Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Videos of the Day Roundup

The well done Eights Days of Chanuka -- NBN video.


Palestinian Authority TV slanders Israel (surprised? pathetic)


So glad I'm neither a West Coast OR East Coast Jew...


So glad I don't have hashkafic problems about science and Orthodoxy.


Glad I'm not flying with my kids in the USA anytime in the near future

TSA Screener Accosting 3 Year Old Child at Security Checkpoint from RonPaul Fan on Vimeo.






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Monday, November 15, 2010

Israel's "Best Friend" Provided Safe Haven to Nazis

As Israel is pressured by its best friend to relinquish sovereignty over its capital city of Jerusalem and the West Bank, sordid details are emerging of how the US provided safe haven for Nazis.
The 600-page report, written in 2006 and which the US Justice Department has tried to keep secret ever since, describes what it calls Washington's "collaboration with persecutors".

Agents from the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations (OSI) found that war criminals "were indeed knowingly granted entry" to the US, even though government officials were aware of their pasts, the report concluded.

"America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became – in some small measure – a safe haven for persecutors as well."
Read it all at the Daily Telegraph.

Remember, countries don't have friends they have "interests"...and the interest of any country, including democracies, can change based on new administrations.

Maybe Palestinian terrorists will be given "safe haven" in the US as well?

Just a thought.


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Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Soul of America is on the Line

If there were any people that thought the massive loss of Congress would give the Obama a pause in whether the people of the US approved His actions and philosophies, they can remove all those mistaken assumptions right now.

Let’s forget for a minute that the Obama is asking for an additional freeze.

Let’s instead consider His open threats.

Obama is telling Israel, that if Israel doesn't continue the freeze for another 90 days and fully comply to His wishes, the Obama administration will give orders to do the following:

1. The US will not veto any unilateral acts by the “Palestinians” in the UN.

2. The US will not veto any UN resolution that denies Israel the right to self-defense.

3. The US will not veto any UN resolutions that denies Israel the right to exist.

4. The US will not oppose any of these above efforts or actions in the UN Security Council and other UN forums either.

Well congratulations America. The Obama has just lined up the United States with all the third world, repressive, dictatorial countries such as Syria, Libya, Iran, and others that routinely attack Israel and America as well.

Can you imagine that?

Where once the United States was a beacon of democracy, and known for standing up for what was right, in just two years the Obama will have dragged the country down to what is probably the lowest moral point in its history.

The Obama has given notice that he will allow all these third world countries unbridled permission and US support to attack the only true, functioning democracy in the Middle East.

The Obama has said that the defense of a fellow democracy is negotiable and on the chopping block.


Bibi, call Him out. Openly take this to Congress and the Senate.

This is Obama's personal war against the Jewish state of Israel.

The Jewish people have friends in Congress and the Senate, and when the Obama pulls a stunt like this, they won’t take it lying down - if they see we won't take it lying down either.

People of America - WAKE UP.

Write your Senators and Congressman. Call their offices. Take just a minute of your time and take an action.

The bottom line is that Israel shares America's democratic principles and values, and if you let the Obama get away with this without doing so much as making a phone call or writing an email, then you will be as guilty of destroying the moral standing of the United States and the security of Israel, as the Obama is.

This is your battle too, and all you need to do is make a phone call or send an email.

The soul of America is on the line.

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Stop mailing us stuff before January

Dear Friends and Family,

Starting January 2011, the Israeli Post Office will be taxing recipients of packages from overseas a minimum NIS 38 fee (over $10) on all packages we receive through the mail.

It doesn't matter how small or cheap the package is you send, the initial tax begins at NIS 38.

If the package you send is more expensive, that tax will be even higher.


Unfortunately, this is not a joke, but abuse of the Israeli citizen.

We ask that everyone sending us packages please ensure they arrive before 2011, as after that date we have no interest in having to pay this harassment tax.


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The Arabs get an upgrade

No longer does just Israel exclusively share that special relationship with the US.

“This figure underscores the strong determination of the American people and this administration to stand with our Palestinian friends even during difficult economic times,” declared US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in announcing the aid, which was taken from the $200 million the Obama administration plans to allocate to the PA in 2011."

Under the Obama regime, the "Palestinians" have been upgraded to "friends" of the US. That kind of makes a mockery out of it when they say the same about Israel.

Palestinian Friends of the US expressing their friendship.


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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Rant of the Day (There's Someone on the Wing!!)

There was a time when I used to post all sorts of stories like the upcoming one. I wonder how many readers remember my infamous Manila posts, my rant about a certain restaurant in London, the origin of the Muqata Wafflemaker or Elvis the Drug Dealer...

Regardless, I don't rant everyday but its time to let off some steam.

Last time I flew to India for business, I brought all my food with me. Not that there's so much Kosher food to eat in India to begin with, but I brought everything: cereal, boxed milk, tuna-fish, pitot, a bunch of manachama (manot chamot) [just add hot water for an instant meal], and bottled water.

I sparingly ate every meal knowing that there was no margin of error, and I didn't want to get stranded without any Kosher food.

After a few days, it was time to fly home to Israel, via London and I was thrilled that I'd have a "normal" kosher meal on the plane, even if it was "airline food".

During check-in, I double checked to ensure that my kosher meal was in fact reserved, and I'd be receiving it on my flight. All was in order.

Luckily for me, this leg of the trip was in business class and I sat in the upper deck of the plane (you'll soon see why this factoid is important for the story)

About 30 minutes into the flight, the stewardess (air-hostess? what's the proper politically correct term?) came by and reassured me that my kosher meal would be ready shortly. My stomach growled in anticipation -- I guess there's something about flights that makes one hungrier than usual, and having spent the week rationing my food, I was famished.

Meal service began.

Meals were given out one at a time, as I hungrily looked on in anticipation...one more minute...and I'd have "normal" food for the first time in a week.

And then, the stewardess smiled and presented my meal to me.

A linen napkin covered tray with steaming hot food, smiled at me.

"Excuse me," I said, "I ordered a Kosher meal."

"This is a Kosher meal," stated the stewardess, as she smiled and pointed to a piece of paper written in Hebrew, Yiddish and English which was neatly lying on the tray.

Shaking my head in hungry disbelief I asked, "didn't you see that the entire tray was wrapped in plastic, with big red letters on it, "ONLY TO BE OPENED BY THE PASSENGER", and that the hot dish of the meal had the same warning on it?"

The stewardess smiled back, "This is India. They didn't want you to feel bad that your meal looked different than everyone else's, so food services opened up your meal, and we heated it up with everyone's food, so you wouldn't feel different than everyone else ."

It took a minute for all this to sink in.

"Do you know that I'm not able to eat this now?" I asked?

The stewardess sighed.

I asked her if she could look out the window of the airplane for a second, and if she could read what it said in big letters on the wing.


"DO NOT WALK OUTSIDE THIS AREA," she read from the wing.

"Exactly!", I said, "Maybe...just maybe someone in the India ground crew thought the wing would 'feel bad,' and walked all over the wing. After all, you can walk on other parts of the airplane, but not that specific part of the wing, and we wouldn't want the wing to feel differently, would we? Even though there's a clear warning on it, how do we know that no one walked all over it?"

The stewardess nodded her head seriously and said, "You're absolutely right. Would you like anything else to eat?"

She managed to find me some fruit and a coke.

Ten minutes later I was surprised when a member of the cockpit crew, perhaps the Captain or Co-pilot walked over to me.

He bent down to talk to me and in a very serious voice said, "We radioed back to Bangalore airport. Apparently, the person you saw walking on the plane's wing was a fuel technician, and he is specially trained where he is allowed to walk on the wing, and where not to walk."

I stared at him in disbelief.

"I didn't say I saw someone walking on the wing," I blurted out, "I was trying to make a point by the comparison of my meal to the wing, and how instructions should be listened to..."

The cockpit officer gave me a puzzled look, and said, "I thought you would be happy to know that the person you saw on the wing knew where he was allowed to walk."

"Thank you," I said, "I'm very relieved now," and he turned around going back into the cockpit.

No one seemed to "get it."

And why am I reminded of this now?

I'm going back to India soon, and needed to apply for a visa. The procedure required that I provide my current and expired Israeli passports, as well as my US passport to the Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv.

Now, my US passport was very recently issued and is therefore a "USA Electronic Passport". You can tell from the weird symbol underneath the "United State of America"that this is a genuine electronic passport.

The exciting features of an electronic passport include some of the following (but isn't limited to)...

* Securely stored biographical information and digital image that are identical to the information that is visually displayed in the passport;

* Contactless chip/RFID technology that allows the information stored in an Electronic Passport to be read by special chip readers at a close distance; and

* Digital signature technology that is used to verify the authenticity of the data stored on the chip. This technology is commonly used in credit cards and other secure documents using integrated circuits or chips.

Sounds great, right?

Located on the inside back cover (where the electronics are located) is a message in clear, bold, block letters:

THIS DOCUMENT CONTAINS SENSITIVE ELECTRONICS:
FOR BEST PERFORMANCE, DO NOT BEND, OR PERFORATE,
OR EXPOSE TO EXTREME TEMPERATURES


Imagine my surprise when I received my Israeli passport with the new visa to India in it and all my other passports...AND THEY WERE ALL STAPLED TOGETHER BY THEIR BACK COVERS.

The "do not perforate" rule doesn't apply to India...(after all, you wouldn't want your passport to "feel bad" that other passports can be perforated, and not new US electronic passports...so who cares what it says...who cares if it ruins the electronics?)

Will this affect the validity of my US passport, now that it has 7 pairs of staple marks in the back cover, probably ruining all the high tech invested in it?

Probably not yet, but I doubt the friendly people in TSA will care or even believe me when I say, "it's not my fault, the Indian embassy in Tel-Aviv did it," as they drag me off to one of those newfangled full body naked scanners.

PS: My travel agent informed me today that the airline I'm flying on from India to London leg of my trip, no longer offers Kosher meals when leaving India. I guess following directions proved to be impossible...



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Photo of the Day: Certified Kosher


(And extra crunchy as well)


hat-tip: JoeSettler

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Tuesday, November 09, 2010

PA Arrests "Divine" Blogger

Talk about close to home -- the GodolHador of Qalqiliya has been arrested by Palestinian Authority security forces. The PA News service, Maan, reports:
QALQILIYA (Ma’an) -- Residents of a conservative northern West Bank city were surprised when security forces detained a controversial blogger whose postings on Facebook had infuriated Muslims.

A high-ranking source in the general Palestinian intelligence services told Ma’an that the detainee, who was not identified, was arrested in Qalqiliya. He refused to give specific details and would not identify the detainee. However, Ma’an has learned from other security sources that the man “who claimed divinity” is a 25-year-old university student.

The sources say security services have pursued the man for more than two months until they finally caught him at an internet café in Qalqiliya while updating his Facebook profile on which he claimed he was God and that he was angry with his subjects.

Conservative Muslims had been angrily following the blogger's postings, many of them altered verses from the Koran, the Muslim holy book, as well as caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that had been published in Danish newspapers. Hundreds of Facebook groups had asked that the man's account be deleted. After Facebook closed his group, the young man started a blog, Enlightenment of Reason.

Although he had not been identified by the PA, supporters of the blogger have indicated that he is 26 years old. He has identified himself as Waleed Al-Husseini and, in an August blog post, defended his beliefs.

"Muslims often ask me why I left Islam," he wrote. "What strikes me is that Muslims can’t seem to understand that renouncing Islam is a choice offered to everyone and that anyone has the right to do so. They believe anyone who leaves Islam is an agent or a spy for a Western State, namely the Jewish State, and that they get paid bundles of money by the governments of these countries and their secret services. They actually don’t get that people are free to think and believe in whatever suits them."

He added: "I would like to emphasize that by writing this article, I did not mean to imply that Christianity or Judaism were better than Islam, and the reader should not fool himself into thinking that I only reject Islam among religions, all of which are to me a bunch of mind-blowing legends and a pile of nonsense that compete with each other in terms of stupidity.

Although secular political beliefs are not uncommon in the occupied Palestinian territories, the expression of views seen as hostile to the dominant religion is viewed by many as incitement rather than free speech."
Arabs following my blog seem to feel the same way about the following statement as it sort of describes me rather well:
The positions taken by the blogger were so out of the mainstream that many in Qalqiliya were surprised to learn that he was Palestinian.
OK, so I'm not Palestinian...

The article claims there's now a support Facebook group for the blogger: "In Solidarity With Waleed Al-Husseini," that states "Criticizing religions is pretty much allowed in countries with Muslim majority; people publically criticize Christianity and Judaism in mosques, published books, national and pan-Arab TV stations, and even in public schools. It's criticizing of Islam that is only not allowed." However, I haven't found a link to it yet.

The post added: "Allowing such action is not only double standard, but a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It also could make a dangerous precedent that may open the door for further persecution, than already is, for irreligious and other religious minorities in societies with major Muslim population."

Moral of the story: This is just a sampling of what we can expect to see in the budding pseudo-State of the Palestinian Authority.

...And blog under a different name.


h/t: David H.


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Movie Review: New Turkish Blockbuster Libels Israel

In one of the highest budget films ever made in Turkey (over 10 millions dollars), "Valley of the Wolves: Palestine," inspired by the May 31 Mavi Marmara Terror-flotilla ship, will hit theaters in November in about 100 countries around the world.

Movie Trailer: Subtitled into English


The childish plot depicts a "Delta-Squad" of elite Turkish commandos arriving in Israel to "take revenge" for the deaths of the Flotilla terrorists, killed by IDF soldiers. Their "target" is an eye-patched Israeli officer, Moshe Ben Eliezer, who "planned and managed the raid" of the Mavi Marmara. Of course, many people planned it, but why let facts get in the way of a pathetic Turkish film?

Further departing from reality, the movie shows scenes from aboard the Marmara, with IDF naval commandos firing automatic live gunfire at the helpless peace activists.

The film is one big libel scene from start to finish, and is typical of new winds of Jihad and anti-Zionism blowing through Turkey.

With friends like Turkey, who needs Hamas?

This film rates zero cups of Turkish Coffee, on the Muqata Film Scale.




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