WarSclerotic

White House Instructs Allies To Lean On ‘Jewish Community’ to Force Iran Deal

Officials push polling from fringe left-wing J Street organization

BY: Adam Kredo Follow @Kredo0
July 7, 2015 3:02 pm

via White House Instructs Allies To Lean On ‘Jewish Community’ to Force Iran Deal | Washington Free Beacon.

VIENNA—The White House is targeting Jewish groups in its latest push to blunt congressional criticism of an Iran deal that observers expect to be sealed in the coming days, according to a recording of a strategy conference call obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and experts familiar with the call.

The White House’s liaison to the Jewish community on Monday advised dozens of progressive groups to push a poll commissioned and distributed by the liberal fringe group J Street, which has been defending a deal with Iran.

Matt Nosanchuk, an official in the White House Office of Public Engagement, who also serves as Jewish liaison, cited J Street’s poll and urged liberal activists present on the call to cite its numbers when defending a deal with Iran.

The private strategy call, which included more than 100 participants, was organized by the Ploughshares Fund, a liberal group that has spent millions of dollars to slant Iran-related coverage and protect the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts.

Nosanchuk told participants there is support for the deal “within the Jewish community, where J Street has recently done a poll that shows even in that community when you describe the terms of a deal you have upwards of 78 percent of respondents supporting it.”

Virtually all polling stretching back several months, including polling featured on conservative and progressive outlets, shows that while Americans are divided on the wisdom of negotiations, they believe that a deal would not prevent Iran from constructing a nuclear weapon.

Critics of J Street’s poll have pointed out that it polled respondents on a hypothetical deal that does not actually exist.

J Street, which has received money from Ploughshares, has long been viewed as a pariah in the mainstream Jewish community. The group’s consistent attacks on Israel and criticism of its policies has unnerved and angered many Jewish leaders, including some in Congress.

“The lies this White House and its allies will tell about this deal seem to know no bounds, and now there exists the audiotape to prove it,” said a top official with a leading pro-Israel group. “No matter the facts of the deal, they will send Americans to lie to each other to further Obama’s legacy.”

Nosanchuk went on to tell participants that the issue of Iran has been the president’s chief priority in the Oval Office since day one.

“This has really been on the front burner from a foreign perspective, although not in the public eye necessarily, since the very beginning,” Nosanchuk said. “This is not an issue of the day, this is really an issue of the presidency.”

Robert Creamer, a member of the liberal political shop Democracy Partners who was also featured on the conference call, told participants they need to prepare for “a real war” against skeptics of the White House’s diplomacy.

Nosanchuk’s role in organizing the call is generating controversy and suspicions that the White House is targeting the Jewish community as part of its campaign against critics who accuse the administration of having made excessive concessions to Iran.

“Why is @WhiteHouse “Jewish Liaison” @MattNosanchuk leading #IranDeal charge?” the advocacy group United Against a Nuclear Iran tweeted following the initial Free Beacon report on the call. “Concerns ALL Americans.”

One senior official at a D.C.-based Jewish organization said there was nothing surprising about the White House’s strategy.

“This is a White House that has, from the very beginning of nuclear negotiations with Iran, used whatever Jewish groups it could find as cover for making staggering concessions to the Iranians,” said the official, who would only speak on background, citing concerns that the administration has been known to retaliate against critics in the Jewish world. “Apparently some groups haven’t learned their lesson yet—or, like J Street, don’t seem to want to learn.”

President Barack Obama acknowledged in an interview months ago that the deal would, after roughly a decade, leave Iran months away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

Another official with an advocacy group that has been critical of the administration’s Iran policy also expressed displeasure that the administration’s Jewish liaison is coordinating efforts to back the Iran deal.

“It leaves a bad taste in the mouth that the White House Jewish Liaison is leading efforts to sell the Iran deal to the American public,” said the source, who also expressed fear about discussing the issue on record. “This is a matter that concerns all Americans. It seems the administration sees advantages in compartmentalizing this as a Jewish, pro-Israel issue instead of a broader national security one.”

U.S. and Iranian negotiators agreed on Tuesday to extend the talks for a second time as the two sides attempt to resolve key differences and secure a final deal.

Iranian officials continue to insist that the United States “give up their excessive demands.”

Tehran maintains that economic sanctions must be lifted in full before international inspectors are given entry to its military facilities.

White House: Obama Will Fight Media To Stop Anti-Jihad Articles

via White House: Obama Will Fight Media To Stop Anti-Jihad Articles | The Daily Caller.

President Barack Obama has a moral responsibility to push back on the nation’s journalism community when it is planning to publish anti-jihadi articles that might cause a jihadi attack against the nation’s defenses forces, the White House’s press secretary said Jan. 12.

“The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke jihadist attacks, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at the White House’s daily briefing.

The unprecedented reversal of Americans’ civil-military relations, and of the president’s duty to protect the First Amendment, was pushed by Earnest as he tried to excuse the administration’s opposition in 2012 to the publication of anti-jihadi cartoons by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The White House voiced its objections in 2012 after the magazine’s office were burned by jihadis, followings its publication of anti-jihadi cartoons.

Earnest’s defense of tho 2012 objections came just five days after the magazine’s office was attacked by additional jihadis. Eight journalists, two policeman and a visitor were murdered by two French-born Muslims who objected to the magazine’s criticism of Islam’s final prophet.

In 2012, “there was a genuine concern that the publication of some of those materials could put Americans abroad at risk, including American soldiers at risk,” Earnest said.

“That is something that the commander in chief takes very seriously,” he added, before saying that “the president and his spokesman was not then and will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform.”

In December, Congress approved and the president signed a $585 billion defense budget to train and equip soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen to defend Americans — including journalists — from foreign threats. The nation’s media industry does not have a defense budget to protect soldiers.

Earnest tried to rationalize the president’s opposition to the publication of anti-jihadist materials as a moral duty.

Whenever journalists consider publishing materials disliked by jihadis, “I think there are a couple of absolutes,” he told the reporters.

The first is “that the publication of any kind of material in no way justifies any act of violence, let alone an act of violence that we saw on the scale in Paris,” he said.

The second absolute is the president’s duty to lobby editors and reporters against publishing anti-jihadi information, he said. ”And there is — this president, as the commander in chief, believes strongly in the responsibility that he has to advocate for our men and women in uniform, particularly if it’s going to make them safer,” Earnest said.

He repeated the two-fisted formulation a moment later. ”What won’t change is our view that that freedom of expression in no way justifies an act of violence against the person who expressed a view. And the president considers the safety and security of our men and women in uniform to be something worth fighting for,” he said.

Throughout the press conference, Earnest repeatedly said the media would be able to decide on its own whether to publish pictures, articles or facts that could prompt another murderous jihad attack by Muslim against journalists.

But he did not say that his government has a constitutional and moral duty to use the nation’s huge military to protect journalists from armed jihadis, but instead hinted strongly that journalists should submit to jihadi threats.

“I think that there are any number of reasons that [U.S.] media organizations have made a decision not to reprint the cartoons” after the January attack, he said. “In some cases, maybe they were concerned about their physical safety. In other cases, they were exercising some judgment in a different way. So we certainly would leave it to media organizations to make a decision like this.”

“What I’m saying is that individual news organizations have to assess that risk for themselves,” he said. “I think the point in the mind of the president and certainly everybody here at the White House is that that is a question that should be answered by journalists.”

“I’m confident in saying that for the vast majority of media organizations, that [fear is] not the only factor. But I would readily concede that it is one in the minds of many of those news executives. But again, that is a decision for all of them to make,” he said.

Obama’s willingness to pressure media outlets, to quit defending First Amendment rights and also to mollify jihadis, reflects Obama’s overall policy of minimizing conflict with militant Islam.

Throughout his presidency, Obama has tried to shift the public’s focus away from the jihadi threat toward his domestic priorities.

He also repeatedly praised Islam and Muslims, and criticized criticism of Islam. “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” he told a worldwide TV audience during a September 2012 speech at the United Nations.

“As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam,” he declared in a 2009 speech in Cairo. “It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar [seminary] — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment,” he claimed.

Obama ha also tried to elevate the status of Islam in the West. “As a student of history, I also know civilization’s debt to Islam,” he told his audience in Cairo. “It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment. … I also know that Islam has always been a part of America’s story.”

To reduce the public’s focus on jihadis, Obama has even named the jihadi threat as a non-specific issue of “violent extremism,” and has repeatedly said jihadis have no connection with Islam. “Those who have studied and practiced this religion would tell you — Islam is a peaceful religion. … [Violent acts are] entirely inconsistent with the basic principles of that peaceful religion,” Earnest said Jan. 12.

But that claim of a peaceful Islam was repeatedly coupled with Obama’s policy of pressuring journalists not to anger aggressive Muslim believers. ”I will say that there have been occasions … where the administration will make clear our point of view on some of those assessments based on the need to protect the American people and to protect our men and women in uniform,” Earnest said.

“I wouldn’t rule out making those kinds of expressions again,” he added.

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Ditching Israel, Embracing Iran

Nov 10, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 09 • By LEE SMITH

via Ditching Israel, Embracing Iran | The Weekly Standard.

Last week, the Obama White House finally clarified its Middle East policy. It’s détente with Iran and a cold war with Israel.

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To the administration, Israel isn’t worth the trouble its prime minister causes. As one anonymous Obama official put it to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, what good is Benjamin Netanyahu if he won’t make peace with the Palestinians? Bibi doesn’t have the nerve of Begin, Rabin, or Sharon, said the unnamed source. The current leader of this longstanding U.S. ally, he added, is “a chickens—t.”

It’s hardly surprising that the Obama White House is crudely badmouthing Netanyahu; it has tried to undercut him from the beginning. But this isn’t just about the administration’s petulance and pettiness. There seems to be a strategic purpose to heckling Israel’s prime minister. With a possible deal over Iran’s nuclear weapons program in sight, the White House wants to weaken Netanyahu’s ability to challenge an Iran agreement.

Another unnamed Obama official told Goldberg that Netanyahu is all bluster when it comes to the Islamic Republic. The Israeli leader calls the clerical regime’s nuclear weapons program an existential threat, but he’s done nothing about it. And now, said the official, “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”

In other words, the White House is openly boasting that it bought the Iranians enough time to get across the finish line. Obama has insisted for five years that his policy is to prevent a nuclear Iran from emerging. In reality, his policy all along was to deter Israel from striking Iranian nuclear facilities. The way Obama sees it, an Iranian bomb may not be desirable, but it’s clearly preferable to an Israeli attack. Not only would an Israeli strike unleash a wave of Iranian terror throughout the region—and perhaps across Europe and the United States as well—it would also alienate what the White House sees as a potential partner.

The negotiations with Iran were only the most obvious part of the administration’s policy of pressuring Israel. The White House knew the Israelis would have difficulty striking Iranian nuclear facilities so long as there was a chance of a deal. Jerusalem couldn’t risk making itself the enemy of peace and an international pariah. All Netanyahu could do was warn against the bad deal Obama was intent on making.

The White House used plenty of other tools to pressure Jerusalem. For instance, leaks. Virtually every time Israel struck an Iranian arms depot in Syria or a convoy destined for Hezbollah, an administration official leaked it to the press. The White House understood that publicizing these strikes would embarrass Bashar al-Assad or Hassan Nasrallah and thereby push them to retaliate against Israel. That was the point of the leaks: to keep Israel tentative and afraid of taking matters into its own hands.

Another instrument of pressure was military and security cooperation between Israel and the White House—the strongest and closest the two countries have ever enjoyed, say Obama advocates. It allowed administration officials to keep even closer watch on what the Israelis were up to, while trying to make Jerusalem ever more dependent on the administration for its own security.

Don’t worry, Obama told Israel: I’ve got your back. I don’t bluff. The Iranians won’t get a bomb. And besides, the real problem in the region, the White House said time and again, is Israeli settlements. It’s the lack of progress between Jerusalem and Ramallah that destabilizes the region. As John Kerry said recently, the stalled Arab-Israeli peace process is what gave rise to the Islamic State.

From the White House’s perspective, then, Israel is the source of regional instability. Iran, on the other hand, is a force for stability. It is a rational actor, Obama has explained, pursuing its own interests. The White House, moreover, shares some of those interests—like rolling back the Islamic State.

The fact that Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani now calls the shots in four Arab capitals—Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Sanaa—makes him the Middle East’s indispensable man. Compared with the one-stop shopping Obama can do in Tehran to solve his Middle East problems, what can Israel offer?

The Obama administration’s Middle East policy, finally clarified last week, is premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Islamic Republic. The question is whether the White House has also misunderstood the character of a man, the prime minister of Israel, whose courage they mock.