IF ISRAEL IS REALLY AN APARTHEID STATE... It's Almost Supernatural links to a post at Curiouser and Curiouser:

He questions why, if Israel is an Apartheid State, would so many black Muslims choose to flee there. They have so many Muslim/Arab neighboring states to choose from, but trek hundreds of mile more under harrowing conditions to come to the Jewish state.

Read a black Muslim's answer.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Apartheid and Sudan.

A SHORT HISTORY OF BROKEN PRESIDENTIAL PROMISES. Condoleezza Rice is back in town again in the Middle East, applying pressure on Israel to keep the momentum going in the pursuit of yet another initiative:

On the first day of her Middle East tour, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday signed a joint statement with Egypt, Jordan and six Persian Gulf states, endorsing the 2002 Arab peace initiative as one of the foundations for Middle East peace.

...The initiative offers Israel normalized relations with all Arab countries in return for full withdrawal from the territory Israel captured in 1967.

Remember Bush's promises in his letter to Sharon back in April 2004? It looks real nice up there on the Whitehouse web site:

As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

Of course there is a lot of wiggle room that can be read into that paragraph--and you could say the same thing about this paragraph as well:

The United States will lead efforts, working together with Jordan, Egypt, and others in the international community, to build the capacity and will of Palestinian institutions to fight terrorism, dismantle terrorist organizations, and prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat that would have to be addressed by any other means.

These are after all merely assurances, not iron-clad promises written in stone. Then again, it is not as if President Bush is the first president to make promises to Israel. Cal Thomas recalls:

In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower made commitments in order to get Israel to withdraw from the Sinai. In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson failed to implement those commitments and the Six-Day War followed.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon made promises to end the war of attrition between Israel and Egypt. Egypt violated the agreement, and the United States failed to live up to its commitments. The 1973 Yom Kippur War followed, which killed 2,800 Israelis.

In 1996 and again in 1998, President Bill Clinton promised to refrain from pressuring Israel into making further concessions until the Palestinian Authority altered its Charter that calls for the elimination of Israel. The Charter was not altered, but Israel was expected to honor its promises.

In 2000, Clinton committed $800 million in special assistance to induce Israel to withdraw from Southern Lebanon. Israel withdrew, and Hezbollah quickly filled the geographic and military vacuum, increasing terrorist attacks. The promised U.S. assistance never arrived.

Soccer Dad remembers that Netanyahu was betrayed by the Clinton administration after agreeing to give up Hebron with the understanding--formalized in a statement by Warren Cristopher on January 15, 1997--that "further redeployment phases are issues for implementation by Israel rather than issues for negotiation with the Palestinians.'' Remember how that turned out?

While President Bush follows the mold of good cop presidents who promise the world but never manage to deliver, Rice follows in the mold of the those who have never shied away from pressing Israel to make concessions that have never turned out to be in her own best interest.

Caroline Glick provides a list of US strongarm tactics used on Israel:

So it was in 1956, when Eisenhower forced David Ben-Gurion to beat a speedy retreat from the Sinai and Gaza at the end of the Suez campaign. The president justified the uncompromising demand by promising Israel that if the Egyptians were again to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, the US would send its navy to reopen the waterway by force. In 1967, when Gamal Abdel Nasser closed the straits, president Lyndon Johnson begged off, forcing Israel to stand alone.

After the Six Day War, which should have led to a complete political reshuffling of the region, the US again protected Israel’s neighbors.

In 1973, the US administration was again on hand, wresting the Egyptians from the jowls of defeat. Henry Kissinger prevented Israel from destroying Egypt’s Third Army, allowed the Egyptians to escape with honor and thus enabled the creation of the current Egyptian myth – that Israel lost that war.

The Ford and Carter administrations strongly pressured Israel to sign away the Sinai in exchange for peaceful ties with Egypt, which after 23 years have yet to materialize, although Egypt, rearmed with American assistance, now poses a military threat unimaginable in the past.

In Lebanon in 1982, the Reagan administration stepped in to save a routed Arafat. The Americans paved the way for his escape with his troops from Beirut to Tunis, free to fight another day. In the meantime, the US forced Israel to withdraw from much of Lebanon and allowed the Syrian army to remain.

And in the Gulf war, the first Bush administration not only prevented Israel from achieving political advantage, it prohibited Israel even from defending itself against unprovoked Iraqi ballistic missile attacks. After isolating Israel from the coalition, the administration proceeded to force its democratic ally to the negotiating table to discuss the transfer territory to the Arabs. When the negotiations failed to bear fruit, the administration meddled in the 1992 elections to assist in the victory of the more forthcoming Labor Party.

Although the Clinton administration served in a decade unscathed by large-scale war, but marked by an increase in rogue states’ audacity and terrorist attacks on US targets, Clinton consistently urged Israel to accept Palestinian terrorism and insisted on turning a blind eye to blatant PA breaches of its commitments to Israel. The Clinton administration’s addiction to pressuring Israel to accept Arab aggression under the guise of peacemaking led to unprecedented meddling in Israel’s internal politics. The end result could be seen in the twin pictures of Clinton impertinently announcing his peace plan after his successor had already been elected, and Madeleine Albright chasing after Arafat outside the US Embassy in Paris in a vain attempt to get him to return to the negotiating table he had just overturned.

Administrations change, but the games is always played the same.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

JERUSALEM'S ONLY FEMALE MUSLIM TAXI DRIVER. Elms In The Yard finds that the BBC has caught on to this singular woman 2 years after she did herself.

Technorati Tag: Israel.

EVEN AT SUMMER CAMP IN US--NO ESCAPE FROM SDEROT. From The Boston Globe:

The children began to cry and shake when they heard the thunder and saw the lightning during the camp dance. One girl fainted. Another hugged a counselor so hard that she dug her fingernails into the woman's back.

Everyone had the same thought: The boom from the sky was a Qassam rocket.

The boys and girls had traveled from Sderot, Israel, a dusty, war-torn desert outpost one mile from Gaza, to spend a month at Jewish camps in New Hampshire and Brighton.

..."The noise returned me to Sderot," Sabrina Eliaev, 12, said in Hebrew, offering an elegant comparison of her life there and her life in New Hampshire: "But I know that thunder doesn't kill people, so I would agree to having thunder in Sderot instead of the Qassams."

If only the choice was hers.

[Hat tip: Backspin]

Technorati Tag: Israel and Sderot.

FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU DURBAN. From the NGO-Monitor Blog:

European Parliament to Host UN NGO Anti-Israel Propaganda Conference

The United Nations has scheduled an “International Conference of Civil Society in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace”, to be held in the European Parliament in Brussels, August 30-31. This misleading not withstanding, this annual conference is held under the auspices of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, and the International Coordinating Network for Palestine - frameworks that promote the conflict through NGOs involved in implementing the Durban agenda of demonization. This year, for the first time, the exercise is gaining the legitimacy of sponsorship by the European Parliament, further highlighting the role that the Europe Union plays in supporting the NGO campaign.

The list of speakers is apparently kept secret, but not the list of topics.

Topics include “The situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and civil society response”, “Action by civil society organizations working in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”, workshops on “Fortieth anniversary of occupation: building on action taken by civil society…”, and “Strengthening campaigns to end occupation, including grassroots campaigns against the wall, rallying around Bil’in” (the site of violent attacks organized by NGOs in order to provoke Israeli responses). The program and further information can be found at http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf and through representatives of the European Union and parliament.

The "bash" is less than a month away.

Technorati Tag: Israel and UN and NGOs.

BLOGGER TOUR HEARS NETANYAHU. I mentioned in an earlier post that a handful of US bloggers are visiting Israel. In that post, I linked to a post by Gateway Pundit where he had an excerpt of a talk by Natan Sharansky. In a newer post, he has an excerpt of a talk by Bibi Netanyahu on the radical Islamist threat.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Netanyahu.

THE FORGOTTEN LESSON OF ALIYAH BET FOR TODAY. Hillel Halkin writes in the New York Sun about the commemoration in Israel of Aliyah Bet, particularly the reunion of the survivors of The Exodus, made famous in the book by Leon Uris and the movie by Otto Preminger.

Halkin reminds of the failure of Aliyah Bet--assuming of course that the real purpose was actually to consistently avoid the British surveillance and successfully bring large numbers of Jewish immigrants into Israel.

But bringing significant numbers of Jews to Palestine was never the real purpose of Aliyah Bet, whose planners understood that they were no match for the British navy. The purpose was public relations, or, to use a less pleasant term, propaganda — and in this, Aliyah Bet succeeded brilliantly. Each turned-back boatload of homeless Holocaust survivors, their families murdered by the Nazis, their tragedy-lined faces staring with longing at the land they were not allowed to enter; each doomed and sometimes violent struggle with the British shore police to reach that land, sometimes by jumping into the water; each newspaper photograph of the detainees in Cyprus, looking at the camera through barbed wire as if they had been returned to Auschwitz or Treblinka — every such story and image was another blow struck in world public opinion against the continuation of the British Mandate and for the creation of a Jewish state. Nothing did more to create sympathy for Zionism in those years than the "failure" of Aliyah Bet.

But Israel has forgotten this lesson of Aliyah Bet--and worse.

Israel today has forgotten not only the American boys who manned the Wedgewood, the Haganah, the Arlosoroff, the Ben Hecht, the Hatikvah, the Exodus, the Geula, the Jewish State, the Pan York, and the Pan Crescent. It has forgotten the lessons of Aliyah Bet as well. It's not only the immediate results of what you do or don't do that matters, it's also how it looks. Too often despairing of winning the world's understanding or sympathy, Israelis have developed the attitude that there is no point in fostering their own image or making photogenic gestures, since the world will not appreciate it anyway. They will do what needs to be done and the world can like it or lump it.

This is shooting oneself in the foot. For better or for worse, the world sees images first, what lies behind them only later. An image without a positive truth behind it will sooner or later collapse, but a truth without a positive image may take unaffordably long to register. The boys who sailed the boats got the message across in time.

While Olmert's government is drifting aimlessly out to sea...

[Hat tip: Democracy-Project]

Technorati Tag: Israel and Aliyah Bet and Hillel Halkin.

SAUDIS SUE, PUBLISHERS CAVE (UPDATED). Apparently for the 4th time. From Critical Mass:

Cambridge University Press announced this week that it would pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, in response to a libel claim filed in England by Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker. The book suggests that businesses and charities associated with Mr. Mahfouz financed terrorism in Sudan and elsewhere during the 1990s.

"Cambridge University Press now accepts that the entire bin Mahfouz family categorically and unreservedly condemns terrorism in all its manifestations," a lawyer for Mr. Mahfouz declared on Monday in a London courtroom.

During the court hearing, the publisher also promised to contact university libraries worldwide and ask them to remove the book from their shelves. It also agreed to pay "substantial damages" to Mr. Mahfouz. Representatives of both parties declined to tell The Chronicle how much money was involved in the settlement.

The book's authors -- Robert O. Collins, a professor emeritus of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and J. Millard Burr, a retired employee of the U.S. State Department -- were not personally named in the libel action, and they have refused to endorse the settlement. They declined to speak to The Chronicle on Tuesday, saying they were still talking to the university press about their legal obligations.

This is at least the fourth book against which Mr. Mahfouz has successfully pursued a libel action.

The National Review Online thinks there is a major story here that is not being addressed at all in the media. Stanley Kurtz writes:

Here’s a story with huge implications for freedom of speech (all negative), and it’s apparently gone almost entirely unreported in the mainstream press. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), under threat of a law suit, Cambridge University Press has just agreed to pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book, Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World. According to the Chronicle, this is the fourth such book on terrorism funding to be pursued by a libel action. The Chronicle quotes Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, whose own book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed–and How to Stop It is one of the four books.

In an interview on Monday, Ms. Ehrenfeld characterized as "despicable" Cambridge's decision to settle this week, a move the press has defended as necessary and just. Ms. Ehrenfeld, who is a friend of Mr. Burr's [one of the authors of Alms for Jihad], said that, as she understands it, press officials "caved immediately."

"They didn't even consider the evidence that the authors had given them," she said. "They received a threatening letter, and they immediately caved in and said, Do whatever it takes. Pay them whatever they want. Ban the book, destroy the book, we don't want this lawsuit."

In a blog post entitled, "Attention Authors: Be afraid, very afraid....especially if you write about the Saudis and their support of terrorism," Emory University professor, Deborah Lipstadt elaborates. In addition to the links within Lipstadt’s post, you can find related stories at the website of Ehrenfeld’s American Center for Democracy. Given MSM’s silence, this looks like one for the blogosphere.

UPDATE: Here is a review by Michael Rubin of Alms for Jihad and Journey of the Jihadist:

Lay Muslims once looked at zakat as just another tax levied by their governments. However, the Muslim Brotherhood-run mosques began collecting alms to fund jihad. Messrs. Burr and Collins demonstrate this with a number of case studies covering Afghanistan, Sudan, the Balkans, Russia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Holy Land, Europe, and North America. Throughout, the Saudi royal family played a pernicious role, founding and promoting charities to spread militant Sunni Islam, not only as an inoculation against resurgent Shi'ism from revolutionary Iran, but also to radicalize the Muslims in Europe and America.Western bungling amplified the charities' success: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika enabled Islamist charities to sink roots in Chechnya, while in the next decade, the Clinton administration delayed investigations into charities like the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation out of deference to its Saudi royal family patrons.

Not the sort of stuff the Saudis want getting out.

Technorati Tag: Khalid bin Mahfouz and Saudi Arabia and Terrorism and Cambridge University Press and Alms For Jihad.

THE LAST 8 JEWS OF BAGHDAD (UPDATED). From TIME Magazine (via Yahoo):

Baghdad was once one of the great cradles of Jewish culture and wisdom, but now, according to the Christian priest who has been looking after them, there are only eight Jews left in the Iraqi capital, and their situation is "more than desperate." The Rev. Canon Andrew White, the Anglican chaplain to Iraq, says that the small group is in considerable danger. However, the community has been unable to agree to emigrate as a whole. Some of its members, without identifying themselves as Jews, have attempted to leave individually, but have been turned down. White says that only one of the Jews, a woman, still regularly goes to a Baghdad synagogue, though he will give no details.

...He notes that the Iraqi Jews constituted one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, and that the country contains numerous important Jewish sites, such as the graves of the prophets Ezra and Ezekiel. The flourishing Jewish community in Baghdad also produced one version of Judaism's second-holiest book, the Talmud, in about 550 A.D.

Unfortunately, the situation of Jews in Iraq is not well known, never mind the fact that it seems to be a situation much harder to ameliorate than one would expect:

Says Felice Gaer, one of the International Religious Freedom panel's commissioners and head of the American Jewish Committee's Jacob Blaustein Institute for Human Rights: "I didn't know about this community until I heard about it from Canon White. I certainly intend to learn more about the situation. It's hard to believe that those who want to provide charitable assistance couldn't reach people anywhere in the world, no less in a country where he U.S. has 160,000 troops."

Read the entire article.

So just who are we supposed to turn to and support in order to help get the Jews of Iraq out of there?

Update: Check out The Washington Times, which indicates that minorities in general are in physical danger and the 8 Jews in Baghdad are in hiding.

According to the article:

"The international community has done nothing to help these people," Mr. White said, explaining that the group is trying to emigrate to an Iraqi Jewish enclave in the Netherlands, which won't admit them.

[Hat tip: Hot Air Headlines]

Technorati Tag: Israel and Jews and Iraq and Canon Andrew White.

HILLARY CLINTON AND STAR TREK. The Jewish World Review has a piece by Kathleen Parker on the releasing of some letters of Hillary Clinton from during her college years.

Parker concludes:

Reading too much into these musings is a temptation to resist. Even so, it seems not much of a stretch to say that Hillary's superego won the joust. She married an id boy and let Bill Clinton carry the couple's narcissism for her, while Hillary carried the cross of self-discipline and moral vigor for him.

I suppose Parker things this is a good thing. Obviously she does not remember the Star Trek episode from the original series--"The Enemy Within," where Kirk is split into 2 separate beings.

Written by renowned novelist-screenwriter Richard Matheson (The Incredible Shrinking Man), the outstanding episode "The Enemy Within" proposes a transporter malfunction that results in Captain Kirk being divided into two versions of himself, one aggressive and brutal, the other sensitive and good. Essentially, the personality mix that makes Kirk an effective leader and balanced man is scattered like so many marbles, and the result is one captain running around mauling women and wreaking havoc while the other is frightened and indecisive.

Is this really the kind of image of Hillary that Parker wants to convey?

Technorati Tag: Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Parker.