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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Republicans to Unveil Bill to Force Major Changes at the UN

House Republicans are planning to introduce today legislation that seeks to force major changes at the United Nations, using as leverage the U.S.’s 22 percent contribution to the world body’s operating budget.

Bloomberg

The bill by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would require the UN to adopt a voluntary budget model in which countries selectively fund UN agencies rather than according to a set formula. It would end funding for Palestinian refugees, limit use of U.S. funds to only purposes outlined by Congress and stop contributions to peacekeeping operations until management changes are made.

The legislation represents the leading edge of Republican moves against the world body at a time when the Obama administration is increasingly building its foreign policy around multilateral institutions, making the alliance-based approach central to its stance on Libya. The bill may advance in the Republican-controlled House but is likely to hit opposition in the Senate and from President Barack Obama.
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Obama's Pretend Counterterrorism Policy

With trumpets and drum rolls, the White House in early August released a policy paper on methods to prevent terrorism, said to have been two years in the making. Signed personally by Barack Obama and with rhetoric vaunting "the strength of communities" and the need to "enhance our understanding of the threat posed by violent extremism," the document looks anodyne.

Peter King (left) and Bennie Thompson
(right) symbolize the difference in
 counterterrorism policy outlook.

by Daniel Pipes

But beneath the calm lies a counter­productive–and dangerous–approach to counterterrorism. The import of this paper consists in its firm stand on the wrong side of three distinct counterterrorism debates, with the responsible Right (and a few sensible liberals) on one side, and Islamists, leftists, and multiculturalists on the other.

The first debate concerns the nature of the problem. The responsible Right points to one immense threat, Islamism, a global ideological movement that has motivated some 23,000 terror attacks worldwide since 9/11. Islamists deny that their ideology spawns violence, and they categorize those 23,000 attacks as the work of criminals, crazies, or misguided Muslims. Western leftists and multiculturalists concur, bringing their formidable cadres, creativity, funds, and institutions to support the Islamists' denial of responsibility.
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Comparing Obama’s Performance in Office with that of a Sack of Hammers

Pajamas Media
by Frank J. Fleming

President Barack Obama is an Ivy League-educated man of considerable intelligence and ambition who has surrounded himself with numerous experts to help in his decision-making. With these advantages, he has tried a number of things to help the country domestically and in the area of foreign affairs. But at the end of the day, how does Obama’s efficacy in office compare to that of a sack of hammers?

It’s somewhat difficult to judge the performance of a president with all the factors that need to be considered and trying to figure out the president’s effect on them, but perhaps the best way to accurately assess the effectiveness of a president is to judge him against the expected performance of a sack of hammers in a similar situation (which is known as the “Coolidge Test”). Basically, the question is: Instead of electing the current president, would the country have been better off taking a burlap sack to Ace Hardware, filling it with approximately one hundred dollars worth of hammers, and placing that in the Oval Office?

As long as it’s an old burlap sack and the hammers were made in America, this is a perfectly constitutional option for president. It’s never been tried, though, so it only exists as a hypothetical. Nevertheless, the nature of a sack of hammers is pretty easy to predict, so we can accurately assess how it would have performed in similar situations versus the more ambitious and active people who tend to be elected president. So let’s go through the issues that Barack Obama has dealt with and, in as fair and balanced a manner as possible, determine whether he has performed better, worse, or about the same as a sack of hammers.
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The Soros-supported Center for American Progress blames rich Jews for stoking Islamophobia

American Thinker
by Ed Lasky

The Obama-allied Center for American Progress has released a report that blames Islamophobia in America on a small group of Jews and Israel supporters in America, whose views are being backed by millions of dollars.  This "network", according to the news release, have "have worked hard to push narratives that Obama might be a Muslim, that mosques are incubators of radicalization, and that "radical Islam" has infiltrated all aspects of American society -- including the conservative movement.

Who are the figures mentioned as the promoters of prejudice? Most of them are prominent Jews and supporters of Israel, such as David Horowitz, Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson (the founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism). The eight foundations mentioned as funding this effort include are almost exclusively ones founded and funded by Jewish donors, and lest readers not be aware of this fact, the Center for American Progress lists not only the other beneficiaries of the charities and foundations (most of them having Jewish or Israel in the title) but also goes to the trouble of naming the individuals behind these charities -- not just the donors but also those who serve on the boards.
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Jews Say Yes

Some 70 years after high school students, shopkeepers and doctors stood with their backs to the wall of the ghettos and sang, "Never Say You Walk Upon Your Final Way" while reloading their pistols, a rally organized by "Jews Say No" gathered to protest against Israel for defending itself.

Sultan Knish a blog by Daniel Greenfield

The Partisan's song of the ghettos was a courageous affirmation of life by those who went off to fight in Warsaw and in Jerusalem. And today there are the ugly chants of those who deny that affirmation. Who insist that the Jews are better off dead. Their rhetoric cloaks this agenda in the occupation,

Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner wrote on his blog that, "the Palestinians have the right to use terrorism against us." Of the terrorists who killed eight Israelis last week, "however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack."

Larry Derfner is honest, if equally vile, he doesn't bother justifying the genocidal Islamism of the post-PLO order, instead he settles for justifying the murders without regard to ideology. It doesn't matter what you believe anymore, or what you're fighting for, the left now extends the right to kill Jews without any belief test. You can be on the left, you can even be on the right, you can have beliefs identical to those of the Nazis, but with an Islamic veneer. It's all good.

Derfner dresses up his murderous permissiveness in talk of resistance, but if the fathers of one of the children killed by Fatah terrorist attacks were to kick Abbas in the shin, he would be the first to call for his head. It's resistance when you kill Jews. It's occupation when Jews fight back.
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Ron Paul: "Those who hate us and would like to kill us, they are motivated by our invasion of their land"

Jihad Watch

I'm tired of the Rick Perry firestorm. Time for a Ron Paul firestorm. Another Clueless Presidential Candidate Alert: "Ron Paul says U.S. intervention motivated 9/11 attacks," by Josh Hafner for the Des Moines Register, August 27:

WINTERSET, Ia. – Two weeks away from the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, presidential candidate and Texas Rep. Ron Paul says that U.S. intervention in the Middle East is a main motivation behind terrorist hostilities toward America, and that Islam is not a threat to the nation.
At a campaign stop on Saturday in Winterset, one man asked Paul how terrorist groups would react if the U.S. removed its military presence in Middle Eastern nations, a move the candidate advocates.

“Which enemy are you worried that will attack our national security?” Paul asked.

“If you’re looking for specifics, I’m talking about Islam. Radical Islam,” the man answered.

“I don’t see Islam as our enemy,” Paul said. “I see that motivation is occupation and those who hate us and would like to kill us, they are motivated by our invasion of their land, the support of their dictators that they hate.”

Yes. When Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, “Have no doubt... Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world,” he was just upset about the U.S. invasion of Iran. When CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad said in southern California that “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth” (he now denies saying this, but the original reporter sticks by her story), he was just angry about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. When the prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj said, “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate,” he was upset about the U.S. invasion of Dearborn, Michigan. When the most influential Islamic cleric in the world today, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, said that “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice,” he was upset about the U.S. invasion of Malmö, Sweden.
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Answering Jonathan Alter’s Challenge

“Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president?” Jonathan Alter writes in his column.

Commentary Magazine
by Peter Wehner

Alter tells us he’s not talking here about Obama as a tactician and communicator, and he’s not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about people’s generalized “disappointment.” (Neither am I.) He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far.

In Alter’s words, “Your mission, Jim [or anyone else for that matter], should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral.”

Consider the mission accepted.

In one sense, the answer to the Alter challenge is obvious: Obama has failed by his own standards. It’s the Obama administration, not the RNC, that said if his stimulus package was passed unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. It’s Obama who joked there weren’t as many “shovel-ready” jobs as he thought.
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Column One: Glenn Beck’s revealing visit

In general, Israeli media responded to Beck’s visit either as a non-event, or distorted who Beck is and what he is trying to do

The Jerusalem Post
by Caroline B. Glick

American media superstar Glenn Beck’s visit to Israel this week was a revealing and remarkable event. It revealed what it takes to be a friend of Israel. And it revealed the causes of Israel’s difficulty in telling its enemies from its friends.

Many world leaders, opinion-shapers and other notables protest enduring friendship with Israel. From Washington to London, Paris to Spain, policy- makers and other luminaries preface all their remarks to Jewish audiences with such statements. Once their declarations are complete – and often without taking a breath – they proceed to denounce Israel’s policies and to deny its basic rights.

US President Barack Obama exemplifies this practice. Obama always begins his statements on Israel by proclaiming his enduring friendship for Israel. Then he tells us to deny Jewish property rights, accept indefensible borders, or desist from defending ourselves from aggression.
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Jewish Mail-Order Brides on the American Frontier

There are many stereotypes of Jewish women, and mail-order bride isn’t one of them. But in the 19th century, some left Eastern Europe for the American frontier, where they married men they’d never met.

Tablet Magazine
by Anna Solomon

The phrase “mail-order bride” always conjured certain associations for me—desperate, uneducated, sexually submissive women, and the desperate, misogynistic men who order them—but Jewish wasn’t one of them.

Then, a few years ago, in a quiet moment, I was Googling myself—as if you’ve never done it—when, along with an L.A. real-estate agent and a Brooklyn social worker, another, more curious Anna Solomon appeared. This Anna Solomon was featured on a website about Jewish women pioneers to the American West, a category I’d never known existed. Along with Anna—who, with her husband, Isadore, founded the town of Solomonville, Ariz., in 1876—a number of other Jewish women were toughing it out on the frontier, including Rachel Bella Kahn, who came to America in 1894 as a mail-order bride for Abraham Calof of Devil’s Lake, N.D.
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Al Sharpton on Comedy Central (Now Called MSNBC)

Israeli ambassador to U.S. hosts Ramadan dinner

(CNN) - The Israeli ambassador to the United States hosted a dinner celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Thursday, marking the first time an ambassador from the Jewish state has hosted such a dinner in the United States, the embassy said.

By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren hosted the dinner at his residence, with about 65 guests in attendance, including imams, rabbis and officials from the White House, Congress and the State Department, according to Israeli Embassy spokesman Lior Weintraub.

Oren said the unusual dinner is fitting at a time when the future of the Middle East is uncertain, as the Arab Spring has unseated regimes in Tunisia and Egypt and as Libya appears poised on the brink of a revolution. Read more »

With Glenn Beck by the Temple’s Walls | Rubin Reports

Glenn Beck’s program in Israel went off without a hitch, ending in a rally on the southern side of the Old City of Jerusalem. About 1000 people were in attendance, mostly Americans (contrary to the media coverage, a number of the Americans were Jews not Evangelicals) who’d come to Jerusalem at Beck’s urging, but with a sprinkling of Israelis, including a fair proportion of Orthodox Jews.

With the Old City walls to his right and in front of him, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque looming quite close, Beck handled himself with a mixture of audaciousness toward his enemies and sensitivity toward his friends. He announced a global movement, to be headquartered in Texas, to encourage average people to act against injustice, though the details of its scope and goals weren’t clear. Since you won’t get any real coverage in the media, here is the full text of the speech. Read more »

More by Barry Rubin:

 JPost | Beck gets it right when it comes to the big picture issues

As Jews, and Israelis most of all, should know, to be falsely reviled is not proof of being wrong or evil.

Having studied the Middle East professionally for 35 years, and with a PhD in Middle East history, let me make it perfectly clear: Glenn Beck, who is holding several rallies in Israel this week, has a better grasp of Middle East politics than most Western experts, as well as some Western leaders. Read more »

Beck Announces Global Movement to Defend Israel

The Five Most Catastrophic Hidden Costs of the Obama Presidency | Pajamas Media | by Kyle-Anne Shiver

We well remember candidate Barack Obama’s ’08 throngs laying in breathless wait for the “Lightworker” to appear and speak as “sort of like God” from his teleprompter on high. Now, with nearly everything this president has touched lying in shambles, a shrunken Obama whines from town to town, transported in a taxpayer-purchased bus that resembles a big, fat hearse — the perfect symbol for the harbinger of economic death that Obama’s presidency has become.

It’s painfully apparent now that the American people were scammed in ’08 by Barack the Bamboozler in what will be known historically as the most audacious scheme of fraudulent branding the world has ever seen.

I would just love to see a crackerjack team of litigation attorneys put together a class action suit with a dollar amount on both the tangible and intangible “pain and suffering” costs of the Obama presidency. In fact, if I were a Republican strategist, I would commission a legal team to devise such a case and put it in a PowerPoint presentation for voters by next fall. Read more »

The Visceral Terror of a Tea Party Presidency: 10 Thoughts on the Coming Political Warfare of 2012 | The PJ Tatler

A few thoughts of reflection after considering PJM‘s coverage of Rick Perry’s announcement of his candidacy:

1. Conservatives fear leftist government because they know the policies do not work and the country will suffer as a result.

2. Leftists fear conservative government because deep down they are afraid the policies will work and the country will prosper as a result and more people will abandon the progressive faith and they will no longer be able to live with the comforting delusion that they are superior to everyone around them.

3. The Left is permanently incapable of self-reflection. It cannot reverse its centuries-long cosmic quest for the Open Society based on Social Justice; but rather only shift its tactics when necessary. Read more »

A disaster called Obama | Ynetnews | by Yigal Walt

Great promise turns into catastrophe as Obama leads world into abyss; can we have Bush back?

Barack Obama is solidifying his status as the worst president in American history. The leader who promised us a bright future of peace and fraternity is leading the American empire – and the rest of the world with it – into a dark abyss. Ever since he settled into the Oval Office, Obama has been hopping from one disaster to the next, making every possible mistake, boosting enemies and disregarding allies while ruining everything he touches in the process. To our regret, the heaviest price – for the time being at least – is being paid by residents of the Middle East.
 
When the masses hit Iran’s street and threatened to topple the Ayatollah regime, Obama was silent. Why should he support a struggle waged by freedom-hungry citizens against a radical Islamic dictatorship and chronic human rights violator? And so, a rare opportunity to change the face of a state that today constitutes the gravest threat to world and regional peace slipped away. Read more »

Glenn Beck Restoring Courage

Should Israel Welcome Glenn Beck's Support? Hudson New York | by Alan M. Dershowitz

All decent people, whether on the left or the right, should support Israel's right to exist as the democratic nation state of the Jewish people. All decent people should support Israel's right to defend its civilians from terrorist attacks. All reasonable people should favor a just peace that assures Israel's ability to thrive in a dangerous neighborhood and to defend its borders.

These issues should not divide decent people along ideological or political lines. Israel's existence and right to defend itself should be bipartisan issues, not only in the United States, but in all democratic countries of the world.

The reality, however, is very different. The Jewish state is demonized by the hard left in America, by virtually the entire left in much of Europe, and by most of the left and right in Ireland, Norway and Sweden. Its right to exist is denied by a high proportion of Arabs and Muslims, and most of the Arab and Muslim nations do not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

In many circles, anti-Zionism easily morphs into anti-Semitism, and in some countries Jews are afraid to walk the streets wearing any clothing or symbols that identify them as Jewish.

The general assembly of the United Nations has become the world's new Der Sturmer, whose podium hosts, and many of whose audience members cheer, virulent anti-Semites such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Read more »

The Imperial Presidency

European royals make do with a less lavish lifestyle than the supposed citizen-executive of a so-called republic

National Review
by Mark Steyn

Rick Perry, governor of Texas, has only been in the presidential race for 20 minutes, but he’s already delivered one of the best lines in the campaign:

“I’ll work every day to try to make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential in your life as I can.”

This will be grand news to Schylar Capo, eleven years old, of Virginia, who made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days, and for her pains, was visited by a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter (with accompanying state troopers) who charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species and issued her a $535 fine. If the federal child-abuser has that much time on his hands, he should have charged the cat, who was illegally transporting the protected species from his gullet to his intestine. Read more »

Jon Voight compares Palestinian terrorists to Nazis | JPost

At J'lem Holocaust event organized Glenn Beck, Oscar-winning American actor praises Israel, condemns terror attacks.

Oscar-winning American actor Jon Voight slammed Palestinian terrorism Monday, at a Jerusalem event about the Holocaust organized by broadcaster Glenn Beck.

Voight, who is not Jewish, praised Israel and the Jewish people in his speech. He made reference to suicide bombings and to the March 11 slayings of the Fogel family in Itamar. Read more »

The Islamic Political Takeover of America FrontPage Magazine | by Daniel Greenfield

American presidents have traditionally been the governors and the senators of key states. The rise of sizable politically active Muslim populations in those states positions Islamic groups to exert a strong and disproportionate influence on national politics. A governor or senator who seeks out Muslim support to get elected at a state level will form alliances that he will carry forward with him into the White House.

Basic diversity and multiculturalism means that state officials in key states are forming ties with Islamic associations that serve as front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood or other organizations that are equally antithetical to the long term survival of the United States. Through a few meetings, the Brotherhood is gaining a lever that it can use to move presidents.
Virginia once produced more presidents than any other state. Now with a Muslim population as high as a third of a million it’s known for mosque controversies and terrorist training camps. Ohio produced nearly as many presidents, from the ranks of former governors Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley. But former Ohio governor Ted Strickland spoke at a CAIR banquet and pandered to Muslim abuses in the Rifqa Bary case. Like California, Texas and New Jersey—Virginia and Ohio now rank among the top ten Muslim populated states in the country. Read more »

Closing The Gap Between Campus ‘Insiders,’ ‘Outsiders’ The Jewish Week | by Hart Levine

Jewish life on campus is the best of times for some students, but for most it is the worst of times. Consider the University of Pennsylvania, my alma mater, whose Jewish students represent about 25 percent of the student body.

There is a vibrant Jewish community centered at Hillel, as well as Chabad and other Jewish organizations, but the majority of Jewish students just aren’t involved in Jewish life on campus. Sure, Hillel and its active leaders provide the coolest programs, finest building, and tastiest kosher food (recently voted best food on campus), but most Jewish students still don’t come. Or they show up once and never came back.
For example, of the 2,500 undergraduate Jews at Penn, 400 show up regularly to celebrate Shabbat. The first week of the school year might even draw 800 people, but half of them never return. And Jewish life at Penn is considered among the best in the country. Read more »

First 'Restoring Courage' Event in Caesarea

Beck: We are entering the age of the miracles of God
JPost | By Jonah Mandel

US media personality opens four-day Restoring Courage rally in Caesarea; 2,000 Christians, mostly Americans, fly in especially for Beck’s event.

The solutions to the problems of our times are not within the reach of political leaders, rather divinity, US pundit Glenn Beck told nearly 3,000 enthusiastic followers in the Caesarea Amphitheater on Sunday night, at the opening event of his four-day Restoring Courage rally.

“I’ve spent the last few years trying to find solutions for what is happening in the world,” he said on the backdrop of the pillars of the grand stage. “While there may not be a political solution, the good news is the God of Abraham ain’t running for office,” he said to loud applause. “Be not afraid, know who he is, know his face, know that he is a God of covenants and miracles. We are leaving the age of man-made miracles of spacecraft, and we are entering the age of the miracles of God.” Read more »

The Voice | by Katie Schneider | Tablet Magazine

Before he was the famous voice of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Woody Woodpecker, Mel Blanc was a Jewish kid in Portland, Ore., doing impressions of his immigrant neighbors

Museum exhibits are often about visuals, but the first thing you notice when you walk into the Oregon Jewish Museum’s current show celebrating Mel Blanc’s life and career is his voice. That manic patter is familiar and unmistakable: It’s the voice of Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird, Barney Rubble and Dino and so many other beloved cartoon characters. Blanc, in fact, voiced so many different characters—over 400—that Jack Benny once remarked, “There’s only five real people in Hollywood. Everyone else is Mel Blanc.” And all of Blanc’s characters, as the new exhibit deftly reveals, owe a part of their existence to his upbringing as a young Jewish boy in Portland, Ore., performing in the city’s vaudeville houses and mixing with its various ethnic populations.

Born in San Francisco in 1909 as Melvin Jerome Blank, he moved north with his family at the age of 6. His father owned several apparel businesses, and young Melvin spent his days running around south Portland, observing its residents, many of them Jews. Among the first people he befriended were the elderly Jewish couple who ran the local grocery; they spoke Yiddish, and the boy became fascinated with the strange dialect and its intonations. He learned to imitate it. It was, by his own admission, the first voice he ever performed. Read more »

The Science Of Shadchanim | VosIzNeias.com

New York - How do shadchanim, both professional and dabblers in the field, think? What methods do they use to present possible shidduchim to would-be clients?

The shidduch crisis has certainly been a dominant theme of conversation in religious Jewish circles. This article represents an attempt to help address the crisis in a small way. The best way to address it, however, is to explore exactly how we think about shidduchim.
A brief survey reveals that there are no fewer than six different methods employed by shadchanim. What follows is a brief synopsis of each of these methods. Following the synopsis will be a modest suggestion.
1. The “working memory” method. It seems that many shadchanim have about five or six candidates of each gender in their working memory. Working memory is defined as the information that the person can access immediately. Often the shadchan will choose the best available candidate in his or her working memory that would be compatible with the person the shadchan is currently thinking about.
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Richard Silverstein’s racially offensive attack on black congressmen visiting Israel | Harry's Place

Seattle-based blogger Richard Silverstein has published a racially charged attack on Jesse Jackson, Jr. and several other African-American congressmen currently visiting Israel.

The post bears the odd headline “Whorin’ and Shnorin’ Jesse Jackson Jr. Style”. That Silverstein apparently attempts to use black dialect to mock these congressmen, dropping the terminal “g” twice in the headline and twice in the post’s first sentence, shows a shocking lack of sensitivity. It seems that Silverstein is willing to make gratuitous use of a racial stereotype to mock black people whose support for Israel he finds objectionable.

The content of Silverstein’s column, which attempts to paint Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. as an ignorant opportunist willing to sell out his principles for cash, strikes a similarly harsh tone. Silverstein bases these charges on the slimmest of evidence: that Rep. Jackson purportedly received an $8,000 campaign donation from AIPAC. Based on that and on Jackson’s participation in the fact-finding tour of Israel, Silverstein writes that Jackson

knows what he’s told to know. And you know who tells him what he knows? His rich pro-Israel Jewish friends in Chicago who are filling his campaign coffers.

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Elie Wiesel arranging Durban III counter-conference | JPost

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Holocaust survivor seeking to debunk process which critics say riddled with hatred, intolerance.

BERLIN – The third UN-sponsored anti-racisim conference, which plans to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the 2001 anti-Israel Durban I event, will face a counter-conference in September featuring Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, seeking to debunk a Durban process which critics say is riddled with hatred and intolerance.

The Durban process, so named for the South African city where the first conference took place in 2001, is shrouded in controversy because the first conference singled out Israel for attacks in its political document. Read more »

Obama Administration’s Eyes Are Closed on Completely Predictable Middle East Crises | Rubin Reports

A Hollywood mogul once explained that he didn’t get headaches, he gave headaches to others. President Barack Obama’s determination not to give headaches to America’s enemies guarantees that he brings them onto U.S. interests. Here are examples happening right now and certain to blow up before the November 2012 elections.

Iraq and Afghanistan: Obama plans to withdraw U.S.combat troops by December 31 from Iraq and next year from Afghanistan. A “logical” American official, not understanding how things work in the Middle East, would say:

Well, of course they know we are leaving so they will be quiet and let us withdraw.

But that’s not how the Middle East works. Knowing that U.S. forces are leaving, revolutionary Islamists in both Iraq and Afghanistan are stepping up offensives now to make this look like a U.S. retreat due to defeat. Their purpose is to build morale and support among their own people. The Taliban will say:

We drove out the Russians and the Americans. We defeated both superpowers. See, Allah is on our side! Join us. Our victory is inevitable. Read more »