Not a Peace Plan -- Israel is Peace Offering

In a day and age when the racist notion of the “house Negro” has finally, thankfully been laid to rest, it is the height of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism that the media and political pundits berate Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for not assuming the submissive posture of the “House Jew.”  We at Talking Tachlis are so proud of PM Netanyahu’s rejoinder to President Obama last Friday in the Oval Office after their private meeting (see their exchange here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l28xJitnP78&feature=youtu.be  or click in at 7:10 to hear Bibi:

Bibi’s  stirring defense of the Jewish homeland exemplified what true leadership is.  His extemporaneous appeal for Israel’s survival was so powerful and poignant it was as though G-d Almighty was speaking through Bibi.    Bibi spoke from the heart; he was strong, direct and clear.

That’s why the criticism of his remarks is so out of bounds. We were painfully dismayed to hear Bibi’s commentary blasted as “disrespectful” of President Obama.  The characteristically amnesiac press seems to have forgotten about the humiliation visited upon Netanyahu and his official coterie in March of 2010 when Obama walked out of a meeting and left them hanging while he went for dinner with Michelle. Talking heads fixated on sensationalizing the apparent tension between Obama and Netanyahu and castigated Bibi for “lecturing” and “schooling” the US President.  In a glorious display of Jewish strength, Bibi refused to play the role of the “dhimmi” Jew, the “sha-shtill” obsequious ghetto Jew of yore.  How dare a Jew stand resolute in defense of our homeland and our peoplehood, and in the White House, no less?   This is what elicited the firestorm of controversy that has ensued and been a sorry distraction from the substance of the messages delivered and the gravity of what is at stake.

Bibi could not have been any more compelling in making his case to the President and to the callous world that he bears the same awesome responsibility in protecting the safety and security of his citizens as does President Obama.  Just as the US had the right and responsibility to commit our troops and our nation’s blood and treasure a half a world away in Afghanistan to take out Osama bin Laden to protect our children, Israel too has the same right and responsibility to refuse to negotiate with Hamas terrorists storming their gates killing their children.

Bibi plaintively sought to soften the Pharaoh Obama's heart, but apparently to no avail.  The Israeli PM gently reminded Obama that Hamas recently launched anti-tank missiles at a yellow school bus, killing a 16-year-old boy, and politely pointed out that Hamas is the Palestinian version of al Qaeda.

TT prays that in his address before AIPAC this evening and again in his speech to Congress Tuesday, Bibi holds fast in his insistence that Israel will NOT  negotiate with a PA unity government with Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews worldwide. It is in America’s interests as well that all further “peace” talks be put on hold until Fatah and Hamas renounce their genocidal charters, stop their incitement to hate and violence, dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and FINALLY demonstrate a willingness to recognize the Jewish state and to uphold the pledges they have repeatedly made and broken.

To do otherwise is to turn a blind eye to the blood-soaked record of Hamas and to reward terrorism.  This is the Second Coming of Yasser Arafat.  Either the US and rest of the so-called civilized world recognize Hamas et al for what they are and shuns them accordingly, or we continue to embrace them as we did Yasser Arafat and treat them as the victim darlings of the world.  If we betray Israel, we will no doubt unleash the third intifada in Israel and accelerate the carnage of global jihad.

Talk of 1967 borders, land swaps, right of return and and all ancillary issues should remain off the table UNTIL Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria and the full constellation of Iran’s proxies and terror threats to Israel have laid down their arms and renounced their evil ways. Instead of pressuring Israel for more and more concessions which only emboldens the  terror masters and their clients,  America should use its full weight and whatever is left of its moral authority to crush terror organizations and punish their sponsors.  If we fail to excise the threat, the “cells” will only metastasize.

After all, if we Talk Tachlis, this conflict is not about the little spittle of land that is Israel.  It certainly is not about resources.  The hard truth is that Israel is the outpost of democracy in the Middle East; the forward base and proxy of the free world.  Hamas and the PA are proxies of Iran, which is racing to nuclear capability in its quest to rid the world of both the Little Satan and the Big Satan. 

Israel is but a speedbump, the first road block to Muslim hegemony of the Mideast and the further conquest of the Western world and establishment of the global caliphate.

This is not about a “peace plan.”  This is about the willingness of this Administration to sacrifice Israel as a peace offering.

--posted by MT Beadle and The Mole

Michigan Congressman Thad McCotter Gets it Right on Obama's MidEast Speech

"Bluntly, a continued destabilization of Israel's security is a strategic sellout of the highest order, and a breaking of our solemn promise to our ally."

Bravo to US Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R), representing Michigan's 9th District! All supporters of Israel and democracy should applaud Rep. McCotter's perspicacious analysis of President Obama's Middle East Speech.  Please call the Congressman (Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121) to thank him for his political courage and stalwart support for Israel.  Make sure to call our other Congressmen and Senators from Michigan to get their read on President Obama's MidEast push.

Washington, D.C. – In response to President Obama’s address on the Middle East and North Africa, U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter (MI) has issued the following statement:

In his latest lecture to the Middle East, an ideologically purblind President Obama has again failed to acknowledge the facts on the ground, much to the detriment of American and Israeli strategic interests.

First, the President continues to confound "popular uprisings" with America's strategic interests.  This fails to account for the inherent danger that such movements can be usurped - if not instigated and abetted by - radical elements bent upon usurping them for anti-American purposes, as is increasingly evident in Egypt.  Providing the new Egyptian government billions in debt relief and loans without the conditions that the Camp David Accords must remain inviolable both in law and practice, is but the latest manifestation of this administration's Mid-East dumbfoundment.  

Secondly, the President's ill-conceived and incoherent policy and mission creep in Libya has now resulted in the administration's diminished willingness to promptly call for Syria's Assad to exit power; ergo, we witness the Obama Administration being more resolute in precipitously demanding the removal of an ally in Egypt than of an enemy in Syria - let alone in Iran.

While an increase in human intelligence gathering and grass roots support for nascent democratic and free-market institutions and movements within oppressed nations will help ensure these freedom movements are not hijacked by worse tyrants and steered into anti-American regimes, the Obama Administration refuses to accept the reality that these uprisings' beneficent outcomes can best be effectuated by the success of Iran's Green Revolution.  Succinctly, the removal of a murderous terrorist regime that stole a popular uprising in 1979, and its indigenous replacement with a true, free, anti-terrorist republic, will serve as an example and deterrent to the present movements being perverted by would be despots.

Such strategic celerity, though, is lacking in the Obama Administration.  For, as is becoming abundantly clear, its missteps and missed opportunities stem from the President's inconstant commitment to the strategic partnership that founds America's Middle Eastern policies for our national security and regional peace: the American-Israeli alliance.

Israel is a market-based, liberal democracy that protects the lives and property of its people, including its minorities.

Israel is America's key strategic ally in the region.  Israel enhances our defense capabilities; provides us a secure foothold in the strategically important and turbulent Middle East; and has supported our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by sharing its military technology and its intelligence on hostile forces.

Israel is under a constant and increasing threat from terrorist forces, such as Hamas and Hezbollah; instability on its borders; and the hatred of hostile nations, notably Iran and Syria, that seek our ally's demise.  

Already, due to the Obama administration's bungling, radical political forces in Egypt are promising to press for the abrogation of the Camp David accords with Israel, both as a matter of law and a matter of fact.

Inexcusably, the President's opining and overtures have caused America’s and Israel's shared strategic interests to decline in the Arab world - as has, not ironically, America's popularity.

Now must end the Obama Administration's pressure upon our ally to make dangerous strategic concessions, which the President has done since entering office.  Indeed, from day one the President has misunderstood and mangled the peace process, demanding concessions on Israeli settlements that the Palestinians had never made a precondition in negotiations.  In return, all the President has reaped is the Palestinian National Authority pulling out of negotiations and endeavoring to have the United Nations foist a Palestinian state upon Israel without any direct negotiations.  Moreover, the President's "policies" have done nothing to stem the Palestinian national authority allying with the terrorists of Hamas, who are pledged to Israel's destruction. 

Today's speech repeats the injurious canards of forcing unilateral concessions on Israel; and claiming Hamas is becoming "moderate".  This is naïve at best, and, in reality, a foolish and dangerous misreading of a terrorist group that is America’s and Israel's enemy.  Instead, The President should have made clear that, if the Palestinian Authority chooses Hamas, it has turned its back on peace and forfeited American support, aid and assistance.

Bluntly, a continued destabilization of Israel's security is a strategic sellout of the highest order, and a breaking of our solemn promise to our ally.

Mideast peace will not result from arbitrarily and unilaterally imposed solutions that will, in consequence, only further destabilize the region.  Peace will come when the Palestinians and the Arab nations accept Israel as a Jewish state, abandon their dreams of eradicating it; stop demonizing Israel; cease teaching their children to hate it; and, conversely, tolerate and protect the minorities in their midst.  When this happens, the Israelis will have a true partner in peace, one with whom they can mutually work for liberty, prosperity and security in that long troubled land.

Thus, to do otherwise in our strategic partnership with Israel, however unwittingly, would reveal President Obama's failure to acknowledge President Kennedy's sage advice: "The surest path to war is the path of weakness and disunity."

No, in the interests of peace and American and Israeli security, the President must acknowledge the truths underpinning our alliance; recognize those facts on the ground endangering our alliance; and, so doing, commence strengthening the foundations of the American-Israeli alliance; and the very hopes for Middle East peace.

Goldstone's Mea Culpa Too Late to Undo the Hate

Justice Richard Goldstone's stunning repudiation of his infamous report attacking Israel for its military reprisal into Gaza comes too late to undo the international community's vicious isolation of Israel that his report fueled. With Israel's back against the wall -- condemned as a pariah state on the world stage and being set up for a UN vote this fall granting statehood for the Palestinians -- Justice Goldstone's contrition leaves a lot to be desired.

If his chest-thumping is sincere, he must retract his flawed report publicly before the United Nations, the very same body whose imprimatur made the biased findings so lethal for Israel. Executioner Goldstone must act NOW, before the UN carries out its death sentence against Israel. Mort Klein, president of The Zionist Organization of America, issued a statement late Monday, calling for Goldstone to

"do the only other respectable thing left to him, by actively working to try and undo the delegitimization and demonization that he has caused by working to have the United Nations rescind his report and withdraw all support for its use in any UN forum.”

Goldstone Promises to Recant -- but he can't

Goldstone will try to do just that "after the dust settles" and is also, according to reports late Tuesday, planning a trip to Israel to tour the southern communities hardest-hit by Hamas'rocket pounding. The invitation to Goldstone from Israel's interior minister, Eli Yishai lifts the nation's blacklisting of the South African Jew after he issued his report.

Despite Goldstone's pledge to nullify his report made to Yishai and Danny Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Cedric Sapey, spokesman for the UN Human Rights Council that commissioned the report, is quoted by the UK Guardian as saying: "The UN will not revoke a report on the basis of an article in a newspaper. The views Mr Goldstone expressed are his own personal views." A move to change or withdraw the report would either require a formal written complaint from Goldstone, backed unanimously by his three fellow authors, or a vote by the UN general assembly or the human rights council, Sapey said.

Hamas crimes aimed at civilian targets "intentional;" Israel did not "intentionally" target civilians

Talking Tachlis agrees with the New York Sun that Goldstone's retraction, published this past Friday in the Washington Post is indeed "galling." As the Sun notes, Goldstone now says that it “goes without saying” that the “crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional” in that “its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.” Moreover, what he calls the “allegations of intentionality by Israel” were, he now says unfounded. Big-time bungle for Inspector Clousseau! In a sharp about-face, the South African Judge admits that “that civilians were not intentionally targeted" by Israel "as a matter of policy.”

Goldstone's blood libel has earned a place in infamy next to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. As noted by the NY Sun:

"it is all too common that accusations made against Israel, when followed by sober investigation, turn out to exonerate the Jewish State. It happened in respect of the massacre at Jenin that turned out not to have taken place. It happened with the shooting of Muhammad al-Durrah."

How tragic that Goldstone's slanderous report powered a global tsunami of Israel-bashing and gave license to Hamas to attack Israel with impunity. By condemning Israel as the perpetrator of war crimes, the world has seemed to justify and excuse away Hamas' stepped-up campaign of terrorism. With his 'tale' between his legs, Goldstone tearfully confesses:

“At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality.”

Goldstone is now requesting that the U.N.’s Human Rights Council condemn Hamas’s “heinous acts in the strongest terms” and also condemn the “inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.” Fat chance! More likely that the UN would screen "Obsession" in its august chambers. Or, as the Sun correctly observes:

"For Mr. Goldstone to suggest, even by implication, that the U.N. Human Rights Council has any concern whatsoever for truth in respect of Israel simply asks the world to lend credence to a body that would be best disbanded."

The ZOA must-read statement on the Goldstone fiasco rightly calls out the media and other institutions for failing to give Goldstone's retraction the same long-play, blaring exposure as they did the original 2009 report.

Our area has seen an alarming escalation of anti-Israel programs at the universities and in the community, some premised exclusively on the fraudulent Goldstone report. We at Talking Tachlis won't hold our breath for such Israel demonizers as Jewish Voice for Peace, Norm Finkelstein, Mondoweiss blogger Philip Weiss, the International Anti-Zionist Jewish Network and others of their sorry ilk to exonerate Israel now that Goldstone has reprised his report.

Goldstone Report Poisoned Academia

The ZOA and other organizations committed to supporting Israel need to follow up these important statements with action that will have traction. The need is especially great on our college campuses, where a toxic anti-Israel climate now prevails in the aftermath of the Goldstone Report Big Lie. In the intervening two years, rabidly anti-Israel professors and lecturers have capitalized on the Goldstone Report's falsehoods to demonize Israel with abandon.

The ZOA, StandWithUs, Hillel, AIPAC and others should now demand equal time to set the record straight. Wayne State and University of Michigan, for example, have given speakers platforms to spew virulently anti-Israel polemics based on the Goldstone Report's spurious findings. Now, in the interests of academic integrity and restoring any semblance of balance, the campus should roll out the welcome mat to those best qualified to deprogram the students subjected to unrelenting anti-Israel indoctrination.

It was just last week that the Arab American News ran an article assailing the "Wall of Lies" ad placed in the U-M Dearborn student newspaper by the David Horowitz Freedom Center in response to Israel Apartheid Week on campus.

University of Michigan-Dearborn Vice Chancellor Stanley E. Henderson was quoted by the Arab American News as saying "Intolerance is a cancer; it sucks the vitality, the glow, even the life out of good people as surely as a tumor. A one-sided view such as the 'Wall of Lies' ad does not present a path for peace in the Middle East and it does not represent the core values of our campus," he added.

Never mind that the temperate vice chancellor did not see fit to apply the same standards to the malignant hate-inspiring Israel Apartheid Week. Never mind that Horowitz's 'Wall of Lies' is a straightforward expose of the libels against the Jewish State which, Horowitz claims, neither the vice chancellor nor the Arab American News could refute.

Given Palestinian activist Ann Wright's recent guest speaking engagement at the University of Michigan's main Ann Arbor campus (co-sponsored by the Arab Student Association along with the Ford School of Public Policy and the Barger Leadership Institute of Organizational Studies) at which she reportedly solicited funds for the next Gaza-bound flotilla, the university's own standards would compel it to counter such a "one-sided view" which surely "does not present a path for peace in the Middle East" nor "represent the core values" of the university.

Talking Tachlis can't help but wonder if the I Love Hamas production staged at the Ann Arbor campus late last year with university support represented the "core values" of the university? Surely not the core values of its generous Jewish donors!

--MT Beadle and The Mole

Bad Doin's at the International Academy

I was forwarded the following email. Read it. It's disturbing.

From: IA Parents Information Email List
To: "ia-parents@listserv.bloomfield.org"
Sent: Mon, February 28, 2011 9:42:19 AM
Subject: [IA-Parents] supplemental history text donation effort

Dear IA Family, (International Academy, book for 12th grade in fall)
Thanks to many of you, we've passed the halfway point!!!
In order to raise the remaining 45% of the money we need, please consider the below request:
The IA History Department and the Muslim Student Association are raising funds for a supplementary text for use in IB2 History. The text, Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco, is a graphic non-fiction book intended to illustrate both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Thanks to your generous support, we were previously able to obtain 35 copies of Footnotes through DonorsChoose.org. Now we would like to purchase an additional 65 copies in order to enable students to take the books home for further exploration. We need to raise about $600 more to reach our goal.
To donate online through Google Checkout and for more information on the book, please visit:
http://iabookdrive.blogspot.com/
To donate directly to the History Department, feel free to make out a check to Bloomfield Hills Schools and give it to Mrs. Arola in the office. Please write Footnotes in Gaza on the Memo line. 100% of all money collected, online or otherwise, will go towards buying copies of Footnotes in Gaza.
We have no doubt that the IA community will be able to meet this challenge and raise enough money for this supplementary text! Please join us in helping our students become even more open-minded and critically-thinking “international” students.
Thank you for your support!
Marc de Zwaan, IA History Teacher
Faisal Chaudhry, IA Senior
Yunus Shabandri, IA Senior

If you have any questions, please let us know!

I read part of Joe Sacco's first Israel-bashing comic series (since collected into one volume), "Palestine." I stopped buying when I couldn't stand paying for obvious anti-Israel bias.

Footnotes in Gaza is one I haven't read, but I did watch him speak on this book. He promotes as fact massacres by Israeli soldiers in Gaza in 1955 alleged by Palestinians and their handlers. One would assume that with all of the fine-toothed coverage Israel has received since its founding, if these massacres happened, it would have been much easier to uncover the facts. Sacco, instead, as he did with Palestine, relies on people who claim to be witnesses. The claim that Sacco illustrates both sides of the conflict is difficult to believe based on his talk and his previous book. In typical current fashion, he isn't interested in the Israeli side.

You may wish to take the contact information above and use it to let the administrators and history teachers at IA know that Israel-hating diatribes are not actual history. Oh yeah, and members of the Muslim Student Association, an organization linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood should not be directing the curriculum on the Israeli-Arab conflict. You might also want to ask exactly where Sacco presents the Israeli side in his book.

Here is the website for donations. Notice that,

Any money you donate will go to the Muslim Youth of Greater Detroit, a non-profit (501(c)(3)) affiliated with IA's Muslim Student Association. 100% of the donated money will go directly from this group to IA's History Department for the purchase of "Footnotes in Gaza".

If you have trouble recalling the face of the MSA, here is a reminder from David Horowitz and an MSA representative.



by Cowznofski