ALERT

U.S. Advised Israel Against Syrian Strike

“According to reports, the administration tried to convince Israel that it could use the information to pressure Syria into concessions in Lebanon, to stop its support for Hamas and to stem its involvement in rebel activities in Iraq.However, Israel - according to reports that are based on senior administration sources - refused.The reports state that for Israel the construction of the reactor constituted an “existential threat”; therefore, Israel demanded that it be allowed to take the only action possible: to destroy the reactor in a military operation, prior to the introduction of nuclear fuel that would enable the Syrians to produce plutonium.” Read more Prominent Author Pressured to Boycott Israel “South African writer Nadine Gordimer may pull out of her appearance next month at Jerusalem’s International Writers Festival in the face of a widespread campaign pressuring her to cancel.” Read more Sharia Child Bride “While America was watching authorities do their duty and seize children from a Mormon compound in Texas in order to protect them from potential underage marriage and sexual abuse, a single-minded girl with no police or legal protection bravely defied Sharia law and her country’s male-dominated culture to divorce her husband. And, she is just eight years old.” Read more

Appeasing via Words

The Associated Press confirms what Robert Spencer reported Tuesday on Jihad Watch, that federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. embassies say words including “jihadists,” and “mujahedeen” are off limits. In addition, references to Islam and Muslims are frowned upon, too. Read more

Investigating Muslim Chaplins

Fearing the radicalization of U.S. soldiers, the leader of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus has called for a government investigation of all Muslim chaplains serving in the U.S. military to determine whether they have ties to radical Islamic groups. Read more

Mein Kampf Won’t Go Away

Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” whose publication is prohibited in Germany, could be released again in Germany.

Historians and other academics say it is essential to publish the notorious book with editorial annotations and critique before 2015, when it enters the public domain and may be reprinted freely by neo-Nazis. Read more

Timing of Espionage Indictment

“Why now? That’s what everyone is asking after Tuesday’s arrest and indictment of Ben-Ami Kadish. That’s the key question, to which there is no clear answer and which is grist for the mill of rumors, guesses and theories, including conspiracy theories.” Read more

Ambassadors Walk-Out

“UNITED NATIONS — Several Western ambassadors walked out of a Security Council meeting yesterday after a Libyan representative compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis in the concentration camps.” Read more

Syria’s Nuclear Facility

“The Bush administration is set to tell Congress today that a nuclear facility in Syria built with North Korean help was nearly complete when Israel bombed it in September, but that Pyongyang has not provided any further nuclear assistance to the hard-line Arab nation, at least at that site, U.S. officials said.” Read more

Recent Israeli Innovations

“As many of its neighbors concentrated on finding ways to destroy Israel, Israelis, in the first months of 2008, have, among other things, developed designer video glasses and discovered that all dogs speak the same language.” Read more

News & Views

Why was the new spy exposed now?

Debate over Engaging Hamas

Goals & Strategies of J-Street Project

Read more

Moderate British Muslims

“LONDON (Reuters) - Former Islamist radicals in Britain launched a “counter-extremism think-tank” on Tuesday, saying they wanted to reclaim Islam from the violent ideology of al Qaeda.” Read more

Muslim Anti-Semitism Danger for Israel

“A new Israeli study of anti-Semitism with Muslim roots has concluded that the phenomenon is growing, even in Jordan and Egypt, which have peace treaties with Israel, and that “Anti-Semitism and the accompanying hate industry are a strategic danger for Israel and the Jewish people.” Read more

New Espionage Case Will Be Damaging to Israel

“The new U.S.-Israel espionage affair revealed Tuesday is in fact an old story. Nothing in this fact, however, can reduce the gravity of damage it will cause Israel, nor lead to expectations that suspect Ben-Ami Kadish’s punishment will be eased - if he is indeed to be convicted in a court of law.” Read more

Hamas Clarifies Intentions

“It didn’t take long for Hamas to clarify their intentions. Two hours after Carter’s speech was broadcast on Israel radio, Hamas leader Khaled Maschal, who had held extensive meetings with Carter in Damascus, denied that any such assurance had been made. Maschal, who had overseen Carter’s talks with other Hamas leaders in Egypt and in Gaza, once again reaffirmed the Hamas commitment to liquidate the Jewish state. Not for the first time, the ex-president was left looking like a dupe of the terrorists.” Read more

Meanwhile, progressive Zionist Bradley Burston has two words for Hamas-Defensible Borders. Read more

Iran’s Nuclear Intentions

The AP reports that “Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he believes Iran is hell bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, but he warned in strong terms of the consequences of going to war over that.

Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need and, in fact, I believe it would be disastrous on a number of levels, he said in a speech he was delivering Monday evening at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

He said he favors keeping the military option against Iran on the table, given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat - either directly or through proliferation.” Read more

Caroline Glick has a more decisive evaluation of options to use against Iran arguing that deterrence will not be any more effective than appeasement:

“There are two reasons that a deterrence model will be as ineffective in curbing Iranian aggression as Obama’s appeasement model. First, as last week’s 25th anniversary of the Iranian-sponsored bombing of the US embassy in Beirut recalled, Iran has been attacking the US and its allies both directly and through proxies since 1979. To date, not only has the US failed to deter such attacks, it has never made Iran pay a price for them. With this abysmal track record against a non-nuclear Iran, it is hard to see how the US can threaten a nuclear-armed Iran with sufficient credibility to make a deterrence-based strategy successful.

“The second reason that basing US policy towards Iran on a deterrence model will likely fail is because Iran’s leadership has made clear that is not necessarily concerned about the survivability of Iran. From Ayatollah Khomeini to Ayatollah Khamenei to Ali Rafsanjani to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s leadership has made clear that they are not Iranian patriots but global Islamic revolutionaries. Given their millenarian, apocalyptic view of their country’s purpose in world affairs, there is good reason to believe that a strategy based on some form of mutually assured destruction would have only marginal impact on Iran’s decision-makers.”

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.

As we wish you a joyful Passover, we present you with the idea that central to this holiday is the concept of Jewish peoplehood

“Passover, more than any other Jewish holy day, is the one in which Jews celebrate not their religion but this strange concept of becoming a people. This idea, of Jewish people-hood - the historic fact that Jews, for generations, didn’t see themselves as just sharing their faith, but also their national fate…” Read more

As Jewish people all over the world prepare for the feast of Passover, we bring you a pastiche of articles from the English language version Haaretz, Israel’s oldest (founded in 1918) daily newspaper, which has a vibrant feel for the pulse of the world-wide Jewish zeitgeist.

Western Alliance

“Whether hardcore realist, or ardent idealist, anyone who believes in the idea of the West must also wish to see the alliance continue, and encourage its transformation into a more cohesive, effective force.” Read more

A Friend of Israel Elected to Italian Parliament

“I said that Italy can learn a lot from Israel. It can learn what a true democracy is, how a democracy can survive in conditions of conflict, without forsaking its fundamental principles. Israel is a culture of life, a culture of people who are always seeking peace. Our problem in Italy is that sometimes we don’t know who we are. You can know who you are if you know your enemy and your friend. Israel is Italy’s friend.” Read more

Countering Hamas Influence in East Jerusalem

“Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski is planning to enlist world Jewry in a fund-raising drive for East Jerusalem’s Arabs, in a bid to counter Hamas influence in local schools. The money will be used mainly for educational projects in the east of the capital, where an acute classroom shortage means many pupils end up in schools identified with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.” Read more

Organizing Alternative to AIPAC

“The debate over the need for and the significance of the J Street Project is over what makes up a pro-Israeli position. It is not a new debate, but in recent months the election campaign has brought it once more to the fore. Solomont says that in recent years, a pro-Israeli position has been defined by neocons, right-of-center Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals, and the J Street Project’s other leaders agree with him.” Read more

Lonely Seder in Sderot

“Rabbi Shimon Avitan, who immigrated from Morocco to Sderot 40 years ago, has not decided where to spend the Passover seder yet. He is torn between his commitment to his congregation and his desire to celebrate the holiday with his six children, who live out of town…Last Passover, some 30 relatives sat around his table in Sderot. This year, only the rabbi, his wife Rosa and their youngest daughter, Shirit, remain. The rest of the children refuse to come to Sderot.” Read more

Hamas in Washington Post

“History teaches us that everything is in flux. Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun, and adversity has taught us patience. As for the Israeli state and its Spartan culture of permanent war, it is all too vulnerable to time, fatigue and demographics: In the end, it is always a question of our children and those who come after us.” Read more

Mahmoud al-Zahar, a surgeon, is a founder of Hamas. He is foreign minister in the government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, which was elected in January 2006.

Washington Post on Hamas

“ON THE OPPOSITE page today we publish an article by the ‘foreign minister’ of Hamas, Mahmoud al-Zahar, that drips with hatred for Israel, and with praise for former president Jimmy Carter. We believe Mr. Zahar’s words are worth publishing because they provide some clarity about the group he helps to lead, a group that Mr. Carter contends is worthy of being included in the Middle East peace process.” Read more

Hakim on Israel Immigration Issues

Israeli journalist Hillel Hakim discusses the developments that have greatly complicated the question of who has a right to be an Israeli:

“None of these developments were or could have been seen by the framers of the Law of Return. They make it a clumsy tool with which to deal with current-day realities - and worse yet, a tool that, wielded by bureaucrats in Israel’s ministries of the interior and religion, often has been applied inconsistently, sometimes discriminatorily, and frequently under political pressure.” Read more

Will Obama Be another McGovern?

Learn why Victor Davis Hanson believes that Obama will prove another McGovern for the Democratic Party.

“So here we have the essential Obama, a walking paradox between the postmodern hip-Ivy-Leaguer who sneers at middle-class America’s supposed prejudices and parochialism, while at the same time courting an anti-Enlightenment, prejudicial demagogue like Jeremiah Wright.” Read more

What the Clintons Are Not Saying

Read on the Politico blog another take on how the Clintons are handling her campaign:

“A lot of coverage of the Clinton campaign supposes them to be in kitchen-sink mode - hurling every pot and pan, no matter the damage this might do to Obama as the likely Democratic nominee in the fall.

In fact, the Democratic race has not been especially rough by historical standards. What’s more, our conversations with Democrats who speak to the Clintons make plain that their public comments are only the palest version of what they really believe: that if Obama is the nominee, a likely Democratic victory would turn to a near-certain defeat.” Read more

PA Official Speaks of Phased Plan

From the MEMRI TV Monitor Project, a revealing video:

Title of Video: Palestinian Authority Representative in Lebanon Abbas Zaki Supports Anti-Israeli Attacks and States: We Act According to the Phased Plan.

Islam’s Potential to Evolve in a Democratic Direction

In a FrontPage commentary titled Is Islam Compatible with Democracy? Daniel Pipes does not rule out the possibility but recognizes the obstacles.

“The fact that majority-Muslim countries are less democratic makes it tempting to conclude that the religion of Islam, their common factor, is itself incompatible with democracy…I disagree with that conclusion. Today’s Muslim predicament, rather, reflects historical circumstances more than innate features of Islam. Put differently, Islam, like all pre-modern religions is undemocratic in spirit. No less than the others, however, it has the potential to evolve in a democratic direction.” Read more