The Two-State solution was never intended to be ...

and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can start to imagine and visualize what the nation of Israel with Jews, Muslim Palestinians, Christian Palestinians, Druze and what-have-you will look like in a couple of decades because there's no getting away from the fact that these people who are at each other's throats at this present time, will ultimately have to live together as one people.  There's just no other way.

Jonathan Cook at ConsortiumNews
Israel Bulldozes Khan Al Ahmar and Buries the Two-State Solution
Israel finally built an access road to the West Bank village of Khan Al Ahmar last week, after half a century of delays. But Israel only allows vehicles like the bulldozers scheduled to sweep away its 200 inhabitants’ homes.

If one community has come to symbolize the demise of the two-state solution, it is Khan Al Ahmar.

It was for that reason that a posse of European diplomats left their air-conditioned offices late last week to trudge through the hot, dusty hills outside Jerusalem and witness the preparations for the village’s destruction. That included the Israeli police beating residents and supporters as they tried to block the advance of heavy machinery.

Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain submitted a formal protest. Their denunciations echoed those of more than 70 Democratic lawmakers in Washington in May – a rare example of US politicians showing solidarity with Palestinians.

It would be gratifying to believe that Western governments care about the inhabitants of Khan Al Ahmar – or the thousands of other Palestinians who are being incrementally cleansed by Israel from nearby lands but whose plight has drawn far less attention.

After all, the razing of Khan Al Ahmar and the forcible transfer of its population are war crimes.

But in truth, Western politicians are more concerned about propping up the illusion of a peace process that expired many years ago, than the long-running abuse of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.......

Is Israel to blame for the rise of Hamas? Yup!

Believe it!  Israel did with Hamas exactly what the USA did with al Qaeda. Strengthened them for their own devious purposes. And just like how al Qaeda turned on their paymasters, so did Hamas. Another case of  "chickens coming home to roost"  or as another saying goes "You reap what you sow."  

Kevin Carson writing at C4SS:
Gaza: Israel’s Chickens Come Home to Roost. One fact that gets little attention in the debate over Israel’s attack on Gaza is Israel’s role in the rise of Hamas.

That’s right. Never mind that the rockets fired out of Gaza are amateurish things that could be crafted from hobby shop supplies, causing barely one percent as many casualties as Israeli reprisals. Never mind that the rockets — reprehensible as attacks on civilians are under any circumstances, regardless of Israel’s provocations — are fired by desperate people from inside Israel’s Warsaw-Ghetto-on-the-Mediterranean, out into the settler nation that drove them out of their homeland. Never mind that rocket firings have often occurred in response to unilateral Israeli violations of ceasefires.

Never mind all this. Hamas — which the Israeli state propaganda apparatus presents to the Israeli public and the world as an existential threat comparable to the Bugs in “Starship Troopers,” whipping the people of Israel into the kind of frenzy where they sit on hillsides cheering the bombing of hospitals — was actually created in part by the intelligence apparatus of the state that claims to be fighting a life-and-death war against it.

Anthony Cordesman, a strategic analyst of Middle Eastern security issues at Center for Strategic Studies, says Israel aided Hamas back in the ’70s as a counterweight to the PLO. An anonymous former CIA official concurs that Israel secretly supported Hamas as a religious challenger to a “strong, secular PLO.” The upsurge in popular support for Hamas in the ’80s — resulting in part from the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and in part from the PLO moving its headquarters to Beirut — caught the Israeli leadership off-guard.

Some allege that Israeli support for Hamas goes back even further, and that Shin Bet and the military occupation authorities supported the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and foundation of Hamas in the ’60s. At the time Hamas was hostile to Palestinian nationalist organizations, and directed most of its violent energies against Fatah, PFLP and PLO forces in the Occupied Territories. (Sources: Richard Sale, “Analysis: Hamas history tied to Israel,” UPI, June 18, 2002; Robert Dreyfuss, “How Israel Backed Hamas,” Institute for Public Accuracy, July 22, 2014).

And unfortunately, some geniuses in the Israeli security state just preferred having a scary theocratic outfit like Hamas as the main face of the Palestinian enemy, rather than an organization calling for a secular Palestinian state where Arabs and Jews can live together in peace. Hamas makes a much better Goldstein in the Two-Minute Hate.

This is a disturbing pattern. Hamas was originally an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza (which had been quietly supported by the US in the 1950s as a religious challenge to Nasserism and Baathism). Al Qaeda emerged from the US-sponsored Mujaheddin guerrillas fighting Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. ISIS originated in similar US aid to anti-Assad rebels in Syria. And then these movements, created with the help of black-budget aid and training by the CIA, Green Berets or Mossad, are in turn used to scare the domestic public into supporting criminal wars abroad with large-scale atrocities against civilian populations......

On the three kids kidnapped by terrorists

Here's another indication that terrorists are enemies of all decent people.  You can't arm and fund them in Syria and Libya and then expect them to behave like angels in selected other places of the globe.  I can't understand why the Reuters' jounalist is not calling the terrorists by what they are ...they are "terrorists" pure and simple... PERIOD.  Don't call them "Militants" .... militants  are the separatists in Ukraine. There is a clear distinction between the two descriptions. 

Jeffrey Heller at Reuters:
....Israel says Hamas militants behind abduction of three teens.
Israel said on Sunday Hamas militants had abducted three Israeli teenagers in the occupied West Bank, warning of "serious consequences" as it pressed on with a search and detained dozens of Palestinians.

The two 16-year-olds and a third man aged 19 disappeared on Thursday night in the West Bank, where they were seminary students in a Jewish settlement.

"These teenagers were kidnapped and the kidnapping was carried out by Hamas members," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters in English, referring to the Palestinian Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.........

Pope Francis the wannabe Peacemaker ....

trying to get two of the most virulent warmongering peoples on this our good Earth to give up their thirst for blood and gore.  Fat chance!

More here.

Terrorists and murderers hidden deep inside government establishments

Wonder how many thousands like her have infiltrated some of the highest echelons of power and have already done untold damage and continuing to do more.

Jillian Kay Melchior writing at NationalReview:
.....Convicted Terrorist Worked as Obamacare Navigator in Illinois.  Woman involved in deadly terror bombings kept her past secret from authorities in President's home state.

A terrorist from Jordan briefly worked as an Obamacare navigator in Illinois while authorities remained unaware of her conviction for involvement in a deadly grocery store bombing and two other attacks.

Rasmieh Yousef Odeh was convicted in Israel for her role in several bombings, including the 1969 attack on an upscale Shufersol grocery store, which killed two Hebrew University students who had stopped in to buy groceries for a hiking trip in the Jerusalem hills. Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe were killed by a bomb hidden in a candy box tucked on a shelf, which also injured nine or 10 others, according to a website maintained by the Israeli government to commemorate terror victims.

The Illinois Department of Insurance quietly revoked Odeh’s certification as a Navigator In-Person Counselor on November 24, explaining in a disciplinary report that the decision was “based on an investigation which revealed that she had been convicted in Israel for her role in the bombings of a supermarket and the British Consulate in Jerusalem and failed to reveal the conviction on her application.”..........

Demographics and Israel

In the race to Caliphate the world, no other ethnic group stands a chance when pitted against the you-know-who... when we come to the issue of demographics.  

I am a firm believer in what can happen when we consider demographics as the biggest factor changing the face of a country and its people .... as outlined beautifully in Mark Steyn's book "America Alone."

Palestinians, or the people who call themselves Palestinians, insisting on living off the world's charity, are actually people who belong largely to Jordan. The right kind of negotiations for "peace"  should include part of Jordan to be either annexed or given  freely  to the Palestinians.  Furthermore, border areas of Saudi Arabia can also be sliced off and given to the Palestinians.

The powers-that-be in the USA should make that happen instead of manipulating to import quarter million Palestinians into the heart of Israel.  Call me what you will, but as far as I am concerned, not an inch of the property captured in 1967 should be given back.  That would be like America giving back California or Arizona and even part of Texas, to the original conquerors of those lands ... the Spaniards.  America won't do it...but they want Israelis to give up the land they captured in a war which was not of their own making?   MADNESS!!

Why can't people see what the Muslim world is trying to achieve at whatever cost?  Changing Israel to islam and changing Italy to islam is the ultimate conquest for the Caliphate. Those would be the starting points from which they would extend throughout the world. The Catholic honcho can't see it, wrapped up as he is in the delusional cloak of "goodness"  but I hope some of the brains in Israel and those for Israel can see what's going on. Israel must withstand the pressure from the USA and the world at large....even if it means another war. Better a war now then when the Caliphate gets stronger. 

Dan Perry and Karin Laub of AP writing at ADN:
... Palestinian construction worker Nael Yassin and his wife, Wafa, are the proud parents of a new baby girl — the fifth child for the couple in their early 30s.

Such fecundity is usually a private affair, but in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a broader issue is in play. A race for "demographic" prominence — and the fact that Israel may be losing it — has become critical to the current peace effort led by John Kerry.

The U.S. secretary of state himself has started warning Israel that it stands to become a binational state unless it ends the occupation of the lands it captured in the 1967 war. Kerry, who is expected to present a framework for a deal soon, said last month that failure "will make it impossible to preserve (Israel's) future as a democratic Jewish state."

The idea — emphasized as never before — is being listened to in Israel.

In a speech Monday, Finance Minister Yair Lapid presented the issue as the main reason Kerry must succeed: "Every moment we don't separate from the Palestinians is a clear threat to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state."

The "demographic issue" is focusing Israeli minds in a way that moral arguments against occupation have not, particularly when they are weighed against forgoing the West Bank's strategic hinterland and Jerusalem with its unrivaled religious and historic sites.

Some experts are predicting Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel plus the areas it captured in 1967 — the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Continued occupation, they say, would force Israel into a hard choice: Formalize Jewish minority rule over disenfranchised Palestinians — or give them the right to vote and end the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine.

In this context, those arguing for a pullout on these terms are essentially trying to save Israel as a "Jewish state" — where the degree of Jewishness is a function of the size of the majority........

Gaza Caravan-tied "charity" might get what it deserves

I found the below at a good blog to visit to "follow the money" MoneyJihad and as the "humble" blogger of it says: "it's a gem of a blog"  and it truly is ... it's not an empty boast. 

From InvestigativeProject:
IRS Wants Gaza Caravan-Tied Charity's Status Stripped. 
An Internal Revenue Service audit recommends stripping a New York-based charity of its tax-exempt status after it served as a conduit for donations for a convoy that delivered cash and goods to Hamas officials in Gaza.

The investigation was prompted by a 2009 report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that documented statements during a Viva Palestina fundraiser directing contributions to the charity, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations (IFCO)/Pastors for Peace. Viva Palestina is the brainchild of British MP George Galloway..........

Egypt goes where namby-pamby Western nations fear to tread

After getting the Muslim Bros fleeing the country with their tails between their legs,  now the smart Egyptians are setting their eyes on Hamas.  What's not to like about that?

From Reuters:
....After crushing the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Egypt's military rulers plan to undermine the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the neighboring Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials told Reuters.

The aim, which the officials say could take years to pull off, includes working with Hamas's political rivals Fatah and supporting popular anti-Hamas activities in Gaza, four security and diplomatic officials said.
Since it seized power in Egypt last summer, Egypt's military has squeezed Gaza's economy by destroying most of the 1,200 tunnels used to smuggle food, cars and weapons to the coastal enclave, which is under an Israeli blockade............

............According to the Egyptian officials, Hamas will face growing resistance by activists who will launch protests similar to those in Egypt that have led to the downfall of two presidents since the Arab Spring in 2011. Cairo plans to support such protests in an effort to cripple Hamas.

"Gaza is next," said one senior security official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "We cannot get liberated from the terrorism of the Brotherhood in Egypt without ending it in Gaza, which lies on our borders."

Asked why Egyptian intelligence is not going after Hamas now, another senior security official said: "Their day will come."......

As expected, Palestinians say "La, La, La" to peace deal

The craziness of Israel's PM is all too evident in the number of hard-core prisoners the man has released without giving a second thought to the victims and the families of the victims.  And, what does he get in return?  Exactly what appeasers who try to please their enemies get. A big fat ZERO.  Let me shrill my mantra once again and this time it is aimed at the dyfunctional Israeli PM and his gang:  "Pleasing your enemies will never turn them into your loving buddies, NEVER"   Sadly, the Israeli PM seems to think otherwise.  His stance on several issues in the last four years have been so lunatic, but his fans can't see him doing anything wrong.

I sincerely hope Netanyahu does not agree to cede even an inch of Jerusalem, but I fear he might. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Over and above, the man might even allow the 80,000 Palestinians to relocate in Israeli like the USA wants him to. That number will probably double in two years and within five years will probably become 500K given how Muslims have more than one wife churning out babies every nine months.  You can do the math from there and figure out for yourselves whether it will be Jews or Muslims who will dominate Israeli politics by 2025.  Furthermore, the Palestinian side wants 200.000 to be relocated to Israel.  Yes ... imagine that!  They want a takeover of Israel by population numbers ... and a takeover as soon as possible. Why can't all the Jewish people the world over see that. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr !!   

From GlobalTimes:
Palestinians reject peace deal  excluding east Jerusalem as future capital  ....A senior Palestinian official stressed on Saturday that it is impossible to reach a peace agreement with Israel without having east Jerusalem as the capital of the future state of Palestine.

Nabil Abu Rdineh, the media aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said in an emailed press statement that the Palestinians would never accept less than east Jerusalem being the capital of their future independent nation.
Abu Rdineh was commenting on earlier statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that he refuses to negotiate the issue of Jerusalem.
Israel considers all Jerusalem, including its east captured in 1967, as the eternal capital of the state of Israel, while the Palestinians want the eastern part of the holy city to be the capital of their state.
"We refuse to delete any of the major permanent status issues, mainly Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees' right to return, and also the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails," said Abu Rdineh....

PLO takes another life .... this time one of their own

Karma!

From AP:
....It also appeared that the door of the safe had been booby-trapped, according to Zoulova. It was unclear how al-Jamal tried to open it or what type of safe it was.

The safe was recently moved from the old embassy building, but it had come from a building that used to house the Palestinian Liberation Organization's offices in the 1980s, Malki said.

"The ambassador decided to open it. After he opened it, apparently something happened inside (the safe) and went off," Malki told The Associated Press.

It was not immediately clear how Malki knew the safe had been untouched for more than 20 years or why and when the safe would have been booby-trapped.....

Scholastic.com publishing house = Sinfully non-scholastic

There should be a class action brought against the publishing house Scholastic. Trying to feed wrong information to children via childrens' literature is one of the most horrible sins imaginable.  This is all the more disturbing because this publisher gears their work for sale to schools and teaching institutions all over Canada.

Here's their Canadian website catering to Canadian schools. Bet there must be tonnes of Palestinian influence flowing inside those walls which help create such lying maps.

Elhanan Miller writing at TimesOfIsrael:
....Arab textbooks are not the only ones erasing Israel  from their maps. Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher of children’s books, has also eliminated the Jewish state in a book.
“Thea Stilton and the Blue Scarab Hunt,” part of the popular Geronimo Stilton children’s series translated from Italian and published by Scholastic in 2012, tells the story of a group of investigative journalists involved in a treasure hunt in Egypt.
The story commences with a map of modern Egypt and its neighboring countries. While Sudan, Libya and Saudi Arabia appear clearly on the map, the territory of Israel is completely covered by Jordan, painted red. A line indicating the Israeli border with the Sinai Peninsula does appear in the book.

Adina Golombek, a Jerusalem resident who emigrated to Israel from Canada last year, said she was shocked to discover Israel’s absence while reading the book with her 7-year-old son.

“I wanted to show my son where we lived in the Middle East, but it didn’t say Israel on the map; instead it said Jordan,” Golombek told The Times of Israel. “I showed him the problem and drew in the border of where Israel is today.”.....

Egypt's new honchos' strategy to isolate Muslim Brotherhood's Hamas

I am loving this!!  There's only so much decent people can tolerate or pretend they are blind to.  Palestinians are known to bite the hand that feeds them .... but in the case of Egypt, me thinks they bit too hard and tore away a finger or two.  

William Booth and Abigail Hauslohner writing at WashingtonPost: 
...Egypt shutting economic lifeline for Gaza Strip,  in move to isolate Hamas.
The ­Egyptian military has launched what appears to be a campaign to shut down, once and for all, the illegal but long-permitted tunnels that provide a vital economic lifeline to the Gaza Strip and supply tax revenue to the Islamist movement Hamas.

The operation seems to be part of an effort to cripple Hamas, which rules the coastal enclave bordered by Egypt and Israel. The group is an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, whose ­standard-bearer held that country’s presidency before being ousted from power this summer.

The Israeli government enforces strict rules on people entering and leaving Gaza via a lone pedestrian crossing at Erez, the checkpoint on the border with Israel. Israel prevents Gaza from operating an airport or seaport, and it regulates trade in and out of the territory, limiting some crucial items, such as building materials.

Now, with Egypt’s military-backed interim government shutting down the tunnels and largely closing its own pedestrian crossing, at Rafah, Gaza is increasingly shut off from the world.

The Egyptian army has begun bulldozing and blowing up houses on its side of the border near Rafah, destroying more than a dozen. Egyptian security officials this month leaked military plans to create a “buffer zone” hundreds of yards wide between the two sides, replicating the barren no-man’s-land that Israel enforces inside Gaza to keep Palestinians from approaching the Israeli border. 

Hamas officials also said that the Egyptian military plans to dig a moat in the area and fill it with water to further thwart the smugglers who have burrowed hundreds of tunnels, complete with lights and trolley lines, since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007.......

On Israel's decision to release 104 murderers

It is clearly apparent, even to the blind, that Israel has always made "lopsided trades" as Dr. Daniel Pipes says in his article below.   IMO, whatever Israel does to satisfy her enemies should be dumped  in the "feeding your enemies only makes them greedier" folder with a big Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.    Who can forget how Israel exchanged more than 1000 prisoners for one kidnapped soldier?  That was a breaking point for many well-wishers and supporters of Israel,  moi included.  Such a stupid move has never been recorded in the history of the world.  Was that move done to pacify the haters of Israel all over the world?  If so, it didn't work but Israel is the only one not able to chew on that fact.   

The latest gift  from the Israelis to the Palestinians is another pacifier.  This time the release of  over a 100 hardcore murderers from Israeli  jails.  Maybe, Israel has surmised that those released will make their way to Syria and get  themselves sent to their porn headquarters where those never-ending 72 virgins in "use after expiry date" packages await them.  However,  no amount of good gestures from the Israelis will ever please the Palestinians but will the Israelis ever reconcile themselves to that fact?  Never.

....Israeli leaders have a long history   of making lopsided trades with their Arab enemies. These include:

1985 – 1,150 prisoners for 3 captured Israelis
2000 – 450 Arab prisoners for 3 Israeli bodies and a kidnapped Israeli;
2008 – 5 Arab prisoners (including the psychopath Samir al-Kuntar) and 199 Arab bodies for 2 Israeli bodies;
2011 – 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Schalit.

I strenuously opposed these unbalanced exchanges (e.g., the Schalit one), even as I acknowledged the honorable Israeli intent not to abandon soldiers.

But there is nothing redeeming whatsoever in the exchange that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu proposed today, releasing 104 murderers as a good-will gesture to encourage the Palestinian Authority to negotiate. Netanyahu justified this decision on the basis that "sometimes prime ministers are forced to make decisions that go against public opinion - when the issue is important for the country."

This is a specious argument. Much more persuasively, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon argues that this gesture "is a prize for the Palestinians, just for their willingness to sit with us at the negotiating table. This defines future standards of far-reaching concessions by Israel, vis-à-vis ridiculous demands by the other side." Danon rightly calls the release of dozens of terrorists who have the blood of hundreds of Israelis on their hands "lunacy."

Lunacy, but also immorality. The exchange betrays the families of victims and it betrays Israel's allies. It is a repugnant action......

Outsiders not welcome to their rallies, say Egyptians. Especially not welcome are Palestinians

Hmmmm...nice!   Worth giving the Egyptians 10 out of 10 for  identifying the #1 troublemakers in the world. The Egyptians know that the trouble going on at their Sinai border with Israel is the work of Palestinians (see second link).

Tom Finn writing at Reuters:
....Deadly clashes between ousted leader Mohamed Mursi's supporters and the army have stoked paranoia that trouble is being stirred up by outsiders, especially from Syria and Gaza, home to Islamist groups seen as close to Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood.

"Syrians, Palestinians, Israelis, you can find them on every street corner. They're here to exploit the chaos," said Yusuf Al-Desouki, waiter at a busy coffee shop in downtown Cairo.

"Yeah!" chimed in 21-year-old customer Mohammed al-Nahsi. "I heard two Palestinians on the metro - they were hatching a plan against the military."

A flurry of media reports and government assertions that foreigners have infiltrated Egypt and are taking part in violence have helped sow widespread distrust.....

....A state prosecutor said on Sunday that five Syrians arrested on suspicion of shooting at an anti-Mursi rally admitted to receiving money and arms from the Muslim Brotherhood.

On Monday the interior ministry issued a statement banning foreigners from joining street protests.......

...."All those aggressors interfering in the internal affairs of Egypt can go to hell. All those defending them can go to hell too," Youssef el-Hosseiny, a popular radio and television presenter, said on his twitter account on Thursday.

Media magnate Tawfiq Okasha told his television viewers on Thursday that Egyptian citizens should form a "defense army" and arrest Syrians, Palestinians and Iraqis causing trouble.......

........Smarting from their loss of power after more than 80 years of street-level organizing, the Muslim Brotherhood says the accusations against outsiders are part of a "fear-mongering" campaign by the new government aimed at diverting attention from its own difficulties..........

From ANSAMED:
Security forces on alert    after killing of Egyptian policeman.  Egyptian security forces arrested three armed Palestinians at the Israeli border in the northeastern Sinai peninsula early on Friday, state news agency MENA reported.

The three were part of a larger group and were arrested ''while attempting to attack a site of vital interest in the Sinai'', MENA quoted local sources as saying.


The report has not yet been independently verified.....

Lots of baddies killed, including Hamas gunmen

Good news like this always welcomed.  The more islamists that bite the dust, the better for us infidels.

Elhanian Miller writing at TimesOfIsrael:
The Egyptian army has killed some 200 gunmen  in Sinai, including 32 Hamas members, and arrested 45 others over the past several days, an Egyptian security source told London-based Arab daily Al-Hayat on Thursday.

The unnamed official accused Hamas of intentionally escalating the security situation in Sinai following the ouster of president Mohammed Morsi. The official claimed that Egyptian military forces have observed Hamas activists operating in Sinai in cooperation with local jihadists.....

Morsi's ouster also means Hamas's banishment from Egypt

Hamas thugs are shivering in their sandaled feet.  Are the secular pallies gutsy enough to grab this moment and overthrow their terrorist overlords?

Khaled Abu Toameh writing at GateStoneInstitute:
....These are tough days for Hamas. After losing the military and financial support of Iran and Syria, Hamas has now lost its main allies in Egypt.

The downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt is a severe blow to Hamas, whose leaders are now studying ways of avoiding a "revolution" that could end their rule in the Gaza Strip.

But although Hamas has suffered a major setback in wake of the ouster of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, it is premature to talk about the beginning of the countdown for the collapse of the Hamas regime.

The Gaza Strip has neither an organized opposition nor an army that could assist in removing Hamas from power.

One of the biggest fears is that if Hamas is toppled, those who would replace it would not be any better. This is particularly true in light of the growing popularity of various Islamist groups operating inside the Gaza Strip, some of which are affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Hamas supporters were the first to celebrate the toppling of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and the first to take to the streets in jubilation over the victory of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Morsi, in the general elections a year ago.

Morsi's rise to power had been seen by Hamas and other Muslims as a "divine victory": Allah's gift to his believers.

Contrary to Mubarak, Morsi's regime adopted a completely different policy toward Hamas.

While Mubarak dealt with Hamas and the Gaza Strip as a "security" issue, Morsi sought to legitimize the Palestinian Islamist movement in the eyes of the whole world.

For the first time ever, and much to the dismay of the West Bank's Palestinian Authority leaders, under Morsi, Hamas leaders became regular and welcome guests in the Egyptian presidential palace.

Morsi's rise to power emboldened Hamas in a way that allowed it further to tighten its grip on the Gaza Strip.

For Hamas, there was nothing better than having the full political backing of Egypt, the largest and most important country in the region.

During the last war between Israel and Hamas, "Operation Pillar of Defense," and much to the dismay of Fatah's Palestinian Authority leaders in the West Bank, Morsi dispatched Egyptian prime minister Hesham Qandil to the Gaza Strip, in an unprecedented show of solidarity with the Hamas regime..........

......... Although Hamas leaders have publicly played down the significance of the Egyptian coup, reports from the Gaza Strip suggest that some leaders of the Islamist movement are already nervous.

According to one report, the new rulers of Egypt have issued an order banning all Hamas leaders from entering their country.

Another report said that Egyptian security authorities have arrested several Hamas members based in Cairo and Sinai on charges of involvement in terror attacks against Egyptians.

Hamas leaders who tried to contact senior Egyptian government officials over the past few days said their phone calls were being totally ignored........

Palestinians creating trouble for Egypt yet again ?

Hmmm ... me thinks Egypt is gonna come down hard on pallies.  Nobody knows better than the Israelis and the Egyptians how much of a plague the pallies are proving to be for everybody all around. What are the bets that the trouble on the Sinai border is Palestinian doing?  Very good ... know why?  The border between one of Egypt's border town with the Gaza Strip has been closed as of today.  Egypt knows where the trouble is coming from even if the delusional lefties in the West dying of love for the pallies don't know it. All they know is: if the pallies are against Israelis, then befriend the pallies.  Israelis bad .... Palestinians good.

Luiz Sanchez writing at DailyNewsEgypt:
....The EOHR issued a statement on Thursday calling for the arrest of the kidnappers of four army officers and three police officers in Sinai. In the statement EOHR said the officers were kidnapped off duty, and are being held for ransom and are used as bartering chips to secure the release of the kidnappers’ relatives from jail.

EOHR called the abduction an act of terrorism, which requires “quick and immediate intervention” to prevent Sinai from becoming a hotbed for terrorism.

“Such terrorist crimes represent a gross violation to life, liberty, personal security and freedom of movement, guaranteed by international conventions on human rights,” EOHR said, calling on the government to comb through the peninsula and to close all borders until the men are found.

The statement continued by saying the repeated attacks on the Al-Arish police station, as well as the attack on the border last year that left several soldiers dead, “prove there is a complete lack of security in Sinai”. In order for the state to preserve national security, the statement said, it must exert unremitting efforts and hold a steadfast position in the face of the spread of terrorism.

Head of EOHR Hafez Abu Saada called the Sinai Peninsula an area of great importance both politically and in terms of security. He added that the kidnapping is evidence of the collapse of Egypt’s security and called on the authorities to find and punish those responsible.

Meanwhile, soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula border town of Rafah closed the crossing into the Gaza Strip on Friday, the state-run Al-Ahram reported. The closure was in protest to the kidnapping of officers on Thursday..........

A gathering of Muslim commies in Tunisia

Tunisian lefties and Palestinians go at each other's throats. Tunisian lefties show more sense than the violent Palestinians.  Pallies want armed resistance, Tunisians vandalize the Gaza photo exhibit and tear down their Khomeini portrait.  I guess there are some lefties who can actually think, still around in some parts of the world ... although not here in the West.
Al-Nahda is the leftish party in Tunisia and it is heavily divided.  Qatar and Saudi Arabia have managed to fund and infiltrate Al-Nahda and the lefties who are secular find themselves pitting against other comrades in their own party  who want to remain loyal to their masters in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.  Quite the conundrum.

From Al AkhbarEnglish:
....  While a “Free Palestine” was a uniting goal,  people differed on how to reach that goal.

A vocal group of Palestinian youth calling for armed resistance was cringed upon by the Abu Mazen authority representatives inside the “official” Palestine tent. Tunisian communists took offense at the presence of a banner portraying Khomeini at a Gaza photo exhibit and vandalized it. The latter incident was partly motivated by solidarity with the Iranian left, which is largely oppressed by the Islamic republic, but also a result of the built up contempt Tunisian left have against their own Islamist rivals in al-Nahda.

“Jihad is in Palestine, You Religious Clerks!” That was the chanted charge often levied by the Tunisian Leftist Popular Front against Islamist forces and their calls for jihad in Syria. Tunisian jihadists in Syria was a dominant topic on Tunisian talk radio as news came out of a fatwa calling for women to take part in the jihad as sex servants. The veracity of this particular fatwa was contested, but the tensions between the Tunisian Left and Tunisian Islamists on Syria run high. Al-Nahda’s ties to Qatar, and by extension the Syrian opposition, shape much of the Left’s position.

But beyond Tunisia, Syria is still a very contentious issue in the Left. The anti-Imperialism versus anti-Oppression argument is still the dominant one and has not evolved much after two years into the crisis. A stand by the Global Campaign of Solidarity with the Syrian Revolution invited many questions about the revolutionary credentials of Syria’s rebels along with the wrath of many pro-Assadists. Many of the debates were heated, but the frequent visits by a disruptive group of self-professed “Shabiha forever” escalated the debates to confrontations, the last of which on Friday resulted in the beating of five solidarity campaigners and the destruction of their stand..........

Caroline Glick on Obama's "mysterious" visit to Israel

I like Caroline Glick!!  Tells it like it is.  You Go Girl !!!!

Why is US President Barack Obama coming to Israel today?   In 2008, then president George W. Bush came to celebrate Israel’s 60th Independence Day, and to reject Israeli requests for assistance in destroying Iran’s nuclear installations.

In 1996, then-president Bill Clinton came to Israel to help then-prime minister Shimon Peres’s electoral campaign against Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu.

It is possible that Obama is coming here in order to build up pro-Israel bonafides. But why would he bother? Obama won his reelection bid with the support of the overwhelming majority of American Jews. Their support vindicated his hostility toward Israel in his first term. He has nothing to prove.

It is worth comparing Obama’s visit to Israel at the start of his second term of office, with his visit to Cairo at the outset of his first term in office.

Ahead of that trip, the new administration promised that the visit, and particularly Obama’s “Address to the Muslim World,” would serve as a starting point for a new US policy in the Middle East. And Obama lived up to expectations.

In speaking to the “Muslim World,” Obama signaled that the US now supported pan-Islamists at the expense of US allies and Arab nationalist leaders, first and foremost then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Moreover, in castigating Israel for its so-called “settlements”; channeling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by intimating that Israel exists because of the Holocaust; and failing to travel from Cairo to Jerusalem, preferring instead to visit a Nazi death camp in Germany, Obama signaled that he was downgrading US ties with the Jewish state.

In sharp contrast to the high expectations the Obama White House cultivated in pre-Cairo visit statements and leaks, Obama and his advisers have downplayed the importance of his visit to Israel, signaling there will be no significant changes in Obama’s policies toward Israel or the wider Middle East.

For instance, in his interview with Israel television’s Channel 2 last week, on issue after issue, Obama made clear that there will be no departure from his first term’s policies. He will continue to speak firmly and do nothing to prevent Iran from developing the means to produce nuclear weapons.

He will not release convicted Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard from federal prison despite the fact that Pollard’s life sentence, and the 28 years he has already served in prison are grossly disproportionate to all sentences passed on and served by offenders who committed similar crimes.

As for the Palestinians, Obama repeated his fierce opposition to Jewish communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines, and his insistence that Israel must get over its justified fears regarding Palestinian intentions and withdraw from Judea and Samaria, for its own good.

Given that all of these are positions he has held throughout his presidency, the mystery surrounding his decision to come to Israel only grows. He didn’t need to come to Israel to rehash policies we already know.

Much of the coverage of Obama’s trip has focused on symbolism. For instance, the administration decided to boycott Ariel University by not inviting its students to attend Obama’s speech to students from.............

Obama's USA sends $$$$$$$$$$$$$s to feed and arm non-Americans while Americans eat from dumpsters

The new America is getting loonier by the day under the almighty Obama !!   But, truth be told, America has always been taking similar illogical  decisions even during the Bush years...so let's not  push all the blame on Obama.

Scouring for his next meal in a dumpster downtown, a homeless man is ticketed by Houston Police. Now, opponents point to the citation as validation of arguments against the city’s homeless feeding ordinance.
Cited for “disturbing the contents of a garbage can in downtown central business district,” the 44-year-old Caucasian man is known only as K.J., in a redacted ticket issued by police the morning of March 7.
But now, he is quickly becoming a symbol of how the city’s 2012 feeding ordinance victimizes the poor, says Joe Ablaza, an opponent of the policy.
K.J. is a homeless veteran forced to dumpster dive for food where he once relied on the kindness of strangers. And now, even that source of food is in jeopardy, he says....

"Generosity begins at home"  ...    but I guess nobody has ever told that to our politicians in North America.

The Obama administration announced   Friday its plan to transfer $450 million in cash to help Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government cover its massive budget deficit, which is estimated somewhere between $12 billion and $23 billion. .....

... the U.S. government has committed over $4 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians, who are among the world’s largest per capita recipients of international foreign aid. ......

Instructors from US special forces are training armed opposition groups that are fighting against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s state-run news agency Sana reported on Sunday.
The US commandos are training rebels from the so-called Free Syrian Army in camps located on the territory of Jordan, according to Sana.
The training program started in late 2012 in a base located on a private territory in the northern suburbs of the Jordanian capital of Amman. Apart from the US instructors, the Syrian militants are also receiving training from French and British commandos, Sana reported........