Geert Wilders has announced his approval of a new Right leaning Dutch coalition government that will include his Freedom Party as a member.
The Freedom party has called for restrictions on immigration, tighter controls on the importation of radical Islam and an end to policies that have resulted in Muslim no go areas and increased crime in the Netherlands.
Freedom Party leader Wilders ( whose trail in Amsterdam over the movie 'Fitna' resumes Monday) said the coalition deal would prove "fantastic" for the Netherlands.
"There will be a historic policy, which will be very different on various matters," he said.
Needless to say many Dutch Muslims are not pleased by this. Farid Azarkan, from the Dutch Moroccan lobby group SMN, said that the new coalition government could lead to problems with Muslims if the Dutch accept the Freedom Party's policies.
"The gap between Muslims and non-Muslims will be widened by this and that won't be good for (immigrant) integration at a time when it's not actually going so badly," he told the Dutch news agency ANP.
Apparently the majority of the Dutch don't agree with Azarkan that Muslim integration into Dutch society is 'not actually going so badly' where they're concerned.
Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief is scheduled to come to Israel for meetings with Israeli PM Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, and Arab -American US envoy George Mitchell.
So of course, she had to pop off beforehand and let the Israelis know that she's not interested in their point of view in the least.
In a press conference, she basically demanded the Israelis extend the building freeze indefinitely. In fact, she wants it done before she lands and deigns to set foot in Israel!
I love this..you come to Israel as a guest with the idea that you're going to dialog with the Israelis and try to solve a problem. So of course, you open your big mouth beforehand to let the Israeli know they can't expect even-handedness or fairness from you.
Needless to say, this isn't the first time Ashton has opened her mouth to make bizarre statements regarding Israel.But this time, her timing is especially lousy..especially if she had any hopes of actually convincing the Israelis to make any concessions.
The EU haas funded 'Palestinian' terrorism and anti-Israel NGO's for years, they have very little moral or practical authority left in this matter and it's about time they realized it.
The sheer arrogance of these people is amazing. If I were Netanyahu, I would give Ashton my regrets and send Israeli foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to meet with her instead.
Once again it's time for the Watcher's Council nominations from a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best posts, with the results appearing on Friday.
Hidey Ho, Primates! Welcome to the one and only Real Banana, your source for the real poop on politics.
Let's do it and get to it..
President Obama may be in denial primates, but my Democrats are about to take a major donkey whupping. And going around the country blaming the voters or FOX News is pathetic.
I'm not laying any shekels out or making picks yet, but a whole lot of the Democratic class of 2006 and 2008 is about to go bye bye, and even some old familiar faces are likely to join them.I'd be surprised if the ReThugs picked up less than 50 seats. The banana's just as rotten when it comes to state legislatures, which affects redistricting and could have a really lousy effect for Democrats in 2012.
I was also willing to give pretty good odds that the Senate would stay Democratic. Was. At this point, even that's problematical.
The GOP started out with 41 seats and they were always going to scoop up five pickups - Arkansas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Dakota. That's half way up the tree to taking the Senate, but I figured the max the ReThugs could put together was a gain of 7 seats.Especially after Tea Party wacko Christine O'Donnell won the nomination in Delaware and started riffing on her old witchcraft days...hoo hoo!
But look what's happened since. While everybody's getting a good laugh out of O'Donnell, things have gotten crazier than a buncha baboons on the rampage.
In Wisconsin, incumbent Russ Feingold has all but lost his seat to a GOP newbie, And Patty Murray, Babs Boxer and Kirsten Gillibrand are holding on by their fingernails in Washington, California and New York, which nobody figured on. Guv Joe Meachin, who was supposed to be a lock to win West Virginia is getting stomped by Republican John Raese to the point where Meachin is yakking it up about repealing Obamacare.
Harry Reid is either neck and neck or slightly behind, depending on who you listen to in Nevada, and Rethug Mark Kirk is actually leading in Illinois in the fight for Obama's old seat. And in Connecticut, ex-WWF queen Linda Mcmahon is bodyslamming Richard Blumenthal to the point where she's only a few points behind and the race is a tossup.
Numbers,primates - the Rethugs needed 10 seats to take the Senate and they already had five. They've apparently picked up Wisconsin, which makes six. Out of the four more they need, they're already leading in Illinois and West Virginia, and tied or close to it in the other five with only about four weeks to go until chad pushing time.
I'll simplify it for you - instead of needing to win all the close ones like before, the Rethugs now only need to go 4 out of 7...and they're ahead in two of those races. Even worse, the Democratic jungle in the Northeast could get breached if New York and Connecticut go ReThug.
The weird thing is that this carnage might lead to Obama getting re-elected in 2012.
The Rethugs will likely try to get spending under control and balance the budget, but things have gotten pretty far out of whack and they may not be able to. Not only that, But Obama can still use his veto pen.
If the economy is still poopy in 2012, Obama can campaign on how bad things are because of the Rethugs..you know how this president likes to blame others for his screw ups! But if things are rosy,hey he can claim the credit.
Of course, that would depend on him making a few changes in his basic act. And a lot of other people being willing to keep their mouths shut and fall on their swords for him in exchange for those lovely presidential get-out-of-jail free cards known as pardons. Susan MacDougal, Webb Hubbell and a few others could tell you how that game is played.
But if all that works out, Obama could very well be ready for another term in 2012. So for my democrats, there could be a silver lining to this cloud..call it a little taste of caviar to make a poop sandwich a little more palatable.
See yah later, Primates!
Weekend Monkey was a Democratic candidate for president in 2008 and is JoshuaPundit's political Guru. He can be reached at wendmonkey@yahoo.com
You'll often hear the dinosaur media refer to 'traditionally Arab East Jerusalem' without ever mentioning how it got that way - violent ethnic cleansing by Jordan in the 1948 war, followed by an influx of Arabs who simply moved into the vacant Jewish-owned homes.
I still recall seeing a CNN camera man filming an Arab in East Jerusalem who was ranting about how his family had lived in that house for 50 years - after which the camera man briefly focused on the upper right hand corner of the doorway, where the outline of where the mezuzah had been was clearly visible.
After Israel retook the area when Jordan attacked Israel in the Six Day War, they made a decision to allow these squatters to stay where they were.,
One of the places that happened was in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. But the worm has indeed turned.
The normally Left leaning Israeli Supreme Court has made an historic ruling upholding a lower court ruling determining that a parcel of land on the western side of Nablus Road in East Jerusalem belonged to Jews who, according to the ruling, purchased it in 1892.
Since the Court upheld the lower ruling declaring that the land sandwiched between Nablus Road and Highway 1 in the Western half of the Shimon HaTzadik (Sheikh Jarrah) neighborhood belonged to Jewish, rather than Palestinian owners, it removes the last obstacle keeping the original Jewish owners from taking back their homes and land and paves the way the way for the possible eviction of Palestinians who have been living there rent-free in the stolen homes for 60 years, as the property reverts back to the rightful owners.
Perhaps some of the former residents of the Jewish communities in Gaza who were made into refugees by their own government will find homes there. A number of them are still living in trailers.
Justice sometimes works slow, but it does work most of the time.
"I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land.”- Mahmoud Abbas, (Palestinian President and 'Peace Partner') August 26, 2010
“I'm willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as NATO forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the NATO forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land”. - Mahmoud Abbas, quoted by Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency and published on July 28 in its Arabic version of Abbas’ briefing to the Egyptian media.
"The selling of land to Jews is a major offense punishable by death." - Palestinian Authority Prosecutor-General Ahmed al-Mughni, in his successful appeal to the Palestinian courts to keep selling land to Jews as a death penalty offense, 9/20/2010
The Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations came to a standstill as Israel refused to extend its unilateral 10 month concession of a building freeze in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank)indefinitely and 'Palestinian' leader Mahmoud Abbas left New York after delivering an ultimatum that he would break off direct talks unless Israel announced it would continue the freeze.
This kind of tactic makes perfect sense for Abbas and the 'Palestinians' revanchist goals of obtaining everything they want from the current negotiations while giving no concessions in return.
The 'Palestinians' have continued to build on land in Jerusalem and in the disputed areas of Judea and Samaria all during the freeze without the international community saying a word, and it's obvious that they expect to get the entire West Bank area and East Jerusalem in their entirety while giving up nothing except a signature on a few pieces of paper.'Palestinian' spokesholes like Nabil Shaath and Saeb Erekat constantly refer to Israel building on 'their' land as if the entire process was just a comedy prelude to Israel capitulating to their demands in full.
Since Abbas and Fatah were aware from the first that the Israeli freeze was a one time special offer available for a limited time only, it's quite obvious that they planned this kabuki crisis in advance.
There's no downside whatever for them. If Israel capitulated, Abbas could simply pocket another concession without giving up anything, one that allows them to build while the Israelis do not, thus altering the facts on the ground and weakening the Israeli government strategically and politically. And then Mahmoud Abbas could boast in Arabic to cheering crowds in Ramallah about how he had stood up to the Jews. On the other hand, if Israel refused to extend the freeze, Abbas would have the excuse he wanted to break off direct talks while blaming Israel for 'ending the peace process', aided by the usual suspects. And Mahmoud Abbas could boast in Arabic to cheering crowds in Ramallah about how he had stood up to the Jews.
Meanwhile the aid money continues to flow into the Palestinian occupied areas of Judea and Samaria..and part of the equation Abbas and the Palestinians figured on is that they can count on Barack Obama not to make any real demands on them whatsoever.
The Israelis understand all this quite well, which is exactly why they decided to not to renew the freeze. From their standpoint, they already made a major concession under pressure from Obama that cost them a great deal politically just to get Abbas to direct talks, and there's no upside for them in continuing it.
As things stand right now, the Obama Administration is desperately trying to salvage something out of the mess.
Mahmoud Abbas basically told the Americans that he was holding off formally breaking the talks off until he met with the Arab league on October 4th. The Americans tried floating a compromise by Abbas regarding limited construction in just some areas,or a limited extension of a couple of months, but Abbas turned them down cold.
Meanwhile Arab-American envoy George Mitchell is headed to Jerusalem and scheduled to meet with Israeli PM Netanyahu tomorrow. The chatter is that SecState Hillary Clinton spoke with Netanyahu twice yesterday and made a proposal that would include U.S. guarantees over core issues in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on any Palestinian 'right of return', security arrangements and recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. In return for the American guarantees, Israel would extend the freeze.
Now, if I were Benyamin Netanyahu, all I'd have to do is flash back a few months to see what any guarantees coming from the Obama Administration were worth. And according to a number of sources, Netanyahu was not favorably impressed and did not provide a positive response.But then, they likely talked about more than that.
Abbas sent a high level Fatah delegation to Syria led by long time Abbas confidant Azzam al Ahmad, a high ranking member of Fatah's central committee for secret talks with top Hamas leaders, including Hamas head Khalid Meshaal. After assuring Meshaal that what happened in Washington and Egypt between the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Israel were not negotiations but just preliminary meetings over negotiations, Ahmad got down to the real business of working out a reconciliation between Fatah and the genocidal Hamas and beginning the coordination of strategy for more joint 'armed resistance' measures. Indeed Meshaal went on record today saying that Hamas was going to 'kill all illegal Israeli settlers'.
According to at least one of my sources, other participants in the powwow included Hamas chief Mussa Abu Marzouk, who is a fugitive terrorist wanted by the US for laundering money for Hamas in America and Izzat Rishak, who reportedly planned and orchestrated the attacks that left five Israeli civilians dead when the peace talks first started at the end of August.
Needless to say, the Israelis are fuming over this development and understandably so. With one hand Abbas is issuing ultimatums and making pious noises about negotiations while with the other he's downplaying the peace talks and negotiating on a partnership with a bunch of Hamas terrorists whose intentions are anything but peaceful.
And I'd be very surprised in Netanyahu didn't discuss this with Secretary Clinton and if the conversation doesn't continue with Mitchell tomorrow.
For her part, Clinton tried to salvage something by flying to Syria and wooing the Assad regime by offering to 'fold' peace negotiations between Israel and Syria into the mix. However, Syria's minimum precondition for even meeting with Israel involves a surrender of the strategic Golan Heights, which isn't going to happen.
Assad already knows the US is in retreat in Iraq and in political trouble at home. And an alliance between Fatah and Hamas that Syria and Iran can use to their own advantage against Israel and against American interests in the region suits them quite well.
Needless to say, you're getting none of this from the dinosaur media. It doesn't fit the narrative of intransigent Jews 'killing the peace talks. '
Some people are just incapable of learning from their mistakes.
Ever since Obama became president, he's practiced the Alinskyite tactic of trying to personally demonize anyone he sees as opposing his views, and FOX news has always been a particular punching bag of this administration.
Just last year the White House launched a full bore attack on FOX..and it worked about as well as their attacks on Rush Limbaugh.
Obama's idea for gaining ground in the midterms? Well, attacking minority leader John Boehner didn't fly, the Palin thing is so 2008 and the blame Bush mantra isn't nearly as effective as it was...so the current occupant of the White House figured he'd try bashing Fox again, this time in a Rolling Stone interview.
The 'interview' itself was bad enough, to the point where the staff at Rolling Stone likely needed kneepads and towel service just to get through it. It is faux journalism at it's worst. But the part where Prez Obama goes off on FOX is particularly embarrassing.
Here we have the sad spectacle of a sitting president of these United States attacking a successful (actually the most successful) news organization in America simply because they have the temerity to air people that disagree with his policies. I mean, does he expect the entire press to be one vast massage like Rolling Stone, Pravda-on-the-Hudson or MSNBC? How thin skinned and egotistical can he be?
Is it too partisan to ask the President of the United States to put on his big boy pants and man up for a change?
It's some fairly balanced reporting on Obama's fatuous policies that doesn't occur in most of the rest of the dinosaur media that the president really objects to. Obama can certainly continue cringing and whining about FOX if he wants, but it will probably just swell their viewership like the last time.
FOX isn't Obama's problem. It's the American people's gut reaction to his administration and its policies that has even a lot of Democrats fleeing from him like vampires from Garlic.
Instead of boo-hooing about Fox, Barack Hussein Obama would make a far more productive use of his time working on his golf swing.Or maybe even coming up with workable policies that attract bi-partisan support and don't alienate the American people.
This has to be one of the funniest - and effective - takedowns of a Leftist posing as a reporter I've ever read.Here's a slice of Ann Coulter's "Breaking: Jayson Blair Now Working At The Politico!": ********************************** Excerpts from a Politico reporter who seems not to have been at the event he was allegedly reporting on, probably because he's homophobic:
“The broad surge in the conservative grassroots made it as far as PayPal founder Peter Thiel’s grand apartment overlooking New York’s Union Square Tuesday night, where about 150 backers of the conservative gay group GOProud gathered to laugh at Ann Coulter’s red meat riffs on Democrats, blacks, and the Obamas at a fundraiser organizers touted as ‘Homocon.’”
The event was Saturday night -- not "Tuesday" -- there were no "riffs" on "blacks" -- there were riffs on gays trying to be black – and it wasn’t “touted” as Homocon, it was “called” Homocon.
“GOProud is an explicitly gay group that isn’t particularly focused on gay rights, and Coulter’s speech – full of conservative red meat, and only the occasional Judy Garland joke – reflected its focus.”
More than half the speech -- and the entire Q&A --was an argument against gay marriage. Was Ben Smith even there? How did he miss that?
“Coulter’s presence at the event was controversial, as other gay activists pointed out that she’d made a series of anti-gay remark — she called former presidential candidate John Edwards a ‘faggot’ — which she explained away at the top of her speech as humor.”
I said absolutely nothing about the (fantastic) Edwards joke all night, no one asked me about it all night, and Ben Smith is probably the only person in the country who didn't get it at the time and doesn't get it now.
“Marriage ‘is not a civil right – you’re not black,’ Coulter said to nervous laughter. She went on to note that gays are among the wealthiest demographic groups in the country.”
Nervous laughter? More like “huge belly laughs.” (I think someone is engaging in gay stereotyping.) ***************************** Heh! Read the rest here
Three members of Islamic Jihad's al-Kuds brigade learned the hard way that it doesn't pay to launch rocket attacks on Israel.
The Shin Bet and the IDF had apparently been tracking a cell of these cockroaches.
The strike took place as the cell members were spotted moving towards the Noserat refugee camp in central Gaza.Muhammad Abu Id, Awani Abdel-Khadi and Ala Abu Zbeida – all confirmed members of the Islamic Jihad's al-Quds Brigades - became extra crispy courtesy of the IDF.
The IDF Spokesman's Unit confirmed the strike, saying that "the Israel Air Force, in a joint military-Shin Bet operation, attacked a terror cell preparing to fire at Israel."
Along with shooting up cars on Israel's roads, rockets have continue to be fired at Israel's civilians. During the past week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli communities near Gaza vicinity and warned Hamas and its friends that Israel's patience was running out.
"Our first commitment is to security, and I suggest Hamas and the other organization not test us on that."
Now tell me the truth..wouldn't you just love to see Nancy Pelosi's butt boy Steny Hoyer out of Congress?
Well, the tools and talent exist, in the form of Charles Lollar , GOP candidate in Maryland's 5th. He's pictured above in the middle next to the one and only Robert Stacy McCain on the Right (of course). McCain goes into detail about why the personable young ex-Marine intelligence officer has a decent shot at sending Hoyer to the showers.
This is exactly the kind of no-nonsense Conservative we need in Congress...especially if I'm right about what we're liable to be faced with in the latter part of Barack Hussein Obama's reign.
Check out McCain's post and see if you don't agree it's a worthwhile investment.
BTW, my other faves Jesse Kelly in Arizona 8 and Lt. Colonel Allen West in Florida 22 are doing quite well, but merit your love attention and investment as well.
We have a historic opportunity to take back the country in November. let's not squander it.
One of the keys to defeating al-Qaeda and the insurgency in Iraq involved the US cultivating the Sunni Awakening movement in places like Anbar province, giving them arms and money and convincing Sunnis that they would have a place at the table in Iraq's new federation government.
Now that the US is on the way out, Iraq's caretaker Shi'ite government led by President Maliki has stripped 410 Sunni policemen associated with the Awakening movement of their police rank in Anbar province.Most of them are convinced that the move is a political ploy to marginalize the Sunnis in Iraq, which it almost definitely is.
Iraq, you'll remember, still doesn't have a government after the disputed election. Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's bloc won with a razor-thin lead, but the Shi'ite power structure led by Maliki managed to disqualify several winning parliamentary candidates on dubious grounds. Allawi,whose constituency largely consisted of Sunni and secular Shi'ite voters has essentially been marginalized, and a Shi'ite caretaker government led by Maliki continues to rule the country as many Sunnis accuse Shiite leaders of trying to steal the March 7 election and rule the country along tribal lines.
Mohammed Rashid, an assistant to Anbar's police chief, said, "If they insist to remove all these officers, we will suffer from a big shortage," he said. "We'll have to reduce our police stations, or the Ministry of Interior will need to replace them."
"They are the sons of the tribes, and they fought al-Qaeda in Iraq," Rashid said. "They're heroes."
My guess is that they'll be replaced by Shi'ites loyal to the Maliki government. The way the politics stack up, Iranian backed Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc has the decisive voice, and I wouldn't be surprised to see these police positions go to deserving members of Sadr's Mahdi Army.
You've all heard the typical narrative by now - that the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are the real obstacle to Middle East peace, and if those stubborn, evil Israelis would just stop building in 'disputed territories' there would be peace in nothing flat.
President Obama says it and the Leftist press says it, so it must be true,no?.
The Israelis stupidly fed this notion by allowing themselves to be pressured into a 10 month building freeze as a unilateral concession with the idea of getting the Palestinians to the table to talk peace. After 9 1/2 months, Palestinian capo d'Rammallah Mahmoud Abbas finally allowed himself to be pressured into direct talks,but let it be known that he was not going to make a single concession to Israel.
Not only that, but he and the Palestinians have let it be known that unless the freeze continues indefinitely - including in Jerusalem- they 're going to walk when the temporary freeze expires.
When the Israelis let it be known that they've already made a major concession for their small, crowded country in order to get Abbas to the table and have no intention of making a further one to keep him there just because it took the 'Palestinians' 9 1/2 months to agree to direct talks, the Israelis are accused of being obstructionist and not caring about 'peace.' And if Abbas and the Palestinians walk away the usual subjects are more than ready to lay the blame on Israel.
But by comparison, let's look at how the Palestinians are treated when they build in 'disputed territories'.
As I write this, the Palestinians are constructing a city from scratch near Ramallah called Rawabi, largely funded by the Arab country of Qatar and USAid. Rawabi already encroaches on the Israel town of Ateret. And no one is accusing the Arabs of wrecking a potential peace agreement by 'building in disputed territory.'
Not only are they building, but they had the nerve to demand extra land from Israel - in the absence of any peace agreement or even any concessions - for a new roads to Rawabi.
That's exactly how this version of Newspeak works. If Israel needs to build a security barrier or maintain checkpoints to protect itself from Palestinian attacks on its civilians, that's a 'land grab'. But if the Arabs attempt to encroach on an Israeli town's boundaries and appropriate land for roads only they will be able to use, that's perfectly OK.
If you live in Gush Etzion and the local kids need a new school or you simply want to add a room on to your home, you're an Enemy of Peace. But if you're an Arab building an illegal construction without any permits in East Jerusalem, or even an entire city, you're simply exercising your rights.
A nine-month pregnant Israeli woman and her husband were attacked when their car was fired upon while they were driving along Route 60 near Teneh Omarim, a small Israeli community which is just outside Mount Hebron.
The two were both wounded, but managed to drive to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, where the mother delivered a healthy baby boy via C-section before undergoing her owns urgury, shown above with his father Sharon Zucker.
The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's military wing, and al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad's military wing, claimed 'credit' for the shooting. This is known as 'peace negotiations, Palestinian style.'
The site of this shooting is not far from where five Israelis were murdered earlier in a similar attack.
As a gesture to strengthen Abbas and the so-called peace process, Israeli checkpoints were removed from Route 60. The results are obvious. And it's also likely that American-supplied weapons were used.
These attacks on Israel's civilians are being carried out in the name of the same people Israel is supposedly negotiating peace with. As shown above, the factions work together interchangeably when there are Jews to be murdered.
These terrorist factions were supposed to be dismantled by the 'Palestinians' under the Road Map. They have never done a single thing to do so.
As a matter of fact, Abbas now has the nerve to demand that dozens of Arab terrorists convicted in Israeli civil courts and incarcerated be released as a what good will gesture that will help give peace talks between the sides momentum going forward.
Mounir Mansour, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Committee said that Abbas would expect the release of all 7,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli prisons as part of any final peace agreement.
People like this. And there are plenty of other murderers in custody just like him.
Hopefully Netanyahu will tell Abbas exactly what he can do with his expectations.
Jewish communities all across Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) celebrated the end of Israel's 10 month unilateral building freeze today by doing what they do best...building and improving their communities.
The Jews of Kiryat Netafim marked the end of the construction moratorium by laying a cornerstone for a badly needed kindergarten.
They brought trucks to the area, poured cement and broke into applause.
Shomron Regional Council head Gershon Mesika called the freeze "a racist decision which only forbids Jews to build their home in their country."
"We're laying a cornerstone to protest the injustice caused to 35 babies born here this year in Kiryat Netafim. Due to the whims of (Defense Minister) Ehud Barak, who has failed to sign the project outline, we cannot build kindergartens, children's homes and synagogues."
"From this stage I turn to Hussein Obama and tell him, 'The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel.'
"Throughout history leaders have conspired against the people of Israel, but they live on, while (the leaders) have disappeared off the history pages. So we will continue to build and develop the communities, in spite of the opposition of all the oppressors, inside and outside."
That's actually a pretty impressive birth rate, 35 kids born in one year - since there are only 620 residents in Kiryat Netafim! Must be the water...or maybe that enhanced fertility rate is a statement of commitment. People tend not to have children at that pace unless they feel rooted.
It might just be me, but I have a feeling they're not planning on going anywhere.
Another ceremony was held in the community of Revava, where Likud activists arrived on 80 buses.
The ceremony, pictured above, was attended by a fairly decent crowd of people, and the celebration featured attendees waving the flags of Israel,the US, Canada and Finland. (Unlike their Arab counterparts, Israelis don't burn American flags). A number of Chinese citizens arrived at the event as well, waving the flag of China.
I particularly liked what Revava's Druze Deputy Minister Ayoob Kara said in his speech about Israel's security being linked to the continuation of Jewish communities on Israel's borders. "When Jews were expelled from Gush Katif, we though we would reach the international border and 'the redeemer will come to Zion.' They continued hitting us and throwing Qassams at Ashkelon and Ashdod".
"The game in the Middle East is strong. Kill or be killed," he said, stating that he was a Jew and a Zionist "more than all other Jews and Zionists."
For those of you unsure about what he was talking about, Druze are non-Muslim Arabs who have their own religion but are Israeli citizens who proudly serve in the IDF..just like the Muslim Circassians and Bedouins. And of course, Kara is correct - retreat and making fresh areas of the Holy Land judenrein has not brought peace, just further aggression.
Yesha Council leaders also gathered near in the sukkah of Coalition Chairman Zeev Elkin, near his home in the community of Kfar Eldad in the Gush Etzion area.
"We gather here today both in honor of the Sukkot holiday and to discuss the end of the freeze," Elkin said at the start of the meeting. "This is a symbolic gathering place, in one of the frozen communities. Kfar Eldad has people who have been living in caravans (Israel-speak for trailers) and have not been able to build their homes. This reality is about to end tonight, and life in Judea and Samaria will return to normal."
Netanyahu had asked the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria to observe restraint.But after ten months of doing just that, they've decided that they're through cooperating with de facto apartheid aimed at Jews, and enough is enough.
Note to Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barack - the tribe has spoken, and they're done with making any more one-way concessions to Abbas and getting nothing but hatred, bluster and violence in return.
The Council has spoken! Here are the results of our weekly Watcher's Council contest.
Both of our winners examined the problem of Islam - or more properly, Islamism - and its incompatibility with freedom, secular mores and democracy.
This week's council winner was The Razor for Does Islam Tolerate Secularism? , an excellent examination of the subject that looked at both Khomenist Iran and the latest developments in increasingly Islamist Turkey, the closest thing the Islamic world ever had to a secular democracy.
Our non-council winning post was Who Lost Turkey? by Caroline Glick, which covered exactly what is happening in Turkey under the Erdogan government...and why you should care.
The New York Post notes that during his stay in New York City to address the UN, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a dinner meeting at the Warwick Hotel on West 54th Street with none other than the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan and members of the New Black Panther Party.
Ahmadinejad actually hired out a banquet room to meet with Farrakhan and the Panthers - no doubt to discuss 'the Jewish problem.'
Democrat Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez went on Spanish language television station Univision and blatantly used racist language to get Hispanic voters to re-elect her, saying "the Vietnamese and the Republicans" are trying to take away her seat, which she's used to do so much for "our community" and "give it" to a Vietnamese Republican who is both "anti-immigrant" and "anti-Hispanic".
Since this is a Democrat, look for this to go quickly down the memory hole.But imagine if a Republican running in a partially Black district against a Black Democrat had made a speech on television saying his opponent was 'trying to give my seat to the blacks'. Would we ever hear the end of it?
Needless to say, there will be no reprimand or condemnation for Loretta Sanchez from the Democratic National Committee.
Ms. Sanchez is running in the Orange County, California's 47th district with both a large Hispanic contingent in Santa Ana and vicinity and a large Vietnamese community in places like Garden Grove and Westminster.The difference is that the Vietnamese are almost entirely legal residents or citizens.
I mention this deliberately, in view of Ms. Sanchez's history.
Back in 1996, Sanchez ran against a Republican incumbent, Bob Dornan. She won by 984 votes, almost all coming from the Hispanic community.
Dornan contested the election, saying there had been massive voter fraud and that many illegal aliens had voted. 748 of Sanchez's votes were eventually disqualified, and after Dornan personally paid for his own investigation, a Congressional committee in conjunction with immigration authorities identified as many as 4,700 fraudulent registration affidavits.
The investigation into these fraudulent registrations was abruptly halted by the Clinton Justice Department before it could be finalized on the grounds it was 'unlikely to alter the election results' even though there was only a 200 vote gap and Loretta Sanchez was allowed to keep 'her' seat.
Sanchez has since issued a lame apology, saying that her remarks, delivered in Spanish and obviously intended to invoke racist posturing on the part of the Hispanic community was 'a poor choice of words'.
Exactly what other words would she have used, I wonder?
I'll be taking a hiatus for a couple of days to celebrate the holiday of Sukkot, which commemorates the forty-year period during which the children of Israel were wandering in the desert. Sukkot is also a harvest festival and the direct ancestor of the American Thanksgiving...William Bradford and the Pilgrims were very familiar with the Bible (Bradford, like many other educated people of his time spoke and wrote Hebrew) and likewise wanted to give thanks for their deliverance from the wilderness.
In honor of the sojourn of children of Israel in the wilderness, people live in or spend time in temporary shelters. These contraptions are called sukkahs. The sukkah has at least three sides and a partially open roof covered with palm fronds, reeds, or whatever. Ideally the roof must be partially open so that the sky and the stars can be observed.
It's a tradition to eat in the sukkah and to have people over Essentially, it's a party, coming as a counterpoint to Yom Kippur and the Days of Awe.
The sukkahs can get extraordinarily inventive, and kids absolutely love to help put them up and decorate them:
Plain or fancy, elaborate or made from scratch and thrown together, the sukkahs reflect the long journey of the Children of Israel from there to here and remind them of where they come from.
Another observance during Sukkot involves what are known as The Four Species or the lulav and etrog. The lulav consists of a palm branch, a myrtle branch, and a willow branch bound together. They all have symbolic meanings relating to the land of Israel.The etrog is a citrus fruit native to Israel (and now, California) and is held separately. With these four species in hand, one recites a blessing and waives the species in all six directions (east, south, west, north, up and down).
I'll let my pal Ya'akov have the last word....Chag Sameach!
The Republican Party is finally set to reveal a doctrine of goals and principles to the American people. They call it "A Pledge To America". The official unveiling is set for tomorrow, in the plain setting of a Virginia hardware store.
The highlights? A return to the principles of our Founders.
They plan to cut wasteful spending, rolling back non-discretionary spending to 2008 levels before TARP and Obama's so-called 'stimulus'. They will extend tax cuts to all Americans and offer concrete help to small business in the form of a 20% tax deduction and repealing the small business mandates in Obamacare to get businesses hiring again.
They will require congressional approval for any new federal regulation that would add to the deficit, repeal and replace ObamaCare and establish strict budget caps on Federal spending.
They pledge to reform Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, end any future TARP payments and reduce the size of government.
And on national defense, they pledge to control and enforce our borders, fund missile defense, try jihadis in military rather than civilian courts, end the mirandizing of enemy combatants and demand the enforcing of tough sanctions against Iran.
The full detailed plan is here. And it will give the American people a clear idea of the choice they have come November.
Not the beginning of the end, but definitely the end of the beginning.
A few crib notes..Bibi Netanyahu is a particular admirer of Winston Churchill, so the satire in that sketch,complete with a TAU lefty professor is directly aimed at Netanyahu.
The Jewish holiday of Sukkot starts tonight at sundown, and part of that holiday involves building a sukka, a small temporary structure in which the open sky must be partially visible, to commemorate the time the Jews spent wandering in the Wilderness.
The sketch satirizes the Muslim seethe-fest over one woman building a small succa and 'destroying the peace' versus the sort of things the Muslim nations are involved in every day.
At least according to ex-president Bill Clinton, that is.
In a roundtable with reporters during his Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York, Mr. Bill decided to weigh in on the Middle East Peace process.
"An increasing number of the young people in the IDF are the children of Russians and settlers, the hardest-core people against a division of the land. This presents a staggering problem," Clinton said. "It's a different Israel. 16 percent of Israelis speak Russian."
Clinton called the Russian immigrants to Israel the group least interested in making a peace agreement with the Palestinians. "They've just got there, it's their country, they've made a commitment to the future there," Clinton said. "They can't imagine any historical or other claims that would justify dividing it."
Don't you just love it? The Israelis make a unilateral concession not to build in their own cities and towns for ten months,and the Palestinians finally get pressured into direct talks after nine-and-a-half months. When they finally show up, they constantly threaten to walk out and start 'negotiations' out by saying they're not going to make even one concession to Israel.meanwhile, the stream of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric spews unabated from the Palestinian Authority's mosques, schools and media.
And it's the Israelis who aren't interested in peace? Did Mr. Bill finally decide to inhale?
As for the Russians, guess what? The 'Russians' alone aren't the nearly two thirds of Israel's Jews who voted for parties on the Right. So it's not just Israelis from Russia ( most of whom have been their over a decade, by the way) or a bunch of 'settlers' who are suspicious of establishing a Palestinian state.
Actually, Mr. Bill bears no small responsibility for that change in Israeli public opinion. Thanks to him,(with an assist from Israel's Labor government) the Oslo Accords were rammed through, Yasir Arafat was empowered to create a terrorist infrastructure on Israel's borders and over 1,000 innocent Jews paid with their lives because of it.
After seeing the results of Oslo and the follow up lesson in Gaza, most Israelis understand that the no concessions Israel makes will ever be enough and that whole idea of swapping 'land for peace' with people who are committed to Israel's destruction is not just stupid - it's suicidal.
Mr. Bill ought to think about the blood that's already on his hands before he starts badgering the Jews of Israel to give a repeat performance.
The Watcher's Council is a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best posts, with the results appearing on Friday...except for this week, when they'll be out Sunday.
Barack Obama once again engages his mighty intellect, the same superior brain that thinks Austrians speak Austrian, there are 57 states, America is one of the largest Muslim countries in the world, and that corpsman is pronounced corpse man. because, you know, he's smarter and better than you.
This latest came at a speech he made before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Annual Awards event in DC to try and gin up some racial posturing before the midterms, where he said, "Long before America was even an idea, this land of plenty was home to many peoples. The British and French, the Dutch and Spanish, to Mexicans, to countless Indian tribes."
Someone should tell this self-proclaimed student of history that the US declared its independence in 1776 - while Mexico did not become a country until September 27, 1821.
Oh, and the phrase he quoted from our Declaration of Independence? Our 'Christian' president somehow left out 'endowed by their Creator' from that famous quotation.
From his recent travels to the Persian Gulf—sponsored and paid for by the State Department—Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf returned with a none-too-subtle threat. His project, the Ground Zero Mosque, would have to go on. Its cancellation would risk putting "our soldiers, our troops, our embassies and citizens under attack in the Muslim world."
Leave aside the attempt to make this project a matter of national security. The self-appointed bridge between America and the Arab-Islamic world is a false witness to the sentiments in Islamic lands.
The truth is that the trajectory of Islam in America (and Europe for that matter) is at variance with the play of things in Islam's main habitat. A survey by Elaph, the most respected electronic daily in the Arab world, gave a decided edge to those who objected to the building of this mosque—58% saw it as a project of folly.
Elaph was at it again in the aftermath of Pastor Terry Jones's threat to burn copies of the Quran: It queried its readers as to whether America was a "tolerant" or a "bigoted" society. The split was 63% to 37% in favor of those who accepted the good faith and pluralism of this country.
This is remarkable. The ground burned in the Arab-Islamic world over the last three decades. Sly preachers and their foot soldiers "weaponized" the faith and all but devoured what modernists had tried to build in the face of difficult odds. The fury has not burned out. Self-styled imams continue to issue fatwas that have made it all but impossible for Arabs and Muslims to partake of the modern world. But from this ruinous history, there has settled upon countless Muslims and Arabs the recognition that the wells are poisoned in their midst, that the faith has to be reined in or that the faith will kill, and that the economic and cultural prospects of modern Islam hang in the balance.
To this kind of sobriety, Muslim activists and preachers in the diaspora—in Patterson, N.J., and Minneapolis, in Copenhagen and Amsterdam—appear to be largely indifferent. They are forever on the look-out for the smallest slight.
Islam in America is of recent vintage. This country can't be "Islamic." Its foundations are deep in the Puritan religious tradition. The waves of immigrants who came to these shores understood the need for discretion, and for patience.
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