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Our nation once again faces threats to our very survival. While evil doers often succeed for a while, the Jewish people have a guarantee from Hashem that we will endure. But at what cost? What can we do to allay our fear and protect Am Yisrael from greater tragedy?
President Barack Obama feigns a punch while talking about health care reform with Nancy-Ann DeParle, Peter Orszag, Phil Schiliro and Larry Summers in the Outer Oval Office, July 13, 2008. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
White House "presses" GOP
"What you can’t do just yet is read about the Republicans’ consensus plan – because so far they haven’t announced what proposal they’ll be bringing to the table," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote in a blog post Tuesday morning.... "As of right now, the American people still don’t know which one Congressional Republicans support and which one they want to present to the public on Thursday."
House Republicans ridiculed the proposal as political posturing.
"Bear in mind, at this point, the White House’s 'plan' consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). "So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States’ economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they’re complaining that they can’t find our plan on their own website? C’mon."
In addition to "pressing" the GOP, the White House is "clamping down" on big banks and rallying for another climate change "push."
In other news,
Obama wants to expand the federal government’s role in education, which traditionally is a state and local responsibility. His approach has been to use the federal purse as leverage to encourage states to adopt his ideas.
And speaking of leverage, check this out from today's WH press briefing:
TAPPER: One last thing, I'm sorry. Congressman Joe Sestak last week said that the White House offered him a high-ranking job in the administration to not run against Arlen Specter. Do you guys have any comment on that?
GIBBS: I was traveling for a couple of days, as you know. I have seen some stuff that he said. But I have not looked into this, Jake.
And last but not least, you'd better check on your investments. This month's plunge in consumer confidence is tanking the stock market.
The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index fell to 46 in February from 56.5 last month. That was well below the forecast of economists polled by Thomson Reuters. They expected a reading of 55 ....
A reading above 90 means the economy is on solid footing.
All in all, not what you'd call a great day -- but it could be worse.
I was pretty hard on David Harris yesterday, begrudging him his half a million dollars a year as Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, but today I need to give credit where credit is due. The man is funny.
At both the Jerusalem and Huffington Posts. Take your pick.
Seriously ill? Head for Libya
Why Libya, you might ask? Very simple, actually.Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was convicted, in 2001, of 270 counts of murder for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in mid-air. Two-hundred-fifty-nine passengers and crew, 190 of them American, along with eleven Scots on the ground, were killed in the terrorist attack. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in a Scottish prison.
In August 2009, Megrahi was released on "compassionate" grounds by Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill.
In this image made from television Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, right, who was found guilty of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, is greeted by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, in Tripoli, Libya on Friday, Aug. 21, 2009. The release of al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of blowing up a Pan Am flight in 1988 has brought high drama and controversy: the jeering mob outside a Scottish prison, the cheering crowd at a Tripoli airport, the furious families of the 270 people who died in the Lockerbie bombing.
Megrahi, the world was told, was suffering from fatal prostate cancer, had no more than three months to live according to an examining oncologist, Karol Sikora, and should be allowed to die at home.
Again, that was in August. Now, six months later, Megrahi is still alive and reportedly living in his suburban villa outside Tripoli, the nation's capital.
Well, I used to think that if I were told I only had three months left, I'd want to spend it listening to some of the most boring people I've ever met. They would ensure that the three months felt like eternity.
But scrap that idea. Instead, I'm heading for Libya. Clearly, medicine is far more advanced there than we all give it credit for. The Scots couldn't do anything for Megrahi other than close his file and send him packing, accompanied by none other than President Gaddafi's son, Saif, who couldn't hide his glee that he had pulled off this release. Meanwhile, miracle of miracles, Libyan doctors have already managed to double Megrahi's predicted life expectancy....
|
Date |
Presidential Approval Index |
Strongly Approve |
Strongly Disapprove |
Total Approve |
Total Disapprove
| |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
02/22/2010 |
-19 |
22% |
41% |
45% |
54% | |
|
02/21/2010 |
-19 |
22% |
41% |
45% |
54% | |
Today's Rasmussen has Obama stuck for two days in row at his lowest "strong approval" rating ever. And the gap between his overall approval and disapproval is nearly
BtB April 2004 ~ Then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as quoted at Israel Insider:
"Disengagement allows us a free hand
to act against terror."
And by way of Jewish Current Issues ~ PM Sharon in an Address to the Knesset, October 25, 2004:
"I know the implications and impact of the ... decision on the lives of thousands of Israelis who have lived in the Gaza Strip for many years, who were sent there on behalf of the governments of Israel, and who built homes there, planted trees and grew flowers, and who gave birth to sons and daughters, who have not known any other home.
However . . . I also believe in the necessity of taking the step of disengagement in these areas, with all the pain it entails, and I am determined to complete this mission. I am firmly convinced and truly believe that this disengagement will
Over and over again Jews have paid the "price for peace," and over and over again the Muslim neighbors insist on incessant war.
On February 11, 2010 PA TV aired a pre-recorded interview with a woman who called on Muslim mothers to “sacrifice a child for Palestine.”
The woman, whose terrorist son died in an Israeli air strike, described herself as proud that her son had “achieved martyrdom.” She said, “We had always hoped for his martyrdom, knowing he wanted to die as a martyr [shaheed].”
"My message to every mother is to sacrifice her child for Palestine,” she added.
Last quote. Theodor Herzl 1896.
"If we [Jews] could only be left in peace.
But I think we shall not be left in peace."
--------------------------------------------------------------------About that first Herzl link, don't be surprised if you get this message from Google. It's just more of the same old / new antisemitic BS.
Gen. David Petraeus told "Meet the Press" on Sunday: "We have over the course of the last year pursued the engagement track. I think that no one at the end of this time can say that the United States and the rest of the world have not given Iran every opportunity to resolve the issues diplomatically. That puts us on a solid foundation now to go on what is termed the 'pressure track.' And that's the course in which we're embarked now." (MSNBC, via Daily Alert)
I don't like this word, tracks. Especially in the context of Iran, it brings to mind The Issue of Bombing Auschwitz:
...the appeals for bombing multiplied after mid-1944.
Proposals were sent to the War Refugee Board, which had been established in January by President Roosevelt. The board made repeated approaches to the War Department. Other appeals from various sources were addressed directly to Roosevelt or the War Department. Unfortunately, the appeals led nowhere.
The War Department, opposed to any diversion of military resources to non-military ends, rejected the idea in a confidential memorandum of early 1944.
The Department also asserted that the bombing was unfeasible because it would involve the diversion of air power required to win battles elsewhere. The Department went on to point out the technical difficulties involved, and even asserted that bombing could cause German reprisals. The Department held that the most effective aid for the victims of persecution would be a quick Allied victory over the Third Reich and the other Axis countries, and that this was the goal towards which all available means should be used.
The British Air Ministry held similar views.
Jan 3, 1944 - Soviet troops reach former Polish border.
Jan 24, 1944 - In response to political pressure to help Jews under Nazi control, Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board.
Jan 25, 1944 - Diary entry by Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, concerning the fate of 2.5 million Jews originally under his jurisdiction - "At the present time we still have in the General Government perhaps 100,000 Jews."
In Feb - Eichmann visits Auschwitz.
March 19, 1944 - Nazis occupy Hungary (Jewish pop. 725,000). Eichmann arrives with Gestapo "Special Section Commandos."
March 24, 1944 - President Roosevelt issues a statement condemning German and Japanese ongoing "crimes against humanity."
The Allied position precluded any military operations to bring the extermination to an end. Auschwitz never became a bombing target. Nevertheless, Allied aircraft flew repeatedly over the area where the camp was located. Reconnaissance aircraft began flying over in April 1944 to photograph industrial plants, and especially the Buna-Werke synthetic rubber and gasoline plant in Monowice. The cameras also captured the grounds of the camp. The first aerial photographs showing Auschwitz concentration camp were taken on April 4...
April 5, 1944 - A Jewish inmate, Siegfried Lederer, escapes from Auschwitz-Birkenau and makes it safely to Czechoslovakia. He then warns the Elders of the Council at Theresienstadt about Auschwitz.
April 6, 1944 - Nazis raid a French home for Jewish children.
April 7, 1944 - Two Jewish inmates escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau and make it safely to Czechoslovakia. One of them, Rudolf Vrba, submits a report to the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia which is forwarded to the Vatican, received there in mid June.
April 14, 1944 - First transports of Jews from Athens to Auschwitz, totaling 5,200 persons.
In May - Himmler's agents secretly propose to the western Allies to trade Jews for trucks, other commodities or money.
May 8, 1944 - Rudolf Höss returns to Auschwitz, ordered by Himmler to oversee the extermination of Hungarian Jews.
May 15, 1944 - Beginning of deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.
May 16, 1944 - Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process. By May 24, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 persons - half of the Jews in Hungary - arrive at Auschwitz.
In June - A Red Cross delegation visits Theresienstadt after the Nazis have carefully prepared the camp and the Jewish inmates, resulting in a favorable report.
June 6, 1944 - D-Day: Allied landings in Normandy.
June 12, 1944 - Rosenberg orders Hay Action the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children aged ten to fourteen for slave labor in the Reich.
Summer - Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest-ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over 9,000. Six huge pits are used to burn bodies, as the number exceeds the capacity of the crematories.
In July - Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary, and proceeds to save nearly 33,000 Jews by issuing diplomatic papers and establishing 'safe houses.'
In a July 6, 1944 meeting with foreign secretary Anthony Eden, Jewish Agency representatives Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Sheraton proposed the bombing of the railroad lines from Budapest to Auschwitz, and of the extermination machinery within the camp itself. Eden and Prime Minister Churchill were receptive. On July 7, Eden wrote to Air Minister Archibald Sinclair on the feasibility of the attack. Sinclair replied on July 15 that the Allied bombing of the rail lines and the extermination facilities at Auschwitz could not be carried out, and that even if it were carried out, it would be of little benefit to the prisoners. At the same time, Sinclair proposed that the Americans be involved.
Henryk Świebocki " The Issue of Bombing Auschwitz" [in:] Auschwitz 1940-1945. Central Issues in the History of the Camp, vol. IVhttp://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=371&Itemid=8
July 24, 1944 - Soviet troops liberate first concentration camp at Majdanek where over 360,000 had been murdered.
Aug 4, 1944 - Anne Frank and family arrested by Gestapo in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.
Aug 6, 1944 - The last Jewish ghetto in Poland, Lodz, is liquidated with 60,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz.
RAF reconnaisance photo taken August 23, 1944
Oct 7, 1944 - A revolt by Sonderkommando (Jewish slave laborers) at Auschwitz-Birkenau results in complete destruction of Crematory IV.
Oct 15, 1944 - Nazis seize control of the Hungarian puppet government, then resume deporting Jews, which had temporarily ceased due to international political pressure to stop Jewish persecutions.
Oct 17, 1944 - Eichmann arrives in Hungary.
Oct 28, 1944 - The last transport of Jews to be gassed, 2,000 from Theresienstadt, arrives at Auschwitz.
Oct 30, 1944 - Last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Nov 8, 1944 - Nazis force 25,000 Jews to walk over 100 miles in rain and snow from Budapest to the Austrian border, followed by a second forced march of 50,000 persons, ending at Mauthausen.
Nov 25, 1944 - Himmler orders the destruction of the crematories at Auschwitz.
Late 1944 - Oskar Schindler saves 1200 Jews by moving them from Plaszow labor camp to his hometown of Brunnlitz.
In 1945 - As the Allies advance, the Nazis conduct death marches of concentration camp inmates away from outlying areas.
Jan 6, 1945 - Soviets liberate Budapest, freeing over 80,000 Jews.
Jan 14, 1945 - Invasion of eastern Germany by Soviet troops.
Jan 17, 1945 - Liberation of Warsaw by the Soviets.
Jan 18, 1945 - Nazis evacuate 66,000 from Auschwitz.
Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there.
April 4, 1945 - Ohrdruf camp is liberated, later visited by General Eisenhower.
April 10, 1945 - Allies liberate Buchenwald.
April 15, 1945 - Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth."
April 23, 1945 - Berlin reached by Soviet troops.
April 29, 1945 - U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau.
April 30, 1945 - Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker.
April 30, 1945 - Americans free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.
May 2, 1945 - Theresienstadt taken over by the Red Cross.
May 5, 1945 - Mauthausen liberated.
May 7, 1945 - Unconditional German surrender signed by Gen. Jodl at Reims.
The New York-based American Jewish Committee blasted the BBC on Sunday for airing an accusation that Jews around the world assist in supposed Mossad assassinations.
BBC Radio 4’s PM program interviewed Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon’s Spies, a book about the Mossad, about the January 20 assassination of Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.
Local authorities and many international media outlets believe that the killing of Mabhouh, who bought rockets for Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip, was carried out by the Mossad.In explaining the Mossad’s operating methods outside Israel, Thomas told PM host Eddie Mair, “They have a whole backup system called ‘asylum.’ These are people, local residents, Jewish people, who help the Mossad. It is estimated to be in the world about half a million; some people say a million; I tend to say it’s about half a million, all of them Mossad people.”
The AJC said in a statement that it was “dismayed that a guest on BBC Radio 4 was allowed to state unchallenged” that the Mossad relies on Jews for assassination plots.
“This baseless accusation crosses every red line between legitimate public discussion and bigoted fear-mongering,” said AJC executive director David Harris. “In less than a minute, the BBC has cast a shadow on the lives of Jews worldwide.”
Organizations like the AJC never tire in their efforts to promote an image of the Jewish people as helpless victims. They would rather see us as somehow threatened by a BBC broadcast than as dangerous "Mossad people." They assume there is safety in Jewish victimhood (even though both history and current events strongly attest otherwise).
The AJC has been in "the business" of Jewish advocacy for over a hundred years. They sit on assets of nearly $120 million from donations made in good faith so that some sort of results might be achieved. They pay David Harris nearly half a million a year -- for what? to wag his finger at the BBC? What a waste.
Personally, I prefer the radio scenario. I think it's "good for the Jews" if BBC listeners (and others) believe that hundreds of thousands -or a million- Jews worldwide form a "backup system" for Mossad. If I were in Harris's position, I would have issued a statement clarifying that our "asylum" has not one million, but many millions of Jews helping Mossad -- and furthermore, if anyone's thinking of messing with us, they should think again.
As for the elimination of Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh in Dubai, he was a terrorist killer and I'm glad he's gone. He should rot in hell. And all his "brothers" in HAMAS should join him there. They're the ones who cast a shadow over our lives! And not just Jewish lives either, but those of all the "Kuffar" -- the rejecters, the ingrates, who refuse to "submit" to the tenets of Islam.
To hell with that.
Twenty years ago MobWho disguised himself as an Orthodox Jew, kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, Ilan Sa'adon and Avi Sasportas HY"D, and murdered them. So now their blood has been avenged. But the injustice - that he got to live twenty years longer than they did and was able to marry and have children while they were not - remains ... for eternity.
According to JPost's reading of a HAMAS "palestinian information center" website, MobWho was still playing a "continuous role in supporting his brothers in the resistance inside the occupied homeland." Translation: He was bringing Iranian-supplied advanced weaponry into Gaza for the killing of Jews in Israel.
And there are people who think he shouldn't have been stopped? Well, to hell with them. The Mossad can use my passport anytime.
Let me just say this to Islamofascist terrorist scum all over the world: Don't let David Harris fool you. We are all Mossad now, and you should be very afraid.
After Words
Hey BBC, take a memo leak: Those of us who aren't Mossad, are Bielski.
