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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; settlement</title>
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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>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[settlement]]></category>

		<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>An Illegal Arab Settlement in the West Bank?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/an-illegal-arab-settlement-in-the-west-bank/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=an-illegal-arab-settlement-in-the-west-bank</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Sep 2014 04:10:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rawabi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[settlement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[town]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240317</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where is the international outrage? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/zhRvN.AuSt_.91.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240326" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/zhRvN.AuSt_.91-416x350.jpg" alt="zhRvN.AuSt.91" width="347" height="292" /></a>Another illegal settlement has arisen in the Judea-Samaria (West Bank) territories, the New York Times reports. Surely there will soon be an expression of &#8220;deep concern&#8221; from the Obama administration, a furious resolution from the United Nations Security Council, and a letter from twelve angry congressmen mobilized by J Street.</p>
<p>Oh, wait. It&#8217;s not a Jewish settlement &#8212; it&#8217;s an Arab settlement. Cancel the outrage!</p>
<p>A feature article in the New York Times on August 31 reports that the Palestinian Authority is building a new settlement called Rawabi. The first 600 apartments are already complete, out of a projected 6,000 units that will house an estimated 40,000 people.</p>
<p>While Jewish communities in the same area, with even larger populations, are called &#8220;settlements&#8221; by the Times and the rest of the world news media, Rawabi is for some reason characterized as a &#8220;town&#8221; and a &#8220;city.&#8221;</p>
<p>Why is one man&#8217;s community called a &#8220;settlement&#8221; and another&#8217;s a &#8220;town&#8221; ?</p>
<p>Because a &#8220;settlement&#8221; sounds like a foreign implant &#8212; something that has no business being there. A &#8220;town&#8221; sounds normal and natural. Supporters of the Palestinian cause &#8212; whether in the news media, the State Department, or misnamed &#8220;peace&#8221; groups &#8212; want to award Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Arabs. They want everyone to recognize those territories to be &#8220;Palestinian.&#8221;</p>
<p>The problem they face is that there are three significant obstacles to calling the territories &#8220;Palestinian&#8221;:  international law, history, and a text of religious history called the Bible.</p>
<p>According to international law, Jews have at least as much right as Arabs to build towns in Judea and Samaria. All of the documents related to the governing of those territories throughout the past century &#8212; the Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations Mandate, and so on&#8211;specifically endorse the right of Jews to build there. The territories have never been part of a &#8220;Palestinian&#8221; state which made them legally off-limits to Jews.</p>
<p>And according to the historical record, Judea and Samaria belong to the Jews. That&#8217;s why they have been called &#8220;Judea and Samaria&#8221; since ancient times. The Jews had a sovereign state there for nearly a thousand years, then maintained a continuous presence for the past 3,000 years. Arab roots in the area are remarkably shallow: the vast majority of the Arab residents are the children or grandchildren of migrants from Arab countries who immigrated when the Jews began developing the land in the 1920s and 1930s. The local Arabs traditionally called themselves &#8220;southern Syrians&#8221; and never claimed any separate &#8220;Palestinian&#8221; identity until they began using it as a propaganda weapon against Israel in the 1960s.</p>
<p>Tens of millions of Bible believing Christians in America, and many more around the world, join millions of Jews in acknowledging that the Bible repeatedly and unambiguously refers to Judea and Samaria as the heart of the Jewish national homeland. As birth certificates go, that&#8217;s pretty strong.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a lot for proponents of the Palestinian cause to overcome. Some of them have used terrorism to try to intimidate Israel into withdrawing. Some have used threats of boycotts and international isolation to frighten the Israeli public and its Diaspora supporters.</p>
<p>And some use the weapon of language to subtly wage war, wielding labels and slogans and assumptions as rhetorical swords to slash their opponents. Exhibit A: The illegal settlement of Rawabi.</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 &#8216;Central Park Five’: Still Guilty</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jack-kerwick/the-central-park-five-still-guilty/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-central-park-five-still-guilty</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Aug 2014 04:30:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Kerwick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Central Park Jogger Case]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Confession]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[settlement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Trisha Meili]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238071</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The facts versus the lies about the Central Park Jogger Case.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/The-Central-Park-Five.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-238072" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/The-Central-Park-Five-450x316.jpg" alt="The-Central-Park-Five" width="273" height="192" /></a>Twenty-five years ago, Trisha Meili—“the Central Park jogger”—was a 28 year-old employee for a prestigious Manhattan investment banker when she was mercilessly beaten, raped, and left for dead by thugs.</p>
<p>Meili lost approximately <i>80 percent </i>of her blood.  Her skull was fractured to the point that her one eye had popped out of its socket.  On the scale of 3 to 15 that neurologists use to gauge brain functioning, Meili’s was assigned a rating of 4.  She spent nearly the next two weeks in a coma, with experts expecting her to die.</p>
<p>This crime became a racially explosive issue, for Meili was white and her assailants were not: Of the 30 or so minority youths that had been randomly terrorizing park dwellers, four blacks and one Hispanic confessed to having engaged in the attack on Meili.  Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise, and Yusef Salaam were arrested, tried, convicted, and issued prison sentences.</p>
<p>But in 2002, long after “the Central Park Five,” as documentarian and apologist for the convicts, Ken Burns has dubbed them, had done their time, and long after <i>the statute of limitations </i>on the 13 year-old crime <i>had expired</i>, convicted serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, who was already serving a life term, confessed to being Meili’s lone assailant.   DNA testing confirmed that it was Matias’ semen—and his alone—that was found on Meili’s body and around the scene of the crime.</p>
<p>Shortly afterwards, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau prevailed upon his state’s Supreme Court to “vacate” the convictions of “the Central Park Five.”  Not unsurprisingly, the latter sued the City of New York for wrongful imprisonment to the tune of <i>$250 million.  </i></p>
<p>In June, courtesy of the ever illustrious Mayor DiBlasio, “the Central Park Five” discovered that they would receive <i>$40 million</i>.</p>
<p>Not since the O.J. Simpson acquittal have we witnessed this gross a travesty of justice.  Yet it’s also a travesty of intelligence, for only a fool—or perhaps a liar—could think that “the Central Park Five” were innocent of <i>anything</i>, much less the attack on Trisha Meili.</p>
<p>For starters, no one has ever disputed that the Harlem thugs had been in Central Park that fateful evening for the sole purpose of assaulting and mugging innocents (one of whom had been bludgeoned with a pipe).  As is the wont of cowards, “the Five” set upon only those who they outnumbered, those who were weaker and more vulnerable.  This they confessed from the moment they were in police custody.</p>
<p>To the present day, they have never retracted <i>this </i>confession.</p>
<p>Yet “the Five” also proceeded immediately to implicate themselves in the assault on <i>Meili</i>.  On <i>multiple</i> occasions, while alone with the police <i>as well as </i>when they were accompanied by their adult relatives, they left no doubts about their role in this act of barbarism:</p>
<p>Antron McCray: “We charged her.  We got her on the ground.  Everybody started hitting her and stuff.  She was on the ground.  Everybody stompin’ and everything. Then we got, each—I grabbed one arm, some other kid grabbed one arm, and we grabbed her legs and stuff.  Then we all took turns getting on her, getting on top of her.”</p>
<p>Kevin Richardson: “Raymond [Santana] had her arms, and Steve [Lopez] had her legs.  He spread it out.  And Antron [McCray] got on top, took her panties off.”</p>
<p>Raymond Santana: “He was smackin’ her, he was sayin’, ‘Shut up, bitch!’ Just smackin’ her…I was grabbin’ the lady’s tits.”</p>
<p>Kharey Wise: “This was my first rape.”</p>
<p>Ann Coulter reminds us that Melody Jackson, whose brother was friends with Wise, <i>testified </i>that the latter told her by phone while he was incarcerated at Riker’s Island that even though <i>he </i>didn’t’ actually rape Meili, he <i>did </i>restrain the victim’s legs while Kevin Richardson “fucked her.”</p>
<p>Jackson, incidentally, informed the police of this exchange only because she thought that it would <i>help </i>Wise’s case.</p>
<p>Coulter also notes that one of the youths apprehended by police shortly after the attack against Meili insisted—<i>prior to being questioned</i>—that he knew “who did the <i>murder</i>.”  This is proof that, at the very least, the pummeling that Meili endured was witnessed by multiple people <i>and </i>that its severity was such that it was assumed that it was fatal.</p>
<p>Meili <i>was </i>left for dead.</p>
<p>But there is more.</p>
<p>This same punk—again, mind you, without even being asked about the attack, much less a murder—fingered none other than <i>Antron McCray </i>as “the murderer.”</p>
<p>Multiple videotaped confessions of “the Five”; the presence of semen, blood, and hair on all of the suspects; a scratch on Kevin Richardson’s neck that, <i>in the company of his father,</i> he<i> </i>admitted he received by Meili; and several witness accounts confirmed for the police that the vermin who Ken Burns would years later make into martyrs were as guilty as sin itself of initiating and facilitating an attack against Trisha Meili that nearly cost the poor woman her life.</p>
<p>Matias Reyes semen was the only attacker’s DNA found <i>on </i>Meili or at the crime scene.  However, neither this nor the word of this serial rapist and murderer that he acted alone goes any distance whatsoever toward proving the innocence of “the Central Park Five.”</p>
<p>Police have been prevented by the District Attorney, Robert Morgenthau, who recommended that the convictions of “the Five” be vacated, from interrogating Reyes.</p>
<p>Linda Fairstein, the original prosecutor in this case, expressed her certainty that “the Central Park Five” are guilty.  Reyes, she believes, merely finished what they had started.  As for this notion that the NYPD “coerced” false confessions from the suspects, Mike Sheehan, one of the central detectives who investigated the crime, and who, in his own words, had spent decades taking “over 1,000 confessions, in 3,000 homicides,” has nothing but contempt. “All of this stuff about coercion really pisses me off,” Sheehan has said.  “Do you honestly think that we—detectives with more than 20 years in, family men with pensions—would risk all of that so we could put words in the mouth of a 15 year-old kid? Absolutely not.”</p>
<p>Even Morgenthau concedes that no police misconduct—like coercing the teens into admitting to a crime in which they had zero involvement—ever occurred.</p>
<p>Now “the Central Park Five” is $40 million richer.</p>
<p>But the taxpayers of New York City—including the victims of the “wilding” rampage visited upon Central Park 25 years ago—have suffered a loss far greater than this.</p>
<p>For that matter, the fortune of “the Central Park Five” is the misfortune of all decent people.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>ACORN Wannabes May Get $4 Billion</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/acorn-wannabes-may-get-4-billion/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=acorn-wannabes-may-get-4-billion</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2013 05:45:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ACORN]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barney Frank]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[JPMorgan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NeighborWorks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[settlement]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=211373</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Happy days are here again for leftist pressure groups.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/jp.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-211391" alt="jp" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/jp.jpg" width="280" height="177" /></a>Radical in-your-face pressure groups that are part of President Obama&#8217;s political machine may soon reap a $4 billion windfall thanks to a huge cash settlement the administration extracted from lending giant JPMorgan.</p>
<p>The settlement, which weighs in at a total of $13 billion, <a href="http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/November/13-ag-1237.html">was unveiled</a> last week by the Justice Department. In it JPMorgan acknowledged what DoJ called &#8220;serious misrepresentations to the public&#8221; about the mortgage securities transactions.</p>
<p>The $4 billion is supposed to be used to provide relief to underwater homeowners and potential homebuyers.</p>
<p>But there&#8217;s a catch.</p>
<p>According to the Department of Justice, if JPMorgan fails to shell out the $4 billion by Dec. 31, 2017, it will be required &#8220;to pay liquidated damages in the amount of the shortfall to NeighborWorks America, a non-profit organization and leader in providing affordable housing and facilitating community development.&#8221;</p>
<p>Why is the bank coughing up the dough?</p>
<p>&#8220;JPMorgan employees knew that the loans in question did not comply with those guidelines and were not otherwise appropriate for securitization, but they allowed the loans to be securitized – and those securities to be sold – without disclosing this information to investors,&#8221; the DoJ said. &#8220;This conduct, along with similar conduct by other banks that bundled toxic loans into securities and misled investors who purchased those securities, contributed to the financial crisis.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s hogwash, of course.</p>
<p>What this all really means is that the bank stands accused of fraud &#8212; but that very accusation in itself is a fraud. JPMorgan did what liberal Democrats and some misguided Republicans told it to do.</p>
<p>The whole thing is an example of crass, vicious Marxist scapegoating, a class-warfare scam concocted to distract from the decisive role that boneheaded, destructive left-wing policies pushed by Barack Obama, former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo and their fellow Democrats played in plunging mortgage markets into chaos.</p>
<p>And NeighborWorks, the potential vehicle to distribute the $4 billion, is a government-funded housing organization that is politically aligned with the worst of the left-wing activist groups. These groups already get millions of taxpayer dollars from NeighborWorks which in recent decades has become a major funder of radical, often taxpayer-supported, activism.</p>
<p>Imagine what these awful pro-Obama groups will be able to do with $4 billion.</p>
<p>The Obama administration used the opportunity of announcing the settlement to grandstand against JPMorgan.</p>
<p>“Without a doubt, the conduct uncovered in this investigation helped sow the seeds of the mortgage meltdown,” said Attorney General Eric Holder, <a href="http://spectator.org/articles/42248/holder-hater">a conservative-hating</a>, pathologically dishonest racist who may soon face <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/15/house-republicans-introduce-resolution-to-impeach-attorney-general-holder/">impeachment proceedings</a> in the House of Representatives.</p>
<p>“JPMorgan was not the only financial institution during this period to knowingly bundle toxic loans and sell them to unsuspecting investors, but that is no excuse for the firm’s behavior,&#8221; Holder sniffed without mentioning that his comrades strong-armed banks into originating the dubious mortgages that were securitized and sold to the public.</p>
<p>The deal officially resolves &#8220;federal and state civil claims arising out of the packaging, marketing, sale and issuance of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) by JPMorgan, [now-defunct] Bear Stearns and [now-defunct] Washington Mutual prior to Jan. 1, 2009,&#8221; DoJ said in a press release.</p>
<p>The Justice Department described the legal compromise, which requires JPMorgan to provide relief to underwater homeowners and potential homebuyers, as &#8220;the largest settlement with a single entity in American history.&#8221; The civil settlement does not absolve JPMorgan or its employees from any possible criminal charges. In other words, for the bank, it&#8217;s not much of a deal at all. In other words, the settlement gives Eric Holder&#8217;s radical, lawless Justice Department continuing leverage over JPMorgan.</p>
<p>Few serious economists doubt that the mortgage market debacle and the economic collapse of 2008 were caused by the deliberate weakening of underwriting standards carried out in the name of ending discrimination.</p>
<p>Leftists played both sides during the saga. They called banks racist and demanded more subprime lending for minorities and then when the loans went bad called the banks racist for supposedly targeting on minority borrowers. Through the magic of dysphemism, the once sought after subprime lending was transformed into &#8220;predatory lending.&#8221;</p>
<p>Activist groups were encouraged to agitate by the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act, which enshrined in law a kind of lending protection racket. Banking regulators who had come under the influence of groups like ACORN had the power to make trouble for banks that failed to lend enough money to borrowers in so-called underserved communities. Banks that paid enough &#8212; whatever that means &#8212; got left alone, but banks that didn&#8217;t, got their legs broken.</p>
<p>The shaking down of lenders intensified when then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin presided over the Clinton administration&#8217;s effort to put the CRA on steroids. Banks began to make risky subprime loans and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aggregated them for sale in the secondary market as mortgage-backed securities. These practices made it easier for banks to give in to the demands of ACORN and other groups to originate more and more doomed mortgages because they knew they could offload their high-risk debt on quasi-governmental suckers Fannie and Freddie, which were under intense political pressure to service the subprime market.</p>
<p>Like all statist true believers, Janet Yellen, the dismal central banker who is well on her way to becoming the next Federal Reserve chairman, is in denial. Yellen refuses to admit that the crazy policies that left-wingers and crony capitalists support are turning America into Greece. This Keynesian wrecker bemoans the &#8220;tendency to conflate the current problems in the subprime market with CRA-motivated lending.&#8221;</p>
<p>Even now leftist groups such as Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America (NACA), National Council of La Raza, Greenlining Institute, Jesse Jackson&#8217;s RainbowPUSH Coalition and ACORN&#8217;s successor groups brag that they forced banks to underwrite trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of bad loans solely in pursuit of redistributive so-called social justice.</p>
<p>Left-wing pressure groups threatened nasty public relations campaigns against lenders that refused to kneel before their radical economic agenda.</p>
<p>With the new cash boost they&#8217;re likely to soon receive, they&#8217;ll rage against lenders again, effectively rewarded for their antisocial agitation aimed at bringing down the American capitalist system.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="/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>
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		<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>Blood Libels from Israel-Hating Students in Florida</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/blood-libels-from-israel-hating-students-in-florida/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=blood-libels-from-israel-hating-students-in-florida</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Apr 2012 04:53:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dorm]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eviction notice]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[students for justice in Palestine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=129593</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[University helps Students for Justice in Palestine harass dorm residents. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/69456655.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-129621" title="69456655" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/69456655.gif" alt="" width="375" height="261" /></a>Students who vocally call for the destruction of Israel have created a stir in Florida with their promotion of modern-day blood libels and lies demonizing the Jewish State. On March 30th, 200 mock eviction notices were <a href="http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-04-12/news/fl-fau-investigation-conclusion-20120412_1_fliers-eviction-notices-anti-israel">placed</a> on dorm-room doors by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Boca Raton. &#8220;We regret to inform you that your home is scheduled for demolition shortly,&#8221; begins the notice, which can be seen <a href="http://vladtepesblog.com/?p=46863">here</a>. &#8220;You have three (3) days to vacate the premise persuant (sic) to code no. 208.2A or you will be subject to arrest. If you do not leave, we reserve the right to destroy your home. Anyone left inside is not our responsibility.&#8221;</p>
<p>The notice continues: &#8220;Harsh? So is this reality: The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions reports about 25,000 homes have been destroyed by Israeli military forces since the Occupation of Palestine began in 1967.&#8221; Further down, the notice repeats the lie that Israeli forces deliberately murdered American peace activist Rachel Corrie.</p>
<p>For the legions of college students reliably ignorant of history, 1967 is the year of the Six Day War during which Israel <a href="https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/six_day_war_1967.htm">neutralized</a> the attempt by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq to annihilate the Jewish State. As for Corrie,<strong> </strong>she was killed when she attempted to interfere with Israeli counter-terrorism operations taking place in a declared war zone. The zone was part of an area concealing weapon smuggling tunnels used to attack Israel. Corrie was acting as a human shield and was accidently crushed by falling debris. Yet her death remains a cornerstone of anti-Israeli propaganda.</p>
<p>SJP campus leader Noor Fawzy claims the notice was nothing more than an attempt to educate students. &#8220;The intent is to expose Israel&#8217;s illegal policies and give students a feel of what it&#8217;s like to live under occupation&#8221; she said, further noting that the notices were posted at random and Jewish students were not singled out. &#8220;We don&#8217;t discriminate, we&#8217;re here to raise awareness about the plight of Palestinians,&#8221; said Fawzy. &#8220;This was done randomly, we were escorted by a housing official as we distributed the notices.&#8221;</p>
<p>With respect to that last contention at least, Fawzy is telling the truth. The FAU Housing and Residential Life Department not only approved the notices, but <a href="http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-04-04/news/fl-fau-palestinian-hillel-20120404_1_fau-s-students-fau-students-student-affairs">provided</a> a department employee as an escort when the anti-Israeli activists posted them on dorm doors and elevators. Initially, Charles Brown, FAU&#8217;s Senior Vice President for Student Affairs, contended the university did not condone the fliers. Yet FAU was eventually forced to accept responsibility. “The recent mock eviction postings did not comply with the policies of University Housing and Residential Life or the Office of Student Involvement and Leadership concerning the distribution of printed material,” said a released statement.</p>
<p>The notices also contained a mock Palm Beach County seal that PBC Commissioner Steven Abrams noted was illegal, even though it contained a disclaimer &#8220;not affiliated with county.&#8221; Abrams contended the posting was done &#8220;to scare or confuse students, which I am informed was the case in many instances,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Fawzy remained unrepentant. &#8220;We have the right to express ourselves,&#8221; she said. &#8220;There is no reason for the Jewish community to feel afraid.&#8221; Student Rayna Exelbierd, who had one of the eviction notices posted on her door, wasn&#8217;t <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/florida-jewish-journal/florida-jewish-journal-eviction,0,192522.story">buying it.</a> “We’re taking it very seriously,” she said. “We’re considering it a hate crime. The flier promotes hate; it doesn’t promote peace. People were scared by it. People felt threatened by it.”</p>
<p>Students do have the right to express themselves, yet the point at which such expression crosses the line into outright intimidation&#8211;make that <em>university-sanctioned</em> intimidation&#8211;may in fact be a violation of anti-discrimination laws that do not allow for the creation of a hostile environment targeting specific groups. The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), a group that has led the charge to defend Jewish college students from campus hate, demanded that FAU condemn the notice. They contend the flyer was anti-Semitic, citing a 2005 study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recognizing that anti-Semitism “should be distinguished from legitimate discourse regarding foreign policy,” and that “anti-Semitic bigotry is no less morally deplorable when camouflaged as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism.”</p>
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		<title>The Misguided Tenure of Susan Rice</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/rick-moran/the-misguided-tenure-of-susan-rice/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-misguided-tenure-of-susan-rice</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:15:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rick Moran]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=90651</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Making sure America always comes last at the UN. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/rice1.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-90684" title="rice1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/rice1.gif" alt="" width="375" height="269" /></a></p>
<p>President Obama&#8217;s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, has long been an advocate for weakening American sovereignty in order to benefit the UN and its anti-American agenda. It is a policy known as &#8220;engagement,&#8221; where the United States subsumes its own vital interests, abandons its traditional role of leadership in the world community, and, as <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/264685">Anne Bayefsky</a> writes, pushes the process of &#8220;subcontracting American national security&#8221; to the UN.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2060494,00.html"><em>Time Magazine</em></a> refers to this policy &#8212; without a hint of irony &#8212; as &#8220;leading from the back.&#8221; And while Washington was busy this past week exchanging blows over the budget deficit, Rice <a href="http://internationalrelations.house.gov/112/ric040711.pdf">was testifying </a>on Capitol Hill, imparting her vision of what the US&#8217;s role in the world should be and her belief in the vital importance of the United Nations to our national security. This includes an open hostility to the state of Israel, a dangerous reliance on the UN to keep Iran from going nuclear, as well as the world body&#8217;s inexplicable granting Tehran membership on the UN&#8217;s Commission on the Status of Women.</p>
<p>Rice&#8217;s past tells us all we need to know about why she embraces these views. Rice got her start in politics as a foreign policy advisor to the campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1988. She worked for several years in the Clinton administration on the National Security Council in various capacities, including senior director for African Affairs. After a short stint in the private sector as a consultant, she gravitated to the Brookings Institution where the issues of global poverty and transnational threats to American security occupied her time. Given this background, it&#8217;s not surprising that she is considered Afro-centrist and a fierce proponent of African nationalism.</p>
<p>While one expects a UN ambassador to be an advocate for internationalism, Rice slipped the bounds of reason and waxed poetic in her testimony about the importance of the United Nations to our national security. Lobbying members to appropriate monies that we owe to the world body, Rice claimed that &#8220;when we meet our financial obligations to the U.N., we make Americans safer,”  and “the U.N. promotes universal values Americans hold dear.”</p>
<p>One doesn&#8217;t need to be a Brookings Institute Fellow to know that statement is nonsense. It is beyond rhetorical excess and enters the sublime milieu of self-delusion. Unless she believes that America &#8220;holds dear&#8221; values like racism, anti-Semitism, corruption, sexism, child rape, and a host of other execrable hallmarks of United Nations actions and policies, then she is either naive or willfully blind to the true nature of the UN.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/264685">Ann Bayefsky</a> wrote of Rice&#8217;s testimony that it &#8220;offers the most detailed defense yet of the central foreign-policy plank of the Obama administration, known as &#8216;engagement.&#8217;&#8221; Basically, the Obama doctrine has &#8220;outfitted American interests with U.N.-made cement shoes.&#8221;</p>
<p>This is especially true regarding US policy toward Israel at the UN. In one of the most extraordinary statements ever made by an American official about Israel, Rice bitterly complained last February about having to veto a Security Council resolution condemning Israel and its settlement policy. She <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/0211/US_vetoes_UN_resolution_declaring_Israeli_settlements_illegal.html">deliberately undercut</a> the impact of the veto by saying, &#8220;For more than four decades, [Israeli settlement activity] has undermined security &#8230; corroded hopes for peace and security &#8230; it violates international commitments and threatens prospects for peace.&#8221; During her testimony last week, Rice reiterated that sentiment, adding “Israeli settlement activity is illegitimate.&#8221;</p>
<p>What angered Rice was that the Security Council vote was 14-1, with countries like Great Britain, France, and Russia co-sponsoring the Palestinian-inspired condemnation. To Rice&#8217;s and the administration&#8217;s way of thinking, going against international &#8220;consensus&#8221; &#8212; even if inimical to US interests &#8212; was a blow to their strategy of &#8220;engagement.&#8221;</p>
<p>Rice&#8217;s statements before the committee on the UN&#8217;s massively hypocritical selections for the Human Rights Council can only be termed bizarre. The HRC features such stellar advocates for human rights as Angola, China, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia &#8212; a rogue&#8217;s gallery of thuggish states. After acknowledging that it is difficult to find nations that have good human rights records to serve on the council, Rice seemed proud of the fact that US opposition had kept Iran off the HRC. She chalked that &#8220;success&#8221; up to the fact that the United States had agreed to join the HRC rather than refuse to participate in such a farce.</p>
<p>What Rice didn&#8217;t mention was that in order to get Iran to withdraw its application for membership on the HRC, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/13/united-nations-libya-human-rights-opinions-columnists-claudia-rosett.html">Washington agreed </a>not to raise a stink when the fundamentalist Islamic Republic that mandates stoning women for adultery wanted to join the Commission on the Status of Women. With no objection from the US, Iran was duly elected to the commission.</p>
<p>Instead of Iran joining the HRC, Libya got the slot. How this can be termed a &#8220;success&#8221; takes pretzel-like logic &#8212; something Rice appears to excel at.</p>
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		<title>Bottom-up Peace?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-puder/bottom-up-peace/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bottom-up-peace</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 14 May 2010 04:00:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[yossi beilin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zaro]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=60142</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Are grassroots peace measures outpacing the work of the political class in the West Bank? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/up.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-60218" title="up" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/up.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="261" /></a></p>
<p>The realization that political leaders have been unable to bring peace to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that involvement of the international community has only sharpened the division between Arab and Jew, has prompted the people of Eretz-Shalom (Land Peace) to seek peace from the bottom up.</p>
<p>The Israeli Left has made numerous attempts to make peace between Israeli-Jews and Palestinian-Arabs.  The <a href="http://www.mideastweb.org/general">Geneva document drafted by MK Yossi Beilin- and P.L.O spokesperson Abd –Rabbo in October 2003</a> failed as did the previous attempt, the <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/peoplesvoiceplan.">Ayalon-Nusseibeh Peace Plan of July 27, 2002</a>, both of which were supported and funded by the European Union and Western (mostly European) NGOs.  These two peace plans represented the views and expectations of the secular leftist-European-and liberal worldview to the exclusion of the traditional values of the people who are both physically and emotionally tied to their land. Both these peace plans have been relegated to the dustbin of history.   It is the people who work on the land and who have personally experienced closely the price of war and its cost in blood, who are, in the end, the best possible peace-makers.</p>
<p>In “settlement” communities such as Kedumim in Samaria, the people are determined to live in peace with their Arab neighbors.  There is no fence around Kedumim, and the residents travel to Arab villages, while Arab villagers come to be served in the settlement’s gas station. This is true for other communities as well. “We are open and ready to settle our differences with our Arab neighbors on the basis of live and let live with mutual respect for one another” says Raphaella Segal of Kedumim. Although Raphella is not yet an active member of Eretz-Shalom, she supports the idea behind the movement.</p>
<p>The Land Peace movement began with meetings between local Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the Etzion Bloc (Gush Etzion) and moved southward to the Mt. Hebron region and northward towards Samaria.  In an interview with the Israeli Hebrew daily Makor Rishon, Nachum Petznick, one of the founders of Land Peace explained that,</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;Land Peace<em> </em>grew from the bottom by regular people both Palestinian-Arabs and Jewish settlers who understood that there is no time to wait while politicians who try time and again to present unsuccessful peace plans.  Reality is more complex, however, and while the politicians discuss peace agreements something entirely different is occurring on the ground.  Our aim is to impact on reality while understanding that both the Palestinians and we, the Jewish settlers, are here to stay.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“We are now several hundred strong.” says Petznick, “The mere fact that we are meeting with scores of Palestinian-Arabs who are interested, and that we are getting to know each other is of immense importance, Petznick said.  The conversation in the political Left is about “recognizing” the Palestinians while at Land Peace we “get to know” real Palestinians as individual people,” Petznick added.  To recognize something is undefined, but to know somebody is real, according to Petznick. The people associated with Land Peace want to live side by side in peace with their neighbors, but as Petznick puts it, the word “peace” has been exploited and beaten up from all directions, “I prefer to talk about good neighborly relations and mutual respect &#8211; rather than use the word &#8216;peace.&#8217;”</p>
<p>S., a former Hamas activist who must hide his name for fear of retribution, found his way to Land Peace through an Israeli prison system. He tells the story of a young Palestinian named Tzudki Zaro in prison with him who told him without remorse that he murdered the Jewish baby Shalhevet Pas.  When S. asked him if he was proud of his deed, Zaro replied “of course, why not?” S. described the shock he felt knowing that this human monster was proud of murdering a baby who was just a few months old.  After that S. recounts, “I began to think differently.” As S. told a Makor Rishon reporter, “I reached the conclusion that I did not want to be with people like Zaro, and that both you (the Jews) and us (Palestinians) live on this land, and that we do not have another land, so what are we to do? You fire at us, we fire at you, you kill and we kill, and when will it end?&#8221;</p>
<p>S. described how he has been searching for ways to talk to Israelis and how he found the Land Peace movement.  According to S., the peace from above failed, and the leadership on both sides failed.  “I do not care about Abu Mazen or Netanyahu, but I do care about my neighbors, and I want the firing on each other to stop. I want my Jewish neighbor to give me a ride and I want to do the same for him, and we together will force our leaders to make peace.”</p>
<p>S. is clear about the way to peace: “The leaders failed to bring peace because the public was not prepared for it.  The leaders sat together and wrote agreements and then delivered the message through the press to the people.  But, the people have not seen a difference, and they are still suffering.” S. concluded, “Peace will come not when the leadership will cook and we will eat from it, but rather, when we shall cook for ourselves.”</p>
<p>Shai Ben Josef, another key figure in Land Peace<em> </em>observed that, “For seventy years people are trying to divide the land and have failed because it is a small land and because we live amongst each other, and share the same roads, breathe the same air, and drink the same water.  We must therefore find a way in which each nation (Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs) will be able to fulfill its self determination separately, but at the same time share in things that could be run together.”</p>
<p>The message of Land Peace to President Obama and the European Union is clear: let us “cook” peace for ourselves.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Charles Krauthammer: The Age of Obama: Anno Domini 2 &#8211; Heritage Foundation Lecture</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/charles-krauthammer-the-age-of-obama-anno-domini-2-heritage-foundation-lecture/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=charles-krauthammer-the-age-of-obama-anno-domini-2-heritage-foundation-lecture</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/charles-krauthammer-the-age-of-obama-anno-domini-2-heritage-foundation-lecture/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:46:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[agenda]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48542</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In the real world, as opposed to what French President Nicolas Sarkozy calls President Barack Obama’s “virtual world,” America faces the reality of Iran’s intransigence and aggressiveness; China’s headlong pursuit of its own national, regional, and global interests; Russia’s determination to regain its Near Abroad; the Arab states’ refusal to accept any kind of a [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the real world, as opposed to what French<br />
President Nicolas Sarkozy calls President Barack Obama’s<br />
“virtual world,” America faces the reality of Iran’s intransigence<br />
and aggressiveness; China’s headlong pursuit of its<br />
own national, regional, and global interests; Russia’s determination<br />
to regain its Near Abroad; the Arab states’ refusal<br />
to accept any kind of a reasonable settlement of the kind<br />
that Israel has already offered under several governments;<br />
Syria’s designs on Lebanon; and Hugo Chávez’s designs on<br />
the weaker countries in Latin America. President Obama’s<br />
foreign policy agenda of gradual American retreat will<br />
have inexorable consequences: When erstwhile allies see<br />
the American umbrella being withdrawn, they will have to<br />
accommodate themselves to those from whom we were protecting<br />
them. If Obama proves impervious to empirical evidence<br />
and experience, all these accommodations, the<br />
weakening of alliances, the strengthening of centers of<br />
adversarial power in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Caracas,<br />
and elsewhere will continue until we are awakened by<br />
some cataclysm. Read the whole lecture <a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2010/pdf/hl_1143.pdf">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2010/pdf/hl_1143.pdf">hl_1143.pdf application/pdf Object</a>.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Kicking the Palestinian Habit</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/kicking-the-palestinian-habit/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kicking-the-palestinian-habit</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/kicking-the-palestinian-habit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:06:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48280</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Middle East “peace process” is on hold – and that’s a good thing. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48281" title="obama_abbas_netanyahu" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/obama_abbas_netanyahu.jpg" alt="obama_abbas_netanyahu" width="400" height="290" /></p>
<p>Conspicuous for its absence in President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last week was any mention of what is variously called the Arab-Israeli conflict or the Middle East peace process. Israeli analyst Yoram Ettinger <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3841505,00.html">suggests</a> that this “reflects a US order of priorities and, possibly, a concern that mediation in the Arab-Israeli conflict does not advance—but undermines—Obama’s domestic standing.”</p>
<p>Conceivably, a similar premise underlies Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=167225">demonstrative acts</a> in favor of settlement in the West Bank. Last week, just after a meeting in Jerusalem with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, Netanyahu marked the tree-planting holiday of Tu Bishvat by planting trees in public ceremonies in the Jerusalem-area West Bank settlements of Kfar Etzion and Maale Adumim. He capped it off on Friday with a tree-planting ceremony in Ariel, a settlement somewhat deeper in the West Bank in Samaria. There Netanyahu suggested that the settlement was a crucial part of Israel:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Everyone who understands the geography of Israel know how important Ariel is. It is the heart of our country. We are here where are forefathers were, and we will stay here.”</p></blockquote>
<p>And on Sunday Benny Begin, son of the former prime minister and a member of Netanyahu’s inner security cabinet, <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3842105,00.html">took part</a> in a cornerstone-laying ceremony in yet another West Bank settlement, Beit Hagai, and said:</p>
<blockquote><p>“The state of Israel and the people of Israel have interests in Judea and Samaria [West Bank] and in Jerusalem, which are not only security-related, but based on an ancient affiliation.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Considering that in November Obama <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2009/11/20/obama-to-israelis-jerusalem-is-a-%E2%80%9Csettlement%E2%80%9D-by-p-david-hornik/">harshly criticized</a> Israel for planning to build within a neighborhood of Jerusalem, also conspicuous for its absence, so far, is any public U.S. rebuke of Netanyahu or Begin for these gestures. Ettinger suggests that Obama’s “involvement with the Arab-Israeli conflict has diverted his attention from issues which are much more important…eroded [his] support among the American people, [and] complicated his relations with friends of Israel on Capitol Hill, whose support is critical to Obama’s legislative agenda.”</p>
<p>Although it may be too early to assume a waning of Obama’s pressures on Israel, his words in his recent <em><a href="http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1955072-6,00.html">Time interview</a></em> also strengthen that impression. “This is as intractable a problem as you get,” Obama said. “Both sides—the Israelis and the Palestinians—have found that the political environment [was] such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation.” If so, a lull in the grimly relentless diplomatic activity on the Israeli-Palestinian front would be a chance to rethink some assumptions that have become all too axiomatic.</p>
<p>One is that the Palestinian side should always be coddled, with infinite patience, and should never have to pay a price for its failures. With Netanyahu having declared in November an unprecedented ten-month freeze in new construction in the West Bank, and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas continuing to refuse to hold talks with him, it can be hoped that Netanyahu’s and Begin’s affirmations signal a new Israeli assertiveness. It is only for the Palestinians that land, and offers, are kept indefinitely on hold even as they <a href="http://www.palwatch.org/">preach hatred</a> and practice rejectionism. Energetically resuming settlement activity at the end of the ten months would, for once, be a fitting response.</p>
<p>It could also be asked whether the pursuit of a Palestinian state as a supposed panacea has ever made much sense in normative terms. Human Rights Watch has published its <em>World Report 2010</em> and gives a <a href="http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/01/25/world-report-2010-harsher-climate-human-rights?print">rundown</a> of the human rights situation in Middle Eastern Arab countries that is anything but encouraging. Regarding women’s rights, the report points out that:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Perpetrators of so-called honor killings in Jordan (where there were at least 20 such killings), and in Syria (at least 12), benefit from legal provisions that mitigate their punishments…. Domestic abuse went largely unpunished in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In Lebanon and Jordan, where domestic abuse can be tried as assault, protection mechanisms for women are largely inadequate and ineffective.”</p></blockquote>
<p>As for prison conditions, “Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen failed to tackle frequent incidents of torture. Jordan’s prison reform program has not strengthened accountability mechanisms for torture….”</p>
<p>Minority rights—“Saudi Arabia discriminated against its Shia population…. Kurds, Syria’s largest non-Arab ethnic minority, were subject to systematic discrimination….” and so on.</p>
<p>Considering that all these abuses—oppression of women, torture in prisons, persecution of the Christian minority—already exist in the Palestinian Authority (not to mention Hamas-ruled Gaza), a diplomatic lull could be a time, particularly from an American standpoint, to question whether the dogged pursuit of a Palestinian state holds up to scrutiny. Instilling democracy in the Arab world may not have been realistic; <em>creating</em> another dictatorship—apart from the security threat it would pose to Israel—would appear worse than pointless.</p>
<p>Instead, a combination of Israeli assertiveness and U.S. benign neglect would convey the right messages to the Palestinians: that they, too, are subject to the cost-benefit calculi of human life and there are costs for clinging to radical positions rooted in a vision of Israel’s demise; that their present situation of enhanced autonomy under Israeli security control is quite feasible for Israel, which has always had its own interests and attachments in the West Bank.</p>
<p><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /><input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /></p>
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		<title>Hizballah Flag and Nazi Salutes in Toronto &#8211; by Robert Spencer</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/robert-spencer/hizballah-flag-and-nazi-salutes-in-toronto-by-robert-spencer/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hizballah-flag-and-nazi-salutes-in-toronto-by-robert-spencer</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/robert-spencer/hizballah-flag-and-nazi-salutes-in-toronto-by-robert-spencer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Dec 2009 05:02:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44225</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Paid for with $3 million from Canadian taxpayers.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44224" title="Hizballah Toronto" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Hizballah-Toronto.jpg" alt="Hizballah Toronto" width="500" height="375" /></p>
<p>Here are three photos from the &#8220;Gaza Freedom March&#8221; in Toronto on December 27. The top one, of the chappie with the flag of the jihad terrorist group Hizballah, comes from <a href="http://www.shalomlife.com/eng/article.php?id=3276" target="_blank">Shalom Life</a>, where in &#8220;Hizbollah Flag in Downtown Toronto,&#8221; Jonathan Dahoah Halevi (translation by Elad Benari) gives a useful account of the demonstration.</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44239" title="Nazi Salute 01" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Nazi-Salute-01.jpg" alt="Nazi Salute 01" width="480" height="640" /></p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44240" title="Nazi Salute 02" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Nazi-Salute-02.jpg" alt="Nazi Salute 02" width="500" height="396" /></p>
<p>The other two photos come from <a href="http://lumpygrumpyandfrumpy.blogspot.com/2009/12/nazi-salutes-at-gaza-freedom-march.html" target="_blank">Lumpy, Grumpy and Frumpy</a>, where there are <a href="http://lumpygrumpyandfrumpy.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">many more</a>. The two here show pro-Palestinian demonstrators giving the Nazi salute, and <a href="http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2009/12/nazis-for-gaza-freedom-march-in-toronto.html" target="_blank">Blazing Cat Fur</a> explains the significance of the second one:</p>
<blockquote><p>Something caught my eye in one of her photos which I posted below, notice the &#8220;flag staff&#8221;, it reads &#8220;Palestine House&#8221;. I guess Nazi Ideology is part of the curriculum taught in their &#8221; language instruction and <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">lebensraum</span> immigrant settlement programs&#8221;. You know, the ones your taxes pay for.This is taken from NGO Monitor&#8217;s submission to the CPCCA posted below.</p>
<p>•Palestine House Educational (PHE) (Mississauga, Ontario): PHE received <strong><em>$747,314</em></strong> from the Canadian government in 2008-9 for language instruction ; and Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has two agreements totaling over <strong><em>$3 million through 2010</em></strong> for language instruction and immigrant settlement.</p></blockquote>
<p>There is more. <a href="http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2009/12/nazis-for-gaza-freedom-march-in-toronto.html" target="_blank">Read it all</a>. Also, the great <a href="http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/:entry:fivefeet-2009-12-30-0003/" target="_blank">Shaidle </a>was there.</p>
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		<title>Eurabia vs. Israel on Jerusalem &#8211; by P. David Hornik</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/davidhornik/eurabia-vs-israel-on-jerusalem-by-p-david-hornik/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=eurabia-vs-israel-on-jerusalem-by-p-david-hornik</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/davidhornik/eurabia-vs-israel-on-jerusalem-by-p-david-hornik/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:06:45 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=42566</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The EU pressures Israel to surrender its capitol. 
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p dir="ltr"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-42567" title="1306345-View_of_Old_City_from_Mt_Of_Olives-Jerusalem" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1306345-View_of_Old_City_from_Mt_Of_Olives-Jerusalem.jpg" alt="1306345-View_of_Old_City_from_Mt_Of_Olives-Jerusalem" width="463" height="314" /></p>
<p dir="ltr">The recent Swiss vote to ban minarets was seen by many as a further indication that European populations are waking up to the threat of Europe’s Islamization and the need to stop the trend. If so, the European Union—the centralized bureaucracy that, as documented in Bat Ye’or’s important book <em>Eurabia</em>, went “over the heads” of European publics to meld the European and Arab/Muslim civilizations in the first place—still hasn’t caught up and remains locked in a pro-Arab/Muslim disposition.</p>
<p dir="ltr">At least, the EU’s stance on Jerusalem would suggest so. Last week the new EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, “<a href="http://euobserver.com/9/29167">came down hard</a> on the Israeli government” in her maiden speech to the European Parliament and said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">“East Jerusalem is occupied territory together with the West Bank. The EU is opposed to the destruction of homes, the eviction of Arab residents and the construction of the separation barrier.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Her words prompted Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon to <a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&amp;cid=1261244337074">reply</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">“Just as the Romans did not succeed in cutting off Jerusalem from Israel, so too will diplomats from the UN and the EU be unsuccessful as well.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Ashton, previously the EU’s trade commissioner and expected to be given considerable authority as a new sort of EU foreign minister, also called Israel’s recently launched ten-month moratorium on settlement construction a “first step”—representing, as the <em>EUobserver</em> <a href="http://euobserver.com/9/29167">comments</a>, “a cooler tone than EU foreign ministers who last week took ‘positive note’ of the move.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">The <em>EUobserve</em>r also pointed out that the speech was</p>
<blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">“significant for what it left out: Ms Ashton did not say that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that it faces a security threat from Palestinian ‘terrorists’ or that Palestinians should immediately return to formal peace talks—the classic tenets of Israeli supporters.”<strong> </strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">Ashton’s statements also come hard on the heels of an EU-Israel spat over Jerusalem in which the EU explicitly called for East Jerusalem to become the capital of a Palestinian state. That demand was later only partially toned-down under intense Israeli objections.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In other words, even at a time when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly accepted the call for a Palestinian state and enraged part of his right-wing base with the settlement moratorium, the EU keeps reflexively embracing Arab/Muslim positions. As always, the EU’s stance on Jerusalem ignores several facts.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Jerusalem was unified under Israeli sovereignty in 1967, after nineteen years in which Jordan illegally occupied the city and finally used it to attack Israel despite being implored by Israel to keep out of the fighting.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Under Israeli rule, Muslims and all other groups (except Jews—on the Temple Mount itself) have enjoyed full freedom of worship—a stark contrast to the nineteen years of Jordanian rule when Jews and Christians were denied access to Jerusalem’s holy places and Jewish synagogues and gravestones were destroyed and desecrated.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Muslims already have full control over Mecca, Medina, and countless sacred locales and shrines throughout the vast Muslim world, and their demand for Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem and the redivision of Israel’s capital can reasonably be regarded as excessive – especially when, as noted, Israel gives Muslims full access to their Jerusalem shrines and full rights in the city.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Indeed, Jerusalem is full of minarets, and any visitor to its Old City or its Arab neighborhoods can attest to the vibrancy of Muslim religious life there. The EU should be more concerned with Islamization on the continent than with taking harsh stances against Israel as it struggles to survive and to find the right mix of accommodation and steadfastness in an Arab/Muslim environment hostile its very existence.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But for the EU, after decades of forsaking its Judeo-Christian roots for pro-Arabism, that may be too much to expect. Even if European populations are starting to grasp the consequences of this civilizational self-abnegation, Europe’s Brussels-based bureaucracy remains willfully ignorant of the stakes.</p>
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		<title>David M. Phillips: The Illegal-Settlements Myth, Commentary</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/jlaksin/david-m-phillips-the-illegal-settlements-myth-commentary/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=david-m-phillips-the-illegal-settlements-myth-commentary</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:02:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[acceptance]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=40105</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The conviction that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal is now so commonly accepted, it hardly seems as though the matter is even open for discussion. But it is. Decades of argument about the issue have obscured the complex nature of the specific legal question about which a supposedly overwhelming verdict of guilty [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The conviction that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal is now so commonly accepted, it hardly seems as though the matter is even open for discussion. But it is. Decades of argument about the issue have obscured the complex nature of the specific legal question about which a supposedly overwhelming verdict of guilty has been rendered against settlement policy. There can be no doubt that this avalanche of negative opinion has been deeply influenced by the settlements’ unpopularity around the world and even within Israel itself. Yet, while one may debate the wisdom of Israeli settlements, the idea that they are imprudent is quite different from branding them as illegal. Indeed, the analysis underlying the conclusion that the settlements violate international law depends entirely on an acceptance of the Palestinian narrative that the West Bank is “Arab” land. Followed to its logical conclusion—as some have done—this narrative precludes the legitimacy of Israel itself.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-illegal-settlements-myth-15295">The Illegal-Settlements Myth</a>.</p>
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