US Police: Man threatening Jews taken off flight


Police say an airline passenger in Miami proclaimed "I want to kill all the Jews" before officers forced him off a Detroit-bound plane.

 Miami-Dade police said in a statement Thursday that 43-year-old Mansor Mohammad Asad of Toledo, Ohio, was arrested. He faces several charges including disorderly conduct. (AP) 1/7/10


Ahmadinejad: Iran and Syria will create a new world order (DPA)[on Haaretz.com]  1/7/10
 

You'll love The Barber of Seville at the Caspe Terrace, January 31

Don’t forget to purchase your tickets to The Barber of Seville. OPERA Iowa’s first public performance at The Caspe Terrace, 6:15 pm on Jan. 31. Receive a 10% discount by registering for “Dish It Up.” Call Cathie at 277-6321 ext. 224 for details.



THE BARBER of SEVILLE by Rossini

The Lions and the Pomegranates are hosting an evening at the opera featuring the most performed comic opera of all time, Rossini’s THE BARBER OF SEVILLE.

Performing will be OPERA Iowa, the award-winning touring program of the Des Moines Metro Opera. $15 for adults and $5 for children (5-18). If you call Cathie at 515-277-6321 or email cathie@dmjfed.org to order tickets, you can even ask for a 10% discount when you pre-order. Tickets will be available at the door for regular price.

The performance will be held on Sunday, January 31, 2010 at The Caspe Terrace 6:15pm – 8:15pm in the stunning Bucksbaum Auditorium (Bad weather? The Opera will be rescheduled.)

jtanews: As zero hour nears, differences emerge on Iran sanctions http://digg.com/u1JUDk

Hamas' Gaza: outgoing and incoming

1. Two hi-power rockets, Grad rockets, were launched by Hamas from Gaza today a short distance into Netivot, Israel.

2.  IDF Spokesperson:  despite rocket fire @ #Israel last night, 115 aid trucks + supply of gas sched to cross into #Gaza [Friday.]

3.  IDF Spokesperson: : nearly 285 rockets fired from #Gaza in 2009

 Wall Street Journal   December 30, 2009

Israel's Right in the 'Disputed' Territories

By Danny Ayalon,  deputy foreign minister of Israel.

The recent statements by the European Union's new foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton criticizing Israel have once again brought international attention to Jerusalem and the settlements. However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel's rights to what are generally called the "occupied territories" but what really are "disputed territories."

That's because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered "occupied" in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel's conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years.

The name "West Bank" was first used in 1950 by the Jordanians when they annexed the land to differentiate it from the rest of the country, which is on the east bank of the river Jordan. The boundaries of this territory were set only one year before during the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan that ended the war that began in 1948 when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State. It was at Jordan's insistence that the 1949 armistice line became not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: "No provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations." (Italics added.) This boundary became the famous "Green Line," so named because the military officials during the armistice talks used a green pen to draw the line on the map.

After the Six Day War, when once again Arab armies sought to destroy Israel and the Jewish state subsequently captured the West Bank and other territory, the United Nations sought to create an enduring solution to the conflict. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is probably one of the most misunderstood documents in the international arena. While many, especially the Palestinians, push the idea that the document demands that Israel return everything captured over the Green Line, nothing could be further from the truth. The resolution calls for "peace within secure and recognized boundaries," but nowhere does it mention where those boundaries should be.

It is best to understand the intentions of the drafters of the resolution before considering other interpretations. Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in 1967 and a drafter of the resolution, stated in 1990: "Security Council Resolution 242 and (subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution) 338... rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to "secure and recognized borders," which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 194."

Lord Caradon, the British U.N. Ambassador at the time and the resolution's main drafter who introduced it to the Council, said in 1974 unequivocally that, "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial."

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, made the issue even clearer when he stated in 1973 that, "the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal." This would encompass "less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel's prior frontiers had proven to be notably insecure."
Even the Soviet delegate to the U.N., Vasily Kuznetsov, who fought against the final text, conceded that the resolution gave Israel the right to "withdraw its forces only to those lines it considers appropriate."

After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose. However, Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said "the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors." There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since.

And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it. Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted, the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table. Statements like those of Lady Ashton's are not only incorrect; they push a negotiated solution further away.

Rubin: The Danger of Revolutionary Islamism

Scholar and political analyst Barry Rubin provides some useful information and offers some advice, in his latest article, about what he terms Revolutionary Islamism:

The Obama Administration should acknowledge that the United States confronts a huge—but not united--revolutionary movement [Revolutionary Islamism] which has major assets. Elements control Iran, Syria (not Islamist but allied with it), Sudan, the Gaza Strip, and now in part Lebanon, too. There are major elements in the Pakistani and Turkish governments that lend it aid and comfort. It is also fueled by Saudi Wahabi Islam and money.

[Revolutionary Islamism] is fighting in two dozen countries, from Indonesia, the Philippines, China, and Thailand in the east, to Morocco and even within Europe on the western flank. That movement is also challenging for authority in every Arabic-speaking country and trying to destroy Israel.

The following should be instructive to those who (a) want  either to blame all Muslims or Islam itself for the behavior of  jihadi Islamists; or (b) who chose to believe that the concept of military jihad is not present in the sacred Islamic texts. -- MF

[T]raditional Islam in most places was socially reactionary but also relatively moderate. While jihad was part of the sacred texts, no one was advocating that it be carried out. Suicide attacks were viewed as a heretical activity. ... [R]evolutionary Islamism reinterpreted conservative traditional Islam. ...[Revolutionary Islamism] used deep-seated beliefs and values ...[and] made them into something quite different.

JPost: Netanyahu has good meeting with Mubarak

1. Egypt's Foreign Minister: Netanyahu  seems to genuinely want to try to resume negotiations with the Palestinians.

2. US envoy George Mitchell expected to  bring documents setting the basis for restarting diplomatic discussions.

3. Netanyahu, in a speech Monday to 140 Israeli ambassadors and heads of delegations currently in Jerusalem for a series of high-level briefings, emphasized the importance in his mind of Palestinian acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state, and said that demilitarization was Israel's key security requirement for any future Palestinian state.

Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, Netanyahu said, was necessary for any agreement with the Palestinians that would lead to an end to the conflict.

"We want an end to the conflict," he said. "That means the Palestinians must stop attempts to use a Palestinian state as jumping-off point for further claims against Israel. No claim to flood Israel with refugees, which would mean the end of theJewish state; and no irredentist claims to the Negev, Galilee or Israeli citizens, which would mean the dissolution of the Jewish state."

Regarding Israel's demands that any future Palestinian state be demilitarized, Netanyahu said this would necessitate preventing the import of rockets and missiles that could be fired into Israel, as was currently the situation in Gaza and Lebanon.

He said the situation in Lebanon, and the rearming of Hizbullah despite Security Council Resolution 1701 prohibiting just that, proved that agreements on paper were ineffective.

"I am doubtful that anyone can do this except a real Israeli presence, Israeli forces," he said, intimating that in any future agreement with the Palestinians, Israeli forces - not international ones - would have to be on the eastern border of a future Palestinian state to prevent it from importing arms and staging attacks against Israel.