WarSclerotic

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. 

A Dying Little Palestinian, You Tube, Wild Bill for America, May 1, 2014

(Posted without comment because none is needed. — DM)

( “Wild Bill” gives voice to America’s “salt of the earth” support for Israel… Thank you, Bill. We love America as America loves us. –  JW )

WaPo: Middle East peace process dead, worse off than before, Hot Air, Ed Morrissey, April 30, 2014

(The release of Palestinian “political prisoners” previously convicted of murder was the benefit resulting from the Obama – Kerry “peace process.” It was indeed a benefit, but only for the Palestinian Authority et al and their terrorist propensities. For Middle East peace? That’s different. — DM)

The Post never mentions that Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel as Fatah signed that reconciliation agreement. That might be one reason that Israel doesn’t believe Hamas to be a partner for peace, no? The problem of Palestinian demands for Israel’s destruction existed before Kerry took over from Hillary Clinton, of course, but his central conceit was that his diplomacy was going to be different. It turned out to be the same old thing, and it left the situation arguably worse.

Politically, Barack Obama can’t sustain another Cabinet change before the midterms, but diplomatically, Kerry’s turning into a walking catastrophe that Obama can’t sustain for much longer, either. The best Obama can hope is that Kerry keeps his foot out of his mouth for a few months longer, but the President may need to pick a special envoy for Israel in the meantime to bypass Kerry and his foot-in-mouth disease.

In truth, the best possible spin on the Middle East peace process before John Kerry warned Israel about becoming an “apartheid state” was that it was on life support. The Washington Post declares the project DOA, blaming intransigence on the part of the participants rather than Kerry’s gaffe-ridden approach. And wasn’t Kerry arguing that he would be the one man able to bridge that intransigence through his diplomatic brilliance?

Nine months after it began, the Obama administration’s marquee diplomatic effort to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians ended Tuesday with neither a whimper nor much of a bang.

The initiative pressed by Secretary of State John F. Kerry revived a brand of Middle East shuttle diplomacy made popular in the disco era and included a hundred closed-door meetings in a half dozen world capitals. But the talks reached their expiration date with each side blaming the other (and the United States) for the impasse and saying that neither saw a true partner for peace in the other.

That “disco era” wisecrack has to sting a bit, but it’s not far from the truth. It’s also not far from the results that shuttle diplomacy provided back in the day, mainly because the issues have little to do with the miles traveled by an American Secretary of State. The reunion between Fatah and Hamas more or less proves that, as Hamas refuses to recognize Israel nor disavow violence, despite having its own territory now in Gaza.

The Post’s William Booth and Ruth Eglash parse out the blame:

The Palestinians argue that Israel was looking for an excuse to end the talks and found cause in that reconciliation between Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which controls politics in the West Bank. The two factions split in 2007 after Hamas seized power in Gaza.

“Israel never gave the negotiations a chance to succeed,” said Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, on Tuesday. “If this Israeli government were sincerely interested in peace,” he said, “it would have taken Palestinian national reconciliation as an opportunity for peace rather than an opportunity for a new blame game.” …

“We’re not going to negotiate with a government backed by Hamas unless Hamas changes its position and says it’s willing to recognize Israel,” Netanyahu said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

The Post never mentions that Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel as Fatah signed that reconciliation agreement. That might be one reason that Israel doesn’t believe Hamas to be a partner for peace, no? The problem of Palestinian demands for Israel’s destruction existed before Kerry took over from Hillary Clinton, of course, but his central conceit was that his diplomacy was going to be different. It turned out to be the same old thing, and it left the situation arguably worse.

In fact, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki couldn’t name a single benefit for Israelis or Palestinians of Kerry’s talks when pressed by the Associated Press’ Matt Lee, except for the prisoner releases (via the Free Beacon):

Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere is hard pressed to come up with a single Kerry initiative that’s succeeding:

Name one high-profile issue that’s going well right now for Secretary of State John Kerry. …

Even as Kerry and Obama have brought together allied international action on Ukraine, Iran and elsewhere, his administration has been under attack at home and abroad for not being better able to showcase strength or effectiveness toward Russia and Syria.

Amid that criticism, Kerry is the face of the administration foreign policy, whether announcing the preliminary breakthrough with Iran in November — still moving forward, at least for now — or standing in Geneva again two weeks ago to cautiously accept the basic agreement with the Russians, now proven useless, to de-escalate Ukraine.

And then there’s his own decision to making a renewed Middle East peace effort a central mission, which continues to have Obama’s support and which hasn’t been affected by the “apartheid” comment or the response it’s generated.

After the “apartheid” comment, which not only put the nail in the coffin of the peace talks but may have permanently damaged Kerry’s ability to interact with Israel, Senator Ted Cruz demanded his resignation. Politically, Barack Obama can’t sustain another Cabinet change before the midterms, but diplomatically, Kerry’s turning into a walking catastrophe that Obama can’t sustain for much longer, either. The best Obama can hope is that Kerry keeps his foot out of his mouth for a few months longer, but the President may need to pick a special envoy for Israel in the meantime to bypass Kerry and his foot-in-mouth disease.

Update: Walter Russell Mead reminds us that this is Obama’s foreign policy, even if Kerry is the incompetent in charge of it at the moment:

It’s clear that the White House is beginning to understand that even American liberals have to work hard these days to continue to believe that the President is doing a good job in foreign affairs. Unfortunately, it is less clear that the White House knows what to do about the situation.

But neither the President nor Ben Rhodes (who is cited later in the article) appear to be taking on the reason so many of the president’s sympathizers are shaking their heads over the state of American foreign policy today. It is clear to a child of ten that the President and all the people around him totally failed to understand the first thing about Vladimir Putin and his foreign policy agenda. They were caught utterly flatfooted by his move on Ukraine. To both the average layperson and the seasoned foreign policy professional, this looks like a major misreading of a major issue. Many will wonder how an administration that was listening in to Angela Merkel’s cell phone calls could have misread Russia so comprehensively.

A public failure of this magnitude, (comparable in a way to George W. Bush launching a war to stop a WMD program that he then failed to find) is profoundly damaging to public confidence in a political leader.

Via Instapundit.

Erdan: US In No Position to ‘Grade’ Us on ‘Price Tag’ Attacks, Israel National News, Yaakov Levi, May 1, 2014

(How many have been murdered or horribly injured during price tag “terrorism” attacks? Applying an horrific label to actions that do not warrant it creates a powerful meme. Unfortunately, it has become consistent with the Obama Administration’s tendency to cast aspersions on its “friend” Israel during the now defunct “peace process.” — DM)

The State Department’s 2013 anti-terrorism report investigated terror activity across the globe in 2013, and was published on its website. The “Israel, West Bank, and Gaza” section, however, focuses intensely on “extremist Israeli settlers” and subtly calls for them to be prosecuted by the UN. “Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents, property, and places of worship in the West Bank continued and were largely unprosecuted [sic] according to UN and NGO sources,” the report claims, citing the leftist UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs. 

Price tag vandalism in Jerusalem (illustrative) Flash 90

The US has no business criticizing Israel for failing to rein in so-called “price tag” attacks, Communications Minister Gilad Erdan said Thursday. The criteria set in the State Department report were unrealistic and unfair, and the report ignores Israel’s attempts to deal with the problem. “They are in no position to grade us on our actions,” Erdan told Channel Ten in an interview.

The State Department’s 2013 anti-terrorism report investigated terror activity across the globe in 2013, and was published on its website. The “Israel, West Bank, and Gaza” section, however, focuses intensely on “extremist Israeli settlers” and subtly calls for them to be prosecuted by the UN. “Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents, property, and places of worship in the West Bank continued and were largely unprosecuted [sic] according to UN and NGO sources,” the report claims, citing the leftist UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs.

The report also cited “399 attacks by extremist Israeli settlers that resulted in Palestinian injuries or property damage” and deemed them “violent extremists” – mostly over “price tag” attacks against Palestinian Arab homes and property.

“Price tag” is a euphemism for politically-motivated vandalism and criminal damage usually attributed to Jewish extremists, carried out either in revenge for Arab terrorist attacks, or in protest of Israeli government policies such as the destruction of Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria.

In the interview, Erdan said that the State Department was unfairly equating Israel with true terror regimes. “These price tags attacks are not against lives, but against property. It’s graffiti, not murder. I do not accept the position that attacks on property are the same as attacks against people. It’s true that these kind of attacks could get out of hand and lead to murder, but this has not happened yet,” Erdan said.

“We in the government strongly condemn these kinds of attacks and we have been taking action against them,” Erdan said. “We are very concerned. These are immoral acts and crimes that damage Israel.

Islamic Jihad Seeks to Join Hamas-Fatah Pact, Israel National News, May 1, 2014

Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza Reuters

Despite last week predicting its failure, the Islamic Jihad terrorist group is trying to join in on the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation agreement.

Sources in the group told the Ma’an news agency that three senior leaders of the group traveled from Gaza to Egypt via the Rafiah crossing on Wednesday.

According to the sources, Muhammad al-Hindi, Nafith Azzama, and Khaled al-Batsh traveled through Egypt to convene with other faction leaders for meetings on the recent reconciliation deal.

The leaders will consider the ways Islamic Jihad could be involved in the unity government, which is due to be set into place within four weeks, the sources told Ma’an.

It is the first time the leaders have been allowed into Egypt since the military ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi in July, the news agency noted.

According to the deal announced last Wednesday, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to issue a “presidential decree” announcing the dates for elections, which PA officials said would likely take place within the next six months.

Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas figure and member of the Hamas parliament, told the Arab news channel Al-Khuttab on Tuesday that Hamas leadership decided to take part in the coming elections for “Palestinian president.”

The participation would be conducted either by presenting an official Hamas candidate, or by supporting a national candidate who presumably would identify with Hamas, he said.

Cracks have already appeared in the unity agreement, as senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar declared on Tuesday that Hamas will never recognize Israel’s right to exist or put its terrorist army under Palestinian Authority (PA) control.

Those comments are contradictory to ones made by Abbas, who declared on Saturday that the new government will “obey my policy,” and would “recognize Israel and reject violence and terrorism, and recognize international commitments.”

The Fatah-Hamas Agreement, Gatestone Institute, Richard Kemp, May 1, 2014

(The perception seems to be that if everyone else (particularly Israel) will just be nice to terrorists and welcome them all will be well — for everyone else. — DM)

There is the criminal failure of the international community, as both accomplice and accessory before the fact, to make any meaningful effort to prevent endless salvoes of terrorist rocket attacks against Israeli civilians for over nine years.

As we saw with the Iranian arms shipment aboard the Klos-C last month, Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism continues unabated — even as the international community is rehabilitating its extremist regime.

But one could hope for something more forceful from Washington than State Department spokesman Jen Psaki’s weak and vacillating response in which she attempted to take the heat off Hamas and the PA by taking a gratuitous dig at Israel. “There have been unhelpful steps from both sides throughout this process,” she said.

Three hundred and thirty two drone attacks against Al Qaida and Taliban targets on Pakistani territory since 2005 demonstrate U.S. President Barack Obama’s strong resolve against terrorists that threaten the United States. Only last week, the latest wave of air strikes launched or enabled by his government against Al Qaida networks in Yemen killed 55 suspected extremists, possibly including master bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri.

Of course no one expects the U.S. to send drones in reply to the news that the Palestinian Authority [PA], upon which he has lavished billions of dollars and thousands of hours of diplomacy, was going into business with Hamas, which the United States has branded a terrorist organization.

But one could hope for something more forceful from Washington than State Department spokesman Jen Psaki’s weak and vacillating response in which she attempted to take the heat off Hamas and the PA by taking a gratuitous dig at Israel. “There have been unhelpful steps from both sides throughout this process,” she said.

If the US response was feeble, the EU’s was treacherous.

Like America and several other countries, the EU designates Hamas as a terrorist organization. Yet the spokesman for Catherine Ashton, EU foreign affairs head, actually welcomed the proposal to bring Hamas into the PA.

Though shameful, this is far from surprising. It is part of a lengthy pattern of witting or unwitting EU encouragement of Middle Eastern terrorism.

The EU has contributed its taxpayers’ money to paying the salaries of convicted Palestinian terrorists via unconditional donations to the PA amounting to billions of dollars since 1994. Some of this money has also been spent on school textbooks, television programs and other PA propaganda that incite hatred and terrorism against Israel.

Ashton and the EU have called repeatedly for an end to the Israeli-Egyptian security operation on land and sea around Gaza. The operation is designed to prevent predominantly Iranian-supplied munitions and materiel for terrorism from entering the Gaza Strip, and to stop Gaza terrorists and weapons moving to attack Israeli or Egyptian targets.

At the same time, the EU, like the UN, has usually remained mute in the face of volley after volley of Iranian-supported rocket attacks from Gaza directed against the civilian population of Israel. These rockets are fired mainly by Hamas and their terrorist bedfellows, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Silence and inaction by such significant international bodies as the UN and the EU must, in these circumstances, add up to at least a degree of culpability.

Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Peace Process, seems to have swallowed Abbas’s suggestion to him that reconciliation with Hamas will be on the basis of “recognition of Israel, non-violence and adherence to previous agreements.” On that “understanding,” the UN, like the EU, apparently welcomes and even supports the prospect of a terrorist group’s incorporation into the PA.

Were Hamas indeed to commit — plausibly — to such undertakings, then Israel could of course continue peace negotiations and cooperation with the PA on current terms. But other than Abbas’s words to Serry, there is no indication of this and, in the real world, Hamas is not likely even to consider such conditions.

Prime Minister Netanyahu therefore had no choice other than to suspend the peace process. This was his obligation to the Israeli people and to the international community. How could he possibly continue to negotiate with an entity that is itself negotiating with a vicious, murderous and unrelenting terrorist group hell-bent on the destruction of Israel and outlawed around the world?

Of course Abbas knew full well when he agreed to unity with Hamas that this would end the peace negotiations. But this is only the latest in a series of steps that Abbas has taken to sabotage the peace process. He rejected U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework principles last month; he has repeatedly refused to discuss PA recognition of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people; and at the end of March he initiated a move to join 15 international organizations, contravening an agreement to make no unilateral moves in the international arena during the period of the peace negotiations.

One of the greatest challenges in the peace process, should it be resumed at some point, is resolving Israel’s security concerns in the West Bank. Since the Israel Defense Forces left Gaza in 2005, Palestinians have fired into Israel over 8,000 rockets, killing 44 Israelis and injuring more than 1,600.

A damaged apartment building in Ashdod, following a direct hit by a rocket fired from Gaza, in November 2012. (Image source: IDF)

In addition, Gaza terrorists have seized every available opportunity for other forms of attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians including kidnappings, shootings, suicide bombs, anti-tank missiles and Improvised Explosive Devices [IEDs].

Iran, sworn to Israel’s destruction, as are its Gaza-based proxies, has funded, armed, energized and directed both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. As we saw with the Israeli interdiction of the Iranian arms shipment aboard the Klos-C only last month, Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism continues unabated — even as the international community is rehabilitating its extremist regime.

Especially in a region and among neighbours that are becoming even more unstable, violent and unpredictable, Israel must ensure that in the event a Palestinian state should ever reach fruition, the West Bank does not become a second Gaza. The bloody consequences of that for the Israeli people would be far greater than from anything Hamas could hurl out of the Strip.

Kerry has proposed international troops to provide security against attacks on Israel from the West Bank. Few Israelis believe that they could rely on such a force to protect them. There are the historical precedents for the failure of peacekeeping forces in the region and beyond, especially when the going gets tough. And in the West Bank, the going would get very tough very soon and very often.

There is the criminal failure of the international community, as both accomplice and accessory before the fact, to make any meaningful effort to prevent endless salvoes of lethal terrorist rocket attacks against Israeli civilians for over nine years.

Worse still, when Israel has been forced to respond to protect its citizens, it has been stabbed in the back by the international community, who have accused it of war crimes.

The UN’s ill-conceived and deeply flawed 2009 Goldstone Report, for example, amounted to nothing less than incitement to terrorism.

And then there is the spectacle that we have witnessed over the past few days, of the pusillanimous and equivocating international response to plans for an active and violent terrorist group to join the PA.

Confronted by world leaders who lack the moral courage to face down terrorists whom even they themselves have designated as such, Israel is entirely right in its assumption that when it comes to security it can rely only on its own moral strength and its own armed forces.

Obama and the Inconvenience of History: Abandoning Ukraine | New Republic.

Obama abandons another country to its fate

 BY LEON WIESELTIER

 “Yeah, let’s talk about that.” The president wished to change the subject. At a press conference the other day he was being interrogated about Ukraine when a reporter asked a question about health care. Obama was delighted. As the excellent Peter Baker reported in The New York Times, “Mr. Obama seems intent on not letting Russia dominate his presidency.” This is not the first time the president has attempted to resist such intrusions upon his idea of how the world ought to be. He has been trying to escape the Middle East for years and “pivot” to Asia, as if the United States can ever not be almost everywhere, leading and influencing, supporting or opposing, in one fashion or another. On the eve of the president’s trip to Asia, Susan Rice remarked that “increasingly [we] see our top priorities as tied to Asia, whether it’s accessing new markets or promoting exports or protecting our security interests and promoting our core values.” What is this strange choice, this retiring either / or calculation? Only small powers think this way. Can the United States ever have “top priorities” only in one place, even if it is a place as big as Asia? Are our “security interests” not also broached by the failure of the Syrian state, or our “core values” not also invoked by its slaughter without end?

No one defends Obama foreign policy these days | Right Turn.

By Jennifer Rubin Updated: April 30 at 3:13 pm

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