s blockade is the only defense of a nation beset on all sides by enemies who want to push them into the sea. Wouldn’t it be more intuitive to label the continued “aid vessel” traffic as “defiant,” instead of the Israeli government? Hamas - the elected governing party of Gaza – is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. The useful idiots crying about Israel’s blockade have no excuse save ignorance for siding with genocidal maniacs, but they do so proudly.
As for those truly suffering in Gaza – how is it that Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Hamas escape blame? Why is Israel the only nation demonized for the suffering of people used as pawns in an ongoing effort to destroy the Jewish state? To read the Associated Press take on the situation, you’d think enforcing a blockade was worse than regularly launching rockets at Israeli civilians. Don’t worry, the AP mentions that pesky “rockets and mortars” issue… in paragraph 28.
Charles Krauthammer’s weekend article at National Review provides invaluable context. A highlight that I found more than a little shocking:
Oh, but weren’t the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel’s offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel, and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza – as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.
The plight of Gaza’s people can be blamed on many parties. Israel may be on the list, but they’re definitely not at the top. Nonetheless, the Associated Press continues reporting as if Israel is the root cause of every problem in the Middle East. Who will clueless Westerners blame if Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran (but I repeat myself) have their way?
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan began legal action on Thursday to seize properties in Queens and across the country where several mosques are located in a broad move against a nonprofit organization that was accused of illegally providing money and other services to Iran.
I’ll take any sign that we’re being serious about our enemies as a good one at this point. There is, of course, concern about Islamophobia.
“Because information is lacking, this might well cause yet another wave of fear in the Muslim community,” said Adem Carroll, chairman of the Muslim Consultative Network, an advocacy group. “It would be sad if word in our community starts spreading that the government will shut us all down. Already some think this is a war against the religion; that is a very unhelpful perception.“
That would be sad, but what’s sadder is that any time something like this happens there always seems to be a Muslim advocacy group ready with warnings and excuses. Know what lends to the perception that there’s a religious war going on? Muslims in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Texas, Chicago, and New York plotting and carrying out the murder of infidels.
She [Secretary Clinton] spoke of “consequences” — tougher international sanctions — if Iran spurned the offer. German counterpart Guido Westerwelle said the six powers’ patience was “not infinite.”
Diplomats say Western powers will reconsider sanctions if there is no breakthrough with Iran by the end of the year.
The UN is so cute! You ignore sanctions, they threaten you with new sanctions unless you’ll talk to them. You string them along for awhile, they say, “hey, you guys had better not stop stringing us along, or we’re going to enforce those old sanctions you’ve been ignoring this whole time!” Then you bat your eyelashes and the UN says, “aw, shucks, what’s another six months among mortal enemies whose spineless diplomats talk like friends?”
Sadly, I’m not real sure infinity minus one is a threatening deadline. Ah, well… two steps forward, three steps closer to being nuked. Israel, far more likely to be on the receiving end, has less infinite patience.
President Bush wasn’t always clear about why he made the decisions he made. President Obama is better than President Bush, because he can give a 50 minute speech about any old topic but he can also summarize all the important issues into simple precepts.
Foreign policy: If they hate us, kiss their asses harder.
Iran basically told us to go screw ourselves. But that’s okay – sure, the president stood by while they crushed political dissenters, and doesn’t much care to stop them from getting nukes; they’ll come around. Persia’s old, and they definitely won’t nuke Israel like they’ve promised to.
“America and Islam are not exclusive,” he said, “and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”
All the right people are taking notice of the pretty things President Obama says and the pretty ways he says them.
“There is a change between the language of President Obama and previous speeches made by George Bush,” said Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas.
This from a Hamas representative. Hamas, whose charter includes such gems as “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.”
Golly, this Barack character must be a top-notch thinker, if he can warm the cockles of even a Hamas spokesman’s heart. Whereas famous quotes from President Bush include*, “There ain’t no Muslims in Am-uhr-ica,” and “We’s gonna bomb them thar Islamics,” President Obama is a beacon of enlightenment for his countrymen. Being a Muslim is not the same as being a terrorist! Not all Muslims participate in or condone violence as a means of enacting sharia law!
Now that we’ve worked those things out, it’s just a matter of getting the jerk-bag Israelis to quit whining about “Muslim extremists” suicide bombing their “women” and “children.” Why, just because the Palestinians have used every new piece of land as additional rocket launching ground, the Israelis think they have a right to stop giving Palestinians land!
But as he presses Netanyahu for concessions, Obama has to be looking over his shoulder toward the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States and the many deeply conservative Christian organizations that back Israeli policy without question.
Emphasis mine. Doggone Christians, supporting The Jews (cue scary music) without thought or hesitation. They could learn something from the populations of the world’s free, competitive, advanced Muslim countries!
* Oh wait, President Bush mostly said the same things President Obama is saying, minus the constant preening about how magnificently multicultural he was for saying them.
“I sure do love suicide bombings. Oh, and young men. Mmmm, young men.”
I saw some tool on campus wearing a kaffiyeh today. Second time in as many weeks I’ve noticed a guy wearing the symbol of the two-faced Palestinian suicide cult — and I don’t leave my office all that often. I know full well that cataloging examples of clueless leftism on a large college campus would be an exhausting task, and it’s not one I plan to undertake. But come on, people. Israel is better than Palestine, and that is a demonstrable fact unless you love people whose claims to fame are losing a war 40 years ago and celebrating the murder of civilians.
Nice scarf, though. Idiots. Dead terrorist photo copyright Time.
Upstanding Islamic Jihad commander Ayman al-Fayed was, in a cruel twist of fate, killed in an explosion today.
Islamic Jihad and witnesses blamed the explosion on an Israeli missile strike, but the Israeli military denied involvement.
Those doggone Israelis, blowing up/maybe not blowing up/facilitating the blowing up of another psycho killer (qu’est que c’est?) whose life’s goal is to murder Israeli civilians.
In other news, the top United Nations humanitarian affairs official, John Holmes, visited Gaza Friday and says he was shocked by the misery he says has been caused by Israel’s closure of the border. He is calling for the crossings to be opened so the people of Gaza can get food, power and other essential supplies.
useful idiot
- noun
1. John Holmes
see also, “The overwhelming majority of United Nations humanitarian affairs officials.”
Who’s to blame for the Palestinian territories being a flaming wreck? Hamas? Fatah? Islamic Jihad? Oh, that’s right… Israel.
Tuesday, 12-20-11, 08:30:02am 
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