We are waiting patiently, as the fuse burns down on another Middle Eastern powder keg. On Sept. 20, as the next United Nations session opens, Mahmoud Abbas will present a declaration of statehood to the General Assembly, on behalf of the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank. Though unilateral, it will be welcomed by a voting majority which includes all the dictatorships of the Muslim world and Africa.

Full membership in the UN requires the sanction of the Security Council, where there is an American veto. That will almost certainly be exercised, even by the Obama administration. But for all practical purposes, the Palestinian Authority has been a member for a long time, and been behaving as a state. It has the ultimate hallmark of a state, for it conducts its own foreign policy, freely.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/republic+anti+Israel/5331129/story.html#ixzz1WiGp60Y9

Two weeks ago, a Palestinian from Bethlehem was arrested by the U.S.-financed and trained Palestinian Authority security forces. He was charged with "carrying out commercial transactions with residents of a hostile state."

No, he was not buying uranium from Iran. His purported crime was purchasing wood products from an Israeli community located beyond the 1949 armistice lines.

Denied bail by the U.S.-funded PA magistrate's court in Bethlehem, he has been remanded to custody pending the conclusion of his trial.

This man's arrest is part of what the unelected, U.S.-supported Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has touted as his "National Honor Fund." The goal of this project is to ban all economic contact between Palestinians and Jews who live and work beyond the 1949 armistice lines. As far as the supposedly moderate Fayyad is concerned, those Jews and Israel generally comprise the "hostile state," that the Palestinians under Fayyad's leadership are being compelled to boycott.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Palestinian Labor Minister Ahmed Majdalani said the PA hopes that by the end of the year all the thousands of Palestinians who are employed in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria will quit their jobs. What he didn't mention is that if they don't quit, they will be arrested.

The Israeli government is moving toward accepting the Obama administration's request to renew the building freeze in Judea and Samaria for another three months.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's support for the measure and Shas's willingness to abstain in a vote would likely yield an approval of the plan in the appropriate cabinet forum.

This is a necessary step, not principally because the US has sought the extension in return for a package of security incentives, various unspecified understandings relating to Iran and to Israel's nuclear policies, and fighter jets worth $3 billion. One would have liked to believe that the central elements of this package, though far from negligible, would in any case have been deemed to meet the mutual interests of Israel and the US.

Nor is the key issue here Washington's apparent commitment to use its Security Council veto to block attempts by the Palestinians in that forum to declare an autonomous state on the West Bank. It would be difficult to envision America, under any foreseeable circumstances, encouraging a unilateral process that would leave all core issues of dispute unresolved.

"This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations," President Obama said Tuesday at a press conference in Indonesia. He was referring to approvals issued in Israel this week to build 1300 homes in two East Jerusalem neighborhoods.

That is, 1300 homes for Jews. Obama would have had no problem if the announced homes had been designated for Arabs—or anyone other than Jews.

As the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial, the country—Indonesia—in which Obama made his remark is one that forbids Israeli citizens to visit. Indonesia is also one of 19 UN member states that do not recognize Israel as a state, and it does not allow overflights by Israeli aircrafts.

One could say, then, that in counterposing Jewish homes in Jerusalem to peace, Obama was not encouraging the best side of the Indonesian national ethos.

Christians in Iraq have been, and not for the first time, deliberately targeted in a major terrorist attack. Indeed, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Iraq, from the Gaza Strip to Egypt to Sudan to Nigeria, Christians are being assaulted, intimidated, and murdered by militant Muslims.

Yet virtually never do Christians in any of these countries-perhaps with some occasional exceptions in India--attack Muslims. In the West, there have been no armed terrorist attacks on Muslims or the deliberate killing of Muslims. There does not exist a single group advocating such behavior.

Have you seen any of this in the Western mass media? Have any Christian church groups-some of which find ample time to criticize Israel-even mentioned this systematic assault? Indeed, on the rare occasions that the emigration of Christians is mentioned, somehow it is blamed on Israel, as one American network news show did recently.

Years from now, when historians seek an overarching concept to define our times, they could do worse than refer to it as the Age of Dissimulation. Today our leading minds devote their energies and cognitive powers to figuring out new ways to hide reality from themselves and the general public.

Take U.S. President Barack Obama's senior counterterrorism advisor for example. On Sunday, John Brennan spoke on Fox News about the latest attempted Islamic terrorist attack on American soil.

Since the Obama administration has barred US officials from referring to terrorists as terrorists and effectively barred US officials from acknowledging that Islamic terrorists are Muslims, Brennan simply referred to the Islamic terrorists in Yemen who tried to send bombs to synagogues in Chicago as "individuals."

While these days the focus is understandably on Al Qaeda, alarming news has also surfaced about Hezbollah, the Shiite terror group that is clustered near Israel's border and has taken control of Lebanon.

The French daily Le Figaro reports that Hezbollah's arsenal now numbers 40,000 missiles, and that the organization fields over 10,000 fighters. Le Figaro also gives details on three Hezbollah units tasked with maintaining and transporting the missiles, and on Syria's close involvement in the whole enterprise.

The article says that last January one of the three, Unit 108—in a move picked up by U.S. intelligence—received a delivery of 26 Syrian M-6002 missiles somewhere between Damascus and the Syrian-Lebanese border. While Unit 108's main barracks are near that border, it also has a base near Damascus Airport for handling weapons shipments from Iran.

Le Figaro quotes the French Defense Ministry as saying Israel might strike Unit 108's sites in Syria.

It has become fashionable to compare the current situation in the world with the experiences of Nazism and World War Two. There are some parallels, of course, worth exploring. But a more likely model for the next period in world history is more likely to be that of the Soviet Union and the Cold War.

The future of the confrontation between Islamism and the governments of Muslim-majority states as well as Israel and the West is more likely not going to be some terrible but relatively brief shooting war for several reasons.

Iran, the closest thing to a leader of revolutionary Islamism, is far less strong and bold than Nazi Germany. It is unlikely to offer the West an occasion for direct, conventional war. It is very strong in the elements of ideology, client groups, and ideological appeal. As in the USSR's case, Iran will more likely use nuclear weapons as a shield rather than a vehicle for attack. And also, as in the Cold War, there will be many independent or semi-independent revolutionary groups in dozens of countries stirring up trouble.

In contrast to the Cold War era, however, the West has no taste for such a confrontation and would avoid waging this struggle as much as possible. Equally, the revolutionary forces are diverse, including even anti-Iran Islamists, and conditions vary in each country.

If you've lost faith in the current administration's ability and mass media's ability to respond to Middle East developments, here's more evidence. There's a relatively new American idiomatic expression, "Ya [you] think?" Said sarcastically, it means: Wow, duh, the answer to that question is really obvious!

So consider how hidden, obscure stories [sarcasm] are being dug out by policymakers and top media. The New York Times reports that the U.S. government is "increasingly alarmed by unrest in Lebanon, whose own fragile peace is being threatened by militant opponents of a politically charged investigation into the killing in 2005 of a former Lebanese leader."

Ya think? Lebanon has been taken over (or recaptured, if you wish) by the Iran-Syria anti-American, revolutionary Islamist, terrorist-sponsoring axis, operating largely--though by no means completely--through their client, Hizballah. Might this be of some concern for U.S. policymakers?

Syria's president has accused the United States of sowing chaos overseas, snubbing Washington's efforts to improve ties with Damascus.

Bashar Assad told Al-Hayat newspaper in an interview published Tuesday that the U.S. created chaos in every place it entered.

Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizbullah hate Zionism, but admire its success, says Dr. Uriya Shavit of the Dayan research center. The terrorist groups have even sought to mimic the Zionist success story in their own way, he told Arutz Sheva.

Islamic movements' hatred and opposition to the Jewish presence in Israel goes back for many years, longer than most realize, Shavit said. "However, what is even less widely known is that for all those years, Islamists tried to copy Zionism, and almost admired it," he declared.

A cartoon published last week in the newspaper that serves as the official mouthpiece for the Palestinian Authority continued Ramallah's campaign of incitement against the State of Israel, and explained at least in part why peace has not yet been achieved with the PA.

The picture, picked up by the PA media watchdog Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), appeared in the October 19, 2010 edition of the Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily newspaper.

And when it comes to the peace process, the Middle East isn't Northern Ireland.

With the resumption of Arab-Israeli direct talks comes the regurgitation of a minority view that these talks are destined to fail because Hamas is excluded. The first salvo in this ongoing campaign came from Palestinian-American blogger Ali Abunimah, an advocate of the one-state solution, who expounded upon the need for recognizing Hamas in the New York Times. Peter Beinart made the same case in a broader Daily Beast column about Obama's failed foreign policy. What both had in common, apart from thinking rather generously of a totalitarian and anti-Semitic Islamist party, is use of the Irish Republican Army and Northern Ireland as a convenient analogy for the Middle East peace process. Didn't the British government eventually sit down with Sinn Fein, the IRA's "political wing," after decades of murderous mayhem in Belfast and bombings in the Tube, pubs, and other targets on the mainland? And can't the same lessons learned from the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which inaugurated the end of the Troubles, be applied to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Data found on a laptop of a passenger of last May's Gaza bound flotilla indicates that the flotilla's organizers received assistance from the highest levels of the Turkish government, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Edogan and other senior government officials.

Records of the meeting between the heads of the six groups behind the flotilla, in Istanbul, two weeks prior to embarkation and other similar documents were found on laptop computers confiscated by the Israel Defense Forces following the takeover of the flotilla.

The documents suggest long-term and detailed preparations by the organizers, months in advance, including readying for various scenarios, including the landing of commandos on the ships using ropes from helicopters.

The Turkish government denies offering any assistance to the flotilla's organizers.

For Hezbollah, which calls the shots in the neighborhood, this was just the right soundtrack for the Iranian president's state visit last week. Indeed, funds from Iran have been used to finance the construction of new buildings and streets, support war widows and create jobs in the sections of southern Beirut and southern Lebanon that Israeli fighter jets reduced to smoldering rubble in the summer of 2006.

"We love Ahmadinejad," says Fatima Kais, an old woman from the southern part of the country who has wrapped herself in an Iranian flag. "He protects us from the Zionists. We owe him our lives."

There was no mistaking the enthusiasm that gripped the vast majority of Shiites in Lebanon as they played host to the Iranian president. Ahmadinejad's two-day visit gave an enormous boost to what is the largest segment of Lebanon's population, which was, however, also the most marginalized group for many years. In particular, Hezbollah, whose name means "Party of God," is brimming with self-confidence. The organization's militia has long since recovered from the fighting with Israel four years ago and once again boasts a well-filled arsenal of rockets.

"Even if Hezbollah is perhaps nothing more than a plaything of the Iranians, the Lebanese Shiites are enjoying finally being recognized as the strongest voice in the country," says Beirut political scientist Hilal Khashan. His colleague Raghid al-Sulh even maintains that Hezbollah is the "strongest political party in Lebanon of all time."

I'm speaking of Philippe Karsenty, who delivered a talk in Montreal on October 13 of this year dealing with the infamous Mohammad al-Dura hoax perpetrated by France 2 TV. Karsenty, deputy mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine and director of the Paris-based analysis firm Media-Ratings, has become justly celebrated as the man who single-handedly defied the entire French media, political establishment and intellectual synod which closed ranks to defend the official version of what happened on September 30, 2000 at the Netzarim junction in Gaza. The episode and its aftermath are by this time widely known, but a brief recapitulation would not be out of place.

Jamal al-Dura, a native of Gaza, and his 12-year-old son Mohammad, were filmed supposedly caught in a crossfire between Palestinian operatives and Israeli soldiers at the Netzarim junction, approximately five kilometers from Gaza City. According to Israeli-French journalist Charles Enderlin, France 2 TV's Jerusalem correspondent who edited and narrated the clip, and his cameraman Talal Abu Rhama who bore witness to the event, the Israelis deliberately targeted the two victims for a full forty-five minutes, wounding the father and killing the son. An expurgated version of the film circulated around the globe, and the international media, with scarcely an exception, condemned the Israelis as child killers. With the collusion of the Western press, the Palestinians had invented yet another martyr to grace their faux hagiography.

Ahmed Qurei, a senior PLO official and former Palestinian Authority prime minister, has said he does not rule out the possibility that the Palestinians will launch an "armed resistance" against Israel if the peace talks fail.

Qurei, who was one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, was speaking at a seminar that was held in Cairo earlier this week.

An Israeli official said Qurei's threat was "regrettable."

"It is indeed regrettable that there are still senior Palestinian leaders in the Palestinian Authority who talk about using the path of violence," the official told The Jerusalem Post. "It is clear that the path of violence is a dead end and only through direct negotiation can peace be achieved."

"Stop the Peace Process." That's the name of an editorial that appeared this week on Walla!, the most popular of Israel's indigenous Hebrew websites. What's surprising is that Walla! is strongly left-leaning and was founded by Haaretz, Israel's left-wing daily.

The editorial is quite interesting and worth quoting. "Israelis observe with total indifference," it says,

the political process that Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, and Barack Obama are trying to sell them. The streets were supposed to be churning with political activity, pro and con. In the city squares the believers in the process were supposed to be angrily confronting the opponents. But the Israelis aren't fools. Their sense of smell, which is sharp and sensitive after years of peace follies and piles of corpses, can well detect when a genuine political process is occurring and when it's a matter of PR for an [Israeli] prime minister who pretends to be a statesman, a president of an [i.e., Palestinian] Authority who's scared to death, and a U.S. president who's determined and naïve to the same extent.

Aside from the arguable characterizations of those three leaders, especially the obligatory jab at Netanyahu, Walla! is right. Anyone who lived in Israel in the 1990s recalls the fierce standoffs between those who supported the "peace process" of that time — and in many cases continued supporting it even as those corpses from terror attacks kept piling up — and those who opposed it. In comparison, the situation today can be described as "eerily silent."

How should American voters concerned with Israel's welfare and security vote in the U.S. Congressional elections on Nov. 2?

This much is clear after almost two years of Democratic control over the executive and legislative branches of government: Democrats consistently support Israel and its government far less than do Republicans. Leaving Barack Obama aside for now (he's not on the ballot), let's focus on Congress and on voters.

Congress: The pattern of weak Democratic support began just a week after Inauguration Day 2009, right after the Israel-Hamas war, when 60 House Democrats (including such left-wingers as Dennis Kucinich, Barbara Lee, and Maxine Waters) and not a single Republican wrote the secretary of state to "respectfully request that the State Department release emergency funds to [the anti-Israel organization] UNRWA for reconstruction and humanitarian assistance" in Gaza.

In the same spirit, 54 House Democrats and not a single Republican signed a letter to Barack Obama a year later, in January 2010, asking him to "advocate for immediate improvements for Gaza in the following areas" and then listed ten ways to help Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization.

In dramatic contrast, 78 House Republicans wrote a "Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu" letter a few months later to express their "steadfast support" for him and Israel. The signatories were not just Republicans but members of the House Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus.

So, count 54 Democrats for Hamas and 78 Republicans for Israel.

It is not often that a state visit by a foreign president plunges the host nation into political turmoil. But then Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presence in Lebanon is no ordinary visit. On one level, the Iranian president's controversial tour of southern Lebanon, where yesterday he was literally a stone's throw from the Israeli border, should be seen as yet another example of the publicity-grabbing exploits that have become the hallmark of this eccentric leader.

What better way to distract attention from Iran's deepening economic crisis – the direct result of Mr Ahmadinejad's intransigence over the nuclear programme – than to stage a high-profile visit to about the only place in the world where he can truly be guaranteed a popular welcome.

It would have been unthinkable just a couple of years ago: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was welcomed in Lebanon on Wednesday for a visit that demonstrated just how far the Lebanese democracy has fallen and how fast the enemies of freedom have risen.

Ever since the Doha Agreement of 2008, in which Hezbollah achieved with guns what it couldn't achieve with the ballot box, the arc of power and influence of the democratic "March 14th Alliance" has been waning. In Qatar, the Western-friendly coalition made up largely of Sunnis, Christians, and Druze reluctantly agreed to give the Hezbollah-led opposition enough cabinet ministers in government to give them veto power over the majority's policies. In effect, the hard-won election of 2005 that had given the democrats nominal control was canceled, and the wolf was invited inside where he then proceeded to make himself at home.

Even the parliamentary elections last year that saw another victory by the March 14th coalition was eventually watered down as the "Spirit of Doha" and once again brought the Hezbollah opposition into a government partnership. The political motto of Lebanon — "No victors, no vanquished" — rings hollow today as Hezbollah has bullied and threatened its way to dominance.

No one in Lebanon seems to know who invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Beirut for a two-day "official visit" -- his first since assuming office in Teheran five years ago. No Lebanese official has claimed credit for a trip that Israel and the U.S. have condemned as "provocative." But it's shaping up as a potential powder keg and a huge political embarrassment for Lebanon whose reverberations are being felt in many capitals, not just in the Middle East.

Ahmadinejad lost no time in thanking the cheering throngs who lined the streets and pelted his armored car with rice and flowers. These were the tens of thousands of supporters of Hezbollah, Iran's Shiite Muslim ally in Lebanon which the U.S. and Israel have branded a terrorist organization, despite its participation in Lebanon's fragile government. Enthusiastic Hezbollahis painted their faces with Iranian flags and hoisted posters featuring Ahmadinejad's face in a giant red heart to proclaim their "love" for Iran's unpopular, polarizing president, welcoming him to their capital. He felt "at home" in Lebanon, Ahmadinejad declared. "We are two peoples that love each other. We have joint interests."

On Tuesday, as his trial resumed in Amsterdam on various charges of offending Muslims, Dutch freedom fighter Geert Wilders won one victory and suffered one defeat. This is welcome news for Wilders personally, since any acquittal moves him closer to the end of these nightmarish proceedings; however, the ominous implications of his trial in general for the freedom of speech were reinforced on the same day, and those implications could have deleterious effects far beyond the Wilders trial itself.

First, the good news: public prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman noted that the statements for which he is on trial referred to Islam and the Qur'an, not to Muslims as people – although they did add in the politically correct observation that Wilders' statements might nevertheless hurt Muslims' feelings. Despite that assertion, in a burst of logical thinking unusual in these proceedings, they recommended that since Wilders was speaking about Islamic texts and teachings and not Muslim people, the charge against him of group defamation should be dropped

David Be'eri is either much admired or much hated, depending on how you feel about Israel and Jewish heritage. Be'eri is the founder and head of the Ir David Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to excavating, preserving and developing biblical Jerusalem, the City of David.

When Be'eri began his project in 1986, the City of David, located just opposite the Old City, was in shambles. Former excavations were hidden beneath heaps of garbage and debris.

Owing to his efforts, today the City of David is one of Israel's most beloved tourist attractions. Some 500,000 tourists visit the site each year. Seventeen archaeological excavations have been undertaken there or are currently ongoing. Annual archaeological conferences at the site attract leading scholars from all over the world.

One of the keys to Be'eri's success has been the close relations he has cultivated with the local Arabs. Hundreds of local Arabs have worked in the City of David on the various excavations.

But in the past few months, and particularly since the Obama administration began pressuring Israel to curb its sovereignty in Jerusalem, things have begun to change. Leftist groups including Peace Now, Ir Amim, B'Tselem, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Emek Shaveh have begun organizing frequent protests.

According to Udi Ragones, the spokesman for Ir David, the various leftist groups collaborate openly with two Arab groups that have been formed over the past year: Silwannet and the Wadi Hilweh Information Center. Peace Now's Hagit Ofran is often seen working with Jawad Sayam from the information center.

One of the information center's employees also works for Emek Shaveh, an organization of anti-Zionist archaeologists.

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has endorsed (Arabic) (English translation by MEMRI) anti-American Jihad and pretty much every element in the al-Qaida ideology book. Since the Brotherhood is the main opposition force in Egypt and Jordan as well as the most powerful group, both politically and religiously, in the Muslim communities of Europe and North America this is pretty serious stuff.

By the way, no one can argue that he merely represents old, tired policies of the distant past because the supreme guide who said these things was elected just a few months ago. His position reflects current thinking.

Does that mean the Egyptian, Jordanian, and all the camouflaged Muslim Brotherhood fronts in Europe and North America are going to launch terrorism as one of their affiliates, Hamas, has long done? No.

But it does mean that something awaited for decades has happened: the Muslim Brotherhood is ready to move from the era of propaganda and base-building to one of revolutionary action. At least, its hundreds of thousands of followers are being given that signal. Some of them will engage in terrorist violence as individuals or forming splinter groups; others will redouble their efforts to seize control of their countries and turn them into safe areas for terrorists and instruments for war on the West.

No sooner did Israeli-Palestinian talks start up again, after an intermission of almost two years, than they got snagged again—this time by the Palestinians' demand that Israel extend its settlement moratorium. The moratorium—a major, unprecedented concession by Israel—was instated from late November last year to late September this year. It garnered no reciprocal gesture whatsoever from the Palestinian Authority, where virulent anti-Israel incitement continued.

Instead, PA president Mahmoud Abbas finally entered talks with Israel toward the end of the ten-month West Bank building freeze, just in time to condition any further talks on its extension. This at a time when Palestinian building in the West Bank—including a whole new city, Rawabi—continues unfettered.

Various media reports give different accounts of how likely it is that the talks will resume, and the positions of the sides. The reports agree, though, that intensive U.S. efforts to rescue the talks continue—President Barack Obama having made an envisioned Israeli-Palestinian peace a central and even obsessive goal.

In the aftermath of the Six Days War of 1967, with Israel in control of the Sinai, the Golan Heights, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, a fierce debate began in Israel over how to make peace with its Arab enemies. The political-left saw an opportunity to use the captured territories as bargaining chips for peace — hence the land for peace formula.

The political-right, on the other hand, looking pragmatically at Arab hostility and the Arab world's unwillingness to neither make peace with Israel (nor recognize or negotiate with the Jewish State), argued for keeping most of the captured territories (certainly Judea and Samaria) and maintained that Israel had as much of a claim to the territories as the Jordanian monarchy or the Arab-Palestinians. Moreover, they asserted that the Arabs would never make a full and sincere peace with Israel.

Within the Israeli center-left establishment, the Allon Plan (named after General and Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon) gained a great deal of currency. It called on Israel to retain the strategic areas (the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, and the Jordan Valley) and negotiate over the densely populated cities of the West Bank with Jordan in exchange for peace.

A new Hizbullah country seems to be developing in place of the sovereign nation of Lebanon, and its population is preparing for another war with Israel.

Hizbullah may be feeling particularly bold due to the impending arrival of its prime patron, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is set to arrive October 13 on his first state visit to the country since entering office in 2005.

A significant faction of Hizbullah-linked legislators plays a major role in the country's parliament, with several ministers included in the cabinet as well. More to the point, Iran's role in the Beirut government and the country's infrastructure, through its links with Hizbullah, should not be underestimated.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama made clear that one component of his agenda would be to give a high priority to pursuing Arab-Israeli peace. Many Jews had some concerns about Obama, but his pro-Israel statements reassured them, and ultimately nearly 80% voted for him. Obama's appearance before the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and recitation of talking points from the Israeli lobby playbook were consistent with the popular view of a powerful lobby that demands the fealty of elected officials.

Within a few weeks of taking office as the nation's 44th president, however, Obama seemed to pick a fight with the Israeli government over its settlements policy. He began to publicly demand that Israel freeze all settlement activity. When Israeli officials brought up the fact that certain understandings had been reached with Obama's predecessor regarding what the United States considered to be acceptable construction, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denied any such agreements had been made.

In July 2009, Obama invited a group of Jewish leaders to the White House who were content to hear the President's views and asked only that he refrain from public criticism. Obama made clear he would do no such thing.

The U.S. Administration, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia's decision to rewrite history by labeling the Territories 'Occupied Territories,' the Settlements as an 'Obstacle to Peace' and 'Not Legitimate,' thus endowing them with an aura of bogus statehood and a false history. The use of these dishonest loaded terms, empowers terrorism and incites Palestinian Arabs with the right to use all measures to expel Israel.

The Jewish People's Right to the Land of Israel The "Mandate for Palestine" & the Law of War

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the European Union Foreign Affairs Chief Catherine Ashton became victims to the 'Occupation' mantra their own organization has repeated over and over in their propaganda campaign to legitimize the Arab position.

Continuous pressure from the "Quartet" (U.S., the European Union, the UN and Russia) to surrender parts of the Land of Israel are contrary to international law as stated in the "Mandate for Palestine" document, that firmly call to "encourage … close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes." It also requires "seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the government of any foreign power."

Any attempt to negate the Jewish people's right to Palestine – Eretz-Israel, and to deny them access and control in the area designated for the Jewish people by the League of Nations is a serious infringement of international law.

Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak decided to release the minutes of the deliberations on an air blitz against Damascus - held in Jerusalem before and during the Yom Kippur War 37 years ago - as a strong warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad, debkafile's military and intelligence sources reveal. Then, a decision to take out Damascus to halt the Syrian offensive was overruled. This time could be different: Bashar Assad regime's own centers of power could be at risk if Syria and Hizballah go through with their plan to overpower Beirut and topple Saad Hariri's sovereign government.

That is the message relayed by the October 1973 war papers released this week, which go beyond uncovering secret operational and intelligence decision-making and are unusually wide-ranging.

Terrorists in Hamas-controlled Gaza resumed rocket attacks on Israeli civilians Wednesday afternoon, firing two missiles. One of them struck the separation-security barrier and the second one landed in an open agricultural field. No injuries were reported.

Israeli armed forces usually carry out a retaliatory attack shortly after terrorist attacks, which have continued despite a ceasefire in January 2009 following Israel's three-week Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist campaign.

It becomes more apparent that with each passing year, the Arab-Israeli conflict gets a new facelift in the media headlines. Many notable news sources demonize Israel in the most "objective" manner possible, concentrating always on angles irrelevant to the real conflict. When foreign journalists come to Israel with their notebooks, pens, and preconceived notions, there is very little chance that their audience back home will have the opportunity to understand the conflict in an unbiased way. An overabundance of misinformation places Israel and her citizens into a very vulnerable position.

On the day that the settlement freeze expired, CNN featured the following headline in big bold lettering on its news site: "Palestinians: We fear Violent Israeli Settlers." The article focused on one Palestinian family, using them as the only example to support the story's sensational title. What the article did not point out was that that for many Palestinians, settlement construction is a major part of their livelihood and that many are currently out of work due to the freeze. Even more sadly, stories highlighting friendly relations that do exist between Israeli settlers and Palestinians rarely appear in Western media. The first West Bank team in Israel's amateur American football league, which includes Israeli settlers and Palestinians, has largely been ignored by most mainstream news outlets, including CNN.

After acceding to U.S. requests for nine months by freezing construction on existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank and also not building over the pre-1967 frontier in Jerusalem, Israel got nothing.

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed willing to continue it in some form, pressures from within his coalition made that impossible.Therefore, the freeze is coming to an end, though Israel is still ready to discuss limits on new construction. Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas is threatening to walk out of the once-every-two-weeks direct talks.

So what has been the reaction?

It is true that the passage of the referendum in Turkey with 58 percent of the vote can be seen as a victory for the AKP regime. But that point shouldn't be exaggerated. The bad feature of the reforms--in terms of consolidating the Islamist government's power--is to strengthen the regime's control over the courts and to limit further the autonomy of the Turkish army.

At the same time, though, there were many other provisions that the overwhelming majority of Turks wanted, expanding freedoms and civil liberties, reining in the possibility of military coups which those left of center have opposed in the past. Moreover, it was sold as a step toward Turkish entry into the European Union, still a prime goal though something that's never going to happen.

There are many contradictory aspects. The legal changes strengthen women's and privacy rights on paper but the regime has appointed hardly any women to high-ranking posts and has increased wire-tapping. To allow officers expelled from the army for Islamist activities to appeal the decision in court certainly seems to protect individual rights, but in practice it means that Islamists can now infiltrate the armed forces, organize politically, and if thrown out by the still-secular high command get it reversed by a regime-appointed judge.

I would bet that if it weren't for fear of the provisions strengthening the regime--90 percent of Turks would have supported the proposed changes instead of just 58 percent. But that was part of the trick: putting in some key provisions fundamentally transforming the Turkish republic amidst twenty others that mainly referred to historical or abstract issues.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has been going out of his way to make it clear where his country's loyalties lie.

In New York for the UN General Assembly, Gul, in a calculated push to reassert Turkish antagonism toward the Jewish state, invoked the name of the Mavi Marmara and noted that "in old times" Israel's ill-fated raid would have been casus belli – a justification for war.

Gul hinted that Israel had to perform a public act of contrition. "It is up to Israel. They have to do what is necessary since they are the ones that created the incident," he said.

Gul's audacious comments followed a nasty diplomatic tussle between Gul and President Shimon Peres. The two had planned to meet on the sidelines of the General Assembly. But Peres was forced to cancel after he refused Gul's precondition of offering an official Israeli apology for what happened on the Mavi Marmara on May 31.

Even in international forums, notoriously slanted against Israel, not everyone has concluded that Israel was to blame for the bloody confrontation, which ended with the deaths of nine Turks. Both the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and a separate UN panel formed by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, are looking into the incident in which dozens of "peace" activists violently attacked IDF commandos when they boarded the ship to enforce a naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The referendum proposed by Turkey's government has been passed with 58 percent of the population approving it in a vote with 77.5 percent turnout. The Obama Administration is praising the 26 amendments that bring Turkey in a more democratic direction but undermine the military and judiciary that protect the country's secularism. The State Department may not realize it, but it has congratulated Prime Minister Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) on paving the way for the further Islamization of Turkey.

After the results came in, the State Department spoke in favor of the referendum. "We hope that through these reforms, it will further enhance Turkey's democratic processes and human rights protection…. This was a choice for the Turkish people, and there was a very strong, decisive vote to move towards greater civilian oversight of these democratic institutions," a State Department spokesman said. Iran also hailed the referendum.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, practically every American understood and agreed with a powerful two-word sentiment that summed up the nation's attitude during those traumatic days: "never forget." Nine years later, it's clear that great swathes of the populace have indeed forgotten and the leftist media's coverage of the anniversary this weekend was symptomatic of the Left's selective memory when it comes to Islamic terrorism. Oh sure, they remembered the victims of al-Qaeda's barbarous attacks who fell in New York, Washington and Shanksville, but that's the easy part. There's nothing controversial or dangerous about mourning the murdered. It's quite another thing to point out that the murderous ideology that put thousands of Americans in their graves nine years ago is as potent, as dangerous and as evil a force today as it was on that fateful fall morning in 2001. Yet, from the mainstream media's coverage through President Obama's remarks, leftists used the 9th anniversary of the attacks as another excuse to try to conceal Islam's sharp talons beneath cloaks of respectability and even impotence.

We have entered into a new period of U.S. policy toward Israel for the Obama Administration. Basically, President Barack Obama needs Israel, requires its cooperation, and is eager to get along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. How long this will last is unclear but it should characterize, barring unforeseen events, at least for the next year.

What is the basis of this new era? When it came to office, the Obama Administration was in radical mode, determined to distance itself from Israel as a key to winning over Arabs and Muslims, assuming that peace could be achieved with sufficient pressure on Israel as the only requirement, and hostile to Israel's current government.

A measure of reality eventually set in, involving a large number of factors ranging from the lack of Arab cooperation, to Iran's intransigence, the lack of progress in engaging Syria, and the tasks of dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration's head-on charge over demanding a freeze of construction on settlements only produced a one-year-plus delay on Israel-Palestinian negotiations. The Palestinian Authority (PA) was uncooperative. American public opinion was unhappy with the policy toward Israel.

Four score and ten years ago women won the right to vote in the United States. And thirty years ago, in 1980, I stood with the Israeli delegation in Copenhagen at the United Nations conference on women—the true precursor of the anti-Zionist conference in Durban in 2001. Twenty-nine years ago, right here in Connecticut, at the University at Storrs, I convened a panel at the annual convention of the National Women's Studies Association to challenge American feminists about both their anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

I had been doing this since the early 1970s but even I could not have predicted the rapid and extreme Stalinization and Palestinianization that would take place among academics and activists in general. I could never have imagined that the western intelligentsia, the "good" people, including feminists, would make so tragic an alliance with Islamic barbarism and misogyny.

I became a feminist leader in 1968-1969. I remain one. Most of the other feminists of my generation are no longer engaged in the historical moment.

Are women racists? We might as well ask: Are women human beings?

But are women also anti-Semites?

It's been nearly two years since Palestinian representatives and Israelis sat across a table from each other to talk about peace. As the latest round of talks got under way yesterday, it's hard to imagine that the results this time will be much different than any other time. Has anything changed that might lead to a different outcome? Gaza is still being run by Hamas. The "moderates" sitting across the table from Israel – Fatah, Egypt and Jordan – refuse to do to take any action that would delegitimize the group of terrorists who rule Gaza. The much vaunted "two state solution" can hardly work when half of the proposed Palestinian state refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, sneers at peace talks involving their enemy and, just to emphasize their contempt, carries out terror attacks two days before those talks commence.

Hamas sent a greeting card to the quintet of leaders meeting in Washington, D.C., this week to initiate negotiations about a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In a well-planned ambush, they killed four Israeli civilians near the city of Hebron, two men and two women (one nine months pregnant), creating seven orphans. The murderers escaped, and may perhaps have videotaped the atrocity.

In Gaza that evening, 3,000 celebrants clogged the streets, waving flags, setting bonfires, passing out candy, and carrying their children on their shoulders. If there is videotape, it will presumably permit the revelers to relive the pleasure, even as the video of Daniel Pearl's beheading has circulated on the Internet.

While the Palestinian Authority did condemn the attack, it did so in mincing terms. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad disapproved, he said, because "the operation went against Palestinian interests." It would be difficult for a leader of the "moderate" (that word is always attached) PA to condemn such attacks as, say, immoral or despicable, as the Palestinian Authority itself (formerly the PLO/Fatah) was conceived in violence and continues to honor its spirit

Palestinian Authority terrorist groups are scrambling to claim credit for a second attack that left a Jewish man and woman, both in their 30s, wounded on a road north of Jerusalem late Wednesday night.

Rabbi Moshe and Shira Moreno, residents of the Jordan Rift Valley, were treated on the scene by Magen David Adom medics before being rushed to Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem. Moreno was moderately wounded, and suffered leg injuries; his wife sustained lighter wounds as a result of the vehicle overturning.

On Monday all the talk in the news was of an Israeli Rabbi who had called on G-d to strike down Abbas, the head of the terrorist Palestinian Authority, and the rest of his gang. On Tuesday, terrorists murdered a pregnant woman and three other people. The same media that dedicated a great deal of time and energy to condemning Rabbi Yosef for inciting violence, wasted no such time on discussing the constant incitement to violence practiced by the Palestinian Authority media under Abbas' authority. Earlier this month Abbas had participated in a ceremony honoring the Munich Massacre terrorists. But the media has never been particularly interested in discussing Muslims calls to violence, only in tarring any opponents of Muslim terrorism in the darkest and ugliest shades.

The murder of four Israelis and an unborn child was described not in terms of their human toll, but their political toll. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs condemned the terrorists as "enemies of peace". The six orphans no doubt thank him for his concern for "peace". State Department spokesman PJ Crowley dispensed with the human side entirely, warning that, "There may well be actors in the region who are deliberately making these kinds of attacks in order to try to sabotage the process". A statement that could have been produced by a particularly unfeeling computer.

It seems the State Department, the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and the not-so-fond-of-Israel/Jewish-self-hater Matt Drudge are all up in arms about the "death wish" made by former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef against Holocaust-denying terrorist and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But you need to place his comments in perspective and know a little about the guy and about Mr. Abbas.

Neoconservatives, Reaganites and other militarily assertive factions in the United States are sometimes accused of thinking it is always 1938 (Britain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich) -- that there is always a Hitler-like aggressor being appeased and about to drag the world into conflict. There is sometimes merit in that charge.

As, likewise, is there sometimes merit in the charge against isolations and other doves that they always see 1914 (start of WWI) or 1964 (beginning of escalation of troops in Vietnam) -- the imminent and foolish entry into or escalation of a war that can't be won -- or even if victory were to be gained, it would be Pyrrhic.

Knowledge of history can be as much a snare as a guide -- if it is wrapped in a dogma that distorts the current facts to match the preferred historic lesson.

Our actions -- if any -- in the Iranian nuclear weapons development controversy cry out to be based on a careful assessment of facts -- and a heartless rooting out of assumptions, hidden or otherwise, that may be driving policy.

Iran has said it was prepared to sell weapons to the Lebanon should the government in Beirut seek help to equip its military. On Tuesday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had proposed to the unity government of Prime Minister Hariri to formally seek military assistance from Tehran, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported. In Tehran, Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said that Lebanon "is our friend, and its army is also our friend" and if there was a demand [for arms], "we are ready to help that country and conduct weapons transactions with it." Nasrallah, whose movement is backed by Iran and Syria, vowed in a televised speech Hezbollah could help secure the aid for the Lebanon's army, which is still seen as under-equipped compared to the Shiite paramilitary group.

The Oslo Accords signed on the White House lawn in September 1993 served Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) well. The Accords were the Trojan Horse that enabled Arafat to return to "Palestine" as a hero. Only a few years earlier, he had supported Saddam Hussein's brutal occupation of Kuwait. But when the U.S.-led coalition pushed Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, Palestinians living in the region paid the price for Arafat and Saddam's alliance — half–a-million Palestinians were expelled by the Kuwaitis. Arafat's fortunes had nose-dived. He was in exile in Tunisia, and the dream of expelling the Jews from "Palestine" seemed remote. Then, lo and behold, he was saved by Israel and the U.S.

Arafat inaugurated a new strategy in the early 1970s with regard to dismantling Israel. The strategy was based on diplomacy, along with armed struggle. Some called it the "Destroying Israel in Phases" plan. The idea was to gain enough territory through diplomacy so that the Jewish State's defensive capacity would be weakened. Then, they would finish it off in an armed struggle — using the pretext of "Palestinian Right of Return" to engage in terrorism. In September 2000, Arafat reached the conclusion that Israeli society was too weak to stomach terrorism (armed struggle) in Israeli cities. He believed the Israeli public would crack under pressure from terror and fear, and would then call on the Barak government to make further concessions to the Palestinians.

The U.S. announcement inviting Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) for direct talks shows quite clearly, though unintentionally, why the talks will fail.

Special Envoy George Mitchell explains:

"We are all well aware that there remains mistrust between the parties, a residue of hostility developed over many decades of conflict, many previous efforts that have been made to resolve the conflict that had not succeeded, all of which takes a very heavy toll on both societies and their leaders. In addition, we all know that, as with all societies, there are differences of opinion on both sides on how best to proceed, and as a result, this conflict has remained unresolved over many decades and through many efforts. We don't expect all of those differences to disappear when talks begin. Indeed, we expect that they will be presented, debated, discussed, and that differences are not going to be resolved immediately."

This is a good explanation that the administration knows how hard it is to bring peace, though it does not jibe well with his saying a few minutes later: "We believe that if those negotiations are conducted seriously and in good faith, they can produce such an agreement within 12 months. And that is our objective."

The Quartet is expected to publish on Friday a statement calling on Israel and the Palestinian Authority to begin direct peace negotiations.

Diplomatic sources in the US said that the statement by the Quartet (which is comprised of representatives from the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations) will not mention the issue of the building freeze in east Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. The statement will say that the peace talks should end within one year.

Among the first things the Obama administration did to break from the "unilateral" policies of the Bush administration was to join the United Nations Human Rights Council, which the U.S. shunned when it was formed in 2006. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised that "we will engage in the work of improving the U.N. human rights system." U.N. ambassador Susan Rice declared that we were joining "because we believe that working from within, we can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights."

Now, almost a year and a half later, the Council remains as it ever was: a body composed of some of the worst human rights abusers in the world, devoted to attacking Western democracies, demonizing Israel, covering up the abuses of authoritarian regimes, and undermining the pursuit of human rights. The only difference today is that America's name is being lent to this effort.

First it was the United Arab Emirates ambassador in Washington, now it's a Saudi Arabian editorial, and John Bolton says the entire Persian Gulf feels the same: an attack on Iran is the only option - if it's not too late.

An editorial in an official Saudi Arabian newspaper indicates that a military attack against Iran might be the only way of stopping it from obtaining nuclear weapons. "Tehran is moving its conflict with the international community into high gear," the Al Madina daily wrote this week, "and [in this case] some may consider the military option to be the best solution."

Delaying recourse to this option, the paper continues, "may lead to a point where it is impossible to implement it - if Tehran manages to produce a nuclear bomb of its own."

On September 11, 2001, extremists hijacked four American airliners, crashing them into New York City's World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. The tragedy resulted in 3,000 Americans dying.

Does the above paragraph sound strange, deliberately vague, misleading (i.e., "politically correct") -- like a misrepresentation of what actually happened on that fateful Tuesday morning? If so, then for the last nine years, America -- from presidents and other politicians to Pentagon officials -- has been engaged in an exercise of obfuscation and verbal gymnastics. And, of course, the leftist establishment media (aka the "mainstream media") have willingly gone along with the above deception. Now consider the politically incorrect truth:

I simply cannot comprehend why so many in the West refuse to see that Arabs can be revolutionaries. It is remarkable that so many who claim to be experts don't incorporate the idea that Arabs, like other peoples, might dislike their existing societies or be motivated by ideologies claiming to be the blueprints for utopias.

After all, if Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Latin Americans think and behave this way, why aren't Arabs going to act the same?

The two paragraphs above are written in response to yet another book, by a very experienced expert on the region, saying that al-Qaida is almost completely motivated by the Palestinian issue as well as a couple of articles claiming that the only reason why the United States or President Barack Obama isn't popular in the Middle East is due to Israel.

In fact, al-Qaida, Hamas, Hizballah, Muslim Brotherhoods, and other Islamist groups, have been overwhelmingly motivated by a desire to revolutionize the entire Muslim-majority world (and even the whole world) in line with its interpretation of Islam. Al-Qaida's original cause was to overthrow the Saudi royal family, followed by an effort to help Iraq against Western pressure. In al-Qaida documents before and after the September 11 attacks, the Palestinian issue was not mentioned more than about ten percent of the time and never highlighted.

Eleven militant Palestinian groups based in Syria warned on Sunday against a "concession and compromise" policy ahead of a possible round of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The message from the groups, which include Gaza rulers Hamas as well as the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine factions, appeared directed at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Nothing is more like the fascist Axis of the 1930s than Islamist expansionism today. Like the Hitler-Tojo-Mussolini Axis of the 1930s, Islamic fascists are fundamentally imperialistic, with an explicit order from on High to subjugate civilized people or turn them to ashes. Mohammed himself famously threatened the cultured Persian and Byzantine Emperors of his time, and in the following years, his followers knocked those empires over like devouring army ants.

The peace-loving Buddhist monasteries of India were consumed by invading Muslim armies, with the result that there are no Buddhist monasteries left in India today. Not a single one. Only Hinduism survived the Muslim invasions, because Hindus are not pacifists. You can ask any Sikh about that; they are a huge warrior religion that arose as a buffer between Hindu India and its many Muslim invaders, who now hold Pakistan and Afghanistan. In India, the Buddhist monks just died or fled to Tibet. So much for the glorious results of peaceful resistance against Muslim armies.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki (pictured, left) has met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus to discuss "the regional security threats posed by the Zionist regime" [Israel]. Referring to the deadly border skirmish last week, both men declared that they would support Lebanon against Israel's "aggression". Mottaki described Israel as "the source of insecurity and threat" in the Middle East . He also met with the exiled leader of Hamas, Khaleed Meshal, in Damascus.

Suddenly, it seems, everyone is talking about Shariah. In particular, growing controversies over proposed mosques at Ground Zero and other sites are becoming powerful "teaching moments" - raising awareness about the repressive theo-political-military-legal doctrine that animates the builders and that their fellow adherents seek to impose on the entire world.

This is a most welcome development in light of the grave and growing threat posed by this agenda and the concerted effort being made - here and elsewhere, through violent jihad and the stealthy kind - to realize that goal.

When the Obama administration banned the terms Islamic extremism and jihad from US national security documents back on April 7, 2010, the United States began a new approach toward the war on terror. No longer would the ideological or religious elements that had driven the 9/11 attackers be emphasized. Any terms insinuating the religious zeal that inspires and has inspired suicide bombers from Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere across the world, have been hastily filed away in the cabinet known as the ill-conceived Bush Doctrine.

Instead, the Obama adminsitration formulated a new set of terms to showcase the White House's new and improved outreach to the Muslim world. On the same day that the Associated Press carried the 'banned terms' news release, the assistant to President Obama on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan spoke with law students at New York University, where he referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, Al-Quds.