Israel-Hamas

[pam]

There are two primary choices in life; to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.
                                                                                   ~Denis Waitley~

Sooner or later somebody INVOLVED in the situation in the middle east is going to HAVE to choose to accept the responsibility for changing the way they are over there.  All the talkin and bargainin in the world by outside parties is never gonna change anything until THEY choose to be different. It DOES all boil down to choices..................

[Teresa]

More Hope & Change from Pres Obama...
Hope your new neighbor is just a refugee instead of a Hamas Terrorist.



Under the radar!!!


By executive order, President Barack Obama has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in migration assistance to the Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.

The "presidential determination" which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States was signed on January 27 and appeared in the Federal Register on February 4. Obama's decision, according to the Register, was necessitated by "the urgent refugee and migration needs" of the "victims."

Few on Capitol Hill took note that the order provides a free ticket replete with housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary election of January 2006.
Let's review some of Barack Obama's most recent actions since he was inaugurated a little more than four weeks ago:

* His first call to any head of state as president was to Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah party in the Palestinian territory.

* He ordered Guantanamo Bay closed and all military trials of detainees halted.

* He ordered all overseas CIA interrogation centers closed.

* He withdrew all charges against the masterminds behind the USS Cole and 9/11.

* Today we learn that he is allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refuges to move to and live in the US at American taxpayer expense.'

Here is the text of the executive order:

Presidential Documents

Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27, 2009

Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza

Memorandum for the Secretary of State

By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States, including section
2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of
1962 (the ``Act''), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I
hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the
Act, that it is important to the national interest to
furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to
exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency
Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund for the purpose
of meeting unexpected and urgent refugee and migration
needs, including by contributions to international,
governmental, and nongovernmental organizations and
payment of administrative expenses of Bureau of
Population, Refugees, and Migration of the Department
of State, related to humanitarian needs of Palestinian
refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.

You are authorized and directed to publish this
memorandum in the Federal Register.

(Presidential Sig.)

THE WHITE HOUSE,
Washington, January 27, 2009
[FR Doc. E9-2488
Filed 2-3-09; 8:45 am]
Billing code 4710-10-P

[srkruzich]

I can't remember who handles executive orders after their issued but write your congressman and senator! they have 30 days to throw it out after its issued.
The president can write them all day long but Congress has final say on that.

[Teresa]

Oh I write to them.. but do you honestly believe the ever adoring Obama congress will do much even if they or their staff do read it? Which I doubt anything much gets read.. Probably goes into the File 13 can.. 

[srkruzich]

Oh I write to them.. but do you honestly believe the ever adoring Obama congress will do much even if they or their staff do read it? Which I doubt anything much gets read.. Probably goes into the File 13 can.. 

Uhm I get replies all the time from our senators and congressmen.  I don't necessarily like their answers all the time but the one important thing that my writing does.  It alerts them that I am paying attention and that I VOTE.

[Warph]

The leaders of Israel's two main parties have claimed victory in an early general election.

With almost all the votes counted, the governing centrist Kadima has 28 seats and the right-wing Likud opposition 27, election officials said.

Kadima's Tzipi Livni told supporters she was ready to lead the country. But Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu said the "nationalist camp" had won.

Both need coalition partners. Ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu came third.

The results - if confirmed - push the Labour party led by Defence Minister Ehud Barak into an unprecedented fourth place.

Final results will come within days.

Whoever wins the Israeli election will face one unavoidable reality: the area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean will soon have more Arabs than Jews.

The Israeli Right's old ambition was to keep every inch of this territory, especially the gains of the Six Day War in 1967. But demographics now underlie every calculation and, for Israelis, the facts are deeply disturbing.

Today, their country has about 5.7 million Jewish inhabitants.  Meanwhile, the West Bank, which Israel occupies, has 2.5 million Palestinians and the Gaza Strip another 1.5 million.  The Arab minority within Israel itself numbers a further 1.4 million.

Altogether, about 5.7 million Jews and 5.4 million Arabs live between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.  Because Arabs have more children, they will probably become the majority within a decade.

If Israel keeps all this territory, the country will face a terrible dilemma.  Will it be a Jewish state, or a democracy?  Once the Arabs form the majority, Israel could not be both.

"People here think of this every day.  It threatens them more than Hamas or Iran," said Uri Dromi, a former prime ministerial spokesman.  "If it's one man, one vote, then Israel loses its Jewish character.  If not, we become an apartheid state."

Israel's only escape from this dilemma would be to divest itself of four million Arabs by allowing a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.  No Israeli politician can avoid this hard reality, not even Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu nor Kadima's Tzipi Livni

[Warph]

What would happen if America's 2008 Presidential election had run under Israel's election rules?

Hillary Clinton's Progressive Democrat Party, composed of centrist defectors from the Democratic and Republican parties, wins 100 seats in the 435-seat lower house of Congress. But Barack Obama, winner of the Democratic Party nomination, picks up 47 seats that otherwise would have gone to Hillary.

The leading right-wing parties, composed of Republican Fred Thompson's 96 votes, Libertarian Ron Paul's 54 and Christian Conservative Mike Huckabee's 34, totals 184 seats. Adding seats from John McCain's National Service Party (19), Mitt Romney's New Economy Party (15), Sarah Palin's Energy Independence Party (12) and Newt Gingrich's Win the Future Party (10), all right-wing parties total 240 seats, a clear majority.

As no single party won a solo majority, the Speaker of the House would have to decide which party's Presidential candidate should be invited to try to form a government. Nancy Pelosi could ask Hillary to form a government, but the right-wing parties could respond by forming a "blocking coalition" of 240 votes to guarantee that Hillary's coalition would fail. If Pelosi refused to invite Thompson to form a government, candidates would gear up for a re-run of the Presidential contest. Thus the cycle would begin again and we would still not have chosen a President.

If that kind of process seems chaotic, that's because it is.

Today, Israel's right-wing parties total about 55 percent of the seats in the newly chosen Knesset. That's enough to block Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni from forming a left-wing government. Several right-wing parties split Israel's right of center voters, who clearly are fed up with the Palestinian negotiation policy of the sitting government. Thus Livni finished first by a single seat in the party-list total.

Second-place finisher, Likud Party leader Binyamin Netanyahu, a former Prime Minster, can try to negotiate a right-wing coalition or, as reports indicate, may seek a broader coalition including Livni's Kadima Party, with Livni in his government.

Behold the insanity of Israel's electoral system. It combines the worst features of parliamentary and party-list systems. Party-list voting deprives voters of the opportunity to "split their tickets" by voting for one party in the legislative chamber, while choosing a different party's candidate at the top of the ticket. It empowers, in vast disproportion to their vote share, minority parties who may thus decide the composition of the government, at times not necessarily in line with how the electorate voted. It gives the government in power the authority to call a "snap" election when the Prime Minister finds convenient, or to delay until the full term runs its course. The President can designate who gets a crack at forming a government, and if no one can do so, the process starts again.

America's system of government has many defects—all political systems do—but setting aside issues arising out of an honest and accurate vote count, complete chaos rarely occurs. The closest analogue was America's 1824 election. Four candidates divided 261 electoral votes and 365,833 popular votes: Andrew Jackson had 99 votes with 41.3 percent of the popular vote; John Quincy Adams, 84 and 30.9 percent; William Harris Crawford, 41 and 11.2 percent; and Henry Clay, 37 and 13.0 percent.

With March 4, 1825 set as Inauguration Day, the House of Representatives met in February 1825 to choose a President. Its choice was constitutionally limited to the top three finishers. No longer eligible, Senate titan Clay threw his support to Adams. The House balloting then went by majority vote within each state delegation, with Adams winning 13, Jackson 7 and Crawford 4. Clay was rewarded with the position of Secretary of State, in what Jackson and his supporters called a "corrupt bargain." The deal poisoned the well during the Adams presidency. To this day, it remains the only time no candidate won a majority in the Electoral College.

Failure to win an outright majority is commonplace in parliamentary systems, and is now the norm in Israel. Watching their elections makes America's system, with all its warts, look better every day.

[Warph]

Recently Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has offered up $900 million to the PLO and Gaza restoration.  Never mind that Hamas continues to attack Israel and says in their charter that Israel should not and will not be a state.  Never mind that our Friend, Israel is the one that has been horrendously attacked to this day.   

$900 million!  Right....and you just know that Hamas is not going to get their hands on any of this money....WHY do we worry about terrorism when we have a government that has managed to destroy this nations economy and create more problems for our country than was EVERY imagined.  I wonder how much of the 1.4 billion $$$ that the Saudies have pledged for reconstution of Gaza will be left after Hamas gets their hands on it.

These are the people who danced in the streets after 9/11 and burned American flags... these are the people who support suicide bombings against Israeli civilians (as was demonstrated by a decisive Hamas victory in the Gaza elections after Israel withdrew from Gaza), these are also the people whose first leader was Yasser Arafat, the father of modern-day terrorism!  There is no telling how many billion$ of dollars wound up in Swiss banks that Arafat stole from the Palestinian people while in power.

Did anyone notice that our country is in a severe recession/depression?  Could any of our states with their hands out use
$900 million for REAL projects instead of terrorists attacking our allies?

This is outrageous.  We have the highest unemployment rates in decades, a huge national deficit, people having to choose between heating their homes and feeding their families, and yet our government feels the need to give almost a billion dollars to our enemies.  $900 Million..... wonder where it's going to come from?



Lets see, what else..... Russia revealed a secret letter sent by Obama promising to take the defense system out of Europe that would only protect all of Europe if they would encourage Iran to stop their nuclear program.  Of course, Russia revealed this letter and said to Obama we would be glad to talk with you about closing down your defense system in Europe but won't consider talking to Iran.  I would say that was an Obama, body slam.

Now isn't it grand what it says about our loyalty and commitment to our allies in Europe?  Nada, Zilch!   We are doing very good so far.... we have insulted Israel, kissed up to the terrorist group, Hamas, been body slammed by Ahmadinejad (are you surprised?), insulted Great Britain, all of Europe and been put-down flatly by Russia. 

Man, Obama.... your foreign policies SUCK!  You're batting a 1000% for the first two months in office.  What do you think you are.... a global community organizer or something???

[Warph]

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Israel launched airstrikes into Gaza on Saturday, responding to a series of rockets fired by Hamas the day before, the Israeli military said.
 
Hamas security forces also reported Saturday's strikes. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
 
The Israeli air force struck two "smuggling tunnels" on the southern Gaza border and one "weaponry storage site" in Gaza City, a military spokesman told CNN.

"In all strikes, a hit was identified," the spokesman said, adding that the strikes were in response to six rockets targeting Israeli since Saturday morning.
 
According to the Israeli military, more than 100 rockets, mortar shells and missiles have been fired at Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza since Hamas leaders announced a cease-fire on January 18.
 
Israel also announced a cease-fire and pulled its troops out of Gaza in January, ending a three-week military campaign that the Israeli military said was aimed at halting the rocket fire.
 
Egypt has been trying to broker a broader cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Israel is demanding that Hamas release kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit before it fully reopens the border crossings with Gaza.
 
Hamas has rejected discussing Shalits release as part of any cease-fire negotiation.

[srkruzich]

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Israel launched airstrikes into Gaza on Saturday, responding to a series of rockets fired by Hamas the day before, the Israeli military said.
 
Hamas security forces also reported Saturday's strikes. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
 
The Israeli air force struck two "smuggling tunnels" on the southern Gaza border and one "weaponry storage site" in Gaza City, a military spokesman told CNN.

"In all strikes, a hit was identified," the spokesman said, adding that the strikes were in response to six rockets targeting Israeli since Saturday morning.
 
According to the Israeli military, more than 100 rockets, mortar shells and missiles have been fired at Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza since Hamas leaders announced a cease-fire on January 18.
 
Israel also announced a cease-fire and pulled its troops out of Gaza in January, ending a three-week military campaign that the Israeli military said was aimed at halting the rocket fire.
 
Egypt has been trying to broker a broader cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Israel is demanding that Hamas release kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit before it fully reopens the border crossings with Gaza.
 
Hamas has rejected discussing Shalits release as part of any cease-fire negotiation.

Gee who would have thunk it!   When will folks realize that to deal with hamas and any other terrorist organization you have to beat them back into the stone age and quit holding hands and singing kumbaya