From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.
***************
The world is totally committed to the two-statesolution. European country after country is passing non-binding resolutions to recognize Palestine in principle. The parameters of the deal which have been set in stone, notwithstanding that all issues are to be decided by negotiations, are the ’67 lines plus swaps and the division of Jerusalem.
Never mind that such a deal is not good enough for the Arabs. Hamas rejects it outright. Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the PA, is still clamoring for the so called right of return and is unwilling to recognize Israel as the home of the Jews while at the same time insisting that “Palestine” be yudenrein.
The EU has already put a boycott on goods from Judea and Samaria and is drafting legislation imposing sanctions on Israel. It is even rumored that the US is contemplating doing the same. That’s ironic considering that both want to ease sanctions on Iran.
Israel, for its part is going along to get along, at least that is, to a degree. Netanyahu has agreed to negotiate the two-state solution subject to three pillars, “One, genuine mutual recognition; two, an end to all claims, including the right of return; and three, a long-term Israeli security presence.” This is according to his remarks to the Saban Conference. He did not mention borders. Would he accept ’67 lines plus swaps? He didn’t say but I think it is implied. Even so, there are no takers.
The Palestine Authority (PA) has turned its back on negotiations which would require it to accept these pillars and instead is getting ready to ask the UN Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and to call for Israel to evacuate the territories calling for a full Israeli withdraw to the pre-1967 lines by November 2016.
The Obama administrations is working to prevent this but at the same time is considering the implications of not vetoing it. From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.
Congress, on the other hand, in their spending bill, provides as follows, according to the Washington Post, “The bill stops assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it becomes a member of the United Nations or UN agencies without an agreement with Israel. It also prohibits funds for Hamas.” and provides “$3.1 billion in total aid for the country (Israel) plus $619.8 million in defense aid”. It has yet to pass.
Meanwhile the PA continues its incitement and lies. A recent poll of Palestinians showed that 80 percent supported individual attacks by Palestinians who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations and 59.6 percent supporting rocket fire at Israel. Is this a partner for peace? This poll may have been intended to promote the resistance.
At long last Israel is mounting certain responses. 1) Greater police presence in Jerusalem with fewer restrictions on them, 2) Greater penalties, like longer sentences, for any violent rioters and 3) Enacting zero tolerance laws prohibiting incitement. The Bill, not yet passed into law, states, “A call to an act of violence or terror deserves condemnation in the criminal realm as well, even if it is insufficient to lead to violence or terror. It does not deserve to be protected by the principle of freedom of expression.”
Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon attributed the building freeze in Judea and Samaria to pressure from the Obama administration and suggested Israel has to wait him out.
Speaking to reporters in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that objection to “settlements” was longstanding and would not change after President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017 and said “Our policy has been consistent for quite some time,”
I am not so sure. Besides, she misses the point. While all administrations, from President Reagan on have considered settlements, while not illegal, to be an “obstacle to peace”, none of them forced Israel to freeze construction and even planning for construction and certainly not in Jerusalem.
The US and the EU continually allege that ‘settlements’ are an obstacle to peace. Have you ever heard them claim the same about PA incitement, or its support of terror or its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or its unwillingness to forego the “right of return”? Maybe, a little bit in passing, but they have done nothing to change their position and hardly condemned them.
Furthermore, Obama’s decision to back negotiations based on borders along the ’67 lines plus swaps was a big mistake. Doing so was contrary to his often stated position that any settlement must come through direct negotiations. He has forever repeated the mantra that neither side should take any unilateral moves which pre-determine the outcome. He himself, by predetermining the borders, is pre-determining the outcome.
Had he not pre-determined the borders of the final settlement, then Israel would have been entitled to build everywhere at its peril, meaning that when borders are agreed upon, if ever, the housing on Israel’s side would remain and the housing on the Palestinian side would have to be vacated if the PA insists on the Nazi doctrine of making the land yuden frie (Jew free) and the West supports such a doctrine.
The only unilateral moves proscribed by the Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements, are those which change the status of the land. By this is meant, claiming sovereignty. So Israel can’t annex the land andthe PA can’t go to the UN and ask them for sovereignty, not so long as the Oslo Accords have not been formally abrogated. The construction of housing by Israel in no way changes the status of the land. And neither does land use planning.
And if you think that Israel will agree to divide Jerusalem, their eternal capital, think again. Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, when addressing the JPOST Diplomatic Conference attended by over three hundred of diplomats, gave a very upbeat assessment of the transformation of Jerusalem that is taking place and will continue to take place. He stressed the commitment by him and the government to maintain the status quo between all religions. He ended by disabusing the audience of any thoughts they might have about dividing Jerusalem. It will never happen, he said, and I believe him.
Israel is consumed with the issue of whether to pass the nation-state bill which essentially declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. To do so, claims the left in Israel, is to diminish it as a democratic state. But there is no evidence to support this.
Eugene Kontorovich wrote a two part article in the Washington Post onThe legitimacy of Israel’s nation-state bill in which he said the bill was unremarkable when compared to many European constitutions with similar, and stronger, national homeland provisions.
He also argued that:
“The proposed measure must also be understood in the context of Israel’s diplomatic situation. Israel’s biggest diplomatic issue is the status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and international pressure to create a new Arab state there and in Gaza. The major argument by proponents of territorial withdrawal (including President Obama and Sec. Kerry) is that despite the serious security risks, Israel must retreat in order to maintain a “Jewish state.” Indeed, even foreign leaders, like President Obama and Secretary Kerry have both justified their pressure on Israel by invoking the preservation of the Israel’s Jewish identity.”
And went further:
“Thus supporters of Israel leaving the West Bank believe having a Jewish state is worth security risks, surrendering historical homeland and religious sites, and expelling over 100,000 Jews. That suggests a Jewish state is not merely a legitimate thing, but one that is worth a great deal. Yet the same voices calling for Israel to undertake dangerous diplomatic concessions in the name of preserving the state’s Jewish identity balk at legislation declaring that the state in fact is what they claim they want it to remain.”
According to a Israel Democracy Institute recent Poll, 75% of Israeli Jews see no contradiction between Israel being Jewish and being dermcratic.
MEMRI, the NGO that for years has translated the Arab media to document what the Arabs including the PA say among themselves as opposed to what they say in English to the West, prefaced their latest report with this:
“Preacher At Al-Aqsa Mosque In Jerusalem Tells Jews: ‘We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy’ and ‘I Say To [You] Loud And Clear: The Time For Your Slaughter Has Come’; Says Koran Depicted Jews ‘In The Most Abominable Images,’ Allah Turned The Jews ‘Into Apes And Pigs’; Calls To ‘Hasten The Establishment Of The State Of The Islamic Caliphate’”
Obama does not want Americans to be free — to think for ourselves, to have our First and Second Amendment and other constitutional rights or to reject any aspect of His radical transformation of our country and others into nations of which He, in His twisted way, can be proud. Part II of this multipart series deals with Obama’s foreign policy.
When el Presidente Chávez took office in 1999, he began only slowly to implement his “reforms.” To a casual observer, few changes were apparent in Venezuela between 1997 when my wife and I first arrived and late 2001 when we left, probably never to return. We had a few concerns about the future of the country under Chávez but they were low on our list of reasons not to buy land and build our home in the state of Merida, up in the Andes. Mainly, we wanted to continue sailing and Merida is inconveniently far from an ocean.
Chávez’ initiatives increased dramatically in number and in magnitude only when he was well into his seemingly endless terms in office. Maybe he had heard the story of the frog put into a pleasantly warm but slowly heating pot of water. The frog failed to realize until too late that he was being boiled for dinner. By then the frog had become unable to jump out of the pot.
President Obama, flush with victory and perhaps not having heard the frog story, turned up the heat quickly at first. As a result, starting in January of last year, President Obama’s dinner was delayed by an uncooperative House of Representatives. The frog survived for a while longer. If reelected and given a compliant Congress, he seems likely to turn up the heat. We are the frog.
The situation has worsened since I wrote that article in January of 2012, not the least in Obama’s foreign policies. His then already rapid pace has accelerated and the consequences of His actions have become more “transformational.” In no particular order, He has done His utmost to enhance racial divisions, to conduct His own “war on women,” to engorge the welfare state, to import many illegal aliens, to punish His enemies and reward His friends and to conceal His intentions and actions and otherwise to deceive the public. He has also continued to militarize Federal, State and local law enforcement entities and others well beyond their legitimate needs to the detriment of those who obey the law. His transformational depredations have also infested His foreign policies and actions. In particular, He has tried to punish His, rather than America’s, enemies and to reward His, rather than America’s, friends. Despite all of this He remains — although decreasingly — popular with His admirers.
The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences. The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran. ]Emphasis added.]
Radical Islam is spreading in the same sort of way that postwar communism once swamped postcolonial Asia, Africa and Latin America. But this time there are only weak responses from the democratic, free-market West. Westerners despair over which is worse — theocratic Iran, the Islamic State or Bashar Assad’s Syria — and seem paralyzed over where exactly the violence will spread next and when it will reach them. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
In the late 1930s, it was pathetic that countries with strong militaries such as France and Britain appeased fascist leader Benito Mussolini and allowed his far weaker Italian forces to do as they pleased by invading Ethiopia. Similarly, Iranian negotiators are attempting to dictate terms of a weak Iran to a strong United States in talks about Iran’s supposedly inherent right to produce weapons-grade uranium — a process that Iran had earlier bragged would lead to the production of a bomb. [Emphasis added.]
The ancient ingredients of war are all on the horizon. An old postwar order crumbles amid American indifference. Hopes for true democracy in post-Soviet Russia, newly capitalist China or ascendant Turkey long ago were dashed. Tribalism, fundamentalism and terrorism are the norms in the Middle East as the nation-state disappears. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly — or that after Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change. [Emphasis added.]
A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventative vigilance that might have stopped it.
Islam
Islam is on the march for greater power and against other religions, including Christianity and Judaism. In the Islamic view, Allah is the only true God and Mohamed is His messenger. According to Wikipedia,
Islam teaches that everyone is Muslim at birth[30][31] because every child that is born has a natural inclination to goodness and to worship the one true God alone. . . . [Emphasis added.]
Muhammad commanded: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-`ashriyyah, Al-Ja`fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” There is only disagreement over whether the law applies only to men, or to women also – some authorities hold that apostate women should not be killed, but only imprisoned in their houses until death.
In some but not all cases, it may be possible to escape death by paying, in perpetuity, substantial fines which many simply cannot afford.
Here is a video of Ayan Hirsi Ali‘s September 15, 2014 remarks at a Yale Buckley Foundation symposium. They deal with the clash of civilizations. If you want to skip the introductory formalities, go directly to 03:45. Her remarks begin at 10:33.
Obama, like Ayan Hirsi Ali, was raised as a Muslim child. As she matured and began to think for herself, she found the realities of Islam increasingly hateful. Obama continues to find Islam good and to consider it the “religion of peace. Why?
At a dinner in Washington, Biden attempted to correct her perspective on relationship between the Islamic State and Islam, saying, “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” When she pushed back, Biden said, “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam…” [Emphasis added.]
“I politely left the conversation at that,” Hirsi Ali said. “I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents.”
Consistently, Obama’s “solution” and that of many other multiculturalists: declare the Islamic State, et al, (but not Islam itself, of course) non-Islamic.
Why Uruguay? It’s one of several South American countries run by Marxist terrorists.
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, a former Marxist terrorist, already offered to take in Syrian refugees and a number of the freed Gitmo Jihadists are Syrians who trained under the future leader of what would become ISIS. If they stay on in Uruguay, they can try to finish the job of killing the Syrian refugees resettled there. If they don’t, they can just join ISIS and kill Christian and Yazidi refugees back in Syria.
It’s a win-win situation for ISIS and Marxist terrorists; less so for their victims.
Most of the Guantanamo detainees freed by Obama were rated as presenting a high risk to America and our allies. They include a bomb maker, a trained suicide bomber, a document forger and a terrorist who had received training in everything up to RPGs and mortars.
Outgoing Uruguayan President José Mujica has made clear that Uruguay would not hold or restrict the six Guantanamo detainees who were recently resettled in his country.
“The first day that they want to leave, they can leave,” said Mujica in a Spanish-language interview with state television TNU. [Emphasis added.]
Please see also this article at The Long War Journal for additional information on the released terrorists. It also observes that
In its final recommendations, issued in January 2010, President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force recommended that all six be transferred “to a country outside the United States that will implement appropriate security measures.” [Emphasis added.]
Right. Was it an humanitarian gesture from Obama? An early Christmas present for the Islamic state and related peace loving Islamic terrorists?
Iran and Nukes
The Israel versus Iran context provides glaring examples of Obama’s predilection for punishing His, rather than America’s, enemies while rewarding His, rather than America’s, friends. As I observed here, Iran is well known as a major sponsor of Islamic terrorism. It is also remarkable for its failure to provide even the most basic human rights.
It has been reported that Iran executed more than four hundred people during the first half of 2014. That’s more than two per day.
Despite Iran’s state anti-Semitism, the recent arrest of U.S. journalists, and the continued oppression of women, the Obama administration has been attempting a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Fending off Iran hawks in Congress and the D.C. punditocracy, the administration has argued for a policy of constructive engagement, pursuing diplomacy over military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The execution of two gay men, while it may not be surprising, certainly doesn’t make that “engagement” any easier.
Iran’s abysmal human rights record and support for Islamic terrorism appear to be of little if any relevance to Obama and the P5+1 negotiators as they pursue a deal with Iran. As noted here, Iran is already at least a nascent nuclear power and, due to Obama’s twisted world view and His desire for a legacy consistent with it, the P5+1 nuclear negotiations gave, and will likely continue to give, Iran substantial advantages. Iran continues to use those advantages, as P5+1 continues to give Iran all that it demands while receiving little if anything in return. The recent seven month extension highlights this strategy.
[W]hat is clear is that the Islamic Republic, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have gained considerable amount of geopolitical, geostrategic and economic advantages from this offer by the Obama administration. The Supreme Leader’s strategies to buy time, regain full recovery in the economy, pursue his regional hegemonic and ideological ambitions, and reinitiate his government’s nuclear program have been fulfilled. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
[T]he extension of nuclear talks offered to the Islamic Republic is not going to alter Iran’s stand on its nuclear program. Iran will continue holding the position that their demands for the following issues to be met: maintaining a specific number (tens of thousands of) fast-spinning centrifuge machines, Tehran should have the capacity to produce nuclear fuel in the future, and maintain specific level of enriching uranium. In the next few months, the Islamic Republic is not going to give up its capacity to produce plutonium which can be utilized for weapons at its heavy water reactor in the city of Arak. Iran is less likely to provide more evidence proving that it did not carry out secret tests on the development of atomic weapons in Parchin or other military complexes. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently pointed out that the Islamic Republic continues to deny the IAEA access to sensitive military site which are suspected to be used for nuclear activities. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
After the extension of the nuclear talks, President Rouhani pointed out on state television that “I promise the Iranian nation that those centrifuges will never stop working.” The extension not only will not alter the Islamic Republic’s position on its nuclear program, but will give the ruling clerics the opportunity to be further empowered, making them more determined to pursue their regional hegemonic ambitions. [Emphasis added.]
Alireza Forghani, a former provincial governor (and pro-nuclear radical) who now serves as strategist at a think tank aligned with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in his blog that Iran is pursuing a tactic of “elongation” in the talks, which “never are supposed to be brought to a successful conclusion.” He backs a policy of nuclear weapons being the Islamic Republic’s “definite right” and looks forward to a time when the United States faces “a nuclear Iran who not only has nuclear power, but also is equipped with nuclear weapons.” [Emphasis added.]
In a previous post headlined “Iran Needs a War,” Forghani cautioned that “American politicians should know that their next war with the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the war which guarantees Iranian Muslims survival, will be an utter destruction.” He also denounced “the childish behavior of Obama” regarding the negotiations and said that “nuclear weapons capabilities are essential in order to prevent U.S. freedom of action” and that Iran needed the capability to mount a “rapid response at the level of the atom bomb.” [ Emphasis added.]
The Obama administration is trying to portray the failure to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran as just part of the ebb and flow of the diplomatic process. But the signals coming from Tehran indicate that arms control negotiations are just another tool in Iran’s drive to achieve nuclear capability. [Emphasis added.]
Iran contends that the Obama Administration continues to lie about Iranian concessions, which Iran denies having made. Due to the overall credibility deficit of the Obama administration, I consider Iran more credible on the matter.
Iran over the weekend pushed back against key claims made by the administration to lawmakers and the press about further concessions agreed to by Iran following the last round of talk in Vienna regarding the country’s contested nuclear program.
In talking points disseminated to congressional offices since the extension in talks was announced, the administration has claimed that the terms of the agreement—which will prolong talks through July 2015—included “significant concessions” by Tehran, according to the Associated Press. [Emphasis added.]
However, Iran says that this is a lie and that no new concessions have been agreed upon.
Islam and Israel
Islam, the Religion of Peace Death and Subjugation, is not the root of all evil, but it engages in and promotes far more than its fair share of the worst types. Obama assists it in its depredations. Here’s a video of a Muslim preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem speaking with great warmth heat about Jews.
The words of that “preacher-teacher,” as Ayan Hirsi Ali would probably characterize him, and those of like-minded Islamists, have gained many devout followers among Palestinians. According to this article,
An overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs support the recent spate of terrorist attacks against Israelis, an opinion poll released Tuesday finds, according to The Associated Press (AP).
. . . .
The poll found 86 percent of respondents believe the Al-Aqsa mosque is in “grave danger” from Israel. It said 80 percent supported individual attacks by Arabs who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations. [Emphasis added.]
Islamists have been regularly clashing with Israeli police on the Temple Mount and escalated a campaign of harassment against Jewish visitors, who are already under severe restrictions due to Muslim pressure. The violence reached a peak with the recent attempted murder of prominent Jewish Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has blamed Israel for the ongoing tensions in Jerusalem.
The Iranian regime has launched a nationwide social media campaign called, “We Love Fighting Israel,” which encourages Iranian children, teens, and Internet users to photograph themselves alongside messages of hate for the Jewish state.
. . . .
Thousands of Iranians are reported to have already joined the electronic movement following comments by Khamenei’s outlining Iran’s goal of destroying the Jewish state.
“Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well,” [Supreme Leader] Khamenei was quoted as saying in a recent speech by the country’s state-run media. “By Allah’s Favor and Grace, we have passed through the barrier of denominational discord.” [Emphasis and bracketed insert added.]
. . . .
The anti-Israel campaign now “has gone viral on the web,” according to Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency, “getting more and more boost from individuals who post photos reading similar sentences, [and] sharing the #Fightingthezionists hash tag.”
In 1975, after repeated attempts to kick Israel out of the U.N., the General Assembly succumbed to the pressure exerted by the Arab countries and determined that Zionism is racism. The decision was the cornerstone of the institutionalized factory of discrimination against Israel at the United Nations. The U.N. waited 16 long years before retracting its “Zionism is racism” decision. The protocols have been updated, but even with no official reminder, the stain remains on the walls of the general assembly hall and the stench is still in the U.N.’s corridors today. [Emphasis added.]
Of the 193 states that belong to the U.N., only 87 are democracies — less than half. The countries that are taking advantage of the democratic process at the United Nations are the same ones that suppress any spark of democracy within their borders. Although the U.N. uses a parliamentary mechanism, many of the hands raised to vote are the hands of brutal dictators. [Emphasis added.]
The U.N. has gone from being a stage for courageous statecraft to a theater of the absurd: The General Assembly allows wild Palestinian incitement, the Security Council has Venezuela and Malaysia managing peacekeeping forces, and then there is the Human Rights Council, in which the guardians of humanity are regimes without a shred of humanity, regimes that invent blood libels against Israel while in Syria, a tyrant slaughters hundreds of thousands of his own people. [Emphasis added.]
The UN created a unique organization, UNRWA, to handle refugees from Palestine/Israel while every other global refugee is managed in an under-funded, undermanned separate agency. The UN compounds the abuse by only allowing descendants of UNRWA to receive aid, while denying descendants of the rest of the world’s refugees any support.
. . . .
The UN only condemned the nationalist movement of Israelis as “racism” while ignoring nationalism of other countries
The UN censured Israel when the Israeli Prime Minister visited the holiest spot for Jews during regular visiting hours, but didn’t say a word while some countries were slaughtering thousands of people.
Unlike the UN believer in the cartoon, Obama remains unwilling to learn about the bases of, let alone to consider, other perceptions.
A senior official of the United Nation Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), also known to some as the United Nations Rocket Warehousing Agency), recently called for a boycott of the Jerusalem Post for publishing an editorial
by Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid that called for an audit of all allocated funds to UNRWA and the dismissal of its Hamas-affiliated employees. (“Proud Palestinians must lead the fight to reform UNRWA,” Dec. 1, 2014.)
And Obama often relies on the U.N. to tell Him how and where to “lead.”
For Obama and European leaders, Israel is reducible to the peace process. And the Israeli left depends on the support of foreign governments for its network of foreign funded non-profit organizations. The Israeli left can’t let go of its exploding version of ObamaCare [the peace process] because the left is becoming a foreign organization with limited domestic support. Its electorate isn’t in Israel; it’s in Brussels. [Emphasis and bracketed insert added.]
The Israeli left is short on ideas, both foreign and domestic, and its last remaining card is Obama.
Escalating a crisis in relations has been the traditional way for US administrations to force Israeli governments out of office. Bill Clinton did it to Netanyahu and as Israeli elections appear on the horizon Obama would love to do it all over again.
There’s only one problem.
The United States is popular in Israel, but Obama isn’t. Obama’s spats with Netanyahu ended up making the Israeli leader more popular. The plan was for Obama to gaslight Israelis by maintaining a positive image in Israel while lashing out at the Jewish State so that the blame would fall on Netanyahu. [Emphasis added.]
Obama considers Prime Minister Netanyahu the principal impediment to realization of His fantasy of Palestinian peace through creation of a Palestinian state. “Peace” with the Palestinians will not bring peace to Israel — aside from Islamic peace through death. Yet it seems that Obama is meddling in Israeli politics to get Prime Minister Netanyahu removed from office. Obama recently met with Netanyahu’s Israeli opponents:
The White House is still working on a detailed plan of action, but has lost no time in setting up appointments for the president to receive heads of the parties sworn to overthrow Netanyahu – among others, ex-minister Lapid, opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog of Labor and Tzipi Livni (The Movement), who was fired this week as Justice Minister along with Lapid. [Emphasis added.]
They will be accorded attractive photo-ops with Obama and joint communiqués designed to signify to the Israeli voter that the US president would favor their election to the future government and the country as a whole would gain tangibly from a different government to the incumbent one. [Emphasis added.]
This White House campaign would be accompanied by leaks from Washington for putting Netanyahu and his policies in a derogatory light. Messages to this effect were transmitted to a number of serving political figures as an incentive to jump the Likud-led ship to opposition ranks. The US administration has begun hinting that it may emulate the Europeans by turning the screws on Israel as punishment for the prime minister’s signature policy of developing West Bank and Jerusalem development construction. [Emphasis added.]
Conclusions
Should we, who claim to be civilized and therefore to support democracy with freedom — including freedom of religion but not freedom to engage in genocidal religious wars — respect and emphasize with the Islamic views of the “preacher-teacher” in the video embedded above and of Iran’s Supreme Leader that the Jews who infest the Earth must be hated and killed? Does Hillary Clinton’s sympathy and empathy meme apply only to our enemies? Does she consider the preacher-teacher, the Supreme Leader and their ilk to be our friends or enemies?
Rather than be troubled by the nature of Islam, Obama heartily approves of it. As far as the Middle East is concerned, He is troubled principally by Israel’s refusal to commit national suicide by bowing to His every demand which, in His apparent view, should bring peace to the entire region. If Israel fails to do as He demands, it must suffer the fate of a rabid dog so that its infection cannot spread.
Obama has been a disaster as a world leader and, when He has actually tried to lead He has done so, often in conjunction with the U.N., to deprive many of their freedoms while enhancing the abilities of others, particularly devotees of Islam, to trash even more of those freedoms. If, as seems increasingly likely, the P5+1 negotiations as eventually concluded permit Iran to get (or keep) nukes and the means to use them, the world will be a much less safe place for all.
If Obama succeeds, Iran will see to it that Israel is not the only nation to suffer the consequences of His actions.
For the Arabs, the Israelis are the ‘others’, suspected of manipulation and treachery, and a permanent adversary and enemy, as taught in the Arabic Koran.
It is essential to unlock the Arab culture code, and cease viewing the Middle East through a Western prism that leads only to delusion, disdain, and a host of ill-consequences and dashed hopes.
****************
The multi-faceted essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israeli-Palestinian war is territorial, political, ideological, and religious – a convulsive confrontation between the mutually exclusive claims of Judaism and Islam.
But a fifth dimension of the conflict is culture – popular culture – embodied in a code of identity that differentiates one human community from another.
Culture is not negotiable or alterable: it is the texture of the life people live, and the local rhythm of things they know from their earliest memories. It is an inbred code of behavior and, as for all peoples, precedes and precludes morality, thought, and judgment.
The reason why the cultural component of the conflict is ignored stems from the fact that in order to appreciate a culture, you basically have to know it from the inside; and outsiders, non-Arabs, are ignorant of Arab culture, and haughtily assume that it has no value.
Add to this obstacle the fact that a native always behaves differently when he is with a foreigner than with a fellow-native. Surface-like conversations between people from different cultures can reveal very little. To call the Arabs rhetorically flexible is a kind way to infer their masterful command of deception.
It is Arab culture in particular, atavistic and organic, encased in the old binding from its historical origin, which must be addressed in order to better explore the intractability of the long Arab-Israeli rivalry
1
Arab culture is a family-clan-national social reality. An Arab owes absolute and blind loyalty to the group of his birth. He belongs to family and village, as a Bedouin belongs to his tribe. You can’t change your tribe, and you don’t change your family; and no other social framework demands more adhesion than blood relations. It follows from this premise that the Arab mistrusts outsiders. For the Arabs, the Israelis are the ‘others’, suspected of manipulation and treachery, and a permanent adversary and enemy, as taught in the Arabic Koran.
2
For the Arabs, language reflects culture in a way that prevents it being a vehicle for direct and clear communication. Words are used to impress, deflect intentions, disarm interlocutors, confuse listeners, and offer promises never to be fulfilled. The cultural subtext in discussions and negotiations with Arabs is often garnished in polite commitments and even written agreements. But there is little conviction to adhere to the summary accord because the culture code calls for gingerly saying what the other wants to hear; then agreeing to an appointment never to be kept, or promising a phone call that will never come. The Israelis were enthused that the Palestinians moved toward peace in the Oslo Accord, but it was followed by blood and murder, not reconciliation and brotherhood.
3
For the Arabs, the past defines the present because history is the anchor for all aspects of identity and aspirations. There is a mythological fascination with ancestors – as for the contemporary Salifiyyamovement – combined with an axiomatic belief that sees the future as necessarily emerging from and even repeating the glorious Arab past. This contributes to an iron-will and patience until victory is assured. For the Arabs – Israel beware forget any perceived ill act against them. The early Islamic days of conquest and caliphate will be renewed, even if the shift in power takes forever.
4
Arab self-consciousness, spared any identity crisis, provides a psychological foundation for imposing the collective will upon others. To be a Muslim and an Arab, as Allah’s chosen people, launches the Arab on a path of self-justification, whose flip-side is to blame the non-Arabs for all Arab misfortunes and failures. Israel is always excoriated for crimes of aggression and violence. The composed Arab never doubts that justice is on his side: he can do no wrong. Thus, all the Arab-Israeli wars since 1948 are blamed on Israel. Considering that self-criticism is an ancient Jewish practice, Arab self-justification creates an imbalanced ethical equation that demoralizes the Jews while radicalizing the Arabs. In short, the Arabs seek victory, not peace.
5
Islamic truth claims, as in Koranic deviations from Biblical narratives, do not require proof or evidence, or even common sense validity. The Arabs are not perturbed by the lack of facts; their discourse is internal and self-enclosed, as reality is in their mind and not in the external objective world. The Arab mind-set inhabits a world of entrenched fantasy or diabolical conspiracy theories. Note the revelatory comment by Anwar Sadat that ‘all life is play-acting’. He was one to know. In 1993 Arafat demonstrated his theatrical adeptness at the Oslo signing ceremony at the White House.
*
It is essential to unlock the Arab culture code, and cease viewing the Middle East through a Western prism that leads only to delusion, disdain, and a host of ill-consequences and dashed hopes.
The poll found 86 percent of respondents believe the Al-Aqsa mosque is in “grave danger” from Israel. It said 80 percent supported individual attacks by Arabs who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations.
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An overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs support the recent spate of terrorist attacks against Israelis, an opinion poll released Tuesday finds, according to The Associated Press (AP).
The poll also found that more than half of Palestinian Arabs support a new “intifada” (uprising) against Israel, and that Hamas would win presidential elections if they were held today.
Palestinian Arab pollster Khalil Shikaki said the results reflected anger over Israeli statements about Jerusalem, as well as a loss of hope following the collapse of U.S.-brokered peace talks and Israel’s recent war with Hamas in Gaza.
Shikaki heads the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which interviewed 1,270 people in the Palestinian Authority-assigned areas of Judea and Samaria and Gaza last week. The poll had an error margin of 3 percentage points.
“There is an environment in which violence is becoming a dominant issue,” Shikaki told AP. “This seems to be one of the most important driving forces.”
There has been a spate of attacks in Jerusalem over the past month and a half, at a time of rising tensions over the Temple Mount. The wave of attacks has come to be known as the “silent intifada”.
The poll found 86 percent of respondents believe the Al-Aqsa mosque is in “grave danger” from Israel. It said 80 percent supported individual attacks by Arabs who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations.
Islamists have been regularly clashing with Israeli police on the Temple Mount and escalated a campaign of harassment against Jewish visitors, who are already under severe restrictions due to Muslim pressure. The violence reached a peak with the recent attempted murder of prominent Jewish Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has blamed Israelfor the ongoing tensions in Jerusalem.
(Please see also Hamas Declares Palestinian Unity Government Dead. According to the article republished below, “The State Department maintains that Qatar shares President Obama’s views about the Middle East peace process.” Their views have long been anti-Israel, pro-Islam. But what difference does it make now? The “peace process” is already moribund and Qatar will administer the last rites. — DM)
Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh / AP
Qatar promised the State Department it would not give more money to Hamas.
The State Department maintains that Qatar shares President Obama’s views about the Middle East peace process.
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The Obama administration is pressing for the Qatari government to remain a chief broker in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process despite the country’s longstanding financial support for the terror group Hamas, according to recent correspondence from the State Department to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Qatar—which has come under harsh criticism by lawmakers in recent months due to its longtime financial support for Hamas—has promised the Obama administration that it will not allow the terror group to benefit from a new $150 million cash infusion that is meant to go toward reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip, according to the letter.
The Obama administration will maintain its close ties with Qatar and push for it to have a key role in the tenuous peace process, despite protestations from lawmakers on Capitol Hill who say that the country cannot be trusted due to its close ties to Hamas, according to the letter sent by State Department officials late last month to Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.).
Although Qatar has pledged in past years to give Hamas at least $400 million in aid, it has assured the United States that the next $150 million sent to the Palestinians will not make its way to the terror group.
“Qatar has pledged financial support that would be directed to the Palestinian people in Gaza,” Julia Frifield, an assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the State Department, informed Roskam in a Nov. 21 letter. “Qatar assured us that its assistance would not go to Hamas. We continue to interact closely with the government of Qatar and will reinforce that such assistance should not go to Hamas.”
The Obama administration in turn will continue to rely on Qatar to serve a role in the peace process and to engage with Hamas, according to the letter.
“Qatar has said it wants to help bring about a cease fire to the ongoing hostilities in Israel and Gaza,” the letter states. “The Qatari government has engaged with Hamas to this end.”
While the United States still regards Hamas as a terrorist organization, “We need countries that have leverage over the leaders of Hamas to help put a ceasefire in place,” Frifield wrote. “Qatar may be able to play that role as it has done in the past.”
Lawmakers and experts remain dubious that Qatar can be taken at its word given its robust support for Hamas in the past.
“It’s an indisputable fact that Qatar has become the chief sponsor of Hamas—an internationally recognized terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel,” Roskam said earlier this year after he petitioned the administration to reassess its close ties to Qatar.
“With Qatar’s financial backing, Hamas continues to indiscriminately launch thousands of rockets at our ally Israel,” Roskam said. “The Obama administration must explain its working partnership with a country that so brazenly funds terrorism right before our eyes, even going so far as turning to Qatar to help broker a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.”
The administration cannot blindly trust Qatar to cut its close ties with Hamas, said one senior congressional aide who works on the issue.
“It appears the administration is willing to take Qatar for its word on funding some of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations, and the notion that Qatar can simultaneously fund Hamas and help broker and Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty is laughable,” the source said. “Congress is intent on holding the Qataris responsible for their illegal behavior and send a message that under no circumstances should the United States tolerate such brazen support for terrorism.”
The State Department maintains that Qatar shares President Obama’s views about the Middle East peace process.
“Qatar has welcomed President Obama’s commitment to a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and shares the view that such a solution would advance security, prosperity, and stability in the Middle East,” the letter states.
In addition to its role in the peace process, the administration believes that Qatar can help in the international fight against terrorism and groups such as the Islamic State (IS).
“We remain strongly committed to working with Qatar to confront ongoing terrorist financing and advance our shared regional goals,” the State Department told Roskam, noting that more than 8,500 U.S. troops are housed at the country’s Al Udeid Air Base.
“We also have a productive relationship with Qatar on key regional issues ranging from Syria to Iran,” the State Department wrote.
Terror attack scene in Jerusalem . (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred.Today Israel is powerless to influence the hearts of our Arab neighbors. But we can influence their minds. We can deter them from attacking us.
The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.
If the government and Knesset adopt these measures, they will rectify some of the damage Israel has inflicted on itself by showing the Palestinians over two decades that they will be rewarded for their aggression.
******************** What we are seeing in Jerusalem today is not simply Palestinian terrorism. It is Islamic jihad. No one likes to admit it. The television reporters insist that this is the worst possible scenario because there is no way to placate it.
There is no way to reason with it.
So what else is new? The horrible truth is that all of the anti-Jewish slaughters perpetrated by our Arab neighbors have been motivated to greater or lesser degrees by Islamic Jew-hatred. The only difference between the past hundred years and now is that today our appeasement-oriented elite is finding it harder to pretend away the obvious fact that we cannot placate our enemies.
No “provocation” by Jews drove two Jerusalem Arabs to pick up meat cleavers and a rifle and slaughter rabbis in worship like sheep and then mutilate their bodies.
No “frustration” with a “lack of progress” in the “peace process,” can motivate people to run over Jewish babies or attempt to assassinate a Jewish civil rights activist.
The reason that these terrorists have decided to kill Jews is that they take offense at the fact that in Israel, Jews are free. They take offense because all their lives they have been taught that Jews should live at their mercy, or die by their sword.
They do so because they believe, as former Jordanian MP Ya’qub Qarash said on Palestinian television last week, that Christians and Muslims should work together to forbid the presence of Jews in “Palestine” and guarantee that “not a single Jew will remain in Jerusalem.”
Our neighbors are taught that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, signed the treaty of Hudaybiyah in 628 as a ploy to buy time during which he would change the balance of power between his army and the Jews of Kuraish. And 10 years later, once his army gained the upper hand, he annihilated the Jews.
Throughout the 130-year history of modern Zionism, Islamic Jew-hatred has been restrained by two forces: the desire of many Arabs to live at peace with their Jewish neighbors; and the ability of Israeli authorities and before them, British authorities, to deter the local Arab Muslims from attacking.
The monopoly on Arab Muslim leadership has always belonged to the intolerant bigots. Support for coexistence has always been the choice of individuals.
Haj Amin el-Husseini’s first act as the founder of the Palestinian Arab identity was to translate The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and serialize them in the local press.
During the Arab jihad of 1936-1939, Husseini’s gangs of murderers killed more Arabs than the British did. He targeted those who sought peaceful coexistence with the Jews.
His successor Yasser Arafat followed his example.
During the 1988-1991 Palestinian uprising, the PLO killed more Palestinians than the IDF did. Like Husseini, Arafat targeted Palestinians who worked with Israel.
Since Israel imprudently embraced Arafat and the PLO in 1993 and permitted them to govern the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, and exert direct influence and coercive power over the Arabs of Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority’s governing institutions have used all the tools at their disposal to silence those who support peaceful coexistence with Israel, and indoctrinate the general public in Islamic and racial Jew-hatred.
Much has been made of the recent spike in incitement of violence by Palestinian leaders led by Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas. But the flames Abbas and his comrades are throwing would not cause such conflagrations if they hadn’t already indoctrinated their audience to desire the destruction of the Jews.
You cannot solicit murder among those who haven’t been taught that committing murder is an act of heroism.
Today Israel must take swift, effective action to stop the slaughter. The damage that has been done to the psyches of the Arabs of Jerusalem and their brethren in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, cannot be repaired in a timeline relevant to the task of preventing the next massacre.
This means that for the time being, on the tactical level, Israel’s only play is strengthening its deterrence.
Israel faces two major constraints in meeting this challenge.
First, the European Union and the Obama administration, as well as the US foreign policy elite, are obsessively committed to a policy of empowering the Palestinians against Israel.
The Spanish parliament’s decision to go ahead with its planned vote to recognize the “State of Palestine,” just hours after the massacre at the Bnei Torah Kehillat Yaakov synagogue in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood shows that the EU’s dedication to strengthening the Palestinians against Israel is entirely unrelated to events on the ground.
They don’t care who the Palestinians are or what they do. For their own reasons they have made supporting the Palestinians at Israel’s expense their top foreign policy priority.
Similarly, US President Barack Obama couldn’t contain his compulsion to pressure Israel even in his statement condemning the massacre. Even there, Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians equally to restrain themselves.
Obama’s unabated hostility toward Israel was brought to bear on Tuesday afternoon when the State Department restated its rejection of Jewish property rights in Jerusalem and its desire to see the homes of terrorist murderers left intact for the welfare of their terror-supporting families.
On Tuesday, Israel’s social media outlets were filled with angry rebukes of Western media outlets from CNN to MSNBC to CBS, to the BBC. All these networks, and many others, did everything in their power to explain away the synagogue slaughter as just another instance of a cycle of violence. That is, they all sought to frame the discussion in a way that would lead their viewers to the conclusion that the slaughter of praying rabbis was justified.
While appalling, the coverage was not the least surprising. The Western elite media’s devotion to their false narrative of Israeli culpability for all the problems in the region is absolute. Networks would rather wreck their professional reputations than tell the truth.
Together with the EU, the American policy elite and the Obama administration, the media place Israel’s leaders in a bind. Every step they take to defend the country and protect the rights of Jews meets with automatic and libelous condemnation.
The other impediment Israel faces in deterring anti-Jewish violence against its citizenry is its own weakness. Since the inception of the phony peace process, Israel has continuously rewarded the Palestinians for their murderous violence against its citizenry.
From Israel’s transfer of control over all the Palestinian population centers in Judea and Samaria, to its forcible expulsion of its own people from Gaza, to its repeated releases of terrorists from prison, to its continued transfer of hundreds of millions of shekels in tax revenues to the PA, Israel has showed the Palestinians at every turn that far from being punished for murdering Jews, they will be rewarded for doing so.
Given the US and European support for the Palestinians, Israeli declarations that there will be no future releases of terrorists have no credibility. If terrorists aren’t killed on the spot, they can assume that they will eventually be released; if not in exchange for an Israeli hostage, Israel will release them in an attempt to placate the White House.
But even with these constraints on its actions, Israel can take steps to deter its hate-filled enemies from attacking.
Since the current campaign of murder is being carried out by terrorists largely acting on their own accord, the measures Israel adopts to stop the attacks should be directed primarily against individual terrorists. As for action against the PA, it needs to be credible, consistent and directed to where it will hurt Palestinian leaders the most: their wallets.
With regard to the individual terrorists, the government has made much of its intention to destroy the homes of terrorists. While it sounds good, there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of this punitive measure, which is a relic of the British Mandate.
Rather than destroy their homes, Israel should adopt the US anti-narcotics policy of asset seizure.
All assets directly or indirectly tied to terrorists, including their homes and any other structure where they planned their crimes, and all remittances to them, should be seized and transferred to their victims, to do with what they will.
If Israel hands over the homes of the synagogue butchers to the 24 orphans of Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky and Rabbi Avraham Goldberg, not only will justice be served. The children’s inheritance of the homes of their fathers’ killers will send a clear and demoralizing message to other would-be killers.
Not only will their atrocities fail to remove the Jews from Israel. Every terrorist will contribute to the Zionist project by donating his home to the Jewish settlement enterprise.
Just as Israel has repeatedly buckled under US pressure to release terrorists from jail, so it has bowed to US pressure to continue to fund the PA by transferring the tax revenues it collects on goods imported to the PA.
Assuming that the government is too weak to stand up to the Americans, at a minimum it can see that the money is properly used.
To that end, the Knesset should pass a law permitting Israeli terror victims to sue the PA for actual and punitive damages in Israel courts. The sums awarded to the victims should be taken from the tax revenues Israel collects for the PA. The law should apply retroactively to all victims of Palestinian terror carried out since the establishment of the PA in May 1994.
Not only should the law permit Israeli terror victims to sue the PA. It should dictate actions the Justice Ministry must take to assist them in bringing suit.
Israel should also revoke citizenship and residency rights not only from terrorists themselves, but from those who enjoy citizenship and residency rights by dint of their relationship with the terrorists.
Wives who received Israeli residency or citizenship rights though marriage to terrorists should have their rights revoked, as should the children of the terrorists.
Since Tuesday’s massacre, aside from Abbas’s phony condemnation, the Palestinian leadership and public from Fatah to Hamas have been unanimous in their praise for the atrocity.
Today Israel is powerless to influence the hearts of our Arab neighbors. But we can influence their minds. We can deter them from attacking us.
The actions set forth above: asset seizure, revenue seizure and citizenship/residency abrogation for terrorists and their dependents are steps that Israel can take today, despite the hostile international climate.
If the government and Knesset adopt these measures, they will rectify some of the damage Israel has inflicted on itself by showing the Palestinians over two decades that they will be rewarded for their aggression.
If our leaders fail to take these or similar actions, and suffice with complaining about incitement, their condemnations of the murder of Jews will ring as hollow as those sounded by the BBC, Obama and Abbas.
On the one hand, in Ferguson, with an entire population on edge, the president and his attorney general are plainly siding with the lynch mob. On the other hand, when it comes to the Israelis and Palestinians in response to the killing of rabbis in a synagogue, the response is moral equivalence.
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Moral equivalence on parade.
Ferguson, Missouri, where the facts of the police shooting that killed Michael Brown have yet to be presented by the grand jury, an entire community braces for violence if the “wrong” decision is announced. While waiting, the Obama administration huddled with those who have a history of inciting racial violence and are heading to Ferguson.
In Jerusalem, where the bloody trail of Jihad streams from a synagogue, the response of the Obama administration is to play the moral equivalency card between Palestinians and Israel.
The contrast could not be more stark — or more telling.
First Ferguson: As headlined at The Gateway Pundit reports:
President Obama met with Ferguson protest leaders on November 5th, the day after the midterm elections. The meeting was not on his daily schedule. He was concerned that the protesters “stay on course.”
There was no Oval Office meeting or similar words of encouragement for those supporting either officer Darren Wilson or the simple concept of letting a grand jury work its will without intimidation.
The Orthodox Jewish men were facing east, to honor the Old City site where the ancient temples once stood, when two Palestinians armed with a gun, knives and axes burst into their synagogue Tuesday morning, shouting “God is great!” in Arabic. Within moments, three rabbis and a fourth pious man lay dead, blood pooling on their prayer shawls and holy books.
The assailants, cousins from East Jerusalem, were killed at the scene in a gun battle with the police that wounded two officers; one died of his injuries Tuesday night. Politicians and others around the world condemned the attack and the rising religious dimension of the spate of violence, which has been attributed mainly to a struggle over the very site the victims were praying toward.
And what was the president’s response? Mr. Obama read a statement in which he said that “too many Palestinians have died,” and “I think it’s important for both Palestinians and Israelis to try to work together to lower tensions and reject violence….We have to remind ourselves that the majority of Palestinians and Israelis overwhelmingly want peace.” There was no summoning of the Israeli ambassador no suggestion for Israel to “stay the course.”
What are we seeing here? It’s very clear and utterly unsurprising. On the one hand, in Ferguson, with an entire population on edge, the president and his attorney general are plainly siding with the lynch mob. On the other hand, when it comes to the Israelis and Palestinians in response to the killing of rabbis in a synagogue, the response is moral equivalence. Moral equivalence uttered while — quite literally, as seen here — Palestinians take to the streets to wave hatchets, and hand out food to gleefully celebrate the murders. Just as, it should not need to be reminded, Palestinians were in the streets celebrating on 9/11 when the twin towers fell and some 3,000 Americans were murdered.
This follows six years worth of the Obama administration absolutely trashing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel itself — whether rudelyleaving Netanyahu waiting around the West Wing while the president went off to dinner, or having an anonymous minion snarking to the Atlantic that Israel’s prime minister is a “chickens–t.” Recall the moment that played out in front of cameras at the 2012 Democratic Convention when it was discovered that somehow, mysteriously, the Democratic platform refused to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — and it had to be undone while delegates booed? As seen here it wasn’t pretty, the cameras picking up a delegate loudly shouting “no” while displaying an “Arab American Democrats” sign. Not to be forgotten is Obama’s personal history with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, both of whom have frequently been labeled as anti-Semites.
Thus the vivid illustration of the core of the modern left. A president stands with the lawbreakers in Ferguson as the town braces for riots. At the same time, confronted with the murder of rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue — another chapter in the war of Islamic fascism against the Jews — he responds with moral equivalence. The Palestinians this…but on the other hand the Israelis that. And so on.
From Ferguson to Jerusalem, this is the mindset of the modern left that is on display. That mindset isn’t just ugly — it’s dangerous.
Sultan Abu Al-Einein, a Fatah Central Committee official (screen capture: MEMRI, YouTube)
Einein, who also serves as an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Iranian Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam that “anyone who sells even an inch of our Palestinian land must be killed in the streets and hanged on an electric pole.
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Fatah official praises Yehudah Glick’s shooter, calls for public killings of those who engage in property transactions with Jews.
Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu Al-Einein said Palestinians who sell their land to Jews should be publicly executed.
Einein, who also serves as an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the Iranian Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam that “anyone who sells even an inch of our Palestinian land must be killed in the streets and hanged on an electric pole.”
The October 31 interview was posted and translated Friday by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, a US-based watchdog group.
Under Palestinian law, land sales to Israelis are illegal and a crime punishable by death. The PLO’s Revolutionary Penal Code (1979) applies the death penalty both to “traitors” and to those accused of “transferring positions to the enemy.” Since the late 1990s, Palestinian courts have been dealing out death sentences to convicted land dealers, though Abbas has not authorized the implementation of executions since his election in 2004.
In response to recent Israeli acquisition of apartments in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods last month, Abbas issued an executive order amending the penal code to establish punishments for those who sell land to “hostile countries.”
Abbas’s new punishments for Palestinians who engage in property transactions with Israelis include hard labor and life imprisonment.
In the interview, Einein also praised Mutaz Hijazi, a member of Islamic Jihad who attempted to assassinate Temple Mount activist Rabbi Yehudah Glick last month, saying “the way to defeat the Israeli occupation is the way of the martyr Mutaz Hijazi.”
“If the people do not fight the Israeli occupation in the way they see fit, in order to liberate their land, they do not deserve to live,” he said.
You’ve been a great friend for the last six years and, to express our appreciation, we’d like to acknowledge some of your many helpful actions:
1) In 2009, our presidential election results were so dubious that millions of brave, pro-democracy protesters risked their lives to demonstrate throughout our country. When our Basij paramilitary force brutalized them, you kept your response irrelevantly mild for the sake of “engaging” us. That surely helped Iranians understand the risks of protesting our “free” election of 2012 (involving our eight handpicked candidates). It was indeed a very orderly rubberstamp.
2) After eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we KNEW you’d fall for the smiles of his successor, President Hassan Rouhani! Human rights abuses have actually worsened under his rule and his polished charm only makes him better at duping the world into acquiescing to our nukes, so we LOVE how you’ve overlooked these facts.
7) Speaking of enforcing red lines, we LOVE how you backed off yours, after our Syrian buddy, Basher Assad, used chemical weapons on his own people. That was a very helpful signal to everyone that we need not take your threats too seriously (contrary to those scary words you issued in 2012 about how stopping our nukes militarily was still an option, unlike containment, and how you don’t bluff). But we understood back then that you were trying to get re-elected, so we didn’t take it personally.
9) Fortunately, you don’t take our Supreme Leader Khamenei seriously when he tweets out his plan for destroying Israel (why let our true motives get in the way of a fantastic nuclear deal, right)?
12) It’s so cute of you to write us these letters asking for help against ISIS and showing us how desperately you want a nuclear deal. All we had to do was hint at an ISIS-for-nukes exchange and you got so excited!
14) What’s really awesome about the deal that we’re “negotiating” is that it allows us to continue nuclear enrichment but makes it even harder for Israel to take any military action against our nuclear program. And our agreement will give the press even more ammunition against such an attack. We already know about the world media’s anti-Israel bias – they can’t even get a simple story about vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct. Even we were surprised at how The Guardian writes accurate headlines when Canada suffers an Islamist car attack but not when Israel does). So if you accept our nukes and Israel then attacks them, the media will be even harsher on Israel (even though the world will be silently relieved, if Israeli courage succeeds at neutralizing what scared everyone else).
And after everyone sees the killer deal that you’re giving us, the world’s bad actors will line up to talk to you, with demands of their own that you can try to satisfy in the hope that they’ll stop opposing your national interests so much.
Overall, we appreciate you even more than we did President Carter, because getting nukes is WAY COOLER than holding 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days.
With our deepest gratitude,
Your Friends in the Iranian Regime
p.s. We’re glad you didn’t take any personal offense when one of our officials used the N-word to describe you back in 2010. He actually has nothing but respect for you, as do we.
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.
This is a guest post by Imam Mohamed allah-Dork, chairman of the Washington Islamist Coalition for Peace and Prosperity (WICPAP). Although it might appear to be satire it is not, because he articulates, far more candidly than most, the objectives of the “progressive” Obama Administration. I found him with the assistance of (another) imaginary “friend,” the Highly Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the Great State of Confusion Utopia, where happy unicorns frolic endlessly in the service of Obama.
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Hatred of Israel is among our Dear Leader Obama’s most effective weapons against those who oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He has made heroic efforts to encourage and use it, with help from the progressive media and His other friends.
Because of the wise efforts of Our Dear Leader and His brilliant Secretary of State, hatred of Israel has increased in recent years. This has been due, in large part, to Israel’s continuing and patently unreasonable refusals to commit national suicide by agreeing to all of the righteous demands of Palestinian Authority President Abbas, as Obama and Kerry have also demanded. Peaceful Palestinians have responded to Israel’s malicious refusals through non-violent protests resulting in the death or injury of Jewish terrorists, accidentally run over, stabbed or shot.
Jewish Terrorists
The beautiful song embedded above was recently augmented by a new Palestinian musical offering including wholesome family-oriented lyrics.
I am so proud of the composers, singers and musicians that I cry whenever I watch the video!
According to a specious article at a right-wing propaganda site called PJ Media,
That is absurd. They were no more “murdered,” than are filthy dogs which are righteously slaughtered because they are dangers to society at large.
Unless Israel’s refusal to commit national suicide is condemned world-wide, undue attention will focus on the peace loving Islamic Republic of Iran and its legitimate goal of having nuclear weapons to bring Islamic peace to all who desire it. Israel opposes Iran’s quest for Islamic peace through nukes and therefore selfishly rejects it.
Hatred is irrational and bad, except that directed at genocidal, apartheid Israel and others who fail to embrace Islam. Hatred of them is rational and good. Just as hatred of Israel must be encouraged to the extent possible, so must the stupidity great credulity of the American people be fed and used for Progressive purposes, as it was fed and used to give them the blessings of superior health care.
Lies, obfuscation and secrecy for good purposes as praised by our Dear Leader’s consultant Jonathan Gruber, such as the passage of ObamaCare, are good because they are necessary. Leading the way, our Dear Leader promised to have the most transparent administration in history.
It was all diversionary symbolism, of course, because truth, clarity, transparency and accountability in pursuit of bad objectives — such as defeat of our Dear Leader’s policies — are intolerable because it is racist to oppose Him. Also, they might succeed.
That brings us to our Dear Leader’s dominant role in the P5+1 negotiations with The Islamic Republic of Peace Everlasting, Iran.
It is more than simply unfortunate that Western policymakers look at Iran and appear to see only what they want to see. They heap praise on progress in the nuclear negotiations without looking at the actual content. They tune into televised smiles and reasonable-sounding public statements from the Rouhani administration and tune out the bombastic threats, insults and anti-Western rhetoric that invariably accompanies them. They push for large-scale rapprochement with Iran on the apparent assumption that its crimes will disappear if we somehow pretend they don’t exist. [Emphasis added.]
But these wishful thinkers are in the corridors of power in Washington and Westminster. Although ISIS has grown stronger thanks to the sectarian conflict that Iran has helped create, these unrealistic optimists would imply that somehow Iran is our best hope for defeating this menace. So they give in to Iranian intransigence in the nuclear talks by senselessly giving away more and more leverage. [Emphasis added.]
Make no mistake, Tehran’s theocratic rulers are very well aware of this “pie-in-the-sky” illogicality. Indeed, they are counting on it. The regime’s officials are so confident in our diplomatic vulnerability that they have been trying to use the crisis in Iraq not only to obtain unearned concessions in the nuclear domain, but also to pressure the U.S., the U.K. and their allies to modify their stance against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad in Syria. [Emphasis added.]
Nonsense! Iran needs nuclear weapons to pursue its peaceful, humanitarian goals and, with our Dear Leader’s help, will get (or keep) them! Life will then be better for everyone who matters.
No deal with Iran will be finalized unless all of Iran’s righteous demands are met. Unless ample lies and obfuscations are spoon-fed to the American public to minimize the consequences of Iran’s victory, the deal may well be opposed. Lies and obfuscation were needed to pass ObamaCare, even with solid Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress. A deal with Iran is even more important. Our Dear Leader’s wise consultant, Jonathan Gruber, knows this very well and so does our Dear Leader.
Fortunately, a Washington think tank is taking the lead to counter the silly stuff spouted by racists.
A leading liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., has begun enlisting its associates in an “all-hands-on-deck effort to support” the Obama administration as it seeks to ink a nuclear deal with Iran by the end of the month, according to emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Truman National Security Project, a nonprofit think tank with ties to the administration, is assembling a “crack team of writers” to flood national and local media outlets with articles supporting the White House’s efforts before the details of a final nuclear deal have even emerged, according to internal emails sent by the organization to its listserv. [Emphasis added.]
“Our community absolutely must step up and not cede the public narrative to neocon hawks that would send our country to war just to screw the president,” Graham F. West, Truman’s writing and communications associate, wrote in a recent email to the organization’s listserv. [Emphasis added.]
Pay no attention to insane mumblings by the editor of this subversive blog. He has long opposed what he refers to as the Iran Scam and recently wrote this racist diatribe against our own Dear Leader and His quest for peace everlasting. If this sick cartoon isn’t racist, then I don’t know what is.
Our Dear Leader has already accomplished countless wonderful things to establish His magnificent legacy. Here are just a few:
He is the first African American President of the United States.
The award of His Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009, a mere nine months after He became the President of the United States. No other President has accomplished that.
He compelled passage of the Affordable Care Act during His first term in office.
He has already issued more crucial executive decrees than any former President.
He has consistently condemned the apartheid, illegitimate state known as Israel.
Miller even contends, speciously, that Iran’s alleged human rights abuses and alleged support for world-wide terrorism should be considered by the esteemed P5+1 negotiators under our Dear Leader’s helpful guidance. That, like all of his other suggestions, would elevate facts, transparency and accountability for a bad purpose over lies, obfuscation and non-accountability for a good purpose. What great sage once wrote “the truth shall make you flee?” He was right. Truth would make many Americans flee from a deal with Iran, and we need their unthinking support to show that, despite recent election results, they reject racism and therefore still love, respect and have unbounded confidence in our Dear Leader.
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Editor’s comments
In an effort to help Imam Mohamed allah-Dork present his ideas most candidly and therefore effectively, I was pleased to provide the You Tube videos.
I agree with allah-Dork’s thesis that lies and obfuscation are as necessary to secure public approval of a nuke deal with Iran as they were to secure passage of ObamaCare. A nuke deal with Iran would be even worse than ObamaCare.
It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to repeal ObamaCare outright if for no reason other than that Obama would veto any bill repealing it. However, it is possible that the Supreme Court may deal ObamaCare a fatal blow if it finds that subsidies for customers of ObamaCare exchanges were clearly intended, and stated by the Congress, to be available only for customers of State, not Federal, exchanges.
Once Iran gets (or keeps) nukes, there will be no way for Congress to repeal the agreement, no way for the Supreme Court to overrule it and no way to force Iran to get rid of its nukes. That Iran may get rid of some of them voluntarily — by using them — offers no comfort at all.
Israel, the only free and democratic nation in the Middle East, has served as a useful distraction from the violation of even the most basic of human rights throughout the rest of the region. She continues to respect and implement those rights despite the Obama Administration’s increasing rejection of them and its refusal to take them into account when dealing with other nations. Iran is perhaps the worst human rights violator in the region as well as the most prolific sponsor of Islamic terrorism. As the Obama Administration ignores blatant human rights violations by other nations, it fantasizes that Israel is a gross violator and amplifies its fantasies at every opportunity.
Obama and His cohorts have learned the lessons taught by Mr. Gruber very well and have used them with success. Here is an excerpt from an article by Jonathan Turley, a liberal in the old fashioned sense of the word. He has often supported the ends which Obama has sought to achieve while opposing the methods He has used and continues to use.
In fairness to Gruber, he is again being honest about what happened in the passage of ACA and speaking as an academic. However, such machinations are rarely confirmed by high-level consultants or officials. The ACA was pushed through by a muscle vote on a handful of votes while the Administration made claims that he later had to admit were misleading at best, such as the President’s repeated assurance that citizens could keep your current insurance policy if you liked it. There was a great deal of cynicism and misleading representations made during the ACA debates — reflecting a deep-seated contempt for the intelligence of the American voter. Gruber however seems to celebrate the success in using what he viewed as the stupidity of citizens, to quote his earlier comments, to secure passage of the ACA. It is the triumph of the ends over the means — the mantra of Beltway denizens who view more principled actors as naive chumps. What is shocking for many outside of the Beltway is of course the moral relativism and cynicism reflected in such comments, but Gruber is the norm in Washington. He is the face of the consequentiality morality that has long governed this city. [Emphasis added.]
What is different is that he admits it.
Obama, et al, have consistently applied Gruber principles to the Iran Scam and will continue to do so in seeking public support for any nuke deal with Iran. They will also continue to obfuscate and lie about the Israeli situation to distract attention from what they are doing, relying on their perceptions of the “stupidity” of the American public.
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