Charles,

In our previous discussions we had taken the habit of addressing each other in an informal way, so I will not adopt a pseudo-official tone to speak to you publicly.

The open letter you have published against Philippe Karsenty has put me in such a rage after years of silence on this matter, I have to intervene or to speak in a familiar way, to add “my two cents.”

The reasons for this anger? The underlying bad faith in each of your sentences makes me feel ashamed for the special correspondent I used to respect … once upon a time.

You probably already know I was the very first, with the support of the Bn’ai Brith, to be revolted against the deadly false report that your TV channel and yourself released in September 2000. My disbelief in the face of such images, the certainty that there was rigging, manipulation, or at best, misinterpretation of facts led me at the time to involve myself body and soul into the conflict and, without you, and the phony images of your activist cameraman, I would probably not have embarked on this career of independent documentary filmmaker, which launched me in your line of work. But quite obviously not on the same track.

Between September 2000 and January 2001, I traveled to Israel four times and once to Gaza to meet most of the participants, some politicians, and the Druze soldiers of Magen Shaloch accused of the “murder” of al-Dura, whom you, as you yourself said in your open letter, have never even approached.

During this same period, I hired a lawyer, Maître Julien, to file a complaint against France 2 “for spreading false news causing a disturbance of public order.” Had it not been shouted “death to Jews” on the streets of Paris the next day? In the complaint, I added a folder which you can still find traces on the net today: debriefing.org/A-Dura.

Strangely enough, the case was dismissed by the prosecutor in less time than it takes for an Arab propagandist to convince his audience of the monstrosity of Israel. My attorney, who specializes in defamation cases, could not believe it.

I was hoping that thanks to our exchanges I would perceive some form of regret on your part, because I was convinced that you had been manipulated and that somehow you were now defending your honor the best you could. I had come to feel compassion for you. Indeed, what a burden it must be for a Jew to know he has been indirectly, unintentionally and out of clumsiness, responsible for the deaths of so many innocents. Innocents on both sides, Charles!

As, if instead of preparing his Al Aqsa Intifada for two years, Arafat had not refused the proposal of Barak, if he had accepted the truce proposed by Bill Clinton after Ariel Sharon went on Temple Mount, if Mr Chirac had not meddled with it with all the arrogance and all the smugness that characterize French politics towards Israel, and if, finally, you had not been fooled,if you had not had wool pulled over your eyes by the nephew of one of the founders of the PLO, I mean your beloved Talal, thousands of lives would have been spared on both sides and, perhaps, today, the Arabs living in the disputed territories (I do confirm, this is official language, rooted in international law) would have a country by now, provided they are able to have one, without foreign help and that of Israel.

Source

So naturally the Religious Left is opposing these mostly symbolic statements, because largely pacifist prelates do not believe any situation, no matter how dire, ever merits even the implied contemplation of force.  They also are more concerned about military force from the U.S. or Israel than they are about nuclear weapons in the hands of apocalyptic Iranian mullahs.

Complaining that the congressional resolutions would “undermine diplomatic efforts,” the leftist churchmen warn the statements would set a “dangerously low threshold for war” by “ruling out containment,” possibly even, by some interpretations endorsing “military force against Iran now.”

The ecumenical complaint to members of Congress was organized by the Presbyterian Church (USA) chief Capitol Hill lobbyist. It was signed by Quaker and Mennonite officials, a left-wing Catholic order, and the lobby offices of the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church.

Noting that Iran’s theocracy since at least the late 1980s has “engaged in a sustained and well-documented pattern of illicit and deceptive activities to acquire nuclear capability,” the congressional resolutions cite Iran as the “most active state sponsor of terrorism,” according to the U.S. State Department.  They also recalled the U.S. Treasury Department’s finding last year that Iran had a “secret deal” to help al Qaeda. Of course they mentioned Iran’s genocidal threats against Israel.  And they pointed at the Islamic Republic’s “serious human rights abuses,” according to the United Nations, including “torture, cruel and degrading treatment in detention, the targeting of human rights defenders, violence against women, and ‘the systematic and serious restrictions on freedom of peaceful assembly’ as well as severe restrictions on the rights to ‘freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.’”

The Congressional resolutions, noting Iran’s continued failure to comply with international non-proliferation standards, urge continued diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran until it ends its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. It also commends the “universal rights and democratic aspirations of the Iranian people.”

Leftist prelates in the U.S. of course are not particularly interested in disarming or democratizing Iran.  Instead, they complain the congressional resolutions are “undercutting” diplomacy, which “heightens the potential war.” They quote various critics claiming the resolutions resemble pre-2003 justifications for the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein Iraq. They insist Iran has not yet decided for nuclear weapons. And they reiterate: “Direct, sustained diplomacy remains the single most effective way to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran and avert war. And they implore:  “We urge you to support diplomacy, not war, with Iran, and to oppose” the congressional resolutions.

Source

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.  

Source

“I have long wanted to make a film about the Dreyfus Affair, treating it not as a costume drama but as a spy story,” said Polanski. “In this way one can show its absolute relevance to what is happening in today’s world – the age-old spectacle of the witch-hunt of a minority group, security paranoia, secret military tribunals, out-of-control intelligence agencies, governmental cover-ups and a rabid press.”

He may want to make the story of Dreyfus into a leftist parable, but it was a real event with a real underlying cause. But Polanski has a history of ignoring real anti-Semitism in his films, despite the fact that he is a Holocaust survivor. The Pianist had several soft stereotypes of Jews in it, including guests in a café checking whether their gold coins are genuine; meanwhile, the film soft-pedals the brutality of the Germans – in the film’s climactic scene, the main character is let go by a German officer who is converted to kindness by the character’s piano-playing.

This is typical Hollywood. Anti-Semitism can never be treated as an actual phenomenon – instead, it is a metaphor for other suffering. No doubt; Emile Zola,  who exposed the Dreyfus prosecution as a fraud, will be portrayed not as an enterprising truth-teller, but as a synonym for today’s modern leftist press.

Source

Consider some examples of Muslim sympathy following his death: Egypt’s Al Akhbar newspaper called the Pope’s burial “the funeral of the century,” reporting that a million Egyptians-likely more Muslims than Christians-came out to mourn him; “His death is a tragedy and a great loss for Egypt and its people, Muslims and Christians,” declared Egypt’s Grand Mufti; a recent episode of Al Dalil, famous for criticizing Islam, gave several more examples of Egyptian Muslims mourning and sympathizing with their Christian counterparts-including one Muslim who had tried to give his kidney to the ailing Pope.

In short, human nature took over.  Some of Egypt’s Muslims saw in Pope Shenouda a beloved national figure-much to the chagrin of Islam’s clerics, like Khaled Abdullah, who, in amazement, said, “I can’t believe it-what I saw today [the Pope's funeral], I can’t believe it.  If a Companion [of Muhammad, among Islam's most revered people] died we wouldn’t do this for him,” adding that Muslim participation and mourning in the funeral was “hurtful to the feelings of 80 million Muslims.”

Accordingly, Islam’s clerics rushed in, pointing out Sharia law’s teachings concerning the death of an infidel, or non-Muslim, like Pope Shenouda.  Fatwas appeared, many saying it is forbidden to offer condolences to the Copts, others saying it is permissible-but through carefully crafted words, and in the hopes of attracting Copts to Islam (reminding one of Sheikh Muhammad Hassan‘s assertion that smiling to non-Muslims is permissible, but only as a way to attract them to Islam).  Salafi leader, Yassir al-Burhami, permitted minor condolences-mostly by way of tawriya, using words that console, but that have a generic or pro-Islam meaning-while insisting it is forbidden to pray for deceased infidels (since all non-Muslims are destined and deserving of hell, Koran 9: 113).

The most vicious condemnations came from Sheikh Wagdi Ghoneim, formerly a Californian mosque prayer-leader, who, a day after Pope Shenouda’s death, referred to him as an “accursed criminal” and praised Allah for his death: “Yesterday [March 17], thanks be to Allah, the head of infidelity and polytheism, this so-called Shenouda, died-may Allah be avenged on him.  He perished, and all were relieved of him-people, worshippers, trees, and animals; Egypt is relieved of him, for he initiated sectarian strife.”

Source

Israel’s citizen army naturally mobilizes her reserve troops where they live. This means primarily an “L” shaped land mass, from Jerusalem at one end and Haifa at the other with Tel Aviv in the middle. Along this short and narrow strip resides some 70 percent of Israel’s population (and 80 percent of her industrial base) and therefore, about 70 percent of the nation’s reserve soldiers (as well as 70 percent of her labor force).

Even before Israel has the opportunity to field the full complement of her army, including its reserves, in time of war, Israel must prevent this area from being overrun by an invading enemy. Should the enemy forces succeed in cutting into the “L”, the damage to Israel’s mobilization and deployment process might well be beyond repair. Worse, if the invasion force cannot be stopped before the fighting reached the main cities, Israel would have lost the war.

This grave situation is recognized by Israel’s military, even if not fully grasped by all its politicians. In 1952, IDF Chief of Operations General Yitzhak Rabin ordered IDF Chief of Planning Colonel Yuval Ne’eman (who helped organize the IDF into a reservist-based army, developed the mobilization system, and wrote the first draft of Israel’s defense doctrine) to conduct an exercise to test the IDF under conditions of a surprise attack, under the then-prevailing 1949 ceasefire lines, i.e. the pre-’67 lines known today as the “Green Line.”

The maneuvers were organized, and the ensuing results were a disaster. During the exercise, Israel’s first president, Dr. Chaim Weizman, passed away. The exercise was then cancelled to deal with the State funeral that had to be carried out. However, by that time the exercise’s “invading force” had conquered Petach Tikva and Ramat Gan, two cities surrounding the approach to Tel Aviv proper (the distance from the pre-’67 ceasefire lines to the outskirts of metropolitan Tel Aviv is a mere 11 miles), and had yet to be stopped in its tracks. It is this nightmarish situation that hung over Israel’s neck like the Sword of Damocles until the 1967 Six Day War and the extension of Israeli control over the Biblical mountain ranges of Judea and Samaria.

Imagine further, how much worse in reality the results of the 1952 exercise could have been if Israel’s enemies, large and small, added to the invasion force barrage after barrage of missiles onto Israel’s main population centers.

The “Land for Peace” concept, accepted and unquestioned in Western capitals (and by Israel’s political Left), if implemented, would seriously weaken Israel, even clearing the path to her ultimate destruction. The areas already given over to the control of the Palestinian Authority (and now also Hamas) has considerably complicated Israel’s defense in an all out war situation. Further territorial concessions would prove catastrophic.

The missile age has not made strategic depth irrelevant, it has made it even more vital. The advanced weapons systems and missiles now in the hands of the Arabs, makes the threat of the reduction of Israel’s size back to her pre-’67 dimensions potentially devastating. Permitting such a diminution would also be a foolhardy move on the part of the Western democracies. A truncated Israel, forced to concentrate all her defenses on her high-population areas, would effectively become useless to those she currently serves so well as a major linchpin in the Western global strategy against the threat from radical Islamic expansionism.

Source

A shadowy $10 billion Obamacare agency with zero oversight just awarded first lady Michelle Obama’s pet patient-dumping scheme at the University of Chicago Medical Center a $5.9 million taxpayer-funded grant. It will enable Mrs. Obama’s cronies to build a government-sponsored electronic medical record-sharing system.

The Chicago program, known as the Urban Health Initiative, is run by one of President Obama’s closest golfing buddies, scandal magnet Eric Whitaker, who has been entangled with Illinois corruption celebrities Rod Blagojevich and Tony Rezko over the past decade.

Fun fact: Whitaker recently was named by author Edward Klein as the man who purportedly offered hate-mongering Rev. Jeremiah Wright $150,000 in hush money during the 2008 campaign.

The nearly $6 million grant was announced last week by the “Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation” at the Department of Health and Human Services. White House watchdog journalist Keith Koffler notes that “some 3,000 applications were received for a share on the $1 billion in 3-year grants available. Only 26 programs were included in the first batch of awards doled out.” The administration grants circumvent any and all congressional deliberation as part of Team Obama’s election-year “We Can’t Wait” initiatives.

The grant recipients will help fulfill the mandated Obamacare vision of a centralized patient-record database with unprecedented federal oversight. The provision is being challenged in court by the Goldwater Institute for forcing Americans to share “with millions of strangers who are not physicians confidential private and personal medical history information they do not wish to share.”

HHS denies any favoritism, citing a “competitive, objective” process. But as I first reported in March, a Congressional Research Service analysis concluded that Obamacare’s Innovation Center is subject to no administrative or judicial review. The Innovation Center director is, in effect, a super-czar without any checks or balances on his grant-making decisions, methods or results.

I warned two months ago that the Obamacare Innovation Center and its multibillion-dollar slush fund smacked of “another pipeline for political payoffs and Chicago-style boodle that will result in less patient autonomy, fewer health-care choices, more government intrusion and lower-quality care.”

Source

The good news is that al-Asiri isn’t very good at it. His bomb did a good job of killing his brother, but not much else. The original underwear bomb worn by the Christmas bomber didn’t work out. The bad news is that with enough cannon fodder and enough attempts, sooner or later al-Asri or another college dropout will get it right. But even if he doesn’t, the force multiplier of the threat alone will do the job.

All it took was one shoe bomber to get us to take off our shoes. A failed plan to blow up airliners with liquid explosives led to the liquid ban. In the age of underwear bombs we have naked scanners. What is going to happen when the next plot involves explosives surgically implanted in the human body or in a pet?

A bomb anywhere is a bomb everywhere. When the bombs are everywhere, then so are the security measures taken against them until life is one big bomb and one giant security measure.

We may sooner or later hunt down al-Asiri and blow him away, but taking out a twenty-something graduate of a Saudi university after a long manhunt at a cost of countless millions of dollars will not be some grand achievement. There are plenty of Saudi, Kuwaiti and Pakistani chemistry students who can step into his exploding shoes.

We are not fighting a war against toothpaste, shoes or underwear. Nor against bombs. Bombs after all don’t make themselves or detonate themselves. That’s what people are for and until we come to grips with the people making and detonating the bombs, then we will go on living in a world of bombs, where every item, no matter how innocuous, is treated as a potential explosive device, and every person in line as a potential explosive weapon.

The formula for fighting a War on Terror without defining a vector for that terror has led to a state of terror, in which everyone is either terrified or terrorized. The official word is that anyone and everyone can be a terrorist, and even though they all seem to be Muslim, the official position is that this is a complete coincidence, a misunderstanding of the religion of peace or a result of our foreign policy.

To believe any of these things is to also believe that history is bunk. Al-Asiri’s last name indicates that he comes from the Asir province, the heartland of fanaticism in Saudi Arabia. Asir means “difficult” in Arabic. Six of the 9/11 hijackers came from Asir and Bin Laden praised its tribes as “forming the lion’s share”. Asir had been a source of violence and Islamic fanaticism long before American foreign policy mattered to anyone one outside the hemisphere. The Asiri Wahhabis had fought the Ottoman Empire in Asir going back to the early 1800′s and then they fought the House of Saud. With global access, Asiris are able to extend their wars deep into our territory. To launch attacks well beyond their desert home.

The sword has given way to the bomb, though it is still used occasionally on hostages, and by importing Islam we have imported the way of the sword and the rule of the bomb. When the followers of the sword take the plane, then sooner or later they will bomb the plane or use the plane as a guided missile. There is no avoiding that.

Source

The Globe’s original story, published on May 1st, reported that a document proved Warren’s claim. “A record unearthed Monday shows that US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has a great-great-great grandmother listed in an 1894 document as a Cherokee, said a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogy Society.” The same day the Boston Herald reported that “the Harvard Law professor’s campaign last night finally came up with what they claim is a Cherokee connection–her great-great-great-grandmother.” ABC News also did a May 1st report, noting that genealogist Chris Child of the New England Historic Genealogical Association ”set out to hunt down Warren’s ancestry last Thursday. In less than a week, he discovered documents citing an 1894 marriage record that lists Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, O. C. Sarah Smith as Cherokee, meaning that Warren is 1/32nd Native American.”

On May 4th the New York Times  took it a step further, claiming that Republican opponent Scott Brown’s questioning of Warren’s assertion “is straight from the Republican cookbook of fake controversy,” and that “Massachusetts Republicans place doubts on her racial claims to portray her as an opportunistic academic seeking special treatment.” Writer Kevin Noble Maillard, law professor enrolled as a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, offer his own take on the controversy. “For the Cherokee Nation, Warren is ‘Indian enough;’ she has the same blood quantum as Cherokee Nation Chief Bill John Baker,” he wrote.

The meme, “Warren is 1/32 Cherokee” continued to be promoted by several difference news outlets, most of whom did nothing more than regurgitate the original story, absent any independent fact-checking. These included CBS News, the Huffington Post and the Associated Press. The most hilarious assertion regarding Warren’s claim came courtesy of the Washington Post’s David Treuer. In column entitled, “Elizabeth Warren says she’s Native American. So she is.”, Treuer makes the absurd claim that “(A)n Indian identity is something someone claims for oneself; it is a matter of choice.” He further excuses Warren’s assertion, contending that “to be a woman from Oklahoma of working-class upbringing–and to want not only to walk the halls of power but to help build them–you have to press whatever advantage you have. Doing so might seem distasteful to those who’ve never had to do it because they were born into privilege and power.” In other words, lying is acceptable–as long as one’s lower class and purported ethnicity qualifies one to do so.

Despite the mainstream media pile-on, it didn’t take long to prove that Elizabeth Warren’s assertion was nothing more than wishful thinking. Breitbart.com was apparently willing to do something most other news organizations were unwilling to do: conduct an actual investigation of  Warren’s assertion. They reviewed original marriage records found in the files of the Logan County, Oklahoma Court Clerk’s office in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and spoke with Logan County Court clerk ReJeania Zmek. Breitbart discovered that the original May 12, 1894 marriage license and the corresponding May 13, 1894 certificate of marriage of William J Crawford, great-great-grand uncle of Elizabeth Warren, and Mary E. (Long) Wolford contains a column for the race of the bride and the groom–but both of them left it blank

Zmek offered another indication that something was amiss. “In modern times we keep marriage license applications,” she said. “The way they’re issued now, you do the application, then you do the license. We currently do keep records of marriage license applications.” Yet she revealed that this practice didn’t begin until 1950.

Zmek then revealed (probably inadvertently) why many Americans consider mainstream media claims of even-handed reporting beneath contempt. She confirmed to Breitbart that “no other news organization had contacted her to date on any national topic or to inquire about the validity of this purported 1894 Logan County, Oklahoma marriage license application or anything related to the 1894 marriage of William J. Crawford.”

Such “errors of omission” might be acceptable were it evenly applied to both sides of the political spectrum. Yet one need only compare the Washington Post’s recent effort to portray Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney as a bully based on a single incident that happened 47 years ago with the mainstream media’s calculated incuriosity regarding large portions of president Obama’s life, whichstill remain off the record almost four years into his time in office. Furthermore, as the Journolist scandal of 2008 reveals, leftist media members coordinated efforts to keep Jeremiah Wright and his incendiary rhetoric from damaging the president during that election run.

Elizabeth Warren can continue to insist that she is part Cherokee, whether based on dubious assertions, like her grandfather having “high cheekbones, or ridiculous rationale such as the claim that she did so “in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am.” And the leftist media can continue to protect her by asserting that she didn’t use such claims to advance her career. But the fact remains that the University of Pennsylvania, who listed her as a minority in a “Minority Equity Report” from 1987 to 1994, and Harvard University, who listed her as a diversity hire in 1996, were more than willing to do so based on nothing more than hearsay. And the mainstream media, as well as the New England Historic Genealogical Association, which is now saying that “the original [marriage license] application cannot be located” were also willing to take Warren at face value, or base their entire assertions of proof on an unsubstantiated March 2006 family newsletter quoting an amateur genealogist.

Yet it remains to be seen if the people of Massachusetts will be as flexible regarding the truth on election day next November. Undoubtedly they will base their votes for either Republican Scott Brown or Warren on a number of issues. Warren might want to hope that personal credibility isn’t one of them.

Source

“It can be said that within the last 60 years, this is the first time that the Zionist regime, since its illegal inception, has had to endure rejection by the West over its vision and interest in the region,” wrote Sadollah Zarei, according to a translation by Reza Kahlili.

It’s easy to see why Iran has picked up on what Democrats have been desperate to deny throughout Obama’s tenure. Headline after headline is about the U.S. trying to hold Israel back. In March, an anonymous administration official told the Washington Post, “We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel.”

There’s been a steady stream of leaks from administration officials potentially damaging Israel. On March 28, Foreign Policy reported on the alleged existence of a secret agreement between Israel and Azerbaijan making the latter’s airbases available for a potential strike on Iran. The results of a classified war game simulating a conflict between Israel and Iran that showed hundreds of U.S. casualties made its way into the press. Another report claimed that Israel is using members of the MEK Iranian opposition group to target Iran’s nuclear scientists.

The author attributes the change in U.S. policy to recognition of Iranian strength because of the Arab Spring, which he refers to as the “Islamic Awakening.” He specifically mentions the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent takeover of the country by Islamist forces. Zarei also claims that the U.S. is “on the verge of accepting the Iranian nuclear program” and points to statements by Israeli officials that Iran is “rational” as proof that the Israeli government is weakening.

Don’t let the fact that Iran is Shiite and the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists are Sunni fool you. The two forces may be battling in Syria, but the Iranian regime still believes that their rise is a fulfillment of Islamic End Times prophecy. Last year, Ahmadinejad’s office produced a documentary titled The Coming is Upon Us. It outlined how it views its role in Islamic prophecy and plainly states that the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascendance is “in accordance with the Hadith.”

In February, Khamenei declared, “From now on, in any place, if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help.” This should be seen as an overture to the Muslim Brotherhood. The film states that the destruction of Israel is preceded by the creation of an anti-Western Arab coalition.

Arguably the most important line in Zarei’s column is this: “With diminishing support for Israel and with the (upcoming) collapse of the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, there won’t be any obstacles left facing Iran with its policy of annihilation of Israel.”

This statement echoes what the apocalyptic documentary said. In The Coming is Upon Us, the regime teaches that the death of Saudi King Abdullah will be a fulfillment of prophecy and one of the last precursors to Israel’s destruction. Saudi Arabia will be consumed with internal turmoil until the Mahdi appears to vanquish Islam’s enemies. King Abdullah is at least 87 years old.

Source