Friday, September 16, 2011

The World Council of Churches Made Durban Worse

Camera  |  by Dexter Van Zile

On September 22, 2011, the United Nations will host a “commemoration” of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance that took place in Durban South Africa in 2001.

The fact that the UN's General Assembly would choose to commemorate this conference, which has gone down in the annals of history as an anti-Semitic hate-fest is frankly, shocking.

At this conference, Arab and Muslim extremists from the Middle East and their allies from the radical left in Europe and the U.S. were able to convince the gathered assembly to affirm an amalgam of ritualistic charges of genocide, racism and ethnic cleansing targeted at Israel.

Jews were singularly denied the right to participate in proceedings at the conference because they could not be "objective." Security officials told representatives of Jewish groups that their safety could not be guaranteed. Protesters carried signs stating that if Hitler had finished the job there were would be no state of Israel and no Palestinian suffering. During the conference a Jewish doctor was beaten by people wearing checkered keffiyehs – the symbol of the Palestinian cause – who said Jews were the cause of all the problems in the Middle East. One local Jewish leader attributed the attack to the atmosphere at the UN Conference.


In light of this, one would think that the international diplomatic community would regard the 2001 Durban as an embarrassment and not worthy of “commemoration.”

In fact, a number of countries have decided to boycott the event for fear that it will provide anti-Semites yet another platform to assail the Jewish state. It is what happened at a follow up to the 2001 Durban conference held in 2009. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map used the 2009 event as a platform to assail Israel.

Nevertheless, if one is going to have a commemoration of the 2001 conference, it is appropriate to bring to mind those decisions that helped turn the event into a hate-fest where Israel was demonized and where leaders of Jewish organizations were told their safety could not be guaranteed.

In particular, it is important to note the role the World Council of Churches played in turning Durban I into a hate-fest.

What the WCC Did

The World Council of Churches sent a 35-member delegation to the Durban Conference which began on Aug. 26, 2001 and ended on Sept. 7, 2001.

At the conference attendees from non-governmental organizations from throughout the world deliberated on a draft document that condemned racism but made no reference to the oppression of religious and ethnic minorities in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East. The document also singled Israel out as guilty of ethnic cleansing and genocide, prompting diplomats from a number of countries to walk out.

There were three paragraphs dealing with the issue of anti-Semitism, the last of which read as follows:

We are concerned with the prevalence of antizionism and attempts to delegitimize the State of Israel through wildly inaccurate charges of genocide, war crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, as a virulent contemporary form of anti-Semitism leading to firebombing of synagogues, armed assaults against Jews, incitements to killing, and the murder of innocent Jews, for their support for the existence of the State of Israel, the assertion of the right to self-determination of the Jewish people and the attempts, through the State of Israel, to preserve their cultural and religious identity.
This paragraph was spot on in its assessment of how false accusations of genocide against Israel (which ironically were leveled at the UN conference) generated racist hostility toward Jews throughout the world.


Nevertheless, the WCC's delegation recommended that this paragraph be deleted.

An report on the Durban Conference published by B'Nai Brith Canada describes what happened:

… the World Council of Churches speaking for the Ecumenical Caucus, proposed the deletion from the text on antisemitism the paragraph protesting anti-Zionism. Their reason was that this clause contradicted the pro-Palestinian clauses elsewhere in the document. The chair called a vote on this proposed deletion, without giving the Jewish Caucus, or, indeed, anyone, an opportunity to speak to it.

Several caucuses abstained, but only four, the Jewish, European Caucus, Roma and Eastern and Central European Caucuses, voted against. After this vote, the Jewish Caucus and the Eastern and Central European Caucus walked out. The Asian Descendants Caucus subsequently told the Jewish Caucus that they were so confused by what was going on that they voted in favour even though they intended to voted against.
A report written by the WCC's delegation to Durban reports that it called for the deletion of this paragraph because it “was of the opinion that the clause added little strength of the previous two paragraphs.” The report continues:

But more importantly, the text was confusing in its structure in that it mixed the Jewish people with the State of Israel and implied whatever criticism was made of the State of Israel was to be regarded as anti-Semitic. This opinion was shared by every other Caucus except one and its deletion was greeted with applause.
This justification is remarkable in its evasiveness. The paragraph that was deleted was quite explicit in condemning “wildly inaccurate charges of genocide, war crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing an apartheid” and pointing out that these accusations led to violence against Jews throughout the world. It did not imply that "criticism" of Israel was anti-Semitic. The point this paragraph was trying to make was confirmed in a number of subsequent events, such as:

1. The murder of a French Jew, Ilan Halimi in Paris in 2005. Halimi, a 23-year-old French Jew, was kidnapped, tortured for three weeks, stabbed and left to die at a train station on the outskirts of Paris by Muslims who had anti-Israel literature in their apartments. His torture took place in the basement of a public housing project. People knew of his suffering and did not call the police.

2. The murder of Pamela Waechter, an employee of the Jewish Federation in Seattle in 2006. Waechter was shot to death at the height of the Hezbollah War by a man describing himself as a Muslim-American “angry at Israel.” The killer was later discovered to be suffering from mental illness, but just as John Salvi who killed two women at an abortion clinic in Boston in 1994, was encouraged by the highly-charged atmosphere surrounding the debate over abortion in the U.S., the anti-Jewish fringe is energized by hostile rhetoric coming out of the Middle East.

3. The plight of Jews in Malmo, Sweden. Jews are fleeing Malmo in droves as anti-Semitic attacks, perpetrated mostly by Muslim immigrants have increased substantially. Malmo's mayor stated these are merely a consequence of Israeli policies in the Middle East.

4. The display of anti-Semitic imagery at anti-Israel rallies in the U.S. during Israel's fight with Hamas in the Gaza Strip during the winter of 2008-09. Protesters carried signs equating the Start of David with the Nazi Swastika, a clear expression of anti-Semitism. At one rally, a woman called for Jews to “go back to the oven.”

By calling for the deletion of the paragraph quoted above from the draft document at Durban I, the WCC's delegation gave churchly cover to the process by which anti-Zionism has been used to generate hostility toward Jews throughout the world.

The WCC delegation also failed to respond to the anti-Semitic hate that was so evident at the conference and in the document that was approved by the assembly. In response to the controversy over what happened at Durban, the WCC's delegation merely stated “there are some statements in the NGO forum document which are outside the WCC's policy framework, and which the WCC cannot support, such as: equating Zionism with racism, describing Israel as an apartheid state, and the call for a general boycott of Israeli goods. This does not detract from the WCC's support for the document as a whole.”

The Durban Conference turned into an anti-Jewish hatefest, and the best the WCC's delegation could do was say it disapproved some statements that were “outside the WCC's policy framework.”

The WCC's actions at Durban in 2001 were shameful and should not be forgotten.

Source: Camera

Related:


Endorsement of Kairos Palestine and condemnation of Israel

WCC general secretary, Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, said in December 2009 the endorsement by the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem of the “Kairos Palestine” document “adds integrity, authority and force to the message of the document," which includes a call for an "end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and for a boycott of Israel."


Kairos Palestine

In December 2009, prominent Palestinian Christian leaders released a historical document, the Kairos Palestine Document, "A moment of truth." The document call echoes a similar summons issued by South African churches in the mid-1980s at the height of repression under the apartheid regime. That call served to galvanize churches and the wider public in a concerted effort that eventually brought the end of apartheid. Among the authors of the document are Patriarch Michel Sabah, Archbishop Attalah Hanna, Father Jamal Khader, Rev. Mitri Raheb, Rev. Naim Ateeq and Rifat Kassis who is the coordinator and chief spokesperson of the group.
The document declares the Israeli occupation of Palestine a "sin against God" and against humanity. It calls on churches and Christians all over the world to consider it and adopt it and to call for the boycott of Israel. Section 7 calls for “the beginning of a system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel.” It states that isolation of Israel will cause pressure on Israel to abolish all of what it labels as "apartheid laws" that discriminate against Palestinians and non-Jews.

Source: Wikipedia

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Southern Comfort

Welcome to Memphis’ World Kosher Barbecue Championship, where thousands of participants get a chance to meld their Southern and Jewish traditions

Tablet Magazine  |  By Daniel Fromson

There are two kings in Memphis—Elvis and barbecue—and here, as in most of the South, barbecue usually means pork. But this Sunday, hundreds of competitors will gather at Anshei Sphard Beth El Emeth, an Orthodox synagogue with roots stretching back to the Civil War, to compete in the 23rd annual World Kosher Barbecue Championship. Rabbi Joel Finkelstein will monitor the contenders, and his volunteers will ready the grounds for 2,000 to 3,000 guests, setting up everything from the barbecue itself to a basketball tournament and a pickle-eating contest.

“The average person, you come to Memphis, you’ll see Elvis and then you have to get some barbecue,” Finkelstein said. “If you keep kosher, then you’re disconnected from that experience.” The contest allows observant Jews to “connect with both their Jewish and Southern roots,” he said. The model is a successful one: In recent years, similar contests have been proliferating, from Alabama’s When Pigs Fly Kosher BBQ Cookoff to Pennsylvania’s Hava NaGrilla.
Read more at Tablet Magazine »

Tunick's Dead Sea shoot to be thwarted?

Some 1,000 Israelis prepared to take off their clothes for famous American photographer on Saturday, but Tamar Regional Council head says won't allow 'provocative event' to go through

by Danny Adeno Abebe

After the Alps, the Sydney Opera House, the Vienna soccer stadium and other famous landmarks, the lowest place on earth will be hosting its first mass nude photo shoot this Saturday – if all goes as planned.

More than 3,000 Israelis have asked to take part in Spencer Tunick's Dead Sea shoot. But the 1,000 who have been selected may be in for a disappointment.
Read more at Ynet »

Palestinian ambassador to US wants Jew-free state

The Palestinian Ambassador to the United States Maen Rashid Areikat said on Tuesday in Washington that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)opposes the immediate presence of Jews and gays in an independent Palestinian state, according to reports in The Daily Caller and The Weekly Standard.

When asked by Jamie Weinstein, senior editor and columnist for The Daily Caller, whether a Jew could be elected Mayor of Ramallah in an independent Palestinian state, Areikat said: “But after the experience of 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it will be in the best interests of the two peoples to be separated first.”

Areikat added that “Well, I personally still believe that as a first step we need to be totally separated, and we can contemplate these issues in the future.”
Read more at JPost »

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Our Canine Heroes and Islamic Dogophobia

Sultan Knish
a blog by Daniel Greenfield


Kalb, or dog, is one of the worst possible insults in the Muslim world. Call a man Kalb or Kalb ibn Kalb, if you want the knives to come out. In Afghanistan, those who fled the Taliban and returned to help the Coalition rebuild the country are called "Sag shouey" or "Dog washers" since Americans are infidel dogs and the Afghans who cooperate with Americans are menial servants of the dogs.

Mohammed, in addition to his affinity for pre-teen girls also had a compulsive hatred of dogs. Some Hadiths quote him ordering the killing of all dogs, others show him to be moderate ordering that only "'black dogs" be killed. Which gives a special edge to the not uncommon description in the Muslim world of Obama as a "black dog".

After Osama bin Laden's execution, an imam of the Al-Aqsa mosque castigated the "Western dogs" who had done it. And as it turned out a dog actually did accompany the SEAL team that took down Osama. Unlike the billions spent on trying to win over Pakistanis and Afghans, who went on aiding terrorists anyway-- the dogs remained true and loyal friends.

On September 11th, among the first responders were our four footed friends who risked their lives clambering around the smoking rubble in search of survivors. Muslims believe that an angel cannot enter a home when a dog is inside. But after the Muslims had killed thousands of Americans, it was the dogs who acted as the angels finding the bodies where they could and helping give the families of the dead something to bury.
Read more »

Has Obama Learned Anything?

by Peter Wehner

Imagine you’re in the Obama White House, and this is what you face. Democrats lose a special election in a congressional district they have controlled since the 1920s and which was framed as a referendum on the president. There’s a possible scandal brewing over the White House’s effort to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion dollar loan to a solar-panel manufacturer, Solyndra. The most recent Census Report shows median household earnings fell for the third consecutive year, back to 1996 levels. A record number of Americans are in poverty. In Afghanistan, the Taliban mounted a fierce assault on the U.S. embassy and NATO military headquarters in Kabul. A new CNN/ORC poll shows Obama’s disapproval rating has reached a new high while the number of Americans who think he is a strong leader has dropped to a new low. And that’s just today.

On a human level, one can sympathize with what the president, his advisers, and his supporters are going through right now. But there is a cautionary tale in this as well. When Obama was running for president, he was dismissive of those who came before him. The problems we faced, at home and abroad, would be fixed by signing this executive order and passing that piece of legislation. Hope and change were on the way. “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game,” Obama is reported to have said back in 2004.
Read more at Commentary Magazine »

In NY-9, GOP Listened to Voters

Jews and Democrats trusted the Republican and his message.

by Patrick Brennan

In Howard Beach, Queens, last night, Bob Turner delivered a very short victory speech to celebrate the end of a very long conservative drought. In around five minutes, he marked the end of 88 years of Democratic dominance in New York’s 9th congressional district.

Soft-spoken but honest and direct, he first attributed his election to the dissatisfaction with President Obama’s “irresponsible fiscal policies” and his “treatment of Israel”: The latter elicited the loudest cheers of his speech. He reemphasized his vocation as a “citizen-candidate” and concluded, “I promised you I’d get to work; I’d better go do that.” That the Irish Catholic Republican stood surrounded by Jewish leaders and Democratic politicians emphasized the improbability of his success: He won by 54 to 46 percent, a miraculous upset in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than three to one.

Turner benefited from desperate dissatisfaction with the Obama administration in decidedly middle-class parts of Brooklyn and Queens. The electorate repeatedly emphasized concern about the state of the economy, high unemployment, and the threats to the survival of Medicare and Social Security. On all of these issues, Turner promised serious and conservative, but not revolutionary, solutions. His opponent, David Weprin, unsuccessfully tried to portray him as planning to cut entitlements for current seniors, sending multiple-page mailings to elderly voters on this theme. Turner maintained, in an impressively disciplined way for a relatively inexperienced politician, that he would preserve benefits for those 55 and older and deal with the actuarial realities without privatizing the programs. His victory in a district with an extremely high proportion of elderly voters indicates that Republicans can speak honestly and still win seniors over.
Read more at National Review Online »

Islamic Hate Goes to School

by Daniel Greenfield

Ninety years after Columbia University imposed quotas on Jewish students; its president along with other university presidents received a letter from a Jewish civil rights organization reminding them of their legal obligation to ensure a safe educational environment for Jewish students.

The quota system that kept Jonas Salk and Richard Feynman out of major universities has long been abolished, but it has been replaced by student checkpoints, violent confrontations and faculty harassment. One man, Hatem Bazian, and his organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, have led the way in creating this hostile environment on campus. And in October 2011, SJP will be holding its first national conference at Columbia University.

Hatem “Hate’em” Bazian headed the Muslim Student Association at Berkeley, but there were practical limitations to what a Muslim group could accomplish on campus. Students for Justice in Palestine, which he co-founded, shed the explicit Islamic colors of the MSA and added one more degree of separation between the Muslim Brotherhood and what appeared to be a secular social justice movement whose agenda just happened to align with that of the Brotherhood.
Read more at FrontPage Magazine »

Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote

He doesn't have a 'messaging' problem. He has a record of bad policies and anti-Israel rhetoric

The Wall Street Journal 
By DAN SENOR

New York's special congressional election on Tuesday was the first electoral outcome directly affected by President Obama's Israel policy. Democrats were forced to expend enormous resources in a losing effort to defend this safe Democratic district, covering Queens and Brooklyn, that Anthony Weiner won last year by a comfortable margin.

A Public Policy Poll taken days before the election found a plurality of voters saying that Israel was "very important" in determining their votes. Among those voters, Republican candidate Robert Turner was winning by a 71-22 margin. Only 22% of Jewish voters approved of President Obama's handling of Israel. Ed Koch, the Democrat and former New York mayor, endorsed Mr. Turner because he said he wanted to send a message to the president about his anti-Israel policies.

This is a preview of what President Obama might face in his re-election campaign with a demographic group that voted overwhelmingly for him in 2008. And it could affect the electoral map, given the battleground states—such as Florida and Pennsylvania—with significant Jewish populations. In another ominous barometer for the Obama campaign, its Jewish fund-raising has deeply eroded: One poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Mr. Obama in 2008, only 64% have already donated or plan to donate to his re-election campaign.
Read more »

REVENGE OF THE JEWS DEM SEAT TURNS IN NYC

With his outcome of his own reelection effort 14 difficult months away, President Obama suffered a sharp rebuke at the polls Tuesday, when voters in New York elected a conservative Republican to represent a Democratic congressional district that has not been in Republican hands since the 1920s.

Bob Turner, the winner, cast the election as a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of the economy and, in the state’s 9th Congressional District, which has a large population of Orthodox Jewish voters, the president’s position on Israel.

Turner, 70, a retired cable television executive who has never served in elective office, defeated Democratic State Assemblyman David Weprin, 55, who has two decades of public service experience, to fill the seat left vacant when Anthony Weiner (D) resigned in disgrace in June after more than 12 years in the House.

The Washington Post / Drudge Report

It's noteworthy:

David Weprin is an Orthodox Jew and Bob Turner is not Jewish.

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 3-to-1 in the district


Election results:
Republican   Bob Turner        32,403        53%
Democratic   David Weprin    27,599        46%

In Praise of NYC's Muscular Counterterrorism

by Daniel Pipes

U.S. law enforcement agencies have generally responded to 9/11 with a pretend counterterrorism policy. They still insist that naming the enemy as Islamism causes terrorism, that Islamist violence poses no more threat than that of neo-Nazis, racial supremacists, et al., and that counterterrorism primarily involves feel-good measures such as improving civil rights, passing anti-discrimination laws, and displaying goodwill to Islamists.

And then there is the New York Police Department, an institution uniquely spurred by 9/11 to abandon its former laxity and get serious. The force that had mishandled prior terrorist incidents (e.g., the assassination of Meir Kahane) quickly transformed itself into an outstanding counterterrorist agency under the remarkable leadership of Raymond Kelly. (Andrew McCarthy calls him a "godsend"). Unlike other law enforcement institutions, NYPD names the enemy, acknowledges the predominant threat of Islamist violence, and built a robust intelligence operation.

The public saw first hints of these changes in 2006, in the course of the Shahawar Matin Siraj trial. The government convicted Siraj, an illegal Pakistani immigrant planning to blow up a subway station, on the basis of information from two NYPD Muslim spies: a paid police informant, Osama Eldawoody, and a pseudonymous undercover detective, "Kamil Pasha." The latter testified about his serving as a "walking camera" among Muslims living in Brooklyn, to "observe, be the ears and eyes" for the NYPD.
Read more »

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Q&A: Scott Ian

Before the “Big 4” heavy metal show at Yankee Stadium, the Anthrax guitarist and lyricist talks Queens, Jews, and Louis Farrakhan

Tablet Magazine
by David Samuels


Scott Ian was a 14-year-old kid from Bayside, Queens, when he saw his first KISS show at Madison Square Garden. Now 47, and living in California with his wife Pearl Aday, who is Meat Loaf’s daughter, the rhythm guitarist and primary lyricist for the heavy metal band Anthrax is an energetic little man with an outlandishly long and pointy billy-goat beard that immediately marks him as a stage performer of some kind, or a refugee from a reality show or a circus.

A proud freak and knowing fan, a talented performer, a songwriter and businessman who has sold over 10 million albums of his music worldwide, Ian is a funny mix of brainless extrovert and outer-borough sharpie. Born Scott Ian Rosenfeld, he at first denied that being Jewish meant anything in particular to him growing up. As he tried to solve the riddle of why a Jew from Queens would be attracted to the music of meth addicts and assembly-line workers, he revealed a streak of ethnic pride that helped him explain why the Jew and the metal-head in him are actually the same person.
Read more »

Monday, September 12, 2011

The ‘War on Terror’ Is All About God

Several years ago, I was speaking with a left-wing journalist who was rather hysterical about the subject of religion — although perhaps I repeat myself. In any case, she had heard that then-President George W. Bush prayed for guidance before ordering the invasion of Iraq. She was appalled.

Pajamas Media | by Andrew Klavan

“Bin Laden is fighting for his God and Bush is fighting for his God!” she said. “It’s a holy war!”

As happens sometimes in this tragicomical life we live, her line of reasoning was absurd but her conclusion happened to be correct. What has been fatuously called “The War on Terror,” this ongoing struggle between Islamism and the rest of the world (including some of the Islamic world) is, in fact, a holy war: a violent argument over the nature of our Creator.

Americans right and left hate this fact. Many can barely face it. Almost no one in authority or the media ever dares mention it at all (Glenn Beck is the exception). In principle, through tradition, by law and nature, most of us are repelled by the idea of killing over religion. Freedom in these matters is our watchword. I say Jesus; you say Allah; let’s call the whole thing God.
Read more »

Iran and the EMP Threat

We are not prepared for an electromagnetic pulse attack. Iran is almost prepared to launch one.

Pajamas Media  |  by Reza Kahlili

The first thing they will notice is there is no power. Another damn power outage, they will grumble — but then again, there has been no storm. Confused, some will try to call for information, but the phones will be down. The TV, the radio — nothing, no reception.

The panic will come when cars won’t start.

The traffic lights will be out, too. It will get much worse. Most will not survive to see life get back to normal in America.

Thousands will be stranded on subways, and over a million passengers who fly daily across the continent will be stuck at airports with flights canceled. Those already in the air will meet a deadly fate as planes plunge from the sky, their electronics fried.

Within the next few days, water supplies will run out: water-pumping stations will grind to a halt and electric pumps for water purification will also stop. Remaining water supplies will soon become contaminated.
Read more »

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Iran’s Dirty 9/11 Secrets

FrontPage Magazine
by Kenneth R. Timmerman

It has taken nearly ten years, but the real story of Iran’s direct, material involvement in the 9/11 conspiracy is finally coming to light. And it’s being revealed not by the U.S. government or by Congressional investigators but by private attorneys representing families of the 9/11 victims in U.S. District Court.

Just one week before the 9/11 Commission sent its final report to the printers in July 2004, diligent staffers discovered a six-page classified National Security Agency analysis summarizing what the U.S. intelligence community had learned about Iran’s assistance to the 9/11 hijackers.

They happened upon the document by chance. It had been tucked away at the bottom of the last box in the last stack of classified documents they were reviewing. But it was so explosive that several Commissioners pushed hard to make sure the information it contained was included in the final report, despite intense push back from the intelligence community.
Read more »

Palestinians celebrating the fall of the twin towers on 911

Let’s Roll Over

National Review Online   |  by Mark Steyn

Waiting to be interviewed on the radio the other day, I found myself on hold listening to a public-service message exhorting listeners to go to 911day.org and tell their fellow citizens how they would be observing the tenth anniversary of the, ah, “tragic events.” There followed a sound bite of a lady explaining that she would be paying tribute by going and cleaning up an area of the beach.

Great! Who could object to that? Anything else? Well, another lady pledged that she “will continue to discuss anti-bullying tactics with my grandson.”

Marvelous. Because studies show that many middle-school bullies graduate to hijacking passenger jets and flying them into tall buildings?
Whoa, ease up on the old judgmentalism there, pal. In New Jersey, many of whose residents were among the dead, middle-schoolers will mark the anniversary with a special 9/11 curriculum that will “analyze diversity and prejudice in U.S. history.” And, if the “9/11 Peace Story Quilt” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art teaches us anything, it’s that the “tragic events” only underline the “importance of respect.” And “understanding.” As one of the quilt panels puts it:
Read more »

Remembering Muslim Colonialism on September 11

Anyone who cared to dig through the graveyards of Sudan already knew that Muslims mattered more than Africans to us. The sky full of jets that we dispatched to bomb Yugoslavia on behalf of Muslim terrorists never clouded the skies of Khartoum. But they did show up to bomb Tripoli so that Islamist thugs could begin torturing and murdering Africans.

Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield

In the left's pyramid of races, some matter more than others, and Arabs are higher than Africans. So much higher that Sudan is piled with corpses, but the mere thought of Islamist rebels losing in Libya was enough to send in the air forces of bankrupt Western countries already tied up in too many places.

The primacy of the Arab Muslim over the African Christian is a recent thing in the liberal landscape born in part of realpolitik and the red enthusiasm for revolutionary violence. It is a thing which almost no one discusses because it has gone unnoticed. The racial vocabulary of it is one that few are even able to read.
Read more »

Victory! Ground Zero Mosque Denied Tax Payer Monies from LMDC

Congrats to all freedom lovers who have opposed federal taxpayer funds being used to build a mega mosque on the sacred ground at Ground Zero.

Atlas Shrugs

You gotta love how these chazas applied for 911 Ground Mosque taxpayer funds while denying the Ground Zero mosque was on Ground Zero.

Islamic supremacist grifter Sharif El Gamal was denied the jizya. This is the people's victory. Because you stood against this cultural obscenity. The LMDC knew the firestorm that would ensue if they went against the will of the overwhelming majority opposed to this 15-story middle finger to America.
Read more »

Barack Obama’s Wings of Wax

COMMENTARY MAGAZINE  |  by Peter Wehner

Presidencies can go through various stages in terms of their effect on the opposition – from eliciting respect and some amount of fear, to provoking anger, to becoming the object of ridicule.

Barack Obama has reached the third stage.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has written a column in which he cites passages from Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress last night and then chronicles the reaction among congressional Republicans, which included chuckles, guffaws and giggles. Hostility to Obama has given way to indifference to what he says; witness the fact the GOP did not even feel the need to provide a televised response to Obama’s speech. And of course, it didn’t help that the president’s address was relegated to pre-primetime, in order not to compete with an NFL game.
Read more »

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Why do they hate us?

Delayed reforms, soaring unemployment, and constant search for scapegoat led young generation 'that has never known war' to turn its frustration toward State of Israel

Ynetnews 
by Tomer Velmer


During the 32-year peace treaty with Egypt, the relations between Jerusalem and Cairo have seen their ups and downs. What used to be called "cold peace" turned extremely hot over the weekend, when hundreds of Egyptian protesters stormed the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, demolishing the security wall and replacing the Israeli flag with an Egyptian one.

Though the crisis ended fairly well, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a senior research fellow at the Begin- Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University explains that these are the sort of events that happen when peace is forged between governments, not people.
Read more »

Gunwalker Explodes: FBI Hid Weapon, Tax Dollars Subsidized Murder

Pajamas Media  |  by Bob Owens

Fox News investigative reporter William Lajeunesse dropped a pair of bombshells in one article Friday afternoon, revealing: the presence of a third “walked” gun at the scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder, an FBI cover-up of the gun, and the news that your tax dollars funded cartel weapons purchases:
Unlike the two AK-style assault weapons found at the scene, the third weapon could more easily be linked to the informant. To prevent that from happening, sources say, the third gun “disappeared.”

In addition to the emails obtained by Fox News, an audio recording from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent investigating the Terry case seems to confirm the existence of a third weapon. In that conversation, the agent refers to an “SKS assault rifle out of Texas” found at the Terry murder scene south of Tucson. …

The two AK-type assault rifles were purchased by Jaime Avila from the Lone Wolf Trading Co. outside of Phoenix on Jan. 16, 2010. Avila was recruited by his roommate Uriel Patino. Patino, according to sources, received $70,000 in “seed money” from the FBI informant late in 2009 to buy guns for the cartel.
Every American, regardless of political ideology, should be livid that the FBI gave at least $70,000 of “seed money” to murderous felons so that they could buy firearms. The FBI knew these weapons were destined for narco-terrorists, and that they would be used to target not just other murderous cartels but to terrorize innocents.
Read more »

Friday, September 9, 2011

The Five Biggest Reasons Republicans Keep Losing the Propaganda War

It never ceases to confound me, dear readers, how on earth Republicans keep losing America’s propaganda war.

Pajamas Media
by Kyle-Anne Shiver


How do we know they’re losing in the public’s perception? Easy.

Ask yourself: when was the last time you freely discussed any conservative or even moderate political view with friends at work, or on campus, or in public, or at a large social gathering — without hedging your every word? When? Can you identify a single recent instance when you felt your conservative or even moderate views would be tolerated without provoking name-calling or public shaming into the nearest corner of societal oblivion?

Everywhere one goes, save conservative websites, Republicans are widely connoted with tinges of racism, hate, selfishness, greed, war-mongering, and conspiratorial theocratic designs against democracy. Fox News has some opinion shows that try to give an ounce of conservative balance to the airwaves and they’ve paid for it with an all out war declared against them by leftist activists.

And, honey, any way one chooses to slice, dice, puree, or grind to bits this reality, it spells one thing for the Democrats: VICTORY.
Read more »

U.S. to veto Palestinian state

Tim Mak - POLITICO.com

The Obama administration has announced for the first time publicly that it will veto any bid by the Palestinians to seek statehood recognition later this month at the United Nations, a move Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called “too late” to stop them.

For some time, President Barack Obama’s policy has been to oppose a unilateral attempt by the Palestinians to seek statehood, but Thursday was the first time that the administration explicitly said it would use its veto power on the U.N. Security Council.
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Thursday, September 8, 2011

New York Times Promotes Radical Sources Maligning Israel

A New York Times article about the FBI’s attempts to eavesdrop on the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the resulting leak of wiretapped conversations to a blogger (Scott Shane, “Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel,” Sept. 5, 2011) was as much a defense of these actions as it was about the controversial eavesdropping and illegal leak.
Leibowitz (l) and Silverstein (r).


CAMERA  |  by Ricki Hollander

That is because the article was based almost entirely on the comments of extremist, anti-Israel blogger Richard Silverstein justifying the actions of his friend, Shamai Leibowitz, who was sentenced to 20 months of incarceration for illegally transferring wiretapped documents to publicize on Silverstein's blog.

Unsurprisingly, the New York Times article failed to accurately inform readers of the radical anti-Israel agenda of the two. Instead, it identified Silverstein simply as a “blogger” who “gives a liberal perspective on Israel and Israeli American relations” and Leibowitz as “a lawyer with a history of political activism” who shares Silverstein’s “concern about repercussions from a possible Israeli airstrike on nuclear facilities in Iran.”
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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Obama 'star' of Palestinian ad

President Barack Obama is the unlikely star of a new Palestinian media campaign.

POLITICO.com  |  by Mackenzie Weinger

Part of a speech Obama gave in 2010 to the United Nations General Assembly is featured in an ad aimed to rally support for the Palestinians upcoming bid for statehood at the United Nations on Sept. 20, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
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The Revered and Reviled Bernard Lewis

A Retrospective Of The Scholar Who Provided The Intellectual Ammunition For The Iraq War

MOMENT MAGAZINE
by Daphna Berman


Bernard Lewis has just moved to a small apartment in the manicured suburbs on Philadelphia’s Main Line. At 95, it was time for the man the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing calls the “most influential postwar historian of Islam and the Middle East” to leave Princeton—his home for more than 35 years—for a senior living facility known for attracting retired academics.

“I’m getting old, I’m no longer sure about dates,” he tells me in his polished British accent, though this moment of self-deprecation is hardly convincing: Our conversation reflects his uncanny ability to recollect dates, time lines and facts—both from his lifetime and several centuries before. As we talk, Lewis recalls the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699 as easily as the Turkish elections of 1950. He also regales me with stories, though it is impossible to predict which millennium they will date to. One minute, it’s the Marx Brothers skits he shared with the Shah of Iran in the days before the revolution, the next, an eighth century Arabian joke about a sinful woman praying to Allah for mercy before she dies. And he speaks with eloquence, his ideas organized into complete paragraphs.
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Full text of 'Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future'

by David Horowitz and Robert Spencer

READ HEAR

Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future

The movement seeking to turn “Islamophobia” into a thought crime and to silence all critics of radical Islam is gaining momentum.

FrontPage Magazine

Just recently, Think Progress — an organization created by billionaire George Soros, puppet master of the left wing of the Democratic Party, and John Podesta, former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, put out a report written by Faiz Shakir and others called Fear Inc: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America. Because of his speeches to students warning against the pro-jihadis spreading their message of hate in our universities — in particular the Muslim Students Association — David Horowitz was one of the targets of this smear.  Another was Robert Spencer, author of several courageous books about radical Islam and director of the early warning website jihadwatch.org. Ironically, Horowitz and Spencer are the authors of a new pamphlet, Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future, which unmasks the sinister agenda behind the anti-Islamophobia movement, which Frontpage takes pride in publishing today.
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American Jews and the liberal art of demonization

New York Ninth Congressional District race attracting great attention because it's serving as referendum on Obama’s Israel policies.

JPost  |  by Caroline B. Glick

US election season is clearly upon us as US President Barack Obama has moved into full campaign mode. Part and parcel of that mode is a new bid to woo Jewish voters and donors upset by Obama’s hostility to Israel back in the Democratic Party’s fold.

To undertake this task, the White House turned to its reliable defender, columnist Jeffrey Goldberg. Since 2008, when then-candidate Obama was first challenged on his anti-Israel friends, pastors and positions, Goldberg has willingly used his pen to defend Obama to the American Jewish community.
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Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Obama’s Patronage Pigs Can’t Fly

As if President Obama didn’t have enough bad news last week, Solyndra, which manufactures solar panels, filed for bankruptcy and laid off almost its entire work force of 1,100. Going down the tubes with it, of course, is a $535 million loan that was guaranteed by the federal government as part of the stimulus program.

Commentary Magazine
by John Steele Gordon

And it seems the White House put pressure on the Department of Energy to OK the loan. As the Washington Post reported:
Frank Rusco, a Government Accountability Office director who helped lead a review of the Solyndra loan and the Energy Department’s loan guarantee program, said the GAO remains “greatly concerned” by its 2010 finding that the agency agreed to back five companies with loans without properly assessing their risk of failure. The companies were not identified in the report, but the GAO has since acknowledged that Solyndra was one of them.
And one of the company’s biggest backers, George Kaiser, is also one of Barack Obama’s biggest backers. That, I’m sure, is another “coincidence,” such as the Republican debate being held at the same time that he chose to address Congress.
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Leak Offers Look at Efforts by U.S. to Spy on Israel

Shamai K. Leibowitz in 2002
WASHINGTON — When Shamai K. Leibowitz, an F.B.I. translator, was sentenced to 20 months in prison last year for leaking classified information to a blogger, prosecutors revealed little about the case. They identified the blogger in court papers only as “Recipient A.” After Mr. Leibowitz pleaded guilty, even the judge said he did not know exactly what Mr. Leibowitz had disclosed.

NYTimes.com  |  by Scott Shane

“All I know is that it’s a serious case,” Judge Alexander Williams Jr., of United States District Court in Maryland, said at the sentencing in May 2010. “I don’t know what was divulged other than some documents, and how it compromised things, I have no idea.”
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Robert Gates Says Israel Is an Ungrateful Ally: Jeffrey Goldberg - Bloomberg

Obama administration got together with Ron Paul election campaign in an admirable fit of bipartisan unity to commission Jeffrey Goldberg to write their joint communique, published on Bloomberg:
It was an extraordinary scene: President Barack Obama, sitting impassively in the Oval Office in May as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lectured him, at considerable length and at times condescendingly, on Jewish history, Arab perfidy and the existential challenges facing his country.

What was extraordinary wasn’t the message -- it was not an untypical Netanyahu sermon. What was notable was that Netanyahu was lecturing the president live on television, during a photo opportunity staged so that the two leaders could issue platitudes about the enduring bonds between their nations.


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Monday, September 5, 2011

When Anti-Zionism becomes Anti-Semitism

Obama's demagoguery with foul implications

John Podhoretz in COMMENTARY MAGAZINE makes good point:
Obama’s “Country Before Party” Nonsense

News reports suggest that on Thursday night, the president will tell Republicans in the House and Senate that they should put “country before party” and endorse his proposals for job creation. The “country before party” line has become Obama’s new theme in the wake of the debt crisis, and the passion with which he invokes it indicates it’s something he actually and truly believes in.

And it’s utter nonsense. Offensive nonsense too. Obama isn’t truly asking Republicans to put country before party. He is asking them to elevate the interests and ideas of the Democratic party higher than their own ideas, their sense of what is best for the nation, and their deeply held convictions about the moral hazard posed by a too-large government and a populace too reliant on it. They won’t do it, and they shouldn’t, and the next time liberals complain that conservatives unfairly impugn their patriotism, Obama’s effort to do just that with his loyal ideological opposition should be thrown in their face.
Why it is demagoguery? Obama is not making an argument about the advantages of his point of view, he is softly coercing.   The opposite side, the Republicans can turn it around 180° and ask Obama to adopt their standpoint "putting country" ahead of his ideology.

The foul implications: they (the Republicans) don't have best interests of the country in mind, and their ideology is self serving and not a different view on what's good for the country. They should be shamed into not being selfish and start thinking about other people.

The Obama Effect

This election highlights a growing phenomenon: non- Jewish Republican candidates outflanking Jewish Democrats in pro-Israel positions.

JPost
By ABRAHAM KATSMAN

When an Orthodox Jewish, kippa-wearing Democratic candidate might lose a congressional election in the most Jewish (and 75% Democratic) congressional district in America – a seat occupied by Democrats for nearly a century – to a non-Jewish Republican, something significant is going on. And Golda Koppelman knows what that something is.

New York’s 9th Congressional District (Brooklyn and Queens) is gearing up for the September 13, 2011 special election to fill the seat vacated by disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner. Koppelman, a Holocaust survivor who has lived her American life in the district, is a devout Jewish mother and grandmother, with family in both Israel and America. Like many of her generation, she’s also a devout Democrat. Until now.

“I have never voted for a Republican in my life” she says. But in this election, “I don’t even care who the Democrat is; I am voting Republican to show Obama I am upset with his policy on Israel.”
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Obama’s Defilement of 9/11

As the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks approaches, President Obama is again pushing his “National Day of Service” in an effort to pervert the meaning of that terrible day for partisan political purposes.

FrontPage Magazine
by Matthew Vadum

In his weekly address on Aug. 27, Obama urged Americans to do volunteer work this Sept. 11, a day that the administration ought to officially call the “National Day of Ignoring Islamofascism.” The president said Americans should do something to serve their communities on that day “to honor the victims of 9/11 and to reaffirm the strength of our nation with acts of service and charity.”
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Sunday, September 4, 2011

NEW PRO-JEWISH NYC CAMPAIGN: ‘PRESIDENT OBAMA IS NOT PRO-ISRAEL’

A new New York City-based, GOP-sponsored, pro-Israel campaign takes aim at President Barack Obama and his stances on the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict.

TheBlaze.com
by Billy Hallowell

In an effort to convince voters that Obama’s stance on Jerusalem — and on Israel as a whole — isn’t palatable to either political party, the Emergency Committee for Israel (run by famed conservative Bill Kristol) is communicating its message through video and newspaper ads, among other venues.

While NYC is certainly a more progressive locality, there may be some breathing room for the group’s conservative views to take hold. Considering that the city is home to the largest number of Jews in America, there is an audience that may be willing to listen. Politico’s Ben Smith writes:

The fact that both candidates in Anthony Weiner’s old Democratic-leaning district have criticized Obama on Israel offers the Emergency Committee for Israel [EIC] some fodder.
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Saturday, September 3, 2011

Golda Sought Bombing of Auschwitz

Golda Meir was among Jewish leaders who tried to persuade the United States government to bomb the camp in 1944.

Israel National News
by Dr. Rafael Medoff

Seventy years ago today, the first gassing of prisoners was carried out in the Auschwitz death camp.  Now researchers have found evidence that Golda Meir, the future prime minister of Israel, tried to persuade the United States government to bomb the camp.
On September 3, 1941, the Nazis gassed to death 850 prisoners in Auschwitz. During the next three years, an estimated 1.75-million prisoners, most of them Jews, were murdered in the gas chambers there.

A number of Jewish leaders asked the Roosevelt administration to bomb the camp, or the railways leading to it, in 1944. What was not known until now is that one of those who sought the bombing was a young Zionist leader in Palestine who would later become Israel's prime minister: Golda Meir.
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Column One: Cliché-based foreign policy

Ros-Lehtinen’s bill shows that the foreign policy debate in US is now a fight between those who trust facts and those who trust clichés.

The Jerusalem Post
Caroline B. Glick

US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, kicked up a political storm this week. On Tuesday, Ros-Lehtinen introduced the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act. If passed into law it would place stringent restrictions on US funding of the UN’s budget.

The US currently funds 22 percent of the UN’s general budget. That budget is passed by the General Assembly with no oversight by the US. America’s 22% share of the budget is nonvoluntary, meaning the US may exert no influence over how its taxpayers’ funds are spent.

If Ros-Lehtinen’s act is passed into law, the UN will have two years to enact budgetary reforms that would render a minimum of 80% of its budget financing voluntary. If the UN does not make the required reforms, the US government will be enjoined to withhold 50% of its nonvoluntary UN budget allocations.

Beyond this overarching demand for UN budgetary reform, the act contains several specific actions that are directed against UN institutions that advance anti-American and anti-Israel agendas.
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Thursday, September 1, 2011

Yiddishkeit

The last fully realized work by the late Harvey Pekar illuminates the bluntness and delight of American Yiddish in the last century. An excerpt from a new anthology of comics.

Tablet Magazine
by Neal Gabler

Perhaps the greatest difficulty in trying to describe “Yiddishkeit” to an English-speaking audience, as this book attempts to do, is that there is really no English equivalent for the word. “Yiddish culture” comes close, but Yiddishkeit is so large, expansive, and woolly a concept that culture may be too narrow to do it full justice. “Jewish sensibility” comes closer still because it internalizes the notion of Yiddish, places it in the head as well as on the stage and the page, but sensibility is itself a rather loose and elusive idea and within Yiddishkeit there are several sensibilities that, while closely connected, are still not congruent. In effect, Yiddishkeit isn’t a thing or even a set of things, an idea or a set of ideas, which may explain why a book about Yiddishkeit is itself so sprawling, kaleidoscopic, disjointed, eclectic, and just plain messy. You really can’t define Yiddishkeit neatly in words or pictures. You sort of have to feel it by wading into it.
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In the Picture

Bruce Jay Friedman’s darkly comic novels, short stories, and screenplays place him among the past century’s best American writers. In his new memoir, Lucky Bruce, he reminisces about many of them.

Tablet Magazine

Bruce Jay Friedman has been writing across genres and media for more than half a century. Literary types remember Stern, his 1962 breakout book, referred to by one critic as “the first Freudian novel.” Movie buffs know him as the screenwriter of blockbusters like Splash and Stir Crazy. The film The Heartbreak Kid was based on his short story “A Change of Plan.” And then there were his several plays, including the popular 1970 Steambath.
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

George Gilder on "The Israel Test," Obama, the Internet...and the Gays?

The Center for American Progress’s Jewish Conspiracy Theory

According to the Center for American Progress, the reason that nearly half of all Americans have a negative view of Islam is because of three and a half Jews and an Irishman. If such an allegation were being made by a Saudi cleric or an Egyptian newspaper, we could laugh it off along with the aphrodisiac gum, the GPS shark and other regional conspiracy theories about the Jews. But that’s not the case here.

FrontPage Magazine
by Daniel Greenfield


Time Magazine described the Center for American Progress as the most influential outside group in the Obama Administration. Run by Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, and funded by shady billionaires, the growing influence of the shadowy organization on the Democratic Party has troubled even the mainstream media.

“It is difficult to overstate the influence in Obamaland of CAP,” Time wrote. It is even more difficult to overstate its influence on the media, which relies on talking points created by the Center and its blog, ThinkProgress. And that makes the CAP’s descent into scapegoating all the more disturbing.
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ADL: 9/11 anti-Semitic theories 'alive and well'

Jewish group shows how conspiracy theories surrounding attacks have grown and evolved over past decade, including claim that Jews or Israel perpetrated attacks instead of al-Qaeda

Ynetnews

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Is BDS campaign working?

It's working in ways the organizers have not intended it to. As it affects primarily commodities (agricultural products, natural resources) it is facilitating Israel's restructuring to high tech economy; which is virtually impossible to boycott (Israel is already producing products that have little competition and the trend will intensity). One other unintended consequence: reduction in demand for low quality labor, and therefore the need for foreign workers and Palestinians. Palestinians are the ones who will really suffer from this boycott as it picks up. As for the Jews: it's a reincarnation of the old prohibition for the Jews to work in agriculture. New form - old substance: we will handle this. If not for the message they are sending I would join the picket lines.
Here is the article:

Anti-Israel boycotters increasingly successful in strangling economy of Jewish state: More than 20 organizations in Europe in 13 countries endorse boycott of Agrexco, Israel’s leading flower exporter

Ynetnews
by Giulio Meotti

Many Israeli agricultural products have been recently targeted by the Israel boycott campaign: tomatoes, peppers, citrus fruit, carrots, melons, strawberries and celery. But the flowers have been the primary obsession of the divestment movement, which wants to strangle the Israeli economy.

Agrexco, Israel’s leading flower exporter, has recently declared bankruptcy, partially due to the global boycott of its produce, according to some reports. More than 20 organizations in Europe in 13 countries endorsed a boycott of Agrexco.
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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

WHITE HOUSE’S 9/11 ANNIVERSARY GUIDELINES ASK OFFICIALS TO ‘MINIMIZE REFERENCES TO AL QAEDA’

Communist Party Central Committee The White House has provided guidelines to government officials regarding how to observe and discuss the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. While there are certainly some beneficial recommendations held within, some may interpret the disseminated documents as more agenda-driven than not.

TheBlaze

These instructions include information about how to honor the lives lost here in America. Additionally, they call for remembrance of the fact that Al Qaeda and other terror groups have also killed innocent individuals in other localities across the globe. Politico has more:

The guidelines detail what the White House has deemed the important themes that must be discussed, as well as the tone the 9/11 observances should take.
“A chief goal of our communications is to present a positive, forward-looking narrative,” the foreign guidelines state.
Again, these are worthwhile goals and ideals, but they may be viewed as something more sinister by President Obama’s political opponents. The Atlantic writes:
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Poll: Most American Muslims satisfied with Obama

A majority of US Muslims are content with the nation's direction in contrast to many Americans and few Muslims who believe there is support for Islamic extremism, a survey released on Tuesday found.

Ynetnews 

With the 10th anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon approaching, the Pew Research Center found that most Muslims felt ordinary Americans were friendly or neutral toward them.
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Adler & Coren on Ground Zero imam Rauf

Mitt Romney facing fund-raising challenge from Jewish donors who mistakenly think Bachmann is Jewish

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is facing a new challenge: He's having trouble raising money from some Jewish donors who mistakenly believe one of his opponents, Michele Bachmann, is Jewish.

NEW YORK POST
By JOSH MARGOLIN

Some Jewish donors are telling fund-raisers for Romney, a Mormon, that while they like him, they'd rather open their wallets for the "Jewish candidate," who they don't realize is actually a Lutheran, The Post has learned.

"It's a real problem," one Romney fund-raiser said. "We're working very hard in the Jewish community because of Obama's Israel problem. This was surprising."
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