Friday, June 04, 2010

How Illegal Immigration Is Tearing Apart the Very Fabric of the United States By Benyamin Korn

Source: http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/21276/

June 03, 2010

Can American Jews, who have always embraced ethnic diversity and generous immigration policies, support legislation to curb illegal immigration? Yes, we can -- and we should.

Traditional Jewish support for a liberal U.S. immigration policy has been rooted in two concepts: one practical, one idealistic. The practical is the need to shelter refugees from persecution; the idealistic is our vision of a pluralistic, multiethnic society.

The recent law passed in Arizona, and a similar bill that was proposed in the Pennsylvania House (HB 2479), may not be perfect, but they are broadly consistent with both of these goals.

America -- today a home to all peoples -- opened its doors to successive waves of Jewish immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. German Jews came in the mid-1800s, working their way up from pushcart peddling to creating the likes of Macy's and Bloomingdale's. Russian Jews came in the early 1900s, fleeing tsarist pogroms. The American Jewish community owes its very existence to America's open doors.

The closing of those doors spelled doom for millions. Despite U.S. Jewry's fervent support for President Franklin Roosevelt, it was his administration that refused to admit all but a handful of European Jews fleeing persecution in the 1930s and '40s.

The longest-serving Jewish member of Congress, Emanuel Celler, who fought unsuccessfully to pry open America's doors during the Holocaust, was the one who eventually brought about the abolition, in 1965, of the old "national origins" immigration quotas, which had kept out people whose countries of origin were considered less desirable (i.e., East European Jews and Italian Catholics).

It's vital to keep in mind, however, that what American Jews like Celler were fighting for was legal immigration. They were seeking flexibility within the existing immigration law, and at least temporary shelter for those fleeing persecution.

American law today provides for both. "The U.S. has the highest legal immigration in the world," former New York City Mayor Ed Koch pointed out in a recent column. "Every year, we allow 750,000 immigrants to enter the country legally and make them eligible for citizenship within five years."

As for emergency shelter, any refugee who can demonstrate a "well-founded fear of persecution" in his or her native land qualifies for asylum and eventual U.S. citizenship. Each year, the president sets the maximum number of refugees who can be granted asylum; for 2010, President Barack Obama has set it at 80,000.

Of course, welcoming strangers from around the globe fosters the kind of diverse, multiethnic society that Jews have long advocated. But there has to be limits.

Recent history provides us with a bitter example of what happens otherwise. In 1980, Fidel Castro decided to empty Cuba's prisons and mental-health facilities. An estimated 125,000 Cubans boarded ships in the Mariel Harbor and headed for Florida. President Jimmy Carter let them in. The problem was not that they were Hispanic; the problem was that so many of them were criminals.

Everyone has the right to expect the U.S. government to enforce federal laws against illegal immigration. Only when the federal government proved lax in its administration of existing laws were individual states compelled to act.

Opponents of the Arizona law and the proposed Pennsylvania measure, recalling the racism and anti-Semitism that sometimes marred American society in the past, understandably fear that action against illegal immigration could lead to oppressive racial profiling.

Arizona has already acted to address those fears with a second measure, requiring police to request proof of citizenship only when they are stopping someone suspected of another crime.

Likewise Pennsylvania's HB 2479 states clearly that a police officer can check a suspect's immigration status only if he has arrested him after determining that there is "probable cause" that the person committed a crime. In law, the suspect's race or ethnicity is irrelevant. It is actions that count.

Benyamin Korn, former executive editor of the Jewish Exponent, is director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin and JewsforSarah.com.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies

Source: http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=5958687

LIE #1

Israel was created by European guilt over the Nazi Holocaust. Why should Palestinians pay the price?




Three thousand years before the Holocaust, before there was a Roman Empire, Israel’s kings and prophets walked the streets of Jerusalem. The whole world knows that Isaiah did not speak his prophesies from Portugal, nor Jeremiah his lamentations from France. Revered by its people, Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures 600 times - but not once in the Koran. Throughout its 2,000-year exile there was continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land, with the modern rebirth of Israel beginning in the 1800s. Reclamation of the largely vacant land by pioneering Zionists blossomed into a Jewish majority long before the onset of Nazism.



After the Holocaust, nearly 200,000 Shoah survivors found haven in the Jewish State, created by a two-thirds vote of the UN in 1947. Soon 800,000 Jews fleeing persecution in Arab countries arrived. In ensuing decades, Israel absorbed a million immigrants from the Soviet Union and thousands of Ethiopian Jews. Today, far from being a vestige of European guilt or colonialism, Israel is a diverse, cosmopolitan society, fulfilling the age-old dream of a people’s journey and ‘Return to Zion’- their ancient homeland.



LIE #2

Had Israel withdrawn to its June 1967 borders, peace would have come long ago.




Since 1967, Israel has repeatedly conceded, “land for peace.” Following Egyptian President Sadat’s historic 1977 visit to Jerusalem and the Camp David Peace Accords, Israel withdrew from the vast Sinai Peninsula and has been at peace with Egypt ever since.



In 1995, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel but neither the Palestinians nor 21 other Arab states have done so. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords ceding administrative control of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority(formerly the PLO). The PA never fulfilled its promise to end propaganda attacks and drop the Palestinian National Charter’s call for Israel’s destruction.



In 2000, Prime Minister Barak offered Yasser Arafat full sovereignty over 97% of the West Bank, a corridor to Gaza, and a capitol in the Arab section of Jerusalem. Arafat said NO. In 2008, PA President Abbas nixed virtually the same offer from Prime Minister Olmert. In 2005, Prime Minister Sharon unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. Taken over by terrorist Hamas, they turned dismantled Jewish communities into launching sites for suicide bombers and 8,000+ rockets into Israel proper. In 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu renewed offers of unconditional negotiations leading to a Palestinian State, but Palestinians refused, demanding more unilateral Israeli concessions, including a total freeze of all Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.



LIE #3

Israel is the main stumbling block to achieving a Two-State solution.




The Palestinians themselves are the only stumbling block to achieving a Two-State solution. With whom should Israel negotiate? With President Abbas, who, for four years, has been barred by Hamas from visiting 1.5 million constituents in Gaza? With his Palestinian Authority, which continues to glorify terrorists and preaches hate in its educational system and the media? With Hamas, whose Iranianbacked leaders deny the Holocaust and use fanatical Jihadist rhetoric to call for Israel’s destruction?



Today, it is a simple fact that while the State of Israel is prepared to recognize all Arab States, secular or Muslim, these states adamantly refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish State and demand “the right of return” of five million so-called Palestinian “refugees” – a sure guarantee for Israel’s demise.



LIE#4

Nuclear Israel not Iran is the greatest threat to peace and stability.




Though never acknowledged by Jerusalem, it is generally assumed that Israel has nuclear weapons. But unlike Pakistan, India, and North Korea, Israel never conducted nuclear tests. In 1973, when its very survival was imperiled by the surprise Egyptian-Syrian Yom Kippur attack, many assumed Israel would use nuclear weapons--but it did not. Contrary to public condemnations, many Arab leaders privately express relief that Israeli nuclear deterrence exists. While Israel has never threatened anyone, Tehran’s mullahs daily threaten to “wipe Israel from the map.” The U.S. and Europe can afford to wait to see what the Iranian regime does with its nuclear ambitions. But Israel cannot. She is on the front lines and remembers every day the price the Jewish people paid for not taking Hitler at his word. Israel is not prepared to sacrifice another six million Jews on the altar of the world’s indifference.



LIE #5

Israel is an Apartheid State deserving of International Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns.




On both sides of the Atlantic, church groups, academics and unions are leading deceitful and often anti-Semitic boycott campaigns demonizing what they call the Jewish “apartheid” State.



The truth is that unlike apartheid South Africa, Israel is a democratic state. Its 20% Arab minority enjoys all the political, economic and religious rights and freedoms of citizenship, including electing members of their choice to the Knesset (Parliament). Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have standing before Israel’s Supreme Court. In contrast, no Jew may own property in Jordan, no Christian or Jew can visit Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia.



LIE #6

Plans to build 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem prove Israel is ‘Judaizing’ the Holy City.




Enemies of Israel, exploit this phony issue. Jerusalem is holy to three great faiths. Its diverse population includes a Jewish majority with Muslim and Christian minorities. Since 1967, for the first time in history, there is full freedom of religion for all faiths in Jerusalem. Muslim and Christian religious bodies administer their own holy sites. Indeed, the Waqf is allowed to control Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, even though it rests on Solomon’s temple and is holy to BOTH Jews and Muslims.



Meanwhile, Jerusalem’s municipality must meet the needs of a growing modern city. The unfortunately-timed announcement during U.S. Vice President Biden’s visit of 1600 new apartments in Ramat Shlomo, was not about Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, but for a long established, heavily populated Jewish neighborhood in Northern Jerusalem, where 250,000 Jews live (about the same population as Newark, N.J.) -- an area that will never be relinquished by Israel.



LIE #7

Israeli policies endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.



The charge that Israel endangers U.S. troops in Iraq or the AF-Pak region is an update of the old “stab in the back” lie that Jews always betray their own friends, and the libel spouted by Henry Ford and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that “Jews are the father of all wars.”



U.S. General Petraeus has stated he considers Israel a great strategic asset for the U.S. and that his earlier remarks linking the safety of U.S. troops in the region to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal (which 2/3 of Israelis want) were taken out of context. A resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would benefit everyone, including the U.S. But an imposed return to what Abba Eban called “1967 Auschwitz borders” would endanger Israel’s survival and ultimately be disastrous for American interests and credibility in the world.



LIE #8

Israeli policies are the cause of worldwide anti-Semitism.




From the Inquisition to the pogroms, to the 6,000,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis, history proves that Jew-hatred existed on a global scale before the creation of the State of Israel. In 2010, it would still exist even if Israel had never been created. For example, one poll indicates 40% of Europeans blame the recent global economic crisis on “Jews having too much economic power,” a canard that has nothing to do with Israel.



The unsettled Palestinian-Israeli dispute aggravates Muslim-Jewish tensions, but it is not the root cause. During World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a notorious Jewhater, helped the Nazis organize the 13th SS Division, made up of Muslims. Unfortunately, in addition to respectful references to Jewish patriarchs and prophets, the Koran also contains virulent anti-Semitic stereotypes that are widely invoked by Islamist extremists, including Hezbollah (whose agents blew up the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994), to justify murdering Jews worldwide. The disappearance of Israel would only further embolden violent Jew-haters everywhere.



LIE #9

Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. Goldstone was right when he charged that Israel was guilty of war crimes against civilians.




The Goldstone Report on Israel’s defensive war against Hamas-controlled Gaza, from which 8,000 rockets were fired after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005, is a biased product of the UN’s misnamed Human Rights Council. The UNHRC is obsessed with false anti-Israel resolutions. It refuses to address grievous human rights abuses in Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and beyond.



Faced with similar attacks, every UN member-state including the U.S. and Canada would surely have acted more aggressively than the IDF did in Gaza.



Yet, Richard Goldstone, a South African Jewish jurist, signed a document prepared by investigators whose main qualification was rabid anti-Israel bias. He accepted every anonymous libel against the IDF. But he insisted that hearings in Gaza be televised, guaranteeing that fearful Palestinians would never testify about Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields and their hiding of weapons in mosques and hospitals. Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz denounced Goldstone’s Report as a modern “blood libel” accusing Israeli soldiers of crimes they never committed.



LIE #10

The only hope for peace is a single, bi-national state, eliminating the Jewish State of Israel.




The One-State solution, promoted by academics, is a non-starter because it would eliminate the Jewish homeland. However, the current pressures on Israel are equally dangerous. In effect, the world is demanding that Israel, the size of New Jersey, shrink further by accepting a Three-State solution: a PA state on the West Bank and a Hamas terrorist state controlling 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. All this, as Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, stockpiles 50,000 rockets, threatening northern and central Israel’s main population centers.



In 2010, most Middle East experts believe that the only hope for enduring peace is two states with defined final borders. But too many diplomats, pundits, academics and church leaders ignore the fact that current polls show that while most Israelis favor a Two-State solution, most Palestinians continue to oppose it.









It is up to us to help disseminate the facts about Israel -- to our Nation’s leaders, to world governments, to our media outlets, to all who will listen. Please stand up today and do your part.

 






UNITED STATES

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Vice President Joe Biden

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

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Wednesday, June 02, 2010

As Euro Zone Demonstrates Again, Socialism's Downfall Is Inevitable By Steve McCann

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/535508/201005261831/As-Euro-Zone-Demonstrates-Again-Socialisms-Downfall-Is-Inevitable.aspx

05/26/2010

Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, and it will continue to do so despite the best efforts of the die-hard true believers in the Obama administration and the rest of the world.


The most recent example of this failure: Euro-socialism is presently bankrupting the countries that embraced it in Europe. This will result not only in more social and economic upheaval, but also the ultimate demise of the ill-conceived European Union.


The original and current proponents of socialism fail to take into account one basic but immutable factor: the fundamental nature of the human race. The most dominant trait mankind has, as do all living creatures, is an innate desire to survive and prosper.


While some may willingly choose to pursue subsistence on their own terms, to the vast majority of the human race, the path of least resistance is the most desired. Thus, mankind is susceptible to financial scams, gambling, crime and resentment or violence toward those who may have more.


But above all, people are very open to the concept of a central authority providing them with the means of livelihood.


A secondary characteristic of human race, again shared by other species, is the need by some within the group to conquer or maintain control over their fellow man. Thanks to modern technology and weaponry, gone are the days when a megalomaniac could by sheer force of determination and arms conquer and impose his will on others.


Faustian Deal


The mid-19th century saw the Industrial Revolution and the rise in living standards and education for the populace in Europe. It was during this same period that the advent of socialist-Marxist theory occurred. Those who considered themselves superior to the masses, and in the past may have achieved ruling status through the power of intimidation over the illiterate and unwashed, now had to look to other means to achieve control of the levers of government.


The easiest course to assume this power was to promise, in return for the support of the people, that the state through a new ruling class would provide the citizenry cradle-to-grave economic security. Thus, a Faustian bargain encompassing the desire by the majority for ease of survival and others for the need to rule would be entered into. The populace, having committed itself to this compact, would expect never-ending freedom from adversity.


However, within this arrangement is the seed of its own destruction. For socialism to succeed, it must have an economic underpinning that can provide the foundation for massive social spending. The Soviet Union, as early as the 1920s and '30s, proved that complete state control of the means of production was a colossal failure, as it could not produce sufficient wealth to support the population.


So only the capitalist system, which is anathema to a powerful central government and its attendant oligarchy, can produce sufficient wealth to underwrite a social safety net for the general public and finance the agenda of the governing class.


Capitalism, reflective of that portion of mankind choosing to seek subsistence on its own terms, does by its nature celebrate the success of the individual, not the collective. Individuals, separately or together, driven by the motive of self-enrichment, produce goods or services desired by others. In the process, jobs and wealth are created, thus benefiting society as a whole.


A massive tension exists between those who adhere to central government control and swear fealty to socialist-Marxist philosophy and those who produce the wealth of a nation. The state inherently has more power than the individual, and once the radical element of the ruling class assumes power, government begins an inexorable process of injecting itself into the affairs of the individual and producer class (which is always a minority in any society).


Those who believe they have a manifest destiny to rule and are faithful to socialist tenets have a predisposition to controlling the populace and economic activity through laws, regulations, taxes and intimidation. Despite the lesson of the Soviet Union and its state control of the economy, every new generation of adherents to socialist ideology believes it can make this fallacious philosophy work and maintain its arrangement with the citizenry.


But the reality is that it cannot, as the economic engine of capitalism will not continue to produce wealth if it is increasingly put under the thumb of bureaucrats and central planners inevitably attempting to not only institute state control of the economy, but to also regulate the day-to-day lives of all citizens. The motivation of the producer class will be stifled and members will either drop out, join the dependent class or simply move on to more hospitable countries.


Governments will, as history has shown (most recently in Europe), turn to excessive and unsustainable borrowings and inflation to finance their societal obligations. The contract between the statists and the citizens who were promised cradle-to-grave security cannot be maintained, as the economic underpinning of this arrangement will quickly erode.


Rocky Path


Social and economic chaos resulting in a dramatically lower standard of living must inevitably ensue, and in some cases these conditions will lead to violence or revolution. No amount of promises, demonization of capitalism and seizure of the means of production, confiscatory taxes or printing of money will reinstitute prosperity or security for the populace.


This is the path on which President Obama and his fellow travelers have set the United States.


The Founding Fathers of the United States, one of the greatest confluences of brilliant minds in the history of mankind, understood the basic nature of human beings. They accordingly set forth a form of government and a written Constitution to greatly limit those who seek hegemony over the people, especially those seeking unlimited security from a central government. They recognized that only the individual free to pursue economic happiness would result in a society wherein all would benefit on a sustained basis.


American voters made a grave error in judgment in 2008. But unlike in many other countries in Europe and elsewhere, this mistake can be reversed, as the citizens of the United States do have the governmental structure to allow the country to step back from the precipice that this nation and many others are presently staring into.


But will the general public understand that the socialist path the nation is on is preordained to fail? Will the citizenry change the government before it is too late?


• McCann is a regular contributor to the American Thinker, the electronic magazine where this article first appeared.

Who Is Really To Blame For This Blowout? By Charles Krauthammer

Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/535634/201005271815/Who-Is-Really-To-Blame-For-This-Blowout-.aspx

05/27/2010

 View Enlarged Image

Here's my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place? Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there.


As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama's tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.)


And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.


So we go deep, ultradeep — to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.


There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people?


All spills seriously damage wildlife. That's a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?


Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they've escaped any mention at all.


The other culprits are pretty obvious.


It starts with BP, which seems not only to have had an amazing string of perfect-storm engineering lapses but no contingencies to deal with a catastrophic system failure.


However, the railing against BP for its performance since the accident is harder to understand. I attribute no virtue to BP, just self-interest. What possible interest can it have to do anything but cap the well as quickly as possible? Every day that oil is spilled means millions more in losses, cleanup and restitution.


Federal officials who rage against BP would like to deflect attention from their own role in this disaster. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department's laxity in environmental permitting and safety oversight renders it among the many bearing responsibility, expresses outrage at BP's inability to stop the leak, and even threatens to "push them out of the way."


"To replace them with what?" asked the estimable, admirably candid Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander.


No one has the assets and expertise of BP.


Government Impotence


The federal government can fight wars, conduct a census and hand out billions in earmarks, but it has not a clue how to cap a one-mile-deep out-of-control oil well.


Obama didn't help much with his finger-pointing Rose Garden speech in which he denounced finger-pointing, then proceeded to blame everyone but himself.


Even the grace note of admitting some federal responsibility turned sour when he reflexively added that these problems have been going on "for a decade or more" — translation: Bush did it — while, in contrast, his own interior secretary had worked diligently to solve the problem "from the day he took office."


Really? Why hadn't we heard a thing about this? What about the September 2009 letter from Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration accusing Interior's Minerals Management Service of understating the "risk and impacts" of a major oil spill?


When you get a blowout 15 months into your administration, and your own Interior Department had given BP a "categorical" environmental exemption in April 2009, the buck stops.


In the end, speeches will make no difference. If BP can cap the well in time to prevent an absolute calamity in the Gulf, the president will escape politically.


If it doesn't — if the gusher isn't stopped before the relief wells are completed in August — it will become Obama's Katrina.


That will be unfair, because Obama is no more responsible for the damage caused by this than Bush was for the damage caused by Katrina.


But that's the nature of American politics and its presidential cult of personality: We expect our presidents to play Superman. Helplessness, however undeniable, is no defense.


Moreover, Obama has never been overly modest about his own powers.


Two years ago next week, he declared that history will mark his ascent to the presidency as the moment when "our planet began to heal" and "the rise of the oceans began to slow."


Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn't be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.