ALERT

Urging EU to Follow Obama’s Lead and Skip Durban

“The biggest Jewish body in the United States on Sunday lauded the decision of the Obama administration not to participate in a United Nations anti-racism summit which it fears will be used as a forum to criticize Israel.” Read more

Original Materials Expose Lie of Israeli Apartheid Charge

“(Los Angeles) — StandWithUs, the international Israel education organization, has just distributed tens of thousands of fact-based, well-designed materials to students who requested help countering the latest anti-Israel campaign on campus: Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). This 5th annual IAW, scheduled for March 1-8th at campuses worldwide, threatens to be bigger and more hate-filled than its predecessors. It will be especially ugly on European campuses, where incidents of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic agitation are escalating.” Read more

History as a Beast that Is Loose Again

Writing about the world economic crisis, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post speaks of a generational respite from history being over, History, like an animal escaped from the zoo, is again out of its cage. He illustrates his point with references to Stefan Zweig a European Jewish author in the first half of the last century. Even without the reference, Cohen’s words lend themselves to the inference that history is roaring back for Jews, a people for whom economic instability has always held a unique danger.

Report Obama Administration to Offer Israel “Nuclear Umbrella”

“U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s administration will offer Israel a “nuclear umbrella” against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran. . .But America’s nuclear guarantee to Israel could also be interpreted as a sign the U.S. believes Iran will eventually acquire nuclear arms.” Read more

U.S. Training in Africa Aims to Deter Extremists

“KATI, Mali - Thousands of miles from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, another side of America’s fight against terrorism is unfolding in this remote corner of West Africa. American Green Berets are training African armies to guard their borders and patrol vast desolate expanses against infiltration by Al Qaeda’s militants, so the United States does not have to.” Read more

A CAIR Whitewash at Voice of America

“The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) was named as one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding trial, a trial that resulted in convictions for all the defendants on all counts. CAIR’s name was not removed from the list of conspirators (despite repeated attempts to pressure the court), which means that their status as a Hamas front group was upheld.

But you won’t find one word about any of that in this glowing Voice of America puff piece about CAIR’s annual meeting, in which leading hater Nihad Awad demands that Barack Obama end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and appoint Muslims to his cabinet: American Muslims Hope Obama Will Encourage Tolerance, Respect for Rule of Law.” Read more

Spymaster Interview about Iranian Nuclear Threat

“Israel must destroy Iran’s nuclear program within the next 12 months or risk being attacked with an atomic bomb itself, the former head of the Mossad told the British Sunday Telegraph.

As an intelligence officer working with the worst-case scenario, I can tell you we should be prepared Shabtai Shavit, who served as Mossad chief from 1989 to 1996, told the British paper.” Read more

BBC Bias Evident in Initial Reporting of Today’s Terror Attack

“At the time of writing, more details are emerging on today’s (Tuesday July 2) terror attack on Jerusalem’s busy Jaffa Street thoroughfare. A Palestinian resident of Jerusalem went on the rampage in a bulldozer, attacking two buses, a number of cars and innocent passers-by, killing at least three people and wounding dozens more before being shot by an Israeli policeman.

“While BBC Online currently covers the story Bulldozer rampage hits Jerusalem, this was not the original headline. Offering a glimpse into the BBC’s warped journalism, the initial headline read Israel bulldozer driver shot dead.” See this story in today’s online Honest Reporting.

New Strategy of Disparate Groups Using al Qaeda as a Brand Name

Amir Taheri discusses the “ideas developed by al Qaeda’s chief theoretician, Sheik Abu-Bakar Naji, in his new book Governance in the Wilderness (Edarat al-Wahsh)… Middle East analysts think that the book may indicate a major change of strategy by the disparate groups that use al Qaeda as a brand name.,, Middle East analysts think that the book may indicate a major change of strategy by the disparate groups that use al Qaeda as a brand name.,, Islamists in the wilderness must create parallel societies alongside existing ones, Naji says - but not set up formal governments, which would be subject to economic pressure or military attack.” Read more of Taheri’s taken Naji’s strategies.

When & Where Islamization Occurs

“Islam is not a religion nor is it a cult. It is a complete system…Islam has religious, legal, political, economic and military components. The religious component is a ” beard ” for all the other components…Islamization occurs when there are sufficient Muslims in a country to agitate for their so-called ‘religious rights.’

When politically correct and culturally diverse societies agree to ‘the reasonable’ Muslim demands for their ‘religious rights, they also get the other components under the table. Here’s how it works (percentages source CIA: The World Fact Book (2007).”

Read more of this essay adapted on Front Page from Dr. Peter Hammond’s book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat

Internal documents: Capitol ill-prepared for bomb attack

A future terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol is highly probable, and Congress’s specialized bomb squad is unlikely to be able to deal with it, according to internal U.S. Capitol Police documents obtained by The Hill.

The unclassified internal letters and memos, written by Capitol Police captains, lieutenants, and sergeants between 2005 and 2007, detail more than three years of complaints to their superiors about the Hazardous Devices Unit’s lack of vehicles, its desire for more frequent training and the inadequate level of experience of bomb technicians within the specialty unit.

A suicide bombing or a car bomb are “the two major threats to the United States Capitol complex and the Congressional community,” according to a memo from mid-2006. While Washington, D.C., has not experienced the effects of such attacks, “the possibility that one of these two techniques may be used remains quite high and could become a reality.”

Read more of this report from The Hill

Music Festival Strives to Bridge Gap with Mix of Idealism & Realism

“Despite the ongoing talks between Israel and Syria, and sporadic contacts with the Palestinian leadership, there doesn’t seem to be much progress happening over a solution to the ongoing regional tension and violence. So it might not be a bad idea to try a different tack, one that circumnavigates the political domain and tries to appeal to an alternative area of interest shared by all inhabitants of the region.

That’s an ethos embraced by Erich Oskar Huetter, a thirty-something Austrian cellist who periodically doubles as artistic director of the Sounding Jerusalem Festival. The annual festival is currently under way for the third time and will end on July 5.

One of Huetter’s declared intentions is to use the festival to bring Israelis and Palestinians closer together and to offer a glint of hope for peaceful coexistence.”

Read more of a hopeful article from the Jerusalem Post about a music festival that attempts to span the gap between Israelis and Palestinians with a mixture of hope and realism.

Why Americans Back Israel

“In the future, as in the past, U.S. policy toward the Middle East will, for better or worse, continue to be shaped primarily by the will of the American majority, not the machinations of any minority, however wealthy or engaged in the political process some of its members may be.” Read more

“New Low in Presbyterian-Jewish Relations”

The church’s statement on anti-Semitism “marks a new low-point in Presbyterian-Jewish relations,” the Jewish leaders said. “Indeed, this document reads as a blueprint for how to engage in anti-Israel activity without being accused of anti-Semitism.” Read more

Two Facets of youtube & Anti-Semitism

A friend of ALERT sent us a link to a video about anti-Semitism that is as essential to watch–and to forward–as it is disturbing. Equally troubling was the anti-Semitic video we noted under the heading Related Videos. Youtube cuts two ways.

We mourn the passing of ALERT benefactor SPENCER, S.A. (SASH). 76. Sash A. Spencer, a resident of Key Biscayne, Florida passed away on June 10, 2008 in New York following a brief illness. Mr. Spencer was the founder and chairman of Holding Capital Group, a private investment firm specializing in leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, and money management. Born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia on June 22, 1931. He traveled with his parents in Europe during his early years before moving to the Philippines where he lived and was imprisoned during the Japanese occupation. Mr. Spencer graduated from American School in Manila, Philippines in 1948. He received an A.A. and B.S. Degree in Commerce, Malayan Colleges in 1946 and 1954 respectively. During this period he also operated his own company, Operated Mercantile, Inc, in the Philippines, which was in the import/ export/services industry. Mr. Spencer was an officer in the US. Army, OCS Artillery, 101st Airborne Division from 1955-1958. Following his discharge from the army he went on to earn his MBA with distinction from the Wharton School in Accounting at the University of Pennsylvania in 1959. After earning his MBA he was a Principal with McKinsey & Co., Inc., Management Consultants, in Washington, DC and New York from 1959-1966. In 1966 Mr. Spencer became President and CEO at the Briggs Manufacturing Company in Detroit, Michigan. He left in 1970 and was Managing Director of A.P. Moeller (Maersk Line), Copenhagen, Denmark until 1975 when he founded Holding Capital Group. Mr. Spencer was an avid art collector, racer of sailboats and a hiking enthusiast. Surviving are Mary M. Spencer, his beloved wife of 47 years and his sister, Linda Fales of Sunrise, Florida. Mr. Spencer was preceded in death by both of his parents and his brother Henry. Miami Herald

ISRAEL‘S GIFT TO THE WORLD

By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

(reprinted from the New York Post)

May 4, 2008 — As Israel celebrates its 60th birthday, the world should recognize the enormous gifts the Jewish state has given the world. Israel has exported more lifesaving medical technology to the far-flung corners of the earth than any nation of comparable size. It has done more to protect the environment, to promote literature, music, the arts and sciences, to spread agricultural advances and to fight terrorism within the rule of law.

Israel has created a legal system that is the envy of the world, with a Supreme Court that is open to all with few, if any, restrictions on its jurisdiction. As America’s most liberal Supreme Court Justice William Brennan observed when he visited Israel in 1988:

“It may well be Israel, not the United States, that provides the best hope for building a jurisprudence that can protect civil liberties against the demands of national security. For it is Israel that has been facing real and serious threats to its security for the last 40 years and seems destined to continue facing such threats in the foreseeable future. The struggle to establish civil liberties against the backdrop of these security threats, while difficult, promises to build bulwarks of liberty that can endure the fears and frenzy of sudden danger - bulwarks to help guarantee that a nation fighting for its survival does not sacrifice those national values that make the fight worthwhile.”

Yet despite these disproportionate contributions to the world, Israel has proportionally more enemies than any nation on earth. Moreover, the intensity of the enmity directed against the Mideast’s only democracy is unexplainable on any rational basis.

It is remarkable indeed that a democratic nation born in response to a decision of the United Nations should still not be accepted by so many nations, groups and individuals. No other United Nations member is threatened with physical annihilation by other member states so openly and without rebuke from the general assembly or security counsel.

No other nation has been subjected to so many threats of boycott, divestiture, and delegitimation than the Jewish state. No other nation with such high standards of morality has ever been regarded as so immoral by so many members of the media, academia, and the intellectual elite.

Israel’s enemies have learned how to take advantage of its high standards of morality. They understand what Golda Meir meant when she said to the terrorists: “We can perhaps forgive you for killing our children but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children.” Islamic extremist leaders who preach the culture of death are indeed trying to make you kill their children, because they know that every time you accidentally do, they win as big a victory as when they deliberately kill one of your children. That is why they fire their rockets from densely-populated areas knowing that you have no choice but to try to destroy their launching pads and knowing that in the process you may kill some innocent people. It is a win-win situation for them and a lose-lose situation for you.

I agree with the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he said that Israel should try to make peace as if there were no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there were no peace process. No nation can be expected to endure repeated and systematic attacks against its civilian population, even when those attacks come from civilian areas. No nation can make peace with terrorists who seek not compromise, but total defeat of their enemy.

Israel’s continuing efforts to fight terrorists within the rule of law and within the reasonable constraints of human rights and civil liberties may be among Israel’s most enduring contributions to the civilized world. Israel’s fight is our fight. Israel’s struggles are our struggles. Israel’s victory over terrorism will be our victory - a victory that will benefit the entire world.

So let the entire free world join Israel in its celebration of sixty years of nationhood, since no nation in the world has contributed more per capita to the general welfare of the people of this planet than Israel.

Happy Birthday to Israel - may she go from strength to strength and from success to success, and may she finally experience the kind of peace and legitimacy she has sought since her creation on the ashes of the Holocaust 60 years ago.

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His latest book is “Is There A Right to Remain Silent?”

Caroline Glick on Whitewashing & Protecting Hamas

“Another ordinary week has come and gone in southern Israel. Bombarded by rockets from Hamastan in Gaza, residents of Sderot, Ashkelon and nearby towns watched as their national leaders conducted negotiations by proxy with Hamas to release hundreds of terrorists in Israeli jails and consolidate Hamas’s weapons supply lines by suspending Israeli counter-terror operations during a “cease-fire.” Between trips to the local bomb shelter, they watched Israeli trucks deliver fuel and supplies to Hamas in Gaza in the morning and they watched Hamas store the fuel and supplies in depots near the border in the afternoon. In the evening they watched news reports echoing Hamas’s claims that Israel is depriving Gazan hospitals of fuel and Gazan civilians of basic foodstuffs…

“…just as the media and Carter refuse to acknowledge the significance of Hamas’s terror regime, so the Bush administration refuses to acknowledge the significance of its broad-based popular support among Palestinians.” Read more

Plight of Counterterrorism Palestinian Police Officer

“A Palestinian police officer accused of helping Israel with counterterrorism is facing death at the hands of a firing line unless a last-minute appeal to President Bush can save him.” Read more

Call for Jews to Boycott Beijing Olympics Sparks Debate

“A call for Jews not to attend the Beijing Olympics because of China’s policies in Tibet and Sudan is dividing the Jewish community and prompting stern warnings that such a boycott could lead to a backlash.” Read more

Radical Islam Support Test

“Dr. Tawfik Hamid, a former member of a terrorist organization who is now dedicated to reforming Islam, has written a book entitled Inside Jihad… In one section of the book he spells out what he calls the Radical Islam Support Test, or RIST. Instead of our settling for tepid, generic condemnations of terrorism by Muslims and Muslim organizations that purport to be mainstream and moderate, it would be more illuminating to see how such Muslims respond to the questions contained in the RIST. Read RIST Questions

“Crimes”: of Brigitte Bardot

“In the 1960s, Brigitte Bardot was France’s national icon, a pouty-lipped poster girl for the glories of her home country. So it is a sign of how radically times have changed that yesterday’s silver-screen darling is today’s enemy of the people.

Bardot’s crimes, such as they are, are straightforward: She has committed the sin of speaking frankly and unapologetically about her country’s hostile Muslim immigrant population and - what is evidently worse - questioning the compatibility of some Muslim religious practices with Western society. Common sense, one might think, or least subjects fit for fruitful debate.

Not in modern France. Last week, the erstwhile cinema siren went on trial on the charge of inciting racial hatred against Muslims. If convicted, she could face a two-month suspended prison sentence and nearly $24,000 in fines.” Read More

Hamas and Carter

“Khaled Meshal probably cannot now assure that Hamas’ military wing in Gaza, Iz al-Din al-Qassam, will indeed stop firing rockets at Israel… to enforce a cease-fire, Hamas would have to use fire against the other groups, like Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees.” Read in its entirety this analysis of the organizational context in which Hamas met with Jimmy Carter.

Report of Carter Preparing to Meet with Hamas

Former President Jimmy Carter is reportedly preparing an unprecedented meeting with the leader of Hamas, an organization that the U.S. government considers one of the leading terrorist threats in the world. Read more

McCain’s Hands-Off Approach to Peace Negotiations

Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton backed active diplomacy begun by the Bush administration to facilitate Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, while Republican candidate John McCain took a more hands-off approach, in response to a recent questionnaire. Read more

Transformations & their Implications

A friend of ALERT has alerted us to an intellectually rigorous examination of four transformations the world is undergoing and their implications for the future, concluding with the sweeping statement that, “Ultimately, it’s an issue of culture. The only people who can hurt us are ourselves, by losing our culture. If we give up our Judeo-Christian culture, we become just like the Europeans. The culture war is the whole ballgame. If we lose it, there isn’t another America to pull us out.” Read in its entirety this cogent cultural analysis.

A friend of ALERT who prefers taking the bus to driving between towns in the Aspen Valley reports the following two incidents last week.

1 Waiting at the bus stop, she head a trio of rather unkempt high school girls intoning a crude ditty intended to insult someone with whom they were on the outs. Among the phrases intended to insult was: Even that dirty Jew is better than you.

2 Two days later our friend was on the bus when a nicely dressed well-mannered man struck up a conversation with her and upon hearing that she grew up in Chicago remarked that his brother will soon be going there for a job trading in futures, casually adding, though, I can’t see why he wants to crawl around on the floor with a bunch of Jews.

We find these quotes chilling. Where are they coming from? They’re airborne, like a plague. The period in which these two troubling incidents occurred was Holy Week, always a dangerous time for the Jewish population of Eastern Europe. This writer recalls being on a train four years ago and overhearing a conversation about Mel Gibson’s passion movie. One man remarked that the Jews are pissed off about it. It was disquieting to hear the term the Jews thus bandied about.

Several months later, I attended a meeting of our local peace group and heard an outburst of anti-Semitism, and recalled the remark overheard on the train.

Yes, it’s airborne, like the plague, and like the plague it can be dormant for a long time, then something in the environment activates the virus.

Please join us in combating the virus by passing this blog along to anyone whom you feel might be receptive to its message.