IDF in Heavy Firefight with Terrorists on Gaza Border

by Yaakov Katz, Yaakov Lappin

Hours after IDF kills global jihad terrorist in air strike, Palestinians fire dozens of mortar shells into Eshkol Regional Council area; no immediate reports of injury; IDF responds with tank fire.

Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

Dozens of mortars rained down on Israel Sunday night and a heavy firefight broke out between Palestinian terrorists and IDF soldiers near the Kerem Shalom Crossing.

The mortar fire began at around 8 p.m., likely in retaliation to an Israeli airstrike earlier in the day against a global jihad terror cell which the IDF said was in the final stages of launching an attack against Israel along the Egyptian border. One terrorist was killed in the strike and another was seriously injured.

The IDF ordered residents of communities in the Eshkol Region to remain inside their homes. Palestinians reported that the IDF was firing tank shells into southern Gaza, likely part of an effort to suppress the mortar fire.

"I'm hearing the explosions all the time, every few seconds there are mortars or Kassams...We don't know of any injuries, thankfully," Eshkol Regional Council spokeswoman Ronit Minaker told The Jerusalem Post.

The fresh round of violence came hours after the Israeli Air Force bombed a motorbike in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, striking a global jihad terrorist who the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said had been plotting a terror attack along the Egyptian border for weeks. Palestinian hospital officials said the man, Ahmed Ismail, 22, was seriously injured, and his assistant, Eid Okel Hjazi, a 19-year-old from Rafah, was killed.

Security sources said the terrorist was Ahmed Said Ismail, 22, from the Gaza Strip. They said he was part of the group that carried out the attack in June that killed an Israeli workman, and was in the midst of planning another attack against Israel along the border.

Security sources said it was possible the strike thwarted the terror attack. IDF spokesman Brigadier Gen. Yoav Mordechai said they were in the "advanced and final stages of launching an attack on the Eilat - Egyptian border."

Military sources added that global jihad elements were taking advantage of regional instability, in particular in Egypt and Syria, to create infrastructure that can be used to attack Israel.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement praising the IDF and the Shin Bet for the "precise operation" in Gaza.

"All those who intend to harm us should know our long arm will reach them," he said.

Israel is increasingly concerned with the presence of global jihad operatives in the Sinai Peninsula and their ties with Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

Several terror cells are believed to consist of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as well as global jihad operatives from various Arab countries throughout the Middle East.

Last week, the Counter-Terrorism Bureau urged Israeli tourists in Sinai to return to Israel immediately because terrorists are planning to abduct Israelis from the peninsula.

Yaakov Katz, Yaakov Lappin
Herb Keinon contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=280155

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Rumsfeld: Israel Shouldn't Tell the US Before Striking Iran

by Eli Leon and Israel Hayom Staff

Former U.S. defense secretary tells Fox News that international sanctions have had no impact on the Iranian regime • Given leaks at White House, Rumsfeld says he would not notify U.S. of Iran plans if he were in the Israeli government.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "Sanctions have not influenced the Iranian regime." | Photo credit: AFP

Rumsfeld said that sanctions usually don't work well over a prolonged period of time. He added that sanctions tend to hurt people more than governments.

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld expressed firm support this weekend for Israel's position on the Iran nuclear issue and said that international sanctions have not influenced the Iranian regime. Rumsfeld also said that if he were Israel, he probably wouldn't notify the U.S. of an impending strike on Iran given the current state of the relationship and frequent leaks out of the White House.

"Well, I think the prime minister of Israel, [Benjamin] Netanyahu, is probably correct," Rumsfeld said in an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News Thursday. "Their intelligence on Iran is excellent."

Rumsfeld cited the example of Iraq, where sanctions didn't affect the actions of Saddam Hussein. "He kept building palaces and importing weapons and doing what he wanted to," Rumsfeld said of Hussein.

"I think any prime minister of Israel who gets up every morning and reads in the newspaper that the leadership of Iran says that the Israeli state should be annihilated, eradicated, incinerated, has to know that it's that prime minister's responsibility to see that that doesn't happen," Rumsfeld continued.

When asked how the U.S. should respond if Israel were to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, Rumsfeld said it would depend on who is in the White House at the time.

"We historically have looked at Israel as a very important relationship," Rumsfeld said. "We have been cooperative, and we have assisted them with various types of technology and weaponry."

Rumsfeld went on to speak out against White House leaks on the Iran nuclear issue.

"If I were in the Israeli government, I don't think I would notify the United States government of any intent to do anything about Iran," Rumsfeld stated. "I think that their [Israel's] relationship with the United States is such that it conceivably could leak out of the United States government that he called and that he plans to do something on Iran."

"So my guess is, given the pattern of leaks out of the White House, that any prime minister of Israel would not call the United States and give clear intentions as to what they plan to do."

Asked about Israel's capabilities to stop Iran's nuclear program, Rumsfeld said that Israel wouldn't need to destroy every Iranian nuclear site.

"All the Israelis need to do is delay them [the Iranians]," Rumsfeld said. "They [Israel] don't need to — you don't need to do something like that 100 percent, like they were able to do in Iraq when they had the bombing raid and took out the Iraqi nuclear facility, or in Syria, where they took out the Syrian nuclear facility."

Rumsfeld also spoke about the ongoing violence in Syria and said that the U.S. should provide aid to the rebels who are fighting against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

"Syria and Iran are linked at the hip," Rumsfeld said. "They are terribly damaging to our country. They support Hamas. They support Hezbollah. They support other terrorist organizations. They are harmful to us in Iraq. They are harmful to us in Afghanistan. And they are harmful in the region."

Eli Leon and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=5290

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Misreading the Quran

by Jay Schalin

Few topics are more important to the future of the free world than its relationship with Islam. Muslims are on the march, here and in Europe, and many make it clear that they have no intention of leaving the West as they found it.

Frighteningly, the university dialogue about this crucial relationship, which often spills over into national policy, is usually controlled by academics who willfully ignore Islam's less savory aspects. Whether they deliberately aid the cause of "jihad" or are so enamored of their own studies of the Islamic world that they are blind to its dark side doesn't matter; either is perilous to our society's long-term security.

Carl Ernst is one such academic. There is little question that he is an important voice in Middle East studies. He is the William R. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, the former chair of the religious studies department, the co-director of Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, the director of the Duke University-UNC Consortium of Middle East Studies, and a board member of the national Middle Eastern Studies Association.

Yet, with a background in comparative religions instead of history or political science, he seems ill-equipped to comprehend the worldwide emergence of radical Islam in a broader sense. His latest book, entitled How to Read the Qur'an: A New Guide, with Select Translations, defends the Quran against Western criticism, largely by emphasizing literary and structural techniques rather than the major themes. It is a paean to minutiae; Not only does Ernst miss the forest for the trees, but he misses the trees for the leaves.

It's not the first time that Ernst has tried to introduce the Muslim holy book in a more benign light than perhaps it deserves. He caused a national controversy at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2002 when he convinced the school to assign Michael Sells' Approaching the Quran as its summer reading program selection required for all incoming freshmen.

Critics attacked the choice, saying that Sells' book whitewashed the Quran's violence by eliminating the more questionable chapters (suras). It was considered especially divisive coming the year after the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Ernst defended his support for Sells' book in a 2003 Spirituality and Health article, in which he concluded:

One happy response to the tragedy of September 11 has been a thirst for knowledge of Islam. This summer reading program was a small step in that direction. As the Qur'an asks, "Are those who know the same as those who do not know?

It astonishes to hear an American to speak of a "happy outcome" of 9-11, especially if that outcome caused Americans to learn about Islam according to the terrorists' wishes. He missed entirely that the surge in interest in Islam was because people wanted to know why it compelled its followers to commit such terrible acts -- not because they sought its wisdom. And quoting the Quran to authoritatively affirm his comments seems provocative beyond the pale.

Ernst also raised questions about his allegiances in 2008, when he traveled to Iran to accept an award for scholarship directly from the radical Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ernst intended How to Read the Qur'an to be a first exposure for college and even high school students. But it is no straightforward introduction to a complex subject. Ernst eschews thematic discussion of the book, the method most likely to provide the basic understanding that should be the purpose of a first exposure.

The Quran is important because it has affected hearts, minds, and events for 1,400 years; a first exposure should deal with its meaning and influence above all. But the key issues are of little concern to Ernst:

Although some readers may be particularly interested in sura 4, "The Women," for its focus on gender issues, or in suras 8 and 9 because of their attention to warfare, those questions would be most relevant for a subject-oriented approach to the Quran ... which is not the main concern of this book.

Instead of tackling the most relevant issues, Ernst presents the Quran according to its technical building blocks, a technique sure to confuse the novice rather than illuminate. In doing so, some important themes are mentioned, but in a tangential, scattershot manner that instills vague impressions rather than understanding.

In How to Read the Qur'an, Ernst attacks Western critics of the Quran for tending to "take individual verses out of context" when they point out its ominous meanings. But the Quran contains over 100 passages urging violence in a variety of contexts, including jihad. If the angry words appear on page after page, then perhaps they are the context, and there is no reason to doubt that violence is expected of the faithful.

According to Ernst, many Western scholars claim that the Quran is an "inferior derivative work" for its many uses of previous texts, including the Old and New Testaments and various tales from Arabic poetry and Middle Eastern folklore. He tries to refute their opinions through a process of "intertextuality" that suggests that "the Quran engages with earlier texts as part of a shared civilization." He takes that idea farther:

... the Quranic appropriations of biblical and other pre-Islamic narratives, oftentimes with new emphases and different conclusions, is a logical extension of the same literary processes of prophecy that have been practiced over the centuries.

One might be tempted to argue that the Quran, with its emphasis on war and hellfire, is hardly the "logical extension" of the New Testament, which suggests turning the other cheek.

The Muslim take on intertextuality is that "divergences between the Quran and biblical texts were proof of corruptions of the Bible," according to Ernst. Only belief in the Quran as divine revelation could uphold such a claim -- scholarly objectivity suggests that the accounts of witnesses closest to the original stories are more likely to be historically accurate. Despite Ernst's objective aspirations -- "no judgment is made whether or not the Quran is a divine revelation or the word of God" -- he offers support for the Muslim view.

Ernst also decries Orientalism, which is the study of the Middle East and Asia from a Western perspective, regarding it as "arbitrary theories by arrogant outsiders." Yet he is perhaps guilty of a similar cultural superiority, albeit one that downplays the violent aspects of Islam that are commonly accepted by believers rather than emphasizing them. He rejects the practice of Muslim scholars to rectify conflicts within the Quran based on the age of texts -- called "abrogation" -- instead preferring to use structural analysis developed by Western scholars that looks at the way the verses are organized. In Ernst's method, many of the more violent verses can be downplayed, whereas abrogation tends to elevate them.

One well-known case of abrogation concerns the Medinan sura "Al Tawba," one of the last written. It contains the infamous "Verse of the Sword," which "commands warfare against unbelievers," and, according to Ernst, "is held by some commentators to abrogate dozens of Quranic verses that proclaim patience and forgiveness for people of the book." This is because the early, less aggressive revelations were made during the Meccan period, when Muhammed had little power and was more conciliatory; in the later Medinan period, he had an army of converts at his disposal and pursued conquest.

But Ernst fails to say that "some commentators" are actually many of the most noted Islamic scholars over the centuries and that there is ample justification for giving primacy according to later texts within the Quran itself. For instance, for Sura 2, "the Cow":

None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar: Knowest thou not that Allah Hath power over all things?

And it is not just the Sword Verse that commands war against "unbelievers" or harsh treatment of Jews and Christians. Such commands appear throughout the Quran, such as "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them."

There is ample evidence of radical Islam seeking influence in the American academy; how, then, can we give so much intellectual authority to narrowly focused literary scholars, such as Carl Ernst, who think the most interesting facet of the Quran is its rhyme schemes and such? All over the world, radical Muslims are smirking.

Jay Schalin is the director of state policy analysis for the Pope Center for Higher Education.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/misreading_the_quran.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

A New Documentary Exposes the U.N.'s DNA

by Lauri B. Regan

When I was in grade school, I was given a UNICEF collection box every year with marching orders to solicit donations from family, friends and neighbors. My parents always had me toss the box in the garbage explaining that the United Nations was an anti-Semitic organization and we would not support its projects.

Decades later, my children were still sent home from school every year before Halloween with a UNICEF collection box and instructions to take it along while trick-or-treating. Like my parents, my initial reaction was to forbid my children from collecting money for the U. N. It was not just the anti-Semitism emanating from the organization that caused this visceral reaction. It was my awareness of the corruption and dysfunction that permeated that institution that infuriated me every time I drove by the headquarters on the East River, passed a diplomat's car double parked wherever it chose in Midtown Manhattan, or got stuck in traffic delays due to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again coming to New York to address the General Assembly. But that was difficult to explain to my children as well as adults who questioned my evident callousness at not supporting this organization founded on idealistic hopes and dreams.

Well not anymore. In a brief and entertaining 93 minutes, Ami Horowitz and Matt Groff, writers, producers, and directors of the documentary, U.N. Me, take the viewer on a fascinating, disturbing, and often humorous ride through the corruption, criminal activity, ineffectual bureaucracy, and profound uselessness of an institution that was initially created to fight the bad guys and address the problems related to war and peace. As Horowitz, also the star of the film, explains, "In the aftermath of World War II, the leaders of the world created the UN to ensure global security and protect human rights."

Alas, by the end of the movie the viewer is left with a sick feeling knowing that the $8 billion of U.S. funding of the U.N. in 2010[i] is being used to finance some of the world's worst atrocities and line the pockets of many of the vilest dictators and despots in modern history. As Claudia Rosett explains, "It's a culture that has a lot in common with dictatorships. It's what you'd find in despotisms, not in democratic societies. Secrecy and privilege. And that's unfortunately what's come from that utopian charter."

This Michael Moore-style documentary so artfully and skillfully produced by Horowitz and Groff appropriately begins and ends with Ahmadinejad taking the stage as the keynote speaker at the U.N's premiere human rights conference in 2009 in Geneva. At the start of the film, Horowitz questions the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and Conference Director as to how Ahmadinejad was chosen as the keynote speaker. There was no substantive answer - how could there be?

Horowitz ties the film together by returning to this theme at the end. In an interview with an Iranian diplomat defending his government's human rights record, the Iranian explains that each country may have its own standard of human rights based on cultural differences. So when Iran forces sex change operations on suspected homosexuals and stones women for untold number of reasons, they are simply enforcing laws based on cultural differences rather than abusing an individual's right to live. Horowitz's sarcasm once again gets the better of his interviewee as he hugs him goodbye and asks, "You like my shirt? It's not too gay is it?" The irony is not lost on the viewer as the film then points out that Iran was elected to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, the agency assigned with protecting the rights of women across the globe.[ii]

Just as Iran does not believe that there should be one standard of human rights, the U.N. apparently believes that there should not be one definition of terrorism. In one segment of the film, Horowitz interviews Javier Ruperez, whose title of Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the Security Council in and of itself reflects the messy bureaucracy plaguing this dysfunctional institution. You cannot make this stuff up and the filmmakers do not have to.

The U.N.'s Counter-Terrorism Committee was created as a response to the attacks on 9/11. Ruperez explained that 9/11 "was the day that was the moment when the whole world came to realize that we were facing a new and very serious threat." But apparently, no one in the U.N. hierarchy truly understands the threat since, as Ruperez explains, "[T]he United Nations so far has not been able to define terrorism."

So what exactly does the Committee do to combat terrorism? They fill out "reports" and when a country does not comply they send "missions" and they "talk to them." Not surprisingly, the Committee has never denounced a nation as having ties to terrorism. And when Horowitz pointed out that Syria, despite its numerous connections to terrorism and terrorist organizations, was elected to sit on the Security Council just months after 9/11, Ruperez responded, "there are a number of countries which certainly could improve their performance as far as terrorism is concerned." Indeed.

Other segments of the film address the corruption of the U.N.'s peacekeepers in Cote D'Ivoire (which includes rampant sexual abuse and gunning down of unarmed civilians), the ineffectiveness of the International Atomic Energy Agency established to prevent nations from acquiring nuclear weapons (and under whose watch Iran is moving ever closer to attaining that goal as it sits as vice chair of a disarmament commission), and the abuse that occurred in the "biggest scam in the history of humanitarian relief," also known as Oil for Food.

But one of the most disturbing segments of U.N.Me is entitled "1,000 people every 20 minutes." That was the number of innocent people killed in the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994 due to the failure of Kofi Annan, then U.N. head of peacekeeping missions, to authorize intervention despite having a mission in place ready and willing to act. The film does a superb job of walking the viewer through the background leading up to the extermination of the Rwandan people and the callousness and disregard for human life that occurred under the U.N. watch.

Ironically, the U.N. human rights body is supposed to be the first line of defense against Holocaust-type atrocities. But as U.N. Me illustrates, the world's worst human rights violators avoid condemnation by sitting on the very body that allows the persecution and abuses to continue. Governments who care the least about upholding the U.N. Charter's principles have the most to say about how they will be defended. Such upholders of human rights as Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Idi Amin's Uganda, Libya, China, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and North Korea have all sat on the Human Rights Commission.

In one of the most powerful video clips of the movie, Jody Williams, the head of the U.N. Mission to Darfur is seen presenting her report on the atrocities occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan while being told by representatives from Algeria, Syria, China, and Iran that her report is flawed and not legitimate. Her reply summarizes the ineffectiveness of the United Nations and its appalling corruption:

The world hung its head in shame and said never again. Well too many of us have lost hope that never again seems to have no applicability whatsoever in Darfur. When will the world hang its head in shame again? And our job is to attempt to try to alleviate the suffering of the people of Darfur who are being raped, pillaged and burned while political wrangling goes on here in the hallowed halls of the United Nations.

One of the things that makes U.N. Me so effective in reaching its audience is Horowitz's wit as he interviews various officials too ignorant to know what to do with him. His sarcasm ostensibly flies over their heads as, for instance, the Sudanese Ambassador explains away the genocide claiming that the conflict is due "primarily [to] climate change" and that the deaths are a result of "desertification and drought." While earlier in the film images of dead bodies hacked to death by U.N. funded machetes and weapons appear on the screen along with tables covered with endless numbers of skulls bearing brutal signs of injury and abuse, Horowitz responds, "Really? I never heard of drought causing axe wounds" and suggesting that perhaps driving Priuses would help the situation.

Toward the end of the film, Horowitz visits the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where the U.N. Charter is housed. We learn early in the film that the Charter, beginning with the words, "We the Peoples," was based on the ideals of the U.S. Constitution. So it seems apropos that both documents are stored at the National Archives. But whether Horowitz meant to make a political point or not, one cannot help but draw a connection between the rampant corruption that exists in the U.S. government and that seen permeating the dealings that take place at the U.N. Security Council.

Hundreds of thousands are slaughtered in Rwanda and Darfur on the U.N. watch. And most recently, the present U.S. government sits back and watches thousands slaughtered in Syria. Whether motivated by politics in the lead up to an election or a philosophy born out of belief in the power of the international community, Obama's ideological conviction that the U.S. must turn to the U.N. before intervening in atrocities committed throughout the world is untenable in the face of the lessons of U.N. Me. For, as Jody Williams concludes, "These countries on the Council, they're protecting their power... They don't give a shit about the civilians."

U.N. Me should be watched by every U.S. government official beginning with the POTUS. It should be required viewing in high school civics classes. And it should be watched by every U.S. taxpayer who will come away with the knowledge that their money is being wasted. This is an entertaining, well made, documentary that I highly recommend as a must see. You can view a trailer of U.N. Me and the DVD can be purchased by going to www.unmemovie.com.Watch it today - and contact your local representative tomorrow.

---

[i] This is a 21% increase over the 2009 budget.

[ii]And, since the filming of U.N. Me, and despite its defiance of Security Council resolutions directed at it in the face of its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Iran has since been named to sit on a conference bureau at the U.N. Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty.

Lauri B. Regan

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/a_new_documentary_exposes_the_uns_dna.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The Real Price of Middle Eastern Oil

by Shoshana Bryen & Stephen D. Bryen

American gasoline is cheap at the pump because consumers pay only for the oil, refining, and transportation to market -- plus tax. What we don't calculate is what the United States spends to defend the oil in the ground or the sea lanes that allow it to be shipped from the Middle East. We don't calculate the perversion of American principles as we coddle dictators to ensure they don't turn off the taps. Factoring those in makes the use of imported oil for transportation fuel much more expensive and distasteful.

The Middle East accounts for about 30% of the world's oil supply (North Africa, mainly Libya and Algeria, is another 6%), with 20% of the supply passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. is the primary defender of the sea lanes, beginning with the Strait and extending through the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Along this route, oil is delivered to India, Japan, China, and South Korea, among others. It is an enormous undertaking, costing the U.S. billions of dollars annually and having a heavy political and military impact.

Politically, it requires a potent relationship with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government is discriminatory toward Jews, Christians, women, and foreigners. It was the original funder of al-Qaeda and continues to export an extremist ideology. But it pumps a reliable 9+ million barrels a day, which appears to balance the scales.

Oil policy involves the U.S. in uprisings for and against dictators in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. It skews the American relationship with Israel and encourages Palestinian intransigence. It encourages the U.S. to temper its public defense of civil rights and individual liberty to ensure the continued flow of oil.

Militarily, it has meant the establishment and maintenance of CENTCOM, designed to protect the Gulf but located in Tampa, FL to avoid "regional sensitivities," meaning the Arabs we protect don't want to see us very often. It has fueled an arms-first relationship with dictators -- U.S. aid to Hosni Mubarak was split $1.25 billion for arms and $250 million in civilian support. It meant American involvement on Saddam's side in the Iran-Iraq war, and then against him in the Gulf War and the Iraq war. It meant involvement in Libya on behalf of French and British oil interests. It means that the U.S. has now assumed primary responsibility for keeping the Strait of Hormuz open should Iran try to close it.

All this secures just about 18% of our oil imports, primarily to gas up our cars. In 2011, Americans used 134 billion gallons of gasoline at an average price of $3.52.

On the other hand, securing the Strait of Hormuz and the passage of Persian Gulf oil ensures the safe arrival of about 77% of Japan's oil imports, 74% of South Korea's imports, and 43% of China's imported oil. India imports 11% of its crude oil from Iran, 18% from Saudi Arabia, and 34% from elsewhere in the Middle East -- making it over 60% dependent on the region. (If you think the 1 July embargo on Iranian oil greatly changes these figures, be aware that the Obama administration has issued waivers to 20 of Iran's biggest customers, including China and India.) To defend what is arguably of greater importance to them than to us, India, Japan, South Korea, and China pay exactly nothing.

This is a good time to consider the relationship among transportation fuel, defense policy, and defense spending. Over the next decade, nearly $500 billion (9%) will be cut from the Defense budget if the planned Sequestration goes through in January. This falls on top of $487 billion in cuts already agreed to by DoD. Both the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs have called the situation dire.

Earlier this year, President Obama said, "The size and structure of our military and defense budget have to be driven by a strategy -- not the other way around." But to the extent that the U.S. assumes military responsibility for defending indefensible regimes and ensuring China's access to oil, our military spending is at odds with our strategic aims. Defense of our friends and deterring/eliminating our adversaries should be our national security drivers.

The time is right -- the world's energy picture is changing in terms of resources and who controls them. Israel and Cyprus are poised to be major players in Europe and Asia. Canada is developing additional resources, and the U.S. is reclaiming its stake in domestic energy. The shift can be hastened by the recognition that Middle Eastern oil is not now and never has been cheap.

Shoshana Bryen is senior director of The Jewish Policy Center; Stephen D. Bryen is president of SDB Partners.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/the_real_price_of_middle_eastern_oil.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Celebrating Ramadan With Anti-Semitism

by Jonathan S. Tobin

Last month President Obama noted, as he does with all major religious events, the start of the Muslim holy month Ramadan and commemorated the holiday by calling it a time to “cherish family, friends, and neighbors, and to help those in need.” That was an appropriate statement but in much of the Islamic world, it also appears to be a time to indulge in Jew hatred. While holiday specials in the United States are noted for their saccharine tone, Ramadan specials appeal to a very different sort of sentiment. As the Anti-Defamation League noted on Thursday, the 30 days of fasting and prayer has been marked in a number of Muslim countries with special television programs that are rife with anti-Semitism and intended to foment hatred of Jews and Israel.

The significant factor about these shows is not just that they are drenched in the traditional tropes of anti-Semitism in which Jews are portrayed as cheap as well as cheats and villainous victimizers of Muslims. It is that these programs are clearly crafted to appeal to a popular audience throughout the Middle East. While they can be rightly accused of promoting hatred at the same time they must also be understood as a reflection of the attitudes prevalent in Muslim societies. The producers of these shows are guilty of pandering to the deeply ingrained prejudices of the Islamic world as much as they are feeding them. That some of these shows like the Egyptian “Firqat Naji Attalha” are comedies in which the bias against Jews is merely the backdrop for humor tells us more about popular opinion in these countries than anything else. According to the MBC network, which is broadcasting the show throughout the Middle East, “Firqat Naji Attalha” gives audiences “the sweetest jokes about the ‘cheap Jew.’”

The Egyptian comedy portrays the exploits of an attaché at the country’s Israeli embassy that performs acts of sabotage in Israel including robbing a bank disguised as an ultra-Orthodox Jew. The show includes lots of references to negative Jewish stereotypes and celebrates terrorist attacks on Israel.

Other Ramadan television highlights are less funny but not less disturbing. “Ashar il Sabt” runs twice a week in Egypt and features an Egyptian professor who pretends to be an expert on Hebrew literature and discusses anti-Semitic libels such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as part of an effort to trash Judaism.

Another Ramadan favorite is the Egyptian version of the old American standard “Candid Camera.” As we previously noted in Contentions, one episode centered on tricking Egyptian celebrities into thinking they were appearing with Jews on Israeli television which sent the victims in paroxysms of rage and violence, salted with anti-Semitic invective.

Also playing on Arab television screens this month is a production of the popular Al Manar channel run by Hezbollah. Their contribution for the holiday is a series called “Al Ghalibun” that predictably depicts Israelis as cruel invaders of Lebanon while treating anti-Israel terrorism as laudable.

As the ADL reports, this isn’t the first time Ramadan has been used by Arab and Islamic television to promote hatred of Jews. Both Egyptian television and Al Manar have run blatantly anti-Semitic shows in the past. Indeed, the entertainment industry in the region appears to believe such shows are exactly what their audiences want most during the holiday.

Those who believe such attitudes are caused by West Bank settlements or the refusal of Israel to make enough concessions to the Palestinians need to understand that the hatred of Jews is not so much a function of politics but of culture. Until there is a sea change within the Muslim world in which this kind of hatred is not only no longer popular but rejected by mainstream opinion, Middle East peace is just a dream.

Jonathan S. Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/08/05/celebrating-ramadan-with-anti-semitism-television/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Why Is North Korea So Poor?

by Michael Rubin

The answer should be stunningly obvious, but don’t tell Reuters. In the course of an article about the divergent fates that await victorious North Korean athletes and those who have failed, comes this:

The reality is that life is tough in North Korea in the best of times, however. International sanctions over its nuclear weapons program, a decaying economy and a defective food distribution system have left almost a third of its 24 million people poor and hungry and it has few friends besides its neighbor China.

It really takes an intellectual contortionist wearing blinders to miss so utterly the reasons for North Korea’s failure: it’s a totalitarian state that holds its own citizens in contempt. International sanctions may target the North’s weapons program but, if sanctions were waived tomorrow, the only beneficiaries would be Kim Jong-un and the military. The food distribution system is not defective, just misaligned. After all, it was the regime and military that benefited when the Clinton administration shipped food aid to North Korea. The regime maintains the Songbun, a social classification system that marks North Koreans for life. A tiny few benefit; most are disposable.

Nor was North Korea’s economic decay a passive process. Rather than invest in expanding the economy, the North Korean leadership siphoned all investment into its million plus man army. There is no better illustration today of the human cost of communism and dictatorship than the juxtaposition between North and South Korea.

Reuters may have thought that their explanation of North Korean woes to be a throwaway sentence, a bit of background for those who do not the poverty that blankets North Korea today. When it comes to North Korea, however, there can be no way around blame: The responsibility for North Korea’s dire situation rests solely and completely on its murderous, totalitarian regime.

Michael Rubin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/08/05/why-is-north-korea-so-poor-communism/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Despising Israeli Democracy

by Jonathan S. Tobin

You might think that even the New York Times would get tired of publishing rants from failed Israeli politicians denouncing not only their nation’s current government but also the entire society that had rejected them. But apparently the newspaper’s appetite for such tirades is undiminished as the publication of Avraham Burg’s in the Times’ Sunday edition today. There isn’t much that is particularly original about Burg’s piece that takes the point of view that Israel is on the brink of no longer being a democracy and is intolerant of minority views. That this is not remotely closely to being the truth is no barrier to its publication since it is exactly what American leftists want to be told. His views are an absurd conflation of egotism and blindness but his foolishness is not limited to his analysis of his own country, he also understands nothing about U.S.-Israel alliance and the strength of the across-the-board support the Jewish state has here.

In the conclusion of his article in which he envisions a post-Zionist government of Israel that will reject Jewish nationalism in favor of something more inclusive, he claims:

When a true Israeli democracy is established, our prime minister will go to Capitol Hill and win applause from both sides of the aisle.

That is, I suppose, a shot at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he accused earlier in the piece of being a “warmonger.” But as anyone who bothered to watch Netanyahu’s address to a joint meeting of Congress last year, he was widely cheered by both Republicans and Democrats with both parties competing with each other to show their enthusiasm for their Israeli ally. This is the sort of obvious mistake that any editor, even one with no love for Israel, should have caught. That it wasn’t tells us that the gatekeepers at the Times are as out of touch with reality as Burg.

Burg, who is the scion of a famous family and was once thought to be a man with an unlimited political future, seems to despise his country these days. Though he attempts to wax lyrical about trends in its society, the main reason he thinks Israel is no longer a democracy is that Israel’s electorate has consistently rejected his views about the peace process as well his own hopes for high office causing him to question not only their judgment but the entire ideological edifice on which the country rests. His egotism is pathetic but it is fed by a stubborn refusal to see what the vast majority of his compatriots understand. They agree with him that a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians would be ideal but have come to terms with the fact that their antagonists have no interest in such a deal.

Burg despises what he calls the “religious, capitalist” state that Israel has become. Most Israelis would be happy if the ultra-Orthodox would have less power but what he is really longing for is the Israel of the past in which secular Jews of European origin dominated a country in which socialist economic policies served to keep the power of existing elites in place. He rejects Netanyahu’s free market reforms that have made Israel a burgeoning economic powerhouse because more economic freedom has created a messy but more genuine democracy in which “princes” like Burg are no longer in position to tell everybody else what to do.

Burg also does an injustice to the overwhelming majority of Americans who, contrary to his belief that the alliance is now rooted in “war, threats and fear,” still care about the common democratic values that he seems to think have been abandoned by everyone but himself. Most Americans, even those who don’t particularly like Netanyahu, respect the will of Israel’s voters more than Burg. They also recognize that the threats to Israel’s existence, principally the nuclear danger from Iran is a life or death matter that requires more serious thought than Burg seems capable of these days.

Burg is right about one thing. Israel could use a written constitution and smarter people than him have been thinking and writing about it for a generation. But the course of Burg’s career shows that the only constitution he is really interested in is one that could guarantee that his views could be imposed on his country. Not even the imprimatur of the New York Times Sunday Review can disguise the fact that Burg’s post-Zionist views are outside the Israeli mainstream. In publishing his article, the Times has shown that, contrary to the title of the piece, its real complaint is not about the absence of Israeli democracy, but its vibrancy.

Jonathan S. Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/08/05/despising-israeli-democracy-netanyahu-congress-avraham-burg/#more-801429

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Doctors Fear for Medicine’s Future

by Tait Trussell

In a new national poll, doctors say they must now decide if they can continue practicing medicine in their patients’ best interest or bow to bureaucratically-set restrictions that take precedence over patient necessities. Another stark choice some doctors ponder is: Can I afford to quit medicine altogether? The language of respondents is stark and often angry.

The survey of 36,000 physicians by the Doctor Patient Medical Association Foundation (DPMAF), with a better than average return, revealed a most disturbing future for the health care of all Americans.

Doctors responded from 45 states. (130 didn’t identify their specific geographical location). Most (81 percent) were in small group practice. Most have been in practice for from 11 to 30 years. The survey, conducted by fax and online, was completed in June. Of those responding:

• 90 percent say the medical system is “on the wrong track.”
• 83 percent say they are “thinking about quitting.”
• 61 percent said the system “challenges their ethics.”
• 70 percent say “reducing government would be the single best fix.”

A Texas Orthopedist wrote, “I have been in practice 28 years and medicine is now the worst for doctors it has ever been.” A Wisconsin anesthesiologist wrote, “I would not consider letting my teenagers become physicians.” A Kansas sports medicine doctor wrote: “Medicine is circling the drain. Heaven help us as we age.”

“I did not go to school for 25-plus years to be a computer programmer for the federal government,” testily responded a Florida ophthalmologist.

A Missouri physician concluded, “Medicine is no longer about treating and taking care of patients. I spend more time telling patients about additional paperwork they need to fill in.”

Two out of three surveyed answered that electronic medical records (EMR) [required by ObamaCare] compromise medical privacy and confidentiality. A neurologist from Missouri writes, “Electronic medical records…should not be connected to the outside world to avoid confidentiality abuse.” A Massachusetts psychiatrist added: “EMR has no place in psychiatric practice.”

A Florida endocrinologist branded ObamaCare as “a monstrous bill designed to give government COMPLETE control over our lives.” A New Hampshire doctor practicing internal medicine wrote: “Government gets away with rationing by making doctors the scapegoats that an ACO made a profit by skimping on care.” He referred to the Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). They take up only seven pages of the massive Affordable Care Act. Yet they have become one of the most confusing provisions. This latest model for delivering services offers primary-care doctors and hospitals financial incentives to provide “quality” care (as defined by bureaucrats) to Medicare beneficiaries while clamping down on costs. It is one of the more controversial provisions of ObamaCare, among the 150 programs, agencies, and boards in the law.

One physician who separated himself as much as possible from government intrusion wrote happily: “I opted out of Medicare and Medicaid for 12 years now as an internal medicine practitioner. I have never been busier, deliver a high quality service, am financially secure, and cannot wait to go to work every day,” according to that Minnesota internist.

Doctors also scoff at declared cost-cutting tactics falsely promised by the Obama Administration. They are quite “unlikely to do so,” many said. “Only the free market will fix this mess,” wrote a Texas OB-GYN.

Two out of three physicians answering the survey say they are “just squeaking by or are losing money, and half expect that financial situation to worsen in the next five years. A Pennsylvania ophthalmologist wrote, “As a solo doc, I am being forced out of my practice by the bureaucracy…Those that suffer will be the patients.”

A Washington State family practitioner said: “I would be willing to do charity care weekly for the poor and uninsured if there was tort reform.”

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, 40 percent of medical malpractice suits filed are “without merit.” Yet despite the frivolous nature of many suits, juries often award millions to plaintiffs — and their trial lawyers. These predatory suits amount to legalized extortion and require doctors to carry malpractice insurance at great expense. A Department of Health and Human Services study found that unlimited excessive damages add between $70 billion and $126 billion annually to health-care costs. Trial lawyers are staunch Democrat supporters.

Many of the physicians point out that the huge expansion of Medicaid enrollees (estimated at 30 million) called for under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) “is likely to backfire.” Almost half of the doctors (49 percent) said they will stop accepting Medicaid payments.

“More patient involvement” was ranked as a “most important” factor by 68 percent of the docs—just behind reducing government regulations and mandates.

Having health insurance–as required under the Affordable Care Act (upheld by the Supreme Court) means nothing if there aren’t doctors to care for us. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) estimates a shortage of 63,000 doctors by 2015 and 91,500 by 2020 and 130,600 by 2025. The new survey indicates such estimates may well minimize an ominous future shortage.

“Hands down,” the medical Foundation said in its report, “doctors blame government involvement in medicine for the current problems in medicine, and they are not shy to say they want it out. Two out of three doctors ranks government as the top reason.”

A Kentucky anesthesiologist complains “As regulations have increased there has been a direct impact on the cost of care increasing.” But as a family practitioner in Washington State wrote: “I want to focus on what is best for my patients, not what a government official deems cost effective.” Another Washington State physician, in an explosive response said, “The federal government needs to get the HELL out of the practice of medicine.”

Enormous cost of “setting up the infrastructure, complexity of payment, unclear regulations, delayed payments, extreme government involvement, need to hire specialists in Information Technology (IT), and database management, quality control, customer service, compliance, finance administration, and physician networking and following rules often set by non-medical personnel” face the nation’s medical system, the Foundation concluded.

In the desperate words of a Florida neurologist: “American healthcare is finished.”

Tait Trussell

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/tait-trussell/doctors-fear-for-medicine%E2%80%99s-future/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama’s Disappearance On Darfur

by Stephen Brown

“Genocide is underway in Darfur, Sudan. Already 50,000 African Muslims have been killed and 1.2 million displaced by the Sudanese Government militias and encouraged by Khartoum…We cannot, in good conscience, stand by and let this genocide continue.”

- Senator Barack Obama, 2004.

“The United States has a moral obligation anytime you see humanitarian catastrophes. When you see a genocide in Rwanda, Bosnia or in Darfur, that is a stain on all of us, that’s a stain on our souls…We can’t say ‘never again’ and then allow it to happen again, and as a president of the United States I don’t intend to abandon people or turn a blind eye to slaughter.”

- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, 2007.

“The Government of Sudan has pursued a policy of genocide in Darfur. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have been killed in Darfur, and the killing continues to this very day…The Bush Administration and Congress have imposed sanctions in an effort to change Khartoum’s behaviour; to suddenly offer to normalize relations before that change takes place, particularly without close consultation with Congress, makes no sense.Washington must respond to the ongoing genocide and the ongoing failure to implement the CPA with consistency and strong consequences.

- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, 2008.

“The genocide in Darfur has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and left millions more displaced…Our conscience and our interests in peace and security call upon the United States and the international community to act with a sense of urgency and purpose.”

- President Barack Obama, 2009.

Oh, what a difference winning an election can make! As a Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama described Darfur, a rebellious region in Sudan, as one of his top priorities, gaining support from voters by doing so. But in contrast, in the 2012 electoral contest, the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Darfur has so far barely rated a mention. And it is easy to understand why.

Despite Obama’s stirring, call-to-arms verbiage in 2008, the slaughter still continues in Darfur, about which he promised he would “not turn a blind eye” as president. The most recent instance of murder by Sudanese government forces of indicted International Criminal Court (ICC) fugitive President Omar al-Bashir concerns the killing of 12 demonstrators last Tuesday in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur State. Since Obama’s election, government attacks against Darfuri civilians have resulted in additional hundreds of deaths, thousands of refugees and the destruction of homes and villages as well as the continued use of rape as a weapon of war.

The situation also has not changed for the three million Darfuri civilians displaced by the conflict that began in 2003 between the government and Darfuri rebel forces over black African Dafur’s marginalisation and discrimination by the central Arab government in Khartoum. These homeless Darfuris are still living in refugee camps both in Darfur and neighbouring Chad, to which they fled to escape death from air raids and from the brutal, government-armed Arab horse militias, the dreaded janjaweeds. Murder, rape and the destruction of villages was the janjaweed’s specialty – and still is. From the refugee camps, the Darfuris have also had to look on helplessly as their lands were taken over by Arab colonists, while the Obama administration looked the other way and complained about Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

And instead of getting quieter with an American president who stated several times he was adamantly opposed to such killing and Rwanda-like slaughter, the sounds of genocide in Sudan just keep getting louder. The Khartoum government is again engaged in genocide, its third one to date, in the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan state.

Before Darfur and South Kordofan, the first Khartoum-backed genocide occurred in southern Sudan, now the country of South Sudan, between 1983 and 2005, a conflict in which two million people, mostly black African southern Sudanese, died, four million were displaced and tens of thousands captured and sent to Arab northern Sudan as slaves. One of them, Francis Bok, a Dinka tribesman, told his story here in FrontPage Magazine of his ten years working as a child slave, from age seven to seventeen, for a cruel Arab master and his escape to freedom in America.

In South Kordofan, it is again, like in Darfur and in the former southern Sudan, a black African population that is being savagely attacked. Reports indicate the Sudanese military is waging a campaign of extermination there along with a military one. Like in Darfur, government warplanes are bombing Nuba villages unopposed, while witnesses state government troops “were shooting ‘the black people’.”

“Nuba were often just shot on sight by Khartoum forces, no questions asked,”testified former State Department Special Representative on Sudan, Roger Winter, before a congressional hearing. “Today, again, Nuba are positioned for liquidation by Khartoum forces.”

Perhaps nothing better indicates post-election Obama’s having gone “soft on genocide” and his failed policy to end the violence than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Khartoum last Wednesday to start an 11-day African tour. With the continuing slaughter of black African peoples in Sudan, one would think an African-American president would have his top foreign affairs official breathing fire in talks with the Sudanese. But nothing of the kind seems to have occurred.

According to a Sudan Tribune report of her meeting with Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Katri, it appears Clinton’s main focus was getting talks back on track between Khartoum and the government of South Sudan over the implementation of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the North-South civil war and resulted in South Sudan becoming an independent country in 2011. Darfur was not even mentioned in the story, indicating its importance in the discussions, while the war in South Kordofan was brought up in the context of Clinton asking Katri to allow humanitarian aid, which Khartoum had cut off on July 25, to flow back into the devastated region.

But such lack of firmness on the part of the Obama administration towards the Bashir government’s genocidal behaviour is not surprising. Retired Air Force General Scott Gration, Obama’s special envoy to Sudan between 2009 and 2011, once said there were only “remnants of genocide” in Darfur and followed Obama’s naïve policy of offering incentives to get the criminal regime in Khartoum to change its barbaric ways. Gration once famously stated: “We’ve got to think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries – they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement.”

One critic, Eric Reeves, author of the book A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moment’s in the Darfur Genocide, said Gration had “…no significant diplomatic experience or knowledge of Sudan…” and followed a “notorious policy of appeasement” with the ICC-wanted criminal Bashir.

But this soft approach would just have been a reflection of what Gration’s political superiors in Washington wanted.

“Gration’s record in Darfur has been one of complete failure,” Reeves stated in 2011.

To show what a low priority the Dafur crisis appears to have become for Obama, in 2010 at a State Department background briefing an official said the Department “would…be decoupling the state sponsor of terrorism from Darfur and the Darfur issue” in order to get Khartoum’s co-operation on the upcoming independence referendum in southern Sudan. Sudan was on the State Department’s list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

“The ‘Darfur issue’: what fantastically euphemistic language for what had previously been ‘genocide’, Reeves wrote scathingly. “…But the message here has not been lost on the brutally calculating men in Khartoum: in extremis, the USwill choose the southern CPA over ending genocidal violence and attrition in Darfur.”

Hilary Clinton’s visit to Khartoum this week appears to confirm Reeves’s analysis.

So having gone the full circle from roaring lion in 2004 to quiet lamb in 2012 about Darfur, the question remains as to why the dramatic change? Of all the reasons proffered, Winter probably stated the most likely one before the congressional committee when commenting on the “eccentricities” of Gration’s approach to the Khartoum regime, saying they “are related to the Administration’s commitment to ‘reach out’ to the Arab and Islamic world.” In other words, don’t treat an Arab regime, even a genocidal one, harshly or the other Arab countries won’t be your friend.

But this weak, naïve and less than insightful approach by Obama to Sudan will not produce the desired peace but only encourage Khartoum to continue its hard-line stance and murderous aggression. And this, in turn, will only produce more of the same for Sudan’s long-suffering, black African people in South Kordofan and Darfur, for whom Obama once used to express such great concern: war, death and enslavement.

Stephen Brown

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/stephenbrown/obama%E2%80%99s-disappearance-on-darfur/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.