Step Into Their Shoes For A Moment - Let's Play Pretend

from the blog Holger Awakens

199 Missiles Fired at Israel Since Operation Cast Lead
From the Sderot Media Center:
by Jacob Shrybman

The weekly Jewish Sabbath intended for rest and rejuvenation was nothing of the sort this Friday and Saturday as more rockets and mortars struck southern Israel. One qassam and two mortars were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel prompting the Israeli Air Force to target 5 smuggling tunnels between Egypt and the Hamas controlled territory. The Israeli Defense Forces said that this targeting of tunnels was a clear message that there would be a response to every rocket fire.

In the 105 days since the end of the 21 day Operation Cast Lead on January 18th there has been 199 missiles fired at Israeli civilians. More specifically there have been 128 qassam rockets, 66 mortar shells, and 5 grad missiles. These most recent attacks only add to the well over 10,000 missiles that have been fired at Israeli civilians since January 2001.

In a cease-fire both sides must stop all attacks. The Israelis stopped Operation Cast Lead as a favor to Barack Obama, yet they have gotten nothing in return. How much longer does Israel have to endure before they finally finish the job that they started last December?

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'US not seeking Iranian regime change' - John Kerry - a living Benedict Arnold

Saying that Obama has a foreign policy is really a stretch. Regardless, the decisions he's been making, and the comments made in the press and behind closed doors are not only dangerous for The United States and Israel, but they are borderline traitorous. Obama's reckless foreign policy will end-up being responsible for the deaths of millions of people across the Middle East.
Rees

from The Jerusalem Post
By Hilary Leila Krieger
Jerusalem Post Correspondent

The United States has stepped back from the notion of "regime change" in Iran, US Sen. John Kerry stressed Wednesday, urging that Iran also moderate its actions.

We are not in a regime change mode," said the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a hearing on the Islamic Republic. "Just as we abandon calls for regime change in Teheran and recognize a legitimate Iranian role in the region, Iran's leaders must moderate their behavior and that of their proxies, Hizbullah and Hamas."

Kerry praised the Obama administration's focus on diplomacy with Iran, adding that "engagement alone is not a strategy and talks are not an end in themselves." The Senate committee is set to release a report on Iran and its nuclear ambitions Thursday.

Kerry also raised questions about the utility of sanctions, an option the administration has threatened to ramp up if talks fail.

"Sanctions - even coordinated, multilateral sanctions - are a blunt instrument with an imperfect track record. When it comes to Iran, the verdict on them is mixed at best," he said. "Sanctions slowed Iran's nuclear program, but they did not prevent it from acquiring the capacity to enrich uranium on an industrial scale."

Still, he described sanctions as "far more likely" to succeed that military force when that possibility was raised by witness Nicholas Burns, a top State Department official in the Bush administration tasked with the Iran portfolio.

"I don't see Iran negotiating seriously if there isn't a marriage between diplomacy and the threat of force. It's a language they understand," said Burns, who recommended that the Obama administration to reiterate the possibility that force could be used.

In response to Burns's comments, State Department Spokesman Robert Wood said later Wednesday that, "Our policy's very clear. We're pursuing diplomacy, a two-track approach with our other partners … and that's where our efforts are focused." Burns emphasized that he didn't think force should be seriously considered in the near term, and also cautioned that "I don't think it could work" if used later on.

For now, he praised the Obama approach to the issue and its focus on engagement, differing from recent comments from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that only three months should be allowed for diplomacy.

"My assumption is there is time," he said, though added that a timetable should be set so negotiations don't continue indefinitely.

On Tuesday, Kerry defended the Obama administration's approach on Iran in a speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "When we have engaged effectively with hostile nations in the past, we did so fortified by moral authority, committed allies, and the strongest military in the world," he said. "That's exactly how we should engage Iran today - not to accept the unacceptable, but to make sure Iran never gets a nuclear bomb."
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Poll: Most Israelis would support Iran strike

from The Jerusalem Post
By HERB KEINON

A vast majority (66%) of Israelis said they would support military action if diplomatic and economic efforts failed to get Iran to stop uranium enrichment, and of that number, 75% would support this action even if the Obama administration were opposed, according to a survey jointly commissioned by Bar-Ilan University's BESA center and the ADL, published on Sunday.

Regarding the US president, most respondents have an overall favorable opinion of Barack Obama, but are skeptical about his Middle East policies; while 60 percent said they had either a "somewhat favorable" or "very favorable" opinion of Obama, and 14% said their attitude toward him was unfavorable, only 32% of the respondents said they approved of Obama's policies toward Israel, and 21% said they disapproved.

Fully 47%, however, had no answer regarding those policies, an indication that people were still forming an opinion.

Bar-Ilan University's Eytan Gilboa, a professor of international communications who directed the poll along with BESA director Efraim Inbar, said Israelis were making a distinction between Obama, whom they liked, and his policies toward the region, of which they were more skeptical.

While a 60% approval rating for Obama among Israeli Jews is high, it is still significantly below the president's popularity rating among American Jews, where tracking polls conducted through the new president's first 100 days in office showed that 79% of Jews approved of Obama's performance so far.

The BESA/ADL poll showed that Israelis were ambivalent about Obama's connection to Israel, with 38% characterizing his attitude toward Israel as "friendly" or "very friendly," 33% as "neutral," and 8% characterizing it as "unfriendly" or "very unfriendly."

Gilboa noted that throughout the survey, the younger respondents, aged 18 to 41, were more hawkish in their views than the older ones.

Gilboa said that, counterintuitively, the younger respondents had less trust in Obama and were more in favor of military action against Iran, even against US wishes.

He said this represented a degree of distrust among the youth of politicians and politics as usual, and said the attitude was consistent with the fact that Israeli youth voted more heavily for Israel Beiteinu in the last elections than their elders,

The poll, which was taken in advance of a conference on US-Israel relations to be held at Bar-Ilan University later this week, was very similar to a poll taken two years ago - albeit without reference to Obama - and the earlier poll provided a baseline for comparison.

As opposed to the 2007 poll, where 62% of the respondents said that American Jews should feel free to criticize Israel and the government's policies, and 36% said they should not, this time the numbers were reversed, with 35% saying American Jews could criticize Israel, and 52% saying they should not.

Gilboa interpreted this as an indication that Israeli Jews felt less secure about US policies than they did two years ago.

"What the public is saying is that since we don't know much about Obama, and don't trust him, US Jews must be careful about criticizing us," he said.

Among the other findings in the poll were that fully 72% of Israelis had a positive attitude of the US, up eight points from 2007, and 76% believe that the US would come to Israel's aid in a serious crisis involving a threat to Israel's existence, a figure down four percentage points from 2007.

Some 49% of the respondents said that US relations with Israel were close because of Israel's role as a strategic partner, 26% attributed the support to the political power of American Jewry, and 15% said it had to do with the democratic tradition and values shared by the two countries.

The telephone poll, carried out by Maagar Mochot, was conducted among a representative sample of 610 Jewish Israeli adults aged 18 and above. The poll had a 4.5% margin of error.
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Neutering An Ally - to death...

from Investor's Business Daily
Posted Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Middle East: The U.S. may be embracing a radical foreign-policy position fraught with danger for the whole world: the nonsensical notion that de-nuclearizing Israel will stop Iran.

According to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., we are no longer "in regime change mode" toward Iran.

The dirty little secret is that we never were. Years of opportunities to wage serious economic warfare against the Islamofascist regime in Tehran have been squandered.

Nor did the U.S. follow the advice outlined by Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute in his book, "The Iranian Time Bomb," and publicly aide Iran's many dissident leaders with material support like satellite phones, laptops and software to confound the regime's filtering of the Internet.

Ledeen wanted such items "distributed to the key groups: students, teachers . . . key religious leaders, both inside Iran and to their supporters outside."

Paired with pumping up the strike funds of worker organizations within Iran, such moves could have led to general strikes and mass demonstrations, possibly bringing down the mullahs' regime in the manner in which it was founded 30 years ago.

Finally, we have not taken military action against Iran's well-spread-out and fortified nuclear sites — a difficult task that isn't getting any easier with the passage of time.

Nicholas Burns, the third-ranking official in the State Department during the Bush administration, even unhelpfully told the world this week there was no "scenario where military force could actually fully stop" Iran's nuclear program.

It's in this highly troubling context that the U.S. seems to be saying, "Well, maybe if we have Israel get rid of nukes, Iran will do the same." By that thinking, World War II could have been avoided by our sinking the Pacific Fleet ourselves and saving Imperial Japan the trouble of traveling to Pearl Harbor.

An explosive report by Eli Lake in Wednesday's Washington Times suggests the Obama administration could seek linkage between Iran's nuclear ambitions and Israel's atomic arsenal and "expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel's nuclear weapons from international scrutiny," according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

On Tuesday, the administration's assistant secretary of state for verification and compliance, Rose Gottemoeller, called on Israel to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The same Ms. Gottemoeller co-authored a paper in 2005 recommending an agreement in which Israel would move toward nuclear disarmament: Iran would abandon uranium enrichment, and other Mideast powers would scrap their chemical and biological warfare programs.

In pursuit of a "Mideast Nuclear-Free Zone" in which the world can live happily ever after, will the U.S. government now, in effect, echo the propaganda of Iranian officials — that no one should complain about Iran having nukes since Israel has them?

The open secret of Israel's nuclear deterrent has existed for more than 40 years. It has constituted a danger to no one — in fact, it has prevented full-scale conventional wars in the Middle East.

A nuclear-armed Iran, on the other hand, would mean weapons of mass destruction in the hands of jihadists who'd like to see a Tel Aviv, or a London, or a Washington, go up in a mushroom cloud.

Clearly, Israeli disarmament would only make such genocide likelier.
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Obama indicates support for Iranian Nuclear Weapon - All things considered, he may as well make it official

Obama should hold one of his warm and fuzzy press conferences and officially announce his support for the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program. He might as well, because everything he's said, including what's been said by those in his administration, indicates that he will do nothing to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Obama is now using the Iranian Nuclear Program as leverage to blackmail Israel to agree to his Middle East Peace Process. Obama is bound and determined to go down in history as THE American President that brings about the mythical "Peace in the Middle East." It's rooted in his narcissistic, always needing to be a hero mode. His narcissism will end up being his downfall. Middle East Peace is not going to happen under him or any future American President. The culture and the religions will not allow it to be.

It's unfortunate there are no adults in his administration, because it's time that one steps-forward and gives Obama a "good talking to."

Just when you think the Obama administration couldn't get anymore extreme, Obama decides to employ his attack dog Rahm on Israel and threaten them into submission. I have a feeling that Israel will remain outwardly cordial, but behind the scenes, they are going to make Obama pay dearly. I think they'll find a very clever way to embarass Obama on the national stage.
Rees

How Do You Spell Blackmail? E-M-A-N-U-E-L - He should resign immediately

He is a traitor to his religion, to Israel and to the United States of America. This guy doesn't deserve to remain at his job one more minute. I would hope that someone in a position of power raises hell about what he said.

So he thinks having a two state solution is more important that Israel surviving as a state? I'm literally stunned that he would say such a thing. He is an arrogant punk that's pretty much done and said whatever he wants. I hope it comes back to haunt him.
Rees

Emanuel: Thwarting Iran hinges on Israeli-Palestinian talks
By JPOST.COM STAFF
5-4-2009

Thwarting Iran's nuclear program is conditional on progress in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, according to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Israeli TV reports said Monday that Emanuel made the comments in a closed-door meeting the previous day with 300 major AIPAC donors.

Last month, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israel that it risks losing Arab support for combating threats from Iran if it rejects peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

Clinton said Arab nations had conditioned helping Israel counter Iran on Jerusalem's commitment to the peace process.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post Sunday, former US House speaker Newt Gingrich blasted the Obama administration for setting itself on a collision course with Israel and endangering the Jewish state. He called US President Barack Obama's program of engagement on Iran a "fantasy," and his Middle East policies "very dangerous for Israel." He summed up Obama's approach as "the clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter."
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Michael Oren - Israel will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons

by Natasha Mozgovaya
from the San Francisco Sentinel
May 3, 2009

Israel will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, Israeli media on Sunday quoted Michael Oren, who is slated to be Israel’s next ambassador to the U.S., as telling pro-Israel lobbyists.

Oren, a noted historian, was quoted as saying that Israel would not remain passive while a regime that has sworn to wipe it off the map acquired the means to do this, referring to comments made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He reportedly made the comments at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington.

Former Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, meanwhile, warned the lobbyists of the dire consequences that Iran’s attainment of nuclear weapons would have on Israel and the entire Middle East.

“The terrorists across the region will raise their heads because they will have nuclear backing… it will spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” Sneh told the AIPAC summit.

“Immigration to Israel will stop; parents will encourage their children to leave the country; investment in Israel will drop significantly; moderates in the Middle East will become more extreme.”

The event drew more than 6,000 participants, including politicians, students, Jewish community activists and academics. Much of the discussion at the conference was devoted to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which Israel and the United States say are aimed at producing atomic weapons.
Sneh also touched on the much-touted possibility of an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“From what we know about the progress of Iran’s nuclear program, this is the deadline for a decision,” he said.

“This is an undiplomatic answer, but you need to assume that we have a [military] operational solution, and this is based on what we can do on our own, without permission and without support.”

The former lawmaker’s comments came after the French magazine L’Express reported on Saturday that the Israel Air Force recently staged military exercises between Israel and the British colony of Gibraltar near southern Spain.

The fact that the drills were held 3,800 kilometers away from Israel “confirms that the Israel Defense Forces is making concrete preparations” to attack Iran over its refusal to cooperate with the international community over its contentious nuclear program, according to L’Express.
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Will Israel Survive This? - Seven Existential Threats - Incredible detail describing the Israeli situation

This is very long and detailed. However, if you're interested in Israel and their struggle to survive the ongoing attacks by their enemies, your time will be well-spent reading this article.
Rees

from Commentary Magazine.com
by Michael B. Oren
May 3, 2009

Rarely in modern history have nations faced genuine existential threats. Wars are waged to change regimes, alter borders, acquire resources, and impose ideologies, but almost never to eliminate another state and its people. This was certainly the case during World War II, in which the Allies sought to achieve the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan and to oust their odious leaders, but never to destroy the German and Japanese states or to annihilate their populations. In the infrequent cases in which modern states were threatened with their survival, the experience proved to be traumatic in the extreme. Military coups, popular uprisings, and civil strife are typical by-products of a state’s encounter with even a single existential threat.

The State of Israel copes not only with one but with at least seven existential threats on a daily basis. These threats are extraordinary not only for their number but also for their diversity. In addition to external military dangers from hostile regimes and organizations, the Jewish State is endangered by domestic opposition, demographic trends, and the erosion of core values. Indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to find an example of another state in the modern epic that has faced such a multiplicity and variety of concurrent existential threats.

Here are the titles of the seven existential threats discussed in the article. You can click on any of them to go directly to the article.

The Loss of Jerusalem
The Arab Demographic Threat
Delegitimization
Terrorism
A Nuclear-Armed Iran
The Hemorrhaging of Sovereignty
Corruption

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What A Shocker! Antisemitic Muslims!

from Cheat-Seeking Missiles
April 29th 2009
Posted by: Laer

Elaina Cohen has labored long and hard for England’s leftist Labour party, slogging the precincts, pimping the candidates, collecting the cash. So she felt it was her turn to head up an inner-city ward and submitted her application.

It came back stamped “Too white and too Jewish.” Here’s the story:

Elaina Cohen claims that Labour councillor Mahmood Hussain said he would not support her application for an inner-city ward because ‘my Muslim members don’t want you because you are Jewish’.

Mrs Cohen, 50, has made an official complaint about the alleged remarks made by Mr Hussain, a Muslim and former lord mayor of Birmingham.

She said: ‘I am shocked and upset that a member of the Labour Party in this day and age could even think something like that, let alone say it.

‘People should not be allowed to make racist comments like that. If someone in the party feels I cannot represent them because of my colour or religion, that’s ridiculous.” (Daily Mail)

Cohen argued that she had worked hard for Birmingham’s Muslim community and had even been on official visits to Pakistan as part of her Labour labors - but, really, who’s she kidding with that “ridiculous” line. Britain’s Labour party has encouraged massive immigration of Muslims in an effort to secure long-term dominance in local government and Parliament and has kowtowed to their every whim. You want British public toilets to not face Mecca? Sure! You want police dogs to wear booties when searching your houses? Sure! You want us to ban our own flag because it offends you? Why the heck not? You want welfare for your mulitple wives even though polygamy is illegal in England? Why didn’t you ask sooner!

You want Jews sent to extermination camps?

Hussssssain has denied making the comments. But then we know the Qur’an says it’s fine and dandy to lie to infidels in order to further the jihad, and, as it happens, Cohen had a witness:

Lorraine Briscoe, who runs a local community association, was sitting next to Mrs Cohen when the conversation took place on speakerphone last Tuesday.

‘I was disgusted that a councillor could make comments like that in 2009,’ she said.

‘He told her, “They will not vote for someone who is white and Jewish. My Muslim members don’t want you because you are Jewish”.

‘Elaina then asked him if he had talked to his Muslim members about it and he said, “I don’t want to talk about it with you” and hung up.

Two days after the incident, Cohen’s application to run was summarily rejected. She has filed an official complaint with, if you’ll excuse the term, Labour’s management. Get ready for liberal antisemitism, round two.

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BMI airline wipes Israel off the map

from The Jerusalem Post
April 30, 2009

Israel has been excluded from digital maps displayed for passengers on British airline BMI flights from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv.

Instead of viewing Tel Aviv or other Israeli cities signposted on screens, customers flying on two BMI-owned Airbus A320 airplanes have instead been exclusively shown Haifa, spelled 'Khefa' - the Arab name of the city before 1948.

BMI, which runs flights to Tel Aviv twice daily, has declared that the maps displayed are a logistical error due to the company's failure to modify the system created by British airline BMED (British Mediterranean Airways), now defunct, who BMI acquired the planes from two years ago.

BMED, formerly a franchise of British Airways, was absorbed into BMI in October 2007 and previously flew primarily to the Middle East - specifically to Amman, Beirut and Damascus, but not Israel. The maps were therefore previously tailored to its Muslim passengers, said the company, and also highlighted Islamic holy sites.

BMI spokesperson Phil Shepherd told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that the "old maps" were due to be deactivated on Thursday night and new maps, which will label Israel and Tel Aviv, were set to appear on screens in two weeks.

Shepherd commented, "Because of the routes that [BMED] flew at that time, that's why the digital map was showing what it was showing… When we bought [BMED] out, we integrated it into BMI… The moving map should have been disabled when the software was updated, so the moving map shouldn't have been operating at all. It only came to light recently that it was still showing. We had a procedure to switch it off… when we started the Tel Aviv route… but for some reason it wasn't disabled."

British Airways declined to comment on the BMED maps, stating that the airline was simply a franchise that was not run by British Airways.

BMI also made headlines lately for firing a staff member refusing to fly to Saudi Arabia. $22,000-a-year flight attendant Lisa Ashton was told to wear a black robe, known as an 'abaya,' which covers everything but the face, feet and hands, in public places in Saudi Arabia. She was also instructed to walk behind her male colleagues, irrespective of rank. Ashton, a practicing Christian, filed for unfair dismissal at a UK employment tribunal earlier this year; however the court dismissed the case, stating that BMI was justified in imposing "rules of a different culture" on staff. Ashton may seek a judicial review of the decision and has been in consultations with human rights organization Liberty.
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