Judging by the increasing number of symposia around the world devoted to promoting a binational state instead of two states for two peoples, a sea change is underway among academics and organizations engaged in progressive thinking.
A generation ago, the demand for establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel expressed a radical, post-Zionist stance. Now that this position has been deemed acceptable by the heart of the establishment, and even serves as the platform of centrist political parties, the circles that fought for it are distancing themselves from it. In its stead has come talk of a binational state. read
Apr. 28, 2009 DAVID HOROVITZ and amir mizroch , THE JERUSALEM POST
He's only been in the job for a month, but already the foreign minister is fed up with the 'slogans' he keeps hearing from his international counterparts: occupation, settlements, land-for-peace, two-state solutions... His favored key words? Security (for Israel). A stronger economy (for the Palestinians). And stability (for all). Bringing peace to our region is more complex than sloganeering would allow, he tells The Jerusalem Post in this interview, his first with an Israeli newspaper. And it's time we all faced up to the inconvenient reality. read more
Peace Now: Olmert government built, planned 9,000 homes on war-won land
Israeli watchdog groups call on Obama to pressure Netanyahu to halt settlement expansion. 'International community must save Israel from itself, because we are losing the two-state solution,' peace activist says Associated Press
Apr. 27, 2009 Haviv Rettig Gur and Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST
Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is the only way to end the conflict, the Foreign Ministry said Monday, in response to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' rejection of the Israeli demand for such recognition.
"The argument over recognizing Israel as a Jewish state is not technical or tactical," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy told The Jerusalem Post Monday.
"The Palestinians cannot negotiate for a two-state solution where one is Palestinian and the other is Palestinian-to-be,"
Earlier Monday, Abbas delivered a tough speech on peace-making, rejecting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's demand that the PA recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Last week senior Palestinian officials also rejected Netanyahu's demand.
"The Israeli government has come up with many new issues and it does not want a two-state solution," Abbas told the Palestinian "Youth Parliament in Ramallah. "We don't accept the term 'Jewish state' and insist on achieving all our rights." read more
The Death Penalty According to reports by Amnesty International, at least 346 people received the death punishment in Iran in 2008. This makes Iran the country with the second highest number of court-ruled death cases in the world. China occupies the first position with 1718 capital punishment cases. But if one considers the populations of these two countries, then Iran leads the world in deaths per capita, and China follows suit.
Palestinian Authority demands based on egregiously false assumptions Arlene Kushner
We here in Israel have been asleep at the wheel. In a rush of concessionary zeal after Oslo, we chose to refrain from making our own case. At first this decision, made at a governmental level, was intended to demonstrate our eagerness for peace. But after a time it was almost as if we had forgotten how to speak for ourselves with vigor and forthrightness.
Mahmoud Abbas, PA president, and others speaking on behalf of the Palestinian position, regularly refer to the “June 4, 1967 border.” What Abbas et al have in mind is the line, commonly called the Green Line, behind which Israel operated before the Six Day War that began on June 5, 1967. Implied is that this line constitutes Israel’s “real” border, and that Israeli presence beyond this is automatically “illegitimate.” Thus, goes the PA argument, there can be no justice, no fairness that will lead to peace, unless Israel returns to her border.
Yet the simple, irrefutable, historical fact is that this line was not a border at all, but merely an armistice line. It was drawn when hostilities ceased at the end of the 1948-49 War of Independence — a war initiated, it should be noted, by the Arab League, which attacked the nascent state of Israel as soon as independ¬ence was declared.
Not only was it an armistice line, it was intended to be temporary. In the signed armistice agreement with Jordan (which was on the other side of that line) there was a clause stating that this line would not prejudice future negotiations on a permanent border. Thus the case cannot legitimately be made that the Green Line has any legal status in determining Israel’s “true” border. It does not. That border has yet to be determined. In negotiations. <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3703694,00.html">read more</a>
The reason Hareidim don't stand to attention like non-Jews do on War Memorial day, is because it is not the Jewish way of mourning.
We have many days to mourn our fallen: Tisha B'Av; 17 of Tammuz; 10th of Tevet. These are Jewish days, where we fast, pray in the merit of all Jews who have been killed and who have suffered throughout history, and do things THE JEWISH WAY.
How many seculars even understand what these fasts are all about.
Imagine that it is decided that to make Memorial Day more real, everyone has to fast and restrain from sexual relationships. How many of you could manage that?
So don't criticise Hareidim; be thankful that at least they are doing something truly in the merit of the Fallen.
Finally after 60 years and 363 days a moderate Arab leader speaks up!!
Abbas won't recognize Israel as a Jewish state
Palestinian President delivers harsh speech in Ramallah in which he says Israel can define itself as a Jewish state, ' but I don't accept it and I say so publicly.' Abbas also says talks cannot be resumed without Israeli settlement freeze News agencies
"A Jewish state, what is that supposed to mean?" Abbas asked in a speech in the West Bank's political capital of Ramallah. "You can call yourselves as you like, but I don't accept it and I say so publicly."
Modern Palestinian demand for state stems from anti-Semitic desire to harass Jews Hagai Segal Ynetnews.com
Yeshayahu Leibowitz once ruled that even a kitchen table is allowed to present itself as a people, and the Palestinians jumped on the bandwagon of this simplistic criterion. However, even Leibowitz refrained from arguing that every fresh nation immediately deserves a state. After all, earth is too small to contain all the different desires for sovereignty of the people who live here.
The Kurds, for example, a people boasting a rich history and numbering 25 million souls, are forced to get by without a state of their own. The Basques, Catalonians, Corsicans, and Scots also have no state. Even the Native Americans, Flemish, the Copts and the Maronites have no state. Therefore, it is quite odd that it is precisely the absence of a Palestinian state that preoccupies the international community and the Israeli consciousness.
That is what we learned from a report last week by the Census Bureau which found that fewer Americans are changing residences than at any time since 1962, back when there were 120 million fewer Americans than today.
The numbers are yet another worrying beep from the array of gizmos that monitor our economic coma. But the report also signals a profound, if barely noticed, change to our national psyche, one that goes far beyond the way we think about housing.
For decades, Americans have been known as epic consumers, but it would be more accurate to call us epic upgraders. During all those years of packing up and moving, we were headed to a bigger house, at a better address, perhaps for a higher-paying job. We were trading up, and that urge — to acquire something bigger or better, preferably something bigger.
Survivor Zuma Takes Helm as Poor Push Him on Pledges (Udpate1)
By Mike Cohen and Karl Maier
April 24 (Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s about-to-be president Jacob Zuma “has survival skills like we can hardly imagine,” says Susan Booysen, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
He’ll need them.
Zuma, who survived being fired as the nation’s deputy president and beat charges of rape and graft, is about to take control of Africa’s largest economy with promises to create jobs and improve health and education for the millions of poor South Africans who voted for him, as well as to woo foreign investment. With about nine-tenths of the ballots counted, his African National Congress was leading with about two-thirds of the vote.
If there were justice in the world, Israel would be seen as a role model among the nations.
This is the text of the speech given by the British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Saks at the Finchley Road Synagogue on Yom Haatzmaut 5765/2005
Not lightly does the Torah give the name Israel to our people, for it means "you have struggled with God and with men, and have prevailed." To be a Jew, to be a member of the people Israel, has always been a struggle, sometimes with God, sometimes with our fellow human beings. But that is our destiny, our call, our task...
The American writer Milton Himmelfarb once said that we are a tiny people, but great things happen around us and to us. Already before the 20th century Jewish history was recognized as unique: by Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Tolstoy. Little could they have known that some of its most dramatic chapters were yet to be written:
The Shoah, the attempt once and for all to silence the Jewish voice and eliminate the Jewish presence. Yom Hazikaron, when we remember those who fell in Israel's defense as they discovered that the Jewish people still has to fight for the right to be, to exist, to have one place on earth where we can defend ourselves. Yet out of the depths of those very tragedies came two of the greatest moments in 2000 years of history, Yom Ha'atzmaut -- the restoration of Jewish sovereignty after 1900 years, and Yom Yerushalayim, the return to the ancient and holy city, home of the Jewish heart, focus of all our prayers, embodiment of all our hopes.
Yet once again Israel is under attack, after four years of a savage, ceaseless, brutal onslaught of terror. At the very moment that terror is being contained, Israel is facing a new attack -- a systematic campaign of delegitimization and demonization among the media, non-governmental organizations, university teachers, and perhaps even among the churches -- as if the cause of peace, or justice, or reconciliation, or coexistence were served by listening to only one voice in the conversation, one side in the conflict. <a href="
I spent 2008 harping on the prediction that Obama would be a complete disaster for the United States and the world. Good Lord! I never dreamt to what extent. We cannot all be Cassandras.
Obama is apologizing for America’s deeds, its past, its present and the rest; he is apologizing for everything. For deteriorating relations with Russia, lack of respect for Islam, bad relations with Iran, squabbles with Europe, lack of adulation for Fidel Castro, every occasion is a pretext to declare America’s repentance.
What is more, he is celebrating the (totally fictitious) contribution of Islam to America’s ascension, and does his utmost to bow down before the bloody and sectarian king of Arabia, Abdullah The Hateful. He cancels the anti-missile belt installed in Alaska and proposes a useless nuclear disarmament.
The fact that the dictator Putin has, over the last ten years, revived Russian hatred and aggressiveness towards the West, attacked neighboring states by military means, and the United States by all other means, do not even mention it! It is, it must be, it can only be Uncle Sam’s fault.
America’s fault over the last thirty years if relations with Islam have deteriorated, through lack of American respect. Nasser, the Syrian and Iraqi dictators, Soviet influence, do not even mention them…
Guilty by definition. The bellicose folly and the hatred of the West that characterized Ayatollah Khomeini since the forties? The general conversion of the Iranian intelligentsia to anti-imperialist extreme-left thinking? The rescue of millions of Muslims by America in the four corners of the earth from the barbarity that is Islam? The rhetorical genuflections of Bush before “Islam, a religion of peace”?
Europe, frightened by its own shadow, hesitant to arm itself even with a pen-knife (a dangerous arm of aggression), Europe that demonstrates by the millions against the “Euromissiles” and Ronald Reagan, and even against Clinton? Once again it is ever and always America’s fault. “We do not speak Russian! It is your fault”.
But where did Obama learn this nonsense! Where does this accumulation of all the world’s disappointments, these false and deformed ideas, come from? Where does this knee-jerk “I apologize” come from? We are used to Jimmy-Carterism, falling down on all fours before Khomeini (“a saint”), the USSR, Cuba, the third world, Muslim terrorism. How is it that Obama — governing a republic — bowed his head before the king of Arabia?
ssssssThat is where we need to remember the man who was his pastor for twenty years, which is a very long time when you are under fifty: pastor Jeremiah Wright, of the Chicago Trinity United Church of Christ, from whom Obama only separated under constraint, because of his unbearably anti-American and anti-Western, delirious and declarations inspired by conspiracy theories, and which “went over badly” in the electoral campaign.
For twenty years, Wright was his mentor and his Nestor, the one who introduced him into the circles of Chicago’s Black Theology, who initiated him to the ideas of this black version of “liberation theology”.
And what does it say, what does Wright say? “Not ‘God Bless America,’ but ‘God damn America’”. That America is slavery, that AIDS was “invented” by the American government to exterminate blacks, etc.
Wright hates America with all his being, even if he pockets all imaginable dividends… Black “liberation” theology is the American equivalent of all the worst perversions spawned by Castro, Guevara and Fanon: America is satanic, and all the others — who are victims of America — are angelic.
Twenty years is enough time to become steeped in sermons. It was Wright who made the Harvard graduate — who was a “community organizer” — a noted politician in Chicago. Let us not forget that Obama’s local political career was launched by fanatics who hate America, the extreme left-wing Weatherman terrorists, in Chicago, who repeat and confirm the same ideological refrain. All the aquariums where the tadpole swam are filled with the same water.
Obama is the manicured version of Wright: he went to Harvard. He does not eructate, he does not slobber, he does not show his fist. He does not continuously spout obscenities like his guru does. He is elegant, syrupy, but even when they are sugar-coated, the pills are still full of hot pepper. The heart is the same. Wright insults America, Obama apologizes: in both cases, America is guilty. Wright is a pastor, Obama is president.
Even worse, this deplorable America has spread disorder and evil all over the world. Instead of collaborating multilaterally with all, working for the common good with Putin, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, Bachir al-Assad and Co., horrible Bush made enemies of them.
How shameful! We have to repair the damage. America will only find its redemption in withdrawal, penitence, contrition, and a form of disappearance. Submerged in multilateral and international organizations, smothered by the UN’s unanimities, harmonized with Europe, abandoning its own sovereignty in favor of “international law”, whose judges no longer bother with democracy and are accountable to none, like the European Union, that has repealed democracy and replaced it by the government of jurists and commissioners. Jeremiah Wright wants apocalypses; Obama wants to change everything gently, through attorneys.
That is why his administration is crammed with these jurists who look down on and scorn the American constitution, electors, congressmen: their peers are the international jet-set of multinational jurists, juridical NGOs, judges of international courts.
They do not so much want a state of law and international law as they want the reign of jurists. They want to place a jurist behind each soldier and put war — which is ultima ratio regis, the king’s ultimate argument, as was engraved in the cannons of Frederick the Great of Prussia — outside the pale of the law.
They are the only ones to do so, while the gangs of assassins roam the streets and alleys of the megalopolis. They scrutinize the least actions of soldiers, intelligence agents, the government, and subject them not only to censorship but also to sanction, self-disarmament by means of utopia, while the other sides, who could not care less, continue with their depredations.
That is what is taught at Harvard Law School, of which Obama is a graduate. All action must be regulated by the dictatorship of subsections, of the bearers and interpreters of clauses: lawyers.
We must at all costs find common grounds with all. We must go a long way with concessions: the other side will end up understanding. Kim Jong II, Hugo Chavez, ayatollah Khamenei, Assad, Hamas, we will find the compromises necessary for a deal with the other side’s lawyers.
Without an agreement, we fall back into the errors of shameful America. America, how awful, goes so far as to defend its allies against its enemies. We fight in Vietnam and Korea against the aggressions of communism. We fight against Soviet communism. What do you think Obama stated in Berlin, during his electoral campaign, not without a degree of delirium, that the world won the Cold War “by uniting”, as if there were only one side in this war!
America must be reduced in its aspirations and in its power. The world must be reduced to a single camp, that of the peacemakers, with which an agreement is always possible. There are no enemies, there are only misunderstandings. There can be not confrontations, only clarifications.
You do not agree? Shut-up! It is you who are the menace, the trouble-maker, the public enemy. You intend to defend yourself? Who are you to defy the “international community”? The chorus of liars who promote the official pseudo-reality will condemn your voice and your action.
The chorus of sycophants is deafening. Just yesterday, for example, after the operation of commandos that liberated the American captain, a hostage of Somali pirates, The Washington Post titled, on its first page “An Early Military Victory for Obama”: it was the battle of Lepanto, the battle of Jutland, Midway; we were plunged in an Epic saga.
Blowing up a minute police operation and turning it into a military victory is, obviously, to deceive oneself as to what war is and what military means are. Obamaism has created for itself such a deformed image of war that it no longer distinguishes reality from delirious rambling. By confusing a police raid with war, they mix them up. It is not serious in the case of a road accident, but it is in the event of a real conflict.
If it is not just three miserable good-for-nothings on the Somali coast that you have to neutralize, but North Korea you have to free from Kim Jong II, three marine commandos will not suffice.
And the Iranian mega-rogue? And Putin? When you can no longer distinguish black from white, you can no longer see anything. You bow down before a despot, you reassure Islam that you will never be at war with it (even if Islam is at war with us). You promise a “new start” to the Russian tyrants who are determined to make America an enemy.
Disorder and confusion are at their peak. Obamaland is a land of chaos. We should note, in this respect, that the fray of foreign policy “realists”, who advise getting rid of one’s allies in order to find an agreement with the bad guys, are in bliss and participate in setting up Obama’s con game. At last! we are no longer bothered by anything else other that short term “stability”.
Obama makes no distinction between black and white, between friend and foe. He gratuitously offended the English by scorning their “special relationship”. He offended the Japanese by paying no attention either to them or to the North-Korean missile that flew over their territory. He had not a word to say to the Taiwanese ally. He is relentlessly preparing a crisis with Israel. He has showed the Czechs and the Poles, with the anti-missile defense issue, that they cannot count on Washington and that they will be sacrificed on the altar of the “new start” with Moscow.
For everyone the lesson is brutal: in the Obama era it is better to be an enemy than a friend: if you are a friend, you will be cast aside. If you are an enemy, Washington will bend over backwards to please you.
In geopolitics the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu had words of wisdom: it is best to avoid the strong points and attack the weak ones. The “full” should be avoided, the “empty” should be invaded. Obama creates the empty and avoids the full.
In the coming years we can predict a rush toward the bad guys, and the sacrifice of the good ones. Carter sacrificed the Shah of Iran, who was no saint, in favor of the satanic ayatollah. It is the model Obama follows. In a Western I saw and English duke who said to a thug from the Far West: “Well sir, we shall fight”. By the time he took off his coat, the other guy had already kicked him several times where he should not have.
Durban II ends today. The five-day conference in Geneva adopted a declaration running to 143 paragraphs. If weighty words count, then the world has taken a giant step forward in the fight against "racism, discrimination, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance".
Unfortunately, of course, life is more complex than that, especially when the countries that endorsed the sonorous phrases include some of the worst violators of human rights, with murder of opponents, suppression of women and homosexuals, slavery and savage punishments.
But while recognising that it's an imperfect world, shouldn't everyone – including especially those who boycotted or walked out of the conference – now rally round and endorse the declaration? The conference did little to achieve its real purpose – to review the extent to which countries have put anti-racism National Action Plans in place (only about 10 have done so). But doesn't its declaration deserve respect as an international statement of hope and aspiration for how we should behave towards each other?
Again unfortunately, the flaws are too great, both in the process and the document. The problem starts with the organisers, the United Nations, and its offshoot, the Human Rights Council. How did they manage to allow Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be the star speaker? Everyone knew he would be spitting venom; the only unknown was how much and how virulent. Yet he landed up as the keynote speaker on the opening day – leading to the extraordinary walking out of representatives of 23 states and organisations.
He seemed oblivious to the insult. But the Norwegian delegate got to the nub of it: freedom of speech, yes, but Ahmadinejad's speech "ran counter to the spirit and dignity of the conference … it promoted a spirit of intolerance".
If Ahmadinejad was the only head of state who wanted to attend, couldn't he have been (diplomatically) uninvited? Instead, UN officialdom provided him with a platform to be a one-man wrecking crew.
The Human Rights Council is itself a curious body, with strong representation by human rights abusers. They have a fixation about Israel and devote a high proportion of their meetings to the country. That could be justifiable if Israel was the only or the worst human rights offender, but it pales alongside places like Darfur, Zimbabwe, China, Sri Lanka and Iraq, which do not get anything like the same attention.
Perhaps part of the UN problem is in the lack of understanding of the issues at stake shown by Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and secretary general of the conference. This is what she said in pleading against boycott moves: "I am fully aware that the reputation of the 2001 World Conference was tainted by the antisemitic behaviour of some NGOs on the sidelines."
That's a remarkable playing down of the 2001 conference held in Durban, South Africa. It is widely recalled as a "hatefest" that severely set back the anti-racism cause. NGOs frenziedly condemned Israel and the west to such an extreme extent that the government conference that followed refused to endorse their resolutions, the first and only time this has happened in UN history. Aziz Pahad, then deputy foreign minister of South Africa, Pillay's home country, later publicly apologised for the "disgraceful events" and said that his government regretted that antisemitic elements had "hijacked" the conference.
Should countries that boycotted this week's meeting – such as the US, Canada, Germany and Israel – have attended? Should the countries that walked out on Monday – such as France, Australia and Poland – have stayed to listen to Ahmadinejad and engaged him in debate?
Would it have been possible to sit down to a polite conversation with Adolf Hitler and persuade him that he was wrong to believe that Jews, Gypsies and Russians were sub-humans deserving only of mass death? Would there have been any point in trying to engage Ahmadinejad in debate, and in a large conference setting at that, to tell him his views are lunatic and evil?
Going beyond this, however, what has emerged from this week is depressing and worrying: during the Ahmadinejad diatribe, many in the conference hall, from Africa, Asia and Latin America, applauded and cheered his attack on Israel as a "racist state" and on the west.
Who wants to be involved with people who behave like this? Who wants to be associated with their nice-sounding words against racism and intolerance?
On Comment is free this week, while many denounced Ahmadinejad, some commenters supported him, showing no embarrassment at lining up with a man whose government denies elementary rights. Amnesty International reports large-scale arrests, incommunicado detention and torture of dissidents and minorities and persecution of religious minorities. Iran executes children under the age of 18. Adultery can be punished by death.
They also parrot Ahmadinejad's "Israel is racist, Zionism is racism" cry. Israel is certainly subject to attack for its oppression of Palestinians and its occupation. But the "racist" charge is as inaccurate and unthinking as the "apartheid" label. Israel has a Jewish majority and they have decided that they want a state for Jews. That is their right and it is nothing exceptional. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and a host of other countries declare themselves, even in their constitutions, to be Muslim or Arab states. Does anyone accuse them of racism? When Ahmadinejad pours out his Holocaust denial and his call to wipe out the Zionist, Jewish, state, read read more
Is the Beached Whale the economic, social and political system itself? I think what is missing in most of the reporting going on in the mainstream media is that we are experiencing a general crisis of the whole economic system. The best analysis I have seen so far puts forth the position that our present capitalist economic, social and political system is a victim of its own success. With the robotic and electronic revolution well under way we are replacing manual labor as we know it. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. If we can get machines to do the back breaking work in the factories, mines etc. then that should be a plus for humanity. But unfortunately they haven't figured out how to get the robots to buy back what they produce. And with a system still based on the premise that you have to have a job to earn a wage to buy the necessaries of life and there are no jobs....you have an irreconcilable contradiction. The profits and market system can no longer function to meet the needs of the majority of society. With Globalization there is an evening up process with the spread of the technology.... and rather then bringing the rest of the worlds workers up to the living standard we have enjoyed...our standard of living is being driven down to theirs. I used to think it was a big conspiracy by the elite but now I believe that every economic system has its own objective motion and laws. The people in power have no control over what is happening either. It is always better to be able to rule with the consent of the ruled. They think that if they just throw more of our taxpayer money at the problem it will go away. Every day you see another fascist type attack on our constitution. The system is based on competition to increase their profits. So they can't not compete. What we must move towards is some sort of cooperative, non-ideological economic system that can meet the needs of the population of the entire globe. And with the new technology we can meet those needs. In the proper hands we could eliminate world hunger, homelessness, disease etc. in a very short time. Let this Beached Whale die! read more
The US needs to make it clear it will not tolerate a first strike.
By Walt Rodgers
The new Israeli prime minister recently appeared to give President Obama a blunt ultimatum: Stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons – or we will.
Benjamin Netanyahu's challenge (intimated in an interview he gave to The Atlantic magazine) smacks of unrealistic bravado and, worse, it appears to be a crude attempt to bully an American president into bombing Iran's nuclear installations.
The world should hope it's a hollow threat.
The consequences of a unilateral Israeli strike would be enormous if not disastrous. Mr. Obama cannot allow himself to be intimidated by Mr. Netanyahu, nor can he wink if the Israeli air force bombs Iran's nuclear facilities.
Israel has acted unilaterally to squash a perceived nuclear threat before. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin sent fighter jets to knock out Iraq's "Osirak" nuclear reactor. Israel claimed that Saddam Hussein was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons and that it had no choice but to bomb it out of existence. In 2007, Israel bombed a facility in Syria it claimed was a nuclear reactor.
Any strike on Iranian reactors would be a different matter entirely. Osirak was a lone, poorly guarded, and inoperative nuclear plant that had a year earlier been damaged by an Iranian airstrike. The Iranians have taken considerable precautions to build their facilities on something more solid than desert sand. At present there is but one facility, Bushehr I, but Tehran is gearing up to build an entire network of nuclear plants. Israel would be bombing until the Shah comes home to merely delay what is an unstoppable Iranian nuclear program.
The fallout from Israel's strike on Osirak was serious but limited. But a preemptive strike on Iranian soil would border on catastrophic. Consider:
•Iran has signaled that if attacked, it would close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world's oil flows. This would plunge the world into economic calamity.
•Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, is believed to have more than 42,000 missiles, according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak – enough to make Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv burn like London did during the Nazis' Blitz. Hezbollah is believed to have terror cells in Europe and North America. It has struck in South America, and many terrorism experts believe it is potentially even more dangerous than Al Qaeda. Iran, using this proxy force, would probably unleash it on the world if Netanyahu were to bomb the Bushehr I reactor.
•It would trigger a tsunami of anti-Semitism that would inevitably translate into violence against Jews worldwide.
•Such a strike would be perceived as further evidence of a US-Israeli global war on Islam. Islamist fighters from Marrakesh, Marseille, London, Cairo, Karachi, and Tehran would enlist overnight by the thousands and march to Iraq and Afghanistan to wage jihad against the American troops there.
Netanyahu is no fool. He is keenly aware of these global implications. He knows that a unilateral Israeli strike would not only accelerate Iran's nuclear ambitions but also legitimize them. He also knows that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map is bombast. It is the country's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who commands the armed forces and national security apparatus, not the populist president.
Domestic Israeli politics may have been a factor motivating Netanyahu's warnings. Talking tough soothes anxieties at home. Equally likely, Netanyahu was prodding the new Obama government. And in that sense he may feel the recent US-led invitation to Tehran to meet with Washington and five other major powers to discuss the disputed nuclear program was a result of his threat. Iran has agreed to "constructive dialogue," although it may be delusional for the Israeli prime minister – or any other Western leader – to believe that political or economic pressure can sway Iran's ruling clerics.
What's worrying is that Netanyahu had a record of bad judgment in his previous term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Not without cause did The Economist run a cover photo of "Bibi" in October 1997 under the headline "Israel's Serial Bungler." It described his governance of the Jewish state as a "calamity" for the peace process.
Iran has no need to nuke Israel. Its ruling clerics, whom Netanyahu described as a "messianic apocalyptic cult," believe time, history, and Allah are on their side. They believe the Jewish state, starting across the border in Lebanon, can be nibbled to death over the next century just as the Arabs did to the Crusader kingdoms 600 years ago.
It should surprise no one that Iran's mullahs want nuclear weapons. They live in a nuclear neighborhood: Pakistan, India, Russia, China, and Israel, which is estimated to have 200 nuclear bombs ready to use if it were attacked. The ayatollahs also remember Mr. Hussein's 1991 folly of going to war with the US without nuclear weapons.
Obama needs to do Netanyahu a favor and tell the Israelis: "No first strike." Keep the F-15s and F-16s at home. A messianic vision such as Mr. Ahmadinejad's is rife in much of the Islamic world. Bellicose rhetoric most often serves as an excuse for inaction. It does not denote suicidal inclinations on the part of Iran's more pragmatic leaders. read more
Rivlin family celebrates the birth of its 50,000th member
Mar. 23, 2009 Mel Bezalel , THE JERUSALEM POST
A Jewish family whose impressive history can be traced back more than 450 years celebrated the birth of its 50,000th member in Jerusalem on Tuesday at a special family event.
The Rivlin family consists of 22 documented generations and has researched its roots back to Vienna in 1550. It boasts among its ranks the Vilna Gaon (Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna), Yosef Yoel Rivlin, the author of the first Hebrew-edition Koran, the first female mayor of Israel, several actresses, political figures and TV presenters, and former Knesset speakers Avraham Burg and Reuven Rivlin.
The newest family addition, Michael Ben-Shimhon, who was born in Jerusalem on February 16, joins some 35,000 of his ancestors residing (currently or previously) in Israel. The baby will be formally initiated into the Rivlin clan by Reuven Rivlin this afternoon at Airport City's Kenes International. Michael and his parents will be presented with a scroll documenting his historic birth. The family will also officially activate its application to the Guinness World Records, hoping to set the record for the world's largest tribe.
The family gathering is a precursor to the main Rivlin family event, set to take place in October. Some 5,000 Rivlin relatives will gather in Jerusalem to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the family's immigration to Israel in 1809, encouraged by the Vilna Gaon.
The family's departure to Israel predates the First Aliya by 73 years, and it is for this reason that Reuven Rivlin said his family was part of "the real aliya." His was among the last names to be added to the family's first genealogical project - created and maintained by his father's cousin, Eliezer Rivlin, who died two years after Reuven's birth in 1942.
Proud of his prestigious family heritage, Reuven Rivlin commented: "Family history is very important to me, and I was brought up knowing the origins of my family. They were the real Zionists at the beginning of the 19th century. I am a Rivlin from my mother and father's side, as they are seventh-generation cousins. My father is a descendent of the Gaon and the mitnagdim [opponents of Hassidism], and my mother is a descendent of the cousin of the Gaon, who was considered to have betrayed the Gaon."
The first known family ancestor, Rabbi Yosef of Ovan, lived in Vienna around 1550 and was exiled to Prague.
The Rivlin family intends to continue its commitment to its genealogical heritage, as their Web site (www.rivlinfamily.com) states: "It is said that a people who are not acquainted with their past will not have a future. Our family's past history is an impressive one, and it is hoped that its future will be just as great and will not constitute a disappointment to its past."
Wednesday: in many ways, today could be called victory day for pro-Israel, pro-human rights forces at Durban II. Students, StandWithUs fellows, a host of pro-Israel organizations, human rights victims, and human rights groups from around the world converged in Geneva, countered the evils of Durban II, and reclaimed the moral high ground.
Yesterday (Tuesday, April 21), Durban II delegates ended the conference three days early, voting to accept the Durban II document. Perhaps they ended early because ten important nations had boycotted the conference, and there was little to debate. Or perhaps the Durban II organizers simply wanted to hurriedly end an event that had become, in the words of the BBC, a "UN public relations nightmare." But parallel meetings and conferences continued to take place. That's where the real human rights issues were seriously addressed. That's where leading international figures in human rights advocacy repeatedly denounced the travesty of Durbans I and II, of Ahmadinejad speaking at the opening session, and of the anti-Semitic racism that has driven the UN to obsessively condemn Israel and ignore the suffering and human rights abuses committed by the very nations leading the charge against Israel. They expressed their moral outrage that the Human Rights Council has ignored Iran's genocidal incitement against Israel and Jews-in flagrant violation of the 1949 Genocide Convention, sometimes called the "Never Again" Convention-and let 6 million die in genocides from Cambodia to Rwanda to Darfur while they indulged their obsession against Israel.
These speakers knew that standing up for Israel also meant they were standing up for the rights of all people. They knew they were rescuing human rights values themselves from racists and human rights abusers who had hijacked and perverted their meaning.
On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine—anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:
"Favoring the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.
"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected." [italics in the original]
On September 21, 1922, the then President Warren G. Harding signed the joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
Israel shocked by Obama's approval of large Turkish arms sale to Lebanon
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
April 22, 2009, 10:49 PM (GMT+02:00)
DEBKAfile quotes senior Israeli military circles as staggered by the discovery that US president Barack Obama had approved a large Turkish arms sale to the Lebanese army, including the services of Turkish military instructors. This was taken as further proof that the US president is deaf to Israel's immediate security concerns....
Investors are struggling to figure out what’s next for stocks. Oppenheimer’s Carter Worth reveals what his charts suggest. If you watch Fast Money regularly you know that Carter Worth has been somewhat bullish on this market. Well, hold you hats because he's changing his call. Now, Worth tells us not to expect too much from this market over the next few weeks. He's grown cautious. “It’s time to get off this ride,” Worth says. According to Worth, the preceding plunge in the S&P that we experienced in February and March has now been offset by the recovery of late March and April. That leaves the market at a place where it should stop and just go dead..... read more
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is developing a "laundry list" that he will present to U.S. President Barack Obama when they meet next month in Washington. The Israeli premier will present Obama with a three-part plan involving halting Iran's nuclear program, closer relations with moderate Arab states and dealing with the Palestinian issue through several channels.
Netanyahu will tell Obama that he will not recognize a nation-state providing Palestinian self-determination if the Palestinians don't recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. From the standpoint of the Israeli prime minister, the requirement that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is a fundamental demand in any negotiations on a final settlement. It is not a precondition to conducting negotiations, but rather necessary to progress towards an agreement....
By DANIEL HENNINGER Wall Street Journal April 23, 2009
The now-famous photograph of Barack Obama sharing a handshake and mile-wide smile with happy Hugo Chávez recalled to mind a visit years ago of Philippine strong man Ferdinand Marcos to The Wall Street Journal's offices in lower Manhattan.
The Marcos entourage emerged from the elevators in a stream that included not only the dictator's entire cabinet but Philippine TV crews, cameras aloft, lights aglow. Some of the editors recognized the game and did a slow fade into the corners of the room. Others told the commando cameramen to shut down.
They had been sending the Philippines images of Marcos in the company of American symbols -- bankers, journalists, politicians. Propaganda. The message for the Philippine opposition was: Behold, the Americans are with me, not you. In 1986, that opposition defeated Marcos in Cory Aquino's "Yellow Revolution."
Hugo Chávez is a tin-pot dictator who has debauched Venezuela's democracy. Normally in such circumstances, an American president would show reserve. The weirdly ebullient Mr. Obama did not, and that image was the photo seen 'round the world.
In New York this week, I asked a former Eastern European dissident who spent time in prison under the Communists: "If you were sitting in a cell in Cuba, Iran or Syria and saw this photo of a smiling American president shaking hands with a smiling Hugo Chávez, what would you think?"
He said: "I would think that I was losing ground."
The hopeful way to view the Obama administration's openings to Chávez, the Castros, Iran and the others would be: This had better work. Because if it doesn't, a lot of people who've spent years working in opposition to these regimes -- in hiding or in prison in Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, China, Russia, Burma, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan -- are going to get hammered. North Korea's opposition is invisible.
Change in autocratic regimes doesn't come from talking to the dictators. Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger explains. (April 23)
Other than physically controlling their populations, the biggest problem for autocrats -- most of them narcissistic monomaniacs -- is maintaining the legitimacy of their authority, which by definition is always on thin ice. To Mr. Obama and his handlers perhaps it was just a photo-op. For Mr. Chávez it was priceless. Merely being seen or photographed in the presence of civilized society -- at summits, negotiations, in state visits -- empowers the autocrat and discourages his opposition.
Within days of the Summit of the Americas, former Venezuelan presidential candidate Manuel Rosales formally applied for asylum in Peru, fearing a corruption trial at home.
When Barack Obama was a candidate for president, the main plank of his foreign policy, other than withdrawing from Iraq, was agreeing to "talk to our enemies," notably Iran and Syria. The intellectual rationale for this policy, as far as one can make out, is that because George W. Bush wouldn't commit the office of the presidency itself to direct negotiations with the leaders of these regimes, and because everything George W. Bush did was wrong, reversing that policy would bear fruit.
Iran just sentenced Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi to eight years in prison. Syria's leading pro-democracy dissident, Riad Seif, has spent the last year in Adra prison and is reportedly dying of prostate cancer. Syrian "president" Bashar Assad won't let him leave the country to get treatment.
In Cuba, Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is serving a 25-year prison sentence. In China, the whereabouts is unknown of Liu Xiaobo, co-author of a new, online pro-democracy petition. His wife has written to Mr. Obama for help. Tens of thousands of North Koreans are hiding in China.
The Obama people seem to believe that talking top guy to top guy is the yellow brick road to progress. Why do they think that? They say Ronald Reagan negotiated over nuclear arsenals at Reykjavik. But virtually all desirable regime change in our time -- Soviet Communism, South Africa, the Philippines -- has come mainly from below, from the West protecting and supporting people in opposition to autocrats.
The origin of the change-from-below movement was the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which ratified the legitimacy of self-determination. There was no stronger supporter of this liberal turn than AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. Where is his like today in the Democratic Party or its unions? Where is the left-wing blogosphere when the pro-democracy prisoners of Cuba, Iran and Syria need them? It's ranting about Bush "war criminals."
It is early in the Obama foreign policy. They say the right thing on political rights. But there appears to be no coherent strategy beyond "talk to our enemies." So far, what do we see? Hugo Chávez is smiling. His fellow prison wardens around the world are smiling. The joke must be on someone else.
Israel need look no further than Oslo. In preparation for a 2 state solution they withdrew their military from major cities and other areas. When sustained suicide bombing forced them to re-occupy, the outrage in the world, particularly europe, was as if Israel were invading fresh territory. It`s nice to be popular, but the europeans are the last people Israel should be taking advice from. It`s easy to "talk" about a two state solution forever, and maybe that`s the game Israel should be playing along with. Few smart people actually believe a successful 2 state solution can be salvaged from negotiations. The Pal. side just isn`t capable or willing. Instead, "2 state solution" means `something other than the one state solution of Greater Israel. For serious negotiations to take place, these things have to be clarified. Of course, the euros aren`t meant to be taken seriously.
EU froze ties during the gaza war. The EU foreign commissions leader told the commission to stay away from Israel and ties would not be upgraded. This happened in January long before Netanyahu.
Let`s see: Israel signs agreements with temporary West Bank government -then Hamas takes over West Bank neutralizes agreement and bombs Tel Aviv-then Israel fights back and Europe demands Israel stop--so the real answer is Europe wants Israel to disappear..
Giving the Holocaust-denying fruitcake Ahmadinejad a platform to lecture the world about racism is like inviting Bernie Madoff to headline a global conference on business ethics.
Professor of History at Southwest Baptist University Bolivar, Missouri 417-328-2067 twood@SBUniv.edu
I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes these exist, but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it. Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about ten - fifteen years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people we know they can never pay back. Why?
We learn that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has 'loaned' two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom, or why, or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September. Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of 'we the people', who loaned our powers to our elected leaders. Apparently not. One important point missing is the fact that the Federal Reserve is a PRIVATE COMPANY not anything to do with the government.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why? We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and we no longer teach our founding documents, showing why we are exceptional and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, and school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so 'controversial' that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman!). Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago? We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then allow mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government, and our education system is worse than a joke. (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially 1929 x ten. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion, an enemy who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so. Now we have elected President a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla , Alaska All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling, if not downright scary. Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a 'mandatory civilian defense force' stronger than our military for use inside our borders. No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over, and then demand he explain it. Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important to the media.
Mr. Obama's winning platform can be boiled down to one word: change. Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now! This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the beginning.
I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed. He edged his way onto the political stage through great oratoryand promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his 'brown shirts' would bully them into submission. And then, he was duly elected to office as full-throttled economic crisis was at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department-by-department,p erson-by-person, bureaucracy-by-bureaucracy . The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think. How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in their country, across Europe , and around the world.
He did it with a compliant media. Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and ..... change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) This is same as what Obama is doing, so should be addressed as Mein Fueher or COMRADE Obama???
Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though.
Don't forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years --- a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency --- it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to hell is paved with them. As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong by closing my eyes, having another latte, and ignoring what is transpiring around me.
Some people scoff at me, others laugh, or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe, and why I believe it.
According to the demographics of Iran, the total population of the country has been estimated to be 65,397,521 in the 2008 census. Iran is a country of ethic and linguistic diversities. There are various ethnic groups in certain cities of Iran. The five cities in the country which are most populated are Tehran, Mashad, Isfahan, Tabriz and Shiraz. A notable feature of the demographics of Iran is the high literacy rate which is over 80%.
Roughly 70% of the people of Iran speak Iranian languages with major groups including Persians, Kurds, Gilakis, Mazandaranis, Lurs, and Baluchis. The rest are mainly Turkic, like the Turkmen, Azeri, the Qashqai, Arabs, Armenians and Assyrians.
In terms of religious affiliations, the majority of the Iranians are Muslims; of which 90% belong to the Shia branch of Islam, the official state religion and 9% belong to the Sunni branch. The non-Muslim minorities in Iran comprise of the Zoroastrians, Jews, Baha'is, Mandeans and Christians.
Demographics Statistics
Population: 65,397,521 (July 2008 est.)
Age Structure 0-14 years: 23.2% (male 7,783,794/female 7,385,721) 15-64 years: 71.4% (male 23,636,883/female 23,088,934) 65 years and over: 5.4% (male 1,701,727/female 1,800,462) (2008 est.)
Median Age Total: 25.8 years Male: 25.6 years Female: 26 years (2008 est.)
Population Growth Rate: 0.663% (2008 est.)
Birth Rate: 16.57 births/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Death Rate: 5.65 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Net Migration Rate: -4.29 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Sex Ratio: at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female Under 15 years: 1.054 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.024 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.945 male(s)/female Total population: 1.026 male(s)/female (2008 est.)
Infant Mortality Rate: total: 38.12 deaths/1,000 live births Male: 38.29 deaths/1,000 live births Female: 37.93 deaths/1,000 live births (2008 est.)
Life Expectancy at Birth: total population: 70.56 years Male: 69.12 years Female: 72.07 years (2008 est.)
Total Fertility Rate:1.71 children born/woman (2008 est.)
Nationality Noun: Iranian(s) Adjective: Iranian
Ethnic Groups Persian 51%, Azeri 24%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Arab 3%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other 1%
Religions Affiliation Muslim 98% (Shi'a 89%, Sunni 9%), other (includes Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Baha'i) 2%
Languages Persian and Persian dialects 58%, Turkic and Turkic dialects 26%, Kurdish 9%, Luri 2%, Balochi 1%, Arabic 1%, Turkish 1%, other 2%
Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write Total population: 79.4% Male: 85.6% Female: 73% (2003 est.)
This article provides an overview of the demographics of Iran. For more on Iran, visit- 123independenceday.com
