I am grateful to the Republican Jewish Coalition for hosting this forum.

Thank you Chairman Flaum and Matt Brooks for your leadership.

And, of course, I join you in honoring the service of Ambassador Sam Fox. Ambassador Fox has contributed in extraordinary ways to our economy, to our communities, to our nation, and to Israel.

Today, we gather as Republicans, Americans, and friends of Israel. For us, the last three years have held a lot of change, but haven’t offered much hope.

Our debt is too high and opportunities are too few. Almost a trillion dollars in failed stimulus and trillions more in deficits have left millions of Americans out of work.

The unemployment rate has been over 8% for 34 months. Over the last four years, the median American income has fallen by 10%, even as the costs of food and fuel and healthcare have risen. Americans are suffering. The poor have a safety net and the rich are doing just fine, but middle-income Americans have never seen things so bad.

Internationally, we have witnessed a weakening of our military and a decline in our standing in the world.

President Obama’s troop withdrawals in Iraq and Afghanistan were based upon electoral expediency, not military requirement.

He has bowed to foreign dictators. And when the opportunity arose to defend freedom, he’s either been late to the game or failed to show up at all.

President Obama rushed to apologize for America, but he has hesitated to speak up for democracy and freedom.

He has visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iraq. He even offered to meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yet in three years, he has not found it in his interest to visit Israel, our ally, our friend, the sole Middle East nation that fully shares our values, the nation in President Truman’s words, that is an “embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.”

No, over the past three years, President Obama has instead chastened Israel. In his inaugural address to the United Nations, the President chastised Israel, but said little about the thousands of Hamas rockets raining into its skies. He’s publicly proposed that Israel adopt indefensible borders. He’s insulted its Prime Minister. And he’s been timid and weak in the face of the existential threat of a nuclear Iran.

These actions have emboldened Palestinian hard-liners who now are poised to form a unity government with terrorist Hamas and feel they can bypass Israel at the bargaining table. President Obama has immeasurably set back the prospect of peace in the Middle East.

As President, my policies will be very different. I will travel to Israel on my first foreign trip. I will reaffirm as a vital national interest Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. I want the world to know that the bonds between Israel and the United States are unshakable. I want every country in the region that harbors aggressive designs against Israel to understand that their ambition is futile and that pursuing it will cost them dearly.

I would not meet with Ahmadinejad. He should be excluded from diplomatic society. He should be indicted for the crime of incitement to genocide under Article III of the Genocide Convention. Iran’s ayatollahs will not be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons on my watch. A nuclear-armed Iran is not only a threat to Israel, it is a threat to the entire world. Our friends must never fear that we will not stand by them in an hour of need. Our enemies should never doubt our resolve.

Today, you will hear from several of my fellow Republicans. Like me, each will acknowledge President Obama’s failings toward Israel. Like me, each will assure you of our friendship and commitment to Israel. We are not distinguished from one another by our opposition to President Obama … or even by our support for Israel. What distinguishes us is our experience, our perspective, and our judgment.

I spent 25 years in business. I’ve signed the front and the back of a paycheck. I’ve helped businesses, like the Sports Authority and Staples, to grow from start-ups to international enterprises. I’ve served as governor of a state and the steward of the Olympics.

My perspective is informed by those experiences and by the defining constants in my life: my 42-year marriage to my wife, Ann; the life we’ve built with our five sons; and the faith that sustains us. My family, my faith, and our freedom – these are enduring truths in my life. My commitments are firm, and they do not falter.

When I was young, I had the opportunity to live abroad. I recognized that the greatest advantage my parents had given me was being born in America. I am passionate about the principles that have made this nation the land of opportunity and a shining city on a hill.

I believe in America. I believe it is the greatest nation in the history of the earth. I believe that the next century must be an American century. Our highest priority must be to maintain a people, an economy, and a military so strong that no nation would ever risk challenging it.

My faith in America stems both from my faith in the American people, and from the principles that have made our people strong. We are a people from all parts of the world and all walks of life, but we are strengthened by our nation’s unique founding principles. It is not accident or luck that made America the greatest nation in the world – it is the power of our values and beliefs.

We weathered a Great Depression. We emerged victorious from two world wars. We faced down an Evil Empire.

Today, as we face new challenges and threats, I have every conviction that the American people, edified by American principles, will rise to the occasion again, securing our safety, our prosperity, and our peace.

One of these principles is a merit-based society. In a merit-based society, people achieve success and rewards through hard work, education, risk taking, and even a little luck. The founders considered this principle to be one endowed by our Creator, and called it the “pursuit of happiness.” We call it opportunity, or we call it the freedom to choose our course in life.

A merit-based, opportunity society gathers and creates a citizenry that pioneers, that invents, that builds and creates. And as these people exert the effort and take the risks inherent in invention and creation, they employ and lift the rest of us, creating prosperity for us all. The rewards they earn do not make the rest of us poorer, they make us better off.

American prosperity is fully dependent upon our opportunity society. I don’t think President Obama understands that. I don’t think he understands why our economy is the most successful in the world. I don’t think he understands America.

He seeks to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society. In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people to enjoy truly disproportionate rewards are the people who do the redistributing—the government.

Entitlement societies are praised in academic circles, far removed from the reality of a competitive world. Opportunity is replaced by the certainty that everyone in an entitlement society will enjoy nearly the same rewards. But there is another certainty: they will be poor.

In an entitlement society, the invigorating pursuit of happiness is replaced by the deadening reality that there is no prospect of a better tomorrow. Risk-taking disappears, innovation withers, and small business is replaced by large, government enterprises. And the result is a nation that stagnates, that declines, that cannot defend itself.

I am convinced that this is where President Obama’s “fundamental change” is leading America. And it informs aspects of his foreign policy. Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy. Appeasement betrays a lack of faith in America, in American strength, and in America’s future.

Like others among the Washington elite, he believes that America’s role as the leader of the world is a thing of the past; that this will be a post-American century, perhaps an Asian century. American strength, he imagines, will eventually or possibly be eclipsed. And so, President Obama seeks to appease those he believes will balance us or challenge our leadership.

This appeasement by this Administration has taken many forms. It includes offers to engage with the world’s most despicable dictators. It consists of concessions to Russia to remove our missile defense sites from Poland and to exclude tactical nuclear weapons from the new, remarkably one-sided, New START treaty. President Obama even looks the other way as China employs unfair trade tactics that endanger our economy and kill jobs.

This President appears more generous to our enemies than he is to our friends. Such is the natural tendency of someone who is unsure of America’s strength – or of America’s rightful place in the world. The course of appeasement and accommodation has long been the path chosen by the weak and the timid. And history shows it is a path that nation’s choose at their own peril.

The President promised that he would fundamentally change America. He is doing just that. At home, he is changing us from an opportunity nation to an entitlement nation. He is building a government so large that feeding it consumes a greater and greater share of the people’s production. And it is a government so intrusive that it can command free people and free enterprises according to its bureaucratic will.

Abroad, he is weakening America, shrinking our military, shrinking our commitments to our friends, accommodating our foes, and appeasing the competing forces that are vying for global leadership.

This election is not only a referendum on President Obama’s failures on employment, on income growth, on housing, on recovery, or on a nuclear-intent Iran, on an emboldened China and on friends like Israel being put at greater risk. This election will decide what kind of America we will be. It is defining.

Will we remain an opportunity nation or become an entitlement nation? Will we remain the leader of the free world, or become a follower in a more dangerous world? Will America be transformed by Barack Obama, or will America be restored with the founding principles that have made this the greatest nation history has ever known?

Many think that because of his staggering failures, President Obama will be easily defeated. But an incumbent is rarely turned out of the White House, and his resort to class warfare and demagoguery are powerful political weapons.

In less than a year, Americans will be asked to make a choice about the kind of country they want to live in and the kind of future they will bequeath to their children.

It will be a choice between entitlement and merit, between appeasement and resolve.

Our party must offer a candidate who can make the case for freedom, opportunity and strength. Our nominee must offer Americans more than just a chance to vote against President Obama; our nominee must give Americans an opportunity to vote for a different path and a better future. A path dictated not by government, but determined by a free people. A path marked by the virtues of merit, not by the slow decline of entitlement. A path that achieves prosperity through opportunity, and peace through strength.

This is what Americans deserve. This is what the moment demands. And this is what I will deliver, with your help.

Join me. Join me, and I will lead our Party and our Nation through these difficult times to a brighter future.

America has been a shining city on a hill. That light is dimming. But together, we will reignite the spirit of American greatness.

We have wandered and drifted. I will lead us to a better place. Join me, and together we will reclaim and rebuild the America we love.

I believe in America. Our fight starts today. Join me.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

2. Remarks By Rick Perry At Republican Jewish Coalition Forum (December; 07 the, 2011) :

Thank you Cheryl. It is an honor to be with you today and to share my thoughts on faith, foreign policy and the free State of Israel.

It is great to see so many friends with the Republican Jewish Coalition…including two vital supporters, Dr. Jeffrey Feingold and Kirk Blalock.

As we gather today, I am struck by the coincidence that two of the American citizens being unlawfully detained abroad today are Jewish: Alan Gross in Cuba, and Warren Weinstein by al Qaida in Pakistan.

In both cases their offense was spreading political and economic freedom to better the lives of less advantaged people around the globe.

Their selfless commitment to this work is a testament to the great value America’s Jewish community has brought to our nation, and our government should be working aggressively to achieve their speedy release.

The repressive Castro regime should not be rewarded with increased tourism while Mr. Gross languishes in prison, and Pakistani authorities should clearly understand the significance of rescuing Mr. Weinstein from terrorist elements within their borders if they value the foreign aid they seem to take for granted.

We have an Administration in Washington today whose foreign policy is an incoherent mess. They embolden our adversaries while isolating our allies.

There is no greater example of President Obama’s failed foreign policy than how he has undermined our historic friendship with Israel.

Israel is the oldest democracy and our strongest ally in the Middle East. Our relationship is founded on three basic principles: prosperity, security and freedom.

With a robust economy, Israel is a strong trading partner, importing our goods and supplying us with both high-tech innovations and specialized natural resources.

I am proud a Texas company, Noble Energy, is supplying a large percentage of the natural gas Israel depends upon today. Israel’s security is critical to America’s security.

We must not forget it was Israel that took out the nuclear capabilities of Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. In both instances, their actions made the free world safer.

And Israel shares a commitment to our core principles of personal freedom. And yet President Obama has systematically undermined America’s relationship with Israel, specifically on the question of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinian People.

I want to be clear I support the goal of a Palestinian state, but it should be the Palestinians who meet certain pre-conditions.

And those pre-conditions must include statehood that is directly negotiated between Israeli and the Palestinian leaders; second, a Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; and third, Palestinian leaders must renounce the terrorist activities of Hamas.

Instead, the Administration has insisted on previously unheard-of preconditions for Israel, such as an immediate stop to all settlement activity. President Obama has suggested the 1967 borders as a basis for negotiations. And he has instituted the practice of “indirect talks”, subverting the Oslo Accords.

Yet his administration seemed blindsided when this fall the Palestinians declared a new state with East Jerusalem free of any Jewish settlements as its capital, based on the 1967 borders, established through the United Nations without Israel’s involvement.

But in effect all the Palestinians were doing was taking President Obama up on the concessions he had already made. The threat posed by Iran makes our friendship with Israel all the more critical.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency report last month confirmed, Iran is marching unimpeded toward nuclear weapons.

We also know Iran has chemical and biological weapons programs, and that they are accelerating their ballistic missile capabilities so that they can deliver these weapons. The Islamic Republic has made no mystery of their intent to use these weapons against Israel, and eventually the United States.

As this threat gathers, our President has pursued a failed policy of outreach to Tehran.

This administration was silent during the Green Revolution in 2009. And they have avoided tougher sanctions that would cripple Iran’s economy. I have repeatedly called for the sanction of Iran’s central bank. Recently, the U.S. Senate vote unanimously to sanction Iran’s Central Bank. So now President Obama is isolated even from his own party on the Iranian question.

And here is why. Democrats know what we know: current sanctions may have caused “significant discussion” in Tehran as Vice President Biden recently said, but they have not actually stopped progress towards a nuclear weapon.

This increasingly leaves us with only two options: a military strike or a nuclear Iran.

Many seem to think that Israel can step in and dispense with the Iranian treat with through targeted strikes as they did in Iraq and Syria, taking the pressure off the United States.

But Iran is a much greater challenge, and Israel would face terrible reprisals from Tehran and its terrorist proxies. So the military option is not one that Israel would take eagerly or lightly, but only after long deliberation and in the face of overwhelming evidence that Iran is on the verge of an operational nuclear weapon.

What Israel’s military needs from the United States is our ongoing security support through hardware and guaranteed supply chains. But Israel also needs our vocal, unerring moral support in the face of what will be inevitable international condemnation if she is forced to strike.

Here’s what Israel does not need.

Israel does not need our President demanding gratitude for being the best friend Israel has ever had while his Secretary of Defense rails that Israel has to “get back to the damn table” with the Palestinians, and his Secretary of State questions the viability of Israel’s democracy, even as his Ambassador to Belgium blames anti-Semitism among Muslims on Israel’s failure to accommodate the Palestinians all of which happened in the last week alone.

This torrent of hostility towards Israel does not seem to have been coordinated, but rather is the natural expression of this administration’s attitude towards Israel.

I want you to know American-Israeli policy is not a box to be checked as part of my campaign. It is both a deeply personal issue for me, and is also a cornerstone of my larger global strategy.

I feel a special connection to Israel, dating back nearly 20 years when I first visited the Holy Land.

I have been to the Western Wall, that most sacred of symbols where Jewish pilgrims gather to pray today, and that has withstood the assaults on the Jewish People since the times of the early Romans.

I walked in the footsteps of the heroes of Massada, a fortress of defiance symbolizing their loyalty to freedom more than life itself.

I took a group of Texas business leaders on a tour of Sderot in Gaza. We walked onto a playground built under a rocket protection shelter, a clarifying moment for each one of us as we recognized the constant threat of attack even the children of Israel live under.

And I had the distinct pleasure of sharing a meal with a former Soviet Dissident who spent nine years in a gulag, including 400 days in punishment cells – Natan Sharansky – that great champion of democracy who now calls Israel home and is a living link to the atrocities of brutal regimes.

When you visit Israel, you gain an understanding of a nation that has survived for more than 60 years despite living in a constant state of siege, but something else becomes evident about the Jewish People in Israel and around the world: a resolve to live free, and a willingness to go to any length to preserve your history, your heritage and your faith that is unsurpassed by any people on earth.

Today six million Jews live in Israel, the largest population of Jews in the world.

Whether you are old enough to remember the 1940s or not, you know the significance of that number. When we speak of the unspeakable, it is often said, “never again.”

In making this vow, we honor those who suffered the most inhumane treatment, those, like us, who were made in the Image of God.

And in making this vow, we recognize that peace and freedom are fragile enterprises that can only be preserved with determined vigilance.

It is in the spirit of those words… “never again”… that we must do everything in our power to make the world safe for freedom and democracy.

We must have faith we are in the right, and we must fight with the might of a super-power.

That is why I utterly reject President Obama’s political strategy to hold our military budget hostage unless Congress gives in to his proposed tax and spending increases.

We have already sacrificed too many of our Defense capabilities to misguided austerity that will not balance our budget, and will weaken our ability to defend ourselves and our allies.

We must demand action in Congress to block these cuts that threaten to “hollow out” our forces and prevent President Obama from using the capabilities our war fighters need as political pawns in a budgetary fight.

The men and women of our military are the greatest ambassadors for freedom the world has ever known.

In the last two decades they have repelled the forces of oppression from places like Kuwait, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

In fact, no country has done more to liberate millions of oppressed people, many of them Muslim, since the end of the Cold War.

Our freedom agenda applies to all, regardless of faith, because I believe every human being was created to live free, and worship freely.

And because there are numerous countries that oppress freedom, that deny basic human rights, I am adamant that any discussion of foreign aid should start at zero.

But let me be clear. Israel is our strategic ally. America long ago ended traditional foreign aid to Israel. Strategic defense aid to Israel will increase under a Perry administration. And the money we decide to grant foreign nations should always advance American interests.

Our nation was founded on the principle of religious liberty. Like Israel, many of America’s earliest ancestors sought a safe haven from religious persecution. They came to a New World to leave behind the injustices of the Old World. They came here to live in freedom, and for many to live out their faith.

America is rooted in Judeo-Christian Values. Our laws emanate from the ancient law of the Torah.

They come to us as principles handed down from our ancestors, who fought, bled, and died to defend them. But the law is more than that. It is, as Jeremiah wrote, “a law written on our hearts.” Faith and freedom are the fiber of our union.

My favorite founding father was also a life-long champion of religious freedom…James Madison.

He wrote in the First Amendment to the Constitution that “the civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.”

My faith will guide me as president.

And what I mean by that is not just faith in God’s plan for us as a nation he has blessed, time and again.

But it is also faith in the ability of our people, with his help, to accomplish the impossible, the miraculous, as they have done before and will do again.

As I travel across the country, I see the plight we are in. People without the dignity of a job, uncertain where to turn for help.

And I have turned my thoughts recently toward Nehemiah. I think of his return to Jerusalem, of finding the city walls laid to waste, the defenses crumbling, and the people dismayed. They had almost given up hope.

So he gathered the people together, and he told them what he would do. “Then said I unto them, ‘You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins, and how its gates have been burned with fire. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem together, that we will no longer be in disgrace.’”

Nehemiah did not do this work by himself. He did it prayerfully and seriously, because he understood the desperate need. And when their enemies came, he urged the people on, to keep building, with a brick in one hand and a sword in the other, until the city could stand tall again.

Bringing America back starts with faith: Faith in the Almighty, who created us, faith in our friends and allies, in a time of trouble, and faith in each other, to not give up hope.

We must keep the law written on our hearts. We must put our mind to the things above. And we must set ourselves to the work that must be done.

Come. Let us rebuild together.

Thank you and God bless you.

3. Michele Bachmann Delivers Remarks At Republican Jewish Coalition Forum (December; 07 the, 2011) :

“I’m honored to be here today in the company of so many friends. Thank you Dan for that kind introduction. Like this organization, I have been a long-time advocate for the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. My love for Israel and its people deepened while I worked on a kibbutz just after graduating from high school.

“Today, we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. On that fateful day a 19-year-old Minnesotan on board a submarine patrol in the waters outside of Pearl Harbor reported sighting a Japanese submarine, but the warning sign of the bigger calamity to come was all but ignored. The same is true today with Iran and other dangerous actors in the world. We are ignoring the warning signs, and I worry what other ‘Pearl Harbors’ might be in our future.

“It seems as if lately, our president has forgotten the importance of Israel to America and thinks of our relationship only in terms of what we do for Israel. The president is more concerned about Israel building homes on its own land than the threats that Israel and America face in the region.

“The president was right to promise to veto the Palestinians‘ bid for statehood in the U.N. Security Council. But in large part it is the president’s weakness in the Middle East that has emboldened the Palestinians to attempt to achieve statehood through the U.N. rather than at the legitimate negotiation table with Israel. Our policy has confused engagement with appeasement and has inspired Israel’s enemies.

“The Palestinians must recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence against Israel in order to become a serious partner in peace with Israel.

“My administration’s policy will be that, the Palestinian Authority’s compliance with its prior agreements is the first step that must be taken to assure peace in the Middle East. The Palestinian Authority must meet its existing written obligations to collect illegal weapons; pursue terrorists; cooperate with Israeli security forces; change the Fatah Constitution which still calls for the complete eradication of the State of Israel; and to stop inciting terrorism.

“I stand with Israel. And aid to Israel now more than ever, is a necessity–they are our most trusted ally and the only real democracy in the Middle East. But if we are to continue to provide assistance to Israel, we must get our own fiscal house in order.

“A vocal minority, called Occupy Wall Street, otherwise known as the Obama re-election team, believes that the economic problems we face are capitalism or free markets. They’re not. The problem is government doing what both the constitution and decent morality prohibit, that is cronyism capitalism, or forcefully taking your money for the purpose of paying off a politician’s political friends. The problem is one set of standards for individual Americans and another set of standards for those who make political donations to candidates.

“The problem is an individual tax code with 3.8 million words that’s too complicated for the average American to understand and a corporate tax code that makes America hopelessly uncompetitive at almost 40 percent when you add the federal and state taxes. And a tax code that contains loopholes that are exploited by companies large enough to hire an army of lawyers. As Investor’s Business Daily wrote, in 1981 the entire developed world had high corporate tax rates, averaging 47 percent. Then capital became mobile and rates plummeted to 25 percent and haven’t stopped falling. The United States remains stuck since 1986 in an out of date high corporate tax rate that sent companies fleeing America for a more competitive tax climate. Just ask any number of companies why they left America and they’ll tell you that between the high tax and unreasonable regulatory burden in America, other nations are now a more profitable place to do business. For your sake and your future, America, and Occupy Wall Street in particular, needs to wake up and stop blaming job creators for the failures created by selfish politicians who wink at their political donors.

“Politicians assure their friends that with government’s financial backing, their businesses will never fail.

“It happens every day, and it has to stop. After all, we’re not a Banana Republic; we’re the United States of America and we need to act like it.

“We need a system that forces large, well connected corporations to play by the same rules as small businesses and individual Americans and that protects and provides fair competition in free markets.

“You see, there’s a reason our Founding Fathers decided to establish our political capital in a different city than our financial capital. It’s time for us to reaffirm the wisdom of that decision by getting Washington D.C. out of free markets. I’m running for president because I understand the difference between free markets and Bernie Madoff style government.

“My administration will stop the Obama administration’s dangerous policies and delegitimization of Israel. Obama has delegitimized Israel by wrongly describing Israel as a 60-years long occupation, which displaced and caused Palestinian suffering, and by wrongly blaming Israel and settlements for the lack of peace in the Middle East.

“Obama abandoned prior U.S. policy and U.N. Resolution 242’s insistence that Israel is entitled to defensible borders. The Obama administration also abrogated former President Bush’s commitments in Bush’s 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon. Bush’s letter and subsequent Congressional resolutions committed the U.S. to the policy that Israel will retain large West Bank settlement blocks, that there will be no right of return to Israel for ‘Palestinian’ refugees, and that the Palestinian Authority’s compliance with its obligations, including the Palestinian Authority’s obligation to stop inciting terror, is the first step that must be taken towards Middle East peace.

“Instead, Obama improperly calls for Israel to retreat to indefensible 1949 armistice lines with swaps, and to then still face further demands to divide Jerusalem and allow a Palestinian ‘right of return’ to overrun the entire State of Israel. The Obama administration has also unconditionally given the Palestinians unprecedented amounts of U.S. foreign aid, and opposed Congressional efforts to condition aid on the real steps that would bring about peace.

“The so-called Palestinian ‘right of return,’ would demographically destroy Israel by swamping it with millions of Arabs who never lived in Israel, thereby turning the world’s only Jewish state into the world’s 23rd Arab state.

“Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently once again publicly displayed this administrations disdain for Israel putting Israel on the same footing as the Palestinians and declaring that they ‘get to the damn table’ to resume peace talks. And the president derisively said Israel’s Prime Minister was someone ‘he had to deal with everyday.’ But the president’s ambassador to Belgium went even further and justified anti-Semitism because of Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians, and the president should fire him for those irresponsible remarks.

“Instead of defaming Israel, as the Obama administration has done, my administration will recognize that, in the words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, Israel is a country that ‘is based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets,’ and which has ‘safeguard[ed] the sanctity and inviolability of the shrines and Holy Places of all religions.’

“And like Israel’s Declaration of Independence, my administration will similarly call upon Israel’s neighbors to cooperate with the Jewish nation and return to the ways of peace for the common good of all.

“While the president demands Israel give back land necessary to protect their existence, he has taken his eye off of the most serious threat to Middle East security, a nuclear Iran. Some 80 years ago the world saw evil rising. A mad man spoke, but the world did not listen and the world sank into an enormous conflict and millions of Jews lost their lives.

“Today a mad man again speaks and once again it seems as if the world isn’t really listening though Iran’s president has made his intentions for Israel clear. He intends to wipe Israel from the face of the earth once he obtains nuclear weapons, and he will seek to use them against the United States shortly after achieving his first goal.

“Consider the Iranian constitution, which states that Iran’s Army and Revolutionary Guard ‘will be responsible…for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God’s way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God’s law throughout the world.’

“And Iran has made good on that promise over the last 30 years from the bombing of the United States Marine base in Beirut to being the leading supplier of arms to kill Americans in Iraq. Iran is at the heart of much of Israel’s problems.

“Two principles must guide U.S. policy toward Iran. First, we must never allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. And second, we must realize that this is as much a threat to U.S. national security as it is to Israel’s and should not outsource U.S. national security to the United Nations. This is the moment for clarity in standing with Israel and against Iran.

“We can’t afford to wait until the election to change course, the president must make it the policy of the United States now to support the dissidents of the current regime in Iran to bring down the terrorist leaders and replace it with a democratic government at peace with the U.S., Israel and the free world.

“The U.S. must be clear that it is the policy of the United States to stop Iran from building and deploying nuclear weapons. In leading from behind the president has been ambiguous with Iran and has given them the luxury of time to advance their nuclear weapons program without real punishment as we learned from the IAEA report last week.

“The U.S. should develop and deploy comprehensive ballistic missile systems on land, at sea, in the air, and in space to protect the American people and our allies from the threat of ballistic missiles. Iran, with the help of the Chinese has obtained missile delivery systems for nuclear weapons that pose a threat to Israel, to the region and potentially the United States.

“While the United States does not buy oil from Iran, Iran is a major player in the oil market and affects its price, which directly affects the United States. We need to legalize American energy production to free us from Iran’s influence through oil.

“The U.S. must immediately end appeasement and weakness towards Iran and pursue decisive, common sense strategies ignored or rejected by the current administration.

“We need Secretaries of State and Defense who fully support a pro-freedom and security policy towards Iran, and we need them to replace those in the bureaucracy — especially at State — who will not fully support this policy.

“We need crushing economic sanctions on Iran, including on the central bank and the oil and gas industries. We must hurt the Iranian economy more severely by doing damage to their oil revenues and their central bank.

“The president stands with Occupy Wall Street, but he doesn’t stand with Israel. When Israel looks at President Obama, they don’t see a friend. The State Department should regularly expose the atrocious activities of the Iranian regime that are arresting, imprisoning, torturing and murdering innocent Iranian citizens.

“We must accelerate covert operations and cyber operations in Iran and order the CIA Director to take all means necessary to stop Iran from getting the Bomb before it is too late. The Pentagon should prepare a war plan, as a last resort, should all else fail in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

“But the president’s lack of leadership and the failure of the Supercommittee this week will lead to, in Defense Secretary Panetta’s words, ‘devastating cuts that will seriously damage readiness’ making a military response more difficult. President Obama has seriously damaged the security of Israel by decreasing our status as a military superpower.

“Part of that plan should be to direct the Navy to make preparations for a possible blockade of Iran’s ports from all oil and gas imports and exports to cut off critical petroleum revenues from going to the regime in Tehran.

“We should continue comprehensive missile defense development while moving additional Aegis and Patriot missile defense systems into the Middle East to protect U.S. citizens and assets, Israel and our allies. We must sell Israel the additional fighter jets, bunker buster bombs, refueling tankers and other materials they need to defend themselves.

“A Bachmann administration will recognize that Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people, a vibrant democracy and America’s staunch ally. My administration will fully recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, and will be the first administration to finally implement the laws passed by Congress requiring the State Department to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. My administration will also recognize Israel’s 1980 annexation of the Golan Heights and any settlements, which Israel, as a sovereign state, chooses to annex. Simply put, my administration will accord Israel the respect to which sovereign, democratic nations are entitled.

“On the day of my inauguration as president I will announce that the U.S. Embassy will be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “I do not take lightly the prospect of committing U.S. troops in an effort to stop Iran. Only a fool wishes for war. But we must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to stop the Iranians from obtaining a nuclear weapon and massively destabilizing the region by attacking our ally Israel, and supplying those weapons to even more radical regimes or individuals that would use them to do harm to America and its way of life. I recognize that the security of America is intertwined with the security of Israel.

“Hitler once famously said in justification of his order to murder millions of Jews, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ Ahmadinejad is counting on the same collective memory today as he marches toward a second holocaust.

“We must send him the message that – we will never forget!

“God bless you and God bless Israel and God bless the United States of America.”

Let me begin by making a clear and loud declaration for all to hear: There is absolutely no basis in Jewish law for the separation of men and women on buses or public streets.

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the greatest Orthodox halachic authority of the 20th century, made this very clear in his responsa, where he ruled that there was no problem with riding the New York subway, where men and women are often pressed together in very tight quarters. This applies all the more so when simply sitting in close proximity on a bus.

Aside from the fact that Jewish law certainly allows men and women to sit together on the bus or walk on the same side of the street, there is actually a specific halachic transgression that occurs when such extreme actions are taken.

The Torah clearly prohibits a person from embarrassing another, which is exactly what happens when men harass and intimidate women for sitting in the front of the bus on a “mehadrin” bus line. In certain circumstances, Jewish law actually allows one to transgress a prohibition if doing so will preserve and protect the dignity of a fellow human being.

Therefore, even according to the warped understanding that Jewish law does mandate the separation of men and women in these circumstances, there would certainly be no justification for demeaning a woman by forcing her to move to the back of the bus.

Granted, Jewish law does mandate the separation of men and women during prayer and specific other times, but nothing beyond that. The Torah opens society to women and cautions that it is the man’s responsibility not to “stray after your eyes.”

But this isn’t just about buses. This is about growing extremism in the haredi world, part of which includes the demonization of women.That is the reason in certain neighborhoods the Clalit healthcare fund has stopped giving children stickers with pictures of little girls on them, and the reason some haredi newspapers will not print pictures of women. Some go as far as doctoring photos in order to remove women in adherence of this policy.

IF WE don’t stop this trend to extremism as a political force right now, I fear to think where things will be in 15 years. Will “religious police” dictate where we can walk, what we can eat, and how everyone must dress? We must ensure that our country is really an “Am Shalem” – a “Complete Nation” – where every group and individual, including women, contribute to the greater whole.

So let us take a few moments to clarify what the classic Torah sources say about women in order to understand why I, a haredi rabbi, take a strong stance on this issue.

Right at the beginning of Creation, the Torah says God created one being in the following way: “Male and female He created them.”

If there was only one being, why does the Torah say “them” and describe it as both “male and female”?

The Talmud explains that God fashioned an original being which embodied both male and female characteristics and then separated that one being into two. Why? Why didn’t He make them into separate male and female beings from the start?

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, one of the most prominent Orthodox rabbis of the 19th century, explained as follows: “So that what was previously one creature was not two, and thereby the complete equality of women forever attested [to].”

Complete equality! Not a secondary being who can be told to go to the back of the bus or who can be removed from all pictures. (It is not within the scope of this column to explain what traditional Judaism does see as differing primary roles for men and women, but Rabbi Hirsch calls this a “division of labor,” with neither primary role superior to the other.)

But our tradition goes even beyond demanding equality.The Talmud teaches that the Jews were redeemed from slavery in Egypt due to the merit of Jewish women, and that the women did not worship the golden calf or believe the negative report of the spies about Israel. Our salvation in the Hanukka and Purim stories came because our women rose to the occasion. According to our tradition, women have binah yeteira – an increased ability to understand and comprehend. That quality has saved the Jewish people throughout history.

Finally, in medieval times, when most men treated women as little more than property, Maimonides ruled that “a husband must honor his wife more than his own self.”

The time has come for the non-extremist community, which includes moderate haredim, to demand that the surge to the extreme cease immediately. There can be no more demanding that women move to the back of the bus, no more removing women from all publications, and no more demonization of the half of our nation responsible for our very survival.

It is time for us to place women back on their pedestal and recognize the equality which God intended at Creation thereby enabling and empowering women to flourish, shine and proudly contribute to the future of our state and nation

Haïm Amsellem – JSSNews
The author is a Knesset member, an ordained rabbi and chairman of the Am Shalem movement. www.amshalem.org.

IDF commanders are reviewing the “Hannibal Protocol: Rules of Engagement,” which declares that everything possible must be done to prevent soldiers from being abducted – even if it means endangering them.

Eleven years after the al Dura hoax — produced and broadcast by state-owned France 2 TV — the same outfit treats us to a ludicrously staged Palestinian State promotional film.  Was the 2½ -hour « documentary » aired on October 3 in the geopolitical magazine Un œil sur la planète (an eye on the world), a chef d’oeuvre in the campaign to destroy the Jewish State or a last gasp of shopworn Palestinianism¹?

Looking at the world through keffieh-colored glasses, MC Etienne Leenhardt disingenuously asks: « Is the creation of a Palestinian state still possible? »  First stop, Ramallah.  Chic, modern, bustling with business and a humming bureaucracy that maintains law and order…everything you need to make a state.  How did Ramallah get so shiny and peaceful?  What keeps it from tumbling into the maw of the Islamists who rule Gaza?  Who is financing its prosperity, and what does the « wall » have to do with it?  Don’t ask.  Leenhardt and cohorts know why the Palestinians don’t have the state they’ve been yearning for since the days of Adam and Eve: it’s because the cruel, heartless, murderous, land-grabbing, gun-slinging Israelis colonize their land!

One brief scene sums it up.  A Palestinian in the West Bank (Judea-Samaria) points to a clump of trees in the near distance and laments: « You see that fertile land over there?  That’s what the colonists [Israelis] took for themselves.  They left us this arid stuff. »

The indictment builds and incriminates.  The Israelis/Jews stole the land, siphon off the water, erect a wall between a man and his fields, expropriate the very holiness, and, one could assume, took all the fertile intelligence for themselves, colonizing the Nobel prizes and leaving the Palestinians with nothing but bile.

Actually, this docu-hoax could be used to help the Zionist cause.  It is so grotesque, so crudely fabricated, so false and so dishonest that it sheds light on the subtle twists of more sophisticated products that weave their way through public discourse, gradually bending minds and condoning atrocities.  We who have been working tirelessly to expose the Mohamed al Dura hoax can take some comfort in observing that this long-drawn out genocidal hate speech exercise doesn’t seem to have the electrifying effect of the September 2000 blood libel.  Unfortunately, this does not rule out a potential increase in thuggery against French Jews.

Intuitively avoiding the fact-check trap, I followed the film without noting one by one the lies, fibs, half-truths, distortions, misconceptions, and twists that would have distracted from a cogent analysis of the overall enterprise.  The five-part broadcast, presented as the work of globetrotting reporters who gathered the facts at ground level, was a total fabrication — so much so that Uzi Landau, granted a short minute to say that no sovereign nation would give free rein to an entity determined to exterminate it, seemed unreal, even when you know him personally.

What was the point of broadcasting this fictional documentary a few days after Mahmoud Abbas made his U.N. Security Council bid for recognition of a Palestinian state carved out along the 1947 partition lines with Jerusalem as its capital and a funnel to pour millions of « refugees » into the temporarily surviving rump state labeled « Israel »?  Whom did France 2 hope to convince with its overblown, slapdash, hysterically hyped, sleazy marketing film?

Was it aimed at the European Parliament?  If it’s possible to be less discriminating than the U.N., the European Parliament is your man.  Was it tailored for UNESCO, whose advisory board giddily recommended admission of a Palestinian state?  We’re the cultural arm of the U.N., dahling, we don’t have to quibble about mundane things like borders and democratic institutions.  Palestine, for us, is a fashion statement.  Was it a sop to our local punk jihadis…if they had the patience to sit through this yawn-a-minute, low-testosterone production?

Or was it simply made to order for the choir that never tires of preaching to itself: print media, academics, NGOs, and value-added Jews who certainly slurped up Avrum Burg’s six minutes of pontifications?  For these aficionadas, the repetition of the word « colon » (« colonist ») is as thrilling as a lap dance.  According to Stéphane Juffa of Metula News Agency, the Arabic mustaotinin — settler — is systematically mistranslated as colon.  Hallowed places like Jerusalem are polluted with colons, and in Hebron, Palestinians have to share their « mosque » with the colons: « On their Sabbath and holidays, it’s half of our mosque for them, half for us. »  The « mosque » is no less than the synagogue built over the Cave of Machpela, said to be the tomb of Adam and Eve, Sarah and Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah.

Apparently aligned with the jihad practice of launching attacks on Jewish holidays, France 2 threw its Eye on the Planet in our faces during the « days of awe » between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.  The reaction was rapid and forceful.  France 2 has learned nothing from the al Dura fiasco.  But we have!  Thinkers, writers, associations, and honest citizens are speaking out.  The CRIF (Jewish umbrella organization) and the Israeli embassy publicly protested and will be meeting with France 2 authorities later this month.  Samy Ghozlan of the BNVCA (national bureau for vigilance against anti-Semitism) is filing a lawsuit.

As usual in France, when Jews and their allies protest against incitement to hatred, they are accused — first, of censoring the media, and second, of bad faith, clannishness, thin skin, emotional overreaction, dual loyalty, refusal to face the truth of their (i.e., Israel’s) pernicious deeds…and finally, they are dumped into a Protocols of the Elders of Zion cesspool.

The corporation of journalists stands shoulder to shoulder to protect France 2 and its planetary eye from the wicked Jews.  The monotonously unanimous war cry is « there are no factual errors in this program. »  Charles Enderlin of al Dura fame says so, and he should know.  All the guys and girls who worked on the film  – it took five months, by golly– say so, and how could they be wrong when everything they said, showed, and recorded is 100% factual?  Every Palestinian who walked, talked, and gestured in front of their cameras spoke the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth.

They have the good Professor Walt on their side.  Jimmy Carter, too.  One is led to understand from the « Israel Lobby » segment that American journalists, unlike their French counterparts, are not free to give the facts on the itchy Mideast conflict.  Are the garish lighting and harsh camera angles reserved for The Lobby factually true?  Does AIPAC hand out envelopes to puppet politicians?  A journalist fingered by CAMERA for not painting a pretty picture of Israel can’t get work anywhere in the U.S., right?  What’s not factual about the choke-gulp-gasp panorama of Christian Zionists?  The big guns aimed at Glenn Beck?  The outrageous behavior of Israel-lobbied congressmen and women who threaten to punish the Palestinians for trying to put together a decent state?  Aren’t these people and their organizations objectively lurid, shady, manipulative, and permanently accompanied by dramatic here-comes-the-villain music?

And if you don’t like it, you’re a dirty Jewish censor, n’est-ce pas?  The representative of the Israeli embassy said, « Press freedom, yes — freedom to incite hatred, no. »

What’s not to hate?  The plight of a Muslim family in Hebron — plump mother in hijab/djellaba, mustachioed father, numerous wide-eyed children, a spoon-fed baby — who can’t go anywhere, do anything, live, breathe, or swallow in peace, because of the colons.  Here, you see this window in the kitchen?  The colons were always throwing rocks at it.  The broken glass went into our food.  Now we covered it with a steel shutter.  No sunlight, but it’s better than having glass in our food.  The farmers of Gaza want to feed the hungry population…their fields just happen to run along the border with Israel.  Israeli soldiers pop them off like clay pigeons.  Helpers from the International Solidarity Movement (presented as an impeccable source of information and disinterested action) radio the soldiers: « We’ll be here for a short time…just to pick our crop.  We aren’t doing any harm. »  Ha! They take three steps and the soundtrack crackles with the ping-zing and evil snickers of faceless sharpshooters.

Eye on the Planet caught a strangely muted glimpse of the « internationally famous » Charles Enderlin « interviewing » Nabil Shaat.  It looked like a spliced image — the two don’t appear in the same frame.  Enderlin whispers a few semi-questions, and the rest of the sequence is Shaat, supremely alone, spouting off about how they had tried everything for decades, but the Israelis just don’t want to make peace, don’t respect any agreement they sign, don’t stop chomping away at our land to make colonies, kill our people, send dogs against them, we had no choice but to go to the U.N.  We are ready for statehood.

At this writing, a meeting is scheduled with France Télévision’s news director Thierry Thuillier, former chief of the Oeil sur la planète program, who has ominously warned: « They [president of the CRIF and a representative of the Israeli embassy] have something to say to us, but we have something to say to them. »  What?  Is there an insult or accusation that was not included in the broadcast?  Something saved to throw in the faces of those who dare to protest?

What can we say to reporters with no scruples, no depth, no sense of fair play, who have been covering the conflict year in, year out with no regard for the truth?  How can you reach journalists who have crossed into the Palestinian camp and see nothing wrong with stamping a promotional film with the logo of state-owned French television?

The Eye on the Planet outfit has announced its line of defense: there are no factual errors in the report.  Wouldn’t it be wise to sidestep and attack at the fundamental level?  For, in fact, the entire report is a lie; the « Palestinian State » defended in the film by French journalists and at the U.N. by Mahmoud Abbas is a lie.  The sixty-plus years of Palestinian distress is due not to the lack of a state, but to the frustration at not being able to implement a genocidal project.  The security barrier, checkpoints, Gaza blockade, and other vexations deplored by the Planet’s Eye are not impediments to Palestinian statehood; they are a direct consequence of the genocidal project.  And everything in the report, from the hustle and bustle of Ramallah to the house keys of Palestinian refugees to the fifth generation in Lebanon who participates in that genocidal project, has nothing to do with statehood.  The only possible effect of the pretentious Eye on the Planet episode will be to further the genocidal project by enflaming hatred against Jews, without bringing Palestinians one inch closer to a theoretical statehood that they have never pursued.

If I were invited to the face-to-face, I would be dignified, imperious, and unemotional.  No hint of lamentation or supplication.  As long as the genocidal project hides behind the term « Palestinian State, » I would say that it is logically and materially impossible to envision any normally functioning civil entity under the same label.  It is counterproductive to quibble over details.  Your film embraces the genocidal project.  It is disgraceful, but it will fall by the wayside.  We are strong.  You are foolish.  Adieu.

Addendum:

October 17: Christian Denisot, a 45 year-old unemployed IT technician, holds hostage the Director and her assistant in a state employment agency in the 11^th arrondissement of Paris. Several hours later the hostages are released, unharmed. Monsieur Denisot’s gun was a fake. But the 20-page Manifesto transmitted by Denisot, curiously enough, gives short shrift to the travails of the unemployed. According to Pierre Haski, editorial director of the Rue 89 blog [1], 15 pages were devoted to a denunciation of the « extremist Zionist fringe groups » that have poked a « black hole » in our democracy. Denisot declares that the purpose of his act was to awaken society to the dangers of these Zionists, namely the Betar, the Jewish Defense League, the CRIF, and Samy Ghozlan of the BNVCA. Citing various incidents that occurred over the past ten years, Denisot claims these organizations confuse anti-Zionism and criticism of Israeli government policies with anti-Semitism, and get away with it.

Shortly after taking the hostages, Denisot contacted Rue 89 and specifically asked to speak to the specialist on Mideast affairs. He kept a running conversation with Haski throughout the operation and finally surrendered after the police had assured him that his message had been relayed to major media and broadcast publicly. In fact, outside of Rue 89 his message was either not mentioned or dismissed as « vague. » I contacted Rue 89 this morning to request a copy of the Manifesto and was told that Haski, who has an appointment with the police today, cannot transmit it « because it hasn’t been published. »

Will it eventually be made available? I have my doubts. But I will try to contact some of those « extremist Zionist fringe groups » to see if they at least have had access to the document that incriminates them.

The comparison with the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik is intriguing. In both cases, a « native » European focused on Muslims or Jews attacks his own. Will those who accused anti-jihad thinkers of propelling Breivik now suspect Un œil sur la planète of inspiring the hostage-taker?

By Nidra Poller – The American Thinker -

¹Blurbs for the five segments:

A working State? by Martine Laroche-Joubert and Thierry Breton : There is already a working administration in Palestine. International organizations congratulate the management of ongoing affairs. The West Bank is much more modern than South Sudan, the State most recently admitted into the UN…

1000 faces of Gaza, by Katia Clarens and Valérie Lucas : Besides the West Bank there is the Gaza Strip, run by the Islamists of Hamas, infamous for bloody suicide attacks in Israel. In retaliation the territory is subjected to a blockade. In retorsion Hamas sends rockets to Israel, that counter-attacks… Violence that severely penalizes civilians. A majority has nothing to do with Hamas and wishes they would leave. But there are also Salafist groups that find Hamas too moderate… Exclusive report.

Frontiers of Discord, by Alexis Monchovet and Sophie Claudet: There are other obstacles to the creation of a Palestinian State. First, frontiers. The Israelis don’t want to hear anymore about the lines traced before the Six-Day War. For strategic or religious reasons, they multiply colonies in the West Bank, monopolizing the water and the best land. Jewish colons also settle in and around Jerusalem. How can a viable State be created under these conditions?

And the right of return? by Negar Zoka and Malek Sahraoui: Another concern, the Palestinian refugee question. There are approximately five million outside the territories. More than in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The right of return is transmitted from generation to generation. In Lebanon some have been rotting away for more than 60 years in unsanitary camps. Only a minority can return to Israel or Palestine.

The pro-Israel lobby in the United States, Estelle Youssouffa and Christophe Obert: Despite UN Resolutions, Israel has long been able to count on unfailing support from the top world power. Because the Israeli lobby is very influential in the United States, with a mixture of Jewish organizations and conservative Christians. Their pressure weighs with all its weight on American foreign policy. But the Arab Spring has redistributed the cards.

Two-and-a-half years ago, I returned to the Prime Minister’s Office.  One of the principal and most complicated missions that I found on my desk, and which I set my heart to, was to bring our abducted soldier Gilad Shalit back home, alive and well.  Today, that mission has been completed.

It entailed a very difficult decision.  I saw the need to return home someone whom the State of Israel had sent to the battlefield.  As an IDF soldier and commander, I went out on dangerous missions many times.  But I always knew that if I or one of my comrades fell captive, the Government of Israel would do its utmost to return us home, and as Prime Minister, I have now carried this out.  As a leader who daily sends out soldiers to defend Israeli citizens, I believe that mutual responsibility is no mere slogan – it is a cornerstone of our existence here.

But I also see an additional need, that of minimizing the danger to the security of Israel’s citizens.  To this end, I enunciated two clear demands.  First, that senior Hamas leaders, including arch-murderers, remain in prison.  Second, that the overwhelming majority of those designated for release either be expelled or remain outside Judea and Samaria, in order to impede their ability to attack our citizens.

For years, Hamas strongly opposed these demands.  But several months ago, we received clear signs that it was prepared to back down from this opposition.  Tough negotiations were carried out, night and day, in Cairo, with the mediation of the Egyptian government.  We stood our ground, and when our main demands were met – I had to make a decision.

I know very well that the pain of the families of the victims of terrorism is too heavy to bear.  It is difficult to see the miscreants who murdered their loved ones being released before serving out their full sentences.  But I also knew that in the current diplomatic circumstances, this was the best agreement we could achieve, and there was no guarantee that the conditions which enabled it to be achieved would hold in the future.  It could be that Gilad would disappear; to my regret, such things have already happened.

I thought of Gilad and the five years that he spent rotting away in a Hamas cell.  I did not want his fate to be that of Ron Arad.  Ron fell captive exactly 25 years ago and has yet to return.  I remembered the noble Batya Arad.  I remembered her concern for her son Ron, right up until her passing.  At such moments, a leader finds himself alone and must make a decision.  I considered – and I decided.  Government ministers supported me by a large majority.

And today, now Gilad has returned home, to his family, his people and his country.  This is a very moving moment.  A short time ago, I embraced him as he came off the helicopter and escorted him to his parents, Aviva and Noam, and I said, ‘I have brought your son back home.’  But this is also a hard day; even if the price had been smaller, it would still have been heavy.

I would like to make it clear: We will continue to fight terrorism.  Any released terrorist who returns to terrorism – his blood is upon his head.  The State of Israel is different from its enemies: Here, we do not celebrate the release of murderers.  Here, we do not applaud those who took life.  On the contrary, we believe in the sanctity of life.  We sanctify life.  This is the ancient tradition of the Jewish People.

Citizens of Israel, in recent days, we have all seen national unity such as we have not seen in a long time.  Unity is the source of Israel’s strength, now and in the future.  Today, we all rejoice in Gilad Shalit’s return home to our free country, the State of Israel.  Tomorrow evening, we will celebrate Simchat Torah.  This coming Sabbath, we will read in synagogues, as the weekly portion from the prophets, the words of the prophet Isaiah (42:7): ‘To bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house.’  Today, I can say, on behalf of all Israelis, in the spirit of the eternal values of the Jewish People: ‘Your children shall return to their own border [Jeremiah 31:17].’  Am Yisrael Chai! [The People of Israel live!].

(Applause.)

On top of its legal nullity, the push for recognition at the U.N. trashes the spirit of the Oslo Accords, which commit both the Israelis and the Palestinians to addressing their differences through negotiations. Thwarted at the Security Council, the Palestinians will likely go to the rabble in the General Assembly, where we don’t have a veto and they will presumably succeed in putting a fig leaf on a fraud.

The General Assembly can change the status of the PLO from an observer “entity,” as it is now, to a “non-member state” observer, like the Vatican, and thereby recognize it indirectly as a state. But this won’t create a real state, either in law or in fact. Under international law, the Montevideo Convention of 1933 explicitly provides that the existence of a sovereign state is independent of recognition by other states, and further provides that a state must have a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. The Palestinians arguably have none of those things. By their own admission, they don’t have a defined territory. Their government, meanwhile, is riven: Terrorists control one half of the territories and the other half is controlled by a former terrorist whose term of office expired two years ago.

Nobody would like to see the Palestinians under a functioning state of laws more than the Israelis. But a state must have a monopoly of violence, and Hamas has always rejected the monopoly of violence in favor of the inherent individual right of resistance to occupation. The Palestinians have barely managed to maintain political institutions of any kind, and a declaration of statehood will do nothing to solve that problem.

Any action in the cause of Palestinian statehood at the U.N. will serve to isolate Israel further, and could make its government subject to international legal proceedings. But the main danger is the effect it could have in the Muslim world, including the occupied territories. Another intifada would force Israel to resort to military measures, giving Egypt and Turkey another excuse to express their growing hostility to the Jewish state.

The Middle East has come to this pass despite President Obama’s blithe belief at the inception of his administration that he could forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace. From the start, Obama cast his role in the Middle East as one of impartial mediator, not realizing that America’s influence among the Palestinians requires Israel’s confidence that we will protect the Jewish state come what may. Anyone can play the role of mediator, but only America can underwrite the risks of a negotiated settlement for both sides. The strategic prerequisites for Israeli-Palestinian peace are the same as they were for peace between Israel and Egypt in the 1970s: We must convince the Arabs that they can get what they want from the Israelis only by going through us, and we can deliver Israeli concessions only if we can guarantee Israel’s security.

Yet the Obama administration has reprised the Clinton administration’s childish schoolyard spats with Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu. By embracing the Palestinian insistence on a halt to settlement construction as a precondition for talks, Obama encouraged the Palestinians to dig in their heels. Now the Palestinians think they can get what they want by forcing the issue at the U.N. and encouraging Egyptian and Turkish belligerence.

The new government of Egypt is seeking legitimacy by embracing the worst anti-Israeli sentiments of its populace. The army recently stood by as a Cairo mob ransacked the Israeli embassy. The Camp David Accords of 1979 are starting to crumble. Because no combination of Arab states could afford to go to war with Israel without Egypt’s help, Henry Kissinger realized that peace between Israel and Egypt would end the era of Arab-Israeli wars. The fraying of the Camp David Accords, which preserved a tenuous peace for more than three decades, is ominous. So is the reemergence of Turkey as a regional power. Turkey has pledged a military escort for the next “humanitarian flotilla” aimed at forcibly breaching the Gaza blockade, a fully legal blockade even according to the United Nations.

The Middle East is again on the cusp of crisis, with the U.N. about to stoke the flames and the Obama administration caught in a self-imposed impotence.

NRO -
JSSNews

The Washington Post :
- Israel’s hostile neighborhood The Arab world has the oil, the geography and the numbers. But the United States has the moral obligation to stick by the sometimes obstreperous democracy it felt morally obligated to embrace. The Obama administration has to show no daylight between it and Israel — never mind that Benjamin Netanyahu is no Ben-Gurion.
- Once again, Israel is scapegoated

New-York Post :
- Sorry excuses can’t conceal truth

The Wall Street Journal : (Cut and Paste Headline in Google News in order to access full story)
- Israel’s Predicament  It is surrounded on nearly all sides by enemies who are aggressively committed to its destruction. And too many people who call themselves its friends are only ambivalently committed to its security.
- The Palestinians’ U.N. Agenda Encouraging another Palestinian intifada should be the last thing anyone wants.

National Post :
- Troubling signs for Egypt’s future

Bloomberg :
- Israel Surrounded as Arab Spring Turns Darker

Famagusta Gazette :
-Greek PM backs Cyprus in drilling spat « The exploitation of natural resources by Cyprus and Israel is their sovereign right, Greek Premier George Papandreou has said, speaking during a press conference at the 76th Thessaloniki International Fair. (…) He noted that it is Cyprus’ and Israel’s sovereign right to exploit their natural resources, adding that ‘this is a clear message to Turkey’. »

The Post Standard :
- Mideast Meddling: Arab Spring may be turning into a fractious fall « Those who would exploit today’s changes by meddling in the Israeli-Palestinian standoff do themselves and the Palestinians no favors. »

The Globe and Mail :
- UN resolution on Palestine statehood is over the Topp

The Guardian :
- Egypt’s fragmenting revolution  – The attack on the Israeli embassy is a wake-up call for the 25 January protesters to focus on the ballot box, not the streets
- Turkey’s stance on Israel will reverberate in Washington The Middle East will never be the same. America must recognise Turkey’s emergence as the region’s pre-eminent power

BBC :
- St Andrews student sentenced for Israel flag racism

Hurryiet :
- Outlawed PKK demands own apology from Israel
- This shame is not on the Palestinians
- Parliament suspends friendship with Israel

Today’s Zaman :
- Problematic approach to Heron UAVs

The Christian Science Monitor :
- Israel and Egypt: The view from Cairo – The Israel-Egypt relationship can’t be the same again.  A coordinated and reasonably sophisticated terror attack emanating from the Sinai peninsula kills 34 people, 12 of them Israeli tourists. The bombings send shudders through the Israeli-Egyptian relationship and spread fears that the Sinai, home to Bedouins and smugglers and, it seems, a growing armed Islamist movement, is careening out of control.
Sound familiar? No, this wasn’t the infiltration into Israel from the Sinai in mid-August, when seven Israelis were killed by a group of gunmen. Rather, it was a 2004 attack in which the Taba Hilton and two nearby tourist camps were bombed.
The difference in Egypt’s response then and now to attacks in the Sinai, together with this weekend’s attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo, signals a fundamental change in the relationship between Israel and the Arab world’s most populous country.

-Israel arrives at a tough diplomatic intersection Israel’s crises with key regional partners Egypt and Turkey could pressure the Jewish state to make a renewed push for peace with the Palestinians

Time :
- Israel and Turkey: How a Close Relationship Disintegrated
- Arab Spring Over, Islamists, Generals and Old Regimes Battle for Power From Tunisia to Syria

The Daily Telegraph :
-Israel watches its old alliances crumble The overthrow of President Mubarak in Egypt, the estrangement of Turkey and a UN vote on Palestinian statehood combine to make an intractable set of problems
- Turkey attempts to rally diplomatic alliance against Israel Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that the Jewish state’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last year had been « grounds for war ».

The Independant :
- The casino tycoon who took on free speech and lost face Sheldon Adelson stands accused of trying to control opinion in Israel. But now his opponents are having their say.

Agence France Presse :
- Turkish PM says not visiting Gaza during Arab Spring tour
- Egypt military to widen state of emergency One of Egypt’s ruling generals said Monday the military will expand a state of emergency because of a « breach in public security » after protesters stormed Israel’s embassy

UPI :
- Israel seeks to boost UAV strike power

Gulf News :
- Syria must begin dialogue and reconciliation The current situation cannot continue as the costs would be grave for the people

Arab News :
- All-pervasive rot Apart from toppling some regimes, Arab Spring has exposed the West’s duplicity

The Hindu :
- Turkey gets tough

The Daily Star :
- Gemayel lashes out at Hezbollah’s weapons, labeling them ‘sectarian arms’
- Sleiman: Cluster bombs form of Israeli occupation

JTA :
- Durban’s 10th anniversary is no cause for celebration

 Jonathan-Simon Sellem – JSSNews

Aaron David Miller wrote this on The Post’s Sunday op-ed page:

Last week’s attacks near Eilat and the Israeli response show that violence always looms; Palestinians are suffering; Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state is at risk; and American credibility is on the line. But if Israeli and Palestinian leaders wanted to solve their problem, or at least make a serious run at negotiating (with or without U.S. help), we would not be on the verge of a big blame game. The fact is, however unpleasant the status quo, keeping things as they are strikes Israelis, Palestinians and Americans as much less risky than the decisions required to change it. Until that calculation changes — driven by the prospects of real pain and gain — there are going to be a lot more dead cats in the neighborhood.

This is perfectly absurd relativism, ignoring the obvious and profound role that each party has played in the breakdown of the nonexistent peace process. Notice the contrived sentence structure to avoid identifying the perpetrators. “Violence always looms,” you see. In other word, Hamas has never given up its blood lust for killing Jews.

Relatives of Yossi Shooshan mourn during his funeral, on August 21, 2011 in Ofakim, Israel. Shooshan was killed in a Palestinian rocket attack on the Israeli city of Beersheba last night.

It grows tiresome to repeat, but the convenient amnesia of peace-processors demands that we restate certain basic facts. The Palestinians have repeatedly been offered their own state. The Palestinians, sensing an easy mark in this American administration, threw a temper tantrum, demanding a settlement freeze. The Israelis complied. The Palestinians walked out. The Palestinians have (in a New York Times op-ed by Mahmoud Abbas and elsewhere) repudiated the Oslo Accords, vilified the president and declared themselves uninterested in adhering to any of their international obligations. They have climbed into bed with Hamas, which is now on a killing spree. There is the potential for full-scale war (either now, in response to the murders of Israelis in south Israel, or later, in the form of a third intifada that could well be triggered by a U.N. declaration of statehood, a suitably heinous reward to the Fatah-Hamas partnership by one of the world’s premier anti-Israel bodies ).

So let us give up the pretense, which verges on moral idiocy, that neither side is willing to take risks for peace and everyone is to blame. Hogwash.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like his predecessors has made clear that Israel is prepared to make peace. His Bar Ilan speech, the substance of which has been repeated in many contexts since it was given in 2009, is certainly not reflective of a leader unwilling to change current conditions. Or is Miller so benighted as to imagine that if Netanyahu would stop for another 10 months (or 10 years, for that matter) building apartments in Jerusalem or moving Israelis from leaky trailers to homes in Ariel, that there would be peace?

As for President Obama, he arguably has made things worse by overpromising to the Palestinians and encouraging their worst tendencies. But even he, as incompetent as he is when it comes to Middle East policy, is not primarily to blame.

The potential for war should and must be laid at the feet of the Palestinians (aided in this specific case by the indifference and/or malice of the new Egyptian government). Relations between Egypt and Israel “reached the worst point since the Camp David peace accords” as Israeli officials asserted that the terrorists came through Egyptian-owned Sinai. (Three Egyptians died in crossfire when Israel struck back at terrorist sites.)

The Jerusalem Post reports on the potential for widening violence in the wake of the assault on innocents launched by Hamas:

Israel’s government was considering on Saturday night the possibility of escalating its military response to the continued rocket fire from Gaza.

At least one man was killed and dozens of others were wounded by the more than 80 rockets that pounded southern Israel over the weekend. . . .

The . . . options [of the Israeli Defense Forces] vary, and could include an expansion in airstrikes, similar to the first week of Operation Cast Lead, which started in December 2008 with the bombing of hundreds of targets throughout the Gaza Strip.

The government will also consider a possible ground offensive inside Gaza, including small and isolated operations.

Other possibilities could include the use of targeted assassinations against leaders of terrorist organizations based in Gaza.

Only in the morally illiterate “international community” could the United Nations be on the verge of recognizing a Palestinian state jointly run by the terrorists who have (in all but name) launched (continued to launch?) a war against Israel. Only in a European continent now suffused with anti-Israel malice could the French and English be leading the charge to bestow statehood on a terror state. And only in the mind of peace-processors who have devoted their lives to an entirely false premise — that Palestinians are prepared and able to live in peace with a Jewish state — could this all appear to deserve studied evenhandedness. Enough already.

By Jennifer Rubin – Washington Post
JSSNews

UPDATE (4:45 p.m.): The Jerusalem Post informs us that despite reports that Hamas was seeking a cease-fire, rockets still rained down on southern Israel.

With Israel’s social protest movement in its fourth week, the Government has appointed a team of experts (the “Trachtenberg Commission”) to suggest ways of making life more affordable for the middle-class. High-rank academics have volunteered to help the protesters formulate their demands. Among those self-appointed consultants is Yossi Yonah, a philosophy professor at Ben-Gurion University. How exactly is Yonah qualified to argue about macroeconomics with the Trachtenberg Commission? True, the same question can be asked about Yuval Steinitz, himself a philosophy professor turned Minister of Finance. But the question is not whether philosophers can understand economics (Karl Marx had a Ph.D. in philosophy, in case you were wondering what the answer is). The question is what the presence of Yossi Yonah tells us about the true agenda of some of the movement’s leaders.

Yossi Yonah publishes mostly on “multiculturalism” and he summarized his views in an interview published in Ha’aretz in 2005 (“Brave New Multicultural World,” Ha’aretz, 14 October 2005). What is Yonah’s vision for the future of Israel? « Well” he says, “besides the naturalization of the migrant workers, it will include the annulment of the Law of Return; the cancellation of the arrangement of automatic naturalization for Jewish immigrants; and provision of a worthy solution for the Palestinian refugee problem, based on the Geneva Convention. » So, you see, it’s not only about economics.

There are economic experts on the team, though, such as Prof. Avia Spivak from Ben-Gurion University. He recommends raising taxes, especially corporate taxes, which would supposedly fill public coffers –as if Israeli companies couldn’t pick-up and leave, and as if both economic theory and practice hadn’t showed that governments’ revenues decrease when taxes are too high.

Then there is Shas’ brilliant idea on how to lower the price of real-estate. Rent control, of course: the Government should tell landlords what to charge. Such policies have been tried in the past, and they’ve always had the effect of increasing the price of real estate. The reason is simple: when real-estate investors cannot charge the rent that would make their investment profitable, they stop investing in real-estate. When investments in real-estate decline, so does housing supply. And when supply goes down, prices go up.

The official narrative in Israel’s media these days is that the high cost of living and the hardships of the middle-class are the result of “ultra-liberalism” and that Israel must become a “welfare state.” The very opposite is true. Israel is not a liberal economy: it is dominated by oligopolies that strangle consumers, and by monopolies (such as the National Land Authority) that control supply. If the Israeli economy is strong and productive, it is partly thanks to the economic liberalization undertaken by Shimon Peres in 1985 and by Benjamin Netanyahu in 2003. What Israel’s economy needs is more, not less, freedom and competition.

As for adopting the welfare state model, it is ironical that our know-it-all pundits are suggesting the idea precisely when the welfare state is causing European economies to crumble. If Greece, Spain and Italy are broke, it is partly because their welfare state model was built at a time when the population was young and the economy was hardly exposed to foreign competition. With an aging population and the constraints of a globalized economy, the European welfare system has become unaffordable. Hence the pilling debts of European governments, and hence the nervousness of financial markets.

Israel’s provincial public discourse does not end there. The violence in Britain, we are told, is to be blamed on Thatcherism. The fact that Labor was in power between 1997 and 2010 is irrelevant (and anyways, a journalist told me while interviewing me live on the “Reshet Bet” radio last week, Tony Blair allied himself to George Bush, so he doesn’t count). The truth, of course, is that Margaret Thatcher saved the British economy and that if it weren’t for her reforms, Britain’s fate today would be similar to Greece’s.

If the current social protest movement in Israel finally provides the opportunity to lower the cost of living by breaking-up monopolies and cartels and by lowering taxes, it will be remembered as one of the best things that ever happened to the country. But if the movement is hijacked by armchair ideologues to implement policies that have been proven to be counter-productive, then Israel is in trouble.

Those who believe that socialism might actually work at the end and that Israel is just the right place to check the theory again are about as rational as Elvis Presley’s fans who “know” he’s alive. The Israeli hard Left should be given a chance to implement its economic theories –but only after it finds out where Elvis is hiding.

Emmanuel Navon – his website – JSSNews