M E N O R A H

Mitchell, Armed with US Media, Trying to Extend Building Freeze

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell begins three days of talks with Israel and the Palestinian Authority Wednesday following PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ statement he will accept direct talks in return for an extension of the building freeze.

Abbas’ move gives him the upper hand in what has become a diplomatic struggle over which side can blame the other for what is widely viewed as fruitless efforts by the United States. More

Anti-Semitic Farrakhan charges Jews with 'anti-black' behavior

Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan has written the leaders of more than a dozen major US Jewish groups and denominations seeking "repair of my people from the damage" he claims Jews have caused blacks for centuries.
 
Farrakhan sent the letter along with two books from the Nation of Islam Historical Research Team that the 77-year-old minister said prove "an undeniable record of Jewish Anti-Black behavior," starting with the slave trade and laws that discriminated against blacks. More

Hamas torches children's summer camps

All those who believe Gaza is in need of more international aid should be aware of what has now happened twice to summer camps for children in Gaza that are run by the UN. Foreign Policy magazine reports:

Last night, 25 armed, masked men set fire to a U.N. summer camp at a beach in Nuseirat, Gaza, destroying inflatable pools and tents and roughing up a group of guards protecting the facility. It was the second attack on a U.N. recreation facility in just over a month. On May 23, a group of 30 masked, armed men set fire to another U.N. summer camp facility under construction in Gaza City. They also threatened to kill the U.N.'s top relief official in Gaza. More

This is the day on which Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian forces breached the walls of Jerusalem in 422 BCE

The "Three Weeks" of gradually-increasing mourning over the destruction of the Holy Temples and Israel's exile begins today (Tuesday) with the fast of the 17th of the Hebrew month of Tammuz.

The 17th of Tammuz marks other calamities in Jewish history as well. It is the date on which Moses, having descended from Mount Sinai for the first time, saw the people sinning with the Golden Calf and broke the first set of Ten Commandments. In addition, the priests of the First Temple era were forced on this day, a year before the Temple's destruction, to stop offering the daily sacrifice due to the shortage of sheep. More

Palin Knocks Obama for ‘Selling Out’ Israel and other Allies

Sarah Palin, who ran on the Republican ticket against the Obama-Biden team in 2008, raised the pitch of her unofficial campaign for the White House in 2012 on Sunday and tore into the president for “selling out” American allies, especially Israel.

"Do they think, really, that we're getting anything in return for all this bowing and kowtowing and apologizing? No, we don't get anything positive in return for this," the former governor of Alaska added.

She castigated the president’s lack of outright support for Israel’s interception of the Turkish-led flotilla, which ended in bloodshed May 31 when terror activists attacked Israeli Navy commandos who prevented the ships from reaching Hamas-controlled Gaza. More

Iranian lawmakers heading to Gaza via Lebanon

Iranian parliamentarian Mahmoud Ahmadi Beighash announced Saturday that he and other Iranian lawmakers intend to join a ship headed for Gaza by way of Lebanon.

"A ship is going from Lebanon to Gaza in the course of the current week and the lawmakers will go to Gaza via this ship," Beighash said in comments to semi-official news agency ISNA cited by Reuters.

The decision to head from Lebanon to Gaza and not Egypt was reached in a meeting with speaker of parliament Ali Larijani according to Beighash. More

Congresswoman: Hezbollah joining Mexican drug cartels

WASHINGTON – North Carolina Congresswoman Sue Myrick warned Friday that Hezbollah may be colluding with drug cartels on the US-Mexican border, and called on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate the matter.

Fox News reported Myrick is arguing that the Lebanese militia would soon begin threatening the US as it does Israel.

"It is vital we know what is happening on our border, especially as crime and violence continue to rise there and as terrorist plots and threats are increasing inside the US," she wrote. More

Slicing and Dicing the Israeli Salami

Every concession that Israel makes to its Palestinian pseudo-negotiating counterpart, without the slightest reciprocation, is just another slice of territory, another fragment of legitimacy, lost to its enemies. Honig points out that the term was coined by Hungary’s communist dictator Mátyás Rákosi, who in the 1940s pursued the policy of szalámitaktika — salami tactics — to gradually dismember the opposition parties.

The salami tactic has a long history in the Middle East and was employed with consummate effect by terrorist kingpin and Fatah leader Yasser Arafat, in particular by manipulating the Oslo Accords to his advantage. In an Arabic-language message broadcast on Jordanian TV on September 13, 1993, Arafat revealed that the Oslo DOP (Declaration of Principles) was, in the words of Efraim Karsh, “merely part of the implementation of the PLO’s ‘phased strategy.’” Palestinian Authority Minister Faisal Husseini, in an interview with the Egyptian daily Al-Arabi on June 24, 2001, referred to the Oslo Accords as a “Trojan Horse” and a “temporary procedure” in the larger “strategic” plan to destroy Israel. More

Palestinians stealing water in West Bank

Surely they would not steal.

Irregular water supply on IDF bases, settlements near Mount Hebron has become routine recently. Via pirate connections to source, Palestinian neighbors are stealing millions of shekels of water per year. Situation growing worse. More

U.S. government's Arabic TV station: the waste of money was not the worst problem

Early in Al-Hurra's life I met with an official of the network, and we had a wide-ranging and detailed discussion which appeared to be most promising. But I never heard from them again, and they clearly went in a direction much different from the one which I had suggested, which was much like the one ably delineated by Hugh here. I advised them to offer American Constitutionalism and genuine pluralism as an alternative to Sharia -- and said they would draw in many Muslims who would prefer to live free than to live under Sharia.

But clearly they had no interest in challenging Sharia. See, for example, "U.S. Government Gave Airtime to Terrorists, Official Admits," by Justin Rood for ABC's The Blotter, May 22, 2007:

Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.

That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces....More