1.  The Definition of Israel Apartheid Week:

Israel Apartheid Week is the week in which the Western campus Hitlerjugend demonstrate against and call for the destruction of the only Middle East country that is NOT an apartheid regime!

2.  http://www.shalomlife.com/eng/8379/I%27d_do_this_Again_in_a_New_York_Minute/

"I'd do this Again in a New York Minute"

By: DAN VERBIN  
Published: March 17th 2010

After his motion denouncing Israeli Apartheid Week was unanimously passed by the Ontario Legislature, Thornhill Progressive Conservative MPP Peter Shurman expected that haters and anti-Semites might crawl out of the woodwork.

What he did not expect was to be on the receiving end of the biggest barrage of hate he has so far received in his more than two years in office.  Responses after the February 25 voice vote that condemned Israeli Apartheid Week, a controversial two-week long campus event that is highly critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, have been mostly negative.

And while some of the correspondence has been of a supportive nature, a large number of the emails been hateful and anti-Semitic. Besides receiving multiple form letters from interest groups supporting Israeli Apartheid Week, Sherman has been addressed as the "Minister of Kikes", "The Nazi" and called other terms using "four-letter language" that he said he would rather not repeat.

With the Legislature's unanimous denouncement of Israeli Apartheid Week featured in US, Europe, and Middle Eastern media and on many blogs, hate mail has come from all over the world, something that Shurman called "unexpected"  – discussion of his resolution lasted only "twelve little minutes."

"It's remarkable," Shurman told Shalom Life. He said that obscure blogs he has never heard of before are "calling me every name under the sun."

Shurman, a former CFRB talk radio host, said that the intent behind his motion was to challenge the perception that Israeli Apartheid Week, on its sixth year, is an intelligent discussion. He said that the event centres on a false premise – that Israel is an Apartheid state – in an attempt to stifle free discussion of the Middle East.

"The premise of the resolution was that your freedom of speech can never trump mine. That's the essence of our country." he said. "When you say Israeli Apartheid Week, you curtail my ability to speak to that because you've already decided. That's what (my resolution) was talking about. I could not debate the peace process in 12 minutes. I think I successfully debated an issue that effects publicly funded campuses in Ontario."

He said that security at Queen's Park has vetted the emails to make sure that he is not in danger.

"I've received support from all my colleagues in the PC caucus, including today," he said, noting that the rest of the Legislature is also supportive of him.

Shurman is not the only Ontario MPP experiencing a hateful reaction to the Legislature's vote. Several Liberal MPPS have also received hate emails.

 Shurman noted that he is especially concerned about the reaction that MPP Cheri DiNovo (Parkdale-High Park) has received after she spoke in favour of his resolution in the Legislature. While Shurman has so far not received any death threats, the NDP MPP who is out of the country this week has received numerous threats, describing the backlash in a Toronto Star interview as "unbearable."

"The fact that she's the one who's apparently getting the death threats speaks to people who feel that her NDP affiliation has somehow been betrayed by the positions she took. I think nothing could be further from the truth," said Shurman.

DiNovo, a United Church Minister, was accused on Facebook of brandishing the "Zionist Playbook." A discussion on website rabble.ca wondered if the MPP had "self-destructed" or "gone over the deep end."

"DiNovo's debate to the resolution was from all points of view quite benign," Shurman said. "What she talked about was trying to find a way for us all to live in peace with each other even though we have opposing views. She tried to address the central theme of the resolution which was if we sit down and talk about our differences in a respectful way then maybe we can find some resolutions."

Shurman said that the volume of hate he has received is by far the biggest since he was elected, even outnumbering the emails he received after putting forward a resolution to end the contentious strike at York University a year and a half ago.

Given that many of the emails he has received contain "appalling" hate speech, Shurman refuses to back down. He would not hesitate to put forward a similar resolution next year.

"I'd do it again in a New York minute," he said. "It was time that somebody shoved this stuff down the throats of the haters and I'm happy to have been an instrument of that."

See also http://www.shalomlife.com/eng/8459/US_Department_of_Justice_Asked_to_Look_into_Peace_Now/

3.  http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3864592,00.html

The Gaza siege myth

Amid 'siege' claims, Gaza enjoying more aid than quake-ravaged Haiti
Jacob Shrybman

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is set to arrive in Israel to visit the Gaza Strip amidst demands to end a so-called siege on the terrorist-controlled territory. Yet one has to ask what siege, or blockade, he is referring to, with 738,576 tons of humanitarian aid being transferred into the Gaza Strip in 2009.

Moreover, the UN has provided $200 million in Gaza Strip aid following a military operation that reportedly claimed 1,300 fatalities amongst a population of less than 1.5 million – meanwhile, notwithstanding plans to raise more funds, it has provided only $10 million to natural disaster victims in Haiti as of the end of January, an earthquake that claimed the lives of over 230,000 people and affected over 3 million. Of course, that is without mentioning that Haitians have not been attacking an innocent nearby civilian population for a near decade.

The international community has bought into a bold-faced lie about an Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip while ignoring the facts on the ground. International humanitarian aid has been flowing rapidly into the Gaza Strip for years and in no way stopped after Operation Cast Lead, as 30,576 aid trucks entered the territory in 2009. In 2009, 4,883 tons of medical equipment entered the Gaza Strip. Just last month, a new CAT scan machine was brought into the Strip.

The world's largest prison?

The Gaza Strip has also been referred to as "the world's largest prison", implying that residents are not being able to exit the territory. Yet in 2009, 10,544 patients and their companions left the Gaza Strip for medical treatment in Israel, and last week alone nearly 500 patients and companions from Gaza entered Israel for treatment.

Meanwhile, US government officials such as Congressmen Keith Ellison and Brian Baird, both of which visited Sderot with the Sderot Media Center, have promoted the idea of a "Gaza Siege." They must be ignoring the fact that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged $900 million in aid to be sent to the Gaza Strip following Operation Cast Lead. A USAID and DOD report calculating the aid sent to the quake-raved Haiti noted that, as of last month, all US government programs provided just over $700 million in aid, nearly $200 million less than to the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip.

Over a year has passed since Operation Cast Lead and the international community is still buying into the lie about a "Gaza Siege." Meanwhile, the Sderot Media Center has reported that over 320 rockets and mortars have hit Israel in that same year. Indeed, Ban Ki-moon should be visiting Kibbutz Nirim to see where a rocket destroyed a building just last week, instead of helping promote a myth by visiting the Gaza Strip.

 Jacob Shrybman is the Assistant Director of the Sderot Media Center, www.SderotMedia.org.il

4.  Isracampus Translation:  The following Op-Ed page by Shlomo Sand appeared in YNET (the web site of Yediot Ahronot) in Hebrew on Feb 24, 2010 at  http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3853788,00.html

The Memorial Agent versus the Essence of our Existence

By Shlomo Sand

Netanyahu could have invested millions to fund the dwindling study of history in the school system and universities.  However, piles of stones have always been more useful for manufacturing and reproducing rigid, impervious national memory.

****

In 1996, Binyamin Netanyahu announced the opening of the Western Wall Tunnel in the Moslem Quarter of the Old City, explaining that Israelis visiting the site would bring us closer in touch with the "essence of our existence".

In the wake of the riots that erupted from this foolhardy political move, more than 70 Palestinians and 17 IDF soldiers were killed.  They were forgettable victims who were simply sacrificed, and not for the first time, upon the altar of a mythological fuzzy past. Herod the Edomite Jew, who initiated the building of the Western Wall at a cruel and bloody price, would  most likely be amused at the long-term consequences of his historical undertaking.

Jump forward to the year 2010, when Israel's Prime Minister has decided to include the Patriarchs Tomb and Rachel's Tomb in the list of National Heritage sites, to be preserved lest we forget the nation's history.  Unfortunately, Netanyahu did not read the latest archeological studies claiming that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, those famous camel riders who "lived and roamed" according to the finest Biblical fantasies, during a period where camels were still undomesticated.

In addition, one must bear in mind that our Prime Minister is the son of a historian, who was unfairly turned away from academia in Israel and forced to wander foreign lands, together with his family.  Therefore it is not surprising that Netanyahu has suddenly decided to budget NIS 500,000,000 for the preservation of heritage sites that belong to the past. True, he could have handed over the funds instead to the state educational system or to the universities and fund the dwindling study of history.  However, piles of stones have always been more useful for manufacturing and reproducing rigid, impervious national memory.

Only sound and light shows projected on to the silent stone walls can withstand the outburst of cultural globalization and the deluge of internet sites flooding young minds, making them more and more cosmopolitan.

Beyond the ideological aspect, there is also a political problem regarding the heritage sites that have been added to Netanyahu's list.  The Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb are not with the jurisdiction of the State of Israel, but rather that of the Palestinian Authority.   After all, the government of Israel continues to ladle out money to Israeli settlers who have abandoned their own state in order to settle in an area that Israel stubbornly refuses to take under its sovereignty.  So why not also fund memorial sites that are not part of its territory?

No need to worry, the son of the national historian winks at us from the pinnacle of his historian heights.  Some still have not grasped that all the peace prattle and talk of recognition of a Palestinian State were meant simply to please the ear of some naive American president.  The Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem,  and for that matter also, Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, will all remain sites under the control of a strong Israel.  It is true that they interfere a bit with Israel trying to set up the formation of a second Indian-like Reservation, in addition to the one in Gaza.

However, an enormous reshuffling perhaps in the shape of an all-out war with Iran might open up alternative demographic options, making way for the annexation of the precious memorial heritage sites that preserve the eternal nation.

In the framework of the governmental declarations it has also been stated that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the "Fathers of the Nation."   And here I thought that they were really Theodore Herzl, Max Nordau or Vladimir Jabotinsky.  Thank Heavens that I was mistaken; otherwise Netanyahu would declare the casino house where the first Zionist Congress took place in Basel as a heritage site and would propose investing additional millions for its preservation.  For it was there that Herzl gambled, and later claimed the Jewish State was founded.  It seems more and more that it was indeed a fateful gamble.

The Grand Marching Song of the Anti-Zionist Left

By Steven Plaut

We are progressive, caring, socially advanced, egalitarian and freedom-loving Anti-Zionists. Here we present to you our Grand Marching Song. Set to John Philip Sousa. All together:

We believe in enlightened government and progress.

And that is why we support Arab fascism.

We believe in peace.

And that is why we support all military aggression against Israel.

We believe in democracy.

And that is why we believe that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that must be destroyed.

We believe in freedom.

And that is why we support Syria and Iran, and of course the Hamas.

We believe in the freedom of speech and of the press.

And that is why we support the Palestinian Authority.

We believe in self-determination and self-definition for all.

But not for Jews.

We oppose violence.

And that is why we support Palestinian terror.

We believe in human dignity.

And that is why we applaud when Arabs blow up Jewish women and children.

We believe in human rights.

And for this reason we support Arab atrocities.

We believe in fraternity and the brotherhood of nations.

Which is why Israel must be de-Zionized and converted into a clone of Rwanda.

We believe in voting.

Which is why we applaud Libya, Sudan, Iran, and Syria and demand that Israel be destroyed.

We believe in freedom of movement.

Except for Jews.

We favor equality.

As in Syria, Iran and Libya.

We favor minority rights.

But not for Jews, Kurds, Southern Sudanese, Copts or any other politically incorrect groups.

We believe in freedom.

But do not mind that slavery still exists in Sudan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere among Arabs.

We believe in a free press.

And so we support censorship by the PLO and Hamas.

We believe in freedom to practice religion.

But only for Moslems.

We believe in affirmative action preferences for those who suffered from past discrimination.

 But not for Jews.

We believe in progress and enlightenment.

And so we support Jihad and pogroms.

We believe in egalitarianism.

And so we support demands for ethnic cleansing of the Middle East to drive out the Jews.

We love children and living things.

And this is why we applaud suicide bombers.

We hate it when people blame the victims.

Which is why all terrorism is the Jews' fault.

We believe in education.

As long as we never have to read any books.

We believe in multiculturalism.

As long as no one ever has to learn respect for the Jews or for the West or for Amerika.

We believe in progress.

And so we celebrate barbarism and savagery.

We believe in progress.

As long as Arab countries never are asked to progress beyond the 12th century.

We believe in democracy.

But not for Arabs.

We believe in prosperity.

And that is why we support Arab feudalism and kleptocracy.

We believe in equal citizenship.

Just as long as Israel never conscripts its Arabs.

We believe in freedom of expression.

Which is why people who do not agree with us must be censored.

We believe the human rights of Arabs must be protected.

But not in Arab countries.

We are upset by illiteracy.

And that is why we practice it.

We believe in women's equality,

But not among Arabs.

We oppose torture,

Except when it is by the Palestinian Authority or similar progressive Arab force.

WHO US? ANTI-SEMITES? US?

by Steven Plaut

We have nothing against Jews as such. We just hate Zionism and Zionists. We think Israel does not have a right to exist. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such. Heavens to Mergatroyd. Marx Forbid. We are humanists. Progressives. Peace lovers.

Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews. Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism and Israeli policies. The two have nothing to do with one another. Venus and Mars. Night and day.

Trust us.

Sure, we think the only country on the earth that must be annihilated is Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Sure, we think that the only children on earth whose being blown up is okay if it serves a good cause are Jewish children. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

Sure, we think that if Palestinians have legitimate grievances this entitles them to mass murder Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such. Naturally, we think that the only people on earth who should never be allowed to exercise the right of self-defense are the Jews. Jews should only resolve the aggression against them through capitulation, never through self-defense. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We only denounce racist apartheid in the one country in the Middle East that is not a racist apartheid country. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We refuse to acknowledge the Jews as a people, and think they are only a religion. We do not have an answer to how people who do not practice the Jewish religion can still be regarded as Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think that all peoples have the right to self-determination, except Jews, and including even the make-pretend "Palestinian people". But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We hate it when people blame the victims, except of course when people blame the Jews for the jihads and terrorist campaigns against them. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think the only country in the Middle East that is a fascist anti-democratic one is the one that has free elections. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We demand that the only country in the Middle East with free speech, free press or free courts be destroyed. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We oppose military aggression, except when it is directed at Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We really understand suicide bombers who murder bus loads of Jewish children and we insist that their demands be met in full. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We do not think that Jews have any human rights that need to be respected, and especially not the right to ride a bus without being murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

There are Jewish, leftist anti-Zionists and we consider this proof that anti-Zionists could not possibly be anti-Semitic; not even the ones who cheer when Jews are mass murdered. These are the only Jews we think need be acknowledged or respected. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.. We think the only conflict on earth that must be solved through dismembering one of the parties to that conflict is the one involving Israel. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We do not think murder proves how righteous and just the cause of the murderer is, except when it comes to murderers of Jews. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We do not think the Jews are entitled to their own state and must submit to being a minority in a Rwanda-style bi-national state, although no other state on earth, including the 22 Arab countries, should be similarly expected to be deprived of its sovereignty. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We think that Israel having a Jewish majority and a star on its flag makes it a racist apartheid state. We do not think any other country having an ethnic-religious majority or having crosses or crescents or Allah Akbar on its flag is racist or needs dismemberment. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We condemn the mistreatment of women in the only country of the Middle East in which they are not mistreated. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We condemn the mistreatment of minorities in the only country in the Middle East in which minorities are not brutally suppressed and mass murdered. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We demand equal citizen rights, which is why the only country in the Middle East in need of extermination is the only one in which such rights exist. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

We have no trouble with the fact that there is no freedom of religion in any Arab countries. But we are mad as hell at Israel for violating religious freedom, and never mind that we are never quite sure where or when it does so. But that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

So how can you possibly say we are anti-Semites? We are simply anti-Zionists. We seek peace and justice, that's all. And surely that does not mean we have anything against Jews as such.

1.  The Obama Intifada:  http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2010/03/17/the-obama-intifada-melanie-phillips/

See also http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/9361

2.  Washington Throws a Tantrum

by Jonathan Rosenblum
Yated Ne'eman
March 17, 2010

http://www.jewishmediaresources.com/1355/washington-throws-a-tantrum

Vice-President Joseph Biden's visit to Israel last week was touted in advance as an effort by the Obama administration to reassure Israelis of its warm feelings for Israel. Things did not quite work out that way. Indeed Israel's ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told Israeli consuls in America, in a Saturday night conference call, that the crisis in American-Israeli relations triggered by Biden's visit is the most serious since 1975. The tongue-lashings administered to Israel by a host of administration officials, most notably Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, suggest that perhaps a love-fest was never on the administration's agenda, and that if the announcement of plans to build new housing in Jerusalem had not dropped in the administration's lap, some other pretext for rebuking Israel, like the declaration of Ma'arat Machpela and Kever Rochel as national historical sites, would have been found.

The announcement at the outset of Biden's visit of government approval of another 1,600 housing units in Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood undoubtedly handed the Palestinian Authority and a hostile U.S. administration a huge own goal. It allowed the Obama administration to burnish its anti-Israel credibility in the Moslem world with repeated public expressions of outrage; provided the United States and the European Union with the means to ratchet up pressure on Israel for further concessions; and handed the Palestinians an excuse to withdraw from negotiations in which they have no interest, while being able to place the onus on Israel.

Yet no matter how stupid the timing of the announcement, it should have had no substantive impact on the ill-starred proximity talks that had been scheduled to take place. When Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced a ten-month freeze on settlement building in late October, in order to entice the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, he explicitly excluded from the freeze building in Jerusalem, even in areas beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Despite that exclusion, Secretary of State Clinton praised the prime minister's "unprecedented" concessions.

Thus any building of new units in Ramat Shlomo, a large chareidi neighborhood, was fully within Israeli policy guidelines of which both the United States and the Palestinians were fully aware, and which Clinton recognized as a major concession on Israel's part. Netanyahu's insistence on continued building in Jerusalem was not, as the Obama administration and J Street seem to think, a reflection of his allegedly right-wing views, but an expression of the Israeli consensus. Even in the wake of the harsh American response to the announcement of the new units, not one of the five Labor members in the cabinet expressed any unease with the government policy.

The planned units in Ramat Shlomo would not create new facts on the ground. There is no conceivable scenario in which the 20,000 chareidi residents of Ramat Shlomo would be uprooted from their homes, at least so long as Israel exists. Nor would a slight expansion of Ramat Shlomo's borders preclude an eventual division of the predominantly Arab areas of the city from the rest of Jerusalem in final status negotiations.

For negotiations with the Palestinians to have any chance of success, the Palestinians must understand that they will not receive everything they want and wind the clock back to 1947. Israel was created as a homeland for the Jewish people by the United Nations in 1948. Arab armies sought to eradicate that decision by force of arms in 1948, 1967, and 1973, and each time were defeated. Israel will not willingly destroy its status as a "Jewish" state by permitting the return of all Arab residents who left in 1948 and their descendants. (Just last week, the European Court of Human Rights rejected the claim of Greek Cypriots, who fled the Northern part of the island in 1974 for the return of their homes. The Court decision noted, "Generations have passed. The local population has not remained static. . . . Much Greek-Cypriot property has changed hands at least once, whether by sale, donation or inheritance.")

Nor will Israel willingly subject its entire civilian population to imminent threat by returning to the aptly named pre-1967 "Auschwitz borders." Finally, no sane Israeli prime minister will trigger an all-out civil war, which would destroy the country, by seeking to uproot the major settlement blocks built since 1967.

Feeding Palestinian fantasies cannot be the pre-condition for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians; rather it is the guarantee of their failure. Hundreds of thousands of Jews live in Jerusalem neighborhoods built since 1967, and that is not going to change. Netanyahu refused to freeze all Jerusalem construction, with the unanimous agreement of his cabinet and most opposition members as well, because to do otherwise would be to undermine the legitimacy of all those neighborhoods built since 1967, as well as feed Palestinian irredentism.

From the outset of the Oslo process until 2009, the Palestinians never made negotiations conditional on a cessation of all settlement building. But when the Obama administration entered office and began to focus obsessively on the necessity of an Israeli settlement freeze, Mahmoud Abbas was forced to follow suit and refuse to negotiate absent such a freeze. Last week's hysterical American response to the proposed new units in an established Jerusalem neighborhood repeats the administration's initial mistake of making negotiations more difficult by feeding Palestinian illusions of what America will impose on Israel.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE NEW UNITS was ill-timed, and Vice-President Biden can be forgiven for initially assuming that it was meant to complicate his visit to Israel. Yet Secretary of State Clinton's response a full two days after Prime Minister Netanyahu had profusely and abjectly apologized, both publicly and privately, was over the top. She delivered a lengthy dressing-down to Prime Minister Netanyahu on Friday, which both she and State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley were only too pleased to describe in detail for the press. In an NBC interview, Clinton called the Israeli announcement an "insult to the United States."

According to Crowley, Clinton told Netanyahu that "she couldn't understand how this happened" – a question which the Prime Minister had already answered at length. So great was the insult that it constituted a "deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship" and "undermined . . . American interests." Now, Crowley reported Clinton as saying, it was up to Israel to show that it was committed to the bilateral relationship "not just through words, but through specific actions."

In short, in Clinton's Wellesley etiquette book the appropriate response to an insult, however inadvertent, is not an apology, but gifts, lots of gifts. And the proof of commitment to the American-Israel bilateral relationship is that Israel do whatever America says. (Imagine how the Americans would have reacted to an Israeli spokesman who questioned America's commitment to the bilateral relationship on the grounds that the Obama administration has still not taken one concrete step to neuter the Iranian nuclear threat. Every time one of the administration's deadlines for an Iranian response passes, we hear again about how the Secretary State will now start rounding up international support for sanctions, which will take anywhere from weeks to months to draft, it having apparently never occurred to anyone to draft such sanctions in advance just in case the Iranians ignored yet another deadline.)

Interestingly, no American official ever thought to question the Palestinians commitment to the peace process when Abbas refused to negotiate at all, or saw fit to criticize the Palestinians' for sending negative signals about their commitment to peace when the Palestinian Authority named a public square after Dalal Mughrabi, the architect of the Coastal Road Massacre, in which the first victim was an American citizen, and in which 37 Israeli civilians were killed by terrorists. Nor has the Secretary of State ever hinted that the Palestinians might be showing a bit of ingratitude for the hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid showered upon them by flatly refusing to negotiate with Israel directly.

In accusing Israel of undermining American interests, the Secretary of State lifted a page from the foreign policy realists, whose influence on the Obama administration has been evident from the start. According to the realists, the Arab-Israeli conflict holds the key to all that ails the Middle East, and America's identification with Israel is an albatross around America's neck preventing it from advancing its interests in the region.

White House counselor David Axelrod followed along in the same vein. When asked not once but twice by Jake Tapper whether the Israeli announcement of the intention to build additional housing units in Ramat Shlomo "put the lives of American troops at risk," Axelrod did not dismiss the suggestion out of hand. While not specifically adopting Tapper's analysis, he subtly reinforced it by stating that it was important for America's "own security" that the Palestinian-Israeli issue be resolved. Tapper's question, however, bordered on the lunatic. The Taliban is not fighting to regain its control of Afghanistan because of Israel. Nor are the so-called insurgents in Iraq, whether Sunni or Shiite, continuing in their attempts to destabilize the country because of Israel.

As reported in Yediot Ahronot, Vice-President Biden was explicit, albeit private, in this demonization of Israel as endangering American soldiers. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us . . . ," Biden was quoted as telling Prime Minister Netanyahu.

In the course of her scolding of Netanyahu, Clinton was also reported to have ordered him to cancel the Ramat Shlomo project. She thus reverted to the hectoring tone of last June when she stressed that President Obama does not want to see a single porch extended anywhere beyond the 1949 Armistice Lines, including Jerusalem. Only with Israel and Honduras has she indulged in issuing orders in such an imperious manner.

Even Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, a long-time defender of the Obama administration's policy towards Israel, and someone who has gone so far as to accuse critics of President Obama's Mideast policy of latent racism, professed to be "shocked and stunned at the administration's tone and public dressing-down of Israel of future building in Jerusalem." "We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States," the ADL statement continued. "One can only wonder how far the United States is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table." (Apparently, Foxman's memory is not as good as mine with respect to previous ultimatums to Israel from Clinton.)

The EU, another member of the Quartet, saw in the harsh American response to Israel's blunder, an opportunity to exert more pressure on Israel. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton hinted that the EU would use trade with Israel as leverage to pressure Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians. Since Israel has long made clear its readiness to negotiate without preconditions, and it is the Palestinians who have been refusing to negotiate, she can only have meant that Israel would be pressured to make further concessions to the Palestinians. The American and EU positions were thus perfectly coordinated.

What continues to go unnoted by both the Obama administration and the Europeans is that the Palestinians have not moved one iota from their basic positions as of the start of the Oslo process nearly twenty years ago. Palestinian textbooks and media continue to incite against Jews and Israel and to exult martyrdom. And another generation of Palestinian children has been raised on the hope that all of Palestine will one day be theirs. Over the same period, Israel has made repeated territorial withdrawals and uprooted eight thousand Jews from their homes in the hope of advancing peace.

Jerusalem Post editor David Horowitz speculated that Clinton's public attack on Netanyahu was designed to suggest to Israelis that they have to choose between their prime minister and good relations with America. If so, she was aping her husband's heavy-handed efforts to influence the 1999 elections in favor of Ehud Barak, including sending his top political operatives to work for Barak. What Mrs. Clinton fails to appreciate, however, is that the situation is far different today than in 1999. Netanyahu now stands at the very heart of the Israeli political consensus, nowhere more so than with respect to building in Jerusalem.

With all attention focused on the blunder of announcing the new housing units and the American response, another news item at week's end passed almost without notice in Israel. The survivors of Rachel Corrie, a member of the radical International Solidarity Movement, who was killed when she knelt in front of an Israeli army bulldozer not realizing that she was hidden from the driver's view, are currently suing Israel in Israeli court. Corrie has become a poster child for anti-Israeli propaganda in the United States, in much the same way the iconic faked photo of Mohammed al-Dura cowering behind his father while allegedly being targeted by Israeli soldiers became a potent tool for fostering hatred of Israel in Europe.

Though Corrie hated America as well as Israel – she was once photographed entertaining Palestinian children by burning an American flag -- her father and sister told reporters last week that American embassy officials in Israel have been actively involved in their family's lawsuit, and even encouraged the family to bring it. That suit is a piece of political agit-prop designed to place Israel in a bad light in America.

In light of the overheated American response to the blunder of announcing the housing approval during Vice-President Biden's visit and the American embassy's involvement in the Corrie suit, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) can be forgiven for concluding in a press release last week: "The narrative before this week was that President Obama wasn't properly understood by Israel as a friend. The truth is that he was properly understood."

3.  Halakha vs Political Correctness:  http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/42996

4.  Demolish UNRWA – make Middle East Peace:  http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3863043,00.html

5.  They seem to be reading Barry Chamish:  US military behind Haiti quake, says Innsbruck scientist

Innsbruck political scientist Claudia von Werlhof has accused the USA of being behind the Haitian earthquake in January, it emerged today (Tues).

According to a report on tirol.orf.at, Werlhof said that machines at a military research centre in Alaska used to detect deposits of crude oil by causing artificial earthquakes might have been intentionally set off to cause the Haitian earthquake and enable the USA to send 10,000 soldiers into the country.

Ferdinand Karlhofer, the head of the Innsbruck Political Science Institute where von Werlhof works, has slammed her comments. He said such conspiracy theory had no scientific basis and her claim would damage the reputation of the Institute abroad.

Austrian Times

1.     To Obama:   No You Can't (give the Savages Jerusalem)!!!

By Steven Plaut

    No sooner did the Obama Administration denounce Israel for its building activities in Jerusalem when hordes of violent Palestinian thugs took to the streets of holy Jerusalem.  As always, the Arabs show the world how sacred Jerusalem is to them by filling it with violence.  They rioted to demand that Jews be prohibited from opening a synagogue that had been destroyed by Arab troops, a synagogue located smack in the middle of the Jewish Quarter in an area having no theological significance for Moslems.  Was it a coincidence that the Arab riots followed so closely the Obaman bile hurled against Israel?   Well, if you believe that, I have a nice bridge I'd like to sell you that goes into Brooklyn.

     Vice President Biden, who sometimes likes to call himself "Zionist Joe," had trouble containing his rage at the Jews.  On an official state visit to Israel, his Kodak moments were interrupted when an Israeli official announced that Israel has plans to build a lot of new housing in East Jerusalem.  The Vice President was aghast at the chutzpah.   Secretary of State Clinton issued a series of shrill verbal attacks against Israel.  Talk about a "disproportionate response!" 

      How dare the Jews construct housing in their own capital?  Just because Washington builds housing in the District of Columbia without asking its allies for permission does not mean that the Israelis can build the same way in THEIR capital!  Don't those Israelis realize that the United States has plans to transfer East Jerusalem to the terrorists of the Palestinian Authority or its Hamas overlords?     

      To put the Obama Administration's temper tantrum over Jerusalem into perspective, one has to try to imagine the following scenario:

      Try to imagine the allies of the United States condemning the displacement of the Japanese population in Guam shortly after Guam was liberated by the United States in 1944.  Guam, after all, had been conquered fair and square by the Imperial Japanese military the day after the attacks on Pearl Harbor.  Japanese troops and civilians had lived in Guam throughout most of the war.  The American presence there, which was eradicated on December 8, 1940, was itself of recent and dubious creation.  The United States became occupier of Guam only in 1898 as part of the Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War.  The Yanks then built a series of settlements on the island. 

     Now try to imagine the Allies of the United States hectoring and condemning America about displacing the Japanese already living on Guam after 1944, replacing them forcibly with American citizens.  How dare the Americans move their own civilians into homes they legally own?   

   If you can imagine all that, you will have a pretty good understanding of the Obama-Biden assault against Israel for building homes for Jews in Jerusalem.  Many of these homes are within inches of Mount Scopus and the Old City of Jerusalem. 

     The State Department is soiling itself in rage over Israel allowing Jews to move into the Simon the Righteous neighborhood in East Jerusalem, also known as Sheikh Jarrah.  You may recall that Sheikh Jarrah was where a horrific massacre of a convoy of Jewish medical personnel headed for the Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus took place in 1948.  79 Jews were murdered in cold blood and their bodies mutilated.  When East Jerusalem was liberated from its illegal Jordanian occupiers in 1967, Sheikh Jarrah should have been emptied entirely of its murderous residents and turned over to the families of the victims of that massacre as compensation!

       East Jerusalem was made Judenrein, with its Jews ethnically cleansed, in Israel's 1948-49 war of independence.  Before that Jews had lived in East Jerusalem almost without interruption since King David conquered it.  Those attacking Israel are insisting that she leave that crime of ethnic cleansing in tact, un-redressed.  Their demands are equivalent to demands upon the United States to leave the Japanese presence on Guam unchanged after 1944. 

     To put this another way, let's ask just why the State Department objects to Jews moving into homes in East Jerusalem, homes they legally and legitimately own.  The answer is that the State Department plans to force Israel to turn East Jerusalem over to some future Palestinian terror state, and that will be harder to do if East Jerusalem is filled up with Jews.  But that is precisely the reason why Israel SHOULD build housing in East Jerusalem!!

     If Bibi Netanyahu had any sense of Jewish history or an ounce of courage and self-respect, he would answer the complaints coming from Clinton and the Biden delegation thus:  "We understand that you want East Jerusalem preserved as an area unpolluted by the presence of Jews so that it can be transferred in the future to the terrorists.  And that is why we refuse to agree to your calls for a building freeze anywhere in Jerusalem.  We will build like the dickens to prevent anyone transferring Jerusalem to any 'Palestinians' from any political movement.  And if the result of that is for the war between Israel and the Arabs to continue for another thousand years, then we choose that over giving up Jerusalem."

    Israel's position should be simply that if the Arab world refuses to come to terms and make peace with an Israel controlling all of Jerusalem, then we do not believe that they will come to terms or make peace with any Israel that has relinquished Jerusalem either.  The Arabs can threaten Israel all they want about the dire consequences if Israel refuses to turn Jerusalem over to them.  Israel's response should be, "You can't have it, period."

      And if there were any doubts as to who has the moral and legal right to control East Jerusalem, they were removed in the violent rioting by Palestinians over the opening of the rebuilt Hurva synagogue this week.  Tradition has it that it stands on the site of synagogues going back to the second century AD.  One synagogue standing there in the 1700s was destroyed, leading to the nickname of the site, the "Hurva" or "the Destruction."   A later synagogue was constructed on the site in 1864.  It remained there until Jordanian soldiers, who were illegally holding the Old City after 1948, demolished it.  Yes, those same soldiers of the Kingdom of Jordan, which is so often proclaimed moderate and peace seeking, carried out unprecedented crimes against humanity, by systematically demolishing almost all the Jewish shrines in the Old City.  

    Under Arab rule (by Jordan), the religious shrines of Jerusalem were systematically demolished, profaned and violated.  Under Israeli rule, every religious group is free to practice its religion in Jerusalem and its shrines are protected.  End of story.  The Arabs forfeited any moral claims they might have once had to govern the city when they trashed the Jewish shrines of the city.  Any questions? 

     The Hurva synagogue is nowhere near the Mosque of al-Aqsa or any other Islamic shrines in Jerusalem.  It is located close to the Ramban or Nachmanides synagogue, which was converted by the pro-Nazi Grand Mufti into a mosque in 1948 and used as a factory under the illegal Jordanian occupation.  The Arabs have absolutely no legitimate claims to the site.  Indeed, the reign of intentional destruction carried out by Jordan after 1948 should nullify altogether once and for all any claims the Arab world has to East Jerusalem.