Yes, it is a first -- but I'm curious how welcome a Jew would be in the government of most Arab nations. Oh, that's right -- many of those nations expelled all or most of their Jews following the birth of Israel!

Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved the first Arab Muslim minister of the Jewish state, a milestone marked here mostly by bitter criticism of what many lawmakers viewed as a politically motivated selection.

Raleb Majadele, a Labor Party legislator, was approved by a wide margin as minister without portfolio in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's cabinet. Only Avigdor Lieberman, minister of strategic affairs from the Israel Is Our Home party, voted against the nomination.

Majadele's appointment is "a significant, historic step toward equality and peace in the region," said Amir Peretz, the Labor leader, who chose Majadele for a cabinet post several weeks ago during an ongoing fight for the party leadership.

An Israeli Druze, Saleh Tarif, was appointed minister without portfolio in 2001. But many of Israel's roughly 100,000 Druze, members of a sect that broke with Islam centuries ago, do not identify themselves as Arabs and serve in Israel's army.

The move is controversial among Arabs, with some seeing it as a betrayal. Still, it is significant to note that Israeli Arabs have significantly better living conditions and more freedom than Arabs living in most of Arab countries -- and certainly better than the small numbers of Jews in those countries.

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I wonder -- will the Israelis act to make sure that this potential Islamo-Spy Satellite never makes it off the launch pad?

RAN is on the verge of launching a satellite into space that could herald a new dimension in Tehran's strategic capabilities, Aviation Week and Space Technology says on its website.

The recently assembled, 30-tonne ballistic missile-turned space launcher could also be used for testing longer-range missile strike technologies, the magazine said in a report for its January 29 issue.

The Iranian space launcher "will lift off soon'' with an Iranian satellite, said Alaoddin Boroujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, according to the weekly.

It is decidedly not in the interest of either Israel of the United States to have "Big Mullah" watching over us. And since the test could also be a pretext for testing long-range ballistic missiles, it seems to me that it would be best if it suffered a horrible accident, courtesy of the IAF.

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Or is this one more illusion of progress?

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have pledged to forge a peace between their countries, calling the vision of two states, side by side, the only path.

With Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas watching, Livni told the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum that a Palestinian state is "not an illusion. It's there, it's achievable".

Livni urged the international community to support moderates in the Middle East.

She told Abbas that "compromising with extremists will not promote anything" - a clear reference to Hamas and other militant groups.

Abbas listened intently, nodding his head, and afterwards greeted her warmly with a long handshake.

He reiterated that if he cannot form a unity government with Hamas officials, he will move to call early elections, but gave no specific timetable.

Abbas was addressing a large crowd of political leaders, corporate bosses and others at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.

He said that such an agreement would help strengthen the hands of moderates in the region and fight extremism of all types.

But will Hamas, Hezbollah, and the other extremists in the region allow such a deal to happen. After all, the entire origin of the conflict was the refusal of Arabs to live with a two-state solution that Israel embraced from its inception. Can the Palestinians quit murdering Jews long enough to achieve what could have been theirs six decades ago?

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But the Dems like Harry Reid and Jim Webb insist that George Bush isnÂ’t allowed to do anything but make nice with the mad mullahs and the Holocaust-denying/desiring leader of Iran. Will it take a nuclear holocaust on American soil to get the Blame-America-First Party to come around on the issue, or will continued rhetoric like this be sufficient?

Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) said in a report.

"Iranian President Mahmoud AhmadinejadÂ… assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives," the Iranian president was quoted as saying.

"Sparking discord among Muslims, especially between the Shiites and Sunnis, is a plot hatched by the Zionists and the US for dominating regional nations and looting their resources," Ahmadinejad added, according to the report.

Is it time to start the bombing yet, Democrats be damned? Or do we let this genocidal maniac get nukes and carry out his plan to make Israel Juden frei -- and radioactive for at least the next 25,000 years?

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The possibility of good news for the Cuban people seems to be increasing.

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in "very grave" condition after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, a Spanish newspaper said Tuesday.

The newspaper El Pais cited two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Maranon hospital in the Spanish capital of Madrid. The facility employs surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old Castro.

In a report published on its Web site, El Pais said: "A grave infection in the large intestine, at least three failed operations and various complications have left the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, laid up with a very grave prognosis."

I look forward to hearing soon that Castro is in "in the grave" condition.

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As they have every time one has been offered, dating back to the partition of the region by the UN in 1947. So why should we be surprised that this proposal for a state with interim borders would be rejected?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, pledging deeper engagement in the Middle East peace process, met Sunday with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, who rejected suggestions for establishing a temporary state within provisional borders and pledged that any American money to bolster his security forces would not be misused.

“I have heard loud and clear the call for deeper American engagement in these processes,” Ms. Rice said after two and a half hours of talks with Mr. Abbas.

* * *

Although no formal proposal has been presented, some Israeli officials have floated the idea that the peace process could be accelerated by establishing a provisional Palestinian state within temporary borders to be subsequently set.

But Mr. Abbas said the idea would never work, fearing that the Palestinians might be locked into an inferior map.

“We have also noted to Minister Rice our decision to end any temporary or transitional solutions including a state with temporary borders because we do not believe it to be a realistic choice that can be built upon,” Mr. Abbas said during a joint news conference with the secretary of state.

Then again, if the Palestinians get their own state, they might be expected to quit killing Jews in Israel -- an outcome that too many of Israel's Arab neighbors find unacceptable.

Don't believe me? Consider this little bit of information buried in the final paragraph of the article.

Despite a cease-fire in Gaza that came into effect on Nov. 26, Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into southern Israel on an almost daily basis. The rockets are inaccurate and rarely cause serious damage or casualties, but the Israeli government says it will not tolerate the attacks indefinitely.

Israel, on the other hand, is expected to exercise restraint.

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After all, that is the only way to interpret this veto of a resolution on human rights in Burma, which for decades has been among the most serious violators of human rights in the world.

China and Russia on Friday jointly vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution criticizing Burma's human rights record, striking a blow to the Bush administration's year-long campaign to use the U.N. Security Council to spotlight the repressive rule of Burma's military junta.

Friday's vote was part of a broader diplomatic effort by Beijing and Moscow to prevent the United States and its Western allies from using the 15-nation council to censure some of the countries particularly known for rights abuses, including governments in Belarus, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

They were joined by one of the council's most influential Third World countries, South Africa. It also opposed the U.S. resolution on the grounds that the Security Council has no mandate to scold or sanction Burma, also known as Myanmar, for abuses on its own soil.

"We believe that the situation in this country does not pose any threat to international or regional peace; this opinion is shared by a large number of states, including most importantly those neighboring Myanmar," Russia's ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, told the council. "We find that attempts aimed at using the Security Council to discuss issues outside its purview are unacceptable."

Is it time for us to abandon this corrupt organization, a haven for dictators and murderers, to the dustbin of history? Is it time to start an international organization – composed only of democracies that guarantee human rights – to serve as a moral beacon to the world?

And is it time to expel the UN from American soil and to demolish the building at Turtle Bay?

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From NROÂ’s The Corner

Torture in Egypt [Michael Rubin]

In a November 15, 2006 Corner post, I linked to a video posted on an Egyptian website showing the Egyptian police sodomizing a dissident with a stick while he screamed in agony. The Egyptian Courts have now ruled on the caseÂ… and have thrown the dissident in prison for “resisting authority.”  Because the White House remains silent, all Egyptians are left with are images like this and this.

I guess Arabs torturing Arabs is not nearly so troubling to the Arab street and world sensitivities as the less serious incidents at Abu Ghraib -- acts that America punished rather than condoned.

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Just when you think Iran's government couldn't sink any deeper into the abyss of anti-Semitism, one of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's top aides has come out with a real whopper.

Just when you thought the Iranian leadership could stoop no further: A top advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed in an interview with Iranian website Baztab that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's parents were both Jewish and that Hitler himself was one of the founders of the State of Israel.

n the interview, translated by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) Mohammad-Ali Ramin, a chief aide to Ahmadinejad, told Baztab that Hitler's paternal grandmother was a Jewish prostitute and his father even kept his Jewish name until finally changing it to Hitler when he was 40.

Ramin also claimed that the reason Hitler developed such an aversion to Judaism was because his Jewish mother was a promiscuous woman. Hitler therefore, says Ramin, tried to escape his religion.

Ramin cites a 1974 book by Hennecke Kardel titled 'Adolf Hitler: Founder of Israel', which alleges that Hitler strived to create a Jewish state as a result of being influenced by his Jewish relatives and his cooperation with Britain – which also wanted to drive the Jews out of Europe.

I'm speechless.

American Thinker Blog has additional coverage and quotes.

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And one I have to agree with him in most respects -- we need to do more to assist refugees in Iraq, especially those who have assisted the Coalition and the new Iraqi government.

There is an overwhelming need for temporary relief and permanent resettlement. Last year, however, America accepted only 202 Iraqi refugees, and next year we plan to accept approximately the same number. We and other nations of the world need to do far better.

Thousands of these refugees are fleeing because they have been affiliated in some way with the United States. Cooks, drivers and translators have been called traitors for cooperating with the United States. They know all too well that the fate of those who work with U.S. civilians or military forces can be sudden death. Yet, beyond a congressionally mandated program that accepts 50 Iraqi translators from Iraq and Afghanistan each year, the administration has done nothing to resettle brave Iraqis who provided assistance in some way to our military. This lack of conscience is fundamentally unfair. We need to do much more to help Iraqi refugees, especially those who have helped our troops.

As a humanitarian issue, there is no question that Kennedy is right. More humanitarian aid will help to stablize the region and stem the humanitarian crisis that exists. But there is one other consideration as well -- one that the policy proposals we hear from too many Democrats make a real issue.

The biggest disgrace of America's betrayal of South Vietnam was the number of Vietnamese left behind who had relied on US assurances that their assistance to the United States and involvement with the South Vietnamese government would assure them a seat out when the Communists violated the Paris Peace Accords. As some Democrats prepare to force a second great military cut-and-run from success, we need to ensure that there are not many Iraqis who assisted America trying to break through the embassy gates as the last American helicopter leaves the Green Zone

UPDATE -- 1/2/2007: How serious is that refugee crisis?

With thousands of Iraqis desperately fleeing this country every day, advocates for refugees, and even some American officials, say there is an urgent need to allow more Iraqi refugees into the United States.

Until recently the Bush administration had planned to resettle just 500 Iraqis this year, a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are now believed to be fleeing their country each month. State Department officials say they are open to admitting larger numbers, but are limited by a cumbersome and poorly financed United Nations referral system.

“We’re not even meeting our basic obligation to the Iraqis who’ve been imperiled because they worked for the U.S. government,” said Kirk W. Johnson, who worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Falluja in 2005. “We could not have functioned without their hard work, and it’s shameful that we’ve nothing to offer them in their bleakest hour.”

* * *

The State Department has made it clear that it is deeply concerned about the fate of IraqÂ’s religious minorities, including Christians. Officials at the department say that any refugee program must also be geared to those vulnerable groups.

As many as 100,000 exiled Iraqi Christians have relatives in the United States and would want to resettle there if given the chance, said Joseph T. Kassab, the executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, a Michigan-based umbrella group that represents Iraqi Christians. Mr. Kassab said his groupÂ’s estimates were based on questionnaires devised by University of Michigan professors and filled out by several thousand Iraqi Christian refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon in recent months.

Yes, we need to care for the religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq -- but what of those in peril because of their service to the United States? Do we not have an obligation to them? Or is it April 30, 1975 all over again.

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