Yet another US bailout for the terrorists

How pathetic is this?  More $ for terrorists and terrorist enablers, a/k/a UNRWA

The UN agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees says the US has agreed to donate an additional $55 million to the organization. The UN Relief and Works Agency provides health care, education, housing and humanitarian assistance to 4.7 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.


The agency said on its website that the US made the announcement Wednesday in Jordan during a meeting of a commission that deals with the group's financial needs.The contribution brings total US assistance to the organization in 2009 to $154.5 million. (AP)


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3729433,00.html

I wrote about the IPF here:  http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/01/barack_obama_embraces_middle_e.html.  They have the ear of this US president.  A further reason for us to be outraged by the grotesque suggestion by J Street that it is pro-Israel: it has just launched an initiative to infiltrate college campuses in the guise of "promoting pro-Israel advocacy on college campuses." It will have the imprimatur of the Israel Campus Coalition because it is teaming up with the Union of Progressive Zionists (a misnomer if ever there was one) which overcame objections to its inclusion in the ICC last year, because they carted around the "Breaking the Silence" monsters to campuses last year. Objections were overruled by the uber goal of inclusiveness.

Bogus ‘Zionist’ Israel-bashers

Posted by Isi Leibler on June 10th, 2009 

It is ironic that many of the disconcerting themes relating to Israel in US President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech replicated those widely promoted for months by a noisy minority of radical American Jews. These “Israel bashers” now proudly proclaim that the new language being employed by Obama “echoes the vocabulary we use.”

On the eve of Binyamin Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington, a full page advertisement inserted by the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) appeared in The New York Times. Instead of the customary welcome message to a visiting prime minister or expressions of solidarity, it urged Obama to press Israel to make further unilateral concessions to the Palestinians, assuring him that in the event of a confrontation, he would enjoy the backing of most American Jews because “they are not Israelis living in exile.” IPF’s Washington director, M.J Rosenberg, issued a call to neutralize “the minority of Jews falsely” purporting to present the Jewish community as “blind supporters” of the Israeli government.

ISRAEL POLICY FORUM is only one of a cluster of radical left-wing organizations that have the chutzpa to describe themselves as lovers of Israel and even “Zionists,” while actively lobbying the Obama administration to pressure Israel. They deviously sugarcoat their anti-Israeli campaigns by comparing themselves to parents whose children are drug addicts requiring “tough love” to force them to change their dangerous habits.These sentiments were effectively replicated in Obama’s Cairo speech.

They were joined in April last year by J Street, a new group initially funded by the Jewish tycoon George Soros who had achieved notoriety for demonizing successive Israeli governments irrespective of their political leanings.

J Street and another radical group, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, proudly announced that they had succeeded in persuading 11,000 of their members to bombard the White House with e-mails urging Obama to stand firm against Netanyahu.

During the Gaza offensive, J Street condemned the action against Hamas as “disproportionate.” Refusing to “pick a side” and identify “who was right and who was wrong,” it applied moral equivalency to both parties proclaiming that “we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right and wrong… While there is nothing ‘right’ in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing ‘right’ in punishing a million and a half already suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists amongst them.”

J Street also opposes Israel’s efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Despite the fact that Israelis of all political opinions are united on this issue, J Street members were e-mailed and urged to actively lobby against a bipartisan congressional resolution calling for tougher sanctions to be applied against Iran.

The radical groups also resurrected the bogus anti-Semitic charge of “dual loyalties,” warning Jews that by continued “blind” support of Israel, they risked alienating the American public and would be condemned for displaying greater loyalty toward Israel than the US. They were almost hysterical in their condemnation of Jews who exercised their rights to protest against the proposed appointment of the fiercely anti-Israel Charles Freeman to head the National Security Agency. IPF spokesmen went so far as to explicitly state that being an anti-Israeli fanatic was insufficient grounds for barring a person from assuming a senior administration role.

If there was any doubt about J Street, its endorsement of the British anti-Semitic play Seven Jewish Children, effectively a contemporary blood libel, placed it squarely in the camp of those seeking to demonize the Jewish state. It justified its support on the grounds that the play would promote “rigorous intellectual engagement and civil debate on which our community prides itself.”

J Street and IPF also seek to slander and undermine AIPAC, the highly effective pro-Israel lobby group, depicting it as an extreme right-wing and hawkish body although it has consistently promoted the policies of all Israeli governments, including the dovish administrations preceding Netanyahu.

IN AN ENVIRONMENT in which global anti-Semitism and demonization of Israel are beginning to make inroads into the United States, the potential of such radical groups to destabilize the standing of Israel should not be underestimated.

Never before has the Jewish community faced a situation in which organizations presenting themselves as Zionists shamelessly lobby their president to pressure the democratically elected government of the Jewish state to make concessions which could have life and death implications for its citizens.

Not that anti-Jewish Jews are a new phenomenon. Jewish communists were bitterly opposed to the campaign to liberate Soviet Jewry and defended state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. But they were marginalized and regarded as pariahs by the Jewish community.

The problem in the US is that the established Jewish leaders decided to ignore these organizations, mistakenly believing that confrontations would be construed as attempts to restrict freedom of expression and would transform the radicals into martyrs.

But the issue of freedom of expression is a red herring. Any Jew is entitled to express his beliefs, no matter how nauseating or deviant such views may appear to the majority. That certainly applies to those arguing in favor or in opposition to settlements. Surely the red lines are being crossed when, as distinct from expressing views, American based organizations claiming to “love” Israel aggressively lobby the US government to pressure it to make concessions that could place lives at risk. To tolerate such groups within the framework of the Jewish community provides them with an aura of respectability to which they are not entitled. Alas, today some of these groups already attend administration briefings on a par with the recognized mainstream organizations.

Furthermore, failure to confront these Israel bashers has already provided the general media with grounds to suggest that American Jewish support of Israel is collapsing. That has certainly encouraged the Obama administration to intensify its pressure on the Netanyahu government. It may also cause some weak-kneed Jews to distance themselves from Israel to avoid confronting a popular American president.

There are even ominous mutterings predicting a possible replay of what transpired during World War II, when fearing a confrontation and bedazzled by president Franklin Roosevelt, Jewish leaders lacked the courage to protest against the indifference of the US government to the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

Now, as never before, when the beleaguered State of Israel confronts Iran, potentially one of the greatest existential threats since its creation, the support of American Jews is crucial.

A united Jewish community should marginalize the anti-Israeli radicals and urge Obama (who received 80 percent of its votes) to stand by commitments made to Israel by previous US administrations in the same manner as the Netanyahu government is obliged to adhere to undertakings made by previous Israeli governments. A strong Jewish stand in this direction could effectively tip the balance in averting a catastrophic major rift between the US and Israel.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post

Gazan terrorists use "horse bombs" in effort to kill Israelis

BBC NEWS  

Israelis 'thwarted Gaza horse bomb attack'

Four Palestinian militants have been killed on Gaza's border as Israeli forces fired at what they said were men and horses carrying explosives. The Israeli military said its forces returned fire at a group including a few men wearing explosive vests and five horses loaded with explosives. [CHILDREN, WOMEN, DONKEYS, NOW HORSES - WHAT WON'T THESE MONSTERS USE TO MURDER ISRAELIS? LLM]  

Israel said the Palestinians opened fire and tried to plant bombs near a crossing on the Gaza-Israel border. Palestinian officials said about 10 gunmen were involved in the incident. The Palestinian health ministry, which is run by the Hamas movement that controls Gaza, confirmed that four fighters were killed in the shooting.  

Israeli forces fired on the militants with machine guns and tanks backed up with combat helicopters, the military said. There were no Israeli casualties in the incident, which took place north of Nahal Oz, the main terminal for transferring fuel into Gaza. [THIS IS WHY CHECKPOINTS CLOSE - STOP THE TERROR, OPEN THE CHECKPOINTS. IT'S SIMPLE. LLM] Nahal Oz and the nearby Karni crossing, used for transferring grain and animal feed, were closed in the wake of the incident.  

It is one of the worst clashes since Israel's three-week operation in Gaza in December and January. Both Israel and the Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, declared unilateral ceasefires in the wake of the fighting. Senior Hamas leader, Ismail Haniya, said the incident was confirmation that Israel's "aggressive intentions" continued, and accused Israel of not respecting the cease fire. [THIS IS NOT, I REPEAT NOT, A JOKE. ISRAEL'S DEFENSIVE FIRE AT TERRORISTS LADEN WITH EXPLOSIVES IS EVIDENCE OF ISRAEL'S AGGRESSION AND FAILURE TO RESPECT THE CEASEFIRE? AND THE BBC REPORTS THIS QUOTE AS A FACT. LLM]  

Although Gaza has been relatively quiet since Israel's three-week offensive against Hamas ended on 18 January, the border is a flashpoint for sporadic violence.  

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8089535.stm Published: 2009/06/08 14:21:22 GMT

Sophie's Choice? Bibi's Choice

Bibi’s Choice 

Posted By James Lewis On June 4, 2009 

Benyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu has a fearful choice to make today, like Sophie in William Styron’s novel Sophie’s Choice (made into a movie with Meryl Streep). 

The young Sophie of Styron’s novel was forced to choose which of her two young children were to be murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. 

I have known real Sophies in my life, among Holocaust survivors. They were literally forced to choose which toddlers to save from death and to single out those who could not be saved. The Nazis sent an estimated 1.2 million Jewish children to be killed in concentration camps, along with thousands of Gypsy and handicapped children. Those choices scarred all the Jews who were forced to be involved for the rest of their lives. 

The nation of Israel was created by all the Sophies and Benyamins of a previous generation to make sure there would be a real choice if another Hitler ever rose again.  Today, Ahmadinejad armed with nukes is about as close to Hitler and the Nazi killing camps as can be imagined. 

So the moment for which the nation of Israel was founded has come. Bibi’s choice is deeply understood by all Israelis across the political spectrum. His defense minister, Ehud Barak, may disagree on a hundred political issues, but not on this one. Barak’s military and family background is almost exactly the same as Bibi’s. 

Bibi’s choice is either to destroy the danger from Ahmadinejad and his fellow Armageddon cultists in Tehran before they get a nuclear bomb, or to hide his head in the sand in the hope that every screamed threat from the Tehran regime for the last three decades was only a bluff. 

The bluff theory is clung to by wishful liberals around the world, including those in the Obama administration. But their necks are not on the line — not yet. The United States will not be within range of Iranian nukes and missiles for several years.

Liberals are evasive by nature; they dodge all the difficult moral questions and love to beat up on real adults who have to face them. They are moral cowards. 

When Jimmy Carter allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to take over Iran in 1979, our diplomats in Tehran were taken hostage for almost a year. That humiliation was enough to defeat Jimmy Carter and bring Ronald Reagan to the presidency. But in the Iran-Iraq war that followed, a million people died. Jimmy Carter still denies any responsibility for that calamity. But had Carter supported the pro-American Shah, a million Iranians and Iraqis would still be alive. 

Presidents have to face such choices. Americans have never held Jimmy Carter accountable for his ignorance, arrogance, and moral cowardice. Jimmy can still twist the history of his administration and most people won’t know the difference. After all, Iran and Iraq are so far away. More Americans know about American Idol contestants than about Iran’s Armageddon cult. But that fact is about to change. With the North Koreans exploding a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb, the American homeland will soon be in reach of rogue nuclear regimes run by madcap dictators. 

Long before the end of the Obama administration we will be facing a realistic prospect of nuclear attack, either by missile, or by intercontinental airplanes, or by other means like some innocent-looking shipping freighter with a nuclear bomb on board. The Iranians will have a nuclear bomb in one to three years. They already have long-range missiles, and they will soon be intercontinental in range. North Korea sells nuclear and missile technology to Iran and Syria. Venezuela and Bolivia are selling uranium to Iran. Nuclear proliferation has not been halted. Rather, it is accelerating as more and more murderous rogue regimes get more powerful weapons. 

Bibi’s choice is coming ever closer. In the Nazi concentration camp Sophie had a choice that was no choice at all: to kill one child or another. Israel was created to make sure there would a genuine choice in the future, a realistic opportunity to choose life and not death for the children of the survivors of the Holocaust. But such choices are never easy. They are never free of risk. They only exist for morally responsible people who do not escape into denial. Bibi Netanyahu is a morally serious person, unlike most politicians in the world — including our own. He has had to face Sophie’s choice in his own life. Netanyahu’s older brother Yonatan was killed while leading the 1976 Entebbe rescue raid by Israeli special forces, after more than 100 civilians were kidnapped by German and Palestinian terrorists and held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. 

Yonatan Netanyahu was the only rescuer killed, because the officers’ ethic in the Israeli Army demands that field officers lead from the front. So Bibi Netanyahu is the child who survived, while his brother Yonatan had to die to save his fellow Jews. If that doesn’t make someone morally serious, nothing will. 

Today Americans are confronted with a choice as well. Historians a century from now may tear out their hair trying to figure out why our voters elected an American Idol contestant as president of the United States at a time of greater danger than we have faced since Stalin exploded his first nuclear device in 1949. 

Barack Obama is not a morally serious person. He’s an ego-tripping, self-indulgent, Chicago politician who’s been able to have it both ways on all the tough choices — both to shut down Guantanamo prison and at the same time to keep it open; to campaign for abortion on demand and yet get credit for being nice to anti-abortion Catholics at Notre Dame; to play footsie with political corruption in Illinois and Washington, D.C., and yet look pure as the driven snow. He’s the darling of the media, and so far they have covered for him. He’s never had to make the hard moral choices like Sophie or Bibi have. 

Just like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, Obama’s biggest talent is dodging responsibility for his own egregious mistakes of commission and omission. Consider the bank bailouts, the take-over of the car companies, the failed effort to prosecute Bush administration lawyers, and the eleven trillion dollars of new debt. With the media playing cover-up for the Obama administration, he can get away with every kind of dodge and blooper. Almost. Until the American people have to start paying attention. 

The North Koreans explode a Hiroshima-sized bomb on May 25. Earlier this month, a new and longer-range Iranian missile was launched. Also this month, Rahm Emanuel issued a warning to Prime Minister Netanyahu not to take action against Iran’s nuclear industry. Today, more than half of Israeli voters want a strike to take out Iran’s nuclear capacity. Last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calls an Iranian nuclear bomb “calamitous.” A lot of Americans are still snoozing. Our liberal media have gone all-out to lull them to sleep since 9/11. That is how Obama was elected. A nation that knows it is at war would have elected John McCain, in spite of his gray hairs.

 Can you hear the clock ticking? 

If not, you are not paying attention. 

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia .com/blog/ bibis-choice/

New Disease discoverd: Jewish Obamapologists

I'll write about the Cairo University speech later.  It was exactly as we feared.  Not only has Israel been thrown under the train, but the train keeps backing up and running over it again and again.

Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen as a Muslim Country, Too

 Would he ever say the US is a Christian country? The overwhelming majority (85%) of Americans are Christian. There are about the same # of Jews as Muslims in the US - would he ever say the US is a Jewish country? In fact, speaking globally, the US has a far greater percentage of the world's Jews than of the world's Muslims (or even of the world's Christians), so would it be more accurate to say the US is a Jewish country?

From NYT political blog

JUNE 2, 2009, 7:39 PM

Obama Says U.S. Could Be Seen as a Muslim Country, Too

By JEFF ZELENY

HAHN, Germany — As President Obama prepared to leave Washington to fly to the Middle East, he conducted several television and radio interviews at the White House to frame the goals for a five-day trip, including the highly-anticipated speech Thursday at Cairo University in Egypt.

In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He sought to downplay the expectations of the speech, but he said he hoped the address would raise awareness about Muslims.

“Now, I think it’s very important to understand that one speech is not going to solve all the problems in the Middle East,” Mr. Obama said. “And so I think expectations should be somewhat modest.”

He previewed several themes and objectives for the speech, which aides said the president intended to tinker with — and rewrite — aboard Air Force One during his 12-hour flight to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“What I want to do is to create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States, but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what’s happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Mr. Obama said.

The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.”

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

The speech on Thursday has many intended audiences, but among them are the young people in Cairo and beyond.

“I think the most important thing I want to tell young people is that, regardless of your faith, those who build as opposed to those who destroy I think leave a lasting legacy, not only for themselves but also for their nations,” Mr. Obama said. “And the impulse towards destruction as opposed to how can we study science and mathematics and restore the incredible scientific and knowledge — the output that came about during centuries of Islamic culture.”

The president is flying Air Force One directly from Washington to Riyadh. The White House press corps — traveling on a chartered United 767 — is refueling in Hahn, Germany.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/obama-signals-themes-of-mideast-speech/?hp 

NYT FAILS MULTIPLE CHOICE TEST

The New York Times

June 2, 2009

Israel and U.S. Can’t Close Split on Settlements

By ISABEL KERSHNER

KFAR TAPUAH, West Bank — Thirty Israeli couples are on a waiting list to move into the Kfar Tapuah settlement, which teems with children on the hilltops south of Nablus. Some on the list grew up here. But there is not an apartment available for sale or rent, or even a stifling trailer to be had.

If Israel built all the housing units already approved in the nation’s overall master plan for settlements, it would almost double the number of settler homes in the West Bank, according to unpublished official data provided to The New York Times. [NOW THERE'S A WAY TO CURE THE SO-CALLED DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEM.  WHENEVER ANYONE NAIVELY REPEATS THE FABRICATED FEAR THAT THERE WOULD SOON BE AN ARAB MAJORITY WITHIN ISRAEL UNLESS IT CARVES ITSELF INTO SMALLER PIECES AND GIVE CHUNKS OF ITSELF TO BLOODTHIRSTY TERRORISTS, EXPLAIN THAT SO LONG AS ISRAEL RETAINS ITS LEGAL AND BIBLICAL LAND - WHICH MEANS INCLUDING THE POPULATION OF THE CURRENTLY DISPUTED TERRITORIES,  THE JEWISH POPULATION WILL BE JUST FINE THANK YOU VERY MUCH.  THIS IS IN ADDITION TO THE FULLY-RESEARCHED AND DOCUMENTED EXPLANATION BY YORAM ETTINGER, MIKE WISE, ROBERTA SEID AND BENNET ZIMMERMAN CONCERNING THE WILDLY PADDED CENSUS OF THE PALARBS. FOR A THOROUGH DISCUSSION OF THE COMPETING DEMOGRAPHIC THEORIES, SEE http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=29  LLM]

The decision of whether to build, and how much, goes to the heart of the tensions between the administrations of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Obama, an unaccustomed and no-budge conflict between Israel and the United States. Washington is standing firm against any additional settlement construction in the West Bank, including what Israel argues is necessary to accommodate what it terms “natural growth.” [LET'S PLAY THE NEW MULTIPLE CHOICE GAME, QUESTION #1 : WHICH IS WORSE, (A) A CULTURE OF TERRORISM AND DEATH OR (B) A CULTURE OF LIVING AND MULTIPLYING?  IT'S CLEAR WHAT THE NYT THINKS IS THE ANSWER. LLM]

That term has been defined vaguely by Israeli officials, meaning for some that settlements should expand to accommodate only their own children. But Mr. Netanyahu, of the conservative Likud Party, made his own wider position clear on Monday. He said that while Israel would not allow new settlements and that some small outposts would be removed, building within the confines of established settlements should go on.

Israel “cannot freeze life in the settlements,” he said, describing the American call as an “unreasonable” demand.

And in fact, whatever the American demands and Israeli definitions, the reality is that no full freeze seems likely.

The issue is, in part, political: Mr. Netanyahu is trying to hold together a fractious coalition, including parties that favor settlement building and oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state. He must contend with an aggressive settler movement, emboldened by support from Israeli governments for decades and determined to continue building, if necessary through unofficial means.

“It is important for the world to know we won’t stop,” said Doron Hillel, 29, the settlement council head and one of the first children born here after it was founded about 30 years ago. “These decrees make things difficult, but they strengthen us. We will continue to build and grow.”

A partial freeze has been in place for several years, but settlers have found ways around the strictures. [NOW WHY IS THERE NO DISCUSSION ABOUT THE BAN ON TERRORISM WHICH THE TERRORIST PAL ARABS HAVE FOUND THEIR WAY AROUND FOR YEARS?  MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION #2 WHICH IS WORSE:  (A) TRAILER HOMES OR (B) TERRORISM? LLM] Twenty trailer homes have been assembled in Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, for young families over the past year. The Samaria Council, which represents settlers in the northern West Bank, has brought in 150 trailers. Thousands of permanent houses have been illegally constructed within existing settlements, and settlers have recently bulldozed new roads through fields to link up the outposts. [HOUSES AND FAMILIES AND ROADS, OH MY! LLM]

Critics argue that successive Israeli governments have turned a blind eye to this construction and that they have contributed more broadly to settlement growth. [AND WHAT OF THE "BLIND EYE" TO ILLEGAL ARAB CONSTRUCTION?  NARY A WORD. LLM]

The settlers’ annual population growth, at 5.6 percent, far outstrips the Israeli average of 1.8 percent. But official data from the Central Bureau of Statistics of Israel shows that while about two-thirds of that is a “natural” increase, as defined by settler births in relation to deaths, one-third stems from migration. There is also a disproportionately high level of state-supported building in the settlements compared with most regions of Israel.  [AND AN ENTIRELY STATE AND GLOBAL-FUNDING OF PALARAB TERRORISM.  MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION #3:     WHICH IS WORSE, (A) BUILDINGS OR (B) BOMBS? LLM]

And many critics of the settlement movement dispute the notion that settlers’ children have an absolute right to continue living in their parents’ settlement.

“A newborn does not need a house,” said Dror Etkes of Yesh Din, an Israeli group that fights for the rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories. “It is a game the Israeli government is playing” to justify construction, he said. [ YESH DIN IS FUNDED BY THE USUAL BAND OF IGNORANT-OF-ISRAEL EURO BLEEDING HEARTS, ANTI-ISRAEL ORGANIZATIONS AND PRIVATE ANTI-ISRAEL DONORS.  "AS WITH OTHER EUROPEAN-FUNDED POLITICAL NGOs BASED IN ISRAEL, YESH DIN IS ONE-SIDED, AND IGNORES PALESTINIAN VIOLATIONS OF ISRAELI HUMAN RIGHTS, INCLUDING TERRORISM" ACCORDING TO NGO MONITOR.  FOR MORE INFO ABOUT YESH DIN, GO TO   http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/_yesh_din_justice_for_all.  LLM ] 

Underlining the competing pressures on Mr. Netanyahu, extremist settlers rioted on Monday in various parts of the northern West Bank, stoning Arab vehicles, burning tires and setting fields alight, according to a witness and the police. They were protesting the government’s recent actions against some tiny outposts ["TINY OUTPOST"?  INTERESTING THAT THEY ARE NEVER DESCRIBED THAT WAY EXCEPT WHEN IT IS TO SUGGEST THAT THE FOAMING-AT-THE-MOUTN, DROOLING ZIONISTS ARE OVERREACTING TO A SLAP ON THE WRIST. LLM]  Several Palestinians were wounded. Six Israeli settlers and a rightist member of Parliament were arrested and later released.

The Israeli population of the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem, has tripled since the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort started in the early 1990s, and it now approaches 300,000. The settlers live among 2.5 million Palestinians in about 120 settlements, which much of the world considers a violation of international law, [NOT THIS CRAP AGAIN - ISRAEL ACQUIRED THE LAND IN A DEFENSIVE WAR, EXACTLY WHICH COUNTRY ON THIS PLANET HAS BEEN REQUIRE TO HAND OVER LAND TO ITS ENEMY WHEN THE ENEMY NOT ONLY LOST THE WAR, BUT STARTED IT AS WELL.  PLUS, THE LAND IN QUESTION WAS NOT PREVIOUSLY  SOVEREIGN TERRITORY - ON BOTH COUNTS  THIS ARGUMENT IS CRAP.  "MUCH OF THE WORLD CONSIDERS" ISRAELI JEWS BREATHING ON THIS LAND A VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW BECAUSE MOST OF THE WORLD EITHER DESPISES ISRAEL OR IS IGNORANT OF THE FACTS OR BOTH.  LLM] as well as in dozens of outposts erected without official Israeli authorization. Israel argues that the settlement enterprise does not violate the law against transferring populations into occupied territories.  [THIS IS THE SHAM OCCUPATION CRAP.  SEE THE PREVIOUS SOVEREIGN TERRITORY COMMENT ABOVE. LLM]

According to the newly disclosed data, about 58,800 housing units have been built with government approval in the West Bank settlements over the past 40 years. An additional 46,500 have already obtained Defense Ministry approval within the existing master plans, awaiting nothing more than a government decision to build. [NU? BUILD! LLM]

The data began to be compiled in 2004 by a retired brigadier general, Baruch Spiegel, at the request of the defense minister at the time, Shaul Mofaz. The Defense Ministry has long refused to make the data public, but it has since been leaked and obtained by nongovernmental groups. Mr. Etkes analyzed the master plans in the Spiegel data, together with a colleague from Bimkom, an Israeli group that focuses on planning and social justice [YEAH, PLANNING AND SOCIAL JUSTICE ONLY IF IT MEANS PLANNING THE DEATH OF ISRAEL AND SOCIAL INJUSTICE.  BIMKOM IS ANOTHER NEW ISRAEL FUND - A/K/A NO ISRAEL FUND - DONEE, THE PURPORTED EXPERTISE OF WHICH IS LAND PLANNING.  THEY ARE ONLY ABOUT PLANNING TO TAKE LAND FROM ISRAEL AND GIVE IT TO THE PALARABS.  ONE OF THEIR OFFICIAL REPORTS "PROVES" THAT THE SECURITY FENCE ROUTE IS SOLELY ABOUT LAND EXPROPRIATION BY ISRAEL AND SECURITY CONCERNS WERE NOT THE DRIVING FORCE.  IF YOU MUST READ ABOUT IT, SEE http://www.almubadara.org/new/edetails.php?id=774. LLM]

Under international pressure, construction in the settlements has slowed but never stopped, continuing at an annual rate of about 1,500 to 2,000 units over the past three years. If building continues at the 2008 rate, the 46,500 units already approved will be completed in about 20 years. [BARUCH HASHEM. LLM]

In Kfar Tapuah, a group of young Israelis who grew up here decided about six years ago that when they married, they would stay. The population has more than doubled since then, to 150 families from 60. Like in other West Bank settlements, nobody counts individuals here: the rate of new births makes that impossible. [WHAT?  SO MANY BABIES NO ONE CAN COUNT THEM?  PLEASE TELL ME THAT WHOLE SENTENCE IS A TYPO.  THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE ANY OCTOMOMS THERE. LLM]

Revitalized from within, the community also attracted young couples from other settlements and from cities in Israel who were seeking a lifestyle that combined relatively cheap suburban comfort with the national-religious ideal of settling the land.

Kfar Tapuah has a reputation as an extremist settlement, having become a base for the followers of the virulently anti-Arab Rabbi Meir Kahane after he was assassinated in 1990. [VIRULENTLY ANTI-ARAB, NOW THAT'S HORRIFYING, BUT DID HE EVER ACTUALLY KILL ANY?  DID HE BLAST A HOLE THROUGH A 5 MONTH OLD BABY'S HEAD JUST BECAUSE SHE WAS A JEW?  OKAY, MULTIPLE CHOISE QUESTION #4: WHICH IS WORSE:  (A) BIG, BOLD SCARY WORDS OR (B) THE INTENTIONAL, PREMEDITATED MURDER OF INFANTS AND OTHER CIVILIANS?  WAIT, JUST THINK, YOU'LL GET IT IN A MINUTE.  OR MAYBE NOT, IF YOU WRITE FOR THE NYT.  LLM]  It now seems overrun by young children. A $150,000 state-of-the-art playground recently went up, a second kindergarten just opened and a third is planned.

“This is our land from the beginning of days,” said Aviva Herzlich, 67, most of whose 10 children and more than 40 grandchildren live in and around the settlement. “We do not have anywhere else.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/world/middleeast/02mideast.html