2
POPSLetter to Obama Supporters Well, the Obama ascendancy may make the U.S. more popular in Europe—though our unpopularity there has been overstated. The most influential nations in Europe elected or re-elected Bush allies during his two terms in office, including Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Tony Blair in Great Britain, Angela Merkel in Germany, and Nicolas Sarkozy in France. In other hemispheres, Canada elected Stephen Harper, and Australia (hats off please for one of our most stalwart allies) re-elected John Howard. Still, let’s concede that for many Europeans, George W. Bush’s style was off-putting. The Texas swagger that many of us (though not all to be sure) regard as an amusing regionalism, they found obnoxious.The same cannot be said for our enemies. It wasn’t a matter of Bush’s style, or his accent or his political party.
3
POPSPress in Palestine At least 15 gunmen stormed the offices of the local Sawt Al-Hurriya (Voice of Freedom) radio station” in Gaza City and forced a popular, but anti-Hamas, radio host “to accompany them to an unknown destination.” A week before, a Palestinian journalist working for WAFA (a sort of Palestinian AP) “was severely beaten by masked gunmen who stormed his office and destroyed all the equipment and furniture.” n March 2007, Palestinian gunmen fired 14 bullets into the armored car of a United Nations official. “This is unprecedented, to shoot at a clearly marked U.N. vehicle with a U.N. flag flying in broad daylight,” said the official, John Ging. Ironically, Ging was Gaza director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA), the largest nongovernmental employer in Gaza. It supplies food, medicine, and schools for about 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.5 million people.
3
POPS500 Palestinians Dead? I wouldn't count just yet. It’s time to recall another Israeli incursion in which Palestinians used casualty numbers seemingly plucked out of the air to justify its claim that Israel was employing “disproportionate force.” In the spring of 2002, after months of near-daily suicide bombings inside Israel, the IDF decided to make a major incursion into the Jenin refugee camp, which even Al-Fatah documents identified as “the capital of suicide bombing. Nasser al-Kidwa, a Palestinian representative to the United Nations, told CNN: “There’s almost a massacre now taking place in Jenin. Helicopter gunships are throwing missiles at one square kilometer packed with almost 15,000 people in a refugee camp. . . . Just look at the TV and watch, watch what the Israel forces are doing.
3
POPSAnti-Semitism In Helsingborg, the congregation at a Swedish synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in; in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store; in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a Belgian synagogue; in Antwerp, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue.
3
POPSWhy Europe is Anti-Israel Sad but true. The problem is that these Anti-Semitic Europeans don't REALLY believe that these Muslims want another Holocaust. Once they wake up. It might be too late. I suspect Israel is not going to let it come to that. I hope they pound Hamas into the dirt.
2
POPSChanging Cultures
A couple of days after Hamas voted to restore crucifixion to the Holy Land, their patron in Teheran (and their primary source of “aid”) put in an appearance on British TV. As multicultural “balance” to Her Majesty The Queen’s traditional Christmas message, the TV network Channel 4 invited President Ahmadinejad to give an alternative Yuletide address on the grounds that it was a valuable public service to let viewers hear him “speak for himself, which people in the west don’t often get the chance to see”. In fact, as Caroline Glick pointed out in The Jerusalem Post, the great man “speaks for himself” all the time — when he’s at the UN, calling on all countries to submit to Islam; when he’s presiding over his international conference of Holocaust deniers; when he’s calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map” — or (in his more “moderate” moments) relocated to a couple of provinces of Germany and Austria. Caroline Glick forbore to mention that, according to President Ahmadinejad’s chief a
1
POPSThe Necessity of Israel What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin building the state that is supposedly their great national aim? No. No roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at all. The flourishing greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and abandoned. Instead, Gaza's Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their resources to turning it into a terror base -- importing weapons, training terrorists, building tunnels with which to kidnap Israelis on the other side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly. The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They were all removed in September 2005. There's only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel's very existence.
1
POPSWell I feel safer, how about you? Uh, what exactly is he going to do to protect us from, Iran, Russia, China, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Queda and every other bad guy in the world. I suspect this is why he gets endorsed by so many of the bad guys.
2
POPSWill the carrot approach work? Nope. Wait and see. Just as Hamas started lobbing rockets a mere 5 days into the cease fire, you can be sure that North Korea will not fulfill their promises.
Newest Clips
see Newest Clips
1
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update