Monday, March 02, 2009
How to Protest Judicial Suppression of Freedom of Speech in Israel
anti-democratic Israeli judge who convicted a driver of "racism" because
she did not like his bumper sticker?
That whole story is here:
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/02/late-israeli-democracy-dies-on-car.html
Well, if you would like to protest this assault on Israeli democracy by
the judge, you can print off your own copy of the "offending" bumper
sticker, from here: http://halemo.net/satiroom/noterror/noarabs.jpg
You might put it on your car below another sticker that says, "Defend Free
Speech in Israel, Fire Judge Shulamit Dotan!" You could also stick it on
a tee shirt.
2. Israel Can't Afford Any More Dangerous Concessions
Obama shouldn't push the Jewish state to give territory to terrorists.
By TOM GROSS | From today's Wall Street Journal Europe.
TEL AVIV
Hillary Clinton arrives in Israel today on her first visit since becoming
Secretary of State, at a time when many influential people in America and
beyond are clamoring for the Obama administration to pressure Israel into
making major concessions. Before she succumbs to those pressures, she
might want to bear in mind the pain Israel suffered the last time it was
forced to make such concessions -- when Mrs. Clinton's husband was
president.
Getty Images
An example of what Israel gets when it gives territory to terrorists: a
bombed-out bus, Tel Aviv, September 2002.
It is a pain that has many names and faces. One of them is Kinneret Chaya
Boosany. At the very moment that Barack Obama was delivering his historic
victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park in the early hours of Nov. 5, a
small miracle was happening over 6,000 miles away in Israel when Kinneret
gave birth to her first child. Six years earlier, Kinneret, then 23, was
blown up as she worked as a waitress in a coffee shop in Tel Aviv.
Her injuries were so horrific that the doctors gave her a 2% chance of
survival. She remained in a coma for 88 days. When she awoke, she changed
her name from Kinneret to Kinneret Chaya (meaning "Kinneret Lives" in
Hebrew). In her own words, "Kinneret died that night in the flames, but
Kinneret Chaya was born."
She is just one of the thousands of Israelis -- both Jews and Arabs --
injured by Palestinian suicide bombers who were sent out on their deadly
missions by either the Islamist Hamas movement or the Fatah faction headed
by "moderate" Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his
predecessor Yasser Arafat. The number of Israelis killed in terror attacks
has been greatly reduced in recent years after the government built a
security fence to make it harder for bombers to get through.
Today Kinneret's skin still bears the scars of burns over 85% of her body.
She spends many hours in a heavy pressure suit and face mask to prevent
the scarring from getting worse. She cannot go out in the day because the
sun has become her enemy. But Kinneret struggled back to life, through
countless operations and long sessions of physiotherapy, learning to
accept her disfigured body and to smile in spite of her scarred face. And
then in November, even though the doctors said she had only a very slim
chance of a successful pregnancy, the beautiful former teenage ballerina,
who got married at the start of last year, gave birth to a healthy baby
girl.
This story is worth reflecting on as Hillary Clinton arrives here in
Israel. Barely a day goes by way without Jimmy Carter and assorted
European politicians calling on Mr. Obama to coerce Israel into hastily
withdrawing from more land no matter the security risks. The reigning
Nobel Peace Prize laureate, for instance, former Finnish Prime Minister
Martti Ahtisaari, went so far as to use the prize ceremony as a soapbox to
urge Mr. Obama to make pressure on Israel the principal focus of his first
year in office.
Like most Israelis, Kinneret Chaya, whom I saw again last week,
desperately wants peace with the Palestinians. It is my experience of
covering the region as a reporter for many years that no one wants the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict to be peaceably resolved more than Israelis
do.
But Israelis are also very aware of the dangers of naively handing over
territory to terrorists, as was done during the presidency of Secretary of
State Clinton's husband, Bill Clinton, in the 1990s. The vote by Israelis
in elections two weeks ago was not a vote against peace as many Western
commentators claim. It was a vote for realism and security.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's likely next prime minister, has been wrongly
vilified as being against a two-state solution. In fact he is open to the
creation of a Palestinian state, but only if it is one that will live in
peace with Israel. And for this, Mr. Netanyahu argues, you can't simply
wave a magic wand at some fancy signing ceremony on the White House lawn
and say "hey presto" -- which is exactly what politicians tried to do at
the Oslo signing ceremony in 1993.
First the Palestinians need to do the hard work of building institutions
that would allow such a state to succeed -- a functioning economy, the
rule of law and so on. And Mr. Netanyahu is very willing to offer Israeli
assistance in building such mechanisms.
Avigdor Lieberman, one of Mr. Netanyahu's possible coalition partners, who
has been misleadingly described as an extreme rightist by many
journalists, has been even more explicit than Mr. Netanyahu in calling for
a two-state solution, including the division of Jerusalem between Israel
and a future Palestinian state.
Even Shimon Peres, Israel's dovish president, now has second thoughts
about unilateral Israeli concessions. Having long championed territorial
withdrawals to attain peace, Mr. Peres last month acknowledged that it was
a mistake for Israel to withdraw from Gaza in 2005 without first having a
peaceful and democratic Palestinian party to hand that territory to.
Israel has always shown a willingness to make peace if a peace partner
exists, as it did in the case of the late Anwar Sadat of Egypt and
Jordan's King Hussein. Israelis are still waiting for a Palestinian Anwar
Sadat.
One of Mr. Netanyahu's most difficult challenges during his first term as
prime minister from 1996 to 1999 was coping with a Clinton administration
that berated him for his belief that peace must be built from the bottom
up through the liberalization of Palestinian society, rather than from the
top down by giving land to terrorists. The question is whether President
Obama and Hillary Clinton have come round to Mr. Netanyahu's way of
thinking.
Kinneret Chaya is an exemplary and courageous figure. The international
community owes it to her and the countless other terror victims to
confront the basic realities of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. By all
means, pressure Israel into making concessions that do not threaten its
security -- into not expanding West Bank settlements, for instance. But
Israeli concessions will never resolve the conflict in themselves. They
will only work if there is corresponding pressure on the Palestinians to
accept Israel's existence as a Jewish state and to make aid to the
Palestinians conditional on putting an end to their inciting for the
destruction of Israel.
Mr. Gross is the former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph.
3.
http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Ronit%20Lentin.htm
Destroying Israel via Polysyllables
4. Subject: Remember This Guy?
'Here's my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.'- Ronald Reagan
'The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the
government and I'm here to help.' - Ronald Reagan
'The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's
just that they know so much that isn't so.'- Ronald Reagan
'Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was
too strong.' - Ronald Reagan
'I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have
looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.'- Ronald
Reagan
'The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but
doesn't have to take the civil service examination.'
- Ronald Reagan
'Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one
end and no sense of responsibility at the other.'- Ronald Reagan
'The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a
government program.'- Ronald Reagan
'It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have
learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.'- Ronald Reagan
'Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short
phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it
stops moving, subsidize it.'
Ronald Reagan
'Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed, there are many rewards;
if you disgrace yourself, you can always write a book.'- Ronald Reagan
'No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is as formidable
as the will and moral courage of free men and women.'- Ronald Reagan
5. History Upside Down
The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression
by David Meir-Levi
New York: Encounter Books, 2007. 152 pp. $20
Reviewed by Asaf Romirowsky
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2009
http://www.romirowsky.com/4644/history-upside-down
Meir-Levi provides a valuable guide for those who wish to understand one
important aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict?the battle over tthe
conflict's historical narrative.
Supporters of Israel face the challenge of differentiating between
legitimate criticism of the Jewish state and a form of anti-Semitism that
uses criticism of Israel instead of Jews in order to provide a fig leaf of
deniability. To recognize genuine condemnation of Israel, Natan Sharansky,
former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician, suggests a test of what he
calls the "Three Ds": demonization (such as comparisons of Israelis to
Nazis and of Palestinian refugee camps to Auschwitz), double standards (in
which Jews and Israelis are held to different and often impossible
standards in comparison to other peoples and nations), and
delegitimization (which seeks to deny the existence of a Jewish people,
Judaism, or the State of Israel). Today, we increasingly see a coordinated
campaign to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish state?its right to exist,
its Jewissh character, and its right to self-defense.
Meir-Levi's book attempts to unearth the historical root problems of
defending Israel; he shows how doing so has become increasingly difficult
as a result of the intellectualization of the debate. The author traces
the origins of Palestinian revisionist history and details how it
undermines the pursuit of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He
argues that until Palestinian culture comes to accept Israel's right to
exist as a Jewish state, that demonization will continue. For this to
change, the historical facts must be taught and debated free of the
mendacity that is standard fare in the Muslim world and in Europe.
Furthermore, what the author defines as "Palestinianism" is the process of
adoption of the Palestinian cause by liberal groups, such as women's and
gay rights groups, which use the Palestinian cause in the same fashion as
the Arab world uses it?as a media tool to galvanize theirr own agenda.
Added to the regular use of Holocaust rhetoric, which Palestinians use to
describe their treatment at the hands of the Israelis, a popular narrative
has been created in which Palestinians are now the David and Israel the
Goliath.
6. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3678574,00.html
A case of leftist arrogance
Left convinced of its superiority, wants rightist government to fail
Hanoch Daum
7. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3677147,00.html
Don.t change system
No need to change system of government just because leftist camp lost
elections
Shlomo Angel
8. Roger Cohen, dupe:
http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2009/02/roger-cohen-dupe-of-tehran.html
