Muslim writer touts Israeli tolerance of minorities

"This country does not fit the description of an apartheid state," says author Qanta Ahmed in visit to Israel.

DR. QANTA AHMED speaks at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem (Photo: Deston Productions)

British author Dr. Qanta Ahmed spoke on Wednesday at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem about the difficulties for minorities in Islamic societies and how Israel is the only country in the Middle East that tolerates them.

The event was organized by Alan Schneider, director of the B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem, and cosponsored by the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity as part of their joint Liaison Committee forum.

The forum serves as an informal initiative aimed at fostering better mutual respect and understanding between local Christians and Jews....

Another Display of Israel's Strategic Value

The ongoing debate about whether America should intervene in Syria highlights an important point about Israel’s unique value as a U.S. ally: It is the only American ally in the Middle East willing and able to serve American interests by projecting power independently, rather than waiting for American troops to ride to the rescue.

One of the most bizarre features of Syria’s ongoing civil war is the widespread assumption that outside intervention against the Assad regime will come from the U.S. or not at all. After all, the rebels’ main backers include two American allies with powerful militaries, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Turkey has one of the region’s largest armies, significantly larger than Syria’s; moreover, as a NATO member, it’s equipped with state-of-the-art Western weaponry. Saudi Arabia has been a major purchaser of the best American weaponry for years, including fighter jets, missiles and airborne warning and control systems. Both have billed Assad’s departure as a major national interest. Yet never once have they suggested that their combined air forces could use Turkey’s bases to impose a no-fly zone over part of Syria; they take it for granted that if military intervention is to happen, America will have to do it. And so does Washington.

In contrast, Israel has always insisted on taking sole responsibility for its own defense, and is consequently both willing and able to take independent military action. And because its interests in the region often overlap with those of its American ally, such action often ends up serving American interests. That was true in the Cold War, when Israeli battles with the Soviet Union’s Arab proxies repeatedly proved the superiority of American over Soviet arms. It was true when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981: Had it not thereby stopped Saddam Hussein from acquiring nukes, an American-led coalition wouldn’t have been able to oust his forces from Kuwait a decade later. And it was true when Israel bombed Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007: Today, Americans are sleeping better because they don’t have to worry about al-Qaida-linked militias in Syria getting their hands on nuclear material....

Kerry: Israel, Palestinians must take hard decisions

John Kerry (AFP photo)

US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Friday to take "hard decisions" to revive the Middle East peace process, which has stalled for almost three years.
  
"We're getting toward a time now when hard decisions need to be made," he told a news conference in Tel Aviv at the end of his fourth visit to the region since he took office in February.

Kerry has been pressing Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks that broke down in September 2010.    He said there was "one way" to make peace a reality, "and that is through direct negotiations.

"Ultimately it is the Israeli and Palestinian people who both decide the outcome... and who will get the greatest benefits" from a resumption of talks, he said.

"I know this region well enough to know there is scepticism, in some quarters there is cynicism, and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment," he said....

Thank you Hafez al-Assad

...During the 1990s, the Israeli Left and the Clinton administration managed to convince the Rabin, Netanyahu and Barak governments to offer to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria.

The only reason that the initiative failed was because Assad Sr. rejected Israel's repeated offers to surrender the strategic plateau in exchange for a piece of paper with a smiley face on it.

Had Assad accepted Israel's offers, we would have been facing a situation today that we would be hard pressed to contend with. On the one hand, we would be facing an all but certain war with Syria with al-Qaida or Iran controlling everything from the Jordan Valley to Haifa Bay.

On the other hand we would be facing this threat as a fractured society.

To hide their culpability for rendering Israel all but powerless to defend itself, those who supported surrendering the Golan would be pretending the dangers away. Instead of being free to discuss how to win a war in Syria, we would be bogged down in discussions of whether we have a right to fight in Syria.

In other words, if it hadn't been for Assad Sr. and his unyielding hatred for Israel, we would be facing the same situation in relation to Syria today that we faced in Lebanon in 2006 and as we have faced in Gaza since we withdrew in 2005. The lack of consensus regarding our strategic imperative to defeat our enemies in Gaza and Lebanon caused the IDF to fail to win its campaigns in both theaters....

Muslim Acts of Beheading in the West

The gruesome murder yesterday of a soldier outside London by a Muslim convert, Michael Adebolajo, brings to mind that throat slitting and beheading are Islamically sanctioned forms of execution. Although these occur particularly often in the course of family-related crimes – think, for example, of the case of Aasiya Hassan in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., killed by her husband in 2009, stabbed with two hunting knives more than forty times in the face, back and chest, then beheaded – this monstrous form of violence is also used in non-family instances. Some of those that took place over the past decade in the West in chronological order include:

• Ariel Sellouk – Houston, August 2003: throat slit attempted but incomplete beheading.
  
  
• Sébastien Selam – Paris, November 2003: throat was slit twice; his face was mutilated with a carving fork and his eyes were gouged out by a Muslim neighbor who boasted "I killed my Jew, I'll go to paradise."
  
  
• Theo Van Gogh – Amsterdam, November 2004: shot, throat slit, and five-page paper pinned to his body.
  
  
• Hossam Armanious, Amal Garas, Sylvia Armanious, and Monica Armanious,  – Jersey City, N.J., January 2005: necks, throats and bodies stabbed, mutilation of Coptic tattoo.
  
  
• Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman, and Raphael Teken - Waltham, Massachusetts, September 2012: throats slit, probably by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers.
  
  
• Hany F. Tawadros and Amgad A. Konds – Jersey City, N.J., February 2013: shot, decapitated, hands severed.
  
  
• Lee Rigby – Woolwich, England, May 2013: run over by car, mutilated, beheaded.

This gruesome list (to be updated as needed) is only part of the story: other characteristically Muslim crimes taking place in Western countries include honor killings, female genital mutilation, and slave holding. These, sadly, are among Islam's contributions to the lands of immigration. (May 23, 2013)

UN Health Assembly, Syria, Slam 'Inhuman Israeli Practices'

Wednesday's WHO session in Geneva condemning Israel but not Syria.
(Photo Credit: UN Watch)

The annual assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization today adopted a resolution criticizing Israel — in the organization’s only debate on a specific country — with Syria protesting “inhuman Israeli practices” that target “the health of Syrian citizens.” Click here for links to documents.

The WHO resolution against Israel was not yet published, but was likely a copy of last year’s condemnation.

Observers of the world body in Geneva said the annual hypocrisy nevertheless reached a new low this year.

“To see the Assad regime point the finger at Israel out of professed concern for the health of Syrians is, frankly, a sick joke,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, a non-governmental monitoring group accredited to the UN....

Livni: Coming days critical for Israel-Palestinian talks

...Kerry is expected to roll out a framework for returning to the negotiations in early June, and since taking office has been trying to get the various sides to take steps that would create a better environment more conducive to talks.

These steps include what is widely believed to be a de facto, but unstated, temporary freeze on construction beyond the Green Line, including in east Jerusalem; a Palestinian commitment to temporarily avoid seeking upgrades in international forum or taking Israel to the International Criminal Court; and the Arab league delegation's recent declaration that it would accept an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that included a "mild" land swap.

Kerry is scheduled to meet with President Shimon Peres this evening.

Undoing the Brainwashing: Summer Reading

This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher learning.

The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of battle. General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties — something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas within the family.

Instead of fighting the Japanese for every island stronghold as the Americans advanced toward Japan, MacArthur sent his troops into battle for only those islands that were strategically crucial. In the same spirit, parents who want to bring their brainwashed offspring back to reality need not try to combat every crazy idea they picked up from their politically correct professors. Just demolishing a few crucial beliefs, and exposing what nonsense they are, can deal a blow to the general credibility of the professorial pied pipers....

Obama Administration's Media Surveillance Unleashes Wave Of Condemnation

The Justice Department's investigation and surveillance of the Associated Press and Fox News have led to perhaps the most sustained wave of criticism for the Obama administration's media policies since the president took office.

On Wednesday, the New York Times became one of the more influential voices to say what many others have been saying: that the administration's methods are an attack on press freedom.

In a scathing editorial, the Times wrote that, "With the decision to label a Fox News television reporter a possible 'co-conspirator' in a criminal investigation of a news leak, the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news."...

Woolwich attack: terrorist proclaimed 'an eye for an eye' after attack

In the first terrorist murder on the British mainland since the 7/7 suicide bombings of 2005, the men attempted to behead the soldier, hacking at him like a “piece of meat” in front of dozens of witnesses, before both were shot by police who took around 20 minutes to arrive.

After the killing, one of the men, believed to be a British-born Muslim convert, spoke calmly into a witness’s video phone.

Pictured left - One of the attackers speaks into a witness's camera phone following the attack (ITV)

Speaking with a London accent, holding a knife and a meat cleaver and with his hands dripping with blood, he said: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. Your people will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day.

“We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you. Do you think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? Do you think your politicians are going to die?

“No, it’s going to be the average guy like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so we, so you can all live in peace.”...