IRIS Blog

The Temple Mount ramp repair project is the latest Arab Big Lie.

Here is a good, short video rebuttal:

The most mainstream Jewish charity, the Jewish Federations, actually funds anti-Israel propaganda. Here's how it works: Federation funds leftist groups that are chartered to spread peace and love but in actuality, work to overthrow Israel:

Some of the money mainstream Jewish donors think is being used to help preserve Israel as the Jewish homeland is actually being used to undermine Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

Most American and other Jews use Jewish Federations as a kind of mutual fund adviser, which makes decisions about and invests their donors' funds in programs they have vetted and determined to be in accordance with the donors' wishes. In turn, most Federations channel funds designated for Israel programs through the Jewish Agency for Israel....

Three of the principal goals of JAFI are to develop Jewish communities in the Galilee and the Negev, encourage aliya, and promote Jewish continuity, with Israel as the linchpin. All three of those goals, however, would be considered illegitimate colonizing enterprises by at least one of JAFI's grantees - the Mossawa Center, an Arab-Israeli thank tank. Mossawa seems committed to eliminating every one of them.

Mossawa, which is funded indirectly by the Jewish Agency, disseminated a report declaring that Israel cannot be both a democracy and a Jewish state. According to that document, which represents the view of many Arab-Israeli elites, and of Arab local authorities - as stated in a separate but nearly identical manifesto - the Jewish state is inherently illegitimate. It must be recast as a bi-national state.

In addition to purging any identification with the Jewish people, Israel must also make reparation to, and elevate everything about, Palestinian Arabs who are Israeli citizens, their culture, history, language and nationalist desires.

Not sated by demanding such changes as de-judaizing the Israeli flag and national anthem, the document also calls for abolishing the Israel's Law of Return. At the same time, Israel must acknowledge and grant Israeli Arabs (and all their descendants) the "right of return" to the places from which they fled during the War of Independence in 1948.

How many times have you heard the question: why study history?

The answer is that we could avert a potential nuclear holocaust and permanent enslavement including institutionalized rape for all of our women simply by learning the lesson of 1973. Despite evidence of an imminent Arab attack, the Leftist Golda Meir admitted in her autobiography that she refused to call up the reserves to prove to the world that Israel was not an aggressor.

Today, if Israel or the US strikes first, Leftists will scream for years about Western aggression. But at least we will be alive:

Stop the Atomic Ayatollahs

Less than 1,000 miles east of Tel Aviv a new Auschwitz is being prepared, as the world looks on and does virtually nothing to stop it. Instead of the gas chambers being fired up, centrifuges are being installed. In place of Zyklon-B gas, the agent of choice is now uranium.

And while the language spoken by its architects may be different, the threat to the future of the Jewish people, and that of the entire Western world, is no less grave than it was six decades ago in Europe.

Indeed, with each passing day the would-be Hitler of Persia draws perilously closer to his goal of obtaining a nuclear arsenal, threatening everyone, and everything, that all of us hold dear. The press loves to mock the Iranian president, portraying him as a nut, a kook, and a fanatic. But I take him at his word. He has made quite clear what his objective is, telling us over and over again that he plans to eliminate Israel and destroy the West.

Like it or not, we are all in his crosshairs, and we ignore him at our peril. And that is why it is time to show a little more courage and a lot more determination, and to tackle this threat head-on.

It is time for Israel or the US to bomb Iran now. Not next week, next month, or next summer, but now. As quickly and as hard and as painfully as possible.

Another must-read from Caroline Glick, who fleshes out the IRIS thesis that the Left is fundamentally antagonistic to Israel:

One of the most difficult things in life is to draw the line between friend and foe. Take the Palestinian terror groups.

Last week in Mecca, the Fatah terror group, which mixes the murder of Israelis with negotiations with Israelis, officially joined forces with the Hamas terror group, which murders Israelis while refusing to negotiate with us.

A brilliant encapsulation the Chelm-like nature of the thinking of Israel's leadership.

Although the agreement makes it clear that both are at war with Israel, on Sunday the Olmert government decided to reserve judgment on the terror unity deal. And Monday morning Vice Premier Shimon Peres warned that saying bad things about the Mecca deal would only weaken Fatah terror boss Mahmoud Abbas, whom we should strengthen because he likes to negotiate while killing.

Unfortunately, the white knight savior, the presumptive next Prime Minister, also cannot identify the Palestinians as an enemy.

Given how hard it is for Israel to identify its Arab foes, it is little wonder that identifying Jewish foes is a near-Herculean task.

Last month the American Jewish Committee took an important first step in this direction by publishing a paper by Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld from the University of Indiana entitled, "'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism." Explaining the difference between criticism of Israel and demonization of the Jewish state, Rosenfeld wrote, "To call Israel a Nazi state? as is commonly done today, or to accuse it of fostering South African-style apartheid or engaging in ethnic cleansing or wholesale genocide goes well beyond legitimate criticism." Rosenfeld noted that these descriptors of Israel, which aim to single out Israel "as a political entity unworthy of secure and sovereign existence" are today "part of a standard discourse among 'progressive' American Jews, who seem to take for granted that the historical record shows Israel to be an aggressor state guilty of sins comparable to Hendrik Verwoerd's South Africa and Hitler's Germany."

HAVING described the phenomenon, Rosenfeld proceeded to identify prominent American Jews, including New York University Prof. Tony Judt, playwright Tony Kushner, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, Noam Chomsky, and Adrienne Rich as leading Jewish lights in the leftist assault on the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our homeland.

Rosenfeld's paper evoked strong reactions in the American Jewish community. A New York Times write-up of the controversy entitled, "Essay Linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor," described how the same "progressive" Jews and their supporters are up in arms over being painted as anti-Semites. Judt opined that the point of the article was to silence them.

This of course, is pure nonsense. All the Jews in America couldn't silence Judt and his colleagues even if they wished to. As anti-Israel Jews, they will never lack prestigious forums from which to propagate their hatred for Israel.

Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Hits Record High
Credit the corrupt Olmert administration for being intelligent parasites. By not dismantling Netanyahu's free market reforms, they are just taking the golden eggs, not killing the goose that lays them.

Palestinian Molotov Cocktail Hits Palestinian Vehicle

Palestinian Rocket Fire Continues
Don't criticize this lest it undermine Abbas

Indian Experts Question Global Warming Theory

Study: Glacier Melting can be Variable

Here is must-hear audio, in which I challenged former Prime Minister Netanyahu. How do we know he will not again sell us out by granting territory to our sworn enemies?

Tough questions from the right such as these are a rarity because Israeli reporters are generally left-leaning and any conservative journalist with the temerity to challenge the Prime Minister, as I did, would be quickly blacklisted.

Background to the question:

The polls indicate that Bibi is the clear front-runner in the next election. Israelis are tired of the leftist administration of Kadima and Labor and that neither party would make it higher than third place if elections were held today. Israel's hopes for a national security candidate rest, therefore, on Bibi. However, no policy can be effective if the diagnosis is missed. The Palestinians have repeatedly revealed that their most fervent wish is for Israel to be destroyed. The Palestinian Authority, including the "moderate" Abbas, has been unmasked repeatedly as a terrorist body, even prior to the landslide Hamas victory.

Notice that Bibi's answer does not respond to the issue of whether the Palestinians are an enemy.

What is quite amazing is that Bibi himself predicted the Oslo accords, and that they would be used as part of the PLO's historic plan of phased destruction of Israel. The details are laid out in the chapter "The Trojan Horse" within his terrific book "A Place Among the Nations."

Listen to his answer, in which he makes the following points:

-"We inherited the Oslo Accords and were contractually bound by them."

Unfortunately, Palestinians continually falsely offerred renunciations of terror as their part of the land-for-peace trade, making any "contract" ludicrous. It's like pretending a rental contract exists when the tenants keep presenting bounced checks.

-"I gave away less land than other Prime Ministers and slowed down the process."

Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert proved that the only irreversible elements to the land-for-peace process are Israeli concessions. The speed of Israeli withdrawals can be increased at any point.

In fairness, I should point out that while Netanyahu did sell out the nation's security by granting land concessions to the Palestinians after their "peace" deal was revealed to be a Trojan Horse, he has been Israel's most effective international spokesman as well as the best Finance Minister in its history.

The complete audio of Netanyahu's blogger conference call is available here.

Take this with a grain of salt, obviously. But it is still interesting breaking news:

The U.S. envoy to talks on North Korea's nuclear program said Tuesday that negotiators reached a tentative agreement on initial steps for the communist nation's disarmament.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said the agreement outlined specific commitments for North Korea and would set up working groups to implement those goals to begin meeting in about a month. He declined to give other details.

"I'm encouraged by this that we were able to take a step forward on the denuclearization issue," Hill said.

A generation ago, the Jewish People focused on the right issue--rescuing Jews from the evil Soviet regime. Natan Sharansky is calling for a new Jewish mobilization against anti-Semitism without mentioning the evil that is behind its frightening resurgence--Islamism.

Just over three years ago, at the first-ever global forum on anti-Semitism organized by the State of Israel, the essential task was to define the beast - the new anti-Semitism. Since then, as the fourth such global gathering meets this week, efforts to incorporate the "three-D" distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel and the new anti-Semitism - demonization, double standards and delegitimization - have become part of international documents and discourse.

These and other accomplishments, as important as they are, have been dwarfed by the quantum leap anti-Semitism itself has taken. It has leapfrogged from isolated attacks against Jews to incitement to genocide - the actual elimination of the Jewish state.

This shift has come in the form of a pincer movement. On one side, we have the Iranian regime, which is denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" while racing to develop the physical means of doing so. On the other side, we have what is, in effect, international silence in response, coupled with growing willingness to discuss Israel's existence as a mistake, an anachronism, or a provocation.

We must recognize the fact that though sympathy for Iran's expressed goal of Israel's destruction is hardly mainstream, the idea of a world without Israel is more acceptable in polite company, the media and academia today than Hitler's expressed goal of a Europe without Jews was in 1939.

Given this situation, it should be clear that we are beyond the stage of definitions. The Jewish world now must mobilize at a level no less than during the struggles to establish the State of Israel and to free Soviet Jewry. It is this latter struggle that presents the most potent model for action today.

Haaretz is the most left-wing of Israel's major newspapers:

No commission of inquiry is needed in order to realize that the fact that the prime and defense ministers are not speaking to each other is a clear and present danger to national security. This grave situation has continued since the war in Lebanon ended, but the public is not fully aware of its gravity. All the conciliatory statements emanating from both ministers' offices are false, as are the smiles they exchange in front of the cameras. The state is not being governed, and there is no coordination between Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz on the most vital issues.

Just yesterday, a scandalous letter that Peretz sent to Olmert, which demanded that construction work on the Temple Mount be stopped, was publicized. Instead of this sensitive matter being discussed privately and seriously, things are evidently being done without coordination, and the defense minister simply responds to events.

The unacceptable explanation offered for this state of affairs is that Olmert intends to replace the defense minister, but is postponing the move for political reasons. This cowardice attests to Olmert's inability to govern. The prime minister - who complains that criminal investigations are disrupting the government's work and therefore, in order to demonstrate his dissatisfaction, quickly and provocatively appointed a like-minded justice minister - has been incapable for months of choosing a defense minister who will help him ensure the security of Israel's citizens. The question is no longer whether Peretz is suitable for the post, or whether the Labor Party will agree to replace him. The situation in which the two are incapable of working together is frightening in and of itself.

It is hard to put faith in the government's declarations about Israel Defense Forces activity on the Lebanese or Gazan borders, its policy on the settlement outposts and the considerations that have led it to acquire new weapons systems - let alone its handling of the Iranian nuclear issue or its contacts with the Palestinian Authority - when these issues are dealt with mainly via the media, and every statement by one side immediately prompts a dismissive response by the other. The offices of the prime and defense ministers are too reminiscent of those of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and Israel's advantage of proper democratic governance is being eroded by embarrassing ego games.

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh says that publication of Peretz's letter about the Temple Mount caused consternation in the Defense Ministry. But the very fact that a letter had to be sent from one ministry to the other on such a sensitive matter, which is liable to result in loss of life, attests to the enormity of the crisis. The work on the Temple Mount, as well as the operations along the Lebanese border, are both matters with the potential to spark a major conflagration, so it would have been reasonable to assume that the decisions were made knowledgeably and judiciously. But the current Israeli government has neither knowledge nor judgment, only politicians hunkering down within their own camps and among their own cronies, and it seems that grudges and vengeance have become substitutes for a national agenda.

If the prime minister wants to leave any positive impression at all before he is replaced, he must at least ensure that the defense establishment is headed by someone who enjoys the confidence of that establishment, and with whom he can work. And if Labor quits the government over the defense minister's replacement, that will be a sign that it, too, is unsuited to lead the country.

Here is a must-read article on the fact that the dominant strain of Islam worldwide (including the US) comes from Saudi Arabia:

The champion of globalization is in fact a puritanical desert-nomad from the sands of Arabia who died in 1792, and the evidence was there in this week's Islamic panic front pages. Mohamed ibn Abd al-Wahhab had a dream. He dreamed of an Islam stripped down to a cold list of mechanical rules, strictly enforced, severely upheld. He ordered whippings and beheadings of Muslims to "purify" the faith. He smashed up and burned down the worship places of the softer, more mystical Muslims all around him. And - his smartest move - he cut a deal. He met the chief of the desert bandits who lived in nearby Najd - a man named Mohamed Saud - and offered him his allegiance, in return for enforcing his severe, new brand of Islam. The Saud ruling family and the Wahhabi doctrine have been locked in a stiff waltz ever since.

More than two centuries later, oil was discovered under the territory of these bandits, and billions of dollars began to soak into the kingdom. True to their ancestor's deal, the House of Saud used this black gold to promote the ideas of Wahhab across the world. By paying for thousands of schools, mosques and trained imams, they dispersed the reactionary preacher's ideas to every continent. Slowly, steadily, they are succeeding in eroding other, gentler forms of Islam. They are globalizing Wahhabism - and your petrol purchases are paying for it.

In Sweden, almost every Islamic school is either funded by the Saudis or seeking out their cash, according to the investigative program "Kaliber." In the U.S., 80% of imams are trained by the Saudis, and in France 70%. In Pakistan, there were 246 madrassas at the time of independence in 1945. Today, there are 6,607 - the majority using Saudi textbooks provided for free.

As a result, five year-olds in the UK are asked to perform exercises like these:

Mention some repugnant characteristics of Jews.

Terrific news from France, except for the many who need to go into hiding in fear of the mainstream Muslim acceptance of Islam's death penalty for converts:

Muslims are converting to Christianity in their thousands in France but face exclusion from their families and even death threats.

Most Muslims hide their conversion and Protestant ministers do their utmost to protect new converts. It is estimated that every year in the world some six million Muslims convert to Christianity.

The Muezzin call to prayer. But here in France it is no longer reaching all Muslim ears.

Around 15,000 Muslims each year are converting to Christianity - around 10,000 to Catholicism and 5,000 to Protestantism....

Many Muslims in France hide their conversion but the trend is continuing. World wide around six million Muslims a year convert to Christianity.

Of course, the Israeli official has to speak anonymously to avoid being fired.

Hezbollah is presently receiving a "constant stream of armaments" from Syria, Iran and other foreign sources, senior Israeli officials said Tuesday. "They are getting all kinds of rockets, advanced anti-tank missiles, command-and-control systems, training, finance," an Israeli official said. The official said Hezbollah maintains an "operational" presence along the Lebanese-Israeli border. Enabling Hezbollah's rearmament is the "open border" Lebanon shares with Syria, and the lack of "real teeth for enforcement" in UN Security Council Resolution 1718, which established a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hezbollah war last August.

At the same time, and in a similar way, foreign sources are providing Hamas with anti-tank missiles, high-trajectory rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and their launchers, explosive devices and automatic rifles. The armament of the Hamas commanders is "intensive" and "incessant," and intended for use against both their Fatah rivals and the Israelis. The official said the IDF has had "no operational activity whatsoever" in Gaza for the last three months, but that in the same time Hamas has launched more than 100 Kassam rockets at Israeli civilian targets.

The official was skeptical about Western plans to shore up the Fatah security forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas. "Every meeting we have on this subject always ends in the conclusion, 'Bolster Abbas,' as if that will solve all the problems. He was in power two years ago [before Hamas came to power], wasn't he? What did he do then?" The official said the Israelis provided Abbas with weapons and some have wound up in the hands of Hamas.

Notice the amazing revelation that every meeting ends with "bolster Abbas," today's "conceptzia":

"Conceptzia" was the term coined by the Agranat Commission to describe the intelligence failure that led to the surprise of the Yom Kippur War. As a friend at Tel Aviv University explained, "It is much more than a mistake." It is a fundamentally flawed understanding of events that prevents one from seeing what is before his eyes.

There is just one flaw in this reasoning hiding in plain sight: Abbas has been a lifelong terrorist who has recently been calling for the shooting of Israelis. Today it was revealed that his Fatah organization is funded by Iran.

The Democratic spin machine that proved so successful in enabling a low-life president has now recrafted scientific skepticism from a virtue to a slur. Climate specialists throughout the nation are now branded "climate change deniers," which is evocative of Holocaust revisionism. Humorously, we are for the first time hearing about the industry support of certain scientists, when nearly all academics receive third-party research funding. The fact that criminal trials can find paid expert witnesses on either side of most scientific questions has rarely been considered notable by the mainstream media.

Hear are two examples from today's news:

Governor Plans To Fire Oregon Climatologist for Skeptical View of Warming

Delaware Scientist's Contrarian Stand Criticized, Ties to Big Oil, Industry-Funded Lobbies Draw Fire

Notice the use of the pejorative term "Big Oil" in the sub-headline above.

Of course, in each of these stories there is an attempt to paint these scientists as alone in their views, when a number of other climate specialists concur. Here are some examples:

There's No "Consensus" on Global Warming

Global Warming: 'The Greatest Deception in the History of Science'

Scientists: Pollution Could Combat Global Warming

While Israel's leadership is daily revealed to be spending its time focused on lining its own pockets, Hezbollah is planting bombs on the Israeli side of the border (under the nose of the UNIFIL 'disarmament force') and Hamas is preparing sophisticated underground assaults from Gaza. Olmert's financial response to Hamas' openly genocidal intentions have been an utter fraud. All of these events have traspired exactly as predicted on IRIS.

Hamas is setting up a new military infrastructure for a serious confrontation with Israel.

It is digging combat tunnels, improving rocket performance and quantity, and collecting weapons, mainly antitank and antiaircraft missiles through smuggling.

The tunnels will allow mobility underground to the expected points of battle with IDF forces entering Gaza.

The fighters will be able to surface quickly, launch missiles or rockets, and disappear, only to surprise IDF forces at another spot.

The tunnels are also meant to hold explosive devices that would be detonated when IDF forces try to enter Gaza.

Tunnels could also be used to infiltrate Israeli territory.

The solution? A leader like Rudy Giuliani who gets two things:

1. The West does not have the option of 'disengaging' from the Global Jihad. They are at war with us and we have only to choose whether to join the battle as passive victims or as active combatants.

2. In this war, we need to be on offense.

Meanwhile, only free-market conservatives are proposing sensible new solutions for advancing Israel's interests.

See here for Daniel Doron's insight that Iran's statist economy is hopelessly overextended and thus quite sensitive to economic pressure.

See here for Caroline Glick's column explaining how a larger understanding of the Global Jihad could be used by jihad victims like Israel and Kenya to influence Bush's "going wobbly" in the war on terror.

Shin Bet: Gaza Weapons Smuggling Increases Six-Fold, Iran Training Palestinian Terrorists

Lebanese Hezbollah Supporting Anti-U.S. Forces in Iraq
The global jihad's unity is news to the New York Times. Clearly the fact that their values are nearly identical has gone unnoticed.

Over 40% of Children Exposed to Internet Porn