Sabbath Round-Up

You know those rumors that we’re in the pay of Mossad? [I wish!] Well, I thought I’d keep them afloat with a weekly Sabbath round-up. Given my tendency to tardiness, these collection will no doubt end up being posted some weeks on Monday afternoon, but for this inaugural event, we’re right on time.

Serendipitously, all of these are requests for posting that I received in the last day or so. The Karma Dude at work again.


In France the Muslims were in a rage were having their usual good time as they reacted to the news that France is prohibiting street prayers.

Vlad Tepes had this video about the situation, and a few choice editorial opinions:

[They]demand that Muslims take up arms against the French state while chanting ‘death to Jews’.

Translators note: We found most of what this person was screaming incomprehensible. We translated only what we could actually understand. By now however, I feel readers can translate the Arabic bits for themselves.

Well, if they had their way we’d all be speaking some form of Arabic or other. Might as well get in a little practice, eh?

Q: Whose fault is this?
A: "Death to the Jews!"
Q: What do you think the solution may be?
A: "Death to the Jews!"

See, they have a final solution for everything.

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The Perennial Question: Israel’s Survival

Whether or not Israel can survive is a query posed by her enemies with great hope, and by her friends with an abiding fear that as Israel goes, so goes the rest of the West.

In fact, it is the very idea of Israel as a linchpin, a canary in a coal mine (or whichever metaphor you’d choose) that makes her foes and even some of her frenemies act from within the depths of a primitive fear. They’ll never admit it of course but you can recognize them easily enough by their congenital inability to admire another, by their fundamental philosophy of scarcity, or by that existential anxiety we all have to one degree or another: plain old envy. Part of the human condition is the struggle to find the equipoise between envy and gratitude. Some people, and some cultures, never do.

Joshua Pundit looks at the question of Israel’s situation via Victor David Hanson’s National Review essay on the current danger. Hanson would have it that things are at their worst due to the many mortal enemies around her.

JH responds:

Hanson cites the Islamist regimes in Egypt and elsewhere brought on by the Arab Spring and their growing hostility to Israel, the genocidal influence of Iran and its missile armed proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, Erdogan’s Islamist Turkey, the huge influence of Arab petro-dollars, and the indifference and growing anti-Semitism in much of Europe and the exhaustion and debt of the United States.

In answering these issues, Joshua Pundit posits the past and current realities:

I would remind the eminent historian that Israel has faced far worst and survived. In 1948, the British left Palestine, but not before confiscating as many arms in the hands of Jews as they could find and turning over strategic locations to Israel’s genocidal enemies. In the year leading up to that conflict, the British armed the Arab nations with modern weapons including aircraft and tanks in spite of their open and explicit threats of jihad against Israel’s Jews. In the case of Jordan, the British not only trained the Arab Legion but officered it during the 1948 war and oversaw the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem , led by a Jew hating British Colonel by the name of John Glubb, AKA Glubb Pasha. And this was a mere three years after the liberation of Auschwitz.

The Jews had no aircraft or artillery, and used homemade ‘Davidka’ mortars and improvised armored trucks as ‘tanks’. They were unable to purchase weapons from the United States because President Truman decided to put an arms embargo on both sides, something that affected Israel greatly and the Arabs not at all, since they were able to purchase arms openly from Britain and other European countries, many of whom were unwilling to sell arms to Israel for fear of angering the oil rich Arabs. In one of the ironies of history, a major cache of the arms the Jews used to win their war of independence were Nazi arms left over from the occupation of Czechoslovakia, purchased on the black market.

He reminds us that "the Jews prevailed...without the help of Europe, the United States, or the UN".

Look at the rest of his essay, as he outlines the various threats from Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Hamas and Hezbollah, etc. ad nauseam. And as he realistically assesses the likelihood of help for Israel from anyone else.

Like the rest of us, he sees Iran as the wild card. And truly wild it is. Iran is destitute. Its young are not reproducing; women are turning to prostitution to pay their way. Iran’s oil ‘reserves’ are poorly managed and going fast. It soon will be facing food shortages.

JH says:

Would the ayatollahs risk heavy retaliation by attempting to destroy Israel for Allah? Perhaps. But Iran is not a nuclear power yet - not quite - and a threat to Israel would of necessity be prefaced by a successful nuclear weapons test. The day that happens, look for the Israelis to launch a major pre-emptive strike on Iran shortly afterwards, which could very well include tactical nukes. As I’ve mentioned before, such an attack would likely be facilitated by the Saudis, who long ago lost patience with the feckless Obama Administration’s non-policy on Iran.

The ‘wild card’ aspect of Iran is its suicidal theology, and the Saudis recognize this. If it looks to Iran that all is lost, then they will bring everyone else down with them. Thus, when you’re dealing with a pathological polity, no amount of rational planning will help.

Iran remains the deadly Joker in this pack of jackals.

And I agree with Joshua Pundit’s final analysis:

The fate of the West is bound to that of Israel’s by the iron chains of history.

This fate is one of the reasons that so much of Europe despises Israel while it refuses to accept the reality of those shackles.

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Which brings us to a reminder from Rick Resteroni at Brutally Honest. He says:

I don’t know that you’ll be seeing much of what Abbas said after his UN speech

So I thought I’d bring it to you:

"They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state"

But we should all recognize a Palestinian state.

Carry on.

Heh. Very Heh. Rick knows Abbas said far more, he just doesn’t think anyone will pay much attention. I don’t know about that. Ol’ Abbas got a standing ovation for his diatribe resounding oration when he spoke to the UN General Assembly:

...Abbas accused Israel of employing an "ethnic cleansing policy" in Jerusalem.

"Israel issues building permits to settlers so they can build in occupied Jerusalem, while it keeps confiscating lands in eastern Jerusalem and driving away Palestinians from their ancestral lands," he said in his address.

"Now, after the Arab springs emphasized their desire for liberty, it’s time for a Palestinian spring - the moment of independence," he said. "I do not believe that anyone with a shred of conscience can reject our application for a full membership in the United Nations and our admission as an independent state," Abbas told the General Assembly, which gave him a standing ovation.

"Our people will continue their popular, peaceful resistance," Abbas declared, while slamming Israel’s settlement policy. "This (settlement) policy will destroy the chances of achieving a two-state solution and ... threatens to undermine the structure of the Palestinian National Authority and even end its existence.

"Sixty-three years after the Nakba, I say enough, enough, enough," the Palestinian leader said. "It’s time for the Palestinian people to get their liberty, and for the suffering of millions of Palestinian refugees to end."

Abbas said that the Palestinians "extend our hands to the Israeli government and the Israeli people.

Wow. Just wow. They "extend their hands"?? I say it’s time for Jordan to recognize the Jordanian Palestinians and start making them pay taxes. However, those pacifists, Hamas, have other ideas:

Meanwhile, Hamas said Friday that Palestinians should liberate their land, not beg for recognition at the United Nations, firmly rejecting President Abbas’ quest for statehood. Speaking hours before Abbas was due to ask formally that the UN recognize a Palestinian state, senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said this would not bring independence.

"Our Palestinian people do not beg for a state. ...States are not built upon UN resolutions. States liberate their land and establish their entities," Haniyeh said.

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And now shall we end on a light note? A little group song fest from the UN Choir?



As usual, another gem from Latma TV.

And so we end our inaugural Sabbath round-up. Leave your prayer shawls in the hall.

Mazel tov, y’all.