[I dealt with this subject also in Will President Palin end the futile "peace process?] A unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. Does President Obama not see that it leads to a minefield? Last week, not for the first time, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said he was considering declaring a Palestinian state and asking the United Nations to recognize it. In the past, it went without saying that the United States, which holds a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, would veto any such proposal that did not come about as the result of a negotiated agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. But there is now speculation that President Barack Obama might break with that precedent. This dialogue did not elevate Hussein’s image or Americas for that matter in Hindu India. Notice : without a teleprompter he is quite inarticulate. Yamit Creeping Shariah: Asserting that Islam embodied a religion of peace,fairness and tolerance, U.S. President Barack Obama said here on Sunday that the religion was being “distorted” by a few extremists. Mr. Obama was responding to a student who invited his opinion on jihad during his town hall style meeting at Mumbai’s St. Xavier’s college. “The phrase jihad has a lot of meaning within Islam and is subject to a lot of different interpretations, but I will say that first Islam is one of the world’s great religions. More than a billion people practise Islam and an overwhelming majority view their obligations to a religion that reaffirms peace, fairness, tolerance. I think all of us recognise that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted by violence,” Mr. Obama said. An unlikely pair elevate the monetary policy debate The former Alaskan Governor showed sound political and economic instincts by inveighing forcefully against the Federal Reserve’s latest round of quantitative easing.According to the prepared text of remarks that she released to National Review online, Mrs. Palin also exhibited a more sophisticated knowledge of monetary policy than any major Republican this side of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan. They Want It All And They Want Us Out! It’s one thing to willfully subscribe to mind-blowing colossal deception; it’s quite another to shake the foundations beneath one’s own civilization. Politically incorrect as it may be in our postmodern, multicultural existence, Europe’s and America’s democracies are constructed on Christian foundations. By accepting Muslim deconstructionist diktats, the West not only injures the Jews, it injures its own legacy. To be fair, the world’s current most inveterate revisers of the... By Chaim Levinson and Nir Hasson, HAARETZ Israel published two major new settlement plans on Tuesday, threatening to undermine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest trip to Washington. More than 1,000 Jewish homes were approved for construction beyond the Green Line in East Jerusalem, along with a second plan to build 800 homes in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. “We were deeply disappointed by the announcement of advance planning for new housing units in sensitive areas of East Jerusalem,” said U.S. State Department Spokesman Philip J. Crowley. “It is counter-productive to our efforts to resume direct negotiations between the parties.” Last month Ariel... Prime Minister Stephen Harper delivers a speech on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Monday, Nov. 8, 2010. Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he is prepared to suffer any political backlash that comes his way for speaking out against anti-Israel rhetoric. Harper told an audience Monday that while Israel is receptive to fair criticism, Canada is obligated to stand up for its ally when it comes under attack from others. “Not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israel mob tell us all too well, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are in the longer term a threat to all of us.” “And I know, by the way, because I have the bruises to show for it, that whether it is at... US DEpt of State Daily Briefing QUESTION: Mr. Crowley, do you notice that there is a pattern here concerning the truth, Yosef’s announcement on building the – on the new buildings and so on coincided with the Vice Presidential speech in New Orleans? It seems that every time there is visitor, a high caliber visitor, be it an American visitor to Israel or an Israeli visitor to the United States, there seems to be an announcement of building settlements. PMO That same resilient spirit is exemplified by your collective efforts to help this great city rebuild itself after Hurricane Katrina. Just as you have rallied time after time to help Israel weather the storms it has faced, you rallied to help New Orleans to get back on its feet. You should be proud of what you have been doing for the Jewish people and the Jewish state, and for others. I am doubly proud to be with you here today. Thank you. On the eve of the 20th century, Theodore Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, foresaw the great challenges that stood before the dispersed Jewish people. He charted a clear path to direct the Jewish destiny to the safer shores of a Jewish state. Herzl’s vision was guided by three principles: Recognize perils, seize opportunities, forge unity. Abbas was ready to back deal with Olmert, Bush memoir says Agreement was to include handing over “vast majority” of West Bank and building tunnel to Gaza; Barbara Bush called son “first Jewish president.” WASHINGTON – Former US president George W. Bush indicates that both Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas were willing to publicly back Olmert’s proposed peace agreement before Olmert’s ouster as prime minister ruined the deal, according to a memoir to be released on Tuesday. “We devised a process to turn [Olmert’s] private offer into a public agreement,” Bush writes of the secret peace deal worked out between the then-prime minister of Israel... By Prof Martin Sherman, A curious Indian stops a passing Israeli backpacker on a New Delhi street. “Tell me,” he asks, “how many Israelis are there?” “I’m not quite sure,” the backpacker answers. “About six million.” “No, no,” retorts the Indian, “not just in New Delhi. I mean all together.” Behind the joke is a remarkable reality: Some 40,000–50,000 Israelis travel to India each year (many of them “unwinding” in the country after completing military service), and are a very visible presence in the country. In some outlying locations Israelis comprise a dominant percentage of foreign visitors. Even in central sites such as the main market in Old Delhi it is not uncommon to see Hebrew signs and meet merchants who can converse with Israeli customers in fairly fluent Hebrew.
An Alternative Road to a ‘Two-State Solution’
Clifford May, NRO
He might do this because he believes in a “two-state solution” and would like to achieve it while he’s in the White House and sooner rather than later. This is not unlike Obama’s approach to health-care reform. He was willing to use whatever means...In India: Obama’s Defence Of Islam Should Please The Muslim Brotherhood…
Palin’s Dollar, Zoellick’s Gold
WSJ EDITORIAL
It would be hard to find two more unlikely intellectual comrades than Robert Zoellick, the World Bank technocrat, and Sarah Palin, the populist conservative politician. But in separate interventions yesterday, the pair roiled the global monetary debate in complementary and timely fashion.
Stressing the risks of Fed “pump priming,” Mrs. Palin zeroed in on the connection between a “weak dollar—a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market”—and rising...Ibrahim and Ibn-Rabah
Quite incredibly, representatives of Western democracies on UNESCO’s executive delivered a self-destructive blow to their own heritage when demanding that Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron be removed from the inventory of Jewish heritage sites. UNESCO’s resolution redefined them as mosques – as if Muslim from time immemorial. It sought to detach seminal biblical place-names from any Jewish connections.New construction announced in Ariel and Jerusalem
The construction in Ariel has been the center of controversy between Israel and the United States. While Israel sees Ariel as part of a large settlement bloc, the United States sees it as a panhandle sticking into the West Bank, intended to prevent Palestinian territorial contiguity.Canadian PM Harper will defend Israel ‘whatever the cost’
(Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
The prime minister acknowledged that his position is not popular with all governments and organizations, including members of the United Nations and the Francophonie.US: housing announcement undermines trust
MR. CROWLEY: Well, I don’t think the Vice President’s taking this personally. Look – and obviously, this is a process. We’ve seen these kinds of announcements before. Actually, some of this might date back to last month. And it could very well be that somebody in Israel has made this known in order to embarrass the prime minister and to undermine the process. This is expressly why we have been encouraging the parties to remain in direct negotiations, to return to direct...PM Netanyahu’s Speech at the GA of the Jewish Federations of NA
The story of the Jewish people is that of great destruction followed by miraculous redemption.
These same three principles should guide us at the dawn of the 21st century. We must recognize...Bush’s Memoirs
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
Bush also excoriates the US intelligence agencies that famously concluded in late 2007 that Iran had halted production of a nuclear weapon, denying him any possible military option, and notes that he rejected an appeal by Olmert earlier in the year to bomb a Syrian nuclear facility.Israel and India: Strategic Bedfellows
That Israelis feel an instinctive affinity for India should perhaps not be surprising. Its history is virtually devoid of antisemitism. Indeed, the only significant incidents...
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Posts
