1. Muslim Acts of Beheading in the West, http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2013/05/muslim-acts-of-beheading-in-the-west, Daniel Pipes
2. Thank you Hafez al-Assad, http://www.carolineglick.com, Caroline Glick
3. Kerry: Israel, Palestinians must take hard decisions, Israel National News, Uzi Baruch & AFP
4. Another Display of Israel's Strategic Value, American Thinker, Evelyn Gordon
5. Muslim writer touts Israeli tolerance of minorities, The Jerusalem Post, Ariel Ben Solomon

The gruesome murder yesterday of a soldier outside London by a Muslim convert, Michael Adebolajo, brings to mind that throat slitting and beheading are Islamically sanctioned forms of execution. Although these occur particularly often in the course of family-related crimes – think, for example, of the case of Aasiya Hassan in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., killed by her husband in 2009, stabbed with two hunting knives more than forty times in the face, back and chest, then beheaded – this monstrous form of violence is also used in non-family instances. Some of those that took place over the past decade in the West in chronological order include:

• Ariel Sellouk – Houston, August 2003: throat slit attempted but incomplete beheading.
  
  
• Sébastien Selam – Paris, November 2003: throat was slit twice; his face was mutilated with a carving fork and his eyes were gouged out by a Muslim neighbor who boasted "I killed my Jew, I'll go to paradise."
  
  
• Theo Van Gogh – Amsterdam, November 2004: shot, throat slit, and five-page paper pinned to his body.
  
  
• Hossam Armanious, Amal Garas, Sylvia Armanious, and Monica Armanious,  – Jersey City, N.J., January 2005: necks, throats and bodies stabbed, mutilation of Coptic tattoo.
  
  
• Brendan Mess, Erik Weissman, and Raphael Teken - Waltham, Massachusetts, September 2012: throats slit, probably by Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bombers.
  
  
• Hany F. Tawadros and Amgad A. Konds – Jersey City, N.J., February 2013: shot, decapitated, hands severed.
  
  
• Lee Rigby – Woolwich, England, May 2013: run over by car, mutilated, beheaded.

This gruesome list (to be updated as needed) is only part of the story: other characteristically Muslim crimes taking place in Western countries include honor killings, female genital mutilation, and slave holding. These, sadly, are among Islam's contributions to the lands of immigration. (May 23, 2013)

Click here for the complete article, or copy and paste this link into your web browser:
http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/news/article.php?id=9372

...During the 1990s, the Israeli Left and the Clinton administration managed to convince the Rabin, Netanyahu and Barak governments to offer to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria.

The only reason that the initiative failed was because Assad Sr. rejected Israel's repeated offers to surrender the strategic plateau in exchange for a piece of paper with a smiley face on it.

Had Assad accepted Israel's offers, we would have been facing a situation today that we would be hard pressed to contend with. On the one hand, we would be facing an all but certain war with Syria with al-Qaida or Iran controlling everything from the Jordan Valley to Haifa Bay.

On the other hand we would be facing this threat as a fractured society.

To hide their culpability for rendering Israel all but powerless to defend itself, those who supported surrendering the Golan would be pretending the dangers away. Instead of being free to discuss how to win a war in Syria, we would be bogged down in discussions of whether we have a right to fight in Syria.

In other words, if it hadn't been for Assad Sr. and his unyielding hatred for Israel, we would be facing the same situation in relation to Syria today that we faced in Lebanon in 2006 and as we have faced in Gaza since we withdrew in 2005. The lack of consensus regarding our strategic imperative to defeat our enemies in Gaza and Lebanon caused the IDF to fail to win its campaigns in both theaters....

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http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/news/article.php?id=9373

John Kerry (AFP photo)

US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Friday to take "hard decisions" to revive the Middle East peace process, which has stalled for almost three years.
  
"We're getting toward a time now when hard decisions need to be made," he told a news conference in Tel Aviv at the end of his fourth visit to the region since he took office in February.

Kerry has been pressing Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks that broke down in September 2010.    He said there was "one way" to make peace a reality, "and that is through direct negotiations.

"Ultimately it is the Israeli and Palestinian people who both decide the outcome... and who will get the greatest benefits" from a resumption of talks, he said.

"I know this region well enough to know there is scepticism, in some quarters there is cynicism, and there are reasons for it. There have been bitter years of disappointment," he said....

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http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/news/article.php?id=9374

The ongoing debate about whether America should intervene in Syria highlights an important point about Israel’s unique value as a U.S. ally: It is the only American ally in the Middle East willing and able to serve American interests by projecting power independently, rather than waiting for American troops to ride to the rescue.

One of the most bizarre features of Syria’s ongoing civil war is the widespread assumption that outside intervention against the Assad regime will come from the U.S. or not at all. After all, the rebels’ main backers include two American allies with powerful militaries, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Turkey has one of the region’s largest armies, significantly larger than Syria’s; moreover, as a NATO member, it’s equipped with state-of-the-art Western weaponry. Saudi Arabia has been a major purchaser of the best American weaponry for years, including fighter jets, missiles and airborne warning and control systems. Both have billed Assad’s departure as a major national interest. Yet never once have they suggested that their combined air forces could use Turkey’s bases to impose a no-fly zone over part of Syria; they take it for granted that if military intervention is to happen, America will have to do it. And so does Washington.

In contrast, Israel has always insisted on taking sole responsibility for its own defense, and is consequently both willing and able to take independent military action. And because its interests in the region often overlap with those of its American ally, such action often ends up serving American interests. That was true in the Cold War, when Israeli battles with the Soviet Union’s Arab proxies repeatedly proved the superiority of American over Soviet arms. It was true when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981: Had it not thereby stopped Saddam Hussein from acquiring nukes, an American-led coalition wouldn’t have been able to oust his forces from Kuwait a decade later. And it was true when Israel bombed Syria’s nuclear reactor in 2007: Today, Americans are sleeping better because they don’t have to worry about al-Qaida-linked militias in Syria getting their hands on nuclear material....

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http://www.unitycoalitionforisrael.org/news/article.php?id=9375

"This country does not fit the description of an apartheid state," says author Qanta Ahmed in visit to Israel.

DR. QANTA AHMED speaks at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem (Photo: Deston Productions)

British author Dr. Qanta Ahmed spoke on Wednesday at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem about the difficulties for minorities in Islamic societies and how Israel is the only country in the Middle East that tolerates them.

The event was organized by Alan Schneider, director of the B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem, and cosponsored by the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity as part of their joint Liaison Committee forum.

The forum serves as an informal initiative aimed at fostering better mutual respect and understanding between local Christians and Jews....

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