A Stand For Justice
Special report For U.S. veterans, the war after the wars
VP Biden pledges unwavering support for Israel
The vice president said the Mideast's genuine threats come from Iran and he pledged to defend Israel from that country.
Federal Civil Rights Policy Expanded To Protect Jewish College Students
The University of California, Irvine, has become emblematic of the trend, as its Muslim Student Union gained attention — and was eventually suspended — for, among other actions, disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the United States, with calls that he was a “killer.” The Muslim group’s anti-Israel protests fueled a 2004 complaint that ZOA filed with the Education Department claiming Irvine’s administration had stood by as its environment became hostile for Jews. (After an investigation, the OCR found that most alleged acts of harassment were not based on shared ethnic origins, and that the university had dealt with other instances appropriately. The ZOA’s appeal is pending.)
Klein said his group regularly fields calls from students who say they are cursed and spat at for wearing shirts promoting Israel. The ZOA and 12 other Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Orthodox Union, wrote a letter in April arguing that OCR’s policy failed to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitic harassment.
More special treatement for guess who? This time, as 'victims' due to the growing anti-Israel sentiment on campus, that's now deemed 'anti-Semitism'.
Bush: Olmert asked me to bomb suspected Syria nuclear plant
Bush writes that he told Olmert, "I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it's a weapons program." Can Israel ever fight any of its own battles?
Struggling Over Subsidies That Undo Modernity
The reason for the protest was the students’ perception of rank unfairness in Israel’s upcoming state budget, which will provide monthly living allowances to Orthodox men engaged in full-time yeshiva study. The stipends actually date back to 1980, but they were ruled illegal by the Supreme Court last June because they discriminate against secular university students. Then, late in October, the Cabinet began discussing a bill to circumvent the high court and restore the yeshiva stipends, and protests erupted nationwide, some of them violent.
Notice how similar this is to the story in this news batch dealing with the upstate New York school in a largely orthodox neighborhood. Welcome to the United States of Israel, where American taxpayers get to fund religious supremacy as long as it is JUDAISM. And we also get to fund the pirate kingdom of Israel, which pillages and plunders its neighbors property at will.
'US Support for Israel Must Continue Forever,' says Biden
Iran featured prominently in Biden’s address in New Orleans.
Special Satmar School District Gets a Windfall
Some basic math shows that the public school district for Kiryas Joel — a town founded in 1977 by the late grand rebbe of the Satmar Hasidic sect, Joel Teitelbaum, as a rural refuge for his followers — will receive more in RTTT funds per public school student than any other district in the state
What remains unclear is whether the district can also use those funds to benefit its private school students, an outcome that would be welcome news to the religious schools that serve almost all the non-special education students in the politically influential town
.......The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that the district violated the Constitution’s requirement of separation between religion and state. But allies of the influential Satmar sect in the state government rewrote the law allowing for creation of the district, finally finding statutory language able to overcome the constitutional barriers.
Unlike some New York villages and neighborhoods with majority Orthodox populations, Kiryas Joel is almost exclusively populated by members of the Satmar Hasidic sect. The village ranks among the poorest in the United States, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Read that again. And realize who cries the loudest to keep the separation of church and state, only when it applies to others.
A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall by Philip Giraldi
hen there are the changes that will take place in committees and the pecking order in Congress, changes that will bring the long war advocates to the fore. It is where the real damage can take place. Not coincidentally, the hawks are also calling for military action against Iran and are notable in their affection for the state of Israel. The Israel connection is significant because Israel has long been at the heart of America’s foreign policy woes. America’s misguided war on terror is in fact a complete adoption of Israeli security paradigms without any regard for the actual threats that confront the US, making Israel’s many enemies also the foes of Washington. The Israeli Lobby might not have single handedly brought about the disastrous Iraq war but it certainly was a major factor in the push to invade, taking its cues from the Israeli Foreign Ministry. And today Israel and its friends in Congress and the media are the most powerful advocates of a military conflict with Iran, which will only take place, if it does, because of them. At the same time the Lobby is doing its best to sour relations with Lebanon and preempt any possible rapprochement with Syria
..Neither Cantor nor Ros-Lehtinen is troubled by giving more than $3 billion of taxpayer money annually to a relatively wealthy country whose policies damage US interests and place US citizens at risk worldwide. With friends like Cantor and Ros-Lehtinen in key positions in Congress it is the American people who should be in despair.
How will the Republican-controlled House affect U.S.-Israel ties?
"If we regain the majority, we will use our larger platform to make the case that a strong Israel is firmly in the strategic and moral interests of the United States. We will press the administration not to pressure Israel into making concessions that will compromise Israel’s already tenuous security.”
Republicans Backtrack After Proposal on Aid to Israel Draws Heavy Criticism
The roughly $3 billion a year provided by the United States for Israeli military purchases is a product of years of formal negotiations and backroom tweaking, and tinkering with it raises concern among pro-Israel lobbyists. Moreover, raising the issue as Cantor did, days before the election, is viewed as breaching the bipartisan support for aid to Israel, which traditionally translates to an easy passage of the bill in Congress every year.
......Throughout the years, AIPAC’s lobbying efforts added other perks to the aid package: Israel is the only recipient allowed to spend a portion of its military aid on purchases within the country; usually this kind of aid is designed for procurement of American-made weapon systems. Israel also receives its aid in the first month of the fiscal year as a deposit in an interest-bearing account. Aid to all other recipients is spread out throughout the year.
Are you getting the picture yet?
WikiLeaks Founder Urges US to Investigate Alleged Abuse by Its Troops
Netanyahu says Iran must fear military strike
Netanyahu's call for a "credible military threat" drew a swift response from the U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said international sanctions were "biting more deeply" than the Iranians anticipated.
"I disagree that only a credible military threat can get Iran to take the actions that it needs to," Gates said in Australia on Monday. "At this point we continue to believe that the political and economic approach that we are taking is in fact having an impact on Iran."
Netanyahu Pounds War Drums
Less than a week after Republicans made major gains in the U.S. midterm elections, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on President Barack Obama to "create a credible threat of military action" against Iran.
.....According to diplomatic sources quoted in the Israeli and U.S. press, Netanyahu's appeal came during a meeting with Vice President Joseph Biden in New Orleans Sunday. It suggests that his right-wing government and its allies here, including hawkish Republicans who will take control of the House of Representatives in January, are preparing to escalate pressure on Obama to adopt a more confrontational stance with Tehran. Can Israel ever fight its own battles?
Echoes of Iraq as Hawks Push for Attack on Iran
Starting in January, advocates of a tougher line on Iran will have powerful allies in Congress who could help advance that plan. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), a veteran Iran hawk who has downplayed the effectiveness of sanctions, will take over as chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
AWOL Soldier Refusing Deployment Because of Severe PTSD
Obama Officials Moving Away From 2011 Afghan Date
The Pentagon also has decided not to announce specific dates for handing security responsibility for several Afghan provinces to local officials and instead intends to work out a more vague definition of transition when it meets with its NATO allies.
Nearly 59 million lack health insurance: CDC
U.S. midterms: AIPAC lauds re-election of pro-Israel stalwarts
Israel's Washington embassy also expressed satisfaction with the results.
"Support for Israel at the Congress is strong and bipartisan,” an embassy spokesman told Haaretz.
BREAKING NEWS: Benjamin Netanyahu retains control of U.S. Congress
"American voters on both sides of the aisle support Israel," Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and president of The Israel Project, says in the e-mail. American voters nothing to do with it. AIPAC did.
Michael Oren urges U.S. Jews to defend Israel against aggressors
“I think it is fair for Israel to expect the American Jewish community to uphold our right to self-defense," Oren said. "Israel expects American Jews to fight the Goldstone report which limits our ability to defend ourselves by branding us as war criminals, with the same zeal that you have fought boycotts, divestment and sanctions."
...“I want to say categorically that bipartisan political support for Israel is a national strategic interest for the Jewish state. We urge American Jews to ensure that preserving a secure sovereign Israel remains a bipartisan goal to which Americans of all political outlooks aspire”.
Netanyahu Tests Obama, Again
While visiting Israel in March, Vice President Joe Biden delivered a speech that delighted the Israeli right and its followers here. The key passage was this: "When it comes to Israel's security there can be no daylight — no daylight — between Israel and the US."
That formulation, which was devised by the pro-Israel lobby here, pleased the Netanyahu government, which interprets it to mean that Israel has carte blanch from Washington to do whatever it wants. No other country in the world enjoys such a pledge from the United States.
Netanyahu to press U.S. for military threat on Iran
George Bush's memoirs reveal how he considered attacks on Iran and Syria
'Bibi Can Take US Into War With Iran'
“On Iran, there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans. They're very comfortable with the idea that a foreign leader like [Benjamin] Netanyahu can take 300 million Americans to war whenever he wants,” said counterterrorism expert Michael Scheuer, who has worked with the Central Intelligence Agency for more than 20 years.
“The election was a disaster in terms of increasing the chances of another war that we don't have the resources to fight, and we won't have the will to win,” Newsmax quoted Scheuer as saying.
.....Scheuer said no problem would be resolved “until they [US officials] understand we're being attacked because of our foreign policy and what we do in the Muslim world, we're never going to understand the motivation and size of the enemy.” We were not attacked for our freedom, because of Islam or because our women are liberated. The majority of those attacked us on 911 because of our support for Israel.
The Parcel Bomb Plot: Al-Qaeda’s Latest Christmas Gift to Israel
While Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may have claimed responsibility for the parcel bomb plot, it’s worth considering how this latest Yemen-linked terror scare has been a gift to their avowed enemies.
A mere two weeks before the discovery of mail bombs addressed to “two places of Jewish worship in Chicago,” Rupert Murdoch sounded prescient as he received an award from the Anti-Defamation League for his support of Israel. “The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world,” declared the media mogul in his acceptance speech. “But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government – and they have not weakened Israeli resolve.” Equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the Fox News owner smeared the growing worldwide condemnation of Israel’s rogue behaviour as an “ongoing war against the Jews.”
U.S.: Syria risks IAEA action if access to suspected nuclear site is denied
Report: Iran gave Hezbollah UAVs, attack aircraft
Justice Dept. Renews Enforcement of Subpoenas for Antiwar Activists Targeted in FBI Raids
Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury were served on 13 people, but later withdrawn when the activists asserted their right to remain silent. But this week, the U.S. Department of Justice said it intends to enforce the subpoenas for some of them and require them to appear before a grand jury.
Outgoing intel chief: Iran can already produce nuclear bomb
netanyahu Intellectual Father of the ‘War on Terror’ by Thomas Harrington -- Antiwar.com
Key to the continued rise of Revisionist Zionism was the ability to organize key elements of American Jewry around this new, hyper-martial view of the Israeli reality. They did so by infiltrating AIPAC and by flooding the think-tanks then being created to prop up the Reagan Revolution (e.g., the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute) with thinkers amenable to their cause, and by founding think-tanks of their own (e.g., the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Hudson Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Middle East Media Research Institute) dedicated wholeheartedly to promoting a pro-Likud approach to Mideast policy. A very good read.
Muslims say Obama failing to keep Cairo promises
Seventeen months after Obama's Cairo University speech, al Qaeda is still threatening the West, peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians remain stalled over the issue of West Bank settlements and U.S. troops remain in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many in the Middle East believe that Washington's tight alliance with Israel makes it impossible to end the suffering of the Palestinians, breeding cynicism among Arab Muslims toward U.S. intentions in the region.
Meet your new House Foreign Affairs chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Over the mid to long term, Ros-Lehtinen is poised to thwart Obama's efforts to move toward repealing sanctions on Fidel Castro and resist any White House attempts to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She isn't likely to move Berman's foreign-aid reform bill through the committee and she is likely to seek cuts in the foreign-aid budget in her authorization bill.
Sen Graham sees ‘confrontation’ with China, war with Iran
The South Carolina Republican saw the United States going to war with the Islamic republic “not to just neutralize their nuclear program, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard, in other words neuter that regime.”
First sign of the new U.S. political reality—Bibi’s swagger JTA - Jewish & Israel News
It was a clear sign that Netanyahu feels empowered by the Republican sweep last week of the House of Representatives to trump the Obama administration’s emphasis on peacemaking with the Palestinians with his own priority: confronting Iran.
.....Pro-Israel insiders in Washington noted that in different ways, Mandel and Grossman both have been leaders in the effort to sanction Iran and now are positioned to mak sure that their states enforce such sanctions. As a lawmaker, Mandel led the effort to divest Ohio from Iran. Grossman, as AIPAC president in the mid-1990s, lobbied for the Iran sanctions passed by Congress at that time.
In U.S., 14% Rely on Food Stamps
Some 42,389,619 Americans received food stamps in August, a 17% rise from the same time a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which tracks the data. That number is up 58.5% from August 2007, before the recession began. Hey I know, let's give a few more billion to Israel.
Obama would be responsible for shutdown: Cantor
Multi-Billion-Dollar Arms Deals Could Haunt U.S.
The U.S. administration's decision last month to sell billions of dollars worth of weapons to potentially unstable Arab nations in the Gulf - including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain - have triggered fears of possible risks to the United States, if history repeats itself.
Iran hawks step up pressure on Obama — some see echoes of Iraq
Obama Administration Claims Unchecked Authority To Kill Americans Outside Combat Zones
US Army Mulls More Charges Over Horrific Afghan Killings
Two more US soldiers face hearings this week over a rogue army unit that allegedly executed Afghan civilians, mutilated the corpses, then beat another soldier for blowing the whistle.
What Did WikiLeaks Really Tell Us about Iran?
Iraqi Victims of UK Abuse Want Public Inquiry
Lawyers of 142 Iraqi civilians, who claim they suffered abuse by British soldiers, are pushing for the UK's High Court to allow a full public inquiry.
Iran arrests four over 'British-linked assassination plot'
Iran said today it had arrested four men it claims were paid by a man based in Britain to carry out a series of assassinations, according to official state TV.
Suburban Poverty by the Numbers
Yemen wants much more US aid to fight terrorism
Yemen wants far more military aid than the U.S. has promised in the fight against escalating terrorism -- billions of dollars more than Washington has in mind.
Saudis warned US of aviation bomb plot weeks ago
Bush rejects claims that Israel was behind Iraq war
The only reference Bush makes to a pro-Israel figure having a role in his Iraq deliberations is the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, a supporter of military intervention whose opinion the president solicited as he weighed his options.
“Elie is a sober and gentle man. But there was passion in his seventy-four-year-old eyes when he compared Saddam Hussein’s brutality to the Nazi genocide,” Bush writes.
The other major pro-Israel figure whose influence Bush notes in his work comes during his discussion of the “Freedom Agenda.” Bush cites a passage from Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy in making the argument that America needed to “put pressure on the arms of the world’s tyrants.”
Iranians stage mass protest against 'Great Satan' US
Thousands of Iranians chanted "Death to America" as they staged Thursday a mass protest against the "Great Satan" to mark the 31st anniversary of the capture of the American embassy by Islamist students.
C-4 seized in Colorado in Navy SEAL smuggling case
The special forces SEAL, Nicholas Bickle, 33, of San Diego, Las Vegas resident Andrew Kaufman, 36, and Richard Paul, 34, of Durango, Colo., were arrested Wednesday in those cities, the U.S. attorney's office in Las Vegas said.
Analysis: Election campaign ignored foreign policy
US senator sees 'confrontation' with China, war with Iran
Schakowsky’s Israel Question
Her own seat seems safe for the time being. But Schakowsky was visibly worried by the prospect of the Obama administration’s Israel policy becoming a wider issue. She was particularly stunned to hear of the loss of Miami Congressman Ron Klein, whose non-Jewish opponent criticized Klein’s support for Obama’s Israel policy.
Boxer Scores Knockout, Defying GOP Wave
Raphael Sonenshein, chairman of the political science department at California State University, Fullerton, believes that Israel and foreign policy generally will have less importance in the coming congressional power struggles than domestic issues, mainly the economy; that is, unless matters should change on the ground and the Middle East erupts into the headlines. “Obama will have less room to push for negotiations,” Sonenshein speculated.
Citing Their Close Ties With Local Muslims, Chicago’s Jews Unfazed by Terrorist Threat
In Chicago, Lopatin noted that the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago issued a statement condemning the attacks immediately after the first news reports broke stating that area Jewish institutions were targeted.
Jews Stayed With Democrats, Now Worry About Domestic Agenda
Capitol Hill, however, is still a friendly place for Jewish and pro-Israeli activists. Leadership of key committees, including Appropriations and Foreign Affairs, will remain in the hands of veteran Republicans with whom pro-Israeli activists had established long-standing working relations. “We make sure to be in close ties with both sides, and we’ve always worked with both the majority and the minority, so these kinds of transitions are easier for us,” said Daniel Meron, minister of congressional affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
The War on Christianity by Patrick J. Buchanan
Some great comments on this article.
Bush: Cheney angry Bush did not pardon Libby
Former President George W. Bush says Vice President Dick Cheney angrily confronted him over Bush's decision not to pardon a former vice presidential aide over his role in the case of the leaked identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Israel/Palestine and Iran Are Not Linked And Should Not Be Linked (II)
Resurgent Republicans Call for More of the Good Old Stuff by Philip Giraldi
Israpundit » Blog Archive » Senator Elect Rubio is coming to Israel next week
You Just Won The Senate Seat For Florida, Mr. Rubio! Now What are You Going to Do? . . . “I’m Going to Israel!”
ANALYSIS - Bush's memoir explains U.S. can't appear to be doing Israel's bidding - Haaretz Daily Newspaper Israel News
Bush's book should thus be read as a lesson for the future: The Americans cannot appear to be doing Israel's bidding. Precise intelligence is necessary. And whatever can be done secretly is better than what explodes thunderously
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