How not to read presidential polls: The increasing absurdity of media reports
By Abe Katsman
At first, it was just a trickle, a misguided throw-away line here and there, easily ignored. Then it started picking up momentum, showing up in one Israeli commentary after another. And now, it is conventional wisdom in the Israeli press and public that the U.S. election is already over, that polls show President Obama’s re-election is inevitable, and that Republican Mitt Romney might as well throw in the towel now.
Of course, this is nonsense. It is based on the most superficial reading of the most superficial polls. In fact, as described below, while poll results are all over the map, the most historically accurate pollsters consider the race tied.
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How Irrelevant is the Palestinian Authority? Very.
The key phrase in Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly today didn’t mention Israel. He had promised Jewish leaders he would recognize Jewish rights to the land that is disputed by Israelis and Palestinians. He moved a little closer to such recognition with his mention of the ties of the three monotheistic religions to the country and did say he didn’t want to delegitimize Israel–though much of his speech was clearly aiming at just such a goal. But the most important sentence was the one where he complained about the Palestinians being moved “to the bottom of the global agenda.” He then went on to claim that the PA alone was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians and that there could not be two such bodies.
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Illegal Housing Built on Private Land and the Silence of Peace Now
Theirs could be the latest battle in the ongoing war over building on private land and its place at the heart of the conflict on both sides of the Green Line….“Does the government have a consistent policy of dealing with land that is privately owned or do they have double-standards?
Mark Ismailoff, who moved to Israel from the UK in 1979, lives in Jerusalem. But his sights are on the Negev, where he owns 6.25 percent of a 640,000-square meter plot of land southeast of Beersheba that he inherited from his grandfather – who bought it in 1935.
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Jewish Settlements are Not Built on Arab Land
Is it really true, as much of the European and American press have been reporting for years, that Jewish “settlers” in the “West Bank” (more properly known as Judea and Samaria) are living on land that they have stolen from Palestinian Arabs?
This is in fact utterly impossible. Every time that the Israeli government has proposed or given tentative approval for the construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, it has first advertised its intentions in Arab newspapers, and invited any Arabs who have claims to the land to come forward with them. Only if no such claims were put forward for at least six months; or if, after such claims were made, the Israeli court system had ruled against them following a painstaking and thorough review of the facts, in which the courts bent over backwards to be fair to all Arab claimants, did the Israeli government actually authorize the construction of Jewish communities in this disputed area. Israeli courts have forbidden the Israel government from confiscating any Arab-owned land for Jewish settlement since 1980. And the Israel government has not authorized any new settlements since the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” began in 1993.
Fordo sabotage enabled Netanyahu to move Iran red line to spring 2013
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 29, 2012,
The sabotage of the Fordo uranium enrichment facility’s power lines on Aug. 17 gave Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu extra leeway to move his original red line for Iran from late September 2012 – now – to the spring or early summer of 2013. The disruption of the underground enrichment plant’s power supply caused several of the advanced IR-1 and IR-4 centrifuges producing the 20-percent grade uranium to burst into flames. Work was temporarily halted and the accumulation of 240 kilos for Iran’s first nuclear bomb slowed down by at least six months, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report.
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Disquiet on the Jordanian Front
September has witnessed a massive—and potentially irreversible—shift in strategy among segments of Jordan’s opposition movement: a number of political activists are now openly and repeatedly calling for a limitation of the monarchy’s powers—with a small (though extremely vocal) minority even explicitly calling for the abdication of King Abdullah II. In a strikingly blunt statement by the organizers of the 8 September protest in East Amman’s Haya al-Tafileh neighborhood—who gathered in response to arrest of a number of fellow activists a day prior and later reorganized on September 11 and 13 at Amman’s Interior Ministry Circle and Second Circle—accusations struck at the king’s carefully curated international image as a modern, democracy-building reformer. Their Facebook statement reads, in part: “You are disguised in the costume of freedom and democracy, while hiding inside of you is absolute fascism and control over the destiny of this country and the livelihood of its people. We can no longer be patient with this repression of our arrested sons, with no guilt other than demanding freedom and social justice for all Jordanians, and fighting corruption that is royally sponsored.” [Full Arabic original and English translation available here] (Read more…)
Omar Khadr, convicted GITMO terrorist, is returned to Canada by the US
In the dead of night, convicted GITMO detainee, Canadian al Qaeda fighter Omar Khadr was flown back to Canada by the US and immediately clapped into a Federal Canadian prison, with the likelihood of parole within a year to walk freely on the streets of Toronto. We have posted on the saga of former child warrior for al Qaeda Omar Khadr who killed his American Special Forces medic SFC Christopher Speer at the battle for the Al Qaeda bastion at Khost Afghanistan in July 2002. He was captured and treated for his injuries at the Bagram Air base medical facility. (See: “Omar Khadr’s Hail Mary (Allah) Pass at GITMO Tribunal” April 2011) He was then sent to Guantanamo at the age of 15 to spend eight years in detention until his military tribunal and conviction for the murder of Speers in October 2010.
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Bibi Shelving Levy Report
Several weeks ago the historic Levy Report declared that Judea and Samaria are not “occupied,” and that Israelis have the legal right to live in the area. The ground-breaking report was welcomed by the political right.
However, in the weeks since, it has been quietly pushed aside. The report’s findings have not been the subject of discussion in government – not even in the ministerial committee for settlement. (Read more…)
Jews and Obama—Pride and Prejudice
Joan Swirsky, CFP.com
In the 1940s, when the Jews in America woke up to the unspeakable horror that their very own relatives or fellow-Jews in Germany, Poland, Vichy France and all over Europe were being savagely, grotesquely, sadistically murdered by Hitler, aided and gleefully abetted by the Muslim Brotherhood…sound familiar?, and that—worse to them—their hero FDR knew about Hitler’s slaughtering rampage but failed to take a moment from puffing tobacco through his pretentious cigarette holder to save them, they went into a period of sustained mourning.
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
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