France On The Way To Financial Self-Destruction

by Peter Martino, STONEGATE INSTITUTE

Last Friday’s downgrading of France and Austria by credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s has left the eurozone, the group of 17 European countries using the euro as their currency, with just four countries with a triple A rating. Of these four Germany is the only one that was not given a negative outlook. Indeed, S&P thinks that the Netherlands, Finland and Luxemburg risk a further downgrade this year or next year.

This is bad news for the euro. The creditworthiness of the euro bailout fund, EFSF, depends on the ability of eurozone countries with the top rating to provide enough money to bail out eurozone countries in financial difficulties. With France, the eurozone’s second largest economy, out of the top league the pressure on the four remaining countries rises. This explains why the Netherlands, Finland and Luxemburg were given a negative outlook. If these countries lose their ratings as well, even Germany, Europe’s largest economy, risks losing its triple A rating. The euro is dragging all the eurozone countries down with it.
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Salomon Benzimra writes to Ban Ki-Moon

In your latest speech in Beirut on January 15, 2012, you declared that “Settlements, new and old, are illegal.”  This is not new, as you expressed a similar opinion at a press conference at the UN in December, 2010, where you condemned “all settlement construction, including construction in East Jerusalem.”

Repetition of a falsehood does not make it true.  Of all institutions, the United Nations should be particularly aware of the legacy of past agreements enshrined in international law and of the immutable acquired rights of peoples, as spelled out in the UN Charter.  By condemning specifically the construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria – a territory commonly known by its unfortunate misnomer, “the West Bank” – you are advocating a return to the untenable ethnic cleansing that prevailed prior to 1967. (Read more…)

By Janet Tassel, AMERICAN THINKER

It was the first week in October in Newton, an upscale suburb of Boston, and Tony Pagliuso’s daughter, a sophomore at Newton South High School, was visibly disturbed. When Tony asked her the problem, she showed him a passage from the chapter she was assigned in her World History Class. It was a chapter called “Women, an Essay,” from a supplemental text called The Arab World Notebook. In a paragraph devoted to women “in the struggle for independence from colonial powers,” we find:

Over the past four decades, women have been active in the Palestinian resistance movement. Several hundred have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Israeli occupation forces since the latest uprising, “intifada,” in the Israeli occupied territories.

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Greenfield thinks so in his analysis

By Daniel Greenfield

[..]
What the Gulfies lack in military skills, they more than make up for in underhanded cunning. If they can’t import an infidel army and they can’t build their own army, then they will follow the honorable tradition of finding a counterbalance to the enemy. The Gulfies have been nurturing the Muslim Brotherhood and funding Al-Jazeera. Combine the two with an American administration eager to win over the Muslim world by reforming American foreign policy and the Gulfies got their own Arab Spring.

The real purpose of the Arab Spring was to create a Sunni Islamist superstate or regional alliance to counter the threat of a Shiite Islamist superstate. With the Muslim Brotherhood sweeping across North Africa all the way to Egypt, the harvest includes semi-secular states with competent armies and if Syria can be tipped into that camp, then Iran will lose its puppet and the Sunni superstate will have a military tipped with top of the line American and Russian equipment, funded by Gulfie oil money and backed by the lunatic fanaticism of Islamist fighters.
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Rubin takes the position that Jordan is vulnerable to an Islamist takeover and says that Israel is trying to keep it stable. Mudar Zahran, the Jordanian Palestinian, with whom I am in constant communication, thinks otherwise. He argues, in an article I will be publishing soon, that in a fair election in Jordan the Palistanians will form the government and that they are anti the MB and the King. They want a secular democracy. The reason Jordan appears stable is because the King and the MB are working together to keep the Palestinians out of power. The MB wants to destroy Israel and they don’t want a Palestinian state to form east of the Jordan as it would undermine the demand by the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria for of a state of their own. Thus it could be in Israel’s interest to enable the fall of Abdullah to permit this to happen. Stay tuned. I am working on it. Ted Belman

The era of the Muslim Brotherhood

By Barry Rubin, ISRAEK HAYOM

The political history of the modern Middle East can easily be divided into three eras. In 1952, a military coup in Egypt signaled the start of the period in which radical Arab nationalism dominated. The 1979 Iranian revolution began the challenge of revolutionary Islamism. And then, in 2011, in the wake of more revolutions, Arab nationalism collapsed completely.
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By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYON

Palestinians have taken advantage of Israeli citizenship laws to realize “the right of return.”

For almost 40 years, Palestinians have taken advantage of the Israeli Citizenship Law, using a path paved for them by the government to realize their “right of return,” to “reunite” with fellow Arabs inside Israel and to become Israeli citizens. Since Israel’s establishment, more than 350,000 Palestinian Arabs have utilized the law to become Israelis.

It was the Bedouin who became experts at invoking the citizenship law, some of them “uniting” with more than one wife. Yet, according to the law, applicable to Bedouin and all other Israelis, a man is allowed to be married to only one woman. Some Bedouin have sent their pregnant second or subsequent wives to hospitals to give birth using identity cards belonging to their first, legal Israeli wives.
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DEBKAfileExclusive Analysis  January 15, 2012, 3:31 PM (GMT+02:00)

Barak Obama

US-Israeli discord over action against Iran went into overdrive Sunday, Jan. 15 when the White House called off Austere Challenge 12, the biggest joint war game the US and Israel have every staged, ready to go in spring, in reprisal for a comment by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon in an early morning radio interview. He said the United States was hesitant over sanctions against Iran’s central bank and oil for fear of a spike in oil prices.
The row between Washington and Jerusalem is now in the open, undoubtedly causing celebration in Tehran. (Read more…)

By Ted Belman

Keep your eye on this. Ban Ki Moon calls for end to ‘occupation’, settlements

Speaking at a conference on democracy in the Arab world in Beirut, Ban said that “the Israeli occupation of Arab and Palestinian territories” and “violence against civilians” must end.

“Settlements, new and old, are illegal. They work against the emergence of a viable Palestinian state,” the UN chief stated.

Ban added: “A two-state solution is long overdue. The status quo offers only the guarantee of future conflict.”

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By YAAKOV KATZ, JPOST

Israel and the US canceled a missile defense drill, billed as the largest ever in the country’s history, planned for the spring, senior military officials said Sunday.

Initially scheduled for April and called “Austere Challenge,” the drill was supposed to see the deployment of thousands of US troops and various sophisticated US military equipment in Israel.

In recent weeks, Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s office has held talks with the Pentagon about the possibility of canceling the drill.

Senior military officers told The Jerusalem Post that the drill scheduled for April has been canceled, while defense officials said that it was possible that it would be held later in 2012.
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By Eli Hazan, ISRAEL HAYOM

There are moments in the history of a democratic nation when its Supreme Court makes a landmark decision that shapes the lives of its citizens. One of these moments occurred in the U.S. when, at the end of the 19th century, the Supreme Court issued its “separate but equal” ruling that essentially legalized discrimination. That same court, with a different bench, rectified this historic injustice when it deemed this policy unconstitutional in what will forever be remembered as Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.

In the same context, one can say that last week’s High Court of Justice decision to reject an appeal to overturn the Citizenship Law (which prevents Palestinians who marry Israelis from gaining Israeli citizenship) was a landmark decision, fraught with significance for Israeli society. The court ruled de jure but also de facto that the state of Israel is a Jewish state, and thus settled a years-long debate.
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ISRAEL HAYOM

The name MK Zeev Elkin started making headlines only over the past several months. What began with a caricature continued on to radio and television programs. Until a year ago, he was unknown by the general public, although he has served in the Knesset for the past seven years.

The media’s interest in Elkin, which began only when he introduced the controversial boycott law, increased when he began, together with his fellow faction member, MK Yariv Levin, to advance a bill that obligates candidates for the Supreme Court to undergo a hearing in the Constitution and Law Committee. It accompanied criticism from Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch and continued in a disagreement over the candidacy of Justice Noam Solberg.

When Netanyahu made him head of the coalition, many people in the Knesset raised an eyebrow. Some thought that the task was too big for someone who was a fairly plain member of Kadima’s faction until he began rebelling against Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni.
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Although the U.S. has put pressure on Iran with more aggressive statements, an initiative to increase international sanctions and a clash over Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, Jerusalem is not satisfied.
By Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, HAARETZ

The two meetings this week between the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz have been scheduled for some time. But the immediate context cannot be ignored: growing tension over the Iranian nuclear program and what appears to be renewed (and increased) American concerns that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear sites.

Dempsey and Gantz are expected meet first at mid-week in Brussels during the annual conference of NATO chiefs of staff, an event to which the Israeli chief of staff is always invited. Two days later Dempsey will arrive in Israel.
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Ted Belman. Sherman works from the premise that Israel’s problem is that she has lost the battle for hearts and minds because she didn’t try to win it. I disagree.

Right from the oil embargo in the seventies, her situation took a turn for the worse because of oil and interests. The world needed energy and did not want to alienate the Muslim world for a few measly Jews. The Saudis got all our African friends to back away from us and began the Eurabia project in which Europe agreed to turn its back on Israel. The US, from 1970 was trying to force Israel to return to the ’67 lines. Then the Muslim countries combined with the non-aligned countries, as part of the cold war, and took over the UN. All this in a half a dozen years.

A bigger hasbara budget would not have changed any or this. It may though have kept a few more Europeans from hating us.

By MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST

Into The Fray: The first of a two-part analysis of why Israel is losing the international battle for hearts and minds.

Israel has made itself defenseless. Israel has vacated the battleground of the mind. Israeli ‘hasbara’ is a JOKE! –
British columnist Melanie Phillips, IBA Television, 2011

One of the gravest strategic threats facing Israel is its accelerating international delegitimization. This is developing into a strategic constraint that is increasingly curtailing the nation’s ability to protect itself and its citizens. Even more troubling, it is undermining international recognition of Israel’s right to exercise self-defense, even in the most blatant cases of aggression against it.
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By Ted Belman

I usually agree with Evelyn Gordon but not now with the points she made on peace in her Commentary article, What Does it Mean to be Pro-Israel?. She writes,

Moment magazine’s latest issue has an interesting symposium on what it means to be pro-Israel today.

I found Hillel Halkin’s definition particularly helpful. But I’d like to add one thing to his list. Clearly, it’s okay to criticize any particular Israeli policy; Israelis do it all the time. But those with influence in the Jewish community, like rabbis or officials of Jewish organizations, also have an obligation to try to understand – and explain to his community – why Israelis might view the issue differently.
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Deer in the Golan Heights’ Odem Forest, Jan. 13, 2012.

By Ted Belman

When is Israel going to wise up? Israel’s preferred policy is to play defense and make as few waves as possible.

Whether its Obama insisting on a building freeze, or negotiations based on ’67 lines with swaps or the EU encouraging the Arabs to violate the Oslo Accords and build in Area C, Israel is always reacting. Thus when we wait to be diplomatically attacked we end up fighting on our own territory.

It used to be that we had a policy of fighting on the other guys territory which means pre-emptive action.
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Stackelbeck on Terror interviews David Haivri and Tommy Waller in Israel’s Bible Belt also know as Yehuda and Shomron.

Watch the beautiful interview

By DANNY AYALON, Deputy Foreign Minister, Israel Beiteinu.

Netanyahu’s idea of free education for those three and four-year-olds is one that in principle Israel Beiteinu supports. However, as always, the devil is in the details.

During his inaugural address in 1961, US president John F. Kennedy spoke the immortal words: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

While this quotation is widely used and sourced, few truly understand the significance of these words.

During Britain’s general election in 2010, the then-opposition Conservative Party created a flagship policy idea called the “Big Society” that became the theme for its successful election campaign.
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by Soeren Kern, STONEGATE INSTITUTE

German authorities have officially confirmed that they are monitoring German-language Internet websites that are critical of Muslim immigration and the Islamization of Europe.

According to Manfred Murck, director of the Hamburg branch of the German domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), his organization is studying whether German citizens who criticize Muslims and Islam on the Internet are fomenting hate and are thus criminally guilty of “breaching” the German constitution.
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