Last week, the IDF issued an unprecedented directive. All Israeli media outlets must obscure the faces of soldiers and commanders who fought in Operation Cast Lead. Henceforth, the identities of all IDF soldiers and officers who participated in the operation against the Hamas terror regime in Gaza are classified information.
The IDF acted as it did in an effort to protect Israeli soldiers and officers from possible prosecutions for alleged war crimes in Europe. The army's chief concern is England. In England, private citizens are allowed to file complaints against foreigners whom they claim committed war crimes. Based on these complaints, British courts can issue arrest warrants against such foreigners if they are found on British territory and force them to stand trial. Over the past few years, a number of active duty and retired IDF senior officers were forced to cancel visits to Britain after such complaints were filed against them in sympathetic local courts.
Following the IDF's move, on Sunday the government announced that Israel will provide legal assistance to any IDF veteran prosecuted abroad for actions he performed during his service in Gaza. The legal assistance will include representation, investigation of the allegations made against veterans, attempts to have the charges against them dismissed and defense at trials.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who brought the decision before the full cabinet, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and their colleagues all asserted that by committing the state to defending its warriors, they were fulfilling their sacred duty to protect Israel's protectors.
Unfortunately, both the cabinet decision itself and our leaders' statements missed the point.
LAST WEDNESDAY, an appellate court in Amsterdam ruled that the Dutch lawmaker and leader of the anti-jihadist Dutch Freedom Party Geert Wilders must stand trial for the alleged "crime" of inciting hatred against Muslims with his short film "Fitna," released last year.
In "Fitna," Wilders juxtaposes verses from the Koran with Islamic terror attacks, mosque sermons inciting believers to murder non-Muslims, and proclamations by Islamic clerics that Muslims must kill all the Jews, conquer the world and subjugate non-believers.
The second half of the 15-minute film is devoted to Holland. It highlights the massive immigration of Muslims to the country over the past 15 years, and calls by Islamic leaders in Holland to kill homosexuals, subjugate women, stone adulteresses, and take over the country. "Fitna" ends with a call for Muslims to expunge Koranic verses commanding them to conduct jihad from their belief system, and with a call for Dutchmen to defend their country, their culture and their civilization from the rising current of Islam in Europe.
All the material presented in "Fitna" is accurate. And it is also explosive. But it is hard to see how it could be illegal. By presenting the material in the way that he does, Wilders is not demonizing Muslims, he is challenging – indeed he is practically begging – his countrymen to engage in a debate about whether or not his dim assessment of Islam is correct.
Wilders has been living under 24-hour police protection since a Dutch jihadist murdered filmmaker Theo Van Gogh in 2004. Van Gogh was murdered after he released his short film "Submission," which described the misogyny of the Islamic world and the systematic terrorization of women in Islamic societies. Since then numerous Muslim clerics have issued religious judgments, or fatwas, calling for Wilders to be murdered.
Last month Wilders visited Israel and was the keynote speaker at a counter-jihad conference at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem sponsored by MK Dr. Aryeh Eldad. Speaking to a standing-room only crowd, and under heavy guard, Wilders argued that Israel is a frontline state in the global jihad. The war against Israel, he claimed has nothing to do with territory, and everything to do with ideology. Israel, as the forward outpost of Western civilization in the Islamic world, stands in the way of Islamic expansion. Consequently, he claimed, when Israel defends itself by fighting its enemies, it is also protecting Europe and the rest of the free world.
As he put it, "Thanks to Israeli parents who see their children go off to join the army and lie awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and have pleasant dreams, unaware of the dangers looming."
Unfortunately, the Dutch court's decision to prosecute Wilders for calling attention to the threat of jihad in Europe demonstrates that the Europeans aren't particularly grateful to their defenders. Indeed, they despise them. Films like "Fitna," and Israel's use of its military to defend its citizens from Islamic supremacists, serve to remind them of the growing threat they desperately seek to ignore. Consequently, Europeans embrace every opportunity to blame any messenger.
THE RIPPLE effects of Wilders' indictment were immediately evident. In England, the British Muslim community mobilized to prevent his film from being screened in public. "Fitna" was scheduled to be shown at the House of Lords on January 29. But last Friday, with the threat of mass Muslim riots hanging thickly in the air, the House of Lords announced that it was cancelling the event.
British Lord Nazir Ahmed called the decision to prevent the thought-provoking, factually accurate film from being shown, "a victory for the Muslim community."
WILDERS' INDICTMENT is a textbook example of blaming the victim. Wilders has been forced to live a miserable life for the past four years. He has no home. Security forces move him from place to place every single day. Since Van Gogh's murder, Wilders' entire life has become one long attempt to dodge the bullet permanently pointed at his head by radicalized Muslims in Holland and throughout the world. These would-be killers wish to see him dead not to avenge any violence Wilders committed, but rather, they believe he must die for doing nothing more than talking about Islam and how he interprets its message and meaning.
Needless to say, the Dutch Muslims Wilders caught on tape in Fitna calling for an overthrow of the Dutch constitutional order and threatening homosexuals have not been arrested for inciting hatred. Likewise, Lord Ahmed, who blocked "Fitna's" screening in the British Parliament was made a British peer after supporting the late Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 death sentence against British novelist Salman Rushdie.
AND THAT'S the thing of it. Increasingly, throughout Europe, those who point out the dangers of radical Islam are hounded – first by Muslims – and then by legal authorities. In contrast, those who seek to intimidate and physically silence them are embraced by the states of Europe as legitimate leaders of their Muslim communities.
This dismal state of affairs, where jihadists are supported and their victims are oppressed, is true not only of people like Wilders who actively fight radical Islam's encroachment on European freedom. It is also the case for people who are victimized solely on the basis of their ethnic identity.
At the same time Wilders and people like him are forced into hiding, Jews throughout Europe find themselves assaulted and under siege not because of anything they have done, but because they are Jews.
Incidents of anti-Semitic violence in Europe reached post-Holocaust record highs over the past month. Jewish children have been violently attacked in France, barred from schools in Denmark, and harassed in England, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland and Germany just for being Jews.
In Britain, Muslims have now taken to entering into Jewish-owned businesses and kosher restaurants to threaten the owners and patrons – just because they are Jewish. Synagogues have been firebombed and defaced. Calls have been issue
d in the US Muslim community on the Internet for Muslims in America to similarly intimidate Jews by entering into synagogues during prayer services and condemn worshippers for supporting Israel.
Jewish men have been brutalized by Muslim gangs in Britain and viciously stabbed in France, just because they are Jewish. In Sweden, pro-Israel demonstrators were attacked with stones by Muslims this week. Even in the US, anti-Semitic violence and intimidation has reached levels never seen before. And in almost all cases of anti-Semitic violence throughout what is commonly referred to as the free world, the perpetrators of the violence and intimidation are Muslims. They attack with the full backing of non-Muslim multiculturalists as well as neo-Nazis. The two groups, which are usually assumed to be at loggerheads, apparently have no problem converging on the issue of hating Jews.
And in almost all cases of anti-Semitic violence, the Islamic identity of the attackers has been de-emphasized or obscured by the media and by politicians, or used as justification for their crimes. In France, for instance, from the way government officials talk it, would be reasonable to assume that a dozen Muslim teenagers were provoked to viciously beat a ten-year-old Jewish girl by the IDF's operation against Hamas in Gaza.
HERE THEN, we arrive at the point that the cabinet missed on Sunday when it passed its decision to commit the government to providing legal assistance to any IDF veteran who runs afoul of European legal authorities during vacations in London and Brussels and Oslo and Stockholm. The point that was missed is that in the event that IDF veterans are charged with war crimes, even the best attorneys will be of little use. These veterans will not be defendants at legitimate trials. They will be the victims of politically motivated show-trials.
In an interview with Ha'aretz on Friday, Wilders claimed rightly that the Dutch court's decision to prosecute him was not a legal decision but a political one. And if he is convicted, his conviction won't be based on evidence. It will be based on the desire of the Dutch multiculturalists to make an example of him to appease the radical Muslims who seek his death, and intimidate any would-be disciples into keeping their mouths shut.
So too, if IDF veterans are indicted for war crimes, they won't be prosecuted based on facts. They will be persecuted to advance the prosecutors' and judges' goal of appeasing their homegrown radical Muslims who seek the destruction of Israel and who violently attack anyone perceived as supporting Israel.
Given this bleak reality, the steps that Israel must take to defend its citizens are not legal but diplomatic. Israel should announce travel advisories against all states that enable the conduct of show trials against its citizens. And it should threaten to cut off diplomatic ties with any country that seeks to persecute Israeli soldiers. Only by recognizing and pointing out what is really going on will Israel have any chance of protecting those who defend our freedom from Europeans who have decided to surrender to Islamic intimidation rather than protect their own liberty.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
The reason that many European leaders are appeasing Islamists is because they’re scared to death of being brutally murdered by jihadists. That explains why a brave Dutchman like Mr. Geert Wilders is persecuted for defending Western Civilization. Germany, France, Holland, and England have restive Islamists who want to takeover those countries. Israel should boycott nations who are not challenging Anti-Semitic violence. Islamists cynically used the Gaza War as a platform to attack Jews with impunity. As a result, there are few countries outside of Israel that are safe for Jews.
Too bad there isn’t a way for Israel and Israeli businesses to withold Israeli-developed technologies from these counties.
I find it no surprise that the more Israel and the West go out of their way to appease Islam ,the more monstrous and dangerous it becomes against the appeasers.
I’ve always said that when God jusges a nation He first makes her leaders stupid.
We’ve passed stupid.
The reality is that the west is finished ,morally bankrupt and has sown the seeds of it’s own destruction.
I see an example of this in Israel’s history.
When Israel crossed the ‘divine line’the God of Israel raised up a powerful King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to overun and defeat Israel sending the survivors into the 70 year captivity to get their act together and return a changed God fearing people.
A similar but more crushing end is under way with the west.
We don’t have a Covenant with God like Israel does and so we’re finished.
It’s God’s inevitable judgmet on the godless,immoral and wicked west.
Israel will be saved from complete destruction but will pay a heavy price for hitching her hope wagon to the perverted west instead of looking to God alone.
It becomes more evident by the day that Israel’s survival is based on rejecting the appeasment model of the West towards Islam and growing sharper and larger teeth to deal with the Islamic world because appeasment has only had the opposite effect.
How different a place Israel would be today if Moshe Dayan had blown up the Dome of the Rock instead of returning it to the cult of death.
All your kind efforts have been returned in blood and death and it’s never going to change.
Israel has been guilty of enabling and encouraging her enemy for too long.
The land for peace plan has been Israel’s greatest disaster and folly and yet Livni keeps singing the same song along with Barak and Netanyahu.
How foolish to trust America or her worthless leaders.
Today America protects,imports and sends out Islamic jihadists.
They have special status in America now.The FBI and Homeland security are have become blind and stupid and enable the terrorists because of their incompetence and political correctness.
They use our laws to destroy us.
We’re doomed here in the U.S. the same way Israel was when King Nebuchadnezzar paid a visit to Jerusalem.
al-Shabab,Minneapolis
The imam says he learned the FBI had placed him on the no-fly list when police at the Minneapolis airport prevented him from traveling to Saudi Arabia in November for the hajj. About the same time, FBI agents began coordinating the return to Minnesota of the remains of Shirwa Ahmed, the young man who blew himself up in Somalia a month earlier. His family buried him at a cemetery in Burnsville, south of Minneapolis. As for Burhan Hassan, his uncle Bihi asks, “How does a child who’s been in the U.S. since he was 4 or 5 become convinced to leave his parents and go to war in Somalia?” A number of families across Minneapolis are wondering the same thing.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/181408
Caroline, the world today is coming apart at the seams right before our very eyes.
You are right on about Israel protecting the rest of the West. How grateful are we? Did you notice the support of the U.S. Government along with our European allies during Israel’s defense against Hamas in the Gaza?
Marc is right also, European leader are fearful of the Islamic jihadist, shame on them.
On top of that America is stuck with a liberal president and congress. Now is not the time for a timid government.
Listen I don’t want to be a repeater. My oldest son would say “don’t repeat it then”.
However, I am compelled to do so.
The message is “Every Jew must be an Israeli” and I should include, “Every American likewise must be an Israeli”.
Solidarity is the goal. We have to come together, Americans and Israelis, Christians and Jews, standing together putting an end to this hatred.
Time to begin is now.
” And it should threaten to cut off diplomatic ties with any country that seeks to persecute Israeli soldiers.”
Not a good idea. Those countries have quite a few Jews in them who need some kind of diplomatic representation. I can understand your anger, Caroline, but this kind of extreme reaction would not be helpful.
I think legal challenges need to be offensively mounted against radical Islamists instead of playing defense to the charges being brought against us by them. The best defense is an offense. Unfortunately, some Israelis would do better not to travel in this long war against Islam. Meanwhile Jewish organizations allied with citizens in Western countries ought to legally attack any and all Islamic organizations that incite violence and terrorism against Western freedoms and countries or support it through ostensible charities.
Prof. Glick,
what Israel should do, is to drop a nuke on Tehran. That would make everybody quiet.
To kill the snake you don’t want to cut the tail. You want to cut the head.
Besides, if the Jews don’t do it, sooner or later the Christians will. Slowly but surely we are getting there. It is only a matter of time.
Well, Caroline…now that the lawyers are involved, we really are doomed.
Back in 2008 Netenyahu remarked that it was 1938. Your article made me realize that we’ve now entered 1939.
My father killed a lot of Germans in WWII. I guess it’s good that he passed away several years ago. No doubt the EU will be looking into past “war crimes” in Normandy and Bastogne. I suppose a decorations for valor will probably be evidence for an indictment.
Shame on the UK and Europe. Shame on the USA for electing Obama.
If I were you Caroline, I’d consider moving to Texas.
Geert Wilders will stand out as the paragon example that highlights the Islamic hypocrisy and the self contradictory nature of leftist human rights people, who support the islamic jihad supported by the oppression theories.
Consider any place in this world and the odds are around 70% that the place is either in the process of destruction by the islamists or that in the near future it is going to be. Around the world at this current moment, it is not exaggerating to say that 80% – 90% of the offenses on the global civilizations (though diverse yet peaceful). Historically cummulated atrocities count of these islamists would on any day break the records that were set by Hitler or Stalin.
And yet the preacher or the preached is at trial, either in a real court of justice or in the internal courts of individual conscience or at the debating tables where such demonic philosophies and ideologies need to be brought and sorted out.
The perils of indifference is too much in this case.
There is no reason for Israel to be seriously worried about the effete and cowardly Europeans who are scared of their own shadows. Leave the pandering to the European fops to Obama. This is the probably the only thing he is good at.
In the end, Israel can do anything it sees fit to do to protect itself in the Mideast and no country will interfere.
I suspect that the Americas and Israel will be the last bastion of our civilization..Europe is giving up…Geert Wilders should decamp to the New World, as Hirshi Ali did
I woke up …to find it’s the 1930’s all over again.
The US continues to push the same failed land for peace agenda with a repeat preformance of high power lawyer for Dubai, Mitchell who failed the last time he was here.
It’s not about Jewish settlments ,it’s about Arab intolerance of non-moslems.
It’s all about stealing land from Israel and the Gaza retreat by Israel in 2005 proved the Arabs do not want peace with Israel.
Whatever Israel does for any peace is not good enough for those who openly call for Israel’s complete destruction.
There really is nothing to talk about unless it’s to entrap Israel.
They sure have been stupid in falling for this phony peace scam.
I wonder if they have wised up since the last no peace hustler Mitchell’s visit ?
The more the US does the worse it gets for Israel.
The mad moslems are not interested in peace or another Islamic state ,they already have 22 of them.
The problem which the media and corrupt western politicians who pander to the intolerant despots of the Arab street is that they do not want non-Moslem Israel in their neighborhood under any circumstances and this is why the 2 state final solution has failure written all over it.
The insecure Moslems are troubled because their global jihadist crusade for allah is hindered by the presence of a non Islamic state in what was once the House of Islam. Their failue to defeat ISRAEL after so many wars calls Isalm’s veracity into question,and thats what all this is about.
Saving Arab face and this is why the West ,especially the U.S. always restrtain Israel from a crushing victory over Hizbollah or Hamas.
Israel has to break free from the US leash and lap dog leaders like Barak,Livni and Olmert.
Obama’s betrayal of Israel will only lead to even greater war in the Middle East because Israel is not going down under the Trojan Horse Road Map which is nothing but Western appeasment of the Islamic world at Israel’s expense.
Payback is hell.
God will repay our dividing of Israel and our global export of decadence and debauchery one hundred fold and we will not survive,Israel will.The time for aliyah will close for American Jews as it did with Jews in Germany.
Please add that Wilders has called for the Koran to be outlawed.
I support his free speech rights, and hope he will see that calling for banning books is counter productive to his goals.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran live by pure consumption of life, wealth, and goodness – a black hole, that is so strongly attractive that not even light can escape if it comes into contact with its ‘Event Horizon’ ( a cone that reaches out like a reverse tornado and sucks in everything …. but gives off a beacon of twin energies, one that is allowed to escape, so called Hawking Energy.
Once thought to exist only at the hub of galaxies, black holes the size of 1000 suns are now to be created within another big force, the LHC, no, not a branch of the Latter day Saints (LDS), but the Large Hadron Collider, now being repaired for $21 million based in Berne, Switzerland. The miles of electromagnetic rings bring particles of energy together with such force that a ‘Singularity’ shall be created, which now some scientists think may not become large enough to continue to exist and thereby existing, it exists from a point to consume the entire earth and beyond, reducing it to the size of a small house… pufff – goodbye world.
And so too Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Quida, Fatah and all the others who thrive on anothers’ destruction and consuming the wealth of those who are afraid of or who would appease those hate-mongers.
Now comes the LHC, and the article where scientists think they have the math, now that shows the size of the black hole will not be large enough to grow uncontrollably.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0901.2948v1
What concerns me is that how could any scientist want to create a Frankenstein (really worse) without having any way to stop it. So to the monsters Hamas, etc.
What seems to be certain is that if it is small enough it cannot live long enough to prevent its decay.
The question: What is that $21 million repair about when they started it up in late Fall. Did they create a black hole that succeeded in devouring part of the machine itself.
My idea is to disrupt the Event Horizon, to keep it from absorbing matter, light and goodness.
So too with Hamas, a perpendicular force against the cone of the Horizon might work. Tunnels run horizontal ….. bombs act vertically … zam; no more weapons to the Beasts. So keep up the bombing of access to weapons.
But this, too, is theoretical; when can you be sure that the Hamas Beasts are small enough to implode.
Cut off all funding of any food to anyone who remains supporting Hamas and the Beasts; let them feed them.
Also if anyone from Israel is sued for war crimes, Counter sue… don’t defend … because in American law, anyway a Counter Suit must be satisfied before an ordinary suit can proceed. Those who would bring criminal charges are co-conspirators to genocide …. the Muslim Brotherhood as the progenitor of all these multiple head of snakes are large and everywhere. They work best in darkness, where they can threaten and suck up live and wealth… Expose them.
And pray that the LHC will not consume the world when it starts this next summer.
Also check out the lawsuit of John Loftus against the Saudis http://www.john-loftus.com/press_release.asp
And the real story of the WMD in Iraq. These need to get out there …. use whatever forces are against Israel to boomarang back at them.
Yea, and anyone who has figured out how to stop an accretioning Black Hole, maybe Caroline would post the solution.
The new America which Israel looks to.
The CIA’s station chief at its sensitive post in Algeria is under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department for allegedly raping at least two Muslim women who claim he laced their drinks with a knock-out drug, U.S. law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
Officials say the 41-year old CIA officer, a convert to Islam,
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=6750266&page=1
Caroline Pres. Obama sent G. Mitchell to the ME to listen.
Be sure to tell him that the US Government should not undertake direct talks with Iran.
Their behavior does not warrant any direct talks, besides they are not interested in listening anyhow. Right about now they feel that the US has a weak and timid administration in power and they have nothing to be concerned about.
Also be sure to tell G. Mitchell to preach to the Palestinians and Hamas and whom ever.
Israel is not going to listen to any road maps for peace and Israel will take appropriate action it deems necessary to defend against any and all aggressors.
In addition remind him that Israel is the only true democracy in the ME and deserves to be treated as such with full and unconditional support. Sometimes people in Washington tend to forget this.
The intolerance of many Muslims and the terrorism perpetrated by the militant jihadists should be described in very accurate terms. Foremost, they are Muslims who believe the Qur’an is “eternal and immutable”; therefore, the scripture must be followed without question including the more violent passages that are associated with Mohammad’s revelations in Medina. Contrary to myth, Islam is not a religion of peace and the actions of the terrorists and rioters prove it.
These people are not ‘radical’ Muslims or extreme or fundamentalist. Rather, they follow the directives mandated by the Qur’an including jihad, sharia and deprivation of all basic human rights.
Labels are important and correctly identifying the enemy will help us win this war of ideas.
The intolerance of many Muslims and the terrorism perpetrated by the militant jihadists should be described in very accurate terms. Foremost, they are Muslims who believe the Qur’an is “eternal and immutable”; therefore, the scripture must be followed without question including the more violent passages that are associated with Mohammad’s revelations in Medina. Contrary to myth, Islam is not a religion of peace and the actions of the terrorists and rioters prove it.
These people are not ‘radical’ Muslims or extreme or fundamentalist. Rather, they follow the directives mandated by the Qur’an including jihad, sharia and deprivation of all basic human rights.
Labels are important and correctly identifying the enemy will help us win this war of ideas.
Haaretz and other ultraleftists are collaborating with the IDF soldiers hunting
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1059758.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1060131.html
via:muqata.blogspot.com
Wilders’ call for outlawing the Koran is probably in line with the general rules of censorship that apply in the Netherlands and most countries. A book like the Koran, which is full of incitements to hate and kill non-believers, particularly Jews and Christians, and that praises a mass murderer, rapist, pedophile would-be prophet as an idol to emulate, might well qualify for a ban, just as Hitler’s Mein Kampf might qualify. The real issue is however not the ban of the book but the ban of any cult based on this book, or, as a first step, the acceptance that such a cult is not a religiion in the sense of the constitutional prerogatives that religions enjoy.
The indictment of Wilder has its parallel in a condemnation of MP Susanne Winter in Austria to pay a fine of 24000 eur for having said, in an incendiary election campaign context, that Mohammed, by today’s standards, would be considered guilty of child molestation (for consummating the marriage with Aisha at her age of 9).
Even worse, there are legislative projects under way, both at the EU and the UN level, for establishing harsher bans on “offense” of religious feelings. These laws would make it ever more urgent to state that Islam does not qualify as a “religion” in the sense of the law, but the trouble is that these laws are designed as means of curtailing free speech in favor of Islam (for the purpose of appeasing rioting islamist immigrant groups) in the first place.
Is’nt diversity great! All you religious kooks know how to f**k things up. Outrageous cencorship by the idf on media outlets. Following the story of the Gaza incursion makes me feel like the idf are no better than nazi stormtroopers. Reports of slaughtering all the animals at the Gaza zoo, killing children in front of their parents, crushing baby’s skull with their boots and remarking that will be one less terrorist we will have to deal with in 18 years! Barbaric savagery! Jewish settlements in Gaza take up 25% of Gaza leaving the remaining 75% of the territory to the Palestinians. Israel has stolen the land from the Palestinians who are now subjects in the Israeli controlled colonies of the Gaza and West Bank. Idf caused over 2 billion dollars in damage to the Gaza strip and now it looks like the americans will have to rebuild there too! If you want to know why Israel has had thousands of rockets launched at them, it is because of racist,apartheid and facist policies by the Israeli government to subjugate the indigenous population of the former Palestine. US taxpayers send plenty of money and supplies advanced weaponary to Israel. What does Israel do with the with these resources? Well, they build walls to separate the Israeli’s from the palestinian outcasts,build new settlements on palestinian land and cut resources off to the palestinians. I read that the annual income in the Gaza strip is $600 us dollars per year. Leading up to the Gaza invasion, Israel cut the Gaza off from receiving supplies of fuel,food and lifes basics trying to strangle the Gazan’s into submission. Israel was the one to break the cease fire and when Israel invades it launched numerous strikes with advanced fighter jets against a mostly civilian population killing many civilians and children. Idf used phosphorus bombs,depleted uranium munitions, and fleschettes in their attacks. After bombing the hell out of Gaza and letting out the Israeli national bloodlust – [yes, we have tough leaders who make the tough decisions!],Israel now has to manage the blowback caused by the Gaza incursion. As an observer from another continent, I was truly amazed at the amount and intesity of propaganda put out not only by Israeli governtment and media but also by the US media in support of the Gaza incursion. Also interesting was the censorship of any dissent. It was reported recently by a blogger in the US who had obtained voliminous amounts of documents from an Israeli leaker. The documents purport to show how Israel kicked money back to US politicians in exchange for continued support of both financial and policy of Israel. These documents also purport to show how deposits were made to the politicians into offshore bank accounts. The documents also purport to list the actual financial transactions, with all details including source, destination, date and time. Could this just be an internet hoax or is this indeed fact? Only time will tell, My point in telling you this is because as an american I am deeply trouble by the actions of our supposed friends in the state of Israel. When I read that the Aipac lobby is the strongest lobby in Washington and basically “controls” politicians with the implied and factual threat of “If you do not support Israel and everything we demand – well, you just might have a hard time getting elected/re-elected!” The state of Israel has many influential friends in the US, it also is expert in manipulating mass media in this country with the help of there special friends in corporate media.
When I hear that Israel wants to prevent Iran from obtaining nuke weapons by denying them the ability to pursue peaceful nuke technology, how is it that Saudi Arabia and other gulf states have been provided peaceful nuke technology under the Bush administration. This is going to be unpopular but I believe Iran indeed has evry right to pursue this science as there is NO evidence that the country is even striving to build nuke weapons. I am against the weapons because of the instaneous and total destruction they cause. Follwing the news and the blogs, it was apparent that Israel was pushing real hard in Washington DC with the Bush administration, the State department and the military and intelligence agencies to back Israel up on a preemptive strike of Iran! By attacking Iran, the US would have been drawn into a third front, a third war if you will with the use of nuclear weapons against the Iranians extremely likely. Thank God, cooler heads prevailed and an Israeli led strike against Iran was averted!
In closing,I believe Israel needs to take action to decide what it is going to do about the Palestinian situation. My advice would be to quit stealing their land for Jewish {religious}settlements and help the Palestinians obtain the same social welfare benefits as Israel provides its’ own citizens. By comi9ng up with a long term plan to achieve this and implementing it no matter what the sacrifice, is only the first step in bringing peace to a region where religious zealotry is the order of the day. Furthermore, I believe that Israelis and jew everywhere should be ashamed at the action of the right wing militarist who conducted these operations. War should only be a last resort and to attack a defenseless population and murder civilians is abhorant and appalling. This action in Gaza only incites the Arab populations in the region and does nothing to squash the bitter feeling against jews and Israel, not only by the Gazan’s,Palestinians,Muslims but in the rest of the world. There has to be a better way and one must be found. I am fearful though that the probale election of Benjamin Netanyahu will only lead to more military action and the defacto creation of a facist state. These are my thoughts about this situation and while you may not agre, I thank you for the opportunity to express my opinion on a situation that is very troubling to me.