In a recent Al-Jazeera TV debate on colonialism and the Arab regimes, Dr. Hadi Shalouf, an expatriate Libyan and a member of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, said that the Arab regimes, which "destroyed our countries and sent us back ...
March 10, 2010, 5:21 pm
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On a visit to Kabul on Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States of playing a ‘‘double game’’ in Afghanistan, according to an Afghan news ...
March 10, 2010, 5:11 pm
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A new book hit the stores in Washington on Tuesday, and in it, former Bush adviser Karl Rove demolishes one of the central theses of another book, Walt and Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby. Rove asserts unequivocally that the United States did not go to war in Iraq for Israel. Rove, Bush’s close confidante and a senior White House adviser at the time of the US invasion in 2003, describes several
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Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, has actually asked to return to the University of California at Irvine. Since then, videos of the incident at Irvine have proliferated on the Internet and attracted significant media attention. I have received heartfelt apologies from UC President Mark Yudof and Chancellor Drake. The response has been overwhelmingly favorable in defense of
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Hizbullah deputy secretary-general Na'im Qassem has said that Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations aim to legitimize the Israeli occupation instead of liberating the Palestinian territories. Speaking at a Hizbullah ceremony in ...
March 10, 2010, 3:12 pm
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You could see this one coming a mile away. Arab foreign ministers have withdrawn their approval for the 'proximity talks.' The Palestinian Authority daily Al-Ayyam reports that in response to Israel's decision to construct 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem, several Arab foreign ministers informed senior U.S. elements that the Arab Monitoring Committee had rescinded its approval for
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The Knesset Defense Budget Committee, a special panel consisting of members of the Knesset Finance Committee and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, has turned down a request from Ehud Barak and the Defense Ministry to redirect NIS 12 million from security to 'coordinating activities' in Judea and Samaria. The 'coordinating activities' consist of enforcing the 'settlement
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Well, I didn't get on the BBC show, but I thought I would do a post telling you what I told them when they called me this afternoon, and what I would have said had I gotten onto the show.It was never correct to say that America (sorry Canadians for referring to 'America' and not to the US) had 'power' over Israel in the sense that one normally conceives of power. America never had the ability to
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The editor of the Syrian government daily Al-Thawra wrote that the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat sold the Arabs, Palestine, and the accomplishments of the 1973 war for the Sinai and for the raising of the Israeli flag in Cairo. ...
March 10, 2010, 1:20 pm
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Following Germany's refusal to extradite Abdolrahman Hajj Ahmadi, leader of the Kurdish separatist organization PJAK, and his subsequent release, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that Europe had become a safe haven for ...
March 10, 2010, 12:42 pm
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The chairman of Libya's Oil Authority said that his country has given China and Russia preferential status over the U.S. with regard to Libyan oil exports. ...
March 10, 2010, 1:23 pm
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An Iranian columnist for the Syrian government daily Teshreen wrote that at the February 25 summit in Damascus, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, and Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah discussed the ...
March 10, 2010, 1:17 pm
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The Palestinian Authority political guidance has decided to name a special course for its officers in Hebron after Dalal Al-Mughrabi, the second-in-command of the 1978 Coastal Road terror attack. ...
March 10, 2010, 1:10 pm
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In response to statements by Iranian Majlis member Mehdi Kouchakzadeh that 'Aisha, wife of the Prophet Muhammad, had deviated from the righteous path, the highest ranking Sunni cleric in the country, Sheikh Abd Al-Hamid... ...
March 10, 2010, 12:54 pm
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The Palestinian Authority daily Al-Ayyam reports that in response to Israel's decision to construct 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem, several Arab foreign ministers informed senior U.S. elements that the Arab Monitoring Committee had ...
March 10, 2010, 1:07 pm
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I'm one of the scheduled guests (they don't guarantee that you'll get on, but since they asked me they said I probably would) on the BBC's World Have Your Say program between 6:00 and 6:30 London time (8:00 and 8:30 Israel time; 1:00 and 1:30 US Eastern time) tonight (Wednesday) night. That's sometime in the next 30-60 minutes or so.The question I'm going to be discussing is Has America Lost its
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Lost in the deluge of news since Tuesday about Israel building apartments for young couples in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, is a unilateral and dangerous concession that Israel made to the 'Palestinians' on Tuesday: Israel has informed the 'Palestinian Authority' that it will stop pursuing 77 'good terrorists' from Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs organization. Some of the terrorists are
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Popular blogger Andrew Sullivan goes off the deep end again (Hat Tip: Memeorandum Having forcibly evicted Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem, the new inhabitants sing songs in praise of the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein. And you really think the decision to make the site of that massacre a national heritage site for Israel had nothing to do with this association? The claim
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If you’ve ever been a reader of Glamour Magazine, you’ll remember that there is always a popular item in the back of the mag called “Dos and Don’ts.” As expected, the Dos are outfits photographed on the street that work, and the Don’ts are the ones that, well, don’t. Given that we’re dealing with some very [...]
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This is rich. Hezbullah accuses the United States embassy in Beirut of running a state within a state. Following the publication of an item in the Lebanese daily Al-Safir stating that the U.S. Embassy in Beirut had asked elements in Lebanon to give it information about Lebanon's communications network, MP Nawaf Al-Musawi, from Hizbullah, said that the embassy was operating as a state within a
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Elder of Ziyon reports that the Egyptian government boycotted the re-dedication of the Maimonides synagogue in Cairo earlier this week, because they were angry that 'Israeli representatives' were invited to the ceremony by Cairo's tiny Jewish community.You may recall that the invited guests included "members of the Cairo Jewish community, the Egyptian diplomatic corps, former Israeli ambassadors
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A major road in the Gush Etzion area has no cellular service, and the Defense Ministry is refusing to repair the cellular service due to the 'settlement freeze.' A major road in Gush Etzion is disconnected from cellular access, even for the IDF. MK Amsalem demanded the dangerous flaw be corrected. The Defense Ministry responded: "The freeze also applies to this." When someone, God forbid, is
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The President of Israel, Shimon Peres visited Bnei Braq today. Calcalist/TheMarker newspaper reported:


If he's calling for segregation in the work place, maybe Peres will endorse segregated mehadrin buses as well?


Visiting Israel?
Learn to Shoot at Caliber-3 with top Israeli Anti-Terror Experts!

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

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Haaretz confirms that US Special Middle East envoy George Mitchell told both sides during his recent visit that former Prime Minister Ehud K. Olmert's giveaway to the 'Palestinians,' which 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen never bothered to answer, is off the table (Hat Tip: Daled Amos). Mitchell told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President
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I'd like to share with you some random thoughts I've had today (Wednesday) about Tuesday's announcement that 1,600 new apartments have been approved for Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood I know well, while Joe Biden is here visiting. For the record, while there are well over 2,000 apartments already in Ramat Shlomo, this is a significant expansion.Recall this from Caroline Glick's Friday column last
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Oavsett vad man tycker om utrikesminister Carl Bildt, hans arroganta ledarstil och hans personliga inställning i Mellanösternfrågan, kan man efter Utrikesdeklarationen i februari och den efterföljande riksdagsdebatten konstatera att den borgerliga alliansens inställning till Israel och fred i Mellanöstern är betydligt mer nyanserad än det röd-gröna blockets.

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“it was not the shortcomings or failures of these dozens of peace organizations… that resulted in the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This result was mainly due to Palestinian rejectionism and intractability. There was never, as there still is not, a credible, serious Palestinian partner for peace with Israel,not before 1948, and not since.”

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Former US ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer, who served as an adviser to the Obama campaign in 2008, has criticized the Obama administration for its approach to the 'peace process.' Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. mediator and ambassador to Israel and Egypt who served both Democrat and Republican presidents, took a more skeptical view. He said it's "not understandable why we would now have them sit
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I Per Anderssons suveräna bok Stenbeck – Ett reportage om det virtuella bruket får vi veta att Uri Savir var styrelseledamot i MTG under en kort period i slutet av 1990-talet. Med anledning av David Kimches bortgång finner jag det passande och måhända intressant att återge ett litet stycke ur nämnda bok: ### I [...]
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On Saturday night, I reported on the Obama administration's efforts to gain an exemption from the United States' own sanctions against Iran's energy supply for Chinese and Russian companies. It seems that Congress has now had enough of Obama on this issue. And while the conference could last a long time and no final vote push is imminent, several congressional aides told The Cable Friday that
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EUobserver.com bills itself as "[e]ditorially independent, open-minded and balanced" and "the trusted source of EU related news and information across the European Union."

It was therefore disappointing to see this wildly inflated figure for Palestinian civilian casualties given in a photo caption on the site.

While the number of Palestinian civilians killed in Operation Cast Lead last year is disputed, not even Palestinian sources put the number at 1,400. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose statistics on Palestinian civilian casualties are grossly inflated, placed the figure at 1,167. A report by the Arab League on the Gaza Strip violence stated that at least 850 of those killed were civilian.

Hamas claims that the total number of Palestinian casualties from Operation Cast Lead, including combatants and civilians, was 1,444. Israel says the total number of Palestinian casualties, civilian and combatant, is 1,166, of which 709 were identified terrorists belonging to Hamas and other terror groups. Israel's figure for the number of civilian Palestinian casualties is 295.

In September, the International Herald Tribune corrected a nearly identical error. Will EUobserver now likewise correct? The good news is that the site promises that it "promptly corrects factual errors and welcomes comments and information that may call for correction." The bad news is that there are only two posted corrections, the most recent one dated April 23, 2008.

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Isn't it amazing how the media continually calls Binyamin Netanyahu 'intransigent' but doesn't even stop to consider whether that adjective more aptly applies to Abu Mazen? The Post's editors can lament that Netanyahu isn't as generous as his predecessors. But the reason there is no peace that Abbas and Arafat before him rejected generous offers. If they are demanding that Netanyahu accept deals
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And you thought Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn't care about anyone. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is apparently quite upset over the sudden demise of Hamas terrorist and arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and is doing everything he can to keep the murderer's memory alive. WHEN THE Iranian foreign minister raises the issue at the UN, it illustrates that they are attempting to keep
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Have you ever tried to go off chocolate? I can tell you from first hand experience, it’s no mean feat. My banning of chocolate has to do with a book I’m reading called Insomniac by Gayle Green. The author, like me, suffers from chronic insomnia and, as with anyone who is sleep starved, she has researched [...]
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The World keeps complaining about the 'blockade' of Gaza. Here are some statistics from this week's 'blockade.' Gaza exported more flowers to Europe last week, while receiving nearly 14,000 tons of humanitarian aid through Israel via the various crossings. Business owners in the region shipped out eight truckloads of carnations to be sold in the European market. The Gaza region is famous for its
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Israel and the 'Palestinians' have one thing in common regarding the upcoming round of 'proximity talks.' [B]oth sides know better than to expect that U.S. special envoy Senator George Mitchell's shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah will be able to bridge the chasm between their demands. Instead, the mutual goal in the latest round of talks is to avoid being blamed for their failure. Indeed.
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Just in time for the festival of Pesach, Egypt’s culture minister says that it will shoulder the costs of restoring the country’s synagogue’s. Farouk Hosny says that his ministry views Jewish sites as much a part of Egypt’s culture as Muslim mosques or Coptic churches and the restorations would not require any foreign funding. This marks [...]
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On Tuesday both Israel and Syria announced ambitions to develop nuclear energy, with Israel facing the prospect that its plan could bring new attention to its secretive nuclear noodling. The confessions were made at an international conference in Paris on civilian nuclear energy. Nuclear energy contributes far less to global warming than the burning of fossil [...]
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Ramat Shlomo is a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem that already has more than 20,000 residents. Originally slated to be the site of the Jerusalem soccer stadium in the late 1970's, it was converted to housing and more than 2,000 units were built there in the early 1990's. Jews have been living there since early 1996.Expelling all the Jews from Ramat Shlomo would mean
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When the bride and the groom at a wedding are underneath the canopy, a glass is broken and we sing "If I forget thee O Jerusalem may my right hand be forgotten, may my tongue cleave to my cheek if I don't remember you, if I don't place Jerusalem at the top of my joyous occasions."This is not a tape from a wedding, but it is a tape about remembering Jerusalem (mostly).Let's go to the videotape.
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Herb Keinon argues that the fact that the 'Palestinians' have agreed to participate in the 'proximity talks' without getting a full 'settlement freeze' that includes 'east' Jerusalem, shows that like Israel, the 'Palestinians' now have shifting red lines and that like Israel, the 'Palestinians' are susceptible to pressue. So when Abbas said for months and months that he would not enter into
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