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by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

Fortunately, Congress is taking a different path towards Israel than the Obama administration. While the President and his team are taking an increasingly hard line against the Jewish State, an overwhelmingly bipartisan consensus in Congress is standing strongly with Israel. On Tuesday for example, “the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a non-binding resolution on Tuesday condemning the Goldstone Report, that accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, and calling on the Obama administration to oppose its endorsement. 334 representatives voted for the resolution while only 36 voted against and 22 abstained.” This bodes well.

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If I had to rank the most pro-Israel leaders in the Western alliance right now, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and French President Nicolas Sarkozy would top the list. President Obama wouldn’t even be on the list.- (more…)

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by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

At 6:25 local time on the morning of October 23, 1983, agents of the ayatollah used a suicide bomber to plow a truck filled with explosives into the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.

The attack resulted in “the largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on the face of the Earth,” according to a U.S. federal court judge who found the Islamic Republic of Iran guilty of perpetrating the crime. Locked doors on a building nearly three hundred feet away were ripped off their hinges. (more…)

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by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

Last month, the Obama administration and the leaders of the G8 industrialized nations gave Iran a deadline of September to accept serious, high-level negotiations over its nuclear program or risk stiffer economic sanctions. Thus far, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his senior aides have rejected any negotiations with the “infidels.” And the clock is running. (more…)

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by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

As I traveled throughout the U.S. on my recent book tour, I kept running into people who would ask me, “Where is Steve Forbes? The economy is melting down. We need his economic expertise right now.”

I couldn’t agree more. Steve’s message in the 1990s of free market ways to create hope, growth and opportunity at home and abroad may have seemed too bold to the GOP establishment at the time. (more…)

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by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

Regular readers of this column and my books know that Bible prophecy says the ancient city of Babylon, Iraq will be rebuilt and become the greatest center of wealth, commerce and power in the “last days” of history. The books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Revelation are explicit on this subject. Skeptics and cynics abound, to be sure, but the fact is Babylon is being rebuilt right now, in part with U.S. taxpayer funds. Iraqi leaders hope that eventually millions of tourists will come to visit, and real progress is being made. Consider today’s edition of Stars & Stripes, a U.S. military publication. They have a fascinating story this morning headlined: “U.S., Iraqi experts developing plan to preserve Babylon, build local tourism industry.” (more…)

by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

To be honest, it’s taken me several days to process President Obama’s speech in Cairo. But let me offer a bit of analysis now that I’ve had a little more time to think about it carefully.

First, the good news:

• It was important for the President of the United States to reach out to moderate Muslims — to the Reformers, as I describe them in Inside The Revolution — and explain America’s desire to understand them, encourage them, and help them succeed. The vast, vast majority of the world’s 1.3 billion-plus Muslims are not Radicals. They may not necessarily love the U.S., or Israel or the West, but they are not jihadists. (more…)

by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

The year 1979 was a game-changer in the epicenter for Radicals, Reformers and Revivalists alike.

• In January 1979, the Shah of Iran — not a Reformer, but certainly a long-time friend of the U.S. and Israel — was ousted from power.
• On February 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini — the first true Radical of the modern era — returned to Iran after decades in exile and was met by millions of Muslims who greeted him as the possible Islamic Messiah, chanting, “The Holy One has come!”
• On March 26th, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat — the first true Reformer of the modern era – and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords at the White House, an historic peace treaty unprecedented in the annals of 4,000+ years of Jewish-Egyptian relations.
• On April 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini declared Iran the world’s first “Islamic Republic,” putting the country under Sharia law and creating a Radical tyranny unlike any other at the time in the Middle East. (more…)

by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

The “mother of the Revolution” is dead at 93

Thirty years after the Revolution began — and twenty years after the death of her husband — the wife of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has died at the age of 93, reports the Associated Press.

Khadijeh Saqafi was known as the “mother of the Islamic revolution.” She died Saturday in Tehran. “Thousands of people, including Iran’s president and supreme leader, attended her funeral at Tehran University on Sunday….”Saqafi, who married Khomeini in 1931, stayed out of the public eye during much of her life,” reports AP. “Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani described her as the ‘closest and most patient’ supporter of her husband and his struggle against the U.S.-backed shah’s government, according to the state-run IRNA news agency….Saqafi is survived by three daughters. One of her son’s, Ahmad, died in 1995 at the age of 50 after suffering a massive cardiac arrest. Another son, Mostafa, was killed in 1977 in Iraq.” (more…)

by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

Amidst the global economic crisis in which upwards of 45% of the world’s wealth has been lost in the last 18 months, talk of radically restructuring the global economic system is growing. In recent weeks, leaders in Europe, Africa and the Middle East have proposed scrapping the current economic order and going to a single common currency.

A story in yesterday’s Moscow Times is creating quite a stir in particular. At the April 2nd meeting of world leaders in London (the G20), the Kremlin is reportedly set to propose a new global common currency system to replace the U.S. dollar as the international currency of choice. (more…)

by Joel Rosenberg [novelist]

Incredibly, a growing chorus of “experts” says yes.

U.S. and Israeli experts increasingly believe Iran could have its first nuclear weapon by the end of 2009 or early 2010. President Barack Obama has all but ruled out military force to stop Iran, preferring instead to pursue direct negotiations with Tehran.

Last week, however, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, dismissed such talk. “Negotiations with whom?” asked Khameini. “With an occupying and bullying regime [Israel], who does not believe in any other principle other than force?….Or negotiations with America and Britain who committed the biggest sin in creating and supporting this cancerous tumor [the Jewish State]?” (more…)