Obama is trying to Give U.S. Military AID Back to Lebanon

US tax dollars Supporting Reuters... I mean the Lebanese. and other fun Jihads of the LEFT

U.S. guns were used to Ambush Israel! Senate Withholds AID that was getting to terrorists and Obama legally tries to co-opt senate decision. Matthew 19:12 For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it." ---any Christians want to explain this one?

UNIFIL may have decided it was the LAF's fault, but Obama hasn't

It's good that Congress has the sense to put the brakes on US military aid to Lebanon. Because the Obama administration sure doesn't.

Nevertheless, it’s worrying that the administration clearly doesn’t share this understanding. The 2009 aid that remained in the pipeline is still being handed over as scheduled, because, a State Department official told the Jerusalem Post, the U.S. is still trying to determine the facts of the incident.
Yet on Wednesday, a day after the incident occurred, UNIFIL — an organization not known for its pro-Israel bias — had already confirmed that the Lebanese soldiers fired first, without provocation, and that no Israeli soldiers had strayed into Lebanese territory, contrary to Lebanon’s claim. Moreover, the Lebanese government has vociferously endorsed the attack and, as I noted earlier, even justified it on the grounds that Beirut no longer recognizes the UN-demarcated international border. Are any other facts really necessary to grasp that this is not behavior Washington should be encouraging by making it cost-free?
But it gets even worse. The official also told the Post, “we continue to believe that our support to the LAF and ISF [Internal Security Forces] will contribute toward improving regional security.” How exactly does supporting an army that has just launched an unprovoked, deadly, cross-border attack on a neighbor — and whose government has just announced that it no longer recognizes the international border, thereby implying that more such attacks are likely to follow — “contribute toward improving regional security”?

Good question.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Can You Handle The Truth?: Poll Shows The Shocking Reality of Arab Public Opinion [Article]

By Barry Rubin *

August 10, 2010

This is one of those stories about the Middle East that is totally amazing but not the least bit surprising. What, you ask, do I mean? From the standpoint of the way the region is portrayed in the West this information is incredible but if you understand the area it is exactly what you'd expect.
I'm referring here to the recent 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll conducted by Zogby International and the University of Maryland for the Brookings Institution. Note that this poll was only done in relatively moderate countries: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates,
Here are some of the main findings:
--Arab views "hopeful" about the Obama Administration policy in the Middle East declined from 51 to 16 percent between 2009 and 2010, while those "discouraged" rose from 15 to 63 percent. Why? Because while the Obama Administration tried to flatter Arabs and Muslims, go all-out to support the Palestinians, distanced themselves from Israel, and took other steps it was not deemed sufficient.
Nothing the United States did would persuade the audience because of such factors as: different ideologies and ambitions, clashes of interest, the filter of government and Islamist propaganda, and excessively high demands. While the populations are "discouraged" with the administration largely due to their radicalism, the regimes are unhappy with it because they feel the U.S. government isn't strong enough in opposing such enemies as revolutionary Islamism and Iran.
Still, unless U.S. policy comes to resemble that of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Jordan, many or most Arabs will continue to be bitter and angry.  Obama's levels of support among Arabs are not that different from those of his predecessor.
--What about perceptions of threat? Same story. Those thinking Israel is a huge threat is at 88 percent (down slightly from 95 percent in 2008) showing that overall hostility just doesn't go away. Do you think that any conceivable Israeli policy would change this fact?
Note that while it is would not be surprising if Arabs see Israel as an enemy generally or as being mean to the Palestinians, for Jordanians, Saudis, and Egyptians to describe Israel as the greatest threat to their own countries shows something beyond rational calculation is involved. The prevalent idea is that Israel wants to take over the Middle East or wipe out Islam or destroy the Arabs. This makes a lasting compromise, comprehensive, and friendly peace rather unlikely.
--What about the United States? Here, too, Obama's efforts have failed. The idea that the United States is the other main threat to Arab countries and societies declined from 88 percent under George W. Bush at the end of his term to "only" 77 percent under Obama in 2010. Given the dramatic change in personality and policy this amounts to nothing.
--As for Iran being a threat, this view among the Arabs polled grew from 7 percent in 2008 to a "whopping" 13 in 2009 and then down to 10 percent in 2010. In other words, the Arab masses believe the United States is about eight times more of a threat than Iran. Indeed, if you add in those nine percent of the Arabs polled who view the United Kingdom as the real danger, 86 percent see Washington or London as the greatest threat to themselves. Again, the ruling elites have a different view but no wonder they are so cautious about opposing Iran or lining up with the United States.
--Asked which foreign leader they most admire, almost 70 percent name an Islamist or a supporter of that movement's forces: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan (20), Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (13), Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (12), Hizballah's Hassan Nasrallah (9), Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (7), Usama bin Ladin (6), and the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (2).
No relatively moderate Arab leader has any significant international following. And note that two non-Arab Middle Easterners (Erdogan and Ahmadinejad) score so high, showing a decline in Arab nationalism that would have been unthinkable during the 1950-2000 era.
Unfortunately, these and other findings reflect the realities of the Arabic-speaking world: the hegemony of radicalism among the masses, passionate hatred for Israel and the West, and lack of sympathy for democracy or liberalism. And the overall trend is to make things even worse, since there is so much positive feeling toward revolutionary Islamism rather than even militant Arab nationalism.
Presumably, of course, Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and others would have expressed support for their own regimes, so this poll should not necessarily be read as implying support for revolution at home. Yet it certainly--like other such polls--indicates backing for terrorism, extremism, and anti-Westernism in regional terms.
The idea that appeasement, concessions, and flattery will make a big shift has been proven wrong in fact and practice, though no doubt the mythology that Obama has transformed America's position in the region will persist among the very elites and "experts" who should know better. Indeed, this is precisely the way the poll was spun on its being released. The clear effort is to portray the problem as one of U.S. policy even under Obama being too friendly toward Israel, as if no other issue in the region existed.
If Arabs are so passionate in their belief that the United States and UK are a threat to their countries, support in large numbers the Islamist transformation of large parts of the region, think Israel is so profoundly dangerous, and are friendly toward an adventurous, expansionist Iranian regime, can someone possibly be so naive to think that bashing Israel or creating a non-Islamist Palestinian state is going to defuse that deeply and passionately held world view?
Yet this is precisely how the poll was spun by the Brookings Institution: as showing the United States wasn't doing enough to distance itself from Israel. Forget about Islamism versus nationalism, poverty, inequality for women, corruption, repression, the war in Iraq, Iran's nuclear weapons' drive, nearly universal dictatorship, Kurds and Berbers,  the growing gap between the Arabic-speaking world and the West or even the faster-progressing states of Latin America and Asia, terroristic violence, and every other issue in the region. We are constantly told that the only thing of any importance is the Palestinian issue.
What are the Arabic-speaking world's real problems?
--A failure of Arab statist dictatorships and Arab nationalist ideology which promised so much and delivered so little. The results include repression, corruption, and far lower living standards (except in low-population, high oil-production Gulf states) than might exist otherwise.
--A stifling traditional culture that clashes with modernity without finding some hybrid solution. This gives rise to the attractive slogan that "Islam is the solution" which promotes an effort to turn the clock back parallel to what happened in past Western societies (the Counter-Reformation, the post-1815 anti-democratic reaction, fascism) and Japan (the revival of feudal military ideology that led to Pearl Harbor).
--The regimes' effort to use violence, scapegoating of the West and Israel, elements of Islamist ideology, and intransigence to win mass support. (Though when one sees the poll figures this is understandable.)
--Internal group conflicts among Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, among other group and regional quarrels.
--The failure to achieve fully integrated states which are sabotaged by pan-Arab and pan-Islamic doctrines.
This is only a partial list. Yet one thing is clear: whether by force or appeasement, seeking popularity or advertising for their own way of life, Western countries cannot solve these problems. The only solution is internal and it will take decades at best. What the West can do is to defend itself, help the most relatively moderate forces (both governments and mass opposition movements as in Lebanon and Iran), and stand up for its own values.
The worst thing it can do is to practice appeasement, a policy that seems to prove the radicals right about Western cowardice and admitted sinfulness, thus inspiring them to more aggression and a stronger popular base of support. Apology and retreat appears to confirm the dysfunctional revolutionary ideologies and favor the revolutionary forces. In the face of the radical advance and Western retreat, demoralized moderates rush to get good surrender terms or join the mob.
Transformation to something better can only come when Arabs and Iranians conclude that the revolutionary road doesn't work and is wrong. Teaching them that it does work and that they are right to pursue it will lengthen the period of change and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
As long as there is a huge gap between the actual Middle East and the fantasy Middle East so dear to many Western academics, journalists, and diplomats, the region will remain incomprehensible and Western policies will not engage with reality.

*
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East (Routledge), The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

via gloria-center.org

no she can't handle the Truth

The Guardian’s anti-Israel Jews, and a letter to my teenage nephew

CiF’s Jewish Israel defamers
When joining the team here at CiF Watch, and attempting to understand why Jewish writers for the Guardian are often among the most vociferous in expressing their contempt for Israel, and so willing to demonize the state’s Jewish supporters, I had to get up to speed on the term “Theobald Jew.”

I soon learned that:
According to the Benedictine monk Thomas of Monmouth in his The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich (1173), it was an apostate Jew, a certain Theobald, who, swore that Jews had killed twelve-year old William, a tanner’s apprentice, to fulfill their “Passover blood ritual” in the fateful year of 1144—the first recorded such episode in a long line of murderous defamations.
The CiF contributors I refer to include Naomi Klein, Neve Gordon, Richard Silverstein, Antony Lerman, Seth Freedman, Tony Greenstein, among others. These Jewish writers don’t merely critique Israeli policy, but routinely engage in hyperbole, vitriol, and gross distortions. Their rhetoric is often spewed with hate towards the Jewish state, all but ignoring the behavior of her enemies - the terrorist and reactionary movements who openly seek her annihilation. Such commentators often infer that the democratic Jewish state (the most progressive nation, by far, in the region) is almost always in the wrong, is usually motivated by a hideous malevolence, and represents a national movement which they, as Jews, are ashamed to be associated with.
Freedman, for instance, has suggested that Israel is a theocracy – one which is on moral par with Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda. Gordon has on several occasions accused Israel of ethnic cleansing - once advancing such an ugly calumny in the radical anti-Zionist magazine, Counterpunch. Tony Greenstein has ardently defended the ugly comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, typically advanced by extremists. Richard Silverstein has called the behavior of Israelis serving in the IDF “subhuman“, and has defended Hamas from “charges” that they are an extremist movement. Naomi Klein actually accused Israel of being so cruel and sadistic as to “bury children alive in their homes.”
While, for the Guardian, employing the services of Theobald Jews serves to inoculate them from charges of anti-Semitism, such Jewish writers, in return, receive the progressive and universalist credentials they so eagerly seek.
The Misnomer of the “Self-Hating Jew”
To be fair, I always found the term “self-hating Jew” to be at best misleading, at worst a complete misnomer. First, because we typically have no way of knowing these writers‘ inner-thoughts. But, more importantly, I never thought that it was an apt description of the anti-Zionist Jews I’ve met over the years. If anything, most seem to possess a belief that they are indeed “better Jews” for being hyper-critical of Israel, opposing their own community, and rejecting the very idea of a Jewish nation-state.
Many seem singularly focused on being seen as a “progressive”. And, as the progressive movement has moved further and further away from identification with Israel – and, to some degree, further away from identification with Jews as such – the need to be seen as progressive (“righteous”) in the eyes of others, has taken precedence over the seemingly parochial desire to identify with, and defend, their own community.
I have thought long and hard about the phenomenon of Jews who oppose their own community, have read and written about it, and there appears to be four dynamics worth exploring:
1. Moral Vanity
I was particularly inspired by Anthony Julius’s long two-part essay published at the American Jewish Committee site, Z Word. The piece was called Jewish anti-Zionism Unravelled: The Morality of Vanity. (Pt. 1 & Pt. 2). Julius also rejects the notion of such Jews as being “self-hating”. Instead he refers to them as moralisers who continually desire affirmation from the non-Jewish world as to their righteousness.
The moraliser makes judgments on others, and profits by so doing; he puts himself on the right side of the fence. Moralising provides the moraliser with recognition of his own existence and confirmation of his own value. A moraliser has a good conscience and is satisfied by his own self-righteousness . He is not a self-hater; he is enfolded in self-admiration. He is in step with the best opinion.
2. The Temptation of Innocence
Ruth Wisse, in her book “Jews and Power“, identified the tendency of some Jews to vociferously oppose their own community as a dynamic which she, in part, attributes to a Jewish uneasiness with the projection political power and a tendency to almost fetishize the Jews’ history of powerlessness. Wisse concludes that Jews who endured, or know the history of, the powerlessness of exile are in danger of mistaking it for a requirement of Jewish life or, worse, for a Jewish ideal. This puerile desire not to be corrupted by the complexities, and occasional compromises, necessitated by possessing moral agency is described by Pascal Bruckner as “The Temptation of Innocence.”
3. Jewish Fear: Assimilation and Altruism as an Inoculation from Harm
More recently, Barry Rubin, director of the GLORIA Center (Global Research on International Affairs), in an illuminating and penetrating piece, entitled “Explaining Jewish Political Behavior“, said:
[historically] Jews were attacked for allegedly having too much power, even when they had little or none, the emphasis was on being eager to make concessions, not to gain victories through threat or pressure.
…How would this strategy try to succeed? By proving Jews were good citizens, by showing they were unselfish and sought nothing for themselves, by demonstrating their willingness to dissolve the bonds and customs of their own community…and by showing that being nice to them would benefit everyone or almost everyone. In other words, altruism was a central element in the strategy
“…A key element of the assimilationist doctrine has been to deny there was a [Jewish] collective communal interest, and to avoid making collective demands.
Rubin, who, it should be noted, fleshes out his argument more fully in his book, Assimilation and Its Discontents, continues:
large parts of the Jewish elite are proud to stand aloof from their own people and deem it virtuous to abandon it and reject any notion of communal interests (including Israel and religion). Indeed, they think they can best prove their credentials by championing the causes of other groups even–sometimes especially–those in conflict with Jewish interests.
…The elite Jew’s emphasis is often to escape identification with the community, proving he is a cosmopolitan with a universalist identity, being the first to demand the dissolution of any community loyalty and viewing the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood—Israel—as an impediment to those goals. While antisemites charge that all or almost all Jews in positions of power pursue a distinctively Jewish interest, the exact opposite is the truth. This explains how left-wing Jews extol multiculturalism and self-determination for other peoples even as they hold the exact opposite attitude toward their own people, whom they are determined to show are not their own people.
…many Jews, particularly in elite positions, are eager to prove their credentials by criticizing their own people or Israel.
4. The Adversarial Jew: Skepticism and relativism disguised as reasoned political thought
I think there’s one last dynamic at play – an insight I came upon as a result of an email exchange I had with my 16-year-old nephew recently.
He reached out to me to seek my advice on this phase he was going through. It seems that he’s going through an early “existential crisis” of sorts – a frame of mind (I warmly noted to him) that most don’t arrive at until college. He mentioned that, lately, he’s been questioning everything – every social convention, everything he’s ever been told, and wondering whether the wisdom, mores, and customs he‘s been brought up by his parents to believe in and abide by are indeed worthy. He said that, since this struggle, he wasn’t misbehaving, but had resigned himself to merely “going through the motions” – but wasn’t really buying into what he always believed to be true. He wanted to know what I thought.
In my reply, I assured him that what he’s going through is perfectly normal, and was a sign that he possessess a vibrant, active, and healthy mind – and, that, indeed, such existential crises were the inspiration for great works of poetry, literature, and philosophy through the ages. I said that I also went through a similar mental orientation - that I, during the first couple years of college, questioned everything ever taught to me by my parents and my community. I even looked down on the adults in my life, and their seemingly conventional thinking. In my arrogance, I said, I believed that I saw things they didn’t see…had arrived at answers to questions that had perplexed not only my a parents and relatives, but the most brilliant minds in my time and in generations past.
However, I also told him that I eventually learned to have a bit of humility about it all, and eventually realized that I didn’t know much about life, at that early stage in my life, at all. And, that my parents, the older I got (and as my adolescence receded) seemed to become wiser and wiser with each passing year – in what I increasingly identified as their decency, sobriety, and plain common sense.
So, I asked my nephew if he would at least try to avoid the audacity of imagining that he alone possessed the wisdom and insight that has eluded his community – the Rabbis, sages, political, and community leaders – in his generation and though the ages. I asked that he not assume that because his father claims that something is true, that the opposite must indeed be what’s actually correct. I asked that he be patient and assured him that, with time and experience, he’ll eventually not be so quick to question the intentions of those who guide him. I expressed confidence that he will come to see that a healthy skepticism about “conventional thinking” is indeed normal, but that he’ll eventually understand that such thoughts need not devolve into a knee-jerk rejection of all the traditions and values of those who have come before him and have guided generations of Jews through often dark and harrowing times.
Julius, in his Z Word essay, dissected the potential moral pathos of many such renegade Jews:
He holds that the truth is to be arrived at by inverting the “us = good” and “other = bad” binarism. He finds virtue in opposing his own community; he takes the other point of view. He writes counter-histories of his own people. It is not enough for him to disagree, or even refute; he must expose the worst bad faith, the most ignoble motives, the grossest crimes. He must discredit.
My nephew is a smart, decent, and level-headed young man. And, I have no doubt that he’ll maintain his bearings during this intellectual “crisis” and not allow himself to surrender to hubris, nor develop a malevolence towards the family and community that has supported, nurtured, and guided him through the complexities of everyday life – those who love him dearly and have tried with all their heart to provide a path to protect him from the maddeningly complicated world he lives in.
It’s a simple lesson perhaps, but a vital one. And, its wisdom that many of the Jews who write for the Guardian, quite shamefully, don’t even meagerly possess.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Navy backs Clinton diplomacy

William R. Hawkins

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sparked strong Chinese protests when she told month's meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that America has "a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea." Beijing likes to claim the entire area as a "territorial sea." Vietnamese, Philippine and Malaysian officials had voiced their concerns to the U.S. about China's claims to places like the Paracel and Spratley islands, ownership of which confers oil and mineral rights in the adjacent seabeds. The South China Sea is also the principle trade route for the nations of the Pacific Rim.
Global Times, a publication of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, argued Aug. 10,

The US is returning to Southeast Asia with a clear political agenda. It is trying to expand US influence and strengthen cooperation with countries in the region, but seeds of distrust are also being planted with its attempt to contain China. Countries around the region must see these tactics for what they are.

Yet, the editorial also noted, "Quickly after the US stated that the South China Sea is of US national interest, Vietnam began intensifying its protest against China's legitimate activities in the disputed waters." The party newspaper asserted, "Traditionally, China was the central power broker in the region, backed by its cultural influence and advanced productivity." One might also add military power. The week after Clinton's remarks in Hanoi, Beijing held a major sea and air exercise in the South China Sea. On Aug. 8, theForeign Ministry stated, "China firmly opposes any remarks and actions that violate its sovereignty over the Xisha Islands and the adjacent waters."
The question was whether President Barack Obama would back his Secretary of State, who is known to favor a more active policy than he does. In the face of strong Chinese protests against holding joint U.S.-South Korean naval exercises as a show of force against North Korea, the maneuvers were limited to the Sea of Japan and stayed out of the Yellow Sea which Beijing also claims are territorial waters.
The answer came this last weekend, as the Strike Group led by the nuclear aircraft carrier George Washington sailed through the South China Sea to the waters off the Vietnamese coast. A delegation of Vietnamese military and government officials were invited aboard the carrier. The guided missile destroyer John S. McCain docked at Danang, the main U.S. Marine base during the Vietnam War. The U.S. and Vietnam navies then conducted joint drills. The message to Beijing could not have been more clear.
And to give China something else to worry about, last Thursday the Pentagon said "the USS George Washington will exercise in the Yellow Sea" as part of a future joint exercises with South Korea. A month ago, Defense officials would not even mention the Yellow Sea by name. Beijing again protested any deployment of a carrier group off the western coast of Korea. But as an Aug. 5 Global Times editorial admitted, "China has fewer means to counter the US than the US can use against China."

via americanthinker.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Bin Laden Clock To Be Biggest in the World

Not only will this clock tower being built in Saudi Arabia be the largest in the world but it will also proclaim graphically to all the world "Allah Akbar". The Bin Laden family that is building this with funding from the Saudis to the tune of $800 million is the same family that spawned Osama and has ingrained the phrase Allah Akbar into the psyche of everybody as the last words of someone getting ready to detonate themselves and kill as many innocent people as possible to accompany him on his trip to hell.

The seven tower complex is being built by developer Saudi Binladen Group, the press agency reported.

Each face will be inscribed with "God is greatest" in Arabic and fitted with thousands of colored lights. The clock will be visible from more than 16 miles (25 kilometers).

No word on if approval has been granted to the Vatican to build a Catholic church anywhere in the country yet.

via jammiewearingfool.blogspot.com

As I reported two weeks ago, the new giant clock atop the Saudi Abraj al-Bait Tower is meant to symbolize Islamic attempts to make Mecca the source for the world's time, supplanting Greenwich.

From the Arab News:

Quiz: What's wrong with this picture?

The giant clock of Makkah is all set to tick home a new time standard, as some scholars believe that it will be an ideal alternative to the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Many scholars are of the opinion that Makkah Time can provide the world an alternative to the GMT. These people have scientific arguments to back their contention, as Makkah is situated in the center of the world.

At a conference in Doha in 2008, Muslim clerics and scholars presented “scientific” arguments that Makkah time is the true global meridian. They said that Makkah is the center of the world.

“Putting Makkah time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time, this is the goal,” said Mohammed Al-Arkubi, general manager of Royal Makkah Tower Hotel.

The Royal Clock is sitting atop the central tower in the Abraj Al-Bait Project, 50 meters opposite the Grand Mosque in Makkah. The clock will be visible from 17 km away at night and 11 to 12 km away during the day. A German-owned company, Premiere Composite Technologies, has designed the clock.

Sources said that the world’s largest clock — six times larger than London’s Big Ben — will be launched in the first week of Ramadan but no date has yet been fixed. The trial run would be conducted on the clock facing Jeddah that is to be inaugurated first.

The tower featuring the world’s largest clock also includes a Lunar Observation Center and an Islamic Museum. While the Royal Clock will announce daily prayers, the Lunar Observation Center and Islamic Museum will serve to protect the heritage for future generations. The observatory will also be used to sight the moon during the holy months. On special occasions, 16 bands of vertical lights will shoot some 10 km up into the sky.

AP mentions that the giant clock was designed by Swiss and German engineers.

The chances of the world adopting Mecca Time is roughly the same as the chances of it adopting Jerusalem Solar Time and the (pretty complicated) Jewish lunar/solar calendar. )elderofziyon.blogspot.com)

Video Shows Zouabi Knew of Plans for Attack Aboard Marmari

Hillel Fendel
YNET News
A video clip indicates that MK Hanin Zouabi, a mild-mannered but extremist first-term Arab Knesset Member, lied outright when she said she did not know that the Turkish terrorists aboard the flotilla ship were preparing to attack IDF soldiers. The clip, released on Army Radio’s website Wednesday morning – although currently not viewable, apparently because of the heavy demand – shows Zouabi standing next to a group of Turks who are armed with clubs and metal bars.
It is likely that they were among the mob that attacked the sparsely-armed IDF soldiers who rappelled down onto the ship after it refused to adhere to IDF orders to change course. Though the mob proceeded to beat and injure several soldiers, including one very seriously, the small IDF force was able to recover and kill nine attackers.
MK Zouabi said repeatedly after the incident, and again today, that though she was on the ship, she had no knowledge of any preparations for a violent attack on IDF soldiers. Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin said he plans to submit the tapes to the Attorney General and to the Knesset Ethics Committee.
Filmed in the stairwell of one of the ship's below-board floors, the clip first shows Zouabi with an orange life-jacket, standing and talking with mob members. One Israel Navy soldier testified that it was at this point that three of his comrades were being dragged below in an attempt to kidnap them; according to his testimony, it is unlikely that Zouabi did not see this.
Zouabi has had, and continues to have, close ties with Azmi Bishara, former leader of her Balad party who, as a Knesset Member, fled the country after being suspected of aiding Hizbullah during the Second Lebanon War.
After seeing the film of Zouabi, a senior Navy source commented, “It is hard to conceive that Zouabi, standing there in the ship’s stairwell, did not see the attempts to abduct IDF soldiers and hide them below-board.”
Her presence on the Marmari evoked a strong public outcry, and the Knesset ultimately voted to strip her of certain privileges, such as the rights to a diplomatic passport and public funding of her legal expenses.
“The Israeli public, and the Knesset Members, are tired of Arab MKs taking advantage of our democracy to harm the country,” MK Danny Danon (Likud) said at the time. “Zouabi must decide if she supports Hamas and Al-Qaeda, or if she is a member of the Knesset of Israel.”
Zouabi herself has stated that she wishes to be both. “I serve my own principles,” she has said, “as well as my people that is oppressed by the State [of Israel], and I have no problem doing so in the framework of the Knesset. My voters did not vote for me so that I would strengthen Zionism… There is a people that voted for Hamas, and I fight for their right to choose.”
Hamas leader Ismail Haniye personally called Zouabi while the Knesset was debating the stripping of her privileges, and encouraged her to “remain strong.”

via docstalk.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous

Lebron James consults Rabbi

The latest crazy news coming out of the entertainment world is that Lebron James has now hired the world famous Rabbi Pinto (I even have a friend in Rabbi Pinto's yeshiva in New York!) to consult with on business matters.

It is crazy, because a)Lebron isn't Jewish (unless he has "Hebrew roots" like Ama're Stoudamire has because his mama studied the Old Testament) and b) Rabbi Pinto no speaka de English. Perhaps he had a translator there, though no translator is seen in the picture, but more likely he is consulting based on his kabalistic ability to glean insight into matters.

The picture is from the entertainment site TMZ which reported:

TMZ has obtained this exclusive photo of LeBron James in a business meeting earlier today with Rabbi Yishayahu Yosef Pinto ... a man known around New York as the "Rabbi to the Business Stars."
Sources involved with the meeting tell us LeBron had hired Rabbi Pinto for spiritual guidance for a "big merchandising meeting" that took place on a private yacht somewhere off the coast of NY just hours ago.
Rabbi Pinto -- a 37 year-old-man who speaks only Hebrew -- has met with all sorts of business moguls in the past ... and is considered by some to be a "spiritual guide" who consults on business matters.
We're told LeBron paid in the neighborhood of 6-figures to get Rabbi Pinto to sit in on today's meeting ... in which LeBron heard presentations from several "big time" retail execs.
It's been a big summer for the Jews -- with Amar'e Stoudemire meeting with rabbis in Israel ... and Shaq learning Hebrew.
It's only a matter of time before they start poppin' Manischewitz in the clubs!

Hey - if Lebron James can consult with a rabbi,, there is no reason why Shwekey shouldn't!

I wonder if he also consulted the Rabbi before he decided which team to sign for...Perhaps one of the reasons he chose Miami is to be closer to Rabbi Pinto, as one of Rabbi Pinto's franchise shuls is located in Miami...

The Yahoo Sports report on this also had a cute line about this:

They say three is a trend, so now all we need is a third NBA superstar to do anything involving anything Jewish. I'm putting my money on Chris Bosh(notes) praising the health benefits of kugel. He seems to like to hop on whatever fad he can.

I don't know why they missed out on the point about Shaq learning Hebrew, so the trend of three already happened.

And let's not forget, James has already expressed in the past that one of the people he most admires is Ohio philanthropist Jay Schottenstein...

via lifeinisrael.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon's posterous