So you want to boycott Israel?

A really great presentation ....

Does this General have 'true grit' ?

This is General Stanley McChrystal.

The soldier Barack Obama personally selected to advise him on the military situation in Afghanistan.

He has suffered the indignity of waiting 3 months while his boss second-guessed his clear recommendations to provide a surge of 40,000 reinforcements. (A figure already cut down from an original estimate of 60,000.)

He has seen his minimum requirements cut down by a quarter.

On top of this, he has seen the utter lunacy of a withdrawal date being notified to the enemy.

All of which means that the soldiers in his care and command will be short on reinforcements and short on morale.

The kind of morale that is stirred by the clear rallying cry of 'victory'.

That is a word which never made it to their commander-in-chief's teleprompter.

So – my question is this:

Does General McCrystal have the courage to speak up for his troops?

Will he make the ultimate sacrifice for them?

And resign in protest ?

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Owner Occupation

We issue building permits as owners ... not occupiers.


These days it seems that a Jew can buy property and build a home anywhere in the world … except in his own homeland. And Netanyahu’s announcement of a 10-month settlement freeze in the ‘West Bank’ would appear to confer Israeli government legitimacy to a clear breach of the human rights of Jewish people.

By its proper name, Judea and Samaria has been Jewish territory for thousands of years. Our biblical title to it is undeniable. Under international law too, our rights are no less legitimate. It was designated as the Jewish homeland by the League of Nations in 1922. After being invaded by the Arabs in 1948 it was recaptured from its Jordanian occupiers in Israel’s defensive war of 1967. It is currently home to over 200,000 Jewish returnees. And, for all the fuss created by our detractors, those Jewish homes actually occupy less than 2 percent of the whole ‘West Bank’ territory.

Few pundits ever mention that both banks of the Jordan were originally allotted to the Jewish homeland. At the last moment, Britain inserted the infamous ‘Clause 25’ by which they gifted our East Bank to the Hashemites who turned it into the modern-day Kingdom of Jordan. So, having been robbed of half the territory, we are now told we cannot live in the half we were left with. Not even in a measly 2 percent of it.

So why, of all ruling parties, should it be the Likud that appears to abuse the rights of Jews in their own land? And why would such ministerial hawks like Moshe Yaalon and Bennie Begin appear to be standing behind Netanyahu’s announcement?

The answer has nothing to do with the peace process. Nor has it to do with the belief that any concessions, in terms of land or refugees, will ever yield Arab recognition of a Jewish State in this region. Instead it is simply a matter of national security which the Prime Minister has rightly put above party politics and other considerations.

Iran’s mullahs are about to go nuclear on the watch of the weakest and most vacillating president ever to have occupied the White House. There is also the matter of 50,000 Hezbollah rockets pointed at Tel Aviv and incessant weapons smuggling into Gaza. Obama turned his back on the Iranian reformers, unilaterally abandoned the missile defence of Baltic democracies, and has spent 3 months second-guessing his own handpicked general’s call for reinforcements in Afghanistan. Such a US President cannot be trusted as a guarantor to coax Israel into even riskier territorial concessions.

Until Obama transforms himself or is replaced after a single term, Netanyahu is forced to play along with this charade. The fiction that Mahmoud Abbas is a credible peace partner. The illusion that Syria can ever be trusted with repossession of the Golan Heights. And the fantasy that the Muslim Brotherhood will ever accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state, even if confined to the city limits of Tel Aviv.

Happily, Israel has more dependable friends in the US: its Congress and the military. Thirty years ago Menachem Begin recognised the value of appealing to Congress over Jimmy Carter’s head. In current times Israel enjoys a high level of co-operation with the US military, culminating in the completion of their joint missile defence exercise last month.

Is that relationship worth a 10-month settlement freeze?
Netanyahu clearly thinks it is. And his courage in resolutely excluding Jerusalem from the offer shows that he is no pushover for Obama.

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[This was first published in the London Jewish News]

The illustration is a detail from a French map dated 1791

Suicide Bombers on Strike

Got this on email .....



STRIKING SUICIDE BOMBERS

Islamic suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda management have so far failed to produce an agreement.

The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death will be cut by 25% next January from 72 to only 60. The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the afterlife.

The suicide bombers' union, the British Organisation of Occupational Martyrs (or B.O.O.M.) responded with a statement that this was unacceptable to its members and immediately balloted for strike action. General secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of jihad. We don't ask for much in return but to be treated like this by management is a kick in the teeth."

Mr Amir accepted the limited availability of virgins but pointed out that the cutbacks were expected to be borne entirely by the workforce and not by management. "Last Christmas Abu Hamza alone was awarded an annual bonus of 250,000 virgins," complains Amir. "And you can be sure they'll all be pretty ones too. How can Al Qaeda afford that for members of the management but not 72 for the people who do the real work?"

Speaking from the shed in the West Midlands where he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained,

"We sympathise with our workers' concerns but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day jihad, in a competitive marketplace. Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. I don't like cutting wages but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up." He defended management bonuses by claiming these were necessary to attract good fanatical clerics. "How am I supposed to attract the best people if I can't compete with the private sector?" asked Mr. Bin-Laden.

Talks broke down this morning after management's last-ditch proposal of a virgin-sharing scheme was rejected outright after a failure to agree on orifice allocation quotas. One virgin, who refused to be named, was quoted as saying "I'll be buggered if I'm agreeing to anything like that........it's too much of a mouthful to swallow".

Unless some sort of agreement is reached over the weekend, suicide bombers will down explosives at midday on Monday. Most branches are supporting the strike. Only the North London branch, which has a different union, is likely to continue working. However, some members of that branch will only be using waist-down explosives in order to express solidarity with their striking brethren.

Jerusalem - a message to the world

After watching this video, I realised that this was the same Stanley Goldfoot whose Jerusalem apartment I had almost bought some years ago. A soft-spoken unassuming man, I had no idea that he could have been a former intelligence officer in Avram Stern's underground movement: LEHI.

Stanley Goldfoot died in November 2006 at the age of 96.
His 'Letter to the World' lives on ....



One of his more successful schemes during his years as a LEHI fighter was the founding of a scholarly journal concerning itself with the Middle East. Through these unsuspecting and lawful means, Goldfoot was able to secure press credentials as a foreign correspondent. With the unknowing aid of such figures as Abba Eban, Goldfoot created a ruse upon which the most up-to date British military intelligence was at his disposal. The information he gathered not only went toward the publishing of articles in his journal, but additionally, and more importantly, directly to the LEHI high-command in Tel Aviv. Goldfoot was present at all press briefings by the British Mandate Authority and later United Nations' personnel and had virtually unlimited access to the key figures dominating the scene. Freedom of movement in a Jerusalem frequently subject to curfews was an additional benefit of press credentials and his journal. Goldfoot was able to gather intelligence information for his clandestine organization as well as be in places restricted to the ordinary Jewish citizen.

For more informaton see this LINK.

How could this happen??