Iran president paves the way for Arabs' Imam return
Nov 17, 2005
His call for the destruction of Israel may have grabbed headlines abroad, but it is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's devotion to a mystical religious figure that is arousing greater interest inside Iran.
In a keynote speech on Wednesday to senior clerics, Ahmadinejad spoke of his strong belief in the second coming of Shi'ite Muslims' "hidden" 12th Imam.
According to Shi'ite Muslim teaching, Abul-Qassem Mohammad, the 12th leader whom Shi'ites consider descended from the Prophet Mohammed, disappeared in 941 but will return at the end of time to lead an era of Islamic justice.
"Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi," Ahmadinejad said ... long passages on the Mahdi which confused Western diplomats and irked those from Sunni Muslim countries who believe in a different line of succession from Mohammed.
...the Hojjatieh Society is governed by the conviction that the 12th Imam's return will be hastened by the creation of chaos on earth. .. read more
Cannot reverse the great wave of wealth destruction. by David P. Goldman Copyright (c) 2009 First Things (May 2009). Three generations of economists immersed themselves in study of the Great Depression, determined to prevent a recurrence of the awful events of the 1930s. And as our current financial crisis began to unfold in 2008, policymakers did everything that those economists prescribed. Following John Maynard Keynes, President Bush and President Obama each offered a fiscal stimulus. The Federal Reserve maintained confidence in the financial system, increased the money supply, and lowered interest rates. The major industrial nations worked together, rather than at cross purposes as they had in the early 1930s. In other words, the government tried to do everything right, but everything continues to go wrong.
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The verdict is in. The experiment in Gaza and Lebanon proves that Arab leadership has no interest in creating peaceful societies living alongside Israel in harmony and tolerance.
Therefore, we hereby declare that the occupation and administration of the West Bank has been terminated. The entire West Bank without exception is declared to be an integral part of the State of Israel. The Palestinian Authority is hereby disbanded. All quasi-governmental agencies, militia groups and organizations and entities hostile to the Jewish State of Israel are ordered to be disbanded. All weapons are to be deposited with local Israeli police and military authorities. Residents of the West Bank who accept the authority of Israel will be candidates for permanent residency and/or citizenship. Others will be relocated to the Gaza Strip and elsewhere with appropriate financial consideration. Regional governance will assure the Jewish character of the State of Israel and protect the civil and religious rights of all peoples. Arabs who have escaped from the West Bank into pre-1967 Israel will be welcome to return to their homes on the West Bank. An era of prosperity, social reform and political stability will come after the removal of the current violent, corrupt leadership. Oslo, Camp David, Roadmap, Annapolis, and all two-state solutions have at least five irreconcilable differences: final borders, status of Jerusalem, return of “refugees”, status of 500,000+ Jews living across the Green Line, and recognition of Israel as the Jewish national home.
By David P. Goldman Wednesday, April 29, 2009 Earlier this week the head of the Palestinian Authority, Muhammed Abbas, once again ruled out recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Hamas clearly wants to continue violent confrontation with Israel, but Abbas prefers a peace agreement that leads to the long-term erosion of the Jewish character of Israel—through, for example, immigration to Israel of the descendants of the Palestinian refugees of 1947. Analysts have long assumed that demographics constitutes the greatest long-term threat to Israel—the “Arab womb” overwhelming the Jews. More recent data, however, suggests that rising Jewish fertility and falling Arab fertility are likely to keep the ratio of Jews to Arabs close to the present four-to-one-level for the foreseeable future. In 1969, Jewish births in the area west of the Jordan River formed only sixty-nine percent of the total. By 2008, the proportion had risen to seventy-five percent. Israel has by far the highest birth rate in the industrial world. New immigration, however, is low in part because Jews outside of Israel evince weaker identification with the Jewish state, and new emigration is high, in part, because Israelis see less reason to live at risk in a country whose national purpose has become less clear to them. Is Israel simply another liberal democracy that happens to be inhabited mainly by Jews and maintains the sort of “kinship-immigration” policy that Germany also has? Or is Israel a Jewish state first and foremost? In a secular world operating according to liberal ideology, a Jewish state seems something of an anachronism. A large body of opinion wants Israel to dissolve into a single state with the Palestinians and abandon its Jewish character outright. This is the view of New York University’s Tony Judt, for example. In an often-cited essay for the New York Review of Books in 1993, Judt denounced the fact that Israel “is an ethnic majority defined by language, or religion, or antiquity, or all three at the expense of inconvenient local minorities,” in which “Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges” that do not belong in “a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law.” Israel also faces internal pressure to conform to secular liberal criteria. At the same time that Israeli voters chose a nationalist government as a response to security concerns, other parts of Israeli society reflect a paralysis of purpose that may do as much long-term damage to Israel as the external threats. Azure magazine, a quarterly published by the Shalem Center of Jerusalem, has for years drawn attention to the actions of Israel’s Supreme Court. In the Spring 2009 issue, attorneys Joel H. Golovensky and Ariel Gilboa argue that the rigorous application of liberal principles has led the Supreme Court to disrupt the core idea of the Zionist project: to settle Jews in the Land of Israel...read more
Police detain eight people protesting against arrests of activists involved in promoting draft-dodging
by Daniel Edelson
A total of 23 feminist organizations were angered by the move, and an enraged letter on the matter was sent to the Interior Ministry. Police made eight arrests Thursday during a protest at a Tel Aviv police station. Demonstrators were protesting a police raid on two websites that promote draft-dodging in Israel and the simultaneous arrests of several activists involved in their activity. About 50 protestors arrived at the Dizengoff St. Police Station...read morea
Talkback on Ynet
What does the "Coalition of Women for Peace" have to do with peace? The answer, sadly, is almost nothing.
A bunch of poorly educated, misinformed people get together and decide that draft-dodging is connected to peace.
It isn't. Too bad these people don't go for a trip to make "peace" with the other side. I doubt any of them read Arabic newspapers, or have been to Gaza in the past 3 years, nor have they talked "peace" with any Palestinian officials from the elected PA government, aka Hamas. Oh yes, in case these morons haven't read a Hebrew newspaper or news website (even Ynet) in the past few months, Hamas keeps saying they will "never" make peace with Israel, and that jihad (aka holy war) is the only way to go. And that, sadly, leaves the rest of us Israelis having to fight the jihadist enemy and at the same time put up with the shenanigans of these dupes.
Immigrant Academics to Lieberman: 'No' to a Palestinian State
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz(IsraelNN.com)
A group of immigrant academics has written to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, urging him to take a clear stand in opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state in Israel. The minister's office was non-committal, although a spokesman said Lieberman would be discussing the letter's contents. read more
The binationalism vogue By Meron Benvenisti 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
The world according to Lieberman 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.
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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 read moreI attended the gathering. Some very well-meaning blind people and some real Jew-haters in the crowd. Difficult to separate the two.
Israel: Recognition of 'Jewish state' is crucial 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."
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