Did he suddenly realize that there might really be a God?

ATLANTA (AP) - Former President Jimmy Carter apologized for any words or deeds that may have upset the Jewish community in an open letter meant to improve an often-tense relationship.

He said he was offering an Al Het, a prayer said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It signifies a plea for forgiveness.

"We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel," Carter said in the letter, which was first sent to JTA, a wire service for Jewish newspapers, and provided Wednesday to The Associated Press. "As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."

Carter, who during his presidency brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace treaty, outraged many Jews with his 2006 book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Critics contend he unfairly compared Israeli treatment of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to the legalized racial oppression that once existed in South Africa.

Israeli leaders have also shunned him over his journey to Gaza to meet with Hamas, considered a terror group by the U.S., the European Union and Israel.

Carter's apology was welcomed by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a vocal critic of Carter's views on Israel.

"When a former president reaches out to the Jewish community and asks for forgiveness, it's incumbent of us to accept it," he said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem. "To what extent this is an epiphany, only time will tell. There certainly was a lot of hurt, a lot of angry words that need to be repaired. But this is a good start."

⁷But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: ⁹And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. ¹⁰And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. ¹¹I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance. but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: ¹²Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

In other words if Jimmah doesn't want to be an anti-Semite any more he needs to prove that he has changed his heart through consistent action over the long term.

A note saying "I'm sorry if you misunderstood my attempts to make you better people" doesn't come anywhere close to cutting it.

If Carter really wants to be believed he can start by telling us how his former attacks on Israel were wrong headed and harmful.

Now that would be a good start.

Israel alone

John Bolton explains the problems facing Israel in regard to Iran's nuclear program:

Legions of senior American officials have descended on Jerusalem recently, but the most important of them has been Defense Secretary Robert Gates. His central objective was to dissuade Israel from carrying out military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Under the guise of counseling “patience,” Mr. Gates again conveyed President Barack Obama’s emphatic thumbs down on military force.

The public outcome of Mr. Gates’s visit appeared polite but inconclusive. Yet Iran’s progress with nuclear weapons and air defenses means Israel’s military option is declining over time. It will have to make a decision soon, and it will be no surprise if Israel strikes by year’s end. Israel’s choice could determine whether Iran obtains nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.

Mr. Obama’s approach to Tehran has been his “open hand,” yet his gesture has not only been ignored by Iran but deemed irrelevant as the country looks inward to resolve the aftermath of its fraudulent election. The hardliner “winner” of that election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was recently forced to fire a deputy who once said something vaguely soothing about Israel. Clearly, negotiations with the White House are not exactly topping the Iranian agenda.

Beyond that, Mr. Obama’s negotiation strategy faces insuperable time pressure. French President Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed that Iran must re-start negotiations with the West by September’s G-20 summit. But this means little when, with each passing day, Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile laboratories, production facilities and military bases are all churning. Israel is focused on these facts, not the illusion of “tough” diplomacy.

Israel rejects another feature of Mr. Obama’s diplomatic stance. The Israelis do not believe that progress with the Palestinians will facilitate a deal on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Though Mr. Gates and others have pressed this fanciful analysis, Israel will not be moved.

Worse, Mr. Obama has no new strategic thinking on Iran. He vaguely promises to offer the country the carrot of diplomacy—followed by an empty threat of sanctions down the road if Iran does not comply with the U.S.’s requests. This is precisely the European Union’s approach, which has failed for over six years.

There’s no reason Iran would suddenly now bow to Mr. Obama’s diplomatic efforts, especially after its embarrassing election in June. So with diplomacy out the door, how will Iran be tamed?

Mr. Gates’ mission had extraordinary significance. Israel sees the political and military landscape in a very inauspicious light. It also worries that, once ensnared in negotiations, the Obama administration will find it very hard to extricate itself. The Israelis are probably right. To prove the success of his “open hand,” Mr. Obama will declare victory for “diplomacy” even if it means little to no gains on Iran’s nuclear program.

Under the worst-case scenario, Iran will continue improving its nuclear facilities and Mr. Obama will become the first U.S. president to tie the issue of Israel’s nuclear capabilities into negotiations about Iran’s.

Israel understands that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent commitment to extend the U.S. “defense umbrella” to Israel is not a guarantee of nuclear retaliation, and that it is wholly insufficient to deter Iran from obliterating Israel if it so decides. In fact, Mrs. Clinton’s comment tacitly concedes that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, exactly the wrong message. Since Israel, like the U.S., is well aware its missile defense system is imperfect, whatever Mr. Gates said about the “defense umbrella” will be politely ignored.

Relations between the U.S. and Israel are more strained now than at any time since the 1956 Suez Canal crisis. Mr. Gates’s message for Israel not to act on Iran, and the U.S. pressure he brought to bear, highlight the weight of Israel’s lonely burden.

Striking Iran’s nuclear program will not be precipitous or poorly thought out. Israel’s attack, if it happens, will have followed enormously difficult deliberation over terrible imponderables, and years of patiently waiting on innumerable failed diplomatic efforts. Absent Israeli action, prepare for a nuclear Iran.

It is deeply saddening that one of the key problems facing Israel it the American presidential administration.

Israel's problem is that it needs help from the outside to survive and the United States is the only nation on earth which has been willing to provide that assistance. Other nations are either too poor, too dependant on Muslim oil or too antisemitic to take Israel as an ally and subsidize its defense.

Now that the US is in the grip of a regime which is as mired in Jew hatred as any in Old Europe (unless you really believe that Obama could sit in Jeremiah Wright's "church" for 20 years and not figure out that the old bastard hated Jews as much as he hated the United States) it seems that Israel must stand alone.

I wonder if now America's Jewish population will wake up and realize how out of place they are in the Democrat party.

Of course it is very possible that God has decided to stop using the USA as a shield to protect Israel and is intending to start doing the job personally. If this is the case then I pity Israel's enemies.

One Down. . .

From the Jerusalem Post:

The IAF on Thursday bombed a building in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, reportedly killing seven people, including senior Hamas leader and cleric Sheikh Nizar Rayyan, and injuring thirty others.

Army Radio reported that according to Palestinian sources, his family was warned before the attack but did not leave the building.

Earlier, the IAF launched a quick-fire response shortly after a Grad-type missile slammed into the top floor of an Ashdod building.

The army said that the air force struck both the Gaza terror cell that launched the projectile and the launching device. Several Hamas homes which were used to store weapons were also bombed in the afternoon air raid.

Since Thursday morning, the IAF struck over 20 targets, including rocket launching sites in northern Gaza, as well as tunnels and a car in the southern Gaza Strip, killing several Hamas operatives.

In addition, the IAF bombed the homes of three senior Gaza terrorists.

As I've said before this whole Israeli/Palestinian business does not end until one side loses so badly that they lose the will to continue the fight.

This means either the Jews evacuating the land or accepting the harshest form of dhimminitude or the Arabs permanently abandoning the hope of destroying the Jewish state.

If the Israelis want to emerge the winners in this conflict they had better stop listening to "The World" and fraking around with "proportionate responses" and crush the Palestinians utterly.

Nothing else will cause the Arabs to abandon even so much as an idle fantasy of eradicating the Jews.

The animals take to the streets

The YouTube video below shows large crowds of subhuman filth dancing with joy and passing out candy in celebration of the murder of some Jewish children in a religious school:



Any city which hosts such celebtations should be destroyed with air raids like those the US used against Japan in the closing days of WWII. The ones where we sent fleets of bombers over their cities and dropped napalm which turned them into oceans of flame.

Fears?

From The Times Online:

A claim by President Ahmadinejad that Iran has 3,000 working uranium-enriching centrifuges sent a tremor across the world yesterday amid fears that Israel would respond by bombing the country’s nuclear facilities.

Military sources in Washington said that the existence of such a large number could be a “tipping point”, triggering an Israeli air strike. The Pentagon is reluctant to take military action against Iran, but officials say that Israel is a “different matter”. Amid the international uproar, British MPs who were to have toured the nuclear facility were backing out of their Iran trip.

Even before President Ahmadinejad’s announcement, a US defence official told The Times yesterday: “Israel could do something when they get to around 3,000 working centrifuges. The Pentagon is minded to wait a little longer.” US experts say 3,000 machines running for long periods could make enough enriched uranium for an atomic bomb within a year.

Israel responded by serving notice that it would not tolerate a nuclear Iran. “Talks never did, and never will, stop rockets,” said Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, after talks with the security cabinet.

The US and Western allies believe that Iran is using its civilian nuclear programme as a cover for weapon development. Tehran says that it merely wants to generate electricity.

The Times' headline for this story is:

US fears Israeli strike against Iran over latest nuclear claim

What I want to know is who exactly "fears" an Israeli strike against Iran? I'm hoping that they take the Iranian nuclear program out and that we help them.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

The Anti-Defamation League is to Jews what the National Organization for Women is to women and the ACLU is to civil libertarians. They represent not Jews or women or civil libertarians, but the left wing of the Democratic Party.

In the paramount threat of our time, the Democratic Party is AWOL. And those are the patriotic Democrats. The rest are actively aiding the enemy.

The blood of millions of Israelis is at stake, and the ADL is flacking for a party that yearns to surrender to the terrorists.

To hide the dirty little secret of the left's burgeoning anti-Semitism, liberals act as if they live in abject terror of right-wingers. When it comes to conservatives, the Anti-Defamation League is the Pro-Defamation League.

For decades, most Jews supported the left, and the left supported Jewish causes. But the left moved on long ago. For liberals, Jews are just so "last Holocaust."

The ADL gently chided Columbia University for making the "mistake" of inviting a genocidal, Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. It tepidly criticized Ahmadinejad's speech for being "a charade of half-answers and obfuscation." That sounds like a fair description of Hillary's current stump speech.

The ADL and its ilk reserve their real venom for a beast like Dennis Prager -- a leading Jewish intellectual, author and radio talk show host. Last year, Prager made the manifestly obvious point that the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, should take his oath of office not on a Quran, but on a Bible, in recognition of "the value system (that) underlies American civilization."
According to the ADL, Prager's column was not a trifling "mistake" on the order of allowing an American audience at one of America's premier universities to give a standing ovation to a murderous, racist lunatic. Prager was "intolerant, misinformed and downright un-American." I think I'd take "obfuscation."

The relevant organs of pious liberal society were promptly rounded up to censure Prager, including the American Jewish Committee and two members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, Rep. Henry Waxman and former New York Mayor Ed Koch -- who called Prager a "bigot." Do they have Ellison on the record acknowledging that the Holocaust happened?

The executive committee of the Holocaust Museum called Prager's column antithetical to "tolerance and respect for all peoples regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity."

But you'll see that famed liberal "tolerance" dry up pretty fast if you render a simple statement of the beliefs of Christians.

The usual liberal coterie acts shocked and offended by Christians who actually believe Christianity is true -- unlike Democratic politicians -- to conceal the fact that the left is increasingly dominated by people conniving in the destruction of Israel.

How about having Tim Russert ask Hillary if she believes the New Testament is the perfection of the Old Testament? She claims to be a Christian. Let's get it on the table: Is she or isn't she? It doesn't get any more bare-bones than that.

Let the cat out of the bag that a 2,000-year-old religion practiced by a majority of Americans teaches that Jesus came in "fulfillment of the scriptures," and you might be better off if you had adopted the preferred approach of liberals' new friends the Muslims and simply slit the Jew's throat.

At least the ADL wouldn't object.

They're too busy conspiring with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to denounce Dennis Prager. And promoting gun control. And gay marriage. And illegal immigration. You know, all the issues that have historically kept the Jews safe.

The ADL denounces the teaching of intelligent design, the placement of the Ten Commandments on public property and Bibles in public schools. Any entity that disagrees with them on these issues will be labeled an "extremist organization."

Gosh, it's a good thing there isn't a worldwide terrorist movement dedicated to killing Jews. The ADL might have to tear themselves away from promoting faddish liberal causes.

The ADL is more concerned with what it calls the "neo-Nazis" and "anti-Semites" in the Minutemen organization than with people who behead Jews whenever they get half a chance. It's only a matter of time before the ADL gets around to global warming.

Earlier this year, the ADL issued an alarmist report, declaring that the Ku Klux Klan has experienced "a surprising and troubling resurgence" in the U.S., which I take to mean that nationwide KKK membership is now approaching double digits. Liberal Jews seem to be blithely unaware that the singular threat to Jews at the moment is the complete annihilation of Israel. Why won't they focus on the genuine threat of Islamo-fascism and leave poor old Robert Byrd alone?

The ADL goes around collecting statements from Democrats proclaiming their general support for Israel, but it refuses to criticize Democrats who attack Joe Lieberman for supporting the war and who tolerate the likes of former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

Sure, Hillary will show up at an ADL dinner and announce that she supports Israel. And then she gets testy with Bush for talking about sanctions against Iran in too rough a tone of voice.

What does it mean for the ADL to collect those statements?

The survival of Israel is inextricably linked to the survival of the Republican Party and its evangelical base. And yet the ADL viciously attacks conservatives, implying that there is some genetic anti-Semitism among right-wingers in order to hide the fact that anti-Semites are the ADL's best friends -- the defeatists in Congress, the people who tried to drive Joe Lieberman from office, the hoodlums on college campuses who riot at any criticism of Muslim terrorists and identify Israel as an imperialist aggressor, and liberal college faculties calling for "anti-apartheid" boycotts of Israel.

The Democratic Party sleeps with anti-Semites every night, but groups like the ADL love to play-act their bravery at battling ghosts, as if it's the 1920s and they are still fighting quotas at Harvard.

Earlier this year, Rep. Virgil Goode Jr., R-Va., said "in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America."

The ADL attacked him, saying, "Bigots have always hid behind the immigration issue."

Like the noose hysteria currently sweeping New York City, liberals are always fighting the last battle because the current battle is too frightening.

Liberal Jews are on a collision course with themselves. They can't reconcile the survival of Israel with their conception of themselves as liberals. The liberal coalition has turned against them. Jews are out; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is in. The new king knows not Joseph.

Ann does a particularly good job this time out. I wondered just the other day why the left has become so antisemitic since most American Jews have been reliably liberal for as long as anyone can remember.

One answer is found in the institutional memory of the Jewish race. Having lived through centuries of persecution at the hand of people who professed Christianity Jewish culture can't help but see any outward sign of Christian devotion as threatening. It reminds me of Eric Flint's novel 1632 about an entire 21st century American town which gets transported back to Germany in the year 1632. A Jewish woman who encounters the Americans takes great comfort in the fact that they are continually uttering casual blasphemy because if they take their religion so lightly they will be unlikely to burn anyone at the stake for disagreeing with it.

Another reason for the actions of the ADL are that just like NOW and the NAACP it is a creature of the Left and its true agenda is the promotion of the Left's goals. Just as NOW would provide cover for a president who was a serial sexual predator who was credibly accused of rape by saying "boys will be boys" so long as that president was a liberal Democrat and the NAACP will oppose school choice even though it leaves a large percentage of black children trapped in dysfunctional public schools which prepare the kids for nothing but a life of welfare dependency and prison as long as the teachers unions continue to dominate the Democrat Party the ADL will take the side of those who murder Jews as long as the Jew-murderers are at war with a Republican presidential administration.

Yes it's sick and evil, but the modern Left is a secular religion, actually a death-cult, and those who would worship at its blood soaked alter must first sacrifice all reason and sense of self preservation.

They do tend to shoot back, you know

From The New York Times:

GAZA — The three Abu Ghazala fathers were in mourning, in the Palestinian way, sitting with their relatives recently in a shaded courtyard, open to the fields of watermelon and eggplant in which their children had died.

The children — Yehiya, 12, Mahmoud, 9, and Sara, 9 — were tending goats and playing tag on Aug. 29 when an Israeli shell or rocket blew them apart. “They went up to that palm tree,” said Ramadan Abu Ghazala, Yehiya’s father, pointing 300 yards away. “They went there every day.”

As the fathers, all farmers, talked, an Israeli blimp, with cameras, hovered in the sky above Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of Gaza, an Israeli drone buzzed in the air and an Israeli watchtower loomed over the nearby border. It was the blimp or the drone, presumably, that first identified the target.

Fatah, the more secular and nationalist of the two main Palestinian movements, and the opposition here in Hamas-run Gaza, has adopted the three young cousins. A Fatah flag flies over the house where they all lived. Fatah has published a “martyr” poster of the three, with Sara represented, between the boys, by a large bunch of red roses. Anyone who dies for any reason in the fight with Israel is regarded by Palestinians as a martyr, with a rapid path to heaven.

The Israeli Army said the children were playing near a launcher used to send Qassam rockets into Israel to try to kill or destroy anyone and anything they happen to land on — children, soldiers, livestock. Sderot, an Israeli city visible from here, has been the main target, and its residents live in fear, running to shelters when an alarm sounds. Sometimes they do not make it.

How nice of Fatah to "adopt" them and declare them to be martyrs since it is Fatah which is responsable for their deaths.

Here's some advice for the Palestinians. Stop trying to destroy Israel and murder Jews and this kind of thing will stop happening.

North Korea giving Syria nuclear materials

From The Times Online:

Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem.

The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say.

They confirmed that samples taken from Syria for testing had been identified as North Korean. This raised fears that Syria might have joined North Korea and Iran in seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.

Israeli special forces had been gathering intelligence for several months in Syria, according to Israeli sources. They located the nuclear material at a compound near Dayr az-Zwar in the north.

Evidence that North Korean personnel were at the site is said to have been shared with President George W Bush over the summer. A senior American source said the administration sought proof of nuclear-related activities before giving the attack its blessing.

Diplomats in North Korea and China believe a number of North Koreans were killed in the strike, based on reports reaching Asian governments about conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials.

Syrian officials flew to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, last week, reinforcing the view that the two nations were coordinating their response.

Right now the problem is North Korea and Iran. If we put out the fire before it spreads from those two sources all will probably be well, however if we allow it to spread there will be no containment.

This just in

From The Jerusalem Post:

Syrian air defenses opened fire on Israeli aircraft that violated Syrian airspace overnight Thursday, a Syrian military spokesman said.

The Israelis broke the sound barrier and "dropped ammunition" over deserted areas of northern Syria overnight, the spokesman was quoted by the official Syrian Arab News Agency.

"We warn the Israeli enemy government against this flagrant aggressive act, and retain the right to respond in an appropriate way," the Syrian spokesman said.

It was not clear if Syria was accusing the Israelis of using warplanes or some type of other aircraft like drones.

"The Israeli enemy aircraft infiltrated into the Arab Syrian territory through the northern border, coming from the Mediterranean heading toward the eastern region, breaking the sound barrier," the spokesman said.

"Air defense units confronted them and forced them to leave after they dropped some ammunition in deserted areas without causing any human or material damage."

The IDF said that it was "not accustomed to responding to such reports."

Israel acknowledges flying over Lebanon routinely, but it is unclear how often its aircraft fly over Syria, if at all.

At the beginning of last summer's war against Lebanon, Israeli warplanes buzzed the palace of Syrian President Bashar Assad in what analysts called a warning to Damascus.

In June of the same year, they also flew over Assad's summer home in the coastal city of Latakia, after Syrian-backed Palestinian militants in Gaza kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit.

The question is this, how badly do the Syrians want their asses kicked?

A necessary division

The New York Times' headline for this story is "A Segregated Road in an Already Divided Land":

JERUSALEM, Aug. 10 — Israel is constructing a road through the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, that will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to travel along it — separately.

There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall wall of concrete patterned to look like Jerusalem stones, an effort at beautification indicating that the road is meant to be permanent. The Israeli side has various exits; the Palestinian side has few.

Do we need to remind people why the Israelis very lives depend on keeping Palestinians out of Israel? Do we need to remind people why the land is "divided" in the first place.

The definition of insanity is . . .

From The Washington Post:

President Bush launched a diplomatic effort yesterday to revive the long-moribund Middle East peace process, announcing aid to the Palestinian government and calling for an international conference this fall aimed at paving the way for the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel.

Five years after becoming the first president to fully embrace a "two-state solution," Bush acknowledged that it remains distant after violent clashes that have politically sundered the Palestinian territories. But Bush called this a "moment of choice" for the region and renewed his commitment heading into his final 18 months in office.

I have no doubt that future historians will look back on this era and scratch their heads with wonder at how the United States, Europe and Israel itself could have repeated the same error over and over again and expected a different result.

I am certain that there are Palestinian people who wish to live at peace with Israel. We know this because from time to time mobs of average Palestinian people locate a collaborator (someone who wishes to live at peace with Israel) and stone them to death in the streets. So they do exist, but have learned not to advertise their existence.

The fact that these peace-loving and tolerant Palestinians make up only as vanishingly small part of the total Palestinian population (and getting smaller all the time as more of them are identified and murdered by their neighbors) seems to go right over the heads of Western political leaders.

I'm going to be politically incorrect here and state the plain and simple truth. If you want a Palestinian state to exist side-by-side with Israel then Jordan should be that state. The population of Jordan already consists of a majority of Palestinian Arabs and the state itself was carved out of the original Palestinian Mandate. Israel should formally annex Gaza and the West Bank and relocate all Palestinians found there to Jordan. The UN should then recognize Israel's new borders and set about sending aid to Jordan to help the new Jordanian citizens integrate into Jordanian society.

The UN should also set up a buffer zone between Jordan and Israel and aggressively patrol it to prevent terrorists from crossing into Israel. US troops would have to be used for this since the antisemitism of most Europeans would cause them to look the other way most of the time and let suicide bombers and other terrorists slip past them.

This will not happen, of course. The UN is itself an antisemitic body. It is also a democratic organization made up of representatives of nations which are not free and are hostile to nations which are free. It would simply be unnatural for the dictators' club on Turtle Bay to favor free Israel over the unfree Arab states even if antisemitism was not a part of the equation.

If Israel wishes to solve its Palestinian problem it must realize that the answer is not to be found in international conferences.

Will they ever learn?

From The New York Times:

ALMOST a year has passed since Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon, time enough to draw lessons from the conflict and reflect on its consequences.

Last week, Israel’s Winograd Commission published an interim report scrutinizing Israel’s conduct during what it called the country’s most recent military “campaign.” But the report failed to draw the most essential lesson from the July war and the wars that preceded it: military action does not give the people of Israel security. On the contrary, it compromises it. The only way for the people of Israel and the Arab world to achieve stability and security is through a comprehensive peace settlement to the overarching Arab-Israeli conflict.

You can read the rest if you want to, but it is just as nonsensical is this bit.

Bottom line is this. How do you negotiate and compromise with people whose ONLY goal is to destroy you? The stated objective of the Arab side in the Arab/Israel conflict is to destroy the state of Israel and either kill the Jews or dirve them back into dispersion.

The Arab position has never waiverd from that and their stated policy on negotiation and compromise is that they are only to be entered into in order to buy time and gain strength and that they are never to be considered binding.

Where is the "middle ground" that you can meet on with people who believe that your very existence is an offense to God and that their sacred duty is to remove you from the earth?

When threatened - Do nothing!

From The New York Times:

JERUSALEM, March 31 — Hamas, the dominant faction in the Palestinian government, is building its military capacity in the Gaza Strip, constructing tunnels and underground bunkers and smuggling in ground-to-air missiles and military-grade explosives, senior Israeli officials say.

The officials, including a top military commander who spoke in an interview on Friday, said that Hamas had learned tactics from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, which brought in and stored thousands of rockets in bunkers near the northern Israeli border before its war with Israel last summer.

In Gaza, the Israeli commander said, Hamas has now recruited 10,000 fighters to its so-called Executive Force, a parallel police force intended to counter the control its rival Fatah exercises over the Palestinian Authority’s security forces. The Executive Force is now divided into five “so-called brigades, with battalion leaders” and is receiving more military training and sharing a common headquarters, he said, with the Qassam brigades, Hamas’s military wing.

The commander, who gave the briefing at the request of The New York Times and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Hamas’s improved rockets had a range of about 10 miles, which would allow them to hit the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

But he emphasized that despite Israel’s growing concerns about Hamas, “we’re not going to start a big operation in Gaza.”

I'm sure that Hamas is glad to hear that. I'm not too sure about how the people of Ashkelon will feel about hearing that you will allow a bunch of them to be blown up before, maybe, thinking about doing something about the arsenal that a dedicated vicious terrorist group is amassing.

But then what can we expect from the clueless left-wing government of Ehud Olmert?

I hope the people of the United States are paying attention. This is what happens when you allow the left to run things. Of course we should already have enough evidence of that. The Iraq Surrender Act just passed by the House and Senate and the completely impotent way the UK is handling the capture of some of its sailors and Marines in Iraqi waters tell us all we need to know.

But then the presidential candidacy of George McGovern and the hapless administration of the loathsome and contemptible Jimmy Carter should have armored us against any temptation ot vote in left-liberals ever again. So the real question is this, can we ever learn?

We can hope, can't we?

From The Telegraph:

Israel is negotiating with the United States for permission to fly over Iraq as part of a plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

To conduct surgical air strikes against Iran's nuclear programme, Israeli war planes would need to fly across Iraq. But to do so the Israeli military authorities in Tel Aviv need permission from the Pentagon.

A senior Israeli defence official said negotiations were now underway between the two countries for the US-led coalition in Iraq to provide an "air corridor" in the event of the Israeli government deciding on unilateral military action to prevent Teheran developing nuclear weapons.

"We are planning for every eventuality, and sorting out issues such as these are crucially important," said the official, who asked not to be named.

If this wasn't from a British paper I would assign some credibility to this. However it is not impossible that the US and Israel are doing some contengency planning.

I hope they are, anyway.

Some good questions

Victor Davis Hanson asks some questions about the agreement between Hamas and Fatha. From The Corner:

What has America done to suggest to a terrorist organization that it has an inherent right to American taxpayer money because it has found a way to market or soft-peddle its intention to destroy a democracy? The money quote of Hamas is the key phrase "they cannot..." Only in the Middle East does the recipient announce to the benefactor the conditions of the hand out.

Why would any Arabs want any money from the US, when the latest Zogby poll, we are told, reveals that the United States is the least popular country in the Arab collective mind?

Surely a proud people would logically announce, "We do not wish one cent of tainted American money"? And surely they would not suggest the lack of such tainted American money leads them to kill each other.

And why, with $500 billion in excess petrodollars floating around the Middle East, is a few hundred million from the US, that is pouring money into Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, seen as the make or break subsidy that either ensures peace or leads to war?

Couldn't Hamas simply instead ask Iran, to cut back a little on the rockets to Hezbollah, and send it instead a few million for groceries?

And if impoverished, where does the money for all the machine guns, rockets, RPGs, and explosives come from?

And does any Reuters reporter grasp the irony that it is precisely the US cut-off of this subsidy that at last has made Hamas pay any lip-service at all toward reconciliation?

This bathos summarizes what infuriates Americans the most about the Middle East-a sort of infantile, passive-aggression, in which America is alternately blamed, then shaken down for cash, libeled and simultaneously beseeched.

Worse still, is not just the fact that Fatah and Hamas act in such a bizarre manner- but rather what is it about us that has led them to believe that it will work?

And what would be so difficult about something like the following request to the Palestinians: please issue a statement recognizing Israel as a sovereign nation and renouncing terrorism, and then the US and Europe will consider aid in a degree commensurate to that offered by the Arab League? Period.

Because, Dr. Hanson, that would make too damn much sense.

They've decided to start killing their real enemy again

From The New York Times:

MECCA, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 8 — The main rival Palestinian factions agreed late Thursday to form a government of national unity aimed at ending a wave of violence between them and an international boycott.

The agreement, signed here in Islam’s holiest city under Saudi auspices, appeared likely to end, at least for now, weeks of fighting that had ravaged the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Still, it seemed to stop short of meeting the demands of the international community for resuming relations and support for the Palestinian Authority.

The accord, signed by Khaled Meshal of Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and leader of Fatah, its main rival, is the first time that the two parties have agreed to share authority. It sets out principles for a coalition government, like the distribution of ministerial portfolios, but leaves many of the details for later.

Israel and international powers have said that they would lift their boycott of the Palestinian government imposed after the victory by the militant group Hamas a year ago only if it agreed to three conditions: recognize Israel, renounce violence against Israel and abide by previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Mecca accord addresses only the last of those and does so rather imprecisely, promising “respect” for previous agreements between the Palestinians and Israel.

To socialists elites like the US Department of State, the Eurocrats in the European Union and other antisemitic loons like former president Jimmy Carter this will seem like good news. To those of us with functioning brains this is anything but.

This agreement between the two murderous terrorist organizations, which are the only kind of government that the Palestinian people will tolerate, will, if it holds, just allow them to stop doing civilization a favor by killing each other and resume killing Jews.

That the government of Israel thinks that the promise of recognition from the Palestinian government has any meaning whatsoever is a telling indictment of just how clueless they are.

The Palestinians will make peace with Israel when Israel has beaten them so badly that they have internalized their defeat. When they look around and see no hope whatsoever and realize that if they don't give up there won't be enough of them left to continue as a "people" they will crawl to the Jews and say, with absolute sincerity, "what must we do for you to stop killing us?"

At that point the war will end and there will be peace. Just as the US achieved peace with the Japanese by fire bombing (and nuclear bombing) their wood and paper cities.

Anything less will keep the low intensity warfare alive and simmering for more decades.

Following the road map to hell

From The Washington Post:

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Jan. 14 -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday adamantly rejected "any temporary or transitional solutions, including a state with temporary borders," throwing cold water on an idea advanced by Israel's foreign minister.

Abbas spoke at a joint news conference with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is touring the region this week in what she bills as an effort to listen to ideas to rekindle the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Rice said she wants to "accelerate" a three-stage, U.S.-backed peace plan from 2003 known as the "road map" but has been vague about what she means. "When I say accelerate, we want to look at it and see how fast you can move," she told reporters traveling with her.

In order for a genuine "peace process" to take place there must be a genuine desire for peace on both sides of the conflict. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is short one party desiring peace.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. The Palestinians want "peace" it is just that they define "peace" as that state of affairs which will come about when the body of the last Jew has been kicked into a mass grave.

Peace defined as two parties working out their differences non-violently and living together without armed conflict is something which they have no interest in. However that is what the Israelis wish for and it is what the United States wishes for.

Now if the Israeli and American governments were willing to look at the situation and see it as it is they would simply deal with the fact that they cannot have what they wish for at this time and seek the next best option. However realism is not a characteristic of either the socialist government of Israel or the socialists of Foggy Bottom.

So the civilized Western powers will sit down across the table from medieval savages who regard any truce or cease-fire as nothing more than an opportunity to rearm and reposition themselves for a resumption of armed hostilities and will negotiate an agreement with them. An agreement which the Palestinians will honor only as long as they believe that it furthers their ultimate goal of destroying Israel.

What Israel and the United States must accomplish if we wish for real peace, as we define peace, to exist in the region is to make the Palestinians desire peace. The only way to accomplish that is to cause them to realise first that their goal of destroying Israel is impossible, now and in the future and second that their survival as a people depend upon making peace, true peace, with Israel and the West.

In short they must be defeated, not just in a battle or even a hundred battles, but in the war. They must lose the war and they must internalize their defeat. They must feel themselves defeated and their will to continue the struggle must be broken.

To achieve this state of affairs Israel must make war upon the Palestinians with every resource at their disposal. They must continue the war until the Palestinians have no more will to resist. General Sherman knew that the Union had won the Civil War when the civilians of Tennessee and North Carolina told him to hurry to South Carolina and Georgia and punish the people who started the war.

Just as the German people at the end of WWII thought only of making it to the American or British zones of occupation rather than winding up the Soviet controlled East and you couldn't find one who would admit to being a member of the Nazi Party the Palestinians will come to the point where pictures of Arafat are burned in bonfires and anyone who speaks of making war against the "Zionist Entity" will be beaten to death by his neighbors and family members. That is if the Israelis will stop trying to make peace with people who are not yet ready for peace.

A bit of justice

The blog Israel Matzav is posting about something I find hilarious:

An Emory University professor has urged the university's Carter Center to cut its ties with former President Dhimmi Carter if it wants to survive:

A noted Emory University anthropologist is calling for the Carter Center to distance itself from its namesake in the wake of the former president's latest book and recent comments about Israel.

Writing to Carter Center Executive Director John Hardman to decline a position on an advisory panel, Melvin Konner also offered a piece of advice.

"If you want The Carter Center to survive and thrive independently in the future, you must take prompt and decisive steps to separate the center from President Carter's now irrevocably tarnished legacy," wrote Konner, adding that the center has to make it clear that, on matters of the Middle East and the Jewish community, Carter does not speak for the institution.

"If you do not do this, then President Carter's damage to his own effectiveness as a mediator, not to mention to his reputation and legacy, will extend, far more tragically in my view, to The Carter Center and all its activities," wrote Konner, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory and the author of "Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews."

As I said, hilarious. The CARTER Center is being strongly urged to cut its ties to CARTER before he drags them down with him.

We might call this a Christmas gift to sanity itself.

We might also take it as a warning that God keeps his promises. The Lord told Abraham in Genesis 12:3 "And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse . . .".

Carter has survived a great deal of his own foolishness with his reputation still intact, at least among those on the left. This latest episode, his one-sided racist anti-Semitic screed of a book seems to have been the straw which broke the camel's back.

He will still be able to get by, touring the Middle East giving lectures to Islamofascist audiences for large fees however his days of being taken seriously by any civilized people may have come to an end.

This photoshop of the cover of Carter's latest book captures its true spirit far better than the actual cover.

More trashing Jimmy

From Front Page Magazine:

Jimmy Carter, it appears, needed a scapegoat for his failed presidency and Israel served as a convenient target. His new book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is a shameful tract filled with factual inaccuracies, and blatant one-sidededness. His pent up frustration with his inability to influence U.S. policy on behalf of his Arab friends prompted the publication of this libelous book.

Lest the readers forget, in March 1977, just months after his inauguration, Carter made his first foreign policy speech in which he called for a “Palestinian Homeland.”

Carter’s presidency, widely renowned for its crowning achievement, The Camp David Accords, which established a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, was not however, a Carter initiative.

The essay goes on to detail how Camp David happened in spite of Carter, not because of him.

The more that I study Carter the more obvious and profound his incompetence and outright evil become. I think that it is time to revive the ancient Athenian custom of ostracism.

Jimmy Carter, former human

David Horowitz has written an essay on his website, Front Page Magazine, about Jimmy Carter and his new book:

Even as Islamic Hitlerites gather in Iran to deny the first Holocaust of the Jews and to plot the second, former president Jimmy Carter tours America with a new book that describes Jews as racists and oppressors, and suggests they are also a conspiratorial mafia that intimidates “critics,” controls America’s media and war policy, and are therefore also the source of Islamic terrorism and the Arabs’ genocidal campaign to eliminate them from the map of the Middle East.

In other words, Americans beware of the Jew in your midst.

I could write a long post about how utterly vile Carter is. I could go into the history of his failed presidency and the terrible damage it did to the nation. But I'm not going to. You already know all that, and if you are too young to remember Carter as president be thankful you didn't have to go through that national humiliation.

The fact is that Jimmy Carter is filth. If you dip a bucket into a sewer and then look down into it you will see Jimmy Carter looking up at you. In writing this book, which goes beyond mere anti-Zionism or even anti-Semitism and begins to flirt with a kind of 21st Century blood libel, Carter has for all intents and purposes resigned from the human race.

By casting his lot with the Islamofascist Muslim theocrats and neo-Nazi holocaust deniers Carter has placed himself beyond the pale. It is no longer necessary for decent civilized people to even recognize a common humanity with Carter.

In the eyes of the law he remains a man with all the legal protections that go with that designation, but in all the ways that count in the moral realm he is a mere thing

From Cox & Forkum