July 1, 2009

AP- WASHINGTON D.C. - In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama’s qualifications for the presidency, the group “Americans for Freedom of Information” has released copies of President Obama’s college transcripts from Occidental College. Released today, the transcript indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the school. The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California. The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship. This document would seem to provide the smoking gun that many of Obama’s detractors have been seeking.

The news has created a firestorm at the White House as the release casts increasing doubt about Obama’s legitimacy and qualification to serve as president. When reached for comment in London, where he has been in meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Obama smiled but refused comment on the issue. Meanwhile, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs scoffed at the report stating that this was obviously another attempt by a right-wing conservative group to discredit the president and undermine the administration’s efforts to move the country in a new direction.

The Arabs know what they want, and that is the end of Israel.

The Jews are divided as to what they want. The left wants to get the hell out of the West Bank. The center, including Kadima and Labour, want to keep the settlement blocks containing most of the settlers but are prepared to uproot as many as 70,000 Jews, perhaps even 100,000. The right does not want to allow a Palestinian state to emerge, even if demilitarized.

All are united in requiring an end of conflict and the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Netanyahu is a centrist, though he campaigned on the right. In his response to Obama’s Cairo speech, he demanded recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and was prepared to accept a demilitarized Palestinian state. He also demanded that Jerusalem be part of Israel and that Israel have defensible borders.

Unfortunately, he was silent on his intentions regarding the settlers and the demanded settlement freeze. He did emphasize Israel’s historical rights but went nowhere with them.

(IsraelNN.com) A think tank which is arguably the most influential in Washington is proposing an “interim” neutral administration to govern Jerusalem instead of Israel.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), headquartered just three blocks from the White House in Washington, is regarded as one of the most influential think tanks in the city, if not the most influential. “CAP has been an incubator for liberal thought and helped build the [Democratic party] platform that triumphed in the 2008 campaign,” according to a Bloomberg.com report, which noted that some of the group's recommendations were adopted by Obama while he was still president-elect.

Four weeks ago, CAP held a panel discussion based on the premise that the Old City of Jerusalem is the main impediment in finding a solution to the Israel-Arab problem in the Holy Land. Michael Bell, a former Canadian Ambassador to Jordan, Egypt and Israel, presented a plan entitled the Jerusalem Old City Initiative. The plan does not call for the internationalization of Jerusalem -- but is not far off from that. It recommends that both Israel and a future state of Palestine appoint a third-party administrator that would run and police the city.

Bell explained that the plan calls for an administration or regime that would govern the Old City of Jerusalem for an interim period, without either Israel or the PA giving up their demands for sovereignty: “Frankly, I don’t think there’s going to be any agreement on sovereignty. I think that the two sides need not cede their demands for sovereignty; these claims can remain exactly as they are today. The sides would simply agree to delay the implementation or assertion of these claims until after an agreement is reached. Until then, a special administration would be set up, with the two sides agreeing to set this up, at least on an interim basis. And what this would do … would be to ensure dignity, human rights and equity for all living in the Old City, all visitors, and all pilgrims.”

(Israelnationalnews.com) Fire fighters in northern Israel fought dozens of blazes that broke out during the day Wednesday, most of them around noontime.

A source in the Hadera Fire Services told News1 that due to the fact that numerous fires broke out in a relatively limited area, the working assumption is that they were deliberately set. “We still do not know how the fires were set and we do not have details about the arsonist or arsonists,” he said.

Fire in northern Israel, February 2009 (Israel news photo: Flash 90)

You don't need to be all that smart to be an effective populist thug (Chavez, Ahmadinejad, etc). You really only need two instincts. You have to be able to smell weakness, just in general so you have a sense for what's possible. And you have to be able to pick out internal and external scapegoats that other people are willing to sacrifice, either in the name of unity or in the hope of quiet.

Ahmadinejad has all but ensured that Iran will become a nuclear power. First he did it by exposing the West as a paper tiger. Along the way he put the destruction of Israel back on the spectrum of public debate. Every brazen call for genocide created a drip drip drip effect that eroded public discourse and shifted the center of debate. Open "anti-Zionism" - which is really the call to destroy a democratic nation-state - is now just one of the things that people say.

The ostensible "middle ground" that liberal foreign policy elites chose was to insist that pressuring Israel will somehow fix Iran, presumably because Ahmadinejad seems really sincere when he says that Israel is the source of regional instability. The Obama White House being what it is, that linkage fetish is now official policy.

Which brings us to this article by Rick Richman:

Hence this secular State must perish for the People of Israel to obtain a new birth of freedom."

Prof. Paul Eidelberg

Foundation for Constitutional Democracy
June 25, 2009

Modern Israel is referred to as a “State” as well as a “Democracy”; and of course public life in this so-called democratic state is dominated by “politics.”  But to practice “politics” in Israel, or to conceive of Israel as a “State” or as a “Democracy,” is to enter a world of thought, action, and passion utterly foreign to the Torah and out of place in the Holy Land.  I shall limit this inquiry to the concept of the “State,” and I will show that insofar as the power of this state is virtually unlimited, it borders on fascism and sometimes crosses that border.

Alfred North Whitehead, the great gentile philosopher and mathematician, wisely said, “The Jews are the first example of [a] refusal to worship the state.”  The reason is this.  The “State,” like the city of Babel, manifests the self-glorification of man.  The State is wholly a human product, based on the autonomy of human will.  The principle, l’état c’est moi, may be traced to Machiavelli’s Prince, from which we learn that the laws of the state depend solely on the will of the sovereign, be it the One, the Few, or the Many.  This idea of the State is fundamentally opposed to the Torah’s conception of Israel. 

Israel is supposed to be a non-sovereign state created by God to be the teacher of mankind.  Perhaps this explains why Israel today, by using foreign concepts, often fails to act like a sovereign state.  Notice how Israel relies on Washington to mediate conflicts with Arab neighbors.  This may not seem unreasonable, until we recall that Israel’s government invested the CIA and the American State Department with the power to supervise PLO compliance with the Wye River Memorandum!

It would seem that Israel cannot act as a normal sovereign state.  Or as the prophet Ezekiel says:  “That which comes into your mind shall not be at all; in that you say, We shall be as the nations ...” (20:32).  What is there about the Sovereign State that Israel cannot readily or comfortably assimilate?

Foundation for Constitutional Democracy
June 30, 2009

Alexis de Tocqueville, a wise man, said that virtually all issues—if we think deeply enough—involve the “God” issue. 

More than two weeks have elapsed since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at Israel’s one religious university and there said nothing of the God of Israel and of His covenant with the Jewish people.  Hence it was all the easier for him to endorse the establishment of an Arab-Islamic state in Judea and Samaria—land God chose for the Jewish people.

More than two weeks have elapsed, and I have yet to hear any serious metapolitical denunciation of Mr. Netanyahu perfidious speech—his desecration of God’s Name and covenant.

Israel’s prime minister had bowed to President Obama.  His rhetoric did not obscure his sheep-like timidity, which was glaring to all but dullards and defeatists.  And of course the wolves in Washington and Europe were quick to pounce on the helpless Jewish state by making insolent demands about Jews and “Jewish settlements.”  France even had the audacity to advise Netanyahu to get rid of his foreign minister!

It’s obvious that Israel’s political leaders have no solid foundation on which to stand like men.  They seem to have forgotten that which preserved the Jewish people during 2,000 years of dispersion, persecution, and decimation.  They are pathetically ignorant of the only true source of Israel’s strength and dignity: the Torah. 

June 30, 2009

TEL AVIV – The composition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is "under assault" by the U.S. and Europe, says a top minister in the Israeli government.

"It seems there is a coordinated assault between the U.S. and some European countries to remove Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and his party and to replace them with the Kadima party," the minister said.

The minister spoke on condition his name be withheld due to possible political fallout from his comments. He said he was expressing his belief and does not have any proof of possible U.S.-European collusion to influence the composition of the Israeli government.

Kadima, headed by opposition leader Tzipi Livni, is considered a "centrist" party politically, although in reality its politics are leftist. Kadima, which led the government until earlier this year, supports a Palestinian state and under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert engaged in negotiations with the Palestinians that reportedly included the willingness to relinquish sections of Jerusalem and 94 percent of the West Bank. Livni led all negotiations.

Foundation for Constitutional Democracy
June 30, 2009

As everyone knows, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state in his June 14 speech at Bar-Ilan University. Yes, there are strings attached:  demilitarization, no treaties with foreign states, recognition of Israel as the State of the Jewish people, etc. 

To superficial observers, the strings appear rather cunning.  It fact, what Netanyahu has displayed is nothing more than very short-term pragmatism utterly devoid of wisdom.  Even if those strings or conditions were accepted by the Palestinian Authority, the first two are not enforceable and the third is worthless.   But let us leave Netanyahu’s so-called cunning aside and probe a little deeper.

In his June 14 speech, Netanyahu made the most pernicious concessions—worse than those of any of his predecessors.  He not only renounced before the entire world Jewish title to Judea and Samaria.  He also legitimated the Arab claim to this heartland of the Jewish people.  Moreover, he legitimated the Arab struggle to wrest this land from the Jews, and, by so doing, he has made Israel responsible for Arab suffering.   These horrendous ramifications will torture Israel’s future.   So much for Netanyahu’s cunning!

(Israelnationalnews.com) While much of the world mourns the untimely death of the "King of Pop" Michael Jackson, it is worth recalling one of Mr. Jackson's more unfortunate qualities: he was an anti-Semite.

In case you think I am making this up, allow me to refresh your memory.

Back in November 2005, Jackson was caught on tape in a voicemail to one of his former business managers calling Jews "leeches". The tapes were played on ABC's Good Morning America program, and Jackson was heard saying, "They suck…they're like leeches. It's a conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose."

And in 1995, Jackson provoked a firestorm of protest when he released an album called HIStory containing a song entitled "They don't care about us" which had the following lyrics: "Jew me, sue me" and "Kick me, kike me". He subsequently promised to re-record the song and delete the offending lyrics.

But then, in February 1996, Jackson nonetheless released a video of the song in which he had re-instated the brazenly anti-Semitic remarks.

So before you go shedding a tear in Michael Jackson's memory, take a moment and consider the hate that he spewed against Jews, both in private and in public.

And then maybe you'll consider saving those tears for someone far more deserving.

(IsraelNN.com) Romanian medical students have bought bones of Holocaust victims, the Rabbinical Centre of Europe (RCE) has learned. An American Jewish medical student currently in the northeastern Romanian town of Iasi has informed the RCE that the students have purchased human bones and skulls for research purposes from a mass grave of Holocaust victims in Podu Iloaiei. Over a thousand Jews who died from thirst and exhaustion on a death train were buried there in 1941.

Medical students at the university in nearby Iasi said that each bone costs $40, which is paid to the cemetery custodian. The email explains that the price includes digging the grave and “cleaning them up nicely.”

(Israelnationalnews.com) The U.S. State Department may have toned down its demand on Israel to freeze construction within Judea and Samaria. In a press briefing Monday, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly reiterated that the obligations signed by Israel under the Roadmap require Israel to freeze all construction within Judea and Samaria, including “natural growth.” Nevertheless, Kelly hinted that the U.S. is open to “negotiations.”

The official stated that both Israel and PA Arabs must honor their commitment to the Roadmap plan towards peace. “For the Palestinians, it means ending incitements to violence against Israel and demonstrating an ability to provide security. For Israel, it means: stop the settlements, which is laid out very specifically in the Roadmap. A freeze on all activity relating to settlements, including natural growth, is what it says in the Roadmap,” Kelly said.

Nevertheless, the spokesman hinted that a compromised agreement would be acceptable. “Well, inherent in the word ‘negotiation’ is, of course, sitting down and finding what one side – what the other side wants and then working out a way to come to a resolution that leads to our goal of a lasting peace in the Middle East,” Kelly said. “I’m not going to say we’re not willing to compromise or – I mean, let’s just see what happens,” the State Department official added, referring to Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s intended meeting Tuesday with U.S. special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell.

(Israelnationalnews.com) Migron residents are asked to resist the government's offer of houses in a bigger town. "Placing us in ghettos will make it easier for them to destroy us," activists tell them.

The Binyamin Residents Committee, the Women in Green grassroots organization, and others call upon the 45 families in Migron, just north of Jerusalem, not to “fall for the trap” of moving into new homes in nearby Adam. The Defense Ministry announced on Monday that it would build 50 new houses in the growing city of Adam for the Migron families. Migron is a hilltop neighborhood officially considered unauthorized – largely because of the lack of Defense Minister Barak’s signature of approval, as well as because of a lawsuit filed by Arab residents – sought out by Peace Now – on part of the land.

“Any solution that means the destruction of a Jewish settlement point,” says the Binyamin Residents Committee, “and transferring the residents elsewhere, is not acceptable. The Nation of Israel did not return to its homeland merely to be concentrated in ghettos.”

“It is too bad that the Netanyahu government caves in to the extreme left which, under the mantle of maintaining law, seeks to destroy the Jewish settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria to its foundations.”  

Foundation for Constitutional Democracy 
June 30, 2009

Various commentators have said that Israeli governments lack “professionalism.”  What is a profession?  What makes medicine, physics, mathematics, political science, architecture, astronomy, law, “professions”?  They are also called “disciplines” because they require sustained and systematic learning. 

Professions, however, involve the transmission, from generation to generation, of organized knowledge and methods of inquiry that enable us to comprehend and  perhaps control various domains of reality.  Such knowledge is not necessarily progressive.  Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher-mathematician and historian of science, notes that “In the year 1500 Europe knew less than Archimedes who died in the year 212 BC.”

June 29, 2009

There was considerable confusion last week when the leader of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church apparently told an Italian news agency of an upcoming announcement about the possible public display of the Ark of the Covenant – the box holding the Ten Commandments – and then the prescribed time passed with no word.

However, there was no equivocation today in an e-mail received by WND from the webmaster of a church website in response to an inquiry about the truth of the matter.

"It is not going to happen so the world has to live with curiosity," said the statement, signed only "Webmaster" in response to the WND inquiry.

The webmaster statement described the tempest as being caused either because of a translation mistake or "a slip [of the] tongue from the patriarch."

Sketch of Ark of the Covenant based on a description by the late explorer Ron Wyatt (wyattmuseum.com)

WND reported first when the apparent "revelation" was to be announced and then again later when the scheduled time came and went without word.

Ark hunters and Bible enthusiasts had been buzzing for days on the report from the Italian news agency Adnkronos that Patriarch Abuna Pauolos, visiting in Italy last week for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, was quoted, "Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses and the center of searches and studies for centuries."

Philadelphia Chapter of Americans for a Safe Israel   

June 29, 2009

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to wipe the state of Israel off the face of the planet. Sadly and strangely, two American born Jewish writers seem content to go along with the idea. One of the writers explains “…sometimes I think it might have been better had Herzl dreamed of a Jewish state in a place less embattled than the Middle East…” The defeatism from these writers and far too many others is blatant.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon was the first Jewish writer to recently examine the modern history of plans to establish sovereign and semi-sovereign Jewish territories outside of the Land of Israel. Chabon’s 2007 novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union is set in an imaginary Jewish settlement in Alaska. In Chabon’s alternate universe Israel was destroyed in the 1948 war and a proposal by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes to develop parts of Alaska as a "haven for Jewish refugees from Germany and other areas in Europe where the Jews are subjected to oppressive restrictions" had been implemented. Now, Hollywood filmmaking mavens Joel Coen and Ethan Coen are reportedly planning to make The Yiddish Policemen's Union into a movie. So, tragically, these long forgotten ideas will be romanticized for still larger audiences throughout the world.

As Defense Minister Ehud Barak flies to Washington for meetings with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, the unnamed senior official stated, “Israel will demand that any compromise be part of a wider program of regional peace, and only after agreement on the basic principles outlines by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in his [recent] speech at Bar-Ilan University.”

The Prime Minister declared for the first time that he would accept the creation of a new Arab state on part of the land of Judea and Samaria on condition that it be de-militarized and that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as a Jewish state. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has categorically rejected both conditions after having been encouraged by American and European support for the Arab-world demands that Israel surrender all of the land restored to the Jewish state in the Six-Day War in 1967, including the Western Wall and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

By Samuel Sokol and David Bedein
WorldNetDaily
June 23, 2009

Yes, everyone wants peace, and there has probably never been a time when so many false messiahs and so-called peacemakers have come to the front of the stage, proclaiming the change towards a new world order in which all humans will be treated fairly and with equality. Who would not want such a world?
 
Barack Hussein Obama is doing this masterfully, reaching out to all religions, to the young and the old, the poor and the rich. 'No more walls of separation and discrimination,' he promised the crowds that gathered to hear him in Berlin, and thus he has continued, stretching out his hand to the whole Muslim world in Cairo, and later standing with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Eli Wiesel at the horrendous site of Buchenwald, to proclaim that what was done there is not the way human beings should act. In his speech, Wiesel asked the question: has the world of today really changed and learned this lesson? Of course not.

The saga of Obama’s origins continues to grow as you will read in the following by Joseph Farah in WorldNetDaily [below]. (1) As you will note, a certain group of Obama supporters/collaborators ginned up a challenge to John McCain during the last Presidential election as to whether McCain was a legitimate American citizen, born off-shore to American parents. Their contention was that he was NOT qualified to run for and to be President of the United States under Constitutional Law. That was investigated but, it was ruled that he was, indeed an American citizen.

*Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, June 22, 2009.

Last week, at Bar-Ilan University, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bowed to the “two-state” formula.  By so doing he renounced Israel’s sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, the heartland of the Jewish People.  Who gave him the authority to do this?  Who gave him the authority to nullify the word of the Almighty?  No wonder he failed to say at this religious university that God gave Eretz Israel to the Jewish people as recorded in our holy Torah 

Instead, and in response to Barack Obama speech in Cairo, Netanyahu countered: “There are those who say that without the Holocaust the State [of Israel] would not have been established, but I say,” he continued, “The right to establish our sovereign state here, in the Land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: Eretz Israel is the birthplace of the Jewish People.” 

This statement—which echoes the first sentence of Israel’s Declaration of Independence—is false!  It suggests that the Jews did not become a “people” until the conquest of the land of Canaan by Joshua, hence, only after the Law-Giving at Mount Sinai.  Yet the Children of Israel are repeatedly referred to as a people even before their exodus from Egypt, as well as during their wanderings in the Wilderness.  In fact, they are also called a “nation.”  Thus:  “What great nation has laws … so righteous as this Torah?” (Deut. 4:8.)   

The media distraction machine has been drowning its target audience in the dazzling bathos of the illustrious “freak,” Michael Jackson, a cynosure and epitome of modern genius and disease. A constructed person whose identity was a mélange of sentiment, desire, toxic trends and, perhaps, serious fiddling he was an avatar of postmodernism, an “idol of the theatre” in Bacon’s sense as well as literally.

When the unstable West raises the banners for its spectacular last stand, already in play, it ought to feature his Frankenstein visage on it, haloed by that large white zero.

With the Reverend Jesse Run Jackson bellying into the picture muttering ominously about an evil doctor, law suits hover like vultures above the stage. In the glare of the cold light and stunning music perhaps Reverend Sharpton too may descend with props and media flacks chirping in tow. Given that the point is distraction, and dolors, one expects the denouement to be both funereal and greatly prolonged.

Foundation for Constitutional Democracy
June 23, 2009

Americans thought they were electing a President for a democratic nation. Little did they know they were about to elect a King to rule over all Americans.

Kings have their own self-centered agendas, often believing their rule is one of destiny, chosen by their gods. To what gods has Barack Hussein Obama pledged his allegiance? Who will be his chosen friends and new allies in the world?

Many have wondered about Obama’s true agenda. Where does his heart and soul lie? Perhaps he is, as claimed, a true Christian or, in his other self, he is the Muslim as he was born.

June 28, 2009

JERUSALEM – The Obama administration told the Palestinian Authority the "golden era" of Israeli construction in sections of Jerusalem and the strategic West Bank will soon come to an end, a top PA negotiator told WND.

"The U.S. assured us that for the first time since 1967, we are going into a period where there will not be allowed a single construction effort on the part of the Israelis in the settlements, including in Gush Etzion, Maale Adumum and eastern Jerusalem," said the negotiator, speaking from Ramallah on condition his name be withheld.

Maale Adumim is located in eastern Jerusalem. Israel reunited the eastern and western sections of Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Six Day War. Eastern Jerusalem, claimed by the PA for a future state, includes the Temple Mount.

The negotiator told WND the positions of the PA and U.S. regarding ongoing Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem "are closer than ever."