Israel: 2008 Archives

The internal struggle in Israel between the appeasement left and its media echo chamber and the patriots on the right dedicated to a free and safe Israel is coming to a head on Election Day February 10th. The incumbent government was more than justified in sending the Israel Defense Forces into war agains Hamas in Gaza to protect Israeli citizens from mortar, rocket and missile attacks. Howver, if the government were really intent on eliminating Hamas as a force, that is, defeating it, it would have done so many months ago. Instead, it is just softening Hamas up so it can resume negotiations to give something away for some temporary period of calm.

In fact, the timing of the attack just six weeks before the election appears to be a cynical attempt by the appeasement government to convince the electorate it can run the country capably and successfully bargain with Hamas for its safety.

Polls show the public substantially opposed to government plans to give away the Golan, most if not all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and strongly in favor of a strong response to Hamas and Fatah aggression in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli public has no confidence that there will ever be peace with terrorists who get their own state in a "two-state solution." It is this public sentiment that the government is trying to overcome with the timing of its IDF attack on Hamas security centers. Through the diplomatic grapevine it appears that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be delighted if the IDF were to convincingly defeat Iranian-backed Hamas. Would that the present Israeli Livni-Olmert-Barak government were committed to victory as well.

Caroline Glick movingly describes the human side of the struggle for Israel's soul that is fast approaching a decision point. Which will prevail, defeatism and appeasement or those who see a shining future for Israel built on strength and a strong defense?

Our World: Patriots and anti-patriots

Dec. 29, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

Two years ago, the North was a war zone. Fields and forests, homes and hospitals were set ablaze by Hizbullah missiles. But on Sunday afternoon, as a tireless patriot was laid to rest in the Jezreel Valley, the ground was not burning with missile fire, it was exploding with fecundity. It filled the air with the aroma of its promise of spring harvests.

A multitude of mourners from all over the country crowded into Moshav Moledet's small cemetery to pay their final respects to 53-year-old Tzafrir Ronen, who died of a heart attack on Friday night. The man they mourned had dedicated his life to defending the country. In recent years, Tzafrir spent nearly every waking moment fighting for its soul. He sought to educate his fellow Israelis about the threats facing the country generally, and specifically about the existential danger to its viability presented by the Left's defeatist and post-Zionist narrative.

For this son of the Jezreel Valley, who grew up with the land, that narrative - which argues that Israel has neither the ability nor the right to defeat its enemies and to settle its land - was the single greatest threat to the long-term well-being of the country. Over the years, as Tzafrir's frustration at the direction the country was taking grew, his message became angrier and more urgent. As each of his successive warnings - about the fraudulent Oslo peace process, the withdrawal from southern Lebanon, the criminalization of Jewish building in Judea and Samaria, the refusal to enforce laws in the Israeli Arab sector, the expulsion of the Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria and the establishment of the Hamas terror state in Gaza - were ignored by successive governments, by the media and, inevitably, by voters, Tzafrir, like so many others in his position felt he was shouting into the wind.

MARGINALIZING AND silencing voices like Tzafrir's is one of the Israeli Left's greatest achievements. By consistently ignoring or demonizing voices like Tzafrir's - who have been correct about every major strategic issue facing the country - while steadfastly legitimizing and lionizing men and women like Amos Oz, Shulamit Aloni, Yossi Beilin and Haim Ramon - who not only have been wrong about every major issue in the past generation, but have also often taken leading roles in our enemies' propaganda campaigns - the Left has managed to remove our most vibrant thinkers and bravest builders and fighters from the national debate.

But the hundreds who crowded into the cemetery on Sunday are proof that the Left's success has been far from complete. The mourners at his funeral included Israelis from all walks of life -- religious, secular, farmers, city dwellers, Jews, non-Jews, new olim and sabras. The fact that people from such diverse backgrounds and traditions have found the way to work with one another shows that in spite of the demonization of the Right, people are still interested in defending and building the country. They are still are drawn to voices in the wilderness, like Tzafrir's, which say that we must fight, and win, and that we deserve to win and should feel privileged to fight for what is right.

On the face of it, Tzafrir, his colleagues and friends could feel vindicated by the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's decision to launch Operation Cast Lead against Hamas's regime in Gaza. Since Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni first began advocating the surrender of Gaza in late 2003, Tzafrir and his colleagues were at the forefront of the protest movement against the giveaway. Not only did they argue that the forcible expulsion and destruction of communities in Gaza was a moral outrage, they warned that a withdrawal would transform Gaza into the jihadist hub it has become.

AND OF course, they were right. Far from bringing peace and stability, as they warned the likes of Olmert and Livni, withdrawal from Gaza started the countdown to the war we are now fighting. And as they warned would happen, withdrawal from Gaza allowed Hamas to become an Iranian proxy and build the Iranian-supplied army that now assaults the South with missiles and rockets.

Moreover, the international outcry which has greeted the IDF operation, and the tepid US support it has enjoyed, shows clearly that by "ending the occupation" of Gaza, (which actually ended with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994), Israel weakened rather than strengthened its international supporters. Today Israel is being condemned more harshly than it was in 2004 when the IDF nearly destroyed Hamas in Gaza by decapitating its leadership.

On the face of it, Tzafrir and his colleagues could pat themselves on the backs and say that by waging Operation Cast Lead, Livni and Olmert and the architect of unilateral surrenders of land to terrorists himself - Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who handed South Lebanon to Hizbullah in 2000 - have finally seen the light. They understand that terrorists have to be defeated and that the country is better off controlling hostile territories than allowing its enemies to control them.

BUT THIS is not the case. Olmert, Livni and Barak have made clear that they haven't changed their defeatist and post-Zionist view of Israel's prospects at all. Their current operation in Gaza is not aimed at defeating Hamas. They have uttered no call for victory. To the contrary, as Olmert made clear in his speech on Saturday evening, the goal of the current campaign is simply to "change the situation" in the South. The question is what "change" they have in mind.

For her part, Livni has called for installing the Fatah terror group in Gaza instead of Hamas. But Fatah has been rejected not only by Gazans, but by the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria as well. Bringing Fatah into Gaza would do nothing to stabilize the situation. It would simply be an invitation for Fatah to conduct war against Israel and seek an accommodation with Hamas and Iran.

Barak has claimed that we can no more negotiate a settlement with Hamas than the US can negotiate a settlement with al-Qaida. And this is true in principle. Just as al-Qaida will never live at peace with America, so Hamas will never accept peaceful coexistence with Israel. But Barak has never been one to abide by principles.

He didn't adhere to that principle six months ago when he convinced Livni and Olmert to accept a cease-fire that enabled Hamas to build its army and its missile arsenal without fear of IDF attack. And Barak did not adhere to this principle when as late as last Tuesday he was calling for a renewal of the failed, one-sided cease-fire.

THE FACT of the matter is that the change that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government seeks today has more to do with the public's perception of its competence than with any interest in changing the situation in Gaza in any fundamental way. During the Second Lebanon War, the government showed that it could not be trusted with the defense of the country and with the proper deployment of IDF soldiers. And in the aftermath of that war, the government lost its moral right to send its forces into battle.

Now it uses its campaign in Gaza as a means of winning back its moral authority. But the problem is that despite its protestations of cunning competence, the government's aims today are the same as they were in 2006. As was the case with Hizbullah, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is signaling that it seeks a new negotiated settlement with Hamas. The hoped-for settlement, which has been telegraphed to the public through the pro-government media, will leave Hamas in power in Gaza. Although the government claims that the postwar Hamas will be more peaceful than the prewar Hamas, there is no reason to believe this will be the case.

Just as has been the case with Hizbullah since the government failed to destroy the terror army in 2006, so if Hamas remains in control of Gaza after the current war, no matter what its condition, it will be perceived as the winner.

HERE IT is important to make a sharp distinction between the IDF's clear military successes in Gaza and the political leadership's problematic management of this campaign. In the former case, it is inarguable that by destroying Hamas's military installations, killing its military commanders and incapacitating its weapons smuggling infrastructure, the IDF is weakening Hamas as a military organization. And this is a great and long-awaited achievement.

In contrast, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government's refusal to reconsider its defeatist political philosophy makes it apparent that in the longer term, any strategic advantage enjoyed from the IDF's success will be marginal. Like Hizbullah, Hamas - which enjoys Iranian and Syrian state sponsorship and authentic popularity throughout the Islamic world - does not have to defeat Israel to be perceived as the victor. It merely needs to survive. That is the great difference between jihadist organizations and Western democracies. And by surviving, it will expand its international cachet.

JUST AS the Bush administration seeks to accommodate Hizbullah by selling advanced weapons to the Lebanese government it dominates, so too, in the aftermath of the current campaign, Hamas will be accepted by the West.

Tzafrir Ronen, and his colleagues whose strategic wisdom caused them to be banished from the public square, can always depend on hapless, defeatist governments like that of Olmert, Livni, and Barak to remember them in times of crisis. Like a Swiss clock, whenever leaders who preach nothing but defeat and retreat to their countrymen find themselves in a position of having to fight our enemies, they know they can count on men like Tzafrir to fight for them. And to date, men like Tzafrir, who served in the IDF's elite combat units, and whose sons and daughters continue to bear the greatest burdens in our defense, have answered their calls without hesitation.

Looking at the faces of the mourners on Sunday afternoon and listening to the many eulogies of Tzafrir that repeatedly praised his Zionism, there was no room for doubt that again today these people will answer the call. But how long will this state of affairs continue? How long can failed and strategically blind politicians continue to expect the men and women they demonize to save the country after they fail, and then hand it back to them to endanger again?

UPDATE: Associated Press filed this report at 8:15 p.m. Eastern Time.

Iran supplies munitions to Hamas in Gaza as well as to Hezbullah in southern Lebanon. Iranian missiles fired from Gaza can now reach 20 to 25 miles into Israel, putting major population centers such as Ashkelon (pop. 105,000) and Ashdod (205,000) in danger.

The Hamas thugs know they are firing at civilian centers. The missiles analyzed by the Israli bomb experts contained

metal balls designed to act as shrapnel, and the intended effects were visible at a home situated just a few meters from where one of the rockets hit, which looked as if it had been sprayed with a machine gun.

Large, gaping holes peppered the front of the house.

Rocket and missile fire from Gaza has been a constant even during the so-called six-month truce which Hamas ended. Since the truce ended ten days ago the projectiles fired have been in the hundreds. Israel had warned repeatedly that the firing must stop or they would attack all Hamas security centers. Hamas often fires the missiles and rockets from mobile platforms in the middle of civilian areas, knowing that when the Israelis retaliate some of their civiilans will be killed, thus providing Hamas with pictures of "victims" for the gullible media.

Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, has not renounced terrorism and has not ceased terrorist operations against Israel's citizens. An American Muslim so-called charity the Holy Land Foundation was recently convicted in Texas of funneling money to a know terrorist organization Hamas. In that case CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) and the North American Islamic Trust, the owner of the new mosque in Boston's Roxbury district, were named as unindicted co-conspirators.)

Hizbullah-type rockets fired

Dec. 28, 2008
Yaakov Lappin , THE JERUSALEM POST
Two Katyusha rockets that Hamas fired deep into Israel on Sunday are the same type launched by Hizbullah during the Second Lebanon War, an Israel Police source told The Jerusalem Post.

The two rockets were Hamas's deepest attacks into Israeli territory to date. The first Katyusha hit in Gan Yavne, 35 km. north of the Strip, and the second struck 20 minutes later in an undisclosed location near Ashdod, 40 km. from Gaza.

Police sappers who analyzed the projectiles said they carried six to seven kilograms of explosives each, and identified them as 122-millimeter PIPE type-81 Katyusha rockets, which have a range of 40 km.

The rockets contained metal balls designed to act as shrapnel, and the intended effects were visible at a home situated just a few meters from where one of the rockets hit, which looked as if it had been sprayed with a machine gun.

Large, gaping holes peppered the front of the house.

"This is our Hanukka miracle," said Avital, a mother of five who hid with her children and husband in a safe room in the house after hearing the air raid siren. Her family was one of the few in her community on Sunday morning - most of the moshav's families were away on an organized trip. Hours later, the families returned and examined the damaged home with stunned expressions.

Dozens of people lit a large hanukkia and sang holiday songs near the home, in a show of solidarity with the family.

"At 9:30 we heard the first siren. I was praying," Avital said. "My son woke his siblings up and we entered the safe room. Soon afterward, we heard a second siren."

Avital's husband, Eyal, was working in the garden outside their home. "I wouldn't be here now if I hadn't heeded that second siren," Eyal told the Post. "I would be dead."

"We entered the safe room [again] and 30 seconds later, we heard an enormous explosion and shrapnel flying," Avital said.

"My little girl cried, but on the whole we were calm," said her husband.

Police sappers quickly arrived and removed the rocket, which hit moist sand next to the home. The soil appeared to absorb much of the explosion.

"We're reciting psalms and thanking God," Avital said. "Property is replaceable, human lives are not," she added. "We are still in shock from what happened."

Avital expressed support for the current IDF operation in Gaza, saying, "This is a kind of war, and we are prepared to take this in order to win. In Sderot, they have this every day."

The Home Front Command added Yavne and Gadera to its list of communities under threat from Hamas rockets, telling residents there they had one minute to enter shelter in the event of an air raid siren.

However, unlike in Gaza-periphery communities, the Home Front Command said life in Gadera and Yavne could continue as usual.

Britain's Channel 4 TV network created some controversy by inviting Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to deliver a message for Christmas Day. It contended that European viewers really didn't know Ahmadinejad and his positions and it was a public service to have him, in a sense, respond to Queen Elizabeth's Christmas message as head of the Church of England.

Caroline Glick, the most perceptive of all Middle East political analysts, believes Channel 4 did the right thing.

THE FACT of the matter is that Channel 4 is right. There is a great deal of ignorance in the West about what the likes of Ahmadinejad and his colleagues in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas stand for. But this isn't their fault. They tell us every day that they seek the destruction of the Jews and the domination of the West in the name of Islam. And every day they take actions that they believe advance their goals.

The reason that the West remains ignorant of the views and goals of the likes of Hamas and Iran is not that the latter have hidden their views and goals. It is because the leading political leaders and foreign policy practitioners in the West refuse to listen to them and deny the significance of their actions.

As far as the West's leaders are concerned, Iran and its allies are unimportant. They are not actors, but objects. As far as the West's leading foreign policy "experts" and decision-makers are concerned, the only true actors on the global stage are Western powers. They alone have the power to shape reality and the world. Oddly enough, this dominant political philosophy, which is based on denying the existence of non-Western actors on the world stage, is referred to as political "realism."

Glick rightly denounces this "realism" as fantasy, whether it involves dealing with Iran, Syria, the Hezbollah-dominated Lebanese government, Hamas or North Korea.

These foreign policy realists maintain that talking and appeasement are the way to bend these actors to the will of the West, even though years doing that have not produced the desired Western results. The age-old definition of a madman applies: Doing the same thing that failed over and over again expecting a different result.

Continue reading "GLICK: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND FOREIGN POLICY ESTABLISHMENT IN FANTASYLAND "

As a pivotal election nears in Israel (on February 10th), the Middle East's leading political analyst Caroline Glick is concerned that the leader of the Israeli conservative Likud Party is making the same mistakes John McCain made in the U.S. presidential election. Her core conviction:

As we saw in the U.S. presidential election and in the current Israeli Knesset campaign, by moving to the left, right-leaning candidates demoralize their base. And far from convincing swing voters to support them, they make swing voters feel comfortable supporting their opponents.

And this:

By incorrectly identifying the object of both Republican dissatisfaction and swing-voter concerns, McCain demoralized his base and convinced undecided voters it was okay to support Obama. Indeed, it was McCain's anti-Republican campaign more than Obama's change campaign that brought a majority of voters to Obama. As polling data indicates, Obama did not move many Republican voters to his side.

Read it all.

How Conservatives Lose Elections

By: Caroline B. Glick

Wednesday, December 24 2008

It would seem that in recent years conservative candidates in both Israel and the U.S. have forgotten how to win an election.

Continue reading "IS ISRAEL REPEATING MCCAIN'S MISTAKE?"

The momentous Israeli election set for February 10th seems likely to put the future of Israel in the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party.

The anti-Israel forces surrounding Obama have been licking their chops, looking forward to the opportunity to sell out Israel to the Muslims clamoring for its destruction. It was very clear before the U.S. presidential election that Obama bore little sympathy for Israel. Too many of the people he is appointing to foreign poicy positions and consulting with are well-known for their antipathy for Israel: National Security Advisor Jim Jones, UN Ambassador Susan Rice, loose cannon advisor Samantha Rice, Warren Christopher and Jim Baker, just to name a few. (Also, 20 years of Jew-hatred from Jeremiah Wright has had to have some effect.) And Obama has promised to "reboot" U.S. relations with the Muslim world and has stated his intention to give a major address in a Muslim state.

People who have been in close contact with Obama's foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with the transition team since last month's US elections, Obama's people are "scope-locked" on Israel.

Even left and center Israelis realize they need a strong leader to stand up for Israel in the face of the expected onslaught from the Obama Administration. The Muslim definition of "peace" is the calm resulting from a complete conquest of the people and land Muslims have targeted. Israel is the target of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Syria. If it is wiped out, there will be peace.

It could be that Obama's negative disposition towards Jews and Israel was planted during his early years in Indonesia attending mosque with his step-father. Though Obama has blocked access to much of his history, it has become known that a prominent Muslim hater of Israel actively worked to get him admitted to Harvard Law School (and may have helped finance him while there) and that he found compatibility with the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan, whose Million Man March he helped organize and attended. At a going away party in Chicago, Obama toasted the honoree, a former spokeman for Yasser Arafat, for his many insights delivered over more than a few familly dinners in his Hyde Park neighborhood. Even his Jewish chief of staff Rham Emanuel was a principal aide to President Clinton in the last days of his administration as he sought to win a Nobel Peace Prize by forcing Israel to surrender almost all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Palestinian terrorists, leaving itself defenseless. Fortunately for the future of Israel, Arafat said "no" to Clinton and Emanuel. One could not get better evidence that Palestinians didn't want to share land with Israel, they wanted to eliminate it.

The Middle East's leading political analyst Caroline Glick describes the battle that will erupt between the Obama Administration and the people of Israel, who want to continue to live in freedom. They know they will have to defend themselves and need a leader strong enought to withstand the pressure to capitulate that will be brought to bear by Obama and his circle of Israel haters.

Israel will be be mostly alone. Though strongly supported by American Evangelicals and many other Americans, its core constituency, American Jews, sold Israel out, voting 78% for Obama, fully knowing his presidency could spell the demise of Israel. Israel has defended itself through wars and terrrorism for more than 60 years and now needs to ready itself to fend off its greatest threat in history, this time coming from its long-time supporter the United States led by a President Obama. They will vote for Benjamin Netanyahu.

The stakes could not be higher for democracy in the Middle East and the fate of half the world's Jews, as Caroline Glick explains.

Column One: Netanyahu's grand coalition

Dec. 11, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
The "international community" is eagerly anticipating the incoming Obama administration's policy toward Israel. It is widely assumed that as soon as he comes into office, US President-elect Barack Obama will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a "peace process" with the Palestinians and the Syrians.

Continue reading "ISRAEL READIES TO FIGHT FOR ITS SURVIVAL AGAINST OBAMA"

By their adoption of multiculturalism -- that is, the belief that all cultures are equally good, except Western civilization, which is universally bad and responsible for the world's ills -- as their religion, Western elites (which include the elites in India) are putting millions in extreme danger.

The Middle East's leading political analyst Caroline Glick finds the post-Mumbai reporting, analyses and governmental commentary unreal if not insane. The mulitculturists immediately began blaming the victims because of the grievances the jihadists had supposedly suffered at the hands of India (ignoring the history of Islamic murder of 80 million Hindus in their centuries of assault). Newspapers such as the New York Times were at pains not to identify that all the attackers were Muslims (instead they were called Pakistanis and one Indian!) and to overlook the fact that the small, out-of-the-way Jewish center had been deliberately targeted.

The jihadists in Mumbai, like their counterparts from Gaza to Baghdad to Guantanamo Bay, have been defended, and their acts and motivations have been explained away, by their allies and loyal apologists: Western multiculturalists. Multiculturalism is a quasi-religion predicated on both moral relativism and a basic belief in the inherent avarice of the West - particularly of the US and Israel. Multiculturalists assert that Westerners - or, in the case of India, Hindus - are to blame for all acts of violence carried out against them by non-Westerners.

What the Mubai attack and its aftermath shows:

THE ATTACKS in Mumbai and the multiculturalists' rush to minimize their significance exposed two disturbing truths about the global jihad. First, they showed that the jihadists are quick studies. With each passing day, their capacity to attack grows larger. . . .

THE SECOND truth about the global jihad that the Mumbai attacks exposed is that there is nothing that jihadists can do to make the multiculturalists stop defending them. And there is nothing effective that democratic governments can do to defend against the jihadists that multiculturalists will deem acceptable. This is the case because multiculturalists cannot accept the fact that the jihadists are waging war against the West without disavowing multiculturalism itself. And since they will not disavow what has become their religion, they will never be convinced that they must stop defending jihadists.

This frightening] "refusal to acknowledge the fact of the global jihad [is shared by] many of the governments principally targeted by jihadist regimes and terror armies. Take the incoming Obama administration for example.

Iran daily threatens to destroy the US, annihilate Israel, close the Straits of Hormuz, use nuclear weapons and proliferate nuclear weapons to other states. It controls Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. It is the primary sponsor of the insurgency in Iraq and, with Pakistan, the major sponsor of the insurgency in Afghanistan. It has cultivated strategic ties with US foes in the Western Hemisphere like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

Yet one of the first foreign policy initiatives promised by the incoming Obama administration is to attempt to diplomatically engage Iran with the aim of striking a grand bargain with the mullahs. . . .

Unless something changes soon, the consequences of the jihadist-multicultural alliance will be suffered by millions and millions of people.

To read Glick's full analysis, click here.

Note: A Power Line reader notes just how assiduously the opinion-setters in the media are going through these multicultural hoops to avoid linking Islam with terror.

Update: Mark Steyn in his weekly column also points out the way in which the cowering media avoids linking "Islam" to "terrorism" in their reports, instead referring to "gunmen," "militants," "youths" and "teenage gunmen."

The ten Islamic terrorists sent from Pakistan to commit murder in Mumbai were specifically told to target the small Jewish center for Jews traveling through India. Five hostages were found tortured and murdered, so badly so that the pathologist said he had never seen such brutality. The 29-year old rabbi from New York and his six-month pregnant wife of 28 were murdered, their 2-year old son survived. What did they have to do with Kashmir, Iraq, Hindu violence? They were sought out and killed because they were Jews.

Orphan of New York Rabbi and Wife Killed in Mumbai Attacks Leaves India
Monday , December 01, 2008

The 2-year-old orphan found drenched in the blood of his parents at the besieged Jewish center in Mumbai left India on Monday on an Israeli Air Force jet, accompanied by the Indian woman who rescued him.

Dec. 1: Moshe Holtzberg, the orphan of the rabbi and wife slain in the Mumbai Jewish center, cries during a memorial service at a synagogue in Mumbai.

Moshe Holtzberg's parents, Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, ran the headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement in Mumbai — one of 10 targets besieged by gunman over the 60-hour rampage.

During the attack Thursday, Sandra Samuel, a nanny who worked there for years, had locked herself in a laundry room when she heard Rivkah screaming for her to help. Then the screaming stopped, and it was quiet, said Robert Katz, a New York-based fund-raiser for an Israeli orphanage founded by the boy's family.

Samuel cracked open the door of her hiding place and saw a deserted staircase. She ran up one flight and saw the rabbi and his wife, covered in blood and shot to death. The child was crying beside his parents' bodies, his pants drenched in blood.

She snatched the boy, bolted down the stairs and out of the building.

"She's been there with him throughout," Katz said.

Six civilians were killed in the center — all of them Jewish and four of them Israeli, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Andy David said. In all, more than 170 died in attacks on 10 targets across the Indian city.

Moshe was accompanied on the trip to Israel by his maternal grandparents, Yehudit and Shimon Rosenberg, who were reunited with their grandson when they arrived in Mumbai on Friday.

"It was pure raw emotion, tears of joy, tears of sorrow, incredible emotion, understandably out of control," said Katz.

Asked about Moshe's condition, he said: "I don't know that he can comprehend or that he will remember seeing his parents shot in cold blood."

Before the child's departure, dozens gathered at a synagogue in Mumbai for a memorial service for the Jews slain at the Chabad center. During the service, Moshe burst into tears and called out "Ima," Hebrew for "mother."

Weeping, Shimon Rosenberg delivered a eulogy for his daughter and son-in-law, reciting the Hebrew phrases from the Book of Job: "The Lord giveth. The Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Moshe's father was a dual American-Israeli citizen and his mother was Israeli. The couple lived in Israel and Brooklyn before they moved to Mumbai in 2003.

Samuel, an Indian resident, will live with Moshe in Israel "so at least he has someone he knows and recognizes and loves," said Katz.

Though Samuel has no passport or papers, Moshe's grand-uncle, Rabbi Yitzchak David Grossman, helped arrange for her to get a visa to Israel. In a sad coincidence, Grossman is founder of the Migdal Ohr, which says it is Israel's largest facility for orphaned and disadvantaged children.

The Israeli jet that carried Moshe and Samuel also carried the remains of his parents and the others killed at the Chabad House, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said.

Government officials planned a small ceremony upon the plane's arrival.

"There are going to be thousands of people at this funeral," said Katz, executive vice president of Migdal Ohr's fundraising arm in New York. "This couple wasn't living in the West Bank. They weren't settlers. They weren't occupying anyone's land. They were killed because they were Jews, simple and plain."

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From the Hadith, the sayings and actions of Mohammad:

.“The Last Hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: `Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him’; but the tree Gharkad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985).

The Middle East's leading political analyst Caroline Glick, who writes weekly for the Jerusalem Post, analyzes the shocking "indifference" of American Jews to the existential threat to Israel posed by not only Iran but by President-Elect Obama. Some 78% of American Jews voted for Obama despite his amply documented history of sympathy for the Palestinians and long time friendships with haters of Jews and Israel.

Ironically, there is more support for Israel among the Christian Evangelical community than among American Jews. The same can be said for national security conservaties, the overwhelming percentage of whom are Republicans, who understand that Israel and the United States are engaged in the same war being waged aganinst them by global Islamic supremacism. Israel is an easier target because of its small size and location, surrounded as it is by 300 million Arabs and within striking distance of Persian Iran's missiles. It will need help, help that is in America's interest to give.

American Jews, like most Democrats, like to believe supremacist Islam is not a threat to the U.S. and refuse to see any connection between Israel's circumstances and those of the United States. (Will the Islamic attacks in India cause a rethink?)

As Ms. Glick noted in an earlier column American Jews are more concerned about the preservation of easy abortion access than they are about the survival of Israel. So they vote for the pro-abortion party and the abortion extremist Obama.

Shortly after Obama becomes president Israel will hold a crucial election (February 10th), in which, hopefully, a strong, realistic leader committed to preserving Israel whole and free will be elected.

As Glick sees it:

Israel's next government will be called on to defend Israel against Iran and its Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese proxies, And it will be called to act at a time when the U.S. is led by an Obama administration pledged to appease these forces. Israel will have to rally all of its supporters in the U.S. to its side in order to stand up for its survival.

She asks: Will American Jews be missing?

American Jewish Indifference

By: Caroline B. Glick
Wednesday, November 26 2008

Apparently Israel is no longer a voting issue for most American Jews.

Seventy-eight percent of American Jewish voters cast their ballots for Senator Barack Obama on November 4. Obama, who boasted the most liberal voting record in the Senate, has never distinguished himself as a firm supporter of Israel. For instance, he opposed the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment that called on the State Department to place Iran's Revolutionary Guards on its list of international terrorist organizations.

Obama counts no deeply committed Zionists among his close associates. Men and women like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Samantha Power, Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Ayers, Robert Malley and Rashid Khalidi were all people Obama turned to for advice, guidance and support in his early years in politics and as a U.S. senator considering a run for the White House.

His "pro-Israel" advisers -- mainly late pick-ups as the presidential race progressed -- included no ardent Zionists to oppose the voices of his anti-Israel advisors. Instead, Obama turned to Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer to advise him on the Middle East. These men, like his designated White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, have views of Israel that are indistinguishable from the positions of Israel's post-Zionist Meretz party.

During the course of the campaign, Obama gained notoriety for his hard left promises to appease U.S. foes like Iran, largely at the expense of U.S. allies like Israel. It could have been presumed that his expressed willingness to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would have raised red flags throughout the American Jewish community.

After all, given the failure of the now five-year-old European-U.S. attempt to appease Iran into ending its nuclear weapons program, it is apparent that a direct U.S. presidential dialogue with Ahmadinejad will be perceived by Iran as a green light to complete its nuclear weapons program.

But American Jewish voters were only too happy to believe Obama's unconvincing attenuations of his pledge to hold talks with Ahmadinejad without preconditions. American Jews were also eager to accept his unconvincing disavowals of his association with the likes of Wright, Power, Khalidi, Malley and Brzezinski.

Obama is now signaling his support for the so-called Saudi Peace Plan, first released in 2002, which calls for Israel to destroy itself in exchange for its Arab neighbors establishing "normal" relations with it. The Saudi plan calls for Israel to remove itself completely to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and accept millions of foreign-born, hostile Arabs as full citizens as part of the so-called right of return of the descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948.

The fact that the Saudi initiative limits the relations the Arabs would have with the rump bi-national state to "normal" rather than "peaceful" shows clearly that far from being a peace plan, it is a blueprint for Israel's destruction.

In light of all of this, it is apparent that by voting for Obama, four-fifths of American Jews voted for a candidate more openly hostile to the U.S.-Israel alliance than any other major-party presidential candidate in the past generation.

One might argue that American Jews were simply unaware of Obama's actual views on Israel. It is true, after all, that the U.S. media worked overtime throughout the campaign defending and hiding Obama's longstanding connections to haters of the U.S.

But despite the media effort to conceal or explain away difficult truths about Obama's character, concerned American Jewish voters had access to the facts. Any number of alternative media outlets provided a steady stream of information about Obama's associations with Israel bashers.

More than anything else, the willingness of American Jews to believe Obama is pro-Israel shows they simply didn't care that much. If they had cared, they would have scrutinized Obama's alarming connections at least as carefully as they attacked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her anti-abortion views. They would have wondered what it means that Obama spent twenty years of his life in the pews of a deeply anti-Semitic church at least as much as they wondered about a Jews for Jesus preacher who once spoke at Palin's church.

There are several possible and complementary explanations for American Jewry's apparent indifference to Israel's fate.

High assimilation rates cause many American Jews to feel more attachment to non-Jewish causes than to Jewish causes. At the same time, the watering-down of Jewish teachings in various Jewish communities and the replacement of Jewish law and traditions with amorphous and trendy concepts of "social justice" and multiculturalism have engendered a basic ignorance of the exceptional significance and beauty of Judaism among a large portion of American Jews.

Then there is the leadership crisis affecting world Jewry. Weak and uninspiring Israeli leaders and weak and uninspiring American Jewish leaders have failed to assert and explain the connection between Israel's security and the wellbeing of the American Jewish community. Whereas until the 1980s it went without saying for most American Jews that their fortunes were directly tied to Israel's security, today the unity of Jewish fate has been lost on ever widening circles of American Jews.

To all of this must be added the unique self-perception of American Jewry. The American Jewish community is the only community in Jewish history that refused to view itself as an exile community. Even before the American Revolution, Jewish settlers in the New World viewed America as a permanent home.

As a consequence, on a philosophical level American Jews have always held Israel and Zionism at arm's length. They could support Israel as a refuge for persecuted Jews from other countries, but they couldn't support Israel as the permanent and irreplaceable homeland for all Jews without revoking the foundational belief of their American Jewish identity.

Today Israel is threatened with annihilation and the U.S. Jewish community is suffering from more blatant and organized anti-Semitic attacks than it has seen in the past fifty years. But during this year's presidential campaign, the basic truth that the security of all Jews is dependent on the security of Israel was no match for the full consequences of failed leadership, assimilation and the basic American Jewish desire to reject the singularity of Jewish destiny.

Israel's next government will be called on to defend Israel against Iran and its Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese proxies, And it will be called to act at a time when the U.S. is led by an Obama administration pledged to appease these forces. Israel will have to rally all of its supporters in the U.S. to its side in order to stand up for its survival.

In light of the American Jewish vote, it is an open question whether Israel will receive the help of its American Jewish brethren in its hour of need.

Caroline Glick is deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Her Jewish Press-exclusive column appears the last week of each month. Her new book, "The Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad," is available at Amazon.com.

It's disturbing that Obama has so many aides who are anti-Israel. It's disturbing that Obama aides met with leaders of terrorist, Iran-supported Hamas during the campaign and told the Hamas leaders to keep quiet about the meeting so as not to cause upset before the election. It's disturbing that one of Obama's most virulently anti-Israel advisors went to Damascus to meet with Syrian leader Assad.

But there's even more.

This week, Middle East Newsline reported that President-elect Obama recently sent "senior foreign policy adviser" Malley to Egypt and Syria where he "relayed a pledge from Obama that the United States would seek to enhance relations with Cairo as well as reconcile with Damascus." According to an unnamed aide, "The tenor of the messages was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests."

Are we entering a new era of accommodation of jihad terrorists bent on Israel's — and the West's — destruction?

Diana West says, "I'm very afraid."

Gulling Americans into making terror legit?

By Diana West, Syndicated Columnist
November 17, 2008

How dumb does President-elect Barack Obama think we are?

Let me rephrase the question: Are we as dumb as Obama thinks?

Continue reading "IS ACCOMODATION WITH TERRORISTS IN OUR FUTURE?"

The Middle East's preeminent political analyst Caroline Glick, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, says her fears of Obama's true intent with respect to the Middle East are being realized. To win Jewish votes he seemed to shun his anti-Israeli advisers as the election neared, but it now appears that the two most virulent opponents of Israel's right to exist are deeply involved in Obama's foreign policy. The signals emanating from the Obama campaign suggest that the first target of Obama's new foreign policy will be Israel, forcing it to give way to Palestinian demands. Closely related is what appears to be Obama's desire to "reconcile" with Iran's ayatollahs.

As Glick logically asks, what wil Obama offer up to Iran for renewed relations and a supposed end to its nuclear weapons program?

As for direct talks with Iran itself, the question immediately arises, what could Obama offer Teheran in exchange for an end to its nuclear program that Bush hasn't already offered?

What it can offer is Israel.

We predicted exactly that before the election, but enough of the electorate was so giddy with the idea of electing what some call the first affirmative action president to not care much about who he was or what he stood for.

Therefore, Israel finds itself in a deadly race for survival: Iran is feverishly pushing ahead with its nuclear weapons program, which is an existential threat to Israel. Israel has two dates of urgent consequence ahead -- January 20th when the new Obama policy can begin to be implemented and February 10th, when Israel elects a new government. If Israel elects a Netanyahu govenment it can save itself. If not, Israel will be at the mercy of Iran and Obama.

Prominent American Jewish supporters of Israel now rightly fear Obama will "throw Israel under the bus." That possibility was quite obvious before November 4th, yet 78% of American Jews voted for Obama.

Some hope that Obama's Jewish chief of staff Rahm Emaneul will prevent that from happening. But Emanuel was a chief aide to President Clinton when he forced Israel to offer virtually all of Judea and Sumaria and East Jerusalem to Arafat in his last minute push for a peace agreement. Fortunately for Israel, Arafat refused (showing he really didn't want peace, he wanted all of Israel gone, as does his successor Mahmoud Abbas.)

Update:

Did we say "giddy?"

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post says the press on Obama is showing "a giddy sense of boosterism." Will honest reporting every return?

Continue reading "ISRAEL FACES THE OBAMA PERIL"

It has just been revealed that aides to Obama were meeting with Hamas representatives before the election. The Obama people told the Hamas group to keep their meetings secret since disclosure might affect the election. Obama got 78% of the American Jewish vote.

Obama's public position was that he would not meet with Hamas until they renounced terrorism and recognized Israel's right to exist. Of course, Hamas has done neither.

John Hinderaker of Power Line is deeply concerned.

It's hard to disagree with this assessment by David Hornik of Pajamas Media:

A clash between Obama's public, anodyne, mainstream statements and behind-the-scenes activities of a different nature would confirm the fears of those concerned about Obama's history of association with radical people and ideologies.

It would have been nice to know about the cordial relationship between Obama's advisers and Hamas during the campaign. But, of course, it was an article of faith in the mainstream media that Obama's many unsavory and radical associations were somehow irrelevant to any expectation as to how he would govern as President.

Democratic policies promoting mortgage loans to those who couldn't afford them created the housing boom and bubble and its collapse that was at the heart of the worldwide financial panic that has cost American savers hundreds of billions of dollars of losses in their life savings. There was a chance to head off disaster in 2005 and 2006 but Democrats in the Senate led by Harry Reid and supported by Barack Obama and other Senate Democrats blocked the Republican bill to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. House Democrats led by Pelosi and Barney Frank backed them up. The Democrats who pushed such policies deserve to be rejected. They sought to "spread the wealth" and instead impoverished tens of millions.

However, the most important decision on November 4th is electing our Commander-in-chief.

These are dangerous times, it is a dangerous world. Many don't want to think about it, but Islamic radicals are waging a world war against Western Civilzation targeting first and foremost the United States. Battlefronts are in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Lebanon, Israel, Nigeria, across all of Western Europe and in the United States, Canada and Australia. In some places it's active warfare, in others, terrorism, in others, subversion of our values and way of life to replace them with Islamic law. And Russia and China are building military strength while Iran seeks nuclear warheads for its long-range missiles.

Only John McCain is qualified and fit for the job of Commander-in-Chief. 69% of our military polled agree. McCain loves America and will do his utmost to protect it. Obama finds it difficult to say a good word about America. He constantly disparages America, it's bad and it needs to be changed.

Not only is Obama unqualified, he denies the importance of these threats, has pledged to slash our military to help fund new welfare programs and seems to believe appeasement and a weakened military will bring us peace in our time, just as Neville Chamberlain did in 1939. What prize would he offer up to Iran as Chamberlain offered (and gave) the Sudetenland to Hitler? No wonder Israelis polled prefer McCain by a wide margin.

To be sure, in Obama's circle of America-haters, Jeremiah Wright and Willam (Bill) Ayers rank high. Wright's rantings of "God Damn America" still ring in our ears. And how can one forget Ayers' bombings of the Capitol and the Pentagon and his (fortunately) failed plans to explode a nail bomb at a Fort Dix dance?

But are there other Obama America-haters as despicable? Some say yes.

Rashid Khalidi was a spokesman for Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Liberation Organization at a time when the U.S. had designated it a terrorist organization. PLO members killed the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Khalidi left Lebanon and wound up in Chicago sharing many dinners with Obama and his wife. Obama toasted him as he left Chicago to head up the most anti-Israeli Middle East Studies program in America at Columbia. Obama steered money from a foundation he chaired to an organization headed by Khalidi that in turn sent money off to the terrorist PLO.

It's no wonder that a recent poll in Israel had McCain favored overwhelmingly 46% to 34%. The Middle East expert and Israeli author Caroline Glick has called Obama's rise "frightening."

Check this Power Lilne report out.

Update: Guess what? Andy McCarthy does some digging and finds out that Ayers and Khalidi were best friends. Khalidi and Obama were buddies. And Ayers and Obama together handed out tens of millions of foundation money to radical groups, including $75,000 to Khalidi's rabidly anti-Israel foundation, which in turn funneled money to the PLO. All these fine folks gathered together for a farewell party for Khalidi who was off to head Columbia's anti-Israeli Middle East Studies department. Obama was reported to have offered a toast, as did many others. Imagine what the remarks about Israel were! Actually, one doesn't have to imagine: The Obama-backing Los Angeles Times has a tape of the reception. But the Times refuses to release it. Journalism's highest standards at work. Where's the outrage?

The Middle East's most perceptive observer Caroline Glick looks at an Obama presidency from the point of view of an American and an Israeli and shudders.

Some main points:

In speaking as he did, Biden essentially acknowledged three things. First, he recognized that Obama projects an image of weakness and naiveté internationally that invites America's adversaries to challenge him.

Second, by stating that if Obama is tested a crisis will ensue, Biden made clear that Obama will fail the tests he is handed as a newly inaugurated president. After all, when an able leader is tested, he acts wisely and secures his nation's interests while averting a crisis.

Finally, Biden made clear that Obama's failure will be widely noted, and hence, "it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

IN LIGHT of Biden's dire warning about his running-mate, the central question that Americans ought to be asking themselves is whether or not Biden is correct. Is it true that Obama projects a posture of weakness and incompetence internationally and is it likely that this posture reflects reality?

Unfortunately, it appears that Biden knows exactly what he is talking about.

Obama has called for slashing the US military budget, cutting back the US's anti-missile programs and scaling back drastically the US nuclear arsenal. That is, although Obama has claimed that he will never take the option of the use of force off the table, by refusing to strengthen the US military which he perceives as weak, he is making certain that the US military option is ineffectual.

Iran will likely be the first US adversary to test Obama. And Obama will have no idea what to do. While Obama has stated repeatedly that a nuclear-armed Iran is a "game-changer," Obama's own rule book for international relations has no relevance for dealing with Iran's game.

Obama views international relations as a creature of American will. If America is nice to others, they will be nice to America. But the fact of the matter is that regimes like Iran hate the US regardless of how it behaves. The only question with strategic relevance for Washington is whether the Iranians also fear the US. And Obama has given them no reason to fear him. To the contrary, he has given them reason to believe that under his leadership, the mullahs can defeat America.

AMERICA STANDS to elect its new president in times of nearly unprecedented dangers. Iran is on the threshold of nuclear weapons. Thanks to the Bush administration, North Korea now feels free to vastly expand its nuclear proliferation activities. Oil rich states like Venezuela, Russia and Iran recognize that with global oil prices decreasing, now is the time to strike before they are impoverished. And the international economic turmoil will cause Western nations to recoil from international confrontations and so embolden rogue states to attack their interests.

Is Obama the man for this job? Clearly not.

Read the entire article, which includes comparisons to Israel's situation and the hugely increased existential risk and danger to Israel from an Obama presidency.

Testing Obama's mettle

Oct. 24, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

In a week and a half, American voters will elect the next US president. Their decision will impact the entire world.

Democratic nominee Senator Barack Obama now enjoys a significant lead in the polls against Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. For McCain to win, a lot of Obama supporters will need to reassess their choice for president. This week, Obama's running-mate Senator Joseph Biden gave Obama supporters a good reason to change their minds.

The many statements by Obama and his campaign suggesting his relationship with terrorist bombers and unrepentant active communist revolutionaries Ayers and Dohrn was just that of two families in the same neighborhood are simply lies. Obama has worked very hard to disguise his long and close relationship with Ayers, which may well have stretched back into the 1980s when both were in New York, attending Columbia University and spending time with fellow Marxist radicals.

William Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical leftist group that from 1969 to the mid-'70s conducted several bombings of government institutions. Ayers served on the group's Central Committee. The Weather Underground bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, military installations, and police stations. In all, seven people were killed. In 1981, two police officers and one security guard were killed by members of the Weather Underground in the robbery of a Brinks truck in New York state. After Ayers married Bernardine Dohrn, also a member of the Weather Underground (who was described by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as "the most dangerous woman in America"), they settled in Chicago.

Fact: Bernardine Dohrn had this to say in response to the Charles Manson murders, which she romanticized as a revolutionary coup at a Flint, Mich., Weatherman War Council in December 1969: "Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim's stomach! Wild!" Dohrn later stated this was meant as a "joke."

Fact: In 1969, Bernardine Dohrn and other members of the Weather Underground traveled to Cuba and met with representatives of the North Vietnam and Cuban governments.

Fact: In 1970, Ayers explained what the Weather Underground was all about: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home; kill your parents; that's where it's really at."

Fact: Both Ayers and Dohrn lived on the run from authorities from approximately 1970 to 1980. The case against Ayers and Dohrn was dropped due to illegal wiretaps and prosecutor misconduct. The FBI was conducting "black bag jobs," or illegal break-ins, in their pursuit of the Weather Underground. Some of these black bag jobs were authorized by Mark Felt, later to be known as "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame.

Fact: Shortly after turning themselves in, Dohrn and Ayers became legal guardians of the son of former members of the Weather Underground, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, after they were convicted of murder for their roles in a 1981 armored car robbery. Two police officers and one Brinks guard were killed in the robbery.

Fact: Starting in the mid-'90s, Ayers and Obama served on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge Project. They served together on the board for approximately seven years. Ayers and Obama were tasked with the oversight of a $100 million budget. The board, under Obama's chairmanship the Annenberg project gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bill Ayers' projects promoting alternative schools.

["Anderson Cooper 360," CNN, Oct. 6, 2008]

Fact: From 1984 to 1988, Bernardine Dohrn was employed by the prestigious Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. She was hired by Howard Trienens, the head of the firm at that time and someone who knew Thomas G. Ayers, Bill's father. However, Dohrn's criminal record has prevented her from being admitted to either the New York or Illinois bar. "Dohrn didn't get a [law] license because she's stubborn . . . She wouldn't say she's sorry."

[Chicago Tribune, May 18, 2008]

Footnote: Michelle Robinson (now Obama) went to work at Sidley Austin in 1988; did she meet and get to know Bernadine Dohrn? Barack Obama showed up at Sidley Austin as a summer associate in the summer of 1989. Why did Barack Obama apply for and get a summer job at Sidley Austin after his first year of law school? Was this an Ayers connection as well, but with the son William, not the father Thomas? There is some speculation that Obama and William Ayers met in New York City where both attended Columbia University. Ayers is a self-confessed radical, a "small "c" communist he calls himself and Obama made it clear in his book Dreams from My Father that he sought out Marxist socialists and black power advocates while in college. So the odds that the two Marxist socialists crossed paths at Columbia were high. Did their meeting propel Obama to Chicago after his one-year stint in the financial world to carry out with Ayers their socialist revolution by radicalizing school children?

Fact: In 1991, Dohrn was hired by Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, as an adjunct professor of law, with the title "clinical associate professor of law." Thomas Ayers was a long-time member of the Northwestern Board of Trustees, and was named life trustee in 1987.

[Source: Feb. 7, 2008 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC]

Fact: In 1994, Dohrn was quoted on her political beliefs: "I still see myself as a radical."

[Chepesiuk, Ron, "Sixties Radicals, Then and Now: Candid Conversations
With Those Who Shaped the Era," McFarland & Company, Inc]

Fact: In 1995, Obama's first autobiography is released. In it he writes of his years in college, associating with radicals. "To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets . . . When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated."

[Obama, Barack, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,
Random House, Pages 100-101]

Footnote: While at Columbia he got to know Edward Said, the notorious anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian head of Columbia's anti-Israel Middle East Studies program (now headed by Obama friend and supporter former PLO spokeman Rashid Khalidi). He apparently maintained a reasonably close relationship with Said (from 1983) because in 1998 at a dinner honoring Said in Chicago Obama, then an obscure Illinois state senator, and his wife were seated next to the great man and his wife.

Fact: In 1995, Ayers and Dorn opened their Chicago Hyde Park home to host a political coming-out party for Barack Obama, when he ran for the state Senate. Someone who was at this party for Obama wrote that Ayers and Dohrn were launching him, "introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread."

[Politico.com, Feb. 22, 2008]

Footnote: It is nonsense for anyone to assert that that fundraiser in the Ayers home was the first meeting of Obama and Ayers. Clearly, for the "sliced bread" comparison to be made, a prior relationship had to be have been established. See Andrew McCarthy's report.

Fact: From 1999-2002, Ayers and Obama served together on a second charitable foundation, The Woods Fund. While at the Woods Fund, they gave money to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church, which Obama attended, and a children and family center, where Dohrn worked.

["Anderson Cooper 360," CNN, Oct. 6, 2008]

Fact: In a 1996 interview, one year after hosting Barack Obama's coming-out party in their home, Ayers and Dohrn were profiled by "The NewsHour" on PBS. Ayers was asked, "Looking back, would you do it differently now?" He stated, "I doubt it . . . probably not."

Fact: Question to Obama in 2000, during his run for the U.S. Congress: "What is your argument, based on the one term that you served in the [Illinois] Senate so far, that makes you prepared for the Congress?"
Answer: "I would argue . . . my experience previous to elected office equips me for the job . . . I've chaired major philanthropic efforts in the city, like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that gave $50 million to prompt school reform efforts throughout the city."

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-45A6I-N5I&NR=1]

Fact: In 2001, Ayers made a $200 campaign contribution to Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama.

Fact: In promoting his book "Fugitive Days" Ayers told The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." When asked if he would "do it all again," he said, "I don't want to discount the possibility."

Fact: Just days after 9/11, Ayers was quoted in The New York Times Magazine: "This society is not a just and decent place . . . We're living in a country where the election was stolen, and we didn't have a mass uprising. It's incredible. We're all asleep. The pundits all pat themselves on the back: 'God, what a great country'. . . It makes me want to puke."

Fact: In 2001, Ayers posed for a photograph in Chicago magazine, accompanying a profile of his book, which shows him stepping on an American flag.

[www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2001/No-Regrets/]

Fact: In a 2001 profile, a writer quotes Ayers as saying, "I think there will be another mass political movement, because I believe that the kind of injustice that is built into our world will not go quietly into the night."

[Chicago magazine, August 2001 online edition]

Fact: In his 2001 memoir, "Fugitive Days," Ayers writes of the time he took part in bombing the Pentagon. "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue; the birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."

Footnote: In 2001, Obama was working together together with Ayers in two charitable organizations which were handing out money to radicalize school children and fund the voter registration fraud specialist ACORN. Do you really think Chicago politician and Ayers colleague Obama didn't see these press reports?

Fact: In 2008, Ayers again denies he was ever a terrorist, writing on his blog: "The September 11 attacks were acts of terrorism, and the U.S. bombings in Viet Nam for a decade were acts of terrorism. Terrorism is never justifiable, even in a just cause . . . I've never advocated terrorism, never participated in it, never defended it. The U.S. government, by contrast, does it routinely and defends the use of it in its own cause consistently."

[billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/page/2/]

Fact: In the 2008 presidential race, Obama downplays his association with Ayers, saying that he is just a "guy who lives in my neighborhood."

[The Washington Post, Oct. 7, 2008]

Fact: David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, attempted to downplay the Obama/Ayers relationship: "Bill Ayers lives in his neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school . . . They're certainly friendly; they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together."

[Politico.com, Ben Smith, Feb. 26, 2008]

Fact: Obama's children never attended school with the Ayers children. Obama's children are ages 9 and 6. Ayers and Dohrn have two adult children, and they adopted a son from their fellow Weather Underground terrorist Kathy Boudin. That son was born in 1981.

Fact: Chicago's Hyde Park residents speak of Obama and Ayers' relationship. "Neighbors said it's only natural that Obama would know Ayers and Dohrn, who often open their homes for gatherings filled with lively discussions about politics, arts, and social issues. Obama and his wife 'are part of our neighborhood and part of our social circle,' said Elizabeth Chandler, a neighbor of Ayers'."

[ChicagoTribune.com, April 17, 2008]

Joan Swirsky is a nurse who became an author. She has her point of view and she expresses it forcefully. Her website tells you something about her. However, her recent article explaining why, as a Jew, she would never vote for Obama has created somewhat of a stir.

Russian emigré to Israel Natan Sharanksy (author of the best-selling "The Case for Democracy" also recently said he could not support Obama; he was a "risk" to Israel. As for McCain, Sharanksy said he was "a person of principle" who has "absolutely a great record of supporting Israel."

Swirsky lists many reasons why she, as a Jewish American, cannot and will not vote for Barack Obama. Her stinging conclusion:

I ask: Does Obama have any friends, associates, mentors or advisors who don’t hate America and Israel? If so, e-mail me. I haven’t found one yet!

Any voter – whether Democrat, Republican or Independent – should find Obama’s far-left voting record and silly-putty changes-o- mind on crucial policy issues reason enough not to vote for him in November.

Certainly, every American Jew should consider his ascension to the presidency a virtual death knell for Israel.

If the corrupt ACORN group he so heartily supported in the Chicago machine – where he “made his bones” – doesn’t rig the election with the votes of millions of dead people and convicts, as they have so many times in the past. I trust the electorate will do the right thing.

The right thing, of course, would be vote against Obama, a candidate who has been infested with far more odious things than fleas, specifically the treacherous anti-American, anti-Israel advice that has clearly shaped his worldview.

Obama would make America less safe, and an unsafe America – which is the last, best hope for the survival of the Jews and Israel – would destroy the twin pillars of steadfast Judeo-Christian values. Destroying both nations is the goal of the Jihadists that Obama would sooner chat with than confront.

Read the whole thing here. We don't think she would mind.

Continue reading "WHY THIS JEW (AND THAT JEW, TOO) WILL NEVER VOTE FOR OBAMA"

In a radio interview September 30th, Sarah Palin was asked this question:

HH: Governor, let’s close with some foreign affairs. It is reported that you had an Israeli flag in your governor’s office. You wore an Israeli flag pin occasionally. One, is that true? And two, why your support for Israel?

SP: Well, it is true, and I ran into Shimon Peres recently at a meeting, and he even pointed that out. He said I saw a picture of you on the internet, and you had an Israeli flag in your state government office, and I said I sure do. You know, my heart is with you. And all of those trials and tribulations throughout history that Israel has gone through, not only does that allow me to want to support that country, but Israel is our strongest and most important ally in the Middle East. And they are a democratic country who I believe deserves our support, and I know that John McCain believes as I do that Israel is our friend, and we need to be there to support them. They are there for us, and I do love that country.

Caroline Glick, the foremost analyst of Middle Eastern affairs, is a citizen of Israel and of the United States. She writes regularly for the Jerusalem Post and is a fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC.

American Jewish organizations had organized a rally in New York for September 22nd to protest the appearance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, at the United Nations. The reason is obvious: Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for the elimination of Israel and is believed by all those in the West who are sane that he is intent on developing nuclear weapons to use, in the first instance, against Israel.

Invited guests who had accepted were Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. It is reported that the Obama campaign pressured Clinton to withdraw, which she did. Pressure was immediately put on the organizers of the event to disinvite Palin so the event wouldn’t appear to be “partisan.”

Caroline Glick in no uncertain terms denounced the event organizers and Democratic Jews for putting their desire for a Democratic president to be elected ahead of the survival of the State of Israel. As she put it, "Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world."

Glick's disgust and outrage is evident in this excerpt:

LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing American women's unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and God out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are than savage conservatives.

Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending, God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari'a legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds and their hearts.

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.

They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week it came to that.

Click here to read the full Glick denunciation of Democratic Jews putting partisanship ahead of the survival of Israel.

Click here to read the address that Sarah Palin would have given had she not been disinvited.

Glick has already made it clear that Israel should not trust Obama.

Israel's UN Ambasador's final speech before the UN Security Council has urgent meaning for Americans.

Ambassador Gillerman said the world is not dealing with a clash of civilizations, but rather with a "clash of civilization, in the singular" - within Islam.

Most of the horror, most of the bloodshed, most of the killings, and most of the violence… is sadly and tragically within Islam. Not only are the majority of terrorists Muslim, but also the majority of terror victims around the world.

The Ambassador deplored the "eerie silence of the Muslim world" in the face of terrorism, and expressed his hope to see a Muslim leader emerge who would say "enough is enough, what are we doing?"

The Islam that seems to breed violence, hatred and death is increasingly a threat in Europe and the United States. What Israel has experienced can happen in America unless the nation takes effective steps to prevent it. As Gillerman said,

Imagine a bulldozer cruising down Fifth Avenue or the Champs Elysees and crushing cars.

Sitting in a coffee house in Paris, Moscow and New York, costs a few dollars. Sitting in a coffee house in Jerusalem could cost many lives.

McCain recognizes the threat. Strong leadership is needed to thwart Islamic supremacism's threat to our way of life, wherever it appears, be it in Jerusalem, Baghdad, Kabul, London or New York.

For a report on Gillerman's speech, click here.

The West's premier analyst of the Middle East Caroline Glick, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, was in the audience when President Bush gave his address to Israel's Knesset pledging American support for Israel in the face of Iran's threat to wipe it off the map.

In particular, the President said this:

'Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided. We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Glick had this to say:

‘To Israeli ears, Bush's words were uncontroversial. Israel is beset by enemies who daily call for its physical annihilation and while doing so, build and support terror forces who attack Israel. For most Israelis, the notion that these enemies can be appeased is absurd and deeply offensive.’

‘From an Israeli vantage point then, it was shocking to see that immediately after Bush stepped down from the rostrum, Obama and his Democratic supporters began pillorying him for his remarks. Most distressing is what Obama's reaction said about the Democratic presidential hopeful.’

‘OBAMA'S RESPONSE to Bush's speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama.

She went on to observe:

‘LIKE HIS life story, Obama's policies are not based on facts, but on his attitude. And his attitude, like Mencken's in the 1930s, is based on a naïve and arrogant belief that the worst thing that can happen is to have someone who talks about evil in the White House.

Peter Osnos, Obama's former publisher told the Times that Obama's meteoric rise to the pinnacle of politics is due in large part to his gift as a storyteller. In his words, "It's almost all based on these two books, two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one's life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it's a stunning fact."

Indeed, it is stunning. And frightening. It says that in a world in which evil men are combining and preparing for war and genocide, good men are preparing for pleasant chitchat with their foes because they have come to prefer attitude to substance. It is a world in which indignation can be summoned as readily (and perhaps more easily) for partisan political attacks as for delusional dictators’ open preparation for genocide. And it is a world in which it is more important to discuss "healing" emotional wounds than devising policies capable of coping with an ever-more-dangerous international coalition of murderers.

That Glick was shocked and dismayed at Obama's naivete, self-absorption and indifference to reality is to state the obvious. Indeed, "frightening." To read her entire article, click here.