By Shimon Z. Klein    
There seems to be a certain inconsistency in what the Israeli government tells the world about settlements in the occupied territories and what occurs on the ground. 
While PM Binyamin Netanyahu reacted to President Obama’s Cairo Speech by giving ambiguous support to the two-state solution, we all know that he does not intend […]

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Today’s Manila Bulletin has it’s usual supplement from the New York Times, and the headline blares:
A Nuclear Free Vision.
In the Depths of the cold war, in 1983, a senior at Colombia University wrote…about the vision of a “nuclear free world”.
It seems that President Obama was promoting nuclear disarmament in the 1980’s.
That in itself is strange […]

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Beware the righteous, for they are righteous when they are right, and they are righteous when they are wrong; they navigate by a missionary compass, and when it loses its North, they steer with conviction toward the South, unknowing.
The Book of Adler 5:15
On June 4, Max Blumenthal and Joseph Dana released on the Internet, via […]

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I am happy that President Obama is trying to mend fences with Arabs and Iranians in the Middle East by giving a speech in Cairo.
And many Americans agree, although many think he is being naive, or is sending a message to the radicals in the area that he is willing to “throw Israel under […]

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 By Shimon Z. Klein
As expected, apart from some understandings between the two leaders no progress in any direction was made. Netanyahu’s world view, especially regarding Israel, is one sided and not conducive to change. He does not give any indication that he will accept the two-state solution.
 The undertones of the meeting with President Obama were […]

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President Barack Obama today announced his choice of Jesus Christ, of Nazareth, as his first selection for the Supreme Court. Citing Christ’s judicial wisdom, impeccable knowledge of the law, and “empathy,” Obama proudly presented his nominee in the East Room of the White House.
Rush Limbaugh wasted no time in seizing his microphone to condemn Obama’s […]

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King Abdulla says that we don’t need a two state solution to the problem of Israel, we need a 57 state solution.
57 states?
The king is referring to 57 “states” that have Muslim majorities.
All of this sounds fine, but I have a few questions.
Why should a country like Indonesia give a damn about Palestinians? They have […]

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By Shimon Z. Klein 
Durban 2 has come and gone. It is an absolute disgrace that a conference dedicated to anti-racism under the auspices of the UN has invited President Ahmadinajad of Iran to address this forum. 
The Iranian dictator is no human rights paragon of virtue. He is a racist anti-Semite of the worst kind. The […]

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An IDF sniper seen wearing a T-shirt that reads ‘1 shot 2 Kills’ with crosshairs pointing to the bulge of a pregnant Palestinian woman’s image.

Just in case the world has forgotten the recent barbaric attacks by Israel  on the unarmed population of Gaza, that killed over 1400,  the daily Haaretz from Israel has luckily published […]

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MEMO TO: Richard Feducci, Overlord of Finance
FROM: E Pluribus, Wondergod
SUBJECT: Five Year International Finance Plan
DATE: January 1, 2005
Happy New Year, Rich. Got some good news and some bad news. The bad news: We’re going to let the American economy crater. The good news: Everybody else’s will, too. The best news: By 2010, we’ll be on […]

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By Jefferson Flanders
Who hasn’t been disturbed by the recent images of Palestinian civilians killed and wounded by the Israeli incursion into urban Gaza? Or deeply troubled by the video of injured children and lifeless bodies? The IDF’s military assault proved both misguided and counterproductive, a disproportionate overreaction to rocket attacks by Hamas. It was exactly […]

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In Friday’s edition of “Best of the Web Today,” James Taranto writes this analysis of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan giving Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres a tongue-lashing during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos:  
“One obvious point is that Turkey is hardly in a position to criticize Israel for responding […]

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In his Presidential inauguration address today, Barack Obama explicitly addressed Muslims and said:
“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. ”
It was definitely a gesture of goodwill to the Muslim world in general, at least in words.
Then he added:
“To those leaders around the globe who […]

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By Shimon Z. Klein 
After 8 years of Qassam rocket fire into Israel with the minimum of Israeli Army retaliation, Israel decided to react. There was no real reason for Hamas’s illogical behaviour. There is no justification for damage caused by these rockets to the population in southern Israel! The damage, apart from being physical and […]

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As CNN and other News channels in the US spent most of yesterday showing its viewers an empty US Airways Airbus 320 floating in the Hudson river, the citizens of Gaza ran for their lives from the indiscriminate bombing by the Israeli forces. But in a place as small as Gaza, there is not much […]

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Roughly a thousand people turned up at the sprawling Schara Tzedeck Synagogue on Oak St. in Vancouver on Thursday evening to a high security – no purse or back pack got through the door unexamined — “Community Solidarity Gathering for Israel”. Some in the overflow crowd at the rally organized by the Jewish Federation of […]

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The major papers here in the Philippines tend to echo the headlines of the New York Times or CNN.
So this week, all the headlines are about Gaza.
Needless to say, few here are aware of small things like Hamas having the goal to eliminate Israel, or the thousand missiles that have kept Israelis in bomb […]

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 FreeMediaOnline.org & Free Media Online Blog  The Federalist Commentary, January 6, 2009, San Francisco
Thinking About The Unthinkable
by The Federalist
If you think about the above phrase coined by the late nuclear war theorist, Herman Kahn, you might find it  both unusually appropriate and alarming when applied to US public diplomacy.
There is a fundamental flaw in the […]

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By Shimon Z. Klein

The pressure cooker had threatened to blow up for a long time. Hamas had been firing rockets indiscriminately into southern Israel turning the lives of the people living there into a living hell. This has been going on for nearly eight years and nobody, apart from Israel, protested. These inhabitants are not […]

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“There have been approximately 7,200 rockets (Grads, Qassams) and mortars launched at Israel since 2005″, according to IDFSpokesperson.com.  There are more stats at the link, but let that one sink in for a moment (especially after reading this headline).
Now consider that when Israel finally defends itself, and launches a counter-attack, with the goal, not of […]

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We prayed again for peace in church today.
The news reports that the 200 Filipinos in Gaza are safe and being evacuated to Jordan. That is good news, although one wonders why they are there: as nurses? or as maids? Drivers? Entertainers?
Filipinos are all over the place, and here one reads about the latest war by […]

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 The late Harold Pinter once asked “How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?” Well Israel’s latest bit of genocide in Gaza has reached 400 and is still on the rise. Indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children. Actions which can […]

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Despite the initial predictable calls for a political solution to a military conflict and justified concerns that Israel’s retaliation to Hamas rocket attacks will only create a new wave of martyrs eager to attack the Jewish state in the future, Germany openly defends Israel’s right to defend itself and puts the blame squarely on those […]

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After the Mumbai terror attack, it appears that Pakistan is falling apart.
The offer by the Taliban commander that they are ready to fight along with the Army is a matter of great concern as it indicates that Taliban and Pakistan army appear to be working together.
The two comments of Taliban  made recently, namely,  that they […]

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In an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald News, journalist Paul Sheehan wrote Israel’s former Chief of Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, had tough talk during an interview in Israel regarding the current regime in Iran: “confront the Iranian revolution immediately” and “all options must considered” including “considering killing” Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
Ya’alon was Israel’s […]

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By Shimon Z. Klein 
The US Elections have come and gone. Many of us are pleased that Barack Obama had won these elections. For us in the Middle East and especially for Israelis and Palestinians who are desirous of a solution to this conflict that has plagued us for so long, there is perhaps a tiny […]

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 By Shimon Z. Klein
After a period if relative instability because of Prime Minister Olmert’s legal problems, the dye is cast and the country is moving towards general elections. The prime minister-designate, Tzippi Livne, was unable to form a new coalition because of the religious Shas Party’s extortionist tactics and the price they demanded to be […]

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the radical president of Iran who regularly threatens to nuke Israel and other representatives of Satan, is planning to visit New York, using the UN as an excuse. So Jewish groups, who don’t especially want their relatives in Israel to be nuked by a madman, are holding a protest.
Hillary Clinton, the Senator from […]

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In his whirlwind tour of the world, the hope of nations, Obama, spent some time in Jerusalem.
Like others who visit there, he left a note in the wall of the Temple, AKA the Wailing wall.
Yes, the deity doesn’t need notes or photos, but it’s a human thing to do such things, and similar customs are […]

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After considering the possibility that “foreign leaders Barack Obama met with on his mid-campaign overseas trip were merely hedging their bets and don’t believe he will win the White House this fall” The Associated Press notes that many of them treated the candidate like a head of state:  
Jordan’s King Abdullah flew back early from Aspen, […]

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