The man who stopped the freeze and how he did it.
By Ted Belman
Moment Magazine just published an article THE MAN WHO STOPPED THE FREEZE by Ilene Prusher. And that man is Dani Dayan
As the very public face of the Yesha Council, what Dayan thinks matters. Yesha, an umbrella organization of muni-cipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and formerly the Gaza Strip, is one of Israel’s most influential lobbies. Known by the acronym for Yehuda, Shomron and Aza, the Hebrew equivalents of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, it is made up of 15 elected settlement municipal leaders and ten community leaders. Its mandate is to assist Jewish settlements in every possible way, working, for example, to acquire bullet-proof ambulances and buses, and pushing the Israeli government to provide roads, electricity and water to the settlements.
The Council serves as the political arm of the estimated 300,000 Israelis living in West Bank settlements and wields power far beyond what its relatively small numbers would suggest: The...
A letter is circulating in the US asking Obama to support UNSC resolution condemning settlements
A letter from an array of concerned policy commentators and practitioners, academics, and former government officials about the resolution pending at the United Nations Security Council on illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied Territory has just been released and is posted below.
Among those signing the letter are former US Trade Representative and Council on Foreign Relations Chair Carla Hills, journalist and former New Republic editor Peter Beinart, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering, former Assistant Secretary of State James Dobbins, former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pastor, former New Republic editor and Atlantic Senior Editor and Daily Dish publisher Andrew Sullivan, former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci and former US Ambassador to Israel Edward “Ned” Walker, among others.
Letter to the President of the United States
Washington, DC — 18 January 2011
Dear Mr. President,
In light of...
Pakistani “Muslims” Now Stoning Babies to Death
Infant born out of wedlock stoned to death under color of Islam
by Bill Levinson
Killings of newborn babies on the rise in Pakistan reports,
Kazmi recounts the discovery of the burnt body of a six-day-old infant who had been strangled. Another child was found on the steps of a mosque having been stoned to death on the orders of an extremist imam who has since disappeared, he says.
Bibi wipes floor with TIME
A Response from the Office of Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to TIME Magazine
By Ron Dermer, Senior Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister
Dear Mr. Stengel,
I wanted to bring to your attention a recent article in Time entitled
“Israel’s Rightward Lurch Scares Some Conservatives.” I hope that you will agree that the article’s obvious bias and numerous distortions are not worthy of the standards of your prestigious magazine.
Israel is depicted in the article as essentially sliding towards fascism.
Your correspondent refers to Israel’s Shin Bet (the equivalent of the FBI) as a “secret police,” claims that the Israeli government “increasingly equates dissent with disloyalty,” and accuses the Prime Minister of “taking a page from neighboring authoritarian states.”
The evidence offered for these outrageous allegations includes a preliminary vote in our parliament that would require...
Canada still supports the peace process
By Ted Belman
Recently, Canada’s Minister of Defence, MacKay met with top Israeli officials and exchanged concerns,
Apparently, Canada has applied more sanctions than the minimum required. Also because Canadian forces are fighting in Afghanistan, Canada is very concerned about Iran’s activities.
Mackay told the Jewish Tribune “Canada is a strong supporter of negotiations for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, with mutually assured borders. Peace is best pursued if negotiations continue.”
I am meeting with Canada’s Ambassidor to Israel on Monday and intend to argue against such a position.
Israel’s nuclear deterrent.
By Ted Belman
Collision Course? is a very informative article on Israel nuclear deterrence.
How did America feel about Israel acquiring the bomb?
There was only one American President who was truly committed in his effort to stop Israel from going nuclear and this was President John F. Kennedy, but his determination was short-lived as he was assassinated in 1963. All others after him, in particular Johnson and Nixon, quietly came to agree with the notion that Israel could have the bomb. Essentially, the Johnson and Nixon administrations, even though they publicly claim to be against Israel acquiring the bomb, in reality they were not. Some would say they were ambivalent, others would say they were sympathetic. Obviously for Israel the nuclear issue was a question of life and death.
I extract from one paragraph dealing with Iran.
You are right to point out that there are different views in Israel about characterizing the Iranian nuclear threat. Some refer to it as...
Israel’s high tech engineers are worth their cost
By Batya Feldman, Globes
One of the great fears of Israel’s high-tech industry in recent years is the hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Indian engineers flooding the global high-tech market and competing against their Israeli colleagues.
The pwc Israel MoneyTree survey, summarizing the decade, states that the cost of an Israeli engineer is 2-3 times the cost of an Indian or Chinese engineer, and that many multinationals are diverting their development budgets to India. However, despite the higher cost of Israeli engineers, they have advantages that corporations are prepared to pay for.
One of these advantages is that Israel has a complete start-up ecology, including fairly friendly regulations, similar companies in each field at different stages of development, the presence of multinational corporations, investors, and service providers, which other countries lack.
In addition, many Israeli engineers enter the labor market after accumulating experience in the...
Defending the English Defense League
The EDL, or English Defense League, which vigorously opposes the advance of Islam into the cultural nexus of Western democracies, finds itself on the receiving end of the customary hysteria that greets every such attempt to defend a way of life we have too long taken for granted. Originating in the city of Luton in England, where a substantial, radicalized Muslim population has been linked to various terror plots and fomented demonstrations against British troops returning from Iraq, the EDL has taken its premonitory message to Europe and North America. A rally was held on January 11, 2011 in Toronto, hosted by the Jewish Defense League (JDL). Predictably, it was met by “pacifist” protesters, associated with several anti-Zionist and ostensibly anti-racist groups, chanting such peaceable slogans as “EDL—go to Hell” and “Smash, Smash, Smash EDL”—and, yes, initiating pockets of violence requiring police intervention. So it goes.
...
Stratfor recommends the US distance itself from Israel
From time to time I post articles by George Friedman of Stratfor. After reading the review of his latest book which is below, I will have to reconsider. I am sure Freidman isn’t the only one offering such advice. Does distancing herself from Israel mean being neutral? I don’t think so. Why go half measure. Why not undermine Israel also?
Strategy site to Obama: End alliance with Israel
World Tribune
WASHINGTON — A newsletter-publisher said to have ties with the Obama administration has called on Washington to end its strategic alliance with Israel.
George Friedman, publisher of Stratfor, has published a book that called on the Obama administration to reorder U.S. foreign policy. Friedman has argued that the key element of the proposal required the end of U.S. strategic ties with Israel and bolstering of cooperation with the Islamic world, particularly Iran and Pakistan.
“The United States must quietly distance itself from Israel,” Friedman says in his...
Saad Hariri’s Moment of Truth
Hilal Khashan:
Recent developments in Lebanon have shown that the preconditions for restoring its sovereignty have not yet materialized. The demise of the “Cedar Revolution” and the fragmentation of the “March 14 Coalition” have set the country back to the era of Syrian domination. The crisis associated with the assassination of former prime minister Rafiq Hariri and the formation of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) afford yet another stark demonstration that the country remains a victim of regional encroachment and that the loyalties of its leaders remain as sectarian as ever. …
Continue reading Saad Hariri’s Moment of Truth…
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
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