After all, if the UN headquarters is such a death trap, it should be condemned and destroyed as a matter of public safety.

And that would allow the organization to relocate to some other, more socialist country – and maybe it could bay one-fifth of the organization’s operating costs.

The long-delayed plans to renovate the United Nations buildings, old and riddled with safety violations, pose deadly risks to emergency responders and thousands who live and work around the area, Sen. Charles Schumer said yesterday.

Citing the testimony of UN officials, Schumer said a fire could travel quickly up the walls of the main building, which lacks sprinklers. Also, the heat pipes leak and could contaminate the Manhattan neighborhood with asbestos if they were to explode, he said.

"If this building were owned by a private company, there would be so many violations that the Buildings Department would be tempted to close it down," Schumer, a Democrat, said. Since the UN is considered international territory, it is not subject to local codes, a department official said.

The UN – who would really miss them?

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After all, if the UN headquarters is such a death trap, it should be condemned and destroyed as a matter of public safety.

And that would allow the organization to relocate to some other, more socialist country – and maybe it could bay one-fifth of the organization’s operating costs.

The long-delayed plans to renovate the United Nations buildings, old and riddled with safety violations, pose deadly risks to emergency responders and thousands who live and work around the area, Sen. Charles Schumer said yesterday.

Citing the testimony of UN officials, Schumer said a fire could travel quickly up the walls of the main building, which lacks sprinklers. Also, the heat pipes leak and could contaminate the Manhattan neighborhood with asbestos if they were to explode, he said.

"If this building were owned by a private company, there would be so many violations that the Buildings Department would be tempted to close it down," Schumer, a Democrat, said. Since the UN is considered international territory, it is not subject to local codes, a department official said.

The UN – who would really miss them?

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Looks like the UN will receive one final test of whether it is worth a pitcher of warm spit. Its handling of this latest move by the Madman of Tehran will determine whether or not the organization deserves to survive. If it fails here, the US and other sane nations should simply walk away.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated on Saturday a new phase in the Arak heavy-water reactor project, part of IranÂ’s atomic program which the West fears is aimed at producing bombs.

A Reuters witness said the president inaugurated the project and toured the site at Khondab, which is near Arak 120 miles southwest of the capital Tehran. The plantÂ’s plutonium by-product could be used to make atomic warheads.

The move came days before a U.N. deadline for Iran to halt uranium enrichment, the part of the program which is the biggest worry to the West. But the latest development is likely to raise further fears in Western capitals.

This move will likely split the major powers working to slow or stop Iran's nuclear program.

Six world powers have offered Iran incentives to halt enrichment. But Iran has so far only hinted it might be ready to consider halting the work as a result of talks, not as a precondition.

The reply seemed tailored to divide the four Western powers and Russia and China who agreed to the deadline on August 31.

The United States has said the six powers will move quickly to adopt sanctions if Iran disregards the deadline. Britain, Germany and France have been less conclusive in public.

Russia and China, both trade partners of Iran, have been unwilling and could veto sanctions in the Security Council.

But the Mullahocracy in Iran has said that it will not comply with UN demands.

Iran responded Tuesday to package of incentives, presented by the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany, for it to halt uranium enrichment and return to negotiations on increasing international oversight of its nuclear program. Tehran said it would be open to negotiations but did not agree to the West's key demand to halt enrichment as a precondition to talks.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, will report on the state of Iran's program by mid-September. If its report finds that enrichment is continuing, the council could move toward sanctions.

Tehran has called the Security Council resolution that set the Thursday deadline "illegal" and has insisted it won't give up its nuclear program.

"They may impose some restrictions on us under pressure. But will they be able to prevent the thoughts of a nation?" Ahmadinejad said Saturday. "Will they be able to prevent the progress and technology to a nation? They have to accept the reality of a powerful, peace-loving and developed Iran. This is in the interest of all governments and all nations whether they like it or not."

The major problem is that while nuclear power in the hands of a peace-loving and developed Iran would be a good thing, we are stuck with a barbaric sharia-law dictatorship ruled by a madman who has expressed a desire to wipe one nation off the face of the earth -- and this call for completing the Hitlerian project of genocide against the Jews is advanced by the continuation of this project.

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Listen to this load of crap from the terrorist shill who ostensibly runs Lebanon.

Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, meanwhile, toured the devastated Hezbollah stronghold in south Beirut and decried the destruction by Israeli bombs as a "crime against humanity." Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite and Hezbollah backer, stood at the Sunni premier's side and said they spoke with one voice.

Of cours the Hezbollah-supporting Parliament Speaker stood beside Prime Minister Saniora -- someone had to operate the puppet strings. My only question is if Berri's lips moved as he put words in the mouth of the ventriloquist dummy who nominally heads the Lebanese government.

And I'll notie that we have yet to hear a single world leader condemn the intentional attacks carried out against Israel's civilian population as "crimes against humanity" -- but every single civilian casualty caused by israel qualifies as one. That is perhaps the clearest indictment of the UN and its leadership that I can think of -- that the victim of the attack is defined as a the aggressor for daring to act in self-defense against an organization that was supposed to have been disarmed years ago under the terms of UN Resolution 1559.

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Since the terms of the cease-fire agreement have not been fulfilled by Hezbollah, Lebanon, the UN, or any of the other parties involved, why should Israel not take steps to protect its own security?

Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley early Saturday, setting off a fierce gun battle. Lebanon called the attack a "flagrant violation" of a fragile six-day-old cease-fire and threatened to halt troop deployments in protest.

Hezbollah, which battled the Israeli military for 33 days until the truce took hold Monday, said its fighters encountered the Israeli commandos in a field near the town of Boudai, about 20 miles from the Syrian border.

The Israeli military, confirming the raid, said its commandos carried out the operation to interdict shipments of weapons and munitions to Hezbollah from Syria and Iran. The military said one Israeli officer was killed and two soldiers were wounded, one seriously.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora told reporters in Beirut that the attack was a "flagrant violation" of the U.N. cease-fire and that he planned to lodge a complaint with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Later Saturday, Annan said that he agreed the raid violated the cease-fire agreement and that he was "deeply concerned."

Hezbollah issued no immediate reaction. But many Lebanese worried that the militant Shiite Muslim movement would retaliate, risking a chain of cease-fire violations that could rekindle the devastating war that drove nearly a fourth of Lebanon's inhabitants from their homes and inflicted an estimated $3.6 billion in damage to bridges, roads and other infrastructure.

In accepting the cease-fire, the Hezbollah leader, Hasan Nasrallah, warned that his militia reserved the right to attack Israelis as long as they remain on Lebanese soil. At the same time, the Israeli military declared that it reserved the right to respond to attacks and prevent weapons shipments to Hezbollah guerrillas in the southern border hills until an international force was in place.

Hezbollah has not been disarmed -- and was being resupplied. The Lebanese government has continued to allow Hezbollah to operate in violation of multiple UN resolutions to the contrary. The UN has acted like the UN -- justifying Arab terror agains thte Israelis. France has shown its usual cowardice.

In short, screw the cease-fire -- Israel should declare its provisions to be a joke and resume its planned destruction of Hezbollah. Let the attacks continue

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He was one of the many iron-fisted dictators -- both of the lright and left -- who ruled in Latin America in the latter part of the 20th century. Here's hoping there is a particularly wam corner of hell with his name on it.

Alfredo Stroessner, the canny anti-communist general who ruled Paraguay for decades with a blend of force, guile and patronage before his ouster in 1989, died in exile on Wednesday. He was 93.

Stroessner contracted pneumonia after a hernia operation in Brazil's capital, where he had lived in near total isolation since he was forced from power.

He died of a stroke with his family gathered around him in the Hospital Santa Luzia, his grandson Alfredo Dominguez Stroessner said in a radio interview. Dominguez Stroessner said his grandfather left no instructions on his funeral but the family was considering burial in Encarnacion, the Paraguayan city where the former dictator was born.

Stroessner seized power in a 1954 coup and through fraud and repression, held it for 35 years to become one of Latin America's longest-ruling strongmen.

Finally ousted by his own generals, Stroessner remains hated by many in Paraguay, where he was accused of repression and human rights violations, even though some stalwarts credit him for big public works projects that modernized the country.

A staunch U.S. ally, Stroessner made Paraguay a refuge for some Nazi war criminals among 200,000 Germans he sheltered after World War II. He twice denied extradition requests for Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz. Mengele later fled Nazi hunters to Brazil, where he died under an assumed name.

Stroessner also sheltered fellow right-wing dictators, including Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua.

"Stroessner didn't have any problem giving refuge to people with blood on their hands," said Aaron Breitbart, a senior researcher with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "His death is no loss to democratic values in Paraguay."

Hopefully he'll be joined soon by Castro.

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Hezbollah will not disarm and withdraw from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah refused to disarm and withdraw its fighters from the battle-scarred hills along the border with Israel on Tuesday, threatening to delay deployment of the Lebanese army and endangering a fragile cease-fire.

The makings of a compromise emerged from all-day meetings in Beirut, according to senior officials involved in the negotiations, and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora scheduled a cabinet session Wednesday for what he hoped would be formal approval of the deal. Hezbollah indicated it would be willing to pull back its fighters and weapons in exchange for a promise from the army not to probe too carefully for underground bunkers and weapons caches, the officials said.

In other words, this is just another repeat of the situation that occurred after the adoption of UN 1559 the last time Israel had to clear out the jihadi rat's nest in southern lebanon.

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The winning entries in the Watcher's Council vote for this week are We Could Be Heroes by Done With Mirrors, and Israel Has No Right to Exist by One Cosmos. 

Here are the full results of the vote.

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In other words, Hezbollah gets to keep on attacking. Here's hoping that an Israeli analog of Winston Churchill appears on the scene soon.

The draft ceasefire plan agreed to by the United States and France may result in an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, but it will not disarm Hizbullah.

It appears that United Nations efforts are concentrating on halting Israeli military operations throughout Lebanon, but no effort is being made to eliminate the Hizbullah threat. The draft agreement only calls for pushing Hizbullah north of the Litani, not far enough from IsraelÂ’s northern border to place Hizbullah rockets out of range from northern Israeli civilian population centers.

While the draft agreement supports UN Resolution 1559, demanding Hizbullah be disarmed by the Lebanese government, it does not make this a precondition to the implementation of the ceasefire.

The plan calls or the deployment of the current UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon, to be supported by some 10,000 French forces and 15,000 Lebanese army troops. Other countries may also send troops to take part in the force, which will be responsible to prevent Hizbullah attacks into Israel.

Fortunately, it looks like the energence of a leader with serious interests in protecting Israel from the jihadis may happen sooner rather than later.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faced a backlash on Friday over a U.N. proposal to end the war in Lebanon, with army officers saying they were held back and right-wing rivals calling for new elections.

"Olmert must go," read a front page headline in Israel's left-leaning Haaretz newspaper.

Opinion polls, conducted before details of the proposed Security Council resolution emerged, showed public support eroding for Olmert, a career politician who lacks the combat credentials of many of his predecessors.

* * *

Leading members of the right-wing opposition Likud party called the resolution a victory for Hizbollah.

"We will work to bring down the government," said Likud's Silvan Shalom. Yuval Steinitz, also of Likud, said the Israeli government should resign and call new elections.

Kadima party officials say they believe that Hezbollah can be disarmed through diplomacy. Unfortunately, we have seen how well such diplomacy has worked over the years. Don't these folks recognize that the diplomatic option only when there are Arab leaders serious about peace -- and that the leadership of Hezbollah does not fall into that category?

H/T Tel-Chai Nation

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Thanks for the correction on the title, zalame!

Well, their Islamo-Nazi leader has talked about wiping out the Jews. Why should we be surprised that he has deployed troops to help.

Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard have been found among Hizbollah guerrillas slain by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, Israel's Channel 10 television reported on Wednesday citing diplomatic sources.

It said the Iranians were identified by documents found on their bodies, but gave no further details on how many were discovered or when. Neither the Israeli military nor Hizbollah representatives in Beirut had immediate comment on the report.

Iran, like fellow Hizbollah patron Syria, insists its support for the Shi'ite guerrilla group is purely moral.

Israel says many of the rockets being fired against its civilian and military targets are Iranian made, and that Hizbollah fighters taking on its forces trained in Iran. Washington also accuses Tehran of actively funding Hizbollah.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are traditionally very close to fellow Shi'ite Muslims in Hizbollah and were deployed in south Lebanon in the 1980s.

But Israel is still the bad guy, according to the international community.

(H/T Captain's Quarters)

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1 Greg, when you're updating the blacklist, do not, under any
circumstances, blacklist an URL containing square brackets, these
things: []



If you do that, you will break comments for the whole of mu.nu.  Which is a bad thing.

Until we can get everyone onto the new comment system (which doesn't suffer from this problem), please be very careful with this.  The spammers are deliberately putting poisoned URLs in the spam to cause this sort of problem.

P.S. Hey, nice comments!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Aug 9 15:46:39 2006 (FRalS)

2 you probably mean: killed in Lebanon, right?
And yes, I wonder why the Israelis are not showing pictures of their documents, that could have been a huge PR win.

Posted by: zalame at Wed Aug 9 16:24:46 2006 (59Iel)

3 Thanks for th correction.

Posted by: Rhymes With Right at Wed Aug 9 16:25:30 2006 (59Iel)

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Aside from a few pacifists, terror supporters, and other folks who have never met a suicide-jihadi they didn't like, Israelis are strongly behind the war in Lebanon which was forced upon them by Hezbollah.

As IsraelÂ’s war with Hezbollah finishes a fourth difficult week, domestic criticism of its prosecution is growing. Yet there is a paradoxical effect as well: the harder the war has been, the more the public wants it to proceed.

The criticism is not that the war is going on, but that it is going poorly. The public wants the army to hit Hezbollah harder, so it will not threaten Israel again.

And while Israelis are upset with how Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has run the war, they seem to agree with what he told aides this week — that given the weaponry and competence of Hezbollah and the damage already done to Israel, “I thank God the confrontation came now, because with every year their arsenal would have grown.”

Abroad, Israel is criticized for having overreacted and for causing disproportionate damage to Lebanon and its civilian population and even for indiscriminate bombing. But within Israel, the sense is nearly universal that unlike its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, this war is a matter of survival, not choice, and its legitimacy is unquestioned.

Even the bulk of the Israeli left feels that way. There is no real peace camp in Israel right now, says Yariv Oppenheimer, the secretary general of Peace Now, which has pressed hard for a deal with the Palestinians and on June 22, before this Lebanon war, called for a halt to air raids over the Gaza Strip. “We’re a left-wing Zionist movement, and we believe that Israel has the legitimate right to defend itself,” Mr. Oppenheimer said. “We’re not pacifists. Unlike in Gaza or the West Bank, Israel isn’t occupying Lebanese territory or trying to control the lives of Lebanese. The only occupier there is Hezbollah, and Israel is trying to defend itself.”

In the daily newspaper Haaretz, a cartoon satirized the group, showing a Peace Now advocate, balding with a ponytail, in a coffee shop saying, “It won’t end until we wipe Beirut off the map.”

When even the peace groups are supporting the war, it becomes clear how deep the support runs -- and that even those who object to war in virtually every situation recognize that this si a fight for Israel's survival against jihadis who will be satisfied with nothing less than genocide.

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After all, the same Lebanese troops that would fill the void in southern Lebanon are the ones who have been unable to control Hezbollah in the past, unable to bring about the dsarming of that terrorist force in compliance with UN Resolution 1559, and which the Lebanese president has previously threatened to send against Israel if it fails to stop attacking the Hezbollah terrorists.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel would "examine" the Lebanese government's proposal to deploy 15,000 soldiers to south Lebanon to replace Hezbollah militias, while an Arab delegation pressed the U.N. security council for an immediate cease-fire and withdrawal of Israeli troops from the country's south.

Olmert, who spoke as fighting continued on both sides of the Israel-Lebanese border, called the Lebanese government's proposal "an interesting step that we need to examine and investigate and see if it's all that it means."

Of course, the Arab supporters of terror want the UN to once again intervene in a manner detrimental to Israeli security.

In New York, Arab officials warned the U.N. Security Council Tuesday that Lebanon would erupt into a civil war unless there was an immediate cease-fire and the withdrawal of Israeli troops, Reuters reported.

Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, representing a three-member Arab League delegation, told the council that adopting a nonenforceable resolution would have "grave ramifications" for Lebanon.

"If we adopt the resolution without fully considering the reality of Lebanon, we will face a civil war," the minister said. "Instead of helping Lebanon, we will destroy Lebanon."

Wellm perhaps these nations should begin by turning to Hezbollah and demanding that the terrorists lay down their arms and accept evacuation to Qatar or some other Arab state where they would no longer be a threat to Israel. Israel could then withdraw to its borders and have security. Unfortunately, that is not in the plans of the Arab League. All the concessions must be on Israel's part, under their proposal.

Prime Minister Olmert needs to just say "No!"

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And it is trying to get it from Africa.

IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed.

A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo.

Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check.

The disclosure will heighten western fears about the extent of IranÂ’s presumed nuclear weapons programme and the strategic implications of IranÂ’s continuing support for Hezbollah during the war with Israel.

When even the UN admits that Iran is seeking this material, there ought to be an outcry from the international communty and the American Left. But they really don't care -- after all, there are Jews to be bashed for defending themselves. Who cares about the actions of a rogue state ruled by a genocidal maniac?

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And do the same to Hamas, too.

That is the proposal of libertarian columnist Vin Suprynowicz, who acknowledges that war is a terrible thing and should be avoided in most instances.

But there are two major exceptions.

Rather than live as slaves, rather than watch our loved ones picked off one at a time while we stand by and do nothing, it is better to risk our lives -- and to kill as many of the enemy as humanly possible, by whatever means -- until such danger is decisively eliminated. It is better to respond to aggression by going to war. Not "going to social work." War, as in, "If everything around you is exploding, that's probably us."

Indeed, demanding cease-fires and temporary truces allows one side to initiate war with impunity, knowing that it will never be permitted to lose. Instead, those who cry "Peace!" will serve as the guarantors that there is no cost to unpovoked aggression by a weak party seeking to improve its position vis-a-vis a stronger and more restrained neighbor.

War in the Middle East has been a constant for some 58 years, since the founding of the modern state of Israel. That state has survived endless assaults upon its people and territory, but has never been allowed to follow through on its right to guarantee its own security by crushing its enemies. Instead, international pressure has been the basis for providing succor to the enemies of the Jewish state. The result has been more war and a constant threat to Israel's survival.

If war is evil, how much more evil is it to impose on anyone an endless stop-and-start war, which the righteous and aggrieved victim is never allowed to pursue to a victorious end -- the aggressor always allowed to rest and refit and then to come again at a time of his choosing, pecking relentlessly at the victim's liver?

Some will say Israel has committed aggression simply by existing. But to say that is to violate the U.N. charter, which guarantees the right of all member states to exist.

"But the Palestinians have no state!" the war-lovers cry.

Sure they do. It's called Jordan. In fact, the Palestinian Arabs got by far the larger part of the old British protectorate of Palestine -- and no one attacked them for daring to set up an essentially one-religion nation where Jews find scant welcome. The masses now huddled around the borders of Israel were kicked out by King Hussein in 1972 after they tried to overthrow him. How is that Israel's fault?

The defeatists cry that "Nothing can be accomplished by violence; war only breeds more terrorists who will fight forever."

Really? Sixty years later, is America still under attack by the aggrieved suicide-belted grandchildren of the Germans and Japanese whose cities we flattened and burned to rubble in '44 and '45?

No. Because wars usually do resolve these issues -- if one side is allowed to fight to a decisive victory. It's just that the pink petticoat gang shriek hysterically and threaten to faint dead away when confronted with the reality of how real wars really end.

Someone raises a white flag, and promises to fight no more if only you'll give the survivors some food and water and stop burning them out of their holes. Many of the conquered women marry the conqueror's soldiers and move home with them, giving up their native dress and learning to drive Buicks.

Israel can and has made peace with its neighbors. Nearly three decades ago, the actions of Begin and Sadat proved that. So, too, did the decision of King Hussein to follow the path that resulted in his grandfathers murder -- for Jordan and Israel are at peace as well. But when one side is unambiguously opposed to peace, no good can come of giving in to peaceful impulses -- for the end is ever the same.

But things could be different.

Today, Hezbollah and Hamas have a problem. All their planning was based on the fact that the world and the United States have never allowed Israel to really win a war -- they always call a cease-fire after a maximum of 20 days.

Can anyone see the terrorists looking around now, wondering when they get their next three years off for rest, refit and resupply? "Hey, it's been the full three weeks. Guys? Anyone? Hello?"

We started out saying war is horrible and is to be avoided whenever possible. But there is a corollary doctrine. If you want a generation of peace, those who launch wars have to be shown this, good and hard.

And that means forcing Hezbollah to its knees in southern Lebanon and Hamas in the territory it controls. That means a stark refusal to make nice when the world community demands it -- for the destruction of these two forces will not only pacify them in the long run, but may also have a salutary effect on those who seek to harm Israel while counting on being shielded by the international pacifist movement.

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On May 26, 1968, the following column by American social commentator Eric Hoffer was published in the Los Angeles Times. Hoffer (who was not a Jew) noted certain realities regarding Israel's situation in the world.

Interestingly, nearly four decades later, the words still ring true and can be applied to the current situation in the Middle East.

ISRAEL'S PECULIAR POSITION

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it, Poland and Czechoslovakia did it, Turkey threw out a million Greeks, and Algeria a million Frenchman. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese -- and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis.

Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world. Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.

Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.

No commitment to the Jews by any government, including our own, is worth the paper it is written on. There is a cry of outrage all over the world when people die in Vietnam or when two Negroes are executed in Rhodesia. But when Hitler slaughtered Jews no one remonstrated with him. The Swedes, who are ready to break of diplomatic relations with America because of what we do in Vietnam, did not let out a peep when Hitler was slaughtering Jews. They sent Hitler choice iron ore and ball bearings, and serviced his troop trains to Norway.

The Jews are alone in the world. If Israel survives, it will be solely because of Jewish efforts. And Jewish resources. Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish, the next Holocaust will be upon us.

UPDATE: This analysis by a Clinton Administration official shows how true these words are today.

The track record of many of Israel's most powerful accusers--including China, Russia and the European Union--is not nearly as good at balancing civilian risk against military goals.

China killed hundreds of peaceful Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989. It has for five decades occupied Tibet, slaughtering tens of thousands; and it vows to invade Taiwan if it declares independence. Neither the Tiananmen protesters nor Tibet nor Taiwan has ever threatened to "wipe China off the map."

Russia has fought since 1994 to suppress Chechnya's independence movement. Out of a Chechen population of one million, as many as 200,000 have been killed as Russia has leveled the capital city of Grozny. Chechen rebels pose no threat to "wipe Russia off the map." All of the leading EU countries actively participated in NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. The military goal was to stop Yugoslavia from oppressing its Kosovar minority. NATO bombs and missiles hit Yugoslav bridges, power plants and a television station, killing hundreds of civilians. Yugoslavia posed no threat to the existence of any of the EU countries that bombed it.

Compared with how China, Russia, and the EU have dealt with non-existential threats--and despite the law-flouting behavior of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria--Israel's responses to the threats to its existence have been remarkably restrained rather than disproportionately violent.

Indeed, the response has been restrained -- but Israel is not allowed to defend itself at all. In the eyes of much of the international community, the only appropriate response of a Jew under attack is to cooperate by dying quickly and without a struggle.

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Jonathan Medved offers a view from Israel on why this war is almost universally supported in that country.

And herein lies a great secret of why we fight, why we have gone to war after the kidnappings of Gilad Shalit in Gaza , and Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev on the Lebanese border. Why the Israeli public completely backs this war with approval ratings of over 90%. Because our army is our kids, and Jewish kids will not be kidnapped and slaughtered ever again without having hell to pay. Because we will not sit idly by while our enemies openly call for our destruction and amass the means to carry out their threats.

Everyday’s paper brings new pictures of fallen soldiers—their smiles, their backgrounds, their unbelievable stories. Major Benji Hillman, 27, an English immigrant, who died leading his troops into Ras A Maroun, only three weeks after his wedding. Major Roi Klein, 31, died by jumping on a hand grenade, thereby shielding his soldiers from certain death—he leaves a wife and two young sons. Seargeant Michael Levine, 22, a new immigrant from Pennsylvania, rushed back to his unit after visiting his family in the states, to find death fighting Hizbollah in Ayta A-Shab. These heroes will not be forgotten nor will their deaths be turned into mere casualty statistics of a war viewed by cynics as “disproportionate”.

Tonight, starts the fast of the 9th of Av, when we read the book of Lamentations as we mourn the destruction of our Temples and other calamities that have befallen the Jewish people on this day. Sitting in the moonlight on a hill across from the Temple Mount, hundreds of our neighbors and friends read together the scary verses about the tragedy that has followed our people for generations. Yet there is a quiet determination which is palpable among the mourners---a feeling that this war, our war, will ultimately be won, that redemption is finally on the way, and that our families will prevail.

May God continue to bless the Children of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob as they defend themselves against those who would kill them for believing in and living out the promises God made to their forefathers.

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As Israel conducts its War of Justice against the Hezbollah swine, many of us feel it is important that we lend our personal support to Israel in any manner possible. The Washington Post has an article about a new campaign by American Jews to help their brothers and sisters under attack by jihadis..

An umbrella organization of North American Jewish charities said yesterday that it will seek to raise a minimum of $300 million in emergency humanitarian funds for Israel this year, one of the largest short-term goals in its history.

The fund drive drew immediate criticism from at least one prominent rabbi who called on American Jews to raise money for the reconstruction of Lebanon, not just Israel. But experts on Jewish philanthropy predicted that the campaign would receive broad support, following a well-established pattern of giving by U.S. Jews in times of crisis for the Jewish state.

* * *

[Howard Rieger, president and chief executive of United Jewish Communities,] said that since Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid, triggering three weeks of fighting between Israel and Lebanese militants, UJC has spent $12.5 million a week to evacuate children and elderly residents of northern Israel beyond the range of Hezbollah rockets.

He said the additional funds would be used to set up summer camps for up to 15,000 displaced children in southern Israel, provide trauma counseling, create a $20 million fund for victims of the rocket attacks and their families, rebuild social services and refurbish bomb shelters that lack air conditioning and are in disrepair.

Doron Krakow, senior vice president of the UJC's Israel division, said the campaign is "fundamentally committed to helping Israeli communities under siege, and that means helping Israeli Arabs and Druze, as well as Jews."

There are, of course, some Jews opposing aid for israel and instead looking for support for the jihadis and their lebanese allies. I guess that is just proof positive that today, six decades after the Holocause, there still are would-be Kapos and judische Polizei in 2006, ready to cooperate with the enemies of the Jewish people rather than aid their brothers and sisters.

To learn more about the campaign, click here.

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After all, if leading figures in the organization are so loathe to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, why do we even stay a member?

[U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Mark] Malloch Brown was quoted in a British newspaper Wednesday suggesting that he does not think that Hezbollah, the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group currently fighting Israeli Defense Forces, is a terrorist organization.

"It's not helpful to couch this war in the language of international terrorism. Hezbollah employs terrorist tactics; it is an organization, however, whose roots historically are completely separate and different from Al Qaeda," he said, according to a transcript of an interview.

So Hezbollah may look like terrorists and act like terrorists, but they are not terrorists because they are not al-Qaeda. This ignores the minor detail that one can be a terrorist without being a part of al-Qaeda, just as one could be a pirate without being Blackbeard.

Can't we just admit that the UN is a failed experiment in utopian diplomacy and dismiss the organization from both our budget and our shores?

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I love it when a public figure goes against the Left-wing conventional wisdom to speak an inconvenient (for the Left) truth.

Charging Fidel Castro with the deaths of his relatives, Cuban-American Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell declared last night: “I hope he does die.”

“Castro killed members of my family,” Lowell told the Herald before last night’s game against the Cleveland Indians at Fenway.

Some news reports have suggested the Cuban dictator, nearly 80, is gravely ill after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding, even as Cuban news media say he is recovering. He has handed power to his brother, Raul Castro.

Lowell, 32, recounted the trauma the Castro regime has caused his family.

“My dad had to pack up his suitcase at 10 years old with his three brothers, who had nothing. And my mother was 11 years old and my grandfather, who’d been a dentist for 15 or 20 years, had to go back to school to be (politically) re-educated,” Lowell said.

“My cousins were political prisoners. My father-in-law was a political prisoner for 15 years because, at 19, they asked him if he agreed with communism and he said, ‘No,’ so they sentenced him to death. That’s not the way to live. I know it’s terrible to say, but I think of all of that and I hope he (Castro) passes away.

“I don’t care if he dies,” Lowell said. “There are so many people who have died because of him and there’s been so much wrongdoing and so many human rights violations that I hope he does die. That sounds bad, but it’s the truth.”

It's time for more Cuban-American celebrities to speak out and slap down the Leftist propaganda that paint's Castro as a good guy.

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