‘Money Makes the Bilin Protests Go ‘Round’

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

The real reason for weekly Bil'in riots is that protesters earn money from international leftists for throwing stones at soldiers, says the IDF, which is relocating the fence, the supposed cause of disturbances.

IDF Colonel Sa'ar Tzur told reporters Sunday, “Protests here will continue because there is a lot of money involved. For a long time this has not been a political or diplomatic issue. They get money from foreign donors.

One soldier who used to be stationed at the Bil’in and Nil'in villages, where anarchists have fueled Friday riots for more than four years, told Israel National News, “One Arab told me he is paid several hundreds shekels each time he demonstrates. It is good business for them.”

The very existence of the violent riots, as the IDF prepares to relocate the fence under High Court orders, underscores the likelihood that money is the reason for the demonstrations. Court judges sided with pro-Arab petitioners that the route of the fence infringes on private Arab land that does not present a security danger to Israel.

Last Friday, as IDF bulldozers prepared to tear down the fence and relocate it, the riots were more intense than they have been for several weeks.

“It is hard to say that we are friends, but it is like the experience of a bunch of guys who play soccer on Fridays. Everyone comes and does their thing and goes home pleased. We know the regular protestors by name,” according to IDF sources quoted Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA).

“Two weeks ago they called out to one of the commander by name, “Make sure your soldiers don't pass this point,"

European funds pay up to 4,000 shekels a month to protesters, a salary that far surpasses the minimum wage in Israel.

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145223

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Hizbullah Named in Hariri Hit

by Gavriel Queenann

Tension mounts in Lebanon as reports emerge the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will indict five Hizbullah members for the 14 February 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in the coming days.

Lebanese judicial authorities will receive a copy of the STL indictment either Monday or Tuesday, a Western source in Paris told the pan-Arab Al-Hayat on Monday.

Meanwhile, London-based Asharq al-Awsat, citing well-informed sources, said five Hizbullah members will be named in the indictment.

Al-Aswat said sources told them the indictment would be submitted to the Lebanese government in the coming two days, but that the inductees names would be kept confidential for a short period during their initial questioning.

Al-Hayat said the confirmation by Western source coincides with an unannounced journey to The Hague by Lebanese judges who are part of the special tribunal’s trial chamber. The remaining judges, both staff and reserve, left Beirut Sunday for the STL headquarters in The Hague, al-Hayat said.

Lebanese officials say the move is a precautionary measure to provide personal protection to the judges ahead of the indictment's release. The sources intimated none of Lebanon’s top government leaders had any official information as to when the indictment would be issued.

The Hariri tribunal followed a tortuous path since its formation shortly after the assassination. In its initial period, it was expected that its main angle of investigation would focus on the Syrians as Hariri was known as a defender of Lebanese sovereignty vis-a-vis the Syrian regime.

Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare's filing of the indictment in January and expansion in March set off political crises in Lebanon, where the Shi'ite group Hezbollah and its allies toppled the government of Hariri's son, Saad Hariri.

The release of the indictments is expected to have serious ramifications in Lebanon and region-wide, even threatening to throw Lebanon into another civil war.

Hizbullah denies its government's delay in formulating a position on the STL stems from not knowing what the tribunal's final conclusion would be.

Gavriel Queenann

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145219

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Delta Denies Complicity in Saudi Discrimination

by Gavriel Queenann

Israel National News on Friday wrote a report on articles appearing various news outlets saying, "Jews and Israelis, or passengers carrying any non-Islamic article of faith, will not be able to fly code-share flights from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia under Delta Air Line's new partnership with Saudi Arabian Airlines that is set to begin in 2012."

Delta responded to the articles strongly, saying it "does not operate service to Saudi Arabia and does not codeshare with any airline on flights to that country."

Delta does, however, have a standard interline agreement with Saudi Air allowing passengers to book flights on Saudi carriers to the kingdom.

“Delta’s only agreement with Saudi Arabian Airlines is a standard industry interline agreement, which allows passengers to book tickets on multiple carriers, similar to the standard interline agreements American Airlines, US Airways and Alaska Airlines have with Saudi Arabian Airlines,” Delta said.

“All of the three global airline alliances – Star, which includes United Airlines; oneworld, which includes American Airlines, and SkyTeam, which includes Delta – have members that fly to Saudi Arabia and are subject to that country’s rules governing entry,” the statement clarified.

"Delta does not discriminate nor do we condone discrimination against anyone in regards to age, race, nationality, religion, or gender," the statement added.

The statement released by Delta on Friday did not note that making use of their interline agreement with carriers that do fly to Saudi Arabia requires customers to first qualify for a Saudi visa, or that passengers boarding flights to Saudi Arabia booked through their interline service would be barred from bringing non-Islamic religious articles.

"We, like all international airlines, are required to comply with all applicable laws governing entry into every country we serve. You as passengers are responsible for obtaining the necessary travel documents, such as visas and certification of required vaccinations, and we’re responsible for making sure that you have the proper documentation before you board," Trebor Barnstetter of the Delta Media Team wrote on Delta's corporate blog.

Colby M. May, senior counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice said his office is trying to determine if the agreement runs afoul of U.S. law.

“The very idea that there is a common carrier airline service that would deny an American citizen in America access to their services because they are Jewish or have religious items such as a yarmulke, a cross or a priestly collar, is deeply disturbing,” May said.

May said he is “trying to get answers” from Delta. “They have not responded in a way that answers the question,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll do so.”

Saudi Arabia maintains it " does not deny visas to U.S. citizens based on their religion," the Saudi embassy in Washington said in a terse statement released Friday.

However, the U.S. State Department travel advisory for Saudi Arabia said there have been reports by U.S. citizens that “they were refused a Saudi visa because their passports reflected travel to Israel or indicated that they were born in Israel.”

Saudi Arabia bars anyone from bringing into Saudi Arabia religious ritual objects, including religious texts, from any faith other than Islam, effectively banning religiously observant Jews from entering the country.

Gavriel Queenann

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145215

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Dutch Stunning Law Aimed at Jews

by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

It seems most Moslems don't care if animals are stunned. Jews do. There is only one Jewish ritual slaughterer in Holland, the anti ritual slaughter research was proven faulty, and the vote is on Tuesday.

In the last few weeks, religious slaughter seems to have become the main issue in public debate in the Netherlands. It all started a few months ago with a private law proposal by Marianne Thieme, the leader of the small Party for the Animals. She wants to prohibit unstunned religious slaughter.

On Tuesday, two days before Parliament breaks for vacation, the vote on the proposal by Thieme and the amendment of the four parties is expected to take place. If the proposal passes, it has clear anti-Semitic characteristics. It mainly singles out a practice of the small Orthodox Jewish community.

Her proposal initially seemed to aim mainly at the Muslim community. Halal meat accounts for more than 99% of the meat from animals slaughtered without stunning. Gradually, it became clear that Orthodox Jews would be the main victims of this law, as only a minute percentage of halal-eating Muslims insist on slaughter without stunning.

Slowly but surely, the Party for the Animals managed to whip up emotions while its scientific claims were being refuted. The party posted videos on the internet which showed ritual slaughter outside of the Netherlands. The proposal based itself on two “scientific reports.” The Dutch public and many parliamentarians thought that these had been prepared by the reputable agricultural University of Wageningen.

Last week, the exposure of fallacies accelerated. A court case brought by two Jewish community organizations was heard on Thursday. The University of Wageningen denied any connection to the reports, nor were any of its employees involved. The documents had in fact been prepared by Wageningen UR, a privatized government organization with a name resembling that of the university.

The Jewish community in a press release said that the experimental report was no more than a pilot test. It has now asked the court to summon the author of the study.[1]In the meantime, the author has admitted that his study cannot be considered “pure scientific research.”

The experimental report has raised a large number of critical questions from Professor Joe Regenstein of Cornell University in the U.S. His criticisms are supported by Professor Temple Grandin of Colorado State University, the world’s leading expert in the field of animal slaughter.

Karen Soeters, the head of the Scientific Research Institute of the Party for the Animals claimed that Regenstein was biased. In the natural sciences however, concrete answers have to be given as to the reproducibility of experiments. Personalizing the debate is a caricature of science.

Soeters also made similar absurd remarks on another issue. TNO, a leading Dutch organization of applied science published a very critical report on the shortcomings of the methodology of the two Wageningen UR reports. Soeters said that TNO had no more competence in this field than an organization of car dealers and garage owners.

Another false suggestion of the Party for the Animals was that the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement in North America supports kosher slaughter after stunning. In a public statement, the Rabbinical Assembly asked for an apology. In addition many American experts whom I have asked said that there is no kosher slaughter in the U.S. under Conservative supervision that they know of.

On the political front, absurdity also prevails. In several parties of which the parliamentarians wanted to support Thieme, there was major dissent from the members. A congress held by the left liberal D66, instructed the parliamentarians to vote against Thieme’s bill.

Together with the Labor Party, the Liberals and the Green Left, a D66 parliamentarian therefore proposed last Thursday an amendment on Thieme’s law. It will allow unstunned religious slaughter, provided that the slaughterer can prove that his method isn’t any more painful to the animals than stunned slaughter.

The practical result of this motion will be to end kosher slaughter, identical to what Thieme had proposed. This was exposed the next day by a Dutch historian Amanda Kluveld, in a national daily De Volkskrant.[2]She pointed out the poor basis of what had falsely been presented as a scientific approach to animal suffering. She also said that reverse proof as proposed in the motion of the D66 was a faulty approach. Scientific proof for their position should be brought in the first place by those who had proposed the law and the amendment.

Kluveld added that the practices of the single Jewish ritual slaughterer in the Netherlands had never been investigated. It was nonsensical to ask from this one person to bring scientific proof, whereas the proposers of the amendment had been incapable of substantiating their case scientifically.

Kluveld concluded that “the parliamentarians debate this topic based on assumptions, fiction and prejudice. They simply do not have a clue about what happens in kosher slaughter in the Netherlands, how it takes place and how much animals suffer from it.”

The Jewish community came out against the motion in a press release. It added: “Everyone agrees that the kosher slaughter of chickens causes less suffering to the animals than industrial slaughter. Does this mean that the 300 million chickens which are now slaughtered in the Netherlands will be slaughtered according to kosher laws?”

The Party for the Animals should be concerned with an industry full of practices which indeed cause lengthy suffering and stress to hundreds of millions of animals. However, It is simply a new mutation of the old and well-known techniques of those who target Jews, while not addressing much bigger issues of others.

---

[1]Danielle Pinedo, “Joodse instanties willen auteur rapport ritueel slachten horen,” NRC, 25 June 2011 [Dutch]

[2]Amanda Kluveld, “Ook amendement koosjere slacht deugt niet,” Volkskrant, 24 June 2011 [Dutch]

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10352

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Israel Hits Back At Foreign Journalists Who Seek Passage On Gaza Flotilla

by Rick Moran

It's better than doing nothing and allowing all that sympathetic coverage of "peace" activists to go unchallenged.

Reuters:

Israel warned foreign journalists on Sunday they could be barred from the country for 10 years if they board a new flotilla that plans to challenge an Israeli naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

In a statement sent by email to Reuters and other international news organizations, Oren Helman, director of Israel's Government Press Office, said participation in the flotilla would be "an intentional violation" of Israeli law.

A year ago, nine Turkish activists, including one with dual U.S.-Turkish nationality, were killed by Israeli soldiers who raided a Gaza-bound aid convoy and were confronted by passengers wielding clubs and knives.

Pro-Palestinian activists have said ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip could depart from European ports in the coming days.

Helman said that sailing in a new flotilla "is liable to lead to participants being denied entry into the State of Israel for ten years, to the impoundment of their equipment and to additional sanctions."

Much of the western press is already anti-Israel - especially with regard to the Palestinians - so it isn't like the Israeli government is going to lose any friends because of this policy. No doubt, we'll hear solemn denunciations from the media about infringing on their rights, but when you're in a life or death struggle with an implacable enemy who plays the western press like a violin to begin with, you're left with very little choice.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/06/israel_hits_back_at_foreign_journalists_who_seek_passage_on_gaza_flotilla.html

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The Gulf Cooperation Council vs. Iran

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) first came to widespread attention during the early stages of the uprising in Bahrain, where, on March 14, it deployed thousands of "Peninsula Shield Force" troops -- drawn principally from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates -- to aid the Sunni monarchy in suppressing the largely Shi'a protestors. This measure, still in force today, is rooted in the growing tensions between the Gulf states and Iran as part of the "Arab Spring," with the former accusing the Islamic Republic of being behind the demonstrations in Bahrain and of fomenting unrest in the predominantly Shi'a areas of eastern Saudi Arabia.

Less widely noticed however, was the GCC's decision on May 10, 2011 to announce at a meeting convened in Riyadh that it welcomed Jordan's request to join the council, along with its invitation for Morocco to become a member. This move came as a surprise to certain delegates at the summit. Yet the choice to invite Morocco to the GCC, despite its distance from the Gulf region, should have been expected.

For those who have been closely following the development of what can be termed the "Middle Eastern Cold War" between the "resistance" bloc led by Iran and Turkey as opposed to the "status quo" bloc of Saudi Arabia and formerly Egypt until Hosni Mubarak's ouster, Morocco has distinguished itself for publicly breaking off all ties with Iran in March 2009. Morocco's initiative was at the time supported by Bahrain, both of whom then claimed that Iran was trying to spread Shi'i Islam in the Maghreb.

But what are the more general motives behind the GCC's decision? Two reasons come to mind:

Forming a Sunni axis against Iran and the Shi'a: It is clear that the GCC is trying to bolster its military capabilities, anticipating a military conflict with Iran in the future. The idea of creating a new coalition of Sunni Arab states can be explained by the status-quo bloc's suffering of a heavy loss with the removal of Mubarak as president of Egypt. With the Egyptian authorities allowing Iranian warships to transit through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt's membership of the status-quo bloc is severely in doubt in the eyes of the GCC.

One can also account for the decision to incorporate both Jordan and Morocco into the GCC in terms of forming a new Sunni bloc against Iran, as well as the GCC's retraction of an earlier invitation to the council for Iraq, which has a Shi'i-dominated government and took a stance in support of the protestors in Bahrain. The latter policy particularly annoyed the GCC, and partly motivated the Arab League in April to cancel the planned Baghdad summit that should have been held in March.

Replacing the dysfunctional Arab League: It could well be that the GCC is trying to create a new inter-Arab political group to replace the Arab League and shift the onus of decision-making to the Gulf region. Two traditional key players in the Arab League have been Egypt and Syria, even though the Baathist regime has aligned itself with the resistance bloc in the Middle Eastern Cold War. A vacuum in the Arab League's leadership has therefore been created by the ouster of Mubarak and the uncertain transition state in Egypt, together with the major protests and unrest in Syria that have taken Bashar al-Assad by surprise. Thus, the Arab League, which has normally fostered some sort of unity among Arab countries and served as a body for joint initiatives (e.g. the "Arab Peace Initiative" in 2002 to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), is now almost completely dysfunctional.

Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia and the GCC have looked beyond the Arab world to strengthen ties with other Sunni nations against Iran and what are perceived as Shi'i threats. For example, in return for Saudi pledges to put Pakistan's economy on the path to recovery, Pakistani security firms -- similar to Blackwater -- have recruited thousands of active and demobilized Pakistani troops to assist the monarchy in Bahrain. Meanwhile, on May 13, Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak declared in Riyadh that he would be prepared to send troops to Bahrain to aid the Peninsula Shield Force if necessary.

The emerging picture appears to be one of alliances formed on the basis of the traditional Sunni-Shi'a schism. On the other side, Shi'i countries and movements such as Iraq and Hezb'allah respectively have affirmed their support for the uprising in Bahrain, while standing with Bashar al-Assad's Alawite (a sect of Shi'i Islam)-dominated regime in the face of protests in Syria. In contrast, the Kurdish authorities and Sunni Arab politicians in Iraq have openly declared their solidarity with the Syrian demonstrators. Sectarianism thus appears to be very much alive in relations among Muslim countries at present.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/the_gulf_cooperation_council_vs_iran.html

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

Where is Gilad Schalit?

by JanSuzanne Krasner

In marking yesterday's fifth anniversary of French-Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit's abduction, Hamas has released photos of a Palestinian actor evoking images of 'Shalit at old age' looking thru prison bars. The pictures include symbolic messages with a hanging photo of Israeli navigator Ron Arad, who has been missing in action for 25 years, and several written messages on the cell wall that are supposed to be from Schalit to Israel. These are taunting words, words of abandonment, rescue pleas at any price, and 'I miss Mom', poking fun and pointing to his fate to be the same as Ron Arad's. This seems to be the best that Hamas has come up with in response to a growing demand to prove that Gilad Schalit is still alive.

It has been five years since Hamas terrorists tunneled into an IDF post, killed two Israeli soldiers and kidnapped Gilad Schalit. Any proof of Schalit's life has been given only in exchange for the release of Israeli-held terror-prisoners and that ended in 2009. The Israeli government has determined, and rightfully so, that convicted terror-prisoner release is dangerous for their national security.

Recently leaders from the US, France, Britain and Italy called for Hamas to let the International Red Cross visit Schalit, but were turned down. Even in Iran, the three young hikers who were arrested for crossing their border illegally and accused of spying were allowed a family member to visit. For the first time since Schalit's capture, the International Red Cross (ICRC) has demanded publicly that Hamas prove that Schalit is still alive. "Because no sign of life has been had from Schalit for nearly two years," the Red Cross publicly stated that: "We demand that Hamas provide proof that he is still alive." But Hamas has responded with rejection, claiming that the Red Cross is intervening in Israel's "security games."

The offer Hamas presently has on the table is an exchange with Schalit for the release of 1,000 convicted terrorists. So far, PM Netanyahu is taking a firm position, as did the previous Olmert government. The international organization points out that Hamas' refusal to allow them a visit with Schalit, amounts to inhuman treatment and is "totally unacceptable." ICRC's Director-General, Yves Daccord said: "The total absence of information concerning Mr. Schalit is completely unacceptable...The Shalit family have the right under international humanitarian law to be in contact with their son...Hamas has an obligation under international humanitarian law to protect Mr. Shalit's life, to treat him humanely and to let him have contact with his family,"

With this in mind, Netanyahu has presented a different approach to the situation. Hamas leaders clearly recognize the difference in prisoner treatment between Hamas jails and Israeli jails. In fact, it is Mosab Hasan Yousef, the son of one of the Hamas leaders, who has been outspoken on the contrast of humanitarian treatment he received in an Israeli prison compared to the deprivation in Arab jails. It was this humanness that got him to become, as some would claim, a traitor to his people, and helped Israel's Shin Bet save lives.

Several members of the Knesset recognized how well the prisoners are treated in their jails while Israeli soldiers are so poorly treated in Arab jails. In 2009, a law was proposed by eight members of the Knesset to "do justice and put an end to the absurd situation in which Israeli soldiers and civilians kidnapped by terrorist groups are held in sub-human conditions, while terrorist prisoners who belong to the same groups and who took part in murderous attacks on innocent civilians, enjoy superior conditions;" but the proposal was rejected by Netanyahu's government. At the end of the Israeli President's conference on June 20, Netanyahu said that he is committed to upholding Israeli and international law, but not exceeding their strict requirements. The Prime Minister's closing remarks included: "We are not committed to anything beyond that. As such the magnanimous conditions in the Israeli jails will end...I believe that if we all place public, political pressure on Hamas, we will advance Gilad's release."

The following is a list of some of the privileges terrorist inmates are given in Israel, all provided by Israeli taxpayers:

1. Prisoners are often allowed, against the rules, to have their children visit them without a glass partition. Family groups are also permitted frequent visitation rights.
2. Three hours a day of social time where they can get together with other prisoners to talk or play games like ping-pong, basketball, soccer and backgammon, using equipment and facilities provided for each activity.
3. In their cell, each prisoner has a TV set with 12 channels, including programming in Arabic.
4. Personal items are allowed near a prisoner's bed including food, cigarettes, and books.
5. Inmates are allowed to pursue an education, and many leave jail with a degree they have earned while being incarcerated.
6. Female prisoners are permitted to keep very young children with them in the cell.
7. Many prisoners receive money from the terror group they represent and are allowed as much as 1,200 shekels worth of food from the canteen every month.
8. As far as meals, inmates receive fish and meat on holidays. It is often said that released Israeli prisoners come home healthier and fatter and the quality of their life is much less when they return to Gaza.

It is quite clear that the Israelis continue to believe that they answer to a 'Higher Judge' and believe in doing right in the face of evil, even with their prisoners. However, in this situation, one can make the moral argument that the Israeli prison system is overly righteous, making capture and imprisonment of terrorists too pleasant, almost too attractive.

The past five years of dealing with Hamas and Schalit's kidnapping has been a great frustration to many, exacerbated by the past 2 years of silence. Is Gilad Schalit still alive? The time has come for international pressure to find out the truth. Hamas' denial for Red Cross visitation, masked in rhetoric, and the release of these offensive photos, is certainly a delaying tactic and one has to wonder where is Gilad Schalit on this fifth anniversary of his abduction?

JanSuzanne Krasner

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/06/where_is_gilad_schalit.html

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

How Environmentalists Cause War and Repression

by Daniel Greenfield

No other group has done as much to keep America dependent on foreign oil as the environmentalists have. After leading successful campaigns against nuclear power and domestic drilling, the green movement may lecture on “oil wars,” but it is responsible for most of them.

The math of it is very simple. Resource shortages are a major cause of conflict. And environmentalists have dedicated themselves to creating resource shortages in prosperous nations. Their campaigns against nuclear, domestic oil and coal production have been big on self-righteousness and short on consequences. And the consequences are that their scaremongering has not only cost millions of American jobs, it has forced us to keep sending money to Muslim oil states who use that money for domestic repression and international terrorism.

The environmentalists have done the same thing in Europe and Asia, turning formerly moribund Communist powers, Russia and China, into energy and manufacturing superpowers. By making it more expensive and in some cases impossible to conduct manufacturing and energy production at home, they exported Western industries to the East, and enabled the transformation of struggling tyrannies into international superpowers.

China’s domestic repression is made possible by its economic boom. A boom created when American companies found it cheaper to do business in a country where they weren’t under siege by college grads with a specialty in pretending to be Rachel Carson or Erin Brockovich, both frauds turned into legends thanks to the mythmaking abilities of the left-wing movement.

The legacy of Tiananmen Square would almost certainly have been reform or revolution, if not for a limited prosperity created through outsourced industries and cheap manufacturing. When the question arises, who killed the pro-democracy movement in China– it wasn’t the tanks, but their enablers, the liberals whose regulation and exploitation had made America into an uncomfortable place to do business. Those companies went elsewhere and the money they brought, propped up the Chinese Communist party. And the industries of the Chinese boom created such intense pollution that it is worse than the worst nightmares of the environmentalists. Pollution that they can and should take credit for, because they were the ones who made it happen.

Environmentalists who agitate against pollution caused by foreign companies in the Third World need to take a long hard look in the mirror. In many cases it was their own campaigns which drove American companies into countries where they wouldn’t be so tightly regulated. Rather than apply reasonable regulations, they made it their goal to wipe out entire industries. They didn’t get their wish. Rather those industries moved abroad to places where there were no regulations at all. And the resulting misery that caused lies at their doorstep.

In Germany, the Greens have succeeded in their campaign against the domestic nuclear industry. What is the net result of this? It further degrades Europe’s energy capabilities and moves it into Putin’s orbit. That empowers Russia to begin another campaign of conquest aimed at its former republics. That is what a “Green” victory really looks like. People freezing in their homes while a dictatorship sends its tanks and infantry on a new campaign of terror.

The environmental response is always something about solar and wind energy, two technologies that are still unready to meet a major country’s energy needs. But that’s exactly why the environmental movement champions them. Aside from the optics of “getting your energy from mother nature”, the real goal has always been to drive up the cost of energy. The environmental movement is not interested in cheap energy. If solar power provided energy cheaply, the greens would be marching against it. Any technology that provides cheap power is their enemy.

The mandate of the environmental movement is artificial scarcity. But artificial scarcity doesn’t exist in a global economy. If you raise the price of energy production, resource mining or manufacturing, it will move abroad to less regulated countries. The price will still go up and there will be other long term consequences, but people will still find a way to get what they need. Like the rest of the left, the green movement has never learned that people will act in their own interests, rather than in thrall to their dogma. That if they can’t get it legally, they will get it illegally.

Americans are not about to freeze in their homes in winter or die of heatstroke in the summer. They are not about to drive midget cars to the lumber yard or let their families go hungry so that they can buy local. And that means more money flowing to Saudi Arabia and to China. It means more war and more repression. It means more families making do without and more firing squads and terrorist attacks. All for the greater glory of the environmental movement.

It will take a lot more work to push down the poverty level to the extent that Americans will bike to work or root through the garbage for food– two behaviors popular in the environmentally pretentious left. Until then there will always be other options. No matter how bad they are.

Wal-Mart owes more to the left’s war on small business and manufacturing than either would care to recognize. Its Made in China merchandise sold at the lowest possible price is the aftermath of an outsourced economy which has brought formerly prosperous towns to the poverty level, and compensated for it with cheap goods from the country that has taken their industries. The left has created the poverty that it mocks. And it has created the slave labor that makes the products which they deplore. It is responsible for all of it and it should take ownership of it.

And as China approaches a new war for Pacific dominance, the left may as well take credit for that too. If it wasn’t for the shift in economic power, driven by their job killing regulations, and their spending sprees, there might be reforms happening in Bejing, instead of the clatter of factories and war machines. And if a war does come, if tens of thousands or millions die, then it too will be on their heads. Along with the clouds of pollution and the body parts of political prisoners being shipped to America for their edification and exhibition.

These are just some of the green chickens coming home to roost. And there will be lots more of them flocking on over if this goes on.

The environmental movement’s manifest hypocrisy is that it causes the very things that it deplores. Its campaigns against the nuclear industry, has sent billions overseas to countries which are developing their own nuclear weapons and intend to use them. By shutting down nuclear plants in America, they have made it much more likely that nuclear bombs will be detonated in America.

It destroyed American industry in the name of worker protection and pollution, and sent the factories to countries where workers have no rights and the pollution looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. And reduced those former workers to the point where they have no choice but to buy those same slave labor products at a non-union store with the profits going to China’s war machine.

Domestic drilling? Allah preserve us. It’s much better to send the money over to Saudi Arabia, which funnels it to terrorists, who kill Americans, and cause global wars. Wars that the left claims to deplore. Oil wars. Their own damn oil wars. Wars in which they are equal partners with the oil companies and the Gulf royal families who have fattened their pockets from the energy hunger of a country where there is plenty of oil, but no way to get at it.

These are all victories for the environmental movements and defeats for anyone with any sanity or sense. But the environmental movement refuses to acknowledge the consequences of its actions. Instead it champions further domestic and international repression. Like every tyrannical ideology it knows only one solution to every problem, more laws, more chains, more investigations and prison cells for anyone who disobeys.

Repression and propaganda is the environmental movement’s solution to everything. Its imperative is to destroy, impoverish, oppress and intimidate. It spreads hopeless misery around the world, with a smile. The countless victims of Rachel Carson’s malaria or the prisoners of the EPA go unnoticed as the latest children’s propaganda cartoon is rolled out. Its implicit message is always that there is a war on between the environmentalists and the people who just want to live their own lives. And that it is the obligation of the youth to put on their uniforms and enlist on their side.

Generations of tyranny later, the environmental movement has little positive to show for it, besides a few cleanups. But its leaders have profited from a regulatory state that impoverishes the country and promotes war and oppression around the world. It is time for those who have chosen to align themselves with a movement that exists to enrich environmental consultants, Saudi Arabia, the People’s Republic of China and Wall Street, while impoverishing Main Street to take a long hard look at what they have done. Before all the chickens really do come home to roost.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/24/how-environmentalists-cause-war-and-repression/; Reprinted from Sultanknish.blogspot.com.

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

The Patrons of Anti-Israelism

by Nichole Hungerford

Last week, a troubling article appeared in The Jerusalem Post on the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), a shady student organization run primarily through the University of California, Irvine that is rapidly spreading. The subject of intense criticism, the OTI has been infiltrated by (among others) activists from the terrorism-supporting International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and has sent students to meet with a leader of Hamas. Even so, what appeared in the Post does little to hold the organization accountable — or its powerful supporters in the Jewish Federation of Orange County (JFOC).

The OTI has been covered extensively at FrontPage, most recently in an article detailing a 2009 student trip to Israel and the West Bank on which students met with one of the foremost leaders of Hamas, Aziz Duwaik (trips to Israel to meet with “dialogue partners” are a central function of the program). The meeting occurred just months after Duwaik’s release from Israeli custody. Afterward, students were told to coverup the meeting and to essentially deceive officials in order to avoid trouble crossing borders and leaving the country. A spokeswoman from UC Irvine told FrontPage that there was no investigation into the incident that she knew of, nor has there been any evidence of an investigation subsequently. That is to say, neither the university nor the OTI’s funders have shown any interest in understanding the OTI’s dealings with Hamas, and in particular, how it is possible that the OTI arranged this meeting and what internal connections brought it about. (Duwaik, incidentally, was detained again in May by the Israeli Defense Force.)

The fact that there was no investigation is most puzzling, as JFOC sent a letter to Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake ostensibly insisting that an investigation be preformed. Yet with no investigation conducted, the federation continues its support.

Also in the absence of an investigation, only a matter of weeks after the Hamas meeting was made known to Drake, University of California President Mark Yudof donated $5000 to the OTI via the Lumina Foundation for Education. This was followed in May 2010 with a $2000 award to the OTI by Yudof for the university’s Presidential Leadership Award. For such generous support, the university has been woefully remiss.

But OTI students typically meet with an abundance of radical anti-Israel activist who are just as objectionable as Duwaik. Explaining the JFOC’s enduring support, federation president and CEO Shalom Elcott told the Post, “We could all agree that we don’t love all the speakers, but we have to work with American Jews to develop a greater understanding about how important that diversity of opinions in Israel is. Our job is to work with OTI and open the door to the best possible teachers and people who know the facts on the ground and make sure they’re engaged on the trip” (emphasis added).

To be clear, Elcott’s definition of the “best possible teachers and people who know the facts on the ground” includes: George S. and George N. Rishmawi, both co-founders of the ISM, a group that openly endorses Palestinian terrorism; Mazim Qumsiyeh, a leading figure and co-founder of the economic warfare movement against Israel (BDS), who also promotes the anti-Semitic lie that Israel, the only non-apartheid nation in the Middle East, is an apartheid state comparable to Nazi Germany (which also causes all wars in the region); UN Gaza refugee director John Ging, who has accused Israel of creating a humanitarian crisis and supports the foreign flotilla assaults on the Gaza blockade; representatives from organizations such as Ir Amim, which has accused Israel of pursing policies of “Judaization;” representatives from Human Rights Watch, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes and various human rights abuses; and numerous others.

What about these impeccable “facts on the ground” that Elcott extolls? In 2010, George S. Rishmawi outrageously told students that “Israeli soldiers would fire and spray bullets randomly at Palestinian civilians in their homes,” one OTI participant recorded. The participant, who is in fact supportive of the OTI, then caught Rishmawi in another lie. Rishmawi, fumbling for an explanation, claimed that Palestinians sometimes fire guns “into the air…as a sign of resistance.” Actually — the student cornered Rishmawi into admitting — Palestinians sometimes fire directly at IDF officers, to which the provocateurs receive the appropriate response. There is simply no positive way to spin these facts: what Elcott and the JFOC consider “diverse opinions” are repulsive lies meant to incite hatred and justify Palestinian violence toward Israelis.

This same OTI participant, on the same 2010 trip, was also left with the distinct impression that George S. Rishmawi promotes violence. The young sojourner wrote (emphasis added):

[M]y biggest problem with individuals like George is their emphasis on being a “peace” activist. George, for instance, claims that he is a non-violent peace activist, however in the same breath he maintains that if his peace is not realized within a year (mentioned above) there is no point in peace and drastic steps must – no – will be taken.

The extent of the Rishmawis’ involvement in the OTI program and its development is immensely curious and disconcerting (remember, these are ISM, Palestinian-terrorism supporting activists). The Centre for New Diplomacy (CFND), a Swedish NGO that does work in Israel, lists the OTI as one of its programs, asserting that it began as a “partnership programme” in 2007 with UC Irvine. One of the George Rishmawis works — or did, at least — as a CFND “coordinator for Palestine.” Most compellingly, George S. Rishmawi previously did work for the Holy Land Trust circa 2004 on what was called the “Olive Harvest Encounter.” As you can probably guess, the Olive Harvest Encounter was another fellow-traveller “dialogue” program that distinguished itself by focusing on the “persecution” and land confiscation of Palestinians by the Israeli government. The group even alleged that members of a particular family faced threats to their lives. Both Rishmawis have been involved in OTI programming every year from at least 2008-2010, and George S. was brought to UC Irvine in November of 2010 by the OTI as a speaker. The Rishmawis’ role in the development of the OTI must be investigated. Considering what we already know of them, it is obscene that they are a part of the program at all.

As to the claim of “balance” frequently touted by OTI supporters and repeated in The Jerusalem Post without scrutiny, a simple look at an OTI itinerary shows that this is not the case. Itineraries show a preponderance of extreme anti-Israelism (including an over-representation of BDS supporters) and Palestinian-exclusive narrative. UC Santa Cruz lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who analyzed the 2010 itinerary, asserted that an “overwhelming majority [of speakers] have expressed an overt animus towards” Israel, which she objected to in a letter to Elcott in 2010. In 2009, students were in the Israel region almost five days before they encountered a pro-Israel speaker even remotely comparable to the level of anti-Israel indoctrination they received. Students’ initial impressions of Israeli-Palestinian relations were shaped by: the two Rishmawis; Mazin Qumsiyeh; Zoughbi Zoughbi, an anti-occupation activist and BDS supporter; a Palestinian whose son was killed by the IDF; a Bethlehem resident “affected by the wall,” and a tour of a refugee camp.

The JFOC has also been dishonest in the disclosure of its funding of the OTI. The federation has publicly denied that it provides significant funding to the program. In December of 2010, Jeff Margolis, co-chair of the federation’s Rose Project (through which the federation says it funds the OTI), told Pajamas Media that the project provides “nominal” funding of the OTI, and Margolis told the Post that the federation was “only one of a number of sponsors.” But in fact, the federation letter to Chancellor Drake regarding the Hamas meeting identifies the federation as the “largest funder” of the OTI and further describes the federation as being central to the program’s development. Moreover, documents recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that the Rose Project has given tens of thousands of dollars to the OTI in the last several years. Notably, in the Post article, neither Elcott nor Margolis denied that Jewish communal funds have been used to fund the program, as Post editor Caroline Glick alluded to in a recent column. The use of communal philanthropic funds has been a major bone of contention for opponents of the OTI, and is a characterization that the federation has objected to. In all reality, however, the issue of communal fund use is largely moot, as any support whatsoever for the program is objectionable.

The purpose of the OTI is clear for anyone with eyes to see: by taking the most anti-Israel of the anti-Israel fringe and putting it on par and in such considerable proportion to mainstream views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the OTI seeks to render virulent anti-Israelism mainstream by association. And contrary to what the OTI claims, where these insidious views are provided a legitimate platform, the public discourse drastically degenerates and naked anti-Semitism thrives. The campus at UC Irvine, home to Israeli Apartheid Week, provides an overwhelmingly hospitable environment for these anti-Israel views, and has been identified as a center of anti-Semitic activity by the Anti-Defamation League. It is not coincidental that the university put itself on the map last year when students associated with the school’s Muslim Student Union attempted to shout-down a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, defaming him and his country with outlandish accusations of genocide. On May 31, the Chabad House at UC Irivine, home to the rabbi and his wife, was vandalized, its front window smashed. The perpetrators remain unknown; the environment that enabled them is not.

[A pledge to prevent Jewish federation funding of BDS-related activity has been developed in response to the Olive Tree Initiative. To view the pledge, click here.]

Nichole Hungerford

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/23/the-patrons-of-anti-israelism-3/

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

Britain’s ‘Subversive’ Archbishop

by Mark Tooley

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was identified as a “subversive” by Britain’s internal security service during the 1980s, The Telegraph recently revealed. The report follows Williams’ recent public denunciation of the British government’s trimming of its gargantuan welfare state, over which he exuded “bafflement and indignation.”

The Church of England’s senior prelate, who also heads the global Anglican Communion, is more professor and aesthete than pastor. His long-time affinity for dreamy politics of the Left, divorced both from earthly reality and Heavenly good sense, have further undermined his communion even as it struggles over a schism regarding sex and theology.

During the 1980s, Williams busily demonstrated outside U.S. and British military bases, earning arrest in 1985 for his civil disobedience with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was part of the international Soviet-backed campaign to prevent the Reagan administration’s placement of Pershing II missiles in Western Europe, in response to the Soviets’ earlier placement of threatening SS-20s. The Soviets hoped to compound their conventional force superiority in Europe with nuclear superiority. No thanks to myopic activists like Williams, joined by millions of demonstrators, the anti-U.S. campaign throughout Europe famously failed to intimidate President Ronald Reagan or Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The U.S. missiles were deployed, persuading the Soviets to negotiate the removal of all intermediate range nukes in Europe. Reagan better intuited the path to peace than did ostensibly sophisticated clerics like Williams and his cohorts at Cambridge and Oxford.

Reportedly, Britain’s MI-5 had a dossier on Williams’ peacenik activism that was shared with then Prime Minister Thatcher and other senior British officials in the late 1980s. In the 1970s the young theologian had helped found a leftist “Jubilee Group” that inveighed against capitalism and apparently included neo-Marxist wannabes. Later, Thatcher reputedly cited the Jubilee Group as “the most subversive group within the religious community in England,” while one British newspaper derisively dismissed it as “a bunch of neo-Marxist trendy clerics.”

Williams reportedly co-wrote the Jubilee Group’s 1974 manifesto, which denounced “the ruthless pursuit of private gain” and the “idolatry of profit” adding: “We cannot…feign neutrality, or remain uncritical, in the face of a society based upon the ruthless pursuit of private gain and unlimited consumption.” According to The Telegraph, the manifesto concluded: “We do not run away from history. We know what the present crisis of capitalism demands of us…we are in the death-throes of late capitalism, which threatens to inflict even greater violence on mankind than it has done before, we must make our stand with the oppressed, with the movement for liberation throughout the world.”

Of course, in contrast with the Jubilee Group’s Trotskyite analysis, it was actually Communism then entering its “death-throes.” But deluded dreamers like the young Williams identified with global movements of “liberation,” by which they almost certainly meant the Marxist Third World insurgencies that inflicted bloodshed and tyranny on countless peoples in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. Naturally, he was contemptuous of Christians who did not share his leftist, liberationist stance. In a 1989 speech, he warned of Reagan and Thatcher’s “alarming religiosity.” Both clinging to the supposedly simplistic faith of their childhoods, Reagan and Thatcher economically revived their nations with free market policies while skillfully navigating the 45-year-old Cold War to a peaceable and mostly democratic conclusion. No wonder leftist clerics like Williams, unable to peer beyond the malaise of the 1970s, were so disdainful of more foresighted Christian lay people.

In Williams’ 1983 book, The Truce of God, he denounced nuclear weapons as “morally outrageous,” unjustified by notions of “deterrence,” and simplistically premised on notions of the “Other Side” as the “aggressor,” while “we shall never be other than the innocent victim.” Aspiring to be thoughtful, Williams lamented that British peaceniks were tempted to “build up fearful caricatures of the brutality, untrustworthiness and inhumanity of the United States, as vivid as many American (and British) caricatures of the Soviet Union.” He generously implored, “We have to remember to love our allies as well as our enemies.” As Williams’ recent biographer commented, The Truce of God was written with “more flair than care.” Unaware of its limitations, Williams republished it after 9-11 with additional such insights.

Of course, Williams is no longer seeking arrest outside military bases, and his leftist politics are now somewhat more decorous, though still premised on elitist superiority. Another book he wrote, directly in response to 9-11, warned that ”bombast about evil individuals doesn’t help in understanding anything.” Williams has controversially advocated British recognition for some aspects of Islamic law, indicating he is as impartially oblivious to the threats against democracy today as he was during the Cold War. He predictably lamented the killing of Osama bin Laden, evidently preferring a proper trial for the terror mastermind.

Thankfully Williams’ political counsel is mostly dismissed as the musings of an ordained egghead focused on the abstract to the exclusion of the concrete. But his pet causes have helped reduce his influence over the global Anglican Communion and may help push the Church of England into disestablishment. Sadly, his leftist slant represents the inability of many establishment Western clerics to discern that Christian-influenced Western Civilization has real enemies and merits defending. The recently revealed MI-5 report about Williams may actually embody more spiritual insight than many of his leftist fellow clerics have typically evinced.

Mark Tooley is President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.theird.org) and author of "Taking Back the United Methodist Church."

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/24/britains-subversive-archbishop/

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