On Iran, cavernous tactical gaps separate Israel, US
On Iran, cavernous tactical gaps separate Israel, US | JPost | Israel News.
LAST UPDATED: 11/16/2013 18:14
On Sunday afternoon, in the midst of considerable disagreement with Washington over Iran policy and hours after the Geneva talks between Iran and the world powers ended without agreement, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took to the US airwaves to present Israel’s case to the American public.
“I think the president and I share the goal of making sure that Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said with tremendous understatement on CBS’s Face the Nation, referring to US President Barack Obama. “I think where we might have a difference of opinion is on how to prevent it.”
To which one could have been forgiven for shouting at the television, “Ya think?!” Saying that Jerusalem and Washington share the goal of keeping Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, and only differ on how to achieve it, is like saying two parents concur that they want their children to grow up to be good and decent human beings, and differ only on the educational philosophy needed at home to bring it about.
What Netanyahu discussed is a pretty fundamental difference on a pretty significant issue. But, as a senior American official said in a briefing with Israeli reporters this week, that type of difference need not break up relationships. Husbands and wives love each other, the official stated, but that does not mean they don’t disagree and fight from time to time – nor that those natural fights and disagreements necessarily put the relationship in danger of collapse.
Which is a valid point, one that everyone from US Ambassador Dan Shapiro to Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz were at pains to stress this week.
“The truth is that the US and Israel have as close a relationship as any two countries on earth,” Shapiro said on one occasion. Steinitz said on another: “USIsrael relations are not good, they are very good.”
BUT STILL, what emerged in the very loud, public and testy dust-up this week between the US and Israel over a proposed agreement with Iran on its nuclear program were basic conceptual differences about how best to approach the issue.
Up until the June election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was ruling the Iranian roost and – because of his radical extremism – made it easier (though not easy) for Israel to rally opinion against Tehran, the differences over Iran had to do with timeline: when it would be necessary to act militarily to prevent Iran from getting nukes.
This was the core of the disagreement last year over redlines for Iran, with Netanyahu urging for a redline to be set, and Obama unwilling to do so.
The difference back then – pre-Rouhani days – could be summed up using a cake metaphor. Imagine you want to keep someone from baking a cake.
What is the best way to do it? Do you prevent the prospective baker from gathering all the ingredients – the eggs, flour and water – and putting them on the table to mix together and place in the oven at his pleasure (the Israeli position)? Or do you say you have time, and can wait to physically stop the baker if he dares to stick head and hands into the oven to remove the cake once it is baked (the US position)?
The entire debate over redlines was a discussion over whether military action was needed to keep the Iranians from gathering all the ingredients needed for a nuclear bomb, but not mixing them together – or whether it was wiser to wait until they mixed all the ingredients together, and were just about to pull a finished bomb out of their centrifuge-spinning military/industrial ovens.
That huge Israeli-US tactical difference could be explained by differences in proximity, threat perception and capabilities. Since Israel is so much closer to Iran than the US and feels so much more immediately threatened, and also because its military capacities are less great than those of the US, it does not feel that military action could be delayed until the very last minute – like the US. Rather, Israel asserted that military action would have to be taken to keep the Iranians from getting all the ingredients together on the table.
That was Netanyahu’s famous redline on a diagram of a cartoonish looking bomb at the UN in 2012; a redline defined as the Iranians acquiring 250 kilos of uranium enriched to 90 percent – a redline, by the way, that the Iranians have been careful not to cross.
That was then. Now, with Rouhani’s election, the discussion has shifted and is less about a redline for military action, and more about the efficacy of diplomacy, and how best to get the Iranians to back off.
Here, too, a cake metaphor can illustrate the differences.
If you don’t want the persistent baker to bake his cake, and are physically twisting his arm to keep him from doing so, do you take the pressure off his arm when he says he is no longer interested in the same type of cake and agrees not to touch the ingredients on the table for a while? Or do you only start letting up on his arm when he pours a good amount of the eggs, flour and water down the drain so he can’t make the cake, even if he might still want to?
And therein lies the major conceptual differences in the US and American approach. Those differences can be seen along two major planes. The first plane has to deal with the idea whether the P5+1 – made up of the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – should pursue an interim agreement or move only toward a final one with the Iranians, and the second has to do with sanctions.
Regarding the type of agreement to pursue, according to the American approach – as articulated this week by a senior American official who briefed Israeli journalists – the proposal put on the table in Geneva was a first stage agreement.
The idea, she said, was to get the Iranians to freeze their nuclear program for six months, and then use those six months to negotiate a comprehensive agreement on the nuclear program.
The guiding philosophy here is it will take much longer than half a year to negotiate a comprehensive deal, but that it was necessary to ensure that during these negotiations, the Iranians don’t use the time to “run out the clock” – meaning that as the negotiations plod on, they don’t use the time to continue spinning their centrifuges.
The approach advance by the US is to get the Iranians to freeze their program for six months, thereby putting some more time back on the clock for negotiations, and in return grant the Iranians some sanctions relief.
Israel has a couple of problems with that approach.
The first is that it believes that if everything is frozen for six months, then Iran – for the first time – would gain international legitimacy for being a nuclear threshold state, something it will then be more difficult to roll back.
“Iran became a de facto nuclear threshold state 12-18 months ago,” Steinitz declared this week, saying this means that once it makes a political decision to go for a bomb, it would take it less than a year to do so.
Up until now, Steinitz said, this threshold status for Iran has put it in clear violation of international law, of UN Security Council resolutions and of various stipulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“Now after this interim partial agreement, Iran is actually in a very sophisticated way achieving international legitimization for being and remaining, a least for the time being, a threshold nuclear country,” he said. “It is the most dangerous thing, and it will be more difficult later to roll back their capacity, because once you give it some kind of international legitimization, it is very difficult to say it is impossible, not legitimate.”
Or, as Home Defense Minister Gilad Erdan put it even more bluntly later in the week, “We must not be mistaken: An interim agreement will be a permanent agreement.”
Steinitz said that Israel adamantly opposes a partial agreement with Iran, because Jerusalem believes in the formula that “the greater the pressure, the greater the chances for diplomacy to succeed.”
If you accept that principle, he continued, “it logically follows that the lower the pressure, the lower the chances. So the conclusion is clear: Don’t ease the pressure on the Iranians until you reach the final goal, before you reach a final comprehensive and satisfactory agreement. If you ease the pressure before that, you will lose the chances to succeed.”
Or, as Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon put it, if the Iranians are only freezing their nuclear program, and not taking any significant steps to dismantle their centrifuges and actually roll their program back, then the world should freeze its sanctions in place, but not begin to roll them back.
A freeze for a freeze, he said, a rollback for a rollback; but definitely not a rollback of sanctions for only a freeze of the nuclear program.
Which leads to the second major conceptual difference with the US, and that has to do with sanctions – both how the Iranians will respond to heavier ones, and how to keep the world on board. These differences are larger even than the spat Wednesday between Washington and Jerusalem, about whether sanctions relief offered to the Iranians was “moderate” as the US claimed, or reached up to $40 billion, as Steinitz maintained.
ACCORDING TO the US way of thinking, if some sanctions relief is not provided in the midst of negotiations, certain countries that have been difficult to get onboard – but which are now onboard – will view this as unreasonable and begin to abandon the sanctions ship. The countries that come to mind in this context are China, Russia, Turkey, India, even South Korea.
The senior US official said that if sanctions are not relieved, but indeed more sanctions are piled on – as the US Senate is considering – two things would happen: Iran would leave the negotiating table and move more aggressively forward in its nuclear program, and the international coalition in place would say the Americans were just pressing for military action, deem this position unreasonable and begin to abandon sanctions altogether.
Israel believes the opposite.
Tougher sanctions, or at the very least not removing sanctions, would not embolden Iran to move more aggressively forward in its nuclear program, but rather render it more pliable – since the pressure of the sanctions is what brought Tehran to the table in a serious mood to begin with.
Moreover, the sanctions regime won’t collapse with more measures, but rather would begin to unravel if it is relieved because – as Netanyahu said this week – if you punch a hole in a tire, it is just a matter of time before all the air escapes and the tire goes flat.
Granted, as Netanyahu said on Meet the Press, the American and Israeli strategic goals on Iran are identical. The devil here is not in the details; rather it is in the significantly different approaches to the tactics.
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WarSclerotic 
November 16, 2013 at 7:11 PM
The differences on Iran between the US and Israel are not tactical but fundamental. Netanyahu believes Islam scholar and Middle East historian Bernard Lewis who says that the Mutually Assured Destruction MAD doctrine is inapplicable to Iran i.e. “For people with this mindset, M.A.D. is not a constraint; it is an inducement” and therefore the threat from Iran is global and orders of magnitude more severe than if this were not the case.
The US apparently believes Bernard Lewis is some looney professor who has no idea what he is talking about.
November 16, 2013 at 8:14 PM
Hussein does not share any goals with Israel. For 5 years he has does nothing but show disrespect toward the Israeli leader.
Last fall during the heat of the presidential campaign he refused even to meet with him when Netanyahu came to NYC for the UN assembly (even as Israel was on the brink of war with Iran).
Now that he has won reelection he is willing to speak to Netanyahu as he stabs him in the back once more. Hussein is best buds with the tyrants that run Iran. He would be more than happy to see them destroy Israel.
The truth may be harsh, but people need to get their heads out of the sand and recognize reality.
November 16, 2013 at 8:19 PM
I’m reminded of September 2012 when both Hussein and Ahmadinejad said the Israelis were “noise” that needed to be blocked out.
Now Hussein and Iran are once again on the same playbook and even at times they are coordinating talking points.
November 16, 2013 at 9:29 PM
Reblogged this on danmillerinpanama and commented:
The post includes two perceptive analogies to cake baking.
And
One problem seems to be that President Obama and Secretary Kerry don’t have very much against the
Yellowcake being baked in Iran.November 17, 2013 at 1:39 AM
All Jews to the ovens…….
Mladen, correct, the differences are fundamental. If I’m correct this started because Bibi said the differences were tactical or such, IN ORDER TO BE POLITE, and Kerry et al picked up on that to suggest that Bibi had no right to complain too much. While Bibi refuses to take off the kid gloves, Iran is getting the bomb.
Dan, you talk about cake and ovens. Do you know who brought this up? Wendy Sherman and Catherine Ashton. When they were about to present the deal they had worked out at the last Geneva meeting, the two of them declared, like giddy little teenagers, “The cake is ready for putting in the oven to bake.” ( http://web.debka.com/article/23436/ ) No one has apparently picked up on the fact that these two are presenting a Chamberlainite deal and OPENLY TALKING ABOUT READYING OVENS. We Jews have a certain historical memory about ovens….
But never mind! Negotiating with Iran is as simple as Home Economics 101 and Suzie Homemaker! Or a community organizing meeting! Pay no attention to those gas chambers over there! Don’t worry! It’s not as if things are going to get hot or anything! It’s peace in our time! Sherman and Ashton said they’re readying ovens? Silly them! Silly! Just shut up and get in the oven.
Meanwhile, the American Jewish community are almost as quiet as mice about all this. Who could be against peace? War is always bad. Yo! Peace! Let’s all have free love at Obama’s free love Geneva hippie commune.
November 17, 2013 at 4:40 AM
Trust Obama. He gave his promise, so what’s the big deal? We have to take the Iran talks one step at a time. If they get the bomb that won’t happen for at least a month. We can always drive off that bridge when we come to it.
Like this:
Just because Obama failed to live up to one promise is no reason to think it could happen twice. The deal with Iran is a sure thing:
Anyway, the mainstream media will never draw a link between his failed promise on healthcare and his pledges on Iran.
So Obama has nothing to worry about.
November 17, 2013 at 7:50 AM
Living outside the US for almost 3 years I am perplexed that Obama would have been re elected…seems the US media is keeping the American people in the dark. Yesterday, I attended a technical conference in BAngkok and one of the speakers was a US Defense contractor, I asked him if he felt the American people were aware of the duplicity and horrific reputation Obama has created by his apparent arrogance, he told me that the American people have been purposely kept in the dark…how is this possible? Every nation on earth is disgusted with Obama for so many reasons, I am amazed he is getting away with his games inside the country. Can anyone explain what his true agenda is..it makes no sense to me. He cannot possibly be that stupid..can he? Is he simple deluded, on a world class ego trip..does he believe he is the coming Messiah..or perhaps the 12th Imam..this whole things is insane.
Lawrence
November 17, 2013 at 8:40 AM
The real problem is how is it that Obama can get away with it while implementing such absurd policies? The American political system of checks and balances is obviously failing.
Help! The density of nonsense coming from Obama and Kerry has reached critical mass!
http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/help-density-of-nonsense-coming-from.html
November 17, 2013 at 12:23 PM
To me, Obama’s behavior and statements are perfectly understandable in light of the Torah. Firstly, we need to understand Ishmael in the Bible from whom the Arabs are descended, and they even admit it. The Bible says of Ishmael, “he shall be a wild man and his hand shall be against every other man’s hands.”
The Torah tells us that Abraham had a righteous son, Isaac, and a wicked son Ishmael. Similarly, Isaac had a righteous son, Jacob, and a wicked son, Esau. It is said of Esau that he was “ruddy,” red-haired, red symbolizing blood, violence, strictness and harshness in an evil way. Only with Jacob’s sons were there no wicked sons and only of Jacob does the Bible say, “his bed was complete.” Hence, it was Jacob who was worthy of being the father of the sons from whom came the 12 tribes of Israel.
Why? Because Abraham inclined to the side of kindness. Isaac inclined to the side of strictness, severity. Only Jacob properly blended these two concepts, which is the actual truth, and that is why he became the actual father of the 12 tribes. But this was before the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Each of them carried out their purpose appropriately. That is why these 3 patriarchs are called the “merkava” or “chariot,” that is, a “vehicle” for G-dliness, a vehicle together, collectively.
For instance, if we give a child too much we spoil the child and if we are too strict we crush the child. Same with society, unrestricted leniency, liberalism carried to an extreme, can be bad. Same with the opposite, unrestricted severity can also be bad, crushing, fascist. Only when properly blending these do we get to the “truth.”
Precisely because each of the 3 patriarchs had a particular inclination, they were tested with the opposite, to see if they worshipped G-d only for that quality or truly out of love of G-d. Hence, since Abraham’s natural inclination was kindness, he was commanded to do the opposite, sacrifice his son Isaac, and only at the last moment did G-d stop him. Same with Isaac, he was forced to do things that were kind in a way that was not his natural inclination. Jacob and his mother Rebecca saw that Esau was wicked and could not be allowed to become the father of the Jewish people, despite his being the eldest, so they deceived Isaac, the opposite of acting truthfully, so that Jacob got Isaac’s blessing, not Esau. Jacob was tested in that he had to do something against his nature, he had to be untruthful. Jacob put on animal skins his mother prepared, so that he seemed hairy like Esau. Isaac, who was at that point blind, sensed that something was amiss, that he was holding Jacob, not Esau, due to his voice. But though confused, he gave the blessing of peoplehood to Jacob nevertheless. At that point Isaac made the famous statement, “The hands of are of Esau but the voice is of Jacob.” Sometimes we must use the tough hands of Esau or the pure voice of Jacob will never be allowed into this world. That is why native born Israelis are called a “sabra,” a cactus, which is tough on the outside but tender on the inside.
Having said all this, because Abraham’s unrestricted kindness is not the ultimate truth, there is room for the opposite. Hence he had a righteous son, Isaac, but also a wicked son, Ishmael, from whom come the Arabs.
In Kabbalah we speak of “klipa,” a “shell” that can cover over G-dliness just as the shell of a nut can cover over and obscure the fruit within.
Ishmael represents “klipa of kindness,” the shell covering up kindness, or the flip side of kindness. It’s not real kindness. That is why the Torah says of Ishmael, “He shall be a wild man and his hand shall be against every other man’s hand.” Why does the text refer to “hand”? Because normally the hand represents kindness, giving charity. Ishmael takes that kindness and perverts it, he uses his hand against other men’s hands. Similarly, we see that the Arabs are all fighting each other. They even use this quarreling as a part of their life force. They use their DISUNITY as an excuse: We have to give in to them because they are under pressure from the EVER PRESENT HARDLINERS, on whom they blame everything. Obama is doing the same thing, caving in to Rouhani on the fantasy that he is under mysterious pressure from the hardliners, but don’t worry, deep down we know Rouhani has good intentions!
Does this make kindness, from whence comes liberalism, inherently wrong? No. We saw that Joseph became viceroy over Egypt and instituted huge granaries to store up grain against the day when the king’s dream would be fulfilled, that there would be famine in the land. Joseph’s actions involved taxation and could be considered the first Federal Reserve, modulating the economy to assure survival and stability. And for the record, Joseph’s action made Egypt vastly wealthy, because when the famine hit thousands came to Egypt to buy grain. Because of Joseph’s “Federal Reserve,” Egypt became a fabulously wealthy superpower.
Understand. G-d is not a Democrat. He is also not a Republican. G-d is G-d! And whatever He tells us, that is what we must do. G-d did not look into Karl Marx’ “Das Kapital” when He wrote the Torah. He also did not look into Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations.” A lot of people from BOTH parties can’t handle this.
Deep down, Obama thinks that by being against killing he is somehow following what the Bible is all about. In fact, the Bible never says, “Thou shalt not kill.” What The Ten Commandments say IN THE ORIGINAL HEBREW (Exodus 20), is “Lo teertzach,” “Thou shalt not MURDER.” If I wanted to say, “Thou shalt not kill,” that would be “Lo taharohg.” The Bible never says “Lo taharohg.” Because some killing is necessary. Hence Moses himself killed people. Moses slew an Egyptian man who was killing a Hebrew man, one of his brethren.
Similarly it says just 2 chapters after The Ten Commandments, in Exodus 22:1, “If a man be found while crawling under your house and he be smitten so that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him.” In other words, if someone is crawling under your house to break in, you do not have to hand him an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire to find out his deep inner outer upper under intentions and you shall not be punished on his behalf if you kill him. No one breaks into a man’s home which will surely be defended, unless he comes prepared to kill. Therefore, you can assume he is a threat to your life and you can kill him. On this verse the Talmud comments in Brachot 58a, “If someone comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.” This is Biblical law.
The problem is not that Obama is a liberal, there are liberal policies that are beneficial. The Lubavitcher Rebbe praised America as a “medina shel chesed,” a “realm of kindness.”
Where Obama and some liberals go wrong is that they often can’t tell the difference between kindness and the klipa of kindness. We have to be kind, right? Okay, let’s be kind to Ishmael. Because otherwise, WHAT WOULD PEOPLE SAY????? It’s not the kindness, it’s the perversion of kindness that is Obama’s problem.
Is this because he’s too stupid to chew gum and walk at the same time?
Yup.
He can’t tell the difference between genuine kindness and klipa of kindness. Some of his policies are genuinely kind in a positive sense. It’s just that he and the nitwits he has brought into government can’t tell the difference between genuine kindness and klipa of kindness. One of the things Obama did NOT do was bring “the best and the brightest” into government as President Kennedy had.
So Obama’s people assume that SINCE we have to be kind, THEREFORE we have to be kind to the most malevolent Muslims, including Iran.
This is also why Obama is incapable of going to war, the opposite of kindness. The problem is not that he is a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican. There are some Democrats who are vehemently opposed to his Middle East policies. It’s that Obama can’t tell the difference between true kindness and fake kindness.
If you look back in history you will see some great progressive Democrats like Bobby Kennedy, John Kennedy, and even Lyndon Johnson. Johnson produced all the great social legislation even while escalating the war in Vietnam. Kennedy laid the groundwork for that legislation, even while standing up to the Russians in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Read “Thirteen Days” by Bobby Kennedy and you will se that the way we got the Russians to back down was Bobby Kennedy’s idea.
But can you imagine Obama creating a genuine naval blockade of Iran the way Kennedy blockaded Cuba? Of course not. Obama basically has the sense and values of a gum popping teenager.
Even President Clinton, with whom I have a great many disagreements, sent in cruise missiles to try to kill Osama.
But Obama? He reportedly did NOT kill Osama and Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta had to actually do it behind his back. Just look at the photo of Obama in the White House Situation Room during the operation against Osama. He looks absolutely petrified, like he is ready to hide under the desk. This is also why he voted “present” over and over while a legislator in Illinois. Obama has deep, deep, deep character flaws.
Obama is thoroughly lost and I do not put him in the same category as some of the great American progressives. Obama is on a gigantic 1960s hippie ego trip and those around him think they’ve got it all figured out.
How did he get there? Is he really a Muslim? I doubt it. He dumbly spent years attending a church led by a radical minister who was certainly no Muslim. But Obama has been exposed to and influenced by the Muslim culture he grew up in, with a father who was a Muslim. His mother was not, as far as I know. One can be INFLUENCED by the kliipa of kindness without actually being a Muslim or Arab. I think he’s sympathetic to them.
I think this is at the heart of it.
In this sense I draw a strong distinction between Obama and many other Democrats. The shame is that Democrats are NOT trying to stop Obama on his suicidal Middle East policies, and that is a great shame, but predictable. Members of the party of a sitting president usually don’t stand up to him. This was also true of Republican presidents who sold out Israel, and Republicans on Capitol Hill were quiet as mice. If Obama were a Republican, Republicans on Capitol Hill would be quiet as mice right now. By the way, George W. Bush wouldn’t let Israel bomb Iran either.
Reagan was something of an exception. When Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant, Reagan was privately pretty sympathetic, saying “Well, boys will be boys.” Unfortunately, everyone around Reagan was determined that Israel had to be punished, including then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush.
If you want an interesting read, read John Loftus’ and Mark Aaron’s massively documented “The Secret War Against The Jews.” They show that EVERYBODY was against Israel, Democratic presidents, Republican presidents, EVERYBODY. Aside from Reagan one isolated exception was President Kennedy, the first president to sell arms to Israel, Hawk missiles. Everybody else, behind the smiles, stabbed Israel in the back. Oliver North wrote in his book that he was astounded at how anti-Israel were so many in the US military and foreign policy bureaucracy. Hostility to Israel is not confined to one party.
This is why it is so treacherous that Israelis are so obsessed with relying on the US to save them. No one in either party is going to actually stop Obama and Obama has been selling out Israel for years and the Republicans haven’t made much of a stink about it either.
And meanwhile, Netanyahu keeps trying to win approval from the US which is never going to come, instead of bombing Iran. After all, WHAT WOULD PEOPLE SAY?!
The truth is that thinking is hard. People would rather follow paradigms than actually think. They follow the liberal rule of thumb or the conservative rule of thumb but THEY DON’T ACTUALLY THINK because that uses up too much metabolic energy. People are stuck in their paradigms. As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet,
“The single and peculiar life is bound with all the strength and armor of the mind. It is a massy wheel fixed on the summit of the highest mount, to whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things are mortised and adjoined.”
In other words, we cling to our paradigms tenaciously. Thomas Kuhn wrote in “The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions” that even scientists can cling to ideas even after they have become outmoded or disproven.
We don’t want to think. Neurologically genuinely thinking about what’s right is resource-intensive. We would much rather ask, “What does my liberal ideology tell me to think?” or “What does my conservative ideology tell me to think?” “What should I do? I know. I’ll look into my liberal crystal ball” or “I’ll look into my conservative crystal ball.”
There have been very anti-Israel and anti-Semitic Republicans in bygone years. Democrats don’t have a monopoly on this. Only what G-d’s Torah says is perfect. Rabbi Nachman, the Breslover Rebbe, said that all the evils of the world can be traced to misplaced kindness and unwarranted fears. Fear and kindness are not inherently bad. It is their MISPLACEMENT that is the problem. Thus, G-d rejected King Saul and replaced him with David because Saul showed too much kindness to the evil Amalekites. Thus the Midrash, an ancient Torah text, comments on this in Midrash Rabbah, Kohelet 7, “He who is merciful to the cruel is destined to be cruel to the merciful.”
The Talmud in tractate Pirkei Avos also tells that the actual straw that broke the camel’s back and made G-d destroy Sodom, more even than their homosexuality, was their laws against kindness and charity. In Sodom it was actually illegal to give charity. A girl there had mercy on a poor person and gave him bread. The people of Sodom seized her, smeared her body with honey and tied her to a roof where she died a horrible death, struggling against swarming bees. This was the final straw that angered G-d and caused him to destroy Sodom.
Once you let purely secular ideologies run your life and think for you, sooner or later you wind up doing pretty ridiculous things.
That, in my opinion, is Obama’s big problem. He doesn’t think, he lets his ideology think for him. And that is why it is almost impossible to get through to him.
November 17, 2013 at 5:42 PM
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.