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    Posted in Ahmadinejad, Iran, Islam, Islamic extremists, Revolutionary Guard, anti-Zionism, antisemitism on August 26th, 2010 by jenhanin

    We have heard it before and chances are we will hear it again. The play on words when it comes to Iran’s nuclear inten­tions couldn’t get any more absurd than if your favorite comic book vil­lain leaped from the pages and spoke it. Just yes­ter­day, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency announced the coun­try is inten­si­fy­ing its explo­ration and dis­cov­ery. Really? I think what he really meant is that the coun­try is ratch­et­ing up their effort to com­mit mass exter­mi­na­tion and det­o­na­tion. I mean after all, it’s not as if Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad recently unveiled a life sav­ing med­ical device. Oh no, he unveiled his solu­tion to pro­mote “peace and friendship” – a weapon that he so poet­i­cally named the “Ambas­sador of Death.” I sup­pose the next release will be the “Sul­tan of Doom” or the “King of Casualty.”

    It just doesn’t get any more absurd than that. I blogged here that Ahmadine­jad is a mod­ern day com­par­i­son to the fic­tional Dr. Evil from the Austin Pow­ers comedic film tril­ogy and yet the truth is – you just can’t make up this stuff. Yes, Oscar Wilde was right on for empha­siz­ing how: life imi­tates art far more than art imi­tates life. What leader of any pro­gres­sive coun­try would be dumb enough to name their weapon of mass destruc­tion the “Ambas­sador of Death.” It just doesn’t bode well with civ­i­lized soci­ety. Unless of course, you’re a seven-year-old delin­quent or you suck at brand­ing because you’re one of Batman’s fic­tional vil­lains like the Joker, the Rid­dler or Mr. Freeze.

    Then while Ahmadine­jad (aka Armaged­don) shared his vision of “peace and friend­ship” to the West­ern media last week­end he for­got how he also told the Mid­dle East­ern media that any attack on Iran would have world­wide con­se­quences. Next, came the annouce­ment of his mass assault boats. Well, so much for “peace and friend­ship.” This kind of dou­ble rhetoric is com­mon among ter­ror­ist fac­tions that aim to deceive the West, through actions or dona­tions or both. Is Ahmadine­jad clue­less when it comes to online ser­vices like Google Trans­late? Any­one can trans­late any­thing these days and don’t think that just because you’re speak­ing Farsi, that the world isn’t trans­lat­ing. We are, and we have been for some time.

    Today, Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (aka as a ter­ror­ist entity by the US) lev­eled a threat that doesn’t sit well either. The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard claimed it would destroy Israel no mat­ter who attacked Iran. Again, I’m still not feel­ing the love. 

    This leaves me with just one last thing to say to Ahmadine­jad; every hero gets his vil­lain. Like Batman’s failed vil­lains, the world will not end thanks to you nor will Israel end up in the sea. Your legacy; how­ever, is des­tined to mir­ror Batman’s other arch­en­emy, the Pen­guin: freaky and disturbed.

    Oh wait, you already are.

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    When Did Liberals Become Hypocrites?

    Posted in Apartheid, Hamas terrorists, Iran, Islam, Islamic extremists, Israel, Palestinians, United Nations, anti-Zionism, antisemitism, honor killings, human rights on August 20th, 2010 by jenhanin

    Grow­ing up, being a lib­eral meant you were an intel­lec­tual who stood for noble causes like progress, peace and human rights. I’m proud to say my dad was one – he knew the wrongs that needed to be resolved but also knew when some­one put lip­stick on a pig. Yet today, those that claim to be lib­eral are often walk­ing con­tra­dic­tions. How can you claim to be for progress, peace and human rights yet side with ter­ror­ist Hamas or the Pales­tin­ian Authority?

    Most aca­d­e­mics know that the Hamas Char­ter calls for the destruc­tion of Israel and it’s no secret that the PA is wag­ing an inter­na­tional cam­paign call­ing for coun­tries to boy­cott, divest and sanc­tion (BDS) the Jew­ish State. Unfor­tu­nately, the cam­paign is gain­ing solid ground. How could it not? Num­bers mat­ter when you con­sider there are 1.57 bil­lion Mus­lims world­wide com­pared to 13.2 mil­lion Jews. This is why if you’re seri­ous about progress, peace and human rights, you will read on, rethink your posi­tion and con­sider the lives of the 7.3 mil­lion Israelis (1.5 mil­lion of which are Arab) that hang in the bal­ance every time you or some­one you know pub­licly dele­git­imizes the Jew­ish State.

    It’s hard to grasp why main­stream media and many lib­er­als choose to ignore the human rights atroc­i­ties that occur in Arab states. Just today, a judge in “eye-for-an-eye” Saudi Ara­bia (aka the coun­try who likes to chop off hands of thieves) con­sid­ered whether to sever the spinal cord of an attacker with a cleaver. Hmm. Not much human rights here.

    Iran doesn’t fare any bet­ter. It has con­tin­ued to fol­low such bar­baric prac­tices like ston­ing. Most recently, an Iran­ian court doled out the death penalty via ston­ing to Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two. Luck­ily, this case received world­wide media cov­er­age and is only scratch­ing the sur­face of how the Arab World hasn’t risen much past the Span­ish Inquisition.

    I’ve blogged about how Arab League coun­tries deal with gay men and women. Cruel and unusual pun­ish­ment doesn’t even come close to it. Try receiv­ing the largest apartheid sen­tence on earth: the death penalty. In fact, pub­lic hang­ings in Iran are com­mon­place. Just to under­stand how many coun­ties oper­ate this way the Inter­na­tional Les­bian and Gay Asso­ci­a­tion acknowl­edge seven Islamic coun­tries that dole out the death penalty for gay, les­bian and bisex­ual indi­vid­u­als that engage in same-sex actions. Those coun­tries are:

    • Iran
    • Mau­ri­ta­nia
    • Saudi-Arabia
    • Sudan
    • United Arab Emirates
    • Yemen
    • Nige­ria (death penalty applies to 12 North­ern provinces with Sharia law)

    I’ve also blogged about how the real Mid­dle East apartheid is occur­ring in the Arab states that enforce Sharia Law, honor killings, and green light the prac­tice of child brides and even child exe­cu­tions. By all accounts, Sharia law has reduced rights of women in Islamic coun­tries to that of minors in West­ern coun­tries. What grown woman needs an escort every­where she goes? I’m talk­ing to you: Jor­dan, Syria, Egypt and Iran. And what’s up with the seg­re­gated side­walks for men and women, Saudi Arabia?

    How have lib­er­als been able to bypass oppres­sive, total­i­tar­ian regimes that deny their cit­i­zens basic free­doms of polit­i­cal expres­sion, speech, press and due process? Some­how, I’m get­ting an awful image of Sean Penn chew­ing fat with Venezue­lan (aka Israel/ Jew hater) Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez. Another actor that I’ve lost ALL respect for.

    Keep in mind that even the Arab Human Devel­op­ment Report (pub­lished by Arab researchers) from the UN Devel­op­ment Pro­gram found that out of the seven regions of the world,

    Arab coun­tries had the low­est free­dom score.

    No one seems to bring this up. Besides Arab coun­tries tank­ing in the free­dom depart­ment, they also had the low­est rank­ing for “voice and account­abil­ity,” a rank­ing of var­i­ous aspects of the polit­i­cal process, civil lib­er­ties, polit­i­cal rights and free­dom of the media. Cen­sor­ing the media in Arab coun­tries is a great way to raise future Israel/Jew haters and it goes against what most lib­er­als say they believe in.

    Human rights atroc­i­ties are the norm rather than the excep­tion in Arab League coun­tries. In fact, it’s worth not­ing that Iran is still hold­ing the three Amer­i­can hik­ers, Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fat­tal that I’ve blogged about in Tehran’s Evin prison. Iran has held them over a year for allegedly cross­ing the bor­der ille­gally while hik­ing (though the cross­ing part is debat­able), and are com­mit­ting a num­ber of human rights vio­la­tions includ­ing denial of  med­ical treat­ment. As of July 30, 2010, Iran has yet to charge them or sched­ule a trial.

    Who can for­get Israeli sol­dier, Gilad Shalit? Ter­ror­ist Hamas kid­napped him over four years ago and con­tin­ues to move him secretly while bar­gain­ing for release of some of the most dan­ger­ous Hamas oper­a­tives in Israeli pris­ons. Most recently, Hamas turned down a pris­oner swap that included 1,000 Hamas pris­on­ers for Shalit. Hamas has vio­lated the Geneva Con­ven­tion by refus­ing to allow the Red Cross to see him for med­ical treat­ment. Where is world con­dem­na­tion for groups like Hamas or any other gov­ern­ment (think Iran) that is com­mit­ting human rights vio­la­tions right under our noses?

    So those that demo­nize a tiny, demo­c­ra­tic coun­try — nick­named the Sil­i­con Val­ley of the Mid­dle East — that has more com­pa­nies on the Nas­daq than any coun­try out­side of the US isn’t really tak­ing into account that these seven mil­lion peo­ple chose progress over war­fare. These same seven mil­lion peo­ple also chose reli­gious free­dom and all other free­doms that accom­pany a demo­c­ra­tic society.

    I haven’t seen any lib­er­als pro­mot­ing a BDS cam­paign against China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Rus­sia, Saudi Ara­bia, Soma­lia, Sudan and Zim­babwe or any other coun­try sighted for hor­ren­dous human rights abuses. Talk about unfair. The world became more out­raged when Israel defended itself against vio­lent attack­ers on the Gaza bound flotilla from Turkey that ended nine lives, then when North Korea killed 46 sol­diers when it launched a mis­sile into a South Korean war­ship months earlier.

    Israel is a Jew­ish state that wants peace with its neigh­bors, and yet it’s fac­ing the same type of eco­nomic dis­crim­i­na­tion and inter­na­tional iso­la­tion that its Jew­ish ances­tors faced thanks to Adolf Hitler.

    Wanted: Lib­er­als that can tell the dif­fer­ence between the facts and a fic­tional nar­ra­tive con­structed to anni­hi­late 7.3 mil­lion Israelis.

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    Derailing Peace at Every Turn

    Posted in Ahmadinejad, Gaza, Gaza flotilla, Hamas terrorists, Hezbollah, IDF, IHH, Iran, Islam, Islamic extremists, Turkey, UN, UN Resolution 1701, UNIFIL, United Nations, anti-Zionism, antisemitism, terrorism on August 5th, 2010 by jenhanin

    Imag­ine if there were evil forces out to frame you no mat­ter what you did or how you did it. Then con­sider Israel. Just two days ago, IDF sol­diers per­formed rou­tine main­te­nance by clear­ing bushes to improve the line of sight along the Israeli – Lebanese bor­der. Then “suddenly” – a word that par­ents read­ing children’s books are all too famil­iar with when the plot turns to the wicked antag­o­nist – Lebanese sol­diers fired and mur­dered a senior IDF commander.

    When the story broke, even “rep­utable” news orga­ni­za­tions like Reuters and BBC helped demo­nize Israel by pub­lish­ing pho­tos that made the world believe that Israel had delib­er­ately breached the secu­rity fence into Lebanese ter­ri­tory. In real­ity, the secu­rity fence and the bor­der demar­ca­tion are not the same in all areas. The attack occurred on Israeli ter­ri­tory. In fact, IDF even cleared this rou­tine work in advance with the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) to pre­vent any poten­tial violence.

    Nev­er­the­less, the vio­lence occurred against Israel and like clock­work, the lynch­ing had begun. The world descended upon Israel and again painted it as the aggres­sor. Even the US gave a response best described as “neu­tral.” But this story, like dozens before it, may as well been con­cocted in La La Land. Crit­ics of Israel are fast to point the fin­ger at the Jew­ish State but are speech­less when try­ing to rat­tle off even one inci­dent where Israel fired first. There sim­ply is none. Through­out its 62-year his­tory, Israel has retal­i­ated to unpro­voked attacks yet never once insti­gated an attack.

    The bor­der inci­dent was no dif­fer­ent from pre­vi­ous inci­dents that endan­gered Israelis. Like the oth­ers, Israel fired back. Hon­est Report­ing did a good job of ques­tion­ing why UN offi­cials and jour­nal­ists were onsite at the time of the ambush. After all, the UN had full knowl­edge that the main­te­nance was occur­ring. It also explains why sev­eral jour­nal­ists linked to media out­lets con­trolled by ter­ror­ist Hezbol­lah were also onsite. Think about the blood that is now on the hands of those respon­si­ble. UN offi­cials and jour­nal­ists don’t just show up at bor­ders where ten­sion are high unless some­one has asked them to be there. So is it the Lebanese gov­ern­ment or the UN that needs to take full respon­si­bil­ity for the mur­der of the Israeli offi­cer, the jour­nal­ist and three Lebanese soldiers?

    The UN has now admit­ted that the attack occurred on Israeli soil but it is also couch­ing the Lebanese attack as a “mis­un­der­stand­ing.” Hmm. Does that mean the Lebanese com­man­der that autho­rized the attack was con­fused about where Lebanon’s ter­ri­tory ends and Israel’s ter­ri­tory begins? Hardly. It’s more likely that the Lebanese com­man­der knew exactly what he was doing and vio­lated UN Res­o­lu­tion 1701 by know­ingly com­mit­ting an act of war.

    Where is the inter­na­tional out­cry? How can the UN boil down a pre­med­i­tated attack to a “mis­un­der­stand­ing?” Like the Gaza flotilla, Israel used nec­es­sary force to defend itself from bru­tal aggres­sors. Unlike the witch-hunt the UN has gen­er­ated into the IDF’s involve­ment with the Gaza flotilla, the fam­i­lies of those slain are likely not gain­ing com­fort know­ing the UN has rub­ber stamped the deaths of their loved ones with a “mis­un­der­stand­ing”. It’s high time the world inves­ti­gates the UN for the crimes it has com­mit­ted and the spe­cial ses­sions it holds to inves­ti­gate Israel while turn­ing a blind eye to coun­tries that com­mit geno­cide. Talk about a bunch of hyp­ocrites. But that’s another blog post (or series of them) all together.

    Con­sider recent threats to Israel over the last month or so. I tweeted about the rocket recently fired from Gaza on the Israeli city of Ashkelon. Then there were rock­ets fired from Sinai on the Jor­dan­ian and Israeli cities of Aqaba and Eilat. Next, the Lebanese army opens fire. It’s clear that Hezbol­lah has infil­trated the Lebanese army and we know that Hamas is respon­si­ble for the rock­ets launched from Gaza and the Sinai. But I haven’t seen the inter­na­tional out­cry in the media against these aggres­sors. Israel and the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity should be able to see these vio­lent inci­dents and “ter­ror­ist fac­tions” for what they are: attempts to rip the peace process right out of its seams.

    Then there is the never-ending parade of flotil­las to con­sider. What a farce! The Turk­ish flotilla comes no sur­prise as Prime Min­is­ter Tayyip Erdo­gan rec­ntly became Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadinejad’s BFF. And where did the fol­low­ing flotil­las come from? Not the Emer­ald City. Oh no, they came from rogue coun­tries that either serve as launch­ing pads for ter­ror­ists like Lebanon or fund world­wide ter­ror­ism like Iran and Libya. These highly pro­pa­gan­dized inci­dents tar­get­ing the only true democ­racy in the Mid­dle East should serve as a reminder that while Israel seeks har­mony with its neigh­bors they are the same lot sac­ri­fic­ing lives and cre­at­ing media mis­di­rec­tion to derail peace. 

    Photo Credit: Israeli mourn­ing mur­dered Senior IDF com­man­der: CNN
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    Cure the Disease, Not the Symptoms

    Posted in Gaza, Hamas terrorists, IDF, Iran, Islamic extremists, Israel, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinians, UN, UNRWA, US President Barak Obama, United Nations, terrorism on July 30th, 2010 by jenhanin

    Israeli For­eign Min­is­ter Danny Ayalon set the record straight with his recent Wall Street Jour­nal arti­cle on the dou­ble stan­dard the world places on Israel. Ayalon brought up a good ques­tion: where was the world a few years ago when Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ists mur­dered nearly 500 locals at a refugee camp?

    Now I have one. Where were Oliver Stone, Elvis Costello and Meg Ryan – three celebri­ties that recently boy­cotted Israel – when the same PA ter­ror­ists slaugh­tered these 500 inno­cent peo­ple? Where were they when Hamas ter­ror­ists launched over 8,600 rock­ets into Israel tar­get­ing civil­ians over an eight-year period lead­ing up to Oper­a­tion Cast Lead? Where were they when ter­ror­ists recently burned down a sec­ond UN sum­mer camp in Gaza? Or when the strug­gle between the PA and Hamas left Gazans in the dark by turn­ing off their elec­tric­ity? Or when Hamas stole aid ear­marked for Pales­tin­ian refugees? (Google it: it’s become a Hamas hobby).  Chances are they were doing what they do best in the free world: enter­tain­ing the masses.

    We have to hold coun­tries and peo­ple account­able if we want to be seri­ous play­ers in the peace process. A small step in this direc­tion occurred last Thurs­day when the Arab League endorsed direct talks between PA Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu. As expected, this endorse­ment is at best backhanded.

    Israel has made a num­ber of con­ces­sions like the 10-month build­ing freeze Netanyahu ordered in East Jerusalem and recently relax­ing the block­ade to allow more sup­plies into Gaza yet the PA has yet to make any. In fact, the PA’s idea of direct talks is get­ting half their cake before nego­ti­a­tions begin then the other half at the nego­ti­a­tion table. This is not nego­ti­a­tion but rather a form of Russ­ian roulette with the gun pointed at what might very well be the Pales­tini­ans last chance for real peace.

    This brings up another entity who con­stantly mis­di­ag­noses this preva­lent dis­ease that we know as ter­ror­ism yet chooses to treat the symp­toms instead. The United Nations Human Rights Com­mit­tee today called for Israel to end its block­ade against Gaza. Hello! Gaza has had a block­ade by Israel and Egypt since 2007 for a rea­son. Both coun­tries have had pro­tec­tion bar­ri­ers from Gaza for years. In fact,  Egypt started build­ing a mas­sive iron wall just last year to shut down smug­gling tun­nels. The UN and oth­ers seem to have a short mem­ory when it comes to Gaza. The block­ade is there for rea­son: to pre­serve Israeli lives.

    Need more? Pales­tini­ans began launch­ing mis­siles and rock­ets into Israel in 2001. The block­ade occurred as a nec­es­sary step to limit Pales­tin­ian rocket attacks on Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip and to pre­vent Hamas from obtain­ing more weapons. It’s inter­est­ing that any “human rights com­mit­tee” would call for treat­ing the symp­toms (remov­ing the block­ade) that is pro­tect­ing 7 mil­lion Israelis before cur­ing the region’s dis­ease (ter­ror­ism). We all know that an unsta­ble Mid­dle East is a pre­scrip­tion for an unsta­ble world. This is even clearer today with Iran’s ter­ror prox­ies, Hezbol­lah and Hamas gain­ing ground, and the num­ber of sanc­tions the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity has placed on Iran in response to its secre­tive nuclear weapons program.

    In fact, the PA’s auto­matic refusals for peace over the last few decades along with the Hamas Char­ter demon­strates that these groups are more inter­ested in Israel’s destruc­tion than they are in estab­lish­ing real peace where their peo­ple pros­per. After all, real peace will likely put these ter­ror groups out of business.

    Netanyahu, on the other hand, has extended an olive branch all year to Abbas. Like many Jews, a two-state solu­tion wasn’t my ini­tial choice. But faced with a worse choice, a one state solu­tion, where you have a Pales­tin­ian birth rate that will eas­ily exceed the Jew­ish birthrate, it’s the bet­ter of the two.

    But focus­ing on Judea and Samaria is a smoke­screen. This con­flict has never been about land. There are 22 Arab coun­tries sur­round­ing Israel that are 640 times its size. If this con­flict was about land, Arabs should be con­tent. But they’re not. If this con­flict was over land, then why are so many coun­tries like Jor­dan, Saudi Ara­bia, and even the UN-run Pales­tin­ian camps teach­ing chil­dren hatred for Jews and Israel? If this con­flict was about land, why do so many Arab pub­li­ca­tions fea­ture car­toon car­i­ca­tures depict­ing the evil, greedy Jew?

    Prob­a­bly one of the most strik­ing tes­ta­ments that Abbas isn’t putting his peo­ple first (besides refus­ing direct talks) is that he is demand­ing that Pales­tin­ian refugees have the “right of return.” When he talks about this, he means sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies return­ing to Israel. Well, let’s think about that. This means sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple that the PA/ Hamas have indoc­tri­nated to hate Jews and Israel return­ing to the land of their “enemy.” I don’t see a peace­ful out­come in peo­ple return­ing to a coun­try they have learned to hate. It’s illog­i­cal not to men­tion a secu­rity risk, espe­cially since the premise of cre­at­ing a Pales­tin­ian State in the first place rests on pro­vid­ing a home­land for a bur­geon­ing refugee pop­u­la­tion of nearly 5 mil­lion. Send­ing them to a state they hate, while Abbas vows that he would never let an Israeli step foot into a future Pales­tin­ian State, is noth­ing short of absurd.

    Just yes­ter­day Hamas fired a rocket into the South­ern Israeli town of Ashkelon. The IDF fired back with an airstrike hit­ting serveral Hamas tar­gets. When will the blood­shed end? Will US Pres­i­dent Barack Obama put more pres­sure on Abbas? Most expect him too. But don’t depend on play­ers that focus on symp­toms to bring real peace to the Mid­dle East. And don’t expect Hol­ly­wood has-beens to pave a path to peace either. Instead, rely on those that cure the plagues of the world by putting their peo­ple first. Abbas: lis­ten up.

    Photo credit: Israeli FM Danny Ayalon: Haaretz
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