* Mark Levin in the National Review about the security fence and US operations in Iraq. Succinctly written and very clear.
The wall is about Israel’s self-defense, and nothing more. The wall can be moved if future agreements require it. The problem has never been Israel’s unwillingness to exchange land for Palestinian promises of peace: It has always been the Palestinians’ unwillingness to keep their promises. This is just one more example of a double standard that devalues Israeli security and the lives of Israeli citizens.
* Rachel Ehrenfeld in the National Review – EuroCash:
How is it possible that the International Monetary Fund, CBS, the BBC, and even the PA itself were all able to document the PA’s misuse of funds while the EU failed to acknowledge it? Further aid payments should cease until the PA explains how it spent more than $6 billion in aid during the last decade, and returns the missing funds to the Palestinian people. History gives us little reason to think the PA will stop funding terrorism. Maybe it’s time to hold European donors legally accountable for the return on their investment.
* A Washington Times editor makes a strong case for the security fence by looking at a larger historical context.
* Molly Moore of the Washington Post reports on how the Israel is sparking tourism by marketing solidarity trips and tours, featuring visits with terror victims, trips to checkpoints, security briefings. Moore quotes the director of Shurat HaDin:”It is not Grandma’s trip to Israel.”
* Steve Chawkins in the LA Times on a trip for Israeli terror victims:
The two dozen young Israelis were on a two-week U.S. tour organized by the Southern California Jewish Center, an educational group based in Los Angeles. There was the young girl who was severely burned in a 2002 terrorist attack on a hotel in Kenya frequented by Israelis. Fire engulfed her as she tried to drag her mother’s flaming body to a swimming pool. There was the 14-year-old boy with permanent brain damage from rocks hurled at him on the street. There was Leor Thaler, 16, who still carries a hunk of shrapnel and a few steel nails inside him. In February 2002 he went out for pizza with his sister, Rachel, and friends when a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing Rachel and two other teenagers, including Leor’s best friend.
