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Sarkozy and Obama at the G20 Summit.

“I’m sick of him,” says Sarkozy. “He’s a liar.”

“You’re sick? I have to work with him every day,”  replies Obama.

Ah, the joy of an open microphone! But what’s new here? We know they don’t like Netanyahu. Here they have important things to worry about, things like the world economy falling apart and, for Obama, an election looming. And those pesky Yids just refuse to bend over to be f***ed by the Palestinian Arabs. Not only that, but their shitty little country‘s economy is doing just fine!

And on top of that they keep threatening to bomb Iran! As if someone who threatens to wipe you out and has nuclear weapons might really mean it! Jewish paranoia!

Yes, the Jews are our misfortune, they think. There are all those Nobel prizes and almost daily announcements of medical breakthroughs from Israel, but after all, the Palestinians deserve a state. We don’t owe the Jews anything — didn’t we save them from the Holocaust?

Oh — we didn’t? Well, but we helped them win their independence…er, didn’t we? No? Well, we — the US at least — give them huge amounts of aid, which of course must be spent on US-made weapons, so they can defend themselves, as long as no Arabs get hurt in the process. Doesn’t that count for something?

***

Obama is pained by the fact that he has to work with the Israeli Prime Minister every day. Excuse me, Isn’t Israel is a sovereign state? Does it need daily guidance on managing its affairs? Does Bibi have to phone Obama every morning for instructions?

Sarkozy thinks Bibi is a liar. After all, he tells him that he has to stop building in ‘Arab East Jerusalem’ and Bibi responds that it is the capital of the Jewish state. Liar!  But France had previously let it be known that it would vote against admitting the non-state of ‘Palestine’ to UNESCO, and then voted for it. Who’s lying now?

And why does Sarkozy think ‘Palestine’ belongs in UNESCO?

France explained that it believed that Palestine had the right to become a member of UNESCO, “whose vocation is to work towards generalizing a culture of peace within the international community,” according to a news release from the French Consulate in Jerusalem. — NY Times

“A culture of peace!” Who would know better about that than the Palestinian Arabs! They are specialists in peace, having popularized airline hijacking, hostage killing, murder of schoolchildren and suicide bombing for ‘peace’ (not that the record of UNESCO has been so great even without ‘Palestine’).

Here’s what I think: Sarkozy and Obama should learn that the Jewish state actually represents the best of Western culture, stop hassling Netanyahu about building in his capital city, treat him with dignity, and support Israel in its struggle to survive against the barbaric forces that want to destroy it.

And if the interests of Israel are not important to them, how about the results for Europe and the US if Iran succeeds in its project to dominate the Middle East?

Technorati Tags: Sarkozy, Obama, Netanyahu, Israel, UNESCO, Palestine

A nine-foot long Grad rocket from Gaza flies toward an Israeli city

I’ve seen films of London during the WWII rocket attacks, in which the V1 ‘buzz bombs’ flew across the sky. When the buzzing of the pulse-jet engine stopped, the people below knew that the bomb was about to fall, perhaps on them. It must have been terrifying.

Israelis today are experiencing exactly this terror. Here is a short account of what it is like, by Hagit Riterman, published in the Israeli newspaper makor rishon on November 4. My thanks to the Daily Alert for the English translation.

Suddenly You See a Rocket Flying Toward You

600,000 Israelis live in the Beersheba metropolitan area. Last Monday evening I was driving into Beersheba, listening to a song on the radio. Through the window I noticed a young girl running fast and looking scared, not sure where she was going. Suddenly I saw that all the cars ahead of me had stopped in the middle of the street. Their occupants were getting out and running. I understood – the air raid sirens.

I ran with the others to take shelter between two buildings. There were women there hugging the concrete walls. Some were crouched down, and one was shaking. Other sat on the ground. Then someone shouted, “Look up!” and I saw them in the sky. Two bright lights, like balls of fire with tails, almost white, flying in an arch in the sky, coming from afar. I thought they were about to land next to us, but the Grad rockets continued to fly and passed over our heads.

We heard explosions and later learned that the Iron Dome missile defense system succeeded in shooting down the two rockets that were aimed at the center of the city. When I saw the two rockets flying in the air, heading towards us, seconds before they passed overhead, I understood so well the fear that people here are now living with. We’re not soldiers in wartime, we’re the civilian population. And in the middle of an ordinary day, during a routine drive down the street, suddenly you see a rocket flying in your direction.

Nazi Germany was a formidable opponent with a massive war machine. It would take the most powerful nations on earth several years to finally put an end to the regime. But Hamas and the other terrorist factions, with their Nazi-like ideologies, are nothing. Israel could crush them like cockroaches.

So why do Israelis have to put up with the daily terror from Gaza?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Grad rockets, Hamas

Logo of the "anonymous" hackers. Do their mothers know what they're doing instead of their school homework?

Yesterday I wrote about an interview with Italian MP and journalist Fiamma Nirenstein, who referred to the widespread support in the UN for Palestinian statehood as “lunacy.” But the UN is just one place where this disorder prevails. Anti-Israel lunacy is most pronounced on the Left, both in the high reaches of academia and among the poorly educated activists in our streets and apparently at their computer keyboards.

Several Israeli government websites were down Sunday, including the public sites of the IDF, Shabak and Mossad, after a public threat from the hacker group “Anonymous” to attack Israeli sites in retaliation for the interception of last week’s attempt to break the blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Despite the claims of the group, there is no reason to doubt the Israeli officials who say that the outage was a result of a hardware problem in the data center in which these sites are hosted.

The self-styled “hacktivists” accused Israel of ‘piracy on the high seas’ and claim that Israel’s actions were

illegal, against democracy, human rights, and international and maritime laws. Justifying war, murder, illegal interception and pirate-like activities under an illegal cover of defense will not go unnoticed by us or the people of the world. We do not tolerate this repeated offensive behavior against unarmed civilians…

— video statement by “Anonymous” (my transcription)

The absurdly pompous video ignores the fact that even the UN’s own commission investigating the 2010 seizure of the Mavi Marmara declared that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is legal, and that a blockade-running ship may be boarded in international waters. It tells us that the seizure took place at “exactly 5:59 Gaza time,” as if this is relevant, in order to create an aura of seriousness.

Despite its appeal to international law, it insists that ‘Palestine’ is a “sovereign nation” (it is not) and accuses Israel of acts of war against it. Naturally it doesn’t mention Hamas’ rocket fire on Israeli civilians. “We are legion. We do not forget. We do not forgive. Expect us!” the video concludes in its  now-familiar signoff.

This is beyond stupid. It seems to me to be more or less on the level of something that a mediocre high school student might do. Unfortunately, in today’s world even a mediocre student can become a dangerous Internet vandal if he has access to networks of compromised computers that can mount DDoS attacks (explanation here, and much more than you wanted to know here).

The ‘lunacy’ part is that while these ‘activists’, both the ones on the boats and the ones behind their keyboards, claim to be acting in the name of  democracy, human rights, peace, justice, freedom, and so on, they are in practice supporting the Hamas, which is undemocratic, tramples on human rights (of women, Jews, Christians, homosexuals, etc.), is presently making war against Israel and whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of its people.

But hey, who cares about the real world?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Anonymous, flotilla, Gaza, Hamas, lunacy

Fiamma Nirenstein

Israel Hayom published a great interview today with Italian journalist and MP Fiamma Nirenstein. Here is a snippet (but read it all):

And yet, we can ask why it is that when facing a unilateral declaration, the world is prepared to support a Palestinian state? As this is lunacy. First, a Palestinian state cannot exist, divided as it would be between Hamas and the PLO. They have nothing in common, neither institutions nor an economy. So only violence can result from such an unrealizable expectation. Second, what could be the nature of a Palestinian state? On the basis of our knowledge until now – a state where women are inferior; extremist Islam prevails and perhaps wins the next elections; homosexuals are persecuted, as well as regime dissidents. In this case, why has it gained such widespread support around the world, particularly in the western world?

The Jews are the reason. The Palestinians’ raison d’être is not a positive aspiration to establish a state, but a negative one, to destroy the Jewish state. This apparently suits the cultural and political agenda of the world’s Left. [my emphasis]

Indeed. It often strikes me that it is impossible that all of the EU politicians, President Obama and his advisers, the journalists who write about the Middle East (Nirenstein says that Thomas Friedman “…is constantly wrong. He no longer has eyes to see”), the human rights industry, all of them, can be simply naive or stupid.

In the case of the politicians, even if they are naive or stupid — Obama has shown over and over that he doesn’t understand the Mideast — they are surrounded by ‘experts’ who should know better.

I’ve stopped wasting time analyzing and over-analyzing the reasons for this phenomenon. Arab money, Muslim populations in Europe, oil companies, fashionable academic theories, the brilliance of presenting the effort to destroy Israel as a movement of national liberation, on and on. All of these factors may be relevant to some extent, but none of them can explain the way so much of the Western world holds a position that is flat out counterfactual.

Nirenstein is correct: the Jews are the reason.

Technorati Tags: Israel

Caroline Glick today listed the ways that UNESCO has punished Israel since 1974:

In 1974, UNESCO voted to boycott Israel and to “withhold assistance from Israel in the fields of education, science and culture because of Israel’s persistent alteration of historic features in Jerusalem.”

UNESCO’s moves to deny Jewish ties to Jerusalem and the rest of historic Israel have continued unabated ever since. For instance, in 1989, UNESCO condemned “Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem,” claiming it was destroying the city through “acts of interference, destruction and transformation.”

In 1996, UNESCO held a symposium on Jerusalem at its Paris headquarters. No Jewish or Israeli groups were invited to participate.

Beginning in 1996, the Arab Wakf on the Temple Mount began systematically destroying artifacts of the Second Temple. The destruction was undertaken during illegal excavations under the Temple Mount carried out to construct an illegal, unlicensed mosque at Solomon’s Stables.

UNESCO never bothered to condemn this act. It was silent despite the fact that the Wakf’s actions constituted a grave breach of the very international laws related to antiquities and sacred sites that UNESCO is charter bound to protect. Similarly, UNESCO never condemned Palestinian desecration of Rachel’s Tomb, of Joesph’s Tomb or of any of the ancient synagogues in Gaza and Jericho which they razed to the ground.

The reason for UNESCO’s miscarriage of its responsibilities is clear. Far from fulfilling its mission of protecting world heritage sites, since 1974 UNESCO has been a partner in one of the greatest cultural crimes in human history – the Palestinian and pan-Arab attempt to wipe Jewish history in the Land of Israel off the historical record.

As a result of the UNESCO decision — which violated its own constitution — to accept the non-state of ‘Palestine’ as a member, the US and Canada have decided to withhold payment of UNESCO dues (the US alone pays $80 million a year, 22% of UNESCO’s annual expenses).

And so has Israel, which has suspended its $2 million payment.

UNESCO does do a lot of useful things besides deny the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, which is probably why Israel remained a part of it for so many years.  But if the Jewish state itself supports an organization which actively delegitimizes it — and this is the effect of wiping out the historical connection of the Jewish people with the land and Jerusalem in particular — then it in effect endorses the process. If Israel does not vehemently oppose its own delegitimization, who will?

Technorati Tags: Israel, UNESCO