Homecoming

Two years later, and dead, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev are finally home after being kidnapped by Hizballah.

Israel launched a pitiful war attempt in response to their abduction, a war which ended up worsening Israel’s image in the world while strengthening and emboldening their Islamist enemy in Lebanon.  And the release of 5 still-kicking terrorists in exchange for Goldwasser’s and Regev’s remains will only serve to embolden Hizballah further, along with the rest of her enemies.

A millenium-and-a-half of subservience must have altered the DNA of today’s Jewish people (at least the ones with high seats in Israel’s government), as the leaders in the land of this once-proud people is pushing the nation and populace into acts and attitudes of head-hanging penitence and appeasement.

It can only get worse from here.

H/T Jihad Watch.

Update: Make that dead, and mutilated

“the verification process yesterday was very slow, because, if we thought the enemy was cruel to the living and the dead, we were surprised, when we opened the caskets, to discover just how cruel. And I’ll leave it at that.”

Also, Dr. Bulldog reminds that these men were captured and verified ALIVE, which means that Hizballah murdered these men, ostensibly prisoners of war, and are thus guilty (TRULY guilty…not like the accusations tossed at Israel…Israel returned living people) of war crimes.

Reports of Snow Overblown

AFP reports today:

Two rockets fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip slammed into southern Israel on Tuesday, despite an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and the Islamist movement which entered its sixth day.

One of the rockets struck the courtyard of a house in the hard-hit town of Sderot, causing some damage, and another struck a field outside town, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Edmund - you owe me a Coke. 

 

Snowstorm in Hell today

Israel and Hamas reach Gaza truce deal

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Israel and the Islamist Hamas movement have agreed to begin a Gaza truce in two days, Egyptian mediators said on Tuesday after months of negotiations to try to halt bloodshed in and around the impoverished territory.

“We have succeeded in securing the agreement of the two sides to a complete cessation of hostilities and military action from Thursday,” Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki told AFP in Cairo.

“This is a reciprocal and simultaneous period of calm,” Zaki added.

Should Satan’s minion’s break out the wool blankets?

Maybe not.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for a year, said it would respect the truce timetable but warned that it remained free to respond to any attacks on its militants before the ceasefire comes into force.

“Hamas will adhere to the timetable which was set by Egypt but it is our right to respond to any Israeli aggression before its implementation,” said spokesman Fawzi Barhum.

[...]

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev would not confirm an agreement, insisting that the Jewish state required “not just words but actions.”

“If indeed there is a cessation of terrorist attacks, if indeed there is an end to the military build-up in Gaza, if indeed there is movement on the issue of Gilad Shalit, this indeed will be a new reality.”

We Shall See….

Oba-moshiach

Many are probably aware of the curiously strong pro-Israel speech offered by Obama to AIPAC yesterday. This is the same guy who put Brzezinski and Powers on his team, member of the fanatic Wright’s church? He’s now going to be the Savior and Protector of Israel?

Who’s skeptical (besides me, that is)?

Doug Ross is. From his blog:

Now compare and contrast:

Obama at AIPAC:

…I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat — from Gaza to Tehran… First, we must approve the foreign aid request for 2009. Going forward, we can enhance our cooperation on missile defense. We should export military equipment to our ally Israel under the same guidelines as NATO…Lie. Obama opposes all missile defense technology.

Obama at AIPAC:

There is no greater threat to Israel — or to the peace and stability of the region — than Iran… while I don’t want to strike too partisan a note here today, I do want to address some willful mischaracterizations of my positions.Lie. Barack Obama told a crowd of 75,000 last month that Iran is not a threat.

The rest is here, and it’s not any prettier.

Nod: Astute Bloggers

UPDATE: LYING BASTARD Alert™, courtesy of Jihad Watch:

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama did not rule out Palestinian sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem when he called for Israel’s capital to remain “undivided,” his campaign told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

[...]

“Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” Obama declared Wednesday, to rousing applause from the 7,000-plus attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.

But a campaign adviser clarified Thursday that Obama believes “Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties” as part of “an agreement that they both can live with.”

“Two principles should apply to any outcome,” which the adviser gave as: “Jerusalem remains Israel’s capital and it’s not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967.”

He refused, however, to rule out other configurations, such as the city also serving as the capital of a Palestinian state or Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods.

[...]

“It [the "clarification"] means he used the term inappropriately, possibly [possibly??] to mislead strong supporters of Israel that he supports something he doesn’t really believe,”

Apparently when Obama was talking about CHANGE all this time, he’s been referring to CHANGING his position every day or so.  THAT’s the only change I can believe in coming from his direction.

Who is Listening?

As Olmert, Livni, et. al. consider giving away Jerusalem, the Golan, Judea & Samaria (at the insistence of, among others, Bush, Rice, and the disgusting, gutless U.N.), please recall the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.  Meant as a peace overture (land for peace, right?), it has been anything but.

Gazan Arabs see Israel’s withdrawal as a victory for them, proving that their tactics of armed resistance terrorism WORK.

WND reported a few days ago on this very mindset - Israeli concessions do not deter Arab violence, but rather encourage more violence.

JERUSALEM – Terrorists in the Gaza Strip are rejoicing at an Israeli decision today to evacuate troops stationed at a major Gaza-Israel border crossing following repeated Palestinian attack against Israel’s side of the border station.
 
“This retreat proves the Israeli army is a paper tiger. What we proved to the world in 2005 (when Israel evacuated its Jewish communities from the Gaza Strip) we are proving once again. We are reaching a new step and proving our resistance and our rockets are working,” Muhammad Abdel-Al, spokesman and a leader of the Hamas-allied Popular Resistance Committees terror group, told WND.

See?  I’m not making this up.  It’s straight from the horse’s, um, mouth.

“Just as the Zionists are running from the border, they will also run from Ashkelon, Ashdod, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa and Tel Aviv … . We will keep firing until every Jew climbs back into the sh–ty hole he came from,” said Abdel-Al, whose group took responsibility for scores of recent attacks against the Israeli border.
 
Abu Ahmed, a leader of the Islamic Jihad terror group in Gaza, called Israel’s troop evacuation a “victory.” 
 
“We feel proud and determined,” he said. “Israelis start to withdraw from bases that are well-fortified because the Palestinian resistance proved that we are able to reach them at any point even if it is very fortified. We are proving once again that the myth of the unbeatable Israeli army is irrelevant,” Abu Ahmed told WND.

Hello?  Is anyone paying attention to this?  Perhaps it’s just saber-rattling.  They don’t really intend to drive the Jews back to the “shitty hole” they came from…it’s just rhetoric.  Right?

Sure.  Ask the residents of Sderot if these maniacs mean what they’re saying.  But then, no one in the Olmert government is listening to them either.

People have such short memories.  Israel just turned 60.  Recall, 60 years ago, the Partition Plan.  Arabs would now have Judea/Samaria, Gaza, AND MORE, had they accepted the Plan.  But while the jubilant Jews danced in the streets, the Arabs geared up for war. 

Gentlepeople, listen…they do not want a “Palestinian State”.  They never did - if they had, the ‘48 war would not have happened.  Two states for two peoples MY ASS.  The Arabs were not content with the emirate of Transjordan (an Arab state in Palestine - go figure), nor with the Partition Plan.  They will only be content with the elimination of Israel.  Who is naive enough to believe that giving them now what they refused then is going to have a positive effect?

Everyone…all together now…

APPEASEMENT DOES NOT WORK.

History Lesson

On the cusp of the 60th anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence from England, it’s appropriate to remember the perfidy of which England was guilty during the Mandate period…the period during which she undertook the solemn responsibility of doing everything necessary to promote a Jewish National Home, in accordance with League of Nations and United Nations policies. Had England actually fulfilled this pledge, today’s “Palestinian Problem” may well not have ever come to be.

Nod: American Thinker (excerpted)

Britain conquered Palestine from the Turks in 1917-18. First Her Majesty’s Government promised Palestine to the Jews in the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and then again in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922, in which it solemnly accepted as “a sacred trust of civilization” to “be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home.” Then it repudiated that promise in a “White Paper” of 1939, which announced her intention to allow only 75,000 Jewish immigrants into Palestine over the next five years (this as World War II and the Holocaust was just beginning) and after that to allow no further Jewish immigration without Arab consent. The White Paper also placed severe restrictions on the purchase of land by Jews. And it promised the Palestinian Arabs that Palestine would become an independent Arab state within ten years. All this was in flagrant violations of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine; the League of Nations Mandates Commission noted this, and refused to ratify the White Paper. Britain implemented it anyway — to the extent of refusing to admit to Palestine 750 Jews who had managed to escape Nazi Europe in a leaky boat while the Holocaust was in full swing. The Jews were forced to turn back into the human-shark-infested waters of the Black Sea, where their leaky crate was torpedoed, and all but one of them killed.

Other Jews who managed to reach the shores of Palestine were deported by the British Navy to the remote island of Mauritius and kept in a detention camp, where many of them died of disease before finally being released after the end of the war. This British measure was strangely reminiscent of an earlier Nazi plan to deport the Jews of Europe to Madagascar, a larger island in the Indian Ocean not far from Mauritius. Still the British detained other Jews who managed to board ships bound for Palestine for years in camps on Cyprus. This was the way His Majesty’s Government kept its promises to the Jews.

Having already promised Palestine to both the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs, Britain after World War II promised it again, this time to Syria! Secret British correspondence, recently discovered by an Israeli scholar, not in the archives of Britain but in those of France, which intercepted British and Syrian communications through espionage, reveals that the British promised to hand over Palestine to Syria in return for making Britain Syria’s “protector” to replace France. The British even assisted the Syrians to carry out a massacre of French civilians and soldiers in order to force France out of Syria.

Britain encouraged the Arab states to form an “Arab League” as World War II came to an end. A British representative sat in on the League’s meetings and raised no objections as the Arab states planned to invade Palestine — even though Palestine was still under British control!

In 1947, Britain referred Palestine to the United Nations and asked it to find a solution to the conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine that Britain had done so much to foster through its contradictory promises to both sides. When the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution recommending that Palestine be partitioned into separate and independent Jewish and Arab states, His Majesty’s Government, through its representative in the United Nations, solemnly promised to help implement the resolution, even though it had not voted for it.

Instead, the British sabotaged the resolution in every way possible. It refused even to allow the commission that had been appointed by the United Nations General Assembly to oversee implementation of the partition resolution into the country. On the other hand, it permitted the Arab states to send troops into Palestine under the guise of “volunteers,” even before the British administration had completed its withdrawal from the country. It stood aside and did nothing to preserve order as war raged throughout the country and thousands of both Jews and Arabs were killed, even though it nominally retained responsibility for the administration of Palestine until May 15, 1948. Worst of all, it withdrew its administration without appointing or recognizing any government, Jewish or Arab, to take its place, or organizing any kind of successor administration. In an unprecedented act in the history of colonialism, the British simply withdrew, leaving the country that they had misgoverned for thirty years in total chaos. One British author has called this bizarre act an “experiment in anarchy.” Another has characterized British policy in Palestine as “divide and lose.”

Britain’s two-faced machinations did not prevent Israel from winning the independence that the Jews had been promised, but only at the cost of thousands of lives, and with no help whatsoever from the promise-bearing great power. However, Israel has had to live in a constant state of siege from neighbors who remain at war with her, and who still refuse to allow her the “secure and recognized borders” enjoyed by all other sovereign states in the world.

The Palestinian Arabs never got the state that Britain promised them. Syria never “received” Palestine in accordance with Britain’s secret promise, either. First incited to go to war for Palestine, and then left to shift for themselves by their forked-tongued British ‘friends,” the Palestinian and Syrian Arabs are still fighting Israel for the land that Britain once promised each of them.

Yom HaShoah

by Rabbi Yehudah Prero [excerpted from here]

Shoah is the Hebrew word for “whirlwind.” It is the term used to described the conflagration that swept up six million Jewish souls between 1938 and 1945. A war was waged against the Jews in which unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated against a defenseless people. Men and women, young and old alike, were butchered at the hands of the accursed Nazis, may their name be eradicated for all time. Every year, on Yom HaShoah, we remember the martyrs who sanctified the name of G-d in the camps, the ghettos, and in the gas chambers.

However, we find that many Rabbis, survivers [sic] of the Holocaust, do not refer to it as the “Shoah”. Rather, they use the term “Churban Europa.” In fact, they commemorate the destruction not on Yom HaShoah, but rather on Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av. Why do they do this?

While Hitler may have been the last great anti-Semite to plot to destroy us, he was hardly the first. As we read each Purim, Haman actually came just as close to genocide, but through a series of miracles no mass murder took place. Over the intervening millenia, thousands and millions have perished during two conquests of Israel and the destruction of two Holy Temples, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Chmielnicki Cossack Pogroms - a series of one destruction (Churban) after another that have befallen the Jewish people.

Therefore it is important that we recognize that events over the last 2000 years, though much further from our recollection, are just as much a part of the tragic element of Jewish history. When the Second Temple was destroyed, only swords were available - those who wished to murder us did not have modern tools of mass destruction at their disposal - and yet they still killed hundreds of thousands. In addition, that destruction reduced us from a sovereign nation to a scattered and lonely people, setting the stage for the other tragedies that followed. We still await restoration of a rebuilt Jerusalem, the City of Peace, may it come speedily in our days. None of this reduces the mind-bending tragedy of 50 years ago - but nor should we be guilty of forgetting those other tragedies that came before.

May the merits of six million martyrs rise before G-d, and may their merits - and those of the survivors - succeed in bringing an end to our long dispersion. May we see the building of the Third Temple, speedily in our days, Amen.

Important Information

Much is made of all that the Arabs of Palestine lost when they voluntarily left (the vast majority) or were pushed out of Israel in ‘48 and ‘67.  Comparitively little is mentioned of all that was lost by the Jews who were either expelled or forced to leave their homes (e.g. Egypt’s delegate told the UN General Assembly in 1947: “The lives of one million Jews in Muslim countries would be jeopardized by partition.”) in Arab lands. 

A study has been published highlighting these losses at the JCPA site.  I urge a look.

Some excerpts.

The exact number of Palestinians who fled Israel from November 1947 to December 1948 will never be known. The estimates range from about 400,000 to one million. The most plausible is some 550,000…The result is that new refugees [from the 1967 war] probably amounted to about 100,000. Thus, the net total of [Arab] refugees created by both wars was some 650,000.

Before 1948, there were slightly more than one million Jews in the Middle East and North Africa outside the area that became Israel, including the 40,000 in the West Bank and Gaza.[6] The total number fell by half in the years following the 1948 war and then declined to some 100,000 following the 1967 conflict. The Jewish population fell further in the ensuing years and by 2007 amounted to just 15,000 to 35,000. The bulk of those remaining reside in Iran. Thus roughly one million Jews became refugees because of actions of Middle Eastern and North African countries.

When the two refugee exoduses are compared, it can be concluded with a high degree of likelihood that the number of Jewish refugees was some 50 percent greater than that of Palestinian refugees.

The total of 125 million Palestinian pounds [amount of lost assets among Palestinian Arab refugees] amounts to $350 million in 1948. This is equal to some $650 per 1948-1949 refugee.  To this must be added the asset losses for those additional 100,000 who fled in the aftermath of the 1967 war and the 40,000 IDPs. The latter are included even though they often were given new property and/or compensation.[10] At a realistic $700 per capita that would amount to another $100 million in lost Palestinian assets. Thus the total of assets lost by Palestinians is some $450 million. In 2007 prices this would amount to $3.9 billion.

There also are no precise global figures of the assets lost by the Jewish refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. Using a similar methodology, the minimal amount [of Jewish losses] would be $700 million at period prices and $6 billion at 2007 prices.

The bottom line, however, is that no matter what methodology is used the losses of Jewish refugees from Middle Eastern and North African countries are almost certainly at least 50 percent higher than those of Palestinian refugees.

It is noted that since actual records from the time are scarce, this study is to some degree speculative.  However, it is known that there were nearly twice as many Jewish refugees as Arab refugees, even if the final number is not completely accurate, the proportion is still credible.

Getting it Right

Once in a while, our Congress does it.  It did yesterday.

H. Res. 185

In the House of Representatives, U. S.,

April 1, 2008.

Whereas armed conflicts in the Middle East have created refugee populations numbering in the millions and comprised of peoples from many ethnic, religious, and national backgrounds;

Whereas Jews have lived mostly as a minority in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf region for more than 2,500 years;

Protection

Here’s a little plug for the 2nd Amendment - a right that shall not be infringed.  Story from Israel National News.

PA Terrorist Shot Dead By Quick-Thinking Civilian

A Palestinian Authority terrorist was shot dead late Monday afternoon as he attempted to stab two people at a bus stop near Shiloh, 20 miles north of Jerusalem. The armed civilian who put an end to the attack is a school principal from the town of Itamar.

After 5:30 p.m. on Monday afternoon, an Arab man approached the Shiloh Junction bus stop and began talking to two people, an adult and a teenager, who were waiting there.

…After a short conversation in broken English and Hebrew, which aroused the suspicion of the two, the 16-year-old young man decided to move away, behind a concrete barrier at the bus stop while the older man placed his hand on his personal weapon.

At that point, the attacker suddenly pulled out a six-inch knife and tried to stab the adult Israeli. Because of his fear of getting entangled with the law for using his weapon, the would-be victim waited until the last second to draw his personal weapon. Hillel Maeir described that as the terrorist’s knife was coming down toward the Jewish man, he managed to cock his pistol and shoot the terrorist all in the same motion of drawing his weapon.

The bullet knocked the Arab off his feet and wounded him. When the terrorist then reached into his shirt, the civilian interpreted the motion as a possible attempt to detonate an explosive vest, and he shot again, this time killing his attacker. It later turned out that the PA resident was reaching for a second, concealed knife.

Think of this when November comes around.

35. Do you support state legislation to:

• ban the manufacture, sale, and possession of handguns?  Yes. (Obama’s response on a questionnaire - with handwritten notes on it.)

An Open Letter

To the mainstream media outlets, and even some not-so-mainstream (e.g. Prime Time America).

I am consistently thoroughly disheartened by your coverage of the Arab-Israel conflict.  Why?  Primarily because of your insistence on the continued use of the misnomer “Palestinian” to identify the Arabs in Judea/Samaria and Gaza (both of which are continually, erroneously, referred to as “Occupied Palestinian Territory”).  Your perpetuation of this falsehood is a disservice to everyone involved: to the (Israeli) Jews, who are the rightful - Biblically and legally - holders of the land, to the “Palestinian” Arabs who have been force-fed this propaganda device for 40 years, and to the listeners and readers of your articles.

To start, I believe a few quotes are apt. 

First, according to former PLO Executive Committee member Zahir Muhsein:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

Another, from Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937:

“There is no such country as Palestine…There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us.”

And another, from Syrian dictator Hafez Assad to the PLO leader Yassir Arafat:

“Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria.”

Additionally, popular misconceptions to the contrary notwithstanding, Israel has not “occupied” Judea/Samaria or Gaza.  Had the Arab nations not attacked Israel upon her founding, those territories would have remained Israel’s as part of the Mandatory “JEWISH Palestine.”  A nation can not occupy territory that is rightfully its own.  Jordan illegally occupied and illegally annexed Judea and Samaria.  Egypt illegally occupied Gaza.  Israel’s recapturing these areas in 1967 was not, and is not, an occupation.

Also, it would be appropriate for your reporters and commentators to note occasionally that had multitudes of Arabs not attacked Israel in 1948 and 1967, those residing in Gaza and Judea/Samaria would now have the full rights of citizenship that are enjoyed currently by the more than one million Arabs within Israel proper…rights that exceed those of most of their brethren in the Arab world.

While it is not my intention to attempt to discredit your reporting of the unpleasant situation of those who are under the authority of the Olmert or Abbas regimes (let alone that of Haniyeh), which I realize is usually the actual point of the stories, you should know that by mixing falsehoods into your narratives, your points are overshadowed by your inaccuracies.

Threats

 First, Egypt threatened Hamas with broken legs if they penetrated the border again.

Now they’ve upped the ante.

Egypt Warns Hamas: ‘We Will Shoot if Border is Breached’

by Hana Levi Julian

(IsraelNN.com) Egypt officials say they are informing a visiting delegation from the Hamas terrorist organization that police will open fire on anyone who tries to cross the border at Rafah in southern Gaza.

The Associated Press reports that Egyptian intelligence officials said they had received information that terrorists are again planning to force open the border.

The whole world (almost) condemns Israel for militarily protecting its border.  Where’s the howling against Egypt?