Tag Archive for: Jerusalem

Moshe Dayan’s Great Mistake

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In June 1967, Israeli paratroopers under the command of Mordechai (Motta) Gur broke through the Jordanian defenses and captured the Old City, where the Jewish Quarter, the Western Wall, and the Temple Mount – the holiest site in Judaism – are all contained. Many Israelis believed that after 19 years of being denied access, they, and Jews everywhere, would again have unfettered access to the Temple Mount, where they would be able to pray. Alas, it was not to be. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, a secularist, who was intent on mollifying the defeated Arabs, had other ideas. Meir Soloveichik writes about Dayan’s tragic blunder here: “Moshe Dayan’s Tragic Blunder,” by Meir Y. Soloveichik, Commentary, February 2023:

There is an argument to be made for permitting wider access and the right to pray for Jews at the site of the biblical Temples. In part, this argument charges that defense minister Moshe Dayan, in electing not to fully realize Israel’s sovereignty over the Mount immediately after its breathtaking capture in the 1967 war, helped facilitate the resonant Palestinian lie that the Jews have no connection to our ancient homeland—for surely, if the Temple Mount was historically ours, religiously ours, we would not have handed it back to them.

Dayan had the perfect opportunity to end, once and for all, the Arab attempt to cut Jews off from the holiest site in Judaism. When east Jerusalem, and the Old City, were under Jordanian control, from 1949 to 1967, no Jews could visit the Temple Mount or the Western Wall. Dayan might, in the heady aftermath of that spectacular victory in June 1967, have declared that from now on, Jews could visit the Temple Mount, at any time of day, and on any day of the week, just as the Muslims could. He might have insisted that Jews could say their prayers on the Temple Mount, just as the Muslims did. But instead he strictly limited Jewish “visiting hours” on the Mount to four hours a day, and then on only five days of the week. And more terrible still, he decided to forbid Jewish prayer, open or silent, at the holiest site in Judaism, a policy that has been dutifully followed by every Israeli government since Dayan’s day.

Anxious to avoid a full-on confrontation with the entire Muslim world [but just how, following Israel’s stunning victory against three Arab states, would that Muslim world be able to summon the strength to “confront” Israel?], and utilizing the halachic argument that Jews should not set foot on the Mount for fear of defiling the sacred ground where the Temple and its Holy of Holies once stood, he allowed Jordan’s Muslim Waqf to continue to administer the compound’s holy places.

It was not wrong to let the Waqf continue to administer the Muslim holy sites. What was wrong was Dayan’s not asserting the right of Jews to visit the Temple Mount at any time, “just as Muslims do,” and especially, in not insisting that “Jews of course will now have the same rights as Muslims to pray on the Temple Mount.” Put that way, it would be hard for the Western powers to reject such a reasonable, and modest, request.

Netanyahu, David Horovitz [editor of the Jerusalem Post, writing in a recent article] continued, had “wisely” adopted Dayan’s approach previously, but now the prime minister had “sanctioned” an act of “potential pyromania.” This is a reference to [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount. Horovitz’s account leaves out the fact that the decision of the ardently secular Dayan was founded on total disregard for what the Temple Mount meant to religious Jews.

Horovitz, another left-wing secularist, calls on Netanyahu not to change Dayan’s policy on the Temple Mount, but to continue to limit Jewish access and to block Jewish prayer. He preposterously calls Ben-Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount an act of “potential pyromania.” There were all sorts of Arab threats, that if Ben Gvir made that visit, there would be an “explosion” of Arab violence. But he visited, walked around the perimeter of the Compound, steered clear of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, did not pray, made no statement, and left after 13 minutes. And no upsurge of Arab riots and violence resulted from this so-called “pyromaniac’s” visit.

After his paratroopers broke through Jordanian lines in 1967 and reached the site, Mordechai Gur exultantly exclaimed that “the Temple Mount is in our hands.” Dayan, in contrast, infamously reflected, “What do I need this Vatican for?”As the Israeli journalist Nadav Sharagai has documented, Dayan’s actions were based in the presumption that the Temple Mount is not of any religious significance to Jews at all:

Dayan thought at the time, and years later committed his thoughts to writing, that since the Mount was a “Muslim prayer mosque,” while for Jews it was no more than “a historical site of commemoration of the past…one should not hinder the Arabs behaving there as they do now and one should recognize their right as Muslims to control the site.”…

Dayan was a brilliant military commander, but otherwise he left much to be desired. He did not feel any religious attachment himself to the Temple Mount, which, given that he was an atheist, can be understood, but what he also lacked was any comprehension of how much that site meant to others, not just to religious Jews, but even to many secular Jews less dogmatic than he. He did not feel along his pulse that the Temple Mount was the holiest site in Judaism, and was unable to empathize with the millions of Jews who felt that it was such. Nor did he see the Temple Mount as the site not just of religious significance, but of the greatest historical importance to the Jews, the place where both the First and Second Temples had stood. Dayan’s description of the Temple Mount only as a “Muslim prayer mosque,” and his dismissal of the Jews’ 2600-year-old attachment to the site, are shocking. He famously, and unforgivably, wrote that “one should not hinder the Arabs behaving there as they do now” and “one should recognize their right as Muslims to control the site.” He was sympathetic to Muslim claims, but not to those of the Jews, to the Temple Mount; he was unable to grasp the depth of the Jewish attachment – that is, of Jews other than himself – to the Temple Mount. And that led to his unforgivable blunder, in forbidding Jewish prayer on the Mount, at the very time when allowing it would have been accepted by the defeated and thoroughly demoralized Arabs.

The Palestinian attempt to insist that there never was a Jewish connection to the Haram al-Sharif (as Muslims call the Temple Mount), even denying that there ever were two Jewish temples at the site, despite what even non-Jewish historians have written, has had the effect of pushing religious Jews, and some secular ones too, to more forcefully stake the Jewish claim by visiting the Mount in much greater numbers than before the Palestinian denial.

The hysteria over the “far-right” members of the Netanyahu government, expressed by Jews and non-Jews alike, is hardly warranted. And so far these incessant cries of alarm, that “Israel is no longer a democracy,“ that “Israel has lost its soul,” and suchlike alarm, overlook the obvious: the new government that is being called “an enemy to democracy” was itself elected democratically, and can be turned out anytime the voters of Israel chose to do so. That Israeli electorate has, after all, gone through ten governments since 2001.

Now is the time for Israel to state clearly its case for undoing Moshe Dayan’s historic blunder. Prime Minister Netanyahu can speak thus to the world:

“For 2600 years, even before the destruction of the First Temple on the Temple Mount in 586 B.C., and the destruction of the Second Temple on the same site in 70 A.D., what we Jews call the Temple Mount and the Muslims call Haram al-Sharif was the religious and historical center of Jewish life. Under the Babylonians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, and the British, Jews maintained their right to visit and pray on the Temple Mount. During these thousands of years, it was only during the period from 1949 to 1967, when Jordan held east Jerusalem and the Old City, that Jews were forbidden to visit the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. In 1967, Israel came into possession of the Old City, and once again Jews could visit the Temple Mount. But it was the decision of one man, Moshe Dayan, in June of 1967, that deprived Jews of the right to pray on the Temple Mount. And ever since, we Jews have had to endure the paradox of not being able to pray at the holiest site in Judaism. Now that prohibition has been lifted, and Jews will again be free to pray — as Muslims have been able to — just as they did before 1949, on the Temple Mount.

AUTHOR

HUGH FITZGERALD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Jerusalem is mentioned over 600 times in the Holy Bible — Is Pope Francis ignoring the scriptures?

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On December 23rd, 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 was adopted. The United States abstained from voting on the resolution. Resolution 2334 mentions Jerusalem multiple times:

1. Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major
obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;
2. Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;
3. Underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations;

NOTE: A Google search of “Vatican statement on UN Resolution 2334” found no results.

According to Wikipedia:

Pope Francis expressed sympathy to the Palestinian cause already during his visit to the Palestinian Authority in May 2014. On May 13, 2015, the Vatican announced the intention to sign its first treaty with the State of Palestine after formally recognizing it as a state in February 2013.[9] The treaty was signed on June 26, 2015.[10] Following recognition of the State of Palestine, Pope Francis proceeded to establish diplomatic relations with that state, and on January 14, 2017 a Palestinian embassy to the Vatican was officially opened.[11]

On December 10th, 2017 Pope Francis said, “I make a heartfelt appeal so that all commit themselves to respecting the status quo of the city, in conformity with the pertinent resolutions of the United Nations.”

The statement by Pope Francis that “all must commit themselves to respecting the status quo of the city” of Jerusalem is a lie of both omission and commission.

Resolution 2334 did change the status quo of the City of Jerusalem. The Vatican was apparently silent. The Vatican and Pope Francis are clearly anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, given the above major events.

Psalm 122:3-5 ESV reads,

“Jerusalem—built as a city that is bound firmly together, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, as was decreed for Israel, to give thanks to the name of the Lord. There thrones for judgment were set, the thrones of the house of David.”

Does Pope Francis not understand the Holy Bible? Is Pope Francis ignoring the Word of God? Is Pope Francis putting politics before Catholic principles?

There are over 600 references to the City of Jerusalem in the Holy Bible. Among them are:

Isaiah 62:1 ESV, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch.”

2 Chronicles 6:6 when God said, “But I chose Jerusalem for My Name to be there, and I chose David to rule over My people Israel.”

In a World Net Daily op-ed titled “10 biblical reasons behind Trump’s Jerusalem decision” Rabbi Tuly Weisz writes:

This week Jews and Christian Zionists are rejoicing that President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel, and “the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.” He made his remarks from a room set with a Christmas backdrop, the day before the White House Hanukkah party.

Here are 10 biblical reasons Trump made the right decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognize the city as Israel’s capital.

  1. Jerusalem is mentioned more than 600 times in the Bible.
  2. King David declared it 3,000 years ago.
  3. The Jews have never forgotten Jerusalem.
  4. The sovereign state of Israel established Jerusalem as its capital city.
  5. Throughout history there has been an uninterrupted Jewish presence in Jerusalem.
  6. Jerusalem is the focus of Jewish practices.
  7. Only Israel protects the holy sites of all faiths.
  8. Jews worldwide pray in the direction of Jerusalem.
  9. American law already requires the embassy to move to Jerusalem.
  10. The name Jerusalem contains a blessing for peace.

Read the Biblical justification for these statements by clicking here.

Pope Francis, as the Bishop of Rome and Holy See, must uphold the Word of God over the resolutions of men. That seems to have slipped his mind?

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Who is sovereign on the Temple Mount this Tish b’Av?

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Monday evening, July 31, 2017 marks the eve of the Fast of the Ninth of Av (Tish b’Av) commemorating the Babylonian Destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE, the Second Temple in 70 CE and a series of catastrophes that befallen the Jewish people over two millennia at or close to  this date culminating in the Nazi final solution the murder of Six Million European Jewish men, women and children.

The foundation of the modern State of Israel and the 50th commemoration of the recapture of the Old City of Jerusalem to the cries, “the Temple Mount is in our Hands” should have assured the sovereignty of an eternal undivided capital of the Jewish nation of Israel.

The past 17 days since the Temple Mount crisis began with the killing of two Israeli Druze police officers by three Israeli Arab extremists of the Northern Branch of the Islamic movement. The placement of metal detectors at the Lions gate and Arab protests and incitement led to the deaths of three members of the Salomon family (Baruch Dayan ha’Emet  BDE (Hebrew: Blessed Is the True Judge)  in Halamish.

The protests from across the Muslim ummah, Kingdom of Jordan that appoints the Waqf that administers the Mosques atop the Temple Mount, the Palestinian Authority, its President and appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem have challenged the sovereignty of the State of Israel. That led to the withdrawal of the metal detectors and surveillance cameras.

Once, again this episode deminstrates why dissidence and disunity among Jews contributed to both the destruction of the first and second Temples and the recent events of the past two weeks.

Laitman’s kabbalist drash or commentary is timely this Ninth of Av as he emphasizes based on commentaries and histories the core message of unity, the core meaning of Yehudi or Jews.

Who is the sovereign on Temple Mount?

Jerusalem Post, July 26, 2017

By Michael Laitman

It is no secret that the Arab smear campaign in the media and the organized “popular” protests against the placement of metal detectors at the entrances to the Temple Mount have nothing to do with security measures. From the perspective of the Wakf (the Islamic organization controlling and managing the Temple Mount), and the rest of the Arab world, the resistance to the detectors represents the resistance to Israel’s sovereignty on Temple Mount in particular, in the city of Jerusalem, and in all of Israel. The longer this campaign lasts, the more the Arabs will gain the favor of the world, and Israel will increasingly be seen as the bully in the neighborhood.

By now, hardly anyone remembers that the detectors were placed at the entrances because three terrorists opened fire on Israeli police, killing two officers and wounding a third. All that everyone sees now is that Israel is not letting Muslims pray in their holy site, when in fact, the only people keeping worshippers outside the Temple Mount are the Wakf, who are telling worshippers not to enter in protest of the placement of detectors.

The Temple—the Unity of Israel

Not only the Wakf objects to Israel’s authority on Temple Mount. The resolutions of UNESCO denying the Jewish history on Temple Mount, Jerusalem, and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron represent the view of the entire world that we do not belong here. If the UN were to vote today on the establishment of a Jewish state, who would vote “Yes”? Probably not even America.

To be a sovereign in the land of Israel, and particularly on Temple Mount, you must understand what the Temple represents and lead your life accordingly. The book Netzah Israel (Chapter 4) writes, “The House was ruined due to unfounded hatred, for their hearts divided and they parted and were unworthy of a Temple, which is the unity of Israel.”

If we honestly reflect on our society, on what we project to the world, it is clear that we are deeply divided and project disunity and discord everywhere. The Maharal of Prague writes in Hidushey Avot (Gittin 55b): “The Temple should be the wholeness of the entire world, not of Israel alone. …Since the Temple is the wholeness of the entire world, the nations included, it was not ruined by the nations, but only by unfounded hatred and division, when Israel divided.”

In other words, the Temple does not belong to any one nation or faith; it represents the unification of the world. Therefore, only those who advocate and execute unity merit being there. The Hebrew word Yehudi (Jew) comes from the word yihudi,meaning united (Yaarot Devash, Part 2, Drush no. 2). When we, Jews, united “as one man with one heart,” it was the first and only time in history when people of different, often rival clans from all over Babylon and the Near East united and forged a nation. Our unity, therefore, was a model for the entire world to follow. As a result, immediately following the establishment of our peoplehood, we were commanded to be “a light unto nations,” to take our method of unity to the rest of humanity.

The book Sefat Emet (Shemot, Yitro) describes what it means to be “a light unto nations”: “The children of Israel are guarantors in that they received the Torah [the light of unity] in order to correct the entire world.” But if we are not united, and therefore do not project unity to the rest of the world, can we truly regard ourselves as the “children of Israel”? And if we are not truly the children of Israel, united like the children of Israel are meant to be, can we claim sovereignty over the land?

The Sedition Conquered the City, and the Romans Conquered the Sedition

Jewish-Roman historian Josephus Flavius lived at the time of the ruin and witnessed many of the events first hand. He wrote very clearly about the causes of the ruin of the Temple and the exile (The Wars of the Jews, Book IV, Chapter 6): “The sedition [among the Jews] conquered the city, and the Romans conquered the sedition.” In the days of the Temple, Flavius details, “The attribute the [Jews] lacked most was mercy. …They transferred their rage from the living to the slain, and from the slain to the living [of their own people]. The terror was so great that the survivors called the dead ‘happy,’ as they were already at rest. … These men trampled upon all the laws of men [love of others], and ridiculed the words of the prophets. Yet, these prophets foretell … that the city should be taken and the sanctuary burnt by war when a sedition invades the Jews, and their own hand should pollute the Temple. Now these zealots … made themselves the instruments of the fulfillment [of the prophecies].”

When you think of the current hatred between the two sides of the political map in Israel, or between the two sides of the political map among US Jews, the similarities to the enmity among our ancestors are too striking to ignore. “At the end of the period of the Second Temple,” writes the book A Letter from Elijah (Part 3), “strife and hatred intensified in Israel, and pride was the root of the desire for absolute dominance. This brought them into hatred of their fellow person until they could not stand the very existence of the other. From that root of pride also emerged the audacity to sin shamelessly, for they did not perceive the contradiction between their actions and their views, and their conscience did not cause them to conceal their actions. And if they do not care about the conflict between their views and their actions, then they are regarded as ‘all sin.’ These are the things that caused the ruin of the House.”

A Land without a Sovereign

Today, we have a state, and we seemingly have sovereignty. But the name, “The State of Israel,” is still devoid of content. Our intolerance toward each other, our disdain toward our own people is skyrocketing. If we do not realize that we are repeating the same crime of unfounded hatred we committed two millennia ago, we will be banished from this land again until we are ready to unite above our differences as did our forefathers in the desert.

This Monday evening, we will mark the ninth of Av, the date when the Temple was destroyed. But it was destroyed in our hearts long before the bricks were set ablaze. With these compelling words, The Hida describes this inner ruin (Devarim Achadim, Tractate no. 6): “What can we say when we regret all day the ruin of the House and the [absence of] redemption? …It was all ruined because of unfounded hatred, and if we are disunited now and there is unfounded hatred, how can the House be built, since the cause of our ruin has not ceased from us? How can we say that we await Your salvation all the day while there is still unfounded hatred in our midst? Woe, how can man do good deeds as long as his impurity of baseless hatred is still in him?”

To be the landlords in the land of Israel, we must become once more the people of Israel, yehudim [Jews] from the word, yihudi [united]. Unless we reconstruct our unity and reassume our commitment to be a beacon of unity unto nations, the world will not support our being here and we will be expelled once more.

Sovereignty in the land of Israel is unlike the sovereignty in any other land—acquired by military might. This land has no sovereign; its dwellers are people who are willing to connect, to unite above their hatred, just like our forefathers. If we can learn the lesson from the horrors of our ancestors and transcend our selfish egos, we will merit staying here, and the entire world will be behind us. But if we opt once more for enmity, then we will suffer the hostility of the entire world, but not before we scuffle with each other once again.

For more information on antisemitism and the role of the people of Israel, please visit Why Do People Hate Jews.

ABOUT MICHAEL LAITMAN

Michael Laitman has a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah and an MSc in Medical Bio-Cybernetics. He was the prime disciple of Kabbalist Rav Baruch Shalom Ashlag (the RABASH). Laitman has written over 40 books, which have been translated into dozens of languages. Click Here to visit his author page.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

VIDEO DOCUMENTARY: Move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem!

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We detail an investigative documentary that The United West film team will be producing in Israel on their national security mission, May 20-30, 2017.

RELATED VIDEO: Israelis react to possible U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem by CBS News. Moving embassy to Jerusalem is “the moral thing to do.”

EDITORS NOTE: If you are interesting in coming to Israel with Tom, check out all details on the web site http://tt.heritagestudyprograms.com/. If you are interested in helping fund this important film project, please contact Mary@TheUnitedWest.org.

The Malice of the Leader of the Democratic Party

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President Barack Obama is the leader of the Democratic Party. It is expected that after he leaves office on January 20th, 2017 he will continue to be the de-facto leader of the Democratic Party.

His legacy is the legacy of the Democratic Party.

In my column “How Democrats Fundamentally Changed from the Party of JFK to the Party of BHO” I asked, “Where are the Blue Dog Democrats? Purged from the BHO Party? As Ronald Reagan once said he did not leave the Democratic Party, rather the Democratic Party left him. So it is with many Democrats. The BHO Party has left them in the lurch.”

The Democratic Party has become the party of protests, anarchists and tribalism. They cling to illusions of racism, bigotry and embrace an anti-American world view. 

We have been writing about how President Obama has warmly embraced Islam as a person, as President and as the leader of the Democratic Party. Since his election in 2008 there has been malice, with forethought, against America in general and Israel in particular.

In a May 2015 column Dissected: President Obama’s Anti-Israelism Jerry Gordon wrote:

Both Vic Rosenthal’s Abu Yehuda  blog post, “For Obama it’s a Moral Crusade” and Brett Stephens’ Tuesday Wall Street Journal column,“The Rational Ayatollah Hypothesis” suggest that the President’s comments sinuously convey anti-Israelism.

Rosenthal gives the following evidence:

Some of the reasons I and others find Obama anti-Israel are these:

  1. His stubborn attempts to force Israel into a suicidal agreement with the Palestinians.
  2. His acceptance (regardless of his words) of a nuclear-armed Iran, and his efforts to stop Israel from acting against it.
  3. His open contempt for our Prime Minister.
  4. His taking the Turkish president’s side in the Mavi Marmara affair, and forcing PM Netanyahu to apologize to the Turks.
  5. His acceptance of Hamas claims that the IDF acted ‘disproportionally’ in Gaza (as shown by his demand for an immediate cease-fire and imposition of an arms embargo during the recent war).
  6. The aforementioned leaks about Israeli actions in Syria and elsewhere.
  7. His acceptance of the anti-Israel narrative that Israel’s right to exist rests on the Holocaust and that it must be balanced against the rights of the ‘deserving’ Palestinians (as expressed in his 2009 Cairo speech).
  8. His attempts to interfere in Israeli politics, including trying to defeat Netanyahu at the polls. It’s ironic that American money was used to help get out the presumably anti-Netanyahu Arab vote — and then Obama bitterly criticized Netanyahu for telling his supporters that they should get out and vote because the Arabs were!
  9. The double standard he displays: compare his condemnation of the PM for his election-day remark with his lack of response to the daily barrage of Israel-hatred and veneration of terrorists coming from the official Palestinian media. Or look at his expressed concern for Palestinians suffering the indignities of checkpoints against his failure to mention the almost daily Jewish victims of Palestinian terrorism.

I could go on, but this should be enough to show that the belief that Obama is anti-Israel is substantive, not simply a political reflex as he suggests.

Obama and Democratic Party have now shown malice toward Israel.

This malice began when Obama was first elected to the Presidency. His remarks about embracing Israel, and its people, and having their backs was a fabrication, a political calculation to lure them into a spiraling chamber of death.

The Nazis tried to exterminate the Jews under Adolf Hitler. President Obama has given the followers of Mohammed another signal that its alright to exterminate the state of Israel – the definition of malice. Obama with one abstention has made possible the unthinkable.

Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an opponent of Adolf Hitler, wrote, “Not to act is to act, not to speak is to speak.” Obama chose not to act, not to speak, at the United Nations on December 23rd, 2016.

That is his and the Democratic Party’s legacy.

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Christmas in History: First Media Reports of Nativity Story

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How did the ancient mass media report the alleged birth of Christ?

The People’s Cube prepared the following compilation of quotes from the Roman and Judean sources, which should help our readers to form an unbiased opinion of what really happened in the days surrounding the so-called Christmas…

© 2007 Directorate of Historical Revisionism, Karl Marx Treatment Center.


Click here for a larger image

OTHER STORIES:

Judea Today

Another Consumer of Nature’s Resources Born in BethlehemAn international scientific consensus has been reached, and it’s not in Mary and Joseph’s favor. Had the parents of Jesus been more proactive in raising their awareness, they may have considered such important factors as Judea’s fragile environment and air pollution that only increases with every newborn child. No matter how amusing a set of small carbon footprints around the house may seem initially, potential parents should always remember that the footprints will only become bigger as the child matures and turns into yet another indulgent consumer of nature’s limited resources.

The Daily Pharisee 

Scrutiny Tightens On Three Magoi’s Lobbying Operation

BETHLEHEM, December 28 – House Ethics Committee Chair Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Judea) urges congressional ethics probe into gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh by three Magoi – who are the focus of criminal investigations by the Justice Department.

The ethics panel said in a statement that a special subcommittee would try to determine if two Nazoreans violated the law by accepting “gifts, travel benefits, contributions to religious committees and organizations, or any other items of value” from the three Magoi and their lobbying operation.

The Nazoreans who were identified by name as the focus of the committee’s investigations – Joseph and Mary – have said they are innocent of wrongdoing.

Samara Post Intelligencer

Suspected Religious Cultists Exposed in Bethlehem

A homeless couple claiming that an “angel” had declared their infant child “the son of God,” was caught red-handed while apparently trying to engage in some ritual involving animals behind a local inn. Despite his young age, the unplanned and undocumented child whom they referred to as “Jesus” had already acquired notoriety in the religious underworld, operating under several aliases including Immanuel, Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, and The Prince of Peace. Authorities are investigating a possible link to the highly profitable smuggling of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The police arrived at the scene after a call made by a local PETA activist who complained that the couple and the mob that followed them had inconvenienced the resident animals and “displaced handfuls of hay” in order to make a bed for the infant. “What sort of people are these that would invade a peaceful manger, disturb the animals in their home, deprive them of sleep of nourishment, and do YHWH knows what else with them?”

Prosecutors are considering charging the couple as accessories to an unauthorized light show that terrorized area shepherds who happened to be tending their flocks at night. No charges are currently being considered against the infant, though authorities have made clear that he will require careful observation and possibly therapy as he grows up.

The Nazareth Post (Lifestyle Section)

Mary: A Pregnant Teen Failed By The Government

Despite the homeschooling, the abstinence-only education, and her determination to save herself for that special someone, Mary Davidian, 15, still found herself pregnant. Neither her former resolve to remain chaste, not the fact that she was known by all and sundry as “The Virgin Mary,” prevented her from becoming yet another statistic in the growing problem of unwed teen mothers throughout the Roman Empire, particularly in poorer provinces like Judea.

Mary’s been betrothed for some time to Joseph Nazareth, 18, who operates a struggling lumber fabrication business out of his own home. But Joseph – and Mary, too – both agree he’s not the father.

When asked about the father’s identity, Mary raves incoherently about angels and dreams, and someone whom she can only identify as God, a likely gang-related alias.

“We don’t know who this God is, his age, if perhaps he’s so much older than young Mary that he might be guilty of statutory rape,” said a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Nazareth. “Notwithstanding, the fact that Mary conceived even though she’s still a virgin is all the proof anyone needs, that teaching abstinence to our children is totally unrealistic and ineffective. Can’t the right-winged religious extremists see that even when they remain virgins, young people are still going to go out and have sex?”

Rome News and World Report

Senate Ratings At All-Time Low As Occupation of Judea Continues

ROME (Associated Papyrus) The Senate voted today to continue the funding of legions in the Middle East under the threat of a dictatorial veto if they passed a bill that would have denied the funds. The move further alienated the Senate’s base, which vented its anger with posts on The DailyStylus.

“We voted to put them in office with the promise that they’d bring the legions home before Saturnalia. Well, it’s Saturnalia and they’re not home. I’m never voting again!” wrote Alvamus Goldscroll, an unemployed lyre player from Woodaquaduct. “I’m so angry, I’m getting a mallet. Stop the illegal occupation of Judea!”

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire (a.k.a. politically correct) column originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.

Precarity

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Precarity is a neoliberal term that was unfamiliar until I researched the theme of the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) conference. It means precarious, hazardous, risky, and it focuses mainly on the supposed “evils” of capitalism. Although life’s uncertainties have existed since the beginning of time, these women had come together to discuss the insecurities of living, focusing on the drawbacks of being ill prepared for functioning in today’s workforce. Where previous generations sometimes stayed with a company from hiring to retiring, today’s employees change jobs frequently and must keep up with the ever-changing technology. Thus these women fear the difficulties that arise with a free society, changing economy, other unreliable coworkers, and all that free enterprise has to offer.

Risk is the very essence of freedom and of life, and yet this is their anxiety.

They spurn those gifts bestowed upon us by our Creator and cited in our Declaration of Independence – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness, all of which involve risk. It is the freedom to pursue our own happiness along our chosen path that helps us to accept failures and overcome hindrances, and to continue chasing our personal dream. Instead these women are overwhelmed by responsibility, regarding the challenge as simply “misery” generated by capitalism, since they view that the sale of one’s abilities for profit may also result in failure and unemployment. Resistant to change and diversity, they yearn for their vision of a more secure and simpler life of the past, which, of course, is remembered without the discomforts, diseases, poverty and squalor.

Their dreams of the Utopian past erase the men’s long hours of hard labor, the women who were bound to a life of raising more children than they could manage, illnesses that have since been eradicated, few kitchen appliances to ease daily chores, and a labor force of children to help families make ends meet. Blaming capitalism for their current difficulties, the NWSA members want more entitlements and government intervention in exchange for the joys of innovation, growth, and the dignity of achievement. Taught by today’s academia to rely on their feelings and to redefine right and wrong, they wallow in comfortable discomfort and, significantly, decide to boycott Israel, her harvest, inventions and medical innovations. Could it be because Israelis treasure life and produce advantages and benefits not previously known, while the Palestinians desire to acquire Israel without the labor? Arab leaders allowed the barren, sparsely populated, impoverished land to become malaria-ridden over centuries before the Diaspora Jews returned to their historic homeland to cultivate the soil and recreate a flourishing democracy.

Precarity is the cost of living! It is the cost of charting one’s own course with all the possibilities of turning the unsure into opportunities. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that “all human beings are endowed with reason and conscience and shall act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood,” but the new liberalism distorts the vision of brotherhood into a nightmare of sameness, none better or worse; the goal of certainty, no triumphs or failures; and a less educated population reduced by chaos, abortion, sterilization, euthanasia, and incurable diseases. And for political correctness, with their minds distorted and freedom of speech eradicated, these souls will no longer recognize friend from foe, good from evil, excellence from mediocrity, or even female from male.

Amazingly, although we know that eight-one percent of mosques in America advocate violence, and Germany appears to be losing its autonomy to the invaders, and Sweden is losing its heritage, and Belgium went on lock-down, and France is actively closing mosques and eliminating militant imams, the NWSA denounced Israel. Despite the legal documents to verify that Jews, not Arabs, hold rightful title to the land, and under whose direction diverse people within flourish, these women choose Islamo-fascism, where a clear majority of its people favor severe Sharia law and terrorism.

As technology (much of it from Israel) provides us with a front seat to the world, we have seen Muslims destroy 3,000 people in the World Trade Center; Muslims behead or burn Christians alive; Muslims turn their young children into knife-wielding murderers; Muslims kill groups of revelers in arenas and weddings and schoolchildren in classrooms and school buses; Muslims car-attack or knife Jewish pedestrians, but these women are boycotting Israel. Muslims are harming girls with Female Genital Mutilation, followed by enslaving, torturing, and imprisoning women in lifelong domestic/sexual servitude in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, but the NWSA women ignore where they could be truly useful. Islam is overtaking and creating havoc in Europe, and our national intelligence-gathering agencies (FBI and DHS) have long terror-watch lists of dangerous Islamic jihadists, but the NWSA is boycotting Israel.

What the NWSA should know is that the Jewish people have moral, historical, religious and legal claims to the disputed lands in Israel, yet Israel has been willing to forego some claims for the sake of peace. The State of Israel was built on land purchased by Jews, and Jews have been a presence in Jerusalem for 3,000 years, with a majority-Jewish population for more than 250 years.  Israel already ceded land to the Palestinians, who, in turn, destroyed prospering businesses and use the land for launching rockets. In truth, the Arabs who took the name “Palestinians” are the occupiers.

Morally, Israelis are first responders who have helped numerous countries, from Albania to Turkey, after floods, fires, earthquakes, bombings, tropical storms, hurricanes and cyclones, providing emergency humanitarian and medical personnel and assistance. Israelis helped Boston after the Marathon Bombing and California with its fires and water shortages. America benefits from this valuable partnership, including intelligence; the UK benefits from Israeli technology in protection, jobs, medicines and more. Israel is a global leader in bio-technology and defense, agriculture, water innovation, medicine, book publishing, and more.  Increasingly, Israeli entrepreneurs are attracting more foreign banks’ investments in their innovative technology.

IsraAid, which, in cooperation with Israeli NGOs FIRST and Operation Blessing-Israel, launched a social-worker training program in the new African state of South Sudan, one of the most undeveloped in the world. They are addressing the country’s violent misogynistic culture of rape and forced marriage. The women of NWSA could be involved, but do absolutely nothing.

How will these work-shy, incompetent women defend themselves when the soldiers of Allah fill our streets and execute their many forms of violent jihad on our citizens? Will they crumble into submission when the young Muslim males wreak havoc on the most vulnerable? Will they merely stand by and watch the migrants join forces with their brethren in the terror mosques to create battalions beyond the control of our diminished police and armed forces? These women are either terribly ignorant or filled with a fanatical evil – how else to explain this mindset?

Perhaps it is then that the National Women’s Studies Association will finally achieve its goal.

Their insecurities will be gone because their future will be spelled out to the letter. All the laws of Islam are clearly defined for women in the Qur’an. Independence and security will be as amputated as the limbs of Islam’s thieves. They will be guaranteed of being equal to all other women (devalued by men), and their tomorrow will be precisely as today – that is, of course, unless they are accused of some minor Mohammedan infraction. Then the morrow will not even come into question.

Final note: With all the ignorance shown by NWSA, they also appear to be unaware that Israel boycotts are Illegal. Under corporate law, an organization, including nonprofit, can do only what is permitted under the purposes specified in its charter.  Boycott resolutions that are beyond the powers of an organization are void, and individuals can be sued and board members liable for damages.

We Need YOU to Protest this Unfair Boycott!

  1. Call NWSA:(410) 528-0355
  2. Email NWSA at: nwsaoffice@nwsa.org
  3. Click here to protest on the NWSA Facebook page.

Anat Hoffman’s Chaut-akbar

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The summer season of Chautauqua is long over, and the “scholarly” vacationers have returned to their winter existence. For staff and speakers, it is a respite, a tactical Hudna – the time to assess their position and decide on their new plan of action, the speakers, and the indoctrination for next summer, because Islam’s stealth war against the infidel must continue. Its raison d’etre is to mindbend the captive audience, and ultimately to gain acceptance for Sharia – the Qur’anic legal system that dictates every facet of the adherent’s life – as the law of the land.

Surely, we might expect more Islamic representatives and topics next year. Their language will obscure the true nature of the themes and Islam’s history, and present a glossed version of the “Religion of Peace,” as veiled as their women and as masked as the armed jihadists. It may subtly, if not overtly, disparage the State of Israel.

Such was the case of Israeli-born Anat Hoffman, who was invited to speak at the Hall of Philosophy (perhaps more aptly named Hall of Propaganda), as reported in The Chautauquan Daily of August 29, 2015.  Her calls for a more peaceful, inclusive Holy City used three key words: “Holy City” is the non-Jewish name for Yerushalayim (Jerusalem), and “inclusive” is the code word for de-Judaizing the city. It was clear that Hoffman had an agenda to defame not only Jerusalem, the capital, but also Judaism and Israel, the only country in all the world that was dedicated to the Jewish people.

She repeatedly claimed that Israel had no Constitution, when in fact it is embodied in written texts that reflect Israel’s political system, social content, and expanding constitutional tradition – the operative constitution to determine basic operations and governance. Israel relies on Torah and Jewish law (halakha), which is also the basis for America’s Judeo-Christian laws and Constitution. Perhaps Hoffman seeks (but does not clarify) a codified Constitution, but like the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the Parliament of New Zealand, Israel’s Knesset is a Sovereign Parliament that fulfills that function.

With every tribute that Hoffman could muster, including the beauty and nuances of Israel’s language, Hebrew, and the state’s technical innovations, she provided a grievance, her primary one being a gripe against the religious prohibition against women’s praying with men at the Western Wall, a separation that is also maintained in an orthodox synagogue. The rule is grounded in the orthodox view of the divinely-authored Hebrew Scripture, but Hoffman sells her disdain of the orthodox community and, by extension, Israel and Judaism, thereby earning herself the strongest applause.

Hoffman spoke of the violence of zealots, without identifying them or their motivation, thereby again ridiculing Israel to an audience that has been fed pro-Islamic and -Palestinian views throughout the many summers. She never explained that the zealots are Jews who fought against eviction from their homes in Gush Katif in order to appease the Palestinians for a peace pact that the Arabs would never honor. They are the 8,600 Jews who were completely uprooted – lost their homes, schools, neighborhood, community, and livelihoods – among them, the successful, flourishing greenhouses that shipped superior-quality produce worldwide – the same greenhouses that were maliciously destroyed by Palestinians immediately upon transfer of ownership. Zealots are also those who must defend their families and homes against armed Palestinians who use deadly stones, firebombs, and knives to kill innocents indiscriminately – from the very young to the aged. Hoffman never addressed the infamous Itamar attack, the butchering of five members of the Fogel family, and others killed mercilessly by their deadly neighbors.

Clearly, Anat Hoffman tried to summarily dismiss the Iran deal, deceptively telling her listeners that Israelis “are not very concerned,” except that they are quite concerned because the deal will enable Iran to fulfill its threat of annihilating Israel. Following that blatant invention, she suggested that her audience never allude to the deal should Prime Minister Netanyahu ever visit Chautauqua.  Might that be because he would truthfully clarify the peril to both Israel and America?

Rather, she urged Chautauquans to invite Ayman Odeh, a communist who “swept her off her feet,” who vociferously complains of inequality while holding a position as leader of the Knesset’s United Arab Party. She did not expose this man as the violent agitator who threatened the elected government with armed insurrection and who threatened the Aramean population (Arab Moslems) with death for wanting to join the Israel Defense Force (IDF) because of their love for Israel. Odeh’s vitriol and aggression have resulted in violence, which is destroying tourism, commerce and jobs in Nazareth.  In a recent interview, Nazareth’s Mayor Ali Salam accused Odeh of “ruining” the city and the peaceful coexistence had between Jews and Muslims.  Hoffman withheld Odeh’s true activities, the incitement, the violence, the bloodshed. Taqiyyah (Holy Deception for the advancement of Islam) is the essential component of Chautauqua’s programs.

Other guest speakers were Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Imad Kiyaei who came to advise Chautauquans of the benefits of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the Iran Deal, between the US, China, Russia, the European Union and Iran, assuring the gullible that it will stabilize the region and create a pathway to peace.

Chautauquan guest speaker The Reverend James Walters is the chaplain of The London School of Economy and overseer of its faith center.  A “hotbed of Muslims and Lefty Jew haters,” the school hosted a joint Palestine Society and Feminist Society event that portrayed Israelis as rapists, the Islamic tactic of projecting its own evils on its enemy; and the women applauded those who killed Israelis.  Walters concealed the radicalization activities in the UK and in Europe by his friend, Qari Asim, the Makkah Mosque imam in Leeds, home to the mastermind and bombers of the London Underground train in 7/7/05.  He denied any knowledge or connection to the violence that killed 52 and injured more than 700.  And, while British authorities refuse to study, understand, or connect ISIS with Islam, British jihadis have declared that their black flag will fly over Buckingham Palace. I might also wonder how long before “incomparable” Institution’s speakers proclaim the same over the Hall at ”Chaut-akbar.”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Israeli police arresting Anat Hoffman after she said the Shema Israel prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Oct. 16, 2012. (Women of the Wall).

What’s behind the Arab Days of Rage in Israel?

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October 13, 2015 witnessed  the worst attacks by enraged Palestinians in Jerusalem, Central  Israel and on the Gaza frontier.Three Israelis were murdered in bus shootings, car ramming  and knifing attacks that occurred in Jerusalem, northern Israel and Ra’anana near Tel Aviv. On Wednesday evening October 14, 2015, a 65 year old woman was attacked by an assailant receiving knife wounds at  the Jerusalem central bus station. The assailant was shot dead by Border police while attempting to board an Egged bus. Ynet news reported the terrorist background of the dead assailant:

The attacker was identified as Ahmad Shaaban, 23, a resident of East Jerusalem’s Ras al-Amud neighborhood. He was imprisoned between 2012 and 2015 for terrorist activities.

The prior weekend scores of Palestinians in Gaza attempted to cross into Israel’s southern frontier only to be thwarted by IDF soldiers.  A crowd of 200 penetrated the fence near an Israeli kibbutz with resulting causalities, 11 deaths occurred from IDF gunfire when the mob refused to stop. Earlier, rockets had slammed into Southern Israel from Gaza prompting IAF retaliation.

Reuters reported “seven Israelis and 32 Palestinians, including 13 alleged attackers and eight children, have died in the surge of violence.” Reuters further noted what happened on October 13th, “the Day of Rage:”

Palestinian men armed with knives and a gun killed at least three people and wounded several others in a string of attacks in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv, police said, in a “Day of Rage” declared by Palestinian groups.

With the worst unrest in years in Israel and the Palestinian territories showing no sign of abating, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting of his security cabinet to discuss what police said would be new operational plans.

Officials said Israel was considering whether to seal off Palestinian districts in East Jerusalem – home of many of the assailants.

In Jerusalem, two Palestinians shot and stabbed passengers on a bus, killing two and injuring four, police said. One of the assailants was killed and the other captured.

Minutes later, a Palestinian rammed his car into a bus stop in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in the city, police said. A surveillance video showed him then hacking pedestrians with a cleaver until he was shot dead by a passer-by. One of the Israelis he attacked died and six others were hurt, police said.

In clashes near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the Israeli army shot dead a Palestinian, medics said. The army said its troops fired on a man who tried to throw a petrol bomb at them.

1929headline_montage

News Montage on Jerusalem  and Hebron Arab Riots,  Palestine 1929. Source: CAMERA

Arab terrorism connects one Israeli family

As Israeli blogger, Yisrael Medad , posted in  My Right Word , “One Family’s Story of Arab Terror.” The current outburst of Arab Muslim violence has intergenerational connections with history from the pre-state Yishuv period:

On Friday, August 17, 1929, Yisrael Lev, a student at the Slobodka Yeshiva in Hebron did not feel well and left for Jerusalem to seek medical assistance. That day, one of his fellow students was hacked to death and the following day, many more including dozens of Hebron’s Jewish community were similarly slaughtered. He remained Haredi but an Israeli flag flew on his balcony every Independence Day. His two daughters served in the IDF. One, Tzippora, married Zev Roich. The new couple had four children. Tzipora’s granddaughter, Naama nee Armoni, was murdered by Arab terrorists during the [2015] Succoth holiday as was her husband, Rabbi Eitam Henkin.

Naama and Rabbi Eitam Henkin(1)

Naama and Rabbi Eitam Henkin z”l

U.S. and International Concerns

The Israeli  Security Cabinet launched  new security arrangements that include IDF troops guarding buses, destruction of attackers’ homes and cordoning off sections of Arab East Jerusalem. The mainstream media like The New York Times attributes the violence in Israel to unemployed desperate “leaderless Palestinian youths  driven by  social media.” Secretary of State Kerry, speaking at a Harvard’s Belfer Center news conference, condemned the Palestinian violence saying, “the situation in Israel is too volatile.” He stressed the importance for all people to avoid what he called provocative statements that can inflame tensions further. “This violence and any incitement to violence have got to stop.” However, he suggested  that the “tit for tat” violence was driven by continuing Israeli ‘settlement building’ and Israeli “excessive force.” The fact is that settlement activity has been contained near zero. Kerry subsequently ‘clarified’ saying there was no connection between Arab violence and settlements. The Mideast Quartet led by EU Foreign Relations Commissioner Mogherini of Italy cancelled a trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah because of security concerns.

Israeli Arab Sheikh Raed Salah of the Islamic Movement    Released from Ramla Jail, 2010.

The Palestinian and Israel Arabs inciting the violence

The reality is that PA President Abbas, other members of the PA government and the Israeli Arab radical Islamist leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement ,Sheik Saed Salah, have incited and recruited Arabs  They  have fomented what Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, has called the Jerusalem or al Quds, Intifada, a reference to the 100 year old blood libel that “the Al Aksa Mosque is in danger” from Jews.. Add to that the evident disloyalty of Arab Joint list Knesset Members who held massive rallies of Israeli Arab Muslims urging them to rise up along with their Palestinian brothers. Note this Jerusalem Post report on the disruption of an Israeli Channel 2 interview by Arab Joint List leader Ayman Odeh by Nazareth Mayor, Ali Salam:

Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam shouted at Joint List head Ayman Odeh [of Hadash] to leave his city as the MK was about to be interviewed live on Channel 2 there on October 11th.

“Ayman, you need to go elsewhere, you’ve destroyed our city!” yelled Salam at Odeh from his car, which pulled up next to [ to him while he was} standing on the sidewalk in front of the television camera.

“Get out of here. Enough with the interviews!” shouted Salam. “You all have destroyed everything! Go back to Haifa!…What are you being interviewed about? What are you doing to us? You are doing nothing!” shouted Salam.

Odeh, for his part, remained quiet, but appeared to be greatly irritated.

The sharp confrontation followed accusations by Salam earlier in the day in an interview on Army Radio in which he said Joint List MKs were “ruining coexistence.”

Joint List MKs have been organizing and leading protests  riling up the Arab public to violence, which Salam said has led to a sharp drop in Jewish customers and complaints from local business owners.

Stabbing victim Liat Naor Source Channel 2

Stabbing victim Liat Naor, Source: Israeli Channel 2

Evidence of Israeli  Concerns over Arab attacks across the country

My colleague Lisa Benson of the eponymous National Security Radio Show reminded me of an interview she did with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat  just after an another incident involving the death of a baby at a light rail station in Jerusalem. That  was prior to the onset of last summer’s Operation Defensive Edge, the 51 day Gaza rocket war. At the time, Mayor Barkat suggested that the matter of the violent East Jerusalem Arab incident not be mentioned during the interview. Barkat subsequently foiled an Arab knifing attack on an Orthodox Jew during an episode in February 2015. Now, during the current upsurge in jihadist attacks against Israeli Jews in Jerusalem, he is urging the Netanyahu government to combat it. This is reflected in a Jerusalem Post report:

In the wake of the {October 12th attacks in Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to heighten the state’s response against terror and to act more firmly against those who incite and encourage it.  “To our regret there is no limit to the cruelty of these  murderers who choose to the attack children and innocent citizens who return from their studies to encounter the satanic evil that is shocking us all.”

The plague of auto ramming and knifing incidents was exemplified by what occurred in northern Israel reflected in this Israel Hayom report:

“I didn’t do anything, what do they want from me?” Alaa Raed Ahmad Ziwad, 20, says in court after ramming his car into a soldier and then stabbing bystanders.  Ramming victim, 19-year-old Orel Azuri, remains in critical condition.

Liat Naor, 15, was still wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair and holding her own birthday cake when she was attacked by a terrorist with a knife outside a shopping center in Gan Shmuel in northern Israel on Sunday.

She was saved when a bystander, Adi Eshet, helped subdue the terrorist, who had begun the attack by ramming his car into a female soldier, 19-year-old Orel Azuri, before jumping out and stabbing people nearby.

“I was sure I was going to die,” Naor said, speaking in the hospital room where she is recovering from her stab wounds. She thanked Eshet “for the amazing birthday present.”

The shock of the new normal in Central Israel was reflected in the aftermath of two knifing incidents October 13th in Ra’anana, a community of 80,000 near Tel Aviv that has a large of community of Anglo American residents who made aliyah to Israel. During  Operation Defense Edge in the summer of 2014, Ra’anana was spared the rocket on-slaught. The Algemeiner reported:

“Due to the security situation, the shop will be closed today,” was among the signs that could be seen this afternoon in Ra’anana, the Israeli news site Walla reported.

Ra’anana, a city of 80,000 in Israel’s central Sharon region known for its clean streets, quality education system and large English-speaking community, experienced two Palestinian terrorist attacks on the  morning of October 13th. And its citizens are responding with trepidation.

The closing of some stores on the city’s main street, Ahuza, was one reaction to the stabbing attacks, one of which occurred at around 8:50 a.m., and the other at 10:30. Parents of pre-schoolers, too, became concerned and ran to kindergartens to take their children home.

“We are aware of the reality [in the country],” a shop-owner who witnessed the first attack, at a nearby bus stop told Walla. “But when it comes close to you, it’s unpleasant and scary. We always thought that this would only happen in Jerusalem; we didn’t believe Ra’anana would become a terror-struck city.”

[…]

A restaurant owner in the area of the second attack in Ra’anana, which took place across from the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital, said it’s the first time his establishment has been so empty. He also claimed his fellow restaurateurs are experiencing the same phenomenon, because “people are afraid to leave their houses.”

“Even during Operation Protective Edge [last summer’s war in Gaza, when Hamas rockets were launched into the center of Israel on a daily basis] it wasn’t this deserted,” he said.

Evidence of Palestinian and Israeli Arab Incitement

The violence by Palestinians in East Jerusalem  and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria  was stoked by PA President Abbas, whose UN  General Assembly  address abandoned the Oslo Accords. It is pure Jew hatred with episodes of knife attacks, shootings, car rammings and attempted suicide bombings against Israeli Jews. Standwith U.S. developed an interactive map spotlighting where  instances of attacks have occurred: Interactive Map Shows the Where, When, and What of Terror Attacks.

This uprising is different because Israeli Arabs has also been encouraged to engage in these attacks by Joint Arab list Knesset members and the radical Islamist Sheik Saed Salah from his bastion of the um al-Fahm, an Arab town in the triangle area of Israel in the Galilee. Salah is head of the northern branch of the Islamic movement affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the equivalent of Hamas inside Israel. The Netanyahu government has often sought to ban the group. In a November 2014 NER/Iconoclast blog  post on “Israel Plagued by Spreading Islamikaze Violence,“ we noted:

Then there is  the fiery Salafist preacher, Sheik Raed Salah  from the Arab town of Umm al Fahm. Just released from prison for serving another term for incitement, Salah boasts that Jerusalem will become a “global Caliphate.”

As Israeli commentator Barry Shaw observed on the Lisa Benson Show of October 11, 2015, Sheik Raed Salah may have supplied the foot soldiers who barricaded the al Aksa Mosque and kick started the Jerusalem violence at the start of the Jewish New Years. He contends that Salah, whose objective is the establishment of a Caliphate to rule Israel from the Temple Mount, had planned this wave of violence. Shaw suspects that the Jordanian–appointed religious leaders of the Waqf may have been complicit in fomenting the Temple Mount violence. They allowed truck loads to enter the Mosque complex through the underground excavations supplying the rocks, cinder blocks, and materials for making Molotov cocktails. Avi Ischaroff in a Times of Israel report on often jailed Sheik Salah observed:

Salah has tried to utilize the Temple Mount to inflame the Arab Palestinian street. Now he’s finally managed to do so. “The defender of Al-Aqsa,” as Salah is known, continues to warn against the ostensible plans of the Jews to harm the mosque, vowing that he is prepared to do anything to “protect it.” His activists are everywhere in Arab towns and villages, successfully fomenting friction against Israel.

The incitement to Jew hatred and murder are reflected in the provocative statements of PA President Abbas. Jews have observed restraint while on the Temple mount. They are even been barred from saying prayers there. Abbas cited in Bret Stephens’ Wall Street Journal Global View column, “Palestinians: the Psychotic Stage,” wrote:

“Al Aqsa Mosque is ours. They [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.” And: “We bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah.”

Then there was the Imam in Gaza invoking the Qur’anic imperative to kill Jews:

“Brothers, this is why we recall today what Allah did to the Jews,” one Gaza imam said [October 9]  in a recorded address, translated by the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri. “Today, we realize why the Jews build walls. They do not do this to stop missiles but to prevent the slitting of their throats.”

Josh Hasten Israeli American Journalists 10-7-15

Joshua Hasten, Israel American Journalist, October 7, 2015. Screen Shot, You Tube video.

The shahids perpetrating the days of rage in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel are being ‘honored’ for their murderous jihad sacrifices of their Jewish victims according to translations by Palestinian Media Watch:

Fatah brought soil from Al-Aqsa to grave of murderer who stabbed 2 to death in Jerusalem “so that the dead body…can hug the soil for which he died a Martyr”. PA Ministry of Education plants trees in honor of terrorists- the “Martyrs” of “the ongoing popular uprising”. Ministry: “Event meant to illustrate the devotion of the ministry… to honoring the Martyrs…[It] instills national and humanitarian values in the minds of the young”.

Then, brandishing a six-inch knife, he added: “My brothers in the West Bank: Stab!”

The story of one Israeli’s encounter with Palestinian terror

How do Jews in Israel feel confronting this murderous wave of Palestinian and Israeli Arab terrorism? Josh Hasten, a Jerusalem Post contributor was interviewed on the October 11, 2015  Lisa Benson Show.  He spoke of taking a shortcut only to be confronted on the Tekoa Road by a mob of 40 to 50 masked men from the Arab village of Beit Sahour .They were armed with rocks and cinder blocks blocking his way. He alighted from his car, showed them his licensed hand gun and when that didn’t stop them fired off a round that scattered them. Clearly, as you will see in this YouTube video, Hasten thought that spared him. However, that didn’t spare a Jewish woman he encountered who had been brutally set upon and beaten presumably by the same group. Frightening, but rarely reported in the mainstream media that tends to concentrate on Palestinians being killed, perpetrating murder and mayhem against Israeli Jews.

Watch this You Tube video of Josh Hasten’s encounter with Palestinians out to kill “their Jew.” The media may call this “violence.” Sorry, it is jihad.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

A Tale of Two Cities Babylon and Jerusalem: Is Our  Religion Symbolical or Spiritual?

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In the days of Nimrod whose kingdom was Babel, men built a tower, saying, “Let us make a name lest we be scattered abroad,” but God said, “let us go down and confound their language…so the LORD scattered them abroad.” Genesis 10:9,10; 11:4,7,8.

It seems significant that even now the Tower of Babel is used as a symbol of the  European Union with its poster, “Many Tongues, One Voice” (Google), a symbol of defiance to God and with 5-pointed stars pointing down—the official insignia for the Church of Satan. (Google).

From the beginning, God was trying to spare man an external focus that engenders pride. Babel became Babylon and its king later said, “Is this not great Babylon that I have built?” Daniel 4:30. That meant time out for another lesson as the king lost his mind and ate grass for a 7-year humbling of Babylon.

The impending end-times will test our grasp of Bible truth as Babylon will again be humbled for 7 years. The issues are more subtle now, for we are dealing with spiritual Babylon that has permeated society’s systems of medicine, education, welfare, government, correction and religion. Our focus now is religion.

When God liberated Israel from Egypt, He gave them a system of types that foreshadowed spiritual truth. The lamb that they sacrificed represented the lamb in Isaiah 53:5-7, “wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities,” and announced as “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world” by a Jewish prophet, John. John 1:29.

They loved Him for the loaves and fishes, but when He made the internal and spiritual nature of His kingdom clear, they rejected Him, saying “Crucify him!”–He thus fulfilled His sacrificial role as a lamb.

The question is, do we learn from those lessons, or are we as Christians trying to make Jerusalem and its external symbols right so we can feel ok, instead of “the kingdom of God is within you”? Luke 17:21.

In the “Tale of Two Cities,” Christians want Jerusalem, not Babylon, but it’s looking like Jerusalem will become permeated by spiritual Babylon depicted as a harlot involved with kings, wealthy (gold) and wearing scarlet (color of cardinals), a “mother of harlots” (other false churches) and abominations… drunken with the blood of saints (persecuting church in medieval history) on 7 hills, Revelation 17:2-9.

The Vatican plans a millennial reign in Jerusalem (Google it)  and Bible prophecy unmasks the pope’s role to introduce “Jesus” to the world after moving his headquarters there for the end-time, Daniel 11:45; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10.

To answer the question in our title, we must not conclude that we need to see Christian or Jewish symbols or temples in Jerusalem, because in the end, Babylon will use them as it forces everyone to bow as in Daniel 3.

Abraham, the father of the faithful, let Lot have his choice of geography, and Lot picked Sodom. The Bible shows Sodom and Jerusalem as equivalent in Revelation 11:8. So let’s not fight over it–it will end as the last chapters show, with Christ coming on the white horse* to deliver His people in Armageddon, represented also in Daniel as the fiery furnace deliverance.

In the end, only the religion that comes from God can lead to God. We must not insist on our own terms, but seek Him on His terms. Now is our opportunity to study the Bible as it reveals a significant part of what modern religions believe as false and no single denomination as having all the truth, Revelation 3:17.

*The white horse in Revelation 19:11 is pre-figured by the white horse in Rev 6:2, a message of truth that helps us decode the enemy’s counterfeits so we are not deceived.

This article should not be construed as against any sincere Christians, including Catholics who seek a better understanding of Bible truth to explain the incongruities they see in their church and leadership.

RELATED ARTICLE: Politics and Pope Francis: The Role of the Catholic Church and the State

EDITORS NOTE: Dr. Ruhling believes the white horse of Revelation 6:2 also represents information linked to the  7 seals in that chapter—information that is the basis of a covenant enabling us to marry Christ as Israel did and that whether Jew or Gentile, God will bless a covenant-keeping people as His bride in and through end-times, ( http://TheBridegroomComes.com ) not raptured out of it.

Praying or Not on the Temple Mount

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The Palestinians never lose an opportunity or excuse to kill Jews. What is feared is a new intifada or holy war in Israel, specifically in Jerusalem, where attacks on its civilians and soldiers have been occurring. The present grievance has to do with the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Judaism, but one that was taken over by Muslims when they invaded in 638 A.D.

Muslims have a habit of either destroying the places of worship of Jews and Christians or converting them to mosques. In the case of the Temple Mount, known to Arabs as Masjid al Aksa, the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik, around 688 A.D., built the Dome of the Rock, a mosque. The site, Mount Moriah, had been holy to Jews for 3,000 years as the place where Abraham offered his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice when his faith was tested by God.

As recorded in 2 Chronicles 3:1 “Then Solomon began to build the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David, his father.”

And then Mohammad came along with a fanciful story. As recorded in the Koran, Sura Al-Isra 17:1. “Glory be to Him who did take His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Sanctuary to the farthest Sanctuary, whose precincts We did bless…” According to Mohammed, one night he was transported from Mecca to Jerusalem, escorted by the angel Gabriel. From the future site of al-Aksa, he ascended to Heaven where he met the great prophets before returning to Mecca. Suffice to say the “Night journey” became a sacred event for Muslims and al-Aksa, when built, a sacred mosque.

Apparently anything in Islam is justification enough to kill any “unbeliever” and Jews have been on the top of that list since it was created by Mohammed, largely because the Jews of his time refused to abandon their faith and accept him as a prophet.

When Israel became a sovereign Jewish state in 1948, it was immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors and has had to fight several wars since then. It has never been free from attacks, the latest being those by Hamas from Gaza that provoked a military operation to stop their ceaseless rocketing.

In the wake of the first war the Jordanians retained control over the Mount Moriah, refusing entry to the area. The Israelis conquered the whole of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War and liberated the Temple Mount. It was the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans that they had control.

Currently, the Israelis allow Jews to enter the Temple Mount on a restrictive basis, but they are barred from praying there!

Prayer is forbidden because the Israelis have not wanted to offend Muslims. Meanwhile the Palestine Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, has accused Israel of launching a religious war when Israelis responded to attacks by Palestinians on their civilians and soldiers as a way to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death. Abbas has had years in which to find a way toward peace with Israel, but never has.

Access to the Temple Mount has been a topic of discussion among Israelis for whom the site is as holy as that of the Muslims. Attacks on Jewish activists and others have increased, reflecting the Muslim resistance to any policy of tolerance that might permit Jews to pray there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on record that Israel will not change its policy, but prominent Israeli political figures have made trips to the plaza of the Temple Mount to protest the regulation.

For all those in the West who speak of the necessity to extend tolerance to Islam and try to accommodate the demands of Muslims, it would be wise to look at what is happening in Israel, a holy land for three thousand years to Jews, then for two thousand years to Christians, and then to Muslims who arrived on the scene 1,400 years ago and who are engaged in a holy war to dominate the whole of the world.

These days, when not fighting each other throughout the Middle East, Muslims are committing atrocities around the world, killing innocent people with abandon in the name of their holy war and while they do Jews and Christians are forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

The Danger of Lone Wolf Jihadis Among Us

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The final weeks of October 2014 were devastating for America. We had lone wolf jihadis in Ottawa and Montreal killing and wounding Canada Forces service personnel. In New York we had a Muslim convert and former U.S. Navy serviceman shot dead in the midst of a deadly hatchet attack on two NYPD officers in Queens. All three appeared to be operating below the radar screen of surveillance  inspired by Islamic State jihadist social media imploring Salafist brethren in the West to mount attacks on uniformed military and law enforcement officers. These were  so-called ‘citizen jihadists’ wreaking havoc against any means of law enforcement stopping them from their spectacular  suicidal missions. There is a coming Detroit federal court trial on November 4, 2014 against a naturalized US citizen, Rasmieh Odeh. She was a member of a Palestinian terror group, who lied on her application about a prior conviction and incarceration in Israel for a 1969 bombing in Jerusalem that killed two university students.

To answer questions about what drives lone wolf Jihadis undertaking such murderous acts, The Lisa Benson Show on Sunday, October 26, 2014 heard from three prominent experts. They  noted US terrorism expert Steven Emerson, executive director of Washington, DC-based, The Investigative Project, Ottawa-based David B. Harris Canadian consultant on Islamic terrorism and former official at Canada’s Security and Intelligence Service, and Dr. Michael Welner, founder of the Manhattan based, The Forensic Panel, a noted US Forensic Psychiatrist frequently called as an prosecution witness in mass killing and terrorist cases. Dr. Welner was joined by his mother, a holocaust survivor and trained gerontology nurse who presented her views noting their participation in the recent protest of the Met Opera production of The Death of Klinghoffer. This was more information for our listeners packed into 43 minutes of air time than many two hour cable TV documentaries.

Watch video of Attack on Ottawa Parliament, October 22, 2014.

The Odeh case

On Monday, October 27, 2014  Steve Emerson ‘s IPT released the first  in a five part series, “Spinning a Terrorist into a Victim. Rasmieh Odeh a Chicago area Palestinian activist is the subject that report. She was arrested by the FBI for not reporting on her application for US citizenship  her incarceration in Israel for her participation in a 1969 bombing by the terrorist group the  Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). They bombed a supermarket in Jerusalem that killed two Hebrew University students, injuring several others. A second bomb planted at the British consulate did not explode. Odeh was sentenced by an Israeli military court in 1970 to life in prison for her participation in the bombing. Odeh was released in 1979 as part of a group of 76 PFLP terrorist prisoners in exchange for an IDF soldier captured in Lebanon. Odeh came to the US in 1994 from Jordan, settling in Evergreen Park, a suburb of Chicago. She received her US citizenship in 2004. Odeh was arrested on October 22, 2013 under a Federal indictment for not disclosing her prior Israeli conviction, sentencing and incarceration for the PFLP terror bombing. If convicted, Odeh, now 66, may face a 10 year sentence and deportation. Odeh has been vigorously defended by the Council on American Islamic Relations, Students for Justice in Palestine and other so-called human rights groups. Emerson pointed out that Odeh defended her misrepresentations on her application for citizenship on the grounds that she had been tortured while incarcerated in Israel. The IPT team, Emerson said, had interviewed a number of the relatives and friends of the students killed and injured in the PFLP bombing, many now in their 50’s and 60’s.

Canada’s exposure to Islamic terrorism

David B. Harris told about appearing before a US Congressional Committee with Steve Emerson in 1999. He told the Committee had Canada had perhaps the largest number of foreign terrorist groups in the West, surpassed only by the US. That is reflected in the rapid growth of Canada’s Muslim population, a reflection of the ruling governments’ multi-cultural agenda of aiding immigration. This conscious policy is reflected in the following figures he cited. In 1981 Canada had 98,000 Muslim citizens. By 2001, that had risen to about 580,000 and in 2017 projections are that the number will reach 1.4 million. In two decades it is reported that 1 in 13 Canadians will be Muslim and by 2031, 2.9 million Canadians will be Muslim. In 1981, Jews in Canada outnumbered Muslims by two or three to one. In less than sixteen years, Muslims in Canada will outnumber Jews by almost seven to one. Canada’s estimated  current Jewish population is 380,000. So we are seeing the result of laws and policies that have brought about a substantial liberalizing of immigration access, over the last three or four decades.

Against the backdrop of the mushrooming Muslim population, Harris cited a 2007 Environics poll showing that approximately 12 percent of Muslims in Canada would be willing to support a plot in Canada to undertake simultaneous mass casualty attacks. That could include bombing and invading certain government and media premises, including the parliament buildings of Canada. That would translate into at least 49,000 Canadians, which should  concern reasonable Muslim and non-Muslim Canadians alike.

Referring to the two Canadian lone wolf jihadis, he said that in the case of Martin Couture-Rouleau there is evidence the mosque he attended was frequented by an extremist Imam who cited Shariah law mandating both mutilation and beheading as appropriate punishments for alleged crimes under Sharia. In the instance of the late Michael Zehaf-Bibeau there are indications that he may have been applying for Libyan citizenship to supplant his Canadian passport that was withheld in view of his “high risk traveller” designation. Denial of passports may have been a motivating factor for both of these individuals coupled with the broadcast of ISIS social media calling for attacks on military and law enforcement in Canada.

A fascinating exchange referenced a long term outreach effort by the RCMP to Muslim groups and leaders tied to the Muslim Brotherhood that began in 2005 following the events of 9/11 in the US. On  September 29,  2014, two Canadian Muslim groups, Islamic Social Services, Inc. (ISS) and  the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), published a so-called de-radicalization manual, “United Against Terrorism: A Collaborative Effort towards a Secure, Inclusive Canada.” The manual was supposed to be a collaborative effort among the RCMP and the two Canadian Muslim groups. NCCM is the renamed Canadian branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim  Brotherhood Front and unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Dallas Federal Holy Land Foundation trial. The objective of the 21 page document was to dissuade Canadian Muslim youths from joining Islamists. Instead, the manual suggested that “terrorists were not Jihadists “and  Jihad was a  “Noble” cause. The RCMP immediately dropped it like the proverbial hot potato calling it “adversarial” and not distributing to its officers.

At the conclusion when prompted by a question on how vulnerable our Northern border is he commented that there are not enough agents to cover likely crossings. As one indication he cited the example of the Millennium plot by an Al Qaeda operative who came to Canada as a refugee and was caught by an inquisitive US border agent. Thus began the unraveling of the Millennium plot, an attempt by al Qaeda using sleeper cells in the US and Canada, to conduct an attack on the Los Angeles International Airport. For more comments about Canada’s Islamist threats, see our August 2012 New English Review interview with him, “A Self-Inflicted Injury: Immigration, Infiltration and Canada’s Growing Islamist Threat.

What motivates the Jihad of Lone Wolves?

Dr. Michael Welner addressed the question of whether there are so-called lone wolves who undertake actions influenced by, yet not part of terrorist groups. His research into mass killing and terrorist cases has evolved a paradigm as to how these should be viewed professionally. First are instances involving attacks directly planned and organized by designated terror groups like, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Islamic State using specifically trained recruits for these missions. The second are attacks that are undertaken by foreign affiliates of terror group such Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Shabaab and Boko Haram. The third are what he termed “dead enders”, recent converts who are susceptible to undertaking spectacle planned attacks using weapons at their disposal to gain celebrity hood as jihadist terrorists. They may be motivated by doctrinal influences and social media exhortations to demonstrate fealty to their new found faith of Islam committing deadly jihad against innocent unbelievers.

That would explain a host of recent and historic Islamic extremist actions in America. The list would prominently include Maj. Nidal Hassan’s jihad against fellow US Army personnel at Fort Hood, Texas, the killing of US Army Private Andy Long at a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office by Muslim convert Carlos Bledsoe (Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad). See our October 2014 New English Review interview with Dr. Welner regarding the Oklahoma beheading by Alton Nolen or Jah’ Keem Israel.

Barbara Welner Comments

Barbara Welner’s appearance on the Lisa Benson show was an inspired emotional moment as a holocaust survivor who ran away from Nazi killer in a Polish ghetto and survived innumerable threats to the life until liberated.  Lisa Benson father was honored as a liberator of a Nazi  death camps during the last weeks of WWII. Ms. Welner is one of the few persons of her background who has recognized the threat of Islamic Jihadism to both Israel and the Jewish people. See my 2007 Israpundit post, “Moral Clarity from a Holocaust Survivor: Yom Ha Shoah comments of Barbara Welner”. Note this telling comment:

If the Holocaust and the sacrifice of the many millions of innocent lives are to have any meaning for future generations, then our immediate lesson should be to insure our resolve.

I recognize the same intense desire to dehumanize the Jews to utterly destroy them from all quarters of Arab and Muslim life today. The only difference between what I saw from the Nazis is that the Nazis were coy to the outside world about how much they wanted to kill the Jews. The Arabs are quite loudly and vocally advertising how they plan to annihilate Israel.

She recognized that the program provided vital information about a new danger among us here in America. She chastised the Met Opera for conveying a thoughtless production of the Klinghoffer Opera that, as her son said humanized the Palestinian terrorists who killed the defenseless wheelchair bound New York Jew, killing him in cold blood and dumping his body overboard the Italian Cruise vessel, the Achille Lauro. She couldn’t understand why more people in a liberal city like New York with millions of fellow Jews that more people like her son and she didn’t protest the Klinghoffer opera.

Conclusion

What this discussion illustrates is the fatal myopic mindset of counterterrorism  agencies in both Canada and the US reflecting  prevailing multi-culturalism.  In order to secure both countries, a revitalized effort has to be made to understand the threat of Islamic Jihad. Further this may require intrusive community and social media surveillance and targeting  of potential jihadists in our midst.

Listen to the October 26, 2014 Lisa Benson Show with Steve Emerson, David B. Harris, Dr. Michael Welner and his mother Barbara.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

God help us: Pro-ISIS gathering in Jerusalem

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We reported about the New Jersey man who was flying the black ISIS flag whose excuse was he didn’t know what it symbolized. Of course the cultural jihad apologists did their normal “Islamophobe” and alarmist social media attacks. However, I wonder how everyone will respond to this appearance of the ISIS flag – and particularly its location

As reported by the Times of Israel, “Israel’s Channel 10 on Wednesday night broadcast what it said was footage from a recent “Islamic State gathering” on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The report, which is to be broadcast in full next week, said the gathering underlined that Islamic State intends to focus on Israel in the future. Formally, the gathering, attended by thousands, was organized by the Tahrir party, which the report described as being the “Palestine branch” of Islamic State. Speakers were filmed anticipating the liberation of Jerusalem and decrying Jewish pollution of the city. Several black IS flags were seen in the footage.”

If there’s one thing I appreciate about our Islamist enemies – they certainly don’t hide their intent. They make it quite plain that they intend to dominate the world, and will kill anyone who stands in their way to restore a barbaric 7th century ideology. They place the onus squarely upon us, the infidels, the kafirs, to halt their advances — and will continue to advance as their Islamo-fascist ideology commands.

So what’s next for ISIS?

According to the Israel Times, “Channel 10 reporter, Zvi Yehezkeli, said a photograph of a Palestinian youngster holding an ISIS flag that proliferated on social media over the past week was taken next to where he was standing. Yehezkeli said he had expected to be stopped by Israeli Police when he tried to enter the Mount area at a time designated for Muslim prayers, and that it was frightening to be in the plaza while the ISIS gathering was taking place. He claimed that the Islamic State, “now knocking on Jordan’s door, has marked ‘Palestine’ as the next target on its list.”

Consider this scenario for the Jewish State of Israel: Hamas renews its assault against Israel from the south after rearming and restocking its rocket and missile arsenal. Hezbollah decides the time is right to begin an assault from the north with more rockets and missiles. A situation arises where Israel finds its stockpile of Iron Dome weapons is running low and cannot cover a two -ront aerial assault — some of the rockets and missiles find landfall. From Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra has decided to swear allegiance to ISIS and begins a ground assault against Israel from Syria. And in Jordan, where ISIS has been successful, they set their sights on crossing the Jordan River into Judea-Samaria and begin attacking Israeli communities — aided by the Palestinian group Fatah.

Riots and unrest begins in East Jerusalem and a general state of emergency is instituted. Sophisticated surface-to-air missiles begin showing up in the region from Libya supplied by Ansar al-Sharia. Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport is shut down. And U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama states this is a regional problem and that he was elected to end wars.

I know, I’m out of control, and none of this is plausible. Yep, and ISIS is just a JV team, right?

I operate under the premise of being prepared for the enemy’s most dangerous course of action. The Obama administration operates under some misguided premise of “ignore the enemy and it will all go away.” And at worse case, Obama’s narcissistic persona will win the day. But so far, who’s has been right in their assessment?

A global Islamic jihadist movement has been set in motion and denial is not a viable course of action. Furthermore, telling the enemy what you are not willing to do is the dumbest strategy I have ever heard of – well, since Sir Neville Chamberlain.

The Temple Mount has significance in that it was built on top of the historic Jewish Temple of Jerusalem. Flying the black ISIS flag at the Temple Mount signifies the ultimate goal for ISIS — indeed Islam, — the eradication of the Jewish people and the restoration of what they refer to as Al Quds.

I take my enemy for its word and for those who criticize saying we don’t need to do anything – you’re nothing more than surrender monkeys! When America has a leader who understands total warfare and how to destroy an enemy by bringing the full national power of the United Dates– diplomatic, informational, military, and economic — to bear against our enemies; when America has a leader who will identify the enemy; when America has a leader who will not institute restrictive rules of engagement; then we will have victory, peace and domestic and global security.

Until then we are just wasting our time — and sadly wasting lives.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Is President Obama questioning the loyalty of American Jews?

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The Jerusalem Post published an article with a comment allegedly attributable to an Obama White House senior official that has caught the ire of American Jews and Israelis, “US perceives Israel as encouraging anti-Obama backlash among Jews”.  The JP article noted:

A US official close to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry said both men are disturbed over what is being perceived in their inner circle as “Jewish activism in Congress” that they think is being encouraged by the Israeli government, Israel Radio reported on Thursday.

The official has informed Israeli government figures that the president and secretary of state are disappointed over repeated attacks made against them by leading members of the Jewish community in the US.

According to Israel Radio, Israeli diplomats and foreign officers have warned against this trend. According to officials based in foreign missions, the Israeli government is increasingly being viewed as fanning the flames among American Jews by encouraging them to promote the official government position while making no room for opposing viewpoints.

Earlier this month, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon apologized after it was reported that he called Kerry “obsessive” and “messianic.”

In response to this JP report Stuart Kaufman sent an email to me and other colleagues with this comment:

This is dangerously close to the old anti-Semitic accusation of dual loyalty.  We are now on seriously perilous ground.  The rulers of the land are beginning the effort to isolate Jews – to set us apart.  I can’t stress how dangerous this is.  We Jews and those who are our friends must strike back hard.  This serpent can’t be permitted to grow without a major response.

What Kaufman was referring to was the emergence in 19th Century Europe of die Judenfrage, the Jewish question, criticizing Jewish subjects or citizens of being disloyal because of conflicts between nationalism and Zionism; the return of the Jewish people to what is now Israel.  It was from this well of hatred that anti-Semitism arose in the Vienna of the Habsburg Empire, Wilhelmine Germany and the fin de siècle France during the Dreyfus Affair.  It would become transformed into the international Jewish conspiracy forgery of the Czarist secret police, The Elders of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Later it becomes embedded in Hitler’s anti-Semitic tract Mein Kampf that lit the match for the Holocaust of Six Million European Jewish Men, Women and Children during World War Two. Mein Kampf is today one of the most popular books in the Arab Muslim world promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founder Hassan al Banna was an acolyte of Hitler.

Watch this Youtube video of  Julius Streicher, the notorious publisher of the Nazi tabloid Der Sturmer, ranting about Anti-Semitic judenfrage:

In light of that, how callous was this alleged comment from the Senior White House aide in the Administration.  Is the White House really questioning the loyalty of American Jews? Or are the President and Secretary of State simply complaining about Israeli cabinet members and some “American Jews” criticizing them? Are the President and Secretary of State really against Americans, Jews and others, supporting Israel defending its hard won sovereignty against people who would destroy it?

Yesterday, we saw clear evidence of that threat with the World Economic Forum interview of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani by Fareed Zakaria of CNN.  We heard translations of Rouhani  saying he would neither destroy 15,000 centrifuges nor stop building or swap  plutonium producing heavy water reactors at Arak for energy producing light water ones. He was also telling the West that sanctions were illegal.  The Obama White House  Press Spokesman Jay Carney said , in response to  reporters’ questions about President Rouhani’s CNN interview, that  Rouhani’s comments were for domestic consumption back home in Tehran.  AIPAC didn’t think so. They sent out a blast email containing  a link to the CNN interview with Rouhani for its members and others to view.

Rouhani’s CNN interview was a deliberate poke in the eyes of the P5+1 and the denizens of the West Wing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. To warn American Jews they better not defend their Jewish cousins in Israel from this threat was both dangerous and a blatant display of ingratitude towards an ally protecting our assets in the Middle East. Some thanks for Shin Bet saving Amb. Dan Shapiro and his striped pants and skirts brigade in Tel Aviv at the US Embassy and others at the Jerusalem conference center from Al Qaeda attacks orchestrated by Ayman al-Zawahiri’s local henchman in Gaza.  Even peace mongering nonagenarian Israeli President Peres at Davos in response to Rouhani’s interview called  for a boycott of Iran.

Perhaps Members of Congress concerned about these White House follies, both domestic and foreign can express their disdain for accusations like this from the Administration. They could politely sit on their hands and not applaud at the President’s State of the Union Address next Tuesday, the 28th when the President inevitably will do a victory lap about engagement with Iran over its nuclear program.  That would send a visual rebuke captured on national and international TV.  An image that would convey a message that even Iran’s President Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif and Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Khamenei wouldn’t require a Farsi translation. The more courageous among US Senate members in the audience of the Joint Session could immediately take up the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act, S. 1881 and pass it resoundingly next Wednesday.

After this episode we can understand former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ criticism of the mind numbing political apparatchiks in the West Wing inner circle portrayed in his memoir, Duty. Gates has been unfairly maligned by the liberal media reviewers for betraying his trust with the Obama team while Secretary of Defense by releasing his book prior to the end of the President’s term.  In sharp contrast Thomas Ricks published a praiseworthy review of Gates’ memoir, “In Command”, in the New York Times Sunday Book Review.  Note Ricks’ conclusion that provides a measure of the author:

But Gates is doing far more than just scoring points in this revealing volume. The key to reading it is understanding that he was profoundly affected by his role in sending American soldiers overseas to fight and be killed or maimed. During his four years as defense secretary, he states twice, he wept almost every night as he signed letters of condolence and then lay in bed and meditated on the dead and wounded. He was angry and disappointed with White House officials and members of Congress who appeared to him to put political gain ahead of the interests of American soldiers. Fittingly, he concludes the book by revealing that he has requested to be buried in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, the resting place of many of those we lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More  than 10,000 American Jews serve in our military.  American Jewish servicemen and women have fought and died in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  Perhaps they are buried in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery that Secretary Gates wrote about in his memoir.  Watch this Forward  Vimeo video about two  valiant American Jews who served honorably and fell  in Iraq and Afghanistan.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Allen West Releases Ad Hitting Dems for Rejecting God

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Representative Allen West (FL-22) is the first Republican to release an ad hitting Democrats for rejecting God three times during the Democrat National Convention.

According to Steven Ertelt of LifeNews.com. “”The first Republican ad is out that hits Democrats for initially rejecting God and then booing adoption of an emergency amendment to the party platform adding God back in after coming under heavy criticism nationwide.”

“The add, sponsored by the congressional campaign of Florida pro-life Rep. Allen West, features both footage of Democrats loudly rejecting the amendment and booing it after its eventual adoption as well as footage of talking heads like Democratic strategist Paul Begala calling the ordeal an embarrassment for the Democratic Party,” notes Ertelt.

Here is Congressman West’s ad:

This is the paragraph that was in the 2008 platform and became the center of this controversy:

“We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”

Now the words “God-given” have been removed. The paragraph has been restructured to say this:

“We gather to reclaim the basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation on Earth – the simple principle that in America, hard work should pay off, responsibility should be rewarded, and each one of us should be able to go as far as our talent and drive take us.”