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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; building</title>
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		<title>Why Zionism Is Moral &amp; Just</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ronn-torossian/why-zionism-is-moral-just/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-zionism-is-moral-just</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2014 04:10:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ronn Torossian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Settlements]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ze’ev Jabotinsky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zionism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242864</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmed agree or not.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/western-wall.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242865" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/western-wall-450x291.jpg" alt="ISRAEL-RELIGION/WOMEN" width="315" height="204" /></a>History repeats itself when it comes to Jews and Israel – President Obama remains more concerned about Jews building homes in Jerusalem than radical Muslims. Yet, the Jewish State continues to grow and thrive.</p>
<p>There’s a Zionist leader named <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/04/01/ze%E2%80%99ev-jabotinskys-answer-to-hypocrisy/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ze’ev Jabotinsky </span></a>who passed away in 1940, yet is considered the forefather of today’s nationalist politicians, including Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whose late father was Jabotinsky’s personal secretary.</p>
<p>As Jabotinsky said, “We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmed agree with it or not.” Similarly as Jabotinsky wrote in his epic “Ethics Of The Iron Wall”:</p>
<blockquote><p>Human society is based on reciprocity. If you remove reciprocity, justice becomes a lie. A person walking somewhere on a street has the right to live only because and only to the extent that he acknowledges my right to live. But, if he wishes to kill me, to my mind he forfeits his right to exist – and this also applies to nations. Otherwise, the world would become a racing area for vicious predators, where not only the weakest would be devoured, but the best.</p></blockquote>
<p>And while Israel wants peace, Israel knows the importance of a strong arm and standing strong against her enemies, yet:</p>
<blockquote><p>Everything connected with war is “evil” and “good” does not exist at all. When you fire at the enemy do not lie to yourself and do not imagine that you are shooting at the “guilty”… [I]f at that time we would have begun to calculate what was preferable – the result would have been simple: if you want to be “good” allow yourself to be killed and forego all that you made it your aim to defend: home, country, freedom, hope. The Romans used to say: “always choose the lesser of two evils. When you are faced with a situation where the exertion of force prevails, only one question may be presented: “which is worse?”</p></blockquote>
<p style="color: #323333;">Amidst criticism that Israel faces world pressure, and should sacrifice to comply with “world leaders,” <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/israel-revolt/torossian-zeev-jabotinsky-had-it-right-justice-must-be-done"><span style="color: #800d00;">Ze’ev Jabotinsky</span></a> wrote a clear answer in &#8220;The Story of The Jewish Legion&#8221;:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;Everybody is wrong and you alone are right?” No doubt this question springs by itself to the reader’s lips and mind. It is customary to answer this with apologetic phrases to the effect that I fully respect public opinion that I bow to it, that I was glad to make concessions….All this is unnecessary, and all this is untrue. You cannot believe in anything in the world, if you admit even once that perhaps your opponents are right, and not you. This is not the way to do things. There is but one truth in the world, and it is all yours. If you are not sure of it, stay at home; but if you are sure, don’t look back, and it will be your way.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>As Jabotinsky said in 1940, “Life is not always logical.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Rejecting U.S. Support for Palestinian &#8216;Ethnic Purification&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/rejecting-u-s-support-for-palestinian-ethnic-purification/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rejecting-u-s-support-for-palestinian-ethnic-purification</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Oct 2014 04:10:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethnic purification]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242520</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Benjamin Netanyahu's bold rebuke of Obama's push for segregation in Jerusalem. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="color: #222222;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/benjamin-netanyahu-on-his-relati.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242521" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/benjamin-netanyahu-on-his-relati-450x330.jpg" alt="benjamin-netanyahu-on-his-relati" width="310" height="227" /></a>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told “Face the Nation” on Sunday, October 5 that preventing Jews from living and building in mostly-Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem would mean a policy of &#8220;ethnic purification” that is unacceptable in democratic societies. In so doing, Netanyahu once again showed his mastery of nuance in American politics &#8212; a nuance, as it turns out, that even American presidential candidates do not always recognize.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">Appearing on the CBS-TV interview program opposite anchor Bob Schieffer, Netanyahu strongly defended the recent purchase by Jewish families of apartments from Arabs in Jerusalem&#8217;s Shiloach neighborhood, as well as the Israeli government&#8217;s plans to build homes for Jews and Arabs in the city&#8217;s Givat Hamatos section.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">Netanyahu told Schieffer that he was baffled by President Obama&#8217;s criticism of the latest Jerusalem developments, since the idea of barring members of a particular ethnic group from living in specific areas is clearly against American values. He said that neither the United States nor Israel should ever have a policy of enforcing &#8220;ethnic purification.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">That phrase brings to mind a generation-old controversy in American political history.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">The year was 1976. Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia, was locked in a tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination. The hot issues of the day included the busing of African-American children to mostly-white schools and the building of low-income housing in higher-income neighborhoods. A significant number of Democratic primary voters in some states were strongly opposed to both.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">When a reporter asked Carter about the housing issue, Carter evidently tried to appeal to conservative white voters by declaring: &#8220;I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained. I would not force racial integration on a neighborhood by government action.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">That comment ignited a firestorm of questions from reporters. At first, Carter stood his ground. At a news conference in Indianapolis two days later, he reiterated: &#8220;I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained in Indianapolis. I have nothing against a community trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">By the next day, the condemnations were coming thick and fast. Seventeen black members of Congress and the National Urban League denounced Carter&#8217;s statements.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">Carter buckled. He publicly apologized, announced his endorsement of employment legislation that the Congressional Black Caucus had been promoting, and declared: &#8220;I don&#8217;t stand behind any sort of connotation of ethnic purity. I don&#8217;t want any community to maintain its ethnic purity. If someone from a different ethnic group wants to go into a neighborhood, I would fight for that person&#8217;s right to do that.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">Nowadays, Carter is much more likely to be seen hugging a leader of Hamas, than standing on the same political side as an Israeli prime minister. After all, Carter has authored an entire book accusing Israel of &#8220;apartheid,&#8221; and has even publicly claimed that &#8220;obviously the Palestinians have a worse time than the Rwandans.&#8221; (Not so obvious to those who know that one million people were slaughtered in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.)</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">But Carter&#8217;s amended declaration speaks for itself: &#8220;If someone from a different ethnic group wants to go into a neighborhood, I would fight for that person&#8217;s right to do that.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">The new Jewish residents of Jerusalem&#8217;s Shiloach and Givat HaMatos neighborhoods no doubt appreciate that principle, regardless of who is the person articulating it.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">And Prime Minister Netanyahu was spot-on to use the argument to a nationwide American audience in rejecting the Obama administration&#8217;s latest criticism.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Hillary&#8217;s Hand in Hamas&#8217; Terror Tunnels</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/hillarys-hand-in-hamas-terror-tunnels/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hillarys-hand-in-hamas-terror-tunnels</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 04:10:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supplies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terror tunnels]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239433</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One accomplishment from Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hillary1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239435" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hillary1-409x350.jpg" alt="hillary1" width="291" height="249" /></a>Much has been said and written about the terror tunnels that Hamas built in Gaza. But too little has been said about who it was that put the cement into Hamas’ hands, thus making the construction of the tunnels possible in the first place.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Until now.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In a bombshell revelation, Dennis Ross, the senior Mideast policy adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2011, has admitted that it was he who was assigned the task of pressuring Israel to ease up on its military blockade of Gaza, in the events after Israel&#8217;s withdrawal from that region in 2005.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built,&#8221; Ross revealed in the Washington Post on August 10. &#8220;They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not that Hillary&#8217;s State Department had been acting independently of the White House on the issue of cement. For example, Vice President Joe Biden told interviewer Charlie Rose, on Bloomberg TV in 2010: &#8220;We have put as much pressure and as much cajoling on Israel as we can to allow them to get building materials&#8221; and other forbidden items into Gaza.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But now that Mrs. Clinton is attempting to distance herself from the president’s debacles in foreign affairs, Ross’s admission shows that it was she who sent her personal envoy to push for a policy that ultimately enabled Hamas to build the terror tunnels.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Israeli officials have long been justifiably concerned about the danger of dual-use items such as cement. On the one hand, cement could be used for innocent purposes such as home construction, in the hands of a peace-seeking, trustworthy government. But in the hands of untrustworthy elements &#8212; such as the Hamas terrorist regime that rules Gaza &#8212; it could also be used for other purposes. Such as terror tunnels.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">President Obama recently remarked, in his much-discussed interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times: &#8220;Because Israel is so capable militarily, I don’t worry about Israel’s survival.&#8221; Secretary Clinton evidently shared that dismissive attitude when she sent Ross on his mission to put cement into Hamas&#8217; hands.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It seems Obama and Clinton forgot that Israel is the only country in the world that is threatened with annihilation by a nearby regime rushing to build nuclear weapons. Israel is the only country in the world that, in the space of just 65 years, has been forced to fight four major defensive wars and five smaller ones, in order to survive. Israel is the only country in the world whose next-door neighbors have built dozens of tunnels into Israel to perpetrate massacres of civilians.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Today, at least thirty-two terror tunnels later, we know that Clinton, Obama and Ross have been wrong, while Israel is right.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hamas spent between $1-million and $10-million to build each of those tunnels, using as many as 350 truckloads of cement and other supplies per tunnel, according a report in to the Wall Street Journal, quoting Israeli military officials.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And it is &#8220;likely that there are additional tunnels&#8221; that the Israelis have yet to uncover, according to the Journal’s report.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Instead of lethal purposes, the materials used for each tunnel could have built 86 homes, or 19 medical clinics, or seven mosques, or six schools. But Hamas had other priorities.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And Secretary Clinton consciously turned a blind eye. Just as she turned a blind eye to other aggressive and anti-peace behavior by the Palestinians, such as the Palestinian Authority&#8217;s sheltering of known terrorists, its payments to imprisoned terrorists, the anti-Israel and anti-America propaganda that fills the PA-controlled media, and the anti-Semitic hatred in the textbooks used in the PA&#8217;s schools.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What are the real-life consequences of ignoring such Palestinian actions? An entire generation of young Palestinians have grown up incited to hatred of Jews and Israel, and glorifying terrorists as heroes and martyrs.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What are the real-life consequences of Mrs. Clinton putting cement into Hamas&#8217;s hands? The tunnels into Israel were used to carry out the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and numerous other attacks in which Israelis were murdered. They were being prepared to carry out a mass coordinated attack on Israeli towns and kibbutzim, this year on Rosh Hashanah.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Imagine a scenario in which a surgeon decided that she wanted to employ a controversial and risky technique. She was warned repeatedly that it was too dangerous, but proceeded anyway and in the process nearly killed the patient. Surely that would be deemed malpractice. The surgeon probably would be barred from ever again practicing medicine.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Secretary of Stated Hillary Clinton committed diplomatic malpractice. Her own top aide has revealed that it was she who put the cement into Hamas&#8217; hands, even after Israel warned repeatedly that doing so was too dangerous. And Israel continues to suffer the consequences.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Another lesson of the Gaza war: Even as we condemn Hamas’ diversion of cement from the construction of housing to the construction of terror tunnels, let us not forget that it was Hillary Clinton who pushed through the policy that made those tunnels possible.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><em>[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn are members of the board of the Religious Zionists of America. This article is part of a series. To view previous installments, please visit <a href="http://www.phillyreligiouszionists.org/lessons-from-the-gaza-war/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">http://www.phillyreligiouszionists.org/lessons-from-the-gaza-war/</span></a>.]</em></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>No Time to Spare: Talking about Israel’s Legal Grounds</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arlene-kushner/no-time-to-spare-talking-about-israels-legal-grounds/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=no-time-to-spare-talking-about-israels-legal-grounds</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 31 Jan 2014 05:15:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arlene Kushner]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Judea]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217632</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time for Israel to assert its rights. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/west-bank-israeli-_1000389c.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217633" alt="west-bank-israeli-_1000389c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/west-bank-israeli-_1000389c.gif" width="300" height="188" /></a>If the Israeli building in Judea and Samaria destroys the peace process, then, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the EU ambassador to Israel, declared just days ago, “Naturally, the blame will be put squarely on Israel’s doorstep.”</span></p>
<p>Naturally: We wouldn’t expect anything else of the EU.  The issue here is not that this is a surprise, but rather that Israel is being forewarned: The government must consider its official stance<i> now</i>, before that blame has been levied:</p>
<p>It is time for Israel to enunciate a policy that directly addresses her rights.</p>
<p>It is two years since Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appointed a three-person committee, chaired by former High Court Justice Edmond Levy, to examine the situation of the settlements. The Committee’s report – “The Status of Building in Judea and Samaria” – was released on July 8, 2012.</p>
<p>While we have it on good authority that the prime minister was initially enthusiastic about the report, once he began to assess the opposition that was mounting against it, he decided to table it.  In several quarters, this document is viewed as a radical departure from Israeli government policy – a departure that would be highly problematic in the context of the current political situation.</p>
<p>I will argue, however, that – rather than representing a radical departure from Israeli government policy – the report offers a reiteration of what has<i> been</i> normative policy.  The perception that it is radical has been fostered because of the erosion of Israeli positions in the more than 20 years since the onset of Oslo.</p>
<p>Quite simply, the Israeli government has become reluctant to speak out in a forthright fashion in its own behalf.  As a result, not infrequently, government officials have conducted themselves in a fashion that has not been congruent with official policies.</p>
<p>The report has the capacity to pull the government back to where it needs to be. Its conclusions constitute the heart of the matter, and for the moment I would leave all else aside.  The report’s findings, based on historical and legal evidence, are that Israel’s position in Judea and Samaria is <i>sui generis </i>(unique), that Israel is not an occupier, and that the settlements are not illegal.  It further concludes that the Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to Israel’s situation in Judea and Samaria.</p>
<p>No formal adoption of the report need be called for at this time, fraught as these days are with political pressures.  Rather, the report must serve as a focal point, a tool for invigorating national dialogue on a pressing issue: the matter of Israel’s legal grounds in Judea and Samaria.</p>
<p>This is not a dialogue that can be delayed.  That is the crucial point here.  If Israel does not publicly enunciate her case before the EU draws its inevitable conclusions about Israeli culpability, her position will be far less effective.  For then Israeli claims of rights to the land will appear to be simply a defensive maneuver – a reaction and not a legitimate position.</p>
<p>For the last several months, Israel has been engaged, at least theoretically, in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. During this time, PA officials – who never compromise on their positions – have persisted in demanding that Israel return to the “1967 border.”  They maintain unendingly that Israel is an “occupier” in Judea and Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem, all referred to as “Palestinian land.”</p>
<p>The international community, perversely intent on appeasing the Palestinian Authority, and motived in no small part by a blatant anti-Israel bias, is more than content to accept the PA claims.  The settlements are “illegal,” we’re told, or “illegitimate,” which comes to the same thing.  Israeli building in Judea and Samaria prevents peace from bursting out.</p>
<p>Yet, rather than addressing the charges head on, the Israeli government responds by speaking about security:  We cannot go back to the pre-1967 temporary armistice line (which is never even clearly identified as such), as it would not afford us with security.  We must retain the Jordan Valley against the threat of jihadist forces approaching from the east.  And so forth.</p>
<p>The Levy Report comes to tell us that this argument is sorely inadequate.  It challenges Israelis to refocus their attention; in the end, it is not the document – which draws on a host of extant sources – that is important, but rather the issue of Israel’s legal grounds.</p>
<p>On November 29, 2012, the UN General Assembly ‒ in response to a petition by the UN representative from “Palestine”‒ passed Resolution 67/19, upgrading “Palestine” to “non-member observer status.”</p>
<p>Reacting to this unilateral action, which contravened Oslo agreements, the Cabinet passed Resolution 5251, prefaced by the following:</p>
<blockquote><p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Jewish People has a natural, historical and legal right to its homeland and to its eternal capital, Jerusalem</i></p>
<p><i>The State of Israel, as the state of the Jewish People, has a right and claim to areas whose status is in dispute.</i></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ah, then this </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">is</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> government policy. How unfortunate that this language is not drawn upon as a matter of course in public statements issued by the Israeli government.  How sad that the world at large, not to mention much of the Israeli populace, is unaware of this Israeli policy.</span></p>
<p>It is imperative that the Israeli government begin to speak in terms of Israel’s legal grounds. There is not a moment to spare.</p>
<p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Arlene Kushner, author, writer, and blogger – </i><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.arlenefromisrael.info/"><i>www.arlenefromisrael.info</i></a><i style="line-height: 1.5em;"> &#8211; is co-chairing the Campaign to Promote Israel’s Legal Grounds and the Levy Report.</i></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Israel to Palestinians: Sorry, We’ll Keep Building</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/israel-to-palestinians-sorry-well-keep-building/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-to-palestinians-sorry-well-keep-building</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 09 Aug 2013 04:25:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negotiations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[settlement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[west bank]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=199944</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Instead of preparing the Jew-free state.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/settlements.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-199946" alt="settlements" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/settlements-450x346.jpg" width="315" height="242" /></a>This week the Israeli cabinet <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Despite-peace-talks-cabinet-okays-preferential-status-to-settlements-321999">approved</a> a new national-priorities map by 15 votes and four abstentions.</span></b></p>
<p>Each year the map extends special benefits to a list of communities. This year, out of 600 that were chosen, 90 are in the West Bank, and 9 of those are small settlements outside the large settlement blocs.</p>
<p>The inclusion of those small settlements “outside the blocs” drew protests from the usual suspects. The four ministers who abstained—including Tzipi Livni, chief negotiator in the peace talks with the Palestinians—are all dovish advocates of a Palestinian state.</p>
<p>Livni, for her part, <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=11157">said</a> it was “wrong and contrary to national interests to take funds…to encourage settlement in these secluded and dangerous settlements.”</p>
<p>Zehava Gal-On, leader of the far-left opposition Meretz faction, had still stronger words: “The decision to include extremist outposts whose legality is not certain in the national priority map is a targeted assassination of peace efforts and a trampling of the rule of law.”</p>
<p>And Dov Weisglass, who was a negotiator for former prime minister Ariel Sharon, <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4415134,00.html">asked in an enraged op-ed</a>: “How does the decision to bolster communities located in the heart of the territory advance an agreement which Israel claims it is seeking?”</p>
<p>To begin with, on a simple factual level these critics are right. A few days before the cabinet vote, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Abbas-wants-not-a-single-Israeli-in-future-Palestinian-state-321470">reiterated in Cairo</a> his longstanding position that “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli—civilian or soldier—on our lands.”</p>
<p>If one accepts, then, that the Palestinian state would have to be Jew-free—while Israel would continue to include a large Arab population—then strengthening Jewish communities in the putative Jewless areas appears to harm the “solution.”</p>
<p>Why, then, did 15 out of 19 ministers vote in favor of the new map?</p>
<p>The basic reason is that it’s a right-leaning cabinet, reflecting the will of the Israeli people who over the past three and a half decades have mostly elected right-leaning governments.</p>
<p>Indeed, a poll released this week suggests the cabinet is quite in synch with Israeli public opinion. It <a href="http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Poll-Israeli-Jews-say-they-are-pessimistic-about-peace-process-322168">found</a> that 79 percent of Israeli Jews see the recently restarted Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as having a low chance of success, 63 percent oppose withdrawing to the 1949 armistice lines with land swaps, and 58 percent oppose dismantling small settlements outside the blocs.</p>
<p>And what accounts for that rightward drift in the Israeli Jewish public?</p>
<p>No doubt, statements like Abbas’s—“we would not see the presence of a single Israeli—civilian or soldier—on our lands”—have something to do with it.</p>
<p>What kind of neighbor would that be? Should Israel comply with the Jew-free principle and go through the severe national trauma of a forced evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis?</p>
<p>And there are some other factors. Over a thousand Israelis murdered in the 2000-2005 Second Intifada. Thousands of rockets on Israeli communities after Israel indeed—albeit on a smaller scale—removed every Israeli civilian and soldier from Gaza. The ongoing <a href="http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&amp;doc_id=9413">inculcation of murderous hostility toward Israel</a> in both Gaza and the West Bank. Ongoing <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/05/culture-of-violence-a-palestinian-hobby-stone-throwing/">vicious stone-throwing attacks</a> against Israelis who live in the—supposedly acceptable—settlement blocs. One can go on and on.</p>
<p>Another way of saying this is that—yes, even for Palestinians—time does not stand still. After rejecting hands-down every offer of a state from the Peel Commission in 1937 to Ehud Olmert in 2008, after holding fast to conditions that not even ultra-dovish Israeli leaders can meet, after continuing the violence and hate, you might see those settlements keep growing.</p>
<p>Palestinians—unlike the general rule in life—keep getting another and another and another chance. But even that might have its limit.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>NYU Throws Out Blind Chinese Human Rights Activist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/nyu-throws-out-blind-chinese-human-rights-activist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=nyu-throws-out-blind-chinese-human-rights-activist</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:25:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Chen Guangcheng]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[expansion]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[thrown out]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The hammer of China's financial might comes down -- and the campus liberals obey. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ch_2235864b.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-193178" alt="ch_2235864b" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ch_2235864b-450x281.jpg" width="315" height="197" /></a>The leftist-indoctrination centers that many of America&#8217;s college campuses have become added another despicable blot to their legacies yesterday. New York University (NYU) <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/nyu_has_bad_case_of_china_syndrome_vfH5NC733GMAUeoFimKdbK">announced</a> that blind, Chinese political dissident Chen Guangcheng has been tossed off campus. According to the <i>NY Post,</i> the Communist government of China is applying the pressure, using NYU&#8217;s expansion of its campus to a facility in Shanghai as leverage. Chen&#8217;s presence at NYU has apparently rankled Chinese bureaucrats who signed off on the expansion permits. &#8220;NYU isn’t letting a pesky thing like human rights stand in the way of its expansion in China,&#8221; reports the <i>Post.</i></p>
<p>“The big problem is that NYU is very compromised by the fact they are working very closely with the Chinese to establish a university,” said one New York-based professor familiar with Chen’s situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity “That’s their liability,” the source added. “Otherwise, they would be much less constrained on issues like freedom of speech.”</p>
<p>University officials are denying the charge, claiming Chen’s presence on campus was never intended to be long-term, adding that the Chinese government had already signed off on the Shanghai project. “If there were outside pressure, why would we have taken him in the first place when his plight was on every front page in the world?” spokesman John Beckman said in a statement to the <i>Post.</i></p>
<p>If Chen&#8217;s presence wan&#8217;t meant to be long-term, then why did the <i>Washington Post</i> <a href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-06-18/world/35461766_1_blind-activist-chinese-legal-activist-chen-guangcheng">report</a> that the school had &#8220;custom-tailored Chen’s legal curriculum,&#8221; beginning in June 13, 2012? Considering Chen had to learn English first, and was slated to &#8220;make his way in the coming weeks from the Declaration of Independence toward constitutional law,&#8221; accomplishing both tasks in less than a year would be a Herculean effort. Furthermore, Chen is scheduled to visit Chinese nemesis Taiwan in the coming weeks &#8212; meaning pressure against NYU could have ratcheted up recently.</p>
<p>Chen has been an <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/06/13/nyu-reportedly-kicking-out-blind-chinese-activist/">outspoken critic</a> of China&#8217;s human rights policies, speaking before a Congress on the subject. He also says that the Communist government has not lived up to the pledge it made to U.S. diplomats that members of his extended family who have remained in China would be treated in accordance with the law. Two of his relatives have apparently borne the brunt of government retaliation for Chen&#8217;s escape. His nephew, Chen Kegui, was sentenced to 39 months in jail following an altercation with local officials who reportedly stormed his parents&#8217; house. And his oldest brother, Chen Guangfu, reports that he and his family are constantly harassed by local thugs who have assaulted him, tossed dead animals onto the family&#8217;s property, and distributed insulting flyers about them.</p>
<p>Such treatment by the Chinese government is nothing new. While he was still in China, Chen was <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/2012/05/02/the-sad-journey-of-chen-guangcheng/">illegally kept</a> under house arrest for four years. When he escaped with the help of human rights organizations, and ended up at America&#8217;s Embassy in Beijing, government officials demanded an <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/02/us-officials-defend-decision-to-shelter-chinese-activist-amid-call-for-apology/">apology</a> for harboring him. &#8220;What the U.S. side has done has interfered in the domestic affairs of China, and the Chinese side will never accept it,&#8221; Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told China&#8217;s official Xinhua news agency.</p>
<p>At this point the story takes a curious twist. When Chen left the embassy, handing himself back to the Communist government, he checked into a hospital to get treatment for injuries caused by his escape. American diplomats reported Chen did so of his own free will, after they procured assurances from government officials that he would be safe. Yet in an interview given to the AP from his hospital bed, Chen declared that a U.S. official had told him the government would send his family back home, and beat his wife to death if he didn&#8217;t leave the embassy. &#8220;They said if I don&#8217;t leave they would take my children and family back to Shandong,&#8221; Chen told the AP, adding that the death threat was conveyed by an official he could not identify.</p>
<p>Embassy officials concurred with Chen&#8217;s statement that if he stayed in the embassy indefinitely, his family would have been sent home. But they denied passing on any threat of violence.</p>
<p>Chen&#8217;s dissident friends <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/02/chen-guangcheng-prevented-from-meeting-family-congressman/">backed</a> his version of the events, with his wife claiming that “what the media reported is wrong,” and characterizing the deal to return her husband to Chinese custody as “shameful.” She further noted that a widely reported message that Chen wanted to &#8220;kiss&#8221; then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ostensibly as a gesture of gratitude, was actually a demand to &#8220;see&#8221; her before he was returned to Chinese custody.</p>
<p>Chen&#8217;s eventual move to NYU was brokered by NYU law professor and China expert Jerome Cohen, the same man who designed his curriculum. Cohen is currently in China and could not be reached for comment. Chen has had little communication with NYU President John Sexton, who is chiefly responsible for the NYU&#8217;s expansion into Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. And despite university denials, insiders told the <em>Post</em> that the university sees itself as &#8220;increasingly vulnerable to pressure from China as the Shanghai campus project moves forward.&#8221;</p>
<p>Chen is currently in discussions with Fordham Law School in New York, to see if he can continue his studies at that school.</p>
<p>What the <i>Post</i> didn&#8217;t mention was Chen&#8217;s particular brand of human rights activism. He is ardently pro-life and highly critical of China&#8217;s forced sterilization policy. A 2005 <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/01/chen-guangchengs-documents-show-women-aborted-at-nine-months/">report</a> complied by Chen and his human rights team regarding coercive family planning in Linyi City, Shandong Province, included witness statements revealing several gruesome details about the policy. These included aborting and forcibly sterilizing a woman seven months pregnant; Family Planning Officials breaking three brooms over the head of an elderly man, and forcing a grandmother and her brother to beat each other up; people sleeping in fields to avoid those same officials; and the detention, fining and torture of extended family members of anyone who violates the nation&#8217;s One Child Policy.</p>
<p>In the progressive universe of college campuses like NYU, it is likely Chen&#8217;s pro-life efforts are viewed with a certain amount of apprehension, if not downright hostility.</p>
<p>In conjunction with Chen&#8217;s ouster, it is worth remembering that NYU recently rolled out the red carpet for another &#8220;dissident&#8221; apparently more in tune with the university&#8217;s worldview. In April, NYU <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/10/how-1960s-radicals-ended-up-teaching-your-kids.html">announced</a> that former Weather Underground member and convicted murderer Kathy Boudin would be named the university&#8217;s Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence. The <a href="http://www.law.nyu.edu/sheinbergscholar/index.htm">Rose Sheinburg Lecture Program</a> &#8220;invites a scholar working on cutting-edge issues of gender, race, and class to participate in a day of informal discussion, classroom teaching and formal lecture in order to expose the Law School community to a variety of ideas, insights, and initiatives.&#8221;</p>
<p>The biography of Boudin contained at the site is a pathetic example of historical revisionism. &#8220;Kathy Boudin has been dedicated to community involvement in social change since the 1960’s. She works for transformation of the criminal justice system through education, activism, and research and has published widely in the areas of  education, parenting, women, health, and restorative justice.&#8221; Other &#8220;insignificant” details omitted from this paean include the fact that Boudin spent 22 years in prison for an armored-car robbery&#8211;during which two policemen and Brinks guard were murdered.</p>
<p>At NYU, human rights champion Guangcheng Chen gets the boot even as a murderous thug like Kathy Boudin is lionized. In the ivied halls of academia, it doesn&#8217;t get any more intellectually bankrupt than that.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Deadly Israeli House</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/the-deadly-israeli-house/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-deadly-israeli-house</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Dec 2012 04:55:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[house]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168029</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The fearsome weapon of terror: an Israeli family moving into a new apartment outside of Jerusalem.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/the-deadly-israeli-house/west-bank-settlement-hous-006/" rel="attachment wp-att-168033"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168033" title="West-Bank-Settlement-Hous-006" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/West-Bank-Settlement-Hous-006.jpg" alt="" width="267" height="207" /></a>There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its bricks and mortar are combined together, the house, whether it is one of those modest one-story hilltop affairs or a five-floor apartment building complete with hot and cold running water, becomes far more dangerous than anything green and glowing that comes out of the Iranian centrifuges.</p>
<p>Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don&#8217;t impress anyone in Europe or in Washington, DC. Genocide is equally not worthy of attention when in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment downwind from Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it can&#8217;t expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and filling it with Jews. Since the Sudanese Jews are as gone as the Jews of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and good old Afghanistan, the chances of Bashir the Butcher pulling off that trick are rather slim.</p>
<p>Due to the Muslim world’s shortsightedness in driving out its Jews from Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad to Jerusalem, the ultimate weapon in international affairs is entirely controlled by the Jewish State. The Jewish State&#8217;s stockpile of Jews should worry the international community far more than its hypothetical stockpiles of nuclear weapons. No one besides Israel cares much about the Iranian bomb. But when Israel builds a house, then the international community tears its clothes, wails, threatens to recall its ambassadors and boycott Israeli peaches.</p>
<p>You can spit on the White House carpets and steal all the gold in Greece. You can blow up anything you like and threaten anyone you will, but you had better not lift a drill near Gilgal, where Joshua and a few million escaped Hebrew slaves pitched their camp.</p>
<p>Obama has yet to respond to the Muslim Brotherhood coup in Egypt. The gangs of paid rapists assaulting women in Tahrir Square on behalf of the Sharia state are nothing for the White House to worry about. Everyone has their standards and he and the international community have theirs. There are things that we all cannot abide. And for all the Miss America answers about ending war, hunger and people who wear plaid in public, the one thing that everyone will stand up against or sit down in opposition to is the Israeli house.</p>
<p>White House officials are already insisting that Netanyahu &#8220;humiliated&#8221; Obama by authorizing the building of houses. This is the worst Israeli crime since two years ago when the city of Jerusalem passed some houses<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2010/03/barack-hussein-obama-vs-israel.html"> through one stage </a>of a multi-stage approval process while Biden was visiting the country.</p>
<p>Hillary called it an insult and spent two hours yelling at Netanyahu over the phone. Axelrod declared it an affront. Biden was so furious that he refused to come down for dinner until an hour later. For weeks the media howled that Netanyahu had humiliated Obama through the dastardly act of allowing one of the country&#8217;s mayors to approve housing while the sacred presence of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was intersecting with Israeli airspace.</p>
<p>Now that Netanyahu has gone to the mattresses, literally, by authorizing new housing, the media has begun braying that Israel has humiliated Obama all over again. They say that every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. But every time an Israeli jackhammer roars, Obama stands, like that famous trash-mourning fake Indian, off Highway 1 between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, with a tear slowly making its way down one glistening cheek at the sight of another humiliating Israeli house.</p>
<p>According to the New York Times, which is never wrong, building more houses makes peace impossible. Peace, which is not in any way obstructed by rockets, suicide bombers, unilateral statehood bids and declarations of war, comes up against only one obstacle. The stout unyielding wall of the Israeli house. You can shell Israeli houses, bomb them and break inside to massacre the people living inside, but then after all that, Israel goes and builds more of those damn things.</p>
<p>Hamas shoots thousands of rockets and Israel builds thousands of houses. But Israeli houses generally stay where they&#8217;re built, while Hamas rockets are as likely to kill Gazans as they are to put holes in the roofs of those dastardly houses. And in the arms race between houses and rockets, the Israelis appear to be winning. And that&#8217;s not good for peace. If Israelis get the dangerous idea that they can just keep building houses and outlast all the talented rocketeers who spend their time with the Koran in front of one eye and the Anarchist&#8217;s Cookbook in front of the other, then what hope is there for peace?</p>
<p>That is why no one cares much about Hamas rockets, which only kill Israelis, who most reasonable people in London, Paris and Brussels think have it coming anyway, but get into a foaming lather about an Israeli house. Killing Israelis has never been any obstacle to peace. Twenty years of killing Israelis has not dissuaded a single Israeli government from sitting down at the table to dicker with the terrorists. But an Israeli family living in a house is holding down territory that it will be harder to then cede to terrorists.</p>
<p>This peace plan, which has worked as well as fighting fire with gasoline, has not in any way been endangered by two decades of terror, but trembles down to its toes every time an Israeli hammer falls on an Israeli nail in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Because that land must go back so that rockets can be shot from it into Israel, so that Israel can invade it and reclaim it, and then sit down for another peace process to return the land from which the rockets will be fired, which will be invaded, which will be given back&#8230; for peace.</p>
<p>And Israeli houses endanger this cycle of peace and violence. They endanger it by creating &#8220;facts on the ground,&#8221; a piquant phrase that only seems to apply to houses with Jews. Muslim houses in no way create facts on the ground, even though they are built out of the same material and filled with people. Or perhaps they create the good kind of facts on the ground. The kind of preemption of negotiations that the professional peacemakers approve of.</p>
<p>UN Chief Ban Ki-moon has declared Israeli houses to be an &#8220;almost fatal blow&#8221; to the peace process. It is, of course, only an &#8220;almost fatal blow&#8221; because the peace process, like Dracula, cannot be killed. Israeli houses, fearsome as they may be with their balconies and poor heating in winter, are never quite enough to kill it.</p>
<p>Like the monster of a horror movie, the peace process always comes back and no matter how many blows the Israeli house delivers to it, a year later there&#8217;s a sequel where the Israeli house is being stalked by the peace process monster all over again.</p>
<p>The army of lethal Israeli houses, which may not be built for another five years, if ever, seem formidable in the black newsprint of the New York Times, in the fulminations of Guardian columnists and the shrill talkingpointation of CNN talking heads, but its actual potency is limited to housing Jewish families and infuriating international diplomats and their media coat hangers.</p>
<p>Europe is furious, Obama is seething, the UN is energized, and somewhere in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wipes the grease out of his mustache and wonders what he could do to get this much attention. He briefly scribbles down some thoughts on a napkin but then dismisses it as being too implausible. As much as it might get the world&#8217;s attention, there is just no way Iran can put up apartment buildings in Jerusalem.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Escalation in Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/escalation-in-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=escalation-in-gaza</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/escalation-in-gaza/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Oct 2012 04:40:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Qatar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=159908</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[U.S. "ally" Qatar promises huge funds to the Hamas terror state. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/?attachment_id=159931" rel="attachment wp-att-159931"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-159931" title="1700944438" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/1700944438.gif" alt="" width="315" height="227" /></a>Those who have long dreamed of a Palestinian state need dream no longer. Hamas-ruled Gaza, while not internationally recognized as a state, is now a self-governing entity in every meaningful sense. On Tuesday it even had its first official <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/qatari-visit-hands-hamas-major-victory-202555668.html">visit</a>, with full pomp and splendor, by a foreign head of state—the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.</p>
<p>The emir announced he would be donating to Gaza an aid package reportedly worth as much as $400 million. Part of the aid package, <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6182">reports</a> the Israeli daily <em>Israel Hayom</em>, will be “a $150 million housing project…called Hamad City—after the Qatari emir.”</p>
<p>Israel has been preventing building materials from entering Gaza that Hamas could use for bunkers or other military purposes. So “in order to get around the Israeli blockade, Qatar plans to ship in the materials through the Egyptian border.”</p>
<p>In other words, the winds of the “Arab Spring” are clearly blowing here.</p>
<p>To say Qatar plays a double or even triple geopolitical game would not do justice to its versatility. It hosts <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Udeid_Air_Base">a major U.S. airbase</a> with thousands of troops. It is one of the main suppliers of the antiregime rebels in Syria. It also maintains close ties with that regime’s crucial ally, Shiite Iran.</p>
<p>At the same time, Qatar is a key ally of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and supported it in the Libyan, Tunisian, and Egyptian (as well as Syrian) uprisings. And that, from Israel’s standpoint, is where the “Arab Spring” comes in: whereas Hamas-ruled Gaza already posed a serious security problem for Israel, the possibility of Qatar and the new, Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt collaborating with Gaza against Israel is more sinister in its implications.</p>
<p>And all this while Iran remains Gaza’s main patron—but with growing competition from the Sunni-Islamist bloc.</p>
<p>In any case, Israelis who live near Gaza have not been celebrating the advent of the Gazan Palestinian state. On Tuesday night, as soon as Sheikh Hamad had left, Gaza launched a major rocket barrage at Israel.</p>
<p>True, it was part of an exchange of hostilities that began Tuesday morning when an Israeli company commander was seriously wounded by an explosive device along the Gaza border fence. But Tuesday evening’s barrage was the start of a dramatic escalation; by Wednesday evening the Palestinian state of Gaza had <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=289059">fired</a> 80 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilian communities, wounding five including two critically injured Thai workers, and smashing into seven homes.</p>
<p>In other words, Gaza—with the Iranian and Muslim Brotherhood blocs now vying to be its backer, and with a huge new aid package on the way—appeared to react with enthusiasm and confidence. As for Sderot, the town mentioned by President Obama in his debate with Mitt Romney on Monday, it was closed down like all the other nearby Israeli communities, children home from school and waiting with their parents for the next rocket siren.</p>
<p>As always, Israel faces no attractive options regarding Gaza. Operation Cast Lead of 2008-2009 inflicted heavy damage on Hamas, but it was able to recover even before gaining Qatar as a benefactor. Israel is loath to reoccupy the Strip with its teeming, hostile population. Continuing the status quo means—if not worse—recurrent rounds of hostilities like the present one and a harrowing life for Gaza-bordering Israelis.</p>
<p>On Wednesday evening it was <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4296544,00.html">reported</a> that on Tuesday night, an arms factory in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum was bombed by four planes. Sources in Sudan <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/sudan-opposition-bombed-arms-factory-belongs-to-iran-s-revolutionary-guard.premium-1.472090">claimed</a> the factory belonged to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard—confirming earlier statements to that effect in Arab media.</p>
<p>Reports on Israeli TV also claimed the factory was Iranian and stressed the fact that Khartoum is slightly more distant from Israel than Natanz and Fordo, Iran’s nuclear-enrichment plants.</p>
<p>Did Israel have a way to retaliate against the Gaza escalation and give Iran a message without attacking Gaza itself? Israeli officials including Defense Minister Ehud Barak stayed mum, neither confirming nor denying that was the case.</p>
<p>What is clear, at any rate, is that with so many forces arrayed against it and constantly boosting their capacities, Israel cannot afford to stay passive much longer.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>UN Blames Israel for Gaza&#8217;s &#8216;Inviable&#8217; Future</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/un-blames-israel-for-gazas-inviable-future/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=un-blames-israel-for-gazas-inviable-future</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:25:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[livable]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[siege]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=141922</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When will the Palestinians be held accountable for the society they create? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/qassam_610.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-141925" title="qassam_610" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/qassam_610.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) held a conference on August 27th entitled “Will the Gaza Strip be Viable in 2020?” The conclusion, predictably, was that the Israeli government was fully responsible for the difficult human living conditions in the Gaza Strip and that the Gaza population will face a real disaster on all levels by 2020 if the Israeli &#8220;siege&#8221; were not immediately ended.</p>
<p>In attendance at the Israel-bashing conference were the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, Maxwell Gaylard, Director of UNRWA operations in Gaza Robert Turner, and UNICEF Special Representative in the Palestinian Territory, Jean Gough.</p>
<p>Gaylard said that the Gaza population is expected to expand by a half million, reaching 2.1 million in 2020, while access to water and electricity, education and health resources will get worse over the same period, unless major remedial action is taken immediately.</p>
<p>“Despite their best efforts the Palestinians in Gaza still need help,” Gaylard said. “They are under blockade. They are under occupation and they need our help both politically and practically on the ground.”</p>
<p>Best efforts? Gaylard may not have noticed, but Gaza is not under Israeli occupation today. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas has controlled Gaza for the last five years after its forcible ejection of its Fatah rivals. Gaylard neglected to point out the reason for what remains of the Israeli blockade. Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups have used Gaza to launch thousands of rockets, missiles and mortars into Israel during the years of Hamas control -  542 this year alone to date. Indeed, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired seven rockets into Israel in the past few days. Two of them narrowly missed a school just as the new Israeli school year got underway.</p>
<p>Despite the Palestinian terrorists&#8217; continuing onslaught of unprovoked attacks, Israel has relaxed its defensive blockade at great risk to the security of its citizens. Building materials and many goods are regularly imported into the Gaza Strip without Israeli interference. Tons of agricultural products are exported without Israeli interference. And Israel is helping the Gaza economy by supplying six times as many megawatts of electricity to the Gaza Strip as Egypt does.</p>
<p>As a consequence, Gaza&#8217;s economic situation is not the dire catastrophe that Gaylard makes it out to be.  In 2011 the Gaza Strip enjoyed a 27% growth rate compared to 2010. This growth contributed to a rise of about 23% in the per capita Gross Domestic Product. In the first quarter of 2012, the Gaza Strip showed 6% growth compared to the first quarter of the previous year. By comparison, the Gross Domestic Product in Egypt expanded 5.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 over the same quarter of the previous year. Saudi Arabia&#8217;s gross domestic product grew 5.94 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period a year ago.</p>
<p>Unemployment in the Gaza Strip dropped to 28.4% in the second quarter of 2012 &#8211; very high to be sure, but not that much higher than Spain&#8217;s and South Africa&#8217;s unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent during the same period.</p>
<p>What about the critical water shortage in Gaza?  Jean Gough, the UNICEF Special Representative in the Palestinian Territory, warned that there may not be any drinking water in Gaza by 2016. Water demand is expected to increase by 60% in the upcoming years, while, according to UNRWA, only a quarter of Gaza waste water is treated. Seventy-five percent of waste water, including raw sewage, is being pumped into the Mediterranean Sea or contaminating underground water sources.</p>
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		<title>Deconstructing the Israeli &#8216;Settlement&#8217; Myth</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/deconstructing-the-israeli-settlement-myth/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=deconstructing-the-israeli-settlement-myth</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Jul 2012 04:45:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arabs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jordan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Settlements]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=137487</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How racist propaganda became the cause célèbre of the international community. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/071127-alice-silwan.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-137495" title="071127-alice-silwan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/071127-alice-silwan.gif" alt="" width="375" height="256" /></a>There are between 350,000 and 550,000 Jews who have been targeted for ethnic cleansing by the international community. Their crime is their race and religion.</p>
<p>In 1948, armies from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen and Lebanon invaded Israel, along with the Holy War Army, commanded by the nephew of Hitler’s Mufti, and the Arab Liberation Army, under Fawzi al-Qawuqji, freshly released by the Soviet Union after being captured with his Nazi allies in Berlin. Along with them came thousands of terrorists and thugs from the Muslim Brotherhood.</p>
<p>Driven by hate, they swarmed into Israel to destroy it. They seized half of Jerusalem, expelling its Jewish population, blowing up its synagogues and using tombstones from its cemeteries to pave their roads.</p>
<p>Villages such as Kfar Darom in Gaza were besieged, first by the Muslim Brotherhood, and then by the Egyptian Army. The village of 400 men, women and children had managed to throw back the forces of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had shelled the village and failed to break through its fence with tanks, and briefly held out against the Egyptian Army, before it was evacuated, captured and destroyed. Other villages, such as Kfar Etzion, which were not evacuated in time, witnessed massacres after their capture.</p>
<p>When after 1967, the Jordanian and Egyptian invaders had been expelled, and East Jerusalem, Kfar Darom and Kfar Etzion were rebuilt and resettled, the international community declared those Jews living there to be “settlers” and their towns and villages, even their homes in Jerusalem, one of the oldest cities in the world, to be “settlements.”</p>
<p>What is the mark of a “settlement”? It isn’t the age of the buildings or the number of inhabitants.  Jerusalem is ancient and Maaleh Adumim is about the size of Atlantic City. It is race that marks a settler as a target for persecution and ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p>An Arab Muslim with Israeli citizenship who buys a house in Jerusalem is not condemned by Vice President Biden, the United Nations and the media. But when a Jew demolishes the former home of Hitler’s Mufti, after legally purchasing it in order to build an apartment building on the spot, then Hillary Clinton issues a specific statement denouncing the construction of a 20-person apartment building, for no other reason than because Jews will likely live there.</p>
<p>Now the false narrative of settlement and occupation has been challenged by the <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2012/07/english-translation-of-legal-arguments.html" target="_blank">Levy Report</a> which restates many of the obvious points of law; most significantly that Israel is not an occupying power and did not seize any land from another state. Indeed much of the land that Israel is accused of occupying is actually land that was seized from it by invading Arab armies during its 1948 War of Independence.</p>
<p>The only difference between West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem, between a village that is recognized by the international community and a “settlement” that is condemned by the international community, is that the so-called “settlements” are on territory that the invading Muslim armies captured and held for 17 years.</p>
<p>The only legal basis for denouncing the Jews who returned in 1967 to the homes that they had been expelled from in 1948 as “settlers” is by recognizing the Arab Muslim conquests of those territories. But those conquests were never recognized or accepted. Not even by the international community.</p>
<p>The rebuttals to the Levy Report invariably rely on emotional rhetoric and confused legal reasoning. Most of them lean on the 2004 International Court of Justice ruling, which Israel did not participate in, declaring that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the 1967 territories because they “lay to the east of the 1949 Armistice demarcation line.”</p>
<p>But as the Levy Report points out, the Armistice agreement that ended the war specifically disavowed the cease-fire lines as having any political or territorial significance, “being dictated exclusively by military considerations.”</p>
<p>Designating territory that Israel held and where its citizens resided until that territory was seized during an invasion by foreign states before then being liberated by Israel as “occupied territory” needs better legal reasoning than the simple fact of Arab military occupation. Otherwise the ICC has only chosen to recognize one military occupation and then use it to denounce military occupation.</p>
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		<title>Will the Palestinians Just Declare a State?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/will-the-palestinians-just-declare-a-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=will-the-palestinians-just-declare-a-state</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 08 Apr 2010 04:04:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[abbas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Administration]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[East Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fayyad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gen. Keith Dayton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[General Dayton]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[israeli bureaucrats]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[jerusalem post]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[mahmoud abbas]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Moshe Elad]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Yaakov Katz]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=57658</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As cold winds blow from Washington, Israel is worried.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/palest.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-57663" title="palest" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/palest.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a></p>
<p>In the aftermath of last month’s diplomatic ruckus—Israeli bureaucrats referred, with Vice-President Biden in town, to building apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem; the Obama administration took severe umbrage; the Palestinians pulled out of the nascent proximity talks—things, at this moment, remain stuck. Does that mean no progress toward the administration’s cherished goal of a Palestinian state, and frustration all around?</p>
<p>Not necessarily. Moshe Elad, a columnist for Israel’s largest daily <em>Yediot Aharonot</em>, <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3871745,00.html">notes</a> that the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, and prime minister, Salaam Fayyad, have been talking about unilaterally declaring such a state in 2011—and that while “in the past, such statements would anger the Americans…this time around, even if we heard a response from the White House or the State Department, it was rather meek.”</p>
<p>Palestinians, Elad reports, have been setting aside their traditional anti-Americanism and “taking pleasure in feeling that ‘America is with us’”; and are “coordinating with the Americans the building of infrastructure across the West Bank as preparation for economic independence and detachment from Israel’s hold.” Elad goes on to ask “What will Israel’s position be in respect to the long list of guests invited to the ceremony that will seek to land in Ben-Gurion Airport?”—that is, if and when the Palestinians declare their state next year and invite many of the world’s dignitaries to honor the event.</p>
<p>Yaakov Katz, military correspondent for the <em>Jerusalem Post</em>, <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=171356">describes</a> Israel as “extremely worried” about the prospect “because it may lead to a third intifada, during which Israel would be fighting a 20,000-strong militia”—much of which would be American-trained. As Katz explains,</p>
<blockquote><p>Five battalions of 500 soldiers each and trained by US security coordinator Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton in Jordan have already deployed throughout the West Bank alongside seven regional battalions.</p>
<p>By 2011, another five battalions will have undergone training. Fayyad’s plan is to then dismantle the regional battalions and expand the Dayton-trained battalions to close to 1,000 soldiers each, bringing the total number to around 10,000. Add the police and the presidential guard and the number of armed PA security officers comes out to around 20,000.</p></blockquote>
<p>The Palestinians would still then have to face the fact that about 300,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West  Bank. “The solution—an official PA decision to launch a violent terror campaign branded around the world as a war for freedom.”</p>
<p>Or, in another scenario, Fayyad goes to the UN Security Council to get his state recognized; with the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese likely to assent, the question mark is the United States.</p>
<p>Traditionally the U.S. has vetoed anti-Israeli resolutions in the Security Council, and also has upheld the principle of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as the way to resolve the dispute. But given what is now known about President Obama’s identification with Palestinian goals, delegitimization of any Israeli presence in the West Bank and even East Jerusalem, contemptuous treatment of Israel’s prime minister, and hurried timetable for Palestinian statehood—augmented by General Dayton’s activities that started under President Bush—Israelis can no longer be confident of U.S. backing in such a situation.</p>
<p>Some say these fears are exaggerated because Abbas and Fayyad lack sufficient Palestinian support. While Abbas’s Fatah movement (with which Fayyad, while not a member, is effectively aligned) is thought likely to defeat Hamas in this summer’s municipal elections, Fatah is itself deeply divided with its young guard scorning Abbas and Fayyad as weaklings—to the point that even a civil war is not ruled out.</p>
<p>Israel, though—as if not already pressured enough by the Hamas, Hezbollah and, ultimately, Iranian threats—has to take all scenarios into account, and now would be the time to start emphasizing to friends in the U.S. the dangers posed by a Palestinian state. True, in his speech at Bar-Ilan University last June, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he could accept such a state as the outcome of negotiations if it, in turn, was genuinely accepting of Israel and effectively demilitarized.</p>
<p>Clearly, a unilaterally declared Palestinian state would be neither. It would be bristling with hatred instilled by the seventeen years of hate-education enabled by the “peace process,” and with largely American-provided forces that would only grow as further weapons, trainers, and fighters flowed in from the Arab and Muslim world.</p>
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		<title>Homeless in Binghamton</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/faith-j-h-mcdonnell/homeless-in-binghamton/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=homeless-in-binghamton</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Mar 2010 04:00:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Faith J. H. McDonnell]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[A Binghamton, New York, church loses its building to a Muslim “outreach” organization. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/goodshepherd.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-56252" title="goodshepherd" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/goodshepherd.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="281" /></a></p>
<p>During its peak as a thriving little manufacturing center filled with stately  homes and mansions, Binghamton, New York, was nicknamed the “Parlor City.” Today  many of those same mansions are funeral parlors. History appears to be repeating  itself in modern day Binghamton. For some 130 years, the city was the home to  the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. But recently, the Episcopal Diocese  of Central New York sold the pretty little church building on Conklin Avenue to  the Islamic Awareness Center.</p>
<p>In selling Church of the Good Shepherd’s building to the Muslim group, the  Episcopal Diocese of Central New York was killing two birds with one stone.  First, they placed an enormous obstacle in the path of the now-Anglican Church  of the Good Shepherd. Second, they offered a big inter-faith embrace to their  Muslim brothers and sisters who needed a property from which to extend the  <em>Dawah </em>(the invitation to Islam). That’s a good day’s work for a diocese  that has been losing church members for the past ten years or more.</p>
<p>Unlike the diocese, the Church of the Good Shepherd has grown every year  under the care of Episcopal priest team of husband and wife, the Reverends  Matthew and Anne Kennedy. But in 2007, Good Shepherd made the difficult decision  to join the dozens of congregations that were leaving the Episcopal Church while  remaining in the wider Anglican Communion of which the Episcopal Church is a  part . These parishes are referred to as departing churches, but they argue that  it is the denomination that has departed &#8212; from orthodox, biblical  Christianity. The Kennedys were deposed (ceased to have authority as priests) in  the Episcopal Church, and received as priests in the Anglican Church. And the  Diocese of Central New York began an aggressive lawsuit against the church for  all of the property.</p>
<p>Reverend Matt Kennedy <a href="http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/sf/page/25379/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">wrote</span></a> that, &#8220;In  2008, while the lawsuit raged, the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd grew and  expanded significantly.&#8221; The church was impacting the neighborhood through a  soup kitchen that served the homeless and through block parties. Good Shepherd&#8217;s  &#8220;weekly bible studies were packed with new people&#8221; and an increasing number of  students from Binghamton University were coming to the church, Kennedy  recounted.</p>
<p>On January 8, 2009, the lawsuit was decided in the diocese&#8217;s favor. The  diocese was “entitled to immediate possession&#8221; of the church building and to the  rectory, home to the Kennedys’ growing family since 2002. The Kennedys and all  of the people of Good Shepherd hurriedly removed their property from the church  building as they were warned that the diocese did indeed intend to take  immediate possession. At the same time, the church was trying to find another  place to worship and to host their soup kitchen for the homeless, the Shepherd&#8217;s  Bowl. The monsignor of the nearby St. John’s and Andrew’s Catholic Church opened  his parish kitchen to the feeding program so that the meals for the homeless  would not be interrupted. But for the first week, attendance was scant. Signs on  the old building directing the homeless to the new soup kitchen had been taken  down, apparently, by the Diocese when they were padlocking the church to keep  out the Anglicans.</p>
<p>As it turned out, almost all of the wider church community in Binghamton  reached out to Good Shepherd. Kennedy relates that the list of pastors and  churches that helped or in some way encouraged them is “fairly exhaustive.”  “Presbyterians, Baptists, Free Methodists, Methodists, Catholics, Orthodox,  Pentecostal, non-denominational…the outpouring was incredible,” says Kennedy. In  particular, the pastor of the neighboring Conklin Avenue Baptist Church  immediately offered the Anglicans temporary space for worship in his church&#8217;s  gymnasium. Then, thanks to a very generous offer from the Catholic monsignor,  St. Andrew’s church and rectory, which were left vacant when the parish merged  with St. John&#8217;s, became the new home of the Anglican Church of the Good  Shepherd.</p>
<p>It was not as if the people of Good Shepherd had been expecting to keep their  church building at no cost. Before the legal proceedings began, Good Shepherd  offered to purchase the church building and rectory from the diocese. The  diocese refused to sell, and during litigation told the court that the parish  was no longer using the property for the purposes for which it had been intended  by the Episcopalians who built it in 1879 and who had spent money to maintain it  over the years. The Episcopal Church has at various times declared that it will  sue every congregation that departs from the denomination in order to preserve  the &#8220;devotion and witness of Episcopalians of the past for Episcopalians of the  future.&#8221; That has not quite turned out to be the case in Binghamton, though,  unless the &#8220;Episcopalians of the future&#8221; are part of the <em>Ummah, </em>the  Muslim world<em>. </em>Which, come to think of it, does not seem all that  far-fetched.</p>
<p>Although the Diocese of Central New York refused to sell the Church of the  Good Shepherd to the Anglicans for whom it had been home, they were happy to  sell it to a Muslim group for $50,000, a third of the amount that Good Shepherd  had offered. According to the<a href="http://diocny.blogspot.com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> Rev.  Tony Seel</span></a>, the Diocese even added a legal  caveat to the sale stating that the new owners of the property could never  re-sell the building to the original congregation.</p>
<p>The property had been standing vacant and padlocked for many months, when on  March 17, 2010,</p>
<p><a href="http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2010/03/dog-in-manger-ii-good-shepherd.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Kennedy passed by his former church  building</span></a>. He saw a crane removing the cross  from the bell tower. The former Good Shepherd Church had red doors, symbolizing  the blood of Christ as well as the blood of the martyrs. Now the doors had been  painted green, and the new owners had covered over the glass that had formed the  horizontal arms of a cross-shaped window on the church door. Over the back door  was a new sign that said “Islamic Awareness Center.”</p>
<p>The former Church of the Good Shepherd is now a “<em>Dawah</em> organization,”  with representatives ready to meet with schools, parent-teacher associations,  and other community organizations to introduce Islam and Muslims. The Islamic  Awareness Center states that it will “explain Islam’s message of peace, share  Qur’an and Hadith, and answer questions.” It also offers “programs suitable for  children using a puppet show,” it adds.</p>
<p>Binghamton appears to be well into dhimmitude from the looks of the June 2008<a href="http://www.islamberg.org/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> commemoration of the birth of Mohammed</span></a>, celebrated on the courthouse lawn at City Hall. At this inter-faith  love fest Binghamton mayor Mathew Ryan gushed, “I applaud your efforts to create  a dialog, a dialog that celebrates diversity, tolerance, and understanding and  unity, and I applaud the efforts of The International Quranic Open University.”  But even if the <em>Dawah</em> “invitational” approach to Islam should fail, just  up the road about 40 miles there is another <a href="http://www.christianaction.org/terrorists-training-on-us-soil.aspx"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">option</span></a>.</p>
<p>In Hancock, New York, “Islamberg” is an Islamic military training facility  and home to the aforementioned International Quranic Open University. Islamberg  is also headquarters of Muslims of America, a group associated with the  Pakistani terrorist group <em>Jamaat ul Fuqra</em>. Here, as the Christian Action  Network has<a href="../2009/12/30/muslim-guerilla-training-in-new-york-by-frontpagemag-com/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"> revealed</span></a>, men  and women are being trained in guerilla warfare, hand-to-hand combat, and the  shooting of assault weapons. The leader of Muslims of America declares that  “Muslims are the majority in America.” There is no known connection between the  Islamic Awareness Center in Binghamton and Islamberg, but what is known is that  <em>Dawah</em>, the invitation to Islam, traditionally precedes <em>jihad.</em></p>
<p>The Diocese of Central New York preferred to enable the <em>Dawah, </em>the  efforts of Muslims to transform the religious landscape of upstate New York,  rather than to allow a church that is preaching the Gospel, teaching the Bible, and feeding the homeless to hold on to the building that had long been their  home. Sadly, the Episcopal Church very probably doesn&#8217;t even know what the  <em>Dawah </em>is. Sadder still, even if they knew, they wouldn&#8217;t care.</p>
<p><em>Faith J. H. McDonnell directs </em><a href="http://www.theird.org/Page.aspx?pid=183&amp;srcid=-2"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Institute on Religion and  Democracy’s</span></a><em> Religious Liberty Program and  Church Alliance for a New Sudan, and is the author of Girl Soldier: A Story of  Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (Chosen Books, 2007).</em></p>
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		<title>Palestinian Nazis and Double Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/anav-silverman/palestinian-nazis-and-double-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinian-nazis-and-double-standards</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/anav-silverman/palestinian-nazis-and-double-standards/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:25:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Anav Silverman]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The Obama administration's shameless silence on who is truly fanning the flames of hate in the Middle East. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/hate.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55988" title="hate" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/hate.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>The Obama administration’s  pursuit of Middle East peace has brought little if any promising results thus  far. Assigning who is to blame for the stalled talks, however, seems to be a  much easier task for the US administration. In typical fashion, Washington has laid  responsibility for the failure in the recent launch of peace negotiations  squarely on Israel’s shoulders, using the announcement of the 1,600 new homes  built in eastern Jerusalem during VP Joe Biden’s visit, as the primary reason  why peace talks were not progressing.</p>
<p>“We  have to make clear to our Israeli friend and partner that the two state solution  which we support…requires confidence building measures on both sides and the  announcement of the settlements the very day the VP was there, was  insulting  and unfortunate…” stated Secretary of State Hillary  Clinton recently.  Although Clinton attempted to smooth things over in her AIPAC  address, she stated that the US was obligated to tell Israel the truth.</p>
<p>Clinton’s assessment of this current ‘obstacle’ to the Middle East peace  process simply reveals how very little Washington truly understands of the  conflict, especially by dressing the situation with terms like “confidence  building.” The current problems in the Mideast conflict are beyond issues of  mistrust.</p>
<p>As  Palestinian demonstrations and continued rocket attacks in the past week have  shown, deep currents of hate and ideological calls for destruction against  Israel still continue to run strongly among Palestinian leaders.   The rededication of the Hurva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem on  March 15, originally constructed in the 18<sup>th</sup> century, was the most  recent example of how Israel’s recognition of ancient Jewish landmarks in the  Jewish state infuriates the radical Islamic leadership of Hamas and even the  PA.</p>
<p>In  response to the synagogue dedication, Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh  declared that Jerusalem will “always remain Islamic.”  In addition,  Hamas’s ambassador in Lebanon, Osama Hamadan, told Al-Jazeera  TV  that the opening of the Hurva Synagogue was part of a larger Israeli attempt to  “invent” a Jewish history for Jerusalem.  On March 16, Hamas  declared a Day of Rage and defense of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as a way to further incite  Palestinians and escalate tensions.</p>
<p>The  continued incitement and hate-education of Israel is carried out not only by  Hamas. Palestinian Media Watch recently reported that PA television is  broadcasting a new children’s program called Chicks that teaches children about  different areas of Palestine, using a map labeled only “Palestine” which depicts  all of Israel.  Next to the map, written in English and Arabic is  “Explore Your Country.” Education for a two-state solution does not exist on PA  television programs for youth.</p>
<p>However, the most disturbing developments which Washington continues to  steadfastly ignore is Iran’s continued financial and moral support of Hamas’s  terrorist and incitement activities. Dr. Khalil Al Hayya, a Hamas leader who was  interviewed earlier this year on Hamas’s military wing’s website, Iz a-din  al-Qassam Brigades, stated that “Iran supports us financially, politically and  morally without political price.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, the Iranian Intelligence Minister Hydar Maslahi recently  called on Muslim countries to launch a so-called media intifada against Israel  during a conference for the <em>National and Islamic Solidarity for the Future of  Palestine </em>held in Teheran on February 28 (The Intelligence and Terrorism  Information Center). Maslahi stated that his ministry was willing to provide any  assistance to Palestinian people who would carry out anti-Israel and anti-US  propaganda campaigns through on-line social networking.</p>
<p>Until  Washington recognizes the broader problems facing the Middle East at this time,  including the continuing incitement that Palestinian leaders generate among  their constituents, as well as “Islamizing” Israel’s Jewish history and refusing  to recognize to recognize any “Jewish” rights to the land, the road to  negotiations is near impossible.</p>
<p>Mainstream media and much of the world community have always maintained  that Israel’s building of Jewish homes and settlements are the primary obstacles  to peace talks.  To continue to believe so is not only  irresponsible but dangerous on the part of the US government. A truly  comprehensive peace process can be constructed only when the ideological issues  that continue to fan the flames of hate are addressed. By not doing so,  Washington is building another faulty foundation for a peace process that is  bound for collapse.</p>
<p><em>Anav Silverman is the international correspondent for Sderot Media  Center: <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/" target="_blank">www.SderotMedia.org.il</a>, a social media organization dedicated to bringing  the voices of Sderot residents to the attention of the global community. </em></p>
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		<title>Palestinians Glorify a Terrorist</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/danielmandel/palestinians-glorify-a-terrorist/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinians-glorify-a-terrorist</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Mar 2010 04:01:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Mandel]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[And Obama denounces Israel for building homes.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dalal.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55363" title="dalal" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/dalal.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="428" /></a></p>
<p>Does building  homes threaten peace? Or does holding a ceremony honoring as a hero and role  model a terrorist who murdered dozens of civilians? Last week, Israel announced  it would be doing the former. Palestinians did the latter. The Obama  Administration condemned the Israeli words; it ignored the Palestinian  deeds.</p>
<p>What could be  wrong with building 1,600 homes for Jews in eastern Jerusalem?  Nothing, except  for Palestinians who do not accept Israel’s existence and intend as a first step  towards ending it to set up their own Jew-free state and divide Israel’s capital  in the process.</p>
<p>What could be  wrong with the Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) publicly honoring Dalal  Mughrabi, who led the 1978 coastal road terror attack that killed 37 Israeli  civilians? Everything, where peace is concerned but, apparently, nothing where  the Obama Administration is concerned.</p>
<p>Visiting  Vice-President Joseph Biden condemned the Israeli building project. Secretary of  State Hillary Clinton called it “an insult to the United States.” Senior Obama  adviser David Axelrod described it as “destructive” and an “affront.” But no  such words – in fact, no words at all – issued from this Administration over the  PA publicly glorifying Mughrabi, which also occurred during Biden’s  visit.</p>
<p>The Obama  Administration has noisily opposed Jewish construction in the West Bank and  eastern Jerusalem. But last year even it accepted Israel’s unilateral concession  (unreciprocated by the PA) of a ten-month building freeze in the West Bank,  excluding Jerusalem. Indeed, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomed this  concession and called it “unprecedented” – which it was.</p>
<p>After all,  throughout the Oslo process, Israel built homes for existing Jewish communities  without Palestinians breaking off talks, and little wonder: an Israeli  commitment to cease building such homes does not feature in the Oslo agreements.  The use of such a pretext for walking out of talks could only have gone so  far.</p>
<p>However, last  year, the Obama  Administration arrived on the scene.</p>
<p>Since loudly  demanding a Jewish construction freeze, the only result has been that the PA now  refuses to negotiate until Israel accedes to it. This lands an Administration  &#8212; that has made a priority about restarting peace talks without inquiring into  whether Palestinians actually want peace &#8212; in a self-made mess.</p>
<p>Having no-where  else to turn and unable to acknowledge responsibility for the results of its own  posturing, the Obama Administration has scrambled for an alibi to account for  its failure by turning on Israel for doing something it had previously accepted.</p>
<p>This fit of  pique is likely to be as counter-productive for the Obama Administration as it  will be inconsequential for Israel’s Netanyahu government. Israelis do not like  other people telling them to divide their capital and they will not turn on the  Netanyahu government for opposing steps that could lead to it.</p>
<p>The Obama  Administration has already abandoned Obama’s original, sonorously proclaimed  goal of swift, direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks due the very Palestinian  refusal to participate which it has incited. Now it may come to witness the  disintegration of its painstakingly-orchestrated fall-back, proximity talks –  basically the U.S. acting as messenger between the two sides – before they even  begin.</p>
<p>Worse, this  high-handedness with a friend will ultimately dismay other American allies – as  other Obama stunts have done with the Czech Republic, Honduras and Poland, to  name a few – while emboldening rivals and enemies.</p>
<p>Obama promised  the Czechs and Poles that he would keep faith with his predecessor’s agreement  to provide a missile defense shield, before telephoning both countries on the  70<sup>th</sup> anniversary of World War Two to tell them he had changed his  mind at the behest of their worst nightmare, Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Honduras  removed from office in accordance with its constitution a lawless president  seeking to remain there and was rewarded with U.S. condemnation and the cutting  off of military aid. Now Israel announces a housing project that Palestinians  don’t like and the Administration reacts with rancorous hyperbole.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the  Administration presses ‘reset’ buttons with Russia, which sells the technology  for nuclear weapons development to Iran. It  restores an ambassador to Syria, having abandoned holding it accountable for the  murder of Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri or dispatching jihadists to kill Americans in  Iraq. And Obama personally bows before Saudi and Chinese despots who  export the technology and ideology increasingly threatening America and its  allies.</p>
<p>The Obama  Administration fiddles about Israeli apartments while the Middle East  burns.</p>
</div>
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		<title>Why Palestinians Riot Over Jewish Heritage Sites</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/moshe-dann/why-palestinians-riot-over-jewish-heritage-sites/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-palestinians-riot-over-jewish-heritage-sites</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/moshe-dann/why-palestinians-riot-over-jewish-heritage-sites/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:00:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Dann]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[al aksa mosque]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=52789</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The affront that "equal access" poses to Muslims. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/riot.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-52792" title="riot" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/riot.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="382" /></a></p>
<p>Last week saw an <a href="http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/ipc_e074.htm">upsurge in Palestinian riots and attacks</a> against Israeli vehicles in Gaza and the West Bank. What crime did Israel commit to invite the wave of violence? Israel’s government simply <a href="../2010/03/01/israel%E2%80%99s-latest-sin%E2%80%94honoring-its-heritage/">announced</a> that it intended to honor the country’s heritage by including the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem in a list of Israeli national “heritage” sites.</p>
<p>The violence-fueled Palestinian reaction may seem entirely disproportionate to Israel’s offense. But a look at the historical background shows that it is not without grim precedent.</p>
<p>For several decades, Palestinians have been attacking  Jewish worshipers at the   Temple   Mount in   Jerusalem, the Tomb of Rachel near   Bethlehem, and the Tomb of  Patriarchs and Matriarchs, <em>Machpelah</em>, in   Hebron. After the   Oslo and Hebron Agreements in the  1990&#8242;s, attacks intensified.</p>
<p>To protect visitors to Rachel&#8217;s Tomb, a fortified  building was built around the tiny, 19<sup>th</sup> century building that had  been built over the tomb. That wasn&#8217;t enough, since getting to the building from  the closest Israeli checkpoint, a few hundred meters away, exposed Jews to  sniper fire and bombs from adjacent buildings along the road. A new road was  built, therefore, surrounded by high cement walls.</p>
<p>Palestinian riots against the rights of Jews to  visit holy and historic sites are nothing new. In   Jericho and   Gaza,  ancient Jewish synagogues from  the Talmudic period have been destroyed and are off limits to Jews.</p>
<p>In Shechem,   Nablus , the site of Joseph&#8217;s Tomb,  was attacked by Palestinian mobs in 2000, fire-bombed and destroyed. A wounded Israeli  soldier inside bled to death while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his  Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz, negotiated with the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>On the Temple   Mount , the Palestinians have been  systematically destroying Jewish artifacts and antiquities from the   Second   Temple period.</p>
<p>Why is attacking and destroying Jewish heritage sites so  popular among Palestinians?</p>
<p>Arabs claim their own heritage sites. Their claims go back about 1,300 years, when the  Al-Aksa mosque and golden Dome of the Rock were built on the   Temple   Mount. These buildings exist today  under Muslim authority (<em>Wakf)</em>; Jews are prohibited by Israeli police from  praying, carrying holy books, or ritual objects on the   Temple   Mount, in deference to Muslim  restrictions.</p>
<p>During the Muslim occupation of   Israel, with the  exception of about two centuries of Christian Crusader occupation, various  public buildings, palaces, mosques and bridges were built. Remains of Crusader  fortresses are popular tourist sites, along with Nabatean (pagan) sites in the   Negev, many of which are UNESCO-designated.</p>
<p>All are part of the history and heritage of the   Land of   Israel. Except for their buildings on  the Temple   Mount, however, Muslims do not  consider the Land of   Israel, Judea  and Samaria,   Palestine, sacred in any way. During  most of the Muslim occupation, these sites were neglected because they held  little significance. The main focus, for Muslims, was   Mecca and   Medina, in   Saudi Arabia.  Muslims do not make <em>aliyah</em> to   Palestine.</p>
<p>Christians and Muslims venerated holy sites in the   Land of   Israel,   Palestine, but after visiting, or  conquering, they went home. Their heritage was local, tribal, and familial. The   Land of   Israel was not part of their  heritage. It was a heritage for Jews.</p>
<p>This explains why Palestinians are opposed to the  designation of Jewish heritage sites. If it is important to Jews, what does that  mean for Muslims? Indeed, what is their heritage?</p>
<p>Heritage is a legacy that connects generations; it&#8217;s not  politics, but history. For Palestinians, however, the two are entangled – which chokes  off rationality.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not the Muslim significance of historical  sites that inspires Palestinian riots; it&#8217;s that Jews claim it at all. Equal access to  historical and holy sites is considered an affront by Muslims, as it questions  their exclusivity and authenticity.</p>
<p>Under Muslim rule, for example, Jews were denied entrance  to Machpelah, since, if Muslims don&#8217;t have exclusive control of the site, then  no one else should, or will. Any attachment of Jews diminishes that of  Muslims.</p>
<p>This deadly Arab zero-sum game is exacerbated by  President Obama, whose opposition to the right of Jews to live beyond the 1949  Armistice Lines fueled Palestinian riots in eastern   Jerusalem. Recently, State  Department spokesman Mark Toner said &#8220;the administration viewed   Israel &#8216;s move as  provocative and unhelpful.&#8221;  He did  not deplore Palestinian riots.</p>
<p>If you agree with President Obama and Mark Toner, no need  to do anything. If you disagree, however, let your voices be heard. Silence is  acquiescence.</p>
<p><em>The author is a writer and journalist living in  Israel.</em></p>
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		<title>It&#8217;s All the Tea Party&#8217;s Fault</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/its-all-the-tea-partys-fault/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=its-all-the-tea-partys-fault</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/michellemalkin/its-all-the-tea-partys-fault/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:04:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michelle Malkin]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[according to his need]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=51525</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left's haters continue their smear campaign. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/austin.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-51528" title="austin" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/austin.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>Remember &#8220;Not Me&#8221;? He was the famous invisible cartoon gremlin in the newspaper comic strip &#8220;The Family Circus.&#8221; Whenever toys were left on the floor or other school-age disasters struck, the kids in the comic pointed their fingers at &#8220;Not Me.&#8221; Today, &#8220;Tea Party&#8221; is the juvenile left&#8217;s new &#8220;Not Me&#8221; — an all-purpose scapegoat for every crime and disaster.</p>
<p>Last Thursday, a disturbed pilot flew a small plane into an Austin, Texas, office complex that contained an Internal Revenue Service office. Several workers in the building were injured, and Joseph Andrew Stack, the pilot, was killed in the crash. Local authorities suspect he set his house on fire — from which his wife and daughter escaped — before taking off on his deadly journey. Investigators found a Web posting, identified as Stack&#8217;s &#8220;suicide manifesto,&#8221; in which he railed against tax laws, inequity, government and crony capitalism. He also targeted &#8220;puppet&#8221; George W. Bush, murderous health care insurers and the pharmaceutical industry.</p>
<p>The &#8220;manifesto&#8221; ended:</p>
<p><em> The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.</em></p>
<p><em>The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed. </em></p>
<p>This nutball had deadly grudges that transcended partisan lines. But within minutes of the story breaking, a furious left-wing blogger at the popular Daily Kos website — where countless Democratic leaders have guest-posted — fumed: &#8220;Teabagger terrorist attack on IRS building.&#8221; The article immediately cast blame on the anti-tax Tea Party movement: &#8220;After months of threats on the United States government, and government institutions, the Anti-Government forces known as the teabaggers have struck with their first 911 (sic) inspired terrorist attack.&#8221;</p>
<p>At the eponymous mega-website of Arianna Huffington, a 2,000-plus comment thread was filled with allusions to &#8220;teabaggers&#8221;:</p>
<p><em> I would bet he has a membership card to teabag nation and the Glenn Beck fan club!</em></p>
<p><em>Tea bag bomb.</em></p>
<p><em>Good to see natural selection still works! Tea party Unite!</em></p>
<p><em>This guy sounds just like a teabagger.</em></p>
<p><em>Oh please. This has tea bags dripping all over it.</em></p>
<p><em>I hope teabaggers are proud!! &#8230;</em></p>
<p><em>Great opening day for CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) isn&#8217;t it?? </em></p>
<p><em>This guy sounds like a Tea Partier first class! Maybe that movement is more DANGEROUS to our freedoms than they let on! Be afraid America, BE VERY AFRAID!</em></p>
<p><em>He was a Tea Party Terrorist. </em></p>
<p>In the early aftermath of the suicidal pilot&#8217;s attack, there was no evidence that Stack belonged to a Tea Party organization. In any case, no law-abiding Tea Party group would ever condone what he did. But it didn&#8217;t stop the haters from immediately smearing advocates of limited government. And it&#8217;s just the latest in a long line of calculated attempts to paint the vast majority of peaceful Tea Party activists as terrorist threats to civil society.</p>
<p>This week, absurd liberal pundits and bloggers also tried to connect the tragic University of Alabama-Huntsville murders to the Tea Party movement. No matter that the alleged killer, Amy Bishop, was an Obama-worshiping academic who repeatedly got a soft-on-crime pass. Or that Democratic Rep. William Delahunt of Massachusetts was the former prosecutor involved in dropping charges against Bishop in the deadly shooting of her teenage brother. Or that liberal-dominated campus officials apparently looked the other way in response to Bishop&#8217;s several red-flag flashes of violence leading up to the U of A shootings.</p>
<p>Tea Party-bashers claimed that the murders were a manifestation of racist conservative influence on the American landscape. Reuters Foundation Fellow Jonathan Curiel picked up the theme: &#8220;The &#8216;results&#8217; that the Tea Party movement envisions include less government — and less of Obama.&#8221;</p>
<p>Curiel bemoaned the rejection of a post-racial society by tying together the Alabama massacre and the rise of the Tea Party movement more explicitly. Proof of anti-Obama bigotry, he wrote, could be found in &#8220;last week&#8217;s shooting in Alabama, where a disgruntled white professor murdered three minority professors; and the growing success of the Tea Party movement, which is overwhelmingly white and increasing (sic) vocal in its violent dislike of the nation&#8217;s first black president.&#8221;</p>
<p>The same warped worldview blamed Tea Party conservatives for Kentucky census worker Bill Sparkman&#8217;s insurance-scam-inspired suicide and for Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn&#8217;s rampage (despite his published rants against Fox News).</p>
<p>The smear merchants, of course, are simply following Rahm Emanuel&#8217;s advice to exploit every crisis. Pointing fingers at the Tea Party gremlin demonizes the left&#8217;s most potent political opponents. This is the blame-gamers&#8217; ultimate agenda: criminalizing dissent.</p>
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		<title>U.S. curtails use of airstrikes in assault on Marja &#8211; washingtonpost.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/u-s-curtails-use-of-airstrikes-in-assault-on-marja-washingtonpost-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=u-s-curtails-use-of-airstrikes-in-assault-on-marja-washingtonpost-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:57:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[afghan war]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50559</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[MARJA, AFGHANISTAN &#8212; To the Marines of Bravo Company, the black-and-white video footage from a surveillance drone seemed to present the perfect shot: more than a dozen armed insurgents exiting a building and heading to positions to attack U.S. and Afghan forces seeking to wrest control of this Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan. Facing stiff [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/15/AR2010021500774.html?hpid=topnews"><img src='http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PH2010021502174.jpg' alt='' /></a></p>
<p>MARJA, AFGHANISTAN &#8212; To the Marines of Bravo Company, the black-and-white video footage from a surveillance drone seemed to present the perfect shot: more than a dozen armed insurgents exiting a building and heading to positions to attack U.S. and Afghan forces seeking to wrest control of this Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Facing stiff resistance from Taliban fighters, the Marines radioed for permission to call in an airstrike on the insurgents at midday Monday. It appeared to be the sort of clear opportunity that would have prompted a rapidly executed bombing run during the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/countries/iraq.html?nav=el">Iraq</a> war, or even in the first seven years of this conflict.</p>
<p>But not anymore: Officers at the Marine headquarters deemed the insurgents to be too close to a set of houses. In the new way the United States and its NATO allies are waging the Afghan war, dropping a bomb on or near a house is forbidden unless troops are in imminent danger of being overrun, or they can prove that no civilians are inside.</p>
<p>The rejection of Bravo&#8217;s airstrike illuminates the challenges and complexity of waging a counterinsurgency mission that aims to protect Afghan civilians, while battling militants who appear determined to stand and fight for control of this farming district.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/15/AR2010021500774.html?hpid=topnews">U.S. curtails use of airstrikes in assault on Marja &#8211; washingtonpost.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Interview With Robert Morgenthau: Obama &#8220;smoking pot&#8221; if he thinks &#8220;being nice&#8221; to Iran is &#8220;going to get him anywhere&#8221; &#8211; WSJ.com</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/interview-with-robert-morgenthau-obama-smoking-pot-if-he-thinks-being-nice-to-iran-is-going-to-get-him-anywhere-wsj-com/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=interview-with-robert-morgenthau-obama-smoking-pot-if-he-thinks-being-nice-to-iran-is-going-to-get-him-anywhere-wsj-com</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 26 Dec 2009 15:40:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=43489</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the criminal justice system, the people of Manhattan have been represented for 35 years by New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. This is his story.Mr. Morgenthau, who inspired the original D.A. character on the television program &#8220;Law and Order,&#8221; will retire on Thursday at age 90. Much of the barely fictitious drama is [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the criminal justice system, the people of Manhattan have been represented for 35 years by New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. This is his story.Mr. Morgenthau, who inspired the original D.A. character on the television program &#8220;Law and Order,&#8221; will retire on Thursday at age 90. Much of the barely fictitious drama is set in his office in Manhattan&#8217;s Criminal Courts Building. This week, amid half-filled boxes and scattered personal mementos, he sat down to discuss his life&#8217;s work.Even though he knows I&#8217;m wearing a wire—actually an audio recorder placed on the table between us—America&#8217;s D.A. speaks candidly, including about his public blowups with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Mr. Morgenthau says this is the first mayor he hasn&#8217;t gotten along with, and that the relationship went south when his office started investigating the city&#8217;s role in the death of two of New York&#8217;s bravest in an August, 2007 fire. Among other mistakes, city inspectors had failed to note that the water had been turned off at the old Deutsche Bank building opposite Ground Zero. The blaze resulted in 33 &#8220;mayday&#8221; calls from firefighters, and the D.A. is amazed that only two lost their lives.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704039704574616433529879494.html">Interview With Robert Morgenthau: The World&#8217;s District Attorney &#8211; WSJ.com</a>.</p>
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		<title>Nicole Gelinas: Too Big Not To Fail &#8211; National Affairs</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/nicole-gelinas-too-big-not-to-fail-national-affairs/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=nicole-gelinas-too-big-not-to-fail-national-affairs</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:40:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42564</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The catastrophe that struck America&#8217;s financial system in 2008 was not inevitable. Rather than a failure of markets, it was a failure by government to understand its proper role in markets — and the product of an unwise (and unnecessary) abandonment of a sensible system of rules and boundaries that had served American finance well [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The catastrophe that struck America&#8217;s financial system in 2008 was not inevitable. Rather than a failure of markets, it was a failure by government to understand its proper role in markets — and the product of an unwise (and unnecessary) abandonment of a sensible system of rules and boundaries that had served American finance well for six decades.</p>
<p>Beginning in the 1980s, and continuing over the quarter-century that followed, Washington afforded the world of big finance a terrible ­luxury: freedom from the fear of failure. Managers and lenders at financial companies came to understand that the larger and more complex their firms got, the more immunity from market discipline they would enjoy — since they could depend on government guarantees when necessary to protect the broader economy from their mistakes. The government thus countenanced and subsidized an untenable financial system. And it inevitably got more of what it paid for: reckless risk building up to disaster.</p>
<p>The errors laid bare by the financial crisis clearly call for regulatory reform. But in designing that reform, we should avoid the temptation to seek heavy-handed new approaches — and should instead look to the long-term success of the system of rules whose decay brought about the crisis.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/too-big-not-to-fail">Too Big Not To Fail &gt; Publications &gt; National Affairs</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Swiss Minarets and European Islam &#8211; by Daniel Pipes</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/daniel-pipes/swiss-minarets-and-european-islam-by-daniel-pipes/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=swiss-minarets-and-european-islam-by-daniel-pipes</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:10:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Pipes]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=40979</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Switzerland revolts against symbols of advancing totalitarianism.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-40982" title="1027-switzerland-minarets" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1027-switzerland-minarets.jpg" alt="1027-switzerland-minarets" width="465" height="602" /></p>
<p>What importance has the recent Swiss referendum to ban the building of minarets (spires next to mosques from which the call to prayer is issued)?</p>
<p>Some may see the 57.5 to 42.5 percent decision endorsing a constitutional amendment as nearly meaningless. The political establishment being overwhelmingly opposed to the amendment, the ban will probably never go into effect. Only 53.4 percent of the electorate voted, so a mere 31 percent of the whole population endorses the ban. The ban does not address Islamist aspirations, much less Muslim terrorism. It has no impact on the practice of Islam. It prevents neither the building of new mosques nor requires that Switzerland&#8217;s four existing minarets be demolished.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s also possible to dismiss the vote as the quirky result of Switzerland&#8217;s unique <a href="http://direct-democracy.geschichte-schweiz.ch/">direct democracy</a>, a tradition that goes back to 1291 and exists nowhere else in Europe. <a href="http://www.zeit.de/2009/50/Zeitgeist-50?page=all&amp;print=true">Josef Joffe</a>, the distinguished German analyst, sees the vote as a populist backlash against the series of humiliations the Swiss have endured in recent years culminating in the seizure of <a href="http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8351246.stm?ad=1">two businessmen in Libya</a> and the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/6073643/Swiss-governments-apology-over-Hannibal-Gaddafis-arrest-sparks-angry-backlash.html">Swiss president&#8217;s mortifying apology</a> to win their release.</p>
<p>However, I see the referendum as consequential, and well so beyond Swiss borders.</p>
<table style="margin-left:12px; margin-bottom:5px;" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="320" align="right">
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<td style="border:1px solid black;"><img src="http://www.danielpipes.org/pics/new/large/1058.jpg" border="0" alt="" width="320" height="240" /><!-- caption begin --></p>
<p style="font-size:smaller;margin:4px;">&#8220;Our Lady of the Rosary,&#8221; Qatar&#8217;s first Christian church, lacks cross, bell, dome, steeple, and signage.</p>
<p><!-- caption end --></td>
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<p>First, it raises delicate issues of reciprocity in Muslim-Christian relations. A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338014,00.html">Qatar</a>&#8216;s first-ever church opened in 2008, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple, or signboard. Rosary&#8217;s priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: &#8220;The idea is to be discreet because we don&#8217;t want to inflame any sensitivities.&#8221; And when the Christians of a town in Upper <a href="http://www.copts.com/english/?p=3643">Egypt</a>, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of &#8220;laborious negotiation, pleading, and grappling with the authorities,&#8221; won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a <a href="http://www.freecopts.net/arabic/2009-06-28-16-57-25/42-rokstories/1395-2009-10-30-22-27-16">mob of about 200 Muslims</a> attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building <a href="http://www.ebnmaryam.com/vb/showthread.php?p=52207">secret churches</a>.</p>
<p>Why, the <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/3729/the-vatican-confronts-islam">Catholic Church</a> and others are asking, should Christian suffer such indignities while Muslims enjoy full rights in historically Christian countries? The Swiss vote fits into this new spirit. Islamists, of course, reject this premise of equality; Iranian foreign minister <a href="http://www.irna.ir/En/View/FullStory/?NewsId=826171&amp;IdLanguage=3">Manouchehr Mottaki</a> warned his Swiss counterpart of unspecified &#8220;consequences&#8221; of what he called anti-Islamic acts, implicitly threatening to make the minaret ban an international issue comparable to the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/1437/after-the-danish-cartoon-controversy">Danish cartoon</a> fracas of 2006.</p>
<table style="margin-left:12px; margin-bottom:5px;" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="250" align="right">
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<td style="border:1px solid black;"><img src="http://www.danielpipes.org/pics/new/large/1059.jpg" border="0" alt="" width="250" height="211" /><!-- caption begin --></p>
<p style="font-size:smaller;margin:4px;">Iran&#8217;s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warns of &#8220;consequences&#8221; for anti-Islamic acts.</p>
<p><!-- caption end --></td>
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<p>Second, Europe stands at a crossroads with respect to its Muslim population. Of the <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/4323/europes-stark-options">three main future prospects</a> – everyone getting along, Muslims dominating, or Muslims rejected – the first is highly improbable but the second and third seem equally possible. In this context, the Swiss vote represents a potentially important legitimation of anti-Islamic views. The vote inspired support across Europe, as signaled by online polling sponsored by the mainstream media and by statements from leading figures. Here follows a small sampling:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>France</strong>: 49,000 readers at <a href="http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2009/11/30/01016-20091130QCMWWW00619-faut-il-interdire-la-construction-de-nouveaux-minarets-en-france-.php"><em>Le Figaro</em></a>, by a 73-27 percent margin, would vote to ban new minarets in their country. 24,000 readers at <a href="http://www.lexpress.fr/opinions/sondages/?idSondage=831955"><em>L&#8217;Express</em></a> agreed by an 86-12 percent margin, with 2 percent undecided. A leading columnist, <a href="http://blog.lefigaro.fr/rioufol/">Ivan Rioufol</a> of <em>Le Figaro</em>, wrote an article titled &#8220;Homage to the Resistance of the Swiss People.&#8221; President <a href="http://www.france24.com/fr/20091202-sarkozy-interdiction-minarets-reaction-crainte-populations-pays-denature-identite-islam?autoplay=">Nicolas Sarkozy</a> was quoted as saying that &#8220;the people, in Switzerland as in France, don&#8217;t want their country to change, that it be denatured. They want to keep their identity.&#8221;</li>
<li><strong>Germany</strong>: 29.000 readers at <a href="http://www1.spiegel.de/active/vote/fcgi/vote.fcgi?voteid=6471&amp;choice=1&amp;aktion=setcookie"><em>Der Spiegel</em></a> voted 76-21 percent, with 2 percent undecided, to ban minarets in Germany. 17,000 readers of <a href="http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article5382070/Sind-wir-eigentlich-auch-Schweizer.html"><em>Die Welt</em></a> voted 82-16 in favor of &#8220;Yes, I feel cramped by minarets&#8221; over &#8220;No, freedom of religion is constrained.&#8221;</li>
<li><strong>Spain</strong>: 14,000 readers of <a href="http://www.20minutos.es/encuesta/3991/0/0/"><em>20 Minutos</em></a> voted 93-6 percent in favor of the statement &#8220;Good, we must curb Islamization&#8217;s growing presence&#8221; and against &#8220;Bad, it is an obstacle to the integration of immigrants.&#8221; 35,000 readers of <a href="http://www.elmundo.es/debate/2009/11/2519/prevotaciones2519.html"><em>El Mondo</em></a> replied 80-20 percent that they support a Swiss-like banning of minarets.</li>
</ul>
<p>Although not scientific, the lop-sidedness of these (and <a href="http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/12/around-the-world-.html">other</a>) polls, ranging from 73 to 93 percent majorities endorsing the Swiss referendum, signal that Swiss voters represent growing anti-Islamic sentiments throughout Europe. The new amendment also validates and potentially encourages resistance to Islamization throughout the continent.</p>
<p>For these reasons, the Swiss vote represents a possible turning point for European Islam.</p>
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