Levitt Letter Extra News

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com

The Chavista (follower of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez) red shirt onslaught seems to be sharpening its pitch. After all, weeks and weeks of attacks, fanned by “Globovision (a 24-hour television news network in Venezuela) as the source of all evil,” have a way to self-generate excessive stimulation in those quarters.

Yesterday (Wednesday, June 17), we saw many concerted attacks of the sort, worthy of any self-respecting totalitarian regime. I chose to show only one, the attack on Miranda State’s Governor Radonski ’s office by the mayor of Los Teques, Alirio Mendoza. The pictures say it all. My only question is how come nothing will happen to this mayor promoting violence and using public employees for that purpose DURING working hours, while Globovision will be closed any time soon just because Rafael Poleo did not control his big mouth for a few seconds? Does chavismo ignore that these things do go around the world? The shirts might be red, but this is Fascism and the language is clear: those who wear the swastika in their heart are those covering the walls with it.

By the way, just for the record, the grandparents of governor Capriles Radonski died in the Holocaust. So we can mark that down as yet more chavista anti-Semitism.

Chavismo will not stop at anything to weaken those opposition officials elected last November. Rosales, Maracaibo mayor is in exile; Ledezma, Caracas mayor, has been stripped of any function; Governors Perez of Zulia, Navarro of Nueva Esparta, and Salas Feo of Carabobo have lost control of ports, airports, and highways; and now it is the turn of the two last-remaining governors with still some authority. The attack on Capriles Radonski in Miranda has restarted and in the most ignominious way one can think of.

www.IsraelToday.co.il 

Even before Ahmadinejad could start speaking, a man wearing a colorful clown wig stood up and and began jeering the Iranian leader. After the man had been removed by security, Ahmadinejad called him “ignorant.”

The Iranian leader then went on to accuse Western powers of having brought great death and destruction to the whole world during two world wars, and then using the conclusion of those conflicts as an opportunity to impose oppressive and racist restrictions on the rest of the world.

As evidence he pointed out that a mere five nations have veto power in the UN Security Council, the most important decision-making body in the world.

Ahmadinejad then turned to Israel, which he insists European powers established out of guilt over the Nazi Holocaust.

“Under the pretext of compensating for the evil done in the name of xenophobia, they in fact set up the most violent xenophobes, in Palestine,” stated Ahmadinejad.

It was then that the delegates from those European nations who had not boycotted the event all together rose from their seats and filed out of the room right in front of Ahmadinejad’s podium.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama on Sunday defended his decision to boycott the anti-racism summit, calling its open criticism of Israel “hypocritical and counterproductive.”

Reuters

An umbrella group of Jewish groups sought assurances recently from French President Nicolas Sarkozy that authorities would do more to stem a rise in anti-Jewish crime, which has increased following the war in the Gaza strip.

Some 100 acts targeting Jews were reported in France since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against Gaza’s Hamas Islamist rulers in late December, said the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France. “We expressed our worries to the president,” Richard Prasquier, who heads the body, told reporters. “The president assured us of the attention he was giving to these acts. He told us that he would do more to find a solution to this problem.”

The group said aggression against Jews had picked up markedly over the past month compared with 2007, when some 250 acts targeting Jews were recorded.

“These acts are the manifestation of very deeply engrained anti-Semitism in a portion of the population and particularly among the youth in our country,” said Prasquier.

Photo (AP): French synagogue attacked

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie recently met leaders of France’s Jewish and Muslim communities and security chiefs to deliver a message that the Gaza conflict – which ended in a shaky ceasefire – should not lead to violent acts in France.

In recent years, flare-ups between Israel and the Palestinians have been followed by acts of violence against Jewish people or buildings in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities.

Earlier in January, attackers launched two cars packed with petrol bombs at a synagogue in France’s southwestern city of Toulouse, causing damage but no casualties.

www.dailymail.co.uk

The Jewish mother murdered in the brutal Mumbai terror attacks last week was six month pregnant, her father revealed today at her funeral.

And Rivkah Holtzberg’s two-year-old son, Moshe, may have been beaten by the militants, reports have claimed.

His back was covered in bruises consistent with abuse, the chairman of Zaka, Israel’s ultraorthodox recovery service, told Sky News.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men attend the funeral procession of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and his wife Rivkah, 28, killed in the Mumbai Jewish center attack.

Moshe Holtzberg, the couple’s two-year-old son, cried repeatedly for his mother during a memorial service in Mumbai yesterday.

Moshe’s grandfather revealed that his daughter Rivkah had been six months pregnant as he gave a eulogy at her funeral. Rivka and her husband Gabi were buried in Israel along with four other victims of the attacks.

Throngs of mourners today packed the funerals of the six victims, turning the narrow alleys of one Jerusalem neighborhood into a sea of black coats and hats.

A huge crowd gathered outside the red-brick Israeli headquarters of the Chabad movement, whose emissary to Mumbai, Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, was murdered along with his 28-year-old wife, Rivkah.

Those in attendance included President Shimon Peres and a slew of other dignitaries.
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, a Chabad official from New York, delivered an impassioned eulogy, describing the young couple as dedicated people who would stop at nothing to help a fellow Jew.

Israelis have begun burying the six Jews killed in the Mumbai murder spree, including American Leibish Teitelbaum, 38, whose body above was buried.

The religious Mea Shearim neighbourhood of Jerusalem was the scene of wailing and chanting as thousands of people bid a final farewell today to the six Jews killed in last week’s bloody Mumbai attacks.

‘We will answer the terrorists,’ he vowed, his voice shaking. ‘We will not fight them with AK47s. We will not fight them with grenades. We will not fight them with tanks.

‘We will fight them with torches!’ he cried, referring to God’s teachings.
He pledged to rebuild the Mumbai centre and name it after the Holtzbergs. Chabad operates thousands of such outreach centers around the world.

Addressing the crowd, Peres called on the world to unite in the fight against terrorism. He singled out Iran, which supports anti-Israel militant groups and whose president has called for Israel’s destruction.

‘If the entire world doesn’t join together as one man and say ‘enough!,’ then the world is in danger. This is a plague that is difficult to stop,’ he said.

Grief: Ultra-Orthodox mourners sit behind the bodies of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, right, and his wife Rivkah, 28, left, killed in the Mumbai Jewish centre attack, during their funeral procession in Israel today.

Religious Jewish women grieve during the funeral service Holtzberg’s funeral service.

The Holtzbergs’ bodies – hers wrapped in a shroud, his in a prayer shawl – rested on chairs on the dais where the eulogies and prayers were delivered.

There are already fears that Moshe witnessed his parents’ murder after he was found by his nanny crying next to their bodies, covered in blood.

She dashed him to safety before commandos launched an attack on the Jewish house in which the terrorists were holding the family hostage last week.

In an emotional scene before the flight to Israel yesterday, Moshe repeatedly cried for his mother at a tearful memorial ceremony at a Mumbai synagogue. The scene was broadcast repeatedly on Israeli TV stations.

‘You don’t have a mother who will hug you and kiss you,’ Rabbi Kotlarsky cried out during a eulogy that switched back and forth between Hebrew and English. But the community will take care of the boy, he vowed: ‘You are the child of all of Israel.’

The area became a sea of black hats and coats as ultra-Orthodox men followed the service.

Mourners pray over the bodies of the Holtzbergs.

Moshe has not slept in four days, the rabbi who found his father’s body told The Times. Now, the nanny – Sandra Samuel – is the only person that Moshe responds to. his family told Sky News.

Yesterday she and Moshe flew to Israel on the same plane that was carrying his parents’ bodies. His family have asked her to stay and live in Israel as they struggle to come to terms with the trauma of the attack.

In addition to Peres, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s two chief rabbis were among the thousands who attended the nationally televised ceremony.

Most of the people who came were bearded men in the black suits and black fedoras of Chabad members. Women gathered behind a yellow metal partition, in accordance with the Jewish custom of separating the sexes during prayer.

The Holtzbergs on their wedding day in 2002. They were expecting their second child, Mrs Holtzberg’s father said today.

The grimness of the funerals was deepened by the conviction that the victims were struck because of their religion.

‘It’s a very difficult feeling because we know this was targeted against us,’ said Eliahu Tzadok, 41, who attended the funeral of another victim, 38-year-old Leibish Teitelbaum, in Jerusalem.

‘It’s a continuation of acts against the Jewish people when the Jewish people did nothing to deserve it.’

Teitelbaum, a U.S. citizen who lived in Jerusalem, was in Mumbai last week supervising the preparation of kosher food.

Several thousand ultra-Orthodox mourners, most of them bearded men with sidecurls garbed in long black coats and black hats, packed the main square, narrow alleys and rooftops of Mea Shearim, a large religious neighborhood in Jerusalem, for his funeral.

The bloody scene inside the Mumbai house after the failed rescue attempt by commandos last week.

Moshe Holtzberg is held by his nanny Sandra Samuel as she and his grand parents, Yehodit and Shimon Rosenberg, arrive at Mumbai airport on their way to Israel.

Death notices plastered the neighborhood’s billboards and walls, reading ‘May God avenge them.’ Loudspeakers blazed with the sounds of weeping, wailing mourners reciting prayers from the Book of Psalms.

Teitelbaum belonged to a prominent family in the small, ultra-Orthodox Satmar sect, which is ideologically opposed to the state of Israel.

His family informed the Israeli government that they wanted no state involvement or symbols at his funeral, an official in the government ministry in charge of state ceremonies said Monday.

But when Teitelbaum’s casket was taken off the plane from Mumbai, it was draped with an Israeli flag.

Shmuel Poppenheim, who studied with Teitelbaum in his youth, told Israel Radio that ‘disturbed his family very much.’ There were no Israeli flags or government representatives at the funeral.

A fourth victim, 50-year-old Norma Shvarzblat Rabinovich of Mexico, had planned to immigrate to Israel to join two of her children who had already moved here.

She had spent the past few months touring India, and had planned to fly from Mumbai to Israel on Monday – the 18th birthday of her son, Manuel – before she was killed, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry Web site.

The two other victims were Yocheved Orpaz, 60, who had been traveling in India with a daughter and grandchildren, and Bentzion Chroman, 28, who like Teitelbaum, was a supervisor of kosher food.

By Dr. Richard L. Cravatts
www.IsraelNationalNews.com

Lest there be any confusion about the actual sentiments of the Palestinians’ “moderate” leadership, President Mahmoud Abbas’s comments at memorial service on the fourth anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death this month provide ample evidence that the central ideology of Palestinianism was, and still is, based on a cult-like obsession with death and martyrdom, and continuously striving for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

Using the Ramallah event to reaffirm a commitment to “follow Yasser Arafat’s path until a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is established,” Abbas went on to heap heroic praise upon two additional iconic mass murderers who, like Arafat, had become respected martyrs in the struggle for Palestinian self-determination by defining their political lives by the body count of Israeli civilians whose murders they helped effect.

“The path of the shahids,” or martyrs, Abbas solemnly announced, “Arafat, George Habash, and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin — is the path that we cherish; it is aimed at upholding the Palestinians’ nationalist and sovereign resolutions.”

Cherishing that path is clearly not what President George Bush had in mind when he established the Road Map, through which relations with Israel would be normalized and the Palestinians would receive their long-awaited state. The “path of the shahids” that Abbas sanctified with his tributes completely skirts any notion of a cessation of violence, and calls for the destruction and elimination of Israel. In fact, in recognizing the accomplishments of the murderous duo of Yassin and Habash, Abbas is clearly giving a nod to the political tactics not of his moderate Fatah party, but to those of his rivals in Hamas — of which Yassin, interestingly enough, was the co-founder.

Despite the fact that he founded a terrorist organization that was directly responsible, since 2000 alone, for the death of 337 and the injury of 2,000 Israelis — mostly civilians — the world press regularly and carelessly described Yassin, killed in a 2004 Israeli tactical assault, as the “spiritual leader” of the Hamas movement. Wrapping oneself in the insulating shield of one’s faith while at the same time committing acts of decidedly un-spiritual acts, of course, is a technique not unique to Yassin and his apologists, but the widespread acceptance and use of this mantle of theological respectability changes neither the actuality nor gravity of the man’s primary deeds and articulated purpose — namely, the killing and annihilation of Jews in Israel. Despite the fact that he was promiscuously referred to as a “spiritual leader,” he was clearly, to paraphrase and contort Lloyd Bentsen’s famous quip to Dan Quayle, no Mahatma Gandhi.

Similarly, George Habash, Abbas’s other hero of Palestinian nationalism, sometimes referred to as the “Christian godfather of terrorism,” was the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a rival to Arafat, and someone who did not even pretend to desire any type of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. His diplomatic technique was more simple and direct: airline hijacking, hostage taking (with a preference for Jews), barbaric mass murders, drive-by shootings, and suicide bombings. When he was not busy arranging for the murder of civilians around the globe and vaporizing aircraft, Habash used his curious blend of Marxism and nihilistic politics to concoct a hard-line strategy for realizing an autonomous Palestinian state.

“We call all the Palestinian forces,” he said, “to freeze out security cooperation with the Zionist enemy and boost armed and popular struggle against the army of occupation.”

There is hardly a hidden agenda here, and neither Yassin nor Habash limited their incendiary rhetoric and deeds to the “Arab street,” like Arafat did and Abbas now does, while speaking to the West and rest of the world with a message of moderation and restraint. So it is very telling when Abbas uses Arafat’s memorial service to comment that the barbarity of two other murderers is central to the effort “to follow Yasser Arafat’s path.” What does that mean for the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations? Sadly, that it is likely that others will follow the model of this trio of shahids and become martyrs themselves to the Palestinian struggle — what they perceive to be a divinely inspired cause.

Hamas, of course, went one step farther than pointing to its so-called ‘holy book’ for its spiritual inspiration: it wrote in its own 1988 charter that Israel “will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Thus, Hamas’ original and remaining primary intent is the creation, through religiously sanctioned violence, of an Islamic state in all of Palestine.

Yassin himself had reiterated this general approach to Israel, indicating quite clearly that if there is any “road map” for peace, Hamas is clearly not taking that journey; that this is not a struggle against oppression or for territorial rights. It is a campaign to expel Jews, by whatever means necessary, from Israel itself.

This is a particularly thorny issue for Israel which, in having to combat an enemy who is not only willing but eager to die as a martyr for his cause, finds itself unable to protect itself without bringing some of the world’s condemnation and disapproval on its political head. Martin Kramer observed that Israel’s military responses—even preemptive ones—become necessary and unavoidable, that “the goals of terrorists are such that there is no reasonable political response. This is particularly true when one confronts terrorists whose motivation is religious, [since] religious movements that develop terrorist appendages often have goals that are civilizational, and that envision an Armegeddon-like catharsis.”

Yassin, Habash and Arafat may well be inspirations to Abbas and to Palestinians, but there is clearly a moral disconnect that enables someone to characterize a person as a spiritual leader when he lived his life with the primary role of a fanatical, murder-inciting terrorist. Only in the Orwellian universe of contemporary diplomacy can someone be considered a political moderate when he embraces and glorifies the legacy of terrorists and simultaneously sits down at negotiating tables with Israeli leaders. The fact that the current Palestinian leadership admits publicly that violence is an acceptable and admirable component of a political strategy is troubling as well.

“Palestinian terrorism is not a plea to Israel to relieve material needs,” suggested Louis Rene Beres, sadly, “but rather a demand to die so that Arabs can realize their spiritual wants.”

Given the deadly cost of that theology to Jews, the spiritual leadership spawned by such an ideology can never be accepted as part of a road map to any lasting peace.

By Christine Williams
www.FrontPageMagazine.com

Support for Israel has never ranked high on the United Nations’ agenda. And the upcoming World Conference Against Racism, scheduled for early 2009 in Geneva, Switzerland, presents a valid case. Many observers are concerned that the UN-sponsored event will simply serve as yet another a platform to launch attacks against Israel — as the previous world anti-racism conference did in Durban, South Africa, seven years ago.

Even by the standards of the organization’s traditional antagonism toward the Jewish State, the U.N.’s 2001 Durban gathering marked a low point. To the extent that “racism” was discussed, it was only to condemn Israeli policies. Little wonder that the conference, known as “Durban I,” is largely remembered as a U.N.-backed assault on Israel.

Now it’s back. And if early evidence is any guide, Durban II, as the Geneva event is already being called, will be a replay of its predecessor. Consider that the chair of the conference’s planning committee is Libya, whose longtime leader, Muammar Kadhafi, claimed during the recent presidential campaign that the Israeli Mossad aimed to assassinate Barack Obama. The vice chair of the conference, meanwhile, is communist Cuba. And the fact that Iran’s president has notoriously called for Israel’s destruction has not, expectedly, prevented it from playing a key leadership role in the upcoming conference.

Nor does it bode well for Durban II that its agenda will be set by the 56-member Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). In particular, the conference will consider responses to “Islamophobia.” In this connection, the OIC’s members will consider what they regard as the problematic Western right to free speech. Referring to the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed published in Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten and to Fitna, Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s documentary about Islam, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu recently promised to send “a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.” He went on to warn Western countries to “look seriously into the question of freedom of expression.”

For their part, Western countries should make clear that they will not allow the OIC to dictate what can and cannot be said about Islam. Instead, they should shift the focus onto the OIC. Instead of concerning themselves with alleged Western prejudices, Islamic states would do well to ponder the rampant racism in the Muslim World. Darfur, where an estimated 300,000 Muslims have been killed by their fellow Muslims, prompting the United Nations to call it the worst human rights disaster in the world, would be a logical starting point. From there, the OIC might consider the continued bloodshed between Shiites and Sunnis, and the fanatical suicide bombers who have claimed the lives of thousands of their co-religionists. One need hardly look to the West to find “Islamophobia” in action.

As for “racism,” the conference’s nominal subject, it is worth bearing in mind that slavery — the most racist of practices — endures in the Islamic world even as it has been abolished in the West. In OIC member states like Sudan and Mauritania, Arabs still keep black African slaves. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, who was indicted by the World Court for human rights abuses in Darfur, is reputed to have black slaves in his own house. According to NGO reports (non-governmental organizations associated with the United Nations), some 200,000 southern Sudanese have been enslaved during Bashir’s reign, a practice that the UN has charged is “deeply rooted in Arab and Muslim supremacism.” (Such grim statistics did not deter the Sudanese Minister of Justice from demanding, in a stunning act of hypocrisy, reparations for historical slavery during Durban I.) And while Mauritania legally abolished slavery in 1980, it is still practiced secretly. Even Muslims in the West have not accepted its ban on slavery. For example, four Arab princesses were found in July living in Brussels with 17 slaves.

The persistence of slavery in the Muslim world is not, of course, surprising. In August 1990, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights was affirmed by the 57 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). It stated that Islamic sharia law is the sole source of the Islamic perspective on human rights. And slavery is codified in sharia law. It is doubtful, naturally, that this detail will be much discussed during Durban II.

In light of recent history, it makes sense that Israel has decided to boycott next year’s conference. Canada has also decided to boycott Durban II, and other Western countries should consider following the Canadian example. It’s the height of absurdity for free nations to have to endure lectures on human rights from its preeminent abusers. In 2001, they could have claimed to be unaware of the conference’s sinister agenda. Seven years later, ignorance is no longer an excuse or an option.

By Deborah Weiss FrontPageMagazine.com

November 9, 2008 marked the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht. It was a night of terror which constituted the commencement of the Holocaust. It was a horrible night, but it was merely a foreshadow of the doom yet to come. This anniversary should not merely commemorate the horrible events that took place in 1938. Rather, it should serve as a warning that we must learn the lessons of history lest we repeat our mistakes; we must take our enemies’ words seriously, and we must not be complacent in the face of evil.

Hitler disguised his plan to exterminate Jews when he first seized power in 1933. Instead of announcing his plan for genocide, he implemented more palatable anti-Semitic policies, which were incremental, systematic, and strategic. Initially, the policies deprived Jews of social, economic, and legal rights. They helped to desensitize the public to discrimination and hate. Eventually, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped the Jews of their German citizenship and they remained legally nationless.

In October of 1938, the Nazis deported approximately 17,000 Polish Jews back to their land of origin. Each was allowed to take one suitcase of belongings. Their businesses, homes, and other possessions were confiscated by the German government. However, Poland refused to take the Jews back, as they were no longer Polish citizens. They remained on the border of Poland in military stables, penniless, jobless, and in hideous conditions.

Herschel Grynzpan, a 17-year-old student in Paris, learned that this was the plight of his family. His sister, Berta, had sent him a postcard from the Polish outskirts, asking him to send money. Enraged, Herschel bought a gun. On November 7, 1938 he went to the German Embassy and fired five shots at the Third Secretary, Ernst von Rath, whom he mistook for the Ambassador. Herschel took this drastic action to draw attention to how Germany was treating the Jews. Two days later, von Rath died.

The assassination was the perfect pretext for Nazi reprisal against the Jews. Josef Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, organized what later became known as “Kristallnacht” or “night of the broken glass.” Some historians believe that the Nazis had planned an act of violence against the Jews well before the shooting, and were merely waiting for the right moment to implement it.

On November 9, 1938, Richard Heydrich, head of the office that oversaw the Gestapo, the SA, and the State Police, issued a telegraph to all headquarters and police stations. It informed them that riots against the Jews in Austria and Germany would occur that night and into the next morning. It instructed them not to interfere with the violence and to protect only the lives and property of non-Jews.

That evening, acting under Nazi instructions, mobs of Germans and Austrians incited riots. Dozens of Jews were killed, Torah scrolls were desecrated, and hundreds of synagogues were burned to ashes, many of which had been historical houses of worship standing proudly in Germany for centuries prior. Firemen were forbidden from extinguishing the flames.

Approximately 7500 Jewish shops, businesses and homes were vandalized, pillaged and ransacked. This included orphanages and hospitals for sick Jewish children. Some standers-by joined in the rampage, including women and children. Others cried, and more remained silent. Thirty thousand young, healthy Jewish males were arrested, imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. The next morning, the streets were littered with shattered glass from the broken windows.

When all was said and done, some complained that destroying Jewish goods affected German businesses. As a result, the Jews were fined one billion marks to pay for the damage that had been done to them. Claims paid by insurance companies for the broken glass were taken by the state. It took six months for the windows to be completely replaced.

Kristallnacht signaled a dramatic shift in policy from political, social and economic persecution to physical beatings and murder. It was the inevitable progression of incremental discrimination and hate-filled policies. It was also the first violent pogrom in Western Europe in centuries. Further, it marked the end of the German-Jewish legacy which included centuries of religious scholarship, business-building, social activism, culture, science, government service and other Jewish contributions to German society. Previously, many Jews had even fought and died as German soldiers out of loyalty to their Fatherland.

The day after Kristallnacht, Goebbels announced, “[W]e shed not a tear for them. They stood in the way long enough. We can use the space made free more usefully than as a Jewish fortress.” He announced government-sanctioned reprisals against the Jewish community. Within weeks after the shooting of von Rath, Jewish newspapers and magazines were banned from publication, Jewish children were banned from “Aryan” state elementary schools, and all Jewish cultural activities were suspended indefinitely. The Nazis issued a “Decree on Eliminating the Jews from German Economic Life.” Jewish businesses were not allowed to re-open unless they were managed by non-Jews. Jews were no longer allowed to own radios or have driver’s licenses. They were given curfews and geographically segregated. Virtually no Jewish-German contact was permitted in public life, whether related to transportation, schooling, or hospitals.

Though many newspapers and magazines throughout the world condemned the Nazis, little action was taken to actually help the Jews in Germany. Some Jews were permitted to enter England. President Roosevelt stated that refugees already in America on visas could remain. However, the U.S. legislature voted not to open its doors to additional Jewish refugees. And for the most part, other western countries did not change their immigration policies to come to the rescue of the Jews.

The apparent apathy of the “civilized world” in response to Nazi brutality against the Jews only emboldened them. It led them rightly to believe that they could commit ever increasing acts of violence and cruelty without consequence. Jews in Germany, who were no longer citizens of any country, remained trapped in Germany without legal or physical protections from any government. They were no longer human; they were “untermenschen” (subhuman).

During the 1942 Wannsee Conference, the SS adopted the “Final Solution” as official government policy. It paved the way for them to implement policies toward a Judenfrei Europe, and to extinguish the Jewish race as humans would extinguish rodents. Heydrich, who had previously participated in the meeting to remove Jews from all economic life, was appointed Chief Executor of the Final Solution.

Today it is not Aryan supremacists who want to extinguish all Jews, but Islamist supremacists who want all countries to be ruled by Sharia. In some regions of the world, Islamists are imposing their will through acts of violence and terrorism. In the West, they are using non-violent means to achieve the same radical goals. They are lobbying, legislating, litigating, and infiltrating our governments and universities. They are fighting to obtain preferential treatment and take away our freedom.

We must stop our enemies in their first steps on the path toward evil. We cannot give them a foothold. If we do, we have been forewarned. In the face of apathy and complacency, our values, freedom, and national security will be at risk.

Edmund Burke once said “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”. Make no mistake about it — Hitler is back with a different name. After WWII, the world vowed never again. Today, we have another chance to look evil in the eye and take action to defeat it. Will we rise to the challenge? Or will we, once again, sit idly by?

By Dr. Richard L. Cravatts, www.IsraelNN.com

As part of evaluating the competitive landscape of the popularity of nations, in a process referred to in marketing circles as “place branding,” Israel, to no one’s great surprise, comes up short in brand likeability, ranking last out of 35 nations included in an August 2006 survey conducted by nation-branding expert Simon Anholt; even less attractive to respondents than Indonesia, Estonia, and Turkey.

How could this have happened to a country that is the Middle East’s only thriving democracy and that enjoys a remarkably robust economy that has spawned some 1,000 startup high-tech companies, for example, second only to the U.S.? How, in short, would you go about making the world hate Israel?

This is how you would accomplish that objective if you were an enemy of Israel:

Even after 60 years of its existence, you question the fundamental right of Israel to even exist and regularly, though falsely, condemn it for being created “illegally” — through the “theft” of Palestinian lands and property — and thus decide, because of its original sin, that it has no “right to exist” and is merely a Zionist “regime.”

Of all the 100 million refugees who were dispersed around the globe and were re-assimilated since World War II, you choose only the Palestinians to languish in barbaric refugee camps where their lives are used as political fodder to denounce the existence of an Israel that supposedly has deprived them of a home.

You have the United Nations set up an agency, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose sole function is to make sure that this one group of refugees in the whole world is coddled. Give only this group of refugees a collective, as opposed to individual, “right of return,” and not only to those refugees who supposedly lived in and left what is now Israel, but all of their descendants, as well.

You use the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council of the United Nations to repeatedly demonize and delegitimize Israel, making it a pariah in the world community and issuing an edict that equates Zionism with racism. In 2006-07, if you are the Human Rights Council, you pass one hundred percent of your condemnatory resolutions against Israel.

You inculcate Palestinian children, nearly from birth, with seething, blind, unrelenting and obsessive hatred of Jews and the “Zionist regime,” so that kindergartners graduate with blood-soaked hands while toting plastic AK-47s and dedicate their lives to jihad, while older children are recruited to hide explosives on their bodies to transform themselves into shahids — a new generation of kindling for radical Islam’s cult of death.

When Israel launches a military strike against nests of terrorists or in response to ceaseless rocket barrages, you term their response “disproportionate,” another escalation in the “cycle of violence,” a violation of human rights, aggressive, militaristic, with Apache gunships “pounding” terrorist neighborhoods.

If you are the Palestinian media, and members of the world media who are either intentionally biased or willing to be duped by anti-Israel propaganda, you repeatedly report on supposed Israeli human rights violations, such as an alleged “massacre of the 21st century,” a horrible war crime and example of “genocide” committed by Israel against Palestinians in the village of Jenin.

You talk about the Israeli security barrier as an “apartheid wall” and describe it as a massive, soaring, unbroken division through Palestinian neighborhoods and communities, overlooking the fact that the wall is towering and solid concrete only in those regions that have been repeatedly assaulted by terrorism, and that 90 percent of the hundreds of miles of barrier comprises mere wire fence.

You use the “apartheid wall” image to create a broader misconception about the Palestinians living under a South African-style apartheid regime, disingenuously equating race restrictions that blacks lived under in Soweto with the open society of Israel, in which Israeli Arabs have more rights than in any Arab state and are asked only not to murder Jews in their midst.

On campuses where a coddled and insulated professoriate often express antipathy for the perceived ills of capitalism, the usurpation of “Palestine” by Israel, and the denial of the civil and economic rights of the Palestinians, you contend that Israel’s very existence is not at all about self-determination (something you deem appropriate only for the Palestinians) and all about greed, globalism, colonialism, exploitation, and undeserved political and economic might.

You fund Middle Eastern Studies centers on university campuses and use them as anti-Israel, anti-American “think tanks” where scholarship is tainted with ideology and singularly focused on the Palestinian cause. You fund the active and vocal Muslim Students Association on campuses across the US that hold “Israel Apartheid Week” and “Holocaust in the Holy Land” festivals at which propaganda, Jew-hatred, apologies for terrorism and further demonizing of Israel take place.

In the Arab world, you play fast and loose with history in your attempt to create a historical narrative conforming to your own political agenda, erasing any link between Palestine and the Jews. Though Jerusalem is mentioned not once in the Koran and over 669 times in the Jewish Bible, you claim that Jerusalem is now the “third holiest site to Muslims,” that, as Yasser Arafat announced at Camp David in 2000, the Temple Mount was never a Jewish site, that Jews now “occupy” Muslim lands.

If you are in the Muslim world or the netherworld of Jew-haters, you question the actual extent and truthfulness of the Holocaust, first complaining that the Palestinians should not have been made to suffer the loss of their homeland because of the German’s extermination of European Jewry — leading in some part to the creation of Israel — and then at other times questioning whether the Holocaust even occurred and accusing Zionists of using the fictitious event as a way to falsely extract sympathy from the world community and force them into giving Palestine away to the Jews.

You write academic books questioning the strength of the “Israel Lobby,” and wonder out loud if Jewish influence and wealth forces us to lose credibility and threatens America’s national security on behalf of Israel.

You do all of these things as part of a concerted effort and also as random, independent efforts on the part of Israel’s enemies, and you do it for the 60 years of Israel’s existence, and then you are shocked — shocked! — when Israel is shown to rank unfavorably in surveys which measure the public perception of nations and how they compare to one another in the world community. But you are pleased, because you know that if Israel cannot be annihilated with armaments and rockets, perhaps you can make it cease to exist simply by making the entire world loathe it for being what it is.

By Ezra HaLevi, www.IsraelNN.com

Violent attacks against Jews in recent weeks have taken place in Los Angeles, England, and New York City. In Ireland, a Jewish man had graffiti daubed on his home reading: “Go Home, Jew.”

A visibly Jewish man was attacked in Los Angeles by two men with shaved heads �who spoke a language not English or Spanish,� according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which is publicizing a $30,000 reward offered by the L.A. City Council for information leading to the apprehension of the attackers.

The victim, a 58-year-old, was wearing a yarmulke when he was attacked by the two men, who called him �dirty Jew� and hit him on the side of the head before punching and kicking him once he was down.

L.A. Police report a steep rise in anti-Jewish attacks in the San Fernando Valley, with anti-Semitic vandalism and improvised bombs targeting the Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus and a private home in West Hills.

German Arab Terrorist Sentenced For Stabbing Rabbi
A German court has sentenced a German Arab Muslim terrorist to three and a half years in prison for trying to murder a local rabbi with a knife.

The court found 23-year-old Sajed Aziz guilty of causing serious injuries in the September attack on Rabbi Zalman Gurevitch. CNN reported that Aziz claimed in court that he had acted in self-defense; that the rabbi had approached him in a �threatening manner.� Aziz was born in Germany to parents from Afghanistan.

The German prosecutors said there was not enough evidence that Aziz intended to murder the rabbi for a manslaughter charge. According to the European Jewish News, two key witnesses in the case, a Jewish man and the woman who had been walking with Rabbi Gurevitch, refused to testify at the trial because they feared for their safety.

Local Jewish officials criticized the light sentence. “After a verdict like this Frankfurt has become more unsafe for Jews,” Moshe Mendelzon, who attended the trial with other Orthodox Jews living in Germany, told the European Jewish News.

Frankfurt Jewish community President Salomon Korn said the sentence �has given a clear message to potential stabbers. I wonder if this would have been the sentence if there had been a religiously tinged attack on a Christian clergyman.�

Aziz was freed on bail until the end of all possible appeal proceedings.

British Jews Targeted by Attacks
Anti-Jewish graffiti covered shops, sidewalks and walls outside four synagogues in the northeast London Clapton Common and Stamford Hill neighborhoods recently.

The 40 slogans said things like “Jihad to Israel” and “Jihad to Tel Aviv.”

David Greenwald, a young member of the Belz synagogue, one of those targeted, told This Is London: “This morning I went to synagogue to pray and saw the writing all over everywhere — walls, shops, traffic lights. Everyone feels scared. Here we do not have any problem with Arabs — there has never been anything like this before, but now we are worried.”
The report quoted another member: “It makes us feel that we are in exile. It could be kids doing it, but even so, it shows something.” The other synagogues were Satmar Beth Hamedrash Yetev Lev, Atereth Zvi Beth Hamedrash, and the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. A day later more graffiti appeared in Bethnal Green.

Crown Heights (NY) Tensions Simmering After Attack
The Crown Heights Jewish community is still reeling following the attack on 16-year-old Jewish boy Alon Sherman, who was victim of a severe beating followed by the stealing of his bike, wallet, and cell phone.

“We’re having an uptick in anti-Semitism and racism in our community that’s unconscionable and it’s inexcusable,” Barry Sugar of the Jewish Leadership Council told the media. “We are being assaulted and city government is doing little to address our concerns.”

Terrorist Trial in Seattle Federation Attack Continues
The trial of Muslim terrorist Naveed Haq, who killed one woman and injured five others at a local Jewish Federation building, continues as the Pakistani Muslim shooter attempts to convince the jury of an insanity plea.

Dayna Klein, a pregnant Jewish woman who worked at the Federation at the time, took the witness stand and described bring shot in the arm by the terrorist after she called 911. The terrorist shot toward the four-month-pregnant woman�s stomach, but she shielded herself with her arm and the bullet miraculously lodged in her arm, sparing the unborn child.

Klein recalled crawling out of the room she was hiding in once she felt the coast was clear and finding co-worker Layla Bush �lying on her stomach, bleeding from her abdomen.� Klein recalled Bush trying to stop the bleeding from her wound using the baby clothes a fellow worker had bought Klein as a baby gift.

On her way out of the building she passed co-worker Pamela Waechter, shot dead from behind as she tried to escape the terrorist, who was ranting about Jews and Israel.

Haq�s defense lawyers are trying to plead insanity despite evidence of calculated premeditation. Haq bought guns and researched Jewish organizations ahead of the attack. He also, according to Klein, made a statement to the 911 operator when he took the phone away from her. “He began to state that…he would like to talk to [television talk-show host] Larry King and the Jews… [who] need to get out of Lebanon and Iraq,” she said.

Forensic psychologist J. Robert Wheeler testified, for the prosecution, that Haq told him in their interview. �I just got it in my mind to do some political activism, so I just hopped in my truck. I got in my head to do a mission. On my way to the federation I decided I was going to take hostages.�

Haq searched for his target on Google, first searching “AIPAC in Sacramento,” then “future AIPAC events,” “evangelists,” “national evangelical events” and “AIPAC in Seattle,” which brought him eventually to the web site of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. He then searched “current Jewish Federation events,” seemingly seeking to carry out a mass-casualty attack. Seeing none in the immediate future, he decided to embark on a three-hour trip to the Federation office.

In Ireland: Go Home, Jew
A Jewish man living in Ireland complained to police of Nazi graffiti on his home.

According to the Irish Independent, Herb Meyer’s home on the Dublin Road in Tuam was spray-painted with swastikas and slogans such as �Go Home, Jew.�

Meyer said he wasn�t aware of many people who even knew he was Jewish, as he does not dress identifiably like a Jew.

According to the Independent, Meyer �and his partner Armida Walsh, a Tuam native,� were intending to move to London to be near relatives, but they may revise their plans due to the attack.

The paper did not elaborate whether the revised plans may involve going to Israel.

www.littlegreenfootballs.com

United Nations �peacekeepers� stand and salute the remains of Hezbollah terrorists on a truck decorated with a photograph of Imad Mughniyeh, mastermind of the Marine barracks bombing that killed hundreds of U.S. citizens.