An Open Letter to American Jews=E2=80=A8Ben Shapiro=E2=80=A8Wednesday, Ap=
ril 28, 2010
"American Jews, I have one request of you: please pull your heads out of =
your posteriors."
Dear American Jews,
I write to you as a charter member of the tribe. I'm not only Jewish, I'm=
religious. I'm married to an Israeli girl (she'll receive her citizenshi=
p next year and she is a proud soon-to-be American). I go to synagogue re=
gularly, keep kosher, keep the Sabbath.
American Jews, I have one request of you: please pull your heads out of y=
our posteriors.
I mean that in all sincerity. Your continued support for Democrats and an=
administration that is openly anti-Semitic is a disgrace. Your embrace o=
f a party that seeks to hamstring Israel in the name of a wholly fictitio=
us Middle East peace process is contemptible. Your loyalty to a president=
who consistently sides with Palestinian and Iranian mass murder-supporte=
rs is disgusting.
Your backing of a man who has spent his life surrounding himself with the=
worst anti-Semites America has to offer -- Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khali=
di (former Palestinian terrorist spokesman), Louis Farrakhan ("I don't li=
ke the way [Jews] leech on us"), Samantha Power, Robert Malley, to name a=
few -- is nothing short of reprehensible. Rahm Emanuel's presence in the=
Obama cabinet doesn't ameliorate Obama's anti-Semitism -- it just provid=
es it convenient cover. Al Sharpton wrongly called Condoleezza Rice and C=
olin Powell "house negroes"; Emanuel is a kapo.
Even as you continue to buttress a president who seeks the destruction of=
your co-religionists, you demonstrate your myopia by rejecting the tea p=
arty movement and evangelical Christian Israel-supporters.
The tea party movement is your ally for three important reasons. First, i=
t supports capitalism against the forces of socialism -- and capitalism k=
eeps America strong enough to provide Israel with a hand against its evil=
adversaries. Second, American Jews are, by far, the highest-earning reli=
gious group in the United States -- the tea party fights for your right t=
o keep your money. Third, the tea party stands against government overrea=
ch -- and in an era when government overreach promotes anti-religious sec=
ularism, Jews must stand with the tea party.
Your rejection of evangelical Christians is even more idiotic. Evangelica=
l Christians are the only major voting bloc preventing President Obama fr=
om breaking ties with Israel. When Janet Porter, an evangelical Florida t=
alk show host, heard about Obama's anti-Israel tyranny, she responded by =
asking her listeners to buy dozens of yellow roses to send to Prime Minis=
ter Benjamin Netanyahu's office as a show of support. The price per dozen=
: $19.48, in honor of the year of Israel's founding (1948). Over 14,000 f=
lowers were delivered. Meanwhile, Adm. James Jones, Obama's national secu=
rity adviser and the man who brought Jew-hater Zbigniew Brzezinski into O=
bama's inner circle, was busy telling anti-Semitic jokes before the Washi=
ngton Institute for Near East Policy.
"But they want to convert us!" many American Jews shout. Not all Christia=
ns do. But for the rest -- so what? Would you sacrifice the support of mi=
llions of good-hearted Christians because they want to discuss Jesus with=
you? If your own belief system is so fragile, the weakness is yours, not=
theirs. While you expend energy whining about Jehovah's Witnesses who sh=
ow up at your door with a Bible, Obama supports radical Muslims who would=
show up at your door with a gun -- or, as in the case of Daniel Pearl, a=
butcher's knife.
Now, I understand, American Jews, that most of you don't care about Israe=
l.
I understand that you're more concerned about a woman's unconditional rig=
ht to abort her unborn child (which Judaism rejects) than you are about I=
srael. Fine. Understand that you have removed yourself from the vast rive=
r of Jewish history in favor of a chimerical morality that values liberti=
nism over liberty.
I understand that many of you -- all of you above age 70 -- still think F=
DR is alive. He isn't, but Jimmy Carter is.
I understand that some of you still think that conservatives and Republic=
ans are the same folks they were during the 1950s, when they banned you f=
rom country clubs. They aren't.
The simple fact is this: There is only one mainstream political ideology =
in this country that asks you to check your principles and cultural histo=
ry at the door in the name of the greater good -- leftism, the same ideol=
ogy that virtually exterminated Judaism in Russia and Europe. While the l=
eft exploits your adherence to bagel-and-lox Judaism by appealing to your=
watered-down and perverted "tikkun olam" sensibilities, you are enabling=
your own destruction. The same people who urge you to reach out to terro=
rists will be the first to sacrifice you to those terrorists' tender merc=
ies. The same people who urge you to worry about same-sex marriage rather=
than religious freedom will be the first to take your religious freedoms=
away.
I love you, my brothers and sisters. That's why I'm writing to you. Time =
is running out; the clock is winding down. Pick a side
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
why Jan Schakowsky's vote on Israel is not enough
from Richard Baehr
Voting for foreign aid is not enough. Occasionally signing a pro-Israel letter is insufficient. What leadership role did a member take? Were they willing to speak up and challenge a President of their own Party, who seems to be trying to wreck the U.S. Israel relationship? In my book, working with J-Street, and serving as their sponsor, should be disqualifying in terms of pro-Israel community support. When you prop up a group that opposed Operation Cast Lead, opposed Israel's actions to stop the the flotilla, opposed the Iran sanctions resolutions in Congress until the last moment, and supported President Obama as he tightened the screws on Israel, well how does that make you pro-Israel?
and give it momentum than any of the other members of Congress. Let us be clear about J-Street's purpose- it is to weaken AIPAC, and pick off the left side of the Democratic Party to provide protective cover to a President who is hostile to Israel. It is pathetically humorous that one Democratic shill is claiming that Schakowsky honored Helen Thomas before she came out as an anti-Semite, so she did no wrong, and her judgement was sound. . Before that, he claims, she was a respected and great journalist. I get it- so before the recent comments by this vile hateful woman, presumably no one had any idea what Thomas thought of Israel or the Jews. The shill also manages to spell Joel Pollak's name wrong 14 times in one article. The fact that the shill posted an article lamely defending Schakowsky shows her campaign is worried about the race. She should be. Here is video of Alan Dershowitz, a liberal Democrat who no longer robotically supports left wing Democrats, endorsing Joel Pollak.
Dershowitz: http://tinyurl.com/2fds4jr
Voting for foreign aid is not enough. Occasionally signing a pro-Israel letter is insufficient. What leadership role did a member take? Were they willing to speak up and challenge a President of their own Party, who seems to be trying to wreck the U.S. Israel relationship? In my book, working with J-Street, and serving as their sponsor, should be disqualifying in terms of pro-Israel community support. When you prop up a group that opposed Operation Cast Lead, opposed Israel's actions to stop the the flotilla, opposed the Iran sanctions resolutions in Congress until the last moment, and supported President Obama as he tightened the screws on Israel, well how does that make you pro-Israel?
and give it momentum than any of the other members of Congress. Let us be clear about J-Street's purpose- it is to weaken AIPAC, and pick off the left side of the Democratic Party to provide protective cover to a President who is hostile to Israel. It is pathetically humorous that one Democratic shill is claiming that Schakowsky honored Helen Thomas before she came out as an anti-Semite, so she did no wrong, and her judgement was sound. . Before that, he claims, she was a respected and great journalist. I get it- so before the recent comments by this vile hateful woman, presumably no one had any idea what Thomas thought of Israel or the Jews. The shill also manages to spell Joel Pollak's name wrong 14 times in one article. The fact that the shill posted an article lamely defending Schakowsky shows her campaign is worried about the race. She should be. Here is video of Alan Dershowitz, a liberal Democrat who no longer robotically supports left wing Democrats, endorsing Joel Pollak.
Dershowitz: http://tinyurl.com/2fds4jr
Why Republican
"I'm 63 and I am Tired"
by Robert A. Hall
cid:001501cae34b$4932aa70$6101a8c0@JEAN
I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and
a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day,
I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I
still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or
eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my
income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no
retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people
who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government
will take the money I earned, by force, if necessary, and give it to
people too lazy to earn it.
I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people
in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm
willing to help. But, if they bought McMansions at three times the
price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then
let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and
the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with
their own money.
I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires
like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live
in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty
years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy
of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and
violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Christian people of Iran and
the freedom of speech of Venezuela.
I'm tired
of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I
can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives
and daughters for their family "honor";
of Muslims rioting over some slight offense;
of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers";
of Muslims burning schools for girls;
of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery";
of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls - all in the name
of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.
I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial
world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs,
lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities
(harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for
the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts
minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators
from Illinois.
I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black
child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the
Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi
Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and
less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.
I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural
expenses were obscene,
but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful;
that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time,
but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control
weight and stress;
that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never
demanded that Kerry release his;
that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too
inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as
potentially the best president ever.
Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News?
Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry
drove me to his camp in 2004.
I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we
must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa
Islamic schools to preach hate in America , while no American group is
allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi
Arabia to teach love and tolerance.
I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight
global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live
in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our
jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and
granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's,
and, if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.
I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must
help support and treat them and pay for the damage they do. Did a
giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder
up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay
people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take
drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a
freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.
I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers,"
especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or
crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"?
And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and
it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my
religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic
person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who
is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably
for three years in our military. Those are the citizens we need.
I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the
uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their
entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our
military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make
split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad
mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You
bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with
the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty
years and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal. I'll let
myself be subjected to all the "humiliation and abuse" that was
"heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo", and the critics can let
themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and
beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and
murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims
who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in
Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in
Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes.
British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that
civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in
fear.
I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue
and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums
are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need
bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the "Illinois Combine" of
Democrats has worked to loot the public for years.
Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's
cabinet.
I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of
both parties talking about "innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or
youthful mistakes", when we all know they think their only mistake was
getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich
or poor.
Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned
homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans
didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The
poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the
dollars flowing.
I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives
and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or
discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.
Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63.
Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making.
I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in
the Massachusetts State Senate.
by Robert A. Hall
cid:001501cae34b$4932aa70$6101a8c0@JEAN
I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and
a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day,
I've worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I
still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or
eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my
income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no
retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people
who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government
will take the money I earned, by force, if necessary, and give it to
people too lazy to earn it.
I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people
in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm
willing to help. But, if they bought McMansions at three times the
price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then
let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and
the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with
their own money.
I'm tired of being told how bad America is by left-wing millionaires
like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood Entertainers who live
in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty
years, if they get their way, the United States will have the economy
of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and
violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Christian people of Iran and
the freedom of speech of Venezuela.
I'm tired
of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I
can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives
and daughters for their family "honor";
of Muslims rioting over some slight offense;
of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers";
of Muslims burning schools for girls;
of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery";
of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls - all in the name
of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.
I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the post-racial
world of Obama, when it's all that matters in affirmative action jobs,
lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities
(harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for
the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts
minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of U.S. Senators
from Illinois.
I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a black
child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln wrote the
Emancipation Proclamation. I just wish the black president was Condi
Rice, or someone who believes more in freedom and the individual and
less arrogantly of an all-knowing government.
I'm tired of a news media that thinks Bush's fundraising and inaugural
expenses were obscene,
but that think Obama's, at triple the cost, were wonderful;
that thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time,
but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control
weight and stress;
that picked over every line of Bush's military records, but never
demanded that Kerry release his;
that slammed Palin, with two years as governor, for being too
inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as
potentially the best president ever.
Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News?
Get a clue. I didn't vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry
drove me to his camp in 2004.
I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we
must let Saudi Arabia use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa
Islamic schools to preach hate in America , while no American group is
allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi
Arabia to teach love and tolerance.
I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight
global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live
in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our
jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and
granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore's,
and, if you're greener than Gore, you're green enough.
I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must
help support and treat them and pay for the damage they do. Did a
giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder
up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don't think Gay
people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take
drugs. And I'm tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a
freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.
I'm tired of illegal aliens being called "undocumented workers,"
especially the ones who aren't working, but are living on welfare or
crime. What's next? Calling drug dealers, "Undocumented Pharmacists"?
And, no, I'm not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic, and
it's been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my
religion. I'm willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic
person, who can speak English, doesn't have a criminal record and who
is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably
for three years in our military. Those are the citizens we need.
I'm tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the
uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their
entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our
military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make
split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad
mouth better people than themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You
bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with
the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty
years and still are? Not even close. So here's the deal. I'll let
myself be subjected to all the "humiliation and abuse" that was
"heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo", and the critics can let
themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims, who tortured and
beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and
murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims
who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in
Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in
Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we'll compare notes.
British and American soldiers are the only troops in history that
civilians came to for help and handouts, instead of hiding from in
fear.
I'm tired of people telling me that their party has a corner on virtue
and the other party has a corner on corruption. Read the papers; bums
are bipartisan. And I'm tired of people telling me we need
bipartisanship. I live in Illinois , where the "Illinois Combine" of
Democrats has worked to loot the public for years.
Not to mention the tax cheats in Obama's
cabinet.
I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of
both parties talking about "innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or
youthful mistakes", when we all know they think their only mistake was
getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich
or poor.
Speaking of poor, I'm tired of hearing people with air-conditioned
homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans
didn't have that in 1970, but we didn't know we were "poor." The
poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the
dollars flowing.
I'm real tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives
and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or
discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.
Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 63.
Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making.
I'm just sorry for my granddaughter.
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in
the Massachusetts State Senate.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Leonard Fein blame Israel first
Leonard Fein, noted jewish leftist, blames israel for the problems with Turkey in his Forward column recently. Of course it is always blame Israel. The guy has no clue. After the Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, the Ottoman Empire fell apoart after WW 2. The military took over, installing a pro Western, secular muslim state. . That has changed. Tuyrkey is now in the Islamic camp. Fein has it 100% backwards, as the left always does on Israel. Turkey wants the Islamic camp-that is why it allowed the extremist muslim group to purposely incite violence.
Observations from Daily Alert from Council president's major jewish organizations:
Turkey's Islamic Revolution Paid for by Wealthy Islamists - Michael Rubin (Commentary)
* Turkey has changed. Gone permanently is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of Europe.
* Outside of public view, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul, now his foreign minister, presided over an influx of so-called Green Money - capital from Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Persian Gulf emirates, much of which ended up in AKP party coffers rather than in the public treasury.
* Between 2002 and 2003, money appeared in Turkey's financial system for which government reporting cannot account - an amount that increased from approximately $200 million to more than $4 billion. By 2006, Turkish economists estimated the Green Money infusion into the Turkish economy to be between $6 billion and $12 billion. Some Turkish intelligence officials privately suggest that Qatar is today the source of most subsidies for the AKP and its projects. Thus, Turkey's Islamic revolution was bought and paid for by wealthy Islamists.
* Erdogan equated degrees issued by Turkish madrassas - Islamic religious schools - with ordinary high school degrees. This bureaucratic sleight of hand enabled madrassa students to enter the university and qualify for government jobs without ever mastering or, in some cases, even being exposed to Western fundamentals. When such students still fumbled university entrance exams, the AKP provided them with a comparative bonus on their scores, justifying the move as affirmative action.
* As a NATO member, Turkey is privy to U.S. weaponry, tactics, and intelligence. Any provision of assistance to Turkey today, however, could be akin to transferring it to Hamas, Sudan, or Iran. Does President Obama really want to deliver the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to a hostile Turkey, as promised, in 2014?
* As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan quipped, "Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off."
The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Observations from Daily Alert from Council president's major jewish organizations:
Turkey's Islamic Revolution Paid for by Wealthy Islamists - Michael Rubin (Commentary)
* Turkey has changed. Gone permanently is secular Turkey, a unique Muslim country that straddled East and West and that even maintained a cooperative relationship with Israel. Today Turkey is an Islamic republic whose government saw fit to facilitate the May 31 flotilla raid on Israel's blockade of Gaza. Turkey is now more aligned to Iran than to the democracies of Europe.
* Outside of public view, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul, now his foreign minister, presided over an influx of so-called Green Money - capital from Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich Persian Gulf emirates, much of which ended up in AKP party coffers rather than in the public treasury.
* Between 2002 and 2003, money appeared in Turkey's financial system for which government reporting cannot account - an amount that increased from approximately $200 million to more than $4 billion. By 2006, Turkish economists estimated the Green Money infusion into the Turkish economy to be between $6 billion and $12 billion. Some Turkish intelligence officials privately suggest that Qatar is today the source of most subsidies for the AKP and its projects. Thus, Turkey's Islamic revolution was bought and paid for by wealthy Islamists.
* Erdogan equated degrees issued by Turkish madrassas - Islamic religious schools - with ordinary high school degrees. This bureaucratic sleight of hand enabled madrassa students to enter the university and qualify for government jobs without ever mastering or, in some cases, even being exposed to Western fundamentals. When such students still fumbled university entrance exams, the AKP provided them with a comparative bonus on their scores, justifying the move as affirmative action.
* As a NATO member, Turkey is privy to U.S. weaponry, tactics, and intelligence. Any provision of assistance to Turkey today, however, could be akin to transferring it to Hamas, Sudan, or Iran. Does President Obama really want to deliver the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to a hostile Turkey, as promised, in 2014?
* As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan quipped, "Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off."
The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Monday, June 28, 2010
2010 election-who is pro Israel?
Richard Baehr
J-Street has endorsed 58 candidates for senate or house so far, 57 of them Democrats
https://donate.jstreetpac.org/candidate/allcandidates
2 of the 3 Senate endorsements are for open seats. One is for Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who faces a serious challenge this year.
1. I think as a rule, we should never give money to any candidate endorsed by J-Street.
In the open seat races, there is no incumbency rule (e.g vote for the candidate who voted for foreign aid, )
so the two open seats are easy: we should support Republican Pat Toomey over Joe Sestak, in Pennsylvania. Sestak had a poor record on Israel votes in Congress. Toomey had a very good record on Israel votes when he was in Congress.
We should support Republican Roy Blunt in Missouri over Robin Carnahan. Blunt had a good voting record on Israel in Congress. Carnahan has no record, but obviously said something sweet to J-Street's ears.
2. We should not give big amounts to candidates who have little or no competition in their races. (e.g dick durbin, daniel inouye). Better to give to more candidates, and give bigger gifts in close races.
3. Of the 55 members of the House on the J-street list, these are the 17 who realclearpolitics.com rates as vulnerable this cycle (in alpahabetical order, as is the J-street list)
Russ Carnahan, Gerry Connolly, Bill Foster, Debbie Halvorson, Jim Himes, Rush Holt, Steve Kagen, Mary Jo Kilroy, Ron Kind, Dan Maffei, Betsy Markey, Chris Murphy, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tom Perriello, Carol Shea Porter, and John Yarmuth.
If we will be backing Joel Pollak (Schakowsky is not yet on the vulnerable list), then some of these 17 are worth opposing as well. Among those who standout for being very critical of Israel is Carol Shea Porter, a hard left member from New Hampshire.
There are other competitive Senate races, a few of which are open seats:
Florida: Marco Rubio has the best position paper on Israel of any member running. Much better than Crist or Meeks
Two incumbents who are facing challenges , and have good voting records on Israel: Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, and Richard Burr, Republican from North Carolina. Both are ahead by small margins.
In Kentucky, Rand Paul is not as much of a loon as his dad, and has authored a decent position paper on Israel . But I think he is still suspect. Jack Conway is his opponent.
Two other open Senate seats offer easy choices: In Ohio, Rob Portman had a perfect voting record on Israel in Congress. He is running against Lee Fisher who was never in Congress and has no record. This is a very close race. In Indiana, Dan Coats is expected to beat Brad Ellsworth easily. both had good voting records on Israel in Congress, but we should go with the winner to establish a link.
To date, we have given a bit over $12,000 to Democratss this cycle, and a bit over $10,000 to Republicans. I do not think in the end, that we have to exactly balance the amounts. Sad to say, but one party has become better than the other in the last few years on israel.
Two Democratic members of Congress stand out for having the courage to push back against Obama's pressure on Israel- Shelley Berkley of Nevada, , to whom we have already given this cycle and Eliot Engel of New York, who deserves support. . Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland , has also been good.
J-Street has endorsed 58 candidates for senate or house so far, 57 of them Democrats
https://donate.jstreetpac.org/candidate/allcandidates
2 of the 3 Senate endorsements are for open seats. One is for Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who faces a serious challenge this year.
1. I think as a rule, we should never give money to any candidate endorsed by J-Street.
In the open seat races, there is no incumbency rule (e.g vote for the candidate who voted for foreign aid, )
so the two open seats are easy: we should support Republican Pat Toomey over Joe Sestak, in Pennsylvania. Sestak had a poor record on Israel votes in Congress. Toomey had a very good record on Israel votes when he was in Congress.
We should support Republican Roy Blunt in Missouri over Robin Carnahan. Blunt had a good voting record on Israel in Congress. Carnahan has no record, but obviously said something sweet to J-Street's ears.
2. We should not give big amounts to candidates who have little or no competition in their races. (e.g dick durbin, daniel inouye). Better to give to more candidates, and give bigger gifts in close races.
3. Of the 55 members of the House on the J-street list, these are the 17 who realclearpolitics.com rates as vulnerable this cycle (in alpahabetical order, as is the J-street list)
Russ Carnahan, Gerry Connolly, Bill Foster, Debbie Halvorson, Jim Himes, Rush Holt, Steve Kagen, Mary Jo Kilroy, Ron Kind, Dan Maffei, Betsy Markey, Chris Murphy, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tom Perriello, Carol Shea Porter, and John Yarmuth.
If we will be backing Joel Pollak (Schakowsky is not yet on the vulnerable list), then some of these 17 are worth opposing as well. Among those who standout for being very critical of Israel is Carol Shea Porter, a hard left member from New Hampshire.
There are other competitive Senate races, a few of which are open seats:
Florida: Marco Rubio has the best position paper on Israel of any member running. Much better than Crist or Meeks
Two incumbents who are facing challenges , and have good voting records on Israel: Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, and Richard Burr, Republican from North Carolina. Both are ahead by small margins.
In Kentucky, Rand Paul is not as much of a loon as his dad, and has authored a decent position paper on Israel . But I think he is still suspect. Jack Conway is his opponent.
Two other open Senate seats offer easy choices: In Ohio, Rob Portman had a perfect voting record on Israel in Congress. He is running against Lee Fisher who was never in Congress and has no record. This is a very close race. In Indiana, Dan Coats is expected to beat Brad Ellsworth easily. both had good voting records on Israel in Congress, but we should go with the winner to establish a link.
To date, we have given a bit over $12,000 to Democratss this cycle, and a bit over $10,000 to Republicans. I do not think in the end, that we have to exactly balance the amounts. Sad to say, but one party has become better than the other in the last few years on israel.
Two Democratic members of Congress stand out for having the courage to push back against Obama's pressure on Israel- Shelley Berkley of Nevada, , to whom we have already given this cycle and Eliot Engel of New York, who deserves support. . Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland , has also been good.
Obama has led to Turkey and then Malaysia turning on Israel
Flirting with zealotry in Malaysia
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaks at an anti-Israel rally in front of the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur this month.
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaks at an anti-Israel rally in front of the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur this month. (Saeed Khan/afp/getty Images)
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Who's Blogging
» Links to this article
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, June 28, 2010
Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of Malaysia's political opposition, has become known over the past decade as one of the foremost advocates of liberal democracy in Muslim countries. His many friends in Washington include prominent members of the neoconservative movement -- such as Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and U.S. ambassador to Indonesia -- as well as such Democratic grandees as Al Gore.
Lately, Anwar has been getting attention for something else: strident rhetoric about Israel and alleged "Zionist influence" in Malaysia. He recently joined a demonstration outside the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur where an Israeli flag was burned. He's made dark insinuations about the "Jewish-controlled" Washington public relations firm Apco Worldwide, which is working for Malaysia's quasi-authoritarian government.
Therein lies a story of the Obama era -- about a beleaguered democrat fighting for political and personal survival with little help from Washington; about the growing global climate of hostility toward Israel; and about the increasing willingness of U.S. friends in places such as Turkey and Malaysia to exploit it.
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaks at an anti-Israel rally in front of the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur this month.
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaks at an anti-Israel rally in front of the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur this month. (Saeed Khan/afp/getty Images)
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Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging
» Links to this article
By Jackson Diehl
Monday, June 28, 2010
Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of Malaysia's political opposition, has become known over the past decade as one of the foremost advocates of liberal democracy in Muslim countries. His many friends in Washington include prominent members of the neoconservative movement -- such as Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank president and U.S. ambassador to Indonesia -- as well as such Democratic grandees as Al Gore.
Lately, Anwar has been getting attention for something else: strident rhetoric about Israel and alleged "Zionist influence" in Malaysia. He recently joined a demonstration outside the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur where an Israeli flag was burned. He's made dark insinuations about the "Jewish-controlled" Washington public relations firm Apco Worldwide, which is working for Malaysia's quasi-authoritarian government.
Therein lies a story of the Obama era -- about a beleaguered democrat fighting for political and personal survival with little help from Washington; about the growing global climate of hostility toward Israel; and about the increasing willingness of U.S. friends in places such as Turkey and Malaysia to exploit it.
deaf dumb blind with iran
Jennifer Rubin
The administration, the Congress, and American Jewish groups continue the dance — pretending but not believing (unless Jewish leaders are entirely out to lunch) that Obama has a plan and the will to prevent the “unacceptable” (a nuclear-armed Iran). The Israelis meanwhile are left to consider: just how long do they dare wait before acting on their own to eliminate (or at least set back) the threat of nuclear attack on the Jewish state.
The administration, the Congress, and American Jewish groups continue the dance — pretending but not believing (unless Jewish leaders are entirely out to lunch) that Obama has a plan and the will to prevent the “unacceptable” (a nuclear-armed Iran). The Israelis meanwhile are left to consider: just how long do they dare wait before acting on their own to eliminate (or at least set back) the threat of nuclear attack on the Jewish state.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Praeger on why jews are liberal
Explaining Jews, part V: Why are Jews liberal? (By Dennis Prager) Tuesday, April 25, 2006
The most frequently asked question I receive from non-Jews about Jews is, why are Jews so liberal?
The question is entirely legitimate since Jews (outside of Israel) are indeed overwhelmingly liberal and disproportionately left of liberal as well. For example, other than blacks, no American group votes so lopsidedly for the Democratic Party. And the question is further sharpened given that traditional Jewish values are not leftist. That is why the more religiously involved the Jew, the less likely he is to be on the Left. The old saw, "There are two types of Jews -- those who believe Judaism is social justice and those who know Hebrew," contains more than a kernel of truth.
In no order of importance, here are six reasons:
1. Judaism is indeed preoccupied with social justice (as well as with holiness and personal morality), and many Jews believe that the only way to achieve a just society is through leftist policies.
2. More than any other major religion, Judaism has always been preoccupied with this world. The (secular) Encyclopedia Judaica begins its entry on "Afterlife" by noting that "Judaism has always affirmed belief in an afterlife." But the preoccupation of Judaism has been making this world a better place. That is why the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) is largely silent about the afterlife; and it is preoccupied with rejecting ancient Egyptian values. That value system was centered on the afterlife -- its bible was the Book of the Dead, and its greatest monuments, the pyramids, were tombs.
3. Most Jews are frightened by anything that connotes right wing -- such as the words "right-wing" and "conservative." Especially since the Holocaust, they think that threats to their security emanate from the Right only. (It is pointless to argue that Nazism stood for National Socialism and therefore was really a leftist ideology. Whether that is theoretically accurate doesn't matter; nearly everyone regards the Nazis as far Right, and, therefore, Jews fear the Right.) The fact that the Jews' best friends today are conservatives and the fact that the Left is the home of most of the Jews' enemies outside of the Muslim world have made little impact on Jews' psyches.
4. Liberal Jews fear most religion. They identify religion -- especially fundamentalist religion and especially Christianity -- with anti-Semitism. Jews are taught from birth about the horrors of the Holocaust, and of nearly 2,000 years of European, meaning Christian, anti-Semitism. They therefore tend to fear Christianity and believe that secularism guarantees their physical security. That is what animates the ACLU and its disproportionately Jewish membership, under the guise of concern with the Constitution and "separation of church and state" (words that do not appear in the Constitution), to fight all public expressions of Christianity in America.
5. Despite their secularism, Jews may be the most religious ethnic group in the world. The problem is that their religion is rarely Judaism; rather it is every "ism" of the Left. These include liberalism, socialism, feminism, Marxism and environmentalism. Jews involved in these movements believe in them with the same ideological fervor and same suspension of critical reason with which many religious people believe in their religion. It is therefore usually as hard to shake a liberal Jew's belief in the Left and in the Democratic Party as it is to shake an evangelical Christian's belief in Christianity. The big difference, however, is that the Christian believer acknowledges his Christianity is a belief, whereas the believer in liberalism views his belief as entirely the product of rational inquiry.
The Jews' religious fervor emanates from the origins of the Jewish people as a religious people elected by God to help guide humanity to a better future. Of course, the original intent was to bring humanity to ethical monotheism, God-based universal moral standards, not to secular liberalism or to feminism or to socialism. Leftist Jews have simply secularized their religious calling.
6. Liberal Jews fear nationalism. The birth of nationalism in Europe planted the secular seeds of the Holocaust (religious seeds had been planted by some early and medieval Church teachings and reinforced by Martin Luther). European nationalists welcomed all national identities except the Jews'. That is a major reason so many Jews identify primarily as "world citizens"; they have contempt for nationalism and believe that strong national identities, even in America, will exclude them.
Just as liberal Jews fear a resurgent Christianity despite the fact that contemporary Christians are the Jews' best friends, leftist Jews fear American nationalism despite the fact that Americans who believe in American exceptionalism are far more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel than leftist Americans. But most leftist Jews so abhor nationalism, they don't even like the Jews' nationalism (Zionism).
If you believe that leftist ideas and policies are good for America and for the world, then you are particularly pleased to know how deeply Jews -- with their moral passion, intellectual energies and abilities, and financial clout -- are involved with the Left. If, on the other hand, you believe that the Left is morally confused and largely a destructive force in America and the world, then the Jews' disproportionate involvement on the Left is nothing less than a tragedy -- for the world and especially for the Jews.
The most frequently asked question I receive from non-Jews about Jews is, why are Jews so liberal?
The question is entirely legitimate since Jews (outside of Israel) are indeed overwhelmingly liberal and disproportionately left of liberal as well. For example, other than blacks, no American group votes so lopsidedly for the Democratic Party. And the question is further sharpened given that traditional Jewish values are not leftist. That is why the more religiously involved the Jew, the less likely he is to be on the Left. The old saw, "There are two types of Jews -- those who believe Judaism is social justice and those who know Hebrew," contains more than a kernel of truth.
In no order of importance, here are six reasons:
1. Judaism is indeed preoccupied with social justice (as well as with holiness and personal morality), and many Jews believe that the only way to achieve a just society is through leftist policies.
2. More than any other major religion, Judaism has always been preoccupied with this world. The (secular) Encyclopedia Judaica begins its entry on "Afterlife" by noting that "Judaism has always affirmed belief in an afterlife." But the preoccupation of Judaism has been making this world a better place. That is why the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) is largely silent about the afterlife; and it is preoccupied with rejecting ancient Egyptian values. That value system was centered on the afterlife -- its bible was the Book of the Dead, and its greatest monuments, the pyramids, were tombs.
3. Most Jews are frightened by anything that connotes right wing -- such as the words "right-wing" and "conservative." Especially since the Holocaust, they think that threats to their security emanate from the Right only. (It is pointless to argue that Nazism stood for National Socialism and therefore was really a leftist ideology. Whether that is theoretically accurate doesn't matter; nearly everyone regards the Nazis as far Right, and, therefore, Jews fear the Right.) The fact that the Jews' best friends today are conservatives and the fact that the Left is the home of most of the Jews' enemies outside of the Muslim world have made little impact on Jews' psyches.
4. Liberal Jews fear most religion. They identify religion -- especially fundamentalist religion and especially Christianity -- with anti-Semitism. Jews are taught from birth about the horrors of the Holocaust, and of nearly 2,000 years of European, meaning Christian, anti-Semitism. They therefore tend to fear Christianity and believe that secularism guarantees their physical security. That is what animates the ACLU and its disproportionately Jewish membership, under the guise of concern with the Constitution and "separation of church and state" (words that do not appear in the Constitution), to fight all public expressions of Christianity in America.
5. Despite their secularism, Jews may be the most religious ethnic group in the world. The problem is that their religion is rarely Judaism; rather it is every "ism" of the Left. These include liberalism, socialism, feminism, Marxism and environmentalism. Jews involved in these movements believe in them with the same ideological fervor and same suspension of critical reason with which many religious people believe in their religion. It is therefore usually as hard to shake a liberal Jew's belief in the Left and in the Democratic Party as it is to shake an evangelical Christian's belief in Christianity. The big difference, however, is that the Christian believer acknowledges his Christianity is a belief, whereas the believer in liberalism views his belief as entirely the product of rational inquiry.
The Jews' religious fervor emanates from the origins of the Jewish people as a religious people elected by God to help guide humanity to a better future. Of course, the original intent was to bring humanity to ethical monotheism, God-based universal moral standards, not to secular liberalism or to feminism or to socialism. Leftist Jews have simply secularized their religious calling.
6. Liberal Jews fear nationalism. The birth of nationalism in Europe planted the secular seeds of the Holocaust (religious seeds had been planted by some early and medieval Church teachings and reinforced by Martin Luther). European nationalists welcomed all national identities except the Jews'. That is a major reason so many Jews identify primarily as "world citizens"; they have contempt for nationalism and believe that strong national identities, even in America, will exclude them.
Just as liberal Jews fear a resurgent Christianity despite the fact that contemporary Christians are the Jews' best friends, leftist Jews fear American nationalism despite the fact that Americans who believe in American exceptionalism are far more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel than leftist Americans. But most leftist Jews so abhor nationalism, they don't even like the Jews' nationalism (Zionism).
If you believe that leftist ideas and policies are good for America and for the world, then you are particularly pleased to know how deeply Jews -- with their moral passion, intellectual energies and abilities, and financial clout -- are involved with the Left. If, on the other hand, you believe that the Left is morally confused and largely a destructive force in America and the world, then the Jews' disproportionate involvement on the Left is nothing less than a tragedy -- for the world and especially for the Jews.
Rabbis can be fools or fooled too
When Bad Rabbis Happen to a Good People
By Stella Paul
Are you ready for Rabbis Gone Wild -- Boston Edition? In the latest installment of this tragicomedy, the progressive Jewish leadership of Massachusetts decides to break the arrogance barrier and set new records for dangerous egomania.
First, let's meet our cast: seventy distinguished rabbis in Greater Boston, including the Past President of Hebrew College. Boy, you could fell an ox with the collective weight of these worthies' credentials.
And now, the bloodcurdling story: On June 10, these seventy men and women publicly condemned and virtually excommunicated one of the finest American Jewish leaders and human rights activist alive today.
Why? Because Dr. Charles Jacobs has the chutzpah to present documented facts about the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Boston's increasingly infamous, radical-linked, Saudi-funded mega-mosque.
In a broadside entitled "An Open Letter to the Jewish Community," published in the Jewish Advocate, seventy rabbis signed their name to a letter demanding that "Mr. Jacobs discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters."
The rabbis then referenced the Torah portion in which Israelite scouts are struck by fear: "Because they succumbed to their fears, God condemned this generation to die in the wilderness. We refuse to allow Mr. Jacobs to spread his calumnies and paralyze our community in fear."
Way to go, rabbis! Stirring imagery! Biblical metaphor! Huge spiritual uplift! No, wait, that was my lunch.
To get the full flavor of the rabbis' epic stupidity, let's meet the victim of their "Jewish fatwa," Dr. Charles Jacobs. In the late '80s, Jacobs co-founded Boston's branch of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, to expose and combat media bias against Israel. A few years later, he founded, along with Christian and Muslim Africans, the American Anti-Slavery Group. Charles Jacobs was given the Boston Freedom Award by Coretta Scott King for his work helping to emancipate enslaved black Africans in Sudan.
In 2002, he founded The David Project, a powerhouse organization that trains college students to advocate for Israel and fight back against the demonization of Israel on campus. He currently heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group he founded in 2008 to protect American values from attack by radical Islamists and to support moderate Muslims. In 2007, Jacobs was named by The Forward as one of America's top 50 Jewish leaders.
So let me ask you, O Great Progressive Rabbis, this is the man you want to casually destroy? While you were risking nothing more than the stampede to the canapés at some interfaith blabberfest, Charles Jacobs was flying to Sudan to redeem slaves with money he raised and bring them to freedom.
While you were chasing the latest must-have fad in "social justice" and ignoring the rising storm of campus anti-Semitism, Charles Jacobs was doing the grunt work of establishing an organization on the ground to help besieged Jewish students tell the truth about Israel.
While you were playing patty-cake with Jew-hating imams, Charles Jacobs was investigating the facts about their disgusting affiliations and helping moderate Muslims stand up to the radical takeover of their institutions.
O Most Compassionate Ones, do we really have so many people like Charles Jacobs that you can afford to toss him in the trash?
Now let's look at the people you do like, those spicy characters you're staking your reputations on. They're all linked to Boston's mega-mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, which is run by the Muslim American Society, or as federal prosecutors like to call it, "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood."
The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) cavalcade includes its founder, MIT graduate Abdurahman Alamoudi, currently rotting in jail on a 23-year sentence for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist pranks; the loathsome Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, wart-faced "spiritual" leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who's banned from the U.S. but served as ISB Trustee; Osama Kandil, ISB Trust President, director of an Islamic charity designated as terrorist by the U.S. government; and Trustee Jamal Badawi, unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial who tells Boston Muslims they must live only under Sharia Law.
How do I know these facts? Because Charles Jacobs has worked doggedly to expose them, for which I'm immensely grateful. Now, Wise and Wonderful Rabbis, why aren't you grateful, too? Why aren't you saying, "Thank you, Dr. Charles Jacobs, for being our modern-day Paul Revere, the Boston hero who alerted us of invasion from a hostile power. Have an honorary degree on us!"
Instead, you flew into a rage at Jacobs' latest shocker: a video of Beantown's jihadi rock star, Imam Abdullah Farooq, instructing followers to "grab onto the gun and the sword. Don't be afraid to step out into this world and do your job." More chilling than Farooq's words is their context: urging Muslims to support two violent locals, "the Grey Lady of al-Qaeda," Aaafia Siddiqui, who's convicted of shooting FBI agents in Pakistan; and Tarek Mehana, the excitable Sudbury youngster arrested for plotting to murder shoppers in New England malls.
Does this Imam Farooq sound like the kind of fellow you want training your police force? Not unless you want police so "sensitive" they polish their badges while the next Tarek Mehana decides to give New England shoppers a side of bullets with their fries.
And that's why Jacobs' video criticized Governor Deval Patrick for publicly embracing Imam Farooq and accepting a $50,000 check of dubious origins from him to train police in "Muslim cultural sensitivities."
And for this act of supreme civic responsibility, you defame and slander Charles Jacobs? For this, you accuse him of a "destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community" and expose him and his family to potential dangers from vengeful Islamists? For this, you sear the Scarlet B of Bigot on his forehead and cast him into the cold?
Dear Loving and Highly Spiritually Evolved Progressive Rabbis, you're always yammering about dialoguing with "the other," right? So here's an "other" you might try dialoguing with: any Jew who has an ounce of sanity.
You know, all those nice people in your much-vaunted "community" who aren't willing to have their throats slit just because you insist it's the tolerant, hate-free thing to do.
Quick question, O Learned Ones: What are you going to do when jihad-crazed maniacs like Tarek Mehana come after your family with machine guns in the mall? Swat them with your diplomas? Teach them the finer points of Rashi? "Dialogue" on which of your limbs to chop off?
As for all you lovely lady rabbis on the list -- enjoy sermonizing in your burqa! And just hope your daughters don't have to endure the female bris ceremony.
Now, rabbis, I say this only out of the deepest concern for your mental health: Ask a doctor in your congregation to check if your Galloping Smug-itis has reached Stage 4 yet.
Because I'd like to think there's still hope for you. But you're making it really tough.
And by the way, nowhere in your job description can I find "will work to self-righteously deliver congregants into the hands of genocidal maniacs who conspire to shoot people in shopping malls."
You want me to pay dues for that? Two thousand dollars a year for you to hand me over to the Jew-hating nuts? I want my money back!
And please spare me your teary speeches about the Holocaust and your bus trips to the Holocaust Museum.
To you, Never Again apparently means Never Again Will We Bother to Flick An Eyelash In the Annoyingly Icky Direction of Genocidal Threats.
And finally, here's something you may never understand: One Charles Jacobs is worth more than seventy of you. Why? Because he fights for the truth.
By Stella Paul
Are you ready for Rabbis Gone Wild -- Boston Edition? In the latest installment of this tragicomedy, the progressive Jewish leadership of Massachusetts decides to break the arrogance barrier and set new records for dangerous egomania.
First, let's meet our cast: seventy distinguished rabbis in Greater Boston, including the Past President of Hebrew College. Boy, you could fell an ox with the collective weight of these worthies' credentials.
And now, the bloodcurdling story: On June 10, these seventy men and women publicly condemned and virtually excommunicated one of the finest American Jewish leaders and human rights activist alive today.
Why? Because Dr. Charles Jacobs has the chutzpah to present documented facts about the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Boston's increasingly infamous, radical-linked, Saudi-funded mega-mosque.
In a broadside entitled "An Open Letter to the Jewish Community," published in the Jewish Advocate, seventy rabbis signed their name to a letter demanding that "Mr. Jacobs discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters."
The rabbis then referenced the Torah portion in which Israelite scouts are struck by fear: "Because they succumbed to their fears, God condemned this generation to die in the wilderness. We refuse to allow Mr. Jacobs to spread his calumnies and paralyze our community in fear."
Way to go, rabbis! Stirring imagery! Biblical metaphor! Huge spiritual uplift! No, wait, that was my lunch.
To get the full flavor of the rabbis' epic stupidity, let's meet the victim of their "Jewish fatwa," Dr. Charles Jacobs. In the late '80s, Jacobs co-founded Boston's branch of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, to expose and combat media bias against Israel. A few years later, he founded, along with Christian and Muslim Africans, the American Anti-Slavery Group. Charles Jacobs was given the Boston Freedom Award by Coretta Scott King for his work helping to emancipate enslaved black Africans in Sudan.
In 2002, he founded The David Project, a powerhouse organization that trains college students to advocate for Israel and fight back against the demonization of Israel on campus. He currently heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group he founded in 2008 to protect American values from attack by radical Islamists and to support moderate Muslims. In 2007, Jacobs was named by The Forward as one of America's top 50 Jewish leaders.
So let me ask you, O Great Progressive Rabbis, this is the man you want to casually destroy? While you were risking nothing more than the stampede to the canapés at some interfaith blabberfest, Charles Jacobs was flying to Sudan to redeem slaves with money he raised and bring them to freedom.
While you were chasing the latest must-have fad in "social justice" and ignoring the rising storm of campus anti-Semitism, Charles Jacobs was doing the grunt work of establishing an organization on the ground to help besieged Jewish students tell the truth about Israel.
While you were playing patty-cake with Jew-hating imams, Charles Jacobs was investigating the facts about their disgusting affiliations and helping moderate Muslims stand up to the radical takeover of their institutions.
O Most Compassionate Ones, do we really have so many people like Charles Jacobs that you can afford to toss him in the trash?
Now let's look at the people you do like, those spicy characters you're staking your reputations on. They're all linked to Boston's mega-mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, which is run by the Muslim American Society, or as federal prosecutors like to call it, "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood."
The Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) cavalcade includes its founder, MIT graduate Abdurahman Alamoudi, currently rotting in jail on a 23-year sentence for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist pranks; the loathsome Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, wart-faced "spiritual" leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who's banned from the U.S. but served as ISB Trustee; Osama Kandil, ISB Trust President, director of an Islamic charity designated as terrorist by the U.S. government; and Trustee Jamal Badawi, unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial who tells Boston Muslims they must live only under Sharia Law.
How do I know these facts? Because Charles Jacobs has worked doggedly to expose them, for which I'm immensely grateful. Now, Wise and Wonderful Rabbis, why aren't you grateful, too? Why aren't you saying, "Thank you, Dr. Charles Jacobs, for being our modern-day Paul Revere, the Boston hero who alerted us of invasion from a hostile power. Have an honorary degree on us!"
Instead, you flew into a rage at Jacobs' latest shocker: a video of Beantown's jihadi rock star, Imam Abdullah Farooq, instructing followers to "grab onto the gun and the sword. Don't be afraid to step out into this world and do your job." More chilling than Farooq's words is their context: urging Muslims to support two violent locals, "the Grey Lady of al-Qaeda," Aaafia Siddiqui, who's convicted of shooting FBI agents in Pakistan; and Tarek Mehana, the excitable Sudbury youngster arrested for plotting to murder shoppers in New England malls.
Does this Imam Farooq sound like the kind of fellow you want training your police force? Not unless you want police so "sensitive" they polish their badges while the next Tarek Mehana decides to give New England shoppers a side of bullets with their fries.
And that's why Jacobs' video criticized Governor Deval Patrick for publicly embracing Imam Farooq and accepting a $50,000 check of dubious origins from him to train police in "Muslim cultural sensitivities."
And for this act of supreme civic responsibility, you defame and slander Charles Jacobs? For this, you accuse him of a "destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community" and expose him and his family to potential dangers from vengeful Islamists? For this, you sear the Scarlet B of Bigot on his forehead and cast him into the cold?
Dear Loving and Highly Spiritually Evolved Progressive Rabbis, you're always yammering about dialoguing with "the other," right? So here's an "other" you might try dialoguing with: any Jew who has an ounce of sanity.
You know, all those nice people in your much-vaunted "community" who aren't willing to have their throats slit just because you insist it's the tolerant, hate-free thing to do.
Quick question, O Learned Ones: What are you going to do when jihad-crazed maniacs like Tarek Mehana come after your family with machine guns in the mall? Swat them with your diplomas? Teach them the finer points of Rashi? "Dialogue" on which of your limbs to chop off?
As for all you lovely lady rabbis on the list -- enjoy sermonizing in your burqa! And just hope your daughters don't have to endure the female bris ceremony.
Now, rabbis, I say this only out of the deepest concern for your mental health: Ask a doctor in your congregation to check if your Galloping Smug-itis has reached Stage 4 yet.
Because I'd like to think there's still hope for you. But you're making it really tough.
And by the way, nowhere in your job description can I find "will work to self-righteously deliver congregants into the hands of genocidal maniacs who conspire to shoot people in shopping malls."
You want me to pay dues for that? Two thousand dollars a year for you to hand me over to the Jew-hating nuts? I want my money back!
And please spare me your teary speeches about the Holocaust and your bus trips to the Holocaust Museum.
To you, Never Again apparently means Never Again Will We Bother to Flick An Eyelash In the Annoyingly Icky Direction of Genocidal Threats.
And finally, here's something you may never understand: One Charles Jacobs is worth more than seventy of you. Why? Because he fights for the truth.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
How Obama aids Hamas
President Obama Rewards The Hamas Lobby
Why is the terrorist group more interested in attacking Israel than improving the lives of its people?
by Steven Emerson
Forbes.com
June 22, 2010
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2023/president-obama-rewards-the-hamas-lobby
A ship packed with violent, radical activists tries to run a blockade aimed at preventing terrorists from receiving illicit material. Video shows them beating commandos with clubs as they land on the ship, pelting them with slingshots and carrying knives.
What is America's response? To demand that the nation whose soldiers were attacked conduct an investigation to "find out the facts."
It is clear Israel sought to peacefully secure the Mavi Marmara on May 31 as it approached Gaza. But the hardened activists, who openly discussed their desire for martyrdom, weren't going to let that happen. Fighting for their lives, the Israeli soldiers opened fire with their sidearms, killing nine people on the ship.
But that does not make the Obama administration's demand for an investigation from an ally any more sensible. It was the first such demand made by the U.S. of another country, let alone an ally, in recent memory. There was no call for a probe on Russia's treatment of Chechnyans, for Egypt's persecution of the Christian Copts or for the murderous rampages against the Ahmadiyan Muslim sect in Pakistan.
Just Israel made the history books. Israel, however, has proof of what really happened. It released at least five videos on YouTube showing Israeli soldiers being attacked as they landed.
Moreover, details emerged about IHH--the Turkish charity instigating the attack--and its long history of abetting Islamic terrorist attacks and Islamic terrorist organizations. Reports produced by MEMRI showed the violent attack at sea was planned by radicals vowing to go to their "martyrdom." By June 3 more YouTube videos appeared showing the efforts by the Turkish flotilla extremists to battle with the Israelis.
But that wasn't enough for President Obama. Appearing on CNN's Larry King show on June 3, he repeated his demand for an Israeli investigation. But this time, Obama revealed his own biased predisposition when he told King, "You've got loss of life that was unnecessary."
Unnecessary? According to whom? For Turkey's radical Islamist regime, it was not only unnecessary, but evidence of a premeditated "bloody massacre." But to the Israeli soldiers who would have been murdered had they not used their sidearms, the deaths on the ship--as tragic as any death is--were anything but unnecessary.
And then the president blurted out his real agenda, when he criticized the Israelis for their blockade of Gaza: "you've got a blockade up that is preventing people in Palestinian Gaza from having job opportunities and being able to create businesses and engage in trade and have opportunity for the future." Here, he joined the world Hamas lobby--Islamic and European countries--in piling on Israel for creating such a humanitarian mess in Gaza, which in reality does not exist.
Stores are full of food. Pharmacies are stocked with medicines. Fancy restaurants on the coast flourish. There is no hunger. Every week Israel sends in hundreds of Israeli truckloads with food and other essentials.
The embargo exists because Hamas has proven it is more interested in arming itself and attacking Israel than in helping create a better life for its people. What country would ignore these provocations and terrorist attacks? In the past, Israel intercepted two international vessels destined for Gaza containing vast arsenals of weapons, explosives, rockets and missiles. Does Israel have an obligation to help a terrorist government bent on its destruction?
After falling for the agenda of the Free Gaza flotilla, whose membership included more than 100 known Islamic militants and terrorists, the president blurted out in the CNN interview something that was truly incredulous. He said, "...and I think Turkey can have a positive voice in this whole process once we've worked through this tragedy." Turkey? The country that sponsored the would-be killers on the Mavi Marmara?
Turkey has allowed IHH to operate freely. IHH's accomplishments include assisting the Millennium bomber, supporting Hamas and smuggling weapons to mujahedeen. Arab language newspapers have reported that the leaders on board the Mavi Marmara planned to "martyr" themselves by attacking Israeli troops that might come on board. These newspapers also reported that the Turkish leaders armed themselves with knives and slingshots before boarding the Turkish ship.
Instead of rewarding Turkey, the president should have demanded that an international investigation be conducted of its role in inciting and arming the terrorists aboard its ship. He should have ordered Treasury to list IHH as a terrorist entity and ordered the Justice Department to investigate the activities of the Free Gaza Movement in the U.S. and its predecessor the International Solidarity Movement for materially supporting Hamas.
Israel alone was the recipient of the demands for an investigation.
Faced with the pressure from the president, Israel created a committee to investigate the flotilla incident. Moreover, Israel also capitulated to U.S. and international pressure this past weekend and loosened the blockade that will surely help to prop up the declining popularity of the Hamas regime in Gaza. It only goes to prove that terrorism pays.
Steven Emerson is executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2023/president-obama-rewards-the-hamas-lobby
Why is the terrorist group more interested in attacking Israel than improving the lives of its people?
by Steven Emerson
Forbes.com
June 22, 2010
http://www.investigativeproject.org/2023/president-obama-rewards-the-hamas-lobby
A ship packed with violent, radical activists tries to run a blockade aimed at preventing terrorists from receiving illicit material. Video shows them beating commandos with clubs as they land on the ship, pelting them with slingshots and carrying knives.
What is America's response? To demand that the nation whose soldiers were attacked conduct an investigation to "find out the facts."
It is clear Israel sought to peacefully secure the Mavi Marmara on May 31 as it approached Gaza. But the hardened activists, who openly discussed their desire for martyrdom, weren't going to let that happen. Fighting for their lives, the Israeli soldiers opened fire with their sidearms, killing nine people on the ship.
But that does not make the Obama administration's demand for an investigation from an ally any more sensible. It was the first such demand made by the U.S. of another country, let alone an ally, in recent memory. There was no call for a probe on Russia's treatment of Chechnyans, for Egypt's persecution of the Christian Copts or for the murderous rampages against the Ahmadiyan Muslim sect in Pakistan.
Just Israel made the history books. Israel, however, has proof of what really happened. It released at least five videos on YouTube showing Israeli soldiers being attacked as they landed.
Moreover, details emerged about IHH--the Turkish charity instigating the attack--and its long history of abetting Islamic terrorist attacks and Islamic terrorist organizations. Reports produced by MEMRI showed the violent attack at sea was planned by radicals vowing to go to their "martyrdom." By June 3 more YouTube videos appeared showing the efforts by the Turkish flotilla extremists to battle with the Israelis.
But that wasn't enough for President Obama. Appearing on CNN's Larry King show on June 3, he repeated his demand for an Israeli investigation. But this time, Obama revealed his own biased predisposition when he told King, "You've got loss of life that was unnecessary."
Unnecessary? According to whom? For Turkey's radical Islamist regime, it was not only unnecessary, but evidence of a premeditated "bloody massacre." But to the Israeli soldiers who would have been murdered had they not used their sidearms, the deaths on the ship--as tragic as any death is--were anything but unnecessary.
And then the president blurted out his real agenda, when he criticized the Israelis for their blockade of Gaza: "you've got a blockade up that is preventing people in Palestinian Gaza from having job opportunities and being able to create businesses and engage in trade and have opportunity for the future." Here, he joined the world Hamas lobby--Islamic and European countries--in piling on Israel for creating such a humanitarian mess in Gaza, which in reality does not exist.
Stores are full of food. Pharmacies are stocked with medicines. Fancy restaurants on the coast flourish. There is no hunger. Every week Israel sends in hundreds of Israeli truckloads with food and other essentials.
The embargo exists because Hamas has proven it is more interested in arming itself and attacking Israel than in helping create a better life for its people. What country would ignore these provocations and terrorist attacks? In the past, Israel intercepted two international vessels destined for Gaza containing vast arsenals of weapons, explosives, rockets and missiles. Does Israel have an obligation to help a terrorist government bent on its destruction?
After falling for the agenda of the Free Gaza flotilla, whose membership included more than 100 known Islamic militants and terrorists, the president blurted out in the CNN interview something that was truly incredulous. He said, "...and I think Turkey can have a positive voice in this whole process once we've worked through this tragedy." Turkey? The country that sponsored the would-be killers on the Mavi Marmara?
Turkey has allowed IHH to operate freely. IHH's accomplishments include assisting the Millennium bomber, supporting Hamas and smuggling weapons to mujahedeen. Arab language newspapers have reported that the leaders on board the Mavi Marmara planned to "martyr" themselves by attacking Israeli troops that might come on board. These newspapers also reported that the Turkish leaders armed themselves with knives and slingshots before boarding the Turkish ship.
Instead of rewarding Turkey, the president should have demanded that an international investigation be conducted of its role in inciting and arming the terrorists aboard its ship. He should have ordered Treasury to list IHH as a terrorist entity and ordered the Justice Department to investigate the activities of the Free Gaza Movement in the U.S. and its predecessor the International Solidarity Movement for materially supporting Hamas.
Israel alone was the recipient of the demands for an investigation.
Faced with the pressure from the president, Israel created a committee to investigate the flotilla incident. Moreover, Israel also capitulated to U.S. and international pressure this past weekend and loosened the blockade that will surely help to prop up the declining popularity of the Hamas regime in Gaza. It only goes to prove that terrorism pays.
Steven Emerson is executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2023/president-obama-rewards-the-hamas-lobby
Monday, June 21, 2010
Obama and the War against Israel
Obama and the War against Israel
If President Obama had been trying to undermine Israel’s security — and ours — he could hardly have done a better job.
No other country in the world faces an array of existential threats such as the nation of Israel confronts daily. The world’s only Jewish state is also its most precarious. Geographically tiny, Israel is surrounded by theocracies that reject its very existence as a “nakba” — a catastrophe — and call for its destruction. To carry out this malignant ambition, anti-Israel Islamists have mobilized three rocket-wielding armies, sworn to wipe Israel from the face of the earth.
First and most aggressive among them is the Gaza-based Hamas, a fanatical religious party committed in its official charter to obliterating Israel and killing its Jews. Hamas is the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the inspirer of al-Qaeda and the global Islamic jihad, whose official motto declares: “Death in the service of Allah is our highest aspiration.” In Gaza, Hamas has created a terrorist state and a national death cult whose path is martyrdom and whose goal is openly proclaimed: “O, our children: The Jews — brothers of the apes, assassins of the prophets, bloodsuckers, warmongers — are murdering you, depriving you of life after having plundered your homeland and your homes. Only Islam can break the Jews and destroy their dream.”
Given that hatred for Jews is the animating passion of the Hamas militants, their response to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was not surprising. Far from greeting this as a gesture of peace, Hamas regarded the Israeli withdrawal as a surrender to its terrorist attacks and an opportunity to escalate them. In the days and months following the withdrawal, Hamas launched 6,500 unprovoked rocket strikes on towns and schoolyards in Israel before the Israelis decided to strike back.
On Israel’s eastern border is the West Bank, home to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and other terrorist groups, armed and protected by the so-called “moderate” Palestinian Authority. Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority officially rejects Israel’s existence and the right of its Jews to self-determination. Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority provides a curriculum for its schoolchildren that teaches them to hate Jews and hope to kill them, seeking martyrdom in the process. In pursuit of these genocidal goals, all Palestinian schoolchildren study maps of the region from which Israel has been erased.
On Israel’s northern border, in Lebanon, is Hezbollah, the “Party of God,” which is stockpiling tens of thousands of Iranian rockets in anticipation of the war of annihilation it has promised to wage against the Jewish state. Created by Iran’s Republican Guard and supplied by Syria’s (officially) “fascist” dictatorship, Hezbollah is the largest terrorist army in the world. Like Hamas, it makes explicit its hatred for the Jews and its agenda in regard to them — to “finish the job that Hitler started.” Its fanatical leader, Hassan Nasrallah, leads thousands of believers in chants of “Death to Israel! Death to America!” He has said, “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” Under the complicit eye of U.N. “peacekeepers,” Hezbollah continues to amass rockets whose sole purpose is the obliteration of Israel. In May 2006, Nasrallah boasted: “Today all of Israel is in our range.#…#Ports, military bases, factories — everything is in our range.”
But it is Hezbollah’s sponsor, the totalitarian — and soon to be nuclear — state of Iran, that presents the most disturbing threat to Israel’s existence. Its blood-soaked dictators have been targeting Israel for destruction since 1979, when Iran became an Islamic republic and its theocratic ruler, the Ayatollah Khomeini, identified Israel and America as “the Little Satan” and “the Great Satan.” Its former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has publicly announced his support for nuclear war against the Jewish state, reasoning that since Iran is more than 70 times the size of Israel, it could survive a nuclear exchange while Israel could not.
Iran’s current leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has also called for America and Israel to be “wiped from the map” — and there was no dissent from the other 56 Islamic states that make up the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Amateur semanticists insist that Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated, and that he really meant that both countries should be “erased from the pages of history.” But this is a distinction without a difference. For what can that threat possibly mean if Israel or America should continue to exist? Meanwhile, Iran continues to build long-range nuclear missiles that could be used for just such a purpose, and no serious effort to check that ambition has been made by the international community or by the United States.
Where, indeed, does the international community stand in the face of this brazen preparation to bring about a second Holocaust of the Jews? Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arab states have conducted three unprovoked, aggressive conventional wars against it, along with a continuous terrorist war that began in 1949. Yet between 1948 and 2004 there were 322 resolutions in the U.N. General Assembly condemning the victim, Israel, and not one that condemned an Arab state.
The United Nations today is dominated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group that was established in 1969 at a summit convened, according to its official website, “as a result of criminal arson of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem” — in other words, in response to the criminal Jews. The Organization of the Islamic Conference regularly passes one-sided resolutions that condemn Israel, particularly for its efforts to combat Palestinian terrorism and disrupt Palestinian weapon smuggling into Gaza. The U.N.’s most notorious assault on Israel was the Goldstone Report, which was commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council in September 2009 and which condemned Israel’s belated response to the unprovoked Hamas rocket attacks.
Relying on the testimony of Hamas terrorists, the Goldstone Report charged that Israel had deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians and had committed war crimes in Gaza. Outside the precincts of the Islamic propaganda machine, however, Israel’s record is in fact that of a nation that is extraordinarily protective of enemy civilians. In testimony ignored by the Goldstone Report, for example, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, stated: “During Operation Cast Lead [the Israeli response to the Hamas attacks], the Israel Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.” Hamas, by contrast, is notorious for building military headquarters under hospitals, for placing its military forces in refugee camps, and for using women and children as “human shields” to deter attacks. Hamas’s rockets are known to be so inaccurate they cannot be directed against military targets; they can only be used effectively against civilians. In addition, since Hamas’s war against Israel was a response to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal, it was a criminal aggression responsible for all the subsequent casualties, something the Goldstone Report and the U.N. Human Rights Council conveniently overlooked.
The Human Rights Council was created in 2006. In its first year, the council listed only one country in the entire world as violating human rights: Israel. It condemned Israel despite the fact that Israel is the only state in the Middle East that recognizes human rights and protects them. Not one of the world’s other 194 countries was even mentioned, including North Korea, Burma, and Iran — the last of which hangs gays from cranes for transgressing the sexual proscriptions of the Koran. The reason for these oversights is no mystery. The U.N. Human Rights Council has been presided over by representatives of such brutal human-rights violators as Libya, China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba, and it was such a travesty from its inception that it was boycotted by the United States until Barack Obama decided this year to join its ranks. This decision by the Obama administration, along with its overtures to Syria, Iran, and other noxious regimes, lent a stamp of legitimacy to the hypocrisy of the council and encouraged its malice.
In these sinister developments, the world is witnessing a reprise of the 1930s, when the Nazis devised a “final solution” to the “Jewish problem,” and the civilized world did nothing to halt its implementation. This time, the solution is being proposed openly in front of the entire international community, which appears unruffled by the prospect. It has turned its collective back on the Jews, and refuses to recognize the gravity of the threat. Moreover, by enforcing the fiction that there is a “peace process” that needs to be brokered between the sides, and ignoring the overt preparation for Israel’s destruction by the Palestinian side, the “peacemakers” lend their support to its deadly agenda.
For decades now, Israel has been isolated and alone in the community of nations, with one crucial exception. That exception has been the United States, a country on which it has relied for its survival throughout its 60-year history. Every would-be aggressor has understood that the world’s most powerful nation was behind Israel and would not let her be destroyed. Every government harboring ill will toward the Jewish state has had to reckon with the fact that the United States was in Israel’s corner. Every vote of condemnation in the United Nations had to confront a veto by the nation that provides its chief financial support.
Until now.
In the words of a recent Reuters dispatch, “Under President Barack Obama, the United States no longer provides Israel with automatic support at the United Nations, where the Jewish state faces a constant barrage of criticism and condemnation. The subtle but noticeable shift in the U.S. approach to its Middle East ally comes amid what some analysts describe as one of the most serious crises in U.S.-Israel relations in years.”
This change first became apparent during an official visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Biden earlier this year. On March 9, the vice president arrived for a dinner at the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nearly two hours late. His tardiness was not accidental but a calculated diplomatic slight — specifically, a punishment for Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 new homes in a predominantly Jewish section of East Jerusalem. The vice president was embarrassed by the announcement’s being made during his visit.
In fact, the announcement was a routine step, the fourth in a seven-stage bureaucratic approval process for new construction. While its timing might be construed as inopportune, the building of homes in a Jewish neighborhood in Israel’s capital city was hardly an issue that should have created any sort of problem, let alone caused a rupture between allies. Nonetheless, Israeli officials, conscious of their dependence on their American partners, immediately apologized for any perceived offense.
But the Obama administration would have none of it. As severe reproaches of Israel from top U.S. officials followed, the crisis escalated. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton berated Netanyahu, calling Israel’s announcement a “deeply negative signal” for U.S.-Israel ties. Senior presidential adviser David Axelrod delivered the same scolding message to an American audience, going on cable news shows to vent the administration’s displeasure. Branding Israel’s announcement an “affront” and an “insult,” Axelrod claimed that Israel had made the “peace process” with the Palestinians much more “difficult.”
Whereas Israel’s housing announcement was made without Netanyahu’s knowledge, Washington’s response was dictated by President Obama. When the prime minister arrived in the United States for a meeting with the president that same month, there was no ceremony in the White House Rose Garden and no posing before press cameras — the usual goodwill gestures afforded visiting heads of friendly nations.
The reception in private was at least as cold. When Netanyahu arrived at the White House for what he thought was going to be a dinner with the president, Obama unceremoniously presented him with a list of demands — including that Israel cease all housing construction in East Jerusalem — and curtly abandoned his guest to have dinner with his wife and daughters in the White House residential wing. As Obama left the meeting room, he informed his stunned visitors that he would “be around” should the prime minister change his mind. As the Israeli press reported afterwards, “There is no humiliation exercise that the Americans did not try on the prime minister and his entourage.” Washington Post columnist and Middle East expert Jackson Diehl was even more blunt, writing that “Netanyahu is being treated [by Obama] as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator.”
Contrary to the administration’s insistence that Israel was jeopardizing peace by encroaching on negotiable terrain, the construction site in Jerusalem was anything but disputed territory. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, and the construction site is in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood. Housing construction had been under way in Ramat Shlomo since the early 1990s, and it would remain part of Israel in any conceivable peace settlement. Consequently, when Netanyahu had agreed under pressure to a partial ten-month freeze on settlements in the disputed territories, he specifically excluded Jerusalem. By its insistence that Israel cease all building in East Jerusalem, it was the Obama administration, not Israel, that was breaking with precedent, and opening up the political center of Israel itself to Palestinian claims.
In opposing Israeli construction in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, the Obama administration embraced a version of Middle Eastern history that directly lends itself to the Arab war against the Jewish state. In the Arab narrative justifying that war, Jerusalem is alleged to occupy a central place in the history of Muslims and Arabs. In the same narrative, Jerusalem is claimed as the capital of a future Palestinian state. But the spiritual centrality of Jerusalem for Muslims is in fact a relatively recent claim and dubious on its face, while the religious claims are by-products of Muslim military conquests.
The Prophet Mohammed never visited Jerusalem, and consequently Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran. Today even Islamists regard it as only the third-holiest city in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. It was never the capital of any Arab state. Indeed, for centuries, Jerusalem was a forgotten city to most Arabs, and it was allowed to fall into ruin under Ottoman rule, which lasted until the creation of Israel and Jordan in the aftermath of the First World War. On a trip to Jerusalem in 1867, Mark Twain lamented that the city “has lost all its grandeur, and is become a pauper village.” When Jordan occupied Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, it was treated like a backwater. Only one Arab leader, Morocco’s King Hassan, cared enough to pay a visit to the city that Muslims who are involved in the jihad against Israel now suggest is an essential part of their history.
The sudden fracture in the U.S.-Israel relationship in March caught the Israeli government off guard. But close observers of the Obama administration would have recognized it as the logical endpoint of a series of markers that had been laid down since Obama emerged as a leading presidential contender in 2008. With these markers Obama was signaling a major shift in U.S. policy, moving toward the Muslim world and America’s traditional enemies, and away from allies like Israel.
The first sign of this shift was visible during a February 2008 presidential debate, when Obama sought to differentiate himself from Hillary Clinton, his then opponent and future secretary of state, by announcing that, unlike her, he would be willing to meet with hostile governments “without preconditions.” It was a position he justified by asserting that it was critical for the United States to “talk to its enemies.” This was a rare example of a campaign promise Obama has kept.
On entering the White House, Obama quickly moved to set a new tone toward the Arab and Muslim worlds. His very first call to a foreign leader from the Oval Office was to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, and it was not an effort to dissuade Abbas from his support for terrorism or his opposition to the existence of a Jewish state. One of the first interviews Obama gave as president, in January 2009, was to the Dubai-based television network Al-Arabiya. In it, Obama effectively offered an apology to the Arab world for alleged American misdeeds. He assured his interviewer that with him in charge Arab states could look to America as a friend. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy,” Obama said, adding that the United States “sometimes makes mistakes. We have not been perfect.”
It was the precursor of an extensive apology tour for America’s sins around the world. In April 2009, he visited Turkey, a NATO ally that was rapidly — and alarmingly — becoming an Islamist state. Addressing its parliament, he hailed Turkey as a “true partner” and suggested that it was the United States that had been the faithless friend. In a not-so-oblique attack on President Bush, Obama expressed his regret for the “difficulties of these last few years,” referring to a strain in relations caused by Turkey’s refusal to allow American troops to deploy from Turkish soil during the war in Iraq. Obama lamented that the “trust that binds us has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced.” In other words, Turkey’s refusal to help America support the Muslim citizens of Iraq and topple a hated tyranny was a response to America’s prejudice against Muslims.
In his review of past grievances, Obama did not mention the millions of Muslims — including Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — who had cheered the 9/11 attacks on the United States by Islamic fanatics. Nor did he complain about the spread of anti-American and anti-Israeli conspiracy theories concerning those attacks in the Muslim world, including Turkey. As recently as 2008, polls found that as many Turks (39 percent) believed the United States or Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks as believed Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were the culprits.
Even more worrisome, Obama used the occasion of his Turkish visit to break with the U.S. policy of treating countries that harbor terrorists as hostile nations. President Bush had declared that there would be no room for neutrality in the war against terror: “You are either with us or against us.” But Obama now assured his listeners in Turkey and throughout the Muslim world that their governments no longer had to choose between America and al-Qaeda. “America’s relationship with the Muslim world,” Obama said, “cannot and will not be based on opposition to al-Qaeda.”
Obama’s pandering to Arab and Muslim sensibilities had already been embarrassingly on display a few days earlier, when he took the step, unprecedented for an American president, of making a deep bow to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the ruler of a nation in which it is illegal to carry a Bible or build a church, and where women are not allowed to drive automobiles. The incident took place when President Obama attended the G-20 economic summit in London. When critics decried the president’s subservient gesture to the Arab despot, the administration was caught by surprise and attempted to deny that it had ever taken place. Inconveniently for White House damage control, a video had captured Obama in full obeisant mode.
The shift in Washington’s policy toward the Arab world reached a new level in Obama’s speech in Cairo two months later. On the one hand, the president defended the U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East as driven by “necessity,” condemned the Holocaust denial and Jew hatred that are rife in the Arab world (and promoted by its governments), and called on Palestinians to abandon violence against Israel. But these statements were accompanied by others that appear particularly troubling in the light of subsequent administration moves.
While Obama rightly condemned Holocaust denial, he left the impression that Israel’s legitimacy derived solely from the legacy of European anti-Semitism and the Nazis’ extermination of six million Jews. This echoed the Arab propaganda claim that Israel is a problem created by Europeans and unfairly imposed on the Arab world. Once again Obama was bolstering an Arab myth that serves to delegitimize the Jewish state.
The Holocaust is not merely a European legacy. Middle Eastern states such as Iraq and Iran actively sided with Hitler’s armies; Arab generals served with Rommel, Hitler’s commander in North Africa; and Arab leaders applauded and actively promoted the extermination of the Jews. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, was an admirer of Hitler and had Mein Kampf translated into Arabic in the 1930s as a text to guide his followers. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and founder of Palestinian nationalism, was an active and vocal supporter of Hitler’s “final solution” and spent the war years in Berlin recruiting Arabs to the Nazi cause. Al-Husseini, a man revered to this day in the West Bank and Gaza as the George Washington of a Palestinian state, organized anti-Jewish pogroms in the 1920s and 1930s, actively planned to build his own Auschwitz in the Middle East, and was thwarted only when Rommel was defeated at El-Alamein.
The Arab canard that Israel is Europe’s attempt to unload its problem onto the backs of the Arabs ignores — as did Obama — the fact that Jerusalem has been the spiritual capital of the Jewish people for nearly 3,000 years and that Jews have lived in their historic homeland continuously for all that time. Jerusalem is at the center of the Jewish spiritual tradition, and Jews have been its largest religious community since 1864. Prime Minister Netanyahu was historically accurate when he admonished Obama, saying that “the Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.”
In his Cairo speech, Obama also showed little appreciation of the modern history of Israel, a nation that was not built on Arab — let alone “Palestinian” — land. The state of Israel was created out of the ruins of the Turkish empire.
In 1922, Great Britain created the state of Jordan out of 80 percent of the Palestine Mandate — a geographical, not an ethnic, designation. The territory in the Mandate had been part of the Turkish (not Arab) empire for the previous four hundred years. Then in 1948, a U.N. “partition plan” provided equal parts of the remaining Turkish land to Arabs and to Jews living on the banks of the Jordan River. In this plan, the Jews were assigned 10 percent of the original Palestine Mandate, while the Arabs received 90 percent. None of this land had belonged to a “Palestinian” nation or a Palestinian entity. In the previous 400 years there had never been a province of the Turkish empire called “Palestine.” The entire region out of which Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank were created was known as “Ottoman Syria.”
In what would prove to be a continuing pattern, the Jews accepted the partition’s grossly unequal terms; their portion consisted of three unconnected slivers of land, of which 60 percent was arid desert. The Arabs, who had already received 80 percent of the Mandate land, rejected their additional portion, as they would continue to reject any arrangement that would allow for a Jewish state.
Immediately, five Arab nations launched a war against the Jews, who repelled the Arab attacks and established a Jewish state. When the fighting ended, the parts of the partitioned land that had been earmarked for the Arabs — namely, the West Bank and Gaza — were annexed by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, and disappeared from the map. There was no protest from the Arab world at the disappearance of “Palestine” into Jordan and Egypt, no Palestine Liberation Organization, no complaint to the U.N. The reason for the silence was that there was no Palestinian identity at the time, no movement for “self-determination,” no “Palestinian” people to make a claim. There were Arabs who lived in the region of the Jordan. But they considered themselves inhabitants of Jordan or of the Syrian province of the former Ottoman Empire. The disappearance of the West Bank and Gaza was an annexation of Arab land by Arab states.
Arab and Western revisionists have turned this history on its head to portray the Jewish war of survival as a racist, imperialist plot to expel “Palestinians” from “Palestine.” This is an utter distortion of the historical record. The term “Palestine Mandate” is a European reference to a geographical section of the defeated Turkish empire. The claim that there was a Palestinian nation from which ethnic Palestinians were expelled and which Israel now “occupies” illegally is a political lie.
In 1967, the Arab states attacked Israel again, with the express aim of “pushing the Jews into the sea.” Again they were defeated. And once again defeat did not prompt the Arab states to make peace or to abandon their efforts to destroy Israel. At an August 1967 summit in Khartoum, Arab leaders declared that they would accept “no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations” with Israel. This is the permanent Arab war against Israel. It is a war driven by religious and ethnic hatred, which is the only durable cause of the conflict in the Middle East.
It is hardly surprising, given this historical reality, that Israel should regard with skepticism the Arab demands that Israel surrender territory — which it captured in defending itself against Arab aggression — in advance of a settlement that recognizes the existence of the Jewish state. As Netanyahu has said, “What kind of moral position is it to say that the failed aggressor should be given back all the territory from which he launched his attack?” In fact, of no other nation that has been victimized — and victimized repeatedly — by aggressors is such a concession demanded.
Yet Israeli concessions are precisely what the Obama administration is demanding as a precondition of peace. It is ostensibly doing so on the dubious assumption that if only Israel would make further concessions to the Palestinians, peace would be possible. But this assumption flies in the face of 60 years of continuous Arab aggression, including unrelenting terror attacks against Israeli civilians and explicit commitments to wipe out the Jewish state.
The very idea that Israeli settlements (let alone Jewish houses in Jewish neighborhoods) are an obstacle to peace perpetuates the mythical claims of the Arab cause. There are a million Arabs settled in Israel, and they enjoy more rights as Israeli citizens than do the Arab citizens of any Arab Muslim state. So why are the settlements of a few hundred thousand Jews on the West Bank a problem? The only possible answer is Jew hatred, the desire to make the West Bank Judenrein, and ultimately the 60-year Arab campaign to push the Jews into the sea.
The Obama administration’s pressure on Israel to give up its settlements and to concede that its capital is disputed terrain feeds the inherent racism of the Arab cause and undermines Israel’s ability to resist the genocidal campaign against it. Such pressure cannot promote peace negotiations when the other party is openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction and has already shown that it will reject even the most generous offers of peace.
Directly following the Obama administration’s attacks on Israel’s building project in Jerusalem, the Palestinians invoked Israeli intransigence as a pretext for pulling out of the indirect peace talks that had been taking place. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas went on record as refusing to enter into direct talks with Israel unless it instituted an immediate construction freeze in its own capital city. Palestinians had previously participated in talks without that condition, but, as one observer noted, “How could the Palestinian position be softer on Israel than the American position? Of course the Palestinians would have to hold Israel to the newly raised standards of the Obama administration.” In this way did the Obama administration further the efforts of the Arabs to dismantle the Jewish state.
Observers of this ominous development warned that by attacking Israel over settlements the administration was encouraging a violent buildup that could eventually erupt into a third Intifada. A Hebrew-speaking Arab protester interviewed on Israeli radio called for armed resistance against Israel’s “assault on Jerusalem,” declaring that the time had come for a new Intifada. The call was taken up by Hamas, which declared a “day of rage” to lash out against Israel. Arab rioters protested in the streets, hurled stones at buses, cars, and police, and clashed with Israeli security forces. On Israel’s Highway 443, connecting Jerusalem with the city of Modi’in, Israeli Arabs firebombed passing motorists, wounding a father and his nine-month-old infant. Arab parliamentarians in the Israeli Knesset further fueled the violence. Echoing the Obama administration, one of them said, “Anyone who builds settlements in Jerusalem is digging a grave for peace.”
— David Horowitz is the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. . . . Jacob Laksin is managing editor of Frontpage Magazine. He is co-author, with Horowitz, of One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy.
If President Obama had been trying to undermine Israel’s security — and ours — he could hardly have done a better job.
No other country in the world faces an array of existential threats such as the nation of Israel confronts daily. The world’s only Jewish state is also its most precarious. Geographically tiny, Israel is surrounded by theocracies that reject its very existence as a “nakba” — a catastrophe — and call for its destruction. To carry out this malignant ambition, anti-Israel Islamists have mobilized three rocket-wielding armies, sworn to wipe Israel from the face of the earth.
First and most aggressive among them is the Gaza-based Hamas, a fanatical religious party committed in its official charter to obliterating Israel and killing its Jews. Hamas is the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the inspirer of al-Qaeda and the global Islamic jihad, whose official motto declares: “Death in the service of Allah is our highest aspiration.” In Gaza, Hamas has created a terrorist state and a national death cult whose path is martyrdom and whose goal is openly proclaimed: “O, our children: The Jews — brothers of the apes, assassins of the prophets, bloodsuckers, warmongers — are murdering you, depriving you of life after having plundered your homeland and your homes. Only Islam can break the Jews and destroy their dream.”
Given that hatred for Jews is the animating passion of the Hamas militants, their response to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 was not surprising. Far from greeting this as a gesture of peace, Hamas regarded the Israeli withdrawal as a surrender to its terrorist attacks and an opportunity to escalate them. In the days and months following the withdrawal, Hamas launched 6,500 unprovoked rocket strikes on towns and schoolyards in Israel before the Israelis decided to strike back.
On Israel’s eastern border is the West Bank, home to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and other terrorist groups, armed and protected by the so-called “moderate” Palestinian Authority. Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority officially rejects Israel’s existence and the right of its Jews to self-determination. Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority provides a curriculum for its schoolchildren that teaches them to hate Jews and hope to kill them, seeking martyrdom in the process. In pursuit of these genocidal goals, all Palestinian schoolchildren study maps of the region from which Israel has been erased.
On Israel’s northern border, in Lebanon, is Hezbollah, the “Party of God,” which is stockpiling tens of thousands of Iranian rockets in anticipation of the war of annihilation it has promised to wage against the Jewish state. Created by Iran’s Republican Guard and supplied by Syria’s (officially) “fascist” dictatorship, Hezbollah is the largest terrorist army in the world. Like Hamas, it makes explicit its hatred for the Jews and its agenda in regard to them — to “finish the job that Hitler started.” Its fanatical leader, Hassan Nasrallah, leads thousands of believers in chants of “Death to Israel! Death to America!” He has said, “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.” Under the complicit eye of U.N. “peacekeepers,” Hezbollah continues to amass rockets whose sole purpose is the obliteration of Israel. In May 2006, Nasrallah boasted: “Today all of Israel is in our range.#…#Ports, military bases, factories — everything is in our range.”
But it is Hezbollah’s sponsor, the totalitarian — and soon to be nuclear — state of Iran, that presents the most disturbing threat to Israel’s existence. Its blood-soaked dictators have been targeting Israel for destruction since 1979, when Iran became an Islamic republic and its theocratic ruler, the Ayatollah Khomeini, identified Israel and America as “the Little Satan” and “the Great Satan.” Its former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has publicly announced his support for nuclear war against the Jewish state, reasoning that since Iran is more than 70 times the size of Israel, it could survive a nuclear exchange while Israel could not.
Iran’s current leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has also called for America and Israel to be “wiped from the map” — and there was no dissent from the other 56 Islamic states that make up the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Amateur semanticists insist that Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated, and that he really meant that both countries should be “erased from the pages of history.” But this is a distinction without a difference. For what can that threat possibly mean if Israel or America should continue to exist? Meanwhile, Iran continues to build long-range nuclear missiles that could be used for just such a purpose, and no serious effort to check that ambition has been made by the international community or by the United States.
Where, indeed, does the international community stand in the face of this brazen preparation to bring about a second Holocaust of the Jews? Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arab states have conducted three unprovoked, aggressive conventional wars against it, along with a continuous terrorist war that began in 1949. Yet between 1948 and 2004 there were 322 resolutions in the U.N. General Assembly condemning the victim, Israel, and not one that condemned an Arab state.
The United Nations today is dominated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group that was established in 1969 at a summit convened, according to its official website, “as a result of criminal arson of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem” — in other words, in response to the criminal Jews. The Organization of the Islamic Conference regularly passes one-sided resolutions that condemn Israel, particularly for its efforts to combat Palestinian terrorism and disrupt Palestinian weapon smuggling into Gaza. The U.N.’s most notorious assault on Israel was the Goldstone Report, which was commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council in September 2009 and which condemned Israel’s belated response to the unprovoked Hamas rocket attacks.
Relying on the testimony of Hamas terrorists, the Goldstone Report charged that Israel had deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians and had committed war crimes in Gaza. Outside the precincts of the Islamic propaganda machine, however, Israel’s record is in fact that of a nation that is extraordinarily protective of enemy civilians. In testimony ignored by the Goldstone Report, for example, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, stated: “During Operation Cast Lead [the Israeli response to the Hamas attacks], the Israel Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.” Hamas, by contrast, is notorious for building military headquarters under hospitals, for placing its military forces in refugee camps, and for using women and children as “human shields” to deter attacks. Hamas’s rockets are known to be so inaccurate they cannot be directed against military targets; they can only be used effectively against civilians. In addition, since Hamas’s war against Israel was a response to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal, it was a criminal aggression responsible for all the subsequent casualties, something the Goldstone Report and the U.N. Human Rights Council conveniently overlooked.
The Human Rights Council was created in 2006. In its first year, the council listed only one country in the entire world as violating human rights: Israel. It condemned Israel despite the fact that Israel is the only state in the Middle East that recognizes human rights and protects them. Not one of the world’s other 194 countries was even mentioned, including North Korea, Burma, and Iran — the last of which hangs gays from cranes for transgressing the sexual proscriptions of the Koran. The reason for these oversights is no mystery. The U.N. Human Rights Council has been presided over by representatives of such brutal human-rights violators as Libya, China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba, and it was such a travesty from its inception that it was boycotted by the United States until Barack Obama decided this year to join its ranks. This decision by the Obama administration, along with its overtures to Syria, Iran, and other noxious regimes, lent a stamp of legitimacy to the hypocrisy of the council and encouraged its malice.
In these sinister developments, the world is witnessing a reprise of the 1930s, when the Nazis devised a “final solution” to the “Jewish problem,” and the civilized world did nothing to halt its implementation. This time, the solution is being proposed openly in front of the entire international community, which appears unruffled by the prospect. It has turned its collective back on the Jews, and refuses to recognize the gravity of the threat. Moreover, by enforcing the fiction that there is a “peace process” that needs to be brokered between the sides, and ignoring the overt preparation for Israel’s destruction by the Palestinian side, the “peacemakers” lend their support to its deadly agenda.
For decades now, Israel has been isolated and alone in the community of nations, with one crucial exception. That exception has been the United States, a country on which it has relied for its survival throughout its 60-year history. Every would-be aggressor has understood that the world’s most powerful nation was behind Israel and would not let her be destroyed. Every government harboring ill will toward the Jewish state has had to reckon with the fact that the United States was in Israel’s corner. Every vote of condemnation in the United Nations had to confront a veto by the nation that provides its chief financial support.
Until now.
In the words of a recent Reuters dispatch, “Under President Barack Obama, the United States no longer provides Israel with automatic support at the United Nations, where the Jewish state faces a constant barrage of criticism and condemnation. The subtle but noticeable shift in the U.S. approach to its Middle East ally comes amid what some analysts describe as one of the most serious crises in U.S.-Israel relations in years.”
This change first became apparent during an official visit to Jerusalem by Vice President Biden earlier this year. On March 9, the vice president arrived for a dinner at the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nearly two hours late. His tardiness was not accidental but a calculated diplomatic slight — specifically, a punishment for Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 new homes in a predominantly Jewish section of East Jerusalem. The vice president was embarrassed by the announcement’s being made during his visit.
In fact, the announcement was a routine step, the fourth in a seven-stage bureaucratic approval process for new construction. While its timing might be construed as inopportune, the building of homes in a Jewish neighborhood in Israel’s capital city was hardly an issue that should have created any sort of problem, let alone caused a rupture between allies. Nonetheless, Israeli officials, conscious of their dependence on their American partners, immediately apologized for any perceived offense.
But the Obama administration would have none of it. As severe reproaches of Israel from top U.S. officials followed, the crisis escalated. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton berated Netanyahu, calling Israel’s announcement a “deeply negative signal” for U.S.-Israel ties. Senior presidential adviser David Axelrod delivered the same scolding message to an American audience, going on cable news shows to vent the administration’s displeasure. Branding Israel’s announcement an “affront” and an “insult,” Axelrod claimed that Israel had made the “peace process” with the Palestinians much more “difficult.”
Whereas Israel’s housing announcement was made without Netanyahu’s knowledge, Washington’s response was dictated by President Obama. When the prime minister arrived in the United States for a meeting with the president that same month, there was no ceremony in the White House Rose Garden and no posing before press cameras — the usual goodwill gestures afforded visiting heads of friendly nations.
The reception in private was at least as cold. When Netanyahu arrived at the White House for what he thought was going to be a dinner with the president, Obama unceremoniously presented him with a list of demands — including that Israel cease all housing construction in East Jerusalem — and curtly abandoned his guest to have dinner with his wife and daughters in the White House residential wing. As Obama left the meeting room, he informed his stunned visitors that he would “be around” should the prime minister change his mind. As the Israeli press reported afterwards, “There is no humiliation exercise that the Americans did not try on the prime minister and his entourage.” Washington Post columnist and Middle East expert Jackson Diehl was even more blunt, writing that “Netanyahu is being treated [by Obama] as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator.”
Contrary to the administration’s insistence that Israel was jeopardizing peace by encroaching on negotiable terrain, the construction site in Jerusalem was anything but disputed territory. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, and the construction site is in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood. Housing construction had been under way in Ramat Shlomo since the early 1990s, and it would remain part of Israel in any conceivable peace settlement. Consequently, when Netanyahu had agreed under pressure to a partial ten-month freeze on settlements in the disputed territories, he specifically excluded Jerusalem. By its insistence that Israel cease all building in East Jerusalem, it was the Obama administration, not Israel, that was breaking with precedent, and opening up the political center of Israel itself to Palestinian claims.
In opposing Israeli construction in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, the Obama administration embraced a version of Middle Eastern history that directly lends itself to the Arab war against the Jewish state. In the Arab narrative justifying that war, Jerusalem is alleged to occupy a central place in the history of Muslims and Arabs. In the same narrative, Jerusalem is claimed as the capital of a future Palestinian state. But the spiritual centrality of Jerusalem for Muslims is in fact a relatively recent claim and dubious on its face, while the religious claims are by-products of Muslim military conquests.
The Prophet Mohammed never visited Jerusalem, and consequently Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Koran. Today even Islamists regard it as only the third-holiest city in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. It was never the capital of any Arab state. Indeed, for centuries, Jerusalem was a forgotten city to most Arabs, and it was allowed to fall into ruin under Ottoman rule, which lasted until the creation of Israel and Jordan in the aftermath of the First World War. On a trip to Jerusalem in 1867, Mark Twain lamented that the city “has lost all its grandeur, and is become a pauper village.” When Jordan occupied Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967, it was treated like a backwater. Only one Arab leader, Morocco’s King Hassan, cared enough to pay a visit to the city that Muslims who are involved in the jihad against Israel now suggest is an essential part of their history.
The sudden fracture in the U.S.-Israel relationship in March caught the Israeli government off guard. But close observers of the Obama administration would have recognized it as the logical endpoint of a series of markers that had been laid down since Obama emerged as a leading presidential contender in 2008. With these markers Obama was signaling a major shift in U.S. policy, moving toward the Muslim world and America’s traditional enemies, and away from allies like Israel.
The first sign of this shift was visible during a February 2008 presidential debate, when Obama sought to differentiate himself from Hillary Clinton, his then opponent and future secretary of state, by announcing that, unlike her, he would be willing to meet with hostile governments “without preconditions.” It was a position he justified by asserting that it was critical for the United States to “talk to its enemies.” This was a rare example of a campaign promise Obama has kept.
On entering the White House, Obama quickly moved to set a new tone toward the Arab and Muslim worlds. His very first call to a foreign leader from the Oval Office was to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, and it was not an effort to dissuade Abbas from his support for terrorism or his opposition to the existence of a Jewish state. One of the first interviews Obama gave as president, in January 2009, was to the Dubai-based television network Al-Arabiya. In it, Obama effectively offered an apology to the Arab world for alleged American misdeeds. He assured his interviewer that with him in charge Arab states could look to America as a friend. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy,” Obama said, adding that the United States “sometimes makes mistakes. We have not been perfect.”
It was the precursor of an extensive apology tour for America’s sins around the world. In April 2009, he visited Turkey, a NATO ally that was rapidly — and alarmingly — becoming an Islamist state. Addressing its parliament, he hailed Turkey as a “true partner” and suggested that it was the United States that had been the faithless friend. In a not-so-oblique attack on President Bush, Obama expressed his regret for the “difficulties of these last few years,” referring to a strain in relations caused by Turkey’s refusal to allow American troops to deploy from Turkish soil during the war in Iraq. Obama lamented that the “trust that binds us has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced.” In other words, Turkey’s refusal to help America support the Muslim citizens of Iraq and topple a hated tyranny was a response to America’s prejudice against Muslims.
In his review of past grievances, Obama did not mention the millions of Muslims — including Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — who had cheered the 9/11 attacks on the United States by Islamic fanatics. Nor did he complain about the spread of anti-American and anti-Israeli conspiracy theories concerning those attacks in the Muslim world, including Turkey. As recently as 2008, polls found that as many Turks (39 percent) believed the United States or Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks as believed Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were the culprits.
Even more worrisome, Obama used the occasion of his Turkish visit to break with the U.S. policy of treating countries that harbor terrorists as hostile nations. President Bush had declared that there would be no room for neutrality in the war against terror: “You are either with us or against us.” But Obama now assured his listeners in Turkey and throughout the Muslim world that their governments no longer had to choose between America and al-Qaeda. “America’s relationship with the Muslim world,” Obama said, “cannot and will not be based on opposition to al-Qaeda.”
Obama’s pandering to Arab and Muslim sensibilities had already been embarrassingly on display a few days earlier, when he took the step, unprecedented for an American president, of making a deep bow to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the ruler of a nation in which it is illegal to carry a Bible or build a church, and where women are not allowed to drive automobiles. The incident took place when President Obama attended the G-20 economic summit in London. When critics decried the president’s subservient gesture to the Arab despot, the administration was caught by surprise and attempted to deny that it had ever taken place. Inconveniently for White House damage control, a video had captured Obama in full obeisant mode.
The shift in Washington’s policy toward the Arab world reached a new level in Obama’s speech in Cairo two months later. On the one hand, the president defended the U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East as driven by “necessity,” condemned the Holocaust denial and Jew hatred that are rife in the Arab world (and promoted by its governments), and called on Palestinians to abandon violence against Israel. But these statements were accompanied by others that appear particularly troubling in the light of subsequent administration moves.
While Obama rightly condemned Holocaust denial, he left the impression that Israel’s legitimacy derived solely from the legacy of European anti-Semitism and the Nazis’ extermination of six million Jews. This echoed the Arab propaganda claim that Israel is a problem created by Europeans and unfairly imposed on the Arab world. Once again Obama was bolstering an Arab myth that serves to delegitimize the Jewish state.
The Holocaust is not merely a European legacy. Middle Eastern states such as Iraq and Iran actively sided with Hitler’s armies; Arab generals served with Rommel, Hitler’s commander in North Africa; and Arab leaders applauded and actively promoted the extermination of the Jews. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, was an admirer of Hitler and had Mein Kampf translated into Arabic in the 1930s as a text to guide his followers. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and founder of Palestinian nationalism, was an active and vocal supporter of Hitler’s “final solution” and spent the war years in Berlin recruiting Arabs to the Nazi cause. Al-Husseini, a man revered to this day in the West Bank and Gaza as the George Washington of a Palestinian state, organized anti-Jewish pogroms in the 1920s and 1930s, actively planned to build his own Auschwitz in the Middle East, and was thwarted only when Rommel was defeated at El-Alamein.
The Arab canard that Israel is Europe’s attempt to unload its problem onto the backs of the Arabs ignores — as did Obama — the fact that Jerusalem has been the spiritual capital of the Jewish people for nearly 3,000 years and that Jews have lived in their historic homeland continuously for all that time. Jerusalem is at the center of the Jewish spiritual tradition, and Jews have been its largest religious community since 1864. Prime Minister Netanyahu was historically accurate when he admonished Obama, saying that “the Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital.”
In his Cairo speech, Obama also showed little appreciation of the modern history of Israel, a nation that was not built on Arab — let alone “Palestinian” — land. The state of Israel was created out of the ruins of the Turkish empire.
In 1922, Great Britain created the state of Jordan out of 80 percent of the Palestine Mandate — a geographical, not an ethnic, designation. The territory in the Mandate had been part of the Turkish (not Arab) empire for the previous four hundred years. Then in 1948, a U.N. “partition plan” provided equal parts of the remaining Turkish land to Arabs and to Jews living on the banks of the Jordan River. In this plan, the Jews were assigned 10 percent of the original Palestine Mandate, while the Arabs received 90 percent. None of this land had belonged to a “Palestinian” nation or a Palestinian entity. In the previous 400 years there had never been a province of the Turkish empire called “Palestine.” The entire region out of which Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank were created was known as “Ottoman Syria.”
In what would prove to be a continuing pattern, the Jews accepted the partition’s grossly unequal terms; their portion consisted of three unconnected slivers of land, of which 60 percent was arid desert. The Arabs, who had already received 80 percent of the Mandate land, rejected their additional portion, as they would continue to reject any arrangement that would allow for a Jewish state.
Immediately, five Arab nations launched a war against the Jews, who repelled the Arab attacks and established a Jewish state. When the fighting ended, the parts of the partitioned land that had been earmarked for the Arabs — namely, the West Bank and Gaza — were annexed by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, and disappeared from the map. There was no protest from the Arab world at the disappearance of “Palestine” into Jordan and Egypt, no Palestine Liberation Organization, no complaint to the U.N. The reason for the silence was that there was no Palestinian identity at the time, no movement for “self-determination,” no “Palestinian” people to make a claim. There were Arabs who lived in the region of the Jordan. But they considered themselves inhabitants of Jordan or of the Syrian province of the former Ottoman Empire. The disappearance of the West Bank and Gaza was an annexation of Arab land by Arab states.
Arab and Western revisionists have turned this history on its head to portray the Jewish war of survival as a racist, imperialist plot to expel “Palestinians” from “Palestine.” This is an utter distortion of the historical record. The term “Palestine Mandate” is a European reference to a geographical section of the defeated Turkish empire. The claim that there was a Palestinian nation from which ethnic Palestinians were expelled and which Israel now “occupies” illegally is a political lie.
In 1967, the Arab states attacked Israel again, with the express aim of “pushing the Jews into the sea.” Again they were defeated. And once again defeat did not prompt the Arab states to make peace or to abandon their efforts to destroy Israel. At an August 1967 summit in Khartoum, Arab leaders declared that they would accept “no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations” with Israel. This is the permanent Arab war against Israel. It is a war driven by religious and ethnic hatred, which is the only durable cause of the conflict in the Middle East.
It is hardly surprising, given this historical reality, that Israel should regard with skepticism the Arab demands that Israel surrender territory — which it captured in defending itself against Arab aggression — in advance of a settlement that recognizes the existence of the Jewish state. As Netanyahu has said, “What kind of moral position is it to say that the failed aggressor should be given back all the territory from which he launched his attack?” In fact, of no other nation that has been victimized — and victimized repeatedly — by aggressors is such a concession demanded.
Yet Israeli concessions are precisely what the Obama administration is demanding as a precondition of peace. It is ostensibly doing so on the dubious assumption that if only Israel would make further concessions to the Palestinians, peace would be possible. But this assumption flies in the face of 60 years of continuous Arab aggression, including unrelenting terror attacks against Israeli civilians and explicit commitments to wipe out the Jewish state.
The very idea that Israeli settlements (let alone Jewish houses in Jewish neighborhoods) are an obstacle to peace perpetuates the mythical claims of the Arab cause. There are a million Arabs settled in Israel, and they enjoy more rights as Israeli citizens than do the Arab citizens of any Arab Muslim state. So why are the settlements of a few hundred thousand Jews on the West Bank a problem? The only possible answer is Jew hatred, the desire to make the West Bank Judenrein, and ultimately the 60-year Arab campaign to push the Jews into the sea.
The Obama administration’s pressure on Israel to give up its settlements and to concede that its capital is disputed terrain feeds the inherent racism of the Arab cause and undermines Israel’s ability to resist the genocidal campaign against it. Such pressure cannot promote peace negotiations when the other party is openly dedicated to Israel’s destruction and has already shown that it will reject even the most generous offers of peace.
Directly following the Obama administration’s attacks on Israel’s building project in Jerusalem, the Palestinians invoked Israeli intransigence as a pretext for pulling out of the indirect peace talks that had been taking place. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas went on record as refusing to enter into direct talks with Israel unless it instituted an immediate construction freeze in its own capital city. Palestinians had previously participated in talks without that condition, but, as one observer noted, “How could the Palestinian position be softer on Israel than the American position? Of course the Palestinians would have to hold Israel to the newly raised standards of the Obama administration.” In this way did the Obama administration further the efforts of the Arabs to dismantle the Jewish state.
Observers of this ominous development warned that by attacking Israel over settlements the administration was encouraging a violent buildup that could eventually erupt into a third Intifada. A Hebrew-speaking Arab protester interviewed on Israeli radio called for armed resistance against Israel’s “assault on Jerusalem,” declaring that the time had come for a new Intifada. The call was taken up by Hamas, which declared a “day of rage” to lash out against Israel. Arab rioters protested in the streets, hurled stones at buses, cars, and police, and clashed with Israeli security forces. On Israel’s Highway 443, connecting Jerusalem with the city of Modi’in, Israeli Arabs firebombed passing motorists, wounding a father and his nine-month-old infant. Arab parliamentarians in the Israeli Knesset further fueled the violence. Echoing the Obama administration, one of them said, “Anyone who builds settlements in Jerusalem is digging a grave for peace.”
— David Horowitz is the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. . . . Jacob Laksin is managing editor of Frontpage Magazine. He is co-author, with Horowitz, of One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy.
Liberals Rabbis come to the defense of a colleague under fire (or pander to exrtremists?)
their letter "We write in defense of our colleague Rabbi Eric Gurvis. Rabbi Gurvis leads Temple Shalom of Newton, is the past president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, Boston Area Reform Rabbis and currently serves as the president of the Newton Clergy Association. He is a distinguished teacher and respected community leader.
We were shocked and appalled by the vicious, personal attack written by Charles Jacobs and printed in
The Jewish A dvocate. We denounce this attack and call upon Mr. Jacobs to discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters.
Rabbi Gurvis stood with a number of us at a recent interfaith press conference, denouncing the inappropriate words of a gubernatorial candidate who implied that addressing a large group of Muslims was "pandering to terrorists."
Writers response
The letter ignored every concern we raised about the MAS - its Saudi funders, its extremist leaders, its connections to terror and hate speakers. Instead, the rabbis who wrote it, accused me falsely of waging a campaign to defame Boston's Muslim community. These rabbis should have known, with minimal fact-checking, that I have been consistent in my positions: I believe the radical leaders of MAS Boston are first and foremost a threat to Boston's historically moderate Muslim community. The best way to fight this threat is to support the true moderates and reformers of Islam. This is a major component of the Americans for Peace and Tolerance mission and activity. Yet the rabbis irresponsibly claimed that I am defaming all Boston Muslims. This kind of slander can play right into the hands of MAS radicals, who may use this letter to incite Muslims against Americans for Peace and Tolerance and me. Their letter is untrue, inappropriate, and unbecoming for Jewish leaders.
their letter "We write in defense of our colleague Rabbi Eric Gurvis. Rabbi Gurvis leads Temple Shalom of Newton, is the past president of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, Boston Area Reform Rabbis and currently serves as the president of the Newton Clergy Association. He is a distinguished teacher and respected community leader.
We were shocked and appalled by the vicious, personal attack written by Charles Jacobs and printed in
The Jewish A dvocate. We denounce this attack and call upon Mr. Jacobs to discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston's Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters.
Rabbi Gurvis stood with a number of us at a recent interfaith press conference, denouncing the inappropriate words of a gubernatorial candidate who implied that addressing a large group of Muslims was "pandering to terrorists."
Writers response
The letter ignored every concern we raised about the MAS - its Saudi funders, its extremist leaders, its connections to terror and hate speakers. Instead, the rabbis who wrote it, accused me falsely of waging a campaign to defame Boston's Muslim community. These rabbis should have known, with minimal fact-checking, that I have been consistent in my positions: I believe the radical leaders of MAS Boston are first and foremost a threat to Boston's historically moderate Muslim community. The best way to fight this threat is to support the true moderates and reformers of Islam. This is a major component of the Americans for Peace and Tolerance mission and activity. Yet the rabbis irresponsibly claimed that I am defaming all Boston Muslims. This kind of slander can play right into the hands of MAS radicals, who may use this letter to incite Muslims against Americans for Peace and Tolerance and me. Their letter is untrue, inappropriate, and unbecoming for Jewish leaders.
Obama disaster after disaster from ed Lasky
When will Jewish non-leaders start demanding that we withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council? “The United States and its allies suffered a series of setbacks at the United Nations on Friday as the Human Rights Council flirted with media censorship and was poised to elevate an anti-American politician and a Cuban to key positions. Concerns about censorship were raised after the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has tremendous sway in the United Nations, successfully pushed through a resolution that creates a watchdog to monitor how religion is portrayed in the media.” (And for this, we needed a new ambassador to the OIC? Doesn’t seem like the ambassador is persuading the OIC of anything — or is the point to demonstrate that we don’t care to oppose its totalitarian impulses?)
When you see evidence like this, you also see just how lacking in goodwill toward Israel Obama is, such that he would insist the Jewish state be the subject of an inquest: “New footage from the Mavi Marmara was released by the Foreign Ministry on Friday afternoon, this time showing IHH head Bülent Yildirim inciting to violence against Israeli commandos hours before the encounter that claimed the lives of nine Turkish passengers. ‘We follow in the footsteps of the martyrs,’ Yildirim could be seen declaring to a large crowd of activists. ‘You shall see, we will definitely claim one or two victories. … If you send the commandos, we will throw you down from here and you will be humiliated in front of the whole world. … If they board our ship, we will throw them into the sea, Allah willing!’”
When Obama can’t decide whether to send an aircraft carrier to take part in South Korean naval exercises because it might upset North Korea and China – after promising our ally unequivocal support — you get an idea of how much trouble we and our allies are in.
When you return a terrorist to the heart of Wahhabism, guess what happens? “The United States have sent back around 120 Saudis from the detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, set up after the U.S. launched a ‘war on terror’ following the September 11 attacks by mostly Saudi suicide hijackers sent by al Qaeda.” The Saudi running the fake rehab operation (”religious re-education by clerics and financial help to start a new life”) blames “strong personal ties among former prisoners but also tough U.S. tactics as the reason why some 20 percent of the returned Saudis relapsed into militancy compared to 9.5 percent overall in the rehabilitation program.” The Saudis consider the plan such a smashing success that they are building five new centers. Yes, it is madness for us to facilitate this.
When you see evidence like this, you also see just how lacking in goodwill toward Israel Obama is, such that he would insist the Jewish state be the subject of an inquest: “New footage from the Mavi Marmara was released by the Foreign Ministry on Friday afternoon, this time showing IHH head Bülent Yildirim inciting to violence against Israeli commandos hours before the encounter that claimed the lives of nine Turkish passengers. ‘We follow in the footsteps of the martyrs,’ Yildirim could be seen declaring to a large crowd of activists. ‘You shall see, we will definitely claim one or two victories. … If you send the commandos, we will throw you down from here and you will be humiliated in front of the whole world. … If they board our ship, we will throw them into the sea, Allah willing!’”
When Obama can’t decide whether to send an aircraft carrier to take part in South Korean naval exercises because it might upset North Korea and China – after promising our ally unequivocal support — you get an idea of how much trouble we and our allies are in.
When you return a terrorist to the heart of Wahhabism, guess what happens? “The United States have sent back around 120 Saudis from the detention camp at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, set up after the U.S. launched a ‘war on terror’ following the September 11 attacks by mostly Saudi suicide hijackers sent by al Qaeda.” The Saudi running the fake rehab operation (”religious re-education by clerics and financial help to start a new life”) blames “strong personal ties among former prisoners but also tough U.S. tactics as the reason why some 20 percent of the returned Saudis relapsed into militancy compared to 9.5 percent overall in the rehabilitation program.” The Saudis consider the plan such a smashing success that they are building five new centers. Yes, it is madness for us to facilitate this.
Friday, June 18, 2010
hear Prof Alan Dershowitz liberal endorse Joel Pollak over Schakowsky
http://www.medvedmedhead.com/2010/06/11/medvedshow61110h2guestalandershowitz/?popup=true
Thursday, June 10, 2010
saw this about Obama-goog review
Obama
We have seen a president who has weakened traditional alliances, coddled some of worlds most notorious leaders, and weakened the United States both
morally and economically (our children's and grandchildren's finances have now been mortgaged). We were promised transparency, no earmarks, no 'no-bid contracts', the closure of the Gitmo prison, etc. He has proven to be a serial liar.
Regarding Israel, the likes of J-Street have his ear; not AIPAC. When he
begins a peace initiative in Israel MARK MY WORDS, pressure will be place
d on Israel to stop or limit the embargo on Gaza. Israel will be forced to acquiesce and make tangible concessions in return for "virtual" promises.
I am aware that those who so forcefully supported the candidacy and elect
ion of President Obama must be tortured by cognitive dissonance. But I believe that at this point in his presidency to try to tout President Obama
's fine qualities is cherry picking of herculean proportion. His handling
of the BP oil spill make George W. Bush's handling of Hurrican Katrina worthy of a Nobel Prize. He was a minor leaguer pushed into the major leag=
ues long before his time. He is a gifted orator with the aid of teleprompters, but his poor judgement and foot dragging in the face or real challenge is beyond compare. When people continue to try to find virtue in his actions or motives, it is they who are cherry-picking.
We have seen a president who has weakened traditional alliances, coddled some of worlds most notorious leaders, and weakened the United States both
morally and economically (our children's and grandchildren's finances have now been mortgaged). We were promised transparency, no earmarks, no 'no-bid contracts', the closure of the Gitmo prison, etc. He has proven to be a serial liar.
Regarding Israel, the likes of J-Street have his ear; not AIPAC. When he
begins a peace initiative in Israel MARK MY WORDS, pressure will be place
d on Israel to stop or limit the embargo on Gaza. Israel will be forced to acquiesce and make tangible concessions in return for "virtual" promises.
I am aware that those who so forcefully supported the candidacy and elect
ion of President Obama must be tortured by cognitive dissonance. But I believe that at this point in his presidency to try to tout President Obama
's fine qualities is cherry picking of herculean proportion. His handling
of the BP oil spill make George W. Bush's handling of Hurrican Katrina worthy of a Nobel Prize. He was a minor leaguer pushed into the major leag=
ues long before his time. He is a gifted orator with the aid of teleprompters, but his poor judgement and foot dragging in the face or real challenge is beyond compare. When people continue to try to find virtue in his actions or motives, it is they who are cherry-picking.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Turks call for FINAL SOLUTION and Obama says nothing
Flotsam and Jetsam
Jennifer Rubin - 06.05.2010 - 8:00 AM
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Carly Fiorina says there has been more condemnation of Israel than there was of North Korea when it sank a South Korean ship. She says bad things are happening in the world because Obama is displaying weakness.
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Bill Kristol tells us, “The dispute over this terror-friendly flotilla is about more than policy toward Gaza. It is about more than Israel. It is about whether the West has the will to defend itself against its enemies. It is about showing (to paraphrase William Gladstone) that the resources of civilization against terror are by no means exhausted.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Michael Oren says, “Turkey has embraced the leaders of Iran and Hamas, all of whom called for Israel’s destruction. … Our policy has not changed but Turkey’s policy has changed, very much, over the last few years. … Under a different government with an Islamic orientation, Turkey has turned away from the West.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the U.S. State Department urges “caution and restraint” — from Israel in intercepting the next terrorist flotilla.
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Helen Thomas tells Jews to leave Israel and go back to Germany and Poland. (She later apologized, claiming that she really doesn’t believe what she said.)
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” this blather is written: “But that 2 a.m. boarding of an unarmed ship with an unarmed crew, carrying no munitions or weapons, 65 miles at sea, was an act of piracy. What the Israeli commandos got is what any armed hijacker should expect who tries to steal a car from a driver who keeps a tire iron under the front seat. … But we have a blockade of Gaza, say the Israelis, and this flotilla was a provocation. Indeed, it was. And Selma was a provocation. The marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge were disobeying orders of the governor of Alabama and state police not to march.” Pat Buchanan or Peter Beinart? It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the IDF releases a tape showing that the flotilla was warned to back away and the “peace activists” shouted, “Go back to Auschwitz.” Sounds as though their ideal PR flack would be (is?) Helen Thomas.
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the Jerusalem Post reports: ”Hamas’s security forces on Monday and Tuesday raided the offices of several non-governmental organizations in the Gaza Strip and confiscated equipment and furniture, drawing sharp condemnations from human rights groups.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the Christian Science Monitor calls on Turkey to tone it down.”The Middle East does not need another country of fist-shakers, and that’s why the tone in Turkey is of such concern. Not just this incident, but others have increased anti-Semitism in this mostly Muslim country of about 80 million people – a democracy anchored in NATO and working on membership in the European Union.The rhetoric, if unchecked, runs the risk of further undermining Turkey’s credibility and goal of being a regional problem solver, and of the West’s interest in Turkey as a bridge between the Muslim and Christian worlds.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” David Brog, executive director of Christians United For Israel (CUFI), declares, “Israel will face challenges in the days ahead, and it is vital that her allies in the United States stand beside her. A true ally stands with their partners in both easy and difficult times -no democracy under attack, no American ally, deserves any less.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the Zionist Organization of America “renewed its call for an investigation of Turkey for permitting a flotilla of armed and violent extremists to sail in an attempt to breach the lawful Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Obama says nothing.
(gee..I guess Obama did not earn many points after glorifying Islam in Cairo and addressing the Turkish Parliament in Ankara-of , if he did earn points, they are not being used)
Jennifer Rubin - 06.05.2010 - 8:00 AM
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Carly Fiorina says there has been more condemnation of Israel than there was of North Korea when it sank a South Korean ship. She says bad things are happening in the world because Obama is displaying weakness.
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Bill Kristol tells us, “The dispute over this terror-friendly flotilla is about more than policy toward Gaza. It is about more than Israel. It is about whether the West has the will to defend itself against its enemies. It is about showing (to paraphrase William Gladstone) that the resources of civilization against terror are by no means exhausted.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Michael Oren says, “Turkey has embraced the leaders of Iran and Hamas, all of whom called for Israel’s destruction. … Our policy has not changed but Turkey’s policy has changed, very much, over the last few years. … Under a different government with an Islamic orientation, Turkey has turned away from the West.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the U.S. State Department urges “caution and restraint” — from Israel in intercepting the next terrorist flotilla.
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Helen Thomas tells Jews to leave Israel and go back to Germany and Poland. (She later apologized, claiming that she really doesn’t believe what she said.)
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” this blather is written: “But that 2 a.m. boarding of an unarmed ship with an unarmed crew, carrying no munitions or weapons, 65 miles at sea, was an act of piracy. What the Israeli commandos got is what any armed hijacker should expect who tries to steal a car from a driver who keeps a tire iron under the front seat. … But we have a blockade of Gaza, say the Israelis, and this flotilla was a provocation. Indeed, it was. And Selma was a provocation. The marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge were disobeying orders of the governor of Alabama and state police not to march.” Pat Buchanan or Peter Beinart? It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the IDF releases a tape showing that the flotilla was warned to back away and the “peace activists” shouted, “Go back to Auschwitz.” Sounds as though their ideal PR flack would be (is?) Helen Thomas.
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the Jerusalem Post reports: ”Hamas’s security forces on Monday and Tuesday raided the offices of several non-governmental organizations in the Gaza Strip and confiscated equipment and furniture, drawing sharp condemnations from human rights groups.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the Christian Science Monitor calls on Turkey to tone it down.”The Middle East does not need another country of fist-shakers, and that’s why the tone in Turkey is of such concern. Not just this incident, but others have increased anti-Semitism in this mostly Muslim country of about 80 million people – a democracy anchored in NATO and working on membership in the European Union.The rhetoric, if unchecked, runs the risk of further undermining Turkey’s credibility and goal of being a regional problem solver, and of the West’s interest in Turkey as a bridge between the Muslim and Christian worlds.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” David Brog, executive director of Christians United For Israel (CUFI), declares, “Israel will face challenges in the days ahead, and it is vital that her allies in the United States stand beside her. A true ally stands with their partners in both easy and difficult times -no democracy under attack, no American ally, deserves any less.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” the Zionist Organization of America “renewed its call for an investigation of Turkey for permitting a flotilla of armed and violent extremists to sail in an attempt to breach the lawful Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.”
While the Turks call for a “final solution,” Obama says nothing.
(gee..I guess Obama did not earn many points after glorifying Islam in Cairo and addressing the Turkish Parliament in Ankara-of , if he did earn points, they are not being used)
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