Parts 1 & 2

By Debra Rae, NewsWithViews.com

The Jewish Problem Examined

A popular children’s story features a little locomotive put to the test in front of a great, heavy train. As it neared the top of the grade, it reduced speed, but kept saying, “I—think—I—can, I—think—I—can.” Drawing on bravery, it reached the top and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself by saying, “I thought I could, I thought I could.”

Like the little engine that could, Israel is the little nation that could. The history of Israel involves unprecedented obstacles, including forty years of wilderness wanderings; seemingly endless warfare, blood baths (Masada), brutal captivity and enslavement (Assyria, Babylon, Egypt); displacement and persecution; rabid anti-Semitism, pogroms (Russia), Intifadas and riots; plundering, and genocide. When, in 1348, the “Black Death” killed them, among others, Jews were blamed for the Bubonic plague.[1] Read more…

By: Gamal Abuel Hassan for Al-Monitor. April 4, 2013

Israel’s Jewish Demography Defies Conventions
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
“Israel Hayom”, April 5, 2013, http://bit.ly/Zcl9Dc

On March 21, 2013, President Obama stated at the Jerusalem Convention Center: “Given the demographics west of the Jordan River, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine.”

President Obama was misinformed by his advisors.  The suggestion that Israel should concede Jewish geography, in order to secure Jewish demography, ignores demographic trends in Israel, in the Muslim world in general and west of the Jordan River in particular. These trends reaffirm that time is working in favor of Israel’s Jewish demography. Read more…

It is difficult to know which is more troubling: Whether Obama actually meant what he said in his speech to students in Jerusalem; or whether he didn’t.

The impact of the coming rise of Israel as a regional energy superpower plainly heralds significant and imminent changes in the Middle East, and beyond

Israel: gas and oil in abundance

By Att’y Steven M. Goldberg, Arutz Sheva

The writer is National Vice Chairman of the Zionist Organization of America, Vice President of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Los Angeles. He practices law in Los Angeles.

“The Jew bows before no man, only G-d.” Menachem Begin

Is there any doubt that the State of Israel owes its birth to the Irgun Zvai Leumi? Although the Jewish establishment in the United States and Palestine lobbied, pleaded and cajoled the international powers to be so kind as to allow the establishment of a Jewish homeland while the flames of the Holocaust consumed six million Jews, it required the direct, aggressive and sinewy actions of the freedom fighters of the Irgun to convince the British to abandon its occupation of Eretz Israel.

As the “respectable” leaders wrung their hands, It was the Irgun, as well as Lehi, who responded to the brutality of the British measure for measure, whipping for whipping, hanging for hanging, and set the stage for the creation of the Jewish State.
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In 1887 Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, said this about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a Dictatorship.”

Read more…

Yahoo News

This is the incredible moment an elephant came to the rescue of one of its babies being attacked by a pack of hyenas. The elephant is seen charging at the hyenas to ward them off its offspring. The photos were captured by American photographer Jayesh Mehta, 47, in the Savuti region of the Chobe National Park in Botswana.

By Michael Ordman

Jerusalem’s Decreasing Isolation. Israel in the World

by Efraim Inbar
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2013, pp. 27-38 (view PDF)

http://www.meforum.org/3483/israel-isolation

The bad news is clear. Israel’s right to exist is questioned by many, and its ancient and present capital, Jerusalem, is unrecognized by all but a few states. Israeli leaders are sometimes compared to leaders of Nazi Germany, and Israeli actions against the Palestinians are described as Nazi-like policies. Moreover, the Israelis are accused of engaging in South African apartheid policies toward the Palestinians and the country’s Arab minority. Opponents and critics portray the Jewish state as the world’s worst violator of human rights, United Nations resolutions, and international law.[1]

While European guilt over its colonialist past facilitates the acceptance of the Palestinian-as-victim narrative and while the latent, traditional anti-Semitism that culminated in the Holocaust has never been eliminated, Israel is still not quite the pariah of Europe as some think. In May 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu (third from left) joined hands in Paris with leaders (left to right) Andrus Ansip, Estonia; Felipe Larrain, Chile; Silvio Berlusconi, Italy; Borut Pahor, Slovenia, and Angel Gurría, secretary general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, when Israel was formally admitted into the exclusive organization.

Read more…