Iran Wants Be a Super Power

Iran Wants Be a Super Power: ”

Iran Wants Be a Super Power: ‘Iran’s nuclear weapons program is about more than destroying the ‘Zionist Entity.’ Iran wants to be a super power on the scale of the United States. Iraq acts like a super power feeding little satellite countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Nothing makes Iran happier than tweaking at the United States because its President Aym-a-shithead feels that once it develops nuclear weapons Iran will be on par with the evil Satan, the USA.

Iran’s Global Ambition

by Michael Rubin

While the United States has focused its attention on Iranian activities in the greater Middle East, Iran has worked assiduously to expand its influence in Latin America and Africa. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s outreach in both areas has been deliberate and generously funded. He has made significant strides in Latin America, helping to embolden the anti-American bloc of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. In Africa, he is forging strong ties as well. The United States ignores these developments at its peril, and efforts need to be undertaken to reverse Iran’s recent gains.

Both before and after the Islamic Revolution, Iran has aspired to be a regional power. Prior to 1979, Washington supported Tehran’s ambitions-after all, the shah provided a bulwark against both communist and radical Arab nationalism. Following the Islamic Revolution, however, U.S. officials viewed Iranian visions of grandeur warily.

This wariness has grown as the Islamic Republic pursues nuclear technology in contravention to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards agreement and multiple United Nations (UN) Security Council resolutions. In addition, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has played an increasingly destabilizing role in Iran’s immediate neighborhood.[1] But while U.S. officials scramble to devise a strategy to contain, deter, and perhaps roll back Iranian influence in the greater Middle East, Ahmadinejad’s government and the IRGC, flush with cash and overconfident with recent success, now aspire to be worldwide players.

Compartmentalized State Department and Defense Department officers focus on Iranian influence in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf states, and the Palestinian Authority, but a broader perspective that spans country desks suggests that the Islamic Republic now seeks to become a global power. Under Ahmadinejad, Iranian officials have pursued a coordinated diplomatic, economic, and military strategy to expand their influence in Latin America and Africa. They have found success not only in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, but also in Senegal, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. These new alliances will together challenge U.S. interests in these states and in the wider region, especially if Tehran pursues an inkblot strategy to expand its influence to other regional states.

Latin America: Challenging the Monroe Doctrine

There has long been an Iranian presence in Latin America. Some time ago, Hezbollah established itself at the point where Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina meet.[2] Terrorists linked to Iran bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and a Jewish community center in the same city in 1994. In 2006, Argentine prosecutors issued warrants for former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and seven others on charges of ordering and masterminding the 1994 attack.[3] The Hezbollah presence in the region has remained a source of concern for policymakers to the present.[4]

Only under Ahmadinejad, though, has the Iranian government pursued a sustained effort to reach out to Latin American countries. Using hundreds of millions-if not billions-of dollars in aid and assistance, Ahmadinejad has worked to create an anti-American bloc with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. While Ahmadinejad’s first priority may be to solidify diplomatic support among third-world countries, his baiting-and the subsequent baiting by his allies-of Washington and his efforts to further destabilize the neighborhood suggest that he now seeks a permanent Iranian presence on the U.S. doorstep.

The cornerstone of Ahmadinejad’s Latin America policy is the formation of an anti-American axis with Venezuela, a goal driven as much by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez as it is by the Iranian leader. During a July 2006 visit to Tehran, Chávez told a Tehran University crowd, ‘We have to save humankind and put an end to the U.S. empire.’[5] The two met again just two months later during the Non-Aligned Movement conference in Havana.[6] When Chávez again visited Tehran-just a year after his first visit-supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei granted him an audience,[7] an honor bestowed only upon political figures the Iranian leadership deems its closest partners. At the time, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki quipped that ‘Hugo Chávez is becoming-or rather has already become-a household name in Iran and perhaps the region, thanks to his frequent trips to the Islamic Republic.’[8] Ahmadinejad and Chávez used the visit to declare an ‘Axis of Unity’ against the United States.[9]

Shuttle diplomacy has gone both ways. Just two months after fêting Chávez in Tehran, Ahmadinejad visited him in Caracas.[10] ‘Together we are surely growing stronger, and in truth no one can defeat us,’ he told the Venezuelan press.[11] Standing beside Chávez during a trip to Tehran just four months later-Chávez’s fourth visit to the Iranian capital in just two years-Ahmadinejad declared, ‘The peoples of Iran and Venezuela will stand shoulder to shoulder with the disadvantaged nations of the world in spite of the opposition of World Imperialism,’ which is Ahmadinejad’s moniker for the United States.[12]

Whereas Iran plies poorer countries with aid on condition that they alter their stances toward the United States, both Iran and Venezuela are oil rich, and so the relationship is more cooperative. Certainly, Tehran appreciates Chávez’s diplomatic interventions. Indeed, had Venezuela been victorious in its efforts to win a UN Security Council seat in 2006, it is doubtful that Washington or its European allies would have achieved the symbolic victory of unanimous Security Council resolutions sanctioning Iran’s nuclear program.[13]

Both leaders use their mutual embrace to overcome international isolation and sanctions. During his July 2007 visit to Tehran, Chávez presented Ahmadinejad with an Airbus A340-200 as a sign of friendship[14] at a time when many Western countries looked askance at exporting modern aircraft to the Islamic Republic for fear that a plane might be cannibalized for spare parts in support of Iran’s aging military fleet. Such cooperation has made moot the efforts of U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to offer such concessions in order to entice greater Iranian compliance toward its international commitments. For example, just months after she agreed that U.S. companies could export spare aircraft parts to Iran,[15] Ahmadinejad announced the commencement of scheduled passenger flights between Tehran and Caracas.[16]

Both leaders have also used their solidarity to support the other against domestic criticism. On opening two Iranian factories in Caracas, Chávez lauded the ‘achievements made after the Islamic Revolution,’ contrasting them sharply with life under the shah[17]-comments that meant little to the Venezuelan audience but helped Ahmadinejad deflect domestic criticism of his management of Iran’s failing economy. Ahmadinejad, for his part, parroted Chávez’s anti-American rhetoric to the Venezuelan audience, supporting the populist president’s contention that Venezuelan ills derive from U.S. plots rather than economic mismanagement.[18] More bizarre have been reports-clearly false-that ‘entire native tribes’ in Venezuela have converted to Shia Islam.[19] Such propaganda, however, plays well to clerical constituencies in Iran that may feel that their president’s adventurism runs contrary to more immediate Iranian regional interests.

Increased trade has augmented the diplomatic embrace. As Chávez moved to nationalize Western oil facilities in Venezuela,[20] the Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA announced a $4 billion joint Iran-Venezuela oil production project in east-central Venezuela.[21] In April 2007, Mottaki bragged that bilateral trade between Venezuela and the Islamic Republic would soon total $18 billion,[22] which, even if an exaggeration, is nevertheless a sign of Iranian strategy to pursue soft power influence. Several recent visitors to Caracas have commented on the number of Iranians in the city’s hotels.

Cuba, of course, has been part of the Iranian-Venezuelan embrace, although Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s illness and the communist island nation’s poverty may have dampened its utility as a primary player. Besides hosting the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in 2006, however, Havana has joined Tehran and Caracas in efforts to form a joint shipping line[23]-an asset that, given the disorganization of U.S. and European sanctions enforcement, might help each country bypass certain sanctions. Not every shipping company, for example, may be as compliant with Tehran’s sensitivities as one operated by Cubans and Venezuelans. There have already been reports-refuted by the Venezuelan ambassador in Tehran-that Venezuela has enabled Iranian scientists to conduct some nuclear work in the South American state, out of the view of international inspectors.[24]

Both Tehran and Caracas have used their petrodollar windfall to encourage states in Latin America and Africa to embark upon confrontational policies toward the United States.[25] Perhaps the primary beneficiaries in Latin America have been Nicaragua and Bolivia. Just days after Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega’s inauguration, Ahmadinejad reveled in the former socialist revolutionary’s return to power. ‘The two nations share identical ideals’ and a common enemy in the United States, Ahmadinejad said.[26] Ortega endorsed ’strong bonds’ between the ‘two nations and [their] revolutions.’[27] Iran’s embassy in Managua is now the largest diplomatic mission in the city.[28] Ortega returned Ahmadinejad’s visit within months of taking office, traveling to Tehran on a jet lent by Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi.[29] In Tehran, Ahmadinejad spoke of growing Iranian-Nicaraguan ties as the cornerstones of ‘an order based on justice, peace and brotherhood.’[30] In a subsequent session with Ortega, Khamenei spoke of their mutual antipathy toward the United States.[31]

Venezuela might be able to stand on its own, but Nicaragua cannot. The Islamic Republic’s embrace of Nicaragua came with strings attached. Storm-ravaged and unfriendly to investors, Nicaragua gained a needed cash infusion. In the months after Ortega’s visit to the Islamic Republic, the two countries signed a number of trade accords,[32] and Tehran agreed to finance a $350 million Nicaraguan port.[33] After the announcement of these deals, Ortega called the United States ‘a terrorist nation’[34] and later endorsed the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.[35] Alluding to this program, Ahmadinejad even offered to transfer ‘up-to-date experiences and knowledge to Nicaragua.’[36] One seasoned Nicaraguan ambassador, slightly embarrassed by Ortega’s pro-Iranian rhetoric, told an interlocutor that not only Tehran but also Caracas had made aid to Nicaragua contingent upon Managua’s frequent statements of support for Tehran. Regardless of whether Nicaragua is motivated by Venezuelan cash or ideological antipathy toward the United States, an isolated Tehran gains an ally with ‘identical and common political views.’[37]

Bolivia, too, has become an important Iranian ally. Under the leadership of Juan Evo Morales, La Paz has welcomed alliance with Tehran. As with Nicaragua, Bolivia gets aid-upwards of $1.1 billion in ‘industrial cooperation’[38]-and Iran gets a diplomatic ally. On September 4, 2007, amid international efforts to augment sanctions against the Islamic Republic, Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca Céspedes endorsed ‘Iran’s nuclear rights’ and called for international support for the Islamic Republic’s position.[39] Tehran rewarded Bolivia with the opening of an embassy in La Paz,[40] certainly a sign that Tehran no longer saw the landlocked South American country as peripheral to its interests.

There is nothing wrong with countries engaging with other countries. Tehran could argue that they have as much interest in strong relations with Latin America as Washington has with the Persian Gulf emirates or newly independent Central Asian or Caucasian republics. But it would be dangerous to dismiss Iranian outreach as altruistic and irrelevant to U.S. national security concerns.

The Islamic Republic’s state broadcasting authority has in recent months established partnerships with its Bolivian and Nicaraguan counterparts, not only to help these countries expand their own messaging, but also to have a platform for Iranian-sponsored broadcasts ‘for all of Latin America.’[41] The idea that Ahmadinejad might see Latin America as a beachhead from which to conduct an aggressive strategy against the United States and its allies gained further credence when, earlier this month, Colombian forces raided a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) encampment and seized a computer whose files referenced FARC plans to purchase fifty kilograms of uranium,[42] raising concern among some U.S. officials that the purchase may have been facilitated with Iranian money and offices.

Africa: Iran’s Next Frontier

With successive U.S. administrations and European governments effectively ignoring Africa, Tehran sees its fifty-two countries as diplomatic easy picking. On January 29, 2008, Mottaki declared that this year would mark a ‘milestone in Iran-Africa ties.’[43] Three days later, while attending the Africa Union summit in Addis Ababa, Mottaki announced that Iran would soon host a summit of African foreign ministers in Tehran.[44]

The traditional pattern in which Iranian actions fail to live up to diplomatic rhetoric also appears to be changing in Africa, with Tehran developing strong partnerships with a number of states. The Islamic Republic has forged particularly strong ties with Senegal, once a Cold War ally of the United States but now quietly turning into West Africa’s Venezuela. President Abdoulaye Wade has traveled twice to Tehran to meet with Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, first in 2006 and again in 2008.[45] During his most recent visit, he provided a backdrop for Khamenei to declare that developing unity between Islamic countries like Senegal and Iran can weaken ‘the great powers’ like the United States.[46] It would be a mistake to dismiss this as a rhetorical flourish: on January 27, 2008, a week after Senegalese foreign minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio announced that he, too, would visit Tehran, Minister of Armed Forces Becaye Diop met with his Iranian counterpart to discuss expanding bilateral defense ties between the two states.[47]

Senior Iranian officials have returned the visits. On July 22, 2007, judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi and government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham-among the closest confidantes of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, respectively-departed for Dakar, where they met Wade and Senegalese prime minister Cheikh Hadjibou Soumaré. Shahroudi declared, ‘We believe it is our duty to expand ties with Islamic countries and use the capabilities and potentials [sic] of Muslim states to help the growth and spread of Islam.’[48] On March 12, 2008, Ahmadinejad left for a visit to the West African state.[49]

While the Iranian leadership might be most interested in expanding a Muslim bloc-especially one that might supplant the influence of Sunni Arab states-the Senegalese leadership seems most interested in immediate economic benefits. ‘Energy, Oil Prospecting, Industry: Senegal Benefits from Iranian Solutions,’ a headline in the official government newspaper declared after Wade’s first visit to Tehran.[50] After the reciprocal Iranian visit, Wade announced that Iran would build an oil refinery, a chemical plant, and an $80 million car assembly plant in the West African nation.[51] Within weeks, Samuel Sarr, Senegal’s energy minister, visited Tehran and returned with a pledge that Iran would supply Senegal with oil for a year and purchase a 34 percent stake in Senegal’s oil refinery.[52] Such aid probably came with strings attached. On November 25, 2007, during the third meeting of the Iran-Senegal joint economic commission, Wade endorsed Iran’s nuclear program.[53]

Senegal is not alone among those countries Tehran is cultivating. While Iranian officials trumpet Islam during meetings with Muslim officials, the Islamic Republic is willing to embrace any African state-Muslim or not-that finds itself estranged from the West in general and the United States in particular. Here, Sudan and Zimbabwe especially have been beneficiaries. Both European governments and Washington have sought to isolate Sudan for what many international human rights groups deem genocide in Darfur. As the international community sought to tighten diplomatic sanctions on Khartoum, Ahmadinejad moved to embrace Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.[54] Ahmadinejad was forthright: Iranian-Sudanese ties should be built around the understanding that both governments would defend each other in international settings.[55] Just this month, Iran’s defense minister visited Khartoum and called the African state ‘the cornerstone’ of the Islamic Republic’s Africa policies.[56]

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s longtime president, has been as poisonous for his country as Bashir has been for Sudan. Mugabe’s government demonizes racial and ethnic minorities, and his economic policies have forced the breadbasket of southern Africa to face famine.[57] But as the international community has isolated Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, Tehran has reached out to fill the gap. Iranian politicians may speak of their commitment to social justice, but their crass indifference to social issues and public health and well-being are on display as they work to transform Africa’s most brutal dictatorship into a pillar of Iranian influence in Africa. Mottaki initiated outreach to Zimbabwe on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in 2006.[58] The two countries pledged uniformity of policy.[59] At a Tehran press conference in November of that year, Mugabe said, ‘Iran and Zimbabwe think alike and have been described [as belonging to] the ‘Axis of Evil.’ . . . Those countries that think alike should come together.’[60] In subsequent days, the two countries signed deals to boost energy cooperation, restart Zimbabwe’s defunct oil refinery, and underwrite agricultural policies that have left the southern African nation on the brink of famine.[61] The Iranian ambassador in Harare pledged to help Mugabe repel sanctions.[62]

South Africa has become another Iranian regional ally. Grateful for the Islamic Republic’s opposition to apartheid, the two countries formally reestablished relations in 1994. While subsequent bilateral rhetoric was always warm, in recent years, Tehran has used oil and trade to develop its ties with Pretoria. The Iranian strategy is deliberate. ‘South Africa is a key member of the Non-Aligned Movement, a bloc of developing countries that has resisted the efforts to force Tehran to halt uranium enrichment,’ explained a commentary in Iran’s official English-language newspaper.[63]

Having failed to get Venezuela onto the UN Security Council, the Iranian government has been anxious to exploit South Africa’s rotating membership and its presence on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) board of governors.[64] In February 2007, for example, Ali Larijani, then the nuclear negotiator for Iran, traveled to South Africa to meet with President Thabo Mbeki.[65] The strategy has paid dividends. Despite the February 2008 IAEA report that found that the Islamic Republic continued to enrich uranium in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty safeguards agreement and two UN Security Council resolutions,[66] the South African government has used its rotating membership on the UN Security Council to advocate against any further sanctions.[67]

Iranian officials have been just as energetic in cultivating smaller African states. In September 2007, interim Iranian oil minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari pledged cooperation to exploit Uganda’s newfound oil field,[68] and two months later, the Export Development Bank of Iran pledged $1 million to underwrite microfinance in Uganda.[69] In November, Mottaki also announced an initiative to expand relations with Malawi[70] after that country’s president endorsed Iran’s right to pursue nuclear technology.[71] The same month, Mottaki welcomed the Côte d’Ivoire foreign minister to Tehran[72]-again, after the West African nation’s ambassador threw his country’s support behind Iran in the dispute with the UN Security Council over Iran’s nuclear program.[73] Indeed, while the Iranian government spreads millions of dollars around Africa, its aid appears conditional upon support. In recent weeks, the Iranian government has used declarations by the leaders of Lesotho, Mauritania, Mali, and Namibia to bolster support for its nuclear program.[74]

Conclusion

Iran will remain at the forefront of U.S. concern well into the next administration. The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, a joint product of the sixteen organizations comprising the U.S. intelligence community, undercut both a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear defiance and the ability of the Bush administration to constrain Iran’s program through unilateral action.[75] The January 6, 2008, confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz between U.S. warships and IRGC speedboats only underscored the tension.

Absent a diplomatic solution or the prospect of a viable military option, many in Washington embrace containment and deterrence as plan B. For example, General John Abizaid, commander of U.S. Central Command until March 2007, said, ‘I believe we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear. . . . There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran.’[76] Containing Iran, however, is easier said than done.

Throughout his administration’s second term, Bush has struggled to convince regional allies that his commitments to them are solid. As a result, regional U.S. allies like Egypt, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, and Turkey now seek separate accommodation with Iran.

But even as dozens of diplomats, intelligence analysts, and military officers focus on how to counter Iranian strategy in the region and enhance U.S. public diplomacy, the Iranian challenge has grown far broader. The United States has a compartmentalized strategy; Iran has a global strategy that Washington has been unable to counter: for every three trips Ahmadinejad takes to Latin America, Bush takes one.

The chances for long-term Iranian success may be doubtful-Latin American and African countries may welcome Iranian aid and take advantage of Tehran’s soft power with the same enthusiasm with which they sometimes divert U.S. Agency for International Development and World Bank assistance, but any ideological solidarity will be far more limited to each country’s immediate leadership. Still, Ahmadinejad’s outreach to Latin America and Africa can do damage. The Islamic Republic is not an altruistic power. Its aid is conditional, and sometimes these conditions run counter to U.S. interests. At the very least, Tehran’s newfound allies in Latin America and Africa provide needed diplomatic solace and enable Iranian authorities to launder dual use goods and, in theory, outsource suspect weapons research. More worrisome, the Islamic Republic might use its new havens to destabilize neighboring states-indeed, Tehran may be cooperating with Caracas to undermine Álvaro Uribe’s administration in Colombia-or as launching pads for terrorism against U.S. interests. The Pentagon may have strengthened its facilities in the Persian Gulf, but Iran and its proxies may find U.S. interests in places like Cancun and the Caribbean more vulnerable. Just as in 1972 the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine outsourced a terrorist attack on Israel’s main airport to the Japanese Red Army, IRGC planners may find their African and Latin American allies compliant in their desire to lash out at U.S. interests, especially if cooperation comes with further financial reward. The 1994 Buenos Aires bombing already demonstrates Tehran’s willingness to attack soft targets half a world away.

If the Bush administration and its successor continue to ignore Iran’s growing global ambitions and do not implement a strategy to reverse Ahmadinejad’s recent gains, Washington may find that Iran, not the United States, holds the upper hand in a high-stakes game of deterrence.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI, and editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Mr. Rubin thanks AEI colleagues Ali Alfoneh, Megan Davy, Mauro De Lorenzo, and Mark Falcoff for their help and advice. AEI editorial assistant Christy Hall Robinson worked with Mr. Rubin to edit and produce this Middle Eastern Outlook.

1. See Frederick W. Kagan, Danielle Pletka, and Kimberly Kagan, Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan (Washington, DC: AEI, 2008), available at www.aei.org/publication27526/.
2. See, for example, Todd Lewan, ‘Hunt for Islamic Terrorists Leads to Border Region,’ Associated Press, September 19, 1994.
3. ‘Iran Charged over Argentina Bomb,’ BBC News, October 25, 2006, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6085768.stm (accessed March 10, 2008).
4. See, for example, Matthew Levitt, ‘Hezbollah Finances: Funding the Party of God,’ in Terrorism Financing and State Responses: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Jeanne Giraldo and Harold Trinkunas, 134-51 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).
5. ‘Chávez Decorated in Iran; Initials Cooperation Pacts,’ ElUniversal.com (Caracas), July 31, 2006.
6. Anita Snow, ‘U.S. Foes Meet at Nonaligned Summit,’ Associated Press, September 15, 2006.
7. ‘Iranian Supreme Leader Receives Venezuelan President,’ Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) (Tehran), July 1, 2007.
8. Kayhan International (Tehran), July 2, 2007.
9. Parisa Hafezi, ‘Iran, Venezuela in ‘Axis of Unity’ against U.S.,’ Reuters, July 2, 2007.
10. ‘Ahmadinejad Due in Bolivia, Venezuela,’ IRNA, September 26, 2007.
11. ‘Ahmadinejad Cements Ties with Chávez,’ chinadaily. com.cn, September 29, 2007.
12. ‘Rais-e jomhour dar mosahebeh-ye matbou’ati-ye moshtarek ba Chavez: Dowlat-e Mellat-e Iran va Venezuela ala-raghm-e meil-e estrtekbar-e jahani, dar kenar-e mellat-ha-ye mahroum khahad istad,’ Iranian Student News Agency (Tehran), November 19, 2007.
13. See, for example, United Nations (UN) Security Council, Resolution 1737 (2006), December 23, 2006, available at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/681/42/PDF/N0668142.pdf?OpenElement
UN Security Council, Resolution 1747 (2007), March 24, 2007, available at http://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/5891176.html (accessed March 13, 2008).
14. ‘Tahvil-e havapayma-ye jadid airbus az keshvar Venezuela beh havapaymale-e jomhuri eslame iran,’ Fars News Agency (Tehran), July 1, 2007.
15. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, ‘Approval of License Request for Civilian Aircraft Spare Parts to Iran Air,’ U.S. Department of State, October 10, 2006, available at www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/73811.htm (accessed March 12, 2008).
16. ‘Iran, Venezuela to Start Direct Flights,’ Fars News Agency, February 10, 2007; and ‘First Tehran-Caracas Plane Lands in Damascus,’ IRNA, March 2, 2007.
17. ‘Chávez Hails IRI Achievements,’ Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (Tehran), June 24, 2007.
18. Rafael Noboa, ‘Chávez, Ahmadinejad Solidify Iran-Venezuela Ties,’ Agence France-Presse, September 18, 2006.
19. ‘Gerayesh-e dast-e jam’i-ye be eslam dar barkhi qaba’el Amrika-ye latin,’ Raja News (Tehran), November 4, 2007; and ‘Hemayat-e gostardeh Chavez va Castro az moballeghan-e eslami dar Amrika-ye Latin,’ Rasa News (Tehran), December 7, 2007.
20. Juan Forero and Steve Inskeep, ‘Chávez Nationalizes Venezuelan Oil Fields,’ Morning Edition, National Public Radio, May 1, 2007.
21. ‘Iran, Venezuela to Invest $4 bln in Joint Oil Project,’ Fars News Agency, July 12, 2007.
22. ‘FM: Iran, Venezuela to Increase Financial Ties up to USD 18bn,’ IRNA, April 20, 2007.
23. ‘Iran, Latin Countries Launch Joint Shipping Line,’ Fars News Agency, November 5, 2007.
24. ‘Safir-e Venezuela dar Tehran: Az ehtemal hamkari-ye hastehi-ye Iran va Venezuela bi khabaram,’ Aftab-e Yazd (Yazd), November 15, 2007.
25. Natalie Obiko Pearson, ‘Iran and Venezuela Plan Anti-U.S. Fund,’ USA Today, January 14, 2007.
26. ‘Ortega Symbol of Nicaragua’s Justice-Seeking,’ Fars News Agency, January 15, 2007.
27. Ibid.
28. Andres Oppenheimer, ‘Beware Iran in Latin America,’ Miami Herald, September 30, 2007.
29. ‘Nicaraguan President to Visit Iran,’ Fars News Agency, June 4, 2007.
30. ‘Iran, Nicaragua Stress Solidarity,’ Fars News Agency, June 10, 2007.
31. ‘Iran Slams U.S. as It Hails Nicaragua’s Ortega,’ Fars News Agency, June 11, 2007.
32. ‘Nicaragua Signs Accords with Iran,’ Fars News Agency, August 5, 2007.
33. ‘Iran Deepens Ties with Nicaragua,’ Fars News Agency, August 6, 2007; and ‘Iran, Nicaragua Strike Trade Deal,’ Fars News Agency, August 12, 2007.
34. ‘Nicaragua Building Ties with Iran,’ Fars News Agency, August 15, 2007.
35. ‘Iran, Nicaragua Eye Energy Cooperation,’ Fars News Agency, February 10, 2008.
36. ‘Iran, Nicaragua Underline Cooperation among Free Nations,’ Fars News Agency, June 10, 2007.
37. ‘Iran Defends Nicaragua’s Progress, Independence,’ Fars News Agency, June 11, 2007.
38. ‘Bolivia: Iran to Invest in 25 Industrial Projects,’ Fars News Agency, October 9, 2007; and Andres Oppenheimer, ‘Beware Iran in Latin America.’
39. ‘Bolivia Calls on World to Support Iran’s N. Rights,’ Fars News Agency, September 4, 2007.
40. ‘Ijad safarkhaneh-ye Iran dar La Paz,’ Tabnak (Tehran), January 1, 2008.
41. ‘Iran and Nicaragua to Expand Media Cooperation,’ Tehran Times (Iran), December 18, 2007; and ‘Iran to Open TV Station in Bolivia,’ Associated Press, February 19, 2008.
42. U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, ‘Ros-Lehtinen Continues to Raise Concerns over Iran-Venezuela Ties,’ news release, March 4, 2008.
43. ‘FM: 2008 a Milestone in Iran-Africa Ties,’ Fars News Agency, January 30, 2008.
44. ‘Tehran to Host Iran-Africa Summit,’ Press TV (Tehran), February 1, 2008.
45. ‘Communiqué conjoint de la visite officielle de Son Excellence Me Abdoulaye Wade, président de la République du Sénégal en République Islamique d’Iran,’ Le Soleil (Dakar), June 29, 2006.
46. ‘Maqam mo’azzam-e rahabari zaban-e Amrika va Abargodrat-ha ra zaban-e tahdid va er’ab danestand,’ IRNA, February 28, 2008.
47. ‘Senegalese DM Meets Iranian Counterpart,’ Fars News Agency, January 28, 2008.
48. ‘Senegal Stresses Expansion of Ties with Iran,’ Fars News Agency, July 29, 2007.
49. ‘President Leaves for Senegal,’ Fars News Agency, March 12, 2008.
50. ‘Énergie, Prospection Pétrolière, Industrie: Le Sénégal bénéficie des solutions iraniennes,’ Le Soleil, June 28, 2006.
51. ‘Iran to Build Oil Refinery, Chemical Plant in Senegal,’ Fars News Agency, August 4, 2007.
52. ‘Iran to Supply Crude Oil to Senegal,’ Fars News Agency, August 28, 2007.
53. ‘Senegalese President: Nuclear Technology Is Iran’s Legitimate Right,’ IRNA, November 25, 2007.
54. ‘Ahmadinejad to Leave for Sudan,’ Fars News Agency, February 27, 2007.
55. ‘Ahmadinejad: Iran, Sudan Defend Each Other at Int’l Bodies,’ Fars News Agency, March 2, 2007.
56. ‘Sudan, noqteh-ye ateka-ye rivabat-e Iran va Africa ast,’ Aftab-e Yazd, March 7, 2008.
57. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, ‘Zimbabwe,’ in Country Reports on Human Rights Practices-2006, March 6, 2007, available at www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78765.htm (accessed March 12, 2008).
58. ‘Iran, Zimbabwe Voice Enthusiasm for Deepening Ties,’ Fars News Agency, September 22, 2006.
59. ‘FM Stresses Iran, Zimbabwe Joint Stances,’ Fars News Agency, November 19, 2006.
60. ‘Iran, Zimbabwe Vow to Resist U.S. Dominance,’ Fars News Agency, November 21, 2006.
61. ‘Zimbabwean Agriculture Equipped with Iranian Technology,’ Fars News Agency, November 23, 2006; ‘Iran to Launch Zimbabwe’s Oil Refinery,’ Fars News Agency, November 25, 2006; and ‘Zim Strikes Oil Deal,’ Reuters, December 17, 2007.
62. ‘Iran to Help Zimbabwe Beat off Sanctions,’ Fars News Agency, February 12, 2008.
63. ‘Pretoria’s Pro-Iran Stance Can Boost Progress in Global South,’ Tehran Times, February 7, 2008.
64. ‘SA Commends Iran’s Stance on Nuclear Program,’ IRNA, September 14, 2007.
65. ‘Iranian Atomic Negotiator to Hold Talks with South Africa’s Mbeki,’ International Herald Tribune, February 25, 2007.
66. International Atomic Energy Agency, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) in the Islamic Republic of Iran,’ report by the director general, February 22, 2008, available at www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2008/gov2008-4.pdf (accessed March 13, 2008).
67. ‘Security Council Edges towards Adoption of Iran Sanctions,’ Citizen (Johannesburg), February 29, 2008; and ‘UN Iran Resolution Disregarded IAEA-S. Africa,’ Reuters, March 6, 2008.
68. ‘Iran, Uganda to Expand Energy Ties,’ Press TV, September 4, 2007.
69. ‘Uganda: Front Page Microfinance to Get Iran Funding,’ Fars News Agency, December 25, 2007.
70. ‘Mottaki amadagi Iran ra baraye tawsa’eh-ye rivabat-i hameh-ye janibeh ba Malawi ‘alam kard,’ Mehr News Agency (Tehran), November 9, 2007.
71. ‘Malawi Stresses Iran’s Right to Own Hi-Tech,’ Fars News Agency, November 9, 2007.
72. ‘Ivory Coast FM to Arrive in Tehran Tonight,’ Fars News Agency, November 25, 2007.
73. ‘Ivory Coast Blasts West for Opposing N. Iran,’ Fars News Agency, April 24, 2007; and ‘Ivory Coast: UNSC Resolutions Not Always Acceptable,’ Fars News Agency, May 8, 2007.
74. ‘African Leaders Support Iran’s N. Program,’ Fars News Agency, February 2, 2008.
75. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Intelligence Council, ‘Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,’ National Intelligence Estimate, November 2007, available at www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf (accessed March 10, 2008).
76. Robert Burns, ‘Abizaid: World Could Abide Nuclear Iran,’ Associated Press, September 17, 2007. (accessed March 13, 2008); and

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Orgy of anti-semitic cartoons in Arab media lately

Orgy of anti-semitic cartoons in Arab media lately: ”

In every generation they will rise up against us. Lets hope these Jihadis hang on the nooses they set up for us.

Orgy of anti-semitic cartoons in Arab media lately: ‘The ADL has compiled a list of blatant anti-semitic cartoons from the Arab world in the wake of Reuters’ mistranslating Matan Vilnai as threatening a ‘holocaust.’

While the ‘Zionism=Nazi’ imagery is nothing new in the Arab press, they have turned it way up recently, as the ADL report shows.

Of course, Palestinian Arabs don’t have to look far for their own, very real, historic connections to Nazis. Nazis wooed Islamists to get them on their side, Nazis armed Arab terrorists in Palestine before World War II, Nazis tried, semi-successfully, to work with them during WWII, the biggest Palestinian Arab leader helped in the genocide of Jews, Arabs drafted Nazis to help fight Jews after WWII, today’s Palestinian ‘moderates’ consciously imitate Nazi symbolism, and even today neo-Nazis explicitly support Islamic terror against Israel.

My First Rule of Arab Projection is alive and well.

(h/t Suzanne)

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Rachel Corrie—->The American Muhammad al-Dura

Rachel Corrie—->The American Muhammad al-Dura: ”

Rachel Corrie—->The American Muhammad al-Dura: ‘Rachel Corrie has been set up to be a martyr to the Palestinian cause by the International Solidarity Movement, yet the circumstances surrounding her death are almost as suspect as those of Muhammad al-Dura. The only difference is that we know that Corrie is dead. We also know that she jumped out of a hole and placed herself in front of an IDF bulldozer five years ago outside of the drivers sight lines and that when she left the accident site she was very much alive. What happened afterwards has been covered up by the Palestinian Authority and the International Solidarity Movement.

The Myth of Rachel Corrie

By Judy Lash Balint
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/20/2008

Jerusalem: The news that a senior Islamic Jihad terrorist, Shadi Sukiya, was captured by an elite anti-terror unit of the Israel Defense Forces while hiding out in the Jenin offices of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) did not make a ripple in the flood of coverage from the Iraqi front in late March 2003.

Just eleven days earlier, on March 16, the ISM did make world headlines when Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old ISM member, was run over by an Israeli bulldozer in Rafah and died of her injuries.

Maybe the fact that a ‘peace organization’ was found to be defending terrorists twice in a two-week period will factor into the inquiry called by several Washington state congressional representatives into the circumstances of Rachel Corrie’s death.

With the fifth anniversary of Corrie’s death having just passed us, only one thing remains certain about the events of March 16: Corrie died in Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, under very questionable circumstances.

The questions remain: Is Israel responsible for Corrie’s death, or do the doctors at the Arab hospital where she was taken still alive after the accident bear any responsibility? What about the ISM that organizes protests in a closed military zone and encourages its members to play cat and mouse among the tanks and bulldozers? Or the Arabs who invite the ‘internationals’ to risk their lives in a war zone? How she died, exactly where she passed her last moments and who should take the blame for Rachel Corrie’s death are questions that demand answers.

The inconsistencies in eyewitness testimony raise doubts about the simplistic conclusions drawn ever since the event.

By all accounts, Rachel Corrie was one of a group of protesters attempting to disrupt the work of two IDF bulldozers leveling ground to detonate explosives in an area rife with terrorist activity. The bulldozers moved to a different area to avoid the protesters, and Corrie became separated from the group. Some of the agitators stood with a banner, while Corrie picked up a bullhorn and yelled slogans at the driver encased in the small cabin of the dozer. This went on for several hours on the afternoon of March 16. It’s the kind of activity favored by the young pro-Palestinian types who make up the ISM.

There wasn’t enough action for Corrie. According to fellow Evergreen State College student, Joseph Smith, 21, who was at the site, Corrie dropped her bullhorn and sat down in front of one of the bulldozers. She fully expected that the driver would stop just in front of her. ‘We were horribly surprised,’ Smith told me by phone from Rafah the day after the incident. ‘They had been careful not to hurt us. They’d always stopped before,’ he said.

As the dozer plowed forward heaping up a pile of dirt and sand, Corrie scrambled up the pile to sit on the top. Smith says she lost her footing as the bulldozer made the earth move beneath her feet. She got pulled down, he says. ‘The driver lost sight of her and continued forward. Then, without lifting the blade he reversed and Rachel was underneath the mid-section of the dozer, she wasn’t run over by the tread.’

Capt. Jacob Dellal of the IDF spokespersons office confirms what Smith says about the driver: he lost sight of Rachel. Inside the cab, some six feet off the ground, visibility is very restricted. The protesters should have known that and kept within the driver’s line of sight to avoid getting hurt, Dellal asserts.

The strange thing about this part of the story is the discrepancy over the photos given to the press and posted on several pro-Arab websites.

As Smith describes to me his version of events, I ask about the series of photos printed in an Arab newspaper I picked up the morning after the incident, in Jerusalem’s Old City. ‘They aren’t of the actual incident,’ he states firmly. ‘We’d been there for three hours already, we were tired, we already had a lot of pictures.’

Yet these are the pictures used on the ISM website to document the before and after of Rachel’s interaction with the bulldozer. The same pictures are featured as a photo-essay on the site of Electronic Intifada, where they’re even attributed to Joseph Smith.

There are several shots of the back of a woman with a blond ponytail facing a bulldozer. She’s standing in an open field, wearing an orange fluorescent jacket, holding a megaphone.

Even Michael Shaik, the ISM media coordinator at the time, wouldn’t confirm that these are pictures of Corrie taken the day she died. ‘I’m fairly sure they’re of the incident,’ he tells me by phone from his Bethlehem office. In the same conversation, Shaik asks me not to contact Joe, Greg or Tom, the Rafah ISM eyewitnesses again directly: ‘They’re still in trauma.’

The pictures should have raised all kinds of questions to photo editors, but all the major newspapers and wire services chose to run the photos regardless. If there are pictures of Rachel before and after, why didn’t the same photographer consider it important to document the act of the bulldozer running her down?

Where is the mound of earth Rachel clambered up and was buried in? The woman shown lying bleeding from her nose and mouth is lying on a flat piece of ground.

So, Corrie was either knocked down by the dozer, or fell in front of it. ISMers assume that she was intentionally run over, but there’s no proof that was the driver’s intent.

The real issue is, was Rachel alive when she was taken by Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance to Martyr Mohammed Yousef An Najar Hospital? In other words, where did she die? Were adequate efforts made to save her in the hospital?

Again, there are conflicting stories. Joseph Smith tells me in a telephone interview the day after the tragedy, ‘She died in the hospital or on the way to the hospital.’ CNN also reported that Rachel died there. (Israeli bulldozer runs over 23-year-old woman. CNN, Monday, March 17, 2003)

In his account posted on www.arabia.com, ISMer Tom Dale has a slightly different story. On March 17 he writes: ‘I ran for an ambulance, she was gasping and her face was covered in blood from a gash cutting her face from lip to cheek. She was showing signs of brain hemorrhaging. She died in the ambulance a few minutes later of massive internal injuries.’

But Dr. Ali Mussa, director of Martyr Mohammed Yousef An Najar Hospital where Corrie was taken, seems confused. On the day of the event, Dr. Mussa tells AP Gaza reporter Ibrahim Barzak that Rachel died in the hospital. (American Killed in Gaza. AP. March 16, 2003)

One week later, in a telephone interview, Dr. Mussa states definitively to me that Rachel died at the scene, ‘in the soil,’ as he puts it. The main cause of death was suffocation, Mussa asserts. There were no signs of life, no heartbeat or pulse when she arrived at the hospital, he says. Mussa states that Rachel’s ribs were fractured, a fact determined by X-rays.

Doesn’t quite jive with the photo essay on the pages of the Electronic Intifada website for March 16, 2003. (Photo story: Israeli bulldozer driver murders American peace activist by Nigel Parry and Arjan El Fassed, The Electronic Intifada, 16 March 2003.)

A caption under one photo of doctors leaning over a female patient reads: Rachel arrived in the Emergency Room at 5:05 p.m and doctors scrambled to save her. By 5:20 p.m, she was gone. Ha’aretz newspaper reported that Dr. Ali Mussa, a doctor at Al Najar, stated that the cause of death was skull and chest fractures. Dr. Mussa told me he was one of the treating physicians, yet he alone maintains that Rachel was dead before she was put into the ambulance.

To further complicate matters, on that same website, a report from the Palestine Monitor is cited. Here, the writer says that Rachel fractured her arms, legs and skull. She was transferred to hospital, where she later died, says this report.

Just who is Dr. Ali Mussa? Clearly a man in favor with the Palestine Authority hierarchy. Dr. Mussa’s views are aired on the official website of the PA’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation: (January 27, 2003)

There, Dr. Mussa accuses Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s ‘terrorist government’ of deliberately killing Palestinian children in Rafah.

A few days after the incident, ISM Media Coordinator Shaik tells me by phone from Rafah that three ISMers, Tom, Alice and Greg were in the ambulance with Rachel. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, says Michael.

But Greg Schnabel, 28, who is quoted in numerous wire service and newspaper stories, never says he witnessed the death of his comrade in the ambulance. In his account published a few days later on the ISM website, he carefully states that she died twenty minutes after arriving at the hospital.

What happened to Rachel’s body after her death? Depends whom you ask. Dr. Mussa says it was kept for 24 hours at the hospital before a Red Crescent ambulance transported it to the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, via the border where an Israeli ambulance took over. l Shaik says ‘we lost track of it (her body) after she died.’ Three ISMers tried to escort the body, but only one was permitted on the ambulance on the Israeli side. According to his account, the ambulance drove straight to the Israeli Forensic Institute at Abu Kabir, where an autopsy was performed. The Israelis are trying to say she died from a blow to the head by a rock, Shaik recounts.

Speaking about the autopsy, one of Rachel’s ISM trainers, Iowa native LeAnne Clausen, a fieldworker for the Christian Peacemaker Team based in Beit Sahour, tells me: ‘The general sentiment within ISM is that the Israelis are trying to suggest perhaps Rachel was on drugs.’

In reality, IDF spokesperson Dellal says that initial Israeli investigation results indicate that the cause of death was most likely a blow to the head and chest by a blunt object, possibly a chunk of cement dug up by the bulldozer.

In keeping with ISM sympathies, Rachel received a shaheed (martyr) procession in Rafah, the day after her death. But here again, there’s confusion between reality and photo op. Some accounts noted that her coffin draped in an American flag was paraded through the streets. Yet a picture on the site of her college town’s peace movement, the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, shows Arab women holding a coffin covered by a Palestinian flag with the caption: Palestinian funeral for Rachel.

Confusion and obfuscation seem to be a trademark of the ISM. In May 2002, a number of ISMers raced past Israeli soldiers into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where dozens of Palestinian terrorists had holed up to evade capture by the IDF outside. After an agreement was reached, the ISM members refused to leave the church, holding up the solution. Then they charged that they were mistreated by clergy, who claimed the ISMers desecrated the church by smoking and drinking alcohol.

Another revealing ISM action took place shortly before the Bethlehem incident, when a number of protesters managed to make their way past IDF barricades into Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah compound to protect the terrorist leader.

Strange, given the fact that most ISMers are avowed anarchists decrying any kind of governmental authority. Corrie’s Swedish boyfriend and fellow ISMer told a reporter for Seattle’s The Stranger newspaper, (April 4, 2003) that Corrie could be described as an anarchist.

Still, the politics of the Ismers are predictable. Another Evergreen student who arrived in Israel around the same time as Corrie says he has ‘been at war with the multinational corporations for some time now.’ His ‘baptism of fire’ took place at the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, he proclaims.

Joe Smith, recounts his motivation to join forces with the ISM . ‘Because I felt it was one of the best ways for me to use my privilege as a white middle class American male to directly serve impoverished people of color who are under-privileged due to the Israeli and other Western governments, especially mine.

I have dedicated my life to serving such people (ed. Arabs), as I believe my over-privilege is a direct result of their under-privilege. I have benefited from their suffering, and this must stop.’

ISM activity in Rafah has more to do with being used to defend terrorists than preventing suffering of the masses. IDF efforts in Rafah were concentrated on preventing the flow of arms and explosives over the border from Egypt into the terrorist’s dens that riddled the area. Less than a week after Rachel died defending terrorists, Israeli tanks moved into Rafah , surrounded several houses, and arrested two Hamas members. IDF spokesperson, Dellal calls Rafah, ‘the most dangerous area in the West Bank and Gaza,’ and decries the provocative protests of ISM. ‘There’s nothing wrong with civil disobedience, but these people crossed the line of what was safe for everyone,’ Dellal says.

So, while the memorial services laud and remember Rachel Corrie as a peace activist murdered by Israeli occupation forces, the truth lies elsewhere.

An Israeli bulldozer injured Corrie as she tried to prevent it doing its job of protecting Israeli civilians, but she was alive when she was taken to An Najar Hospital, according to at least three eyewitnesses. Only Dr. Mussa, a man intent on accusing Israel of child killing, claims otherwise. None of Rachel’s comrades have stated they were with her in the hospital when she died. No one has commented on the extent of efforts to preserve Corrie’s life at An Najar.

And all the while, the ISM continues to encourage misguided young people from around the world,like Rachel Corrie, to spend time in the Middle East providing cover for terrorists.

Lee Kaplan gave an Excellent Blow by Blow description of the Video evidence surrounding the Rachel Corrie Scam on Atlas Shrugs a few weeks ago. You can find it here St. Pancake’s Suicide

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Just in Time For the Holidays, Jews “Cook Palestinian Children in Ovens” Says Palestinian TV

Just in Time For the Holidays, Jews “Cook Palestinian Children in Ovens” Says Palestinian TV: ”

Just in Time For the Holidays, Jews ‘Cook Palestinian Children in Ovens’ Says Palestinian TV: ’

By Debbie Schlussel

Just in time for Good Friday/Easter Sunday and the Jewish holiday of Purim (which both fall tomorrow; Purim starts tonight at sundown), America’s chosen ‘peace’ partner for Israel, Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinan Authority, broadcasts that Jews cook Palestinians in ovens and that there was no Holocaust, but that the Nazis. The broadcast was aimed at children.

Carl in Jerusalem has all the details, the video, and this very disturbing picture of a Palestinian model ‘crematorium’ with ‘burning’ Palestinian dolls designed to show children that Jews cremated Palestinians.

A few responses:

1) Um, FYI, humans are not kosher, so we wouldn’t cook ‘em, much less eat ‘em.

Palestinians Tell Their Children That Jews Will Cremate Them (Dolls), Via Carl in Jerusalem

2) I remember someone cooking someone. But it was the other way around. Anyone forgot the special Muslim SS unit which helped Hitler cook the Jews in the ovens of Auschwitz, Treblinka, et al? Or how ’bout Yasser Arafat’s ancestor, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, who met with Hitler-begging him to hasten the Final Solution and to bring it to the Middle East?

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, Hangs w/ Hitler

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Proudly Inspects Muslim SS Unit

This all reminds me of a few Purims ago, in 2002, when a Saudi government newspaper published a ‘report’ that Jews used Palestinian kids’ blood in the pastry we eat on Purim-a triangular/three-cornered cookie, with fruit filling.

The blood libel of the anti-Semites never dies. It just reincarnates with more lives than a million cats.

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Buried In Eloquence, Obama Contradictions About Pastor

Buried In Eloquence, Obama Contradictions About Pastor: ”

Buried In Eloquence, Obama Contradictions About Pastor: ’

Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America’s racial divide, Sen. Barack Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial sermons.

Similarly, Obama also has only recently given a much fuller accounting of his relationship with indicted political fixer Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko, a longtime friend, who his campaign once described as just one of ‘thousands of donors.’

Until yesterday, Obama said the only thing controversial he knew about Rev. Wright was his stand on issues relating to Africa, abortion and gay marriage.

‘I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial,’ Obama said at a community meeting in Nelsonville, Ohio, earlier this month.

‘He has said some things that are considered controversial because he’s considered that part of his social gospel; so he was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that,’ Obama said on March 2.

His initial reaction to the initial ABC News broadcast of Rev. Wright’s sermons denouncing the U.S. was that he had never heard his pastor of 20 years make any comments that were anti-U.S. until the tape was played on air.

But yesterday, he told a different story.

‘Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes,’ he said in his speech yesterday in Philadelphia.

Obama did not say what he heard that he considered ‘controversial,’ and the campaign has yet to answer repeated requests for dates on which the senator attended Rev. Wright’s sermons over the last 20 years.

In the case of his relationship with Rezko, Obama has also been slow to acknowledge the full extent of his relationship.

It was only last week that he revealed Rezko had raised some $250,000 in campaign contributions for him.

The campaign had initially claimed Rezko-connected contributions were no more than $60,000, an amount the campaign donated to charity. Then the figure grew to around $86,000, and there were additional revelations that put the amount at about $150,000. Obama’s $250,000 accounting was a substantial jump and clearly contradicted earlier campaign statements that Rezko was just one of ‘thousands of donors.’

Rezko is now on trial in federal court in Chicago, charged with a pattern of bribing state officials to obtain various Illinois state contracts. Rezko has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Obama was initially vague about Rezko’s role in helping him buy a new home on Chicago’s south side. Unable to afford an adjacent vacant lot the seller wanted to sell at the same time as the house, Obama approached Rezko. Rezko’s wife bought the lot on the same day Obama bought the house, and then later, Mrs. Rezko sold the Obamas a strip of the lot which gave the Obamas a larger backyard.

Obama called it a ‘bone-headed’ mistake but never revealed, until he met with Chicago reporters last week, that Rezko had actually toured the house with him and been deeply involved in the transaction.

In a statement, campaign press secretary Bill Burton said, ‘Last week, Sen. Obama spent almost three hours answering every single question about Tony Rezko posed by the local reporters who’ve covered the story closest for years. Those newspapers said they were more than satisfied with his open, honest answers. We’ve given all of the money contributed to Barack Obama’s federal campaigns that could reasonably be credited to Mr. Rezko’s political support to charity. Sen. Obama also provided an estimate of the most that could have possibly been raised as a result of Mr. Rezko’s efforts, but that estimate is not a basis upon which any individual contributions can be donated to charity. ’

As to Rev. Wright, Burton said, ‘While Sen. Obama was not in church for the incendiary and offensive statements of Rev. Wright that have been played on television over the last week, yesterday he delivered a deeply personal, honest speech on race in America in which he acknowledged that over the course of 20 years, of course he heard statements from Wright that could be considered controversial.’

(ABC)

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Junkies Are Funding The Taliban

Junkies Are Funding The Taliban: ”

Aussie Crack Heads Listen Up..You Are Funding The Taliban: ‘Unfortunately Australia isn’t the only place. ‘Get high and kill a GI’ should be the crack heads damn song.

Sydney Herald

‘Taliban’s lifeblood, in mail from Kabul’.

Brown heroin from Afghanistan is starting to fill a drug void on Sydney streets, write Jordan Baker and Ash Sweeting.

IN an Aladdin’s Cave of confiscated narcotics in Kabul, among hollow samurai swords, car parts and fake almonds stuffed with drugs, lie two envelopes. Both had been bound for Sydney.

Each contained a marketable quantity – 10 grams – of brown heroin, a colour that distinguishes west Asian production, and a size that reflects, say drug experts, a growing trend towards importing small amounts of heroin to avoid detection.

What the people who intended to pick those packages up from newsagency postboxes in Leichhardt and Westmead might not have appreciated is that by ordering Afghan heroin, they were financing the Taliban’s battle against Australian forces.

Heroin production in Afghanistan is booming as the Taliban raises money to pay for its insurgency, and there are fears the heroin is making its way to Sydney, filling the void created when Asian production fell and the heroin drought began almost a decade ago.

Afghan police will soon burn the tonne of heroin, tonne of opiates and five tonnes of hash amassed in the Kabul drug storehouse. The Herald understands an Afghan man has been arrested over the Sydney-bound envelopes.

Asian production falls and Afghan rises, how convenient.

Also at My Pet Jawa‘

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But wait, theres more: Second bin Laden message released

But wait, theres more: Second bin Laden message released: ”

The world needs to support Israel and win in Iraq more then ever.

But wait, theres more: Second bin Laden message released: ’

Now how much would you slay?

‘New Usama bin Laden Tape Slams Palestinian Negotiations, Urges Holy War for Liberation,’ from the Associated Press:

CAIRO, Egypt — Pan-Arab Al-Jazeera TV on Thursday broadcast what it described as excerpts from a new audio tape by Usama bin Laden in which the Al Qaeda leader slammed Palestinian negotiations with Israel and urged holy war for the liberation of Palestine.

In the audio excerpts broadcast by the Doha, Qatar-based television, bin Laden said that ‘Palestine cannot be retaken by negotiations and dialogue, but with fire and iron.’

Bin Laden also called on Palestinians who are unable to fight in the ‘land of Al-Quds’ — a Muslim reference to Jerusalem — to join the Al Qaeda fight and the holy war, or jihad, in Iraq.

‘The nearest field of jihad today to support our people in Palestine is the Iraqi field,’ bin Laden said.

‘We tell our brothers in Palestine who could not join the jihad in the land of Al-Quds, to get rid of illusions of political parties and groups which are mired in trickery of the blasphemous democracy and to take their positions among the ranks of the mujahideen in Iraq,’ he said.

Such a Palestinian fight in Iraq should be ‘concentrated on and supported by all Muslims, specially from neighboring countries,’ bin Laden added and also called on people of Syria, Lebanon Jordan and Saudi Arabia to ‘help in support of their mujahedeen brothers in Iraq, which is the greatest opportunity and the biggest task.’ [...]

The mention of by bin Laden of the Annapolis, Maryland, summit last November was the only time reference given in the audio.

‘By their support, they are considered partners to this horrible crime,’ bin Laden said of Arab leaders who have backed the Mideast peace talks.

‘Palestine will not return to us with the negotiations by the submissive rulers, their conferences nor by demonstrations and elections,’ he said. ‘Palestine will come back to us if we awaken from our ignorance and adhere to our religion and sacrifice our lives and means to it.’

The message was the first time bin Laden spoke of the Palestinian question at length.

He appeared to be seeking to merge the Palestinian cause into the wider Al Qaeda struggle.

‘My nation,’ bin Laden addressed his followers, ‘You have a great opportunity to regain your freedom and get out of being a follower of this Zionist-crusade alliance and to do this, you have to free yourself from the chains of humiliation thrown on us by the agents of this alliance, the rulers of our countries.’

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US ambassador: Jews will just have to leave Jerusalem

US ambassador: Jews will just have to leave Jerusalem: ”

Anyone that believes in liberty over tyranny needs to appeal to the Bush administration to remove the current US ambassador. He is trying to take away the liberty of Jews and replace it with the tyranny of the Islamo-fascist terrorist. Jews have been living in Jerusalem for thousands of year. There already is a Palestinian state it is called Jordan. The drive of the Jihadis will not stop at Jerusalem or G-d forbid all of Israel, they want to control the world. If you do not stand up to them now. Your children will be forced to wear burkas. It is time Israel turns around and goes on its own road before it is to late. US ambassador: Jews will just have to leave Jerusalem:

‘http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=15485US Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones suggested during a tour of overcrowded Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem on Monday that many Jews will just have to move out of the capital rather than expand into parts of the city claimed by the Palestinians.Jones told said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post that Washington is growing increasingly displeased with Jewish housing projects on the eastern side of Jerusalem, which are certain to hinder efforts to conclude a peace deal along the lines of US President George W. Bush’s vision for the region The American envoy said he is well aware of the lack of Jewish housing in Jerusalem, but in a remark betraying a lack of understanding regarding Jewish historical and spiritual connection to the city Jones concluded that ’sometimes people do have to move to a different location. They cannot always stay close to their families.’ He insisted that more important than the Jews’ restoration to their biblical capital and heartland is Israel’s implementation of commitments made as part of the US-driven Road Map peace process, even if unreciprocated by the Palestinians.Jones ended the interview by all but justifying the Palestinian Authority’s ongoing failure to meet its primary obligations to curb anti-Israel violence and incitement by stating that ‘it is not easy for either side to move ahead when they see the provocative behavior of the other side.’’

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More Leftist Indoctrination of Our School Children

More Leftist Indoctrination of Our School Children: ”

I also fear teachers brain washing children as well as university students to support Islamo-Fasicst states like Iran, and fear democracies like Israel. It is important stop the brain washing of generations of people before it is too late. The fact that both the media and education systems favor these tyrannies explains why the stalinist Obama is doing well.

More Leftist Indoctrination of Our School Children: ’

I have been saying for quite some time that we conservatives have failed in one major area: education. We have ceded the grounds of the education of our youth to those who despise everything that makes America great. Yet, here we all are blindly sending our children to people who will instill in them a hatred of everything that is American. And then, we get upset when the voters don’t go our way.

The sad truth of the matter is, if we allow those who do not cherish American values to teach our children, what is it that we think those children held captive to anti-American views will learn from the experience

Well, with that point in mind, let us learn of yet one more example of the leftist indoctrination that is being forced upon our children. This one comes from radio talk show host Ron Smith of WBAL radio in Baltimore, Maryland.

One of Mr. Smith’s listeners sent him a little poem that was given to his first grade daughter so that she might learn about taxes. Titled ‘Why Do We Pay Taxes?,’ this homage to big government socialism was pawned off as ‘teaching’ social studies by the public schools in Maryland.

Why do we need to pay taxes?  

The reason is clear to see.  

This money to our government 

Provides services for you and me.

For it’s taxes that pay our teachers,  

Firemen and policemen too.  

Postal workers, librarians,  

Just to name a few.

Our taxes help to pave our roads,  

And take care of the poor.  

Provide for parks and playgrounds 

And still they do much more.

So, when it comes to taxes,  

Everyone needs to pay.  

It strengthens our communities,  

That’s the American Way.

Notice how this poem stresses that taxes are supposed to ‘provide services,’ and ‘take care of the poor.’ Then it links ‘the American way’ to these socialist principles. It’s as if all the government is there for is to give us stuff. At least, that is what these poor kids will learn.

Also, notice the lack of definition for taxes. This poem makes believe that ‘taxes’ are all the same when they most certainly are not. There are different kinds of taxes levied for different reasons, but these kids are being told that ‘taxes’ pay for their teachers, roads, police and librarians. There is no distinction between the property taxes that really do pay for teachers, and other taxes that pay for other things. This is certainly the rhetoric we are used to seeing from our unions, isn’t it?

Now, don’t get me wrong, taxes are an extremely important thing. It was, in fact, one of the most argued about item on the agenda for our founders. So, it is absolutely an important issue to teach our children about. First grade, though, may be a tad early to teach children about this vast and intricate topic.

But, it’s not too early if you want kids to imagine that government is there to guide our lives. It’s not too early if you want kids to learn that they must look to government to solve every problem and to be our provider.

This incident reminds me of a book that my 2nd grader brought home years ago. It was called something like ‘Chipmunk’s first time home alone’ and it was a picture book story of a young chipmunk being home alone for the first time. It was ostensibly about how the young chipmunk was responsible enough for his parents to leave him alone.

Yet, stuck in the middle of the story was the reason the chipmunk parents were going out that night. You see, the parents had to rush off to a meeting of all the woodland creatures because a mean, evil corporation was clear-cutting the forest and they were banding together to stop it!

Right in the center of a story that was supposed to be teaching children how to be responsible when home alone was this anti-corporation, anti-capitalist message.

Yeah, that’s what passes for ‘teaching’ these days in our socialist schools.

And this brings me back to my main point here. If we conservatives expect our current young voters and voters into the future to have even the slightest understanding of our ideas and positions, we need to stop turning our collective backs on the education and ceding the battlefield to those that are enemies to the real American way.

Otherwise, we will continue to see people graduating from our schools and into the voting polity that haven’t got the first clue what we are talking about and why we are right. They’ll have no reason to vote for us because they will simply have no basis of understanding from which to make a decision favoring our policies.

And, if that continues to happen we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

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(Via avideditorla’s shared items in Google Reader.)

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More lies from Jihadis: Mosques Promoting Democracy

More lies from Jihadis: Mosques Promoting Democracy: ”

The absurd 1984 like propaganda of MPACUK is expressed in its new press release. Islamic law and there brain washing occurs in these radical mosques which are institutions that promote tyranny not democracy. There hate for liberty manifests itself in no go zones for non muslims. Extremist have took over London creating Londunistain where they physically assault innocent civilians while trying to spread their political messages of hate. If you click through to there website you will see rallies scheduled to protest against Israel’s rights to defend itself and articles about how destroying british law through sharia. MPACUK obviously supports political tyranny.

Social tyranny spreads through radical mosques that enforce practices mutilate the genitals of little girls so they can never experience feeling, while spreading the lack of feeling to non muslims by increasing drug use and rape victims in there vicinity. If you believe that radical mosques create democracy, I have a bridge to sell you.

London Mosques Promoting Democracy: ‘An estimated 18% of London’s Muslims, approximately 60,000 people are not registered to vote, even though they should eligible to vote. Some London mosques have recognised this problem and are trying to address it through an election awareness and voter registration drive in the run up to the London Mayoral elections on May 1st.’

(Via MPACUK.ORG.)

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Hillary Supporting Preacher: “The First Place I Saw Obama Was On Two Big Ol Tits”

Hillary Supporting Preacher: “The First Place I Saw Obama Was On Two Big Ol Tits”: ”

WOW this video is strange. A Hillary supporting preacher goes crazy on criticizing Obama. I think it is great that he show Obama has no substance. But it is a bit over the top for me. Watch the video if you want to go HUH for most of it unless you are used to listing to preachers in this style. If this video speaks to you more power too you.

Hillary Supporting Preacher: ‘The First Place I Saw Obama Was On Two Big Ol Tits’: ‘Rev. James David Manning is an avowed Clinton supporter.
Ace of Spades and Perfunction posted this video earlier:
Rev. Manning:

‘Obama is a mack daddy! You don’t get your campaign started with a big-chested white woman! She must be a 54D! Double-D! … OBAMA! That’s the first place I saw [his name], on two great big ol’ tits!… He pimps white women and black women. Obama is a long-legged Mack Daddy. I haven’t trashed Obama. His African in heat father went a whoring after a trashy white woman. He was born trash. I said he was born trash. I didn’t trash him. I’m speaking the truth about him… YOu hippocrites you. You don’t have enough sense to poor piss out of a boot. ‘

YOU MUST WATCH THIS WHOLE VIDEO… HERE
Unbelievable!

Hat Tip BG

Meanwhile… Obama has a few more radical friends from the look of things.’

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Geert Wilders on Danish TV

Geert Wilders on Danish TV: ”

I don’t agree what he says about the Torah. I think it is more out of a lack of knowledge instead of anti-semitism. But I think he is right on with what he is saying about Islam and sharia. 

 ::::

: HT Canadian Infidel

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Obama’s Friends – The Weather Underground, Rezko, Wright, & Farrakhan

Obama’s Friends – The Weather Underground, Rezko, Wright, & Farrakhan: ”

Obama’s Friends – The Weather Underground, Rezko, Wright, & Farrakhan: ’

Perfectly said by Rick Moran:

Barack Obama is just another politician – devious when he has to be, vague when it suits him, and a liar when necessity calls. May this incident involving Reverend Wright open the eyes of most of those who have lost themselves in Obama’s rhetorical fog so that they can see who and what they are supporting for President of the United States.

Meanwhile the MSM has tripped all over themselves to ‘forgive’ Obama’s foo-pah of befriending a racist. Just a little misunderstanding right? He was soooo courageous to tell the country that we need to end the division in America. That Wrights hate is the past and he is the future. But did he ever do that at his very own church? Did he bring change there? Isn’t the first place to prove you can lead is among those close to you? But he didn’t do that, no, he sat listening to the hate. He brought his children to listen to the hate….and he never changed a thing in that church. (more…)

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There are lies damn lies and then Islamic Propaganda

There are lies damn lies and then Islamic Propaganda: ”

See what the jihadis think about our war against them. It is funny they sound just like the left and they are projecting there ability to lie on us. Well here is a blog entry for you jihadis at MPACUK. Well here is a blog entry for you jihadis at MPACUK.  MPACUK is just like CAIR but it is the british version.

Warning the following link and segment contains Islmo-fasicst propaganda

This is the war that started with lies, and continues with lie after lie after lie: ‘It has been a war of lies from the start. All governments lie in wartime but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any conflict since the First World War. The outcome has been an official picture of Iraq akin to fantasy and an inability to learn from mistakes because of a refusal to admit that any occurred. Yet the war began with just such a mistake. Five years ago, on the evening of 19 March 2003, President George Bush appeared on American television to say that military action had started against Iraq.’ 

 

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Chinese justice seeps into Canada

Chinese justice seeps into Canada: ”

I think we should treat the Jihadis like the Chines treat the Tibetans. I am against commies but I think Iran would be much less of a thread it China took over. But I still oppose Islamo-fasicst and liberal governments Fascist actions that support the jihadis.

Chinese justice seeps into Canada: ’

This story in yesterday’s Post by Kevin Libin, about the Chinese consulate in Calgary forcibly holding a Tibetan protester for nearly an hour, is growing into a international incident. RCMP are now investigating the conduct of the consulate staff. Kevin will be on Rob Breakenridge’s radio show imminently to discuss it.

I believe in property rights, and I believe that trespass is a tort, and can even be a crime. I also believe in diplomatic immunity, even for diplomats from cruel regimes like Communist China. But if a Tibetan youth did break the law in Canada, it’s for Canadian police and prosecutors to deal with — not some brutish Chinese apparatchik, who thinks he’s still back in Tiananmen Square, meting out Chinese-style ‘justice’.

I understand that the youth in question doesn’t want to make a fuss, out of fear for his family back home. Fair enough, but too bad — I think he’d have a helluva case against the consulate for false imprisonment, assault and battery. If the staff who bullied him were locally-hired, he might be able to proceed against them. If they were Chinese nationals, they’d likely be exempt, and I doubt the case could proceed against the government of China itself. But even filing such a doomed lawsuit would be a well-deserved black eye for the world’s biggest bully.

P.S. I love this suggestion aired by the National Reviews John Derbyshire. I know it would never happen; but if Taiwan did declare independence on the first day of the Beijing Olympics, what would China do? 

 

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(Via avideditorla’s shared items in Google Reader.)

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Rev. Wright reprints “Hamas Stand” in church bulletin!

Rev. Wright reprints “Hamas Stand” in church bulletin!: ”

More of my posts on Obama  

Rev. Wright reprints ‘Hamas’ Stand’ in church bulletin!: ’

Finding an article written by the deputy leader of Hamas, a globally designated terrorist organization, in Trinity Church of Christ’s bulletin on Rev. Jeremiah Wrights ‘Pastors Page’ is beyond shocking. This is just another troubling insight into Barack Obamas friend and spiritual mentor and, of course, Barack Obama himself who said in his speech he could never disown Wright as he is a part of himself.  This is unbelievable:

The July 22, 2007 Trinity United Church of Christ bulletin reprinted an article written by Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy of the political bureau of Hamas. Originally printed in the LA Times as ‘Hamas stand’, Pastor Wright added a new title, ‘A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle’. The Times was criticized for giving a ‘Platform To Genocidal Terrorist.’ Where does that leave Obamas church? 

Marzook is a known terrorist and created an extensive Hamas network in the United States! 

  

click on picture to enlarge

Update: Rev. Wright On The ‘State’ Of Israel

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Mohammed Cartoons for Osama

Mohammed Cartoons for Osama: ”

Hi Osama. I got some cartoons for you. This is in reference to Osama’s new video.  By the way Mohammed was a sick pedophile lying murderer. Also no muslims have the right to live in Israel, they have Jordan.  Feel free to leave the Fatwas as comments.  UPDATE: In honor of all the innocent people that died by the religion of the sword here is a dog shitting on the koran. (give it some time to fully unload )

As they say in Virginia, sic semper tyrannis!

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Obama Camp Drops “Black Panthers For Barack” Webpage

Obama Camp Drops “Black Panthers For Barack” Webpage: ”

Obama Camp Drops ‘Black Panthers For Barack’ Webpage: ‘Thanks to Jay for the latest on the Black Panthers for Obama webpage.
They took it down.

Considering his latest ‘G-damning America’ minister debacle…
Barack Obama decided his New Black Panther page would not help him regain the trust of voters.’

(Via avideditorla’s shared items in Google Reader.)

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BREAKING – “Religion of Peace”: Krystallnacht, USA? – Five Muslims Beat Jewish Rabbi in Brooklyn

BREAKING – “Religion of Peace”: Krystallnacht, USA? – Five Muslims Beat Jewish Rabbi in Brooklyn: ”

BREAKING – ‘Religion of Peace’: Krystallnacht, USA? – Five Muslims Beat Jewish Rabbi in Brooklyn: ’

By Debbie Schlussel

Yesterday, at 6:00 p.m. Eastern Time, four to five Muslims viciously attacked Rabbi Uria Ohana in Brooklyn, New York, while shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar.’

Rabbi Ohana, assistant head rabbi of Chabad-Lubavitch of Massachusetts, was about to get on the F-Train at Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street in Brooklyn.

The young Muslim assailants grabbed rabbi Ohana’s yarmulke (skullcap), and when he went to them to get it back, they beat him and shouted, ‘Allahu Akbar.’ One of the Muslim attackers ran away into the street and was hit by a car (G-d works in mysterious ways). He was arrested by police. But three to four other Muslim assailants-whom you can bet will attack other Jews-escaped and are free.

That Was Then . . .

This Is Now . . .

I just got off the phone with Rabbi Shea Hecht, President of the Rabbinical Committee of Brownstone, Brooklyn, who gave me the details. He is about to hold a press conference, this evening, to urge New York City Police Department to find and apprehend the other attackers.

Tomorrow night, the Jewish holiday of Purim begins at sundown. As Rabbi Hecht said:

On the heels of the Holiday of Purim, in which we celebrate the downfall of all anti-Semitism and hatred, we are calling on the police to beef up security in our neighborhoods to end such anti-Semitic attacks.

Hmmm . . . Where is CAIR et al. on this? Looking the other way.

Remember, it’s too late to be saying, ‘If we don’t fight them over there, we’ll have to fight them here.’

They’re here. And they’re in fighting form.

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(Via avideditorla’s shared items in Google Reader.)

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Stand Against Anti-War Rallies’ Pro-Jihad, Anti-Jewish Effect

Stand Against Anti-War Rallies’ Pro-Jihad, Anti-Jewish Effect: ”

Stand Against Anti-War Rallies’ Pro-Jihad, Anti-Jewish Effect: ‘America’s left commemorates the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq War by organizing Anti-War protests today, March 19th. See 5YearsTooMany.com for a rally close to you.

Will their agenda also denigrate Israel for self-defense against Palestinian terrorism? Minority-rights and pro-Zionism activists should attend these gatherings to defend against anti-Israelism/anti-Semitism. Please bring camcorders and digital cameras to report your experiences here. Find a local MoveOn.Org candlelight vigil near you (and represent):

The war in Iraq has gone on for nearly five years. The unbearable costs at home and abroad keep mounting. It’s clear that Americans are ready for a real change in direction. On March 19th, tens of thousands of people across the country will gather to observe the fifth anniversary of the war with candlelight vigils. (Photo courtesy: Atlas Shrugs)

We’ll commemorate the sacrifices too many families have made, and the billions of dollars wasted in Iraq that could have been better invested at home. Join us at a candlelight vigil on Wednesday, March 19th. Honor the sacrifice. Change our priorities. Bring the troops home. Click here to organize your own vigil, or sign up for one near you.

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(Via avideditorla’s shared items in Google Reader.)

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Antiwar Protesters Celebrate 5 Years of Trashing America

Antiwar Protesters Celebrate 5 Years of Trashing America: ”

Antiwar Protesters Celebrate 5 Years of Trashing America: ‘The Americans for Defeat of America congregated this week:

Zombie Time has photos from San Francisco (That’s Mother Sheehan in the background.)

John Lilyea has photos from Washington DC this morning.’

(Via avideditorla’s shared items in Google Reader.)

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ITS BLOOD LIBEL SEASON/ Russian Town Warns of Jews Kidnaping Kids For Matzoa:

ITS BLOOD LIBEL SEASON/ Russian Town Warns of Jews Kidnaping Kids For Matzoa:: ”

ITS BLOOD LIBEL SEASON/ Russian Town Warns of Jews Kidnaping Kids For Matzoa:: ‘
Blood Libel season has opened in Russia where hundreds of anti-Semitic pamphlets distributed in Novosibirsk, Russia, warning residents of supposed Jewish practice of kidnapping children to use their blood for Passover Matzoa

‘Beware Russian parents. Keep watch over your children before the coming of April 2008, the Jewish holiday of Passover. These disgusting people still engage in ritual practice to their gods. They kidnap small children and remove some of their blood and use it to prepare their holy food (matza). They throw the bodies (of the children) out in garbage dumps,’ the announcements read.

‘Esther’, a resident of Novosibirsk, told Ynet: ‘I saw the announcement, however I won’t be afraid of going to synagogue during Passover. In my house, we will have matzot. ‘Anti-Semitism exists in the city and it never disappears. You can walk around in the streets and see derogatory sayings scrawled on the walls of houses; ‘Jews go home’ and such. The announcement simply disgusted me. (source: Ynet)

Passover is just a month away. When Passover begins to come over the horizen so does the ugly accusations of Jewish blood lust. During the middle ages Europeans would accuse Jews of making their Matzoh with the blood of Christian children and use that trumped up charge as an excuse to kill more Jews. The blood libel charge goes back to the days of the Second Temple and continues even today. Look at the accusations thrust upon Israel, false massacres in Jenin, nuclear tipped warheads in Lebanon, targeting innocent children Gaza and I taking about the Mainstream Media.

As far as the Arab Media today, I have found some recent examples coming from the more ‘Moderate’ Countries (Source:Wikopedia)

• In 2001 an Egyptian film company produced and aired a film called Horseman Without a Horse, partly based on Tlass’s book. The book was cited at a United Nations conferences in 1991 by a Syrian delegate.

• King Faisal of Saudi Arabia accused Jews of a blood libel in Paris.^[9]

• In a twist on the libel of Jews using blood in matzah, a Passover food, in 2002, a Saudi newspaper ^[10] claimed that Jews use blood in homentashn, triangular cookies eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim. The story celebrated on Purim, recounted in the Book of Esther, takes place in ancient Persia (modern-day Iran).

Doctors Ari Greenspan and Ari Zivotofsky have written an excellent history of the Blood Libel for the Jerusalem Post. It is a must read ! As we face it now, and will continue to face it in the future, we must understand the whats and the whys of this twisted Anti-Jewish heritage.

The everlasting lie

We Jews are no strangers to suffering. It started 3,500 years ago in the land of Egypt: ‘Slaves were we to Pharaoh in Egypt,’ the Bible recounts. The 10th and final plague hit the firstborn sons of every Egyptian. However, by smearing the blood of a slaughtered lamb on the doorposts of the Jewish homes, the death passed over them. Since that day, the stain of Pessah blood seems to follow us. For you see, the most wicked of all the slanders against us is that of the blood libel.

Josephus tells us that already in Roman times, the Greeks spread rumors that we wicked Jews slaughtered a Greek in the Temple in Jerusalem and ate his intestines as part of our rites.

In 12th-century England, there were repeated stories of children being killed by the Jews for ritual purposes.

The tale was usually the same. The holiday of Pessah is celebrated in the spring; the unleavened bread is an integral part of the feast. The ugly rumor proclaimed that the matza was not fit for use unless the blood of a Gentile child was kneaded into the mixture.

It is simply such a wild, unbelievable yarn that it became believable. As Hitler’s minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels so successfully taught, a lie, repeated often enough, will end up as truth, and the bigger the lie, the greater the likelihood that people will believe it. With the blood libel, you have both: a lie repeated for centuries that is an unbelievable stretch of the imagination.

The trigger for this malice always seemed to occur in the early spring, before Pessah, when the rivers were melting and the paths were thick in mud. Often a child had disappeared and was found floating in the thawing river. Other times, he would be discovered frozen to death in the woods or in a field. Sometimes, he was even found lost in the forest before the frost took him, but usually after the wholesale indiscriminate slaughter of local Jews. Sometimes entire towns were wiped out.

IT WAS THE year 1144 in Norwich, England, and little William was found stabbed. Almost the entire Jewish population of the town was wiped out. In Lincoln, England, in 1255, little Hugh was found dead in a Jew’s pit. The poor Jew named Copin confessed, in exchange for his life, that the boy was crucified. His life was saved – 18 other Jews were hanged for their ‘crime.’

So well known was this fable that Chaucer memorialized little Hugh 100 years later in his Canterbury Tales in ‘The Prioress’s Tale’:

She’s led him in through ae dark door,
And sae has she thro’ nine;
She’s laid him on a dressing-table,
And stickit him like a swine.
And first came out the thick, thick blood,
And syne came out the thin;
And syne came out the bonny heart’s blood;
There was nae mair within.
She’s row’d him in a cake o’lead,
Bade him lie still and sleep;
She’s thrown him in Our Lady’s draw-well
Was fifty fathom deep.

After centuries of pilgrimage to this site, as recently as the 20th century, the Anglican Church placed the following plaque in 1955.

‘By the remains of the shrine of ‘Little St. Hugh’: Trumped up stories of ‘ritual murders’ of Christian boys by Jewish communities were common throughout Europe during the Middle Ages and even much later. These fictions cost many innocent Jews their lives. Lincoln had its own legend and the alleged victim was buried in the Cathedral in the year 1255.

‘Such stories do not redound to the credit of Christendom, and so we pray: Lord, forgive what we have been, amend what we are, and direct what we shall be.’

Pessah was indeed a holiday in which human blood flowed. But it was usually that of Jews who paid with their lives for baking the most humble of pastries, matza, made with only flour and water. Any other ingredient, most certainly blood, would render it hametz and unfit for the Pessah ritual.

However, such a ‘probable’ reason was not always necessary. A more far-fetched excuse was the well-poisoning libel. During the bubonic plagues of the 14th century, Jews were accused of poisoning the wells of the towns to kill the Christians and to spread the disease. Somehow the fact that the Jews shared the same water, along with the consequences of the plague, seems to have been forgotten by the murderers.

One of the more twisted, and possibly the most telling and significant, of all libel events was that of the bleeding host. Through this facade we can grasp the medieval Christian hatred of the Jews as the deeper headwaters of the blood libels. To a religious and superstitious person in dark Catholic Europe, the wafer taken at mass was the body of their lord, and the wine drunk with it was his blood. It was real – the flesh and blood of their savior, in the flesh.

Throughout the centuries, Jews were accused of stabbing the host in an act of anti-Christian odium. Ergo, being the palpable body of the savior, the little cracker did what you would expect it to, it bled. Was it not enough that the Jews were responsible for Jesus’s death the first time? Seemingly once again they caused his death through the biscuit’s sanguinary surprise. This accusation of host desecration was first leveled against the Jews in 1243 at Berlitz, near Berlin, and resulted in all of the town’s Jews being burned. Over the centuries untold Jews were killed for their supposed heinous act of killing the wafer.

LEST ONE think that these vile events represent the distant foul past of an unenlightened world, we hear of an old-fashioned blood libel in Damascus in 1840. Chief Rabbi Ya’acov Entabi and a group of leading Jews of Damascus were accused of killing a Franciscan monk and his Greek servant to use their blood in matza baking. They were imprisoned and flogged and tortured to admit their heinous crime. When no admission could be coaxed from the rabbi’s pain-racked body, ‘witnesses’ were found who claimed to have seen it all happen.

What was unusual about this particular libel was the active involvement of the French representative in Syria. He seemed to relish being in on the action and watched the torture and egged on the participants. However, this was not the Dark Ages, this was the enlightened modern world. The word of the assault spread via the telegraph, and the Jewish world responded by bringing intense diplomatic pressure to bear on Syria. Sir Moses Montefiore made it a primary cause of his, and soon, all the incarcerated were freed, that is, of course, except for those who died during the torture. Rabbi Entabi was so revered for his honorable behavior that he was received with kisses and honor by the great rabbis of Safed, where he went the following year and where he spent the rest of his days.

The most celebrated of modern libel cases is the Beilis trial in Russia in 1913. The basic story we know without having to tell it: Mendel Beilis, a quiet, reserved superintendent at the Zaitsev brick factory, is accused of killing a Christian boy for blood for his matza. While the reason is unclear, the czarist regime decided at the highest levels to turn this into a show trial. As the closed police records showed after they were opened a few years after the trial, witnesses were procured and evidence was fabricated. One of the greatest difficulties the Russian police had was that not one priest in all of Russia could be found who was knowledgeable enough in the Talmud to argue the prosecution’s claim that the Jewish writings themselves were the basis for such a crime.

This time though, the Jewish and non-Jewish world and the world press followed every aspect of the trial and the ultimate acquittal of Beilis. Poor Beilis, a broken man whose health was taken by the years in a Russian jail, arrived home on the day of his freedom to a joyous welcome. Telegrams from around the world poured into his home, and a single message caught his eye. It was from Rabbi Avraham Kook, the chief rabbi of Palestine. Come home, he said, to the land of Israel. And there, Beilis went (although he later settled in the US).

Most of you reading this have also come home. You might have come from Syria or England, Iran or Germany or even the US. There were a few libels that happened there. Massena, New York, a small village located near the Canadian border, which in 1928 had about 35 Jewish families out of a population of 10,000, was the site. The US is different; there the accusation occurred not in the spring, but on Yom Kippur eve when the Jews were accused after four-year-old Barbara Griffiths failed to return home for dinner. Rabbi Berel Brennglass denied all charges, and stormed out of the police station. The little girl walked out of the woods unharmed the next day, and the Jews too survived the incident unscathed. But it is clear what could have been.

Now we are home and the insanity of blood libels from our lands of origin is behind us. It was something our grandparents might have seen or heard about. Sure some soon-to-be-forgotten history professor made a fool of himself this year by being quoted as claiming that Jews did actually kill Christian children for their blood. He was so shocked to find that besides some neo-Nazis and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, not a single person believed him. In fact, with his tail between his legs and his father, the former chief rabbi of Rome, along with many other historians and scholars publicly denouncing him and his research, he announced that the book was being taken off the shelves.

It is really unthinkable to imagine a more horrible and antithetical act to Jewish law than the use of human blood for a religious rite. The Bible insists that a human life is holy. The most wicked of all human acts is taking the life of another human being. The drinking or usage of blood, specifically blood, is forbidden with language as harsh as we find anywhere in the text. Another principle found in the Torah is human kindness to your fellow man. That stems, as we are told, from constantly remembering the experience of being slaves in Egypt.

These two principles, lovingkindness and the sanctity of human life, are among the most clear directives and messages in the Torah. How cruel it is then that the blood libel cynically plays upon these two hallmarks of Judaism. By asserting that we killed a young, helpless gentile child to utilize his blood, the gentile plays upon exactly those pure traits.

BUT IS IT really a thing of the past? It is if 1982 is the past. For my children it’s like the Dark Ages. However, the then Syrian defense minister published and defended his book entitled Matza of Zion. I think that the cover art sort of says what the book is about. And our neighbors in the Palestinian Authority have had blood libels in the press and TV almost annually for the last few years.

Perhaps the most unique twist on the old story is 2002 article in Al-Ridyah, the Saudi government’s daily paper. One of the editors was called by a US paper and asked whether it was true that Al-Ridyah wrote that the Jews drink human blood and mix it into their food on Purim.

For some real gore (viewer discretion advised), you could tune into the Al-Manar 24-part TV series that looked at every major catastrophic world event in the last 100 years and found a way to make a segment showing how the Jews were the cause. It was shown on cable all across the Arab world and hundreds of millions saw it. Two very Semitic looking hassidim with beautiful ear locks, looking like a cross between Zohar Argov and a Breslav hassid, are seen plotting on how to make the matza with blood. A Jew by the name of Nathan convinces a young Muslim boy to join him in a cellar and there, with a prearranged conspiratorial wink at his Jewish cohorts, they grip the lad and slit his throat, letting his blood drain in full color and motion into a large pan. The next shot is of the two rabbis meeting furtively in an alley to each take a bite of the holy bread. Yes, it’s all there in full color.

We could look for all sorts of deep psychological or religious reasons for the perpetuation of this myth. All we know is that a century ago our ancestors quivered with their doors locked on the night of the Seder lest a knock unexpectedly spell disaster for them and their families. In fact, there were rabbis who decided that one should drink only white wine on the night of Pessah so that no intruder should find a red liquid prompting a call for vengeance.

This was a genuine fear, and because of it we can understand that the section of the Seder that says ‘pour out Thy wrath upon the gentiles’ was not as it is today – a slight break to get some fresh air or to play a trick on the kids and pour out a drop of wine from Elijah’s cup. It was clear and present danger.

While we sit around our Pessah tables with our friends and families this year, joyously tasting our award-winning Israeli wines and sharing our unique camaraderie and our joint history, let’s think twice. Libels continue to spin all around us. Let the final words of the Haggada be our guiding light: Next Year in Jerusalem.

Dr. Ari Greenspan is a dentist in Jerusalem and Dr. Ari Zivotofsky is a professor of brain science at Bar-Ilan University. The writers’ research of this material was part of a project into the history of matza in Jewish communities around the world. Anyone with interesting matza photos or stories is asked to write to Ari@greenspandental.com.

Please email me at yidwithlid@aol.com to be put onto my mailing list.

Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com

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Iran Protecting its Nukes Through Gaza Violence

Iran Protecting its Nukes Through Gaza Violence: ”

I hope the US bombs Iran this month.

Iran Protecting its Nukes Through Gaza Violence: ’

Reports that Iran is the button pusher behind Hamas terrorism out of Gaza are not new. Iran is the puppet master behind much of the Palestinian terror in the world. What is being first being learned now are some of the reasons behind their turning on the spigot. Iran is pulling off an end run to protect its nuclear weapons development. As long as Hamas keeps the IDF occupied it is much more difficult for Israel to launch a presumptive strike against Iran.

Iran’s Hidden Hand in Gaza

By Avigdor Haselkorn
FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/19/2008

The recent escalation of fighting between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip must be viewed in a broader context that centers on Iran’s effort to shield its nuclear weapons program from a possible Israeli military strike.

It is often agreed that Tehran would retaliate strongly if its nuclear facilities were attacked. Yet the tacit assumption is that, Iran would not seek to prevent such an assault in advance. This view is fallacious as it overlooks the fact that Iran can act to prevent an attack without itself resorting to military means. Indeed, the evidence suggests that Iran is energetically pursuing a strategy to divert and deter the IDF from striking its nuclear installations. Iran is also seeking the capability to preempt an IDF attack if these efforts fail. In short, while the rest of the world dithers, Iran is preempting the preemption.

The targeting by Hamas militants based in the Gaza Strip of the Israeli city of Ashkelon by Grad Katyusha rockets, which intensified during the recent fighting, indicates the diversionary aim of this strategy. Indeed, introduction of the Grad into Gaza highlights the length to which Tehran will go to distract the IDF. With a range of more than twenty kilometers Iran was able to treble the number of civilians in southern Israel under rocket threat to some 250,000. The Iranians specifically manufactured the rockets to fit the narrow confines of smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza.

Hamas and Iran were certainly aware Israel could not tolerate such a threat for long. Indeed, Iran has sought to assure that the Gaza Strip’s Islamic radicals amas will not retreat in its will keep up their attacks of indigenously- produced Kassam rockets and mortars against southern Israeli population centers, fully aware of the potential escalation a large-casualty hit can cause. The Iran news agency ISNA reported January 19, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Hamas political bureau chief, Khalid Mashal to announce that ‘supporting [the Palestinian nation] is a religious duty and that Iranians would stand by their side to the time of victory.’

Tehran it must be concluded is not averse to the IDF launching a large-scale ground operation to silence the rockets that will entangle it in the Gaza Strip for a prolonged period. The idea is to sap Israel politically and militarily elsewhere rather than allow it to focus its energies against Iran.

While the Islamic radicals of the Gaza Strip are used mainly as a diversionary ploy in Iran’s preventive strategy, Hizballah on Israel’s northern border has been assigned the task of deterring the IDF from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites. For this purpose Hizballah’s strategic rockets—such as the Zelzal-2 and newly acquired Fatah 110- are under Iran’s final say so. The haste with which Tehran acted to rebuild Hizballah’s long-range arsenal after the IAF destroyed most of it during the 2006 Lebanon war, and its feverish efforts to extend the range of the organization’s rocket threat to Tel Aviv and beyond strongly indicates its interest in restoring its deterrence vis-à-vis Israel. In fact, the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported March 5, that Brigadier General Yossi Beiditz, head of the Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence research department, told European Union ambassadors in a briefing that some of the missiles Iran transferred to Hezbollah have a maximum range of 300 kilometers, ‘capable of reaching the Dimona area from Beirut.’ Iran, it turns out, was not satisfied with threatening Israel’s main cities, but sought to directly link attacks on its nuclear program to Hizballah’s ability to target the nuclear reactor in Dimona to deter the IDF.

The third leg in Iran’s strategy is the undertaking of preparations to preempt conventionally an Israeli attack if one was imminent. For example, in September 2006 during the final stages of military maneuvers dubbed ‘The Blow of Zolfaghar,’ Gen. Amir Amini, deputy commander of Iran’s air force, told state TV Iran test fired a one-ton flying bomb that ‘can be used as a guided long-range air-to-surface missile.’ He added the bomb, named Qassed or Herald, was ‘a special weapon developed for penetrating military, economic and strategic targets located deep underground on the soil of the enemy. ‘

Moreover, Ha’aretz on February 8, 2008 cited ‘briefings recently presented to senior [Israeli] ministers’ as saying Tehran helped Syria, its ally, to upgrade the Iranian-made Zelzal rocket and improve its accuracy so as to become a credible threat against IDF command and control installations, air and naval bases and military depots. With a 250 km range and a 600 kg warhead the weapon is another indication that Iran is developing the capacity to launch a conventional counterforce strike against Israel’s strategic targets.

The bottom line is that Iran has been able to seize and maintain the strategic initiative in its conflict with Israel. It has put in place a wide-ranging preventive strategy along Israel’s northern and southern borders designed to impede the IDF from going after its nuclear program or at least foil an attack. Already this strategy has forced Israel to shift vast resources to defensive missions. Yet Iran has suffered no penalty and its strategic moves remain unhindered. Nor of course is its progress toward nuclear weapons. Worse yet, if Israel was to reoccupy most of the Gaza Strip even temporarily Iran would be rewarded and its strategic plan revalidated. Given the recent hostilities, the Mullahs must be tapping themselves on the shoulder already —deployment of the Grad in Gaza has dragged Israel willy nilly into the Strip, precisely as they had hoped

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(Via YID With LID.)

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(Via The Avid Editor’s Insights.)</

Friends and Foes of the IDF

Friends and Foes of the IDF: ”

I found this great photo essay by Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs

Friends and Foes of the IDF: ‘

Made my way downtown to attend the Friends of the IDF black tie at the Waldorf Astoria, a righteous affair. And who should assault the lovely karma of a busy Park Avenue afternoon? Nazi dregs of the earth, with their ginormous megaphones screaming down Park Avenue ….caterwauling ‘end the zioninst occupation now’!
So of course I start clicking away and they began chanting ‘run the zionist bitch over!’ as I stood in the street taking their pictures………. savages in Gaza, savages in NY.

‘Run the zionist bitch over!’ as I took their picture

tough guy is filming me….

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across from the Waldorf

Lots of full headscarves. And yes they were typically screaming their Arab screed, foul all of it

Once inside, other worldly (like the garden of the Finzi Continis)

Beautiful people

The girls are utterly spectacular.

Atlas loves the Marines!

wow

jihad sniffing dogs

Moncia Crowley hosted (her fifth year) and she was very warmly received. Deservedly.

Olmert. OTOH, he was not as warmly received and frankly his message of ‘peace and security’ fell on deaf ears. We know what he is.

The IDF orchestra played sweetly, the Star Spangled Banner, Hatikvah ….moving all of. The soldiers’ stories were the most emotional and difficult to hear. These special young men and women are lit from within and perform their duty with principal against the the truly depraved evil of’ Islamic jihad.

Atlas and Police Captain David Rosen

It was a huge crowd. An overwhelming sign of support for jihad fighters on the front lines.

VIDEO of the haters (the leftist/Islamic alliance) from Pamela:

• chants of ‘ palestine will never die…’
• and the usual chant ‘Free Free palestine’…
• a look at those who support the ‘palestinian’

  terrorists

• Our counter rally as police set up our pen…and the

  offensive chant ‘free free palestine’

Here Pamela covered the counter protest to the Nazis

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(Via Atlas Shrugs.)

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(Via The Avid Editor’s Insights.)</

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH BUSH: ”

I think it is sick what Bush is doing to Israel. I really hope McCain is better.

IMPEACH BUSH : ‘

You never expected to see those words here, did you? Well I didn’t either. I voted for George Bush and I thought he was the ‘best friend Israel ever had in the White House.’ I still think he is basically a decent man and I appreciate his efforts in the WVT – war on various terrorists (not including the Palestinian ones).

But today the Bush administration went too far in the wrong direction and I must oppose it somehow, with all my being.

In his speech today, President Bush said, ‘Because we acted, Saddam’s regime is no longer paying the families of suicide bombers in the Holy Land.’

Thank Gd and President Bush, he’s right: Saddam is no longer paying the families of Palestinian Jew-murderers for killing Jews.

But the United States IS.

Thirteen days ago, Palestinians viciously slaughtered eight of our innocent sons inside the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva in the heart of what Bush calls ‘The Holy Land.’ And today President Bush is writing the Palestinians a check for $150 million dollars.

Is this not terribly clear?

Add in the fact that, when asked if they supported the murders of the yeshiva boys in particular, 84 %of Palestinians said yes. It’s in the New York Times today.

So let’s get this completely straight. When Palestinians killed Jews, Saddam would pay their families as much as $25,000. We considered this to be evil and America opposed it… militarily.

And Now?

Less than two weeks ago, the Palestinians killed eight Jews – with the support of 84% of their populace – and today George Bush and Condi Rice and our Congress are giving them a gift?

150 million of our tax dollars?

What is that, almost $20 million per dead Jewish boy?

Or is it $250,000 per round of ammunition used?

Western-backed Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said it was ‘the largest sum of assistance of any kind to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority by any donor in one trench since the Palestinian Authority’s inception.’

Fayyad, who signed the agreement with U.S. Consul General Jake Walles, told reporters the U.S. contribution ‘was coming to us at a time of great need and it will help our efforts…’

Walles said the United States had pledged $550 million at a donors’ conference in Paris in December last year that would be allocated for budgetary support, development projects and humanitarian assistance. ‘We’re going to continue to implement the other aspects of our pledge,’ Walles said.

They’re going to ‘continue to implement’ this travesty?

With 550 MILLION of our tax dollars? Oh no they’re not.

Jake Walles and Condi Rice and Salam Fayyad and Abu Mazen can call it whatever they like; Saddam probably thought he was in the business of ‘humanitarian assistance’ too. But if it goes to the Palestinians while they’re killing Jews in Israel, to me it’s blood money, pure and simple.

There is no question: I’d sooner let Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid divvy up the money for earmarks in America any day, than bear responsibility for further enabling the Palestinians to kill and maim our families and our children. With impunity. With American money, our money. I cannot imagine anything more horrific.

If anyone can tell me how the U.S. is different from Saddam Hussein in this instance, speak now, because I’m ready to join with the opposition, the liberals who want to impeach Bush for their own reasons, in a desperate bid to bring attention to my own outrage, alarm and despair.

I have cried, I have blogged, I have emailed and I have faxxed… and nothing changes. Completely contrary to the majority’s pro-Israel sentiment in this country, our federal government is barreling ahead, pouring money into Jew killers and trying to award them with a sovereign state. For WHAT?

The buck stops here, boys and girls. What’re you going to do about it? What CAN we do about it?

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(Via Boker tov, Boulder!.)

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(Via The Avid Editor’s Insights.)</