Questions for the European Left  

by Pilar Rahola

Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris , Barcelona ?

Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection?

Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam?

Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan ?
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September 21, 2013 | 10:21 pm | 7 Comments »

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‘Hitler’s Reign Of Terror,’ First U.S. Anti-Nazi Film, Found In Belgian Film Archive Cinematheque  

75 YEAR OLD U.S. FILM CRITICAL OF HITLER IS FOUND IN BELGIAN ARCHIVE

By Robert-Jan Bartunek

BRUSSELS, Sept 20 (Reuters) – The first U.S. film to warn about the dangers of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime has been found in a Brussels film archive, having lain unnoticed for some 75 years.”Hitler’s Reign of Terror” was produced by Cornelius Vanderbilt, an heir to the wealthy American industrialist family, who visited Germany as Hitler was voted into power in 1933.

The film revolves around footage that Vanderbilt shot and smuggled out, showing Nazi party rallies, book-burnings and the ransacking of Jewish shops.At its premiere in New York in 1934, the film was a big success, said Bruno Mestdagh, head of the digital collections at the Belgian film archive Cinematheque.
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September 21, 2013 | 7:11 pm | Comments »

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A sneak peek at the IDF units who would be key in future Iran strike  

By YAAKOV LAPPIN, JPOST

The secretive units deep in the maze of an Israel Air Force base. A commander of the IAF’s airborne electronic warfare unit.

Nestled deep in the maze of an Israel Air Force base, secretive units form an essential component in any Israeli air strike in enemy territory with air defenses.

Indeed, they would have been an inseparable part of recent air force strikes in Syria, attributed to Israel by foreign media reports, to stop the transfer of sophisticated missiles and air defenses to Hezbollah.

No potential future air campaign in Iran, against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, would be possible without the units.
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September 21, 2013 | 6:16 pm | 2 Comments »

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That didn’t take long  

Moscow pulls away from Kerry-Lavrov deal on Syrian chemical disarmament. Assad gets to keep his WMD

DEBKA

Russian leaders finally picked apart the Kerry-Lavrov understanding for Syria’s chemical disarmament – less than a week after it was unveiled in Geneva last Saturday. Thursday, Sept. 19, they slapped down a string of coordinated obstructions. One knockout blow came from President Vladimir Putin, who commented dryly that he could not be 100 percent certain that the plan for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons would succeed. “But everything we have seen so far in recent days gives us confidence that this will happen. I hope so,” he said.

To dispel that hope, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu followed up with a denial of any plans to destroy the Syrian chemical stocks on Russian soil.
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September 21, 2013 | 4:28 pm | 9 Comments »

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Report: IDF seizes EU diplomats’ West Bank aid supply  

This is a Reuters Report. Mostly it reports on what the EU and Palestinians have to say. Little attention is focussed on the context or what Israel has to say. The JPOST report is more balanced. The Times of Israel report is the best. Ted Belman

Reuters reporter sees soldiers throw sound grenades at group of EU diplomats, aid workers, locals in West Bank. IDF reportedly seizes aid supply

Reuters, YNET

Israeli soldiers seized on Friday a truck full of tents and emergency aid that European diplomats had been trying to deliver to Palestinianswhose homes were demolished this week, Reuters reported.

French diplomat dragged out of truck (Photo: Reuters)
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September 21, 2013 | 9:41 am | 6 Comments »

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Column one: Syria, Iran and the North Korean model  

Like North Korea, Iran will negotiate until it is ready to vacate its signature on the NPT and test its first nuclear weapon.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Did US President Barack Obama score a great victory for the United States by concluding a deal with Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons or has he caused irreparable harm to the US’s reputation and international position? By what standard can we judge his actions when the results will only be known next year? To summarize where things now stand, last Saturday US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov concluded an agreement regarding Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. The agreement requires Syria to provide full details on the size and locations of all of its chemical weapons by this Saturday. It requires international inspectors to go to Syria beginning in November, and to destroy or remove Syria’s chemical weapons from the country by June 2014.
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September 20, 2013 | 8:32 pm | 11 Comments »

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Obama’s plan on Syria will fail for the same reason the Oslo Accord did.  

By BRET STEPHENS, WSJ, SEPT 6/13

Forty years ago Israel blundered disastrously on the eve of the Yom Kippur War because its military leaders had a concept about the circumstances in which it might be attacked, and the concept was wrong.

Twenty years ago, Israel blundered disastrously by signing the Oslo Accord, because its political leaders had a concept about what it would take to get peace, and the concept was wrong.

Beware of policy makers bearing concepts.

That’s worth pondering as the Obama administration peddles another concept— that a deal with Russia will lead to disarmament by Syria—as a reason to call off military strikes. But agreements are not achievements, wishes are not facts, and theory is not reality.
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September 20, 2013 | 7:54 pm | 5 Comments »

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Into the fray: Like a man in a bucket: Failed philanthropy (cont.)  

Trying to win the strategic ideological battle with the Left using the current methods is like a man standing in a bucket, trying to lift himself up by the handle. And just as futile.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

Philanthropy is not working as well as it should, and almost everyone knows it. The causes that receive the most donations are not necessarily the ones that make the greatest impact. Personal whims and preferences of donors determine where dollars flow more than proven effectiveness.

– Eric Friedman, “Why Philanthropy Needs Reinventing,” Philanthropy Journal, August 26, 2013.

I am aware that I am recycling the same introductory excerpt that appeared in my previous column – but I feel this is justified since, as will soon become clear, it is still entirely relevant to this week’s piece.
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September 20, 2013 | 7:41 pm | 2 Comments »

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The Left and the Jihad  

FRED HALLIDAY , OPEN DEMOCRACY, 6 April 2011

HALLIDAY REFINED THESE IDEAS IN SUBSEQUENT ARTICLES

The approaching fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States highlights an issue much in evidence in the world today, but one that receives too little historically-informed and critical analysis: the relationship between militant Islamic groups and the left.

It is evident that the attacks, and others before and since on US and allied forces around the world, have won the Islamist groups responsible considerable sympathy far beyond the Muslim world, including among those vehemently opposed from a variety of ideological perspectives to the principal manifestations of its power. It is striking, however, that – beyond such often visceral reactions – there are signs of a far more developed and politically articulated accommodation in many parts of the world between Islamism as a political force and many groups of the left. Read more…

September 20, 2013 | 5:25 pm | 2 Comments »

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UN nuclear assembly votes down Arab push targeting Israel  

By REUTERS, JPOST

IAEA member states reject Arab-backed proposal singling out Israel to join Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; countries vote 51-43 against resolution at annual gathering of UN nuclear body.

VIENNA – Member states of the UN nuclear agency on Friday rejected an Iranian-backed Arab bid to single out Israel for criticism over its assumed atomic arsenal, in a diplomatic victory for Western powers that opposed the initiative.

The debate and vote at an annual meeting of the 159-nation International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) underlined divisions at a time when the United States and its allies are hoping for progress in a separate, decade-old nuclear dispute with Iran.
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September 20, 2013 | 3:28 pm | 3 Comments »

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‘When they become PM, they realize how utterly dependent Israel is on the US’  

Eitan Haber, Yitzhak Rabin’s closest aide, on the 20 years since that White House handshake, why the process failed, and his sense of forgiveness for Netanyahu, who has ‘gone much further’ toward the Palestinians than Rabin ever did

By David Horowitz, TOI

Exactly 20 years after a clearly hesitant Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with Yasser Arafat to start the Oslo peace process, and almost 18 years after Rabin was gunned down by an Israeli Jewish right-wing extremist, Eitan Haber, Rabin’s closest aide, says he personally never believed Arafat was a partner and isn’t sure that Rabin did either. And yet, Haber insists, Rabin thought he could reach a permanent accord with Arafat because he, Rabin, would lead the effort, and he, Rabin, could attain the goal.

Haber issues a series of such complicated observations during an interview marking Oslo’s 20th anniversary. He also says that Israel benefited immensely from the Oslo process, even though it did not lead to the hoped-for end-of-conflict accord. He says the second intifada started because of then opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000, not because of Arafat. But “to anyone who would say the opposite, I would say, he is also correct.” Read more…

September 20, 2013 | 12:40 pm | 11 Comments »

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Brand: “”Palestinians” have no right to political self determination under International Law.”  

By Wallace Edward Brand, JD, (The writer is an alumnus of Harvard and UCLA.), INN

In 1920, at San Remo, the Jewish People were recognized by the Principal Allied War Powers in WWI as owning the political rights to Palestine

The competing Arab claims also submitted at the ParisPeace talks were implicitly denied in Palestine, but recognized in the rest of the Middle East, i.e. Syria & Mesopotamia and, indirectly, later in Transjordan.

The Allies had conquered this area from the Ottoman Empire in a defensive war.  Their ruling was based on the historic association of the Jewish People with Palestine (the name given to the area by the Romans)  in which there had been a continuous uninterrupted Jewish presence for 3,700 years.
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September 20, 2013 | 10:01 am | 6 Comments »

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Two Hundred Million Europeans See Israel as Nazi State  

Political Islam is the latest totalitarian ideology chosen by Europe to move towards liquidating the Jewish people – and it is working.

By Giulio Meotti, INN

The fundamental Zionist idea about anti-Semitism was that once a Jewish State was realized, the problem of anti-Semitism in Paris, Berlin and Rome would be solved. Since Jews would have their own homeland, they could no longer be persecuted as religious and national strangers. But this neat packet of reasoning has turned out to be incorrect.

The Belgian Ministry of Education funds an organization, the Committee for Remebrance Education, which provides teachers with materials for their history lessons. One of the materials used is the cartoon “Never Again, Over Again”, which equates the treatment of the Palestinian Arabs by the Israelis today with the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis in the 40s.
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September 20, 2013 | 9:55 am | 44 Comments »

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Israel pushes world not to be deceived by Rouhani as he takes ‘charm offensive’ to US airways  

HERB KEINON, JPOST

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Photo: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post

Jerusalem urged the world on Thursday not to be fooled by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s smiles and to intensify sanctions against the regime until he takes concrete steps toward dismantling Tehran’s nuclear program.

“One should not be taken in by Rouhani’s deceptive words,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. “The same Rouhani boasted in the past how he deceived the international community with nuclear talks, even as Iran was continuing with its nuclear program.” Read more…

September 20, 2013 | 9:37 am | 3 Comments »

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SYRIA (TODAY) AND ‘PALESTINE’ (TOMORROW) II  

Louis Rene Beres, JP

As I noted last week, what is currently taking place in Syria closely resembles what we can ultimately expect in a future “Palestine.”

In principle, and contrary to his beleaguered country’s overriding legal rights and security interests, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a Palestinian state back in June 2009. Yet Mr. Netanyahu, more or less prudently, conditioned this concessionary agreement on prior Palestinian “demilitarization.” More specifically, said the prime minister: “In any peace agreement, the territory under Palestinian control must be disarmed, with solid security guarantees for Israel.”

In fact and in law, this published expectation offers no effective obstacle to Palestinian statehood, or to any subsequent Palestinian war against Israel.
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September 20, 2013 | 7:39 am | Comments »

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Disconnect Israel’s Interests from America’s  

Shamir’s blunder was even greater than Golda Meir’s in the Yom Kippur War.

By: Moshe Feiglin, JP

I do not understand the Israelis who are eager for a U.S. attack on Syria. They are confused, willing to be at the receiving end of missiles and, down the road, the object of tremendous diplomatic pressure – to “prove” America’s balanced approach to the Middle East – just to preserve the U.S. hegemony in our region. These people suffer from a blurred sense of identity. It diffuses their ability to identify an Israeli interest that is independent from, and not contingent upon, an American interest. I have the utmost respect for the U.S., but Israel must be able to look in the mirror without seeing stars and stripes.

Yitzhak Shamir, of blessed memory, was perhaps the best Israeli leader since David Ben-Gurion. Nonetheless, Shamir made a serious strategic mistake under circumstances similar to those we are currently facing. Five years ago, I wrote a column explaining why his actions were so detrimental to Israel. That 2008 column (see below) provides fresh insight into Israel’s current position. (The column was translated from the Hebrew version, which appeared in Makor Rishon.) * * *
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September 20, 2013 | 5:57 am | 4 Comments »

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Ruthie Blum favours victory over peace  

WATCH

Steve Ganot and Ruthie Blum go head to head on Oslo. Steve maintains that the goal of Zionism has not changed: a Jewish, democratic state at peace with its neighbors • Ruthie says the goal should not be peace, but victory.

Ruthie is so right.

September 19, 2013 | 8:56 pm | 5 Comments »

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Obama waives ban on arming terrorists to allow aid to Syrian jihadists  

I believe that Obama is assuaging the GCC anger at the failure to bomb Syria. Instead he is arming the islamists backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Ted Belman

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/09/obama-waives-ban-on-arming-terrorists-to-allow-aid-to-syrian-jihadists.html

And thereby admits that he knows they’re jihad terrorists, contrary to all of Kerry’s blather about “moderates,” and wants to arm them anyway.

The U.S. is now officially on the side of al-Qaeda.

“Obama waives ban on arming terrorists to allow aid to Syrian opposition,” by Joel Gehrke for theWashington Examiner, September 16 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
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September 19, 2013 | 8:35 pm | 14 Comments »

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