"STAND WITH US" COUNTERS ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTORS

"STAND WITH US" COUNTERS ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTORS

BY: FERN SIDMAN

On Sunday afternoon, January 9th, "Stand With Us", the pro-Israel student advocacy organization, staged two counter-protests in New York City, as they faced off against hundreds of seething Hamas supporters and anti-Israel apologists assembled for vitriolic demonstrations in New York's Herald Square and outside of the Israeli Consulate in midtown Manhattan.

Spearheaded by Al-Awda NY - The Palestine Right to Return Coalition along with a litany of similar far left radical offshoots such as the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, American Muslims for Palestine, Siege Busters Working Group, Existence is Resistance, ANSWER - NY and the International Socialist Organization, the demonstrators marked the two year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead which saw an Israeli incursion into Gaza; with the focus being the deterrence of Hamas sponsored rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. Calling for an "end to the occupation of Palestine" and railing against purported "IDF atrocities" against civilians in Gaza, the demonstrators held aloft signs declaring, "No US Aid to Zionist Racism and Murder!", "Bring Zionist War Criminals to Justice!" and "Free Palestine".

"In the last two years since the bloody massacre on Gaza, the Zionist aggression has grown exponentially, with the backing of US imperialist forces", Ali Hussein, a spokesman for Al-Awda told the crowd. "The US continues to block international bodies from pursuing the findings of war crimes during the attacks laid out in the Goldstone Report and we are here today to tell the world that our battle against the Israeli occupation forces will never end until the illegal and morally repugnant Zionist entity is defeated", he continued.

Chanting, "Free, Free Palestine" and "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free", the demonstrators marched through midtown Manhattan to the Israeli Consulate where they continued their rally.

Countering the anti-Israel forces were close to 100 activists representing "Stand With Us". On display at the counter demonstration were two rockets that were fired from Gaza into Israel's southern towns since it's withdrawal in 2005. Pointing to the rockets, Avi Posnick, the Stand With Us regional coordinator for the New York chapter said, "These rockets are among the 8000 fired into Israel by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and it is because of these rockets that Israel targeted the terrorist and weapons smuggling operations during Operation Cast Lead in December of 2008."

Citing the fact that in 2010 another 235 Hamas sponsored rockets have fallen on innocent civilians in Sderot, Ashkelon and other Israeli towns, Posnick said that "Despite all this, Israel permits tons of food and supplies into Gaza through its crossings every day - calling into question the incessant and baseless accusations that there is a humanitarian or hunger crisis in Gaza. If we want to talk about peace in the Middle East, we must confront the agitprop emanating from the Hamas propaganda machine that is taking place across the street from here and declare to the world that it is Hamas terrorism and incitement that represents an impediment to peace, not Israel."

The pro-Israel demonstrators held signs saying, "Israel: We Stand With You", "Stop Palestinian Terrorism; Teach Peace", and "Israel Wants Peace, Hamas Supports Terror". These signs are also part of the "Say Yes to Peace" campaign that Stand With Us launched to counter anti-Israel ads in Seattle and San Francisco. New York State Assemblyman David Weprin addressed the pro-Israel contingent by asking some simple questions. "What is rockets were fired at New York? What would the reaction of the United States be? Israel has the right to defend herself just as the United States does and we are here today to support the freedom loving State of Israel in her continual battle for survival against those bent on wanton terror", he said.

Chanting "Stop Hamas Now" and "Israel Wants Peace, Hamas Wants War", the Stand With Us activists continued their vigil until early evening and vowed to return to square off against others planning similar anti-Israel protests. Said David Ruchlamer of Brooklyn, New York who attended the counter protest, "The facts on the ground are quite clear for anyone who has eyes to see. The Palestinian Authority refuses to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, so real and enduring peace is just not attainable. Israel cannot be compelled to make any further territorial concessions with an enemy who is devoted to its complete destruction."

PRESSURE MOUNTS TO RELEASE JONATHAN POLLARD

PRESSURE MOUNTS TO RELEASE JONATHAN POLLARD

BY: FERN SIDMAN

The Voice of Israel government radio has reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Knesset on Tuesday evening, January 4th at which time he publicly read the much anticipated missive that he has personally penned to President Barack Obama requesting the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard. A former United States Navy intelligence analyst, Pollard has been incarcerated in the U.S. for 25 years on charges stemming from the passage of classified information to Israel. Pollard is presently in deterioriating health in a North Carolina federal prison and an orchestrated campaign amongst his supporters is underway to seek his freedom.

In an unprecedented public appeal to the United States requesting clemency for Pollard, Prime Minister Netanyahu became the first prime minister to formally and publicly request his release. "Since Jonathan Pollard has now spent 25 years in prison, I believe that a new request for clemency is highly appropriate," Netanyahu wrote Obama in the letter. "I know that the United States is a country based on fairness, justice and mercy. For all these reasons, I respectfully ask that you favorably consider this request for clemency. The people of Israel will be eternally grateful." In the letter, Netanyahu apologized for using an agent to spy on the United States and pledged that it would never happen again. "Israel's actions were wrong and totally unacceptable," he wrote.

Netanyahu has made previous attempts to trade Pollard for pliancy in Middle East peace negotiations, in the hope that his release would appease conservatives in the Israeli government. He also made Pollard's case a bargaining point with the Palestinians at the Wye Plantation talks in 1998. Most recently, in September of 2010, Israeli officials tried to float a deal in which they would extend a temporary moratorium on settlement construction in Judea and Samaria, a Palestinian condition for negotiations, in exchange for the release of Pollard.
"Israel will continue to abide by its commitment that such wrongful actions will never be repeated", said Netanyahu. In a personal message to Pollard, Netanyahu then added in his speech that he should "continue to be strong," and told him that the entire nation was behind him and vowed that "you will be here soon." Opposition leader Tzipi Livni called the Pollard case "perhaps only the issue that everyone here in the Knesset could agree on."

Previously, Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin had sent a letter from the Knesset to U.S. President Barack Obama, Congress, and the U.S. Attorney General, pleading for the release of Jonathan Pollard.The letter was signed by a leader in every party except for those known as Arab parties, representing a total of 109 out of the 120 Knesset Members. In dispatching the letter, Rivlin stated that it represents the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli public in supporting Pollard’s urgent release. “As Speaker of the Knesset,” he wrote in an introductory note, “I see it as my obligation to bring this letter to your attention.”

Pollard recently made a personal request for a public appeal for his release. The request was relayed in writing by Mr. Pollard’s wife, Esther, who personally met with Mr. Netanyahu on Monday. The prime minister’s office said he made the decision after a series of talks and contacts with senior administration officials in recent months. Accompanying Mrs. Pollard to the meeting held on Monday with Netanyahu was Lawrence J. Korb, assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, and who supports clemency for Pollard.

Mr. Korb told reporters that he had told the prime minister that to “get the ball rolling" he advised Netanyahu to ask for Mr. Pollard’s release publicly and “not as a quid pro quo, but as a matter of justice.” In addition, Mr. Korb said, Israel should acknowledge that it was wrong to have recruited a spy against its closest ally and should say that it is willing to cooperate fully with the Americans to bring the chapter to a close.

Meanwhile, in the US, officials continued to come out on Tuesday with statements calling for Pollard's release. Donald Levy, a former US Navy cryptologist who participated in the damage assessment of Pollard's purported espionage, added his name to the long list of senators, congressmen and senior American officials urging Obama to commute Pollard's sentence.

"There was nothing to indicate that Pollard gave information to any country but Israel," Levy said. "Further, the information consisted primarily of daily operational intelligence summaries, information that is extremely perishable. It did not appear that the information he gave Israel should have resulted in a life sentence."

According to a December 22nd article by Lee Rennert that appeared on the American Thinker web site, he asserts that Pollard has been "the victim of a CIA cover-up of a massive intelligence failure, with the agency blaming Pollard for the damage caused by a real "mole" inside the CIA who passed to Moscow the names of more than a dozen U.S. informants in the Soviet Union -- namely Aldrich Ames, the head of CIA's Soviet-Eastern Europe division, who fingered Pollard to keep the CIA from discovering his own treachery. The CIA did not discover Ames' role until well after Pollard was behind bars and it still isn't willing to acknowledge its mistake in blaming Pollard for Ames's crimes."

The genesis of the Pollard imbroglio began in 1983, when Pollard who based in Washington, DC at the time, discovered that information vital to Israel’s security was being deliberately withheld by certain elements within the US national security establishment. Israel was legally entitled to this security information according to a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries. The information being withheld from Israel included Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Iranian nuclear, chemical and biological warfare capabilities - being developed for use against Israel. It also included information on ballistic missile development by these countries and information on planned terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian targets.

When Pollard questioned his superiors as to why this information was not being disclosed to Israel as had been promised he was told to mind his business. Subsequently, he learned that the objective of suppressing this information to Israel was to severely curtail Israel’s ability to act independently in defense of her own enemies. Pollard did everything in his power to have the legal flow of information to Israel restored. When his efforts met no success, he began to give the information to Israel directly. Pollard was an ideologue, not a mercenary. The FBI concluded after nine months of polygraphing that Pollard acted for ideological reasons only, not for profit. This fact was recognized by the sentencing judge who declined to fine Pollard.In 1985, Jonathan Pollard was arrested by the FBI but was never afforded a trial. At the request of both the US and Israeli governments, he entered into a plea agreement, which spared both governments a long, difficult, expensive and potentially embarrassing trial. Pollard fulfilled his end of the plea agreement, cooperating fully with the prosecution. Nevertheless, Pollard received a life sentence and a recommendation that he never be paroled - in complete violation of the plea agreement he had reached with the government. Pollard was never indicted for harming the United States, nor was he indicted for compromising codes, agents or war plans and he was never charged with treason. He was indicted on only one charge of passing classified information to an ally without intent to harm the United States.

A broad-based interfaith coalition comprised of more than 500 members of the clergy and community leaders also sent a letter to Obama on Tuesday, January 4th in which they called for Pollard's release.The signatories on the letter include prominent religious and communal leaders from a wide array of Christian and Jewish communities, including representatives of Alliance for Jewish Renewal, American Values, Amit, Association of Reform Zionists of America, B'nai B'rith International, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Christians United for Israel, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, EMUNAH of America, Florida Council of Churches, Hebrew Union College, Hillel, JCC's of North America, Jewish Women International, National Council of Young Israel, New York Board of Rabbis, ORT America, Inc., Orthodox Union, Rabbinical Council of America, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Union for Reform Judaism, Yeshiva University, and the Zionist Organization of America.

THE ISLAMIC TSUNAMI: ISRAEL AND AMERICA IN THE AGE OF OBAMA

THE ISLAMIC TSUNAMI: ISRAEL AND AMERICA IN THE AGE OF OBAMA

BY: DAVID RUBIN

REVIEWED BY: FERN SIDMAN

Issuing an impassioned clarion call to the Western world on the litany of existential dangers that radical Islam represents to America's cherished democratic principles, author David Rubin's meticulously researched monograph reveals that Islam is in actuality a political ideology predicated on a pernicious dogma, rather than the "religion of peace" that its proponents purport it to be.

"The Islamic Tsunami: Israel and America in the Age of Obama" (Shiloh Israel Press) is an exceptionally well documented treatise on the gamut of commonalities that are endemic to both Israel and America in terms of religion, politics and culture. Rubin calls on all free peoples, especially Americans, to take serious heed of the escalating dangers that Islam represents in terms of the perpetuation of bellicose actions bent on mass murder or the more insidious and subtle kind of aggression that is manifested by the potential silent incursion of Sharia law into American jurisprudence. He exhorts both Jews and Christians alike to carefully examine the Judeo-Christian value system that has bound them together for centuries and strongly suggests that they create concrete alliances in order to thwart the nefarious agenda of radical Islam; thus preserving "Western civilization" as we know it.

Rubin speaks with authority as he explains the Islamic concepts of dhimmitude (slave status for all "non-believers"), how the Koran metes out punitive measures against infidels, the genesis of "jihad" and its attendant ramifications as well as outlining the ultimate goal of Islamic global dominance in the form of a Caliphate. Rubin is neither an alarmist nor he is suffering from paranoia and to his credit he does not posit himself as an abstract theoretician or a think-tank denizen. Having studied the Koran, the Bible, as well as plumbing the depths of resources on American history as it pertains to the views of the founding fathers and more recent events, Rubin's book is replete with a plethora of highly enlightening quotes from these sources that help to state his case.

As a Brooklyn born American Orthodox Jew who now lives in Israel, he has first hand experience of the travails of Islamic terrorism as he ruefully recalls his victimization and that of his three-year old son, Ruby. In December of 2001 while driving home to Shiloh from Jerusalem, Rubin and his son were both injured in a terrorist attack carried out by Islamic militants. When Rubin arrived at the hospital he was told that he was "the hospital's 1000th victim of terrorism" and recalls that he was later told by a surgeon that, "the bullet which entered the head and traveled through the neck of my three-year old boy missed his brain stem by one millimeter." Determined to assist others facing similar crises, Rubin founded the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund, an organization dedicated to relieving the trauma suffered by child victims of terrorism.

Indeed, politics make for strange bedfellows. Under a sharpened lens, Rubin examines the nexus of ideas promoting multi-cultural and moral relativism as extolled by the ideologues on the far left of the political spectrum and those who would seek to vanquish any vestige of moral clarity, namely radical Islamists. Chiding President Obama for his own associations with left-wing radicals such as convicted terrorist Bill Ayres and his futile attempts to reach out "in peace" to the Muslim world, Rubin details the predominant Muslim influences in Obama's background and his adamant denial of the very real threats that Islamists present to America, Europe and the free world.

While there is a virtual laundry list of hard hitting points that leap forth from the pages of this book, what really stands out is Rubin's assertion that Obama's Harvard law school education was financed by Saudi petro dollars. Says Rubin: "The tentacles of Islamic aggression reached their highest levels of American influence when it was revealed that Barack Obama's higher education was likely financed and guided by the anti-American, anti-Israel alliance of secular leftists and Islamic ideologues." He qualifies this by saying that the radical American Muslim ideologue Khalid al-Mansour, (a.k.a. Donald Warden), a former mentor to Black Panthers founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale was "raising money for Obama, apparently for his education, although the reason why al-Mansour would be raising money for a virtually unknown young student was not divulged."

Rubin tackles the burgeoning phenomenon of Islamic dominance by encouraging the United States to tap into a treasure trove of timeless lessons for life. Quoting the Prophet Isaiah, he says that, "the Torah will go forth from Zion, thereby spreading its wisdom to the entire world." He asks the sublimely simple question: "What can the U.S. learn from the ongoing struggles between Israel and Islam?" Among other things, Rubin calls for the halt of immigration (both legal and illegal) from Islamic countries to the U.S. and suggests that the U.S. require the emigration of actively hostile Muslims and those Islamists who are engaged in anti-American subversion. He also decries the passage of hate crime legislation which he says "will be used as a big brother technique to curtail the free speech of those who dare to speak out against Islamic ideology."

Reminding us of the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson who said "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" and Ronald Reagan who said, "At least let our children and our children's children say of us that we justified our brief moment here; we did all that could be done", Rubin leaves us with a sense of optimism and hope as we prepare to gird our loins and defend our liberties and freedoms and our very lives from those who would obliterate us and them.