[T]his administration isn’t interested in an accommodation with Israel on key issues. Rather it seeks to crush Israel’s efforts to resist détente with Iran as well as to muscle it on the peace process with the Palestinians even though the latter have frustrated the administration by steadfastly refusing to make peace on even the most favorable of terms on a diplomatic playing field tilted in their direction by the White House.
Having thrown away its previous positions on stopping Iran’s nuclear enrichment or dismantling its nuclear program (as President Obama vowed in his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney in 2012), it will clear[ly] stop at nothing to get a deal if one is to be had.
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One of the most important sidebars to the furor over the decision of two “senior administration officials” to tell columnist Jeffrey Goldberg that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a “chickenshit” coward was their boast that he had missed his chance to prevent them from making a weak deal allowing Iran to become a threshold nuclear state. Aside from the general discussion about an administration that is diffident about criticizing actual enemies of the United States choosing to lob outrageous insults at America’s sole democratic ally is the question whether this was a part of an effort to pre-empt Israeli criticism of a weak Iran nuclear deal or was merely just another instance of the Obama foreign policy team’s lack of discipline and incompetence. TheWashington Post editorial page has weighed in on behalf of the latter point of view. But unfortunately there is good reason to think this latest administration attack on Israel was part of a calculated strategy on Iran.
That President Obama has considered engagement with Iran as one of his foreign-policy priorities since coming to office is no secret. But that assumption was given further credence on Friday when the Washington Free Beacon reported on a tape of a talk given by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes (one of those suspected of being one of the sources for Goldberg’s infamous column) in which he declared that an Iran deal would be the most important objective of the president’s second term and the moral equivalent of ObamaCare as an administration priority.
But we didn’t need Rhodes to tell us that. In signing an interim nuclear deal last year with Tehran that did nothing to force it to give up its nuclear infrastructure or long-term hopes of a weapon, he threw away the West’s considerable economic and military leverage and began a process of unraveling sanctions. But in order to seal a final deal with Iran—assuming, that is, that the Islamist regime deigns to sign one rather than merely keep running out the clock as Obama vainly pursues them—he must do two things: overcome considerable bipartisan opposition from Congress and make sure that Israel and/or moderate Arab regimes equally scared by the Iranians aren’t able to scuttle an agreement.
The president’s formula for achieving this dubious goal is clear.
On the one hand, he will try to forge an agreement that will not require congressional approval. That will be no easy task as the Constitution requires the Senate to approve any treaty with a foreign power and only Congress can repeal the economic sanctions it passed in recent years. But as we already know this isn’t a president that is troubled much by having to trod on the Constitution or violate the law. He will, as has already been reported, attempt to portray an Iran deal as something other than a new treaty. He will also use his executive power to suspend enforcement of sanctions, perhaps indefinitely, in order to render existing laws null and void.
As for Israel, as Goldberg’s column indicated, the administration thinks they’ve already won since Netanyahu failed to order an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities during the president’s first term.
So where does this leave us?
According to the Washington Post editorial, Goldberg’s column was merely an indication of the loose tongues that operate in the West Wing. Assuming that the assault on Netanyahu’s character and the gloating about Israel’s inability to stop U.S. efforts to appease Iran was, in its view, giving the “White House too much credit for calculation” since the insults would make it harder for the U.S. to “reach an accommodation with Israel on Iran and settlements.”
But as the record of the last six years and Rhodes’s indiscreet talk verifies, this administration isn’t interested in an accommodation with Israel on key issues. Rather it seeks to crush Israel’s efforts to resist détente with Iran as well as to muscle it on the peace process with the Palestinians even though the latter have frustrated the administration by steadfastly refusing to make peace on even the most favorable of terms on a diplomatic playing field tilted in their direction by the White House.
Goals often dictate not only tactics employed but also the character of the conflict. Having set reconciliation with Iran as one of his chief objectives—something that was made clear in the president’s first inaugural address and reaffirmed by his subsequent decisions on the long running diplomatic engagement he has pursued—Obama has determined that achieving it is worth sacrificing the United States’ close relations with Israel as well as enraging Arab states that have, to their surprise, found themselves aligned with Israel on this issue rather than the Americans.
Though the administration has been rightly criticized for its habit of equivocation on foreign-policy crises, its single-minded determination to outmaneuver the Israelis on Iran while never giving up on efforts to appease the Islamist regime has been impressive. Having thrown away its previous positions on stopping Iran’s nuclear enrichment or dismantling its nuclear program (as President Obama vowed in his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney in 2012), it will clear stop at nothing to get a deal if one is to be had.
Rather than a reset with Israel as the Post advises, Obama has something else in mind. While it may be going too far to say that the administration thinks of itself as entering into an alliance with the Iranians, the bottom line here is that the new Middle East that it envisions after an Iran deal is one in which traditional U.S. allies will be marginalized and endangered while Tehran and its terrorist allies will be immeasurably strengthened. The administration can only achieve that dubious goal by working assiduously against Israel and the bipartisan coalition that backs the alliance with the Jewish state in Congress.
It remains to be seen whether the next Congress will sit back and allow the administration to achieve a détente with the Islamic Republic that will amount to a new tacit U.S.-Iran alliance at the expense of the Jewish state. But whether Congress acts or not (and if the Senate is controlled by the Republicans it is far more likely to be able to thwart the president’s objectives), let no one say that we haven’t been warned about what was about to unfold.
There is no doubt that Obama’s lame duck years will be stressful for Israel and its friends. As Seth noted earlier today, the administration’s full court press for détente with Iran is setting the table for a strategic blunder on their nuclear quest that will severely harm the balance of power in the Middle East as well as lay the groundwork for challenges to American national security for decades to come.
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No doubt the gang in the Obama administration have been congratulating themselves for planting some juicy insults aimed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest column in The Atlantic. But now that the wiseacres in the West Wing and/or the State Department have done their dirty work the question remains what will be the consequences of the decision to widen as well as to embitter the breach between the two countries. While most of those writing on this subject, including Goldberg, have emphasized the real possibility that the U.S. will sandbag Israel at the United Nations and otherwise undermine the Jewish state’s diplomatic position in the last years of Obama’s term in office, that won’t be the only blowback from the administration’s “chickenshit” diplomacy. Rather than harm Netanyahu, this ploy, like previous attacks on the prime minister, will strengthen him while making mischief for the president’s party in both this year’s midterms and in 2016.
There is no doubt that Obama’s lame duck years will be stressful for Israel and its friends. As Seth noted earlier today, the administration’s full court press for détente with Iran is setting the table for a strategic blunder on their nuclear quest that will severely harm the balance of power in the Middle East as well as lay the groundwork for challenges to American national security for decades to come.
Nor should anyone discount the potential for severe damage to Israel’s diplomatic standing in the world should Obama decide to collude with the Palestinian Authority and to allow them to get a United Nations Security Council resolution on Palestinian statehood, borders, and Jerusalem. The Palestinians’ drive to annul Jewish rights and to bypass the peace process could, with Obama’s support, further isolate Israel and strengthen the efforts of those forces working to promote BDS—boycott, divest, sanction—campaigns that amount to an economic war on the Jewish people.
This is a dire prospect for a small, besieged country that still relieves heavily on U.S. security cooperation and defense aid. But for all the huffing and puffing on the part of Obama’s minions, the administration’s real objectives in all this plotting are not likely to be achieved. That’s because nothing published in a Goldberg column or leaked anywhere else will weaken Netanyahu’s hold on office or prompt the Palestinians to make peace or Iran to be more reasonable in the nuclear talks. The only people who will be hurt by the attacks on Israel are Obama’s fellow Democrats.
As I pointed out yesterday, Obama’s barbs aimed at Israel haven’t enticed the Palestinians to negotiate seriously in the past and won’t do so in the future. If the Palestinian Authority really wanted a state they would have accepted the one offered them in 2000, 2001, or 2008 or actually negotiated with Netanyahu in the last year after he indicated readiness to sign off on a two-state solution.
The boasts about having maneuvered Netanyahu into a position where he may not have a viable military option against Iran (actually, Israel may never have had much of an option since it can be argued that only U.S. possesses the forces required to conclusively knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities) is also nothing for the U.S. to be happy about since it will only strengthen the Iranians’ conviction that they have nothing to fear from Israel or a U.S. president that they think is too weak to stand up to them.
But Obama should have also already learned that challenging Netanyahu and insulting the Jewish state in this manner has one definite side effect: strengthening the prime minister’s political position at home. The same thing happened after Obama’s attacks on the status of Jerusalem in his first term. The administration thought it could topple Netanyahu soon after his election in February 2009 and failed, but even after his election to another term in 2013 as well as the absence of any viable alternative to him, they are still clinging to the delusion that the Israeli people will reject his policies. But that isn’t likely to happen for one reason. The overwhelming majority of Israelis may not love the prime minister but they share his belief that there is no Palestinian peace partner and that turning the West Bank into a sovereign state that could be controlled by Hamas and other terrorists just like Gaza would be madness. They also oppose efforts to divide their capital or to prohibit Jews from the right to live in some parts of the city.
Netanyahu won’t back down. In the wake of the summer war with Hamas that further undermined an Israeli left that was already in ruins after 20 years of failed peace processing, Netanyahu was clearly heading to early elections that would further strengthen the Likud. Obama’s attacks will only make that strategy more attractive to the prime minister. But whether he is reelected in 2015, 2016, or 2017, few believe Netanyahu won’t be returned to office by the voters for his third consecutive and fourth overall term as Israel’s leader. Though a lot of damage can be done to Israel in the next two years, that means Netanyahu is almost certain to be able to outlast Obama in office and to enjoy what will almost certainly be better relations with his successor whether it is a Democrat or a Republican. Waiting out Obama isn’t a good strategy for Israel but it may be the only one it has available to it and will likely be rewarded with a honeymoon with the next president.
But Netanyahu isn’t the only person who will profit politically from this astonishingly crude assault on the Jewish state’s democratically elected leader.
Foreign policy is rarely a decisive factor in U.S. elections but at a time when Democrats are suffering the ill effects of Obama’s inept response to the threat from ISIS, it won’t do the president’s party any good for the administration to pick a fight with it’s sole democratic ally in the Middle East. Americans have a right to ask why an administration that was slow to react to ISIS and is intent on appeasing a murderous Islamist regime in Iran is so intent on fighting with Israel. That won’t help embattled Democrats seeking reelection in red states where evangelicals regard backing for Israel as a key issue.
Nor will it help Democrats as they head toward 2016. Though Hillary Clinton will likely run away from Obama on his attacks on Netanyahu as she has done on other foreign-policy issues, running for what will in effect be Obama’s third term will still burden her with the need to either actively oppose the president’s anti-Israel actions in the UN or détente with Iran or accept the negative political fallout of silence. Any Republican, with the exception of an isolationist like Rand Paul, will be able to exploit this issue to their advantage.
Those who worry about the damage to Israel from a lame-duck Obama administration that is seething with hatred for Netanyahu and thinks it has nothing to lose are not wrong. But Democrats will be hurt politically by a crisis that was created by Obama, not Netanyahu. They won’t be grateful to the president for having put them in this fix while Netanyahu will probably emerge from this trial strengthened at home and in a good position to repair relations with Obama’s successor.
The murder of little girls like Chaya Zissel Braun does not take place in a vacuum. The Islamizers of Jerusalem gain confidence when they see that the international community stands behind their demands. In 1920, racist Muslim settler mobs in Jerusalem had chanted “Mohammed’s religion was born with the sword”, “Death to the Jews” and “the government is with us” as Muslim policemen under British colonial rule had joined with them in the rape and murder of the indigenous Jewish population.
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Chaya Zissel Braun was murdered on her first trip back from the Western Wall where the indigenous Jewish population of Israel continues to pray in the shadow of the shrine established there by the Muslim conquerors from which the racist Muslim settlers rain down rocks on the Jewish worshipers.
The three-month old baby girl died when a Muslim terrorist rammed a car into a crowd hurtling her into the air and headfirst onto the pavement. Her death did not take place in isolation. It was not caused by a tiny minority of extremists. Her blood was spilled on the street for the Islamization of Jerusalem.
The Islamization of Jerusalem is an international cause. It does not just come out of Gaza City or even Ramallah. Nor Doha or Istanbul. The politicians and diplomats of every major country demand the Islamization of Jerusalem. When they talk about a Palestinian State with its capital in Jerusalem what they are really demanding is the restoration of the Muslim ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem in 1948.
They demand it with words and boycotts, but the Muslim settlers on whose behalf they cry for the Apartheidization of Jerusalem are writing their murderous demands with the blood of little girls.
The baby girl was murdered to Islamize a city. She died as the Israeli soldiers had died reunifying Jerusalem after the Arab Legion had ethnically cleansed the Jewish population and as ordinary Jerusalemites had died at the hands of Jordanian snipers searching the city for Jewish and Christian targets. The victims of those years of Muslim occupation included Yaffa Binyamin, a 14-year-old girl sitting on the balcony of her own house, and a Christian carpenter working on the Notre Dame Convent.
Like Chaya, I was born in Jerusalem. Like Yaffa, I lived in a building targeted by Muslim snipers. But the Six Day War had ended the reign of Muslim snipers over the city. The building where my parents made their home had been cheap once because living there could mean instant death for anyone looking out of a window at the wrong time. The liberation and reunification of Jerusalem had made it a place where Jewish children could play on balconies and Christians could repair churches without being murdered.
Under Muslim occupation, while Jordanian snipers were cold-bloodedly murdering their children, the Jewish residents living under fire couldn’t so much as put up an outhouse without being reported to the UN for illegal construction. In one case a UN observer organization held four meetings to discuss an outhouse for local Jewish residents before condemning Israel for illegal construction.
It did not however condemn Jordan when one of its soldiers opened fire on a train wounding a Jewish teenage girl.
Muslim outrage over Jewish outhouses mattered more than the Muslim murder of Jewish children. It still does. Today the State Department calls the murder of that little girl a traffic incident while warning that Jews living in Jerusalem will end any possibility of peace.
Hillary Clinton spent 45 minutes shrieking at Netanyahu over the phone after a planning committee allowed new housing in Jerusalem to advance to the public comment stage, and told the media that the proposal that Jews live in a part of Jerusalem that she believes should belong to Muslims is “insulting” to the United States.
The latest firestorm exploded over seven Jewish families moving into homes that they had bought legally in an area from which Jews had been ethnically cleansed by racist Muslim violence in the twenties and thirties. Earlier the State Department and White House had warned that Israel was alienating “even its closest allies” by proposing to build houses on Airplane Hill, a place mainly known for having an Israeli plane crash there during the Six Day War that had formerly hosted temporary housing for Russian and Ethiopian immigrants.
Meanwhile when Chaya was murdered, the State Department urged “all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident.” It wasn’t as if anything important had happened. Just an Israeli-American baby murdered in pursuit of their shared goal of Islamizing Jerusalem.
Secretary of State John Kerry did not call President Abbas, the unelected president of the PLO’s Palestinian Authority, to berate him when one of his advisers called the murderer of that child a “heroic martyr”. Hillary Clinton did not come out of retirement to shriek at him over the phone when his party suggested that the killer would be receiving his 72 virgins in paradise.
If only something more important had happened than a presidential advisor to an Obama-backed terror state calling the murderer of an American child a hero; like planning for new housing “advancing”.
No one objects when Muslim settlers build houses in Jerusalem or anywhere else. But the objections pour in when the indigenous Jewish population builds so much as a house or an outhouse.
What we are talking about here is not peace, but ethnic cleansing. In 1948, the Jews were ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem to Islamize the city. Their synagogues were blown up by the Muslim occupiers. Their tombstones were used to line the roads traveled by the racist Muslim settlers.
“For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter,” Abdullah el-Talal, a commander of the Muslim invaders, had boasted. “Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”
In his memoirs he wrote, “I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty…. Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it.”
Life magazine published photos of the atrocity writing that, “Muslim censors, not only in Palestine but in neighboring Arab countries which have major communication outlets, tried for a fortnight to keep the news from leaking out.”
The Life photographer who took the photos was sentenced to death by the Arab High Committee.
This ethnic cleansing is what Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been defending. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the thrust of all the peace plans put forward.
The entire phony “Palestinian” narrative in which the regional Sunni Arab Muslim majority that is busy slaughtering Christians, Kurds, Shiites acts as if it’s the victim because its racist ethnic cleansing plans were frustrated when its Jewish victims fought back and won.
The Muslim occupiers have added insult to injury by pretending to be the indigenous population to aid in their attempts at displacing the indigenous Jewish population through terror and lies.
Abdullah el-Talal said, “I have seen in this defeat of the Jews the heaviest blow rendered upon them, especially in terms of morale, since they were evicted from the Western Wall and from the Jewish Quarter, for the first time in fifteen generations.”
Every politician denouncing Jews for building houses in Jerusalem, but not Muslims doing the same thing is endorsing Abdullah’s genocidal vision and all the terrorism that goes with it.
The murder of little girls like Chaya Zissel Braun does not take place in a vacuum. The Islamizers of Jerusalem gain confidence when they see that the international community stands behind their demands. In 1920, racist Muslim settler mobs in Jerusalem had chanted “Mohammed’s religion was born with the sword”, “Death to the Jews” and “the government is with us” as Muslim policemen under British colonial rule had joined with them in the rape and murder of the indigenous Jewish population.
Too many governments still stand with those who wave the sword of Mohammed and cry death to the Jews. They encourage them, defend their agenda and issue weak rebukes when blood is spilled in the name of Islamizing Jerusalem.
Those politicians who endorse the Islamization of Jerusalem cannot escape responsibility for the crimes of the Islamizers.
Israel’s vile actions, completely out of Obama’s control, have greatly imperiled heroic Palestinian efforts to advance His peace process. Accordingly, Obama has asked neutral and moderate Iran to act as an impartial mediator.
Statement of President Obama
Good morning, My fellow citizens of the world. This morning I must talk with you about the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East and, indeed, the entire world.
The racist apartheid Israeli regime remains obstinate in the face of justifiably severe criticism from the International Community. Israel recently murdered an innocent Palestinianchild for his peaceful protests against the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and other areas of what must, and will, become a free and democratic Palestine for, by and of the Palestinian people. I of course promptly sent condolences to the family of that innocent victim of Israel’s murderous regime, but even My act of compassion failed to soften Netanyahu’s heart of stone.
Similarly, Israeli goons responded to a traffic accident by murdering a Palestinian driver in Occupied Jerusalem. That, like other Israeli murders — including the thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians (many of them little children) murdered by Israel in Gaza — is Islamophobic genocide gone wild. With all of the sincerity I have, I commend the brave Palestinians who stand up to Israel’s murders, illegal construction and other actions contrary to international law in occupied areas and elsewhere, even at the cost of their own precious lives. They are true martyrs for peace, and our hearts are with the families of all such innocent victims of Israeli aggression.
Rather than halt Jewish construction projects in occupied territories, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu recently proclaimed his intention to build even more Jewish housing.
“I heard the claim that our building in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem makes peace more distant, but it is the criticism itself that makes peace more distant,” Netanyahu said of criticism that poured in following his announcement of plans to develop 660 more units in Ramot Shlomo in the northern part of the city and 400 in the southern neighborhood of Har Homa.
He is of course wrong, as usual. Were the building of illegal settlements neither happening nor planned at all, there would be no criticism of it. However, it is not only happening, it is accelerating. As the situation Neanderthal, of course I refer to Netanyahu, has created now stands, criticism is not just completely justified. It is absolutely necessary.
Despite the massive but sadly rejected conciliatory efforts, and fruitless attempts at compromise, frequently offered by the duly elected Palestinian Authority President Mohamed Abbas — a man of true Islamic peace, truth, justice and compassion — the situation continues to worsen because of Netanyahu’s senseless intransigence.
The situation is beyond My control — despite My countless great successes in domestic and foreign policy as the President of all of My people and universally acknowledged leader of the International Community. It has passed well beyond the point at which the impartial leaders of Turkey and Qatar can deal with it. Even pro-Israel Egypt, under its disgraced coup leader, dictator and Islamophobic “President” Sisi, has struck out.
Iranian President Rouhani, My esteemed friend and colleague in the pursuit of peace, is now the only world leader capable of dealing with Netanyahu’s senseless obstinacy. He did so in the past and will do so again in dealing with Israel, the cause of most if not all turmoil in the Middle East. A final solution is needed. President Rouhani knows what it is, how to arrange it and how to implement it.
He is a true moderate — in many respects perhaps more moderate than even I am. During his tenure, President Rouhani has taken heroic steps to improve Iran’s respect for the human rights which we should all hold dear but which Israel, under Netanyahu’s dictatorial hand, repeatedly ignores. This photo reveals Israel’s continued execution of innocent Arabs guilty only of adherence to the Religion of Peace:
Only recently, Israel executed this young Muslim woman, to the disgust and sorrow of human rights advocates everywhere, falsely blaming the travesty on Iran:
As soon as the P5+1 negotiators and Iran arrive at a mutually beneficial deal under which Iran can continue its peaceful pursuit of nuclear weapons energy, President Rouhani will be able to undertake the heavy burdens I have asked him to bear. I hope and prey pray that the P5+1 negotiations, long stalled by complaints from Israel and other right wing fear mongers who spout catastrophic nonsense, will succeed in the very near future, indeed soon after November 4th.
Thank you and Allah God Damn Bless America.
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By His peace process address and recitation of Iran’s proper place in the International Community as a peace maker, Obama has shown the path He will take as a true citizen of the World and its undisputed leader during the remainder of His term in office.
“We pledge cooperation in proud fulfillment of a great, noble call.” Long may will He rain upon us as our exalted Commander in Chief! The time between now and January 20, 2017 will certainly be, or at least seem to be, very long.
(Rather than chopping the tree down, we are watering and fertilizing it. — DM)
Arab protesters wave Islamic flags in front of the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel / AP
Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’ backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.
We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.
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Last month, addressing the U.N. General Assembly, Benjamin Netanyahu made a connection between the Islamic State and Hamas. These terrorist entities, Netanyahu said, have a lot in common. Separated by geography, they nonetheless share ideology and tactics and goals: Islamism, terrorism, the destruction of Israel, and the establishment of a global caliphate.
And yet, Netanyahu observed, the very nations now campaigning against the Islamic State treated Hamas like a legitimate combatant during last summer’s Israel-Gaza war. “They evidently don’t understand,” he said, “that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree.”
The State Department dismissed Netanyahu’s metaphor. “Obviously, we’ve designated both as terrorist organizations,” said spokesman Jen Psaki. “But ISIL poses a different threat to Western interests and to the United States.”
Psaki was wrong, of course. She’s always wrong. And, after the events of the last 48 hours, there ought not to be any doubt as to just how wrong she was. As news broke that a convert to Islam had murdered a soldier and stormed the Canadian parliament, one read of another attack in Jerusalem, where a Palestinian terrorist ran his car over passengers disembarking from light rail, injuring seven, and killing 3-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, who held a U.S. passport.
Islamic State, al Qaeda, Hamas—these awful people are literally baby killers. And yet they produce a remarkable amount of dissension, confusion, willful ignorance, and moral equivalence on the part of the men and women who conduct U.S. foreign policy. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,’” President Obama said of the terrorist army imposing sharia law across Syria and Iraq. “Obviously, we’re shaken by it,” President Obama said of the attack in Canada. “We urge all sides to maintain calm and avoid escalating tensions in the wake of this incident,” the State Department said of the murder of a Jewish child.
“Not Islamic,” despite the fact that the Caliphate grounds its barbarous activities in Islamic law. “Shaken,” not stirred to action. “All sides,” not the side that targets civilians again and again and again. The evasions continue. They create space for the poison tree to grow.
The persistent denial of the ideological unity of Islamic terrorism—the studied avoidance of politically incorrect facts that has characterized our response to the Ft. Hood shooting, the Benghazi attack, the Boston Marathon bombing, the march of the caliphate across Syria and Iraq, and the crimes of Hamas—is not random. Behind it is a set of ideas with a long history, and with great purchase among the holders of graduate degrees who staff the Department of Justice, the National Security Council, Foggy Bottom, and the diplomatic corps. These ideas are why, in the words of John McCain, the terrorists “are winning, and we’re not.”
A report by Katherine Gorka of the Council on Global Security, “The Bad Science Behind America’s Counter-Terrorism Strategy,” analyzes the soil from which the poison tree draws strength. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, Gorka writes, U.S. policymakers have faced a dilemma: “how to talk about Islam in a way that is instructive in dealing with Muslims who are enemies but not destructive to those who are friends.” For decades, the preferred solution has been to declare America’s friendship with Islam, and to distinguish between jihadists and everyday Muslims.
One of Gorka’s earliest examples of this policy comes from former Assistant Secretary of State Edward Djerejian, who said in 1992, “The U.S. government does not view Islam as the next ‘ism’ confronting the West or threatening world peace.” Similar assurances were uttered by officials in the Clinton administration, by Clinton himself, and by President George W. Bush. The policy was meant to delegitimize terrorism by denying the terrorists’ claim that they are acting according to religious precepts. “Policymakers believed that by tempering their language with regard to Islam, they might forestall further radicalization of moderate Muslims and indeed even potentially win moderates into the American circle of friendship.”
George W. Bush, Gorka notes, combined his rhetorical appeals to moderate Muslims with denunciations of the immorality of terrorism and illiberalism. And yet, for the government at large, downplaying the religious and ideological component to terrorist activities became an end in itself.
The Global War on Terror was renamed the “global struggle against violent extremism.” In 2008 the Department of Homeland Security published a lexicon of terrorism that said, “Our terminology must be properly calibrated to diminish the recruitment efforts of extremists who argue that the West is at war with Islam.” State Department guidelines issued in 2008 said, “Never use the terms jihadist or mujahedeen to describe a terrorist.”
Then came Obama. As a candidate, he stressed his experiences in Indonesia and Pakistan. He told Nick Kristof of the New York Times that the call of the muezzin is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” In one of his first major addresses as president, he traveled to Cairo to inaugurate a new beginning with the Muslim world. His counterterrorism adviser, now director of the CIA, called jihad a “legitimate tenet of Islam,” and referred to Jerusalem as “Al Quds.”
The change in the manner in which the government treated Islamism was profound. “Whereas the 9/11 Commission report, published under the presidency of George W. Bush in July 2004 as a bipartisan product, had used the word Islam 322 times, Muslim 145 times, jihad 126 times, and jihadist 32 times,” Gorka writes, “the National Intelligence Strategy of the United States, issued by the Obama administration in August 2009, used the term Islam 0 times, Muslim 0 times, jihad 0 times.” The omission is stunning.
For Bush, terrorism consisted of immoral deeds committed by evil men animated by anti-Western ideology. Obama downplayed such judgmental language. He preferred an interpretation of terrorism as discrete acts of wrongdoing by extremists, driven by resentments and grievances such as the American failure to establish a Palestinian state, American support for secular Arab dictatorships, American forces in the Middle East, U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, and, infamously, an anti-Islamic YouTube video. “The logic that follows,” Gorka writes, “is that once those grievances are addressed, the extremism will subside.”
Some logic. Six years into the Obama presidency, not only has the vocabulary of jihad been removed from official rhetoric and counterterrorism policy, but troops have been removed from Iraq, troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the administration has condemned Israeli settlement activity while coddling Hamas’ backers in Ankara and Doha, “torture” has been banned, the White House intends to close Guantanamo unilaterally, Hosni Mubarak was abandoned in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the president is desperate for a partnership with the Islamic theocracy of Iran.
The result? The Islamic State rules Mosul, threatens Baghdad, and has conquered half of Syria as Bashar Assad gasses the other half. Libya has collapsed into tribal warfare. Egypt has gone from military dictatorship to Islamic authoritarianism and back again. An Islamic strongman rules Turkey, Hamas murders with impunity, Al Jazeera broadcasts anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda around the world, and the Taliban are biding time in Afghanistan. Not only is al Qaeda not on the run, it governs more territory than at any point since 2001. It is once again the “strong horse,” attracting jihadists to its crusade who inevitably turn their attention to the West.
“Without an ideological catalyst,” Gorka writes, “grievances remain merely grievances. They are dull and banal. They only transform into acts of transcendental violence when ignited by Sayyid Qutb or Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. It is the narrative of Holy War that gives value to local grievances, not the other way around.” Before we can hope to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State or the al Qaeda movement, we must recognize the poison tree of jihad for what it is. We must recognize the global and unitary nature of the threat. We must recognize that there is only one way to deal with a poison tree: You chop it down.
Would General Allen — or any other general today — recommend contracting out his country’s defenses if it were his country at stake? Of course not.
The Iranian regime remains dedicated to undermining and ultimately destroying the State of Israel. The Islamic State also has Israel in its sights and would certainly use the West Bank as a point from which to attack, if it were open to them.
There can be no two-state solution and no sovereign Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan, however desirable those things might be. The stark military reality is that Israel cannot withdraw its forces from the West Bank.
Fatah leaders ally themselves with the terrorists of Hamas, and, like Hamas, they continue to reject the every existence of the State of Israel.
If Western leaders actually want to help, they should use all diplomatic and economic means to make it clear to the Palestinians that they will never achieve an independent and sovereign state while they remain set on the destruction of the State of Israel.
When in 1942 American General Douglas MacArthur took command of the defense of Australia against imminent Japanese invasion, one of the plans he rejected was to withdraw and fight behind the Brisbane line, a move that would have given large swathes of territory to the Japanese.
Instead, he adopted a policy of forward defense: advancing northwards out of Australia to attack the Japanese on the island of New Guinea. MacArthur then went on to play a pivotal role in the defeat of the Japanese empire.
At the end of last year, during the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations involving U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, another extremely able and widely respected American General, John Allen, drew up a plan progressively to withdraw Israeli forces from the West Bank and hand over Israel’s forward defense to a combination of Palestinian Arab forces, international monitors and technology.
Given the range of existential threats emanating from, or through, the West Bank today, known and unknown threats that will develop tomorrow, and the exceptional geographical vulnerability of the State of Israel, such a proposal is blatantly untenable. No other country would take risks with the lives of its people and the integrity of its territory by contracting out their defenses in this way — nor should it.
General Douglas MacArthur (left) strongly believed in forward defense. General John Allen (right) also believes in forward defense — but for U.S. forces only, not for the Israel’s military defending its borders.
Britain, for example, where no such existential threats exist, even refuses to adopt the EU’s Schengen arrangements, which would hand over the security of UK borders to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Spain, Italy and its other European neighbors. It is a long-standing opt-out that looks wiser by the day as international jihadist aggression against the West increases.
General MacArthur would never have recommended the “Allen Plan.” MacArthur, however, was not then under the same political pressure as General Allen. If he had been, he would have repulsed it. In 1934, as Army Chief of Staff, he argued against President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s intention to cut drastically the Army’s budget with such vehemence that he vomited on the steps of the White House as he was leaving.
Would General Allen – or any other general today – recommend a similar plan to his own president, if it were not Israel’s security, but the security of the United States, that was at stake? Of course he would not.
Indeed, U.S. generals unsuccessfully argued the opposite course of action when U.S. President Barack Obama decided on a total withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in 2011, a move that made inevitable the resurgence of large-scale violent jihad.
General Allen is now leading the American and allied forward defensive operations against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq [ISIS]. In the face of what he has defined as a “clear and present danger to the US,” he is not recommending withdrawal of American forces back into the continental United States and reliance on Arab forces, peacekeepers and technology to protect U.S. interests. The reverse, in fact, is true.
The reverse is also true for the forward defensive operations of the U.S. and its Western allies against violent jihad in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali, Somalia and elsewhere. All are significant threats to the West, yet none is as immediate and dangerous as the threat to Israel from an undefended West Bank.
Despite the determination of so many in the West erroneously to view the Israel-Palestine conflict as a mere territorial dispute that could be settled if only the so-called “occupation” ended, the forward defensive measures necessary for other Western nations are necessary for Israel as well. The stark military reality is that Israel cannot withdraw its forces from the West Bank — either now or at any point in the foreseeable future.
For those willing to see with clarity and speak with honesty, that conclusion has been obvious for many years. It is even more obvious, perhaps, for leaders with direct responsibility — such as General MacArthur had in Australia in 1942 — than for those who do not have to live with the consequences of their actions — such as General Allen in Israel in 2013.
Recent events have made this reality even more certain. Through incessant rocket fire and the construction of a sophisticated tunnel system to abduct and massacre Israeli civilians on a large scale, Hamas has just delivered another powerful object lesson in the consequences of IDF withdrawal.
Fatah leaders may take a somewhat different stance for international consumption, but they ally themselves with the proscribed terrorists of Hamas. And, like Hamas, in reality they continue to reject the very existence of the State of Israel. They apparently continue to want only a one-state solution: Arab rule from the river to the sea, with the ethnic cleansing of the Jews that would follow.
They are consistently encouraged in this intent, both wittingly and unwittingly, by Western nations, particularly in Europe. Not least by Sweden’s commitment in September to support a unilateral Palestinian state, the UK Parliament’s recent vote for the same thing, and similar moves across Europe that are likely in the coming weeks and months.
Especially with such encouragement, there is no possibility that Palestinian Arab political leaders’ rejection of the Jewish State will modify in the foreseeable future. The launch pad that an IDF-free West Bank would provide for attacks against Israel is so dangerous it makes even Gaza look about as threatening as Switzerland.
The external threats are at least as serious as those from within the West Bank. Despite the wishful thinking of many Western leaders and the alluring grins from Tehran, the Iranian regime remains dedicated to undermining and ultimately destroying the State of Israel. By funding and fomenting violence, Iran’s leadership will continue to exploit the Palestinian Arab populations in both Gaza and the West Bank to these ends.
Those who are currently arguing for Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank and the establishment of a sovereign state must have missed the war General Allen is fighting against the Islamic State [IS] and their jihadist bedfellows across the border in Syria. The Islamic State also has Israel in its sights and would certainly use the West Bank as a point from which to attack, if it were open to them. In the hands of international monitors and Palestinian Arab forces, the West Bank would be wide open to them.
We have only to look at the reaction to aggression of almost all international peacekeepers over the decades to know they would not last five minutes. And we have only to look at the performance of the battle-hardened Syrian and Iraqi armies when confronted by Islamic State fighters to know how long Palestinian Arab forces would withstand such aggression, whether by infiltration or frontal assault.
Whatever happens to the Islamic State in the future, this resurgent Islamist belligerence is not a flash in the pan. On the contrary, it has been building for decades, and President Obama, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and other world leaders acknowledge it as a generational struggle.
This means that for Israel, as far as the West Bank is concerned, both the enemy within and the enemy without are here to stay. And if the IDF has no choice but to remain in the West Bank to defend Israel, there can be no two state solution and no sovereign Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan, however desirable those things might be.
Nor can there be a one-state solution with democratic rights for all because that would spell the end of the one and only democratic and Jewish state and the beginning of a new autocracy and the next exodus of the Jews.
For those who do not want that to happen, the harsh reality is continuation of the status quo. But the status quo can be significantly improved, by gradual and progressive increases to PA autonomy in the West Bank, to the point where a state exists in virtually all aspects other than military security. That progress can only be achieved through low-key bilateral negotiations with concessions from both sides. It cannot be achieved by Kerry-like peace processes that demand big sweeping strokes to deliver groundbreaking, legacy-delivering announcements.
Nor can such progress be achieved in the face of a Western world that reflexively condemns every move Israel makes and encourages the Palestinian Arabs to believe that the fantasy of a two-state solution or a one-state solution on their terms can become a reality in the foreseeable future.
As so often in the paradoxical world of geopolitics, the well-meaning actions and words of national leaders and international organizations have unintended consequences. For the Israel-Palestine situation, the unintended consequences of Western actions are to deprive Palestinian Arabs of increased freedom and prosperity and to undermine the security of the only stable, liberal democratic state in the Middle East. If the West actually wants to help, its leaders need to face up to this unpalatable truth rather than continue to delude the Palestinian people as well as themselves.
Instead, Western leaders should use all available diplomatic and economic means to make it clear to the Palestinians that they will never achieve an independent and sovereign state while they remain set on the destruction of the State of Israel and while they continue to brainwash future generations to believe in that goal.
Parallels between the current negotiations with Iran over nukes and those with North Korea and China over the end of the U.S. – U.N. “police action” in Korea should be considered in evaluating the former. That is the purpose of this article.
Among the conclusions to be drawn is that Obama’s America and the rest of the “international community” are heading down a foolishly misguided path in nuke negotiations with Iran. The path is likely to lead to results more inconclusive and substantially worse than did negotiations to end the Korean Conflict.
Korea negotiations
Negotiations looking to the end of the Korean conflict began on July 10, 1951 at Kaesong, a town occupied by North Korea. On November 25th, negotiations moved to neutral territory in Panmunjom, where they continued until July 19, 1953, just over two years after they had begun.
During the Korea negotiations — which South Korea opposed and at which North Korea and China, but not South Korea were represented — fighting continued with many casualties on all sides. The push for “peace” and political strategies to achieve it — mainly on the part of the United Nations, America and her allies — overwhelmed military considerations. Those factors pushed the casualty rate higher than it would likely have been during more normal combat operations had there been no “peace process.” (Note: much of the information provided here on the Kaesong – Panmunjom peace process and the continuing combat which accompanied it is from T. R. Fehrenbach’s excellent book titled This Kind of War, first published in 1963. During the conflict, Mr. Fehrenbach served in Korea as a U.S. Army officer.)
The resulting agreement put the geographical situation back where it had been when North Korean troops – supplied, trained and led by Stalin’s Russia — invaded the South on June 25, 1950.
Still a horridly repressive country, North Korea still remains aggressive against South Korea and now has nuclear weaponry. In contrast Japan — which we nuked to end the war in the Pacific with fewer casualties than would otherwise likely have occurred had the war continued — has become one of few reasonably free, democratic and prosperous nations in Asia. Another is South Korea, far past the days of the Japanese occupation followed by the increasingly dictatorial reign of U.S. supported Syngman Rhee.
is the key trading partner of Iran.[4]Iran’s nuclear program depends mainly upon German products and services. For example, the thousands of centrifuges used to enrich the uranium are controlled by Siemens “Simatic WinCC Step7” software.[5][6] Around 50 German firms have their own branch offices in Iran and more than 12,000 firms have their own trade representatives in Iran. Several well-known German companies are involved in major Iranian infrastructure projects, especially in the petrochemical sector, like Linde, BASF, Lurgi, Krupp, Siemens, ZF Friedrichshafen, Mercedes, Volkswagen and MAN (2008). (Emphasis added.]
Iran’s relationships with Russia and China are similar. Negotiations have continued at various venues since February of 2013 with little if any progress and have been extended through November 24, 2014. They seem likely to be extended further. By November 24th, they will have lasted one year and nine months. An extension could well prolong them beyond the two years consumed by negotiations over the Korean conflict.
Iran has benefited substantially from the amelioration of sanctions which pressed it into negotiations and which seem highly unlikely to be restored in any effective manner no matter what happens during the negotiations. Iran has very likely continued its efforts to obtain (or keep) and militarize nukes. P5 + 1 negotiators, with “guidance” from Obama, have yielded to many if not most Iranian demands pointing to that result.
Iran continues to refuse the U.N. “watchdog,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEI), access to sites such as Parchin, where it is thought that Iran continues its nuclear weapons research but which the IAEI has not been permitted to inspect since 2005. According to the IAEI, it has
collected about 1,000 pages of information that point to attempts to develop such weapons.
Several meetings have resulted in little progress since Iran and the IAEA agreed late last year on a new effort to try and clear up the allegations.
The agency said Thursday that Iran presented no new proposals at the latest talks with IAEA experts. An IAEA statement gave no date for a new meeting.
The explosions at Parchin may have been workplace violence a workplace accident, sabotage or, perhaps more likely, an effort by Iran to hide its nuke developments because pressure to allow inspection by IAEI has increased significantly.
The timing of the blast is notable. On Monday night, a delegation from the IAEA landed in Tehran for a new round of talks scheduled for that Tuesday. The UN’s demand to inspect Parchin was set to be one of the top agenda items at the talks. [Emphasis added.]
Given the timing, it is certainly possible that the Iranians carried out the explosion themselves as a means of preventing the IAEA from demanding access.
The explosions at Parchin strongly suggest that Iran continues its nuclear weapons development while Obama and many others continue to live in a world of fantasy, hoping that Iran does not have, may not get and in any event will not use nukes. Obama has not declared the Islamic Republic of Iran “non-Islamic,” so evidently He fantasizes that it (unlike the “non-Islamic” Islamic State) is benign and trustworthy.
Here is an Iranian video simulation of a nuclear attack on Israel:
According to the summary posted at You Tube,
A short animated film being aired across Iran, shows the nuclear destruction of Israel and opens with the word ‘Holocaust’ appearing on the screen, underneath which a Star of David is shown, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Tuesday.
Israel may well be the first to suffer an Iranian nuclear attack if when Iran decides to use its nukes. Why would Iran — which continues to proclaim to the West its innocence of any past, present or future desire for nuclear weapons — try to convince its denizens otherwise? Just as South Korea had the most to lose, opposed and was not represented at the Korean peace process negotiations, Israel is not represented in the P5+1 peace process. She can do little more than sit on the sidelines and urge an international community that rejects her contentions to deny Iran nukes.
As was the case during the Panmunjom peace process, the human rights abuses by Iran appear to be deemed irrelevant. Despite Iranian President Rouhani’s pre-election promises to improve Iranian human rights, its human rights record remains little if any better than that of North Korea. Indeed, far from improving, the situation under “moderate” Iranian President Rouhani has worsened.
The Iranian regime executed more people per capita than any other country, executing as many as 687 people in 2013—an increase of 165 over the prior year. In March 2014, Reuters quoted Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in Iran, as saying: “I am still at a loss to understand how a reformist president should be in office and see such a sharp rise in executions. The government hasn’t given an explanation, which I would like to hear.”
The United Nations cited an increase in the rate of executions in Iran under Rouhani’s presidency in the second half of 2013. As the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) noted in an April 2014 report: “An escalation in executions, including of political prisoners and individuals belonging to ethnic minority groups such as Baloch, Ahwazi Arabs and Kurds, was notable in the second half of 2013. At least 500 persons are known to have been executed in 2013, including 57 in public. According to some sources, the figure may be as high as 625.”
Under Rouhani, Iranian authorities have executed more than two people per day in 2014. As Iran Human Rights reported in June 2014: “at least 320 prisoners have been executed in 2014 in Iran. Iranian official sources have announced at least 147 executions in the period between 1. January and 1. June 2014. In addition, more than 180 executions have been reported by human rights groups and not announced by the official sources. Based on these numbers, the Iranian authorities have executed in average, more than 2 people every day in the first five months of 2014. This is despite the fact that there has been a 3 week’s halt in the executions around the Iranian New Year in March.” [All emphasis is in the original.]
It also appears to be deemed inconsequential that Iran is among the world’s foremost state sponsors of Islamic terrorism, perhaps because Obama and His minions refuse to recognize the nature of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, the State Department recently
issued a tweet endorsing a manual that promotes sharia and admonishes investigators not to use terms like “jihad,” which it describes as “a noble concept” in Islam.
. . . .
Upon reading the book, Toronto Star columnist Anthony Furey observes that it frowns on “liberal values,” forbidding such things as the intermingling of the sexes in civil society and the marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim, while promoting the treatment of adultery and premarital sex as crimes for which “punishments are harsh.” [Emphasis added.]
Even if Iran does not itself use nukes against its enemies (e.g., Israel) how likely is it that it will provide nukes to its Islamic terrorist clients? It has been supplying them with conventional weapons for years.
Iranian negotiators, like the negotiators for North Korea and China, are skillful, well led and devious. They know what they want and will not accept less. “Our” negotiators? Not so much. Indefinite continuation of the Iran Scam negotiations helps rather than hurts Iran. Please see The Iran Scam continues for a summary of the problems as of January of this year. The situation has not got better and instead continues to worsen.
Summany
The Korean “police action” was a deadly mess and its results were inconclusive. Ditto the 1951 – 1953 peace process and the attenuation of military strategy and tactics for the political purpose of achieving “success” at Panmunjom. In view of Obama’s likely willingness to continue negotiations with Iran for however long it may take to get a deal – any deal that He can claim will bring peace in His time – the results are likely to be far worse than merely inconclusive.
Iran even without nukes — assuming that it does not already have them — has been and continues to be a major problem. With nukes, it will become an even greater threat to world security, including that of the United States.
While North Korea has nukes, it has not yet used them. Since North Korea (unlike the Islamic Republic of Iran) is “not Islamic,” perhaps it may eventually do so. However, North Korea has more than enough problems for now. It continues to deteriorate economically and it is not now even known for sure whether Kim Jong-un remains in power, if he ever was. As I noted here in January of 2013,
I disagree that Young Kim leads the direction in which North Korea travels and contended even prior to the death of Kim Jong-il, his father, that a regency would be needed to “guide” his steps. Kim Jong-un is only twenty-eight or so. He is simply too young, too unworldly, too untrained, and by himself too weak, to govern a nation — particularly one such as North Korea, where age is revered and poverty worse than we can imagine based on our own experiences is endemic. For those reasons, and because continuation of the Kim Dynasty was and remains necessary to prevent unfortunate events — among them the death or worse of those in Kim Jong-il’s inner circle — a regency was and remains necessary. There have been changes in the Kim Jong-un regency as central leaders have gained power and those at the periphery have lost it or been ousted. But there is still a regency and Kim Jong-un still seems to dance in step with the music it plays and directs.
Iran — with which North Korea has collaborated in nuke development — is very different. Supreme Leader Khamenei is its most powerful leader; “moderate” President Rouhani has comparatively little power. With the amelioration of sanctions, and despite Iran’s abysmal record of human rights abuses and continuing sponsorship of terrorism, Iran has grown economically as it continues to pursue nuclear weapons; its government seems more than merely stable because it has and uses forceful means to keep it so.
Conclusions
P5 +1 negotiations with the Persian rug merchants of Iran should terminate on November 24th and Iran should be told, clearly and emphatically, that any further attempt to augment its nuclear arsenal will be met with such force as may be needed to eliminate it. That of course assumes something quite unlikely, that such attempts will come to our attention. It also assumes with little basis that the “international community” will care enough to do anything substantial.
However, any Iranian attempt to use its nuclear weapons is more likely to be obvious, and the U.S., what’s left of Israel and others should respond forcefully. It can probably be done effectively even without boots on the ground.
It would be criminally insane to leave the matter up to the “international community” and the U.N. The U.N. in June of 1950, immediately following the North Korean invasion of South Korea, took several of its rare useful steps to respond to aggression. Then, however, Russia was boycotting the U.N. in its efforts to have Communist China admitted as a member. At the request of the U.N. as then very temporarily configured, members of what was then an international community of sorts sent troops and supplies to fight along with the American and South Korean troops. Had Russia been present in the Security Council, the U.N. could not and would not have taken those steps. The Russian boycott stopped soon after the initial U.N. actions and, by 1951, the U.N. and the “international community” were clamoring for an end of military conflict regardless of the outcome and its consequences. America now has far fewer friends there and the U.N. is now far worse than in June of 1950.
Hopefully, Obama will be out of office by the time that Iran uses its nuclear weapons and there may be someone in the Oval Office with sufficient courage, testicular fortitude, belief in freedom and democracy to collaborate with Israel in eliminating those weapons. That remains to be seen, but the prospects do not seem very encouraging.
(It should be satire, but unfortunately isn’t. Please read the linked article at Israel National News and wonder why the “peaceful” non-Jewish residents are violently upset. They are among Israel’s delightful “peace partners,” beloved of the Obama Administration. — DM)
Israel National News reported on Tuesday that Jews had legally purchased, and then moved into, eleven apartments in the historically mixed Jewish and Arab neighborhood of Silwan (Shiloach), Jerusalem. In the US, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded to the news by saying, “the US condemns the recent occupation of residential buildings in the neighborhood of Silwan.”
The assertion that there are certain areas — in any country — in which Jews, simply because they are Jews, should not be allowed to legally purchase homes, is nothing less than an endorsement of housing discrimination. Can anyone imagine President Obama ever suggesting that African Americans (or Latinos or Asians or Arabs) should not purchase homes in certain areas in the US? Under any set of circumstances? Obviously not. Earnest’s comments are reminiscent of an abhorrent chapter in US history, in which restrictive covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to Jews, blacks, and other minorities were common.
Example of a restrictive covenant in a deed
Ernest justified this statement by claiming that the individuals involved have an “agenda [that] only serves to escalate tensions.” That may (or may not) be the case. I have never heard, however, of a case in which a person’s “agenda” precluded him or her from purchasing property, or from exercising all legal rights over such property. By at least one account, JD and Ethel Shelley, the home-buyers involved in the Supreme Court case that barred restrictive covenants, knowingly purchased their property for the purpose of contesting the enforceability of such covenants. In the US, moreover, we now celebrate acts, such as school desegregation, that were once considered so provocative that school children required the protection of US marshals.
Ruby Bridges being escorted by US marshals into a previously all-white school.
As PM Netanyahu rightly responded to the White House’s comments, “[this policy] flies in the face of American values, and it flies in the face of common sense.”
The media, of course, has been no better than the White House, unquestioningly accepting the Palestinian assertion that there ought to be areas in which Jews are not allowed to live. The Associated Press has called it “the biggest settler takeover since Jews began buying up properties in the volatile area two decades ago.” Yahoo picked up a report from Indo Asian News Service and headlined it “Israeli Settlers Seize Houses in East Jerusalem.”
Zion Mike has asked, and helpfully answered, the question: “What if all home purchases by Jewish Israelis were reported the same way as this one?” (Click the image to enlarge & read.)
1. It was not unnecessary. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address at the United Nations General Assembly was only unnecessary in the eyes of the usual suspects. And in the eyes of Netanyahu’s enemies. But the speech was broadcast to millions of American viewers from coast to coast. This refutes the leftist commentators’ claim that the speech was directed only at an Israeli audience.
Israelis know the things he said in his speech, but we need a messenger to relay our truth to the world. It is important that once every year, the head of the Jewish state comes to New York to tell the truth at the United Nations hall of lies. It is among the duties of any statesman worthy of his title.
The leftist commentators also claimed that in his genocide speech, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas served the Israeli Right. Wrong. He doesn’t work for us. He revealed his true self, and that is a truth that the Left rejects.
2. Channel 2 commentator Amnon Abramovich slammed Netanyahu’s speech for lacking a solid peace plan. Labor and Meretz chairs Isaac Herzog and Zehava Gal-On echoed the assertion. And what about them? Do they have a plan? This is not the 1980s; we’ve already tried the Left’s snake oil solutions. Never mind the Israeli radicals and the Arab Knesset factions — they’d rather see us all go to hell and Israel cease to exist in its current form, or at all — but what does the rational, reasonable Left have to offer on the topic? What do they mean when they call for a “diplomatic solution” to the conflict?
Here is the Left’s ingenious plan, in a nutshell: A withdrawal to 1967 borders (with land swaps for settlement blocs), including a withdrawal from the Jordan Valley and the division of Jerusalem (including the Old City!) and an agreement resolving the refugee problem. The Left is divided on the question of how many refugees should be allowed to “return” to Israeli soil. This plan includes the evacuation/expulsion of (approximately) 100,000 Jews. They will be given the option of remaining where they are, under Palestinian sovereignty. Yeah, right.
The Palestinians have already twice rejected reckless deals involving this plan (offered by former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert). But let’s say that they were open to it: Excuse me, have we lost our minds? We withdrew from Lebanon — we got Hezbollah. We withdrew from Gaza — we got Hamas. The Israeli Left claims they won’t allow Hamas to take control over the Palestinian Authority — what are they planning to do, then? Dictate to our neighbors who they elect to power? And then, when the Arab winter begins to encroach on the Samarian hills, will they continue to conceal the truth behind catchphrases like “peace agreement” and “diplomatic horizon”?
3. I heard a radio program on which Israeli poet Nathan Zach complained about the establishment of Jewish towns and communities so close to the Gaza border. Why so close to Gaza? Is there not enough room throughout the Negev? With this complaint, Zach was trying to justify the fact that Hamas fires rockets at us. We pushed them, and they reacted… poor Hamas. The heroes living in the kibbutzim and communities along the Gaza border have now become illegitimate in the eyes of the crazy Left. They are now in the same category as the settlers.
4. The man who embodies the idea of a double standard, Israeli Arab MK Ahmad Tibi, concluded recently that saying that the IDF is the most moral army in the world is actually an oxymoron because occupation contradicts morality. He was being gentle. Last year, Tibi called the IDF an army of murderers. But we are not occupiers, Mr. Tibi. Most of the Palestinian population is currently under self rule, in the Palestinian Authority, which functions as a state. As for the rest of Judea and Samaria — it is the land of our forefathers. In any case, we never conquered land belonging to a Palestinian entity (which never existed), so at worst the land is disputed, not occupied.
As far as we’re concerned, the Arabs are the ones who invaded our land in the seventh century. Ever since the 1880s, the Zionist waves of immigration (aliyah) brought with them hundreds of thousands of people from Arab states. They came here looking for work, while the Jews were coming back to their homeland – the only place for them on earth. That is why the IDF is not an army of occupation but rather a force tasked with protecting Jews from what the Arabs of the region planned to do to us in 1948 and failed. They call their failure to kill us “Nakba” – a catastrophe.
Toward the end of his remarks, Tibi mentioned that he didn’t like the photo that Netanyahu showed at the U.N. (of rocket launchers next to children in Gaza), but that this does not justify the murder of hundreds of children. This begs the question: Putting all other rocket launch squads aside, should the particular launcher in the photo have been bombed, according to Tibi? If not, should we have waited for the rockets to explode on our children?
5. At the Channel 2 News studio, Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog was joined by three journalists who share his views. Tibi was also made to feel at home there. How is it that the only representative of the Israeli majority on the Channel 2 program, Communications Minister Gilad Erdan, was not joined by a single journalist who thinks differently than his or her colleagues?
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