The Coalition Puzzle

I love to read the Dry Bones Comics. Many of the older ones are still relevant today. One Golden Oldie is from 1981 shows Menachim Begin trying to solve the puzzle of how to unite the different ministers to form a new coalition government in the Knesset. It seems that there is nothing new under the sun, because today we're watching Likud leader Bibi Netanyahu doing the same.

He is shown using the Rubik Cube. I am sure you remember the puzzle consisting of twenty-six unique miniature cubes, also called "cubies" or "cubelets". It has twelve edge pieces which show two colored sides each, and eight corner pieces which show three colors. There are 8! (40,320) ways to arrange the corner cubes, and 12!/2 (239,500,800) ways to arrange the edges. Don’t ask me about mathematics, it has something to do with permutations. Although there are a significant number of possible permutations for the Rubik's Cube, there have been a number of solutions developed which allow for the cube to be solved in well under 100 moves.

The Israeli elections have been over for quite some time. But we still do not have a new government and every day that passes sees new possibilities as to what kind of government will eventually emerge. You see, the formation of Israel’s next government has nothing to do with the will of the voters, rather it is Israel's version of the game show, "Let's make a Deal".

While it first appeared that the next government would be dependent upon religious and right wing parties, we now hear that Netanyahu made Barak an offer he cannot refuse. If this materializes then the right wing will have lost its power and the government will be much like the previous one.

So, once again, we see the Israeli democracy proves to be nothing more than a rubber stamp to the secular politicians who care more about their seats then they do about the country they want to run.

Could it be that the Almighty will not allow Israel to have a strong government until they turn to Him for help and guidance?

Shalom – Lilo

American Stimulus Money

Just watch the video, you will get the idea!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62Vsgl6SUZ0

Credit Card 2009

The Silent Exodus

Pierre Rehov’s Middle East Documentary

Silent Exodus was selected at the International Human Rights Film Festival of Paris (2004) and presented at the UN Geneva Human Rights Annual Convention (2004)

In 1948 nearly one million Jews lived in Arab lands. But In barely twenty years, they have become forgotten fugitives, expelled from their native lands, forgotten by history and where the victims themselves have hidden their fate under a cloak of silence.

A people whom legend have always associated with "wandering" many of these Jews from Arab lands had lived there for thousands of years and accepted their fate, through good times and bad times.

But 1948, the beginning of their exodus, also saw the birth of the State of Israel.

And, while the Arab armies were preparing to invade the young refugee-country, the survivors of the Shoah were piling up in rickety boats. Meanwhile a few hundred thousand Arabs from Palestine were getting ready to flee their homes, convinced that they would return as winners and conquerors.

Soon - by a terrible twist of fate they, as well, began to fill up refugee camps and passed on their refugee status to new generations.

The Jews, however, did not receive refugee status.

They had just rediscovered the land of their birthright.

And if they came from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq or from Yemen, if they had lost everything, even their relatives and their cemeteries, they were ready to rebuild their lives in the West and for many - in Israel - and try to forget their past.

Without ever asking for compensation or the right of return, or even wishing that their story be told...

Here is the trailer for the superb filmmaker Pierre Rehov's Silent Exodus. Silent Exodus was selected at the International Human Rights Film Festival of Paris in 2004 and presented at the UN Geneva Human Rights Annual Convention that same year.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/025195.php

Money for Gaza

I wish it was only a nightmare, and I could wake up from a bad dream. But this is all really happening. Crazy things cannot possibly happen in real life, are happening.

The USA – a country who is quickly losing its wealth – is pledging $900 Million to Gaza.
Israel National News reported on February 24, that a senior official in the Obama administration promised, the U.S. would transfer 900 million dollars to Gaza as part of a renovation effort following Operation Cast Lead. The money is supposed to pass through the hands of the UN and non-governmental organizations and not Hamas.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her first foray into Middle East diplomacy, landed in this Red Sea resort on Sunday, carrying a pledge of $300 million for war-torn Gaza.

The United States further promised an additional $600 million to the Palestinian Authority to cover a budget shortfall and to bolster the Palestinian economy. Some of that money may also end up in Gaza, large parts of which are in ruins after Israel’s military assault on the militant group Hamas. Much of it is supposed to go to the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority is in control.

Newspapers around the world published the story in disbelief. Has America gone mad?
People are out of work, houses are not selling, nobody is buying, but Obama is passing money out like candy. Where is all that money coming from?

That’s almost a billion dollars! $900 million U.S. taxpayer dollars (in addition to $85 million pledged in December) to bail out Hamas in Gaza? Are they smoking crack in Washington?
What about war torn Israel? Who cares that they still have missiles raining down on them daily... it just doesn’t matter. Who is helping them? Not the USA, as we can see from her actions.

This is the nightmare. How do you wake up from a nightmare when you are not asleep?

No one is starving in Gaza; no one ever did because Israel won't let it happen. But many may soon starve in the USA, because their tax-dollars have to support Islamic Jihadists.

Bailing out mortgages is one thing - bailing out terrorist organizations is something else.

Oh my, have people gone mad in America?

Puzzled in Gaza

Mar. 2, 2009

YVONNE GREEN , THE JERUSALEM POST

I'm a poet, an English Jew and a frequent visitor to Israel. Deeply disturbed by the reports of wanton slaughter and destruction during Operation Cast Lead, I felt I had to see for myself. I flew to Tel Aviv and on Wednesday, January 28, using my press card to cross the Erez checkpoint, I walked across the border into Gaza where I was met by my guide, a Palestinian journalist. He asked if I wanted to meet with Hamas officials. I explained that I'd come to bear witness to the damage and civilian suffering, not to talk politics.

What I saw was that there had been precision attacks made on all of Hamas' infrastructure. Does UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticize the surgical destruction of the explosives cache in the Imad Akhel Mosque, of the National Forces compound, of the Shi Jaya police station, of the Ministry of Prisoners? The Gazans I met weren't mourning the police state. Neither were they radicalized. As Hamas blackshirts menaced the street corners, I witnessed how passersby ignored them.

THERE WERE empty beds at Shifa Hospital and a threatening atmosphere. Hamas is reduced to wielding its unchallengeable authority from extensive air raid shelters which, together with the hospital, were built by Israel 30 years ago. Terrorized Gazans used doublespeak when they told me most of the alleged 5,500 wounded were being treated in Egypt and Jordan. They want it known that the figure is a lie, and showed me that the wounded weren't in Gaza. No evidence exists of their presence in foreign hospitals, or of how they might have gotten there.

From the mansions of the Abu Ayida family at Jebala Rayes to Tallel Howa (Gaza City's densest residential area), Gazans contradicted allegations that Israel had murderously attacked civilians. They told me again and again that both civilians and Hamas fighters had evacuated safely from areas of Hamas activity in response to Israeli telephone calls, leaflets and megaphone warnings.
Seeing Al-Fakhora made it impossible to understand how UN and press reports could ever have alleged that the UNWRA school had been hit by Israeli shells. The school, like most of Gaza, was visibly intact. I was shown where Hamas had been firing from nearby, and the Israeli missile's marks on the road outside the school were unmistakeable. When I met Mona al-Ashkor, one of the 40 people injured running toward Al-Fakhora - rather than inside it as widely and persistently reported - I was told that Israel had warned people not to take shelter in the school because Hamas was operating in the area, and that some people had ignored the warning because UNWRA previously told them that the school would be safe. Press reports that fatalities numbered 40 were denied.

I WAS TOLD stories at Samouni Street which contradicted each other, what I saw and later media accounts. Examples of these inconsistencies are that 24, 31, 34 or more members of the Fatah Samouni family had died. That all the deaths occurred when Israel bombed the safe building it had told 160 family members to shelter in; the safe building was pointed out to me but looked externally intact and washing was still hanging on a line on one of its balconies. That some left the safe building and were shot in another house. That one was shot when outside collecting firewood. That there was no resistance - but the top right hand window of the safe building (which appears in a BBC Panorama film Out of the Ruins" aired February 8) has a black mark above it - a sign I was shown all day of weaponry having been fired from inside. That victims were left bleeding for two or three days.

I saw large scoured craters and a buckled container which appeared to have been damaged by an internal impact (its external surfaces were undamaged). Media accounts of Samouni Street don't mention these possible indications of explosive caches (although the container is visible on media footage). The Samouni family's elder told me during a taped interview that he had a CD film of the killings. As far as I'm aware, no such film has been made public. He also told me that there are members of his family who have still not been found.

The media have manufactured and examined allegations that Israel committed a war crime against the Samounis without mentioning that the family are Fatah and that some of its members are still missing. They have not considered what might flow from those facts: that Hamas might have been active not only in the Samouni killings but in the exertion of force on the Samounis to accuse Israel.

THE GAZA I saw was societally intact. There were no homeless, walking wounded, hungry or underdressed people. The streets were busy, shops were hung with embroidered dresses and gigantic cooking pots, the markets were full of fresh meat and beautiful produce - the red radishes were bigger than grapefruits. Mothers accompanied by a 13-year-old boy told me they were bored of leaving home to sit on rubble all day to tell the press how they'd survived. Women graduates I met in Shijaya spoke of education as power as old men watched over them.
No one praised their government as they showed me the sites of tunnels where fighters had melted away. No one declared Hamas victorious for creating a forced civilian front line as they showed me the remains of booby trapped homes and schools.

From what I saw and was told in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead pinpointed a totalitarian regime's power bases and largely neutralized Hamas's plans to make Israel its tool for the sacrifice of civilian life.

Corroboration of my account may be found in tardy and piecemeal retractions of claims concerning the UNWRA school at Al-Fakhora; an isolated acknowledgment that Gaza is substantially intact by The New York Times; Internet media watch corrections; and the unresolved discrepancy between the alleged wounded and their unreported whereabouts.
The writer is a poet and freelance writer who lives in London. Her collection Boukhara was a 2008 Smith/Doorstop prize winner. She also translates the poetry of Semyon Lipkin, the Russian World War II poet.

Darfur - Islam and Racism

We have heard Sudan periodically mentioned in the news over the last several years. Darfur, a region the size of France, was an independent sultanate until 1916. Its inhabitants are Sudanese farmers, mostly of black African stock and outlook, growing sorghum, millet, groundnuts and tomatoes, and nomadic Arabs, raising camels and cattle, who mostly regard themselves as ethnic. Since the 1970s, climate change has accelerated desertification, adding pressure on northerners to move southward. That led to conflicts in Darfur between settled farmers and nomads migrating in search of water and pastures have been commonplace for centuries, but traditionally solutions were reached by negotiation. The Darfur conflict was driven by "friction between farmers and herders and shepherds. Among the biggest problems is that of water, which is used to exploit the differences and fuel the conflict."

These conflicts, however, intensified during the 1980s and 1990s, aggravated by drought and the government policy of selectively arming tribesmen while removing the weapons of the farmers. Because livestock is Darfur's main export, the pastoralists have more influence in this region than in places where Khartoum favors settled communities.

Many will remember that Osama bin Laden made Sudan his base of operations before he relocated to Afghanistan. Sudan was chosen by Osama bin Laden because it has an Islamic oriented government with whom he had a friendly relationship until he became too much of a liability.

The fact that Osama bin Laden and the Sudanese Government had much in common for several years, should speak volumes about the nature of at least northern Sudan.

The Sudan also made front page news in the 21st century because of its ties to Islamic terrorism. The Sudanese Government and Sudanese Arab militias have been waging a long-term Jihad against the non-Muslim, non-Arab southern Sudanese population for decades.

It is a classic Islamic Jihad of the type that has resulted in the slaughter of millions of people over the centuries. The Sudanese Jihad, which most reporters only refer to as "genocide," has killed an estimated 2,000,000 people and rendered countless other people refugees.
Sudanese Jihadists engaged in mass slaughter, gang rape and other terrible atrocities. 60 Minutes reported, for example, that the men in destroyed villages were killed, cut to pieces, and thrown into the water supply in order to contaminate it. One village after another had been completely destroyed by the same combination of terror, slaughter, and expulsion so effectively used by Muhammad to gain mastery of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century. The Sudanese Muslims appeared to be following Muhammad's example just as the Qur'an commands.

The Sudanese Jihad was carried out in an age of communication ease and technological wonder that would make the reporting of the complete story - despite its remote location - quite feasible. But that was not happening. It was not happening because telling the world that a modern Jihad has been ongoing for years, which has resulted in mass slaughter, rape and genocide, doesn’t fit into the world view of the mainstream media.

The media simply attributed the cause of the conflict to a genocide resulting from "Arab racism." The words Islam and Muslim(s) were never mentioned, even though the conflict has its origin in Islamic doctrine and the northern Muslim southern non-Muslim divide.

The news described the horrific reality of the "genocide" without a connection to Islam. A fitting analogy was made between "Nazi death camps" and the "death villages" in southern Sudan. 60 Minutes aired footage of destroyed villages and starving children. The story also acknowledged that the southern Sudanese are targets because "they are not Arabs." That is true enough, but the story does not explain that the significance of not being Arab is that they are not Muslim which is quite hypocritical given that the mainstream media and academia generally like to praise Islam as having allegedly eliminated racism. 60 Minutes also placed some blame on Sudan's Muslim dictator al-Bashir, without mentioning that he is also a Muslim.

It is clear that Islam is responsible for the genocide in Darfur. Islam's involvement in a long-term genocide is occurring in a country whose national anthem begins with the words: "[W]e are the army of God . . .", wherein the Muslim Jihadists yell "Allahu Akbar" as they attack, slaughter and rape non-Muslims.

Meanwhile, the UN holds world-wide conferences against racism. Three conferences have been held so far, in 1978, 1983 and 2001. The 1978 World Conference against Racism was held in Geneva, Switzerland. A major focus on the conference were South Africa's apartheid policies of racial segregation and discrimination. Entitled "World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance," the conference was discussing unfair treatment of one group against another. The World Conference against Racism in Durban was originally planned as a platform to focus on the world's underrepresented human rights causes.

Yet what was supposed to be a conference against racism turned into a conference of racism against Israel and the Jewish people. How did we all of a sudden get from the Jihad in the Sudan to Israel?

Here is the twist! Instead of focusing on Islamic Jihad in Darfur;

• ... only one nation is singled out for condemnation: Israel.


• …only one cause merits attention: Palestine


• …and only one religion merits protection: Islam

How did this happen? Where did it begin? - Why did a conference to commemorate the dismantling of South Africa as an apartheid state all of a sudden call for the dismantling of Israel as an apartheid state?

Much of the deliberations had overt anti Semitic tones. Disproportionate amount of time was focused specifically on Israeli treatment of Palestinians, while flagrant violations of human rights and genocide in other parts of the world were ignored.

The conference culminated in a call by a majority of countries to re-establish the UNGA 3379 resolution from 1975 equating Zionism with racism!

“The conference really has nothing to do with racism at all,
but it has to do with forcing the nations of the world to accept Islam under the
guise of racism”.