By Vincent Carroll
11/22/2009

If you sit down with Itamar Marcus, you had better brace yourself for a jarring refresher course on Mideast reality. That’s especially true if you tend to think like the current administrationif you believe, for example, that the Israeli-Palestinian impasse is all about borders and settlements and that the construction of 900 housing units in southern Jerusalem “could end up being very dangerous,” as President Barack Obama said last week.

If it’s “very dangerous” to construct Jewish housing in a city that Israel will never, ever relinquish, what should we call the effort to brainwash children into believing that Israel itself doesn’t exist?

How should we describe the claim that not only East Jerusalem — captured by Israel in the 1967 war — belongs to the Palestinians, but that every other Israeli city, from Haifa to Ashkelon, belongs to them, too?

“In the world inhabited by Palestinian children,” Marcus tells me, “there is no Israel.” And if you give him time, the director of Palestinian Media Watch (palwatch.org) in Jerusalem will subject you to a barrage of depressing evidence for his contention. He’ll show you snippets from TV quiz shows for Palestinian kids predicated on the non-existence of Israel.

Host: “Which mountain is the tallest in Palestine? …” Child contestant: “Mount Meron (in Israel).”

On another show, a host asks, “Which Palestinian city is called ‘the flower of Galilee’?” and then names three Israeli cities!

Then Marcus will show you school geography lessons that use maps on which Israel is missing. Do any Palestinian textbooks acknowledge the existence of Israel, I wonder. “No,” Marcus replies.

The anti-Israeli content of Palestinian textbooks has been a longstanding concern for anyone who yearns for a permanent political settlement, but surely those books have improved since Yasser Arafat’s death in 2004. Not really, says Marcus. If anything, he says, they devote more space than ever to depicting conflict with Israel as a solemn religious duty aimed at liberating a Muslim land.

Remember, we’re talking about textbooks chosen by the Palestinian government led by the allegedly moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, not the overtly jihadist Hamas. The Palestinian Authority media, meanwhile, are full of similar Islamist references that offer no room for compromise, and that honor terrorists and suicide bombers as national heroes.

No less ominous is what Marcus describes as the Palestinian Authority’s “infrastructure of hate,” the relentless depiction of Jews as sinister and evil — as conspirators spreading AIDS, for example, or undermining the very foundations of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Naturally, Jews poisoned Yasser Arafat, too — or at least that is what children are told. In a TV tribute to Arafat earlier this month, one youngster unconsciously presented the essence of this paranoid vision: “He died from poisoning by the Jews. Well, I don’t know what he died from, but I know it was by the Jews.”

“In 2008,” the State Department boasted this summer in a press release, “the U.S. was the single largest national donor to the Palestinian Authority . . . committing more than $600 million in assistance . . . .”

And the fruits of this investment? A Palestinian public that remains in resolute denial about the reality of Israel more than 60 years after its founding. Surely that should worry us more than the expansion of a Jewish neighborhood in a capital whose Jewish roots extend back several thousand years.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_13827921

What Hillary has on Obama is hundreds of affadavits, signed under penalty of perjury, attesting to rule breaking and law breaking in the Texas Democratic primary – and not all of those affadavits come from Clinton supporters. A former head of the Texas Democratic party walked into the caucuses an Obama supporter and walked out a Clinton supporter. In addition, there is physical evidence in their hands of vote fraud in Indiana where underage high school kids were bussed to voting sites, given palm cards instructing them who to vote for, and after voting, were fed lunch and given an Ipod. Clinton has a copy of the palm card. Then there’s Iowa, where rural precincts were overwhelmed with young voters that no one had ever seen in the neighborhood before – this is significant because in rural precincts the local politicos frequently know everyone who participates in the caucuses.

That’s just a small sample of what she has on him.

h t t p : / / w w w.youtube.com/watch?v=2JPyDAwM7mA

h t t p : / / http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JPyDAwM7mA

Fort Hood-style attack threatened at Georgia base

The Army Times is reporting exclusively that an anonymous note threatening a massacre similar to the Nov. 5 attack at Fort Hood, Texas, was discovered Thursday — along with a box of 20 hollow-point bullets — in a motor pool area at Columbus’ Fort Benning.

The discovery coincided with a visit from Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, who was in town for Officer Candidate School graduation. The threat prompted a criminal investigation and greater police presence on the Army base, the Army Times reports.

According to a witness on the scene, a box of 20 hollow-point shells and a handwritten note were found under the 197th Infantry Training Brigade.

“The note said ‘tell the commanding general to call off all charges or there will be a re-enactment of Fort Hood,’ ” a witness told Army Times. Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan is charged in the Nov. 5 shooting deaths of 13 fellow service members.

The newspaper, which serves an audience of Army personnel, active and retired, said military police acted quickly on the threat, cordoning off a 20-foot perimeter around the box.

“They’re talking with anyone with a pending [Uniform Code of Military Justice] charge and people who are getting chaptered out to see if they can find out who it is,” the witness told the Army Times.

Fort Benning officials refused comment on the specifics of the letter but confirmed “an ongoing investigation into a general threat at Fort Benning.”

“A suspicious package and note were found,” post spokeswoman Elsie Jackson said. “The soldier notified a noncommissioned officer, who alerted 911. The area was secured as is normal in these types of incidents.”

Soldiers in the unit are being questioned about the threat, the witness told the Army Times. The Kelley Hill area of Fort Benning was on lockdown for part of the day Friday, according to the witness, who noted an increase in military police patrols on the post.

The Fort Benning spokeswoman said “appropriate force protection measures are in place while an investigation is underway to determine if this is a viable threat.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/fort-hood-style-attack-207757.html