Peace can only come as a result of the terrorists’ unconditional surrender

A ridiculous statement from Meretz’s Zehava Gal-On.

MK Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz), Meretz Knesset candidate Michal Rosin and Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On gathered under a staircase in Meretz MK Ilan Gilon’s home Monday, after a siren went off during an anti-war forum hosted by the party and attended by residents of the south.
Gal-On said that true security can only come as a result of a negotiated agreement, and a land incursion can “trap Israel in the Gazan mud and bring a high price in human lives.” 

Really? Do we have ‘true security’ with the Islamist regime in Egypt thirty years after Camp David? Do we have ‘true security’ with Jordan 18 years after we signed a treaty with them, and will we still have it if the Muslim Brotherhood replaces the house of Hussein? Do we have ‘true security’ with the ‘Palestinian Authority’ 19 years after Yitzchak Rabin stood on the White House lawn with Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton?
No. We have security with none of them. All of them would like to wipe us out, and would do so in a New York minute if they are ever – God forbid – given the opportunity.
Does France have security from Germany today? Does England? Does Belgium?
Does South Korea have security from Japan today? Does Russia? Does the Phillipines?
What’s the difference? The difference that World War II was fought until there was a winner and a loser. The winners have security. The losers surrendered.
We will have security – and therefore peace – when we trust in God enough to fight the Arab terrorists to the finish. When they see they cannot defeat us, we will have both peace and security. When we come cowering for peace because we are tired of fighting, we will have neither peace nor security.
True security as a result of a negotiated agreement? Name me one time in history that it’s happened. 

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

George McGovern, a Pacifist Who Wanted to Bomb Auschwitz

George McGovern receives Distinguished Flying Cross in 1944. (AP Photo/McGovern Family)

by Rafael Medoff
REMEMBRANCE
WASHINGTON (JTA) — George McGovern is widely remembered for advocating immediate American withdrawal from Vietnam and sharp reductions in defense spending. Yet despite his reputation as a pacifist, the former U.S. senator and 1972 presidential candidate, who died Sunday at 90, did believe there were times when America should use military force abroad.
Case in point: the Allies’ failure to bomb Auschwitz, an episode with which McGovern had a little-known personal connection.
In June 1944, the Roosevelt administration received a detailed report about Auschwitz from two escapees who described the mass-murder process and drew diagrams pinpointing the gas chambers and crematoria. Jewish organizations repeatedly asked U.S. officials to order the bombing of Auschwitz and the railroad lines leading to the camp. The proposal was rejected on the grounds that it would require “considerable diversion” of planes that were needed elsewhere for the war effort. One U.S. official claimed that bombing Auschwitz “might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.”
Enter McGovern. In World War II, the 22-year-old son of a South Dakota pastor piloted a B-24 “Liberator” bomber. Among his targets: German synthetic oil factories in occupied Poland — some of them less than five miles from the Auschwitz gas chambers.

In 2004, McGovern spoke on camera for the first time about those experiences in a meeting organized by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies with Holocaust survivor and philanthropist Sigmund Rolat and filmmakers Stuart Erdheim and Chaim Hecht.
McGovern dismissed the Roosevelt administration’s claims about the diversion of planes. The argument was just “a rationalization,” he said, noting that no diversions would have been needed when he and other U.S pilots already were flying over that area.
Ironically, the Allies did divert military resources for other reasons. For example, FDR in 1943 ordered the Army to divert money and manpower to rescue artwork and historic monuments in Europe’s battle zones. The British provided ships to bring 20,000 Muslims on a religious pilgrimage from Egypt to Mecca in the middle of the war. Gen. George Patton even diverted U.S. troops in Austria to save 150 of the famous Lipizzaner dancing horses.
“There is no question we should have attempted … to go after Auschwitz,” McGovern said in the interview. “There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to those death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens.”
Even if there was a danger of accidentally harming some of the prisoners, “it was certainly worth the effort, despite all the risks,” McGovern said, because the prisoners were already “doomed to death” and an Allied bombing attack might have slowed down the mass-murder process, thus saving many more lives.
At the time, 16-year-old Elie Wiesel was part of a slave labor battalion stationed just outside the main camp of Auschwitz. Many years later, in his best-selling book “Night,” Wiesel described a U.S. bombing raid on the oil factories that he witnessed.
“[I]f a bomb had fallen on the blocks [the prisoners’ barracks], it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death,” Wiesel wrote. “Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life. The raid lasted over an hour. If it could only have lasted ten times ten hours!”
At the time, McGovern and his fellow pilots had no idea what was happening in Auschwitz.
“I attended every briefing that the air force gave to us,” he said. “I heard everyone, from generals on down. I never heard once mentioned the possibility that the United States air force might interdict against the gas chambers.”
Ironically, in one raid, several stray bombs from McGovern’s squadron missed the oil factory they were targeting and accidentally struck an SS sick bay, killing five SS men.
McGovern said that if his commanders had asked for volunteers to bomb the death camp, “whole crews would have volunteered.” Most soldiers understood that the war against the Nazis was not just a military struggle but a moral one, as well. In his view they would have recognized the importance of trying to interrupt the mass-murder process, even if it meant endangering their own lives in a risky bombing raid.
Indeed, the Allies’ air drops of supplies to the Polish Home Army rebels in Warsaw in August 1944 were carried out by volunteers, who agreed to undertake the missions despite the hazards of flying their planes to areas outside their normal range.
McGovern noted that he remained an ardent admirer of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Franklin Roosevelt was a great man and he was my political hero,” he said in the interview. “But I think he made two great mistakes in World War II.” One was the internment of Japanese Americans; the other was the decision “not to go after Auschwitz. … God forgive us for that tragic miscalculation.”
In contrast with his pacifist image, McGovern emphasized that for him, the central lesson of the U.S. failure to bomb Auschwitz was the need for “a determination that never again will we fail to exercise the full capacity of our strength in that direction.”
He added, “We should have gone all out [against Auschwitz], and we must never again permit genocide.”
Rafael Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and the author or editor of 15 books about the Holocaust and American Jewish history.

via daledamos.blogspot.com

Israel’s pacifist tragedy

A martyr wall in the West Bank city of Jenin.

via cifwatch.com
This is cross posted by Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio and author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism. The essay first appeared in Ynet.

The 5 Biggest Lies about Liberalism

Daniel Greenfield
5. Multiculturalism – If you haven’t seen the billboards yet, liberals love multiculturalism, they embrace all races and religions because they believe in diversity. True? Nope.
Liberals follow the left’s paradigm of waging class warfare. Their interest in minorities extends only to enlisting some disenfranchised groups in their class warfare. Contrary to all the multicultural billboards, liberals are primarily interested in unsuccessful minorities, because they can frighten them, exploit them and farm them as voting blocks. Successful minorities such as Asians, Indians and Jews are wanted only as window dressing. And get the short end of the stick when a real issue comes up. Multiculturalism is really only class warfare disguised as opposition to bigotry. Take away all the historical revisionism about the Democratic party’s ugly civil rights history and the empty slogans about diversity, and what you have left is naked political opportunism. The Democratic party trafficked in racism when it suited them (and still does) and dons the halo of tolerance when it suits them now. The left was equally at home working both sides of the street, and the views of great socialists from Jack London to Karl Marx on race, differed little from those of the Nazi party.
Multiculturalism isn’t a philosophy, it’s a political organization tactic to bring the groups they consider part of the working class under one umbrella. It’s the same old class warfare organizational tactics applied to race and ethnicity. The goal of these tactics is not empowerment, but to create a voting bloc of people who have been convinced that they’re doomed to helplessness, without the leadership of the left “fighting” on their behalf.
Liberals can still be and often are bigots. Their bigotry is just informed by political necessity. As a bonus, having the “diversity” brand allows them to describe the opposition as bigots, without ever being called out for their own bigotry.
4. Feminism – We all know of course that liberals are the biggest feminists out there, except when they’re running against a woman. Or when a woman accuses their candidate of rape or sexual harassment.
Like multiculturalism, owning the feminist brand has been convenient. And it was easy enough to manage once feminism became a wholly owned product of academia, funded by liberal groups like the Ford Foundation. This brand of feminism has as much to do with equal rights for women, as African Studies have to do with equal rights for African-Americans. They’re basically little more than ways to repackage the agenda politics of the far left in identity colors. That way socialism can be dressed up as a civil rights agenda, and opposition to it becomes racism or sexism.
That leads us to the absurd spectacle of academic feminists declaring that successful female candidates who don’t share their politics are not feminists, but male candidates who do, are. Dig down to their real definition of feminism, and it turns out to be liberalism.
None of this has anything to do with women, just as multiculturalism has nothing to do with race. Take away the disguises, and you end up with the same old ideology marketed to target groups as a political organizing tactic. It’s no different than selling cereal, except the cereal is red and comes with a few dozen textbooks.
Liberals are not interested in empowering women, except to work for them or vote for them. There is no philosophical commitment here to equality for women, only a sales pitch for liberalism.
3. Friends of the Poor – We know liberals are against poverty, right? Otherwise why all that talk of making the rich pay their fair share. But if you actually look at socialist countries, the poor aren’t exactly coming out ahead. What’s the problem?
The problem is that liberals are not into enriching the poor, but removing what they consider the upper class, and turning over control of the economy to themselves. But a centrally planned economy leads to more poverty, not less. Take away the ability to go up the economic ladder, and how can poverty end?
It can’t. But ending poverty was never the idea. Wealth redistribution is a neat catchphrase, but the reality is that the rich and the middle class are purged to make way for a new rich and middle class composed of party members. Their brand of equality is not about helping the poor, but putting themselves in charge and imposing an artificial standard of fairness in order to build a perfect society. Before Communism came to Russia, the poor begged on the street. After Communism, begging was illegal and the poor were deported to labor camps as parasites. Because once society is made equal, anyone who’s still unequal must be an exploiter or a parasite.
You can’t end poverty, except through opportunity, and that’s the one thing their social system doesn’t offer. It’s why America under Obama is poorer than ever. Jobs aren’t created by confiscating wealth, but by encouraging free enterprise. But when the goal isn’t to create jobs, but to create a static society where everyone knows their place, then their way is best. All totalitarian movements are at their heart, reactionary. Even if they’re cloaked in red t-shirts and rock concerts. And reactionary movements are often spearheaded by an upper class trying to deny social mobility to the working class. And when you take a magnifying glass to liberalism, that’s exactly what it looks like.
Of course this isn’t an original observation. Orwell’s Oceania in 1984 worked on the same exact principle. Orwell was warning about the rise of a totalitarian left with no regard for human rights. But it’s already here.
2. Pro-Peace – The left is peaceful in the same way that active volcanoes are gentle, and tsuanmis are a good way to cool off after a long summer day.
Look around the world at the left of center regimes, and you come away with a horror show of constant conflicts. (The left explains this as the result of vast conspiracies by reactionary forces against the freedom loving peoples of the world and their friendly dictators.) And then count how many liberals wear t-shirts with King or Gandhi on them, and how many wear t-shirts with Che on them.
If you read the official talking points, you would have no idea that America fought most of its wars in the 20th century under Democratic Presidents. Or that the enthusiastic revolutionaries of the USSR and China between them accounted for more dead, than would have been produced by a nuclear war.
But being pro-peace is yet another talking point. The left is not pro-peace, it’s against wars being fought by their political opponents. Take a measure of how much coverage anti-war protests received under Bush, and how much coverage they receive under Obama. The war hasn’t gone away, even the protests haven’t entirely gone away (mostly by the same Marxist-Trotskyist groups that were running them all along) but the coverage has gone down the rabbit hole.
Then let’s take a walk back to WW2, when American liberals went from being anti-war when Hitler invaded Poland, to being pro-war when he invaded the Soviet Union. The Trotskyists of the era remained anti-war and the Communist party in the United States helped the authorities deal with them. Because suddenly war was in their interest.
The liberal position on war is that they are against it, unless they are for it. And then when it’s over, they are against it, because it didn’t accomplish all their goals. Liberals were against WW2, before they were for it, but then they were against it, once those GI’s weren’t wearing down German tanks anymore, but blocking Soviet tanks from “liberating” the rest of Europe. Liberals were for Israel, when England was against Israel, but they were against Israel, when Arab tanks forwarded from the Soviet Union were being blown up by the damned Israelis.
An easy way to sketch out the liberal position on a war, is to check the political ideology of the government fighting it and how it accords with their own politics, the political ideology of the enemy they are fighting against, and the effect on any left wing regimes. Add all that up and you get the liberal position on the war. The further left you go, the higher the bar goes.
Liberals will support wars by liberal governments against developed countries they consider reactionary. They will generally oppose all wars by conservative governments. They will generally oppose wars by liberal governments against undeveloped countries, sometimes even when those countries are reactionary, unless the government conducting the war is far to the left.
There are ideological complications and rivalries in the mix. There’s also the human factor. Some American liberals did support the American invasion of Afghanistan initially, but the left never did. A handful of liberals actually thought the American program was within their own ideology, but they were primarily British, and were quickly ostracized for it. On the other hand, George Galloway, who openly supported Saddam, is still considered a hero of the people. Because as bad as Saddam worse, the general agreement is that America was worse, because it represents capitalism and people with jobs. Which are not things the left likes.
And there you have it. The left’s commitment to peace. Or rather a commitment to anti-war rallies, when the war in question doesn’t seem to be in their interest, and isn’t being waged to protect a left-wing country, or a group that the left is allied with.
1. Patriotic – Every now and then liberals like to claim that they’re patriotic. Usually around an election. Of course they’re not patriotic in the “wear a flag on your lapel” kind of way. They’re more patriotic in the “point out everything wrong with your country and then threaten to move to Canada if you don’t win the election” way. Which is fine. America has seen patriots like that before. They used to wear green coats and moved to Canada, right around the time the last British troops left New York on Evacuation Day.
Occasionally when in power liberals will actually try to brand their opponents as traitors or unpatriotic, but like a dog trying to talk, it never sounds right. Mostly they have to defend themselves against charges of being unpatriotic, particularly when they’ve been caught attending a church whose rousing hymn is “God Damn America”.
It’s a challenge being patriotic, when you don’t believe in American Exceptionalism, or even the value of the Nation-State. When you think that the world would run better if everyone just listened to what the UN tells them to do. When you think that its history is the story of how rich Europeans murdered all the natives and built smokestacks over their graves in order to plunder South America of its fruit– being patriotic really requires contortionism that would put any circus acrobat to shame.
That’s probably why liberals don’t do the patriotism thing very well. It’s hard to spit in someone’s face one day and then hug them the next. For liberal politicians, patriotism is one of those unfortunate election season things they try to get through as quickly as possible. And hope no one asks them if they believe in the Constitution.
When they’re forced to, they will say something vague about America’s heritage of tolerance, and imply that the WW2 GI’s were fighting for socialism, civilian trials for terrorists and opposition to tort reform. They’re most comfortable around the Civil War and WW2. Anything outside that comfort zone makes them itchy. They will pose next to Old Glory when they have to, if they have a relative who fought in a war, they will bring him up. If he’s not dead, they will drag him out. If he is dead, they will dig him up. But just don’t ask them any questions about the application of their vaunted patriotism. Or why if they’re so patriotic, they can’t actually get behind their country in wartime.
Of course they will answer that true patriotism means undermining your country in wartime. Which means that Benedict Arnold was the original patriot.

Take away these 5 and what do you have left? Nothing but a political ideology that seeks power and will use any rhetoric and trick to get it. And that is the real face of modern day liberalism.

via docstalk.blogspot.com

noahdavidsimon’s posterous

non-confrontational approach with Palestinians nearly gets four soldiers killed

Palestinians hold a sign depicting a swastika during clashes at Qalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah March 19, 2010. Stone-throwing Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces in several locations in East Jerusalem and the West Bank amid tensions over Israel‘s recently announced plan to build houses in East Jerusalem.

via daylife.com

On Friday, I reported that four IDF soldiers were nearly lynched on Thursday night in Hebron.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Residents of the local Jewish community blamed the IDF’s non-confrontational policy vis-a-vis Arab rioters for the incident. “The fact that the soldiers did not shoot when they saw they were in danger is a direct result of the orders forbidding them from dealing with the Arab rioters [in Hevron] over the past few weeks,” residents said. Instead of putting a stop to violent riots, “IDF soldiers have been told to stand by and wait for PA forces, who are the only ones authorized to restore order.”

Former Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector in Teen Sex Sting

Makes one wonder what Saddam offered this guy to be against the war? The chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-98 and harsh critic of the war in Iraq, Ritter is accused of contacting the 15 “girl” while using the handle “delmarm4fun” last February.

Ritter, 48, allegedly masturbated in front of a Web camera while he was engaged in conversation in an Internet chat room with an undercover cop posing as the teenage girl. He declined to discuss the charges Thursday when reporters visited his New York residence.

“I said there would be no comment,” Ritter said, according to the Albany Times Union. “Why don’t you guys just go away?”

• Click here to read the affidavit.

• Click here to read the criminal complaint.

The New York Post reported Ritter was caught in a similar case in April 2001 involving a 14-year-old girl, but he was never charged.

read the details via foxnews.com

Former Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector in Teen Sex Sting

Makes one wonder what Saddam offered this guy to be against the war? The chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-98 and harsh critic of the war in Iraq, Ritter is accused of contacting the 15 “girl” while using the handle “delmarm4fun” last February.

Ritter, 48, allegedly masturbated in front of a Web camera while he was engaged in conversation in an Internet chat room with an undercover cop posing as the teenage girl. He declined to discuss the charges Thursday when reporters visited his New York residence.

“I said there would be no comment,” Ritter said, according to the Albany Times Union. “Why don’t you guys just go away?”

• Click here to read the affidavit.

• Click here to read the criminal complaint.

The New York Post reported Ritter was caught in a similar case in April 2001 involving a 14-year-old girl, but he was never charged.

read the details via foxnews.com