Peace Process | WarSclerotic | Page 11

Posted tagged ‘Peace Process’

The Pope and the Palestinians

May 20, 2015

The Pope and the Palestinians, Front Page Magazine, William Kilpatrick, May 20, 2015

(The article also deal with Islam in general, as to which the Pope’s fantasies reflect those of the Obama Administration and others. — DM)

francis-and-abbas-450x253

Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

**************************

Contrary to reports in the mainstream press, Pope Francis did not call Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas “an angel of peace.” The correct translation of the pope’s words is “I have thought of you: that you could be an angel of peace.”

Why, then, was it so easy to believe the initial reports? Perhaps because the initial reports seemed to align with previous papal overtures to Palestinian leaders. Pope Francis had previously called Abbas a “man of peace,” he has shown sympathy for Palestinian grievances, and other popes have given the appearance of lending legitimacy to the Palestinian cause. For example, Pope John Paul II is reported to have received PLO leader Yasser Arafat on twelve different occasions.

Arafat was a terrorist. One would think that the Vatican would have wanted to limit its contacts with him. The same goes for Abbas. He has repeatedly honored and praised Palestinian “martyrs” who have slaughtered innocent Jews. There is evidence that he helped fund the 1972 operation that killed eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Why is he accorded such a cordial reception at the Vatican?

Although the Church has often declared its spiritual bond with Jews, it has had a less harmonious relationship with the nation where approximately half the world’s Jews now reside. The Vatican was the last Western government to accord diplomatic recognition to the State of Israel (in 1993). In addition, on several occasions, prominent prelates have likened Israel to King Herod, the murderer of innocents; and others have accused Israel of being an apartheid state. Meanwhile, Catholic NGOs such as Pax Christi and Trocaire have been major players in the boycott, divest, and sanctions campaign against Israel.

Of course, the BDS campaign directly impinges on Israeli security. So do the calls by numerous Christian leaders to tear down the security barrier that divides Israel from the West Bank. On his trip to the Holy Land a year ago, Pope Francis allowed himself to be photographed in prayer at a section of the wall where a large graffiti message compared Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto. In a naïve gesture of solidarity with Palestinians, the pope was unwittingly lending credence to the idea that the Israelis could be compared to the Nazi occupiers of Poland.

The wall was constructed to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli citizens. It’s estimated that its construction has saved thousands of lives. To suggest that the wall is offensive, as many Christians have done, is to suggest that Jewish lives don’t matter. Moreover, such judgments betray an entirely lopsided view of the situation. Take the Gaza conflict. The Catholic hierarchy typically had little to say about the daily rocket barrages launched against Israeli citizens from Gaza, but it was quick to condemn Israel on those occasions when it finally retaliated. In a similar vein, Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, blamed last year’s Gaza war on the Israeli embargo which, he said, had turned Gaza into “a factory of desperate people, designed to easily turn into extremists.”

In short, many Catholic leaders have shown a tendency to blame Israel for defending itself. The implication, of course, is that there would be no need for defense if Israel would only go to the peace table and make the concessions demanded of it by the Palestinians. The Vatican’s recent recognition of the “State of Palestine” reflects this naïve view of the situation. The supposition is that the Palestinians only want to be left in peace, whereas there is abundant evidence that the deepest desire of Palestinian leaders is for the extermination of Israel. Have Vatican officials never seen the photos of Abbas holding up a map of Palestine that encompasses all of the territory currently known as Israel? Are they unaware that he has personally called for a Palestine that is Judenrein? Didn’t they notice that when Israel gambled on disengaging from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Gaza soon turned into a terrorist state governed by an obsession to destroy Israel?

From the Israeli point of view, the call to cooperate with the Palestinian “peace” agenda is a call to cooperate in its own demise. Whenever I hear a UN representative or a Vatican spokesman call for peace talks between Israel and Palestine, I think of that scene from Goldfinger in which James Bond is about to be sliced in two by a laser beam. “Do you expect me to talk?” he asks. “No, Mr. Bond,” replies Goldfinger, “I expect you to die.” The Vatican hasn’t yet grasped the point that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want the Israelis to talk, it wants them to die.

By words and by actions, the Vatican continues to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This policy not only does a disservice to Jews, it also does a disservice to Catholics and other Christians. The main effect of the moral equivalence stance is to sow confusion among Catholics at a time when they need to be clear and unconfused—clear about Islam, that is. The Vatican policy toward Palestine reflects it overall stance toward the Islamic world. In other words, let’s overlook the dark side—the terrorism, the anti-Semitism, the oppression of Christians and other minorities—and let’s put the best face on the Mohammedan faith. For the sake of peace. And also for the sake of maintaining the threadbare narrative that Islam is a close cousin of Catholicism and, therefore, a religion of peace. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this faith in Islam was Pope Francis’ assertion in Evangelii Gaudium that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.”

How well has this policy worked? Not very. Catholics and other Christians who lived in Muslim lands and who took seriously the Catholic version of “this has nothing to do with Islam” soon found that the tiny minority of misunderstanders were legion and had murder on their minds. Many found out too late. Years of indoctrination in the myth of Islam’s pacific nature had left them unprepared for the violence. Not that the Church was the only culprit. The secular opinion-makers had been preaching the same gospel. The irony is that the Church wants Israel to adopt the same policy of make-believe about Islam that has contributed to the death and displacement of millions of Christians.

The policy requires an almost total denial of facts. In the case of the Arab-Israeli crisis it means ignoring the terrorist ties of the Palestinian government, its unity coalition with Hamas, the massive state-sponsored indoctrination of Palestinian children, and the oft-stated goal of eliminating Israel. Ironically, it also necessitates that one ignore the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian leaders do a good job of hijacking Christian themes and imagery in order to gull Christians into thinking that they are, indeed, brothers in Christ. Thus, Palestinians have milked the massacre-of-the-innocents meme for all its worth. They also like to claim that Jesus was the first Palestinian. Another favorite theme is that the Palestinian people are the “new Jesus” who is being crucified by the Israelis.

Many in the Catholic hierarchy seem to fall for the ruse, but the steady exodus of Christians from the Palestinian territories tells a different story. The overall population of Christians in the Palestinian areas has declined from 15 percent in 1950 to 2 percent today. After the Palestinian Authority took control over Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian population there declined by half. In the Gaza Strip, only a few hundred Christians remain. That’s because Christians in Palestine, like Christians in most Muslim-majority societies, are treated as second-class citizens—subject to rape, intimidation, and legalized theft.

Meanwhile, the Christian population of Israel continues to grow. Palestinian Christians want to live there and so do persecuted Christians in other parts of the Middle East. Despite years of propaganda to the contrary, they have come to realize that Israel is a safe haven in a world of Islamic chaos.

Do Christians who migrate to Israel know something that the Vatican doesn’t know? The facts are there for everyone to see, but not everyone sees them. Why do Catholic leaders persist in assigning moral equivalence when there is no moral equivalence? Normally, a belief in moral equivalence grows out of a relativistic outlook. But presumably we can rule that out in the case of Catholic prelates. A more likely cause of their moral neutrality is a misapplication of the principle of “judge not.” Christians today are highly conscious of the sins of Western civilization and are therefore reluctant to judge those who lie outside it—in this case, Muslims. However, the principle is meant to apply to judgments about the state of an individual’s soul, not his behavior. And it was never meant to apply to withholding judgments about ideologies and belief systems.

The reluctance to see the mote in the other’s eye can eventually slide over into willful blindness. There are numerous warnings in the New Testament about spiritual blindness and they apply to those within the Church as well as to those without. The big danger for Church leaders is not that they will be seen as judgmental in the eyes of the world, but that they will be seen as foolishly naïve in the eyes of history.

“First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday” is a well-known slogan in the Middle East. It means that after the Islamists finish with the Jews, they will come after the Christians. The fate of the Saturday people and the Sunday people is intertwined. And the fate of both is put in jeopardy when Christian leaders insist on holding on to a fantasy-based picture of Islam.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Appeasement, Christianity, Christians, Diversity, Fatah, Foreign policy, Freedom, Gaza, Human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Islamophobia, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Pope, Terrorism, Two state solution, West Bank
Tags: Abbas, Antisemitism, Appeasement, Christianity, Christians, DIversity, Fatah, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Gaza, human rights, Ideology, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Muslims, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace Process, Pope, Terrorism, Two state solution, West Bank

Comments: 1 Comment

Liberating Our Jerusalem

May 18, 2015

Liberating Our Jerusalem, Sultan Knish Blog, Daniel Greenfield, May 17, 2015

[T]here are still Jews in the West Bank and they have to be gotten rid of. Once enough Jews have been expelled, there will be peace. That’s not a paragraph from Mein Kampf, it’s not some lunatic sermon from Palestinian Authority television– it is the consensus of the international community. This consensus states that the only reason there still isn’t peace is because enough Jews haven’t been expelled from their homes. The ethnic cleansing for peace hasn’t gone far enough.

There will be peace when all the Jews are gone.

Jerusalem Day is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will we be free of the Joe Bidens and the Peter Beinarts, the Jimmy Carters and Barack Obamas, the Gilad Atzmons and Jeremy Ben Amis. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

**********************

When Jordan’s Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city– the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem possible.

MigdalDavid0002

Since then, the annexation and ethnic cleansing has become an international mandate. It would be absolutely inconceivable for the international community to denounce an ethnically cleansed group which survived attempted genocide for moving back into a city where they had lived. It is, however, standard policy at the State Department and the Foreign Office to denounce Jews living in those parts of Jerusalem that had been ethnically cleansed by Muslims, as “settlers” living in “settlements,” and describe them as an “obstruction to peace.” Peace being the state of affairs that sets in when an ethnic cleansing goes unchallenged.

Describing Jewish homes in Jerusalem, one of the world’s oldest cities, a city that all three religions in the region associate with Jews and Jewish history, as “settlements” is a triumph of distorted language that Orwell would have to tip his hat to. How does one have “settlements” in a city older than London or Washington D.C.? To understand that, you would have to ask London and Washington D.C., where the diplomats insist that one more round of Israeli compromises will bring peace to the region.

They say that there are three religions in Jerusalem, but there are actually four. The fourth religion is the true Religion of Peace, the one that demands constant blood sacrifices to make peace possible, that insists that there will be peace when the Jews have been expelled from Judea and Samaria, driven out of their homes in Jerusalem, and made into wanderers and beggars once again. Oddly enough, this religion’s name isn’t even Islam– it’s diplomacy.

Diplomacy says that the 1948 borders set by Arab countries invading Israel should be the final borders and that, when Israel reunified a sundered city in 1967, it was an act of aggression, while, when seven Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948, it was a legitimate way to set boundaries. When Jordan ethnically cleansed East Jerusalem, it set a standard that Israelis are obligated to follow to this day by staying out of East Jerusalem.

Vice President Biden was so upset that the Jerusalem municipality had partially approved some buildings in the city during his visit that he threw a legendary hissy fit. Hillary Clinton stopped by MSNBC to tell Andrea Mitchell that, “It was insulting. And it was insulting not just to the Vice President who didn’t deserve that.” David Axelrod browsed through his thesaurus and emerged on the morning shows calling it an “affront” and an “insult.” Two for the price of one.

Editorials in newspapers denounced the Israeli government for this grave insult to the Obama Administration.”Israel’s Provocation”, the Chicago Tribune shrieked in bold type, describing it as a “diplomatic bomb” that went off in Biden’s face. The Atlantic, eager to get in on the action metaphors, described Israel slapping Biden in the face. A horde of other columnists jumped in to depict the Israelis kicking and bashing the poor Vice-President, while holding his head in the toilet.

Whether Joe Biden was the victim of the Jews or the Jews were the victims of Joe Biden is all a matter of perspective. The Hitler Administration was quite upset to find that Jewish athletes would be competing in the 1936 Munich Olympics. When you ethnically cleanse people, they are supposed to stay ethnically cleansed. It’s in poor taste for them to show up and win gold medals at the Olympics or rebuild their demolished synagogues. It’s insulting to the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices.

That sounds like a harsh accusation, but it’s completely and undeniably true.

bauernfeind-mur-lamentation-jerusalem

When Muslims move into a Jewish town, poor Joe doesn’t come crying that he’s been bombed with a diplomatic affront and slapped with a Menorah. When Muslim countries fund Muslim housing in Israel, there are no angry statements from Clinton and no thesaurus bashing from David Axelrod. Muslim housing in Jerusalem or anywhere in Israel is not a problem. Only Jewish housing is. The issue is not Israel. If it were, then Arabs with Israeli citizenship would get Biden to howl as loudly. It’s only the Jews who are the problem.

The entire Peace Process is really a prolonged solution to the latest phase of the Jewish Problem. The problem, as stated by so many diplomats, is that there are Jews living in places that Muslims want. There were Jews living in Gaza before 1948, but they were driven out, they came back, and then they were driven out again by their own government in compliance with international demands. Now only Hamas lives in Gaza and it’s as peaceful and pleasant without the Jews as Nazi Germany.

But there are still Jews in the West Bank and they have to be gotten rid of. Once enough Jews have been expelled, there will be peace. That’s not a paragraph from Mein Kampf, it’s not some lunatic sermon from Palestinian Authority television– it is the consensus of the international community. This consensus states that the only reason there still isn’t peace is because enough Jews haven’t been expelled from their homes. The ethnic cleansing for peace hasn’t gone far enough.

There will be peace when all the Jews are gone. That much is certainly undeniable. Just look at Gaza or Egypt or Iraq or Afghanistan, which has a grand total of two Jews, both of them in their seventies. Or Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria where peace reigns now that the Jews are gone. Some might say that violence seems to increase proportionally with the number of Muslims, but we all know that would be a racist thing to say. On the other hand suggesting that violence increases with the number of Jews living on land that Muslims want, that’s just diplomacy. A common sense fact that everyone who is anyone in foreign policy knows to be true.

How will we know when the Muslims have gotten all the land that they want? When the violence stops. Everyone knows that agreements mean nothing. No matter how many pieces of paper are signed, the bombs and rockets still keep bursting; real ones that kill people, not fake ones that upset Vice Presidents. The only way to reach an agreement is by groping blindly in the dark, handing over parcel after parcel of land, until the explosions stop or the Muslims fulfill their original goal of pushing the Jews into the sea.

That’s the wonderful thing about diplomacy if you’re a diplomat and the terrible thing about it if you are anyone else without a secure way out of the country when diplomacy fails. And diplomacy in the region always fails. Camp David and every single agreement Israel has signed with Muslim countries aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. The only peace treaty that counts is the one made by tanks and rifles. It’s the one made by Israeli planes in Egyptian skies and Israeli soldiers walking the border. It’s the one made by Jewish farmers and ranchers, tending their sheep and their fields, with rifles strung over their backs. The only peace that’s worth anything is the peace of the soldiers and settlers.

In 1966, Jerusalem was a city sundered in two, divided by barbed wire and the bullets of Muslim snipers. Diplomacy did not reunite it. Israel pursued diplomacy nearly to its bitter end until it understood that it had no choice at all but to fight. Israel did not swoop into the fight, its leaders did their best to avoid the conflict, asking the international community to intervene and stop Egypt from going to war. Read back the headlines for the last five years on Israel and Iran, and you will get a sense of the courage and determination of the Israeli leaders of the day.

When Israel went to war, its leaders did not want to liberate Jerusalem, they wanted Jordan to stay out of the war. Even when Jordan entered the war, they did not want to liberate the city. Divine Providence and Muslim hostility forced them to liberate Jerusalem and forced them to keep it. Now some of them would like to give it back, another sacrifice to the bloody deity of diplomacy whose altar flows with blood and burnt sacrifices.

As we remember Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, it is important to remember that the city is united and free because diplomacy failed. The greatest triumph of the modern state happened only because diplomacy proved hopeless and useless in deterring Muslim genocidal ambitions. Had Israel succumbed to international pressure and had Nasser been as subtle as Sadat, then the Six-Day War would have looked like the Yom Kippur War fought with 1948 borders– and Israel very likely would not exist today.

Jerusalem-Scopus

Even as Jews remember the great triumph of Jerusalem Day, the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices are busy searching for ways to drive Jews out of Jerusalem, out of towns, villages and cities. This isn’t about the Arab residents of Jerusalem, who have repeatedly asserted that they want to remain part of Israel. It’s not about peace, which did not come from any previous round of concessions, and will not come from this one either. It’s about solving the Jewish problem.

As long as Jews allow themselves to be defined as the problem, there will be plenty of those offering solutions. And the solutions invariably involve doing something about the Jews. It only stands to reason that if Jews are the problem, then moving them or getting rid of them is the solution. The bloody god of diplomacy always assumes that they are the problem. There is less friction in defining Jews as the problem, than in defining Muslims as the problem. The numbers alone mean that is so.

Jerusalem Day is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will we be free of the Joe Bidens and the Peter Beinarts, the Jimmy Carters and Barack Obamas, the Gilad Atzmons and Jeremy Ben Amis. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

Only then will we have liberated our Jerusalem. The Jerusalem of the soul. It is incumbent on all of us to liberate that little Jerusalem within. The holy city that lives in all of us. To clean the dross off its golden gates, wash the filth from its stones and expel the invaders gnawing away at our hearts until we look proudly upon a shining city. Then to help others liberate their own Jerusalems. Only then will we truly be free.

Categories: Antisemitism, Appeasement, Biden, Britain, Diversity, Foreign policy, Human rights, International Community, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Kerry, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Settlements, Terrorists, Two state solution, West Bank
Tags: Antisemitism, Appeasement, Biden, Britain, DIversity, Ethnic cleansing, Foreign Policy, human rights, International Community, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jews, Middle East, Multiculturalism, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace Process, Settlements, Terrorists, Two state solution, West Bank

Comments: 7 Comments

A Preview of ‘Palestine’

May 12, 2015

A Preview of ‘Palestine’, Front Page Magazine, Ari Lieberman, May 12, 2015

Hamas-450x308

[W]hy is the Obama administration placing mammoth pressure on Israel to cede vital strategic territory and why is it besotted with the idea of dismembering Israel by tearing away parts of its ancestral heartland? The answer lies in a flawed foreign policy that rewards tyrannical regimes while back-stabbing allies; a foreign policy that favors Iranian Fatwas over concrete empirical evidence of malfeasance.

******************

Anyone wishing to get a glimpse of what a future “Palestinian” state might look like, need look no further than recent actions taken and official statements made by both the Palestinian Authority and its rival Hamas this past month. While these two governing entities detest each other (perhaps even more so than the infidel Yahuds), it is difficult to discern why, since both of these governing bodies spew forth nearly identical xenophobic rhetoric and act with typical autocratic ruthlessness to stifle any whiff of internal dissent. In essence, they both act in a manner that is not dissimilar to the 20 or so chauvinistic, anti-democratic Muslim pseudo-states of the Middle East.

Most Israelis harbor deep reservations about the creation of an “independent Palestinian state” for a multitude of reasons. Chief among them is the fear that a Palestinian state would devolve into an entity similar to that found in Gaza and that’s a best case scenario. There are far worse, more frightening scenarios. But while Gaza is contained in the southwest corner of Israel and can, relatively speaking, be monitored and controlled, the same cannot be said about the West Bank with its long, torturous border along the imaginary Green Line (the 1949 armistice lines). Moreover, in contrast to the Gaza periphery, much of Israel’s population and industry faces the West Bank, which juts out like a bone into Israel’s throat.

But even if the Palestinian Authority, headed by its aging, autocratic leader Mahmoud Abbas, succeeds in rebuffing a Hamas takeover – an unlikely prospect – the Palestinian Authority’s leadership has proven to be just as extreme, xenophobic and malevolent as its rivals in Gaza. Palestinian Authority TV and media outlets as well as PA-backed NGOs, routinely spew forth ancient anti-Semitic canards involving ritualistic Passover blood libels and conspiracy theories involving Jewish attempts at world domination.

On April 5, in an official PA television interview, Fatah spokesperson, Osama Al-Qawasmi, invoked the notorious early 20^th century Czarist forgery known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to back up his spurious claims against Israel. For the sake of perspective, both Hitler’sMein Kampf and the Hamas Charter incorporate the Protocols to buttress repugnant supremacist views and reinforce ancient calumnies.

Al-Qawasmi comments, largely ignored by the West, represent views that are commonplace within the Palestinian Authority. In fact, most high-level officials within the PA subscribe to Hitleresque positions and this comes as no surprise given that the father of the modern “Palestinian” movement and the man who gave birth to Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al Husseini, was a Nazi collaborator and a dear friend of the Fuhrer. In January 2013, “President” Abbas, whose own ventures into Holocaust denial are well known, showered the Hitler-supporting Husseini with acclaim.

The Palestinian Authority has also been known to perpetuate ancient ritualistic Passover blood libels. In July 2014 Mahmoud Abbas’ official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, featured an op-ed which claimed that Jews use the “blood of [Palestinian] children” as a key ingredient in Matzah or unleavened bread used by Jews during the Passover holiday. Shortly thereafter, in a variation of that insidious theme, Palestinian Authority TV claimed that Israel was injecting poison into the Palestinian water supply.

In 2013, a Western funded Palestinian propaganda outfit called MIFTAH (which publishes in both English and Arabic) published an article in Arabic criticizing President Obama for speaking of Passover in a favorable light. The author then went on to invoke the ancient blood libel stating,

Does Obama in fact know the relationship, for example, between “Passover” and “Christian blood”..?! Or “Passover” and “Jewish blood rituals?!’ Much of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.

Palestinians routinely spew forth revolting babble and nonsensical conspiracy theories in Arabic but are substantially more reserved when addressing Western audiences who would find such utterances disquieting to say the least.

MIFTAH was founded by the Palestinian Authority’s spokeswoman and PLO Central Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi. Incredibly, when confronted with the outrage, Ashrawi, a seasoned politician who makes frequent guest appearances on Western news programs, refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing and actually attacked the blogger who exposed the incident claiming that she was the victim of a “smear campaign.” She also risibly noted that she was committed to “open dialogue” and in any event, a “disclaimer” in the publication absolved her and her organization of any culpability.

To a vile terror apologist like Ashrawi, blood libels are part of her concept of “open dialogue.” Only after drawing the ire of her Western donors did Ashrawi express contrition and posted an apologylaced with the requisite dose of crocodile tears. That served to placate MIFTAH’s gullible Western enablers.

But while Palestinians are free to spew forth the vilest canards against Israel and Jews, any whiff of criticism or dissention directed against any Palestinian body, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, is ruthlessly dealt with. In April, a Palestinian civil servant was arrested for expressing views on Facebook critical of Yassir Arafat. More precisely, he failed to subscribe to the view that Arafat was a “martyr.” He was charged with “attacking and harming the martyr, eternal leader and symbol of the Palestinian people Abu Ammar,” Arafat’s nom de guerre. His niece was expelled from Birzeit University near Ramallah for expressing similar views and all other Palestinian universities have been instructed to deny her admission.

In Hamas-controlled Gaza, in a rare show of defiance, a group of between 150 to 200 Palestinians demonstrated against the governing authorities. The demonstrators were beaten with sticks and some were herded off in jeeps by thug-like Hamas enforcers.

These two incidents are demonstrative of the complete absence of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in areas governed by Palestinians. Conversely, Palestinians are completely free to let loose with the vilest canards as long as the objects of derision, defamation and ridicule are Jews.

A Palestinians state, whether governed by Hamas or the “moderate” Palestinian Authority, will almost certainly resemble the 20 or so Arab pseudo-states currently in existence. It will be dysfunctional, autocratic, xenophobic and unable to survive without massive financial assistance. That will be the nature of the state that lives alongside Israel’s long and tortuous border with the West Bank. That will be the state that will have full view of all commercial airlines that come and go from Ben Gurion International Airport. And that will be the state that juts into Israel’s narrow 9-mile wide waistline overlooking Israel’s heavily populated coastline.

Considering these facts, why is the Obama administration placing mammoth pressure on Israel to cede vital strategic territory and why is it besotted with the idea of dismembering Israel by tearing away parts of its ancestral heartland? The answer lies in a flawed foreign policy that rewards tyrannical regimes while back-stabbing allies; a foreign policy that favors Iranian Fatwas over concrete empirical evidence of malfeasance.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has just formed a governing coalition with a razor thin majority. Yet his coalition partners, cognizant of the dangers they face, both on the battlefield and in the political arena, appear to be solidly behind their Prime Minister. One can only hope that the Prime Minister will stand fast in the face of massive pressure he is sure to encounter from an extremely hostile Obama administration. Good luck Mr. Prime Minister, you’re going to need every bit of it for the next 18 months.

Categories: Abbas, Diplomacy, Fatah, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Terrorists, Two state solution
Tags: Abbas, Fatah, Foreign Policy, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace Process, Terrorists, Two state solution

Comments: Be the first to comment

Exclusive: Obama to back Palestinian state at Security Council – payback for Israel’s right-wing cabinet

May 7, 2015

Exclusive: Obama to back Palestinian state at Security Council – payback for Israel’s right-wing cabinet, DEBKAfile, May 6, 2015

Net-0b_clash_5.15

Barack Obama plans to punish Israel again

DEBKAfile reports exclusively from Washington: US President Barack Obama did not wait for Binyamin Netanyahu to finish building his new government coalition by its deadline at midnight Wednesday, May 6, before going into action to pay him back for forming a right-wing cabinet minus any moderate figure for resuming negotiations with the Palestinians.

Banking on Netanyahu’s assertion while campaigning for re-election that there would be no Palestinian state during his term in office, Obama is reported exclusively by our sources to have given the hitherto withheld green light to European governments to file a UN Security Council motion proclaiming an independent Palestinian state. Although Netanyahu left the foreign affairs portfolio in his charge and available to be filled by a suitably moderate figure as per the White House’s expectations did not satisfy the US President.

The White House is confident that, with the US voting in favor, the motion will be passed by an overwhelming majority and therefore be binding on the Israeli government.

To show the administration was in earnest, senior US officials sat down with their French counterparts in Paris last week to sketch out the general outline of this motion. According to our sources, they began addressing such questions as the area of the Palestinian state, its borders, security arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians and whether or not to set a hard-and-fast timeline for implementation, or phrase the resolution as a general declaration of intent.

Incorporating a target date in the language would expose Israel to Security Council sanctions for non-compliance.

It was indicated by the American side in Paris that the Obama administration would prefer to give Netanyahu a lengthy though predetermined time scale to reconsider his Palestinian policy or even possibly to broaden and diversify his coalition by introducing non-aligned factions or figures into such key posts as foreign affairs.

At the same time, both American and French diplomats are already using the club they propose to hang over the Netanyahu government’s head for gains in other spheres.

French President Francois Hollande, for instance, the first foreign leader ever to attend a Gulf Council of Cooperation summit, which opened in Riyadh Tuesday to discuss Iran and the Yemen war, used the opportunity to brief Gulf Arab rulers on Washington’s turnaround on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

And US Secretary of State John Kerry plans to present the Obama administration’s new plans for Palestinian statehood to Saudi leaders during his visit to Riyadh Wednesday and Thursday, May 6-7. Kerry will use Washington’s willingness to meet Palestinian aspirations as currency for procuring Saudi and Gulf support for a Yemen ceasefire and their acceptance of the nuclear deal shaping up with Iran.

Categories: Coalition, Elections in Israel, Foreign policy, International Community, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Kerry, Netanyahu, Obama, Peace process, Two state solution, United Nations
Tags: Coalition, Elections in Israel, Foreign Policy, International Community, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Peace Process, Two state solution, United Nations

Comments: 4 Comments

Obama turns a smiling face to Israel. Biden: Iran has enough material for 8 nuclear bombs

May 3, 2015

Obama turns a smiling face to Israel. Biden: Iran has enough material for 8 nuclear bombs, DEBKAfile, May 2, 2015

(Obama and Biden speak with forked tongues. Please see also, PM Netanyahu’s Remarks to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.– DM)

Biden-netanyahu_30.4.15

We drive each other nuts…

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have gone out of their way in the last fortnight to shower friendly gestures on Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and even Ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer. Refuting the dire predictions by Netanyahu’s critics of a disastrous breach, Obama and Biden, by word and gesture, are putting behind them the rancor long marring relations between Washington in Jerusalem.

The White House launched its new charm campaign for Israel on April 13 by meetings with three groups of American Jewish leaders. Obama addressed the first with an emotional affirmation of his support for Israel and its security. Vice President Biden, National Security adviser Susan Rice and Biden’s national security adviser Colin Kahl then talked to another group of Jewish leaders, while Obama spoke to Jewish “community leaders”, a group of individuals who though unaffiliated are influential and generous donors to the Democratic Party.

Ten days later, on April 23, Biden was the keynote speaker at the Israeli embassy’s Independence Day reception. He stood alongside the former object of administration ire – Ambassador Dermer – and declared: “We have Israel’s back, you can count on that.” He announced that Israel would be the first country in the world to receive the new US F-35 stealth aircraft already next year.

Thursday, the Vice President delivered a lecture at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the key DC research think tank on the subject of US-Israel relations.

In this important lecture, Biden defended in great detail US strategy and objectives in the negotiations for a nuclear accord with Iran, as they enter their final lap.

All in all, the US president and vice president are devoting more time to gestures for repairing relations with Israel than on the burning crises afflicting the world in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine.

DEBKAfile found four reasons for this striking White House pivot:

1. After the fireworks sparked by Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to the US Congress against the nuclear accord, which placed him at the forefront of the international front opposing the deal, the White House decided that instead of sparring with him, it would be more productive to convert the Israeli prime minister into a supporter by meeting him halfway on certain points.

2. The rift with Israel proved disadvantageous to the Obama administration, while boosting Netanyahu and his Likud in Israel’s recent general election. The US president has paid a high political and personal price for colliding with Congress on the Iranian nuclear issue. His strategic advisers have recommended a bid to convince Netanyahu that Israel’s most pressing concerns about the nuclear deal are being addressed in the final stage of the talks. Assuming that the prime minister too is not looking for a major rift with Washington, he may be amenable to partly changing course and withdrawing some of his objections to the deal. Congress might then respond more positively to the administration’s nuclear policy.

3. As American gears up for its 2016 elections, the Democratic Party needs to woo the Jewish vote and most importantly its financial support for campaigners.

The Biden lecture to the Washington Institute is therefore worthy of close scrutiny. This masterly and eloquent work is an attempt to lay the political and security groundwork for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s consent to a change of heart from opposition to the nuclear deal to its support.

DEBKAfile has therefore singled out is 17 high points:

Israel is absolutely right to be worried about the world’s most dangerous weapons falling in the hands of a nation, whose leaders dream openly of a world without Israel.
So the criticism that Israel is too concerned I find preposterous. They have reason to be concerned. (DF. Netanyahu’s concerns about Iran are fully justified.)
…that’s why the President, President Obama, decided for the first time — people forget this — to make it an explicit, declared policy of the United States of America – no such policy existed before President Obama uttered it — that all instruments of American power to prevent — not contain, not contain -— to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran would be used to prevent that from happening.
…our military had the capacity and the capability to execute the mission, if it was required. (DF. This was an explicit US presidential pledge to use military force to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran.)

Vice President Biden then laid down 12 conditions as the sine qua non for a deal. “If what’s on the table doesn’t meet the President’s requirements, there will be no deal,” he said.

A final deal must effectively cut off Iran’s uranium, plutonium and covert pathways to the bomb.
The final deal must ensure a breakout timeline of at least one year for at least a decade or more.
A final deal must include phased sanction relief, calibrated against Iran taking meaningful steps to constrain their program. (DF. Iran insists on immediate sanctions relief.)
A final deal must provide verifiable assurances to ensure Iran’s program is exclusively peaceful.
If they did try to cheat… they would be far more likely to be caught because… we’ll also put in place the toughest transparency and verification requirements.
Iran will be required to implement the Additional Protocols, allowing IAEA inspectors to visit not only declared nuclear facilities, but undeclared sites where suspicious, clandestine work is suspected and address IAEA concerns about the military dimensions of past nuclear research.
Not only would Iran be required to allow 24/7 eyes on the nuclear sites you’ve heard of — Fordow and Natantz and Arak — and the ability to challenge suspect locations, every link in their nuclear supply chain will be under surveillance.
And if Iran resumes its pursuit of nuclear weapons, no option available today will be off the table. In fact, the options will be greatly increased because we will know so much more.

Biden went on to warn: “Let’s not kid each other. They already have paved a path to a bomb’s worth of material. Iran could get there now if they walked away in two to three months without a deal.” He went on to say: “Without this deal, they already have enough material if further enriched for as many as eight nuclear bombs. Already, right now, as I speak to you.

Under the proposed final deal, the Arak reactor will be redesigned to produce zero weapons-grade plutonium. The spent fuel will be required to be shipped out of Iran for the life of the reactor. And Iran will be barred from building the reprocessing plant for extracting bomb-grade material from plutonium.

“Finally there is the myth that a nuclear deal between the United States and Iran enables Iran to gain dominance inside the Middle East.” The US vice president protested: “But it is a nuclear bargain between Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany, the EU, America and Iran – one that reduces the risk of nuclear war and makes the region and the world a safer place,” he stressed.

“We are working continually to develop the means and capacity to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities…“ he said citing the Strait of Hormuz. We are prepared to use (inaudible) the force.”

Biden wound up his peroration by directing these words to Israel. “It’s true we disagree sometimes. But as I said last week at Israel’s Independence Day celebration, we’re family. I think it was Ambassador Dermer who essentially said the same thing. We drive each other nuts. But we love each other. And most of all we protect each other.”

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources note: The Obama administration appears willing to keep on smiling towards Israel. US Secretary of State John Kerry will soon schedule a visit to Israel, after staying away for a long time, The visit will be billed as promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but his real errand will be to test the ground with Prime Minister Netanyahu and assess how successful the White House’s gestures of affection have been in toning down his opposition to the nuclear deal.

For now, the host of critics who accused Netanyahu of causing an irreparable breach with Washington over the nuclear issue have retired to a corner.

Categories: Biden, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Iran, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Lies, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, Peace process, Two state solution
Tags: Biden, Foreign Policy, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nuke inspections, Iranian nukes, Israel, Lies, Netanyahu, Obama, Peace Process, Two state solution

Comments: 4 Comments

Column One: The Marshall Islands’ cautionary tale

May 1, 2015

Column One: The Marshall Islands’ cautionary tale, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, April 30, 2015

Iranian navy ship

Iranian navy ship.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

There is a thread that runs between Obama’s policy toward Iran and his policy toward Israel.

On Tuesday, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps forcibly commandeered the Maersk Tigris as navigated its way through the Straits of Hormuz. Iran controls the strategic waterway through which 40 percent of seaborne oil and a quarter of seaborne gas transits to global markets.

The Maersk Tigris is flagged to the Marshall Islands. The South Pacific archipelago gained its independence from the US in 1986 after signing a treaty conceding its right to self-defense in exchange for US protection. According to the treaty, the US has “full authority and responsibility for security and defense of the Marshall Islands.”

Given the US’s formal, binding obligation to the Marshall Islands, the Iranian seizure of the ship was in effect an act of war against America.

In comments to Bloomberg hours after the ship was seized, Junior Aini, chargé d’affairs at the Marshall Islands Embassy in Washington, indicated that his government’s only recourse is to rely on the US to free its ship.

Immediately after the incident began, the US Navy deployed a destroyer to the area. But that didn’t seem to make much of an impression on the Iranians. More significant than the naval movement was the fact that the Obama administration failed to condemn their unlawful action.

If the administration continues to stand by in the face of Iran’s aggression, the strategic implications will radiate far beyond the US’s bilateral ties with the Marshall Islands. If the US allows Iran to get away with unlawfully seizing a Marshall Islands flagged ship it is treaty bound to protect, it will reinforce the growing assessment of its Middle Eastern allies that its security guarantees are worthless.

As the Israel Project’s Omri Ceren put it in an email briefing to journalists, “the US would be using security assurances not to shield allies from Iran but to shield Iran from allies.”

But President Barack Obama apparently won’t allow a bit of Iranian naval piracy to rain on his parade. This week Obama indicated that he feels very good about where his policy on Iran now stands. And he has every reason to be satisfied.

With each day that passes, the chance diminishes that his nuclear deal with the mullahs will be scuppered.

On the one hand, the Iranians are signaling that they are willing to sign a deal with the Great Satan. And this makes sense. For them the deal has no downside.

First there’s the money. Last week the State Department indicated that it won’t rule out paying Iran a $50 billion “signing bonus.”

The $50b. would be an advance on Iranian funds that have been frozen in Western banks under the terms of the sanctions regime that would be lifted in the event a deal is concluded.

Iran can do a lot with $50b.

Iran is spending $3b. a month to finance its war in Syria. With $50b. in their pockets the ayatollahs can fight for another year and a half without selling a barrel of oil.

According to a report earlier this week on Channel 10, during Syrian Defense Minister General Fahd al-Freij’s visit to Tehran this week, he was instructed to enable Hezbollah to open a front against Israel on the Golan Heights. Iran’s “signing bonus” would pay for Iran’s new war against Israel.

As for their nuclear weapons program, even Obama admitted that when his deal expires in 10 years, Iran will have the capacity to build nuclear weapons at will.

Iran can get around the ideological issue of signing with its theological foe by focusing its hatred on the US Congress, something Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif did effortlessly at a press conference in New York on Wednesday.

At home as well, Obama no longer faces serious opposition to his Iran policy. The Iranian Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the bill now being debated on the Senate floor, ensures that Congress will have no ability to stand in the way of the deal. In contrast to the provisions of the US Constitution that require a two-third Senate majority to approve an international treaty, the Senate bill requires a two-third majority of senators to block the implementation of Obama’s nuclear deal with the greatest state sponsor of terrorism.

Obama has successfully bullied centrist Democrat senators into abandoning their concern for US national security and supporting his deal.

They in turn have convinced centrist Republicans – and AIPAC – to push forward the legislation and so turn Congress into partner in Obama’s nuclear gambit.

Attempts by Republican senators, including presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, to attach amendments to the bill that would require Congress to either treat the deal as an international treaty, or at the very least require a simple majority to reject it, have been strenuously opposed not only by the Democrats, but by the Republican leadership as well.

Obama’s confidence that his deal will go through has freed him up to mark the next target of his foreign policy in what he recently referred to as the “fourth quarter” of his presidency: Israel.

According to a report in Foreign Policy, the administration is now seeking to delay anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council – including a French draft resolution that would require Israel to surrender all of Judea and Samaria and northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem to the Palestinians – until after the deal with Iran is concluded at the end of June. According to the report, the administration doesn’t want to upset pro-Israel Democrats while it still needs them to approve the deal with Iran.

But Obama has no problem with marking the target.

And so, on Monday, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman did just that.

In an address before Reform Jews, Sherman issued a direct threat against Israel.

In her words, “If the new Israeli government is seen to be stepping back from its commitment to a two-state solution, that will make our job in the international arena much tougher… it will be harder for us to prevent internationalizing the conflict.”

In an apparent attempt to soften the harsh impression Sherman’s statement made on the Israeli public, on Wednesday US Ambassador Dan Shapiro gave an interview to Army Radio.

Although his American-accented Hebrew is always a crowd pleaser, Shapiro’s statements were simply a more diplomatic restatement of Sherman’s threat.

As he put it, “We are entering a period without negotiations [between Israel and the Palestinians] and this leads us to two important challenges.

One – how do we make progress toward the two-states for two-peoples solution, and two – negotiations have always been critical to preventing the delegitimization of Israel.”

In other words, Shapiro signaled that the Obama administration expects Israel to make significant concessions to the Palestinians in return of nothing, in the absence of negotiations.

And if we fail to make such unreciprocated concessions, we will have no legitimacy and the US will have no choice but to act against Israel at the UN.

That is, by Shapiro’s and Sherman’s telling, Israel’s unwillingness to bow to Palestinian and US demands for concessions to the Palestinians is what has caused and what feeds the international campaign to delegitimize its right to exist.

For anyone who entertains the thought that Shapiro and Sherman are correct to blame Israel for the movement to delegitimize it, this week we received new proof of its falsity.

This week, the leaders of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement condemned Israel not for failing to make concessions to the Palestinians. This week they condemned the Jewish state for helping Nepal earthquake victims.

Ever since the Israeli humanitarian aid mission set off for Nepal earlier this week, leading figures in the BDS movement have been working overtime to attribute ill and even demonic intentions to their mission.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted on his Twitter account, “Easier to address a far-away humanitarian disaster than the nearby one of Israel’s making in Gaza. End the blockade!” Max Blumenthal, a Jewish anti-Semite who has risen to prominence in the BDS campaign, tweeted, “For a country responsible for so many man-made catastrophes, natural disasters can’t come often enough.”

Ali Abumiah, the editor of Electronic Intifada, intoned that Israel was racist to evacuate newborn infants born to surrogate mothers in Nepal and leave the surrogates behind. He also tweeted, “Propaganda operation goes into high gear to exploit Nepal earthquake to improve Israel’s blood-soaked image.”

These assaults, which attribute malign, exploitative designs to Israel’s humanitarian relief efforts, make clear that there is no connection between Israel’s actions and hostility toward Israel.

The purpose of the BDS movement is not to pressure Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.

Its purpose is to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and delegitimize support for Israel’s right to exist.

If Israel is evil for sending hundreds of soldiers and relief workers to Nepal to rescue earthquake victims, clearly Israel will be attacked as evil for making concessions to the Palestinians that the Palestinians and the Obama administration will insist are insufficient.

Shapiro’s claim that negotiations between Israel and the PLO, or Israeli unilateral concessions to the Palestinians, protect Israel from its Western detractors is totally unfounded.

There is a thread that runs between Obama’s policy toward Iran and his policy toward Israel.

That common threat is mendacity. Obama’s actual goals in both have little to do with his stated ones.

Obama claims that he wishes to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But as we see from his willingness to allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state while running wild in the Straits of Hormuz, committing mass slaughter in Syria, building an empire that includes Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and threatening its Arab neighbors and Israel, the purpose of the administration’s negotiations with Iran is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

The purpose of the negotiations is to build an American-Iranian alliance on Iran’s terms.

So, too, Obama says his goal is to advance the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

But his pressure and hostility toward Israel does nothing to achieve this goal. The goal of a policy of acting with hostility toward Israel is not to promote peace. It is to distance the US from Israel and align America’s Israel policy with Europe’s preternaturally hostile treatment of the Jewish state.

Three days after a ship sailing under their flag was seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, citizens of the Marshall Islands discovered that their decision to place their security in America’s hands is no longer the safe bet they thought it was 29 years ago.

Anyone who entertains the belief that Israel will gain diplomatic acceptance or even a respite from American pressure if it makes concessions to the Palestinians is similarly making a high risk gamble.

Categories: Foreign policy, Freedom of the seas, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian navy, Iranian nukes, Israel, Marshall Islands, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, Obama administration, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Peace process, Sanctions, Two state solution, U.S. Congress
Tags: Foreign Policy, Freedom of the seas, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian navy, Iranian nukes, Israel, Marshall Islands, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, Obama Administration, Palestinian Authority, Peace Process, Sanctions, Two state solution, U.S. Congress

Comments: 1 Comment

US warns new Israeli government to ‘remain committed’ to two-state solution

April 28, 2015

US warns new Israeli government to ‘remain committed’ to two-state solution
April 27th 2015 05:44pm Via I24 News

(In other words, be good little boys and girls and Uncle Barack will be nice to you. Hang in there guys. You’ve got 632 days left of his crap. In case you want to check from time to time, here’s a link that might help below. Just don’t check it too often as it will seem to slow down. – LS)

CLICK HERE FOR OBAMA COUNTDOWN CLOCK

Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman warns it will be ‘tough to stand up for Israel at UN’ otherwise

American Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman warned Jewish leaders that if the new Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backs down from its commitment to a two-state solution, it would be difficult for the United States to stand-up for the Jewish state at the United Nations.

Speaking at a conference of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, Sherman stated that “the US has stood up to efforts to single out Israel internationally” but that “the US will be watching closely how the new Israeli government will address the issue of the two-state solution.”

Sherman warned that the United States, which has stood up against efforts to single out Israel, will have a much tougher time “standing up for Israel internationally” if Netanyahu’s new government should back down from a commitment from a two-state solution.

Secretary of State John Kerry said in March that US President Barack Obama has has remained “committed” to a two-state solution for Israel and Palestinians.

“The position of the United States with respect to our long expressed hope, the Republicans and the Democrats alike (and) many presidents of the last 50 years or more, has always been for peace and President Obama remains committed to a two-state solution.”

Obama told reporters at a joint White House news conference that “we believe that two states is the best path forward for Israel’s security, for Palestinian aspirations and for regional stability.

“That’s our view and that continues to be our view. And Prime Minister Netanyahu has a different approach.”

Obama said the United States still backs the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and that he would take the issue up with Netanyahu’s government once it is formed.

“This is a matter of figuring out how we get through a knotty policy difference that has great consequences for both countries and the region,” he said.

Since Netanyahu’s party won Israel’s March 17 election, not a day has passed without a US comment — official or otherwise — on the implications of his hardline rhetoric.

During campaigning he said he would block a Palestinian state and on polling day raised the specter of an Israeli Arab rush to the polls to drum up right-wing votes saying “the rule of the right wing is in danger: Arab voters are going to the polls in droves.”

Although Netanyahu has since tried to back-track — denying he reneged on the idea of a two-state solution and apologizing for giving offense — the damage has been done.

In addition to Obama’s stern reminder, US officials have been feeding criticism of Israel’s tactics to the American media.

Some in Israel, however, see the accusations and criticism coming from Washington as sour grapes from a US administration who would have liked to have seen Netanyahu’s coalition fall.

Categories: Appeasement
Tags: Peace Process

Comments: 58 Comments

Humor?| Obama to Israel: I have your back

April 8, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are either mine or those of my guest author. They do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

The Most Revereddd Mohamed Allah-scimitar

The Most Revereddd Mohamed Allah-scimitar

This is a post by my (imaginary) guest author, the Most Reverend Mohamed Allah-scimitar, President Obama’s chief foreign policy adviser on Islamic relations with Christians and Jews. But first, some related observations:

Iran continues to reject as lies Obama’s statements about the April 2nd P5+1 nuke “deal,” and states that it “could build bomb today” but won’t because of Ayatollah Khamenei’s (non-existent) fatwa. Understandably, Israel is becoming increasingly concerned about her future existence. Obama’s claims that He has her back and that she therefore need not worry about anyone (else) who tries to “mess with Israel.” His assurances have provided scant comfort.

Here’s are the comforting(?) words of the Most Reverend Mohamed Allah-scimitar.

***********************

Lord Obama has Israel’s back almost to the same extent that He has the Obama Nation’s back and will protect her if necessary. For Israel to maintain, and even improve, her weapons minimizing destruction (WMDs) is an unacceptable insult to Him and to all for which He stands.

During Israel’s “Protective Edge” war against peaceful Palestinians in Gaza, Israel shamelessly shifted the odds disproportionately in her own favor by using the Iron Dome to thwart efforts to destroy her major cities. She provided not even one Iron Dome to the Palestinians! Since that time, she has improved the Iron Dome and developed other WMDs less dependent upon lengthy trajectory tracking of missiles and perhaps even mortar rounds. Racist to the core, she has no regard for social justice, equality and the sad plight she has imposed on the Palestinians. Indeed, they are forced to rely on funds (“tens of millions of dollars”) from Iran to help rebuild Tunnels for Peace (TFP) and resupply their stocks of Missiles for Peace (MFP).

Now that Israel claims that peaceful Iranian nuclear weapons are an existential threat, she is doubtless looking for — and probably finding — ways to escape their consequences as well. Doing so is risible because Lord Obama has explained patiently — even as He would to a backward child — that it is unnecessary. He has her back, as He always had and always will.

Nobody except Obama had dare mess with Israel! Not even Netanyahu! Hence, there is no need for Iran to recognize Israel’s speciously claimed right to continue to exist, which would require fundamental changes in Iran. For Israel to insist on it is a fundamental misjudgment.

Lord Obama is able and willing to act, if necessary, to demonstrate the firmness of His resolve. Indeed, it has already been rumored that He may dispatch His own beloved mother in law from her happy home in the White House to live with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Occupied Palestine. If so, she will be accompanied by a suitable contingent of unarmed Organizing for Action volunteers. Recognizing, however, that more may be required, Lord Obama has been negotiating with Iran to provide the unjustly impoverished Palestinians not only free electrical power but also medically useful radioactive isotopes as well as others for other peaceful purposes. Despite the petty squabbles between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, Iran will treat them equally.

Israel should and will cease to exist but, with Lord Obama in the picture, Iran should not be a concern.

**************************

There is no P5+1 “deal” and it seems unlikely that there ever will be, no matter how many contortions Obama and Kerry attempt. A deal like the one described in Obama’s talking points would be bad enough. However, Iran has rejected His talking points, has stated that it could build nukes now if it so desired and that the only impediment is a (non-existent) fatwa issued by the Supreme Leader. The Iranian foreign minister has been quoted as saying that

Iran will begin using its latest generation IR-8 centrifuges as soon as its nuclear deal with the world powers goes into effect, Iran’s foreign minister and nuclear chief told members of parliament on Tuesday, according to Iran’s semi-official FARS news agency. [Emphasis added.]

If accurate, the report makes a mockery of the world powers’ much-hailed framework agreement with Iran, since such a move clearly breaches the US-published terms of the deal, and would dramatically accelerate Iran’s potential progress to the bomb.

Iran’s military sites are, of course, off limits to inspections according to Iran’s Defense Minister. Meanwhile, the Supreme Leader continues to lead “death to America” chants and Iranian television continues to entertain its viewers with simulations of nuclear attacks on Israel.

[T]he Islamic Republic has announced a new documentary film which will celebrate the life of Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. It’s bad enough lionizing a master terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the description of the film is even more telling: The film Commander will depict Iran’s and Soleimani’s strategic approach to destroy not only the Islamic State but also “the Zionist regime.” Importantly, the article describing the film was published after agreement on a nuclear framework between the P5+1 and Iran. [Emphasis added.]

Categories: centrifuges, Diplomacy, Fatwa, Foreign policy, Hamas, Humor, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Jews, Mad Mullahs, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Supreme Leader, Terrorists, Theocracy, Two state solution
Tags: centrifuges, Fatwa, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Humor, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Mad Mullahs, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace Process, Supreme leader, Terrorists, Two state solution

Comments: 4 Comments

The Shadow of Munich Haunts the Iran Negotiations

April 2, 2015

The Shadow of Munich Haunts the Iran Negotiations, National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson, April 2, 2015

(Hitler did tell the truth occasionally, in Mein Kampf for example. It was generally ignored until too late. “Death to America and Israel” are spouted by the Iranian Supreme Leader at every opportunity. Obama, et al, ignore it. Will Israel be Obama’s Czechoslovakia? And then what?– DM)

Our dishonor in Lausanne, as with Munich, may avoid a confrontation in the present, but our shame will guarantee a war in the near future.

*********************

Once again our leaders are needlessly appeasing a hostile state that shows them nothing but contempt.

The Western capitulation to Adolf Hitler in the 1938 Munich Agreement is cited as classic appeasement that destroyed Czechoslovakia, backfired on France and Britain, and led to World War II. All of that is true.

But there was much more that caused the Munich debacle than simple Western naiveté. The full tragedy of that ill-fated agreement should warn us on the eve of the Obama’s administration’s gullible agreement with Iran on nuclear proliferation. Fable one is the idea that most people saw right through the Munich folly. True, Europeans knew that Hitler had never once told the truth and was already murdering German citizens who were Jews, Communists, or homosexuals. But Europeans did not care all that much.

Instead, the Western world was ecstatic over the agreement. After the carnage of World War I, Europeans would do anything to avoid even a small confrontation — even if such appeasement all but ensured a far greater bloodbath than the one that began in 1914.

Another myth was that Hitler’s Wehrmacht was strong and the democracies were weak. In fact, the combined French and British militaries were far larger than Hitler’s. French Char tanks and British Spitfire fighters were as good as, or superior to, their German counterparts.

Czechoslovakia had formidable defenses and an impressive arms industry. Poland and perhaps even the Soviet Union were ready to join a coalition to stop Hitler from dissolving the Czech state.

It is also untrue that the Third Reich was united. Many of Hitler’s top generals did not want war. Yet each time Hitler successfully called the Allies’ bluff — in the Rhineland or with the annexation of Austria — the credibility of his doubters sank while his own reckless risk-taking became even more popular.

Munich was hardly a compassionate agreement. In callous fashion it immediately doomed millions of Czechs and put Poland on the target list of the Third Reich.

Munich was directly tied to the vanity of Neville Chamberlain. In the first few weeks after Munich, Chamberlain basked in adulation, posing as the humane savior of Western civilization. In contrast, loud skeptic Winston Churchill was dismissed by the media and public as an old warmonger.

Hitler failed to appreciate the magnanimity and concessions of the French and British. He later called his Munich diplomatic partners “worms.” Hitler said of the obsequious Chamberlain, “I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers.”

The current negotiations with the Iranians in Lausanne, Switzerland, have all the hallmarks of the Munich negotiations.

Most Westerners accept that the Iranian government funds terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. It has all but taken over Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Yet the idea of stronger sanctions, blockades, or even force to stop Iranian efforts to get a bomb are considered scarier than Iran getting a bomb that it just possibly might not threaten to use.

The U.S. and its NATO partners are far stronger than Iran in every imaginable measure of military and economic strength. The Iranian economy is struggling, its government is corrupt, and its conventional military is obsolete. Iran’s only chance of gaining strength is to show both its own population and the world at large that stronger Western powers backed down in fear of its threats and recklessness.

Iran is not united. It is a mishmash nation in which over a third of the population is not Persian. Millions of protestors hit the streets in 2009. An Iranian journalist covering the talks defected in Switzerland — and said that U.S. officials at the talks are there mainly to speak on behalf of Iran.

By reaching an agreement with Iran, John Kerry and Barack Obama hope to salvage some sort of legacy — in the vain fashion of Chamberlain — out of a heretofore failed foreign policy.

There are more Munich parallels. The Iranian agreement will force rich Sunni nations to get their own bombs to ensure a nuclear Middle East standoff. A deal with Iran shows callous disagreed for our close ally Israel, which is serially threatened by Iran’s mullahs. The United States is distant from Iran. But our allies in the Middle East and Europe are within its missile range.

Supporters of the Obama administration deride skeptics such as Democratic senator Robert Menendez and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as if they were doubting old Churchills.

Finally, the Iranians, like Hitler, have only contempt for the administration that has treated them so fawningly. During the negotiations in Switzerland, the Iranians blew up a mock U.S. aircraft carrier. Their supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, did his usual “death to America” shtick before adoring crowds. Our dishonor in Lausanne, as with Munich, may avoid a confrontation in the present, but our shame will guarantee a war in the near future.

Categories: Appeasement, Chamberlain, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Germany, Gulf states, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Islamism, Israel, Kerry, Khamenei, Munich, Nazis, Nukes, Obama, Peace process, Shiite, Shiite crescent, Sunni, Theocracy
Tags: Appeasement, Chamberlain, Czechoslovakia, Foreign Policy, Germany, Gulf states, Hitler, Iran, Iran military, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Islamism, Israel, Khamenei, Munich, Nazis, Nukes, Peace Process, Shiite, Shiite crescent, Sunni, Theocracy

Comments: 2 Comments

Victory Against ISIS in Tikrit Will Embolden Iran

April 2, 2015

Victory Against ISIS in Tikrit Will Embolden Iran, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, April 2, 2015

370x270xtikrit-450x328.png.pagespeed.ic.9xBCkeIFLH

The downside to playing on the same team as the Iranian regime, even in just this one military campaign against ISIS, is that we are helping to enable a far more dangerous power than ISIS to extend its hegemonic dominance throughout the entire region.

****************

Iraq’s defense minister Khalid al-Obeidi is claiming victory over ISIS forces in the city of Tikrit, which ISIS had captured last summer as its forces advanced across large swaths of territory in northern and western Iraq. “We have the pleasure, with all our pride, to announce the good news of a magnificent victory,” Obeidi said. The Pentagon and a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition were a bit more cautious, noting some residual ISIS resistance. However, they too reported that significant progress had been made in wresting control of Saddam Hussein’s birthplace from ISIS’s grip.

The next strategic military objective in pushing ISIS back from the territories it controls in Iraq is to re-take Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul.

Iran supplied significant military support to the Shiite militia forces, who were a major part of the Iraqi counter-offensive on the ground. At the same time, U.S. air strikes seemed to have helped in supporting the Iraqi ground forces’ advance into Tikrit. The precise extent of any behind-the-scenes direct or indirect coordination between the U.S. and Iran is unknown at the present time. However, according to DebkaFile {March 26, 2015), “In the last two weeks of the Tikrit operation, liaison between the US and Iranian military in Iraq was routed through the office of the Iraqi Prime Minister in Baghdad.”

There is little question that without the Iranian-backed Shiite militia and substantial military support on the ground from Iran, ISIS would most likely still be in control of Tikrit today. U.S. airstrikes may have been necessary to soften ISIS’s resistance, but only ground troops with Iran’s support could dislodge them.

The downside to playing on the same team as the Iranian regime, even in just this one military campaign against ISIS, is that we are helping to enable a far more dangerous power than ISIS to extend its hegemonic dominance throughout the entire region.

As General David Petraeus, who certainly knows something about Iraq, told the Washington Post recently:

In fact, I would argue that the foremost threat to Iraq’s long-term stability and the broader regional equilibrium is not the Islamic State; rather, it is Shiite militias, many backed by — and some guided by — Iran… Longer term, Iranian-backed Shia militia could emerge as the preeminent power in the country, one that is outside the control of the government and instead answerable to Tehran.

Without downplaying ISIS’s horrific acts, its rapid-fire successes in Syria and Iraq (even with the setback in Tikrit), and its growing allegiances in Libya, Nigeria and areas further away from its home base including Afghanistan, the fact is that ISIS’s ambitions far exceed its current means for achieving them. ISIS is proficient in using social media for recruitment, propaganda and intimidation purposes, but that can only take ISIS so far.

Iran, by contrast, has built up its military capabilities to the point that it can back up its aggressive threats in the region. And that’s even without the nuclear arms capability that President Obama seems to be willing to risk allowing Iran to achieve in order to secure his legacy with a deal.

As a result, America’s traditional Sunni allies in the region such as Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states are doubting whether they can continue to count on the United States for support. And they are taking matters into their own hands, including a decision to form a multinational Arab military force to respond to Iranian aggression and other perceived threats.

As explained by Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo and quoted by the New York Times: “The U.S. is much less trusted as an ally, as an insurance policy towards the security threats facing the governments in the region, and so those governments decide to act on their own.”

These governments know their neighborhood well and see Iran as a much graver threat to regional peace and security than ISIS. Iran’s military and financial support of the Shiite Houthi rebels in taking control of major parts of Yemen was the last straw. Saudi Arabia on its own initiative decided to launch an air campaign against Houthi positions in Yemen and has not ruled out a ground attack along with the military forces of other Arab countries.

In response to the air and sea blockade of Yemen that Saudi Arabia is imposing on Yemen, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei decided to dispatch “two naval task forces to sail to the Red Sea,” according to DebkaFile (March 31, 2015). “The naval task forces are being sent to draw a sea shield around the Houthi forces to defend them against Saudi-Egyptian assaults. This maneuver was orchestrated by the Al Qods Brigades chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani,” DebkaFile reported.

Soleimani certainly gets around. Earlier this month he popped up in Iraq to lead the Shiite militias in their fight against ISIS. Now the man who fought on the same side as us against ISIS in Iraq is apparently coordinating Iran’s fight to hold onto the Houthis’ gains in Yemen where they forced the American and Saudi Arabian-backed president to flee.

Soleimani is “the puppet master controlling numerous Iranian surrogates in various countries,” said Jim Phillips, Middle East analyst for the Heritage Foundation. “His organization is drenched in American blood,” Phillips added. “It’s infused with an anti-American philosophy and a cooperation with him or his followers would not be on a sustainable basis. The U.S. would regret it.”

The Obama administration is now scrambling to catch up with Iran’s multi-pronged offensives, some of which are under Soleimani’s coordination. Thus, President Obama decided to support the Sunni Gulf coalition and Egypt against Iranian-backed action by the Shiite Houthi rebels to take control of Yemen.

However, the Obama administration’s reactive tactics in dealing with the crisis in Yemen are too little too late. Saudi Arabia is reportedly looking to Pakistan for help in acquiring its own nuclear arms to counter the Saudis’ well-founded suspicions that any deal negotiated by the Obama administration with Iran will not prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear armed power. And while Obama finally lifted the arms freeze he imposed against Egypt two years ago, clearing the way for the delivery of F-16 aircraft, Harpoon missiles and tanks, he also decided to end Egypt’s ability to finance purchases of American arms by drawing credits in advance based on future aid Egypt expects to receive starting in the 2018 fiscal year. Obama also wants to reduce Egypt’s flexibility in what it can purchase with the future military aid. Thus, the Egyptian government can be expected to continue on its course to find other sources for military aid and weapons including Russia, because of doubts that the U.S. will remain a reliable supplier.

The Obama administration has been willing to sacrifice the confidence of its Arab allies, not to mention the United States’ historically close alliance with Israel, in a vain effort to lure the Iranian regime into acting as a responsible party in the Middle East that can help stabilize this volatile region. Instead, Obama should listen to the expert on Iraq, General Petraeus, whose surge victory Obama undermined completely with his precipitous withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011:

The current Iranian regime is not our ally in the Middle East. It is ultimately part of the problem, not the solution. The more the Iranians are seen to be dominating the region, the more it is going to inflame Sunni radicalism and fuel the rise of groups like the Islamic State…Iranian power in the Middle East is thus a double problem. It is foremost problematic because it is deeply hostile to us and our friends. But it is also dangerous because, the more it is felt, the more it sets off reactions that are also harmful to our interests — Sunni radicalism and, if we aren’t careful, the prospect of nuclear proliferation as well.

We can rejoice in the pushback of ISIS out of Tikrit. Perhaps it is a sign of more victories over ISIS to come. However, we should not delude ourselves into thinking that we have more in common with the Iranian regime in combatting ISIS in Iraq or Syria than the Iranian regime ultimately has in common with ISIS. They may be bitter enemies in the struggle over which set of fanatical jihadists should get to rule the global Islamic ummah or caliphate they both fantasize about. However, both fervently believe in the fundamental ideological goal of universal Islamic supremacy. And both are willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of people to reach that goal, no matter how long it takes them. The difference is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be much more capable of carrying out its jihadists’ apocalyptic vision than ISIS and in a much shorter period of time.

Categories: Caliphate, Foreign policy, Gulf states, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Islamic State, Islamism, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Peace process, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria, Tikrit, Yemen
Tags: Caliphate, Foreign Policy, Gulf states, Iran, Iran military, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Iraq, Islamic State, Islamism, Middle East, Nukes, Peace Process, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria, Tikrit, Yemen

Comments: Be the first to comment

Archives