In 2017, Obama may well leave office claiming to have reduced our military while avoiding conflict during his tenure. But will he also be able to assure us that China, Iran and Russia are less threatening; that the Middle East, the Pacific and the former Soviet republics are less explosive; that our own border is more secure -- and that America is safer?
To paraphrase the poet Robert Frost: Two roads diverged in the world, and we always took the one of least resistance -- and that has now made all the difference.
Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel on Friday published a full-page ad in U.S. newspapers condemning Hamas for using children as human shields. Provocatively, Wiesels paid Op-Ed was headlined, Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now its Hamass turn.
The body of the letter invokes the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac to frame the modern conflict between Israel and Hamas, said Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whose organization, This World: The Values Network, created the ad campaign.
Wiesel states that though Abraham lifts his knife to sacrifice his own son Isaac, his hand is stayed by Gods own command, thereby rejecting child sacrifice forever, Boteach said. Wiesel argues that while the suffering of those in Gaza is immense and a true tragedy, the blame lies solely with Hamas who use children as human shields and stores rockets and ammunition in nurseries, schools, hospitals, and family homes.
Boteach said the rationale of the campaign was to bring one of the greatest moral voices or our time and one of the most respected human beings alive, who bore witness to the atrocities of genocide and the Holocaust, to respond to the ugly and fraudulent criticisms of Israel and call for an end to the genocidal aspirations of Hamas.
Boteach said, Hamass charter is clear they seek the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jews wherever they may be found.
Not only is it unreasonable to ask Israel not to defend itself against rockets launched and tunnels dug by Hamas with the intent to destroy, it is also deeply immoral, he said. If Israel did not resist the terrorists of Hamas, it would be guilty of contempt for the lives of its own citizens.
We all lament the loss of Palestinian life brought about by the murderous Hamas regime, Boteach said. This is especially true of the children. That is why we have produced this advertising campaign with Elie Wiesel, to stop the terrorist cowards of Hamas from hiding behind innocent children and pregnant women.
Boteach said his mission is to promote universal Jewish values and the light of the Jewish people.
Israel is the supreme embodiment of these Jewish values, in which we all take such immense pride. Israel is a culture of life which promotes the infinite value of life while Hamas is a gay-murdering, women-honor-killing, deeply-misogynistic, stone-age, barbaric-terrorist death cult dedicated to genocide.
Hamas is an affront to peace-loving Muslims everywhere who should join us in its condemnation, he said. And we Jews will join the fight with our brothers in Israel against Hamas until peace prevails.
The full text of Elie Wiesels paid Op-Ed is below:
Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago
More than three thousand years ago, Abraham had two children. One son had been sent into the wilderness and was in danger of dying. God saved him with water from a spring.
The other son was bound, his throat about to be cut by his own father. But God stayed the knife. Both sons Ishmael and Isaac received promises that they would father great nations.
With these narratives, monotheism and western civilization begin. And the Canaanite practices of child sacrifice to Moloch are forever left behind by the descendants of Abraham.
Except they are not.
In my own lifetime, I have seen Jewish children thrown into the fire. And now I have seen Muslim children used as human shields, in both cases, by worshippers of death cults indistinguishable from that of the Molochites.
What we are suffering through today is not a battle of Jew versus Arab or Israeli versus Palestinian. Rather, it is a battle between those who celebrate life and those who champion death. It is a battle of civilization versus barbarism.
Do the two cultures that brought us the Psalms of David and the rich libraries of the Ottoman Empire not share a love of life, of transmitting wisdom and opportunity to their children? And is any of this discernible in the dark future offered by Hamas to Arab children, to be suicide bombers or human shields for rockets?
Palestinian parents want a hopeful future for their children, just like Israeli parents do. And both should be joining together in peace.
But before sleepless mothers in both Gaza City and Tel Aviv can rest, before diplomats can begin in earnest the crucial business of rebuilding dialogue the Hamas death cult must be confronted for what it is.
Moderate men and women of faith, whether that faith is in God or man, must shift their criticism from the Israeli soldiers whose terrible choice is to fire and risk harming human shields, or hold their fire and risk the death of their loved ones to the terrorists who have taken away all choice from the Palestinian children of Gaza.
I call upon the Palestinian people to find true Muslims to represent them, Muslims who would never voluntarily place a child in danger.
I call upon President Obama and the leaders of the world to condemn Hamas use of children as human shields.
And I enjoin the American public to stand firmly with the people of Israel who are in yet another struggle for survival, and with the suffering people of Gaza who reject terror and embrace peace.
Let us return child sacrifice to the darkest corner of history, and work towards a brighter future with those who choose life, Arabs and Jews alike, all of us Abrahams children.
...Even in the midst of the fighting it is apparent that we are moving toward the endgame.
The question is, what is the desired end-state? How will we know if we have won? Certainly following Americas lead is not an option. Indeed, the Obama administration is the greatest constraint Israel faces today on its road to victory.
From the actions and words of senior administration officials, it is easy to ascertain where President Barack Obama wants this conflict to end.
First, the administration wants Hamas to remain armed and in control of Gaza. This point was made clear by Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn, who heads the US Defense Intelligence Agency. In congressional testimony Flynn told US lawmakers, If Hamas were destroyed and gone, we would probably end up with something much worse.
This of course is absurd. Hamas wants to kill every Jew in the world. As a practical matter then, it is impossible for any successor regime to be worse. But from Israels perspective, more important than discovering that the head of the DIA is an idiot, is Flynns revelation that the US wishes to save Hamas from Israel.
The administrations other positions have all been aligned with this strategic goal of maintaining Hamas in power. Both the US draft cease-fire agreement that Israel rejected, and the White House readout of President Obamas telephone conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night made clear that the US wants Hamas to be able to prosper.
#1
Among examples of how Obama has been harassing Israel since the war started:
the administration has stopped providing visa services to Israelis traveling to the US. According to I24 News, the US Embassy in Tel Aviv is not issuing travel visas except in emergency circumstances, due to staff reductions during the war.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
08/01/2014 11:47 Comments ||
Top||
[Iran Press TV] There are barely any human beings in Israel to put an end to Tel Aviv's gory child-killing spree in the besieged Gazoo Strip, an analyst writes for Press TV.
"There must be at least one or two human beings left in Israel; we will learn who they are when they die in martyrdom operations against their sociopathic child-killing compatriots," Kevin Barrett
The analyst said Israel is likely to see the emergence of a hero like South African novelist Breyten Breytenbach who joined the apartheid regime in the black continent.
"If there are any decent, non-sociopathic Israelis left, they too should join those brigades, just as novelist Breyten Breytenbach and other white South Africans of conscience joined the armed resistance to apartheid," wrote Barrett.
The analyst said the international community should "completely ostracize Israel" and take action to "dismantle the genocidal Zionist entity."
"But," he added, "that cannot happen until the Zionists' death-grip on the West's media, finance and politics is broken once and for all."
More than 1,370 Paleostinians have so far been killed and some 7,700 others injured since the Israeli military first launched its offensive on Gazoo on July 8.
Meantime, the rising corpse count of Israeli forces in the war on the Gazoo Strip has prompted growing opposition to the war among the Israeli public.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/01/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11129 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#1
The Muslim or Paleo woman ranting in front of CNN's cameras reminds me of the actress whom portrayed Mary Magdalene in the latest Jesus flick.
[Ynet] While past operations saw quick targeting of group's top military and politicianship in Gazoo, the current op has been almost completely devoid of high-profile assassinations; why can't the IDF take out Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,' top commanders?
#2
While past operations saw quick targeting of group's top military and politicianship in Gazoo, the current op has been almost completely devoid of high-profile assassinations
#6
When the leadership is beating the ranks into the kill zone, leave them be for the time. Makes the job easier for the trigger pullers who'd rather not have to otherwise dig them out.
[Ynet] In era in which public opinion is part of warfare, Israel and Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason, fighting additional war over the identity and number of causalities in Gazoo, and Israel charges Hamas with turning snuffies into innocents in quest for world sympathy.
The latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas extends far beyond the urban warfare playing out in the cities and towns of the Gazoo Strip; the Israeli cities targeted by waves of Paleostinian rockets; and the seek-and-destroy mission of locating and eradicating the elaborate and intricate network of tunnels revealed to extend deep into Israeli territory and beneath southern Israeli communities.
Beyond the shooting war, there is a war of images seeking to justify the actions of the players in the eyes of the world. To accomplish this, Hamas seeks to create the belief that most - more than 80% - of the 1,137 Paleostinians who died during the first two weeks of fighting are noncombatant women and kiddies - innocent victims of outrageous Israeli aggression. Israel, on the other hand, asserts that the process of identifying the dead is manipulated in order to predetermine the conclusion that Israel has relentlessly slaughtered innocents rather than admit the obvious use of civilian human shields and the commensurate benefits to the Hamas narrative of a high body count.
Continued on Page 49
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
