By Vic Rosenthal
First of all, forget whether the Bush administration was dishonest about its reasons for invading Iraq. Forget about disbanding the Iraqi army, failing to stop looting, sending inexperienced personnel to the Coalition Provisional Authority, backing off from Falujah, allowing contractors to rip us off. Forget if you admire George W. Bush or hate his guts.
Forget “shoulda, coulda, woulda”.
What do we do now, today?
New York, NY, January 10, 2007 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called the formation of a new far-right grouping of European Parliament members who share avowedly racist and anti-Semitic views, “a disturbing show of unity among bigots.”
The “Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty” group, whose leader, Bruno Gollnisch of the National Front in France, is currently on trial for questioning the existence of the gas chambers in the Holocaust, was cobbled together by some of Europe’s most notorious bigots to promote a racist and xenophobic agenda and outlook.
Read the full ADL statement here.
Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality. — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., March 25, 1968
Although we are presently faced with a period of calm, it is the same period during which extreme forces are working in the Middle East — Condoleeza Rice, after a meeting with her Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni.
Israel needs to set up a hotel in Sderot, to put up foreign dignitaries like Ms. Rice. In the meantime, here’s another Jerusalem Post item that describes the ‘calm’ she refers to:
Four Kassams landed in the western Negev on Friday afternoon. No one was wounded and no damage resulted from any of the hits.
Near the Gaza-Israel border fence, IDF soldiers discovered a 12-kilogram bomb. Sappers detonated the device in a controlled explosion, and no one was wounded.
Another bomb was discovered In the West Bank. Sappers destroyed the 35-kg. bomb without incident. No damage was caused by either of the two devices.
In another development Friday, the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) announced that they had arrested on Tuesday a Palestinian suspected of perpetrating a shooting attack on an Israeli neighborhood.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Condoleeza Rice, Kassam
By Vic Rosenthal
In a recent article, Camp David 2000 negotiator Dennis Ross discusses the way Carter and Arafat misrepresented the Clinton/Barak proposal, which he summarizes as follows:
The ADL reports that 14 members of the Carter Center’s “Board of Councillors” have resigned because of statements Carter made in the book and while promoting it. The ADL doesn’t mention it, but these board members are Jewish.
The book is not only embarrassingly biased, but Carter’s remarks about the “Jewish lobby” verge on antisemitism.
Is this only visible to Jews? Why didn’t any non-Jewish members of the board join them?
By Vic Rosenthal
Lately, construction of the security fence has been slowed by environmental issues, budgetary problems, and the ever-popular legal challenges. This is unfortunate, because there is good reason to believe that the fence, where it has been completed, has been successful in reducing terrorist infiltrations.
By Vic Rosenthal
A Syrian representative at the Mideast peace conference that kicked off in Madrid on Thursday afternoon said that his country’s calls to renew negotiations with Israel expressed the needs and will of the entire region.
Doctor Ya’ad Daoudi said that the return of the Golan Heights was a vital step in establishing regional peace and that Israel must return to the 1967 borders…
Osama el-Baza, the political advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said that Israel needed to be pressured into renewing talks with Syria because Damascus “holds the key to the region.” - Jerusalem Post
We are beginning to see some of the Lebanese-war chickens coming to roost.
By Vic Rosenthal
Ze’ev Chafets in the LA Times:
Given the evident failure of American diplomacy and U.N. sanctions, Israel has two basic choices. It can sit and wait, hoping the Iranians do not drop a bomb on Tel Aviv; or it can preemptively attack, hoping to destroy, or at least retard, the Iranians’ nuclear capacity…
By Vic Rosenthal
As everyone knows by now, Ariana Huffington talked to sometime presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark recently.
By Vic Rosenthal
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Amir Peretz have both come up with peace plans. By now, every imaginable permutation of Israeli withdrawals and Arab promises has been presented by somebody.
This morning I was awakened to NPR’s Linda Gradstein reporting as follows:
“…while Olmert was meeting President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in trying to push through a prisoner exchange…Israeli troops in an arrest raid killed four Palestinian civilians in the Center of Ramala, wounded about 20 others, embarrassing Olmert.” — NPR
Olmert was embarrassed, but in fact the four ‘civilians’ were armed guerrilla fighters, probably from the ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction.
