Tel-Chai Nation

The former governor of Alaska has spoken out against Obama's attack on Jewish "settlements":

Former US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin disagrees with the Obama administration's demand that Israel halt settlement construction, although her reason for that opinion is puzzling to some (or at the least demonstrates she's not familiar with the term "natural growth" that much of the debate has revolved around).

She told Barbara Walters on ABC's Good Morning America this week that she disagrees with the White House because all the Jews moving to Israel need a place to live.

"I disagree with the Obama administration on that," Palin told Walters. "I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."

J Street responded by releasing a lengthy statement that condemned Palin's comments and accused her of pandering and ignorance.

"Palin's pandering to her right-wing base comes at the expense of the security of the State of Israel, the lives of those actually living the conflict, and the fundamental American interest in achieving a two-state solution in the near term," it said. "Her words reveal a glaring ignorance of damaging facts and a callous disregard of past and present US policy."

I'm afraid J Street has already been exposed as a fraud, getting their funding from Saudi Arabia and George Soros, so they don't carry much weight in their crud.

This is an improvement over a mistake she made in her debate with vice president Joe Biden last year, something I hadn't taken enough notice of at the time, when she stupidly agreed on the notion of stopping Jewish growth, or segregation from Arabs. But she's still got a long way to go, and is going to have to show that she can still hold that standing in any following election she'll have, regardless of what advisors she has, whom I assume in fairness influenced what she said during the election debate.

Labels: Israel, United States

I most certainly do hope this news (via Allie is Wired) is true, because Oprah Winfrey, as this info revealed, is one of the most pretentious talk show hosts around. An apologist who is not helping anyone, not even during Katrina. It most definitely is time for her to leave the stage, just like Phil Donohue did a few years ago.

Labels: Moonbattery

According to witnesses at a special Senate panel hearing on homeland security, Islamofascists in America are increasing their attacks:

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Terrorist incidents over the past 12 months show that Islamic extremists within the U.S. increasingly are launching attacks against targets such as military bases, anti-terrorist experts said today.

“The threat is now increasingly from within, from homegrown terrorists who are inspired by violent Islamist ideology to plan and execute attacks where they live,” Mitchell Silber, director of intelligence analysis for the New York City Police Department, said.

Silber was among witnesses testifying to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has started an investigation into events leading up to the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, in which 13 people were killed and 43 were injured.

While it may be “premature” to link the shootings at the Texas Army base to homegrown radical Islamic terrorism, the incident is similar to other recent incidents at military bases, Juan Zarate, President George W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, said.

“Unfortunately, this event follows in a line of attacks against military personnel,” said Zarate, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based policy group.

Zarate pointed to a murder outside a military recruitment center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in June and killings at Camp Liberty in Iraq in May and Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait in 2003.

Premeditated Murder

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, has been charged by military authorities with 13 counts of premeditated murder in connection with the Fort Hood incident.

The Homeland Security panel’s probe is the first congressional investigation into the shootings. Republicans have been pressing Democrats, who control Congress, for more probes into the incident.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who heads the panel, has said his goal is to find out how the federal government missed detecting Hasan as a threat.

He said the panel wants to talk to members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force who were collecting information on Hasan. The task force is headed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The panel also wants to interview staff at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, where Hasan completed a residency in psychiatry before transferring to Fort Hood.

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his panel will investigate how the military handled concerns about Hasan.

New Wave

Zarate said the shootings raise “questions about whether we are facing a new wave of terrorism driven in part by self- radicalized actors.”

Some witnesses said they thought those investigating Hasan’s behavior before the shootings may have felt reluctant to act because they were overly concerned with protecting the suspect’s religious beliefs.

Retired General John Keane, the Army’s former vice chief of staff, said the military needs “clear, specific guidelines” on what constitutes jihadist behavior.

“It should not be an act of moral courage for a soldier to identify a fellow solider” as a potentially dangerous Islamic extremist, he said. “It should be an obligation.”

Keane was commanding officer at Fort Bragg in North Carolina during the investigation of racially motivated murders in the 1990s. He said the Fort Hood situation may be similar.

At Fort Bragg, “we were wrongfully tolerating extremists in our organization,” he said.

Pentagon Review

Defense Secretary Robert Gates plans a broad review of the military procedures and policies that were in place before the shootings, a spokesman said.

Gates wants to “assess if the department is doing everything it can to prevent” similar incidents, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The steps could include a review of base security and how “adverse personnel information is handled,” he said.

Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush’s former assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, said reports about Hasan’s communications and ideology indicate that investigators shouldn’t have felt restricted by his First Amendment rights.

Many of the inflammatory comments “had nothing to do with his religion or speech,” she said.

‘Political Correctness’

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, asked if “political correctness” may have contributed to authorities not stopping Hasan.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that was operating here,” Keane said.

Zarate disagreed and said that any reluctance may have stemmed from the perception of Hasan being a doctor conducting research.

Here's where I want to argue that I don't think so, and this certainly doesn't explain how a man as pathetically incompetant in psychiatrics as the repulsive Hasan was could be allowed to continue his job.

Intelligence agencies last year intercepted e-mails between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim religious leader in Yemen known for his anti-American views. Investigators say there was nothing suspicious in the communications, and they appeared to be related to a research project.

Silber said Hasan’s alleged murder spree came after U.S. authorities foiled a number of terror plots by cells and individuals, including four men placing what they believed were explosives outside a Riverdale, New York, synagogue and community center in April.

In September, authorities arrested Najibullah Zazi for allegedly planning to attack New York sites with explosives.

Most recently, the Internet has become a tool for spurring militants in the U.S. to act, Silber said.

Charismatic religious leaders such as al-Awlaki have been effective in urging on would-be terrorists, he said.

Also testifying today was Brian Jenkins, senior adviser at RAND Corp., a Santa Monica, California-based policy group.

The administration provided no witnesses for the hearing.

As told in the prior post, the Senate is calling now on the administration to cooperate and provide witnesses.

Update: in this entry at the Weekly Standard, it tells that Moazzam Begg, a former Gitmo detainee, has ties with Hasan's cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Update 2: as told in this item from ABC's Blotter (via Hot Air Headlines), Hasan even told Awlaki he could wait to join him in the afterlife. One can only wonder if he was planning suicide bombings as well as shootings.

Labels: anti-americanism, islam, jihad, terrorism, United States, US Congress, war on terror

It's good to learn that the Senate has stepped in to help following Obama administration's attempt to stonewall Congress's investigation (Hat tip: Hot Air):

A bipartisan group of senators began a concerted push Wednesday to get more cooperation from the Obama administration in its reviews of the Fort Hood shootings, which left 13 dead and a raft of questions about information-sharing among intelligence agencies.

In addition to the public hearings that Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) is set to begin Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) demanded Wednesday that his panel receive the results of a White House review of agency investigations of suspect Nidal M. Hasan's communications with a radical Muslim cleric who has ties to al-Qaeda.

Congressional Democrats have not been nearly as aggressive in their oversight of the Obama administration as they were during the Bush administration. The actions on Capitol Hill this week, however, demonstrate a growing impatience, particularly among senators, with the White House's preference that lawmakers slow down their inquiries.

Lieberman's hearing Thursday, the first on Capitol Hill regarding the Texas shootings, will start what potentially could be a more assertive approach to administration oversight, at least on matters of national security.

"We are not interested in political theater," Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Wednesday. "We are interested in getting the facts and correcting the system so that our government can provide the best homeland security possible for the American people."

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is leading the investigation with Lieberman, said information-sharing is the most troubling issue that must be addressed. "There's a lot we don't know at this point. That's why we're doing the investigation," she told reporters. "But that's an example of an information restriction that I feel I need to learn more about."

The briefing, coordinated by the National Security Committee, for House and Senate leaders was scheduled after the administration bowed out of a closed hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee that was supposed to happen on Monday.

Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said she’s calling on the administration to work with the committee to cooperate with its investigation of the Nov. 5 shooting deaths at Ft. Hood. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan has been charged with the crime, which Collins called “certainly” an example of home-grown terrorism.

In order to prevent more horrors like this from occurring in the future, that's why we need to know exactly what led to the political correctness and irresponsibility the top brass exhibited.

See also this NPR report that reveals how Hasan was dangerously incompetant as a psychiatrist (also via Hot Air).

Labels: islam, jihad, terrorism, United States, war on terror

Atlas Shrugs reports more on how Rifqa Bary is being isolated from the outside world, and those who are allowed to visit her are being fingerprinted?

Not only that, it seems they're trying to keep the info on the court hearings secret and not revealing it, if at all.

An excellent question is brought up here:

Can any outside pressure be applied? How do we know she is all right? How do we know she is not being psychologically pressured?

My recommendation is to turn to Congress on the matter, both the Ohio-based legislature and Capitol Hill, and even to Sarah Palin's staff, and ask them if they'll be willing to comment on this. Yes, really.

Here's also the Ohio governor's office contact info:
GOV. STRICKLAND's OFFICE:

Governor's Office Mail Governor's Office Riffe Center,
30th Floor 77 South High Street
Columbus, OH 43215-6108 Phone/Fax General Info: (614) 466-3555
Fax: (614) 466-9354

Labels: islam, misogyny, United States

First, here's some news on how president Obama's administration may be stonewalling Congress by refusing to cooperate in a probe to find out how the army could be so negligent in dealing with Malik Nidal Hasan (via Hot Air).

Now, here's something from the Weekly Standard (also via Hot Air) on Sarah Palin's response to this case:

I asked about Palin's upcoming visit to Ft. Hood. "We had planned on that before the tragedy struck," she said. She commented on the trail of evidence linking the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, to militant Islam. "There were such clear, obvious, massive warning signs that were missed," she said. "This terrorist, even having business cards" that identified him as an "SoA" or soldier of Allah. Palin blamed a culture of political correctness and other decisions that "prevented -- I'm going to say it -- profiling" of someone with Hasan's extremist ideology. "I say, profile away," Palin said. Such political correctness, she continued, "could be our downfall." If the upcoming investigations into the attack reveal bad decision-making on the part of senior officials, Palin continued, those officials ought to be fired.

Palin visits Ft. Hood on December 4. She plans to donate all the royalties from her book-signing there to the families of the victims.

A very good idea. She's absolutely correct that those officials who did not distance Hasan from the army or anyone else he could've attacked must take responsibility for their failures and be dismissed from the military.

While I'm writing this, I want to remind one and all that Hasan was there even while Bush was president, so it'd be ill-advised to think this is just Obama's fault. Bush had 8 years to tidy up the military, yet his administration did nothing about problems like these, which took place under their very noses.

Others on the subject include Michelle Malkin, The Jawa Report (plus, another one), Rhymes With Right, Cold Fury, Sword at the Ready, Conservative American.

Labels: anti-americanism, islam, jihad, racism, United States

Jonathan Tobin writes more about how Barack Obama has attacked the legitimacy of Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood, home to at least 33,000 people, by describing it as a "settlement", the MSM's way of delegitimizing any Jewish residence they oppose, and says:

The president’s decision to speak as if this part of Jerusalem was a “settlement” where Jews had no right to live and build is not just a provocative escalation of the administration’s hostile attitude toward Israel. It also gives the Palestinian terrorists who made the apartment complexes in this neighborhood their personal shooting gallery throughout the second intifada an unexpected boost. Palestinian Authority–backed snipers based in the neighboring Arab village of Beit Jala regularly shot into Gilo during that conflict. Gilo also became more than just a middle-class Jerusalem neighborhood. It assumed the role of a symbol of Israeli tenacity and courage, and the area became a regular stop for visitors to the city.

Obama and his staff are going way overboard already with their assaults on Jewish rights to their city, and it's going to run the risk of encouraging more Fatah/Hamas-based attacks on Jewish neighborhoods.

Here's more on the subject from Rick Richman and Evelyn Gordon.

Labels: anti-semitism, Israel, United States

In this report, it's told that George Mitchell tried to pressure the Israeli government to stop building in the Gilo neighborhood:

(IsraelNN.com) U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell reportedly asked Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, during one of their recent meetings, to freeze a construction project of dozens of housing units in Gilo. Netanyahu turned him down.

[...]

Netanyahu refused the U.S. request, explaining that the construction in Gilo, as in most places of the world, does not require government approval. He also explained that the neighborhood is “an integral part of Jerusalem.”

And that's also the good thing about limited government, as they say. I'm glad he stood up to Mitchell's grave demands, and made clear it's unacceptable. More on this here.

Labels: Israel, United States

Here is some info on the origins of the horrific Goldstone report. See also here for more.

The Bulletin reports that Saudi Arabia has been identified as the source of Islamization in the US military and spread of Wahabism.

The Knesset has introduced a special bill recognizing the rights of Jewish refugees from Arab lands:

According to the bill, it will not be possible for Israel to sign any diplomatic agreement with any state or foreign entity without arranging for the interests and rights of the Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

The refugees are defined, according to the UN's Refugee Convention as, "the Jewish citizens of Israel who immigrated from Arab countries in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel and forced to leave the property that had been in their ownership in their countries of origin."

The Jewish refugees from those now utterly hostile lands have every right to demand compensation.

Here's a video at Jihad Watch of the rally for Rifqa Bary.

The abominable Malik Nidal Hasan's many offensive actions include trying to frame/libel/slander US soldiers for "war crimes", and have them prosecuted (also via Jihad Watch). I would never want to have a vile man like that as my shrink!

Disbarred, traitorous attorney Lynne Stewart has been sentenced to prison for abetting terrorism (Hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool and Hot Air). And, it may hopefully be for even longer than thought. More from Andrew McCarthy.

British actor Edward Woodward, famous for roles like Breaker Morant and the Equalizer, has passed away at 79 years old (via Big Hollywood). He'll be missed. More here from S.T. Karnick and Coleman Luck.

Phyllis Chesler reports that western governments such as Canada's are starting to wake up to Islamo-misogyny, among other barbaric practices in the Religion of Peace.

Labels: anti-americanism, anti-semitism, Canada, islam, Israel, jihad, Knesset, misogyny, terrorism, UN corruption, United States

The Knesset has taken some much needed steps to help those unfairly demonized:

(IsraelNN.com) The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has unanimously approved a measure to pardon detainees who were arrested during protests against the 2005 Disengagement Law expulsions from Gaza. The bill now goes to the Knesset plenum, where it will face a vote on the floor, and then moves to the Knesset Constitution and Law Committee, headed by MK David Rotem, before a final vote in the legislature.

The bill will not apply to those who have committed serious or violent crimes, nor to those who endangered the lives of others. None of those records will be deleted, nor will proceedings be suspended against anyone who was guilty of committing crimes of deliberate sabotage, sabotage with explosives, or sabotage and injury to others. Nor will the bill apply to anyone who had a criminal record preceding the events of the expulsion of Jews from Gaza.

Approximately 400 civilians will be affected by the measure, most of whom were teenagers accused of misdemeanors. Some of them have already been sentenced and served their time, but the measure will at least expunge all criminality from any police file in their names. For others, the proposal is irrelevant, since they were accused of more serious crimes, or had risked their lives, or those of others.

Let's just say that the protestors had every right to decry the surrender of Jewish land to the enemy by a prime minister named Ariel Sharon who turned out to be a cold, corrupt man with a record of serious offenses in his past, who's now lying brain-dead for his crimes.

Labels: Israel, Knesset, political corruption

On the ABC News blog of Jake Tapper (via Hot Air), a Japanese expert has said Obama did make himself look like a fool:

“Obama’s handshake/forward lurch was so jarring and inappropriate it recalls Bush’s back-rub of Merkel.

“Kyodo News is running his appropriate and reciprocated nod and shake with the Empress, certainly to show the president as dignified, and not in the form of a first year English teacher trying to impress with Karate Kid-level knowledge of Japanese customs.

“The bow as he performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms [...].The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part."

At least one newspaper in Japan isn't even running the photos out of embarrassment. Curiously enough is that Obama shook hands with the Empress yet didn't make much of a bow to her. Is that because a woman, in his mind, isn't qualified for as much respect as a man?

Labels: Asia, Japan, United States

Atlas Shrugs presents some photos from the rally for Rifqa Bary that took place today in Columbus, Ohio; more to come (here's also some photos of the sponsors). There were people who even came from Canada, and Louisiana and Texas. I may have noticed at least one leftist blog that wasn't happy with this, and the blogmaster was being pretty nasty (blog I allude to is spoken about here).

Will there be another rally next month too, if there's another hearing? Let's hope so, and that this current one can help.

Update: Atlas Shrugs presents a video of an interview for a DC legal panel on the case.

Others on the subject include Thoughts and Theology, Dinah Lord, Small Dead Animals, Daily Christian Way, The Last Crusade.

Labels: islam, misogyny, United States

Another of Obama's ill-advised steps includes trying to discourage Congress from doing their own investigation of the Fort Hood jihadist (via Hot Air):

President Barack Obama on Saturday urged Congress to hold off on any investigation of the Fort Hood rampage until federal law enforcement and military authorities have completed their probes into the shootings at the Texas Army post, which left 13 people dead.

On an eight-day Asia trip, Obama turned his attention home and pleaded for lawmakers to “resist the temptation to turn this tragic event into the political theater.” He said those who died on the nation’s largest Army post deserve justice, not political stagecraft.

“The stakes are far too high,” Obama said in a video and Internet address released by the White House while the president he was flying from Tokyo to Singapore, where Pacific Rim countries were meeting.

If Congress doesn't investigate, it can run the risk of failing to fix more mistakes that could be prevented. What if there's more Hasans waiting in the wings to strike at innocent people? Also, the families of the victims at Fort Hood deserve justice, and that's what Congress is in the business for, to help their constituents. Therefore, Congress would do well to keep on with the investigation they're going to run, to prevent more disasters like the horror at Fort Hood from happening again.

Update: here's a column about the case from Barry Rubin at the Gloria Center.

Others on the subject include Voting Female Speaks, Right Truth, Fire Andrea Mitchell, The Jawa Report, Daily Pundit, Cabinet Meeting.

Labels: islam, jihad, terrorism, United States, war on terror

Avigdor Lieberman has spoken at a conference warning what a withdrawal to the 1967 or even 1949 borders would bring:

(IsraelNN.com) Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in an address at the Saban Forum on Saturday night, warned that a withdrawal to the 1967 borders would only exacerbate Israel's troubles with its Arab population.

Lieberman said the establishment of a Palestinian Authority state in Judea and Samaria would not solve the Arab-Israeli conflict; instead, it will draw it closer, to within the pre-1967 borders.

Arab communities in the Galilee and the Negev -- which include Bedouin and Druze, both relatively loyal to Israel at present -- are likely to demand autonomy once they see Arabs in Judea and Samaria living in an independent state, he said.

There is something to what he says. Worse, it would only further the negative influence of segregation, which would not help anyone.

Labels: islam, Israel, terrorism

First, it was to the Saudi king. Now, he's taken a bow before the Emperor of Japan. You might not think it as bad as bowing to the overlord of the House of Saud, a country that, unlike Japan, is still run by tyranny, but still, it's very extremely stupid, and the Emperor and Empress themselves should really have pointed that out to him as well, if they too are deserving of any criticism. Once again, Obama has shown that he clearly has no understanding of the protocols and beliefs of American politics, nor do any of his advisors.

One has to wonder though: will he be bowing for European royalty next? Or isn't it funny that he hasn't? Indeed, why would he bow for the king of Saudi Arabia and now the Emperor of Japan but not for the royal family of say, Sweden? Or is he planning to, when even in Europe, they've long adopted and accepted simpler greetings themselves like handshakes and would surely find it insulting by now to have one take a bow to people like them?

Update: Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker points out how Obama's bow isn't even how they do it in Japan: they don't touch/shake hands at the same time as they bow! Indeed, the Emperor and Empress do seem embarrassed, much as they try not to.

Others on the subject include One Free Korea, Michelle Malkin, Stop the ACLU, Frisk a Liberal, Ed Driscoll, Always to the Right, Cold Fury, Natural Fake, Scared Monkeys, Missourah, Flopping Aces, The Black Kettle, Conservative Viewpoint Blog, Quipster, AntiObamaBlog, The American Pundit, Moonbat Patrol, Inzax, Texas Broadside, Ironic Surrealism, Ramparts360, Power Line.

Labels: Asia, House of Saud, Japan, United States

Atlas Shrugs tells that there have been hearings on the Rifqa Bary case in Ohio without public knowledge, and that the November 16 hearing appears to be canceled.

On the one hand, while a gag order could actually be of help if that's what it takes to keep awful newspapers like the Columbus Dispatch from writing things that could actually hurt her, it is bad if hearings are being run behind everyone else's back, especially if a backdoor deal were to come up that could find Rifqa returned to her abusive parents without prior knowledge.

And that's one more reason to attend the rally on November 16 at 11AM in Dorrian Commons Park, where Andrew Bostom will also be present.

So far, there appears to be another hearing scheduled for December 22. Let's hope there'll be a rally planned for that time as well.

Others on the subject include Conscience of a Conservative, Texas Broadside, Bare Naked Islam's Weblog, Responsible for Equality and Liberty, Larry's Internet Soapbox, The Legacy of My Fathers.

Labels: islam, misogyny, United States