(Please see also Sharyl Attkisson’s Stonewalled for explanations of what happens in the legitimate “news” media and why. — DM)
If the West is experiencing a rise in the sort of terror attacks that are endemic to the Islamic world—church attacks, sex-slavery and beheadings—it was only natural that the same mainstream media that habitually conceals such atrocities, especially against Christians and other minorities under Islam, would also conceal the reality of jihadi aspirations on Western soil.
[T]he level of the [media] grovelling after the tragic and deadly saga in Sydney Australia over the last 24 hours has been astounding.
At the time of writing, the lead story on the BBC website is of course about that very tragedy, in which an Islamist fanatic took a random group hostage in a cafe, ultimately killing two of them.
He did this in the name of Islam. But you wouldn’t get that impression if you started to read the BBC’s lead story, which astoundingly managed to avoid mentioning the words Islam, Islamic, Islamist, Muslim, or any derivations thereof for a full 16 paragraphs. The New York Times, which led by calling the terrorist, Man Haron Monis an “armed man”, waited until paragraph 11.
In the Guardian’s main story – whose lead paragraph simply referred to a “gunman” — you had to wait until paragraph 24.
If you’d have blinked, you’d have missed it.
….
In the wider media, reports about Muslim fears of a “backlash” have been all but ubiquitous.
If these are the lengths that Western mainstream media go to dissemble about the Islamic-inspired slaughter of Western peoples, it should now be clear why the ubiquitous Muslim persecution of those unfashionable Christian minorities is also practically unknown by those who follow Western mainstream media.
As with the Sydney attack, media headlines say it all. The 2011 New Year’s Eve Coptic church attack that left 28 dead appeared under vague headlines: “Clashes grow as Egyptians remain angry after attack,”was the New York Times’ headline; and “Christians clash with police in Egypt after attack on churchgoers kills 21” was the Washington Post’s—as if frustrated and harried Christians lashing out against their oppressors is the “big news,” not the unprovoked atrocity itself; as if their angry reaction “evens” everything up.
A February 2012 NPR report titled “In Egypt, Christian-Muslim Tension is on the Rise,” while meant to familiarize readers with the situation of Egypt’s Christians, prompts more questions than answers them: “In Egypt, growing tensions between Muslims and Christians have led to sporadic violence [initiated by whom?]. Many Egyptians blame the interreligious strife on hooligans [who?] taking advantage of absent or weak security forces. Others believe it’s because of a deep-seated mistrust between Muslims and the minority Christian community [what are the sources of this “mistrust”?].”
The photo accompanying the story is of angry Christians holding a cross aloft—not Muslims destroying crosses, which is what prompted the former to this display of Christian solidarity.
Blurring the line between victim and oppressor—recall the fear of “anti-Muslim backlashes” whenever a Muslim terrorizes “infidels” in the West—also applies to the media’s reporting on Muslim persecution of Christians.
A February 2012 BBC report on a church attack in Nigeria that left three Christians dead, including a toddler, objectively states the bare bone facts in one sentence. Then it jumps to apparently the really big news: that “the bombing sparked a riot by Christian youths, with reports that at least two Muslims were killed in the violence. The two men were dragged off their bikes after being stopped at a roadblock set up by the rioters, police said. A row of Muslim-owned shops was also burned…”
The report goes on and on, with an entire section about “very angry” Christians till one confuses victims with persecutors, forgetting what the Christians are “very angry” about in the first place: nonstop terror attacks on their churches and the slaughter of their women and children.
A New York Times report that appeared on December 25, 2011—the day after Boko Haram bombed several churches during Christmas Eve services, leaving some 40 dead—said that such church bombings threaten “to exploit the already frayed relations between Nigeria’s nearly evenly split populations of Christians and Muslims…” Such an assertion suggests that both Christians and Muslims are equally motivated by religious hostility—even as one seeks in vain for Christian terror organizations that bomb mosques in Nigeria to screams of “Christ is Great!”
Indeed, Boko Haram has torched 185 churches—to say nothing of the countless Christians beheaded—in just the last few months alone.
Continuing to grasp for straws, the same NYT report suggests that the Nigerian government’s “heavy-handed” response to Boko Haram is responsible for its terror, and even manages to invoke another mainstream media favorite: the poverty-causes-terrorism myth.
Whether Muslim mayhem is taking place in the Islamic or Western worlds, the mainstream media shows remarkable consistency in employing an arsenal of semantic games, key phrases, convenient omissions, and moral relativism to portray such violence as a product of anything and everything—political and historical grievances, “Islamophobia,” individual insanity, poverty and ignorance, territorial disputes—not Islam.
As such, Western mainstream media keep Western majorities in the dark about the Islamic threat, here and abroad. Thus the “MSM” protects and enables the Islamic agenda—irrespective of whether its distortions are a product of intent, political correctness, or sheer stupidity.
Who is responsible for most of the terrorist acts around the world today? Mother Theresa? What percentage of Muslims support militant Islamist organizations? These are not “lone-wolves” — this is a serious phenomenon with grave implications on the free world. It is something that needs to be confronted, rather than ganging up on anyone who points it out.
Isn’t it time to wake up?
********************
1. They haven’t woken up yet. Certainly not in Australia. Even after the deadly terrorist attack at a cafe in Sydney, parts of the institutionalized Australian media are still trying to delude their audience, maintaining that it was a “lone-wolf” who perpetrated the horrific assault. The Australian prime minister “took comfort” in the knowledge that the assailant had a history of mental illness.
A European court decided this week that Hamas is not a terrorist organization — it is a charity group with some “lone-wolf” members. The West’s basic instincts have become dull, after decades of suppressing its own survival mechanism by self-imposing a stern “politically correct” regime. Most of the leading figures in the West (and in Israel) are more concerned with how they are perceived by the community, and that they say the “correct” words that they are allowed to say, than they are with actually confronting the truth.
Who is responsible for most of the terrorist acts around the world today? Mother Theresa? What percentage of Muslims support militant Islamist organizations? These are not “lone-wolves” — this is a serious phenomenon with grave implications on the free world. It is something that needs to be confronted, rather than ganging up on anyone who points it out.
In February 2007, Professor Raphael Israeli — an international expert on Islam and professor at Hebrew University — was interviewed by an Australian newspaper. In the interview, Israeli warned that the Muslim minority living in the continent posed a real threat to the Australians. His studies suggest that life can become unbearable when the Muslim population of a Western country reaches critical mass (in one study he even attached a number to this idea of critical mass: 10 percent of the general population). It is a rule of thumb, he said, and if it applies everywhere, it certainly applies in Australia.
As an example, he cited the riots in Paris in 2006. Israeli suggested that the Australians ban the entry of Muslim radicals and adopt a preventative approach to avoid flooding the continent with immigrants from Indonesia. Muslim immigrants, he argued, have a reputation of taking advantage of Western tolerance and hospitality to advance their own ends. Trains in London and in Madrid were not blown up by Christians or Buddhists. They were blown up by Muslims. Precautions must be taken, he warned.
Not too far from Australia, in Bali, Islamist organizations perpetrated two horrifying terrorist attacks in 2002 and in 2005. Bali bomber Amrozi bin Nurhasin, who was charged with causing the deaths of more than 200 people, stood up in court in front of the global media and cried out “Jews! Remember Khaibar. The army of Muhammad is coming back to defeat you.” Not one of the 200 victims was Jewish. The Australians watched, read the warnings, and went back to what they were doing.
When Israeli was interviewed, the Bali attacks were still fresh, but the regime political correctness made sure to take the string out. Israeli became the target of a Bolshevik-style witch hunt. He was accused of racism, xenophobia, and was called a plethora of derogatory names. He received death threats. In response, the Middle East expert told the Australians to wait and see what happens. This week, one would hope that the Australians recalled Israeli’s cautionary words. Maybe some of them wondered why they didn’t heed his warning. Maybe.
2. On Monday, radio personality Tali Lipkin-Shahak interviewed Professor Israeli. It wasn’t the interview that was notable, but the style in which it was conducted — a style shared particularly by many Israeli journalists, and Western journalists in general. “You were ahead of your time,” she said to him. Israeli replied that he had been investigating the Muslim “diaspora” in Western countries for over a decade, and that in that time the Muslim population has grown to alarming proportions.
“But why do you attribute violent intentions to the immigration process?” the interviewer asked him. “Joseph also immigrated to Egypt,” she remarked, evoking the Book of Genesis.
True, the professor answered, remarking that he had written five books on the subject, “but Joseph’s family had not proclaimed that it planned to conquer Egypt or to convert Egypt to become Israelite.”
“The Muslims explicitly say that they did not come to Europe in order to become European, but to Islamize Europe.” They have vowed that a Muslim flag will wave over 10 Downing Street in England and over Versailles Palace in France within 25 years, he explained.
Lipkin-Shahak then said that “one can always [always!] talk about those people in terms of a negligible, extremist minority, including the terrorist attackers.” Even ISIS, she said, “has no more than several thousand members.”
Israeli insisted that these atrocities are nothing new. In the past, Muslims who immigrated to Australia, Scandinavia and Germany, as well as other places, have perpetrated very serious attacks.
The overly concerned interviewers rushed to protect the ears of her tender listeners, saying “I have to be the one to tone things down, or at least present the opposing view,” she said. “What you are saying, it is very serious. You are vilifying an entire population; you are contributing to the process of hatred and counter-hatred, which only causes harm and intensifies the violence.”
Israeli was not surprised. “That is exactly what they told me in Australia, until they became the victims of a catastrophe…This is my job. Anyone who wants to listen can listen. Anyone who doesn’t, they can wait for the next catastrophe.”
Lipkin-Shahak stuck to her guns: “We listened, but we voiced a skeptical opinion. We disagree.”
“What are you basing your opinion on?” Israeli wondered in desperation. “I am basing my opinion on thirty years of research, studying Islam, and you are basing yours on a trend, on the fact that it is not nice to say these things. We are talking on two completely different planes.”
Indeed, two completely different worlds. Facts vs. beliefs. Reality vs. fantasy. Make love not war; imagine there’s no countries, and no religion too. A very special kind of liberal fundamentalism. The moment the truth comes knocking, they retreat into their politically correct shells and refuse to recognize the facts. There is no such thing as Muslim terrorism. The terrorists come from outer space. Islam is a religion of peace and we mustn’t link it to all these terrible acts perpetrated in its name. Sadly, the people who think this way — the politically correct — have the microphone. The researcher with the facts is only a momentary guest.
3. The politically correct mechanism that launders the language that we use makes it very hard to express doubt in these John Lennon-esque fantasies, like the Oslo Accords for example. It may be hard to believe, but the principles of the Oslo Accords are still being marketed, under new names, to this day. Case in point: The recent empty declarations made by newfound partners Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog regarding their ability to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For our own good, we need to examine the remarks made by the late Arab-Palestinian minister Ziad Abu Ein, who, in 1979, murdered Boaz Lahav of Tiberias and David Lankri of Beit Shean and seriously wounded five others when he detonated an explosive device inside a trash can on a busy Tiberias street.
In July, 2006, Abu Ein told Al-Alam Iranian television that “the Oslo Accords are not the dream of the Palestinian people. However, there would never have been resistance in Palestine without Oslo. Oslo is the effective and potent greenhouse whish embraced the Palestinian resistance.”
“Without Oslo, there would never have been resistance. In all the occupied territories, we could not move a single pistol from place to place. Without Oslo, and being armed through Oslo, and without the Palestinian Authority’s A areas, without the training, the camps, the protection afforded by Oslo, and without the freeing of thousands of Palestinian prisoners through Oslo — this Palestinian resistance and we would not have been able to create this great Palestinian Intifada.”
This of course is the war that Israel has been fighting for years, ever since its creation in fact. Most recently there have been feverish blood libels about the IDF harvesting Palestinian organs, of summary executions during the 2010 flotilla incident, and of a supposed massacre and mass graves in Jenin during the Second Intifada. With all of these accusations Israel is obliged to investigate the conduct of its military, and so it does. That was what was so outrageous about the UN’s Goldstone investigation and indeed the subsequent attempt to have a Goldstone II following the war in Gaza this summer. Such international inquiries are only supposed to be mandated where a state has failed to adequately investigate itself first–but in Israel’s case the international community simply steps in and puts on its own investigation regardless, usually with the conclusion having been written at the outset.
The problem is that while many of them may now realize that the Islamists their armies encounter are unreasonable fanatics, they are equally convinced that the Islamists Israel faces have a legitimate grievance and a just cause.
********************
While the West’s enemies become ever more unrestrained in the barbaric nature of their attacks, Islamist militants are increasingly pursuing tactics aimed at limiting what the West can do in its own defense. As a recent case in Britain has demonstrated, jihadists and their supporters are more than happy to fabricate the most outlandish allegations in an often successful attempt to hinder the fight against them. This is the kind of thing that Israel has been having to deal with for decades, and at some point other Western states need to comprehend that they are all up against the same enemy, one which is willing to employ the same underhanded tactics against all of us.
In May 2004, British troops became embroiled in a three-hour gun battle with insurgents of the Mahdi Army at Al Amara, Iraq. Following the battle it was alleged that British soldiers tortured, executed, and then mutilated the bodies of twenty Iraqi detainees. These accusations have dragged on for a decade now and in response the UK government commissioned the al-Sweady Inquiry, an investigation which has cost the British taxpayer almost $49 million, with the accusers having been able to claim financial assistance from the British state to fund their case against it.
And what did the tribunal discover? The al-Sweady Inquiry has stated unequivocally that the allegations made against the British soldiers are “without foundation,” and that those making these accusations had given evidence that was “unprincipled in the extreme” and “wholly without regard for the truth.”
So after years of investigation, and tens of millions in public money spent (much of it having been used to assist those bringing claims against the British army), the soldiers have at long last had their names cleared while the jihadi militants have been exposed as liars. Hardly surprising; it’s simply delusional to imagine that those who are so unprincipled as to use terrorism to achieve their aims would suddenly become upstanding and honest witnesses once stood before a war-crimes investigation. What these people are, however, is mendacious and calculating in the extreme, and regardless of what al-Sweady may have concluded, by using public money to advance these outrageous allegations the jihadists have won by hijacking the West’s liberalism and respect for the rule of law for their own advantage.
Quite apart from the tremendous financial cost that this investigation and many more like it have carried, the decade that these allegations circulated for have been an outstanding public-relations victory for the insurgents. The media–large parts of which were eager to see Western forces fail in Iraq and Afghanistan–were all too ready to believe the stories spun by the militants and to think the worst of our soldiers. By parroting these lies ad nauseam, the Western media assisted the militants in undermining public morale at home, eroding belief in the rightness of the cause we were fighting for and convincing many that intervention overseas is rarely a defensible or admirable undertaking. In Europe particularly, these tales provide the recruiting fodder that radicalizes young Muslims into believing that their host societies are evil and that they too must join the war against the West. If nothing else, the constant fear of these damaging war crimes allegations persuade Western governments and militaries to be still more restrained in the tactics that they feel able to use in the increasingly muted attempt to counter our enemies.
This of course is the war that Israel has been fighting for years, ever since its creation in fact. Most recently there have been feverish blood libels about the IDF harvesting Palestinian organs, of summary executions during the 2010 flotilla incident, and of a supposed massacre and mass graves in Jenin during the Second Intifada. With all of these accusations Israel is obliged to investigate the conduct of its military, and so it does. That was what was so outrageous about the UN’s Goldstone investigation and indeed the subsequent attempt to have a Goldstone II following the war in Gaza this summer. Such international inquiries are only supposed to be mandated where a state has failed to adequately investigate itself first–but in Israel’s case the international community simply steps in and puts on its own investigation regardless, usually with the conclusion having been written at the outset.
Israel, like Britain and America, does undertake costly and time-consuming investigations where there are allegations of war crimes. But as we have seen so many times before, within hours the international media will have beamed the most tarnishing accusations against Israel around the world several times over. Months later when investigators have established the allegations as baseless, no one is listening anymore and the damage is done.
The debacle of the al-Sweady Inquiry has naturally caused some outrage in Britain, and so one hopes that some lessons will have been learned. But if observers have been reminded that jihadists are readily prepared to use war crimes accusations as a second front in the war against the West, they should also recognize the same tactic when they see it being deployed against Israel. The problem is that while many of them may now realize that the Islamists their armies encounter are unreasonable fanatics, they are equally convinced that the Islamists Israel faces have a legitimate grievance and a just cause.
(When reality is unpleasant, as it often is, those not personally experiencing reality make decisions based on pleasant fantasies. — DM)
[T]his is supposed to be a “peace process.” The operative word here is “peace.” How dare we dictate anything to the Israelis, who are forced to live with the deadly consequences of this obviously flawed foreign policy paradigm? How can we presume to know better than they what it is that the Israelis can actually live with?
**************
In September 1993, when Yasser Arafat was recast from the role of “granddaddy of terrorism” to that of “peacemaker,” the Oslo Accords were marketed to the Israeli public and to world Jewry wrapped in the package of “reversibility.” I remember clearly when a friend of mine, a leftist television personality, assured me: “Don’t worry, Sarah. We will be watching Arafat very closely. It all depends on his compliance with our strict guidelines. He has to stop all the incitement and all the terror. It’s only Gaza and Jericho first. If it doesn’t work, we can always go back and retrieve it.”
That was 21 years ago. Since then, not a day goes by without another fiery Palestinian Authority incident of incitement (painstakingly documented and broadcast to the world by the good work of Palestinian Media Watch). This hatred has metastasized like a cancer and an entire generation has grown up steeped in it. The horrific result is the vast number of Israelis murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.
This past week Khalil Shikaki from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted a poll which indicated that a full 80 percent of Palestinians support stepping up violent attacks against Israelis, including random stabbings and traffic attacks. Over 86 percent believe that Haram al-Sharif (or the Temple Mount, where Al-Aqsa mosque is located) is in danger.
That comes as no surprise because 93 percent of Palestinians consider themselves to be religious Muslims, and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority has been constantly stirring up hysteria that “the Jews are desecrating Haram al-Sharif.”
Although the Oslo Accords were presented as conditional, successive Israeli governments have upheld them, despite the steady stream of constant, daily incitement and increasing number of what the Left used to euphemistically call “korbanot shel shalom” (“victims of peace”).
We Jews seem to have gotten ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole. And many of our leaders do not seem to understand the basic philosophy that “when you are in a hole, you should stop digging.”
American presidents, politicians and diplomats have consistently argued that “Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should be left up to parties themselves.”
Which brings us to Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett’s spirited debate with Martin Indyk at the Brookings Institute’s Saban Forum last week. Bennett courageously uttered the words: “We’re stuck in the conventional directions that we’ve been working on over the past three decades. There’s only one game [foreign policy paradigm] in town and that is a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel. Now, regardless of whether you support it or not, the reality is, it’s not working. It’s not working.”
The outcry from American journalists and officials, who have based their careers on the success of the peace process and the two-state paradigm, was so intense one would have thought Bennett had said something highly irresponsible, such as that Arabs are the descendants of apes and pigs (a remark that official Palestinian Authority media frequently uses to describe Jews).
After all, this is supposed to be a “peace process.” The operative word here is “peace.” How dare we dictate anything to the Israelis, who are forced to live with the deadly consequences of this obviously flawed foreign policy paradigm? How can we presume to know better than they what it is that the Israelis can actually live with?
The premise of “land for peace,” which has dominated American foreign policy and the its attitude toward Israel over the last two decades, might well work in the West when dealing with a land dispute between the United States and Mexicans or Canadians. But it is patently obvious, when listening to the inflammatory rhetoric that comes directly out of the mouths of Palestinian Authority officials, that they have never laid down the societal groundwork for peace, but rather for its very opposite.
This has been going on for over a generation. Words and ideas matter. These hateful words have seeped deep into the consciousness of an entire generation of Palestinians. They lead to tragedies like the recent attack at the Har Nof synagogue in which four Israelis were killed while reciting morning prayers (and a Druze policeman was killed coming to their aid); or earlier this week, when an Israeli family of five stopped to pick up a hitchhiker in Judea and Samaria and was subjected to an acid attack; or in October when a three-month-old, the first child for a couple who had endured years of infertility, was murdered when a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into a group of Israelis waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem.
For some, in America, this is merely a statistic. But for Israelis and Jews, this was somebody’s father, somebody’s mother, somebody’s brother, sister or child. Israel is a tiny country. By now there is hardly anyone in the country who does not personally know someone wounded or murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.
If this were a scientific experiment, we would have reached the null hypothesis a long time ago, and realized it was time to go back to the drawing board.
Whether or not one agrees with Bennett, it is impossible not to admire his moral courage and intellectual honesty for publicly declaring something every Israeli and every Palestinian already knows. He is like the little boy in the story who, in front of everyone, points to the naked monarch and declares: The emperor wears no clothes!
As Bennett said, “Let’s stop looking at perfection, the ideal dream of two states living side by side in peace and democracy. Let’s stop talking perfection that has led us to disaster.”
Yet Indyk, who has made a career out of the peace process industry, had the audacity to tell him, “You are talking pure mythology. … You live in another reality. … You live in what Steve Jobs called ‘a distorted reality.'”
Bennett responded with, “This is quite a sentence. I have been through the First Intifada, the Second Intifada. You attend conferences. I have been on the ground there. How many missiles have to fall on Ashkelon until you wake up? How many people need to die before you wake up from this illusion? When will you say you were wrong?”
Bennett deserves high praise for injecting a bit of reality into the fantasy world that exists inside the beltway, where everyone continues to cling to the illusions of 1993. So many of our think tanks, diplomats and scholars look at the Taliban attack in a school in Pakistan or the hostage crisis in a cafe in Australia as a deplorable acts of terrorism, but when it comes to Palestinian terrorists taking the lives of Israeli citizens, our State Department officials say, “Both sides have to try harder,” as Secretary of State John Kerry said at a press conference in London this week.
This is a hypocritical double standard that no one but Israel would be expected to endure. When people impose a standard on Israel, the Jewish state, that they would never impose on themselves, we have one word for it and that word is anti-Semitism.
Sometimes this anti-Semitism comes directly out of the mouths of Jews. Two thousand years of living in the Diaspora has had an indelible effect on our collective psyche. Many Jews are self-conscious of their Judaism, and want the love of the world so desperately that they have to prove to the world how liberal and broad minded they are … at the expense of their own Israeli brothers and sisters.
I could never understand how anyone sitting in a comfortable living room on this side of the Atlantic, never knowing what it is like to constantly fear for their lives and never worrying about having 60 seconds or less to gather the entire family and hide from incoming missiles, can claim to know better than the Israelis about what is good for them.
This gives new meaning to the definition of the term “chutzpah.”
The Syrian rebel militia Al Yarmouk Shuhada Brigades, backed and trained for two years by US officers, mostly CIA experts, in Jordan, and supported by the Israeli army, has abruptly dumped these sponsors and joined up with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and counter-terrorism sources reveal.
The sudden defection of this 2,000-strong anti-Assad force leaves IDF defense formations on the Golan, US and Jordanian deployments in the northern part of the kingdom, and pro-Western rebel conquests in southern Syria in danger of collapse.
The Brigades’ jump into the radical jihadi camp was negotiated in the last two weeks by its commander Mousab Ali Qarfan, who also goes by the name of Mousab Zaytouneh. He was in direct contact with ISIS chief Abu Baqr Al-Baghdadi, whom our sources report has recently relocated from Iraq to his northern Syrian headquarters at al-Raqqa.
Unlike the Sinai Islamists, Ansar Beit al Maqdis, the Yarmouk Brigades did not pledge allegiance to ISIS. The ir pact was forged as an operational alliance, which is just as grave a peril for the rebel militias’ abandoned allies.
For Israel, in particular, the new development is fraught with three dangers:
1. The Yarmouk Brigades are strung out along Israel’s Golan border with Syria, from the UN peacekeepers camp opposite Kibbutz Ein Zivan (see map) in the north, down to the Israeli-Syrian-Jordanian border junction in the south. The Brigades therefore sit along 45 of the total 76 kilometers of the Syrian-Israeli border. This means that a long stretch of Israel’s Golan border with Syria has fallen under the control of the Islamic State.
2. This militia also commands sections of the Syrian-Jordanian border, as well as districts of the southern Syrian town of Deraa. Therefore, the link between Jordan and southern Syria, which served American strategic interests, is now under military threat.
3. Islamic State forces are preparing to take advantage of their new asset with a buildup near the Druze Mountains (see map) for a rapid push south towards the town of Deraa, where they will join forces with their new ally.
Netanyahu will ask Washington to exercise its veto against the Palestinian motion. But the Obama administration would rather not, since it supports the Palestinians in principle.
Israel may therefore find itself this time ranged against a united US-Russian front on the Palestinian issue, Moscow’s reward for Washington lining up behind its plan for Syria.
Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Sunday, Dec. 14, that Israel would “rebuff any UN moves to set a timetable for withdrawal from territory.” He said Israel now faced a possible diplomatic offensive “to force upon us” such a withdrawal within two years.
*****************
High expectations based on unconfirmed reports swirled around Arab capitals Sunday, Dec. 14, that US President Barack Obama, in league with Moscow and Tehran, had turned his longstanding anti-Assad policy on its head. He was said to be willing to accept Bashar Assad’s rule and deem the Syrian army the backbone of the coalition force battling the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
If these expectations are borne out by the Obama administration, the Middle East would face another strategic upheaval: The US and Russia would be on the same side, a step toward mending the fences between them after the profound rupture over Ukraine, and the Washington-Tehran rapprochement would be expanded.
The Lebanese Hizballah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah would be vindicated in the key role they played in buttressing President Assad in power.
But for Saudi Arabia and Israel, an Obama turnaround on Assad would be a smack in the face.
The Saudis along with most of the Gulf emirates staked massive monetary and intelligence resources in the revolution to topple the Syrian ruler.
Israel never went all-out in its support for the Syrian uprising, but focused on creating a military buffer zone under rebel rule in southern Syria, in order to keep the hostile Syrian army, Hizballah and elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps fighting for Assad at a distance from its northern borders with Syria and Lebanon.
If Obama goes through with accepting the Assad regime, Israel will have to write off most of its military investment in Syria. In any case, Israel’s intelligence agencies misjudged the Syrian situation from the first; until a year ago, they kept on insisting that Assad’s days were numbered.
DEBKAfile’s Arab sources single out major pointers to the approach of a reversal of Syrian policy in Washington:
1. The resignation of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary last month. Hagel was adamant in advocating Assad’s ouster.
2. No more than one sentence was devoted to the Syrian conflict in the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) summit’s resolutions in Doha last week, despite its centrality to inter-Arab affairs: the summit called for “a political solution” of the Syrian issue that would “ensure Syria’s security, stability and territorial integrity.”
Not a word on Assad’s removal from power.
3. DEBKAfile’s Washington and Moscow sources report that the Syrian issue was destined to figure large in the Rome talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Sunday, Dec. 14.
The Kremlin is making US acceptance of its plan for ending the Syrian conflict the condition for joining the US-European line on the Palestinian demand that next week’s UN Security Council session set a two-year deadline for Palestinian statehood within 1967 border. The text calls for Israeli “occupation of Palestinian territory captured in the 1967 war” to end by November 2016.
France, Britain and Germany are in efforts to draft a resolution of their own.
So any deal Kerry and Lavrov are able to finalize for a tradeoff between the Palestinian and Syria issues will be put before Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when he meets the US secretary in Rome Monday, Dec. 15.
Netanyahu will ask Washington to exercise its veto against the Palestinian motion. But the Obama administration would rather not, since it supports the Palestinians in principle.
Israel may therefore find itself this time ranged against a united US-Russian front on the Palestinian issue, Moscow’s reward for Washington lining up behind its plan for Syria.
Moscow proposes that the Syrian opposition throw in the towel and both sides accept a truce – especially in the long battle for Aleppo – for the re-convening of the Geneva 2 peace conference in Moscow, with America’s support and participation. Provincial elections would then take place in Syria to bring the Assad government and opposition elements into collaborating in the various ruling institutions.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov spent two days in Damascus last week to work on the details of this blueprint with Bashar Assad, after which he commented tellingly that he was “in contact with our American partners.”
Russian officials then elaborated on their plan before Hizballah and opposition representatives in Turkey.
Even the US Senate bill calling for fresh sanctions against Moscow and the supply of $350 million worth of military aid to Ukraine under the Ukraine Freedom Support Act is unlikely to rock the Kerry-Lavrov Middle East boat.
President Obama is unlikely to affix his signature to the bill and President Vladimir Putin will take it in his stride if he sees progress in reaching an agreement with the United States on Syria.
Even the American threat to station medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe following Moscow’s refusal to endorse the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty failed to cast a cloud over the Kerry-Lavrov encounter.
The two top diplomats have a solid history of progress in forging diplomatic accords on thorny international issues (e.g. Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s chemical weapons).
If they fail this time, Netanyahu’s talks with Kerry will be lighter and smoother. But if a Syria-Palestinian tradeoff is forged between the two powers, Israel may for the first time find itself on a collision course with a joint US-Russian front on the Palestinian issue.
Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Sunday, Dec. 14, that Israel would “rebuff any UN moves to set a timetable for withdrawal from territory.” He said Israel now faced a possible diplomatic offensive “to force upon us” such a withdrawal within two years.
Therefore, the Israeli air strikes against a shipment of Russian missiles for Syria for Hizballah last Monday, Dec. 8, may be seen as an act of defiance against this nascent big-power partnership. Our sources reveal that Moscow was not alone in demanding “explanations” for Israel’s “aggressive” – so too did Washington.
Former ambassador Michael Oren provided a little reminder that the issue isn’t Netanyahu and that Obama’s radical politics would put him at odds with any Israeli government.
This is an administration which makes the racist claim that Jews living in Jerusalem are “settlers”, which funds terrorists and takes their side against Israel.
Michael Oren was the consummate diplomat. He was dignified, thoughtful, articulate, knowledgeable and tactful.
In a dialogue at The Plaza here last week at the annual Scholar-Statesman dinner of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Oren said that “this administration [in Washington] has a worldview that is not in accord with any Israeli government,” not just the current one.
Describing the Obama administration as “ideological” on the Mideast, with the president’s 2009 outreach-to-the-Arab-world Cairo speech as its source, Oren said the White House views east Jerusalem communities like Gilo, for example, as not necessarily part of the Jewish state, a position he said no Israeli government would accept.
(Gilo is over the Green Line but part of the Jerusalem municipality, with a largely Jewish population.)
After the March 17 elections, Israel’s next government “likely will move to the right,” Oren predicted, “and America may be going a different way.”
Though he said the U.S.-Israel relationship is crucial — “we [Washington and Jerusalem] have no choice but to be allies” — he asserted on several occasions that “Israel has to take responsibility for itself.”
Asked by moderator Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute, about the West’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, Oren first noted that Israel’s “margin for error is exactly zero” on this issue, given Iran’s longstanding threat to destroy the Jewish state.
Then, his voice rising, he said that if you believe that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is indeed the moderate he claims to be, if you believe that Iran has reversed its policy of being the world’s leading exporter of terror, if you believe that its leaders have changed their long pattern of lying about the nuclear program, and if you believe the West is capable of and willing to respond militarily to prevent the production of a nuclear bomb, then yes, you should support the U.S. effort to reach an agreement with Iran.
“But if your children and grandchildren’s’ lives depended on it, you may reach a different conclusion,” he asserted, adding: “We [the Jewish people] have not come back after 2,000 years to disappear.”
And it goes without saying, that if you believe that you’ve chosen to completely ignore everything happening in the world.
I am not Oren’s biggest fan and what he is saying is simply common sense. Obama isn’t just at odds with Netanyahu or with Israel. He’s at odds with the remaining US allies in the Middle East. If Obama is at odds with Muslim allies of the US because he supports Muslim terrorists like the Muslim Brotherhood, it goes without saying that his relationship with Israel will be toxic.
America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic partner.
Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little.
A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.
*********************
Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago like to call themselves foreign policy realists. Realists are, in their minds, people who can assess international situations without any ideological blinders or bias. Walt and Mearsheimer co-authored “The Israel Lobby,” originally as a lengthy article in the London Review of Books in 2006, and then as a much longer book version in 2007. In both the article and book, the professors argued that America’s very tight relationship with Israel was strategically unsound for the United States. The authors claimed that the closeness between the two countries was a product of the behavior of the Congress of the United States, which they believe had been unduly influenced by the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other supporters of the Jewish state, such as evangelical Christians.
In less academic, and blunter terms, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman welcomed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his address to a joint session of Congress in 2011, writing that the applause for Netanyahu reflected the fact that the Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
Of course, Friedman had been out ahead of Walt and Mearsheimer, with a similar themed comment in a column in The New York Times in February 5, 2004:
”Israel’s prime minister has had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates, and by political handlers telling the president not to put any pressure on Israel in an election year all conspiring to make sure the president does nothing.”
Friedman styles himself as an “eminence grise,” sitting high up in New York Times land, a platform from where he can speak as an equal with the likes of academic intellectuals such as Mearsheimer and Walt, but also foreign leaders too numerous to name, and American presidents, all of whom understand the significance of receiving a favorable column from Tom Friedman. As a presumably great strategic thinker and realist like Walt and Mearsheimer, Friedman has come to the same conclusions as the professors on where America’s strategic interests lie in the Middle East. America must challenge Israel and force a two-state solution with the Palestinians. This is in Israel’s interests as well, of course, since the absence of peace creates so much ill will for both Israel and its ally America among other nations in the region and around the world. Friedman always claims he has Israel’s real interests at heart, while their elected government digs deeper holes. Clearly, if Israel were only to be more forthcoming, the deal with the Palestinians could finally get done this time (next time, some time, whenever…).
America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic partner.
Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little. In his case, the president revealed that he reads Friedman’s columns, and then followed it up by inviting Friedman into the Oval Office to offer up his invaluable insights. With all that respect and notoriety, nothing could possibly stop the love coming from the Times columnist for everything Obama. Friedman’s latest service to President Barack Obama was to trash the critics of the president’s Iran policy:
”Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations. “
Friedman and Walt and Mearsheimer are locked into an old and predictable thesis that America’s real strategic interest in the region is securing its oil supplies, and cozying up with the oil-rich nations of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Improving relations with Iran fosters a new climate where American is not so isolated as a result of its support for Israel. And if Israel and the Palestinians make peace, there will be a warm glow everywhere, improving the atmospherics to address other regional issues.
There is however a new realism which has overtaken some of those countries who have been patronized by the American realists for decades. For years, many oil rich nations subsidized the efforts of Islamists in schools, universities, mosques, and in politics. They believed they had bought them off to a large extent in their own countries, but could tip the scales against Israel by aiding Hamas and could satisfy the aggressive demands for Islamist expansion in other places.
The new realism, demonstrated most prominently by Egypt, but also by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all Sunni Arab states, is that Iran, in particular a nuclear Iran, will become more assertive, not less, and represents the biggest threat to their own regimes. Sunni Islamists are also a threat to stability — witness Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Sinai in Egypt. Increasingly, Turkey and Qatar are now grouped with Iran as advancing an agenda that is unhelpful to the Saudis, Egypt, and the UAE. Saudi Arabia and Egypt will not vote with Israel at the United Nations, and they will continue to sign onto the usual collection of resolutions condemning Israeli human rights violations against the Palestinians. But it is Egypt that has gone to war with jihadists in Sinai, and effectively shut its border with Gaza. Egyptian soldiers and civilians are being murdered by Hamas and other allies of the Muslim Brotherhood. Defeating this threat is as important to Egypt, as defeating Hamas is for Israel.
”But the alliance that emerged this summer between Israel and Egypt, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is also a highly significant strategic development. For the first time, a major regional power is basing its strategic posture on its understanding that the threats against itself and against Israel stem from the same sources and as a consequence, that the war against Israel is a war against it.
“Israelis have argued this case for years to their Arab neighbors as well as to the Americans and other Western states. But for multiple reasons, no one has ever been willing to accept this basic, obvious reality.
“As a consequence, everyone from the Americans to the Europeans to the Saudis long supported policies that empower jihadist forces against Israel.
“[Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah] Sissi is the first major leader to break with this consensus, as a result of actions Hamas took before and since his rise to power. He has brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE along on his intellectual journey.
“Sissi’s reassessment of the relationship between the war against Israel and the war against Egypt has had a profound impact on regional realities generally and on Israel’s strategic posture specifically.
”From Israel’s perspective, this is a watershed event.
“The government must take every possible action, in economic and military spheres, to ensure that Sissi benefits from his actions.”
Of course, the Obama administration seemed enthralled with the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and both threatened and for a time carried out an aid suspension when Sissi and his supporters engineered the overthrow. There have been rumors, denied of course, that the White House has entertained similar notions for Israel due to its ”unconstructive” policy on settlement construction. More likely, the administration may be trying to intervene in a none too subtle fashion with the upcoming Israeli elections, to signal how much better relations would be between Israel and America if only Netanyahu were gone. If that is the White House strategy, it is not, to use a word, realistic. Most Israelis expect nothing but the back of the hand from Obama at this point, and Obama’s blessing will not enhance the candidates of the Left in the election.
A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.
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.
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments