Headlines for August 26 - September 1

A Stand For Justice


Palestinian kills 4 Israelis on eve of peace talks
Being an ultranationalist settler living in civilian settlements on occupied land is evidently a dangerous thing.

Whodda thunk it?


Boxed into a Corner on Iran by Philip Giraldi
To be completely and cold bloodedly serious about the respective positions being staked out by Iran and its chief antagonists in Washington and Tel Aviv, one must first of all remember that Tehran does not currently have a nuclear weapon and there is no real evidence that it even has a program to produce one. It has been basically compliant with the UN inspection regime mandated by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory. Nor is there any evidence that the Mullahs are suicidal....The conversation on Iran, such as it is, has been expressly designed to bring about a war rather than avoid it. The mainstream media disinformation campaign orchestrated by AIPAC has worked just fine. Most Americans already believe incorrectly that Iran has a nuclear weapon and most also support attacking it, a product of the steady diet of hokum that they have been fed


Abbas, Palestinians should die: Israeli rabbi
"Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth," Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual head of the religious Shas party in Israel's government, said in a sermon late Saturday, using Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's popular name. ....The Iraqi–born cleric has made similar remarks before, most notably in 2001, during a Palestinian uprising, when he called for Arabs' annihilation and said it was forbidden to be merciful to them.
The warships would be descending on Iran if this were an Iranian cleric that said as much about Jews.


Abbas: No peace talks with settlement building
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned Sunday that he will not back down from his threat to pull out of new peace talks with Israel if it resumes construction in West Bank settlements.



Hamas: PA can't give up Jerusalem in direct Mideast peace talks
Palestinian negotiators are not mandated to surrender Jerusalem or any part of Palestine, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency quoted Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh as saying on Friday, with the Hamas strongman dubbing upcoming direct peace talks as the latest in a string of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people.


Obama, Netanyahu condemn Hamas killings in Israel



'IDF can destroy Lebanon army within 4 hours'



Abbas seeks active US mediation in Mideast talks



Palestinians crack down on Hamas after shooting
Palestinian security forces arrested more than 250 Hamas members in an overnight sweep throughout the West Bank after the Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for shooting dead four Israelis on the eve of new Mideast peace talks.



Obama says Mideast peace moment 'must be seized'



Israel rabbi remarks on Palestinians 'deeply offensive': US
"We regret and condemn the inflammatory statements by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said in a statement.



Mahmoud Abbas: If talks fail over settlements, only Israel will be to blame



Israel gave 'licence to kill' on Gaza ship: Israeli Arab MP
Outspoken Arab Israeli MP Haneen Zuabi on Tuesday told a UN human rights inquiry into Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza–bound aid flotilla that its commandos had a "licence to kill."



Israel govt mulls alternatives to settlement freeze
The idea would be to keep the restrictions quiet in order to minimise chances of a public uproar among rightwing Israelis.



Report: Israel planning to attack Hezbollah arms depots in Syria
The report is based on Western sources who asserted that Israel has increased its military force level along the northern border in the Golan Heights and Mount Dov areas.


NY Muslim groups decry hostile atmosphere
Islamic leaders on Wednesday said they would support a move to another location, if that's what the imam and his supporters choose to do. But they emphasized that Muslims also were killed in the terrorist attacks and were first responders.



'Palestinian Gandhi' Convicted for Protesting; U.S. Silent
Last week, an Israeli military court convicted Abdallah Abu Rahmah, whom progressive Zionists have called a "Palestinian Gandhi," of "incitement" and "organizing and participating in illegal demonstrations" for organizing protests against the confiscation of Palestinian land by the "Apartheid Wall" in the village of Bilin in the West Bank, following an eight month trial, during which he was kept in prison


The Egyptian Plumber and My ‘Eurabia’ Problem
for Jews, Israelis and Americans in Europe, the first impulse is often to worry about Arab migrants. A 29-year-old Tel Aviv native in East Berlin (where I’ve been living since March), summed it up best when she told me the reason that she doesn’t like to visit Neukölln, the Turkish-Arab district in the southeastern part of the city: “I’m an anarchist. I think Middle Eastern immigration to Germany is good. But I lived through the second intifada, and Muslims scare me.”


‘Sinner’ singer given 39 lashes by rabbis



How to Kill Goyim and Influence People:
Palestinian Israeli member of Knesset Jamal Zehalka subsequently demanded that the Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein put Yosef on trial for incitement. "If, heaven forbid, a Muslim spiritual leader were to make anti-Jewish comments of this sort," Zehalka said, "he would be arrested immediately."


Hebron: Soldiers Practice Break and Enter



Obama Resists Pressure for Red Line on Iran's Nuclear Capability
Gates appears to have been trying to maneuver Obama into adopting a policy under which the United States would have a reason for threatening Iran unless it agreed to divest itself of its low enriched uranium stocks and end enrichment.


Losing a Mentor, Gaining an Opponent
In the coming years, he wants to see the Jewish population of the West Bank — which he always refers to by the biblical regions it covers, Judea and Samaria — swell to a million.


At Ground Zero, a Fight We’re All Losing
said Gingrich, “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.” (So now the state of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia becomes the standard against which we are urged to measure ourselves.)


The Israeli Right’s ‘Post-Nationalism’ Excuse
George Will, the conservative Washington Post columnist, was in the Israeli prime minister’s office a few weeks ago and came away with a fascinating new take on Israel’s image troubles.
George Will, a neocon. Whodda thunk it?


Yizkor for Jabotinsky: The Prophet Half-Heeded
At New York’s only memorial for him, an evening organized by Americans for a Safe Israel and held at Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue, the keynote speaker was Douglas Feith, a prominent neoconservative who was under secretary of defense for policy in George W. Bush’s administration. Early on in his talk, Feith highlighted this distinction about Jabotinsky. That's the same Douglas Feith that was making the case for war against Iraq. Read Whose War by Patrick J. Buchanan for more information


Anniversary of WTC Attack To Prompt Rallies Amid Holy Days
The rally will be held on the corner of Park Place and West Broadway, half a block from the proposed site of the Islamic community center and two blocks from Ground Zero. In addition to Wilders, the rally will feature a videotaped address by John Bolton, ambassador to the United Nations during the second Bush administration, and speeches by Republican political candidates and by a conservative radio host


New Goldstone Follow-Up Probe Will Hold Hamas Accountable for First Time
After the second follow-up, Human Rights Watch issued a statement saying that Israel’s military investigations have fallen “far short of addressing the widespread and serious allegations of unlawful conduct during the fighting.” But Hamas, it said, has “announced no serious investigations whatsoever.”

Now, the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, which provided the mandate for the Goldstone Report, is launching its own inquiry to judge for the first time the quality of the aforementioned investigations. And according to several human rights groups, it also will examine whether Hamas has scrutinized its own actions, as is frequently demanded of Israel....Israel has refused to participate in the Human Rights Council’s investigation, just as it refused the demands of the original Goldstone Commission. It has, however, been producing the reports that have been delivered to Ban and the G.A., detailing Israel’s own investigations into the 30 incidents described in Goldstone’s report.


FBI paid informant in Bronx synagogue bomb plot $97K, who provided terror suspects with fake bombs
Defense lawyers contend that without the informant - who they say entrapped the suspects - their bumbling clients would never have tried to blow up two synagogues in Riverdale and shoot down missiles.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/08/25/2010-08-25_fbi_paid_informant_in_bronx_synagogue_bomb_plot_97k_who_provided_terror_suspects.html#ixzz0ysf1kstr


Leaked CIA memo cites U.S. Jews among exporters of terrorism
"Some American Jews have supported and even engaged in violent acts against perceived enemies of Israel," the report reads. "In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American Jewish doctor from New York, emigrated to Israel, joined the extremist group Kach, and killed 29 Palestinians during their prayers in the mosque at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron which helped trigger a wave of bus bombings by Hamas in early 1995."


ISRAEL ORDERS MASSIVE MILITARY FUEL STOCKS FAR IN EXCESS OF THAT REQUIRED FOR NORMAL OPERATIONS
The only conclusion one can draw, if Israel is not planning to actually invade Iran, which, clearly, it could not, is that Israel is planning to use the gasoline and the diesel fuel for some other ground incursion – and that can only mean an invasion of Lebanon and possibly the Gaza and West Bank when an attack against Iran is launched.


Peres warns IAEA chief of Iran nuclear threat
Israel is also widely believed to have an arsenal of around 200 nuclear warheads – but as the country has not signed the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, the IAEA has no inspection rights in the country and has not been allowed access to Israel's main nuclear installation at Dimona.


West Bank Security Barrier Draws Artists and Advertisers



Lawsuit Accuses IRS of Screening Israel-Related Charities
A hawkish pro-Israel activist group has filed a lawsuit alleging that the Internal Revenue Service is impeding or denying applications for tax-exempt status from nonprofit organizations that oppose the Obama administration’s Israel policies. But experts in nonprofit tax law say that the allegations seem far-fetched


Israeli Police Ban Leftist Protests, Fearing Violence; O.K. Rightist Protests Despite Violence
In a separate development that I’m sure is totally unrelated, police in Jerusalem over the past year have arrested dozens of left-wing demonstrators protesting against Jewish settlers moving into the mostly-Arab Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, despite repeated court rulings that the arrests were an illegal violation of the demonstrators’ rights


First They Came for the Sharia Court. Then They Came for the Bet Din
Permitting people to settle their disputes in their own religious courts is not a “replacement” of American law, but a time-honored expression of religious freedom and accommodation.


Bollywood comes to Holy Land for film about Jesus

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