Jewish Russian Telegraph

Fox News Steve Centanni: I learned a lot of good things about Islam

WorldNetDaily:

MEDIA MATTERS

Kidnapped Fox News journalists freed

Steve Centanni: 'We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint'

---

Posted: August 27, 2006
8:15 a.m. Eastern

 

By Aaron Klein
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com  

Fox News camerman Olaf Wiig shown on video shortly before his release (Fox News Channel)

TEL AVIV – Almost two weeks after their abduction in the Gaza Strip, two kidnapped Fox News journalists were freed today by their captors after reportedly being forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam on video.

"There were times when I thought 'I'm dead,' and I'm not," Fox reporter Steve Centanni told his network. "I'm fine. I'm just so happy to be free."

Centanni, 60, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, were dropped this morning off at Gaza City's Beach Hotel by Palestinian security officials, thus ending the longest-running drama involving foreign hostages in Gaza. The Beach Hotel is regularly used by foreign journalists and visiting dignataries.

Shortly before their release, a new video was issued, showing Wiig and Centanni dressed in beige Arab-style robes and apperaring to convert to Islam. Wiig, a New Zealand citizen, gave an anti-Western speech, with his face expressionless.

In a phone interview today with Fox News, Centanni explained, "We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on." [link]

This is one way to learn a lot of good things about Islam. By the same token we learned a lot of good things about Marxism-Leninism. It took 60 million people killed from 1917 to 1991 to teach the world a few good things about Communism. Are we all going to learn a few good things about Islam this way? Or are we going to fight back?

posted by: jrtelegraph

Bostonistan under the regime of legal terror: Radio Talk Show Host Michael Graham subpoened by ISB

Solomonia:

The Islamic Society of Boston has cast its line again, this time drawing radio-host Michael Graham into the controversy surrounding their Boston Mosque project. Graham dared discuss the issue on air and the ISB wants to know how he prepared for his show.

Islamic Society subpoenas WTTK in defamation suit

The group building a vast Islamic mosque and social center in Roxbury has subpoenaed a local radio talk station after one of its prominent hosts, Michael Graham, discussed the project on the air.

A lawyer for the Islamic Society of Boston said the subpoena is part of routine evidence gathering for its defamation case against The Boston Herald, WFXT-TV (Fox 25) and advocacy groups that have questioned the mosque, including the David Project, a Jewish group.

Some civil liberties lawyers who reviewed the subpoena, however, expressed concern that it goes too far and could chill free expression.

ISB attorney Howard Cooper said “the appearance for the lawyer of the David Project on the Graham show is directly relevant to the issues before the court in the pending litigation, and this is why a subpoena has been issued simply asking for copies of the broadcast.”

But after reviewing the subpoena, attorney Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge civil liberties specialist, described it as “extraordinary.” He noted that it also asks for materials used by Graham to support his remarks about the ISB, documents related to David Project lawyer Jeffrey Robbins’ appearance on the show and communications between Graham and other defendants or attorneys involved in the ISB defamation suit.

“Courts have to take seriously their obligation, their duty to protect the First Amendment, because civil litigation can be overwhelming and can really easily turn into harassment,” Silverglate said...

...North Carolina attorney W. Andrew Copenhaver, who is not involved in the defamation suit, said if he was defending WTTK in this matter he would argue the subpoena is a “fishing expedition.”

“They are trying to curtail legitimate public discussion on this matter,” said Copenhaver, who was referring to legal strategy. “They are going to try to punish people for talking about them.”...[link]

Are we turning into Bostonistan? Open discussion and questions are met  with fishing subpoenas? Where is ADL on this matter? Where is JCRC?

posted by: jrtelegraph

Don't Cry for Hizbullah, Argentina

Financial Times:

‘Hizbollah fund’ charge enrages Argentine Jews

By Jude Webber in Buenos Aires

Published: August 25 2006 20:06 | Last updated: August 25 2006 20:06

Allegations that Argentina’s Arab community is sending money to Hizbollah have incensed Jewish groups, in a country where memories are still raw of two deadly bomb attacks on Jewish targets in the 1990s blamed on the Lebanese militia.

“There is a bank account, opened by the Lebanese embassy, and anyone who can is collaborating, with both cash and humanitarian aid,” Yaoudat Brahim, president of the Federation of Argentine Arabic Groups in Buenos Aires, told the Financial Times.

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“We want the reconstruction of Lebanon to be as swift as possible – it was wiped off the map,” he said of the 33-day war between Israel and Hizbollah, in which some 1,300 people died.

Argentina’s La Nacion newspaper last week quoted Muafak Jammal, whom it described as a Hizbollah leader, as saying: “Money is arriving from Argentina for Hizbollah . . . Money is coming not just from Argentina’s Muslim community but also from Christians who are Lebanese and are committed to the reconstruction effort.”

The US-based Jewish human rights group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has urged clarification from the Argentine government about the destination of any cash raised. It said Buenos Aires was bound by international conventions to prevent funding of terror groups.

Such activity would be an affront to the memory of the victims of the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy and the 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish centre, which killed 107 people and were blamed on Hizbollah, he added.

Hicham Hamdan, Lebanon’s ambassador to Argentina, denied that any of the money would go to Hizbollah. “The money will go to the central bank and the Lebanese government,” he said. He declined to comment on how much had been raised so far, but said it was a “very humble” amount and no transfer had yet been made.

Luis Grynwald, president of the AMIA Jewish centre, said he would not be surprised if cash raised in Argentina were helping fund the group. He pointed to increased US-supported security and intelligence efforts in the leaky tri-border area between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay as evidence of Washington’s suspicions that funds from the region’s notorious money-laundering and counterfeiting operations were being funnelled to radical Islamic groups.

Security analysts also believe the area is a Latin American hideout for terror cells. [link]

Open borders anybody?

posted by: jrtelegraph

Teach Jihad in Virgina -- Get 15 years in a cage

Washington Times:

Ex-teacher gets 15 years for aiding terror group

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
August 26, 2006

A federal judge yesterday sentenced a former third-grade teacher at a Muslim school in Maryland to 15 years in prison for providing support to a terrorist organization known as the "Virginia jihad network," which used paintball games to train for a holy war.
    At the sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton, Ali Asad Chandia maintained his innocence and pledged to exact revenge against prosecutors in the afterlife, saying that "those who participated in making my children orphans ... should just remember that the day of judgment is on the way."
    Chandia, 29, who taught at the Al-Huda School in College Park, was convicted in June on three counts of providing material support in what prosecutors called a scheme by Islamic extremists to use force to drive India out of the disputed Kashmir territory in South Asia. A federal jury acquitted him of a fourth count of supporting terrorists.
    Chandia was the last of 11 convicted "Virginia jihadists" to be sentenced to terms ranging from 46 months to life.
     He was found guilty of serving as a driver for Mohammed Ajmal Khan, a senior military leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the U.S. government designated as a terrorist organization in December 2001. He also was convicted for assisting Khan in procuring military equipment for Lashkar and giving safe harbor to Khan during Khan's visits to the United States in 2002 and 2003.
    "Terrorist organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba rely on a network of individuals to carry out their deadly operations," said U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg in Alexandria.
    "Ali Asad Chandia was a member of that network for Lashkar-e-Taiba, and he will now spend a very long period of time in prison for providing material support in furtherance of its violent agenda."
    The original indictment three years ago stated Chandia was among a dozen men who conspired and trained at shooting ranges and elsewhere in Maryland and Virginia with AK-47 assault rifles, other military weapons and equipment, and paintball guns beginning in 2000. Some training, including military tactics, also took place at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Prince William County.
    Other Virginia jihad members convicted in the probe were Ali al-Timimi, 40, of Fairfax; Randall Todd Royer, 30, of Falls Church; Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hamdi of Alexandria; Masoud Ahmad Khan, 31, of Gaithersburg; Yong Ki Kwon, 27, of Fairfax; Mohammed Aatique, 30, of Norristown, Pa.; Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 35, of Falls Church; Donald Thomas Surratt, 30, of Suitland; Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, 27, of Alexandria; and Seifullah Chapman, 30, of Alexandria.
    Two others, Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem, 29, of Arlington, and Sabri Benkhala, 28, of Falls Church, were acquitted at trial.
    The 41-count federal grand jury indictment handed up in U.S. District Court in Alexandria in June 2003 accused Chandia and the others of conspiracy to "prepare for and engage in violent jihad" against foreign targets in Kashmir, the Philippines and Chechnya. Nine were identified as U.S. citizens.
    Then-U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty, whose Alexandria office prosecuted the case, said the men had met, plotted and recruited for violent jihad "right here in this community, 10 miles from Capitol Hill, in the streets of Northern Virginia."
    Mr. McNulty, now deputy attorney general, called the indictments a "stark reminder" that terrorists are active in the United States and seek to exploit America's freedom to recruit and position themselves for new attacks. He said the Virginia jihadists "secretly plotted in this community and perversely planned and traveled to camps in Pakistan" to carry out the scheme. [link]

Could we us a bit of profiling? Perhaps some immigration control? Do we want to stop Jihad in America? Are we serious about our problem? Virginia effort shows that we can be serious when we want.

posted by: jrtelegraph

An elderly Jewish woman braved an angry crowd to pull down an anti-Semitic sign at a Moscow bus stop

Arutz Sheva:

Braving Hostile Crowd, Pensioner Removes Anti-Semitic Sign
01:30 Aug 27, '06 / 3 Elul 5766

(IsraelNN.com) An elderly Jewish woman braved an angry crowd to pull down an anti-Semitic sign at a Moscow bus stop, according to an August 10 report by the AEN news agency. Svetlana Ashurova told AEN that she had heard about anti-Semitic signs being posted in her neighborhood and went out to see them for herself. "The sign was huge and was placed at the bus stop between two panes of glass, where they usually post advertisements," she said. "People were walking by laughing and saying things like, 'It's been long past time to drive all the Jews out of here!'"

The sign said: "Eighty percent of Russia's wealth is in the hands of Jews.
Two million Russians die every year. There are 4,500,000 orphans. THIS IS KIKE FASCISM! Russian! Liberate the native land from KIKE FASCISM!"

Ashurova went to the police who told her that they might get around to removing the sign. She then returned to the bus stop and asked a security guard in front of a nearby bank to help her pull the sign down. The guard refused. She went home to get her pit bull, in case anybody in the crowd waiting for the bus attacked her. Arriving at the stop, Ashurova tied her dog to a bench, climbed up on it, and addressed the crowd, asking for help to pull down the sign. "You're out of your mind!" someone told her. Another person suggested, "Knock that kike off the bench." "You try to knock her off," a third person retorted, "You see what kind of dog she has."

"I got scared," Ashurova told AEN. "But I remembered my purpose there, to clean up that filth. People were looking at me angrily. Finally, I tore the sign down. The faces around me were very ugly." She later tore down a similar sign at another bus stop and took them to the synagogue. Ashurova told AEN that she is studying Hebrew and plans to leave for Israel soon. But in the meantime, she said, "I want to be useful, so that people wake up and so that 1937 [the beginning of the Great Terror] does not repeat itself." (Bigotry Monitor -- UCSJ's weekly newsletter) [link]

posted by: jrtelegraph

KISS' rocker Gene Simmons: "My name is Haim. I was born in Haifa."

Haaretz (emphasis ours, picture - wikipedia):

Israeli-born 'KISS' rocker Gene Simmons sends get-well video to wounded soldier
By Reuters

Israeli-born "KISS" rocker Gene Simmons sent a get-well video to an Israel Defense Forces soldier wounded in Lebanon, calling him a hero the world should be proud of.

"I can't tell you how proud I am of you and how much the world and Israel owe you a debt of gratitude," Simmons told Ron Weinreich, a tank crewman paralysed from the chest down, in a video broadcast on Saturday on Channel 2 television.

Channel 2 said the KISS bassist made the video for Weinreich, a fan of the legendary rock group, at the request of Israel's Soldiers' Welfare Assocation, a fund-raising group.

Weinreich, hospitalized near Tel Aviv, was wounded two weeks ago in fighting against Hezbollah guerrillas.

"From the bottom of my heart, you're a real hero, you're everybody's hero, you're my hero," said Simmons, who recorded the video in the United States.

He added in Hebrew: "My name is Haim. I was born in Haifa."

Simmons was born Haim Witz in the northern port city in 1949. He emigrated to the United States at the age of eight with his mother, a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. [link]

This brings tears. Good for you Gene-Haim.

posted by: jrtelegraph

Londonistan, Where Self-defense is Against the Rules

Joanne Mandel, JRT contributor (emphasis ours):

Londonistan, Where Self-defense is Against the Rules
Review by Joanne Mandel

Londonistan by Melanie Phillips. Encounter Books,
2006. 191 pages. $25.95.

From time to time a book appears that is so enlightening that it should be required reading.
Londonistan by British journalist, Melanie Phillips, offers the reader a short course in current political thinking in many European countries. She explains why any attempt by Israel or America to defend themselves against terrorists is turned upside down and seen as malicious aggression against “innocent victims.”

European security agents began referring to Londonistan in the 1990s when they saw that London had been turned into the command center for Islamic militants in Europe. Radicals who were denied entry to other European countries were welcomed in England where they freely promoted, recruited and financed Islamic terror and extremism. U.K.-based terrorists have carried out operations in 11 countries on four
continents according to Middle East expert, Daniel Pipes, in addition to last year’s London bombings.

Melanie Phillips wants Americans to realize that despite Prime Minister Blair’s support for the war in Iraq, the British people are very different from their predecessors. Unlike their countrymen who withstood the Nazi onslaught of WWII, today’s generation is incapable of acknowledging, let alone confronting the Islamic challenge to their survival as a free people.
The author points out that most British people attributed the London subway and bus bombings to Mr. Blair’s support for the war in Iraq, poverty or “Islamophobia.” Discussion of the cause - religious fanaticism - was avoided.
“Britain was caving in” to demands that Muslim values take precedence over British values she notes. Freedom to express dissenting opinion has essentially been abolished in deference to heightened minority sensitivities. In fact, to criticize Muslims or accuse them of misbehaving in any fashion is seen as racist
and those who dare to do so are vilified. This upside down moral code is quite firmly in place. “Among Britain’s governing class – its intelligentsia, its media, its judiciary, its church and even its police – a broader and deeper cultural pathology has allowed
and even encouraged Londonistan to develop,” the author writes.
We also learn about the virtual absence of recognized voices challenging the establishment’s point of view. Most Americans think of the British as a lot like us – think again. Mrs. Phillips points out that left-wing thinking sets the agenda in American
media and universities just as it does in England. But there is a notable difference. In the United States there is a strong counter force coming from conservative think tanks, publishing houses, talk radio and internet bloggers. A market place of ideas thrives in America among those with access to
alternative media.

  With no equivalent counterbalance to Britain’s main stream media, the left has a lock on public opinion. “A mainly left-wing media daily pumps out a highly distorted and inflammatory version of events in Iraq and the Middle East.” The steady drumbeat of distorted news coverage and analysis has had its intended effect: “Widespread ignorance about the Middle East
contributes to the belief that Israel is the persecutor of the Palestinians and that American foreign policy has been derailed by global Jewish influence.”

This widespread ignorance about the Arab-Israeli conflict is skillfully exploited, according to Mrs. Phillips. “The British anti-war movement is today an enormous platform for Islamist extremism that has given rise to an open season of vilification against Israel and the Jews.” The August 5, 2006 anti-war march in London attracted an unprecedented number of participants. Some 100,000 Hezbollah supporters protested against Israel, chanting ‘We are all Hezbollah.’ The author warns that “The Londonistan mindset is being replicated in America: on campus, in the media and in official circles.”

Mrs. Phillips explains how two “lethal developments” eventually changed England so dramatically. Over the past four decades, Britain developed “alarming tendencies toward social and cultural suicide. Turning upon itself, it has progressively attacked or undermined the values, laws and traditions that make it a nation.” A weakened sense of British identity was
accompanied by the collapse of immigration control. A shared British national identity was to be scuttled in favor of a new multicultural model. Assimilation of newcomers was no longer considered a worthy pursuit since the establishment viewed the nation as being tainted by racism and colonialism.

The loss of national identity gave radical Islamists the opportunity to plant their own identity and purpose on English soil. “The arrival in Britain of large numbers of Muslims… many of whom came with a political agenda promoting the conquest and Islamization of the West” was the second element in the lethal mix. Reading the author’s remarkable account of multiculturalism – a form of educated lunacy - we come to understand how the traditions and values of the majority community were abandoned and an aggressive minority community was able to gain the upper hand.

  The controversial cartoons depicting Mohammed, explicitly conceived as a test of free speech in an environment that increasingly muzzles any comments Muslims might find offensive, were not republished in England. Yet, Muslims outside the Danish embassy in London were allowed to call for bombings and decapitations while police looked on. They held up signs saying ‘Exterminate those who slander Islam’ and
‘Behead whose who insult Islam.” Mrs. Phillips continues by telling us that the only action taken by the police was to restrain those passersby who objected to what the demonstrators said.

The doctrine of multiculturalism says that minority cultures must enjoy equal status with the majority culture and any attempt to put the minority culture at any disadvantage is by definition racist. Add to that the priority given to minority rights - due to their status as a “victim” group - and multiculturalism becomes a weapon that was used to undermine the ability of the “oppressor” majority to defend itself against Islamists intent on establishing their system of law in England.

Londonistaners accept the notion that “one man’s
terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” 

They have lost the ability to make a moral distinction between
those who use women and children as human shields and those who put their own troops at risk to shield civilians caught in the crossfire. In Londonistan, Melanie Phillips reveals the destructive implications of being “nonjudgmental.” The likely cost of our moral confusion has never been greater.

America, be warned!

posted by: jrtelegraph

 

Israelis Were Preparing for the War Against the Jews

InsraelInsider:

Israelis or Jews?
By David Wilder    August 25, 2006


IDF reservists are petitioning a demand for answers. Why weren't they allowed to win? Why were the decision-makers indecisive? IDF officers have started confessing: "We are arrogant."

Blame is flying every which way and finger-pointing is at its peak. Yet, the real point has yet to be addressed.

A few days ago, following Olmert's statements that the next planned expulsion of some 100,00 Jews from Judea and Samaria is no longer on the top of his priority list, I received an email dealing with 'convergence.' In my words, the letter said, 'It's not enough to see expulsion dropped from 'number-one' priority. We have to make sure it is dead and buried, never again to be resurrected.'

Very true. How can we make sure that happens?

Why did we lose the Hezbollah war? Because the Israeli army, rather than prepare for battle with the enemy, prepared for war with its brethren. The government spent millions of dollars and immeasurable man-hours training the troops, not how to win a guerilla war against terrorist-barbarians, rather, how to expel men, women and children from their homes, 'b'regishut' ? sensitively, but with 'nechishut' but with resolve. The brainwashing involved was unparalleled: One example: Participants were told to close their eyes and imagine the most beautiful scene they could think of -- where they would most like to be. That accomplished, they were then told to imagine that a wall now divides between their utopia and themselves.

Following the imaging, with eyes wide open, they were then told: The dream is peace, and the wall is the 'settlers.' The one must be removed in order to reach the other.

Who were those brainwashed? Not only the man on the street, the privates and the corporals. Rather, the cream of the crop, officers in the standing army and the reserves, of all ranks. They were forced to listen, breath, and then implement, the crime of all crimes: evicting brothers and sisters from their homes and then abandoning the land to the enemy -- an act never ever done before by any people in the world.

From the moment Sharon, together with Olmert, and later with the backing of Mufaz, decided to eradicate Gush Katif from the map, the IDF was transformed into a WMD -- a weapon of mass destruction -- or perhaps better put, a weapon of mass self-destruction. The physical and psychological demands upon the officers and soldiers, as well as the time lost preparing for a civil war rather than a real war, there were major factors in the recent lack of victory.

However, the decision-makers who forced Gush Katif down the collective throat of the Israeli public, how can we possibly expect them to have the necessary intellect to reach the proper and necessary conclusions concerning authentic warfare, upon which the survival of the country may be at stake?

What is guiding light of these decision-makers?

I recently heard a true, hair-raising story: A high-level delegation from Israel met with the French minister of war. The goal: to achieve French support for the 'convergence-expulsion' plan. The minister asked the group: How can a country perpetrate such an act against its own people? The answer: "We are Israelis. Those being expelled are Jews."

In other words, we are two peoples, two nations, two seemingly mutually exclusive sects: Israelis and Jews.

All well and good until it comes time for dying. When called upon to put your life on the line, it seems those lines get blurred. Then we are all ---- what? Jews? Israelis? What are we then? Who are the soldiers dying for, for Jews, for Israelis, for whom? [link]

Preparing for the war against the Jews, did not help in preparing for the war against Hezbollah. Different skills are required. Different people too. General Halutz  was extremely brave during the war against the Jews, but he checked in with stomach problems (making into his pants) to a hospital during the war with Hezbollah. (This could not be financial problems, he managed to sell his stocks in the beginning of the miltary operation). This is also true for the propaganda machine in Israel and abroad -- people who were masters of self-spanking and sucking up to the left-wing media turned out to be unsuitable to defend the Jewish state and nation during the propaganda war unleashed against us. No wonder, different skill set, different motivation. How much money did JCRC spend on media campaign justifying "Disengagement"? Was it a good investment? What do you think?

posted by: jrtelegraph

Michael Barone: Our Covert Enemies Want Us to Loose

Michael Barone via Powerline (emphasis is ours):

In our war against Islamo-fascist terrorism, we face enemies both overt and covert. The overt enemies are, of course, the terrorists themselves. Their motives are clear: They hate our society because of its freedoms and liberties, and want to make us all submit to their totalitarian form of Islam. They are busy trying to wreak harm on us in any way they can. Against them we can fight back, as we did when British authorities arrested the men and women who were plotting to blow up a dozen airliners over the Atlantic.

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism.

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

These are the ideas that have been transmitted over a long generation by the elites who run our universities and our schools, and who dominate our mainstream media. They teach an American history with the good parts left out and the bad parts emphasized. We are taught that some of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders -- and are left ignorant of their proclamations of universal liberties and human rights. We are taught that Japanese-Americans were interned in World War II -- and not that American military forces liberated millions from tyranny. To be sure, the great mass of Americans tend to resist these teachings. By the millions they buy and read serious biographies of the Founders and accounts of the Greatest Generation. But the teachings of our covert enemies have their effect.

Of course, this distorts history. We are taught that American slavery was the most evil institution in human history. But every society in history has had slavery. Only one society set out to and did abolish it. The movement to abolish first the slave trade and then slavery was not started by the reason-guided philosophies of 18th century France. It was started, as Adam Hochschild documents in his admirable book "Bury the Chains," by Quakers and Evangelical Christians in Britain, followed in time by similar men and women in America. The slave trade was ended not by Africans, but by the Royal Navy, with aid from the U.S. Navy even before the Civil War.

Nevertheless, the default assumption of our covert enemies is that in any conflict between the West and the Rest, the West is wrong. That assumption can be rebutted by overwhelming fact: Few argued for the Taliban after Sept. 11. But in our continuing struggles, our covert enemies portray our work in Iraq through the lens of Abu Ghraib and consider Israel's self-defense against Hezbollah as the oppression of virtuous victims by evil men. In World War II, our elites understood that we were the forces of good and that victory was essential. Today, many of our elites subject our military and intelligence actions to fine-tooth-comb analysis and find that they are morally repugnant.

We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don't want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose. [link]

Have you met people like this among our Jewish "leaders"? We have. They want to take the community and the people to the Socialist paradise. It took us years to get out.  Thank you very much, we are not interested.

posted by: jrtelegraph

 

Reservists of Spearhead Brigade: Our willingness to fight had been spat on

Haaretz:

TEXT: Protest petition by IDF reservists back from the war
By Haaretz Service

The following is the text of a petition signed by IDF reservists who served in the Spearhead Brigade in Lebanon, sent to Defense Minister Amir Peretz and IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz in protest at the handling of the war by the government and senior military officials:

We, fighters and commanders at the Spearhead [Hod Hachanit] Brigade, were called up to enlist under an emergency mobilization order [Tzav 8] on July 30, 2006. Our attendance was complete in all battalions.

As we were signing on the battle equipment and weapons, we knew that we were signing for much more. We left behind wives and children, girlfriends and families. We put aside our jobs and livelihoods; we were prepared to carry out our mission under the most difficult of conditions, in heat, thirst or hunger.

At the back of his mind, each and every one of us knew, that for the just cause of protecting the citizens of Israel, we would even put our lives on the line.

But there was one thing we were not and would not be willing to accept: We were unwilling to accept indecisiveness. The war's aim, which was not defined clearly, was even changed in the course of the fighting.

The indecisiveness manifested itself in inaction, in not carrying out operational plans, and in canceling all the missions we were given during the fighting. This led to prolonged stays in hostile territory, without an operational purpose and out of unprofessional considerations, without seeking to engage in combat with the enemy.

The "cold feet" of the decision-makers were evident everywhere. To us the indecisiveness expressed deep disrespect for our willingness to join the ranks and fight and made us feel as though we had been spat on, since it contradicts the principles and values of warfare upon which we were trained at the Israel Defense Forces.

The heavy feeling that in the echelons above us there is nothing but under-preparation, insincerity, lack of foresight and inability to make rational decisions, leads to the question - were we called up for nothing?

We are now on the day after, and it seems that the immorality and the absence of any shame are the fig-leaves to be used in order to cover up for the blunders. The blunders of the past six years and the under-preparation of the army have been carried on our backs - the backs of the fighters. In order to face the next battle prepared - and this may happen soon - a thorough and fundamental change must take place.

The crisis of confidence between us as fighters and the higher echelons will not be resolved without a thorough and worthy investigative commission under the auspices of the state. When the commission completes its task, conclusions must be drawn both on the level of strategic planning and national security, and on the personal level of the parties involved.

We paid a heavy price in order to fight and come out of the battle victorious, and we feel this has been denied of us. We will all attend calls to enlist in the future for any mission we will be required to complete, but we would like to know that these missions will be part of a clear objective and will be carried out by striving to engage in combat.

As soldiers and citizens we expect a response at your earliest convenience,

We the undersigned

Fighters and officers of the Spearhead Brigade [link]

In their effort to secure the love and respect of Kofi Annan, Mahmood Abbas, Jackes Shirac and other "friends", Israeli liberals lost respect of their own soldiers. Was is it a good trade? We don't believe so.

posted by: jrtelegraph