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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; hostage</title>
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		<title>Has the West Lost the Will to Live?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mark-tapson/has-the-west-lost-the-will-to-live/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=has-the-west-lost-the-will-to-live</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2014 05:38:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark Tapson]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hostage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lindt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sydney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247687</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is returning to business-as-usual after terrorist attacks a sign of strength or giving up?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sydney-hostage-crisis-in-photos-05.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247688" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/sydney-hostage-crisis-in-photos-05-450x337.jpg" alt="CAFE SIEGE SITUATION" width="300" height="225" /></a>When it became too obvious to deny that the hostage crisis in Sydney, Australia was an act of Islamic terrorism, Prime Minister Tony Abbott asked Aussie citizens for calm, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/12/15/hostage-situation-reportedly-unfolding-in-sydney-chocolate-shop/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">saying</span></a>, “The whole point of politically motivated violence is to scare people out of being themselves. Australia is a peaceful, open and generous society – nothing should ever change that. And that’s why I would urge all Australians today to go about their business as usual.” That’s what a politician is expected to say. But what he should have said is that the time for business-as-usual is over.</p>
<p>Recently my friend Doris Wise Montrose – founder of <a href="http://cjhsla.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors</span></a> and its related site for self-defense instruction, <a href="http://cjhsla.org/jewscanshoot/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jews Can Shoot</span></a> – brought to my attention something she found disconcerting. It was a Facebook post by a very popular Israeli news blogger, a brief update on the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/video-cctv-footage-released-of-stabbing-in-israeli-supermarket-9905059.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">knife attack</span></a> perpetrated by a young Arab on shoppers in a Jerusalem supermarket. This update was accompanied by mention of the blogger’s own mundane shopping trip to a different supermarket, and a photo of the contents of his cart.</p>
<p>Doris commented to him that connecting the two experiences in the same breath, in the same tone, seemed oddly cavalier. The blogger replied that it was simply an acknowledgement that this is the way of life in Israel – her citizens refuse to be cowed; they proudly carry on even with terrorism in their midst. Business as usual.</p>
<p>Last month novelist Jack Engelhard, who writes a weekly column for Israel’s <i>Arutz Sheva</i>, wrote an <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/16006#.VIAUezHF-Sr"><span style="color: #0433ff;">op-ed</span></a> questioning precisely this attitude of proudly taking terrorism in stride. He noted that in the wake of four rabbis being hacked to death in a Jerusalem synagogue, for example, Israeli life went on as before. Engelhard wrote: “Hurray for Jewish bravado,” but</p>
<blockquote><p>are Israelis getting too used to this? Is this a case of Israelis proving that nothing can stop them, or is this a case of Israelis accepting their fate as sheep doomed to be slaughtered? When will it end… how can it end… when no matter what happens ‘everything is back to normal’?</p></blockquote>
<p>You often hear the cliché that if we let the terrorists change our way of life, change who we are, then they win. But they <i>have</i> changed our way of life and who we are as a culture. Look at what has become of air travel in the wake of 9/11 and the bungling Shoe Bomber: passengers shuffling along like cattle in long security lines, removing our shoes and laptops, submitting to invasive scans by the useless TSA, etc. This is but one example of our “new normal,” and as incidents like the Boston Marathon bombing and the Jerusalem synagogue butchering and the Sydney hostage-taking become more and more common, they too will become our new normal.</p>
<p>The jihadists need not carry out another 9/11 or a nuclear strike in order to ultimately prevail. Terrorism is a war of attrition, a strategy of <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/11/23/death-by-a-thousand-cuts-2/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">death by a thousand cuts</span></a>. That means we live with the subtle but ever-present expectation that a so-called “lone wolf” like the Sydney gunman, or a suicide bomber, or a well-trained team of merciless slaughterers like the Mumbai or Nairobi terrorists could strike anywhere at any time: a mall, a café, a market, a school, a synagogue, a subway, anywhere.</p>
<p>For the victims of terrorism life doesn’t go on at all, and it is forever altered for the surviving family members and friends. The rest of us live with the knowledge that next time, it could be us or our loved ones. The psychic attrition is incalculable, and it sits in our consciousness like a cancer no matter how much we tell each other that we must not live in fear.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://blogs.forward.com/jj-goldberg/197232/holocaust-lesson-dont-just-mourn-fight-back/#ixzz3L6nz9euR"><span style="color: #0433ff;">address</span></a> to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust earlier this year, J.J. Goldberg of the <i>Jewish Daily Forward</i> praised those Jews during the Holocaust who “fought back by surviving another day in the face of the inhuman killing machine, and then another day and another. They fought back by maintaining their humanity and dignity in the face of utter depravity.”</p>
<p>But that is not fighting back; it certainly is not victory. It’s simply a dignified surrender. To accept living under the cloud of terrorism while declaring stubbornly that it won’t change us is a terrible self-delusion. It is a fatal misconception to believe that simply denying terrorists the satisfaction of terrorizing us is any kind of a victory at all. Our humanity and dignity mean nothing if depravity wins, if our civilization succumbs to a hungrier, more ruthless one, if the world enters a Dark Age under a totalitarian theocracy. The only victory worth having will come when we bring the terrorism to an <i>end</i>.</p>
<p>The West is in decline for a number of reasons, one of which is its cultural capitulation in the face of an ascendant Islamic fundamentalism. It is as if we, or at least our leaders and elites, have lost the cultural will to live. We need to get in touch with a sort of cultural rage, a fierce determination to crush threats to our culture, our values, and our liberty. We need to demonstrate that our tolerance has reached an end, that there will be no more coexistence with an ideology openly dedicated to our destruction. “Never mind <i>normal</i>,” as Jack Engelhard put it. To paraphrase his wish for Israel, for once let our blood “be exceptional and cause for nausea and trembling” among our enemies. Show the jihadists that there will be no more business-as-usual capitulation, and that they can expect us to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc8fqgbU_SU"><span style="color: #0433ff;">unleash hell</span></a> in retaliation for a single drop of Western blood.</p>
<p>We have a President who actually announced to the world that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” At the rate we’re going, it won’t. One thing is certain: the future will belong to the culture that is not hamstrung by cultural self-doubt, that is not mired in apologetic self-abasement, that is not burdened by historical guilt induced through decades of politically correct indoctrination, and that burns with a will to win, no matter how long it takes or what it costs. The future will belong to the lions, not the lambs.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss Shillman Journalism Fellow <strong>Mark Tapson</strong> on the <strong>Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<strong> Fighting the Culture War</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/v5gR4E5UPB8" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></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>The War Comes to Australia</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/the-war-comes-to-australia-1/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-war-comes-to-australia-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/the-war-comes-to-australia-1/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Dec 2014 05:55:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CAFE]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hostage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lindt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Man Haron Monis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sydney]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247563</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the Sydney café jihadist was no lone wolf. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/EPA_man_haron_monis_jtm_141215_16x9_992.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247519" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/EPA_man_haron_monis_jtm_141215_16x9_992-450x318.jpg" alt="EPA_man_haron_monis_jtm_141215_16x9_992" width="344" height="243" /></a>The hostage saga in Sydney ended in <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/second-group-of-five-hostages-emerges-from-sydney-cafe/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">dramatic fashion</span></a> yesterday as Australian police and SWAT teams stormed a downtown café after a 16-hour standoff with armed hostage taker, Man Haron Monis. Monis, identified as a Muslim cleric with a criminal record that included sexual assault and accessory to murder, was killed during the operation as were two hostages, identified as a male and female in their 30s.</p>
<p>Monis, an Iranian national, requested refugee status and asylum in Australia in 1996 and sought to repay Australia’s benevolence by engaging in a vituperative letter-writing campaign directed at the families of fallen Australian soldiers who served in Afghanistan. The letters, in which Monis expresses opposition to the war in Afghanistan, refers to the fallen soldiers as “pigs” and compares them to Hitler. Australian authorities <a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/547043/Sydney-cafe-gunman-on-bail-alleged-violent-offences"><span style="color: #0433ff;">charged him</span></a> with “using a postal or similar service to menace, harass or cause offense [sic]” for which he received a relatively mild sentence of 300 hours of community service.</p>
<p>Australian police ought to be commended for their efficiency and professionalism in quickly subduing the terrorist and preventing more bloodshed, yet the incident raises more questions than it answers. How was a man with such a shady past, with no viable means of supporting himself, who was charged with such serious crimes, allowed to walk on bail and why was his refugee status not revoked? These are questions that the Australian justice system and immigration authorities will have to grapple with in the coming days.</p>
<p>More problematic is how the Australian government will seek to label this incident. Monis’s former lawyer sought to distance his ex-client from any connection to Islamic terrorism, noting that Monis’s actions reflected those of a “random individual” and were not reflective of a “concerted terrorism event or act.” His lawyer’s comments will surely be echoed by Australia’s Muslim community as well as its multiculturalist amen corner.</p>
<p>But the facts of this case dictate other, more malevolent conclusions that point toward radical Islam. Monis was a radical Islamist who espoused the ideologies of the Islamic State. During the hostage standoff, he issued demands that demonstrated unyielding devotion to Islam. He insisted that authorities provide him with an ISIS flag and that the government officially label the incident an ISIS attack. Monis also forced his terrified victims to display an Islamic <span style="color: #0433ff;">shahada </span>flag in both the window of the café and in the numerous <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2874985/He-says-eye-eye-runs-dies-Hostage-reveals-terrifying-demands-Sheikh-killed-Lindt-Cafe-terror-crisis.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">videos</span></a> released of hostages relaying messages.</p>
<p>Australia has not been immune from the scourge of radical Islam currently sweeping across multicultural Europe. It is a liberal democracy that unwittingly plays host to radical Islamists who have taken advantage of Australia’s liberal democratic character to advance their pernicious schemes.</p>
<p>On September 18, Australian security forces <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/17/world/asia/australia-terror-arrests/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">thwarted</span></a> a plan by Australian Muslims to kidnap and behead Australian citizens in public and drape their bodies in an Islamic State flag. And on December 15, Australian authorities <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/15/two-sydney-men-charged-funding-australians-fighting-isis"><span style="color: #0433ff;">charged</span></a> two Muslim terrorists with providing funding for Australian Muslims seeking to fight with ISIS.</p>
<p>Monis was not a lone wolf as some would have us believe. There comes a point when collectively, so-called lone wolf attacks must be viewed as coordinated strikes, actively encouraged by fundamentalist ideologies. Those who claim otherwise, who refuse to acknowledge the obvious and absurdly label these attacks as acts of “<a href="http://freebeacon.com/issues/ted-cruz-video-makes-compelling-case-for-awarding-purple-heart-to-fort-hood-terror-victims/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">work place violence</span></a>” or “random acts of violence,” are being disingenuous and placing politics above the needs of national security.</p>
<p>Whether it is a shooting spree at Fort Hood, a beheading in Woolwich, a bloodbath at a Jerusalem synagogue or, as in this case, a hostage standoff and murder, these incidents and countless others too numerous to mention, represent nothing short of an attack on Western civilization. The attackers may not have known each other but were nevertheless inspired and guided by the same radical Islamist ideology, an ideology that seeks to dominate, subjugate and restore Islam to the same standing it experienced some 1,000 years ago.</p>
<p>This radical ideology easily spreads like a virus through 21<sup>st</sup> century mediums like Facebook and Twitter but also finds home in the mosques and madrassas of the Middle East and the West where Muslim clerics routinely call for the <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/western-indifference-to-the-palestinian-culture-of-hate/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">murder of Jews</span></a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GadPZpP-DdI"><span style="color: #0433ff;">annihilation of Western civilization</span></a>. Unfortunately, many in the West, in the name of multiculturalism and tolerance, have preferred to ignore this malevolence and have allowed it to metastasize like a malignant cancer.</p>
<p>So long as Western governments continue to bury their collective heads in the sand, fail to draw the necessary conclusions and take decisive action, we can unfortunately expect more future tragedies like that which just occurred in Sydney.</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>The Names of the Victims</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/the-names-of-the-victims/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-names-of-the-victims</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 04:41:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[exchange]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gilad Schalit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hostage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[kidnap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[teens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorist]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The tragic price of exchanging hostages for terrorists. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/F140617ZEL03.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235087" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/F140617ZEL03-395x350.jpg" alt="F140617ZEL03" width="238" height="211" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-one-The-names-of-the-victims-360736">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Three families in Israel are in agony. On June 12, when their sons Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah and Gil-Ad Shaer were kidnapped by Islamic savages, the Fraenkels, Yifrahs and Shaers entered a new world where every breath they take is filled with devastating guilt – that they breathe free while their sons suffer unknown miseries.</p>
<p>Every moment that passes is filled with crushed hope that they will get word that their sons are free, and then the word doesn’t come. And it doesn’t come the next moment, or the next.</p>
<p>And so they will live, in agony, until this ordeal has ended.</p>
<p>Our hearts go out to these families. Our prayers are continuously directed towards them. And in a profound sense that is uniquely Israeli, the people of Israel share their pain. And with this pain comes a sincere and overpowering desire to do something to bring the captive teenagers home.</p>
<p>What can be done? There are only two ways for Israel to free hostages.</p>
<p>The government can devote all necessary resources to gathering actionable intelligence that will lead IDF troops to the boys.</p>
<p>Or the government can surrender to the terrorists by freeing thousands of Palestinian terrorist murderers from Israeli prisons.</p>
<p>So far, the government is concentrating on Option 1.</p>
<p>But Option 2 is lurking around the corner. And we need to confront it now – head on – before it takes center stage.</p>
<p>Over the past 30 years, Israel has released thousands of terrorists from its prisons in exchange for hostages. Thousands more have been freed as so-called “confidence building measures,” to appease our supposedly moderate Palestinian negotiating partners into sharing a table with their Israeli counterparts.</p>
<p>In every instance, these terrorist releases have led to the murder and abduction of other Israelis.</p>
<p>The clock started ticking down to Naftali, Gil-Ad and Eyal’s abduction on October 19, 2011 when Israel released 1,027 Palestinian terrorists in exchange for IDF Sgt. Gilad Schalit who had been held hostage by Hamas for more than five years.</p>
<p>The countdown also began that day for the murder of Baruch Mizrahi, the police officer who was killed in a roadside shooting in April as he drove to a Passover Seder with his wife and children. Mizrahi’s killer was one of the terrorists released for Schalit.</p>
<p>Some politicians are trying to take steps to prevent these swaps in the future. Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman told the media he will prohibit all members of his Yisrael Beytenu party from voting in favor of a hostages-for-terrorists swap if one is on offer in the future.</p>
<p>The day before Fraenkel, Shaer and Yifrah were kidnapped, the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of a bill sponsored by MK Ayelet Shaked from Bayit Yehudi to constrain the president’s power to commute the sentences of some convicted murderers. The idea is that by passing the law, the Knesset will make it impossible for the government to agree to swap murderers for hostages. But then, to avoid the law, all governments will have to do is release prisoners who weren’t sentenced to life without possibility of parole.</p>
<p>The problem with statements like Liberman’s and bills like Shaked’s is that they miss the point. The problem isn’t the law. The problem isn’t that in past swaps MKs were given the freedom to vote as they pleased.</p>
<p>The problem is our media-compliant leadership refuses to act responsibly.</p>
<p>The only way to prevent more Israelis from being abducted in the future is to deter the Palestinians from abducting them.</p>
<p>Deterrence cannot be achieved by cheap political pronouncements or insufficient legislation.</p>
<p>Deterrence can only be built up over time, by behaving consistently in a manner that convinces the other side that it is not in its interest to do something that you don’t want it to do.</p>
<p>Since May 1985, when then-prime minister Shimon Peres freed 1,150 terrorists for three IDF soldiers held hostage by Palestinian terror master Ahmed Jibril, Israel’s behavior has consistently encouraged our enemies to take hostages.</p>
<p>Through their willingness to release murderers for hostages – and even for hostage bodies – our leaders have told our enemies that they should feel free to steal our children. Their payoff is guaranteed.</p>
<p>Through their willingness to free murderers, our leaders have shown our enemies that they should feel free to murder as many Israelis as they can. They know that once their comrades take another Israeli hostage, (or three), they will go free.</p>
<p>And of course, our politicians are not the only ones at fault. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his colleagues and predecessors swim in an acrid stream, where this sort of behavior is required.</p>
<p>To their disgrace, our media consistently behave as advocates and lobbyists for hostage-takers and imprisoned murderers against Israeli society.</p>
<p>For instance, in the case of Schalit, the media worked hand-in-glove with the Schalit family and its public relations firm to convince the public that we should think of a soldier as a child, and not as any child, but as our child.</p>
<p>In more than a thousand media reports, profiles, tear-jerker interviews with Schalit’s kindergarten teachers and siblings, we were told that if we are good and moral people, we must prefer Schalit’s freedom to the continued imprisonment of terrorists who constitute a mortal threat to every other child – and parent – in the country.</p>
<p>Public relations agent Tami Shenkman led the campaign for the terrorists’ release. She was the one who put together the sales strategy for convincing us that capitulating to Palestinian extortion is an act of moral courage.</p>
<p>For her efforts the media lavished her with fawning, heroic profiles.</p>
<p>And for the media’s efforts, three teenagers are now hostages.</p>
<p>True, while our cowardly, irresponsible leaders and demented media encouraged the Palestinians to abduct the three youths, it was the Palestinians that did it.</p>
<p>And this also ought to teach us a thing or two about deterrence.</p>
<p>Our media and our politicians have effusively praised Palestinian Authority President and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas for saying a few lines in favor of releasing Eyal, Gil-Ad and Naftali. But with all due respect, Abbas is responsible for their abduction.</p>
<p>Abbas’s statement calling for the boys to be released was the rhetorical equivalent of trying to put an already exploded bomb back in its shell. Indeed, it is even worse than that. It was Abbas pretending to put a detonated bomb back in its casing after Abbas built the bomb, prepared the fuse and gave the bombers a matchbook.</p>
<p>For 20 years, Abbas and his colleagues in the PA have indoctrinated the Palestinians to view Jews as human scum and seek our annihilation. This message is communicated in all venues. From nursery through the universities, in the mosques, in summer camps, on television, radio and the Internet, Palestinians of all ages are taught that Jews have no right to live. They are encouraged to murder us and view contributing to our destruction as their highest goal in life.</p>
<p>Hostage taking – a war crime – is presented as one of the highest achievements possible. This is why the overwhelming majority of Palestinians applauds and celebrates the kidnap of the three teens.</p>
<p>For 20 years, the PA has indoctrinated its society in a culture of hatred and violence against Israel and the Jewish People. And the results were as predictable as the tides. Nearly 2,000 Israelis have been murdered in Palestinian terror attacks since the PA was established.</p>
<p>Israel can take action to punish the Palestinians for their unlawful behavior. We can arrest their imams for soliciting murder. We can close their schools and shutter their television stations for the same reason.</p>
<p>But we have done none of these things.</p>
<p>All Israel has done in the face of this poison is complain to the Americans.</p>
<p>Even worse than doing nothing, we actively facilitate the PA’s wholesale indoctrination of the Palestinians in genocidal Jew hatred.</p>
<p>Israel funds the PA.</p>
<p>We support the US policy of training and organizing a Palestinian army manned by people who have been subjected to this indoctrination for two decades.</p>
<p>Our leaders proclaim Abbas is a moderate. And still today we say he’s a good guy. The problem, Netanyahu says, is Abbas has formed a unity government with Hamas. But if he quits that, then we will have no beef with him.</p>
<p>The people of Israel want the families’ agony to end.</p>
<p>We want the boys’ terror to end. But the only body that can responsibly accomplish that mission is the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). We cannot find them ourselves.</p>
<p>What we can and must do, however, is protect society as a whole from the next kidnapping. To this end, we need to shame – name by name – the media personalities from Avi Tzvi, the CEO of Reshet, Israel’s largest television franchise, to radio hosts and pop stars like Keren Neubach and Aviv Gefen who demanded the government free 1,027 terrorists from prison.</p>
<p>As for our government ministers, and our prime minister, you need to fix the damage you caused.</p>
<p>You knew when you signed the Schalit deal that the ink was the blood of the victims to come. We didn’t know their identities then. But now we do: Baruch Mizrahi, Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah and Gilad Shaer.</p>
<p>It’s time you understand that after what you did, the only way to change the enemies’ cost-benefit analysis of abductions and other atrocities is for you to change your way of doing business.</p>
<p>This means you have to stop appeasing terrorists and start punishing them. And the punishment needs to be consistent, and painful. Among other things, this means no more money, no more guns and no more legitimacy, not only to Hamas, but to the PA. If you want to do it gradually, you can do it gradually.</p>
<p>It means that every time the Palestinian media broadcasts anti-Jewish bile, they lose something of value.</p>
<p>True, taking such action will likely make it more difficult for elected leaders and military commanders to vacation in Europe. But no one forced you to take your jobs. You asked for the responsibility of providing for the collective defense. And you can’t fulfill your duty by being nice to terrorists or to outsiders who side with them.</p>
<p>Schalit’s media flacks were right. He is a son of all of Israel.</p>
<p>And so are Naftali, Gil-Ad and Eyal who are now captive because of the deal we signed for Gilad.</p>
<p>As we pray for their speedy and safe return home, we must take action remove the targets from the backs of every citizen of Israel. Those targets were placed there by our treacherous media, and by successive governments who preferred the cheap perfume scent of appeasement over the blood, sweat and tears required to secure our freedom and security.</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>The Cuban Hostage Crisis: Day 1460</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/the-cuban-hostage-crisis-day-1460/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-cuban-hostage-crisis-day-1460</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 03 Dec 2013 05:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Humberto Fontova]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alan Gross]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Castro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hostage]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=212190</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why has the Obama administration abandoned Alan Gross? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/alan-gross-photo.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-212199" alt="alan-gross-photo" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/alan-gross-photo-450x322.jpg" width="270" height="193" /></a>On December 3<sup>rd</sup>, 2009, Castro’s KGB-trained police arrested Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen working in Cuba on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Gross has languished in a KGB-designed prison cell ever since. His crime was bringing cell phone and Internet equipment into Castro’s fiefdom to help Cuba’s tiny Jewish community communicate more freely with the outside world.</p>
<p>A reminder: Pre-Castro Cubans enjoyed some of the most advanced communications systems in the world. In 1958 Cuba boasted more phones and TVs per capita than most European countries. Today, Castro’s fiefdom has fewer Internet users per capita than Uganda, and fewer cell phones than Papua New Guinea. The Stalinist regime is very vigilant in these matters.</p>
<p>By the way, introducing cutting-edge communications equipment into Cuba didn’t always land Americans in torture chambers. In 1957 ATT presented Cuban “Dictator” (according to every media mention) Fulgencio Batista with a Golden Telephone for his regime’s enthusiastic welcome of all of their latest technology. This Cuban “dictator” reveled in the fact that Cubans had better, more abundant and cheaper means of communications than most Europeans. You might recall the scene from Goldfather II where Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone pass the Golden telephone around Batista’s conference table. This one scene contains an element of historically accuracy.</p>
<p>In March 2011, after he had lost almost 100 pounds from his prison ordeal, a Castroite court finally got around to actually trying their American hostage Alan Gross. They condemned him to a prison sentence of 15 years for working for an agency of the U.S. government “that aimed to destroy the Revolution through the use of communication systems <i>out of the control of authorities</i>.”</p>
<p>And there’s the hitch: “<i>control of the authorities.” </i>Not even Gadaffi’s late regime, or Assad’s in Syria or Hu Jintau’s in China seek to <i>control </i>cell-phone and Internet access<i>.</i></p>
<p><i>Censor? </i>Absolutely<i>. </i>But outright <i>control </i>of all<i> </i>means of communication is a fetish peculiar to Communists, which no longer applies to the mainland Chinese regime, though it certainly remains despicable and dangerous. No “control-freaks” have ever shackled the human body and mind with the fanaticism and efficiency of Communists. The Castro regime, lest we forget, was founded in 1959. Essentially the same people are running it today as ran it then. Many of the Russians and Spanish Reds who designed Castro’s judicial and prison system had worked for Stalin.</p>
<p>Trotsky&#8217;s murderer, Ramon Mercader, for instance, served as Cuba&#8217;s &#8220;inspector of prisons&#8221; in the 1960&#8242;s and was favorite companion of Raul Castro&#8211;and especially!—of <a href="http://www.hfontova.com/che.html">the starstruck Che Guevara, who had appointed him to the prestigious post.</a> Upon his death in Havana in 1978, the man who hacked Leon Trotsky to death with an ice-axe was buried with honors in the Cuban capitol. Later his ashes were transferred to Moscow.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, the Castro regime never suffered for lack of veneration from “Trotskyists.” Upon the 30<sup>th</sup> Anniversary of Che Guevara’s death Trotskyist Christopher Hitchens wrote in the New York Times that: “1968 actually began in 1967 with the murder of Che. His death meant a lot to me. He was a role model.”  The famously erudite Hitchens was here referring the man who admired and befriended Trotsky’s murderer.</p>
<p>Senator Marco Rubio was among the first to comment on Alan Gross&#8217; sentence: “With Mr. Gross’ sentencing, the Castro regime has effectively demonstrated the hopeless and dangerous naiveté of this administration’s policy toward the regime. The Obama administration’s insistence on moving forward with policies that put more money in this terrorist-sponsoring regime’s coffers is baffling and runs contrary to everything America should stand for.”</p>
<p>“When it is a question of annihilating the enemy,” pronounced Stalin’s chief prosecutor Andrei Vishinsky, “we can do it just as well without a trial.” Alan Gross was certainly “tried”&#8211; but by some of Vishinsky’s most devoted disciples.</p>
<p>Former political prisoner Armando Valladares, who somehow escaped the firing squad but spent 22 torture-filled years in Cuba’s Gulag, described his trial very succinctly: “not one witness to accuse me, not one to identify me, not one single piece of evidence against me.” <i>Senor</i> Valladares was arrested in 1961 for the crime of refusing to display a pro-Castro sign on his desk. Shortly after his arrival on U.S. shores, <i>Senor</i> Valladares was appointed by Ronald Reagan as U.S. ambassador to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, a setting where both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara traditionally basked in wild ovations. Modern history records few U.S. diplomatic tweaks as slick, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Longest-Romance-Mainstream-Media-Castro/dp/1594036675/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1376276049&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+longest+romance+humberto+fontova">or U.S. ambassadors as effective.</a></p>
<p>On July 17, 2012 Armando Valladares published a letter to Alan Gross in The Daily Caller. Among its highlights:</p>
<p><i>Alan P. Gross</i><br />
<i>Havana, Cuba</i></p>
<p><i>Dear friend:</i></p>
<p><i>That is how I am compelled to address you, because even though we have never met, we share a common bond: I too lived behind the iron bars now surrounding you in Cuba — in my case for 22 years.</i></p>
<p><i>Like you, I was convicted by the Cuban authorities without a single shred of evidence against me.</i></p>
<p><i>I have no doubt that your greatest pain right now must be the realization that the U.S. government has turned its back on you. There was a time when the words “I am an American citizen” meant something. It gives me great sadness to say that inside the Communist boot that now tramples upon your dignity is the foot of the American president, Barack Obama.</i></p>
<p><i>The more Castro’s thugs oppress you and make your family suffer, the more your jailers torture you, the harder things get for you — the more this administration seeks to reward them with new concessions. Under any previous U.S. administration, Democrat or Republican, you would not still be in jail. The American president, who has made a habit of publicly bowing to foreign powers, bows to your torturers and would-be executioners. Meanwhile, the adult daughter of Cuba’s dictator recently visited the U.S. to applaud and show her support for President Obama. She receives a visa to come to the United States and a Secret Service escort. And you? You suffer the torture of imprisonment.</i></p>
<p><i>The Obama administration must step up its efforts to press for your release through its diplomatic channels. Should those diplomatic efforts fail, then they must be followed by real action, including the suspension of flights and remittances to Cuba until such time as you are allowed to return to the United States. If the Obama administration even threatened to do this it is my considered judgment that you would be on the next flight back to your home in Washington, D.C.</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>Algeria: Obama’s Chickens Come Home to Roost</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/algeria-obamas-chickens-come-home-to-roost/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=algeria-obamas-chickens-come-home-to-roost</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 04:55:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[algeria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hostage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamist]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174238</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Latest jihad attack a harbinger of much more -- and much worse -- to come. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/algeria-obamas-chickens-come-home-to-roost/obama-articlelarge/" rel="attachment wp-att-174242"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-174242" title="OBAMA-articleLarge" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/OBAMA-articleLarge-450x326.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="196" /></a>Jeremiah Wright was right after all. The Algeria jihad attack proves it.</p>
<p>Not long after the 9/11 jihad attacks, Barack Obama’s mentor and friend, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preached a sermon in which he uttered the now-notorious words: “America&#8217;s chickens are coming home to roost.”</p>
<p>Wright meant, of course, that the U.S. had brought the attack upon itself by its own acts of violence against others: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye&#8230; and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards.”</p>
<p>In a certain sense Wright was right: the U.S. did bring 9/11 on itself – but not in the way that he thought. The jihadists who destroyed the Twin Towers and damaged the Pentagon had not been brooding about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and no action by the U.S. did or could have justified the mass murder those jihadists perpetrated. If it could be truly said that the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself in any way, it was only by failing to recognize the implications of and to confront the ideology behind the jihad attacks that immediately preceded it.</p>
<p>There was an abundance of indicators of what was coming. In December 1988, an Islamic jihadist murdered 259 people, including 189 Americans, by bringing down Pam Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In February 1993, Islamic jihadists murdered six people and wounded over a thousand in their first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center towers. In June 1996, Islamic jihadists murdered nineteen people and wounded 515, including 240 Americans, in a bombing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. In August 1998, Islamic jihadists bombed the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, murdering 291, including 12 Americans, in Nairobi, and murdering ten more and wounding 77 in Dar es Salaam. In October 2000, Islamic jihadists bombed the USS Cole in port at Aden, Yemen, murdering seventeen sailors and wounding 39.</p>
<p>In response to all this, the U.S. lobbed a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan and took out a chemical weapons factory (or aspirin factory, depending on one’s source) in Sudan, and did little more. No serious attempt was made to come to grips with the full nature and magnitude of the ideology that inspired those jihad attacks, and to work to neutralize its violent potential. And so it would have been more surprising if the 9/11 attacks hadn’t happened than that they did.</p>
<p>So it is today. Barack Obama has overseen the installation of Sharia regimes in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. While paying lip service to the importance of distinguishing jihadists from genuine democratic forces in Syria and elsewhere, the Obama administration has offered no criteria for doing this. And now al-Qaeda jihadists in Algeria have carried out a brazen assault on BP’s natural gas plant in that country, killing at least eighty-one people and demonstrating anew the falsehood of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/12/us-obama-afghanistan-idUSBRE90A0ZT20130112">Barack Obama’s recent claim</a> that in Afghanistan “we achieved our central goal … or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al-Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can’t attack us again.”</p>
<p>Al-Qaeda is not “de-capacitated” or dismantled in Afghanistan or Algeria. Barack Obama’s warm support for Islamic supremacist authoritarian regimes has resulted in direct aid for Islamic jihadists, as Libyan jihadists gave weapons they received from the U.S. and its allies to their brethren in Mali, who used them to establish a brutal and bloody Sharia autocracy in the northern part of the country, and have surprised the French with the tenacity and ferocity of their resistance.</p>
<p>Obama has made it abundantly clear that he has no objection, on human rights grounds or any others, to Sharia regimes. Consequently, Islamic supremacists worldwide are considerably emboldened, as they see that the United States will offer no significant counterweight to their advance. One of the hostages taken captive at the Algerian gas plant recounted that the kidnappers had said, “We’ve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is.” Obama has made it abundantly clear that there is no sense in which he objects to that statement; he maintains, on the contrary, that despite such statements from the jihadists themselves, their actions actually have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. He has made this counter-factual proposition the official position of his administration.</p>
<p>These chickens are going to come home to roost no less unmistakably than did the chickens of America’s indifference to jihad mass murder attacks before 9/11. Unreality can be enforced at the point of a gun or a trip to the camps, as in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but the truth can never be wholly effaced from the human mind. Reality has a tendency to break through even the most skillful and subtle propaganda. Unfortunately, in this case reality is very likely to take the form of another catastrophic, high-casualty jihad mass murder on American soil – one that could have been prevented had Barack Obama not instead been encouraging and embracing those who share the jihadists’ goal of imposing Sharia, differing from them only in methods.</p>
<p>The Algeria jihad attack was just the latest harbinger of the things that are inevitably to come.</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 Brewing Egyptian Hostage Crisis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/alan-w-dowd/the-brewing-egyptian-hostage-crisis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-brewing-egyptian-hostage-crisis</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2012 04:25:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan W. Dowd]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=122063</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The world is watching and waiting for President Obama. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/obama-wiping-forehead1-e1305400756777.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-122071" title="obama-wiping-forehead1-e1305400756777" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/obama-wiping-forehead1-e1305400756777.gif" alt="" width="375" height="249" /></a></p>
<p>Not long ago, I used this space to <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2011/02/01/1979-1989-or-2009/">ask</a> if the Arab Spring was like 2009 (the failed Twitter Revolution in Iran), 1989 (the democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe) or 1979 (the Islamist revolution in Iran). Like others, I believed the end of Mubarak’s autocratic rule was something to celebrate, but I worried that what ultimately replaces Mubarak may not be worth celebrating. And sadly, a year later, elements of the Arab Spring are starting to resemble 1979, as evidenced by the brewing hostage crisis in Egypt.</p>
<p>Nineteen American citizens working for well-known and well-established nonprofit groups are being held on trumped-up charges that they tried to destabilize Egypt. Their offices were raided in late December, some are holed up in the U.S. embassy and all of them have been barred from flying out of Egypt. As <a href="http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2106420,00.html">Time</a> magazine notes, December is significant. December is when Congress passed a number of conditions for aid to the Egyptian military, including proving a “commitment to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, progress toward democratic reforms, and the protection of free expression, association and religion.” Not only are the last two of those conditions not being met by Egypt, but Time adds that Cairo’s case against the Americans is “propagated by the military-led regime.”</p>
<p>That’s also an important part of the story. To its credit, the Egyptian military played a key role in persuading Mubarak to cede power, and in preventing Egypt from careening into chaos. The Egyptian military is now trying to serve as something of a referee/power broker/king-maker. Up until this crisis, Washington recognized that while having the Egyptian military in charge is not ideal, it may be necessary to hold the political pieces together in Egypt. But if this is how the “responsible” parties in post-Mubarak Egypt are going to treat Americans, then it’s time to reevaluate everything about this interests-based relationship. Hopefully, Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey is conveying that very message in his talks in Cairo.</p>
<p>The clear, unambiguous and indeed private message should be threefold:</p>
<p>• The U.S. aid spigot—an average of $2 billion per year since 1979—will be shut off if these hostages aren’t freed and if post-Mubarak Egypt continues to resemble post-Shah Iran. As Time puts it, “if Egypt’s generals get away with the NGO crackdown and the political humiliation of its biggest foreign benefactor, it’s going to set a dangerous precedent for other regimes testing the waters of democracy.”</p>
<p>• The United States is prepared to radically rethink its security posture and force structure in the region. There are many other countries in the region that will take U.S. aid dollars and assist the U.S. in protecting its strategic interests.</p>
<p>• U.S. force will be employed if American interests or citizens are again threatened. Washington cannot allow another far-off revolution to hold America hostage.</p>
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		<title>Bin Laden Goes Green</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rich-trzupek/bin-laden-goes-green/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bin-laden-goes-green</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:35:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rich Trzupek]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48430</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What does the world’s most notorious terrorist have in common with Al Gore? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48431" title="obl-gore" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/obl-gore.jpg" alt="obl-gore" width="400" height="266" /></p>
<p>Judged simply by their content, it would be easy to misidentify the speaker who uttered the following quotes:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The effects of global warming have touched every continent. Drought and deserts are spreading, while from the other floods and hurricanes unseen before the previous decades have now become frequent.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Al Gore perhaps?</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;The world is held hostage by major corporations, which are pushing it to the brink. World politics are not governed by reason but by the force and greed of oil thieves and warmongers and the cruel beasts of capitalism.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Sounds a lot like something you might read at the Daily Kos.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;We must also stop dealings in the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible. I know that this has great consequences and grave ramifications, but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>That’s got to be George Soros, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>In fact, all three quotes are part of Osama bin Laden’s <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,584249,00.html">latest appeal to the world</a> in an audio tape released last week by the Arab news network Al-Jazeera. The idea, no doubt, was to appeal to more “mainstream” anti-Americanism around the world. Those who help sabotage American industry and our economy, in other words, punish the infidels. Perhaps not quite as spectacular as <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,582355,00.html">blowing up a CIA outpost</a>, but all contributions are gratefully accepted.</p>
<p>This is not to say that either Al Gore or George Soros are terrorist sympathizers (the jury is out on the Daily Kos). Rather, it’s to observe that radical messages tend to attract radicals. Bin-Laden’s self-serving green activism will resonate with people pre-disposed to distrust America, and alarmists like Gore have created the environment that allows this to occur.</p>
<p>There is much obvious, and laughable, hypocrisy in bin-Laden’s sudden concern for the environment. It was his terrorist organization, after all, that leveled the twin towers, which subsequently created the most horrendous air pollution disaster in the history of New York. If he’s really concerned about the environment, this Islamic warrior might also want to consider how Mother Earth fares in his ancestral home of Saudi Arabia.</p>
<p>The following is an anecdotal story, but one suspects it’s representative of a larger truth. I worked in Saudi Arabia, on and off, between 1996 and 1998, in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu. During my time there, I had occasion to drive up the coastal highway to observe operations at the <a href="http://www.yanbucement.com/profile.html">Yanbu Cement Company</a>, located about seventy kilometers north of Yanbu. (The bin-Laden family was then rumored to have an interest in Yanbu Cement, but I can not confirm it). At the time, Yanbu Cement operated three large kilns, essentially big rotating drums in which the ingredients that go into cement “cook” at high temperature.</p>
<p>In the United States, and in most all of the western world, cement kilns have to <a href="http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&amp;sid=6e49a0f322a1b2a5dc0579dd3386ea91&amp;rgn=div6&amp;view=text&amp;node=40:6.0.1.1.1.17&amp;idno=40">utilize pollution control devices</a> to comply with environmental standards. Without such devices, these kilns would emit truly amazing amounts of air pollution. I was therefore shocked to observe a huge, menacing, dirty brown plume that ran for miles through the air above the Red Sea. Approaching Yanbu Cement, the source of that incredible smear on the atmosphere became obvious: none of the kilns at Yanbu Cement were controlled at all. The stacks belched out filthy plumes of soot at a rate that I have never observed then or since in over twenty five years of environmental practice.</p>
<p>This kind of story can be told again and again throughout the developing and third worlds. Those nations are not nearly rigorous about protecting the environment as the west, because environmental controls cost money to install and to operate. Accordingly, if everyone followed bin-Laden’s advice and, using the power of their purses, effectively transferred manufacturing capacity to such nations, the net result would be a far more polluted world.</p>
<p>But, of course, bin-Laden doesn’t really care about the health and welfare of the planet and its inhabitants. He’s just scrambling for talking points that he hopes will resonate with listeners who hate America. Al Gore and his disciples have unwittingly provided him with more ammunition to do so. That doesn’t make Gore a terrorist, but it’s surely further evidence of the unintended consequences that are bound to occur when you abandon science for the sake of a political agenda.</p>
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		<title>The Deal for Gilad Shalit &#8211; by Jacob Shrybman</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jacob-shrybman/the-deal-for-gilad-shalit-by-jacob-shrybman/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-deal-for-gilad-shalit-by-jacob-shrybman</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jacob-shrybman/the-deal-for-gilad-shalit-by-jacob-shrybman/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:02:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Shrybman]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=39561</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As a new immigrant to Israel about to enter the army and living in Sderot, I have some questions.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p dir="ltr"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-39564" title="gilad_shalit1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/gilad_shalit1.jpg" alt="gilad_shalit1" width="450" height="486" /></p>
<p dir="ltr">As an <em>oleh chadash</em> (new immigrant) that came to land of the Jewish people not due to persecution or suffering but because of deep-rooted beliefs in Zionism, like many I have a big problem with all the latest discussions over Gilad Shalit.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As an <em>oleh chadash</em> that has recently received a profile score of 97 to serve my mandatory army service in a combat unit, and as an <em>oleh chadash </em>that for the past year has lived in the Gaza border city of Sderot I have an enormous problem with the latest discussions over Gilad Shalit.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I do not hold some seat in the government with some fancy title but I know what is going on now is wrong and it pains me to watch it happen.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Why is the discussion during the past week about how many terrorists we are going to give Hamas, Fatah, and the PA as a whole for Gilad&#8217;s return? Why isn&#8217;t the discussion about how we are going to make Hamas pay a huge price for the kidnapping of Gilad or about a plan to retrieve him?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Because we simply have entered into the Arabs&#8217; shuk of hostage negotiating they have already declared a victory that will only empower them to kidnap more soldiers. It is laughable if one believes that they care if they get back 400, 1000, 980 or even 5 of their terrorists because they are in no way lacking numbers, and moreover as they use their own sons and daughters as human shields they clearly don&#8217;t value the lives of those they are receiving.</p>
<p dir="ltr">After a 21 day operation inside the Gaza Strip and we didn&#8217;t see Gilad back home, and now with our government, providing our enemies with the future opportunities to kidnap more of our sons and brothers- what am I supposed to think as someone soon entering the Israeli Defense Forces for ideological reasons when I know that my homeland won&#8217;t rescue me and will minimally take over 3 years to trade me only at the cost of future capture of others like me?</p>
<p dir="ltr">As someone living in Sderot since Operation Cast Lead it is hard to believe that this cowardly surrender to our enemies will bring anything but more missiles to more cities in Israel. It is awing to me when even the Defense Minister Ehud Barak has accepted the reality of rockets in our lives when last week in Sderot he described the situation as quiet. Friday before Shabbat we surpassed a count of 280 qassams, mortars and grads fired since Operation Cast Lead- apparently an acceptable amount to our elected leaders.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So what am I supposed to think as someone who lives in Sderot for the same ideological reasons that I have come to my homeland and will serve in our army, when I know our government is giving our enemies the opportunity to fire more missiles at me and others like me?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Can we really not get Gilad back with our infamous intelligence sources, stealth, and military training? Or has our government already sacrificed him and others to be so that they can get political points with all the world on-lookers and as a result maybe Bibi can also get a handout Nobel Peace Prize?</p>
<p dir="ltr">While all of this is happening and is considered a movement toward a greater peace deal, are we really supposed to believe it is all because of that scary hot-topic term &#8220;settlements.&#8221; Sderot, Ashkelon, and Beersheva are all targets of missile attacks that are not considered &#8220;settlements&#8221; by our administration or the Obama led American administration. Gilad Shalit was born in Nahariya and grew up in Mitzpe Hila, both of which are not &#8220;settlements.&#8221; So how can disallowing the growth of the Jewish nation or what George Mitchell and Barack Obama deem illegal settlement building really help bring Gilad home, stop the future capture of Israelis, and stop missiles from being fired at Israelis?</p>
<p dir="ltr">I do not intend to be facetious in writing all these questions but I am truly asking. As an <em>oleh chadash </em>soon entering the IDF and living in Sderot, what I am observing baffles me and leaves me with a load of questions.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>Jacob Shrybman is a writer for the <a href="http://www.sderotmedia.org.il/">Sderot Media Center</a>.</em></p>
<p dir="ltr"><em> </em></p>
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