from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 07:07 PM PDT

At the end of July, Jews concluded three weeks of mourning
commemorating the first and second fall of Jerusalem and its two temples.
In a perfect bit of timing, Obama chose that period to ratchet up pressure
over Israeli construction in Jerusalem. Because there is no better time to
demand that Jews stop living in Jerusalem, than the Jewish commemoration
of two bloody conquests and exiles.

After 2000 years of exile, a reasonable question to ask is, if
Jews have no right to live in their own capital, where do they have a
right to live? Obama's answer is clearly, nowhere. The same man who has
cynically banked on America's guilt over racial segregation in the
American South, is working overtime to impose segregation south of Tel
Aviv. The media has responded by giving much coverage to Fatah and Hamas
terrorist groups complaining about the "Judaizing of Jerusalem." This is
an absurdity as the common use of Jerusalem originates from the Hebrew
Bible. Arabs call Jerusalem, "Al-Quds", based on a dream that Mohammed
once had, which was
reinterpreted by Muslim colonialism as referring to Jerusalem in order
to Dejudaize and Islamize the city.

It is no more possible to
Judaize, Jerusalem... than it is to Anglicise, London or Russify, Moscow.
It is a place that for billions of people around the world is closely
associated with the Jewish people. And that is a reality that cannot be
erased by any amounts of propaganda from its former Muslim conquerors, who
have been obliged to step down from ruling the city, and forced to
participate in a democratic political system, in which non-Muslims are not
forced to defer to Muslim law.

Under Muslim rule, Jews were
repeatedly barred from access from the former site of the Temple, the
holiest place in Judaism, using it at one point as a garbage dump.
Tombstones from the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, which includes
the tomb of the Prophet Zechariah, were used as paving stones and
as flooring for latrines. Virtually every single synagogue in the
Jewish Quarter was destroyed between 1948 and 1967, as the Jordanian
commander who seized Jerusalem in 1948 proclaimed,
"For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the
Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews'
return here impossible."

There could hardly be a better
demonstration of Apartheid in action than Muslim actions during their
control over Jerusalem. And the world should have cheered Israel's
liberation of East Jerusalem in 1967, making it a place where Jews,
Christians and Muslims could live together, for the first time in a
generation. Instead the world has done the opposite. The U.K. which
recognized the Jordanian apartheid annexation of East Jerusalem, and the
resulting ethnic cleansing of the area, has never recognized its
reunification by Israel. And Obama has used the Three Weeks commemoration
of the Fall of Jerusalem-- to put every effort into pressuring Israel to
deny housing construction to Jews in Jerusalem.

The modern day
siege of Jerusalem is today led by Obama who insists that Jews have no
right to their own capital. This is of course not a new position. It is
one Nebuchadnezzar and Titus shared. It is one that the Jordanian
commander who shelled the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem until not one
building remained intact, reducing thousands of years of history to rubble
in a matter of days, shared as well.

Obama's Muslim roots give him a great deal of sympathy
with the view of city's Islamic conquerors who imposed their own history
on the city, and none with the thousands of years of Jewish history and
memory that is attached to Jerusalem. His assault on Jewish life in
Jerusalem however is an inexcusable case of allowing those sympathies to
dictate international policy, all the more inexcusable as his campaign was
premised on not dictating terms to other countries. Yet all too clearly
the man who can fluently recite the Muslim call to prayer, is working to
pressure Israel into accepting the apartheid Muslim narrative of an
Islamized Jerusalem.

Meanwhile the same Muslim regimes which would
never countenance turning over half of their holy city of Mecca to the
Jews, even though Mecca once had a sizable Jewish population, before it
was ethnically cleansed by Mohammed and the rise of Islam-- demand a
return to the division of Jerusalem that was so heartrendingly described
in "Jerusalem of Gold", a song that nearly became Israel's second national
anthem. "Solitary lies the city, and in its heart-- a
wall."

The annual mourning for the fall of Jerusalem for
thousands of years demonstrates with painful clarity the Jewish connection
to Jerusalem. Yet the same media that seizes on the Nakba's annual key
parties turn their heads away. Just as the 800,000 Jewish refugees from
Muslim lands go unrepresented, so too do the 19,000 Jewish refugees from
East Jerusalem who were ethnically cleansed, and replaced with Arabs. But
perhaps when the Nakba parties have gone on for 2000 years, then the
former Arab rulers of the land will have standing to speak to us about
attachment to the land.

What Obama should remember is that the
Jerusalem is at the heart of Jewish history and identity. Hatikvah,
Israel's national anthem which has Jerusalem as its final word, was partly
inspired by a poem written in the 11th century by Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi,
"My heart is in the East, and I am at the ends of the West. How can I
taste what I eat and how could it be pleasing to me? How shall I render my
vows and my bonds, while yet Zion lies beneath the fetter of Edom, and I
am in the chains of Arabia?" When Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi finally made the perilous
journey from the West all the way to Jerusalem, a city in the "Chains
of Arabia", he was murdered near the Temple Mount by an Arab horseman. The
poet died, but his songs of Zion lived on, and would inspire those farmers
and soldiers who would break the "Chains of Arabia" over 800 years later
to proclaim the modern State of Israel.

And no matter what the modern day would be Muslim rulers of
Jerusalem intend, Obama might do well to remember that betting against the
Jews in Jerusalem is never a good long term prediction. 2600 years ago
Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and drove out its Jewish inhabitants
into exile as slaves. The Persian Empire conquered the Babylonian Empire.
The Greeks in turn conquered the Persian Empire and found that there were
Jews once again living in Jerusalem. Their attempt to Dejudaize Israel led
to the Maccabean wars, which led to the Hasmonean kingdom, the first
Jewish kingdom since the fall of the First Temple.

When the Romans
got done with the Greeks, they turned their attention to Israel. They
appointed the non-Jewish Herod as King, and repeatedly conquered
Jerusalem. It took half the Roman army and the destruction of the entire
22nd legion, but Rome finally got its way. Those Jews who survived the
extensive massacres were exiled, Jerusalem was demolished down to its
foundation and emptied of any Jewish presence. The city was renamed Aelia
Capitolina, after Hardian himself.

Today Aelia Capitolina is a name
only used by historians. Al Quds, part of the nomenclature of Islamic
colonialism, will in time join Aelia Capitolina, from the nomenclature of
Roman colonialism-- when Allah will join Jupiter and Nebuchadnezzar in the
pantheon of dead gods from dead empires. Obama who has spent years
building up a cult of personality more in line with that of a Babylonian
ruler or a Roman Emperor, might profit by their example.

While
Obama conducts a political siege of Jerusalem, its former Arab conquerors
conduct a plainer one. The massacre of
students at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, the bulldozer attacks on busy
Jerusalem streets, as well as the unreported tide of knife attacks,
threats and hit and runs; are the way that Fatah and Hamas mean to lay
claim to Jerusalem, by once again driving out its Jewish inhabitants. By
aiding and abetting their political ambitions, Obama also takes
responsibility for their crimes.

By leading a modern day political siege against Jerusalem,
Obama is working to further the ethnic cleansing and apartheid of Jews, by
the Muslim terrorists to whom he has clear connections of faith and blood.
His evident solidarity with the Muslim majority in the Middle East however
comes at the expense of the region's many oppressed minorities, including
the Copts, the Sufis, the Bahai and the Jews. Obama may have a great deal
of sympathy for Muslims, but they have none for America. And Obama's
political siege of Jerusalem damages America's ties with Israel, as well
as undermining the one Pro-American democracy in the region. The American
people have a right to ask himself whether Obama's policy on Jerusalem is
defined by American interests, or his own cultural and familial ties to
Islam.

War, What is it Good For?

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 10:21 AM PDT

On one extreme of the liberal narrative, war, like firearms, is
an innate evil. It is said to occur because politicians and businessmen
get together in one secret room and decide to puff up their profits and
political fortunes with jingoism and a military campaign. The fancy name
for this particular conspiracy theory is the military-industrial
complex.

Most rational conspiracy theories do require a profit
motive, but it might be worthwhile to ask, do politicians really profit
from war? In American history, the history of the same country blamed for
much of the 20th century's wars, fighting a major war has been a virtually
certain way to destroy a Presidency. In the 20th century, four Presidents,
Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, had their
presidencies destroyed by four of the five major American wars of the 20th
century, WWI, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the War on
Terror.

Not only did these wars severely damage the individual
reputation of the President in question at the time making them political
pariahs, but in each case they resulted in the transfer of the Presidency
to the rival party. The only President to escape this trend is FDR over
WW2, who died in office. This is not a track record that would encourage
any President to engage in a major war. It is a track record that would
encourage a President to steer clear of any wars, and if inheriting one to
bail out with a facesaving truce as fast as possible, the way that
Eisenhower and Nixon did.

War is therefore clearly not of
political benefit to a President. Nor to his party. The safest thing to do
politically, is to avoid all wars. To issue broad generalities about a
desire for peace with everyone. It will alienate many people who are
concerned about emerging threats overseas, but it will unite the mushheads
behind you, and it is worth remembering that mushheads are a far more
vital demographic, than people who think in terms such as sacrifice and
responsibility.

Not fighting a war is always safer, because
American wars are usually fought to deal with threats that may only
metastasize decades or even generations later, when the Commander in Chief
is playing golf in a charity tournament and safely out of office. Take the
Korean War, unpopular at the time and condemned as unnecessary, which took
nearly 50 years to turn into a direct threat to the United States. Yet had
the Korean War not been fought, Kim Jong Il would have had all of Korea to
play with in order to develop weapons of mass destruction, and the
millions murdered, tortured and brutalized can only be imagined. In turn
had men like Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay been listened to, Kim Jong
Il and his nuclear arsenal would not exist at all.

From a
President's standpoint therefore, war is a destructive thing politically,
but can be vital from a long term perspective that may not be appreciated
at the time. It took until after the end of WW2 for the general American
public to understand why it had to be fought, regardless of Pearl Harbor.
The Korean War as we have seen has taken far longer to be justified. The
Vietnam War may never be justified in the context of liberal historical
revisionism that continues to insist that Communism was never a threat.
The War on Terror will not be justified until the next major terrorist
attack hits home.

It is much safer therefore to fight a War on
Poverty, a War on Pollution, a War on Obesity, or a war on anything that
only requires moral hectoring and principled pork, with nary a rifle in
sight.

Nor, contrary to the best information available in the Daily
Worker or the Daily Show, is war particularly good for defense
contractors. Yes orders temporarily boom, but a boom only guarantees a
bust down the road, which results in serious problems when the war ends.
War also commonly exposes flaws in the products that defense contractors
have been peddling or demonstrates that entirely different products are
suddenly needed. This creates an unstable environment for the defense
industry as they rush to fill orders and redesign their products, only to
wake up a year later to realize that no one needs them. This results in
layoffs, uncomfortable mergers for everyone involved.

What defense
contractors prefer is a steady defensive arms buildup which enables them
to profit from the pork, without having their products actually be field
tested. Which is why the defense industry loved the cold war, but dislike
hot wars. Cold wars bring in lots of no pressure orders. Everyone has a
field day guessing what the enemy is developing, and what needs to be
developed to counter them. None of it really matters, because it is never
meant to really see action. Much like the Minutemen missiles, which have a
failure rate that it's best not to even think about.

So what is war
good for anyway? The unpopular and much reviled answer, is that American
wars are good for protecting America and the rest of the world. The United
States has not launched a single war of territorial conquest or unprovoked
aggression in the 20th century. American forces have at one time or
another captured much of the world's territory, across Europe, Asia and
the Middle East-- and given it all back after a rebuilding program that
benefited the region's inhabitants, at America's expense.

Had America really been in the business of spilling blood for
oil, as the cynical left wing shriek goes, why aren't Kuwait and Iraq,
American protectorates? Why for that matter are South Korea and Japan, two
of the richest places in the world, free states with independent and often
contradictory foreign policies? If the accusations of the left held any
truth to them, the world should be an American Empire that would cover
some of the richest markets in the world, including Japan, Germany,
France, South Korea, Kuwait and Lebanon. Yet for all the blather about an
American Empire, no country has been more unwilling to seize territory in
the 20th century than the United States, despite having every opportunity
to do so.

Very few would have blanched had the United States chosen
to carve up Germany after WW2, the way the USSR did to much of Eastern
Europe. With all the criticism America has faced over its actions in Iraq,
it would have faced no more, had it followed suit and discarded
rebuilding, in favor of permanent colonial rule. Yet the United States did
no behave as the empire that its foreign and domestic enemies portray it
as. Instead the United States has fought wars that have given without
taking.

The nobility and generosity of the American soldier and of
American policy toward conquered nations can be tarred by cheap left wing
propaganda, but can never be tarnished, because no other nation has done
so much for its worst enemies. By contrast the beloved motherland of the
left, the USSR, captured nations to turn them into permanent puppet
regimes, used widespread massacres and political repression to maintain
its hold on them, while milking their production for itself.

War
does not profit the United States. War has never profited the United
States. It has been a necessity born out of a need to prevent the rise of
new terrors and tyrannies, to combat evil, and to do the right
thing.