By Walter Russell Mead, THE AMERICAN INTEREST

The repercussions from 9/11/12—the day the roof fell in on the Obama administration’s Middle East policy—continue to rumble across the diplomatic and political landscapes. Before that day, much of the country’s political and media establishment had been studiously ignoring signs of trouble in the Middle East or, when problems were too serious to ignore, studiously refraining from drawing conclusions about the overall state of US policy in the region.

The anti-American riots that have been rocking the Muslim world since 9/11 have shaken the establishment out of its complacency. Increasingly, even those who sympathize with the basic elements of the administration’s Middle East policy are connecting the dots. What they are seeing isn’t pretty. It’s not just that the US remains widely disliked and distrusted in the region. It’s not just that the radicals and the jihadis have demonstrated more political sophistication and a greater ability to organize and strike than expected and that the struggle against radical terror looks longer lasting and more dangerous than thought; it’s that the strategic underpinnings of the administration’s Middle East policy seem to be falling apart. A series of crises is sweeping through the region, and the US does not—at least not yet—seem to have a clue what to do. Read more…

Restore the three sinews of American influence: our economic strength, our military strength and the strength of our values.

By MITT ROMNEY, WSJ

Disturbing developments are sweeping across the greater Middle East. In Syria, tens of thousands of innocent people have been slaughtered. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has come to power, and the country’s peace treaty with Israel hangs in the balance. In Libya, our ambassador was murdered in a terrorist attack. U.S. embassies throughout the region have been stormed in violent protests. And in Iran, the ayatollahs continue to move full tilt toward nuclear-weapons capability, all the while promising to annihilate Israel.
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By MACKENZIE WEINGER, POLITICO

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on Friday said the American people “have flat-out been lied to” by President Barack Obama and his administration about the violence in Libya — and this cover-up is worse than Richard Nixon’s scandal because “nobody died in Watergate.”

“Let’s just get blunt. No way to sugar coat this — We’ve been lied to. We have flat-out been lied to. They know they’ve lied,” Huckabee told Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.” “It’s as if airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center and somebody says, ‘those were just accidents. The planes veered off course.’ Everybody with two eyes and IQ above plant life understands that what happened in Egypt and what happened in Libya was not some spontaneous reaction to a stupid 13-minute video on YouTube. It was a planned, coordinated, orchestrated attack led by terrorists.”
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The writer analyzes a culture that is diametrically opposed to what we are taught.
Ron Jager, INN.com

“Call me Ishmael”, is the opening sentence that opens the novel “Moby Dick” authored by Herman Melville. Ishmael, who is telling the story of Moby Dick, recounts that he is sailing to sea out of a sense of alienation and cultural inadequacy.

Ishmael describes the behavior of Captain Ahab who is so relentless in his obsession to kill the great white whale, that he is willing to endanger the entire ship, all of his sailors, just to kill the great white whale. The name Ishmael, the son of the Patriarch Abraham from the old Testament as well as the Koran symbolizes more than anything the sense of being rejected and being scorned my one’s peer’s and by one’s civilization.
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Website adjusts major surveys by ‘removing Democratic Party bias’

by Jerome R. CorsiE

Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff reporter.

NEW YORK – Arguing that most of the major polls reported by establishment media are “skewed” in favor of the Democratic Party and incumbent Barack Obama, a website contends that a true gauge of the presidential race, based on more realistic models, shows Republican challenger Mitt Romney leading by an average of nearly eight points.

In its daily readjustment of the polling data, UnskewedPoll.com also produces a table showing the spread in President Obama’s approval/disapproval ratio is an average of 8.8 percent more disapproval, as of Monday. Read more…

By Abe Katsman

At first, it was just a trickle, a misguided throw-away line here and there, easily ignored. Then it started picking up momentum, showing up in one Israeli commentary after another. And now, it is conventional wisdom in the Israeli press and public that the U.S. election is already over, that polls show President Obama’s re-election is inevitable, and that Republican Mitt Romney might as well throw in the towel now.

Of course, this is nonsense. It is based on the most superficial reading of the most superficial polls. In fact, as described below, while poll results are all over the map, the most historically accurate pollsters consider the race tied.
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Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary/Contentions..

The key phrase in Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly today didn’t mention Israel. He had promised Jewish leaders he would recognize Jewish rights to the land that is disputed by Israelis and Palestinians. He moved a little closer to such recognition with his mention of the ties of the three monotheistic religions to the country and did say he didn’t want to delegitimize Israel–though much of his speech was clearly aiming at just such a goal. But the most important sentence was the one where he complained about the Palestinians being moved “to the bottom of the global agenda.” He then went on to claim that the PA alone was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians and that there could not be two such bodies.
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Theirs could be the latest battle in the ongoing war over building on private land and its place at the heart of the conflict on both sides of the Green Line….“Does the government have a consistent policy of dealing with land that is privately owned or do they have double-standards?

Ilene Prusher..JPost..

Mark Ismailoff, who moved to Israel from the UK in 1979, lives in Jerusalem. But his sights are on the Negev, where he owns 6.25 percent of a 640,000-square meter plot of land southeast of Beersheba that he inherited from his grandfather – who bought it in 1935.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 29, 2012,

The sabotage of the Fordo uranium enrichment facility’s power lines on Aug. 17 gave Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu extra leeway to move his original red line for Iran from late September 2012 – now – to the spring or early summer of 2013. The disruption of the underground enrichment plant’s power supply caused several of the advanced IR-1 and IR-4 centrifuges producing the 20-percent grade uranium to burst into flames. Work was temporarily halted and the accumulation of 240 kilos for Iran’s first nuclear bomb slowed down by at least six months, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report.
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By Doug McKelway, FoxNews.com

“Don’t boo, vote,” President Obama often says in his stump speech whenever crowds boo a Romney plan.

The off-hand call to vote may be by design. It comes amid a precipitous decline in Democratic voter registration in key swing states — nowhere more apparent than in Ohio.

Voter registration in the Buckeye State is down by 490,000 people from four years ago. Of that reduction, 44 percent is in Cleveland and surrounding Cuyahoga County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.
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Nov 8/12

Following reports for the last months, left me with the impression that differences were being worked out. When Bibi was leaving for the US he asked to speak at on Synagogue. He stressed the importance of his upcoming trip and asked the congregants to pray for his success. It appears that Bibi has agreed not to take action until Iran reaches the very critical stage in March and Obama has clarified his intend to prevent Iran getting the bomb. The fact that Saudi Arabia is dead set against Iran getting the bomb too, may well have factored into Obama’s commitment. I believe the war of words will now end. Ted Belman

Obama, Netanyahu united against Iran nuclear drive
US president speaks with Israeli PM following UNGA speech; reiterate US’ commitment to preventing Tehran from going nuclear; GOP candidate Romney says doesn’t think force will ultimately be needed
Yitzhak Benhorin, YNET

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday expressed solidarity on the goal of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, the White House said on Friday, amid signs of easing tensions over their differences on how to confront Tehran.
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By Rabbi Aryeh Spero, AMERICAN THINKER

No doubt, it’s hard for people to give up their lifelong attachments and identity. But there are moments in history when a turning point arrives, and those with eyes to see and ears to hear recognize it. Many Jews have made political liberalism their religion and personal identity and the Democrat Party their unexamined home and comfort zone. But everything changed early September.

Rarely do modern-day political conventions startle. The Democratic National Convention, however, was earthshaking and a warning to Jews to wake up. Democrat delegates decided to stick it to Israel. We no longer care, they roared, if Israel remains a Jewish state; flood her heartland with millions of so-called Palestinians whose goal is to make the state Islamic. We will not condemn Hamas for targeting Jewish population centers with rockets. Jerusalem is not Israel’s indivisible capital but should be divided, like Berlin was. Such was the undeniable sentiment of the delegates at the Convention.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST

Into the Fray: It would be intriguing to see how “sumud” stands up to a chance of better life and compensation worth two centuries of current GDP per capita.

The most shocking result is related to willingness to [e]migrate… The results also show that 44% of young Palestinians are willing to [e]migrate if given the opportunity.
– Poll #28, Center for Development Studies, Bir Zeit University, September 20, 2006

There has been much talk in Palestine about emigration, especially among the young people…This is being done in search of a better life abroad. Many… rush to the gates of the embassies and consulates of the Western nations with requests for visas in order to reside permanently in those countries.
– Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, mufti of the Palestinian Authority, in an anti-emigration fatwa, 2007

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by Stephen Brown, FPM

A woman in the Iranian city of Shamirzad, angered earlier this month by a cleric who told her she was insufficiently covered, decided that enough was enough with such religious street harassment and took matters into her own hands. Or rather her fists and feet, to be more exact.

Women in Iran are required to be covered up in public in accordance with a law introduced after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, causing most never to leave home without first wrapping themselves up in a body-encompassing black hijab. Women appearing in public deemed improperly covered are warned, and sometimes even beaten, by an assortment of morality guardians that include a morality police, regular police, busybody clerics or general, run-of-the mill religious fanatics.
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