Israeli Demonstrations (1999)

Today's Golden Oldie is from December 1999. Ten years ago this month.

Question: What should the citizens of a democracy do when their government ignores the will of the people?

Answer 1: When the government willingly defies the will of the people, the citizens should demonstrate against the government and its policies.

Answer 2: When, the government ignores the will of the peoplebecause of outside pressures, the citizens should demonstrate against the government and its policies in order to support it.

As it was in 1999 with the Golan Heights issue, so it is now in 2009, with the Obama Settlement Freeze. It's the dilemma of democracy in a small and beleaguered country.

the Promise to Abraham

The Bible quote is from the first of the five books of Moses. The King James translation renders the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 as:

"And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed."

In my recent American speaking tour I discovered that the folks who once believed that George W. was either demonic or stupid now have perfect faith in Obama as a glowing Messianic figure.

I thought I'd do a cartoon about President Obama's surprising string of failures, but these days any criticism of the politician from Chicago is a violation of Political Correctness ...and an invitation to being called a racist!!?!

So I did this cartoon about "playing it safe".

Your thoughts?

Delivery Systems (1994)

Today's Golden Oldie is from 15 years ago this month. It was drawn in December of 1994.

The subject of the cartoon was the use of "exploding suicide belts" for terrorists. Previously, the danger came from booby-trapped devices and bomb-laden vehicles. The advent of using willing stooges had, as pointed out in the cartoon, certain advantages for the Palestinian Terrorist organizations.

* * *These days, of course, the IslamoFascists are developing newer delivery systems for their murderous missions. I refer, of course, to the looming threat of Iranian nukes deliverable by Iranian missiles.

The American administration does not seem overly concerned by the situation, except for its worrying about any Israeli move to prevent the attack planned to "wipe Israel off the map".

American Politics (1980)

Today's Golden Oldie is from October 1980.

The cartoon was about Jimmy Carter who was on the campaign trail for a bid at a second term as U.S. President. He lost.

With Obama we now face an American President who treats the repression of Iranian demonstrators as an internal Iranian affair while taking a stern and personal interest in the question of where Jews may or may not be allowed to live in the city of Jerusalem!?!! This Presidency does not feel the need to hide its double-standard support of the "Palestinian" cause behind empty pro-Israel promises.

It will be interesting to see if Obama will, like Jimmy Carter, turn out to be a one-term wonder.

Turkey

What has happened to the Turkish-Israeli Alliance?

According to the Muslim Media Network:

"TEL AVIV — Turkey was said to have suspended up to $1 billion in proposed Israeli defense projects after canceling a major air exercise with Israel.

A leading Israeli defense analyst said the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has decided to end defense and military cooperation with Israel. Analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the Turkish Defense Ministry has shelved a range of proposed Israeli projects.

“New deals worth tens and hundreds of millions of dollars offered by Israel’s defense industries to the Turkish Army, as well as cooperation with Turkish colleagues, are being put on hold or cancelled altogether,” Ben-Yishai said in a report." -more

According to Barry Rubin:

The Turkey-Israel alliance is over.
"After two decades plus of close cooperation, the Turkish government is no longer interested in maintaining close cooperation with Israel nor is it—for all practical purposes—willing to do anything much to maintain its good relations with Israel.

The U.S.-Turkish alliance, which goes back about six decades, is also over but much less visibly so, though the two relationships are interlinked.

And that’s one important point in the first development. If the Turkish government was really concerned about protecting the kind of tight links with America that have existed for so long, it would be far more cautious about jettisoning the old policy toward Israel." -more

Face It

It is time for America and the Obama administration to open their eyes and face up to the significance of the successful Fort Hood Islamist suicide attack. Here's an interesting analysis of the current situation by Robert Spencer:

"Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, murdered twelve people and wounded twenty-one inside Fort Hood in Texas yesterday, while, according to eyewitnesses, “shouting something in Arabic while he was shooting.” Investigators are scratching their heads and expressing puzzlement about why he did it. According to NPR, “the motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear, officials said.” The Washington Post agreed: “The motive remains unclear, although some sources reported the suspect is opposed to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and upset about an imminent deployment.” The Huffington Post spun faster, asserting that “there is no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab.”

Yet there was, and what’s more, Major Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened – and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored."-more

Start Worrying (1994)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done 15 years ago for in November of 1994.

The Islamist attack at Fort Hood should have been a wake-up call about the growing threat from Radical Islam in America. But apparently it hasn't. Here's a Politically Correct Time Mag report on the successful and bloody Islamist suicide attack on American soldiers, in an American army base, on American soil:

"Determining whether Hasan's actions were inspired by religious fervor (he reportedly said "Allahu akbar" before opening fire), his exposure to the mental trauma of the soldiers he counseled or other unknown factors may be impossible. Currently Hasan is in intensive care at a San Antonio hospital, breathing without a respirator. But given his mental state, even he may not know what caused him to kill.

At least for now, the Army is more worried about how the world is reacting to Hasan's actions than an explanation for them. "I'm concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers," General George Casey, the Army's top officer, said Sunday on CNN. "And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that." -more

* * *

Head Check

The sentiments expressed in today's Dry Bones cartoon are being expressed by bloggers all over the net. Here's a piece fromNewsRealBlog that's worth reading:

"A Muslim fanatic with an Internet site praising Islamic suicide bombers as defenders of their comrades is a Major in the U.S. Army with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry. And it’s not as though the army didn’t know that he was a Muslim fanatic and supporter of the Islamic jihad against the West. He was under investigation for six months because of his anti-American, jihadist rantings. He did not want to be deployed. He wanted to be discharged.

But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was this possible? But it was. And so, after calling America the “aggressor” in Afghanistan and Iraq this Muslim jihadist traitor army officer picks up his semi-automatic weapons and heads for the center at Ft. Hood where soldiers are being deployed to fight the jihadists in Afghanistan to conduct his massacre. Yet this morning the Fox News Channel chiron says “Investigators search for a motive in the Ft. Hood killings.” Is everybody out of their mind?" -more

Clinton and the Stormy Weather (1998)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done in 1998.

I returned to Israel a few days ago in time to say hi and goodbye to the LSW (long suffering wife) who took off for a two week vacation and family visit in NYC and New Jersey.

My return coincided with the Clinton visit (Hillary, not Bill) and the sudden pounding of the country with violent rain storms. I've spent the past few days with my nose pressed to the window pane, watching the storm outside, and sipping a mug of hot coffee. Here in the Holy Land, rain is a blessing ...but highways and basements are being flooded.

There's something about Israeli rain storms that makes me feel closer to the land, and I just didn't feel very political. Which is why I searched for something about sudden storms for today's Golden Oldie . I found this 1998 cartoon about being hit by a sudden blustery storm ...strangely tho', it's also about meeting with Clinton (Bill not Hillary) and about demands for Israeli concessions!

Go figure.

Lockerbie, the Anger

As American anger grows at the release of the Lockerbie Bomber (for "compassionate" reasons) the real story is starting to break. According to the London Sunday Times:

Secret Letters Reveal Labour’s Libyan Deal

"DURING the past year a small ship bristling with computers and seismic equipment has been crisscrossing the Gulf of Sidra, in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast. Its mission: to help to find BP’s next offshore oilfields.

The company’s search for oil off Libya and in a 20,000-mile area in the west of the country potentially offers as much as £15 billion in new revenue. But less than two years ago it was feared that the deal could founder — and the reason was wrangling over Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the jailed Lockerbie bomber.

BP was finally given the go-ahead six weeks after a volte-face by the British government to include Megrahi in a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya under which prisoners could serve out sentences in their home countries. Jack Straw, the justice secretary, revealed this decision in a letter to his Scottish counterpart. He cited “wider negotiations” and the “overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom”.

Sources in the UK and Tripoli said last week that those wider interests included BP’s hoped-for share of Libya’s untapped oil and gas reserves. The decision to include Megrahi in the prisoner transfer arrangement was seen by Libyan officials as paving the way for his release — and BP’s much-coveted deal was finally ratified." -more

So tell me. Are you surprised?

International Justice (1998)

Today's Golden Oldie is from ten years (11) ago this month. July 1998.

Saying that Israel is judged by a double standard is a waste of time. We know it. They know it. So in this cartoon I tried to wring a wry laugh out of the unfair and ugly situation.

A classic goal of much of Jewish Humor.

Yale Intimidated

1. Yale University Press announced that they are censoring a book that they are about to publish. And they said that they had been coerced into taking this action because of having been intimidated by fear and threats of violence.

2. The Department of Defense Dictionary of Military Terms defines terrorism as:

"The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological."

3. According to that definition, Yale and other American Universities are victims of terrorism. They are being intimidated by the threat of violence. They are being coerced into aiding in the pursuit of the political, religious, and ideological goals of Islamists.

4. When will the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI take action?

* * *

Idea: If Yale is afraid to publish the Danish cartoons (in a scholarly work about the Danish cartoons) why don't they put the cartoons up on a website and print the web address in the book?

If you haven't seen the 12 innocuous Danish cartoons click here.

If you haven't seen my previous posting about Yale, click on "Dry Bones at Yale?".

* * *Your thoughts?

Spare Us The Pieties

JINSA Report #: 918
August 24, 2009

To the British government: Spare us your embarrassment over the Libyan government's public embrace of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Pan Am 103 bomber. Did you learn nothing from Israel's release of Samir Kuntar - the scum who smashed a child's head with a rifle butt and killed her father, but who went home to jubilant crowds and a wedding ceremony that rivaled Queen Elizabeth's coronation? Ideological murderers are heroes to their ideological patrons. Did you think they wouldn't love and venerate Megrahi as they did Kuntar? Did you think there was a difference because you're not Israel? And do you think they care that YOU thought they should low-key it? Why should they? They won. YOU lost. They're happy; they're entitled.

And for what? Seif al Islam, the son of Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi, said in a television interview, "In all commercial contracts, for oil and gas with Britain, (Megrahi) was always on the negotiating table. All British interests were linked to the release of Abdelbaset al Megrahi."

Not that he's a great source, but British Business Secretary Lord Mandelson doth protest entirely too much. "It's not only completely wrong to make such a suggestion it's also quite offensive. The issue of the prisoner's release was entirely a matter for the Scottish Justice Minister." The Guardian UK notes that the Libyan-British Business Council, which includes BP, Barclays, GlaxoSmithKline and British American Tobacco - is a veritable who's who of companies that will profit handsomely, embarrassed or not.

That was the financial bet. On the other hand...


To President Obama: The White House characterized the welcome of Maghrabi as "outrageous and disgusting" and "incredibly offensive to Americans." Spare us your disgust. Why are you more exercised over a party at the airport than by the Iranian government beating, maiming and torturing its own citizens? Is it worse than the Basiji thugs who roamed Iranian crowds in civilian clothes and attacked demonstrators from inside? Worse than the murder of Neda Soltan and hundreds of others? Worse than the Iranian government hiding prisoners, and releasing some bodies only after making the families sign sworn statements that they will not disclose the battered condition of their loved ones? Why "disgust" with Libya and the continued caution on Iran?

The administration appears to have made a decision that an open hand to the Iranian government was worth turning a blind eye to the fraud of an election and the subsequent murder of people who first wanted their votes to count and now wish to express disgust for their government. The President couched the decision in the belief that Iran can be talked out of its 30+-year quest for nuclear capability and talked out of its ideological affinity for terrorism as a mechanism for the spread of messianic Shi'ism.

Missing is the recognition that ideological murderers are heroes to their ideological patrons (see above). Iran is no different than Libya in its revolutionary veneration of blood - its own and that of its victims.

President Obama said, "How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya's re-entry into the civilized community of nations." But the one time that revolutionary Libya made a civilized decision - to turn over the elements of its nuclear program to the United States and Great Britain - was the one time it felt threatened, not coddled by the United States. Why would Iran make a different decision?

The British government may have been making a calculated financial bet. The United States clearly is making a calculated political bet. In both cases, members of the small club of democracies are betting that already bloody, already violent and repressive revolutionary governments will now behave in a civilized way because we want them to see their future the same way we see their future.

Why should they and what happens if they don't?
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Pollard's Plight (1998)

Eleven years later, Jonathan Pollard: 8674 days in prison

http://www.jonathanpollard.org/

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Jerusalem Boycott (1980)

Today's Golden Oldie is from August 27, 1980.

Back in 1980, capitulating to Arab threats, the nations of the World bowed their heads and moved their embassies out of Jerusalem, Israel's capital city.

In 1995, the US Congress voted to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but the move was never carried out for political reasons. In June, President Obama postponed moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem for an additional six months. Meanwhile the U.S. is represented in Jerusalem by the U.S. Consulate ...which does not recognize that it is in Israel.

The U.S. Consulate's Jerusalem website has no reference whatsoever to Jews or to Israel, promotes Palestinian causes, and has an Arabic version of the site but no Hebrew version.

Years ago I had my U.S. Passport renewed in Jerusalem. In order to avoid using the word "Israel" they did not stamp the place of issuance as "Jerusalem, Israel" ...instead, they stamped it as having been issued in "Jerusalem, Jerusalem".

Your thoughts?