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Seminal Posts by Ted Belman
The UN acts in violation of International Law while claiming to uphold it (13329)
Can the UN impose a solution on Israel? (31094)
Long standing US Policy on Jerusalem is anti-Israel and pro-Arab. (16840)
The "peace process" is not dead (4238)
The Church planted the seeds of the Holocaust (50934)
The conspiracy to shrink Israel (44017)
"The UN Charter is a war document, not a peace document." (28608)
Trump calls Muslim migration “the all-time biggest Trojan Horse”. (60213)
Since when did the Palestinians become entitled to a state? (52963)
The 100 year betrayal of Israel by the West (43022)
Tiny Qatar casts a giant shadow. (9259)
The Historical Jesus  (50286)
International law and the State of Israel (27615)
The truth about UNRWA (25739)
Saudi Arabia and the Peace Process (19309)
Israel Should Declare Three Nos (25032)
The West should make amends to the Jewish people for this historical injustice. (22555)
Two-State Solution or Jordan Option? Your choice. (17502)
Israel is the legal owner of all lands west of the Jordan R. (38402)
In praise of Israpundit and Ted Belman (8773)
The US and the UK cannot be trusted. (11839)
In the International Arena there is no Rule of Law, only the Rule of Power (8732)
Current Posts
February 4, 2013

Inappropriate Use of the Fourth Geneva Convention  

Eli E. Hertz

Background

The language of Article 49 was crafted in the wake of World War II and the Nazi occupation – an occupation that led to a war of aggression in which Nazi Germany attacked its neighbors with impunity, committing a host of atrocities against civilian populations, including deportation and displacement of local populations in occupied Europe. Millions were sent to forced labor camps and those of particular ethnic origin, most notably the Jews, were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. The drafters of Article 49 were concerned with preventing future genocide against humanity.
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February 4, 2013 | 9:51 pm | 9 Comments »

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Despite the denials, a major explosion occurred at Fordow  

Earlier today I googled for anything I could find on the explosion. It has been out of the news for last 5 days. But when last mentioned, the following denied that the explosion took place; Iran, White House, IAEA. Though London Times reported that Israel officials somewhat confirmed the blast. There was also an article reporting that satellite photos showed no rescue activity the day after the alleged blast. Only WND stood by the story and added to it. I trust them. Ted Belman

NORTH KOREANS AMONG 40 DEAD AT IRAN NUKE PLANT

by REZA KAHLILI, World Net Daily 2013-02-04

The explosions at Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility Jan. 21, killed at least 40 people, including two North Koreans, WND learned Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Islamic regime is labeling WND a “mouthpiece of the CIA” for its exclusive reporting of the blasts.

The bodies of 11 of the technicians and scientists are beyond recognition, a member of the security forces at the facility told WND. According to this source, 60 others are in critical condition and have been transferred to the central base of the 27th Division of Mohammad Rassool Allah, which is equipped with a modern medical facility and is between Tehran and Qom.
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February 4, 2013 | 4:18 pm | 5 Comments »

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The West’s Shameful Demonization of Israel  

Thornton is spot-on. His comparison’s are telling. His knowledge of the record is remarkable. His support for Israel unwavering. Ted Belman

By Bruce Thornton, FPM

After watching Chuck Hagel’s embarrassing performance in his confirmation hearings, I can’t decide if he’s a bigot, a paleocon isolationist, or just plain stupid. I suspect the latter, given his statement, “If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do.” More significant is the fact that he was nominated at all, given his record of gaffes, his use of anti-Semitic tropes like “Jewish lobby” (used only once “on the record,” he assures us!), his indulgence of the genocidal Iranian regime and its nuclear arms ambitions, and his endorsement of American guilt and global retreat.
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February 4, 2013 | 11:23 am | 4 Comments »

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Bayit Yahudi’s agenda for coalition talks  

Bayit Yehudi, Likud Talks ‘Friendly’

MK Uri Ariel: the main topic in coalition talks was hareidi enlistment.

By Gil Ronen

The coalition negotiation teams of Bayit Yehudi and Likud / Yisrael Beytenu concluded their first session of talks Sunday afternoon.

Sources inside the negotiations said that the meeting was conducted in a good and friendly atmosphere.

The teams discussed the matter known as “equality in sharing the burden” – which refers mostly to enlistment of hareidi men into the IDF or national service.
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February 4, 2013 | 10:28 am | Comments »

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How water became a weapon in Arab-Israeli conflict  

By YOCHANAN VISSER, JPOST

The conflict between the Palestinians and Israel is fought on many fronts nowadays. This is the result of a change in strategy decided on by the current Palestinian Authority leadership in 2008. A 2008 report by The Palestinian Strategy Group, which advises the PA, called “Regaining the Initiative” formed the basis of this strategic overhaul in PA politics vis-à-vis Israel.

According to the report, the negotiation route standard between 1988 and 2008 was to be shut down indefinitely and terror (termed “resistance” by the PSG) would be replaced by a more sophisticated “threat power.” This would entail the refusal to cooperate and the push for boycotts.
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February 4, 2013 | 6:46 am | 1 Comment »

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February 3, 2013

State Dept. Recruits Muslim Foreign Service Officers at Jihadist Conf.  

Corruption Chronicles, the Judicial Watch Blog

The Obama administration is covertly recruiting Muslims to work at the State Department as Foreign Service officers representing the United States in one of 265 American embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions worldwide.

It appears to be part of the administration’s Muslim outreach effort, which includes a variety of controversial moves. Among them Homeland Security meetings with extremist Islamic organizations, sending an America-bashing mosque leader (Feisal Abdul Rauf) who blames U.S. foreign policy for the 9/11 attacks on a Middle Eastern outreach mission and revamping the way federal agents are trained to combat terrorism by eliminating all materials that shed a negative light on Muslims.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even signed a special order to allow the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties long banned them from the U.S.
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February 3, 2013 | 10:30 pm | 7 Comments »

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UNHRC report on settlements is totally erroneous  

Briefing on the Problematic UN Human Rights Council Report on Israeli Settlements

Daniel Meyerowitz-Katz

Earlier today, this blog noted that Israel has been boycotting the United Nations Human Rights Council due to the Council’s habitual singling-out of Israel for unfair, unwarranted, and utterly biased criticism.

A report on settlements in the West Bank, the commission of which spurred Israel’s decision to cease cooperation with the Council, has just been released. Sadly, the Report entirely vindicates Israel’s position on the matter. Its three authors began by determining Israel’s guilt, then conducted an investigation into why it was, in fact, guilty. The research was lazy at best – with numerous unreferenced assertions and many very basic factual errors.
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February 3, 2013 | 9:56 pm | 2 Comments »

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The Transparency Law reveals massive funding to political advocacy NGOs  

NGO MONITOR

Jerusalem – Today, Jerusalem-based research institute NGO Monitor released a report analyzing submissions made by NGOs to the Israeli registrar of non-profits in Israel in 2012, as legislated under the NGO Transparency law. The law mandates that NGOs file quarterly reports about support received from foreign government bodies. NGOs receive funding from two primary channels, either via direct funding from foreign governments, or indirectly via third parties such as foundations, and humanitarian, development, and religious NGOs.

The reports for 2012 show that a total amount of 34,355,579 NIS annually is being provided to 30 NGOs from a number of foreign governments. NGO Monitor highlights in our analysis the use of foreign government money to fund political advocacy NGOs based in Israel. As of January 27, 2013, 13 political advocacy NGOs reported grants from foreign governments totaling 21,671,115 NIS, these groups include B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, Gisha, and Yesh Din. A number of other political advocacy NGOs that regularly receive funding from foreign governments did not submit quarterly reports in 2012 for reasons unknown.
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February 3, 2013 | 6:45 pm | 8 Comments »

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Why is Netanyahu nor supportive of the settlement enterprise  

Caroline Glick recently wrote About the Next Israeli Government.

This is the most important take away:

    At the same time, Netanyahu’s assault on his own political camp, starting with Likud and moving to Naftali Bennett and the Bayit Yehudi indicate that at a minimum, Netanyahu will do nothing to advance Israel’s position vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He is unlikely to permit significant new construction in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria or significant Jewish building in Jerusalem. He is unlikely to undertake any democratic reforms in the Justice Ministry or the court system. He is unlikely to take any steps to boost Israel’s rights in Judea and Samaria or to undermine the terrorist-led Palestinian Authority.

I totally agree. Now if she would only explain Bibi’s thinking.

This is exactly what he did during the last four years.

February 3, 2013 | 4:38 pm | 2 Comments »

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Obama green light for Israel to strike Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah military links  

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis February 2, 2013, 4:57 PM (GMT+02:00) Tags:

Obama approves Israeli action after Iran ducks out of nuclear diplomacy
The air raid over the Jamraya military complex near Damascus Wednesday, Jan. 30, attributed to Israel by Western sources was Israeli’s first assault on the Syrian-Hizballah military compact forged between Bashar Assad and Hassan Nasrallah.

That was the real strategic import of the operation, which took place with the approval of US President Barack Obama, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.
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February 3, 2013 | 6:40 am | 3 Comments »

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February 2, 2013

Senate Republicans Arm the Brotherhood  

CAN THE SENATORS BE SO DUMB?

Nearly two-thirds of them voted to give weapons to the Egyptian government.

By Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO

The F-16 — headed to the Muslim Brotherhood

I’m done grumbling about how President Obama is empowering America’s enemies. After all, it is not just Obama. When it comes to abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, Republicans are right there with him.

Not all of them, of course. This week, for example, Senator Rand Paul proposed an amendment that would have prohibited our government from transferring F-16 aircraft and Abrams tanks to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government. This lunatic plan is not just an Obama initiative. It is also a GOP brainstorm — of a piece with 2011’s Libya debacle, in which Republican leaders cheered as Obama, upon consulting with the Arab League, ignored Congress and levied war on behalf of the very jihadists who, quite predictably, have since raided Qaddafi’s arsenal, besieged northern Africa, and massacred Americans in Benghazi.
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February 2, 2013 | 3:13 pm | 12 Comments »

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How did so many Western analysts get Egypt’s Islamist movement so wrong?  

Foreign Policy 

Think Again: The Muslim Brotherhood

BY ERIC TRAGER | JANUARY 28, 2013

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/130128_MuslimBrotherhood.JPG

“They’re democrats.”

Don’t kid yourself. Long before the Jan. 25 revolution that ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, many academics and policymakers argued that his main adversary — the Muslim Brotherhood — had made its peace with democracy. This was based on the assumption that, since the Muslim Brotherhood participated in virtually every election under Mubarak, it was committed to the rule of the people as a matter of principle. 

It was also based on what typically sympathetic Western researchers heard from Muslim Brotherhood leaders, and what I heard as well. “Democracy isshura,” Brotherhood Deputy Supreme Guide Khairat al-Shater told me during a March 2011 interview, referring to the Islamic jurisprudential tool of “consultation.” The implication was that the Brotherhood accepted a political system that encouraged open debate. Read more…

February 2, 2013 | 11:27 am | 6 Comments »

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Bombing the Syrian Reactor: The Untold Story  

Abrams shares with us the decision making process in all its complexities. Rice was against allowing Israel to bomb. She wanted to weaken Israel so it would be more pliable in the peace process. Gates wanted to get brutal:

    Gates also argued for preventing Israel from bombing the reactor and urged putting the whole relationship between the United States and Israel on the line. His language recalled the “agonizing reappraisal” of relations Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, had threatened for Europe in 1953 if the Europeans failed to take certain defense measures: They simply had to do what we demanded or there would be hell to pay.

And surprisingly, when Bush advised Olmert that the US wouldn’t bomb and neither should Israel, Olmert stood his ground.

By Elliott Abrams, COMMENTARY — February 2013

As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regime’s chemical weapons and whether Syria’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after Assad’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on Syria’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not.
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February 2, 2013 | 11:04 am | 6 Comments »

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Hillel’s BDS Battle and Antisemitism  

By Jonathan S. Tobin, COMMENTARY

To listen to the arguments put forward by Harvard students to create what they call an “open Hillel,” their fight with the national Hillel group is about the right of young Jews to free association. The students say that rules mandating that the organization not partner with groups that support BDS — the anti-Zionist campaign that aims to boycott, disinvest and sanction the State of Israel — or host speakers that advocate such measures are unfair and limit their ability to have dialogue with Palestinians. To the thinking of the Progressive Jewish Alliance that is, according to the Forward, organizing the campaign against Hillel, such rules “stifle discourse” and discriminate against those who disagree with Israeli policies.
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February 2, 2013 | 10:32 am | 6 Comments »

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February 1, 2013

Lapid is a chameleon  

Caveat emptor: The illusion of a political Center

By MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST

Into they Fray: Time and time again the Israeli voter has been hoodwinked into voting for allegedly centrist parties only to have them evaporate later.

This [remark by Yair Lapid] showed a kind of crude contempt, mixed with a whiff of racism, for those whom Lapid does not consider part of his political camp. Zoabi was duly elected to the Knesset by Israeli voters who supported her party.

    – “Yair Lapid’s mental block,” Haaretz editorial, January 25

It seems that neither the protests nor the vote for Yair Lapid were ever about “social justice,” in the sense of narrowing the gap between the upper and lower deciles. On the contrary: If Lapid… finds a way to get money from others and bring it to his electorate, as they hope he will, then the income gap… will only grow wider

    – “The wealthy minions of Yair Lapid,” – Haaretz, January 27

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February 1, 2013 | 11:11 pm | 9 Comments »

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Why Today’s American Foreign Policy is So UnRealistic  

By Barry Rubin, RUBIN REPORTS

One of the main features of this misguided contemporary foreign policy debate is the corruption of the concept of Realism. In some ways, the school called Realism was simply a way of teaching principles long regarded as obvious in Europe to Americans, whose idealism about the world had both good and bad implications. Both isolationism and the idea that America’s mission is to spread democracy are typical non-Realist patterns of how American exceptionalism plays into foreign policy thinking. That’s why the concepts that made up Realism were introduced to the United States by Hans Morgenthau, a refugee from Germany, and most clearly practiced in office by Henry Kissinger, ditto.
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February 1, 2013 | 4:14 pm | 3 Comments »

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Lapid is getting too big for his britches  

Netanyahu feels negotiations with Yesh Atid are starting off on the wrong foot because of Lapid’s many demands.

By Elad Benari, INN

Coalition negotiations have not yet formally started, but Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is reportedly already losing his patience with Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid, Channel 2 News reported on Thursday.

The report quoted associates of Netanyahu as having said the Prime Minister believes Lapid is working towards becoming Prime Minister himself in the future and is thus making it difficult for Netanyahu by setting impossible demands on the negotiations.

“This is not how a person who wants to be the senior coalition partner behaves,” the associates said, according to Channel 2, adding that Lapid wants to be the one to determine the government’s basic principles and the number of ministers that will be appointed, prerogatives of the Prime Minister’s party.
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February 1, 2013 | 2:42 pm | 4 Comments »

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Either way, Lapid is not telling the truth.  

By Ted Belman

I was beginning tp think highly of Lapid.  No more.

Excerpts of his interview with TIME were released Thursday.  He is quoted as saying:

    “you make peace with foes, not with friends.”

    “Israelis convinced themselves that there is no use in talking to the Palestinians because they’re not to be trusted. I think they’re wrong. I think the Palestinians are not to be trusted and this is exactly why we should talk to them,”
    Read more…

February 1, 2013 | 10:12 am | 9 Comments »

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