Hitler's 2012 Successors

Every day I read tweets accusing Israel of racism, apartheid, even fascism. Throw in genocide, child murders, ethnic cleansing, and building concentration camps and it just about sums up the level of vitriol that spews from the frothy mouths of Israels enemies! What is particularly scary is that there seems to be a growing mainstream acceptance of these hate filled arguments, despite there being such crude lies.

What should be obvious to all is that behind these very arguments is a religious / nationalist philosophy that really does all these horrific things it accuses Israel of! Just scan the news headlines for examples of genocide, ethnic cleansing and other horrific human rights abuses, and you will no doubt find Israel's dedicated enemies in the Arab & Islamic world: Syria, Iran, Lebanon to name a few and of course terror groups like Hezbolah, Al Qaeda and Hamas.

I am sure that if I were to take a poll with questions such as those below, I'd be unlikely to hear the word "zionism":
1. Who are the 2012 equivalent of Nazi's?
2. Why are there scanners in airports?
3. what is greatest threat to world peace?

If you look through the past 5-10 years of genocide reports, and horrific human rights abuses on a Nazi scale, you'll find that it is almost exclusively happening within the Islamic world, whether in Middle East, Africa or Asia.

There is no genocide, no ethnic cleansing in Israel, and accusations of such extremes merely take the 'playing field' away from the real issues that exist. In fact there is no country on earth, and no army like Israel that is under such close scrutiny by media and HR groups. The Islamic world of 2012 is a clear and present danger to the values of Western Society. They threaten the liberal ideas that our states eschew; they threaten the moral priniples that our democracies and judicial freedoms rely on and they threaten to roll back the equality of men and women by 100 years and indeed, they threaten our very lives.

Israel is not the cause of the problem, merely the focus of it. Israel sits on the meeting point of three continents: Africa, Europe & Asia and of three great faiths of Judaism, Islam & Christianity, and it represents a bastion of liberal freedom and democracy in a neighborhood that fears those ideas more than hell itself. I'm not glossing over the real problems that Israel & The Palestinians face, but the 'anti Zionists' don't care about that, in fact it's in their interest to make things worse. The Palestinians are the ideal cannon fodder for the assault on western minds and values.

The world needs to wake up, because the battle to convince you that Israel is the real evil is the same tactic Hitler used to rally Germans behind his cause. He served Jews to the gas chambers and on the back of that built his power base and plunged the world into war, and for many years, good moral countries let him do it unimpeded. His successors would like the same thing to happen today and they are working hard to that end. You've been warned!

Systemic Societal Child Abuse?

The anti Israel propaganda machine has been in full swing in recent weeks, joining forces with their usual comrades in arms, the human rights groups, over Palestinian 'children' in Israeli custody. The gradual wind up to this seems to have started with posed pictures of Palestinian kids behind barred windows (these were posed behind their school windows and the children, quite young, were not under arrest). When these images got some media traction, the stories and condemnation of the number of children under arrest started to make headlines worldwide, and large numbers of social media posts began. More recently (and inevitably) I have seen"Israel tortures children" tweets, and it wont be long before we see mainstream media pick up on this. Once again Israel will be falsely accused of doing something that Islamic countries actually do on a regular basis.

What the media and the human rights noise makers have missed is the real story underlying the number of Palestinian 'children' being arrested by Israel (by children, they really mean under eighteen older teens of course). Its a story that has been brewing for years, and that supporters of Israel have tried to get the world to take notice of, the story of systemic societal child abuse in the Palestinian Authority & Gaza.

When I was a boy, my mother did not like me watching The A-Team, Hill Street Blues or some other shows that glorified violence. She hated me playing with toy guns when I was little (not that it worked, as I built a fort and spent entire summers fighting wars across the garden fence with my neighbor Joss!). This is good parenting and its normal parenting. My wife runs a gan (kindergarten) in Israel for 2-4 year olds and she never allows 'death' to be mentioned in her gan. "theres plenty of time for them to discover that as they get older" she will tell parents. So, when she teaches the story of Noah and the flood, she tells the kids that when it started to rain, the people had to crowd on mountain tops and got very very wet and miserable! Why does she do this? Its because in a normal society we protect our kids from the darker forces of the world for as long as possible. We hope to preserve their innocence for as many as years as we can. We let them have a childhood. Its not easy to do anywhere, especially in a country where everyone joins the army the day after school, and where many of our cities suffer rocket fire from Gaza, nor is it a simple thing to explain Grandpa's holocaust experiences either, but we do what we can, knowing that eventually our children will have to confront the realities of human evil and basic life and death.

In Palestinian society childhood has been manipulated, extorted and perverted by hatred: schools teach the well edited Palestinian version of Nakba Day, text books quote 'The Protocols of The Elders of Zion', kindergartens dress the kids up as Israelis and pretend to torture Arab children in end of year ceremonies, state sponsored Arab TV famously had its own Mickey Mouse who spewed hate for Israel...the examples are endless. Jewish children sadly often find themselves trapped on the front lines of violence, but Palestinian children are encouraged there by their own parents and society, starting with kindergarten indoctrination, school curriculum revisionism and the hero worship of terrorism and martyrdom all around them.

The result is of course, that Palestinian teens are present whenever rock throwing riots against the army take place; Gaza rocket launch cells use the proximity of children as a deterrent for return IDF fire, and Palestinian propaganda experts ensure the media see crying children at every incident. This amounts to exploitation and worse, it is societal child abuse.

It is abhorrent that entire generations are manipulated to hate and it doesn't bode well for the future, when these abused and damaged kids assume leadership of Palestinian society. So whenever you hear that Israel has a Palestinian 'child' in custody, think about the years of indoctrination and perverted education that led to his being in the situation which got him arrested. Shame on the human rights & peace groups that have allowed this situation to continue under their noses for decades. How dare they now blame Israel when these hate filled 'children' come into conflict with Israel. I urge everyone to consider the type of society that can idolize suicide bombers, encourage children to jihad and produce parents that show pride in their children's violence, hate and racism.

see BBC Newsnight 2007 on Palestinian Children taught to hate


UPDATE: Nov 22nd 2012 (Post Operation Pillar of Cloud):

The past few days has seen some of the most sickening & blatant abuse of children, alive and dead, that the world has ever witnessed! Hamas, who rule Gaza, and their side kicks Islamic Jihad, have waged a campaign of war, by firing their vast number of rockets from within civilian neighborhoods, next to homes and schools. Their targets have been exclusively civilian areas of Israel, placing children on both sides in great danger. Despite Israel's improved ability to accurately target its weapons, never the less, placing a rocket launcher next to a home obviously endangers those within, men women and children.

What has been worse has been the callous use of images of dead children used by Hamas. The fact that many of these images were in fact taken in Syria over the summer only makes the abuse of these poor little girls and boys even worse. I'm not going to compound the crime by showing them here, but perhaps the most famous example of this sick depraved phenomenon was the dead body of Mahmoud Sadallah, the 4-year-old Gaza boy whose death moved Egypt's prime minister togenuine and understandable tears when his broken body was placed in Sadallah's arms. The fact that Hamas knew that this little boy had been killed by one of their own rockets only adds to the crime. Can you imagine even after 9-11 someone placing the still warm corpse of a child in President Bush's arms for a photo shoot? Its unthinkable, yet Hamas did it, and has been tweeting and blogging 100s of pictures of dead kids, their bodies positioned for maximum effect. Their 'message' the past few days is "Israel kills children" - never have I been more disgusted - yes its obviously a lie as the fact bear out, but to see little people, their lives already so short and violent, used like this is the very defeinition of a  crime against humanity. Most of these kids, as I say above, were Syrian not Gazan, but that did not stop western journalists seizing on these photos for retweets and even reproduction, compounding the crime and encouraging the terrorists to keep committing these abominations.

Lets remember that the reason the Gazan children are dead at all  is because Hamas made them targets: Hamas chose the battlefield for this war, and Hamas clearly saw their presence as a win win situation - if Israel doesn't strike back then they did their job as human shields, but if it did fire at the terrorists, and children died, then Hamas could use their bodies for propaganda - martyrdom even beyond death!

The final insult to children was the video produced by Hamas of children of a senior terror leader who died alongside Al JAbari on day one of the violence. These very small children, hours after their fathers death,  explained how they too wished to die as martyrs like their daddy - if these are not abused children, I don't now what is.

Zionism: Lets Get Back To Basics

Zionism is not dead nor is it 'post', nor has it failed, far far from it! Lets get back to basics: Zionism is the Judao-Political belief in the in gathering of the Jewish people our homeland, Israel. It is the idea that led to and still builds the State of Israel. It cannot be dead or 'post' anything because Zionism has not yet fulfilled its core mission while 40% of the Jews of the world live outside Israel. Yes, its that simple! The post-zionist era will commence only when the last Jew makes aliyah (emigrates to Israel)!

Having said that, Zionism is an incredible success, unlike any political or nationalist movement in history. in just over 110 years it has brought the wandering Jew home. They left behind generations of pogroms and ghettos; African famine and Arab racism and of course The Holocaust, and they built a country out of swamp, desert and scrub. And not just any country, but one that stands as a beacon of what can be achieved even in the most difficult parts of the globe, such as the Middle East where it sits and where despots ruled and still rule and peoples rights, quality of life and futures are crushed by the cold Islamic clerics, and the secular corrupt Arab dictators. In a tiny corner of this downtrodden area, zionism built a country that is an economic miracle; a military rock, and spiritual center. A country where freedoms are the norm from regular open elections to free liberal press; freedom of speech to an active judiciary. Israel leads the world in technology, in health advances, in literacy, in university graduation, economically, in the numbers of books published and so many other ways. The Jewish world through the mechanisms that Zionism established such as The Jewish Agency For Israel (where I work) built cities on sand dunes and farmland on malaria swamps. The world turns to us for green technology, water reclamation and disaster relief. Zionism did all that. Zionsim was never about Palestinians,arabs or anone else. It wasn't about wars, negotiations, hate or even love. Zionism was a force to build a state where finally the Jews could have a home and from where they could be free to be Jews and as it turns out, change the world!

Our enemies love to redefine Zionism, applying many derogatory meanings to it, many of them simply using the term as a politically correct alternative to saying 'Jew' so as not to be seen as antisemitic (Gd forbid!), so we read that 'Zionists' run the media; Zionists rule america; Zionists run the world economy and so on. Old antisemitic attacks, with a new word for Jew (oh, but they don't mean Jews, because some orthodox Jews aren't zionist at all!??!)

None of the labels & redefinitions of Zionism stand up to even cursory examination:
Zionism is racism? Really? The facts make that claim laughable: Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has accepted Sudanese muslim refugees. Their Muslim brethren shoot them in Egypt & other states ! We absorbed, even encouraged, into our tiny population over 80,000 Ethiopians in the 80s and 90s; we're the first on hand in Haiti, Thailand, Japan and anywhere else disaster strikes. A Jewish state? Sure, but that isn't racist (unless you hold the view that any form of nationalism is racist!). In 1949 when most of the Arabs of this land were encouraged by their leaders to flee while the Arab states crushed tiny new Israel, Zionist leaders made sure that those that stayed became citizens with full rights as Israelis, even making Arabic one of the two official languages of The 'Jewish' State of Israel! Israel understood the dual loyalty of Arab Israelis, and exempted them from army service. Nevertheless Druze and Bedhuin arabs volunteer en mass to serve. So not racist at all!

Many on social media and indeed enemies of Israel in the press, and parliaments of the west, say that Israel is a terror state. Really? Are airport scanners looking for Zionists? How many terror attacks in London, Spain, US etc were caused by Zionists? In fact falsely accusing Zionism of doing what Islamists do daily seems to be the norm: Israel is regularly accused of massacre, genocide & ethnic cleansing, with little or no evidence, whilst we actually see these happen in Syria at the moment. If these claims were true, why are the Palestinian Arabs of the 'West Bank' still in there homes in Jenin, Ramallah, Hebron & even Gaza. Surely since 1967 they'd be dead or exiled. It seems that Zionism is very poor at ethnic cleansing indeed, because their numbers are growing! Muslims pray daily at their 3rd holiest site, the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, but that happens to be Judaism's holiest site, the site of Solomon's Temple, and yet they were allowed to continue to be free to pray since 1967 when it came into israeli hands. The same could not be said for the Jewish 'Western or Wailing Wall' below, which when in Arab hands from'48-'67 was forbidden to Jews. It can't be said for Josephs tomb or the cave of the Patrarchs which Palestinians are allowed to limit Jewish access to. In fact, if a Jew goes to the Temple Mt aka AlAqsa and looks like he is praying, he will (and many times this happens) be attacked. Recently some Christian tourists were mistaken for Jews and were attacked there! Thats real racism!

In fact the racism and ethnic cleansing is built into the Palestinian dream - they openly want every last Jew out of a future Palestine! Their leaders call for genocide on a daily basis, comparing Jews with monkeys or worse with Nazis, perhaps the most despicable of all the lies aimed at Zionism. The first law enacted by the Palestinian Authority was one to outlaw selling land to Jews on PAIN OF DEATH!

Zionism is Fascist? When the Israeli's build death camps, forcing men women and children in to gas chambers then perhaps the label could be applied; if the Zionist forces round up kids, dig trenches, shoot them, cover them with soil and do it again, then perhaps Nazi or Fascist would fit Zionism. To use that label so falsely cheapens the memory of what The real Nazi's did to The Jews, Gays, Gypsy's and others. Israel is a liberal minority with equality for sexes, gays and minorities. It is the antithesis of Fascism.

I actually understand the anger of the Muslim world because Zionism, which despite their claims that its about doing evil to them and the world, is actually about building a state and improving the world, zionism exposes the Islamic world for the abject failure that it has sadly become. Not one Islamic country, certainly not an Arab one, has gender equality, freedoms, rights of citizens, or indeed living standards for ordinary people like Israel. Israel sits in their midst, a beacon of light exposing the darkness of Islamic / Arab failure!

They have massed their armies on this tiny state more than once, the first time when it had almost no weapons, and they have not just been beaten every time, but humiliated by the scale of that defeat. The protesters in Tahrir square must have known that everything they wanted, every Israeli (including the Arab citizens) already had for 65 years.

If Zionism makes Islam look bad, there can be only two options: improve the Islamic world, or get rid of Zionism. If the Islamic world were capable of choosing the first option, it wouldn't be in the mess it is in the first place. so they seethe with hatred for Zionism.

Lets get back to basics: The goal of Zionism is to bring the Jewish people here. If 60% of the Jews of the world in Israel can achieve all this, what can 100% of us do? SO Zionism will continue to build, educate, support, empower and engage Jews worldwide. Planes of Jews from the 4 corners will continue to land at Ben Gurion airport every day, packed with brand new 'Israeli's by choice' and the hate of our enemies in the Arab & Muslim world will grow, as Zionism succeeds to build a country from hope, while Islamism continues to sow fear and destruction. Zionism is a success...pass it on!!

New Islamists Governments and Their Iranian Friends Threaten the World

Ghandi once said "The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart. "

The Arab spring, and the subsequent rush to elections across the Arab World is Christmas, and Ramadan all rolled into one for Islamic fundamentalists and their Iranian puppet masters

It took Britain hundreds of years ( and a civil war) to move from dictatorial kings ruling by the grace of G-d, to democracy. Even in enlightened Victorian Britian, when the monarch was a mere figurehead, democracy was marred by rotton boroughs, parliamentary seats being given as gifts by the gentry and mass disenfranchisement. The United States, standard bearer for democratic freedoms was denying black citizens the vote until just a few years ago. Why then does the US and Western states believe that democracy can be introduced in a period of weeks on populations that have never enjoyed any rights? It is just opening the door to abuse and manipulation.

The big bad dictator is gone..lets vote ! Its ridiculous! Democracy is a fundamental mind set, a societal understanding of inalienable rights. It is made up of checks and balances with societies, freedoms of press & of justice systems, and constitutions respected at near biblical levels. When you have chaos and confusion, people will grasp the idea of elections as a panacea to lead them to stability and hope, but elections are not in and of themselves democracy. This policy often leads to one man, one vote, one time. That isn't democracy, that's the hijacking of democracy by anti-democratic forces seeking power, and leads to another generation of dicators. Let us remember that Hitler came to power by manipulating democracy, and in the Arab world today there are forces as evil as the Nazi's doing exactly the same thing. Behind all the Islamist organizations you'll find Iran lurking.

Egypt is a fine example: during Tahrir Square, the Islamists stayed in the background, but they had been working and preparing for years for the opportunity that was about to come their way, quietly receiving Iranian support and putting into place a strong structure from which to launch their campaign for power. Other opposition groups formed as the revolution progressed, but needed time to debate, formulate policy and infrastructure, and communicate ideas to the people. Time was the key, but instead Egypt leaped(or was encouraged by the US?) at the idea of elections and inevitably the only organized party grabbed power. President elect Morsi has tried to sell himself as a western educated moderate, but a moderate what? A moderate Islamic extremist! Thats like being a moderate Nazi! He believes in Dar Islam, where the entire Arab areas of the Middle East can only be under Muslim rule and any other people need to be removed or subjugated. Doesn't bode well for Israel does it??... and by the way, lets not forget that Assad of Syria is Western educated. It means nothing. He has already spoken of ties with Iran after 24 hours. Nobody should be surprised at the direction Egypt is about to take!

When these Islamist forces come to power whether though election or coup, they seek out political and socio economic allies, as any government would. Does anyone believe they will see the USA, whose values they despise, as their 'go to' partner? Is it credible that they'll want to seek peaceful coexistence with Jewish Israel, which stands as a beacon of true democracy, exposing their own systems of government for what they really are? The natural allies of the newly minted post Arab Spring Islamist governments is other like thinking countries and the king of those is Iran, already their friend and benefactor for many years. Iran has built relationships for years with Islamist parties and groups across the Middle East. The relationship is already in place, now it is time for Iran to reap the reward of it's hard work and planning.

Iran needs these new friendly governments urgently, because it faces the fall of Assad in Syria, which long been it's strategic power base in the Arab world (we often forget that Iran is not an Arab country). It was through Syria that Iran based and controlled Hezbollah and Hamas, which led to them gaining power in Lebanon and Gaza. It is therefore vital for Iran to seek new power bases, and what better than Islamist Egypt, Islamist Tunisia, Islamist Libya, and others. Iran has much to offer these like minded as they struggle to consolidate power. We are no longer facing Iranian footholds in the Arab world, but instead a pro-Iranian coalition which includes Egypt, the most powerful Arab state of all. One only has to look at the damage done to the UN and it's mission by the Islamic power block to know what it will mean to give Iran a far bigger voice there!

What can the West do?
What it should not do is appease. What it must not do is watch and wait. What it cannot do is ignore the scale of the Iranian threat as it once ignored the threat of Hitler's Germany. The West must engage these countries, support active opposition, nip anti democratic moves in the bud, It needs to ensure these countries depend on the West economically, but most of all The West, led by the US must deal with Iran. Remove Iran from the picture and the momentum behind the Islamists will be gone. Economic sanctions need to be draconian, support for Iranian opposition groups needs to be a priority, and the military 'option' needs to become a military build up on Iran's border. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a huge threat to Iran, forcing it to focus it's military energy on their shared border. That threat is gone thanks to the West and Iran's ambitions have expanded. The fall of Iraq was like removing a nose ring from a bull!

The US and The Western world is in denial about the extreme threat Iran, and the new Islamist Arab world represent. They should remember what Israeli PM Netanyahu said on US TV after 9-11 " Today we are all Americans — in grief, as in defiance. ". It isn't just Bibi who sees that connection, so do Israel's enemies. Listen to their threats against Israel, because those threats are against the US, UK and the entire democratic world as well.
Ahmadinejad wasn't just looking at Israel when he said "Iran's warriors are ready and willing to wipe Israel off the map," , he was looking further west as well!

Israel's Social Protests No Longer Represent Me

As a Zionist, and someone immensely proud of Israel's deeply engrained democracy, with all the inherent freedoms of a true democratic society, I was deeply moved by last Summer's social protest movement here in Israel. I felt that it was a movement of the people, representing the breadth of Israeli society, especially the Middle Classes. It represented me & my struggles with getting on the housing ladder; the insanely high price of basic food products, the untenable cost of childcare and much more. I marched through the center of Jerusalem with thousands of other young parents, middle aged families, religous and secular. There was never any sense that there would be violence, and in fact I saw people pick up trash as they marched! As Britain was engulfed by rioting thugs, Israel literally marched to the sound of democratic freedoms. The Israeli consumer discovered unknown muscles, the Israeli Middle class not only found it's voice, but learned to shout.


As this summer's protests begin, I can see that that our voices have been diverted to a new unpleasant agenda that has no bearing on my life or my hopes and aspirations as a middle class Israeli: Radicals such as Dafni Leef have stolen the leadership, the angry anarchists & bored students are the ones turning out and causing trouble and the needs of myself and my peers are being ignored. People like me don't want to be associated with raiding banks, blocking streets and fighting police. We won't attend the marches or listen to Leef and her cohorts use the protests as a launch pad for their own political careers. She wants the protests in Israel to mirror the ridiculous 'Occupy' movement in the US, achieving nothing but notoriety and violence. She isn't even close to the same page as I am. {photo: Dafni Leef arrested last week at protest}

Last Summer the protests were about creating a society where hard work pays off; where wages are commensurate with the cost of living, where parents have the financial ability to work one job and have time for their kids. It was about dialogue & communication and was never about confrontation. If Israel's protest are simply to be 'Occupy Israel', I'm out and so are all my friends and I am really angry about it. We supported the protests last year because we needed to be heard and we still do. How dare Leef steal our voice just as we had learned to use it!

Obama's Middle East Legacy

It's so easy to blame President Obama for everything bad in the world and it cannot all be laid at his feet: He was in no way to blame for the Japanese nuclear crisis, Greek financial collapse, or recent flooding in The UK...everything else however is open to debate!

The disaster of the outcome of the so called 'Arab Spring' can be laid partially, if not fully, at his feet. The indecision of the Obama administration to grasp the implications of Tahrir Square, or indeed to deal with the genocide in Syria, not to mention his ineffectiveness in dealing with the threat of Iran has damaged America's ability to prosecute its foreign policy far more than any cowboy rhetoric from GW Bush ever did.

When Tahrir Sq began the world saw the indecision of Obama: When Mubarak fell, there were 2 forces at work for the hearts of Egypt's new electorate: Secular and Islamist. Obama had a clear and easy choice of what outcome was in America's best interest, but he dithered letting the cards fall where they would and the result was inevitable: Islamic takeover of mighty Egypt, which may even be completed today after the announcement of presidential election results, but certainly within months. From that disaster we'll see a worsening of relations with Israel as the Islamist's seek out excuses to end the peace with Israel, almost certainly re-militarizing The Sinai, and placing the Southern border of Israel on a war footing for the first time since 1987. Egypt will ally with the other Islamist enemies of both the little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (The USA), drawing close with Iran, offering safe haven to Islamic terror groups, and supporting Hamas's efforts to import weapons to kill Israelis.

Obama could and should have foreseen this. I don't have his resources or intelligence information, but looking back over my own tweets, I saw it coming as did thousands of others, if I knew this was going to happen then Obama surely knew. He should have understood that the interests America's strategic safety and indeed the potential for a peaceful future in the Middle East, were going to suffer a toxic blow if Islamists took power in Egypt. He had no reason to 'let the cards fall', when one side in the Egyptian elections were the sworn enemies of The US, but he did nothing. Future presidents will rue his instinctive "don't interfere" policy, which is at the core of his inability to protect American interests and recognize opportunity.

In Syria we have seen a truly evil dictatorship reach new lows of brutality, slaughtering entire cities and plunging Syria to the brink of civil war. When the UN's emasculation made it impossible for them to act, Obama had the chance to lead the world in effecting positive change in Syria, supporting a peoples opposition. Today that opportunity is gone, for when support didn't come from The West, desperate rebel leaders turned to America's enemies for arms. There is a wide belief that Islamist groups and even AlQayida itself are now operating in Syria allied if not in control of the rebels, but true or not, the rebels leaders are unlikely to look to the US and the West with any affection after they succeed in taking the country, which will almost certainly happen soon. Like in Egypt, a post Assad Syria will likely join the other newly minted Islamist Arab states. Nothing good for Israel or The West can come from this.

Had Obama helped topple Assad, there was a strong possibility of creating a moderate secular Syria, no longer aligned with Iran, no longer destabilizing Lebanon & threatening Israel, no longer a haven to terror groups such as Hezbollah. Sadly that moment is passed and the Syria that emerges from this bloodbath is likely to be as opposed to The US and Israel as Assad was, more aggressive toward Israel as the new (probably Islamist) government of this fractured country looks for a nationalistic cause to motivate the people. What better than attacking the hated Zionists?

The Arab Spring once had the potential for creating a slew of moderate Arab states, opposing the march of Islamist extremism. That had to be the goal of the US administration, but instead it has become the victory that Islamists have dreamed about, creating the potential for war, hate and oppression. Pres. Obama's legacy could well be the 21st century equivalent of Neville Chamberlain, the man who had the opportunity to stop Hitler prior to WW2. Instead he relied on appeasement, and fine rhetoric, or in other words, he did nothing.

President Obama famously said "Yes we can", but he perhaps we'd have been better off had he declared "Yes we will!".

Why The Euro Crisis Has Implications for Israel & Jews Worldwide

Israel, despite some publicly expressed aspirations a few years ago, is not part of The European Union, and therefore not part of the Eurozone (for which we are all very grateful!). The Israeli currency is the Shekel, and is remarkably strong against other currencies, reflecting the vibrant & dynamic nature of the Israeli economy, which is performing extremely well for a tiny country in the midst of a global economic crisis. Few here express more than passing interest and little concern for the Euro Crisis, which threatens the economic stability of not only the 17 Euro countries but the entire 27 states who make up the European Union. Such a massive trading block facing economic disaster has an impact on the entire world economy, and as significant trading partner for Israel, this should obviously be of concern.

However, there are hidden issues of particular concern for Israelis and Jews worldwide: countries across Europe including Ireland, Greece, The UK, Italy, and Spain are putting into place tough (or in the case of Greece draconian) austerity measures. The danger is that as the population of these places face unemployment, & rising cost of living and they start to lose hope, we will see the rise of political extremism. Nobody needs to tell Jews what extremism in Europe can lead to, and we are already seeing blatant antisemitic attacks increasing in these countries and rightist parties gaining voter support. In the UK (by no means the most effected country in the Euro crisis) for example, unemployment amongst school leavers and graduates is at record highs.

There is also the added concern in many countries, because of the large and growing Muslim community, which has it's own brand of extremism and feelings of exclusion. These Islamic fascists will look to exploit the economic and social woes and we can expect more politicized young Muslims, more anger against 'Zionism' and sadly more violence.

Aliyah (Heb. immigration to Israel) from Europe, especially France, has been on the increase in recent years, and the next few months could well see a swelling of numbers from Southern Europe, & France. Waves of aliyah, although unquestionably a good thing, place short-term pressure on the Israeli economy. Israel has experienced social unrest over cost of living issues and recently over African refugees. The economy may be in growth, but the Israeli people feel under pressure from high taxes, and consumer prices.

The Herzl and the other fathers of the modern Zionist movement understood that the Jewish future lay not in Europe, but rather in an independent Jewish State of Israel. They knew that the ingenuity of the Jewish people, that had seen them succeed and contribute immeasurably in Europe, despite being hated & persecuted, would see them succeed in Israel. They have been proven right many times over, and if Israel is to continue it's success amidst Europe's economic demise, it will need once again to rely on it's greatest resource - The Jewish people.

Reducing our dependance on oil through groundbreaking projects like Betterplace Electric cars, becoming net energy producers thru our finds of vast fields of gas in our waters, ending our water crises via water reclamation on a scale never seen before and of course our technical innovations, sought after by the entire world, are our future. Israel has the potential to emerge from this crisis as one of the strongest small economic machines in the world, and as Jews outside of Israel are once again reminded that they are not that welcome in their countries of birth, Israel will continue the zionist dream of the ingathering of the Jewish people.