EHR KUMT- They Are Comming

I received an email from the Birmingham Jewish Federation of a sermon given by Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Atlanta, Georgia. I thought that the Rabbis comment are worthwhile reading in respect to not only how Israel is viewed in the world but how ignorance and denial of radical Islamic belief threatens all.

 

EHR KUMT First Day of Rosh Hashanah 2010 By Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Atlanta, Georgia (Edited from the Rabbi's Sermon)

Our planet is immersed in perversity where morality is not so manifest – where the book burner is a hero and the pious one, a villain. 

We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. 

During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors. We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people. We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day. Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca. It was the entire planet. 

Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent. Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. 

But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent. 

"Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon those who did nothing as well. Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing."

In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win….. to rid the world of malevolence. We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evil doers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct. 

Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists. To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable. 

Make no mistake; we are under attack – our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land. 

A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city. Before the war there were thirty-seven shuls for 38,000 Jews. Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. 

We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno. After my return home I visited Cherry Hill for Shabbos. At the oneg an elderly family friend, Joe Magun, came over to me. “Shalom,” he said. “Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania.” “Yes,” I replied. “It was quite a powerful experience.” “Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno? The one with the big arch in the courtyard?” “Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon.” His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. “Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the arch. The Choral Synagogue was where I davened as a child.” He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past. His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. 

“I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Zev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky came to the shul” (Jabotinsky was Menachem Begin’s mentor – he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) 

Joe continued “When Jabotinsky came, he delivered the drasha on Shabbos morning and I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. ‘EHR KUMT. YIDN FARLAWST AYER SHTETL – He’s coming. Jews abandon your city.’ ” 

We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right -- his warning prophetic. 

"We got out but most did not.” I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity. Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all. I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated."

"Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evil doers."

Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided.

The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not.

The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post, in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeera condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it. Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil." 

We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping. We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. 

Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountain top. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. 

• Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None. 
• After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None. 
• After 9/11, how many anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None. 

And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness. 

The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. 

Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? 

Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee? Should there be a German cultural center in Auschwitz? 

Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? 

Should there be a thirteen story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero? 

Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. 

I don’t buy the argument:

“When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here.” America is greater than Saudi Arabia. And New York is greater than Mecca." 

Democracy and freedom must prevail. Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. 

But should they build at that site? No -- but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not. 

If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere. 

Believe it or not, I am a dues-paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start to finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least. Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, fire fights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U’Magog. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel. It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobble stoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street. It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bullet-proofed inner-city buses. It is in every school yard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater – in every place of innocence and purity. 

Israel is the laboratory – the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grizzly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West. 

In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank. 

Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psychopathic, loathsome evil. 

As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. 

Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel’s galling plight ultimately will be ours. 

Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda. 

• Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
•  There is a message sent and consequences when our president (Barack Obama) visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel. 
• There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights. 
• There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel. 
• There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states. 
• There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy. 

There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” John Milton warned, “Hypocrisy is the only evil that walks invisible.” 

 A few days after the Gaza blockade incident in the spring, a congregant happened past my office, glanced in and asked in a friendly tone – “Rabbi. How’re y’ doing?” I looked up, sort of smiled and replied – “I’ve had better days.” “What’s the matter? Is there anything I can do to cheer you up?” he inquired. “Thank you for the offer but I’m just bummed out today” and I showed him a newspaper article I was reading. “Madrid gay pride parade bans Israeli group over Gaza Ship Raid.” I explained to my visitor – “The Israeli gay pride contingent from Tel Aviv was not allowed to participate in the Spanish gay pride parade because the Mayor of Tel Aviv did not apologize for the raid by the Israeli military.” 

The only country in the entire Middle East where gay rights exist, is Israel. The only country in the entire Middle East where there is a gay pride parade, is Israel. The only country in the Middle East that has gay neighborhoods and gay bars, is Israel.Gays in the Gaza would be strung up, executed by Hamas if they came out and yet Israel is vilified and ostracized. Disinvited to the parade. 

Looking for logic? 

Looking for reason? 

Looking for sanity? 

 Kafka on his darkest, gloomiest day could not keep up with this bizarre spectacle and we “useful idiots” pander and fawn over cutthroats, sinking deeper and deeper into moral decay, as the enemy laughs all the way to the West Bank and beyond. It is exhausting and dispiriting. 

We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered species.

Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago – “Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v’Laila, yome – Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day.” 

We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom. It is a frightening and maddening place to be. 

How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us? 

How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice? Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure is at risk. 

The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn’t get it is baffling. 

Let’s try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading. Anyone buy that medical advice? 

Well, folks, that’s our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. – There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death. 

I was no great fan of George Bush – didn’t vote for him. (By the way, I’m still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right.

His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror. There was no middle ground – either you were friend or foe. There was no place in Bush’s world for a Switzerland. He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M., not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate and you get crushed. 

I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Krakow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun. 

Enough rhetoric – how about a little “show and tell?” A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen year old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.

That is the enemy. If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us. In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi Aisha’s disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha’s face should appear with the caption – “Radical Islamic savages did this.” And underneath – “This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmanijad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Osama bin Laden, by Edward Said, by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Queda, by CAIR.”

“The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness. We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies. We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real. If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.

Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis.

We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.

A rabbi was once asked by his students…. “Rebbi. Why are your sermons so stern?” Replied the rabbi, “If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, ‘di hoyz brent.’ Children our house is on fire and I must arouse you from your slumber.”

During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? 

Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? 

Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail. Democracies don’t always win. Tyrannies don’t always lose.

My friends – the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. "EHR KUMT!"

"Facts And the Arab-Israeli Conflict."

Here are overlooked facts in the current Middle East situation 

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem. 

Fact Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, 2,000 years before the rise of Islam. 

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel. 

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the land for 1,000 years, with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. 

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE lasted no more than 22 years. 

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit. 

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran. 

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem. 

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs towards Jerusalem. 

9. Arab and Jewish refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of the Jews. 68% left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. 

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. 

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be 930,000. 

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100 million refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey. 

13. The Arab-Israeli conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won. 

14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them. 15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths. 

16. The UN record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel. 

17. Of the 690 UN General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel. 

18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians. 

19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. 

20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

New Comments on Muslims and Terrorism

After I published my last Blog entry I was sent two interesting items that I though pertinent to my previous Blog entry.

The first is an article entitled “All European Life Died in Auschwitz" that was written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez and published in a Spanish newspaper on January 15th, 2008. His distinctive warning message that he writes about here is extremely relevant in light of the incident at Fort Hood and other Islamic terrorist actions in the USA and Europe.

ALL EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ
By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity and talent. The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned.

Under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime.

Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts. And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition.

We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.

The second item was sent to me from a good Christian friend of mine in America. It is an open letter sent by a venerable 95 year old US Navy veteran BMC Harold Estes to President Barak Obama.

This venerable and much honored WW II vet is well known in Hawaii for his seventy-plus years of service to patriotic organizations and causes all over the country. A humble man, blind, unable to write and without a political bone in his body, he has never spoken out before about a government official, until now. He dictated this letter to a friend, signed it and mailed it to the president

Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don't believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos'n Mate. Now I live in a "rest home" located on the western end of Pearl Harbor allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country. One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man. So here goes.

I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish. I can't figure out what country you are the president of. You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:
"We're no longer a Christian nation"
"America is arrogant" - (Your wife even announced to the world, "America is mean-spirited." Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and hopelessness.)

I'd say shame on the both of you but I don't think you like America nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

After 9/11 you said, “America hasn't lived up to her ideals”. Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn't mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around because we stand for freedom.

I don't think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.

Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don't, I'll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue. You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don't want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts who was putting up a fight? You don't mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don't want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

One more thing, I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life but you're the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you're not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you're thinking of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president. You're not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That's not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now. And I sure as hell don't want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle.

Sincerely,
Harold B. Estes

Kindly note these comments are from NON Israeli sources and that they BOTH indicate that what I wrote is important to ALL non Moslems.

Islamic Extemism And Moslem-Americans

In the last three decades successive American administrations and the western press have been fearful of relations with the third world and primarily with the Arab countries as they have bent over backward to refrain from openly confronting Islamic extremism. 
For many in the "Western World" in Europe and America they see that the problem of the Middle East stems from the backing of Israel in it’s continuing conflict with the Palestinians. There are many groups active in Europe and North America, who work tirelessly to lay the blame for Islamaphobia -Anti-Moslem and anti-Arab feelings on Israel. 
Very few see this anti-Moslem feeling as having been caused by the ever widening abyss that has opened in the conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and has caused increased casualties among US service personnel. Recent incidents have brought the west to realize that there may not be a way to satisfactorily end what at one time was a noble cause called Operation Iraqi Freedom.

It is also apparent from the reactions of the news media in the USA that the citizens of the United States have not come to realize fully the danger from within that has arisen among certain members of the Moslem American community. 

Allow me to state here that there are many loyal and patriotic Moslem Americans who have accepted the basis of true pluralism that is America. 

Yet sadly there are those members of the community, specifically those recent immigrants from primarily Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan and the Palestinian Areas who are openly hostile and rabidly anti-American. such as the Pakistani born Daoud Gilani aka David Coleman Headley that infiltrated into Mombai in preparation for the terrible terrorist attack that left 173 dead. Headley and his associate Tahawwur Hussain Rana, both of Chicago, are held to have maintained ties with the al Qaeda-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) which was held responsible for those attacks. 
The latest in this list was Ahmad Abousamra, a 35-year-old Syrian-American who was the chief editor of its online propaganda magazine was an American computer scientist.

It was from this group of recent Moslem immigrants that the leaders of the Islamic extremists were able to recruit terrorists who brought the fight to America in January 1993 when two CIA agents were shot and killed as they enter CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The following month, February 1993 a rented van packed with explosives was driven into the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City and six people are killed and over 1000 are injured.

Since the tragedy of “9/11” - September 11th, 2001 and the backlash from the terrible destruction of the Twin Towers by the 19 members of Al Quida, many “good hearted” and naïve Americans persist on denying that it was the faith of Islam that was responsible for the deaths of the innocent civilians. Americans are fierce adherents to the philosophy expressed in the Constitution by Thomas Jefferson of the freedom of religion and as such they are fearful of being labeled Islamophobics.

During the past few days, since the horrific murder of 13 and the wounding of many more US service personnel by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, who coldly walked into the room at Fort Hood and climbed on a table and shouted "Allah Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) and committed a “Massacre”. We have all heard the exact same lame words of excuse by the Moslem American community and the lame statements by those in the United States Government who ignore the obvious. That when one goes into a room and kills others by shouting “Allah Akbar” it is cold blooded murder,terrorism for Islamic reasons.

Newsweek's Evan Thomas stated, "I cringe that he's a Muslim. . . . I think he's probably just a nut case…" Time Magazine's Joe Klein said it "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." Nidal's actions have been termed as an effect of "Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder”, in a blatant attempt to ignore the obvious. As Charles Krauthammer stated in his article fom November 13th, 2009 in the Washington Post, "Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one." As of this writing only Fox News has labeled Nidal as a “Terrorist” and his act as that of terrorism.

The Arab-American Anwar Al-Awlaki an American-born imam and now lives in Yemen, preached in 2001 at the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., where two of the “9/11” attackers reportedly prayed. Only this week in an article on his Web site he has praised Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and called the alleged Fort Hood shooter a "hero". Anwar Al-Awlaki claims that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan “…is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people," Awlaki wrote. "This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn't exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a U.S. soldier."
"Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact, the only way a Muslim could justify serving as a soldier in the U.S. army is if his intention to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal."
The Liberal appeasement groups in the west and specifically in the US chose like ostriches to ignore the fact that there are those of the Islamic faith who are inherently violent and that their jealously of other religions, as espoused by Muhammad, is one of conquest –“Jihad”, a demand for supremacy over all others. Extremist Islamic followers in the United States and throughout the Christian world, especially in Europe, are working silently like a cancer on the naïve to subvert, convert and conquer. The fantastic birthrate of the adherents of extremist Islam is a very real threat to all who are not true believers.

Most “Westeners” do not know anything of the ways of the Islamic-Moslem faith. They have no idea of Jihad which means "to strive or struggle" (in the way of God) and is considered the "Sixth Pillar of Islam" by the Sunni Moslems of Al Quiada. According to Islamic jurisprudence, jihad is usually taken to mean military exertion against non-Muslim combatants in the defense or expansion of the Islamic state, the ultimate purpose of which is to universalize Islam. Jihad, the only form of warfare permissible in Islamic law, may be declared against apostates, rebels, highway robbers, violent groups, un-Islamic leaders or states which refuse to submit to the authority of Islam.

Since the beginnings of the Islamic faith when Muhammad used deception against the Jewish tribes of Medina, Islam has spread by the use of subterfuge, conquest and at the edge of a sword. Let us examine a case in point the Jews of Khaybar since the agreement with the Jews of Khaybar also served as an important precedent in determining the status of dhimmis, (non-Muslims under Muslim rule) for Islamic Law.

Those members of the Jewish clans who opposed the Muhammad were forced into exile, enslavement or death. Upon the surrender Jews of Khaybar they were allowed to live in the oasis only on the condition that they would give one-half of their produce to the Muslims. The Jews were allowed to continue to live in the oasis for several more years until they were finally expelled by caliph Umar. The imposition of tribute upon the conquered Jews served as a precedent for provisions in the Islamic law requires the exaction of tribute known as Jizya from non-Muslims under Muslim rule, and confiscation of land belonging to non-Muslims into the collective property of the Muslim community. This is the new policy of Moslem Jihad in the Madrases of the Sunni’s as proposed by Al Quiada.

In recent years the Genie of Moslem violence and the tendency of adherents of Islam to violently express their view’s on others has risen from the Madras’s of the Islamic centers of the Sunni extremists in the Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan and the Shi’ite Madrases of Tehran. Their word of Jihad has spread through out the world extensively with the help of the Internet and the gross stupidity of the Western “Intelligence” agencies.

Islamic violence exploded on the world in the aftermath of the victory of the Islamic Mujahadeen on the Russians in Afghanistan. Until then the extremist Islamic world had been in a state of suspended animation. With the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan by the forces of the ex-Soviet Union in the 1980s the naïve leadership of the American CIA developed the belief to use Moslem fanaticism to create a Viet Nam dilemma for the Soviet Forces in Afghanistan. This fantastically naïve approach is immortalized in the fantasy movie “Rambo III” pits “freedom loving” Afghanis against the villainous Soviet Regime. What the Americans did not know was that by incorporating Arab “freedom” fighters such as Osama Bin Laden into the Mujehadine they had unwittingly released the Genie of Moslem extremism from it’s slumber. For the fighters of Allah it was not a war against Communism but a war against the Western values that openly clash with those orthodox Islamic beliefs.

Add to this the French government’s release of the Ayatollah to Iran in 1979, in the mistaken belief that the Ayatollah would bring reform and change to the benefit of the western camp against the Soviet Union in Iran, this was a mistake as large as that of the CIA in Afghanistan. What the ulterior motive was of the French Government in the Iranian affair is still unbeknownst.

What is clear is that the Western Christian world began it’s downfall with the hijacking of the four International airliners to Jordan in 1970. The governments of Europe through their “Intelligence” units were desperate to prevent “Arab” Palestinian terrorism from invading their lives. This is why Carlos Illyich Ramirez Sanchez the arch terrorist of the 1970’s was able to keep the millions he brought into his Swiss Bank as well as that of Yasser Arafat and his cronies. “The Jackal” who was run by the East German Intelligence services the STASI for the KGB is now serving a life sentence for three murders in Paris in 1975 and for four bomb attacks in France in 1982 and 1983 that killed 12 people and wounded more than 100. His most audacious attack was the kidnapping of 11 oil ministers in Vienna in 1975, which elicited an estimated £10m in ransom from the “moderate” Arab Sunni leadership primarily that of Saudi Arabia.

During the 1970’s and 1980’s the CIA, The Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service, BND) the foreign intelligence agency of the German government and the French DGSE were protectors of the Palestinian “Black September” terrorists led by Ali Hassan Salameh – aka the “Red Prince” from the vengeance of the Israeli “Mossad” since he was able to “inform” them to prevent attacks on European soil. This Machiavellian approach was used to prevent atrocities on Western targets and it was believed that this same policy would protect them from Arab terrorism.

In April of 1983 the CIA station in the US Embassy compound in Beirut Lebanon was hit by a suicide bomber from the Iranian backed Shi'ite Hezbollah and 63 people were murdered. Then just six short months later a large truck heavily laden down with over 2500 pounds of TNT smashed through the main gate of the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut. 241 US servicemen mainly Marines were killed. Two months later in December 1983, another truck loaded with explosives wais driven into the US Embassy in Kuwait. The following year, in September 1984, another van was driven into the gates of the US Embassy in Beirut. In April 1985 a bomb exploded in a restaurant frequented by US soldiers in Madrid. 22 were murdered in August in 1985 when a Volkswagen loaded with explosives was driven into the main gate of the US Air Force Base at Rhein-Main.

During the 10 year bloody war of Sadam Hussein’s Iraq against the Iranian regime of the Ayatollah, the Sunni versus Shi’ite part of the conflict was largely ignored by the western media. The death of thousands of Iranians many mere children in combat and the massacre of the Kurds, by gas attack, was almost totally ignored by the Western mass media since it had no effect on the west. Meanwhile the continual conflict between Israel and it’s Arab neighbors was constantly under the severest scruntiny of the world media.

It was not until the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 by the Iraqi’s that the West awoke, not so much in response to the invasion of one nation by another, but out of a collective fear at the loss of the wealth of oil revenues that came from the exploitation by the Kuwaitis of their vast monetary wealth and land holdings through out the west. The vast amount of monies in western banks together with extensive property holdings were now part of the thriving western economies. The fear that these vast holding should suddenly by withdrawn by the Kuwaitis and Saudi Arabian’s prompted Western intelligence agencies to push western leaders to act. The close ties of George H. Bush along with prominent business leaders throughout Europe predominately in the United Kingdom also Saudi Arabian princes and business leaders brought the Western powers forward to act against Sadam Hussein.

The question of the story of the WMD –Weapons of Mass Destruction and it’s use as an excuse by American and Western forces to attack Iraq was later “proven to be a lie”. However to us in Israel and the Kurdish people it was never was a lie. What became of the weapons and why the story was suppressed and denied is known only once again to the CIA, The Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service, BND) the foreign intelligence agency of the German government and the French DGSE.
The SAS and DELTA force units that operated in the Western Iraqi desert saw them and how they were smuggled into Syria. These reports were suppressed in order to prevent the Arab world from breaking from the coalition forces. In the aftermath of the Israeli raid on the facilities in the eastern Syrian desert near Dayr az-Zawr on September 6th, 2007, the question that was initially asked was, "Was it an attack on the stockpile of Saddam's chemical/bio weapons snuck out of Iraq and into Syria for safekeeping before the US invasion of April 2003?" Almost as soon as it was disclosed the story was once again suppressed to appease the “moderate” Arab world and to protect allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Americans in particular live the dream of equality and religious tolerance. Americans wish to live in peace in freedom with liberties and equality. Over the years Americans have gone to foreign lands to fight tyrants and darkness to bring the blessings of freedom and life. Americans are not conquerors; they are liberators for we were once conquered. Like the ancient Hebrews, the Pilgrims, the first Americans lived in foreign lands and were oppressed until they came to the shores of North America. They thirsted for religious freedom and tolerance they abhorred hatred. It is this same selfless motivation that motivated so many young brave Americans to fight for freedom on far away shores. Many have died far away in this noble gesture and their bodies lie there as a stark testimony to the price of freedom. The major question that should be raised here is, “Are the people of Iraq and Afghanistan willing to stand up for their own freedom?”

The enlightened and educated in the Arab world know this and they are willing to live in peace. Yet they themselves live in abject fear of Islamic fundalmentalism and Jihad. They are not striving hard enough to prevent it’s spread among the impoverished and poor where hatred and extremist beliefs thrive. Why do Moslem Americans continue to agitate against Israel when they should be striving to lead their brothers and sisters out of the darkness of Islamic extremism? Until the “Moderate” and fabulously wealthy Arab nations begin sharing their wealth to improve the conditions and standard of living of their brothers the world will have “Shahidim” or “Martyrs” for the cause of Islam.

The continual appeasement of the Arabs by the entire “Western World” and the denial of the rise of extreme Islamic fundamentalism has silenced the truth of the danger that it holds for all in the western world.

How Truthful Are UN Reports?

On October 30th, 2009, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon released a report to the UN Security Council in which he said the United Nations took the Israeli allegations about weapons smuggling to Hezbollah seriously, but lacked the ability to independently verify the information. Ban wrote in the report, that the Lebanese government had not informed the UN of a single incident of weapons smuggling to its territory. Michael Williams special envoy for the UN denied knowledge of alleged arms smuggling to the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In the UN Report it fails to mention that on October 13th 2009 after a tip-off from Israeli intelligence the German freighter Hansa India was discovered carrying Iranian arms and ammunition hidden within containers destined for Lebanon, the Berlin government ordered it to sail straight to Malta where the containers were unloaded and found to contain the Iranian arms.

A mere two days after the publication of the report early Wednesday morning Nov. 3rd, 2009, the cargo ship Francop sailing under an Antiguan flag was stopped by the Israeli Navy some 100 miles west of the Israeli coast near Cyprus in rough seas. The Commander of the Israeli frigate asked permission from the ships captain to board the ship for inspection in accordance with UN Resolution 1701. Once the sailors were invited on board they inspected several suspicious containers and discovered they contained a large hidden consignment of Iranian weaponry bound for Lebanon and the Hezbollah. At a news briefing on Wednesday Nov 4th, 2009, the Israeli Navy commander Brig.-Gen Ronnie Ben-Yehuda acknowledged the interception at sea.

It has been revealed that Iran's national shippers, loaded the Iranian ship, Visea, formerly called “Iran Zanian” and is owned by the official Iranian shipping Corporation IRISL, either at Bandar Abbas or Bandar Imam Khomeini in Iran. It had set sail from Iran under the watchful eye of US and Israeli satellites on the 14th of October 2009. The Visea next docked at Jabel Ali in Dubai on the 18th of October. The Visea headed out of the Straits of Hormuz and into the Gulf of Oman shadowed by the guided missile cruiser USS Anzio of the US Navy's Task Force 151 under the command of Rear Adm. Scott Sanders. The purpose of this task force is to prevent piracy and to monitor Iranian arms smuggling. It has been reported that Israeli military intelligence were also kept informed of the Francop's movements by the Task Force, including the projected times of its passage through the Suez Canal and arrival in the Mediterranean. It has been assumed that both Tehran and Hezbollah expected it to be seized, although they did not know by whom.

The Iranian ship sailed into the Gulf of Aden and around the Saudi Arabian peninsular and through the Red Sea and entered the Suez Canal, reaching the Egyptian port of Damietta on Monday, Oct. 26, 2009. It has been assumed that the Egyptian Navy monitored the arms ship as it passed through the canal to the Mediterranean. However the Egyptians allowed the arms shipment to be offloaded from the ship at the Egyptian port and left for trans-shipment on the docks. The Visea immediately left for the British port of Felixtowe after unloading the containers and from there to Hamburg, Germany. It has been reported that after the seizure of the illicit cargo an international operation to apprehend the Iranian ship Visea was instigated.

The Francop, a German-owned ship operated by a Cypriot company that serves as a “feeder ship,” a ship used to shuttle cargo between regular ports of call, docked at the Egyptian port of Damietta on Nov. 1, 2009. Iran has taken to using these commercial "feeder" vessels such as the Francop to disguise its vast traffic of illicit arms to Lebanon. Ships that sail frequently on regular tours around the Mediterranean ports are less likely to arouse attention. It is by this route of deception that Iran has supplied Hezbollah with thousands of tons of arms and ammunition in the last few months. The route of the Francop begins at Damietta, thence to Limassol in Cyprus and from there to the ports of Beirut, Lebanon, Latakia, Syria, and back. The containers and their hidden weaponry, which had stood on the Egyptian controlled docks for five days, were placed on board. Neither the owners nor the crew knew about the concealed arms cargo in the containers, which had no mention of the weaponry in the ship's manifests. These fictitious documents, which were never checked by the Egyptians, were left behind together with the containers by the Iranian Visea before her departure.

The Francop then set sail from the Egyptian port of Damietta with 300 containers, in which some 50 of them had hundreds of tons of Iranian arms for Hezbollah hidden inside them. Under the watchful eye of both US Naval Intelligence of the Sixth Fleet and by Israeli Intelligence and Israeli Navy warships. It was decided not to take any action at that time because of the ongoing joint US Israeli “Juniper Cobra” military exercise. American and Israeli commanders agreed to hold off seizing the ship until a few hours after the two-week war game ended on Tuesday the 3rd of November. Furthermore the US Chief of Staff was forbidden to embark on direct military action against an Iranian target on direct instructions from Washington. The American administration was fearful of provoking a fresh crisis with Tehran and they were reluctant to act openly so long as nuclear negotiations are still in progress.

Therefore the Israeli government realizing the importance of the Intelligence reports decided to act alone in order to prevent the weaponry reaching Lebanon and Hezbollah. After the inspection at sea by the Israeli Navy and the discovery on board of hidden weapons the ship was ordered to set sail for the port of Ashdod.

Upon arrival it's load of containers were unloaded and searched and some 50 containers were found to be secretly carrying a large consignment of arms concealed between sacks of polyethylene pellets.

What was found was some 500 tons of smuggled arms included boxes of 7.62mm ammunition for the hundreds of Russian made AK-47s assault rifles, hand grenades, 122mm and 107mm Katyusha rockets, Iranian manufactured 120mm, 80mm and 60mm mortar shells and anti-tank missiles inside the containers!

Though US-Israeli intelligence and naval cooperation has made it increasingly more difficult for the Iranians to smuggle arms to the Hamas and Hezbollah, Tehran continues to mask their shipments of weaponry as civilian merchandize - hoping to draw less attention to its deliveries.

In his interview after the capture of the illicit arms shipment Brig. Ben-Yehuda related how this latest consignment was a much larger and deadlier amount of weaponry than that carried by the Palestinian arms ship Karin-A. The Palestinian owned ship was intercepted on September 12th, 2002 in the Red Sea by Israeli forces in Operation Noah’s Ark.

It was later proven, from documents captured in the Israel operation "Defensive Wall" – Homat Magen against the “Palestinians” in the Palestinian Authority Offices in the “Muhkater” in Ramala. That Arafat personally authorized the use of $15 million dollars taken from UN and EU funds earmarked for the improvement of Palestinian infrastructure to purchase the 50 tons of equipment on the Karin-A. These weapons included Katyusha rockets, mortars, sniper rifles, bullets, anti-tank mines, anti-tank missiles, as well as over two and a half tons of pure explosives.

The Negation of Israel and Zionism

After having read the recent E-mail article by Carlos (1) I found it necessary to mention two items of concern for those who believe in Israel, Zionism and the right of the Jewish people to a land of our own.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!
    The groaning earth in travail and in pain
Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
    And the dead nations never rise again. (2)

There exists a hideous new trend in the on going propaganda war of misinformation by the “haters of Israel”-Hebrew-“ Sonea Yisrael”. I have given these abject haters of Israel in the 'Talkback" dialogues the Hebrew term to describe them for what they are pure and simple. I have encountered these “Haters” countless times on the Haaretz.com Israeli newspaper in English web site.

These "Talk-backers", who come from all over the globe, utilize almost every possible ‘Talkback’ article to spew out such extreme hatred and baseless lies to demonize Israel  that naive readers who do not have the factual historic background will begin to believe their lies and misrepresentations of truth and historical fact.

Take for example former president Jimmy Carter's label ‘Apartheid’ that he applied to the Israeli society, government and its successful security policies. This ‘branding’ of Israel with the term of Apartheid, a mark of Cain to the Liberals and the ‘Leftists’, has sweep through the ‘Haters of Israel” camp like a wild fire.

 “Anathema maranatha! ! was the cry
    That rang from town to town, from street to street;
At every gate the accursed Mordecai
    Was mocked and jeered, and spurned ”(2)

They use the offensive term every chance they get to demean Israel in front of others as well as irk those who support Israel. They enjoy waving it as a ‘red flag’ to taunt and intimidate.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has failed miserably so far to counter Carter’s and the ‘Hate Camp’s” usage of the term ‘Apartheid’. There is a crucial need to fully explain the abject necessity of the road blocks and the security wall which are essential and have proven to be highly successful in curbing homicidal suicide bombers. This new cry of “Apartheid” has become the newest rallying cry and ‘racial’ slur against the right of all Israeli’s to provide for their self defense. This ‘labeling’ is derogatory and it is meant to stir hatred and animosity among the naïve readers.

In addition to what the article says of the Palestinian Authority and their backers going all out to negate the basis of the right of the Jewish people for a Jewish State. They are proceeding with a 'full court press’ to undermine the basis for Zionism which they term as a "cancer" in the heart of the Middle East.

Not only do they now deny the Jewish people our existence as an entity they are working full time in their propaganda war to debase the existence of the "right" of the Jewish people to the land.

A sterling example of which is the story of a deserted nearby "Palestinian" village known as Suhmata, located three kilometers to the east of my home, here in Ma’alot. I came upon their 'story' by chance when I went into Google Earth with my youngest son. It seems that in their web site, which is linked to Google Earth, is part of the "Palestine Remembered" network.

These refugee "minorities of the mandated areas", (as the Arab inhabitants are called in Article 2 of the Mandate for Palestine) are exerting their ‘right’ to the “Land of Canaan” that “predates” the Jewish claim to the ‘Land of Israel’ in their site they state that,“Suhmata, … was a Canaanite village”. Therefore as ‘true descendants of the Canaanite people their ‘right’ to the land predates the Jewish claim to the “Land of Israel”. The hidden connotation behind their wording is that the Jews=Ancient Israelites are and have always been conquers and invaders and usurpers of the ‘Canaanite=Palestinian People’.(5)

Furthermore they continue to erase any vestige of Jewish linkage to the site by denying the origin of the name Suhmata, “…its name originates from Syriac and means light and sunrise.”

What the authors of the above text neglect to mention is that the village of “Suhmata” was originally a Israelite settlement by the members of the tribe of Asher from before the sixth century BCE. A series of excavations was carried out in the upper mound beginning in 1922 by members of the Royal Society of Archaeologists. In their excavation they uncovered coins, pottery shards and a mosaic located in a synagogue which was removed to the Royal Museum in London.

In their site, Suhmata, they claim, “Its known history starts from the Persian attack of 612-627BCE  and that . This attack destroyed the village and its location was changed from the northern to the southern mound.” Their own statement gives the Hebrew name for the site,  שומםor Desolation as it was a Israelite village destroyed by the Babylonian invasion as proven in the dig.

With regards to Suhmata- "Foundations and ruins, some drafted stone, one rock-cut tomb filled with rubbish; probably a Crusading Village This village divided into two distinct quarters occupies two hills near each other, between which is a great birket, partly cut in the rock and partly built. on of these hills is crowned by the remains of a fortress flanked by towers and built with simple rubble; it contained several subterranean magazines, a mosque and various chambers. The foundation is attributed to Dhaher sl Amer It is now three parts demolished and on the place where it stood grow vines and tobacco."- Guerin 1870 page 192 The Survey for Western Palestine

In addition to which the prologue of Josephus’s book Antiquities of the Jews - Book V states:

“How Joshua, the commander of the Hebrews, made war with the Canaanites, and overcame them, and destroyed them,(!) and divided their land by lot to the tribes of Israel.” Furthermore Josephus relates “So Joshua took both Eleazar and the senate, and with them the heads of the tribes, and distributed the land to the nine tribes, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh, appointing the dimensions to be according to the largeness of each tribe.” “The tribe of Asher had that part which was called the Valley, for such it was, and all that part which lay over-against Sidon. The city Acre belonged to their share, which is also named Actipus.”  

This division and destruction of the Canaanites occurs during the time of Joshua Ben Nun approximately 1254BCE-1204BCE. So if the Bible and Josephus tells us that all of the “Canaanites were destroyed” then exactly pray tell just who are these “Palestinians”?

I also wondered just how these “Falestinians” explain away the injunction that the Lord placed on Jacob and Essau to take Canaanite wives and instead Esau marries two wives, both Hittite women, that is, locals, in violation of Abraham's (and God's) injunction not to take wives from among the Canaanite population. In the Book of Genesis Chapter 26:

34 And when Esau was forty years old, he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite.

It should be noted that Josephus Flavius speaks of Titus leading a Cohort of Asyrian cavalry in 66CE that swept up towards Giscala (Gush HaLav), headquarters of Yohanan ben Levi one of the chief commanders of the revolt against Rome,“Vespasian sent against them Titus, with a thousand horsemen” (3)(4) “Placidus, who was come with two cohorts of footmen, and one troop of horsemen, and was sent thither by Cestius Gallus to burn those villages of Galilee that were near Ptolemais.”

Furthermore, Josephus relates how they destroyed Jewish settlements on the way prior to the assault on Jotapata-Yodfat HaGalil in today’s Gush Segev region. Josephus knew the story well since he was the commander known as Joseph ben Matthias.

Josephus further mentions that the Galil was full of Jewish life prior to the revolt against Rome in 66 CE: "…now there are two hundred and forty cities and villages in Galilee”. Book One 46.

This newest ploy by the Palestinian apologists is a major undertaking being pressed by Palestinian Academics, many of whom are descendants of the refugees who fled the “Nakbah” or “tragedy of expulsion”. These same Arab academic apologists are trying their best to equate their story to that of the Holocaust. Their total effort can also be reflected in the article Forsaking Israel by Anne Bayefsky,  

In her article she relates the story of how the;”…United Nations outdid themselves again at the annual U.N. Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”

In conclusion we who back Israel and the right and need of the Jewish people to a land and home of our own must speak out now and demand our equal rights loudly and clearly.

In the years before the Balfour Declaration, a member of the House of Lords asked Chaim Weizmann, "Why do you Jews insist on Palestine when there are so many undeveloped countries you could settle in more conveniently?"
Weizmann said: "That is like my asking you why you drove twenty miles to visit your mother last Sunday when there are so many old ladies living on your street."

(1) http://www.peacewithrealism.org/headline/ominous.htm

(2) The Jewish Cemetery at Newport Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

(3) Josephus Flavius The War Of The Jews, Book IV, Chapter 2

(4) Two major Roman historians of the era, Tacitus and Suetonius, who wrote in the generation after Josephus.

(5) “The boundaries of ancient Canaan must be delineated, for in modern times the term Canaan has been used imprecisely. Inasmuch as Canaanites lived within well-defined regional territories or city-states with political and economic ties that drew them variously toward Syria, Mesopotamia or Egypt, geographical; and cultural boundaries can be established. Overall, the territory of Canaan has been described as “the Levant’s southern part, comprising Lebanon and southern Syria” (A. Mazar 1990 a:3) or “Western Palestine (the area west of the Jordan River), whose northern boundary fluctuated between southern and central Lebanon” (Picard 1998:40) More specifically, “Canaan’s boundaries began in the south at Wadi-al-Alrish and reached north to the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon Mountain ranges. The Western border was, of course, the Mediterranean, and the eastern was Transjordan (mostly the Bashan) and the Jordan River and Dead Sea further south” (Hacket 1997a:409)  

Anti-Semites and the Palestinian Distortion of Truth

We Jews, and especially those of us who are Israelis, realize from our recent experiences that today’s modern version of the anti-Semites can't tell Israelis apart from the Arabs. These hypocrites do not possess enough basic intelligence or knowledge to make a difference between us. It could be said that modern anti-Semitism does not stem from prejudice, but rather, from abject ignorance. It seems that recently those who harbor dark anti-Semitic thoughts have rapturously embraced the Palestinian cause because of their mutual hatred of the Jews and most importantly the Zionists and Israel.

It is a tendency among the least educated to classify people and to lump all those who are unknown to them together simply because it's more convenient that way. Try asking an anti-Semite for example, “What is the difference between the pale light skinned blue eyed blonds of Scandinavia and the former Soviet Union?” or “Who is from Sweden and just who is from Norway?” Can they tell who is Chinese from Japanese, a Tutsi from a Hutu or an Iraqi from a Kurd? Of course not, yet at a snap mention the three letter word – Jew and they will froth at the mouth.

In the world media, as in the media of the Arab world, Israel is singled out and branded as a blood thirsty monster intent on devouring its poor “defenseless” neighbors. The villainous caricatures of the vile Jew, with the grotesques and distorted faces with the hooked noses, serve both the anti-Semites and the Arab propagandists as one. This slanderous view is constantly expounded by the anti-Semites and their Palestinian cohorts in every venue they find. The two scenes in the recent Turkish melodrama, the first of the supposed IDF soldier murdering the young innocent girl with the smile on her face and the second of the murder of the Palestinian newborn child in the hands of her grandfather, are especially heinous in their anti-Semitic depiction of the Jew.

The pro-Palestinian Arabs and the anti-Semite strive to divert the world’s attention from nations that have engaged in bloody wars that were much crueler than the one between us and the Palestinians. Many of these conflicts have lasted for many years and have left thousands if not millions of people dead with thousands if not millions as refugees. They have tried to pervert historical truth through denial of the Holocaust. Yet in the very same breath they blame the Holocaust for their “Nakbah” –their-the collective Arab disastrous lost in the 1948 attempt to eradicate the Jewish presence in the Palestinian Mandated Territory.

By all estimates a total of 7,000 Palestinians were killed in the 62 years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, Russia’s attack on the Chechnya has left around 100,000 Chechens dead, of which even the most optimistic accounts place the number of “militants” to be at around 15,000. 

Additionally, how many Bosnian Moslems were murdered in the war with the Serbs? How many Hutus were murdered in Rwanda. What about the crimes of Jordan against the Palestinian refugees during the “Black September” of 1970 or of China’s inhuman occupation and oppression of Tibet and Xinjiang? No one dares to mention the extreme brutality with which the various Palestinian factions deal with one another in Gaza and the West Bank. To them this is irrelevant and unimportant what is most important is the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the Jews.

In today’s modern world of cable and satellite TV channels with their live news casts, Israel is consistently singled out for special scrutiny. Why is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the one most scrutinized by the world while the genocidal war in the Sudan with the tragedy of the Christian minority in Dafur is ignored? Of all the conflicts in the Middle East the conflict between the Arab world and the Palestinians against Israel, especially in the Gaza Strip, is a news bite item simply because of the myopic world view and it’s popularity as a news item. Israel is constantly viewed by the world press as a terrible place due to Israel’s replies in self defense to violent and murderous acts of hatred that stems from radical Islamic religious beliefs and anti-Semitism.

For the Jews and Christians Israel is the center of the world because of Jerusalem and its importance in the birth of Christianity. The Moslems envious and conscientious of this fact have attempted to create the “Big Lie” of Palestine and they have recently inflated the importance to the Moslem world of the Mosques on the Temple Mount in recent years to bring the Moslem world out of its ambivalence to the Palestinian cause.

The Palestinians have drawn from the anti-Semites stories that are rehashed versions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the “Blood Libel” such as that which was recently published in Sweden. They tell these new versions not because they are convinced that they are true, but rather, because they don't understand that there is no way in the world that the stories could be true. Like the anti-Semites of old the Palestinians absolve themselves from researching the historic facts for the real truth instead the more absurd and gory the claim the better.

To the anti-Semites and the Palestinians we are accused non-stop of committing Nazi-like crimes in our struggle for our existence against a foe bent on our total elimination. The world has been so blinded by the volume of anti-Semitic Palestinian hatred that they fail to understand that Israel is an enlightened Western democracy. They fail to distinguish Jewish morals from radical Islam's total lack of morality. They cannot tell the difference between our rule of law and our enemies' rule of genocidal hatred. They can not distinguish between a democratic state that constantly investigates and criticizes itself and a terrorist organization. The Palestinians do not reject any means of violence to eliminate us. The Palestinians feel that they have the right to lie ceaselessly and to distort factual historical truth in order to vilify our image worldwide. There is a great, fundamental and irrefutable difference in the Palestinians use of radical Islam's indiscriminate wickedness in the murder of Israeli children in a Pizza Parlor or in a Mall and the killing of children in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead - which was an unforgivable and tragic mistake that happen during combat.

The difference between us Israelis and the Palestinians can be summed up in two simple sentences:
We can erase them –“the Falestinians” - off the face of the earth if we wished, just like Amalek. Yet we are too moralistic to do so.
The Falestinians and the Arabs on the other hand have been attempting to eradicate us for nearly a century. IF they could eradicate us they would do so in a moment without any mercy.