Author: david bancroft

Born in and raised in Philadelphia, PA, USA

Tarek Fatah Talk at ideacity 2011

Truly Compelling



This is serious stuff. We have the same
problem, perhaps worse in the US. Listen to the
end.  

This Democrat made a powerful presentation to his Canadian audience.

This is a very powerful presentation from an Indian Muslim who is from Pakistan.  If this does not get your attention,
nothing will!!!!

Notice no TelePrompTer!!


http://www.livestream.com/ideacity/video?clipId=flv_fd017d81-dc18-42cc-821a-18b86fdea840

If you never watch another video, please watch this one.  The
speaker is an Indian Muslim who is warning us to wake up.  He has tremendous
courage and pulls no punches on what is happening with Islamic fascism.  Make
sure you listen to the end of the tape where he says we now have three members
of the Muslim Brotherhood in the White House (and names them).

He is elderly and in a wheel chair recovering from cancer treatments – perhaps that’s
why he has the courage to speak out.  This is probably one of the most important
messages of our day.

Palestinians won’t accept vote delay on UN bid

So the Palestinians will not accept a delayed vote according the Associated Press.  They will DICTATE this requirement to the U.N.? This is ridiculous.  They have no authority to tell the U.N. what it must do.  Is there an implied threat?  “Give us what we want or we will go to war.”  This entire United Nations event is simply another behavior problem.  Like Khrushchev and Arafat they think they can boss the world.

Israel, with a population of less than 8 million people, in an area the size of New Jersey must confront huge nations with money and manpower.  Other than the United States they have no one to turn to for support.  How sad our world is.

Is Israel Over?

From Newsweek magazine

 Sep 11, 2011 11:00 AM EDT
 
Author Benny Morris

No longer the liberal, democratic, egalitarian society it once was, Israel is fighting the Arabs—and itself.

Israel is under assault. On Sept. 20 the Palestinian Authority plans to unilaterally declare statehood and go to the United Nations for recognition. This is a rejection of all efforts for a peaceful compromise. In its wake will come waves of Palestinian violence. And yet this is just the latest manifestation of an embattled Israel that is being threatened from the outside—by Muslim Arab states and societies, Egyptians storming the Israeli Embassy, a nuclear-arming Iran (with its local sidekicks, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hizbullah in Lebanon), and a besieged President Bashar al-Assad in Syria—and from the inside by domestic upheaval that led to the largest mass protests in the country’s history.

More than 50 years ago, Israel’s leaders, headed by David Ben-Gurion, believed and hoped that they were creating a social democracy, with all the requisite egalitarian accoutrements (socialized national health care, progressive income tax, child benefits, subsidized cheap housing). Ben-Gurion, who owned almost nothing and retired to a primitive hut in the Negev Desert, typified the austere lifestyle, and greatness, of the state’s founders.

This is no longer Israel. A profound, internal, existential crisis has arrived. It stems in part from the changing nature of the country, more right wing, more restrictive, far less liberal, and far less egalitarian. Many moderate Israelis fear the country is heading for ruin. Indeed, the country’s ruling class, including Benjamin Netanyahu and his predecessors Ehud Olmert (now on trial for corruption) and Ehud Barak (a former head of the Labor Party and current defense minister), live in opulence, and the feeling is that they are out of touch with reality. In Tel Aviv, where some 350,000 gathered in protest, a widespread chant, set to a popular children’s ditty, was “Bibi has three apartments, which is why we have none.”

 

Tent cities popped up as the demonstrators—20- to 45-year-olds, with a healthy contingent of older people—rallied against nonprogressive taxation, low wages, and the high cost of housing and consumer goods, which have made it nigh impossible for families to make ends meet. A full 20 percent of Israelis (and 15 percent of Israeli Jews) live under the poverty line, and the top decile of Israel’s population earns 31 percent of the country’s total net income. The lowest decile earns a mere 1.6 percent. Last year Israel was elected to membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the world’s 32 most-developed countries. Among them, Israel ranks as one of the worst (alongside Mexico and the United States) in terms of wealth polarization.

Israel suffers from a steady brain drain, with tens of thousands of university graduates and wannabe academics moving abroad for lack of adequate positions or pay. Berlin has a community of more than 10,000 young Israelis, many of them working in the arts, who found creativity in Israel impossible. In a recent interview, one film director said that in Israel her energies were spent on making commercials and fashion trivia in order to subsist; Berlin enabled her to pursue her passion. In Tel Aviv, kindergartens charge $700 to $1,000 per child per month; in Berlin, the cost is $120; a kilo of cucumbers costs $1 in Tel Aviv, half that in Berlin.

In the 1950s, Israel was an under-developed country filled with ideologically motivated Zionists willing to sacrifice for the collective good. Today’s Israel has a burgeoning economy, driven by sophisticated and internationally competitive high-tech industries, and a population driven mainly by individuals who want the good life. They see that too much of the national pie goes both to the West Bank settlers (who tend to be religious and ultranationalist) and to the ultra-Orthodox (who contribute almost nothing to the economy and avoid mandatory military service).

Worse, this hard-core contingent is making babies at a rapid clip; they tend to have five to eight children per family, versus two to three children in secular homes. This gives them disproportionate clout in Parliament. And that translates into political power—and economic benefits. (Paradoxically, the ultra-Orthodox remain the poorest sector in Israeli Jewish society, mainly because most of them don’t work.)

The other side of the coin: Israel’s own Arab minority is emerging as a potential major problem, too. The Israeli Arab landscape is increasingly dominated by minarets and veiled women; and its leaders, identifying with their Palestinian cousins outside, vociferously call for Israel to shed its character as a “Jewish state” and give its Arab citizens collective minority rights and perhaps some form of autonomy.

Israel is a deeply troubled democracy. A democracy it still is, for its citizens—both Jewish and Arab. But Israel is no democracy when it comes to the semi-occupied 2.5 million Arabs of the West Bank and the 1.5 million semi-besieged Arabs of the Gaza Strip. And all this is now congealing.

Since the West Bank and Gaza were conquered in 1967, successive Israeli governments have failed to fully withdraw from them, either unilaterally or with a peace deal. The Arabs may have been largely at fault—in 2000 Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat turned down an Israeli offer to withdraw from 95 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip—but Israel retains its stranglehold over these people and continues to expand its settlement enterprise.

Now there looms the even greater threat of resurgent Islam, not just within Israel’s borders or the Palestinian territories, but across the region, where it is spreading like a brushfire. Many in the West have taken heart from the so-called Arab Spring, viewing the upheavals as heralds of democratic transformation. Israelis are less optimistic. The Islamist message that is coming out of Ankara, and moving to center stage in Cairo, includes a hard core of anti-Zionism usually accompanied by anti-Semitic overtones. (Egypt’s deposed president Hosni Mubarak is now denounced as a “stooge of the Zionists.” A photo of Netanyahu, dressed in an SS uniform, with a Hitler mustache, making the Nazi salute, appeared on the cover of the popular Egyptian weekly October on Aug. 28. Inside, the journal carried an article called “The New Nazis”—and it isn’t even an Islamist publication.)

Netanyahu is creating a series of bureaucratic salves for the country’s economic ills. But they will be swamped, and rendered irrelevant, in the tide of Palestinian activism and anti-Zionism that will be set off by the Palestinian statehood bid. It will then trigger shock waves around the Arab and Islamic worlds. Months ago, Ehud Barak predicted that Israel will face a “political tsunami.” Here it comes.

Morris is an Israeli historian.

What is your opinion?

Ahmadinejad lashes out at Israel

From the Los Angeles Times

RAMIN MOSTAGHIM REPORTING FROM TEHRAN

Establishment of an in­dependent Palestinian state would not stop efforts to wipe out Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahma­dinejad said Friday.

Palestinians are ex­pected to present a petition to the United Nations Gen­eral Assembly next month I for full U.N. membership, which would confer interna­tional recognition of an inde­pendent state. The United States is seeking’to block any action on the bid.

Creation of a Palestinian state would not satisfy those intent on “annihilating” Israel, Ahmadinejad said, speaking at Iran’s annual Quds Day rally in support of the Palestinian cause.

“Do not think that your existence will be recognized with the recognition of the Palestinian state,” the Irani­an president said, address­ing Israel.

“You have no place in our region and among our na­tions, and you will not be able to continue your ignominious life on even a small part of the Palestinian terri­tories.”

Ahmadinejad also re­newed his previous charac­terizations of the Holocaust during World War II’ as a “lie.”

Tens of thousands of Ira­nians marched Friday in Tehran for Quds Day events; some observers said the crowds were smaller than those of last year.

Authorities provided free bus and subway rides for at­tendees.

Mostaghim is a special correspondent.

Norway says Terrorism Against Israel is Justified

With galling Chutzpah, Norway’s Ambassador to Israel has suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway!

Alan Dershowitz responds…
 

Is Terrorism Against Israel Really More Justified Than Terrorism Against Norway?

July 28, 2011 at 4:30 pm

In a recent interview, Norway’s Ambassador to Israel has suggested that Hamas terrorism against Israel is more justified than the recent terrorist attack against Norway. His reasoning is that, “We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel.” In other words terrorism against Israeli citizens is the fault of Israel. The terrorism against Norway, on the other hand, was based on “an ideology that said that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is foregoing Norwegian culture.” It is hard to imagine that he would make such a provocative statement without express approval from the Norwegian government.

I can’t remember many other examples of so much nonsense compressed in such short an interview. First of all, terrorism against Israel began well before there was any “occupation”. The first major terrorist attack against Jews who had long lived in Jerusalem and Hebron began in 1929, when the leader of the Palestinian people, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, ordered a religiously-motivated terrorist attack that killed hundreds of religious Jews-many old, some quite young. Terrorism against Jews continued through the 1930s. Once Israel was established as a state, but well before it captured the West Bank, terrorism became the primary means of attacking Israel across the Jordanian, Egyptian and Lebanese borders. If the occupation is the cause of the terror against Israel, what was the cause of all the terror that preceded any occupation?
 
I was not surprised to hear such ahistorical bigotry from a Norwegian Ambassador. Norway is the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel country in Europe today. I know, because I experienced both personally during a recent visit and tour of universities. No university would invite me to lecture, unless I promised not to discuss Israel. Norway forbids Jewish ritual slaughter, but not Islamic ritual slaughter. Its political and academic leaders openly make statements that cross the line from anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism, such as when Norway’s former Prime Minister condemned Barak Obama for appointing a Jew as his Chief of Staff. No other European leader would make such a statement and get away with it. In Norway, this bigoted statement was praised, as were similar statements made by a leading academic.
 
The very camp that was attacked by the lone terrorist was engaged in an orgy of anti-Israel hatred the day before the shooting. Yet I would not ever claim that it was Norway’s anti-Semitism that “caused” the horrible act of terrorism against young Norwegians.
 
The causes of terrorism are multifaceted but at bottom they have a common cause: namely a belief that violence is the proper response to policies that the terrorists disagree with. The other common cause is that terrorism has often been rewarded. Norway, for example, has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism against Israel, while punishing Israel for its efforts to protect its civilians. While purporting to condemn all terrorist acts, the Norwegian government has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism as having a legitimate cause. This clearly is an invitation to continued terrorism.
 
It is important for the world never to reward terrorism by supporting the policies of those who employ it as an alternative to reason discourse, diplomatic resolution or political compromise.
 
I know of no reasonable person who has tried to justify the terrorist attacks against Norway. Yet there are many Norwegians who not only justify terrorist attacks against Israel, but praise them, support them, help finance them, and legitimate them.
 
The world must unite in condemning and punishing all terrorist attacks against innocent civilians, regardless of the motive or purported cause of the terrorism. Norway, as a nation, has failed to do this. It wants us all to condemn the terrorist attack on its civilians, and we should all do that, but it refuses to live by a single standard.
 
Nothing good ever comes from terrorism, so don’t expect the Norwegians to learn any lessons from its own victimization. As the Ambassador made clear in his benighted interview, “those of us who believe [the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel] will not change their minds because of the attack in Oslo.” In other words, they will persist in their bigoted view that Israel is the cause of the terrorism directed at it, and that if only Israel were to end the occupation (as it offered to do in 2000-2001 and again in 2007), the terrorism will end. Even Hamas, which Norway supports in many ways, has made clear that it will not end its terrorism as long as Israel continues to exist. Hamas believes that Israel’s very existence is the cause of the terrorism against it. That sounds a lot like the ranting of the man who engaged in the act of terrorism against Norway.
 
The time is long overdue for Norwegians to do some deep soul searching about their sordid history of complicity with all forms of bigotry ranging from the anti-Semitic Nazis to the anti-Semitic Hamas. There seems to be a common thread.

SHITTY LITTLE COUNTRY

The  Middle East has been growing date palms for  centuries. The  average tree is about 18-20 feet tall and yields about 38 pounds of  dates a year.


Israeli date  trees are now yielding 400 pounds/year and are short enough to be  harvested from the ground or a short  ladder.

 

Israel the  100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world’s population,  can lay claim to the following:

The  cell phone was developed  in Israel by    people working  in the Israeli branch  of Motorola, which has its largest development center  in Israel.




Most  of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed  by Microsoft –  Israel.

The  Pentium MMX Chip technology was designed in  Israel  at  Intel.

Both  the Pentium – 4 microprocessor and the Centrino processor were entirely  designed, developed and produced in  Israel.

The  Pentium microprocessor in your computer was most likely made  in Israel.

Voice  mail technology was developed  in Israel.

Both  Microsoft and Cisco built their only R&D facilities outside the US  in Israel.

The  technology for the AOL Instant Messenger ICQ was developed in 1996 by four  young Israelis.


Israel has  the fourth largest air force in the world (after the U.S, Russia and  China). In addition to a large variety of other aircraft, Israel’s air  force has an aerial arsenal of over 250 F-16’s. This is the largest fleet  of F-16 aircraft outside of the U.  S.


Israels $100  billion economy is larger than all of its immediate neighbors  combined.


Israel has  the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita.

According  to industry officials, Israel  designed the  airline industry’s most impenetrable flight security. US officials now  look (finally) to Israel  for advice on  how to handle airborne security  threats.

Israel has  the highest ratio of university degrees to the population in the  world.

Israel produces  more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin  – 109 per 10,000 people — as well as one of the highest per capita rates  of patents filed.

In  proportion to its  population, Israel has the  largest number of startup companies in the world.

In  absolute Israel has  the largest number of start-up companies than any other country in the  world, except the U.S. ! (3,500 companies mostly in  hi-tech).

With  more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups,  Israel has the  highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world — apart from the  Silicon Valley, U.S.

Israel is ranked #2 in the  world for venture capital  funds right behind the  U.S.

Outside  the United States and Canada, Israel has the largest number of NASDAQ  listed companies.

Israel has  the highest average living standards in the Middle  East.

The  per capita income inIsrael in 2000 was  over $17,500, exceeding that of the  UK.

On  a per capita basis, Israel has the  largest number of biotech startups.

Twenty-four  per cent of Israel’s workforce  holds university degrees, ranking third in the industrialized world, after  the United States and Holland and 12 per cent hold advanced  degrees.

Israel is  the only liberal democracy in the Middle  East.

In 1984 and  1991, Israel airlifted  a total of 22,000 Ethiopian Jews (Operation Solomon and Moses) at Risk in  Ethiopia, to safety in Israel.

When  Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister  of Israel  in 1969, she  became the world’s second elected female leader in modern  times.

When  the U. S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya was  bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue  teams were on the scene within a day —  and saved three victims from  the rubble.

Israel has the third highest  rate of entrepreneurship — and  the highest  rate among women and among people over 55 – in the world.

Relative  to its population, Israel is  the largest immigrant – absorbing nation on earth. Immigrants come in  search of  democracy,  religious freedom, and  economic opportunity.  (Hundreds of thousands from the former  Soviet  Union) 

Israel was  the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an  international standard that certifies diamonds as “conflict free.”

Israel has the world’s  second highest per capita of new books.

Israel is  the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with a net  gain in its number of trees, made more remarkable because, this was  achieved in an area considered mainly  desert!

Israel has more museums per  capita than any other  country

Medicine;Israeli scientists  developed the first fully computerized, no-radiation, diagnostic  instrumentation for breast cancer. 

An Israeli company  developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of  medications, thus removing human error from medical treatment.

Every  year in U. S.  hospitals 7,000 patients die from treatment  mistakes.

Israel’s Given  Imaging developed the first ingestible video camera, so small it fits  inside a pill. Used to view the small intestine from the inside, cancer  and digestive  disorders.

Researchers  in Israel developed a  new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with  the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device  is synchronized with the camera helps doctors diagnose heart’s mechanical  operations through a sophisticated system of  sensors.

Israel leads  the world in the number of scientists and technicians in the workforce,  with 145 per 10,000, as opposed to 85 in the U. S., over 70 in Japan, and  less than 60 in Germany. With over 25% of its work force employed in  technical professions. Israel places first in this category as  well.

A  new acne treatment developed  in Israel, the  Clear Light device, produces a high-intensity, ultraviolet-light-free,  narrow-band blue light that causes acne bacteria to self-destruct — all  without damaging surrounding skin or  tissue.

An Israeli company  was the first to develop and install a large-scale solar-powered and fully  functional electricity generating plant, in southern California’s Mojave  desert.

All  the above while engaged in regular wars with an implacable enemy that  seeks its destruction, and an economy continuously under strain by having  to spend more per capita on its own protection than any other county on  earth.

AND  THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR  IN ENGLAND SAYS:

“ISRAEL  IS NOTHING BUT A SHITTY LITTLE  COUNTRY”

What do you think?

What If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path?

Postwar Jewish refugees left everything they had in Europe—no ‘right of return’ requested.

By WARREN KOZAK

It is doubtful that there has ever been a more miserable human refuse than Jewish survivors after World War II. Starving, emaciated, stateless—they were not welcomed back by countries where they had lived for generations as assimilated and educated citizens. Germany was no place to return to and in Kielce, Poland, 40 Jews who survived the Holocaust were killed in a pogrom one year after the war ended. The European Jew, circa 1945, quickly went from victim to international refugee disaster.

Yet within a very brief time, this epic calamity disappeared, so much so that few people today even remember the period. How did this happen in an era when Palestinian refugees have continued to be stateless for generations?

In 1945, there were hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors living in DP Camps (displaced persons) across Europe. They were fed and clothed by Jewish and international relief organizations. Had the world’s Jewish population played this situation as the Arabs and Palestinians have, everything would look very different today.

To begin with, the Jews would all still be living in these DP camps, only now the camps would have become squalid ghettos throughout Europe. The refugees would continue to be fed and clothed by a committee similar to UNRWA—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (paid for mostly by the United States since 1948). Blessed with one of the world’s highest birth rates, they would now number in the many millions. And 66 years later, new generations, fed on a mixture of hate and lies against the Europeans, would now seethe with anger.

via Warren Kozak: What If Jews Had Followed the Palestinian Path? – WSJ.com.