The "Sushi" is Heating Up

The "Sushi" is Heating Up by Mordechai Kedar
Sun Jun 16, 2013 12:06 pm (PDT) . Posted by: "Granddaddy Hand" hisdude2004

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The following article was written in Hebrew by Dr. Mordechai Kedar for
the June 14, 2013 issue of the Makor Rishon newspaper, and translated
to English by Sally Zahav.

The "Sushi" is Heating Up
by Mordechai Kedar

Among scholars of the Middle East, the term "sushi" is used as a
shorthand for the expression, "Sunni-Shi'a". Anyone interested in the
history of Islam knows that the seeds of the Sunni-Shi'a conflict were
planted the moment that Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, closed his
eyes forever in the year 632 CE, without leaving a mechanism for
choosing a successor to lead the nation. The conflict that developed
as a result, has become an open, bloody battle over the years, and it
has been a thread in the fabric of Islamic history throughout all of
its 1400 years. This conflict has facets on many levels: personal,
familial, political and religious. The battle between the two factions
of Islam is "for the whole pot", and it continues to this very day.

In modern times, attempts have been made to bridge over the conflict
and to find common ground between the factions of Islam in order to
create a sense of calm between the factions, on the basis of which it
will be possible to manage states such as Iraq, Syria and Lebanon,
where the two factions live side by side, Shi'ites and Sunnis, in one
state. Even the Egyptian Sheikh Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who is the
Mufti (religious arbiter) of the Emirate of Qatar, has expressed
himself both verbally and in writing about the need to find a way to
"bring the schools of thought closer together", as if Shi'a is another
legitimate school of thought, in addition to the four Sunni schools:
Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali. In the good old days they used to
call the Shi'a faction the "Jafari school" after one of the fathers of
Shi'a.

The Golden Age between the Sunni and Shi'a was the year 2006, as a
result of the Second Lebanon War, when Hizb'Allah managed to create
the impression that it had won a "divine victory" over Israel. After
all, Hasan Nasrallah had survived despite 33 days of heavy Israeli
attacks, some of which were aimed at him personally. Hizb'Allah was
compared with the armies of the Arab countries, which had failed in
all of their attempts to destroy the state of Israel, and were
defeated by Israel's army in only six days in 1967. As a result of the
Second Lebanon War, Hasan Nasrallah declared in every public arena -
especially in his al-Manar ("the beacon") television channel - that
the victory belongs to the whole Arab and Islamic nation, and in this
way, he created for himself the image of being the only leader in the
Middle East who knows what to do and does the right things, ignoring
the objections of the infidel West and its paltry servants, meaning
most of the rulers of the Arab states. Bashar Asad declared that
Hizb'Allah's way is the only way to fight and the only method that can
defeat the Zionist enemy.

During the war in the summer of 2006, great crowds of people of the
Middle East erupted in emotional demonstrations where pictures of
Hasan Nasrallah were held high, and those who wanted to make a point
also carried pictures of Bashar Asad, the great supporter of
Hizb'Allah. It was convenient for everyone - including religious
figures such as Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi - to ignore the fact that
Hizb'Allah was a Shi'ite group, backed up by Iran, because if the
Sunni Hamas movement ended up in the same boat with Hizb'Allah what
evil could possibly have sprung from the Lebanese "al-Muqawama
wal-mumana'a" ("Resistance and Defense") movement, which supports all
of the "liberation movements" regardless of religious sect? The
al-Jazeera channel, which serves as a mouthpiece for the Sunni Muslim
Brotherhood movement, embraced Hizb'Allah and dedicated many hours of
positive programming to it, and in many Islamic societies - including
Israel's - more than a few people crossed over from the Sunni side of
Islam to the Shi'a. Only a small group of Saudi religious authorities
were not overcome by the waves of sympathy for Hizb'Allah. They always
view the Shi'ite dominance of Lebanon, as well as its influence on the
collective Arab discourse, negatively.

But the enthusiasm for Hizb'Allah has not survived the storm that has
been buffeting the Middle East ever since December 2010, known
romantically in the media as "the Arab Spring", as if presently in the
Middle East, the birds are chirping, the trees are budding, the
flowers are blooming, the butterflies are fluttering, people are
smiling and there is an air of rising optimism. The vicious war that
has been raging in Syria since March 2011 has cost so far at least one
hundred thousand fatalities and many thousands of wounded, has made
millions of Syrians into displaced persons within their land and into
refugees in neighboring lands, and Hizb'Allah is totally engaged in
fighting this dirty war in support of the Asad regime. Information
about the involvement of Hizb'Allah in the fighting has been leaking
out for more than a year. At first they buried their fallen in
temporary graveyards in the Valley of Lebanon, near the border with
Syria, to avoid holding funerals in residential areas, thereby
disclosing Hizb'Allah's involvement in the events in Syria. Because
of the need for secrecy, the families of the fallen were forbidden to
observe rites of mourning and memorial services when the fighters
died.

With time, the picture has changed, and Hizb'Allah can no longer hide
its involvement in the battles in Syria. In an effort to shore up his
popularity, Nasrallah tried to say that the Hizb'Allah forces were in
Syria only to defend a number of "Lebanese" villages, but some of
those who heard this story understood that Hizb'Allah was actually
defending Shi'ite villages from attacks by the Sunni rebels. This
story crumbled when faced with the reality that was reported by the
media, describing Hizb'Allah as an integral part of the Asad regime's
fighting effort. For the past year, public criticism of Hizb'Allah has
increased in the Arab world because of its involvement in the murder
of Syrians, and matters came to a head about a month ago, with the
attack on the town of al-Qusayr, which is located on the border
between Syria and Lebanon, and serves as a bridge for the transfer of
support, weapons, ammunition and fighters from the Sunni area of
Tripoli in Lebanon to the rebels in Syria. The rebels took control of
al-Qusayr about a year ago, which enabled them to drive a wedge
between the area of Damascus, the capital, and the Alawite area in the
northwest of the country. From the photographs and the reports of the
battle for Qusayr during the past month, it seems that it was
Hizb'Allah and not the Syrian army that was fighting for the town.

This bloody battle was the straw that broke the Sunni camel's back.
Since al-Qusayr fell into Hizb'Allah's hands, all the dams of
criticism have burst, and the religious authorities of Sunni Islam
have been attacking Hizb'Allah with their sharpest arrows of Islamic
rhetoric, tipped with deadly venom. The expression they use as the
name of the organization is "Hizb al-Shitan" - "the party of Satan" -
hinting at the passage from the Qur'an "The party of Satan are the
losers" (Sura 58, Verse 19), which is the opposite of the name "Hizb
'Allah" - "the party of Allah" - which is also based on the Qur'an
(Sura 5, Verse 56). In homilies given in the mosques and in the media,
Yusuf al-Qaradawi calls on all Muslims, male and female, to wage jihad
against Hizb'Allah in Syria, and openly accuses Hizb'Allah and the
Iranians of wanting to devour all of the Muslim countries. He accuses
them of being infidels and of hiding their true identity.

Qaradawi does not restrain his tongue. He speaks with contempt about
the change in the Syrian constitution that allowed Bashar Asad to
succeed his father in 2000 when he was 34 years old, despite the fact
that until then, the president was required to be at least 40 years
old. He even mentions the original name of the Asad family -
"al-wahsh" - which means "wild beast". Qaradawi calls on all the
Islamic sages of the world to gather in Cairo on Thursday of this
week, to discuss how to deal with the Shi'ites in general and Iran and
Hizb'Allah in particular, and to take decisions on the matter. He
views the ascent of Sunni Islam to power in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco
and Yemen as a blessing, in addition to Gaza, which he visited
recently.

Qaradawi clearly admits that he erred in 2006 about Hizb'Allah, and
was fooled by its religious appearance. Qaradawi praises the religious
sages of Saudi Arabia who even then, in the days of the Second Lebanon
War, were right about Hizb'Allah and did not fall into the trap that
Nasrallah had set for the Arab and Islamic world. He asked for pardon
and forgiveness from those sages for supporting Hizb'Allah against
their judgment.

But Qaradawi is not alone. When 1200 Kuwaiti jihadists were about to
leave Kuwait and go to Syria to join the jihad against Hizb'Allah, the
Kuwaiti Sheikh Shafi al-'Ajami encouraged them to slaughter their
enemy and asked the jihadists to save ten Hizb'Allah fighters for him
to have the pleasure of beheading personally.

Even Sheikh Ra'ed Salah, head of the northern branch of the Islamic
movement in Israel, openly speaks against Hizb'Allah, which acts
against "our brothers" in Syria. It is important for us to remember
that "our brothers" to Sheikh Ra'ad Salah might be the Muslim
Brotherhood in Syria, but could also be the Palestinian refugees in
Syria, several hundred of whom were killed and injured in battles
between Asad and his opposition, and many thousands of whom fled to
Jordan and Lebanon.

In Iraq as well

The increasing tension between the Sunni and Shi'a takes its toll in
Iraq as well. In the month of May this year, more than a thousand men,
women and children were killed in Sunni attacks against Shi'ites, and
in revenge attacks of Shi'ites against Sunnis. The increasing tension
between the factions in Iraq has generated mutual declarations, each
side against the other: "You had better get out of Iraq before it is
too late", meaning before our knives separate your heads from your
shoulders. Iran arms and equips the Iraqi army as well as the Shi'ite
militias such as the Mahdi Army, while Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the
Emirates support the Sunni minority with weapons, ammunition and
funds. The "sushi" tension in the Land of the Two Rivers is increasing
and a conflagration resulting in an all-out civil war is apparently
just a matter of time.

And Lebanon

Many Lebanese object to the activity of Hizb'Allah in Syria because
they fear that the civil war will overflow from Syria into Lebanon,
and they will be its victims. This week the Sunnis held a
demonstration in front of the Iranian embassy in Beirut where the
demonstrators called on Iran to bring Hizb'Allah out of Syria. Armed
Hizb'Allah activists attacked the demonstrators with clubs and sticks
and beat one of them to death. The fighting continues in Tripoli in
the north of Lebanon between the Sunni neighborhood of Bab al-Tabana
and Jabal Mohsen, whose residents are Alawite, and this week too,
people were injured there. About two weeks ago Grad rockets fell in a
southern neighborhood of Beirut, a Hizb'Allah stronghold, and all
signs point to a "sushi" heating up in the Land of the Cedars too.

There are reports that Hizb'Allah has demanded the Hamas movement to
take its people out of Lebanon because Hamas no longer supports
Hizb'Allah.

The Sunni-Shi'a tension might result in a conflagration in many
countries: Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bahrain, the United Arab
Emirates, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and perhaps even Turkey, which also
has a significant Shi'ite minority.

In Israel, we must take into account that in the Middle East the rule
"the enemy of my enemy is my friend" does not always work. Just
because the Sunnis and the Shi'ites relate to each other with
hostility and hatred, that doesn't result in love for Israel. In the
best case, it may lead to a short-term coalition between Israel and
Sunni countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, but we cannot
rely on such a coalition, because we are still the "Zionist entity"
which, according to Islam - Sunni and Shi'a alike - has no right to
exist.

===============

http://mordechaikedarinenglish.blogspot.com

Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar
of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the
director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam
(under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. He specializes in
Islamic ideology and movements, the political discourse of Arab
countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav with permission from the author.

Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center for
the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan
University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly
newspaper.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the author.

Middle East Genocide

Ralph Peters has written an incredibly important, profound, well-documented, and terrifying report on Middle East Genocide (June 2, 2013). While all of us are busy addressing personal issues, and serious matters affecting our lives as citizens in this country, as well as  those affecting our Israeli brothers and sisters, the very nature of the world is changing dramatically. The population shifts due to persecutions and expulsions, many due to Islamic terrorism, must be recognized. They threaten our lives as Christians, Jews, Americans, and Europeans. After reading Peters' article, which appears below, please contact AFSI by email or telephone to help us formulate an action plan. We must work to get Peters' message to  President Obama and the politically correct groups who deny the dangers of Islamic terrorism. If our government continues on its present path, we are all in danger.
 
   
Middle East Genocide

We do nothing as Muslims eradicate the last vestiges of Christians 
and Jews from nation after nation

By RALPH PETERS

We are witnesses to murder, and our governments are accomplices. The relentless destruction of the last remnants of the Middle East's Judeo-Christian civilization is well under way. And we are silent.
 
Captives of political correctness, our governments cater to radical immigrant tantrums as our leaders contort the truth to deny the existence of Islamist terrorism. Meanwhile, our Middle Eastern "allies" and foes alike eradicate thousands of years of Jewish and Christian heritage. Our diplomats treat the persecution as a minor embarrassment, best ignored.
 

Muslims set fire to a Copt  
Christian church in Cairo.

The banishments and butchery aren't new, but the breakdown of the last rotting order in the wake of the "Arab Spring" has empowered psychotic fanatics who do not even value the lives of the faithful, let alone the lives of unbelievers. This is the end-game, the final persecution of Christians clinging to lands they've called home for 2,000 years. Except for Israel and the rarest exceptions elsewhere, Jews are already gone from the realms that nurtured them since the early years of their faith.

A thousand years ago, there were more Christians in the Middle East than in Europe, and Jewish communities prospered from the Nile to the Tigris. Even a century ago, more than 20% of the region's population was Christian, and Jews still adorned Arab cities with their talents.
 
Today, estimates put the Christian population of the region at under 5% and sinking rapidly - and only that high because of the 9 million Copts who remain, for now, in Egypt.
 
The birthplace of Christianity, Bethlehem, now has a Muslim majority of as much as 80% - a reversal that coincided with the West's decision to embrace Palestinian terrorists as "partners for peace." A few decades ago, Lebanon had a Christian majority. Now, with Christian numbers fading, it's tugged between Shia Hezbollah and Sunni fanatics.
 
Slighted by the US occupation - as our government pandered to Muslim hardliners - the Christian population of Iraq has fallen by two-thirds over 10 years. And the most ferocious elements in the Syrian insurgency see no place for Christians in Syria's future. Even Jordan, struggling to appease its own Islamists, has cracked down on Christian activities.
 
The Jews, of course, are already long gone.
 
But the stones of ruined churches cry out, and vanished synagogues haunt decayed Arab neighborhoods.
 
If you read the New Testament or study the formative centuries of Christianity, there are few references to western cities other than Rome. The names that dot the Epistles of St. Paul and histories of the church are now in Muslim hands: Alexandria, Damascus, Tarsus, Carthage, Ephesus, Nicaea, Constantinople and so many others. Even Mecca and Medina had thriving Christian and Jewish quarters before the first jihads.

But all they possess does not suffice for Islamist fanatics. Israel must be blotted from the earth, and the last Christians must be driven out.
 
This is an old, old story, nearing its end. We shroud it in lies to excuse ourselves from taking a stand, even accepting the preposterous Arab claim that Muslim failures today are the fault of the Crusades, a brief interlude when Christians occupied a coastal strip hardly larger than Israel. In fact, it was the Mongols, then the Muslim Turks, who shattered Arab civilization. And as for conquests, Muslims occupied Spain in all or part for 800 years - and brutalized the Balkans for half a millennium. The Crusades were hardly a burp.
 
We also accept extravagant claims that "civilized" Arabs rescued the classical texts that formed our civilization. That's utter nonsense. The Arab hordes that burst out of barren Arabia in the 7th century were composed of illiterates. Conquering at a time when the warring Byzantine and Persian empires had exhausted themselves, the new rulers found that tribal practices didn't suffice to run provinces. So they took over the existing bureaucracies, staffed by Greek-speaking Christians and Jews. It was those officials who saved the Greek classics for Europe's future Renaissance - and their descendants designed Islam's greatest monuments.
 
Yes, some Arab rulers came to value learning - but the Arab world never produced a Homer, Plato, Sophocles or Thucydides whose appeal transcended their culture.
 
Islam was a religion spread by war. It was only a "religion of peace" where it had conquered. True, Islam sometimes proved more tolerant of minorities than Europeans, but that was at the zenith of the faith's power.
 
There's yet another illusion of ours - that Islam is gaining strength. Islam is on the ropes. What we've seen in the pogroms and outright genocides over the last 150 years has been the spleen of a once-triumphant faith whose practices and values can't compete in the modern age.
 
Consider today's Middle East, apart from Israel. Despite the massive influx of oil wealth, there isn't one world-class university. Nothing of quality or technological complexity is manufactured between Morocco and Pakistan. Not even Saudi Arabia has first-rate health-care. Research is nil. Patent applications are statistically zero. Women are regarded as lesser beings, wasting half of the region's human capital. Not one Arab society's a meritocracy. And corruption cripples all.
 
A handful of glitzy hotels and shopping centers do not make a civilization (especially when the merchandise is all imported). Should Islamist fanatics succeed in driving all minorities from the region, they'd be left with a human wasteland of comprehensive failure, seething with hatred and uncontainable violence. The self-segregation of the Islamic heartlands would be a tragedy for humanity - but, above all, for Muslims.
 
Birth rates are a red herring. More mouths to feed are not magic sources of strength in lands of scarcity and poverty. The Middle East is self-destructive, morally brittle and falling ever further behind a world that's charging ahead. Islamists can't even get terrorism right - today, we're terrorizing the terrorists. So they turn on the weak in their midst, the last minorities.
 
The initial wave of destruction and slaughter began almost a millennium ago, when the Muslim world first felt itself under threat. But, more recently, as the West shot to power (thanks to science, learning, hard work, religious tolerance and organization), the creaking Ottoman Empire could not shake off its centuries-old stupor to keep up.
 
Enraged by failure, the Ottomans turned on their most-productive minorities - whose successes outraged yesteryear's fanatics. Beginning in the 1880s and accelerating in the 1890s, pogroms against Armenian Christians stunned Western witnesses. But European leaders turned a blind eye, just as we do today. So during the First World War, the Young Turks who had seized power decided to finish the job.
 
It was genocide. At least a million Armenians - perhaps twice that number - were systematically exterminated . . . although not without being tortured, raped, starved and death-marched first. The scale of the butchery was such that it obscured other, concurrent genocides, most notably that of Assyrian Christians at the hands of Turks and other Muslims. Estimates of Assyrian deaths run from just under 300,000 to one million.
 
Nor did the slaughters stop there. In British-created Iraq, massacres of Christians recurred from 1933 to 1961.
 
City names we know from our recent wars, such as Mosul, Basra or Tikrit (Saddam's home town), once were centers of Christian culture, with bishops, cathedrals and monasteries famous for learning.
 
Gone. And the last pale ghosts, those Christians holding on to homes their blood knew for 20 centuries, are soon to go. Meanwhile, our president assures us that "Islam's a religion of peace."
Mr. President, go to Iraq and speak those words in the bomb-torn churches amid desecrated graves.
 
Mr. President, go to Egypt and explain to the brutalized Copts why your embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood government's good for them.
 
Then go to Israel, Mr. President, where Christians worship freely, and tell the Israelis they should "return Palestinian land" after Muslims seized the homes that sheltered Jews for 3,000 years.
 
Explain to Jews why their temples were profaned and obliterated by the adherents of that "religion of peace."
 
Of course, the real tragedy for the Arabs in the last century wasn't the Naqba, Israel's close-run struggle to survive attacks by an arc of Arab armies. The tragedy was that the most-backward, intolerant and indolent Arabs, primitive tribesmen, got most of the oil wealth and used it to spread their Wahhabi cult throughout the Islamic world. The intellectuals in the great Arab cities never had a chance.
 
My wife and I spent our honeymoon on a long bus trip through Turkey, a country for which I have great, if frustrated, affection. All went fine amid splendid hospitality . . . until we reached the east. Along the roadsides in what had been Armenia (the first Christian kingdom, by the way) desolate villages, razed to their foundations, scarred the landscape between drab modern towns. When asked what those ruins were, a Turk would avert his eyes and mutter, "Abandoned."
 
Those villages weren't abandoned. They were the site of the last century's first great genocide. No one stood up for those inconvenient Christians.
 
And no one's standing up for the Middle East's tormented Christians now, or for the last handful of Jews left beyond Israel.
 
Even the dust cries for justice, and we look away.
 
Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of the new Civil War novel, "Hell or Richmond."

Origin of the word 'Hoax'

Michelango and Jewish symbols
Tue May 28, 2013 10:53 am (PDT) . Posted by: "Salomon L Vaz Dias" Well Judith, in the Vatican they just adore magic. Is their way though a hoax?

Origin of the word 'Hoax'
The word hoax first came into popular use sometime in the middle to late eighteenth century. It is thought to have been a contraction of the word hocus from the conjuror's term hocus pocus. The term hocus pocus itself first appeared in the early seventeenth century. It might have derived from the assumed name of a conjuror in the time of King James who called himself 'The Kings Majesties most excellent Hocus Pocus' because with the performance of every trick he used to call out the nonsense phrase, "Hocus pocus, tontus talontus, vade celeriter jubeo" (later magicians were known to use the phrase "Hax pax max deus adimax"). This phrase was itself probably an imitation (or mockery) of the phrase used by priests of the Church of Rome when they performed the act of transubstantiation, "hoc est corpus."

We all believe whatever we believe or?

Salomon

Is Islam Peaceful?

IS ISLAM PEACEFUL?
Thu May 16, 2013 4:39 am (PDT) . Posted by: "Rufina Mausenbaum" bernardetti _____

From: Denese Z

German's View on Islam - worth reading. This is by far the best explanation
of the Muslim terrorist situation I have ever read. His references to past
history are accurate and clear. Not long, easy to understand, and well worth
the read. The author of this email is Dr. Emanuel Tanya, a well-known and
well-respected psychiatrist.

A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a
number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people
were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward
fanaticism.

'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of
German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who
just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back
and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had
lost control, and the end of the world had come.

My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies
destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is
the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to
live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is
entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better,
and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the
globe in the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is
the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting
wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or
tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire
continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder,
or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is
the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims
and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to
become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the 'silent
majority,' is cowed and extraneous. Communist Russia was comprised of
Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were
responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority
were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese
Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people..

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering
sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia
in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million
Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet. And who can
forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the
majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our
powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because
like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the
fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans,
Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have
died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

Now Islamic prayers have been introduced into Toronto and other public
schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa too while the Lord's Prayer was
removed (due to being so offensive?) The Islamic way may be peaceful for the
time being in our country until the fanatics move in.

In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the
most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them. Just look
at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars, and at other food
items in your local supermarket. Food on aircraft have the halal emblem,
just to appease the privileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within
the nation's shores.

In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and there are now
dozens of "no-go" zones within major cities across the country that the
police force dare not intrude upon. Sharia law prevails there, because the
Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group
that counts -- the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this
email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows
the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on
and on! Let us hope that thousands, world-wide, read this and think about
it, and send it on - before it's too late.

And we are silent..

"NO AND NO"

From: Arlene Kushner
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 7:05 AM
To: A Kushner
Subject: From Israel: No and No!!

April 30, 2013
 
"No and No!!"
 
It gets more and more awful.  More disgusting.  More distorted.
 
The Times of Israel has the following headline this morning (emphasis added):
 
"In sea change, Arab League backs land swaps in peace talks"
 
http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-sea-change-arab-league-backs-land-swaps-in-peace-talks/
 
A sea change is defined as a marked change or a transformation.  But what we're looking at here is nothing of the sort.
 
Members of the Arab League, representing seven Arab nations, met with top US officials yesterday in Washington.  The topic of discussion was the "peace process" and ways in which the Arab nations might advance it. 
 
After the League delegation huddled for consultations at Blair House, Qatari Prime Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Al Thani announced "the possibility of 'comparable,' mutually agreed and 'minor' land swaps between the Israelis and the Palestinians."  (Emphasis added)
 
Note that "land swamps" are not agreed to firmly in principle.  There is a "possibility" of support for this, which means at the end of the day they might say, "Sorry, we won't do this after all."  After all, only seven of 22 nations of the League were represented here.
 
And even if they were to agree, in any case it would be "minor" swaps only.  Piddling. Only piddling. 
 
Most importantly, this entire notion is predicated upon an erroneous and unacceptable concept.
 
~~~~~~~~~~
 
Secretary of State Kerry, who seems to have staked his entire professional (sic) reputation on succeeding with the "peace process," gushed:
 
�We�ve had a very positive, very constructive discussion over the course of the afternoon, with positive results...�
 
He praised the League for the "important role it is playing, and is determined to play, in bringing about a peace in the Middle East."
 
~~~~~~~~~~
 
A bit of background is in order here:
 
The Arab League "Peace Plan" had originally been advanced by Saudi Arabia in 2002, then was adopted by the League, and subsequently "re-endorsed" by the League in 2007.  It was, and is, a horror:
 
If Israel will surrender all lands acquired in 1967, and provide for a "just" settlement of the Palestinian Arab refugee problem, based on UN General Assembly Resolution 194 -- which the Arab world interprets as giving the "refugees" "right of return," when in fact there is no such thing -- then the Arab world will "normalize" relations with Israel.  No specification of what normalization means re: diplomatic, security, economic interaction and ties.
 
Translation: If you will surrender the Temple Mount, and the Kotel, and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hevron, and Shilo, and much more, including the Golan Heights.  And if you will return to the 1967 line [the Green Line], which, admittedly, was recognized by Security Council Resolution 242, passed after the Six Day War, as not providing a secure border.  And in addition, if you will take within your borders millions of so-called refugees, rendered radical and hostile by decades of UNRWA influence.  Then all 22 of the Arab states -- and not just "Palestine" -- will have some sort of ties with you.      
 
This was touted as a great opportunity for Israel, which would secure "normalization" with the whole Arab world in one fell blow.
 
There were to be no negotiations with this plan.  It was a take-it-or-leave-it deal.
 
~~~~~~~~~~
 
Israel rejected it out of hand.  Israel has legitimate rights to Judea and Samaria, based on a heritage that is more than 3,000 years old, as well as legally binding resolutions in the twentieth century, notably the Mandate for Palestine. Israel will never return to the '67 line -- which, in addition to everything else, provides insufficient strategic depth for adequate security.  Resolution 242 says the final border of Israel must be determined by negotiations.  Agreeing to pull back without negotiations is not the way to go.
 
~~~~~~~~~~
 
For years now, the Palestinian Authority and its supporters have promoted the idea that the '67 line is Israel's "real" border, and that everything on the other side "belongs" to the Palestinian Arabs.  It is a crock. A myth.  But unfortunately -- because successive Israeli governments have not been vigorous enough in countering this -- it has become accepted thinking in many places. 
 
It is this myth, this crock, upon which the Arab League fashioned its "peace proposal." 
 
And, more recently, it has been President Barack Obama who has advanced proposals based on the same myth.  Has he swallowed it whole, so that he really believes it?  There is no way to be certain, although there is ample reason to suspect so.  We only know what he says.
 
Obama's only deviation from the stipulation of return to the '67 line is the concept of "agreed-upon swaps" of land.  This means the principle of the '67 line as Israel's legitimate border is retained but if Israel wants to hold on to a community that, say, spreads over two square kilometers east of the line, then "Palestine" will be given two square kilometers of land west of the line, inside of Israel.  In the end, Israel will be defined by an area no greater than what rests within the '67 line.
 
No and no!!
 
~~~~~~~~~~
 
For the record, and this is terribly important: the '67 line, or Green Line, was, with very minor adjustments, the 1949 armistice line.  It is the line that was drawn when Israel and Jordan stopped fighting, at the end of the War of Independence: Israel fought that war defensively, having been attacked by the Arab nations on the day she declared independence.  It is referred to as the "'67 line" because Israel was behind that line until June 1967, when the Six Day war was fought.
 
The armistice agreement signed between Jordan and Israel stipulated that the line was temporary and that the permanent line would be determined by negotiations.  Actually, this stipulation was put in at Jordan's insistence.  And, please, note that it WAS Jordan on the other side of the line -- the nation with which, it was presumed, Israel would ultimately negotiate. There was no talk of "Palestine" or a "Palestinian people" with whom Israel had to negotiate.  Whatever existed on the other side of the armistice line, it certainly wasn't a Palestinian state, or land defined as belonging to a Palestinian people. 
 
How Israel could be required to "return" Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Arabs is a genuine mystery.  The historical situation has been distorted:  It has morphed from the reality into what people of a certain political bent wish it to be.
 
You will be doing Israel an enormous service if you circulate this information -- this historical clarification -- as broadly as possible.
 
If you see reference in news sources to "Israel's '67 border," send a correction: It was never a border, it was an armistice line, and it was temporary; both the armistice agreement with Jordan and the subsequent UN Security Council Resolution 242, called for negotiations to determine Israel's final eastern border.
 
~~~~~~~~~~ 
 
What I see is that Kerry went to these Arab League members and asked them for some flexibility so that he might move ahead with the infernal process. And, to his delight, they delivered.  Not only delivered, but stated themselves willing to go along with parameters outlined by the president.  
 
At a press conference, Kerry declared:
 
"The US and Arab League delegation here this afternoon agreed that peace between Israelis and Palestinians would advance security, prosperity, and stability in the Middle East. And that is a common interest for the region and the whole world..."
 
Well, then, it's the Arab world that sees eye-to-eye with President Obama, yes? And Israel? 
 
We can anticipate that the secretary will now turn to Israel with a request/a veiled demand for more "flexibility," for the sake of stability in the Middle East.  But what has been tentatively proposed is no more acceptable to Israel than the previous formulation of the Arab League plan, or only very minutely so. (Now, presumably, there would be some negotiations to determine the "minor swaps.") 
 
The essential premises of the plan remain as unsatisfactory, and as faulty as a basis for peace, as ever.
 
(With this discussion we have left aside the fact that the entire notion of Israel striking a genuine peace agreement with the PA -- a weak, totally corrupt, terrorist-supporting entity -- is nonsense.  An issue to be re-visited on another day.)
 
I do not, for a moment, anticipate that Israel will agree to the terms tentatively outlined by the Arab League.  But I do anticipate a huge amount of pressure coming down the road.
 
It never hurts to communicate to Prime Minister Netanyahu very briefly to let him know you are with him and encourage him to stand strong.
 

E-mail: Memshala@pmo.gov.il and also pm_eng2@it.pmo.gov.il (underscore after pm) use both addresses

Maimonides as a Physician: Caring and Curing

Maimonides as physician: Caring and curing By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH Tue Apr 2, 2013 11:33 am (PDT) . Posted by: "rufina" bernardetti Maimonides as physician: Caring and curing By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/Maimonides-as-physician-Caring-a\ nd-curing-308369 An impressive English-language volume on the Rambam and his medical career has just been published, showing how he was way ahead of his time. [Maimonides] Maimonides Photo: Yair Haklai/Wikimedia Commons Centuries before the invention of the MRI and CT scans, x-rays, aspirin and antibiotics, the sphygmomanomter and even the thermometer, the medieval rabbi and philosopher Maimonides (Rambam) was a brilliant physician who treated the patient rather than the illness and espoused moderation and disease prevention. The great sage, especially during the last decade of his life as court physician to the sultan in Cairo, devoted himself to medicine and his patients and wrote 10 impressive works in Arabic including volumes on asthma, poisons and their antidotes, hemorrhoids and digestion, cohabitation and health promotion, and a glossary of drug names in Arabic, Syrian, Greek, Spanish, Persian and Berber. In recent decades, the Rambam's medical works were translated over nearly five decades into English by Jewish medical ethicist Prof. Fred Rosner of New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Rosner, Prof. Samuel Kottek (emeritus professor of the history of medicine at the Hebrew University) and Prof. Kenneth Collins (medical historian of the University of Glasgow) have written and edited an excellent new book, Moses Maimonides and His Practice of Medicine. The 202-page, $30 hardcover Englishlanguage volume was published by the Maimonides Research Institute of Haifa and New York and includes chapters by 10 authorities on various aspects of the Rambam's medical work. It is a joy to read, not only for people in medicine but also the layman interested in health promotion, Jewish philosophy and history. Born in Cordoba in the Almoravid Empire (Spain) on the eve of Passover in 1135, Maimonides also lived for a time in Morocco and the Holy Land. He died in Egypt in 1204. His body was buried in Tiberias, on the shores of the Kinneret. Although he himself advocated regular and balanced meals, he worked so hard as a physician in the sultan's palace that he would arrive home in the nearby town of Fostat, exhausted and hungry, where, he said: "I would find the antechambers filled with gentiles and Jews... I would go to heal them and write prescriptions for their illnesses... until the evening... and I would be extremely weak." Some scholars have even suggested that his health declined and he died prematurely because of his endless work as a physician. Maimonides took up the profession at the age of 37 after the death at sea of his brother David, a merchant of precious stones. He needed the income to support himself and his family, including his sisterin- law and nephew, writes Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his foreword. "Why should the work of Maimonides in medical science continue to be of interest to contemporary physicians?" Sacks asks. "After all, the physics of Aristotle, and even his metaphysics, have long been surpassed, even if his writings on ethics still inspire and instruct. The first reason is his status and stature as a role model for Jewish doctors and medical scientists, indeed for all those who engage in the worked of healing as a religious act in the spirit of the biblical phrase `I am the Lord who heals you.' ...Second is the religious gravitas Maimonides ascribed to the calling of medicine. It was a strikingly bold move to include rules of health." The British chief rabbi adds that the Rambam wrote clearly why health is important to Jewish belief and practice of medicine: "Since, when the body is healthy and sound, one directs oneself towards the ways of the Lord – it being impossible to understand or know anything of the knowledge of the Creator when one is sick – it is obligatory on man to avoid things that are detrimental to the body and seek out things that fortify it." Just as a Jew must return a lost object to its owner, doctors should restore the good health of their patients, the Rambam argued. Sacks concludes that the most impressive part of Maimonides' work is its integration, the result of his unrivalled ability to "see life Creator and see it whole." Thus he was a holistic medical practitioner before the term became popular in the 20th century. MAIMONIDES LEARNED a lot about medicine and anatomy from the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who established medicine as a profession and whose doctors' oath the rabbi replaced for Jewish physicians; and from Galen, the prominent Greco-Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher. The Rambam called Galen "the greatest medical scientist who ever lived." Hippocrates recommended "the drawing off of noxious humors, that diarrhea benefits eye disorders and if bald people contract large varicose veins, their hair grows back." Both of these ancient physicians made numerous errors, such as thinking the human heart has two chambers and the liver five lobes. The Rambam was willing to change his views. He "would have understood a world where medical advancement is rapid and sometimes even theories that have seemed to be well validated are speedily discarded," Collins writes in the introductory chapter. "He never claimed certainty for his own views but only that they were likely to be so, given the methods he employed and and his adherence to a scientific outlook... Always challenging, and sometimes controversial, and with very modern attributes even from our contemporary perspectives, Maimonides has much to say to physicians today." While the Rambam hardly mentions surgery, he very often discussed plants – both fruits and vegetables – to treat his patients' ills. Some, like rhubarb, were used to purge the body of harmful humors, while others were used to treat migraines, asthma, cough and constipation. Among his collection of medications were dill, fennel, fenugreek, finger, hyssop, beet juice, borax, celery, cinnamon, quince, saffron, sesame, licorice and pine nuts. K o t t e k stresses the importance the Rambam gave to having a close relationship between the doctor and patient, taking psychology into account and being careful not to harm him. If the patient doesn't trust his doctor fully, the healing process won't get far, the Rambam believed, "For each sick individual feels his heart constricted, and each healthy person feels his soul wide-spread." By this, Kottek explained, the Rambam meant the existence or lack of anxiety. He also understood the importance of the environment on the patient: "In case the sick individual is poor and lives in a place that is harmful for his disease but has nowhere else to go, he [the physician] has to remove him to another place." He even realized that asthma involves air quality. Although bloodletting was commonly used by Arab physicians as treatment, Maimonides realized it could be dangerous and urged care in using it. Health promotion was no less important to Maimonides than caring for the sick, wrote Kottek. The Rambam gave advice on "how to eat, what may be eaten and what not, how to practice exercise, to bathe, to sleep and how to have sexual intercourse." Medicine, for him, was "an art." Prof. Carmen Caballero-Navas of the department of Semitic studies at the University of Granada, notes in her chapter that Maimonides did not seem to practice gynecology, even though he treated women from the Cairo palace for ills not connected to their reproductive organs. This is not surprising, she writes, because male Arab physicians usually did not treat women. Midwives delivered babies rather than male doctors. However, Jewish physicians and rabbis had more of an understanding of female anatomy due to the importance of "impurity" (nidda) in women's menstrual cycles and the halachic rules that relate to them. The Rambam does differentiate between men (as being warm and dry) and women (as being cold and wet) and discussed the theoretical nature of women's conditions, from amenorrhea, uterine "suffocation," "phlegm in the womb," pregnancy, miscarriage and childbirth. THE DISCUSSION of nutrition and lifestyle as seen through the Rambam's eyes is as relevant today as it was in the 12th century. Prof. Elliot Berry, director of the department of human nutrition and metabolism at the Braun School of Public Health and the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, discusses this aspect along with Reut Ben-Ami, a master's degree graduate at the Hebrew University. Maimonides wrote much about keeping clean the air we breathe, observing a proper diet, and "regulating emotions, exercise, sleep and excretions." He even noted the psychosomatic aspects of asthma and the holistic approach to the disease. Just moving from Alexandria to Cairo, with its better air, improved asthma, the Rambam wrote. People should not exercise in extreme cold or heat or immediately after eating. Famously, he urged people not to overeat by getting up from the table before being satiated. Whole grains, Maimonides advised, were better for digestion than white flour, and "thick meat" should be avoided, as its digestion is "hard on the stomach." He recommended poultry as well as small saltwater fish, but did not endorse consuming large amounts of fish – apparently because there were no refrigerators, so they were preserved in salt, which he identified as not promoting health. He recommended dairy products because they are digested easily, but thought them "harmful for those suffering from headaches." He strongly endorsed fruits and vegetables as a regular part of the daily diet and drinking cool water some two hours after eating, when digestion had already begun. Dr. Helena Paavilainen, a history of pharmacology researcher at the HUHadassah Medical School, listed the many plant products that the Rambam prescribed for treating asthma and noted that modern pharmacology has validated their efficacy for controlling respiratory spasms. "Maimonides' medical legacy, rooted in the experience of generations and augmented by his own clinical experience, would be a valuable starting point for further research. His deep understanding of psychosomatic and philosophical aspects of medicine is given the appreciation it deserves," she declared. Although leprosy is given in the Bible as a spiritual disease, Maimonides differentiated in his writings between that condition resulting from slander and the dermatological condition that today is treated with antibiotics. SURELY, THE Rambam erred with regard to some medical beliefs, such as female fetuses lying on one side of the uterus and males on the other. But his knowledge and ability to diagnose were amazing. He deserved the praise given him by Rosner, who called him "one of the greatest physician-theologian-philosophers that ever lived on this earth. May his memory be blessed!"

Passover Lessons

Passover Lessons
 
Paul Eidelberg
 
A propos of Passover and the failure of Moses to persuade Egypt’s
pharaoh to let the Children of Israel go, despots can’t be talked out of their
despotism. Plague after was required to liberate he Jews from Egyptian bondage.
Every Passover is an object lesson that one cannot negotiate with evil.
Israeli prime ministers from Yitzhak Rabin to Benjamin
Netanyahu have simply lacked the intelligence to recognize the futility of negotiating
with “Palestinian” pharaohs. Israel’s leaders, past and present, could also have
learned this lesson from the bloody war that resulted from Chamberlain’s efforts
to negotiate with Hitler.
On the other hand, for any Israeli prime minister to think he
could win peace from the PLO-Palestinian Authority by yielding Jewish land manifests
not only naiveté but arrogance and contempt for Islam. It is to harbor the benighted
conceit that Muslims think nothing of their own religion! Did any Israeli prime
minister believe that he could undo 1,400 years of Islamic history? Did Rabin
or Sharon or Netanyahu believe that he could negotiate genuine peace with Muslims
animated by hatred and violence on the one hand, and utterly contemptuous of
reason on the other?  Leaving academics aside,
can you imagine a sober politician advocating a policy of “reciprocity” vis-à-vis
such an enemy—especially a politician that celebrates Passover?
Doesn’t he know that the Egyptian pharaoh was so fixated or
self-intoxicated that he had to suffer plague after plague before he deigned to
let the Children of Israel go—only to drown in a moment of liberalism?
Passover is an object lesson in despotic stupidity. Alas, this
stupidity has been at the helm in Israel for at least 20 years.  But let’s look at the bright side—especially
today when the democratic world is suffering serious economic and other woes.
Any intelligent observer—certainly if he’s Christian—should know
by now that Israel’s existence and remarkable prosperity is a demonstrable affirmation
of Biblical prophecy.  It seems, however,
that this affirmation of Biblical prophecy has yet to stimulate and embolden the
mentality of Israel’s ruling—or should I say apologetic—elites. It was as if
they were still in Egypt. Hey fellas! Dayenu! Wake up! The world is yours!