WarSclerotic

Indyk’s Amoral Kiss-and-Tell Story, Commentary Magazine, Tom Wilson, May 9, 2014

(The full text of Mr. Indyk’s platitude laden remarks is available here. — DM)

Indyk offered up a serving of platitudes and obvious statements, dressed up with a particularly provocative barb about how Israel’s settlement building is supposedly risking the future of the Jewish state. Among a whole list of predictable observations, Indyk’s remark that if only the U.S. feels a sense of urgency then “the negotiations will not succeed,” seemed particularly unworthy of having been uttered. Indeed, Indyk bemoaned how leaders on both sides “don’t feel the pressing need to make gut-wrenching compromises.” Well, it’s not as if Indyk and Kerry weren’t warned of this fact before they set out on their ill-advised venture. Neither side trusts the other to think that concessions are really warranted, and yet what does Indyk imagine Israel releasing terrorists was if not “gut-wrenching”? If Indyk can be so flippant about the pain caused by these murderers going free then he has either suspended all moral judgment or is completely indifferent to Israeli suffering; perhaps both.

The gap between reality and the picture Indyk and Kerry paint has become so wide that one wonders how it doesn’t simply swallow them both.

Since talks collapsed between Israel and the Palestinians, chief U.S. negotiator Martin Indyk has already gone to the press with at least one kiss-and-tell story, about how Israel sabotaged peace through settlement building. But it seems that Indyk intends to extract still more capital from his role in the doomed negotiations. The business of manipulation and self-promotion that now surrounds the negotiation process has virtually become an end in itself, far outstripping the importance of the always-fruitless negotiations themselves. The talks seem to take place so as to allow individuals on each side to come forward with a drip feed of snippets and revelations, promoting the good will of one side, pouring condemnation on the other.

On Thursday evening, speaking at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s founders conference, Indyk offered up a serving of platitudes and obvious statements, dressed up with a particularly provocative barb about how Israel’s settlement building is supposedly risking the future of the Jewish state. Among a whole list of predictable observations, Indyk’s remark that if only the U.S. feels a sense of urgency then “the negotiations will not succeed,” seemed particularly unworthy of having been uttered. Indeed, Indyk bemoaned how leaders on both sides “don’t feel the pressing need to make gut-wrenching compromises.” Well, it’s not as if Indyk and Kerry weren’t warned of this fact before they set out on their ill-advised venture. Neither side trusts the other to think that concessions are really warranted, and yet what does Indyk imagine Israel releasing terrorists was if not “gut-wrenching”? If Indyk can be so flippant about the pain caused by these murderers going free then he has either suspended all moral judgment or is completely indifferent to Israeli suffering; perhaps both.

Some recent comments that have been widely attributed to Indyk framed the Israelis for having allegedly wrecked the peace talks through settlement building. In his speech on Thursday evening it was Israeli settlements that Indyk was especially eager to condemn. Settlements, claimed Indyk, will “drive Israel into an irreversible binational reality.”

In one sense this claim is demonstrably nonsense. The limited settlement building that has taken place has been restricted to the major settlement blocs that the consensus holds would be annexed to Israel under any final-status agreement. Yet it is also true that many proponents of the settlement project see the role of the settlements as being to block the ceding of strategically important territory to a Palestinian state that might use that territory to attack Israel from—as has been the practice in territories already surrendered by Israel. Yet there is no necessary reason why Israeli annexation of the West Bank would end Israel as a Jewish state. True, if carried out right now it would likely create an almost ungovernable situation and present a severe challenge to Israeli democracy. But the claims about demography used by Indyk/Kerry/Obama to terrorize the Israelis are increasingly being called into question. Israeli birthrates have just overtaken those of Palestinians in the West Bank and with Jewish immigration into Israel up, and Palestinian emigration remaining high, the demographic catastrophe is by no means as imminent as Indyk sounds like he hopes it is.

Still the peace process has become totemic for many, and like Kerry, Indyk is among the most pious devotees to this obsession. And so, in the course of his speech, Indyk insisted that talks could be resumed, that there is still hope for an agreement between the two sides. As ever, it is always five minutes to midnight. For the last two decades the Indyks have been telling us, one more settlement expansion, one more suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and peace will be lost forever and Israel inevitably consigned to the history books. Who knows what any of this is based on? Such claims seem as fabricated as Indyk’s suggestion that since negotiations collapsed both sides have shown restraint. But since when did restraint include the Palestinians moving to bring Hamas into the government and pushing ahead with their applications to join international bodies in direct breach of the Oslo accords?

The gap between reality and the picture Indyk and Kerry paint has become so wide that one wonders how it doesn’t simply swallow them both.

Obama’s Foreign Policy: One Big Coverup, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield , May 9, 2014

It’s easier for Obama to surrender and pretend that was his policy all along than to put up a fight. It’s easier for him to side with Israel’s enemies than with the Jewish State. It was easier for him to appease Putin before the invasion of Ukraine, now it’s easier for him to throw out a few hashtags and stay well away from the fighting and then at an opportune moment, pressure Ukraine into accepting whatever deal the Russians put forward.

Obama’s problem isn’t just that he sympathizes with terrorists and has a distaste for national power and the military, but that everything he does falls apart.

Obama will eventually adopt the Russian line on Ukraine if for no other reason than to avoid exposing his own impotence. It’s why Obama has adopted the Iranian position on its nuclear weapons program, accepted Russia’s Syrian WMD deal and why Kerry and his cronies are busy blaming Israel for the collapse of peace negotiations that were actually sabotaged by the PLO leader.

If you can’t beat them, join them. And Obama can’t beat them. Joining them is his only option.

The culture wars and media firing squads, the SEIU members who shepherd the elderly and infirm to voting booths, the illegal aliens who vote three times because voter ID is racist, are excellent tools for defeating Republicans; but they don’t impress Vladimir Putin or the Islamic militias of Benghazi.

Whatever else went down there, Benghazi had to be covered up because it was easier to join the Muslim mobs burning American flags by throwing a Coptic Christian into jail and filming an apology. It was easier than sending in the Marines or even the drones. It was easier to do nothing, prep for a debate with the real enemy, Mitt Romney, before flying off to party in Vegas.

Obama has preemptively surrendered to anyone and everyone. Even countries he opposes on an ideological basis have discovered that if they slap him around long enough, he will come around.

It just takes a little longer.

Egypt held the line, despite the threats from the State Department and the White House, until Obama decided that it was easier to give in to General Al-Sisi. The condemnations still come, but the Apaches are also on their way.

Despite Obama’s commitment to the Muslim Brotherhood, he blinked.

Obama declared a red line on Syria. Assad is still in power and the red line is crumpled up in an Oval Office desk along with a dozen candy bar wrappers and a dented Nobel Peace Prize.

It’s easier for Obama to surrender and pretend that was his policy all along than to put up a fight. It’s easier for him to side with Israel’s enemies than with the Jewish State. It was easier for him to appease Putin before the invasion of Ukraine, now it’s easier for him to throw out a few hashtags and stay well away from the fighting and then at an opportune moment, pressure Ukraine into accepting whatever deal the Russians put forward.

Putin knows it and that’s why his people are humiliating Hagel and Kerry to up the ante for the final concessions. Ukraine, like Israel, like so many other allies, will be forced to pay a high price to cover up the ego and incompetence of Barack Obama.

Obama’s foreign policy is one big cover up. From Europe to Asia to the Middle East, allies are sacrificed, positions are abandoned and credibility is set on fire to convince Americans that their leader knows what he’s doing. To avoid ever losing a fight and being seen as a loser, he preemptively surrenders.

The media’s story is that Obama meant to do these things. He meant to reverse himself on military aid to Egypt. He meant to set a worthless red line on Syria. He meant to protect Ukraine with hashtags. He meant to do nothing about Benghazi.

Some presidents cultivated a policy of strategic ambiguity to keep the country’s enemies off balance. Obama does it to keep Americans off balance about what he really did and what he really meant.

Obama makes sure to take at least two positions on every foreign policy issue. He evolves and then devolves and evolves again. He was for calling Benghazi a terrorist attack after he was against it. He was against dealing with Assad, before he was for it. He was against containing Iran before he was for it, before he jettisoned containment and skipped straight to embracing a nuclear Iran.

He issues statements that sound bold and decisive, but with just enough wriggle room to allow for a sellout. There’s enough equivocation to cover the ass of the naked emperor no matter what happens. Even while his people were pushing the lie that the Benghazi attack happened because of a YouTube protest, not terrorism, a general aside about “Acts of Terror” was inserted into the Rose Garden speech to cover him against the day when the truth could no longer be denied.

Obama’s speeches are full of double meanings and ambiguities. He came out in favor of a united Jerusalem, only to then explain that he didn’t mean it would be united by Israel. His “Red Line” comments on Syria were so ridiculously ambiguous with the outcome being, “That would change my calculus,” that they meant absolutely nothing at all.

It was the media that took the comments seriously and ended up with egg on its fedora.

Benghazi wasn’t an aberration. It was typical of his foreign policy. It was the policy of Hillary Clinton who liked to talk tough, saying of Gaddafi, “We came, we saw, he died”, while her spokesman called Assad a “dead man walking”, but when push came to shove, she abandoned her people to die without asking for military aid.

She polished her resume, they went, they died.

Democrats complain when Republicans talk about Benghazi. But why don’t we talk about Obama’s foreign policy? Why don’t we talk about the botched war in Afghanistan, his failure to stand up for the Green Movement in Iran, his push for the Islamist Arab Spring, his fumbling in Syria and his poor relations with traditional US allies in the Middle East?

Why can’t we talk about his many lies about Al Qaeda, beginning with selling the disastrous Afghan surge as a platform for defeating Al Qaeda in a place that it had mostly abandoned, only to then declare victory over an Al Qaeda that had hardly been there?

Did Obama sacrifice 1,600 Americans in Afghanistan in a phony campaign for an election talking point?

Is there any part of Obama’s universally disastrous foreign policy that we can talk about? Or is it all one big cover up?

Obama’s problem isn’t just that he sympathizes with terrorists and has a distaste for national power and the military, but that everything he does falls apart.

There is no national conversation about foreign policy or even domestic policy the way that there was during the days of Bush and Clinton. Instead we talk about Obama. Media coverage focuses on his celebrity, his political enemies and his plans for the future in purely personal terms.

The past is a foreign country. And the media doesn’t travel there. The results of his policies at home and abroad are a mystery. The media won’t tell us what happened two years ago or three years ago, so it pivots to the latest racial outrage or hashtag.

Benghazi is one of the many disasters left in his wake and his defenders insist that it go unexamined and the process of covering it up, which began while the bodies were still warm, go unnoticed.

The Obama illusion falls apart if you look at it from any angle other than the front. If you look behind it, there are flames, burning buildings, screams and political hacks who call each other “dude” making up lies about why it happened before moving on to pushing a news story about his wife’s latest hairstyle, their latest vacation or the latest celebrity they were photographed with.

Benghazi is an important part of the conversation that we need to have. But it doesn’t end there.

Iran Targeting U.S. Satellites with Lasers? Commentary Magazine, Michael Rubin, May 9, 2014

If Iran has been targeting American satellites with lasers, perhaps that’s a sign that Iranian sincerity isn’t what the White House believes. Perhaps it is time for the White House to recognize that sometimes a “reset” simply doesn’t work.

For all the Iranian government and its fellow travelers whine about sanctions, the Iranian regime seems to have no problem funneling money off to ever more creative military projects. Take this latest tidbit which appears in the Washington Examiner:

Iran, meanwhile, “undertakes more purposeful interference” with U.S. satellites using lasers and jammers. “Although these actions have not resulted in irreparable damage to U.S. assets, this practice increases the possibility that the United States will misinterpret unintended harm caused by such interference.”

The Examiner piece derives from a longer Council on Foreign Relations report well-worth reading. Indeed, from what I have heard, it has garnered significant attention in policy circles. That report elaborates:

Since Iran already views space as a legitimate arena in which to contest U.S. military power, Tehran could use similar tactics against U.S. satellites during a major crisis, especially if it believes war is imminent—an assessment that could have self-fulfilling consequences. Should this significantly limit U.S. situational unawareness of the unfolding crisis, there would most certainly be a military response against the source of that Iranian interference. Additionally, like North Korea, Iran could attempt a direct-ascent ASAT test or co-orbital ASAT test, in which it detonates a conventional explosive near a targeted satellite. Iran’s capacity to do this will likely improve if it follows through on its June 2013 announcement of plans to build a space monitoring center designed to track satellites above Iranian territory.

President Obama’s initiative toward Iran seems predicated on the belief that Iran somehow changed after the election of President Hassan Rouhani, never mind that presidents in Iran don’t hold power comparable to that in the United States. If Iran has been targeting American satellites with lasers, perhaps that’s a sign that Iranian sincerity isn’t what the White House believes. Perhaps it is time for the White House to recognize that sometimes a “reset” simply doesn’t work. Then again, so long as Obama heard sincerity in Rouhani’s voice in their September 2013 phone chat, what difference does hard evidence of continued malfeasance make?

Hagel to Travel to Israel, Discuss Iran and Syria – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

U.S. Defense Secretary will fly to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel for talks on Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war.

Moshe Ya’alon and Chuck Hagel

Flash 90

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will fly to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel next week for talks that are expected to focus on Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s civil war, officials said Friday, according to AFP.

“This trip will be the secretary’s third to the Middle East in just over a year, and it will advance America’s regional strategy in that region,” Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby was quoted as having told a news conference.

The tour was part of “our effort to work in a coordinated manner with allies and partners across the region to address common security challenges,” Kirby added.

U.S. officials have struggled to reassure Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, over an interim nuclear deal with Iran that the Saudis worry will embolden Tehran. The Gulf governments have also been dissatisfied with Washington’s cautious approach to arming rebel forces in Syria.

In Saudi Arabia, Hagel was due to meet with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) defense ministers, a session he proposed during his visit to the region in December, Kirby said.

The meeting will offer a chance for Hagel “to underscore U.S. security commitments in the Middle East and to reinforce the United States’ unstinting policy of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and further destabilizing the region,” Kirby said, according to AFP.

From Saudi Arabia, Hagel will travel to Jordan, where he will meet his counterpart there to discuss the raging civil war in neighboring Syria.

“This visit will highlight the U.S. commitment to the defense of Jordan, where more than 1,000 US personnel are on the ground working closely with Jordanian defense authorities,” Kirby was quoted as having said.

Hagel will wrap up his regional tour in Israel, where he is due to meet President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

In Israel, Hagel planned to discuss efforts to bolster Israel’s rocket and missile defenses, Kirby said.

Hagel’s visit will take place a week after President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, visited Israel.

Rice assured Israel at high-level bilateral talks on Thursday that Washington remained determined to stop Iran developing nuclear arms.

Hamas TV Show Encourages Children to Kill Jews, Washington Free Beacon, May 9, 2014

Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV ran a children’s show in which the host instructs children to shoot Jewish people, according to video published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Hamas’s official television station broadcast a children’s show earlier this month that advocates for the murder of Jews, according to a Middle East monitoring group.

Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV ran a children’s show in which the host instructs children to shoot Jewish people, according to video published by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

“I will shoot the Jews!” one child tells the host.

“All of them?” responds the host.

“Yes,” the child responds.

A person in a bumblebee costume also encourages children to kill and punch Jewish people.

Israel is only obstacle to nuclear free Mideast: Iran, Tehran Times, May 9, 2014

(Some will likely accept the “honorable” ambassador’s statement. Will President Obama and the rest of the P5 +1 group? — DM)

TEHRAN –  The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations said on Wednesday that the Israeli regime is the only obstacle to the establishment of a zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

Obama Revives the Right-Wing Conspiracy | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com.

May 9, 2014 11:30 am

When a man or woman is mugged on the street or afflicted by disease, the right response is never to pretend everything is fine and nothing has happened.

But if you’re a really cool guy like the president of the United States or one of his top advisors or the Secretary of State who wants to become president of the U.S., then it is perfectly okay to act cool and go into pretend-and-deny mode. It also helps if the media clean up after you.

If Jimmy Carter were as cool as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, he would have pretended that Iranian militants had not attacked a U.S. embassy to kidnap its staff.

If President Carter had the same audacity of hype as Obama, then he would have claimed that 66 American citizens were on an extended sleepover date with the ayatollah. And if the world press corps had bought the story, Carter might have won a second term as president.

But in 2014, the facts are different. In the case of Barack Obama and the 9-11-12 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, Obama and his aides had a lot more warning of the impending attack than Jimmy Carter did with the Iranian attack on the US embassy in Teheran in 1979.

Obama and then-secretary of state Clinton ignored warnings of attack by terror group, trusting their own claims the terrorists had been vanquished. When the attack exploded, Obama-Clinton were paralyzed by inaction. Finally, they denied that there even had been a terror attack. It was all a spontaneous protest over a video, Obama, Clinton, and Susan Rice said.

They even worked hard to put the video producer behind bars, as if he really produced the terror that killed for Americans in Benghazi.

This is not a fictional “conspiracy” concocted by Obama-haters or Hillary-haters. This is clearly what happened. The Obama Administration was incompetent and insensitive in the face of a terror threat in Benghazi about which it had been warned.

Obama, Clinton, and now some Democrats in Congress like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi are again trotting out the “conspiracy” and “witch hunt” charge to keep investigators at bay.

So far Obama’s strategy has worked, because there are differences between 2012-2014 and 1979-80. In 1979, CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite revisited the Iran embassy takeover every night, ending each news show by counting the days Americans were held captive.

CNN’s Candy Crowley is no Walter Cronkite. Not even close. At the 2012 presidential debate, Ms. Crowley dropped the pretense of being an objective moderator and joined Barack Obama’s lie that he and his administration had identified the attack as terror from the beginning.

It was such a nice contribution by Ms. Crowley, that Mr. Obama, asked the referee to repeat herself and trip up his opponent, Mitt Romney, one more time.

“Can you say that a little louder, Candy,” chirped Mr. Obama, wearing a big smile.

Obama was re-elected, and Secretary of State Clinton was able to duck tough questions for many months because of illness. When she finally appeared before Congress, she went from pretend-and-deny-mode into outraged-at-the-question mode.

“What difference at this point does it all make?” declared Ms. Clinton in exasperation when Republican senators had the temerity even to question her and the Obama administration about their Libya policy or lack of policy. After all, Obama and Clinton promised to investigate it all themselves, but actually they buried important information along with the four dead U.S. officials in Benghazi.

Actually Obama-Clinton stalled for time, denying requests for documents or timelines. They relied on Democrats in the Senate and the House to block access to documents or the naming of a special prosecutor, as Congress demanded from President Ronald Reagan over his handling of the Iran-Contra affair. Democrats have not acted like Republicans who helped uncover part of the Watergate cover-up and force Richard Nixon from office.  But now, various congressional and NGO efforts to get some documents have borne some fruit, forcing release of some e-mails that seem to be part of a big cover-up.

One damning document is an email from Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy National Security Advisor emphasizing that “protest” led to attack on the Americans in Libya. Ben Rhodes is the brother of David Rhodes, the president of CBS News, which has been accused of downplaying or ignoring news that might hurt Obama.

A top CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Atkisson, recently quit after she said CBS refused to back her investigations that seemed to embarrass Obama. Ms Atkisson’s tenacity resembles the tenacity from the old days when CBS was not afraid to challenge US presidents, whether it was Nixon or Carter.

CBS News President Rhodes did not do much to keep Ms. Atkisson at CBS. It is clear that when it comes to journalistic values, he is also no Walter Cronkite.

Other major TV networks — NBC, ABC, CNN — largely avoided the story. They have not aired significant footage or stories showing how White House spokesman James Carney has repeatedly lied and dissembled on this subject.

Only Fox News has really pursued the story, angering Obama, Carney, and other administration officials by demanding some kind of explanation for events in Libya.

“Dude, this was two years ago,” observed Tommy Vietor, former spokesman for the National Security Council.

The very use of the term “dude” and the whole tone of Vietor’s response symbolizes a lack of seriousness and incompetence in facing terror.

“I don’t really remember,” said Vietor, sounding much  like Nixon Administration counsel, John Dean, whose pat response at the Watergate hearings was “I do not recall.”

Nobody died in Watergate, but John Dean and other Nixon officials went to jail because they were clearly not cool dudes.

One thing is clear: the Obama Administration is full of cool dudes and dudettes.

When you’re cool, dude, you can flat-out lie, dude, about what you just did or said. You can turn on a dime, and distort what just happened and lie about why it happened. Press Secretary James Carney insisted there was no terror at Benghazi until, a week later in an on-board briefing, he switched and said of course everyone knew there was terror at Benghazi.

But if you are not a cool dude but only an un-cool dud, like Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, or even Mitt Romney, then you’re in trouble.

Just ask Candy Crowley.

Dr. Michael Widlanski is the author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, published by Threshold/Simon and Schuster. He was Strategic Affairs Advisor in Israel’s Ministry of Public Security, teaches at Bar Ilan University and recently was visiting professor at University of California, Irvine. This article was originally published by The American Thinker.

Israel Hayom | Heaven help humanity.

Ruthie Blum

On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama received an “Ambassador for Humanity” award from movie director Steven Spielberg, the founder of the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation.

“Standing up to anti-Semitism is not simply about protecting one community or one religious group,” Obama said in his acceptance speech at the gala, which was held in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Holocaust museum that Spielberg established after making the film “Schindler’s List.”

The president also urged Americans to “speak out against the rhetoric that threatens the existence of the Jewish homeland,” and assured that he would “sustain America’s unshakable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Due to Obama’s appalling treatment of Israel in particular and his disastrous foreign policy in general — both of which have empowered human-rights abusers across the globe — these words ring as hollow as the distinction bestowed upon him by Spielberg.

As a result, conservative pundits have been justifiably taking him to task for his hypocrisy. Obama, after all, is the president on whose watch the Iranian regime is racing towards a nuclear bomb; the Syrian dictator is massacring his people in the tens of thousands with every means available, including chemical weapons; the Turkish prime minister has come out of the Islamist closet to side with forces hostile to the United States and Israel; the Russian president has invaded Ukraine; and the Palestinian Authority is burying the hatchet with Hamas, instead of negotiating its false claims to and ostensible desire for statehood.

These are the most blatant, but by no means the only, results of Obama’s agenda of reaching out to America’s enemies and admitted pride in “leading from behind.” Indeed, they are the fruits of his hard labor, not the blunders of a novice.

Still, there is one key outcome he did not anticipate when handed the Oval Office on a silver platter: that his many years of education at the hands of mentors like radical community organizer Saul Alinsky and Black Liberation theologist Pastor Jeremiah Wright have had the opposite of his intended effect. They did not culminate in the socialist multicultural world-without-borders of his fantasies.

On the contrary, in the world as it actually exists, a weakling in the White House provided a green light for an escalation in sectarian, feudal, religious and — yes — even border wars. Rather than winning brownie points for kowtowing to despots large and small, Obama has earned their utter disdain.

His response has been to attack anyone who dares point this out. It is thus that he considers the Republican Party a greater threat than the Republican Guards.

And then, of course, there’s Israel.

Leaving aside the debate about whether statements emanating from his administration constitute anti-Semitism, there is no question that Obama has as dim a view of Israel as he does of the U.S., and has been doing everything in his power to undermine the fabric of both. As the man at the helm of the latter, he has been doing such a stellar job that it could take decades to repair the damage.

Where the former is concerned, however, he has not fared so well. If anything, his behavior towards Israel has increased Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity at home.

This is because what Obama does is actually worse than expressing the kind of outright hatred for the Jewish state that Iranian mullahs and their terrorist proxies boast. He is among the ever-widening circle of leftists, among them the J Street crowd, who profess their undying love for Israel, while placing it on a par with the world’s most pernicious elements.

The danger of this trend, which I have called “anti-Israel is the new pro-Israel,” lies in its disingenuousness. Where such a fashion reigns, any moral parity made between Israel and the PA constitutes giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. The Obama administration excels at this underhanded game of proving its good intentions by treating “both sides” — one a democracy striving for peace, and the other a corrupt, lawless entity dreaming of jihad — as equals.

This is precisely what enables Obama to continue to enjoy the political support and financial backing of American Jews for whom Israel is a voting issue. Indeed, Obama’s “pro-Israel” speech to Hollywood A-listers at Spielberg’s gala coincided with a massive fundraising campaign among rich Jews ahead of the midterm elections in November.

As a newly crowned “Ambassador for Humanity” — an apt title for someone who makes no distinction between one species of humanity and another — Obama will undoubtedly bring back some big bucks for his party comrades running for Congress.

Heaven help humanity if they win.

An Open Letter to John Kerry, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, May 8, 2014

[T]he only thing you ever do is make things worse. Any man with a scrap of decency looking back on a lifetime of diplomatic wreckage would have retired. Instead you finagled your way into becoming Secretary of State so you could fail on a grander scale.

Dear John,

Every few years a messiah arrives in Jerusalem, shakes hands, makes demands and promises to make peace in our time. Then when the whole thing blows up in his face, he throws up his hands and flies back blaming the ungrateful Jews for not embracing his vision.

So many false messiahs have come before you, squinting against the bright sunshine, pounding the table at meetings, downing martinis and fantasizing about the Nobel Peace Prize that they were sure was waiting for them at the end.

And they left with nothing except sunburn and simmering rage.

Did you really think you would be any different? Were you so delusional that you imagined you could succeed where career diplomats with a lifetime of experience in the region had failed?

It’s not as if you had a good track record negotiating anything. Do you remember meeting Madame Binh in Paris? What about carrying Daniel Ortega’s peace offer after assuring everyone that he wasn’t a Communist? Right before he flew to Moscow. And let’s not gloss over your visit to Assad. Was that peace in the air or was it just the nerve gas?

I know you don’t have time to remember all your diplomatic triumphs. Or like Hillary, any of them.

You went to Paris to aid the Viet Cong. You went to Nicaragua to aid the FSLN terrorists. You went to Israel to aid the PLO. The USSR fell, but your old nostalgia for Communist guerrillas and killers hasn’t deserted you. It’s why you failed. And it’s why you’ll fail over and over again.

No matter what the PLO did, you blamed Israel. Just as no matter what the Viet Cong or the Sandinistas did, you blamed America.

The PLO can call for Israel’s destruction, champion terrorism and ally with Hamas, but your minions will still provide anonymous quotes saying that the PLO can’t be expected to negotiate while Israel possibly considers building houses in Jerusalem.

What’s a little thing like genocide compared to a house?

Israel is expected to free terrorists who murder elderly Holocaust survivors, but the delicate sensibilities of PLO terrorists are outraged whenever a Jewish family that they haven’t managed to murder yet moves into a home in Jerusalem.

Good negotiators can put their sympathies aside to achieve their goals. But no matter how many press releases you put out touting your special relationship with Israel, a relationship almost as special as the one your fellow Massachusetts senator had with a girl in a ‘67 Oldsmobile whose drowned corpse turned up the next day, you spoil it by threatening another intifada or calling Israel an Apartheid state.

You lack the basic criteria of a diplomat. You’re a bad liar.

You show up to provide moral support to the murderers and go home as their useful idiot. That was the pitiful function you served in Paris, in Nicaragua and in Israel. The only thing you ever did with your unsolicited interventions was make things worse. Your anti-war activism helped polarize a nation. Your Ortega intervention emboldened a terrorist group. And your peace initiative led to a unity agreement with Hamas.

After almost half a century, the only thing you ever do is make things worse. Any man with a scrap of decency looking back on a lifetime of diplomatic wreckage would have retired. Instead you finagled your way into becoming Secretary of State so you could fail on a grander scale.

The secret to your success as a lifelong failure is refusing to accept responsibility. You just throw someone else’s medals over the fence and blame someone else for your latest fiasco.

American mediators out of touch with reality, Ynet News, May 9, 2014

Op-ed: [T]he chief mediator, John Kerry, is almost completely out of touch with the international reality. This is the way he conducted himself with Syria, with Egypt, with Libya, with Ukraine, with Saudi Arabia, with Iran – he has no problem that the Islamic Republic will continue enriching uranium as part of a permanent agreement as well – and in a variety of other cases.

Kerry is the one who spread the claim that the status quo here cannot continue – although it is the most stable status-quo in the Middle East – and when he saw that his assessment was not fulfilling itself, he went to world leaders and incited against Israel.

The majority of the Israeli public has lost its faith in the Americans who brokered the peace negotiations with the Palestinians. From the very beginning it was an unrealistic, and therefore dangerous, initiative: We are not in the 1980s or 1990s, with strong Arab regimes, but in the midst of a storm in the Middle East as part of which national regimes are fighting for their lives, and another Arab country could have turned within a short period of time into a front base for al-Qaeda.

Aren’t those Americans looking around? Are they stuck inside a time capsule? The “two state for two people” idea could have been suitable before the jihadist Arab collapse around us, but now the situation is different.

The mediators’ personality was one of the great contributors to the collapse of the faith in them in Israel. One of them gave an anonymous interview to Yedioth Ahronoth and revealed his deep animosity towards the Jewish state: His remarks left the impression that his intention was to push for the establishment of another Arab state at all costs, despite the Salafi outbreak, despite the outrageous agreement with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad and despite Mahmoud Abbas’ negative automatism.

After all, the Palestinian Authority chairman has always said “no,” and in fact returned to the “three nays” of the Khartoum Resolution: No negotiations with Israel, no recognition and no peace. This is in fact a multi-stage plan: Taking over territory, and continuing the war from there against what is left from Israel under improved conditions.

And nonetheless, the American mediator blames Israel, which is defending itself alone against a Middle East which is more hostile than ever.

Even the chief mediator, John Kerry, is almost completely out of touch with the international reality. This is the way he conducted himself with Syria, with Egypt, with Libya, with Ukraine, with Saudi Arabia, with Iran – he has no problem that the Islamic Republic will continue enriching uranium as part of a permanent agreement as well – and in a variety of other cases.

Kerry is the one who spread the claim that the status quo here cannot continue – although it is the most stable status-quo in the Middle East – and when he saw that his assessment was not fulfilling itself, he went to world leaders and incited against Israel.

The United States is left without a single Arab regime it is close to today, and it is therefore taking its anger out on Israel.

There is a public in Israel which expects the Americans to stand unconditionally by Israel – the only democracy in the Middle East, based on the same values of freedom and justice – and not try to impose moves which will lead to its destruction. And if this is what happens in practice, and Israel’s leaders are afraid to say it openly – the public volunteers to do.