The common enemy of the Western world

According to a pair of Gallup polls released last week, 83 percent of Americans say Israel is justified in taking military action against Hezbollah, while 76 percent disapprove of Hezbollah's attacks on Israel. Yet when asked which side in the conflict the United States should take, 65 percent answer: neither side. Indeed, 3 in 4 Americans say they are concerned that the US military will be drawn into the fighting, or that it will increase the likelihood of terrorism against the United States. Gallup's numbers suggest two things. First, that most Americans, sizing up the warfare in northern Israel and southern Lebanon, recognize that Hezbollah is the aggressor and that Israel is fighting in self-defense. And second, that most Americans believe this fight has nothing to do with the United States.

Welcome to Sept. 10. For years Osama bin Laden had preached that it was "the duty of Muslims to confront, fight, and kill" Americans. His adherents had responded by blowing up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and slamming a boat laden with explosives into the USS Cole. Yet most Americans paid no attention to Al Qaeda and its threats -- until 3,000 people lost their lives on Sept. 11, 2001. Has nothing been learned from that experience?

Hezbollah's barbaric assault on Israel -- kidnapping and murdering soldiers who weren't engaged in hostilities, firing waves of missiles into cities and towns, packing rockets with ball bearings meant to maximize suffering by shredding human flesh -- is part and parcel of the radical Islamist jihad against the free world. Nothing to do with the United States? It has *everything* to do with the United States. Hezbollah hates Americans at least as implacably as Al Qaeda does, and rarely misses an opportunity to say so.

More here

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ARTICLES RECENTLY UP ON ICJS

Revolutionaries push pan-Arabism based on faith
Israel's continuing ordeal
Propaganda for young minds, courtesy of our ABC
The Lebanese war is not a game
Media bias and the threat to democracy
Report from Haifa
ABC SBS Bias
Proportional response and prisoners
Editorial: Foes must accept the Jewish state
Submission to UN Human Rights Council
To the National Association of Democratic Lawyers
The Opening Round of Iran's War Against the West
Solidarity Briefing
Hilali to lose advisory position
Proportionality
Address by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Statement from the G-8
Israel update
Communal solidarity tefillah Melbourne
Lettter from David Frankfurter
Fearing our own strength
Some media points
Analysis: Israel at war
Terror in Bombay
The Wisdom of Jonathan Netanyahu

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ELSEWHERE

Hate crime in Australia: "The mufti of Australia has condemned an overnight attack on a Sydney synagogue. A rabbi and his young family were inside a house attached to the Parramatta Synagogue in Mason Street when it was attacked about 9pm (AEST) yesterday. Projectiles were hurled at the roof of the synagogue, and blocks of concrete were thrown at two cars, smashing windows. Shortly after the incident witnesses told police they saw a group of about 10 Middle Eastern men laughing and running down a nearby street."

The antisemitic U.N.: "If the intemperate United Nations response to Israel's defense of its citizens, or U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan's off-the-cuff, before-any-investigation charge that Israel deliberately targeted U.N. peacekeepers surprises you, check out a small sample of facts National Center policy analyst Ryan Balis collected about the United Nations' shameful legacy vis-a-vis Jews and Israel"

The Iranian menace: "On July 29, 2006, the London Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published a detailed article on assistance extended to Hizbullah by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, as reported by a high-ranking Revolutionary Guards officer who had trained Hizbullah naval units. According to the officer, Hizbullah has a diver unit and a naval commando unit. He further claims that Revolutionary Guards officers assisted Hizbullah in the July 14, 2006 firing of a C802 missile at an Israeli Navy ship, and had also helped Hizbullah construct underground facilities - including command and control rooms - which are being operated by Revolutionary Guards officers along with Hizbullah fighters. In addition, Iranian news agencies have published a number of reports about groups of Iranian volunteers sent to Lebanon to aid Hizbullah in its fight against Israel."

Chaos looming in British public services: "A huge rise in immigration from Eastern Europe next year could cause chaos in schools and hospitals and spark a public backlash, according to a leaked government report. It also gives warning that ministers may be forced to abandon their refusal to grant housing and welfare benefits, creating what it describes as an extra "pull factor", attracting further immigrants. The arrival of hundreds of thousands from abroad is already forcing down wages for low-paid workers with "serious implications" for social discord, the report insists. A "step change" in the level of immigration when Romania and Bulgaria join the EU next year could make things worse, it says."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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