Say, you know that “apartheid wall” that people keep telling Israel isn’t working, won’t work, can’t work, and needs to be pulled down?

The terrorists say it’s working.

PIJ leader Ramadan Abdallah Shalah was interviewed in Damascus by the Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq. He said that the second intifada was currently characterized by rocket fire , which had replaced the previous stage of suicide bombing attacks. That, he said, was because the enemy [i.e., Israel ] had found ways and means to protect itself from such attacks: “… For example, they built a separation fence in the West Bank . We do not deny that it limits the ability of the resistance [i.e., the terrorist organizations] to arrive deep within [Israeli territory] to carry out suicide bombing attacks , but the resistance has not surrendered or become helpless, and is looking for other ways to cope with the requirements of every stage [of the intifada]…” (Al-Sharq, March 23, 2008 ).

And that wasn’t the only instance. Read the rest.

Lately the Investigative Project has put CAIR under the microscope to show that it isn’t simply a civil rights organization, but rather a front group for terrorist organizations. The latest report shows the criminal activity of a number of former CAIR officials.So now news comes that a CAIR official in Michigan served to funnel funds from Saddam to three congressmen who traveled to Baghdad in 2002 to make a case against invading Iraq. These guys were - whether they knew it or not - Saddam’s stooges.

Michelle Malkin recalls that Stephen Hayes had figured out that Saddam had likely financed the trip back in 2003.

McDermott, Thompson and Bonior were, I suppose, the best politicians Saddam could buy.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

I’m coming a bit late to the discussion about Sen. Obama and “Tony” McPeak.For a good background check out memeorandum.

Of course McPeak’s assertion that the US government couldn’t achieve peace in the Middle East because of the populations of New York and Miami isn’t just a slur. It’s false. I know I’m Jewish and have been greatly opposed to the peace processing (as opposed to peace) over the past 15 years (or more), but there’s no evidence that any American administration has held back because of me or other like minded Jews.

Mere Rhetoric found another Obama adviser with less than favorable view towards Israel, former Amb. Dan Kurtzer. In statements to Ha’aretz, Kurtzer lauded the peacemaking efforts of Pres. Carter and Sec. Baker.

But as Daled Amos pointed out it’s not one or another, it’s (seemingly) all of Sen. Obama’s advisers.

McPeak is not the only member of the Obama campaign who holds such twisted views. Others such as Robert Malley or Zbigniew Brzezinski have found themselves downgraded to “informal” advisers as their anti-Israel views are made public. Samantha Powers was dismissed for calling Hillary a monster, not for sharing McPeak’s belief in the malign omnipotence of the “Israel lobby.”Obama has a Jewish problem and McPeak’s bigoted views are emblematic of what they are.

Jennifer Rubin says similarly,

You see, Obama is not responsible for Reverend Wright or Tony McPeak. But what about Samantha Power, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Robert Malley? Isn’t it reasonable to ask “Why does Barack Obama have so many foreign policy and national security advisers whose statements about Israel and American Jews are problematic? ” Apparently we should not hold him responsible for selecting these individuals, nor attribute any of their views to him. And we shouldn’t be bothered either, I suppose, by his own comment that “nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.”

Marc Aminder (via memeorandum) defends Sen. Obama.

Tony McPeak is an adviser to the Obama campaign, and he is verbose and colorful enough that Obama’s press team likes to use him as a surrogate. McPeak happens to have some very strong opinions, one of them being the clumsily coded belief that New York Jews are responsible for the United States’s locked-in alliance with Israel, which McPeak seems to believe is damaging. To hold Barack Obama personally responsible for McPeak’s views — which is the consequence of an argument that uses McPeak along to make the case that Obama has a Jewish problem — is simply not logical.

“[C]lumsily coded belief?” I think that’s pretty significant. And what’s not logical about it? I don’t remember these revelations about McPeak during the 2004 election, so I don’t how it’s relevant to Howard Dean. (Though Howard Dean has some interesting ideas of his own about Jews.) Nor do I understand how Ambinder compares McPeak’s relationship to Sen. Obama with Rev. Hagee’s to Sen. McCain. One is an adviser, an actual part of a campaign; the other endorses from the outside.

Ambinder does allow that Rev. Wright is a problem though. So wouldn’t the presence of people like Malley or McPeak in the campaign serve to further confirm that Sen. Obama’s choice of pastor wasn’t just careless but also a considered choice?

Finally Ambinder argues that Sen. Obama doesn’t have a Jewish problem because the polls don’t show it.

To close off this post with some substance, Gallup finds that Obama and Clinton are splitting the Jewish vote, hardly evidence that Obama currently has a “problem” with Jews.

Yes, Jews tend to be more liberal than the American population as a whole. Many don’t look at or simply dismiss these charges. That doesn’t mean that Sen. Obama doesn’t have a problem. And that’s all the more reason to make these arguments.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Say, remember when I wrote about a call for revenge by a rabbi that the world media mostly ignored?

“The biggest revenge on the goyim is for them to see how much God loves the people of Israel,” Rabbi Ovadia Yosef said Thursday at a mass memorial service held for the eight victims of last week’s terror attack at the Mercaz Harav rabbinical seminary in Jerusalem.

That was the Shas spiritual leader. And the Chief Rabbi had this to say:

Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said during the ceremony that “we hear calls that are not in line with the way we were brought up. Underground organizations of any kind are unwarranted, according neither to the Halacha nor to any other worldview. The call should be aimed at the government and the prime minister, to do everything so that the killers and their friends are brought to justice, literally.”

Two very important spiritual leaders of the religious Jews of Israel telling their followers that exacting revenge personally is wrong. These statements go almost completely unnoticed by the world press. But these? These go viral.

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of the northern town of Safed and the son of a former chief rabbi of Israel, issued the call in a newsletter distributed to synagogues around the country.

“A country that really cares about its citizens should hang the 10 sons of the terrorist from a high tree,” he wrote, quoting the biblical Book of Esther. The original text referred to the book’s villain, Haman, who plotted to kill all the Jews in Persia before he was foiled.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Eliyahu said he was using the reference as a “metaphor,” but said he supported taking revenge against people who attack Jews. “I don’t apologize for anything and stand behind everything I wrote,” he said.

Tensions already were high before the harsh comments by Eliyahu, a relatively mainstream rabbi.

What a load of crap. Two of the most important rabbis in Israel specifically do not call for revenge, and the press leaps on the case of a much less important rabbi, and pumps it up to make it look like the Israelis are as bloodthirsty as the Palestinians. Moral equivalence and hypocrisy of the highest order are in evidence. And it gets worse, because Rabbi Eliyahu was not calling for personal revenge. He was calling for the state to punish the organizations responsible for the terror attack. But only the Israeli press carries those quotes—not the AP, which is spreading yet another negative story about religious Jews.

“We have to take horrible revenge for the terrorist attack at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva,” Eliyahu said.

“I’m not talking about individual people… I’m talking about the state,” he continued.

“[The state] has to hurt them to the point where they scream ‘Enough,’ to the point where they fall flat on their face and scream ‘help.’

Once again, the AP proves it will go to any lengths to blacken Israel’s name, all the while whitewashing the depravity of the Palestinians, who held all-night celebrations on the night of the terror attack, and gave out candy in honor of the murder of seven teens and a 26-year-old man. Does it mention that in this article? No. Instead, we read this:

There has been a chorus of calls for revenge since the March 6 attack, in which a lone Palestinian gunman entered the library of the Mercaz Harav seminary and opened fire, killing eight young students and leaving a scene of bloodstained holy books before he was shot dead.

Just after the attack, hundreds of Jewish seminarians gathered outside the yeshiva and chanted: “Death to Arabs.” Days later, a group of mourners marched toward the home of the Palestinian shooter, smashing car windows before being stopped by police.

As if this is the equivalent of Palestinians smiling, celebrating, and whooping it up over the murders of children.

I’m beginning to wonder why any Jew would work for the wire services at all.