Ira Chernus' Agenda

In Salon and the Huffington Post, Ira Chernus pooh-poohs Israel's security concerns.

Chernus lists three "myths" about Israel's security. I will only discuss the first one. It should be enough to show that Chernus is not being intellectually honest, to say the least.

Myth Number 1: Israel’s existence is threatened by the ever-present possibility of military attack.

This is a straw man argument. I'm not aware of anyone who says that Israel's existence is threatened by any conventional military attack.

Israel's security posture is not aimed primarily at defending the existence of Israel. Rather, Israel's army is an almost unique position where it must defend its citizens from the threat of being wantonly attacked.

The US Army has no such worries. NATO members have no such worries. For them, all wars are far away and only soldiers are at risk. Israel is perhaps the only Western country in the world where every single citizen is under the credible threat of an attack in any given week.


This simple fact, which Chernus ignores altogether, is the security issue that Israel faces. Chernus, for all his supposed analytical ability, does not even mention Hezbollah once in his article. It is as if the 2006 Lebanon war - where the hundreds of thousands of citizens in the northern part of the country were forced to become temporary refugees - never happened. Chernus downplays Hamas rockets and ignores the 40,000 more deadly and accurate rockets that are aimed, today, at Israel's population centers. And, as in 2006, it takes only one border incident to escalate into a full scale war.

Would such a war threaten Israel's existence? No. But such a war is still not acceptable. Concern about such a war is still a primary security issue. And those who cannot even acknowledge that this type of war is a possibility less than five years after the last one is either willfully blind or adhering to an agenda.

Chernus also downplays the possibility of a nuclear threat against Israel, with this almost unbelievable sentence:

While the Israeli government constantly sounds alarms about imagined Iranian nuclear weapons -- though its intelligence services now suggest Iran won’t have even one before 2015 at the earliest -- Israel remains the region’s only nuclear power for the foreseeable future.

Is Chernus really suggesting that a nuclear threat that is perhaps four years away is not a significant security concern? How can one take anyone who writes such a sentence seriously?

Moreover, only in 2007 did the world discover that Syria has a secret nuclear weapons program as well. Is Chernus so naive as to think that this is not a threat to Israel either? (Or does he believe that Syria just gave up, and is now a peaceful neighbor that can be trusted?)

In short, Chernus uses multiple false arguments to imply that Israel has no real security concerns.

So why is he purposefully mis-characterizing Israel's security posture?

The answer can be seen in how he sums up his article:

But what if the American public knew the facts...? What if every solemn reference to Israel’s “security needs” were greeted not with nodding heads, but with the eye-rolling skepticism it deserves? What if Israel’s endless excesses and excuses -- its claims that the occupation of the West Bank and the economic strangulation of Gaza are necessary “for the sake of security” -- were regularly scoffed at by most Americans?

It’s hard to imagine the Obama administration, or any American administration, keeping up a pro-Israel tilt in the face of such public scorn.

Chernus has an agenda - to turn the US against Israel.

That agenda is what drives his knowingly deceptive analysis. That agenda is what makes him downplay Iran's nuclear program and political program to surround Israel with Iranian satellites. That agenda is what makes him ignore Hezbollah's rockets and Syria's nuclear ambitions altogether.

And any analysis of Israel's security needs that is based on such an agenda is not worth the disk space it takes up.

Congressman King Getting Muslim Death Threats 2 Days Bef Start

This is what confronting the enemy will get you. I hate to say it, but he better get used to it. We all have. You'll notice their side never gets these death threats.

We'll all be living like Geert Wilders sooner or later.

Rep.Peter King getting threats from overseas, gets security upgrade NY Post

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Long Island Congressman Peter King is facing threats — and getting extra security.

But he vowed Monday to forge ahead with controversial hearings on radicalization in the Muslim-American community, reports CBS 2’s Tony Aiello. I am muslim hate

King was heavily criticized at a weekend rally in Times Square.

“American Muslims are part of the American family and are Americans, too!” Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said.

But the congressman was strongly supported at a smaller rally nearby.

“Imam Rauf and his friends are trying to create a phony trumped-up civil rights movement,” one King supporter said.

The wedge issue is Chairman King’s decision to call a Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday titled “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community — and that Community’s Response.”

“I want to show the extent of that radicalization, how it happens. Also whether or not the Muslim community is fully cooperating,” Rep. King said.

Every Homeland Security chair gets protection, but King’s has been stepped up in the wake of threats — some generated by the controversy over the hearings.

“I’m getting a lot of hostile phone calls now, but the main threats I’m getting are from overseas,” Rep. King said.

King said he views his effort in the same vein as 1995 Senate hearings into the white militia movement, which took place right after the Oklahoma City terror bombing.

“And they were gathering support, and I thought it was important to investigate them,” King said.

King also said he promises to hear from a wide-range of voices, including Muslims that oppose the hearings, but intend to participate.

Among the figures invited to testify by Democrats is the sheriff of Los Angeles County, who is seen as a close ally of the Muslim community.
Pamela Geller

Do We Want an Anti-Semite in the White House?

I call out every American Jew who voted for this racist. I call out every Jew who has stood by and deluded himself that Obama would not hurt the tiny Jewish state. I call out every Jew who thinks that he is safe here in the former land of the free and home of the repressed, oppressed brave. I call out every Jew who gave money to the increasingly radical anti-semitic political party, the Democrats.

Work those phones. You owe it to your children. You owe it to your people. You owe it to the six million dead.

Contact your Congressman;
Pamela Geller

Comment: It is easier to cry anti-Semitism than to deal with facts in the ground. Nuclear bombs have been reduced to the size of an ordinary suitcase. Several nuclear nations have the technology to retail such devices at $20,000,000 no questions asked. The presence of these devices in Washington could affect Foreign Policy.
Extremist Muslim threats to use them have a great deal of credibility.

Somalia: POTUS Must Convert to Islam or US Attacked

But, but, but, he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim, his stepfather was a Muslim, his religion was listed as Islam at the school he attended in Indonesia (the largest Muslim country in the world), and he studied Islam at school.....doesn't that count?

The State department certainly has imported enough Muslims from Somalia to stage an attack. It's all set. The invasion is complete.

Somali Insurgents: Obama Must Convert to Islam or Attacks on U.S. Will Come FOX (hat tip Paul)

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- A leader of Somalia's Islamist insurgency threatened to attack America during a speech broadcast Monday.

"We tell the American President Barack Obama to embrace Islam before we come to his country," said Fuad Mohamed "Shongole" Qalaf.

Al-Shabab has not yet launched an attack outside Africa but Western intelligence has long been worried because the group targeted young Somali-Americans for recruitment. About 20 have traveled to Somalia for training and at least three were used as suicide bombers inside Somalia. Al-Shabab holds most of southern and central Somalia and has the support of hundreds of foreign fighters, mostly radicalized East Africans.

It seeks to overthrow the weak U.N.-backed government, which is protected by 8,000 Ugandan and Burundian African Union peacekeepers.

The al-Shabab militia launched coordinated attacks in Uganda in July that killed 76 people. It has also announced its allegiance to Al Qaeda and is believed to be harboring a mastermind of the twin 2008 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

The radio message was recorded in the town of Afgoye, near the Somali capital, during a meeting of Shongole and Sheik Hassan Dahir Aweys, formerly the leader of insurgent group Hizbul Islam. The two insurgent groups had clashed several times previously but announced a merger last week. Aweys said his group will fight under al-Shabab's command.

"We have united for the sake of our ideology and we are going to redouble our efforts to remove the government and the African Union from the country," said Aweys on Monday.

Reichstag Closed to Jihadist Threats

Germany closes famous glass dome at Berlin's Reichstag to visitors as terror fears mount TELEGRAPH

The world famous glass dome atop the Berlin Reichstag has been closed to all visitors as fears mount of an impending terrorist attack in the capital.

German parliament closed the dome, designed by Lord Foster, which thousands of tourists usually visit daily for unparalleled views of the city on Monday

The 116-year-old Reichstag building houses Germany’s parliament and is now thought to be the number one target for a commando squad plotting a Mumbai-style massacre.
Security has been stepped around the Reichstag, Germany's parliament in Berlin. This comes after fears of an attack by Islamic extremists

Security has been stepped around the Reichstag, Germany's parliament in Berlin. This comes after fears of an attack by Islamic extremists
Police officers with machine guns guard the Berlin parliament building, now closed to visitors

Last week the interior minister announced 'concrete indications' of a terror plot about to come to fruition. Security spiked at all major airports and railway stations across Germany.

Police believe at least two members of a jihadi hit squad are in Berlin.

Al Qaeda and associated Islamist groups are planning to take hostages and fire at people in the Reichstag, said news magazine Der Spiegel, citing intelligence sources.

News of the plot reportedly came from a jihadist who contacted the German authorities.

US Media Cowers Before Muslim Threats

You won’t hear from the mainstream media about the price Wilders is paying. They’re too busy with other matters: when Daisy Khan (Ground Zero mega-mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s wife #3), an inciter and provocateur, and one of the architects of the Ground Zero mega-insult, claims to have received a threatening phone call, and the media is all over it like flies on….

So let’s take a step back ourselves and understand the price that Wilders and others really are paying. Former Muslim and author Wafa Sultan, former Muslim and Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, scholar Robert Spencer, former Muslim and scholar Ibn Warraq, scholar Bat Ye’or, former Muslim Nonie Darwish, cartoonist Lars Vilks, cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, Danish newspaper publisher Flemming Rose, South Park producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Salman Rushdie and countless others, myself included, receive horrible threats all the time. Wafa Sultan is the only American living in hiding. Wilders himself lives under round-the-clock tight security because of the hundreds of death threats he receives every year.