WarSclerotic

Syrian rebel offensive encroaches on last chemical stockpile – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Islamic Front fighters cut the road linking Dumair air base and Sayqal, where chemicals are believed to be held, raising fears rebels will try to take over chemical base.

Reuters

BEIRUT – A Syrian rebel offensive aimed at easing a government siege east of Damascus has brought fighting closer to the last declared stockpile of President Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons, according to diplomats and activists.

Syria has been removing 1,300 tons of chemical weapons under a deal reached last year which averted Western military strikes, after a sarin gas attack on rebel-held suburbs around the Syrian capital in August.

But it has missed several deadlines to ship out the toxins – the last of which was April 27 – and has told the international mission overseeing the operation that one remaining chemical site remains difficult to reach because of the fighting.

Assad’s Western foes suspect him of deliberately dragging out the process, but the rebel advance east of Damascus suggests there are genuine obstacles to getting the chemicals out.

“It’s a very contested area,” said one diplomat following the chemical elimination process, which is supervised by a joint mission of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Activists say rebels have clashed with Assad’s forces between Dumair air base, which they said came under heavy rocket fire from the rebels, and Sayqal air base about 40 km (25 miles) further east where the chemicals are believed to be held.

While the rebel attack appears more focused on Dumair and on breaking the military stranglehold which Assad’s forces have imposed closer to the capital, the fighting has increasingly isolated Sayqal and encroached towards it.

Activists said the fighters are from the Islamic Front – one of the largest and most powerful Islamist rebel coalitions – the Rahman Corps and Ahmad Abdo Brigades. The offensive appeared to be funded by Gulf Arab supporters, they said.

The diplomat said rebels have overrun the abandoned and emptied chemical base at Khan Abu Shammal, which lies between Dumair and Sayqal, and cut the road linking them.

He described the proximity of the fighting to Sayqal as worrying and said it was not clear whether there were alternative routes to evacuate the chemicals other than the road which was blocked by the rebels.

Precursor chemicals

Sigrid Kaag, head of the joint UN-OPCW mission, said on Sunday that 92 percent of Syria’s chemical stockpile had been destroyed or loaded onto ships at the Mediterranean port of Latakia to be eliminated elsewhere.

The remaining chemicals at Sayqal have yet to be packed into containers for the road journey to Latakia, the diplomat said.

It was unlikely they could be used by the rebels if they were captured, he added, because they were in unmixed precursor form. “It’s highly doubtful the rebels would have the capacity to do that (combine them),” he said. “The main risk might be that they might move it out or sell it on.”

Another Western diplomat said rebels understood they could face consequences if they changed the focus of their attack and tried to take the chemical base. He did not elaborate.

OPCW spokesman Christian Chartier confirmed that all remaining chemicals were still located at one site, which he did not identify.

“Of course the fighting is concerning, because it has prevented Syria and it looks like continuing preventing Syria to meet its obligations as quickly as possible,” he said.

“This is not something we can control. We can only wish that Syria does whatever it can to move the chemicals so that we can start on the actual destruction process.”

While Syria is tantalizingly close to shipping out all its declared chemical arsenal – a major feat amid a conflict which has killed 150,000 people – it has yet to agree with the OPCW on a plan to destroy 12 remaining chemical facilities.

The OPCW is also deploying a fact-finding mission to Syria to investigate accusations by rebels and activists of a series of chlorine gas attack in recent weeks.

Chlorine, a far weaker agent than sarin or mustard gas, was not included in Syria’s declaration to the OPCW last year. But it is still deadly and its use in warfare is banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention which Syria signed up to last year.

Assad’s Western and Arab opponents say forces loyal to the Syrian president, who has been battling rebels for three years, were responsible for the August 2013 sarin gas attacks which killed hundreds of people.

Syrian authorities reject the accusation, saying rebel fighters trying to trigger foreign military intervention carried out the world’s worst chemical attack in a quarter century.

Secretary Kerry will bring peace between Islamists and their tormenters, Dan Miller in Panama, Dan Miller, May 2, 2014

Secretary Kerry’s keen mystical insights into human nature and agreement with President Obama’s wise foreign policies will soon bring giant leaps forward for all.

There have been reports that Secretary Kerry’s next peas peace process victim target will be South Sudan in Africa. He is there now, to deal with genocide, as promptly and effectively as is his wont. Indeed, he is expected to be no less successful than he was with his Israel – Palestinian process. Fortunately, he will not limit his quest for a Nobel Peace Process Prize to South Sudan. Instead, his next effort will be to resume his temporarily paused process against Israelis, who torment Islamists unfairly and mercilessly.

Secretary Kerry recognizes that he must appear to be impartial to assure his success. Therefore, blame for violence and social disruption needs to seem, to the extent that he is capable of it, to be cast fairly on both sides.

It’s all mostly Israel’s fault.

When Secretary Kerry referred to Israel as an apartheid state, he meant it. He was correct, despite nonsense such as this:

As John Kerry continues to engage in damage control for his recent pernicious remarks absurdly suggesting (on Holocaust Remembrance Day, no less) that Israel could morph into an “Apartheid state,” there can no longer be any doubt about Kerry’s nefarious intentions regarding Israel. By adopting the narrative espoused by the most rabid of Israel-haters, his credibility as a neutral interlocutor has, at best, been severely compromised. More importantly, his words, once uttered, will reverberate in anti-Israel circles like an echo chamber and will only serve to lend credibility to this ugly falsehood.

“Nefarious intentions?” That’s absurd; Secretary Kerry wants only the best for everyone, as shown below. Moreover, apartheid Israel is little, if any, better than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Robert King, U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, voiced concern on Thursday at the commission of inquiry’s findings of “systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations” committed by officials and institutions.

“We are alarmed by the widespread use of forced labor, including child labor in detention facilities, and we remain concerned about instances of violence against women, forced abduction of foreign nationals, and reports of torture and abuse in detention facilities,” King told the Geneva forum.

He called for Pyongyang to shut political prison camps and to release all inmates. Former prisoners who defected, including Shin Dong-hyuk, gave harrowing accounts in testimony to the U.N. inquiry, whose members were barred from entering North Korea.

Like North Korea, Israel adamantly refuses to release all political prisoners and instead tortures them by, for example, unjustly depriving them of their human right to collect postage stamps efficiently.

The Israeli military (IDF) — ferocious beasts of unmitigated ferocity all — interferes shamelessly in Palestinian family affairs.

Israelis try, with police assistance, to monopolize the holy Temple Mount, sacred to Islam.

Another day, another piece in Arab media trying to rally up the ignorant masses against Israel. Their incitement has been growing recently, when it comes to Jerusalem, Israel and especially, the Temple Mount.

Israeli extremist settlers on Wednesday broke into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, yards away from the Al-Magarbah Gate in Jerusalem, under the protection of Israeli soldiers and policemen, a Jordanian news service reported on Wednesday.”

Israel takes grossly inadequate steps to punish Israeli “price tag” terrorists who spray graffiti on buildings and otherwise vandalize property.

Israelis also murder innocent young Palestinians during nationalistically motivated price tag attacks. Merely by looking at her photograph, it became obvious to Secretary Kerry — due to his unique mystical insights — that young Ms. Dadon was a Palestinian, killed by Israeli nationalists.

Israelis are trying desperately to mask the identities of her attackers. Indeed, it is claimed, by disgraced Israeli yellow journalism source DEBKAfile, that she was murdered by

a gang of Israeli Arabs belonging to an terrorist organization called “The Galilee Liberators.” She died after multiple stab wounds were inflicted savagely on her upper torso. The killers planted clues at the scene that broadcasted their affiliation. 

Planting such “clues” is easy and Israelis are experts. However, Secretary Kerry is not stupid and understands such events very well. Will her Israeli murderers be brought to justice? Don’t count on it.

Israel — unlike the Palestinians — has used every tactic in her arsenal short (thus far) of war to stop the P5 + 1 nuclear peace process with Iran. We desperately need to resolve matters consistently with Iran’s peaceful desires to have and use her insignificant nuclear capabilities. To accomplish that we need to consider — peacefully like Iran — Iran’s peaceful past, present and future during proper negotiations. Israeli bullying tactics harm, rather than assist, the wholesome nuclear peace process just as they impeded Secretary Kerry’s splendid peace process in Israel and occupied Palestine.

On the other side, Palestinians do occasionally euthanize greedy Israeli imperialists who steal Palestinian land.

They are, quite understandably, heroes of the Palestinian resistance.

No less understandably, a few brave members of the Palestinian resistance against Israeli aggression occasionally fire missiles toward Israel. However, they miss in most cases because of their commendable humanitarian feelings, unreciprocated by Israel.

Blame for Palestinian economic misfortunes must be assigned solely to Israel because kleptocracy is anti-Islamic and has no place in Palestinian culture. Old wive’s tales such as this intentionally create a false impression and should be ignored:

Palestinian victimhood is primarily a function of exploitation by the Palestinian leadership of its unfortunate poor. The refugee camp dwellers have become cannon fodder for terror organizations and are used as suicide bombers, hijackers and assassins by Palestinian leaders. Those leaders, trumping the Palestinian cause, have become rich by intimidating European countries, extorting money from wealthy Arabs, and preying on the guilt pangs of former European colonial powers and naive Americans.

Nevertheless, Israelis and Palestinians must be treated with equal fairness

Blame for violent clashes lies on both sides, no matter how major the blame properly ascribed to Israel and no matter how minor the blame properly ascribed to the Palestinians may be. Both sides must, therefore, find redemption with dignity and fairness through the Kerry peace process.

When he succeeds, as his sterling record as the wizard of peace processes proves that he will, there will be no further sectarian troubles in the Middle East, aside from those between rival Islamic sects, principally Sunni and Shia. Flushed with success in his righteous pro-Islamist, anti-Israeli endeavors, Secretary Kerry will be compelled to tackle that problem next, relatively minor though it is.

As the chief implementer of President Obama’s wise, humane and universally acclaimed foreign policies, Secretary Kerry will succeed. He must if the world is finally to be transformed into one truly fair, just and safe for all. President Obama, the undisputed leader of the free world, rightfully demands that it become reality rather than mere fantasy while He remains in office to guarantee his legacy as the greatest and most humanitarian world leader ever.

Leader’s Adviser Stresses Iran’s Regional Influence, Tasnim (Iranian) News, May 2, 2014

(With her great regional influence, why should Iran want nukes? Oh. That’s right. She doesn’t.– DM)

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A senior military adviser to Supreme Leader said the West is anxious about Iran’s growing influence in the region, and added that Iran plays an influential role in regions from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.

Major General Seyed Yahya Rahim Safavi on Friday said Iran’s defense line has reached the border between Southern Lebanon and Occupied Palestine and the country’s strategic depth has extended from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, which has apprehended the West.

He referred to the West’s approach on Syria, saying that the strategy adopted by the US, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the European countries to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has “undeniably failed.”

Rahim Safavi described the failure as a strategic defeat for West-Arab-Zionist front, and said a great victory has been achieved by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Syria has been experiencing unrelenting militancy since March 2011. The Western powers and their regional allies are supporting the militants operating inside Syria.

Despite all the support they receive, the foreign-backed militants have been inflicted heavy defeats by the Syrian army in recent months.

The sky is not falling | JPost | Israel News.

05/01/2014 22:20

In recent months, the imperious US Secretary of State and others have warned Israel that unless it rapidly proceeds to establish a full-fledged Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, the sky will come crashing down on the Jewish state.

The doomsday diviners are certain that unless the “twostate solution” is promptly implemented, Israel will molder, or atrophy into apartheid and inch into isolation.

Well, guess what, they’re wrong. The wisdom and utility of a two-state settlement aside, its absence is not a catastrophe. Israel will continue to prosper and achieve, despite long-term lingering conflict with the Palestinians and notwithstanding the apocalyptic agonizing of well-meaning friends like John Kerry.

As Israel approaches its 66th Independence Day next week, it is important to emphasize and re-emphasize this; to shake off the bleak and sinister prognostications of our “friends” and enemies.

The gloomy, wintry forecasts are just not accurate.

A cold evaluation of Israel’s strengths versus our enemies’ threats leads to the conclusion that Israel is winning on all battlefronts, overcoming every challenge, and advancing in all ways.

Military threats to Israel have greatly diminished, as Arab societies and armies crumble across the Middle East. Soft power attacks on Israel – things like international campaigns to divest from Israel and to sanction Israel – have mostly fallen flat.

The Chinese, the Indians, and even the Europeans are lining up to buy Israeli technologies, not to boycott them.

Palestinian attempts to prosecute or confront Israel are a nuisance and ongoing, but they are mostly empty threats, as the Palestinians are in disarray and deeply divided (despite the flimsy, fake, rehashed Fatah-Hamas unity accord). The amorphous situation in the West Bank is messy but manageable, and is far less bad than most alternatives.

The dramatic weakening of America and the US-Israel relationship under President Barack Obama is of grave concern, but this is temporary and reversible. And for Israel’s major challenge – the peril of an Iranian nuclear bomb – that too will yet be dealt with, I believe, quite firmly.

In the meantime, Israel’s dramatic drive to succeed ever-more in all aspects of life continues unabated, with spectacular results: outstanding science and top-notch technology; leading brain scientists and rocket missile defense systems; Nobel Prize winners; first-class doctors and world-class healthcare; high levels of Torah study – only 70 years after the destruction of European Jewry’s Torah world; a robust economy and strong currency; massive foreign investment; innovative water desalinization programs and newly discovered, massive natural gas resources; a super-vibrant social assistance sector; multiple humanitarian missions undertaken abroad; and most of all, sensational activism and high motivation of our magnificent youth.

So my net assessment of Israel’s strategic and internal situation is astonishingly optimistic. Israel is stronger than any of its enemies. Neither the perpetual Palestinian conundrum, nor the acute Iranian threat, nor the unstable regional situation make me a pessimist. Nor do John Kerry’s miserable prophesies.

If anything worries me, it’s our domestic disputes, social ills and spiritual deficiencies.

Plus the hard-left negativism of mainstream media. But these are our challenges to overcome. Their resolution depends on our energies and wisdom, not on force majeure or the foibles and dictates of others.

And note: Israelis are neither crushed nor dispirited by their challenges. They remain quite resilient and energized to build an even better future.

Listen to the words of the late, great Rabbi Dr. ambassador Yaakov Herzog, speaking in 1971 about “The Permanence of Israel”: “We face perils. No man can guarantee that fighting will not resume tomorrow, that our soldiers will not have to fight again bloody battles. But we know we have the strength to withstand them. The balance of arms is in our favor at the moment… We may face political isolation and pressures, but we face all this in the knowledge that we belong to a new epoch and that the Jew has changed – in Jerusalem, in Israel and across the world.

And though at times it looks dark, the light will reappear.

With firmness touched with generosity, with strength uplifted by spiritual understanding, we can move ahead. With all the difficulties, with all the pressures, we are the generation of redemption. Let us indeed be worthy of this privilege that defies human logic and supersedes human vistas.”

So on this Independence Day, count your personal and our national blessings.

Life in Israel is full of meaning and delight – adorned by sacrifice, commitment, achievement and joy – all the components that make life satisfying and exciting, and certainly so for a Jew.

Despite the overwrought friends, and the naysayers, boycotters and detractors – the Heavens are shining, not collapsing, upon Israel.

Charles Krauthammer: Obama’s foreign policy of denial – The Washington Post.

By Charles Krauthammer, Friday, May 2, 3:21 AM

Barack Obama’s 949-word response Monday to a question about foreign policy weakness showed the president at his worst: defensive, irritable, contradictory and at times detached from reality.

It began with a complaint about negative coverage on Fox News, when, in fact, it was the New York Times’ front page that featured Obama’s foreign policy failures, most recently the inability to conclude a trade agreement with Japan and the collapse of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East negotiations.

Add to this the collapse of not one but two Geneva conferences on Syria, American helplessness in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine and the Saudi king’s humiliating dismissal of Obama within two hours of talks — no dinner — after Obama made a special 2,300-mile diversion from Europe to see him, and you have an impressive litany of serial embarrassments.

Obama’s first rhetorical defense, as usual, was to attack a straw man: “Why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?”

Everybody? Wasn’t it you, Mr. President, who decided to attack Libya under the grand Obama doctrine of “responsibility to protect” helpless civilians — every syllable of which you totally contradicted as 150,000 were being slaughtered in Syria?

And wasn’t attacking Syria for having crossed your own chemical-weapons “red line” also your idea? Before, of course, you retreated abjectly, thereby marginalizing yourself and exposing the United States to general ridicule.

Everybody eager to use military force? Name a single Republican (or Democratic) leader who has called for sending troops into Ukraine.

The critique by John McCain and others is that when the Ukrainians last month came asking for weapons to defend themselves, Obama turned them down. The Pentagon offered instead MREs, ready-to-eat burgers to defend against 40,000 well-armed Russians. Obama even denied Ukraine such defensive gear as night-vision goggles and body armor.

Obama retorted testily: Does anyone think Ukrainian weaponry would deter Russia, as opposed to Obama’s diplomatic and economic pressure? Why, averred Obama, “in Ukraine, what we’ve done is mobilize the international community. . . . Russia is having to engage in activities that have been rejected uniformly around the world.”

That’s a deterrent? Fear of criticism? Empty words?

To think this will stop Putin, liberator of Crimea, champion of “New Russia,” is delusional. In fact, Putin’s popularity at home has spiked 10 points since the start of his war on Ukraine. It’s now double Obama’s.

As for the allegedly mobilized international community, it has done nothing. Demonstrably nothing to deter Putin from swallowing Crimea. Demonstrably nothing to deter his systematic campaign of destabilization, anonymous seizures and selective violence in the proxy-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, where Putin’s “maskirovka” (disguised warfare) has turned Eastern Ukraine into a no-man’s land where Kiev hardly dares tread.

As for Obama’s vaunted economic sanctions, when he finally got around to applying Round 2 on Monday, the markets were so impressed by their weakness that the ruble rose 1 percent and the Moscow stock exchange 2 percent.

Behind all this U.S. action, explained the New York Times in a recent leak calculated to counteract the impression of a foreign policy of clueless ad hocism, is a major strategic idea: containment.

A rather odd claim when a brazenly uncontained Russia swallows a major neighbor one piece at a time — as America stands by. After all, how did real containment begin? In March 1947, with Greece in danger of collapse from a Soviet-backed insurgency and Turkey under direct Russian pressure, President Truman went to Congress for major and immediate economic and military aid to both countries.

That means weaponry, Mr. President. It was the beginning of the Truman Doctrine. No one is claiming that arming Ukraine would have definitively deterred Putin’s current actions. But the possibility of a bloody and prolonged Ukrainian resistance to infiltration or invasion would surely alter Putin’s calculus more than Obama’s toothless sanctions or empty diplomatic gestures, like the preposterous Geneva agreement that wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.

Or does Obama really believe that Putin’s thinking would be altered less by antitank and antiaircraft weapons in Ukrainian hands than by the State Department’s comical #UnitedforUkraine Twitter campaign?

Obama appears to think so. Which is the source of so much allied anxiety: Obama really seems to believe that his foreign policy is succeeding.

Ukraine has already been written off. But Eastern Europe need not worry. Obama understands containment. He recently dispatched 150 American ground troops to Poland and each of the Baltic states. You read correctly: 150. Each.

Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Shelly Dadon was murdered by the veteran Israeli-Arab terrorist group “Galilee Liberators”.

Column One: Life under the Obama Doctrine, Jerusalem Post,  Caroline B. Glick, May 1, 2014

(To the extent that she can do so consistently with her own self-interest, Israel needs to take stands independent of President Obama’s unreliable foreign policy. — DM)

It isn’t easy. But in light of the Obama Doctrine, defying the White House is required to preserve the freedom of the Jewish people.

US President Barack Obama Photo: REUTERS

For most commentators, President Barack Obama’s biggest achievement in his four-nation tour of Asia was the enhanced defense treaty he signed with Philippine President Benigno Aquino. The pact permits US forces to operate on Philippine military bases and sets the conditions for joint training of US and Philippine forces, among other things.

There are two problems with the treaty, however.

And they reflect the basic problem with US foreign policy generally, five-and-a-half years into the Obama presidency.

First, there is the reason that the treaty became necessary.

The Philippines has been under attack by China since 2012 when China seized the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines. Despite its mutual defense treaty with Manila, Washington did nothing.

This non-response emboldened China still further.

And today China is threatening the Second Thomas Shoal, another Philippine possession.

So, too, late last year China extended its Air Defense Identification Zone to include Japanese and South Korean airspace. The US responded to the aggressive move by recommending that its allies comply with China’s dictates.

The administration’s top priority in all these cases, as well as in the case of Beijing’s challenge to Japan’s control over the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, has been to avoid conflicts with China.

But American timidity and refusal to abide by US treaty obligations to the Philippines and Japan have had the opposite effect.

By not responding to Chinese aggression, far from moderating China’s behavior, the Obama administration emboldened it. And in so doing, it destroyed the US’s deterrent posture in Asia. As China’s increasingly belligerent behavior has made clear, Obama’s attempt to appease China was perceived in Beijing as a green light for further aggression, because the Chinese correctly determined that Obama would never make them pay a price for seizing territory and otherwise harming America’s Asian allies.

Under these circumstances, Obama had no choice but to sign an enhanced defense treaty with the Philippines.

Far from calming the situation, though, the treaty increases the chance of war between China and its neighbors. No one, least of all China’s leadership, is fooled by Obama’s whiny insistence that the defense pact isn’t directed against China. And now China, already itching for more confrontations, will feel compelled to respond strongly.

This brings us to the second problem with the Obama administration’s new assertiveness in Asia. It simply isn’t credible.

On Wednesday, The Hill reported that due to Obama’s cuts in defense spending, for four months in 2015, the US will have no aircraft carriers in Asia. In other words, even as Obama’s rhetoric signals a renewed US military commitment to its allies, Obama’s defense cuts empty his pledges of substance.

We already know Obama lacks the will to confront China. And his decision to downsize the US military ensures the US will lack good options for confronting it in the coming years.

During his joint press conference in Manila on Monday with Aquino, Ed Henry from Fox News asked Obama to explain his foreign policy doctrine.

“What do you think the Obama Doctrine is in terms of what your guiding principle is on all of these crises and how you answer those critics who say they think the doctrine is weakness.”

Obama responded with his signature peevishness.

Before launching into a 900-word assault on a series of straw men to whom he attributed positions that at best distorted and at worst willfully misrepresented the positions of his critics, Obama muttered, “Well, Ed, I doubt that I’m going to have time to lay out my entire foreign policy doctrine.”

One thing that Obama did have the time do was signal to the Philippines that the US is no longer a reliable ally. After touting the new defense pact in one sentence, Obama proceeded to explain in the next that his administration cannot be expected to honor any commitment to defend the Philippines militarily.

Obama’s bloviations demonstrated why Henry’s question was so important.

For five-and-a-half years, Obama has not given a straightforward presentation of his foreign policy.

Instead, he has tailored his foreign policy statements to what he thinks the public wishes to hear.

So for instance, in responding to Henry, Obama sounded an isolationist note, attacking imaginary critics for their automatic rush to arms in all circumstances.

Beyond being a gross mischaracterization of his critics, Obama’s remarks ignored the inconvenient fact that he sent US forces on a NATO mission to overthrow the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya without congressional authorization.

No Republicans forced his hand. Since 2004, Gaddafi had posed no threat to US interests.

And in the aftermath of Obama’s unauthorized war in Libya, the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi.

Al-Qaida and other jihadist groups that benefited from NATO’s operation have taken over large swathes of the country and sunk it into ungovernable chaos. And the chaos and jihad in Libya has spread out to much of northern Africa, bringing death, forcible conversion, torture, arms proliferation and terror in its wake.

Although Obama’s 900-word rant obscured rather than explained his foreign policy doctrine, the Obama Doctrine is easily understood from his actual policies – including his military adventure in Libya.

If Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy doctrine was “Peace through strength,” Obama’s doctrine can be summed up in two sentences: “Speak loudly and carry no stick.” And “Be good to your enemies and bad to your allies.”

The defense treaty with the Philippines, like Obama’s bluster in Ukraine and Syria, is a sterling example of the first part of his doctrine.

And Obama’s obsequious policies toward China, Russia and Iran on the one hand, and his coldness toward Japan, South Korea, Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Israel on the other hand demonstrate the validity of the second part of his doctrine.

The reason that Obama has not shared his own doctrine with the American people is not because he can’t explain it in the course of one speech. It is because he knows that they won’t accept it.

For their part, the American people seem to have him figured out. According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll published on Wednesday, Obama’s approval rating for his handling of foreign policy is at an all-time low. Only 38 percent of Americans approve of his handling of foreign policy and 53% disapprove.

The same poll gave respondents two foreign policy doctrines and asked them to choose the one they preferred.

The first was, “We need a president who will present an image of America that has a more open approach and is willing to negotiate with friend and foe alike.”

The second was, “We need a president who will present an image of strength that shows America’s willingness to confront our enemies and stand up for our principles.”

Thirty-nine percent preferred the first policy course and 55% the second one. These numbers are nearly identical to the approval numbers for Obama’s foreign policy.

The problem for dissatisfied Americans as well as for endangered US allies is that it is highly unlikely that Obama will respond to rising disapproval of his actions abroad by changing course.

For America’s allies this reality requires them to carve out their own courses the best they can.

In Israel’s case, this involves first and foremost taking a less idealistic and more mercenary view of the world. This means not shrinking away from opportunities with the likes of Russia and China when they arise. And certainly it means not automatically siding with the Obama administration against them.

The Obama administration is reportedly angry with Israel for refusing to join America in scolding Russia for its aggression in Ukraine. But it is far from clear that the Obama White House offers Jerusalem a better option. To date, Obama has repaid Israel for its willingness to toe his line by undermining its core interests, publicly attacking it and seeking to subvert the elected government.

Israel has no interest in getting on Russia’s bad side in order to placate the Obama administration.

Nor is there any reason for Israel to obey the Obama administration’s demands for belligerent rhetoric when the next step of the Obama White House would doubtless be to turn around and castigate the “Israel lobby” for allegedly pushing the US toward war.

The same goes for China. There is no reason for Israel to jump into conflict with the growing Asian power. While Secretary of State John Kerry is egging on the Europeans to expand their trade war against Israel, China is assiduously expanding its trade with Israel. According to the Economy Ministry, next year Asia will surpass the US as Israel’s largest trading partner.

Then, of course, there is Iran. Out of loyalty and basic trust in the US’s strategic sanity, for the past decade, Israel has been willing to play second fiddle to the US in contending with Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program. This was never a wise policy, but at least under the Bush administration it was an understandable mistake.

Since his first days in office, Obama has signaled clearly through his deeds that he had absolutely no interest in blocking Iran’s nuclear progress. On the contrary, Obama’s policies in the Middle East have consistently involved strengthening and legitimizing the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood at the expense of Israel and the less radical Sunni Arab states.

Out of habit, and in the hopes that something would change, Israel pretended away this reality and continued to follow Washington’s lead, limiting its goals to covert operations against Iran – that Obama leaked to the media – and lobbying Congress for sanctions that never had any chance of blocking Iran’s race to the nuclear finishing line.

Certainly since last November, when Obama signed his nuclear surrender to Iran, Israel has had no excuse for following the US’s lead on Iran. The deal’s sole effect is to enable Iran to become a nuclear power and a regional hegemon.

And so Israel must ignore it. Every day that Israel does not set back Iran’s nuclear progress brings Israel closer to being the subject of nuclear blackmail, Iranian-backed terrorism, and even nuclear Armageddon.

Obama may hide his doctrine behind petulance, populist canards and straw men, but it is clear enough. And that means that as far as Israel is concerned, its goal of securing its survival and prosperity for at least the next two-and-a-half years requires Jerusalem to act on its own and in the face of White House opposition.

It isn’t pleasant to defy the American president.

It isn’t easy. But in light of the Obama Doctrine, defying the White House is required to preserve the freedom of the Jewish people.

Caroline B. Glick is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.