Fidel Castro, the longtime president and leftist icon who stepped aside during a health crisis but still leads the Cuban Communist Party, has told a reporter that Israel definitely has the right to exist.
“Yes it does, without a doubt,” Castro, 84, told visiting US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic magazine, according to a new article published Wednesday.
In the same interview Castro criticized Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and said in an interview Tehran should acknowledge Israel’s fears for its own survival. …
So what are all the dogmatic, mindless “progressives” — who think Castro is a god — going to say now about Israel? As Jeffry Goldberg, the reporter who interviewed Castro, says:
The Los Angeles Timesreported yesterday on the latest Quinnipiac University national survey on American opinions about various immigration matters. The title of the article, “Immigration issues hurting Obama, poll finds,” reflects the finding that, “By a 60%-to-28% margin, respondents disapproved of the way Obama is handling illegal immigration.” What isn’t clear is whether the president is losing support because he hasn’t been able to sign a “comprehensive immigration bill” allowing the legalization of approximately 11 million illegal immigrants or whether it’s because he’s proved much less than serious about border control, workplace enforcement, and deportation. Probably both.
Pastor Terry Jones’ plan to burn copies of the Koran at his church in Gainesville, Florida, let it be emphasized, is a distasteful act that fits an ugly tradition. That said, two other points need be noted: Buying books and then burning them is an entirely legal act in the United States. Second, David Petraeus, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama pressured Jones to cancel only because they feared Muslim violence against Americans if he proceeded. Indeed, despite Mr. Jones calling off the Koran burning, 5 Afghans and 14 Kashmiris died in protests against his plans.
TIME Magazine was completely wrong about Israel — and is a third-rate trashy rag — for publishing a cover story entitled, “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.” I’ve already explained why, and the JewishJournal.comagrees most eloquently:
… All are singular experiences but part of the national psyche: Israelis defending themselves from wars of aggression for the first three decades of the State’s existence. The tension of regular terror outrages that brought unbearable carnage to Israel’s streets and unspeakable pain to so many Israeli families. An unprovoked barrage of Saddam’s scuds, Nasrallah’s katyushas, Haniah’s Kassams and now the threat of Ahmadinedjad’s nuclear warheads barreling their way towards us.
And yet, for anyone who took the time to check, over the last many years, a majority of Israelis have consistently polled in favor of a two-state solution. …
There is something ugly about insisting that Israelis must behave differently to the rest of humanity.
In delegitimizing Israel, it is Israelis and not just the Israeli government that is under attack. …
So, why do Israelis teach about peace in schools and despite constant setbacks, send government after government to negotiate? Because, as Jeffrey insists, peace is about our existence. Surrounded by enemies, there is no life for us without it and no alternative to achieving it.
Look beyond golden beaches, designer shirts and Tel Aviv apartment prices made famous by magazine copy. There are millions of Israelis who have not given up.
Muslim groups have just called for “tolerance.” They “decry bigotry.” The Muslim leaders said: “We stand for the constitutional right of Muslims and Americans of all faiths to build houses of worship anywhere in our nation as allowed by local laws and regulations … Ground Zero belongs to all Americans.”
Technically, these words are both true and stop short of an outright endorsement. However, given the situation, these are also fighting words. Given the groups which attended the meeting and issued this statement, (e.g. Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, etc.), these are disingenuous words meant to falsely pacify, confuse, and disorient the infidel listener. They are words of “taqiyya.” This approach is but one example of how belligerent Islamists — not peaceful Muslims — use Western laws about tolerance in order to justify an era of anti-infidel intolerance. …Continue reading…
Spotlighting the egregious human rights abuses that take place on a daily basis in Iran, the pro-Israel student advocacy organization “Stand With Us” staged a silent demonstration in Manhattan on Sunday afternoon, September 19th at the entrance to Central Park on 59th Street and Columbus Circle. This graphic display of the terror that Iranian citizens face comes in response to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York, where he’ll be addressing the United Nations general assembly on September 23rd.
Did the U.S. spending of $53 billion on reconstruction efforts, or “nation-building,” work in Iraq? According to New York Times’ columnist David Brooks, it did. Unfortunately, however, his argument is flawed on numerous counts by selective evidence.
To begin with, he cites the International Monetary Fund’s report that Iraq will have the twelfth fastest growing economy in the world with a projected 7% economic growth this year, but such a statistic is misleading because, as in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, this expansion is almost entirely due to rising oil prices, and has nothing to do with development projects funded by U.S. taxpayers. Indeed, Iraq has become increasingly oil-dependent like its neighbors in the Gulf region, such that petroleum revenues account for about 70% of GDP and around 90% of government revenues.
Yes, it’s true; a fringe minister with just fifty followers in America wanted to burn a Koran. But he didn’t. Meanwhile another nut wants to kill all Jews, wipe Israel off the map, destroy the United States, eliminate all Christians, indoctrinate children into being suicide bombers, and carry out a revolutionary war of terrorism for decades no matter how many die and how much destruction occurs.
Oh, and by the way, he and his colleagues have several hundred thousand followers and are ruling what amounts to an independent state bordering on the Mediterranean.
So many educated people are afflicted by the equivalent of a blank stare where genuine thought should exist. It’s as if they’re sleepwalkers, oblivious to reality, or under plexiglass, where they can’t hear anything with which they don’t already agree.
Here’s a case in point. A woman who identifies herself as a professor at a Chicago university (it’s Northeastern Illinois) publishes this touching note in the New York (Muslim) Times today. Gail Dreyfuss describes an “encounter” she had with a student who was wearing both hijab (a headscarf) and a pin which read “I am a Muslim.” I guess the student did not want anyone mistaking her for … a Buddhist or a Jew; perhaps the student did not think that westerners know that a wearing a tight “headscarf which framed her face” meant she was a Muslim. …Continue reading…
A recent report by Robert Fisk in the Independent on the subject of honor killings throughout the world should highlight the need to address the prevalence of this barbaric custom.
Fisk notes that many women’s rights groups suspect that the number of victims of honor killings may be four times higher than the UN’s “latest world figure of around 5000 deaths a year.” Meanwhile, “Amnesty International and news archives suggest that the slaughter of the innocent for “dishonouring” their families is increasing by the year.” Moreover, whilst the practice is known to occur amongst Hindus and Sikhs in South Asia and the West, as well as amongst Christians and other minorities in the Middle East, it is still largely confined to Muslim communities in countries such as Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey. However, the custom may be equally widespread in Egypt and the Gulf states, where media freedom on the issue is much more restricted.
Whenever an honest person invents a new lock, the thieves always find a new way to pick it (adapt). For example, look at software operating systems and viruses — an endless battle; and there are many more analogies. Case in point: Counter-terrorism. Are we doing enough to fight Islamo-fascism? Are we adapting and staying ahead of the curve? Read this ominous new report about the growing internal threat posed by Islamist extremism:
Report calls immigrants and domestic Muslims a terror threat in U.S.
Nine years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States faces a growing threat from home-grown insurgents and an “Americanization” of al-Qaeda leadership, the former heads of the 9/11 Commission reported Friday. …
Thousands turned out in New York City yesterday to commemorate the 911 attacks and oppose the planned construction of a mosque (”community center”) near the hallowed ground where the World Trade Center was savagely destroyed by Islamist terrorists. According to CNN, “Protest organizer Pamela Geller… said the NYPD and security at the rally told her about 5,000 demonstrators were there.”CNN added that, “the protest was peaceful. Human rights advocates, politicians and families of 9/11 victims addressed the crowd.” Atlas Shrugscontends that 40,000 people turned out to protest the planned Ground Zero mosque, and provided pictorial evidence to back its claims (see below). Conversly, pro-Ground Zero mosque “protesters” carried acrimonious placards stating, for example, “The attack on Islam is racism” and “Tea Party Bigots,” according to the Associated Press.
As September 11 comes around each year, those of us who focus on radical Islam inevitably ask whether the lessons of 9/11 have sunk in — or whether they are fading as the event itself becomes a memory. Are we, in other words, progressing or regressing in what once was called the war on terror?
In contrast to a conventional war, in which objective markers such as control of territory or the output of steel indicate trends, in this new kind of war one must look to subjective factors like understanding the enemy or pride in one’s own civilization. How, on this slippery basis, does the United States stand on the ninth 9/11?
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