IRIS Blog

The Interior Minister appointed by Ehud Olmert has spoken out in favor of limits on the Law of Return, Israel's raison d'etre:

Israel should no longer grant automatic citizenship to Jews, Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit said on Tuesday.

"I'd like to see that [the immigrant] is not a criminal, that he's learning Hebrew; that he's here for five years before getting citizenship," he said.

The five-year waiting period for citizenship sounds like a political trick designed to blunt the influence of the rising number of olim from America, who are overwhelmingly opposed to such Leftist policies as dividing Jerusalem, giving up control of the Temple Mount, teaching Israel's foundation was a "disaster" in state textbooks, releasing terrorists and paying the salaries of Hamas.

Sheetrit was speaking to the Jewish Agency Board of Governors meeting in Jerusalem. He also called for more careful filtering of who is allowed to enter the country.

"Don't go finding me any lost tribes because I won't let them in any more," he declared. "We have enough problems in Israel. Let them go to America."

If Orthodox Jews in India do not qualify as sufficiently Jewish to Meir Sheetrit, than what does he think of the heroic rescue of Ethiopian Jews, who are also from the Third World?

Ehud Olmert has received a sympathy bounce, up to about half of the lowest level of the most unpopular American president on record. This should underscore his lack of a mandate to give away land.

Here is more evidence of the main tactic in the Palestinian playbook authored by Yassir Arafat--talk land-for-peace in English and explain in Arabic that any ceded land will be used as a basis for the conquest of Israel:

While the PA announces in English its demand for a two-state solution, in Arabic it continues to define all of Israel as "Palestine," and to promise Israel's destruction.

A new video clip, broadcast numerous times daily since it first appeared on Fatah-controlled TV last week, passionately promises that every Israeli city will be "liberated," including Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa, Beersheba and Tiberias.

This strategy is based on the fact that the disputed territories of the West Bank and the Golan Heights are on strategic high ground. They militarily dominate the low-lying area of central Israel, as elaborated in this piece published today.

This is the best analysis I have seen on last week's momentous verdict:

The trial of four key figures with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development ended last week with a hung jury. Yet the defendants remain in legal jeopardy, with a new trial almost assured - and the prosecution has, at a minimum, closed a lucrative funding channel for the Palestinian terror group Hamas. The trial record conclusively demonstrated that Holy Land and several of its unindicted co-conspirators - including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) - grew out of Hamas.

The evidence clearly linked Holy Land and CAIR to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, the hard-line Egyptian Islamist umbrella group and godfather of every Sunni terrorist group from Hamas to al-Qaeda. The full transcript of a secret 1993 meeting in Philadelphia of "The Palestine Committee" - a group of Hamas members and supporters - revealed that Holy Land was an active player in a larger Muslim Brotherhood network aimed at organizing support in America for Hamas.

Read the whole thing...

Those unfamiliar with Nonie Darwish should be sure to read this:

-Nonie Darwish was born in Cairo, and in the early 1950s moved with her family to Egyptian-occupied Gaza, where her father, Lt.-Gen. Mustafa Hafez, was appointed by President Gamal Abdel Nasser to command Egyptian army intelligence. Hafez founded the Palestinian fedayeen units that launched terrorist raids across Israel's southern border. Between 1951 and 1956, the fedayeen killed 400 Israelis. In 1978 Darwish moved to the U.S. During a recent visit to Jerusalem, she said in an interview:

-"Israel really brings hope to the region. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that allows religious freedom. Even though it is the tiniest country in the region, it is not afraid to allow Muslims to have mosques to pray in; it is not afraid to allow Christians all these freedoms. It is really a credit to Judaism that it doesn't have the possessiveness Islam has. You know, it's amazing, with all the land the Muslims have, and all the wealth from oil, and all the armies, that no Arab country is secure in its existence. Why else would 1.2 billion Muslims feel threatened by five million Jews? It says a lot. And I've learned that the fear and hate are by design - of Islam's religious educators, its political leadership and its intellectuals. Hatred for Israel is part of how the Arab world operates. They need an enemy."

-"Islamists are blinded by envy and can't understand Israel's success. They say it must be due to conspiracy and not merit....They have forgotten that Jewish success is due to a culture that promotes excellence and is blessed with self-discipline, education, dedication and a drive to leave this world a better place. There is no conspiracy there! If Arabs want to compete with Jews, let them do it in the realm of innovation and education, and not by terrorizing and eliminating the opposition. Arab mistakes are blamed on Israel, the West, past injustice or colonialism. Looking at a map of Israel in relationship to the Arab world tells us that Arabs don't need land; they need tolerance."

-"America's defense of the Muslims against the Serbs, the Afghani Muslims against the Soviet Union, feeding Somali Muslims starved by their own leadership, received no credit in the Muslim world. In fact, the results are just the opposite; the more we try to help stabilize the region, the more we are despised. Muslims do not want to be rescued by infidels. This is a proud culture that is easily shamed by feelings of dependency on non-Muslims."

Designed on the Hezbollah model, precisely as predicted:

Hamas is trying to establish a bunker system as well as fortified rocket-launching and surveillance positions along the security fence with the Gaza Strip, Brig.-Gen. Moshe (Chico) Tamir, head of the Gaza Division, said Monday.

Tamir said that Hamas was "building an army" in the Gaza Strip and had obtained unprecedented capabilities through smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. On Monday, head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Yuval Diskin said that since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians have smuggled over 112 tons of explosives into the Strip.

"They are trying to dig tunnels, build surveillance positions and mortar-fire stations along the fence," Tamir told reporters during a briefing concerning the death of IDF reservist Ehud Efrati during clashes with Hamas gunmen early Monday morning. "They are trying to build this up and we are trying to stop them."

Tamir said that Hamas was studying Israeli tactics during the IDF's daily operations along the fence and was trying to use this knowledge in its fighting methods.

See also:

Hamas Improving Military Capabilities in Gaza

IDF's Tactical Upper Hand Over Hamas in Gaza is Diminishing

Key excerpt:

"you see the Israeli staff's dedication and concern and on the other hand, the Palestinians' indifference and you can't understand how your own people
completely ignore you and your supposed enemy bends over backwards to see
that you get everything you need"

If the reason they hate us is "oppression," then this kind of story would change minds. Unfortunately the Left is wrong, and their vitriol is ideological, based in the Koran.

For the second year in a row, the facts strongly contradict Al Gore's prediction of record-setting hurricanes due to Global Warming:

Unless a dramatic and perhaps historical flurry of activity occurs in the next 9 weeks, 2007 will rank as a historically inactive TC year for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole. During the past 30 years, only 1977, 1981, and 1983 have had less activity to date

A Muslim man can divorce his wife by uttering a simple phrase, and here is one reason he might do so:

One Saudi woman ignored the cancer growing in her breast because she didn't want to risk a referral to a male doctor. Another was divorced by her husband on the mere suspicion she had the disease, while a third was dragged away from a mammogram machine because the technicians were men. Breast cancer is still considered a taboo in oil-rich Arab Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia even as the disease claims more and more victims, but some women are pushing for greater openness about the illness.

Strange how sex tourism for one-night-only virgin brides isn't considered 'taboo' among Saudis.

Stories like this have become pedestrian:

A powerful explosion went off in a house in southern Gaza on Saturday, killing two women and a four-year-old girl, Palestinian medics and witnesses said.

The cause of the blast in the town of Khan Yunis was not immediately clear.

The blast tore down the facade of the house and badly damaged its interior. A neighboring house was also partially damaged from the force of the blast.

The IDF said it was not carrying out any operations in the area at the time.

Hamas police said they suspected explosives being handled by militants went off prematurely.

June 18: Defense Minister Ehud Barak vowed a full-scale invasion of Gaza to "crush Hamas"

September 12: Ehud Barak: "We'll announce that every Kassam is an hour of blackout. That way, whoever launches the Kassam knows he's cutting the power."

October 26: Israel does not plan to cut the power supply in response to each rocket fired at Israel, but will gradually reduce Gaza's dependency on Israel for electricity. Gaza's population uses about 200 megawatts of electricity, of which 120 are provided directly from Israel, 17 are from Egypt, and 65 are produced locally....The first sanctions will be implemented in the coming days, with electricity supply being disrupted during the evening hours for periods between 15 minutes to an hour each time.

Of course, on June 18, IRIS was nearly alone in analyzing that Ehud Barak's bluster was simply "talk tough to appease the locals" (New Defense Minister Barak Dusts off 'Really Really Hard' Doctrine). All that will occur is the gradual increase of local and Egyptian-supplied power, plus many millions of Western taxpayer dollars for electricity projects that will be stolen in Palestinian graft.

Here is another story confirming the strong Arab opposition to the plan to divide Jerusalem:

Many Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are less than eager for an end to Israeli rule. Some 250,000 people could find themselves under Palestinian rule if the idea of ceding parts of Jerusalem to a new Palestinian state goes forward. "If they put a border here, we'll move to Haifa and Tel Aviv. You'll have 50,000 people who live here leaving East Jerusalem in minutes," said Jamil Sanduqa, head of the popular committee that governs the Shuafat neighborhood. Many of the city's Palestinian residents openly worry about being cut off from jobs, unemployment insurance and medical care.

The Left claims that their pretext for giving away Israeli land with Arab populations is demographic, but this story disproves that claim. It also belies the "Arabs have deep roots to the land" claims. Like almost everyone, they migrate for quality of life reasons.

Syria is an impoverished dictatorship, but they certainly have plenty of resources to cover up an Israeli attack on what they claim was a largely empty warehouse:

"It's a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow," a senior [American] intelligence official said. "It doesn't lower suspicions; it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It's incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away."

Notice the lack of any international sanctions on Israel for engaging in self-defense. If so, why are Israel's leaders so frightened of the global repercussions if Israel hits Hamas or Iran?

Despite Fatah's recent anti-American incitement, "accidental" payments to Hamas' entire payroll, involvement in terror (including the daily Kassam attacks that struck an apartment building today) and children's jihad TV programming, the Bush administration is delivering record sums of money to Abbas for mouthing bromides in English. There is no evidence that Israeli leaders are among the long list of those taking a commission from Palestinian "humanitarian aid", but it is the only explanation for their sell-out of Israeli security:

The American government is planning to transfer $410 million to the Palestinian Authority in an effort to strengthen it - the largest aid program ever given to the Palestinians by the U.S.

A recent, popular slogan designed to sow defeatism is "There is no Military Solution" (similar to "War is Not the Answer").

The current trend in Iraq would say otherwise, thanks to the very military answer known as the "surge":

October is on course to record the second consecutive decline in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths and American commanders say they know why: the U.S. troop increase and an Iraqi groundswell against al Qaeda and Shiite militia extremists.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch points to what the military calls "Concerned Citizens" - both Shiites and Sunnis who have joined the American fight. He says he's signed up 20,000 of them in the past four months.

"I've never been more optimistic than I am right now with the progress we've made in Iraq. The only people who are going to win this counterinsurgency project are the people of Iraq. We've said that all along. And now they're coming forward in masses," Lynch said in a recent interview at a U.S. base deep in hostile territory south of Baghdad. Outgoing artillery thundered as he spoke.

Iraqi citizens aren't coming forward in masses out of love for the US reconstruction effort; they now feel safe from al-Qaeda brutality because of American might. Power is evidence of divine favor in Muslim culture. Might makes right.

Lynch, who commands the 3rd Infantry Division and once served as the military spokesman in Baghdad, is a tireless cheerleader of the American effort in Iraq. But the death toll over the past two months appears to reinforce his optimism. The question, of course: Will it last?

Caroline Glick has a must-read explaining the little understood financial