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GIVE THE JOY OF PURIM TO AN ISRAELI SOLDIER
With Purim coming up, let's do our part for the soldiers of the IDF
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Sent your check payable to:
ZOA Brooklyn Region
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IYIM
20 Ocean Court
Brooklyn, NY 11223
By David Lev
First Publish: 2/7/2013, 1:02 PM
Courtesy of Rubin Margules, PresidentZOA BROOKLYN REGION
With the festive holiday of Purim coming up,
ZOA BROOKLYN REGION is once again thinking of the soldiers of the IDF - and planning to distribute thousands of "mishloach manot," the special gifts of food that are traditionally given out on the holiday.
For Purim 2013, the Zionist Organization of America is teaming up with the World Mizrachi Organization, the International Young Israel Movement (IYIM), American Friends of Yisrael Hatzair and Gillies Goodies in order to maximize resources and ensure that they can bring Purim joy to the as many soldiers as possible.
"It gives me great satisfaction to once again be leading this project for the 13th year in a row", said Rubin Margules, president of ZOA Brooklyn Region and the moving force behind the effort. Solly Sacks, Director-General of World Mizrachi, said that "it is a great privilege and honor to be able to distribute these packages to Israeli soldiers, who defend us 24 hours a day, and to bring a smile to their faces."
This year, the Mishloach Manot will be packaged by overseas students who are learning in various yeshivot and seminaries in Israel for the year, enhancing their Israel experience, said Ceec Harrishburg, President of Young Israel in Israel. "The unique feature of our combined project is that we have many students, members and friends involved from around the world. Whether making kind financial contributions, packing or coming out to the bases to distribute - everyone lends a hand where they can," Harrishburg said.
The packing of the parcels will take place on Monday and Tuesday, 11th & 12th of February, at Heichal Shlomo in Jerusalem, and will include a pre-Purim Masquerade party for Singles to complement the packing. Distribution will take place the following week amongst the Ships and Vessels at the Haifa Naval Base; to the Lone Soldiers of the IDF; and to bases in the Shomron.
"For the past fifteen years we have been able to bring Purim joy, goodies and smiles to our brave Chayalim. I encourage everyone to get involved in this effort," said Meir Mishkoff, President, American Friends of Yisrael Hatza'ir.
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 REUVEN BLAU/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Brooklyn College students protest in support of the upcoming BDS forum at their school. Some elected officials threatened to cut the college's public funding if the event proceeded. The mayor said he can't think of anything "more destructive to a university and its students" than basing school funding on the political views of professors.
Crazy, controversial and even "repugnant" ideas deserve a platform on college campuses - and pols should not try to muzzle them, Mayor Bloomberg says.
In his first comments on the controversy over an anti-Israel forum sponsored by Brooklyn College, the mayor lashed out at elected officials who've threatened to cut the college's public funding if the event proceeds.
"I couldn't disagree more violently with BDS, as they call it, boycott, divestment, and sanctions. As you know I'm a big supporter of Israel, as big a one as I think you can find in the city," Bloomberg said.
RELATED: BROOKLYN COLLEGE FORUM HOSTING ANTI-ISRAEL GROUP SPARKS MAJOR DEBATE
But he added: "If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kinds of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea."
The mayor said the university has the right to sponsor forums on any topic, even BDS, which calls for penalizing Israel financially for its treatment of Palestinians.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/mayor-bloomberg-defends-controversial-anti-israel-event-sponsored-brooklyn-college-article-1.1257057#ixzz2KYfw7wum |
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'Return to Zion' by Dudu Fisher
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ZOA chief: US Jews shied away from Hagel row
02/13/2013 19:11
Morton Klein tells Post that other Jewish leaders urged him to drop 'campaign against Hagel', brands them 'frightened group of Jews'.
 Morton Klein Photo: SAM SOKOL American Jews are "frightened of making an issue seem more important to Jews than others," said Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein on Tuesday. In Israel as a member of a delegation organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Klein sat down to speak with the Jerusalem Post in the lobby of Jerusalem's Inbal hotel to provide his take on the issues facing organized American Jewry. The ZOA, which is a member of the Conference of Presidents, was founded in 1897 and is what Klein calls "the oldest pro-Israel [organization] in the United States." Discussing the his lobbying effort in Washington aimed at blocking the confirmation of Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, Klein said that the ZOA was, aside from the Republican Jewish Coalition, a partisan group, "the only major Jewish group to publicly oppose Hagel and Brenan." The "AJC, AIPAC, ADL [and] the Conference of Presidents never came out and said we oppose this man because he is horrible on Iran, he is horrible on terrorism, horrible on Israel, horrible on fighting radical Islam," Klein said. "I was called by major Jewish leaders, personally called, and [they] told me to stop our campaign against Hagel." Klein said that his counterparts at other organizations said that he was "making this a Jewish issue," which they considered "bad for the Jews." The NAACP promotes issues of importance to the African-American community, he said, but "I don't think they are too worried about that." READ MORE |
'Hagel wrong choice because of Iran, not Israel'By HERB KEINON 02/12/2013 22:07 Ex-envoy to US Rabinovich's remarks come hours before vote on Hagel appointment; says Hagel sends wrong message to Iran.
Chuck Hagel (R-NE) testifies during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, January 31, 2013. Photo: REUTERS/Larry Downing
Former senator Chuck Hagel is a "bad choice' for US Secretary of Defense, not because of his attitude toward Israel, but because of the message his appointment sends to Iran, former ambassador to the US Itamar Rabinovich said Tuesday.
Rabinovich's words to the annual meeting in Jerusalem of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations came just hours before the US Senate's Armed Services Committee was scheduled to vote on Hagel. Hagel has been accused of being soft on Iran because he voted against sanctions as a senator and has come out in the past against pre-emptive military action to stop Tehran's nuclear march. .
Rabinovich, who Yitzhak Rabin sent to Washington as his ambassador in 1993 and who served until 1996, said that without a credible military threat against Iran, sanctions and negotiations will not work. He said that the nomination of Hagel and John Kerry as Secretary of State sent the wrong message to the Iranians.
Rabinovich said that while he appreciated Hagel's service in Vietnam, he was not a good choice to head the Pentagon "especially in the Iranian context, it undermined the idea of a credible military threat."
Rabinovich, on a panel that included three other former ambassadors to the US - Moshe Arad, Moshe Arens and Sali Meridor -- said that when US President Barack Obama arrived in March it would be important to create a "sense of movement," a sense that "things are not frozen," on the Palestinian track." He said he was among those who does not believe that a final agreement with the Palestinians was currently possible, but that this did not mean the status quo should be accepted. Rather, he said, there was a "large space" between the status quo and a final agreement, and that it was within that space that the discussions should take place.
The former envoy said that "mutual trust" was the most important ingredient in the relationship between any US president and Israeli prime minister, and that the mutual trust was not there for the last four years. The most important achievement of the Obama visit, he said, would be if that mutual trust could be rebuilt. .
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Contact Your Senator: Levin https://www.levin.senate.gov/contact/email/ Stabenow http://www.stabenow.senate.gov/?p=contact Capital Hill Switch Board: 202-224-3121 |
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GOP blocks Hagel vote
By RICHARD LARDNER The Associated Press
Published: Thursday, February 14th, 2013
WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the nomination of former GOP senator Chuck Hagel as the nation's next defense secretary over unrelated questions about President Barack Obama's actions in the aftermath of the deadly raid on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya. Obama accused Republicans of playing politics with national security during wartime, and Democrats vowed to revive the nomination after Congress' weeklong break.
By 58-40, with one abstention, the Senate fell short of the 60-vote threshold required to advance Hagel's nomination to a final, up-or-down vote on his confirmation. Four Republicans voted with Democrats to end the debate and proceed to a final vote: Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Mike Johanns of Nebraska.
Obama reacted immediately, hammering Republicans for an unprecedented filibuster of a nominee for defense secretary and insisting that Hagel - a former two-term Republican senator from Nebraska and twice-wounded Vietnam combat veteran - will eventually win confirmation. He would succeed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is stepping down after four years as CIA director and Pentagon chief.
"It's just unfortunate that this kind of politics intrudes at a time when I'm still presiding over a war in Afghanistan and I need a secretary of defense who is coordinating with our allies to make sure that our troops are getting the kind of strategy and mission that they deserve," the president said in an online chat sponsored by Google.
In the final minutes of the tally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., switched his vote from "yes" to "no," a procedural move that allows him to revive the nomination after the break. He set another vote for Feb. 26.
"Just when you thought things couldn't get worse, it gets worse," the Democratic leader lamented of the chamber's bitter partisanship.
The successful Republican effort to block a vote on Hagel leaves one of the most contentious nominations of the Obama presidency in limbo, although Republicans signaled that they would relent and allow a simple majority vote on Hagel when they return from their recess.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., voted against ending debate. But he said that he expects to change his vote, and he believes many of his GOP colleagues will do the same.
"I'm confident that after a reasonable period of time I'm going to vote to end the debate so that we can have an up-or-down vote on Chuck Hagel," Alexander said. "I suspect there will be a large number of Republican senators who also do that."
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Hagel omitted two speeches on Middle East from Senate disclosure forms
By James Rosen
Published February 12, 2013
FoxNews.com
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FILE: Oct. 28, 2009: President Obama meets with Chuck Hagel, then co-chairman of the president's Intelligence Advisory Board. (Reuters)
In the supporting documents he turned over to Senate investigators as part of his confirmation process, Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel did not disclose at least two recent speeches on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Fox News has confirmed.
Obama administration sources and lawmakers said Hagel was required to declare to the Senate Armed Services Committee any "formal speeches" he had given since the start of January 2008. That Hagel appears not to have declared the two speeches from 2008 could further jeopardize his nomination with Senate Republicans, who have already threatened to block the nomination because they believe Hagel has not turned over enough financial data.
An Obama administration official who has worked with the senator during his confirmation process maintained that Hagel has gone "above and beyond" the Senate's requirements, by supplying to the Armed Services Committee whatever evidence he could find - prepared remarks, transcripts and the like - for both formal and "informal" speeches.
Apprised by Fox News of the two speaking dates from 2008, however, the official appeared not to have heard about them. The aide later responded that Hagel did not disclose these two speaking events because neither were formal speeches. "It's simply not true to suggest there was any attempt to hide anything," the aide told Fox News. "One event was at an academic institute - Georgetown, a Jesuit university. The other was with an organization that combats discrimination."
According to materials and documents compiled by Steven Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism and provided to Fox News on Monday, Hagel appeared before the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) on June 13, 2008, serving as keynote speaker at the group's convention that year. The specific session the former two-term Nebraska senator addressed was a fundraising reception for ADC's political action committee.
Although the contents of Hagel's speech have not surfaced, the ADC has a history of controversial statements about Israel and of accepting foreign funds. In July 2006, a writer on ADC's website identified Hagel as the lone member in Congress "willing to stand up to the Israeli Lobby." In the same posting, titled "Facts and Commentary About the Current Conflict Between Israel and Lebanon," James G. Abourezk said President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "have a lot of blood on their hands for remaining silent and for re-arming Israel, which allows the slaughter [of Arabs] to continue." A former Democratic senator from South Dakota, Abourezk was the first Arab-American to serve in the Senate.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/12/hagel-omitted-two-speeches-on-middle-east-from-senate-disclosure-forms/#ixzz2Kq4DGNZl |
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FEBRUARY 13, 2013 12:30 PM
Barack Obama in Israel in 2008.
There's one very simple, very clear conclusion to be drawn from the sudden decision of President Obama to visit Israel, without waiting for Shimon Peres' Presidential Conference in the summer, without there being any fundamental progress in the "peace process" to support - Netanyahu has won.
For almost four years, the strategy of the White House vis-à-vis Israel was built around the assumption that Benjamin Netanyahu is an unfortunate aberration, a sad and annoying throwback to the past that was obviated by the ascension of Obama. At various points, the prevailing opinion among Obama's inner circle was that the Israeli Premier must be pushed, marginalized or replaced. Despite the series of setbacks along the road (including the record drop in the American President's popularity in Israel), and the negative reaction of the American public to the perceived slighting of the trusted ally in an attempt to score points with the "Arab street," the underlying expectation never changed. No matter what the polls told, Israelis were supposed to follow the American cue and to get rid of the leader who failed to appease the newly reelected President.
To be fair, those expectations were not baseless. After all, how hard should it have been for Netanyahu's opponents to prevail when they had an entire propaganda machine (also known as Israeli press) on their side? With exception of "Israel Ha-Yom" (where the defense of Netanyahu never matched the frenzy of attacks on him elsewhere), the Israeli chattering classes, leaded by the media empire of Yedioth Ahronoth, made the defeat of Netanyahu a priority and pursued it single-mindedly. During the electoral campaign, any politician suspected of possible cooperation with Netanyahu was relentlessly attacked. Those attacks caused Labor leader Shelly Yachimovitch to change strategy mid-campaign and declare that under no circumstances will she support Netanyahu as a Prime Minister and join his coalition.
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Officials: Iran and Hizbullah Building Militia Network in Syria
Iran and Hizbullah are building a network of militias inside Syria to preserve their interests in the event that Assad falls.
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By Elad Benari
First Publish: 2/11/2013, 3:12 AM
 A member of the Free Syrian Army paints on the Al-Moshat school wall in Aleppo Reuters
Iran and Hizbullah, its Lebanese terror proxy, are building a network of militias inside Syria to preserve and protect their interests in the event that President Bashar al-Assad'sgovernment falls or is forced to retreat from Damascus, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials told The WashingtonPost on Sunday.
According to the sources, the militias are fighting alongside Syriangovernment forces to keep Assad in power. Officials believe, however, that Iran's long-term goal is to have reliable operatives in place in the event that Syria fractures into separate ethnic and sectarian enclaves.
A senior Obama administration official cited Iranian claims that Tehran was backing as many as 50,000 militiamen in Syria.
"It's a big operation," the official told The Washington Post. "The immediate intention seems to be to support the Syrian regime. But it's important for Iran to have a force in Syria that is reliable and can be counted on."
Iran's strategy, a senior Arab official agreed, has two tracks. "One is to support Assad to the hilt, the other is to set the stage for major mischief if he collapses," he told TheWashington Post.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
Syrian fragmentation along religious and tribal lines is a growing concern for neighboring governments and the administration, as the civil war approaches its third year with little sign of a po
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Understanding Iranian Negotiating Behavior
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Why Iran Already Has the Bomb
If North Korea has the bomb, as this week's nuclear test indicated, then for all practical purposes, so does Iran
 People watch a TV broadcast reporting North Korea's nuclear test at the Seoul Railway station on Feb. 12, 2013 in Seoul, South Korea. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) The White House and President Obama's supporters insist that he's making his first trip to Israel next month to assure the Jewish state that if push comes to shove with Iran, he'll have Israel's back. But North Korea's nuclear test Tuesday morning could indicate that it's already too late for that. If North Korea has the bomb, then for all practical purposes Iran does, too. If that's so, then Obama's policy of prevention has failed, and containment-a policy that the president has repeatedly said is not an option-is in fact all Washington has.
If this sounds hyperbolic, consider the history of extensive North Korean-Iranian cooperationon a host of military and defense issues, including ballistic missiles and nuclear development, that dates back to the 1980s. This cooperation includes North Korean sales of technology and arms, like the BM-25, a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching Western Europe; Iran's Shahab 3 missile is based on North Korea's Nodong-1 and is able to reach Israel. Iran has a contigent of Iranian weapons engineers and defense officials stationed in North Korea. Meantime, North Korean scientists visit Iran. And last fall, both countries signed a memorandum of understanding regarding scientific, academic, and technological issues.
Given all this, there's a great deal of concern that, as one senior U.S. official told the New York Times, "the North Koreans are testing for two countries." The classic case of testing for another country is when the United States tested for the U.K. under the 1958 U.S.-U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement. The situation with the Hermit Kingdom and the Islamic Republic is different: The North Koreans certainly aren't going to make the cooperation quite so explicit, but they're also not hiding it. In January, Kim Jong-un boasted that the United States was the prime target for Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests. Earlier this month, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rejected the idea of nuclear negotiations with the United States. So, neither North Korea nor Iran believe the White House can do much to stop their march-one that they seem to be conducting in lockstep.
Nuclear-proliferation experts I spoke with are reluctant to push the conclusion quite that far. "There's no evidence of direct cooperation on nuclear tests," Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Monterey Institute, told me. "And it would be hard to know," he added, given the paranoid, secretive nature of both regimes. Unless or until the North Koreans or Iranians volunteer that information, it is going to be hard to prove definitively that the North Koreans would give the bomb-or blueprints for one-to Iran.
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FEBRUARY 11, 2013 2:18 AM
Satellite imagery revealing potential nuclear cover-up activity in Iran. Photo: ISIS.
Iran could have its first atomic bomb within four to six months of the regime's decision to assemble one, according to an assessment last Monday by Amos Yadlin, former IDF Director of Military Intelligence. About a week earlier, Tehran declared that it will now use up to three thousand IR-2M centrifuges, which can enrich uranium at about quadruple the speed of Iran's current enrichment rate. Fred Kagan, Director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), describes the IR-2M installation as "undermin[ing] one of the core assumptions of current U.S. policy": that U.S. intelligence could detect Iran crossing a key threshold and developing weapons-grade nuclear material. The much faster IR-2M centrifuges could enable Iran to produce one weapon's worth of highly-enriched uranium in about a week - the amount of time that IAEA inspectors might be absent before their next visit.
Why is Iran boldly defying the international community now, in a way that leaves even less time to address its nuclear ambitions? A perfect storm is motivating Iran's sudden sprint to nukes.
The U.S. national security team is in its most ineffective state. Gary Samore, a WMD czar and key member of President Obama's Iran negotiating team, is leaving. John Kerry is in his first days on the job as Secretary of State, and Chuck Hagel - Iran's preferred pick for Secretary of Defense for his anti-Israel and pro-Tehran views - stands a good chance of being confirmed along partisan lines despite his embarrassing display of waffling and incompetence at last week's Senate confirmation hearings.
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THE WORLD'S TOP 10 MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES IN ISRAEL
1_SodaStream
For providing an alternative to bottles. Virtually unknown until a few years ago,SodaStream is now the world's largest manufacturer and distributor of DIY home carbonation systems, selling its brands in more than 60,000 retail outlets in 45 countries. How much of a threat does it pose to traditional soda sellers? In February, CBS axed an ad created by SodaStream, presumably because it showed bottles by two of its regular advertising partners--Coke and Pepsi--vanishing into thin air.
2_Xsight Systems
For keeping airport runways safe. Foreign Object Debris costs the aviation industry around $13 billion per year and famously downed an Air France Concord supersonic aircraft in 2000. Xsight's FAA-approved FODetect system has emerged as one of the leading solutions, using hybrid radar and electro-optical technology to detect junk on runways. Boston's Logan Airport was the first to test it in 2009, and Paris Charles De Gaulle and Bangkok Suvarnabhumi installed it in 2012.
3_Waze Mobile
For crowdsourcing GPS navigation. Waze gathers map data and user-submitted information from its nearly 30 million app users, and provides recommended routes, traffic updates and even fuel prices in real time. In October, 2012, the company also rolled out more personalized features: If friends are all meeting up at one spot, the app gives real-time updates on everyone's travels, or can map a route for how one person can reach another.
4_Galil Software
For bringing tech jobs to Arab communities. Israel's large Arab minority is underrepresented in the local workforce, particularly in the tech industry. But that is changing thanks to companies like Galil Software, a Nazareth-based leader in onshore outsourcing of R&D and software services. It employs about 150 Arab engineers and last year won the Prime Minister's Prize for Initiative and Innovation, for "providing an example for young Arabs who aspire to careers in the high-tech industry."
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Saudi Hypocrisy At Its Best
February 8, 2013 By Raymond Ibrahim
 Few things offer surreal experiences as when Islam and the West interact-when 7th century primordialism encounters 21st century relativism. Consider the issue of "interfaith dialogue." In principle, it is a decent thing: Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others trying to reach a common ground and professing mutual respect. But what does one make of the gross contradictions that emerge when a human-rights violating nation calls for "dialogue," even as it enforces religious intolerance on its own turf?
Enter Saudi Arabia. Birthplace of Islam, the Arabian kingdom is also the one Muslim nation that regularly sponsors interfaith initiatives in the West-even as its official policy back home is to demonize and persecute the very faiths it claims to want to have an interfaith dialogue with.
Back in 2008, for example, in what was deemed an unprecedented move, Saudi King Abdullah "made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews," going so far as to refer to the latter two as "our brothers." His stated goal was to develop "respect among religions."
The Saudi monarch's most recent initiative reached fruition recently, on November 26, 2012, when the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Center for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue was launched in the Austrian capital, Vienna. According to its own website, the center "was founded to enable, empower and encourage dialogue among followers of different religions and cultures around the world." Lending international legitimacy to this Saudi gesture of goodwill, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was among those who attended the opening.
While all this ostensibly sounds well and good, consider the many incongruities, the many absurdities-initially demonstrated by the simple fact that Saudi Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, who was quoted praising the Austrian-based center as proof that "Islam is a religion of dialogue and understanding and not a religion of enmity, fanaticism, and violence," is also on record calling Jews "monkeys and pigs" and Christians "cross worshippers."
Nor is he just a run-of-the-mill sheikh: he is the government-appointed imam of Saudi Arabia's Grand Mosque in Mecca-Islam's holiest site, where Christians, Jews, and others are routinely condemned and cursed during the prayers of the faithful.
But this is not surprising. Even the State Department's most recent internal religious freedom report on Saudi Arabia notes that "Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice. The public practice of any religion other than Islam is prohibited, and there is no separation between state and religion." READ MORE
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Sharia Law Swallowing Indonesia
Indonesia, once a country of diversity, is now becoming a place for one-way Islam.
Although Indonesia, "the world's largest Muslim country" with an 87% Muslim population, was once considered a moderate Muslim country, day by day it has been leaning more and more towards conservative Islam and Sharia laws. Initiated in 2009, bylaws in the light of Sharia rulings were implemented that conflict with the values of human rights, and are creating a difficult land for minorities to live in.
Indonesian Aceh province authorities recently launched an initiative, despite opposition from human rights activists, to ban women from straddling motorcycles when riding behind a man. Suaidi Yahia, mayor of Lhokseumawe, the second large city of the province, said to the Associated Press, "It is improper for women to sit astride. We implement Islamic law here." He later said, "women sitting on motorbikes must not sit astride: it will provoke the male drivers." Instead, they allow women to sit sidesaddle, which is dangerous on a motorcycle.
The objectives of the local authorities were apparently to prevent "showing a woman's curves;" it is against Islamic teachings, Yahia went on to say, unless it is an emergency. In a notice distributed to the government offices and villages of northern Aceh, they added that women are not allowed to hold onto the driver.
Last year, the mayor of Tasikmalaya in West Java proposed to veil all women, including non-Muslims. Mayor Syarif Hidayat vowed to implement Sharia law, to repay Muslim leaders who backed his election victory. The President of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is serving his second term, also relies on the support of Muslim political parties.
Sharia law is spreading throughout all of the provinces of Indonesia; citizens are enacting their own variations of Islamic laws, and applying then to non-Muslims as well.
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February 10, 2013
The Folly of the West's Alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood
By Janet Levy
The presence of Muslims in the West is not a recent phenomenon; on the contrary, it reaches back many decades, to Nazi Germany. Then, a group of former Soviet Muslims, seeking better treatment in Germany, defected and aided the Nazi effort. Muslim Brotherhood (MB) cohorts in the Middle East conducted a parallel effort. Later, under the control of U.S. intelligence, many of these same Muslims were harnessed as a bulwark against worldwide Communist domination during the Cold War. Eventually completely taken over by the MB, these German Muslim cohorts were courted by the West as a most curious partner to counter Islamic extremism. The locus for much of their activity, which they later used to spread Islam throughout Europe and plan major terrorist attacks in the West, including 9/11, was to become a beachhead in Europe -- the Munich mosque.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Johnson details this history in his book, A Mosque in Munich. Johnson examines nearly 80 years of the Muslim presence in Europe and how America helped strengthen the very community dedicated to the destruction of the West. Most of it is on target, except for Johnson's crucial underplaying of the Muslim Brotherhood's key role in the mission to destroy America.
Muslims Fighting for Nazism
During World War II, the Nazis saw an opportunity to use disenfranchised non-Russian Muslim minorities to fight the Soviet Union. As victims of Soviet repression, Muslims were treated as an underclass. Their farms were collectivized, their assets were confiscated, they were persecuted for practicing their religion, and their mosques were shuttered. Thus, they became ripe for Nazi exploitation, and, as devalued soldiers, non-Russian Muslim minorities were eager to be captured by the Germans and fight against Stalin. In addition, since anti-Semitism was an intrinsic part of their religious doctrine, these Muslims naturally allied with Nazis efforts to exterminate Jews.
Johnson recounts that by the 1930s, another force in the Islamic world, the MB, founded in 1928, was accepting money from the Nazis and using it to establish a military wing. The nascent organization run by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, focused on anti-British colonialism and opposition to Jewish immigration. In 1933, al-Husseini contacted the Nazis about supplying recruits for the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the Nazi party, and joining a collaborative effort to eliminate Jewish influence in economics and politics.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/the_folly_of_the_wests_alliance_with_the_muslim_brotherhood.html#ixzz2Kj5QxdCb
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Blaming 'el Yahud'
02/07/2013 14:11 By ZVI MAZEL
With the Muslim Brotherhood in power, anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are now part of Egyptian culture
 Photo by: REUTERS
America is asking for clarifications regarding a blatantly anti-Semitic outburst from Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Essam Erian, one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, has called on former Egyptian Jews living in Israel to come back to make room for returning Palestinians after the demise of the Jewish state, which he believes will happen within 10 years.
Erian thus puts into words the deep-seated anti-Semitism of the movement he represents: There cannot be a Jewish state, and Jews cannot aspire to be more than second-class citizens in Muslim countries, dhimmis subject to Shari'a (Islamic) law and living under the protection of Islam only as long as they accept their inferior status. In the past, they and other non- Muslim residents had to pay a special poll tax, the jizya; there are now calls in Egypt to revive that tax, which was abolished in the late 19th century by a much-weakened Ottoman empire.
Historically, Muslim hatred toward the Jews is rooted in the latter's refusal to accept Islam and its preeminence over all other religions, as expressed in the shahada, the credo of the faithful: "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah"; Muhammad is the last of the prophets and ushers in an era in which Islam will rule the world through peaceful means - or through war.
Islam claims for its own both the Old and New testaments, and Muhammad was incensed that the Jews, who had introduced monotheism to the world, did not recognize him and accept his teachings. One can find in the Koran far more attacks against Jews than against Christians, who did not acknowledge Islam either. There are numerous verses vilifying the Jews, calling for their abasement and humiliation and, for instance, branding them as sons of pigs and apes, having to bear the wrath of Allah and being doomed to hell on Judgment Day unless they accept the true faith.
The Muslim Brotherhood gave a new slant to the age-old hatred. Hassan Banna, who founded the movement in 1928, transformed what was a "passive" phenomenon into a virulent doctrine, part of both his vision to restore the caliphate and his fight against the British occupation and Western influence on his country.
The hand of the Jews was seen everywhere; they were allegedly attacking Islam and targeting the whole world.
Adopting the message and model of Christian anti-Semitism, the Brothers initiated a program of incitement against Jews living in Egypt and fomented pogroms against the old Jewish quarter of Cairo. In the 1930s and '40s, Banna developed his theories in countless writings, declaring the Jews the agents of change and Westernization, and responsible for the decline of the West as well as of Islam.
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Fairy tales won't bring peace: A tale of 'Five Broken Cameras'
BY ROZ ROTHSTEIN AND YAEL MAZAR
 "5 Broken Cameras" is nominated as best documentary in the Academy Awards. (Sony Picture Classics/Alegria Productions) Five Broken Cameras (2011), a documentary currently up for a 2013 Oscar and co-directed by the film's narrator and videographer, Palestinian Emad Burnat, and Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi, attempts to erase the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The film unfolds as a Palestinian fairy tale, narrated in a soothing, storytelling voice: Once upon a time, a poor Palestinian farmer lived in a West Bank village called Bil'in. He had four sons, a doting wife, and many friends. A few of the men worked, while the women spent their days cooking, cleaning, raising children and otherwise being invisible. The men smoked, danced, watched soccer games and occasionally picked olives. Life seemed perfect. One day, big bad Israelis erected a "barrier" through Bil'in, seemingly for the sole purpose of irritating the villagers. For the next five years, chronicled through the life of the farmer's youngest son, the farmer and his friends nonviolently protested this fence. Some got hurt and some even died because of Israeli soldiers' unprovoked and excessive use of force. Then, because of the villagers of Bil'in, the fence came down. Moral of the fairy tale: Israelis are bad; Palestinians are good; the farmer's son is very cute and has tragically suffered his loss of innocence because of Israel. An intelligent viewer walks away feeling highly manipulated without knowing why. The film portrays reality through a broken lens. Its manipulative narration and visual editing craft a seemingly simple story of Palestinian nonviolent resistance to Israel's security fence, but its covert intent is to denigrate Israel. The film is part of an aggressive industry whose sole aim is to delegitimize and blame only Israel with predictable key techniques, all of which the film utilizes. First, the film provides absolutely no context. Why is there a security fence? Emad alludes to a "barrier" being erected to "secure and separate the settlers." Wrong. Israel temporarily built a security fence in response to the second intifada (2000-2005). The fence literally prevents Palestinian terrorists from walking from their villages, like Bil'in, into Israeli cities, like nearby Modi'in, and blowing themselves up. While it must be frustrating for a Palestinian farmer to walk through a gate to get to his field (as seen in the movie), it is surely more inconvenient for an Israeli girl to lose her parents and three siblings to a suicide bomber (as happened during the Jerusalem Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing on August 9, 2001). It seems that the fence is so troublesome that it has erased all of Emad's memory as to why it is there in the first place. READ MORE |
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 | | It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl |
About this Film
It Is No Dream examines the life and times of Theodor Herzl, the journalist and playwright who was responsible for creating the political movement that led in 1948 to the creation of the Jewish state, Israel. It is the latest feature of Moriah Films, the two time Academy Award winning documentary film division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international human rights organization and NGO with over 400,000 member families.
Narrated by Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley and starring Academy Award Winner Christoph Waltz as the voice of Theodor Herzl, It Is No Dream examines how Theodor Herzl, an assimilated Jew, born into a traditional but mostly non-religious family in Budapest in 1860, was changed by the trial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, which he covered as a journalist in 1895. Previously, he had advocated the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity as a solution to the growing anti-Semitism of Europe. However, after witnessing the court proceedings where Dreyfus was falsely convicted of treason and the anti-Jewish demonstrations of the French public, Herzl became convinced that the only answer to the anti-Semitism that was spreading across Europe was the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people. He wrote a political treatise entitled "Der Judenstaat" or "The Jewish State" that became an international bestseller, laying out his ideas for creating a new Jewish state.
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