Putting it mildly, President Obama has no affection for the State of Israel and no apparent understanding of its importance to the national security of the United States and the free world. He has concocted a phony crisis over the permitting of housing units for Jews in the capital of the Jewish state. By the time this crisis is resolved—if, indeed Obama sees an end in sight, and whether he does or not is, lamentably, debatable—by the time this crisis is resolved to his satisfaction, Israel will have been weakened by the necessity of placating Obama, and the interests of her enemies will have been advanced. But, Israel’s enemies are also the enemies of the United States. They hate not only Jews but Christians. Christians are under siege in every Muslim country in which they live as a minority. But, Israel is expected to cede land and uproot its citizens in favor of a jihadist aggressor whose aim is world domination.
Obama’s deplorable rudeness and contempt displayed toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his White House visit is only a signal of the radical sea-change in Israel/US relations. Obama is seriously considering a request by Qatar’s foreign minister that the US not veto an upcoming Security Council vote condemning Israel for building in its own capital. http://iplextra.indiatimes.com/article/06Sa9xLgYz9MZ?q=Barack+Obama
Until now, only the US stood between Israel and the hostile resolutions passed against her in the United Nations. With Obama at the helm, Israel will no longer be able to count on American friendship as a buffer to international sentiment that is increasingly threatening to Israel and the Jewish people.
One of the most powerful Democrat members of Congress is Representative Henry Waxman of Los Angeles who is Jewish. As Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, Waxman was instrumental in writing the health Care Reform Bill and cracking skulls to get it passed through Congress.
Waxman constantly sites his Jewish background as the source of his cultural pride and where his liberal values come from. He has always voiced public support for Israel even if his actions don’t live up to his rhetoric. The district Waxman represents is 14% Jewish and this large politically active Jewish population is one of the reasons he has been in office for over 35 years.
Considering the amount of work that Waxman did to get Obama’s landmark Health Care legislation passed, it stands to reason that President Obama would lend Waxman his ear because of Waxman’s role as a valuable ally and strategist. It also stands to reason that Waxman would be both concerned about Israel’s position in the world today and Obama’s treatment of Israel. This being the case, it should be a mystery to Jews who live in Waxman’s district why he remains silent about Obama’s clear antipathy toward Israel.
Waxman’s blind loyalty to President Obama and the Obama agenda is disturbing but when one notices Waxman’s complete silence on Obama’s treatment of Israel, America’s only democratic ally in the Middle East, it calls into question not only Waxman’s love for his own people, but his concern for the security of the United States.
Throughout history, Jews who stood up for their people against the forces of tyranny were heroes and advanced the cause of freedom for all people just as the State of Israel must do now.
By not standing up to Obama and by not spending even a penny of political capital for his people, Waxman is next to useless as a protector of the Jewish people and an ally of the State of Israel.
Waxman’s inaction on behalf of our people speaks volumes of his need to be liked and accepted by our president in order to have a powerful position for himself in our government without regard to the long term ramifications this silence will have on the future security of Israel and the United States and the safety of Jews and Christians worldwide.
Waxman must publicly demand that Obama continue to exercise the US veto in the UN Security Council when it votes to condemn Israel. Moreover, he should strenuously criticize Obama for daring to bar Jews from living where they choose in their own eternal and undivided capital. The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 was passed by the 104th Congress on October 23, 1995. It affirms the status of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital. Obama, in condemning Israel for building in Jerusalem, is disregarding US law. Since he is owed a favor from Obama for his work on the health Care bill, the least that we should expect from Waxman is the temerity to remind Obama to enforce the law of the United States with regard to Jerusalem. And while he is at it, he should demand that the US move its embassy to Jerusalem as the Jerusalem Embassy Act requires. Waxman should not treat this as a favor or quid pro quo, for it is not a favor to enforce the law, nor is it a presidential prerogative to ignore it. Obama is not above the law but a servant of the law and Waxman owes it to the Jews who favor him to remind Obama of his responsibility as Chief Executive to faithfully execute and carry out the laws of the United States.
We know that Obama is angling for the re-division of Jerusalem and he propounds the lie that there is an East and a West Jerusalem and that so-called East Jerusalem is traditionally Arab. This vicious, balled-faced lie was concocted by Israel’s enemies in order to deny the Jewish connection to Israel’s capital and the land of Israel itself. The truth is that so-called Arab East Jerusalem was Jewish until 1948 when Jordan either expelled or massacred the Jews living there. Jordan blew up over 100 synagogues, Jewish schools and other institutions and desecrated whatever remained. Israel liberated Jordanian-occupied Jerusalem in 1967 during the Six Day War after being attacked by 5 Arab nations intending to destroy her and drive all the Jews into the sea. People of all faiths and nationalities live in freedom there now which was not the case during the 19 years of Jordanian occupation. These facts must never be forgotten. They are our defense to the false claims of Israel’s enemies that Obama is endeavoring to advance at Israel’s expense.
Passover is the Jewish holiday that celebrates our Exodus from bondage and our journey to the Promised Land. The story of the Exodus is our deed to the land of Israel and 100 years ago, every Christian nation in Europe recognized that it was so. Today, the Arabs zealously defend their claim to Jewish land, though their claims are based on lies. Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran but is the center piece of the Hebrew Bible and the heart and soul of Judaism. In failing to advocate the Jewish claim to the land, he is defending the Arab right. Why should he support the Arabs in their zeal and deny the Jews in theirs? If Waxman continues to go along with Obama, he will be doing just the thing that may lead our people right back into bondage…or worse.
Moreover, the destruction of Israel and even a weakened Israel that is unable to defend itself would not herald the world peace and harmony that our short-sighted President seems to imagine. Certainly, the absence of Jewish housing units in Jerusalem would not contribute to peace and stability—no matter how forcefully Obama insists that Jewish building projects undermine peace. Obama does not recognize that Israel’s enemies and the enemies of the United States are identical and share precisely the same goals for world domination and the destruction of the free world. Since Obama harbors a persistent blind spot for Arab intransigence, aggression, terrorism and hatred for all things Jewish and Christian, it is up to Waxman, one of his closest political allies, to set him straight.
The security of the United States is at stake here, unless, of course, the jihadist paradise advanced by our enemies is as appealing to Waxman as it seems to be to Obama.
I therefore call upon Henry Waxman to step up to the plate, to do the right thing and speak out against the injustices toward Israel already perpetrated by Obama and those that he plans to carry out in the near and long term. Henry Waxman, I implore you! It is the right thing to do.
Ari David
Candidate for Congress
California 30th District
P O Box 163
Malibu CA 90265
AriDavidforcongress.com
Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/aridavidforcongress
Friday, April 02, 2010
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Obama's Oil Drilling Bait-N-Switch
STEVE MILLOY
So President Obama says he's for more offshore oil drilling. Does he really mean it? Would it matter if he did?
Addressing the latter question first, consider President George W. Bush called for offshore drilling in June 2008, when gasoline prices hit $4 per gallon and Congress was less Democrat-controlled than today.
Nothing happened — well, that's not exactly true.
Offshore drilling advocates were ecstatic in July 2008 when they thought a deal had been reached with green groups to permit drilling off Santa Barbara, Calif. — the first since the January 1969 oil spill there. New Hampshire Union Leader editor Andrew Cline gushed in a July 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed: "When an environmental group formed for the sole purpose of opposing offshore oil drilling warmly embraces a plan to drill off its own coast, you know something important has changed in our culture; Americans have recognized that offshore drilling is largely safe."
But less than a week later, the greens wrote the Journal to correct the record: "(T)o be accurate, the (op-ed's) title should have read 'Environmentalists Secure End to Oil Development' ... The agreement struck ... is remarkable because it sets a fixed date for the termination of existing offshore and onshore oil production facilities in Santa Barbara County. We see this agreement as a direct complement to our support for the federal oil moratorium. Just as we need to say 'no' to new oil development, we must put an end to existing development if we are to protect our coast from the risks of offshore oil and gas development, and protect society from climate change."
Despite the "agreement" and approval of offshore drilling by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, the greens subsequently got the California State Lands Commission to deny the offshore leases and then, in July 2009, got the California Assembly to block Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to revive offshore drilling.
Last December, the Obama administration actually granted Shell Oil leases to drill three exploratory wells in Alaska's Chukchi Sea. But claiming a shoddy approval process, the leases are being challenged by green groups in the enviro-friendly 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Without wondering whether the Obama administration set Shell up for frustration, my money is on the greens in that venue.
The lesson here is that the greens oppose, and will use every tactic possible on the local, state and federal level to prevent, offshore drilling, regardless of what emanates from the Oval Office.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=528997
So President Obama says he's for more offshore oil drilling. Does he really mean it? Would it matter if he did?
Addressing the latter question first, consider President George W. Bush called for offshore drilling in June 2008, when gasoline prices hit $4 per gallon and Congress was less Democrat-controlled than today.
Nothing happened — well, that's not exactly true.
Offshore drilling advocates were ecstatic in July 2008 when they thought a deal had been reached with green groups to permit drilling off Santa Barbara, Calif. — the first since the January 1969 oil spill there. New Hampshire Union Leader editor Andrew Cline gushed in a July 2008 Wall Street Journal op-ed: "When an environmental group formed for the sole purpose of opposing offshore oil drilling warmly embraces a plan to drill off its own coast, you know something important has changed in our culture; Americans have recognized that offshore drilling is largely safe."
But less than a week later, the greens wrote the Journal to correct the record: "(T)o be accurate, the (op-ed's) title should have read 'Environmentalists Secure End to Oil Development' ... The agreement struck ... is remarkable because it sets a fixed date for the termination of existing offshore and onshore oil production facilities in Santa Barbara County. We see this agreement as a direct complement to our support for the federal oil moratorium. Just as we need to say 'no' to new oil development, we must put an end to existing development if we are to protect our coast from the risks of offshore oil and gas development, and protect society from climate change."
Despite the "agreement" and approval of offshore drilling by the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, the greens subsequently got the California State Lands Commission to deny the offshore leases and then, in July 2009, got the California Assembly to block Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to revive offshore drilling.
Last December, the Obama administration actually granted Shell Oil leases to drill three exploratory wells in Alaska's Chukchi Sea. But claiming a shoddy approval process, the leases are being challenged by green groups in the enviro-friendly 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Without wondering whether the Obama administration set Shell up for frustration, my money is on the greens in that venue.
The lesson here is that the greens oppose, and will use every tactic possible on the local, state and federal level to prevent, offshore drilling, regardless of what emanates from the Oval Office.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=528997
When Media Become Obama PR Agents
Richard Baehr
The media's tongue bath for President Obama knows no bounds.
We all know that President Obama likes to play basketball. We also know his picks in the NCAA brackets and his percentile ranking among four million-plus entries after each round of the tournament on CBS's website. Harry Smith of the CBS morning program interviewed the president on the court this week while he shot baskets with CBS broadcaster and former college star Clark Kellogg. The video will be shown during the NCAA semifinals Saturday night and again Monday night during the championship game. So 30 to 40 million folks will get this puffery delivered to them. Of course, we have already had Obama in the booth for a Georgetown basketball game this year, on Monday Night Football, and at the major league baseball All Star Game.
Sad to say for Obama, he had a good first round, but he has now slipped to the 55th percentile with his NCAA picks. Since none of his final four teams are left, he may slip to the bottom half by tournament's end. Some percentiles we will never know about the president: his SAT scores, his LSAT scores, his class rank at Columbia, his grades at Occidental (which somehow got him into Columbia as a transfer), or his class rank at Harvard Law School.
Could it be that he was outperformed in these areas by George Bush?
It has been a wonderful tournament, so don't let the political foreplay ruin it for you this weekend.
Do you recall ever hearing a story, no less multiple stories with updates, about President Bush's picks in the NCAA college basketball tournament?
President Bush was an unusually fit man for his age, by all measures in the top 1%. He jogged at a very rapid pace, and he worked out every day. He encouraged other White House staff to exercise and lose weight. Funny -- we heard almost nothing about this.
I don't recall any journalists writing about their jogs with the president (they would have been left looking like President Carter on his infamous run when he collapsed in the Maryland hills). President Bush was also a big sports fan and a former owner of a major league baseball franchise. My guess is that he filled out a bracket each year but did not choose to make it a news story.
In December 2004, my wife and I were invited to and attended the White House Hannukah Party. Try as you might, you will not easily find anything in the mainstream media to reveal that President Bush was the first president to hold such an event. His guest list included both Democrats and Republicans.
Now we have the spectacle of the White House seder, glowingly detailed on the front page of the New York Times. We also learn from the president that the meaning of Passover is that each generation must fight suffering and oppression (and presumably redistribute the wealth of the country). And I guess that if Jerusalem came up in the president's seder, as Professor Charles Lipson suggests, the line might have been: Next year in part of Jerusalem.
It is possible that a few of the herd of Jews who claim to be supporters of Israel -- and who were willing to ignore the president's history with Reverend Wright, Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi, Bill Ayers, and Samantha Power; and not only vote for the great leader, but empty their wallets for him; and testify to his pro-Israel bona fides -- may be reconsidering. I emphasize "possible."
Jewish liberalism is a long-term and terminal disease. Very few can think of switching horses -- after all, liberal Jews grew up believing that liberals and Democrats care for the poor and are generous, and conservatives and Republicans are greedy. Hence, liberals and Democrats are better people. And of course, Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest hero prior to Obama, saved the Jews. Or a few of them, anyway.
With the backlash against Obama's recent outbursts and bile directed at Israel, it was time for the Times, the Torah of Jewish liberalism, to make clear that even if Obama does not love right-wing Israeli settlers, he still loves the Jews. Look -- he has a seder!
The President is wearing a yarmulke. Blacks and Jews are sitting together, like in the glory days of the Civil Rights Movement. Let us kvell.
Richard Baehr is chief political correspondent of American Thinker.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/when_media_become_obama_pr_age.html at April 01, 2010 - 01:15:29 PM CDT
The media's tongue bath for President Obama knows no bounds.
We all know that President Obama likes to play basketball. We also know his picks in the NCAA brackets and his percentile ranking among four million-plus entries after each round of the tournament on CBS's website. Harry Smith of the CBS morning program interviewed the president on the court this week while he shot baskets with CBS broadcaster and former college star Clark Kellogg. The video will be shown during the NCAA semifinals Saturday night and again Monday night during the championship game. So 30 to 40 million folks will get this puffery delivered to them. Of course, we have already had Obama in the booth for a Georgetown basketball game this year, on Monday Night Football, and at the major league baseball All Star Game.
Sad to say for Obama, he had a good first round, but he has now slipped to the 55th percentile with his NCAA picks. Since none of his final four teams are left, he may slip to the bottom half by tournament's end. Some percentiles we will never know about the president: his SAT scores, his LSAT scores, his class rank at Columbia, his grades at Occidental (which somehow got him into Columbia as a transfer), or his class rank at Harvard Law School.
Could it be that he was outperformed in these areas by George Bush?
It has been a wonderful tournament, so don't let the political foreplay ruin it for you this weekend.
Do you recall ever hearing a story, no less multiple stories with updates, about President Bush's picks in the NCAA college basketball tournament?
President Bush was an unusually fit man for his age, by all measures in the top 1%. He jogged at a very rapid pace, and he worked out every day. He encouraged other White House staff to exercise and lose weight. Funny -- we heard almost nothing about this.
I don't recall any journalists writing about their jogs with the president (they would have been left looking like President Carter on his infamous run when he collapsed in the Maryland hills). President Bush was also a big sports fan and a former owner of a major league baseball franchise. My guess is that he filled out a bracket each year but did not choose to make it a news story.
In December 2004, my wife and I were invited to and attended the White House Hannukah Party. Try as you might, you will not easily find anything in the mainstream media to reveal that President Bush was the first president to hold such an event. His guest list included both Democrats and Republicans.
Now we have the spectacle of the White House seder, glowingly detailed on the front page of the New York Times. We also learn from the president that the meaning of Passover is that each generation must fight suffering and oppression (and presumably redistribute the wealth of the country). And I guess that if Jerusalem came up in the president's seder, as Professor Charles Lipson suggests, the line might have been: Next year in part of Jerusalem.
It is possible that a few of the herd of Jews who claim to be supporters of Israel -- and who were willing to ignore the president's history with Reverend Wright, Ali Abunimah, Rashid Khalidi, Bill Ayers, and Samantha Power; and not only vote for the great leader, but empty their wallets for him; and testify to his pro-Israel bona fides -- may be reconsidering. I emphasize "possible."
Jewish liberalism is a long-term and terminal disease. Very few can think of switching horses -- after all, liberal Jews grew up believing that liberals and Democrats care for the poor and are generous, and conservatives and Republicans are greedy. Hence, liberals and Democrats are better people. And of course, Franklin Roosevelt, the greatest hero prior to Obama, saved the Jews. Or a few of them, anyway.
With the backlash against Obama's recent outbursts and bile directed at Israel, it was time for the Times, the Torah of Jewish liberalism, to make clear that even if Obama does not love right-wing Israeli settlers, he still loves the Jews. Look -- he has a seder!
The President is wearing a yarmulke. Blacks and Jews are sitting together, like in the glory days of the Civil Rights Movement. Let us kvell.
Richard Baehr is chief political correspondent of American Thinker.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/when_media_become_obama_pr_age.html at April 01, 2010 - 01:15:29 PM CDT
High-Ranking U.S. Official: Enemies? Islamists? Revolutionaries? We Don't See Anyone Like That!
RubinReports
Barry Rubin
What could one sentence spoken by a high-ranking U.S. official prompt a brilliant pro-Western Arab intellectual to go ballistic and say the following:
“How could America be governed and represented by such blazing idiocy? How is that possible? It's a parallel universe, I'm convinced. The biggest threat, I maintain, to global security is not terrorism. It's stupidity.”
Well, this one. At his confirmation hearing, Robert Ford, ambassador-designate to Syria said:
"I do not see how instability in the region serves Syrian interests." So here is Syria, a radical, anti-American regime allied with Iran, a major sponsor of terrorism, and Ford says that this government has no interest in stirring up instability and cannot receive any benefit from doing so? Of course, Ford rightfully does not want to criticize Syria before arriving there as U.S. ambassador. OK, understood.
But does he have to indicate such an appalling view in advance? Doesn't this throw away all U.S. leverage over Syria in advance? I can tell you that this is precisely the way Syrian leaders are portraying American policy nowadays. Of course, Ford is saying this because it reflects the thinking of this administration and the president.
Incidentally, I recently saw a non-published communication from an international affairs' expert that criticized someone else for having the old-fashioned view that the point of foreign policy is to reward friends and punish enemies. As I have said before even the most basic principles of diplomacy have been forgotten nowadays in large sections of academia, the media, and--much more dangerous--policymaking circles.
Back to Ford and Syria. Yet even if Syria is not building apartments in east Jerusalem, it might still be a threat to U.S. interests and regional stability. (Note: The previous sentence was sarcastic.)
If Syria was not sponsoring the Iraqi insurgents to overthrow the government in Baghdad so as to replace a regime linked with the United States with one servile to itself, it should have been sufficient to show how instability in the region serves Syrian interests.
If Syria was not sponsoring Hizballah and others to seize control over Lebanon it should have been sufficient.
If Syria was not sponsoring Hamas to sabotage any peace process and seize control over the Palestinians it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not oppose peace with Israel so as to destroy that country and replace it with a pro-Syrian Palestinian state it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not back Iran in order to destabilize the Middle East to destroy relatively moderate Arab regimes that oppose Syrian leadership over all the Arabs it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not do everything possible to destroy U.S. influence and interests in the region it should have been sufficient.
To some extent, the State Department has been forced to acknowledge some of these problems in the face of congressional criticism about sending a U.S. ambassador back to Damascus. I'm not saying that the ambassador shouldn't be sent back--though we should remember that Syria has done zero about the reason which led to the withdrawal in the first place, its complicity in the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister--but if he's returned it should be to wage diplomatic battle, not appeasement.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood
Barry Rubin
What could one sentence spoken by a high-ranking U.S. official prompt a brilliant pro-Western Arab intellectual to go ballistic and say the following:
“How could America be governed and represented by such blazing idiocy? How is that possible? It's a parallel universe, I'm convinced. The biggest threat, I maintain, to global security is not terrorism. It's stupidity.”
Well, this one. At his confirmation hearing, Robert Ford, ambassador-designate to Syria said:
"I do not see how instability in the region serves Syrian interests." So here is Syria, a radical, anti-American regime allied with Iran, a major sponsor of terrorism, and Ford says that this government has no interest in stirring up instability and cannot receive any benefit from doing so? Of course, Ford rightfully does not want to criticize Syria before arriving there as U.S. ambassador. OK, understood.
But does he have to indicate such an appalling view in advance? Doesn't this throw away all U.S. leverage over Syria in advance? I can tell you that this is precisely the way Syrian leaders are portraying American policy nowadays. Of course, Ford is saying this because it reflects the thinking of this administration and the president.
Incidentally, I recently saw a non-published communication from an international affairs' expert that criticized someone else for having the old-fashioned view that the point of foreign policy is to reward friends and punish enemies. As I have said before even the most basic principles of diplomacy have been forgotten nowadays in large sections of academia, the media, and--much more dangerous--policymaking circles.
Back to Ford and Syria. Yet even if Syria is not building apartments in east Jerusalem, it might still be a threat to U.S. interests and regional stability. (Note: The previous sentence was sarcastic.)
If Syria was not sponsoring the Iraqi insurgents to overthrow the government in Baghdad so as to replace a regime linked with the United States with one servile to itself, it should have been sufficient to show how instability in the region serves Syrian interests.
If Syria was not sponsoring Hizballah and others to seize control over Lebanon it should have been sufficient.
If Syria was not sponsoring Hamas to sabotage any peace process and seize control over the Palestinians it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not oppose peace with Israel so as to destroy that country and replace it with a pro-Syrian Palestinian state it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not back Iran in order to destabilize the Middle East to destroy relatively moderate Arab regimes that oppose Syrian leadership over all the Arabs it should have been sufficient.
If Syria did not do everything possible to destroy U.S. influence and interests in the region it should have been sufficient.
To some extent, the State Department has been forced to acknowledge some of these problems in the face of congressional criticism about sending a U.S. ambassador back to Damascus. I'm not saying that the ambassador shouldn't be sent back--though we should remember that Syria has done zero about the reason which led to the withdrawal in the first place, its complicity in the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister--but if he's returned it should be to wage diplomatic battle, not appeasement.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood
Sample letter in response to intentional misrepresentation of Israeli history
Dear Editor:
While reading Bayann Hamid's absurd commentary, published March 24,arguing that our government should exacerbate the mistakes that have ground to a halt any semblance of progress in the so-called "peace process." I couldn't help but thinking about the main thread of the Arab-Israeli conflict since the start of the failed Oslo Process in 1993. During that time, Israel has turned over significant portions of the disputed territories, including all of Gaza, to the Palestinian Authority, so now almost all (approximately 95 percent) of the Arabs in those areas live under their own, albeit corrupt, government.
Israel has at least twice offered a peace that would include the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state in virtually all the disputed territories, including parts of Israel's own capital, but been totally rejected without the Arabs even making a counteroffer.
For its part, the Palestinian Authority has yet to offer a single meaningful concession and, in violation of its written commitments, built up a huge terror infrastructure in those areas, indoctrinated its youth in the glories of shaheedism, and in 2000 launched a major terror offensive, including suicide bombings at such "military" targets as shopping malls, pizza parlors and discotheques, murdering more than a thousand Israelis, injuring and maiming thousands more, and prematurely
sending thousands of its own people into Paradise.
As Vice President Biden was leaving Israel in March, the Palestinian Authority demonstrated its true commitment to peace with the inauguration of Dalal Mughrabi Square in el-Bireh, honoring the commander of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in which 37 Israeli civilians along with an American photographer, Gail Rubin, who happened
to be the niece of Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff, were brutally murdered.
Israel is currently about half-way through a ten-month freeze in construction in the disputed territories, offered to induce the Arabs back to the peace table, Mahmoud Abbas/Abu Mazen, the so-called "moderate leader" of the West Bank Palestinian Authority still refuses to negotiate.
The Israelis have demonstrated they are far more interested in getting another Palestinian Arab state established than the Palestinian Arabs themselves.
That's the basic reality, a reality totally ignored by Hamid.
Our American government needs to start basing policy on that reality,
rather than continuing to ignore, excuse and even reward the
intransigence, rejectionism and terrorism of the Palestinian Arabs.
Sincerely,
Alan H. Stein
President, PRIMER-Connecticut
Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting
www.primerct.org
While reading Bayann Hamid's absurd commentary, published March 24,arguing that our government should exacerbate the mistakes that have ground to a halt any semblance of progress in the so-called "peace process." I couldn't help but thinking about the main thread of the Arab-Israeli conflict since the start of the failed Oslo Process in 1993. During that time, Israel has turned over significant portions of the disputed territories, including all of Gaza, to the Palestinian Authority, so now almost all (approximately 95 percent) of the Arabs in those areas live under their own, albeit corrupt, government.
Israel has at least twice offered a peace that would include the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state in virtually all the disputed territories, including parts of Israel's own capital, but been totally rejected without the Arabs even making a counteroffer.
For its part, the Palestinian Authority has yet to offer a single meaningful concession and, in violation of its written commitments, built up a huge terror infrastructure in those areas, indoctrinated its youth in the glories of shaheedism, and in 2000 launched a major terror offensive, including suicide bombings at such "military" targets as shopping malls, pizza parlors and discotheques, murdering more than a thousand Israelis, injuring and maiming thousands more, and prematurely
sending thousands of its own people into Paradise.
As Vice President Biden was leaving Israel in March, the Palestinian Authority demonstrated its true commitment to peace with the inauguration of Dalal Mughrabi Square in el-Bireh, honoring the commander of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in which 37 Israeli civilians along with an American photographer, Gail Rubin, who happened
to be the niece of Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff, were brutally murdered.
Israel is currently about half-way through a ten-month freeze in construction in the disputed territories, offered to induce the Arabs back to the peace table, Mahmoud Abbas/Abu Mazen, the so-called "moderate leader" of the West Bank Palestinian Authority still refuses to negotiate.
The Israelis have demonstrated they are far more interested in getting another Palestinian Arab state established than the Palestinian Arabs themselves.
That's the basic reality, a reality totally ignored by Hamid.
Our American government needs to start basing policy on that reality,
rather than continuing to ignore, excuse and even reward the
intransigence, rejectionism and terrorism of the Palestinian Arabs.
Sincerely,
Alan H. Stein
President, PRIMER-Connecticut
Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting
www.primerct.org
Don't Fall For Obama's Energy Shell Game
Heritage Foundation
Can the Obama administration's desperate attempts to cover their true far left nature with centrist rhetoric and promises become any more transparent? Yesterday, the President announced "an expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration" in selected areas off the coasts of the United States. The President claims this announcement was made "in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs," but nobody believes him. Just take a quick look at today's newspaper reporting:
* The Los Angeles Times: "President Obama ... unveiled a controversial offshore drilling plan Wednesday that was driven largely by the politics of his agenda on energy and climate change -- not by hopes of changing the nation's energy supply."
* The Washington Post: "President Obama's decision ... reflects a high-stakes calculation by the White House: Splitting the difference on the most contentious energy issues could help secure a bipartisan climate deal this year."
* Politico: "Obama's decision is closely tied politically to the fate of the climate change bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kerry (D-MA), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT)."
* The New York Times: "The proposal is also intended to ... help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation."
* Bloomberg: "President Barack Obama's pledge to expand offshore oil and natural-gas drilling may help Democrats deliver legislation that regulates carbon dioxide emissions before any fuel is produced."
In fact, if anything, the policies announced by President Obama yesterday will actually decrease and delay future U.S. oil production. The President actually canceled four lease sales off the Alaska coast that were planned to begin producing oil within the next two years, delayed a planned lease off Virginia until at least 2012, and placed some areas off limits for at least seven years. Go back and look at President Obama's actual announcement again: he only promised new exploration off the Atlantic coast. There is absolutely no guarantee that any new drilling will ever occur. Secretary Ken Salazar's Interior Department still has full discretion to never allow a single drop of oil to be harvested from these waters. And that doesn't even begin to address the court challenges the enviro-left will employ to attack and delay the entire process.
So if developing new energy sources that can create private sector jobs for Americans and new revenues for financially strapped states and the federal government is not the Obama administration's real goal, then what is? Well, President Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who was at yesterday's announcement, has said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." For reference purposes, when Secretary Chu said that, Europeans were paying $8 a gallon for gas at the pump.
Canceling current offshore oil leases and delaying future ones are not the only policy means the Obama administration is using to pursue the high energy price policy ends. The Obama administration has also declared war on energy production in the Mountain West, rescinding oil-shale development leases in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. His administration has completely failed to take on the real regulatory reforms necessary to allow a private sector nuclear industry to thrive. And just this week, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency began its regulation of carbon emissions through the Clean Air Act.
And let's not forget the grand daddy of them all: a cap and trade energy tax bill. But don't call it that. Secretary Salazar told CNBC yesterday, "I think the term 'cap and trade' is not in the lexicon anymore." Whatever you call it, placing an arbitrary penalty on carbon emissions would mean disaster for the American economy. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis has found that cap and tax legislation would cost the average family of four almost $3,000 per year, cause 2.5 million net job losses by 2035, and produce a cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) loss of $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035.
So don't be fooled by President Barack Obama's energy rhetoric. High energy prices are not a side effect of climate legislation - they are the whole point. According to the latest Pew poll, 63% of Americans support allowing more offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters. Americans deserve an energy policy that reduces prices, creates private sector jobs, and reduces our national debt. Right now they have the opposite.
Comment: Even his misdirection tactics are no longer working. We know the next two events he will try to push or ram through congress are Cap and Trade and Immigration policy. to set up Americans, at least a major part of the population he throws out the idea he will lift oil lease bans in place for some time now. For a moment, the population stepped back and said, has he come to his senses? We need to reduce dependency upon foreign oil, this alone would pressure Iran tore-think its nuclear program-but no, Obama was simply performing his magic poorly-again. Look, America uses the highest percentage of oil in the world-still more than China and India. Imagine if we were able to reduce our 70% dependency to only 25% dependency-what would this do to our enemies incomes? Their influence on our policies. We can do this now, without the Russia's or china's of the world. We don't need the UN-we can do this now. I believe the announcement of four new nuclear power plants in strategically placed locations in the USA would alone cause concern abroad. Couple this with opening drilling off all of our shores-the announcement alone would cause additional leverage for the USA with our so-called ME oil friends. We do this at no cost to our economy-know what else would occur, the dollar would begin a surge! We need jobs, imagine the number of new jobs available now-we don't need to invent any new technology or wait for the new science to prove itself-we can do this now. Any guesses why this Administration is not doing this?
Can the Obama administration's desperate attempts to cover their true far left nature with centrist rhetoric and promises become any more transparent? Yesterday, the President announced "an expansion of offshore oil and gas exploration" in selected areas off the coasts of the United States. The President claims this announcement was made "in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs," but nobody believes him. Just take a quick look at today's newspaper reporting:
* The Los Angeles Times: "President Obama ... unveiled a controversial offshore drilling plan Wednesday that was driven largely by the politics of his agenda on energy and climate change -- not by hopes of changing the nation's energy supply."
* The Washington Post: "President Obama's decision ... reflects a high-stakes calculation by the White House: Splitting the difference on the most contentious energy issues could help secure a bipartisan climate deal this year."
* Politico: "Obama's decision is closely tied politically to the fate of the climate change bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kerry (D-MA), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT)."
* The New York Times: "The proposal is also intended to ... help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation."
* Bloomberg: "President Barack Obama's pledge to expand offshore oil and natural-gas drilling may help Democrats deliver legislation that regulates carbon dioxide emissions before any fuel is produced."
In fact, if anything, the policies announced by President Obama yesterday will actually decrease and delay future U.S. oil production. The President actually canceled four lease sales off the Alaska coast that were planned to begin producing oil within the next two years, delayed a planned lease off Virginia until at least 2012, and placed some areas off limits for at least seven years. Go back and look at President Obama's actual announcement again: he only promised new exploration off the Atlantic coast. There is absolutely no guarantee that any new drilling will ever occur. Secretary Ken Salazar's Interior Department still has full discretion to never allow a single drop of oil to be harvested from these waters. And that doesn't even begin to address the court challenges the enviro-left will employ to attack and delay the entire process.
So if developing new energy sources that can create private sector jobs for Americans and new revenues for financially strapped states and the federal government is not the Obama administration's real goal, then what is? Well, President Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who was at yesterday's announcement, has said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." For reference purposes, when Secretary Chu said that, Europeans were paying $8 a gallon for gas at the pump.
Canceling current offshore oil leases and delaying future ones are not the only policy means the Obama administration is using to pursue the high energy price policy ends. The Obama administration has also declared war on energy production in the Mountain West, rescinding oil-shale development leases in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. His administration has completely failed to take on the real regulatory reforms necessary to allow a private sector nuclear industry to thrive. And just this week, the Obama Environmental Protection Agency began its regulation of carbon emissions through the Clean Air Act.
And let's not forget the grand daddy of them all: a cap and trade energy tax bill. But don't call it that. Secretary Salazar told CNBC yesterday, "I think the term 'cap and trade' is not in the lexicon anymore." Whatever you call it, placing an arbitrary penalty on carbon emissions would mean disaster for the American economy. The Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis has found that cap and tax legislation would cost the average family of four almost $3,000 per year, cause 2.5 million net job losses by 2035, and produce a cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) loss of $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035.
So don't be fooled by President Barack Obama's energy rhetoric. High energy prices are not a side effect of climate legislation - they are the whole point. According to the latest Pew poll, 63% of Americans support allowing more offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters. Americans deserve an energy policy that reduces prices, creates private sector jobs, and reduces our national debt. Right now they have the opposite.
Comment: Even his misdirection tactics are no longer working. We know the next two events he will try to push or ram through congress are Cap and Trade and Immigration policy. to set up Americans, at least a major part of the population he throws out the idea he will lift oil lease bans in place for some time now. For a moment, the population stepped back and said, has he come to his senses? We need to reduce dependency upon foreign oil, this alone would pressure Iran tore-think its nuclear program-but no, Obama was simply performing his magic poorly-again. Look, America uses the highest percentage of oil in the world-still more than China and India. Imagine if we were able to reduce our 70% dependency to only 25% dependency-what would this do to our enemies incomes? Their influence on our policies. We can do this now, without the Russia's or china's of the world. We don't need the UN-we can do this now. I believe the announcement of four new nuclear power plants in strategically placed locations in the USA would alone cause concern abroad. Couple this with opening drilling off all of our shores-the announcement alone would cause additional leverage for the USA with our so-called ME oil friends. We do this at no cost to our economy-know what else would occur, the dollar would begin a surge! We need jobs, imagine the number of new jobs available now-we don't need to invent any new technology or wait for the new science to prove itself-we can do this now. Any guesses why this Administration is not doing this?
What Kind of Attack Can Kill 70 to 90 Percent of Americans Within One Year?
Jena McNeill
When the power goes out, what’s the first thing we do?
Grab a flashlight. Search for batteries. Light some candles. Next, we worry about what’s in the fridge. If the power outage lasts for more than four hours, hundreds of dollars in food may be wasted. Cleaning out the fridge and replacing lost food is costly, messy and unpleasant. Fortunately, however, the lights do eventually come back on, and we can go about our daily lives. After an EMP attack, however, getting the power restored would take much, much longer.
EMP stands for electromagnetic pulse. It’s a pulse that can be used as a weapon (most likely caused by blast of a nuclear weapon in the Earth’s atmosphere), and would destroy the critical infrastructure that Americans rely on. Specifically, an EMP, under the right conditions, is extremely damaging to electronics and the electric grid -- the system that keeps those refrigerators (and the food supply) running.
Most Americans are used to fast, cheap and easy food options. McDonald’s, in fact, prides itself on a 90-second or less service time. And given our tendency to eat too much, it is odd to think about any American starving to death.
The impact of an EMP attack on America’s food supply, however, would be enormous. Food wouldn’t simply spoil, but delivering food and cooking it also would be problematic. Many Americans would struggle to survive.
You may not realize, but your grocery store carries very few foods from the local area. Strawberries are often from Mexico, oranges from Florida, and plums from California. For those curious, Ramen Noodles are made in Richmond, Virginia.
EMP, however, would take down the equipment that makes this system function. Besides problems getting food from place to place, preparing, baking, or cooking food would be difficult for both food production companies and everyday citizens. Remember the jalapeño salmonella outbreak in 2008? One small facility in Texas caused the outbreak. Swiftly, at least 1,251 people all over the nation got sick. Preventing food-borne illnesses would be difficult without needed refrigeration or necessary heat.
The EMP Commission Chairman has stated that within the first year of an attack, 70 percent to 90 percent of Americans would be dead from starvation or disease. Forget the orderly bread lines of the Depression; the scramble for any remaining sustenance would be ugly and most likely deadly.
This isn’t an encouragement to “buy local.” It’s more of a wake-up call that this doesn’t have to happen. With a few investments, the U.S. can harden critical infrastructure in a way that will help the food system get back online quickly if such an attack occurs.
Instead of taking these steps, however, the U.S. government is, in effect, leaving the refrigerator door open when it comes to EMP. America’s adversaries are exploring EMP as a weapon. It’s time for Congress and the administration to pay attention.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Jena Baker McNeill is a homeland security policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation (www.heritage.org).
Iranian Nuclear Scientist Defects to US
Hana Levi Julian
A7 News
U.S. officials have confirmed that a top Iranian nuclear scientist has defected to the United States.
The nuclear physicist, Shahram Amirit, disappeared last summer three days after he arrived in Saudi Arabia on a religious pilgrimage. Officials confirmed Wednesday that he defected to the United States in a covert CIA operation, leaving behind his wife and children. The CIA refused to comment on the report. Nearly two months later, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had accused the United States of abducting the scientist, and added that Saudi Arabia “must [also] be held accountable in this regard.”
Information Confirmed What was Already Known
Amiri apparently worked at or near Fordow, a nuclear facility outside the Iranian holy city of Qom, according to officials briefed on the operation by intelligence personnel. Amiri, a man “in his 30s,” was resettled in the U.S. and is working for the CIA, reported ABC News, which added that the information he provided helped confirm what the CIA "already knew" about the Qom facility.
The award-winning nuclear physicist was described as a scientist at Tehran's Malek Ashtar University, which the United Nations identifies as one of several nuclear research facilities in the country overseen by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Two additional nuclear sites in which uranium is being enriched have also recently come to light, as it becomes increasingly clear that Iran maintains a tightly-compartmentalized system of managing its nuclear development program in order to minimize security leaks.
ABC News added that the CIA has been sending agents for more than a decade to Iranian-American communities in the United States hoping to recruit relatives from Tehran.
Israel has repeatedly urged the international community to increase economic sanctions against Iran in an effort to force the Islamic Republic to halt its nuclear development activities. It is believed by many intelligence agencies, including Israel's Mossad, that Iran is building an atomic weapon. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also repeatedly threatened to wipe the State of Israel "off the map of the world."
A7 News
U.S. officials have confirmed that a top Iranian nuclear scientist has defected to the United States.
The nuclear physicist, Shahram Amirit, disappeared last summer three days after he arrived in Saudi Arabia on a religious pilgrimage. Officials confirmed Wednesday that he defected to the United States in a covert CIA operation, leaving behind his wife and children. The CIA refused to comment on the report. Nearly two months later, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had accused the United States of abducting the scientist, and added that Saudi Arabia “must [also] be held accountable in this regard.”
Information Confirmed What was Already Known
Amiri apparently worked at or near Fordow, a nuclear facility outside the Iranian holy city of Qom, according to officials briefed on the operation by intelligence personnel. Amiri, a man “in his 30s,” was resettled in the U.S. and is working for the CIA, reported ABC News, which added that the information he provided helped confirm what the CIA "already knew" about the Qom facility.
The award-winning nuclear physicist was described as a scientist at Tehran's Malek Ashtar University, which the United Nations identifies as one of several nuclear research facilities in the country overseen by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Two additional nuclear sites in which uranium is being enriched have also recently come to light, as it becomes increasingly clear that Iran maintains a tightly-compartmentalized system of managing its nuclear development program in order to minimize security leaks.
ABC News added that the CIA has been sending agents for more than a decade to Iranian-American communities in the United States hoping to recruit relatives from Tehran.
Israel has repeatedly urged the international community to increase economic sanctions against Iran in an effort to force the Islamic Republic to halt its nuclear development activities. It is believed by many intelligence agencies, including Israel's Mossad, that Iran is building an atomic weapon. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also repeatedly threatened to wipe the State of Israel "off the map of the world."
US Mil. Analyst: Obama is the First Anti-Israeli President
Hillel Fendel
A7 News
Lt.-Col. (ret.) Ralph Peters, military analyst and author of a book on Middle East politics, says Obama apparently has a chip on his shoulder against Israel – and it’s not “helpful to our civilization.”
Peters, who wrote “Endless War: Middle Eastern Islam vs. Western Civilization,” was asked to explain why he felt American-Israeli friendship appears to have been derailed so dramatically. “The answer is two words,” he said. “President Obama.” Obama’s treatment of [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu [during their recent meeting in Washington] was disgraceful and shameful,” Peters told FoxNews. “We treat our enemies with greater courtesy! In addition, it was counter-productive – because this vendetta on the part of the White House against Israel - all it does is encourage the Palestinians and their Arab backers to make ever wilder demands that Israel cannot possibly fulfill. This is not a peace process; this is something about a chip on the President’s shoulder.”
Peters says that Obama’s approach is “absolutely” a departure from past American policy. “It all started with Obama’s Cairo speech,” he said, “where Obama attempted to appease radical Muslims in the Middle East, cold-shouldered Israel, and raised Palestinian expectations that he’d take care of Israel and that the Palestinians would get their revenge. Secondly, in the past, under Presidents Clinton and Bush, there were face-to-face negotiations; the Palestinians were offered one deal after another, and it was always – always! - the Palestinians who walked away.”
Obama Refuses to Recognize the Basic Equation
The American animosity towards Israel “is not about housing in Jerusalem or anything else,” Peters emphasized. “We need to back up and get a little wide-angle picture and recognize the fundamental issue in play here: Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbors, and its neighbors want Israel destroyed. The President refuses to understand that.”
“It’s become a credo of the left-wing that Israel is always the oppressor,” Peters continued, “and that the Palestinian terrorists are freedom fighters, etc. … Obama’s mother is extremely left, his university chums are on the left, he spent 20 years with the Rev. Wright – all of their doctrines say that the Palestinians are wonderful and that the Israelis are basically Nazis... I think that the President has gotten that by osmosis… This is our first anti-Israeli President; it’s bewildering and astonishing.”
Peters said that Israel is not perfect: “This is not a question of giving in to everything that Israel wants; Israel screws up too. But [American policy must] be a balanced approach that takes into account that Israel, for all its many faults is the only rule of law, democracy and respecter of human rights in the entire Middle East; they are part of our civilization. To turn away from Israel as we are doing is not going to help our diplomacy; it is going to hurt our civilization.”
Target Israel
Jamie Glazov
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.
FP: Kenneth Levin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
I would like to talk to you today about the Obama administration waging war on Israel. Tell us the ingredients of this war and why it is being waged. Levin: Let’s first consider the elements of policy that are evidence of Obama’s anti-Israel animus. Virtually his first step in Arab-Israeli diplomacy was to demand a total freeze of all Jewish construction beyond the pre-1967 cease-fire lines. This is something which no previous American administration has ever demanded. In addition, it has never been a pre-condition to previous Israeli-Palestinian talks, nor has it ever been undertaken or agreed upon by any previous Israeli government. At the same time, the Obama administration made no comparable demands of the Palestinians or their Arab supporters.
Somewhat as an afterthought, and with much less fanfare, the Administration did suggest the Palestinians ought to refrain from anti-Israel incitement and that Arab states ought to make some gestures of openness towards Israel. The former request was ignored and the latter was explicitly rejected, but the Administration remained focused on pressuring Israel.
Noteworthy in this regard was Jackson Diehl’s article in the Washington Post on an interview with PA prime minister Mahmoud Abbas in Washington at the time of Abbas’s first meeting with President Obama after the president’s inauguration. Abbas conveyed to Diehl that he did not feel the need to make any gestures towards Israel to advance the search for “peace”; that, for example, the Palestinian Authority’s anti-Israel incitement and rejection of compromise on key issues were not problems he had to address. Rather, he could wait until sufficient Israeli concessions were delivered to him. The impression was clearly that this stance derived from what Abbas learned of the Administration’s attitudes: The pressure was going to be focused on Israel and nothing of significance was expected of the Palestinians. Indeed, this was Diehl’s explicit conclusion: “[President Obama] has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud.”
When, in his Bar Ilan University speech last June, Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed a preparedness to recognize a demilitarized Palestinian state, there was some acknowledgment within the Administration that this was a positive step, but it hardly led to any turning to the other side for any reciprocal move. For example, the original UN resolution of 1947 calling for creation of a Jewish state and a Palestinian state within the area west of the Jordan then administered by Britain was accepted by the Jews, rejected by the Arabs. Benjamin Netanyahu, representing the major party most skeptical of Palestinian willingness to live in peace alongside a Jewish state, was now expressing his preparedness to accede to Palestinian sovereignty in a neighbor nation carved out of the West Bank and Gaza. Yet no Palestinian leader has ever expressed a comparable willingness to tolerate a Jewish state, and Mahmoud Abbas has explicitly refused to do so. But this has failed to elicit from the Administration any criticism or insistence that Abbas and the Palestinians change their stance and mirror Netanyahu’s gesture.
On the contrary, Obama has chosen to continue pressuring only Israel.
That the Administration sees its role as accommodating Arab demands and dismissing Israeli interests was further demonstrated when Prime Minister Netanyahu acceded to a ten-month freeze in Israeli construction in the West Bank – something to which no previous prime minister of any Israeli political party had ever agreed. Initially the move was praised as a major, courageous step by Israel – as in Secretary of State Clinton’s immediate response to announcement of the Israeli concession. But within days, as the PA and Arab states made clear they were not satisfied with the Israeli move, the Administration, including Hillary Clinton, changed its tune and insisted that, of course, it too was not satisfied with the Israeli concession but wanted the freeze extended to Jerusalem as well.
The most recent illustration of anti-Israel animus on Obama’s part should hardly then have come as a surprise to anyone. This was, of course, the Administration’s cynical, histrionic, defamatory response to the announcement – during a visit to Israel by Vice President Biden – of one of a long series of bureaucratic steps involving the approval of construction of additional housing units in a long-established Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem beyond the pre-1967 cease-fire lines. Prime Minister Netanyahu did not know of the move beforehand – a fact no one in the Administration has challenged – and he immediately apologized to the vice president over its timing. Biden left Israel having seemingly accepted the apology, but the president decided to clamp onto it as the pretext for a vitriolic anti-Israel campaign, using Secretary Clinton and even his advisor David Axelrod to accuse the Jewish state of somehow insulting and demeaning America by its daring to build homes for Jews in territory the Palestinians want as their own.
FP: And all this time, the Obama Administration is simply doing nothing about Palestinian provocations?
Levin: Indeed, the Administration has ignored, and continues to ignore, PA provocations. As has been noted by some in the media, during the Biden visit, the Palestinians dedicated a square in a Palestinian municipality to a terrorist who participated in one of the worst terror massacres Israel has suffered, the murder of 37 civilians, about half of them children. In her AIPAC speech, Secretary Clinton spoke of the dedication having taken place in a town run by Hamas, was silent on Abbas and the PA’s involvement in the affair, and had only words of commendation for Abbas. In fact, Abbas has repeatedly praised the terrorist, Dalai Mughrabi, defended the naming of the square in her honor, ordered and arranged PA participation in the ceremony, and he and his PA colleagues, not Hamas, were the major driving force behind the dedication. Yet the Secretary of State intentionally omitted this background and exonerated Abbas and the PA as she sought to render Israeli construction of Jewish housing the major obstacle to progress towards peace.
FP: Obama is actually violating key principles and previously recognized international understandings and agreements, right?
Levin: Absolutely.
Beyond the obvious absurdity of the Administration’s anti-Israel invective, and the transparent animosity that underlay it, lie Administration betrayals of international understandings regarding the territories, international law, and prior American commitments.
First, the cornerstone of negotiation over the territories remains UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed in the wake of the 1967 war. The authors of 242 explicitly stated that it did not call for Israel to return to the pre-war lines and that they believed Israel should not do so as those lines were no more than armistice lines and, in addition, a return to the status quo ante would only invite future aggression against Israel.
In the context of 242, the areas beyond those lines are disputed territory. Moreover, under international law, by virtue of UN charter references to the status of the area and to the continued standing of League of Nations directives pertaining to the area, by virtue of there having been no internationally recognized sovereign power in the territories after Arab rejection of the 1947 partition plan, and by virtue of the territories having been lost to Israel as a result of aggression undertaken against her, Israel has legitimate claims in the territories and her presence there has international standing.
Furthermore, this standing, and the legitimacy of Israel’s claims to defensible borders
which will entail retaining parts of the territories in any settlement, have been recognized by various American presidents. Israel created most of its settlements – certainly those where the vast majority of “settlers” live – to reinforce its claims to strategically sensitive areas, such as those crucial to the defense of Jerusalem, heights that dominate the coastal plain that is home to most of Israel’s population, and the Jordan Valley and the heights above it, which control approaches to Israel’s interior.
Consistent with all of this, there have been earlier presidents who have suggested that at least some settlements might complicate the search for an Arab-Israeli agreement, but none other than Jimmy Carter claimed the settlements were illegal. Obama has come closest to emulating Carter, calling them “illegitimate.”
The Administration has argued as well that Israeli construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank is also intolerable because it is prejudicial to ultimate arrangements. This is certainly Israel’s intent – again, it has used settlements to lay claim to strategically sensitive areas. But the Palestinians have done the same. Aided by large infusions of money from Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and also by European funds, they have built extensively, for example, in previously empty areas in and around Jerusalem. They have done so because they are no less aware of what is strategically sensitive territory than is Israel, and while Israel wants to defend areas within its pre-1967 lines, the Palestinian leadership and their Arab allies want to establish positions that will again render those areas strategically vulnerable.
The Administration’s characterization of Israeli building as prejudicial to a final settlement and its vituperative demands for an end to all such construction, coupled with its silence and implicit support of large-scale Arab building and establishment of “facts on the ground” in disputed territories, is itself an expression of anti-Israel bias.
FP: So what’s going on here? Why is the Obama Administration bullying Israel?
Levin: As to what is motivating the Obama Administration’s war against Israel, a number of possibilities have been suggested. Some have pointed out the president’s long association with people who harbor, and peddle, deep enmity towards Israel, including Bill Ayres, Reverend Wright, Rashid Khalidi, Samantha Power and others. It is suggested that he shares much of these associates’ world view, including their attitude towards the Jewish state.
It is, of course, difficult to weigh how much this history figures in his policies as president vis-à-vis Israel. More clearly open to assessment are broad elements of his approach to foreign policy since his inauguration and how they relate to Israel. He declared as a candidate, and has pursued as president, a policy of seeking to ingratiate himself with hostile states and hostile populations. This has led, for example, to repeated apologies for supposed American “misbehavior” in the past and to other self-effacing blandishments towards such parties. Inevitably, this seeking to make nice to those hostile to America will all too often entail backing away from friends who are likewise viewed with hostility by those the Administration is trying to appease.
FP: And Obama is trying to mend fences with the Muslim world, right?
Levin: Well, this is how it is seen, but it is not quite true; Obama is seeking to mend fences primarily with America’s enemies in the Muslim world, and – to the degree that picking fights with Israel derives from this agenda – Israel is not the only victim. We’ve seen the Administration’s slowness to voice any support for those engaged in the popular uprising in Iran. The Iranian people are perhaps the most pro-American population of any Muslim country; but Obama has been seeking to engage the regime, and so he initially gave Muslim friends struggling for their freedom the back of his hand in order not to offend Iran’s theocrats. To some degree, he continues to do so.
Similarly, the genocide being perpetrated by the Sudanese government against the Muslims of Darfur continues virtually unabated. But Sudan, whose president won the support of the entire Arab League following his indictment for genocide by the International Criminal Court, is another enemy the Administration is seeking to placate, and so the Muslims of Darfur – despite Obama’s campaign promises to make their plight a priority for his presidency – are given short shrift.
The same pattern can be seen in the Administration’s actions vis-a-vis Honduras when its former president sought to subvert the nation’s democratic constitution in order to stay in power, in the manner of his friend Hugo Chaves’s subversion of Venezuela’s democracy. Honduras’s independent judiciary backed the constitution, refused to acquiesce in its violation and ordered that President Zelaya’s attempts at what was, in effect, a coup, be stopped. The Obama administration’s response was to back Zelaya and impose sanctions on this fellow democracy – apparently to win favor with Chavez and his circle of like-minded anti-American leaders in Central and South America who, of course, also sided with Zelaya and against Honduras’s democratic institutions.
Beyond perhaps a longstanding anti-Israel animus, and the role of this seeking to ingratiate himself with those hostile to America, as explanations for Obama’s “war” against Israel, there also undoubtedly looms large his embrace of claims – long popular among those hostile to Israel in Washington – that American closeness to Israel and failure to force upon Israel concessions that would satisfy the Palestinians and the Arab world more broadly, make it difficult for America’s Arab allies to cooperate with the United States vis-à-vis Iran, or Iraq or in other arenas where such cooperation would be useful.
FP: How legitimate are these claims?
Levin: There are many obvious flaws with these anti-Israel arguments. First, as was seen at the 2000 Camp David summit, and again in the negotiations between Prime Minister Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, no amount of Israeli concessions that allows for Israel’s continued existence will satisfy Palestinian leaders or most of the Arab world.
In addition, Arab nations are less solicitous of the Palestinians than hostile to the Israelis, and one would be hard-pressed to find any instance in which Arab leaders have, for the sake of the Palestinians, foregone pursuit of policies they have seen as in their own national interests. If, for example, particular Arab states feel sufficiently threatened by Iran and compelled to take action against Iran, they will do so no matter what is happening between Israel and the Palestinians. And if they feel too intimidated by Iran to take any action against her, or – as seems likely at the present time – are too untrusting of the American commitment to contain Iran and prevent its acquiring nuclear weapons; too untrusting, in effect, of American backing, to dare take strong steps of their own against Iran; they will refrain from such steps no matter what concessions Israel makes to the Palestinians.
No doubt, when pressed by the United States to take positions they find unpalatable, America’s Arab “allies” will at times assert that American support for Israel has rendered America so unpopular among their people as to present an unbridgeable obstacle to the desired cooperation. But to the degree that Israel is venomously, murderously hated in the Arab world, that hatred derives primarily from the campaign of anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish, defamation and demonization which is spewed by government controlled media, mosques and schools in virtually every Arab state. For Arab leaders to then assert that they must be excused from helping America because their people so resent the American alliance with Israel is rather like someone killing his parents and then pleading for the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan.
An additional explanation that has been offered by some for Obama’s recent attacks on Israel is that he has no intention of stopping Iran’s development of nuclear weapons and is positioning himself to blame Israel for his failure. Certainly, Obama gives little indication of feeling any urgency to exert substantive pressure on Iran. He promised punishing sanctions if Iran did not agree to international proposals regarding its weapons program by September, 2009, and six months later no such sanctions are on the horizon. He has fought the recent Congressional push for effective sanctions. And he has hardly indicated any willingness to resort to military means to stop Iran. The argument by those who see his attitude toward Iran as key to his recent attacks on Israel is that Obama will claim that Israel’s failure to take sufficient steps to accommodate Palestinian demands and those of the international community, particularly regarding settlements, undermined the Administration’s ability to build the coalition necessary for the imposition of effective sanctions on Iran.
Of course, Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would not only present an existential threat to Israel but would unleash a nuclear arms race among other Middle East nations, could result in nuclear weapons being given to Iran-sponsored terrorist groups, and would endanger America and its international interests in myriad ways. With regard to Iran, as with regard to so many other issues in the Middle East and beyond, Israel and America’s interests coincide, and that is why the alliance between the two nations has been so strong for so many decades.
But this last point may actually touch on the key to much of Obama’s apparent hostility towards Israel. Among much of the European Left, for whom belief in America’s negative role in the world is clung to virtually as a religious conviction, Israel’s greatest crime has been its close alliance with the United States. Obama is likewise convinced that America’s behavior in international affairs has been largely negative – a conviction that underlies, of course, his repeated apologies to international audiences for his nation’s past actions – and as he seeks to reshape America his model is primarily that offered by the European Left. For Obama, as for many of those Europeans, Israel’s greatest sin may be that – both through the Cold War and in the ongoing confrontation with Islamic fascism – it has been such a close, valuable and trustworthy ally of the United States.
FP: Kenneth Levin, thank you for joining us.
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/01/target-israel/?utm_source=FrontPage+Magazine&utm_campaign=7332b3809a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email
OC: Next Battle: Immigration
Victor Davis Hanson
What we will — and will not — hear in the upcoming debate over illegal immigration.
After the health-care fight, we can expect the Obama administration to use the same template to pass “comprehensive immigration reform.” That is a euphemism for permanently ceasing construction of the still-incomplete border fence; institutionalizing a large guest-worker program; treating illegal residents as de facto citizens in terms of receiving earned-income credits, health care, and general entitlements; and providing virtual amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens. And what exactly is that model for passage of something that promises to be so unpopular?
We know the boilerplate well after a year of health-care acrimony. First, immigration policy — like health care, and cap-and-trade to come — will be cast as a civil-rights issue. That is, free access to the United States and, for some, its entitlement industry for millions of impoverished Mexicans will be redefined as comparable to ending discrimination in the South in the 1960s.
Next, skeptics will be branded “racists” and “nativists,” as is being done now to the tea partiers. A few House members will wade through anti-illegal-immigration rallies, and within minutes the media will announce “racial slurs” and “a scary atmosphere” suggesting “violence” and “hatred.”
This polarization is critical for the bill’s passage, since it does not have 50 percent public support — and won’t unless a series of constituencies can be united to see the issue in polarities such as us vs. them, whites vs. people of color, rich vs. poor. Blacks will be told it is Birmingham all over again. The Mexican-American middle class, highly skeptical of open borders, will be told that opposition to amnesty is “anti-Hispanic.”
So the debate will be personalized — and, above all, blurred. Opponents, we will also be told, are not bothered by illegal immigration per se. Rather they are “anti-immigrant” — as the issue is transmuted into one of hating real people rather than opposing an illegal activity.
Fence-sitting House members will be promised all sorts of special multi-million-dollar earmarks to allay “voter concern.” Executive orders will be pledged to override the more disturbing elements of congressional legislation. Anecdotes about starving children, and accusations of responsibility for the deaths of hundreds trying to cross the border in the desert, will pepper the rhetoric of open-border advocates.
The key will be to redefine as liberal something as inherently illiberal as illegal immigration. Thus there will be no discussion of what the surge over the last two decades of more than 11 million illegal aliens has done to poorer American workers.
We won’t hear from the Democrats that upper-middle-class suburbanites — many quite liberal —apparently see themselves as aristocratic, at least in the sense of being entitled to cheap labor for their lawn care, domestic cleaning, and child care.
They will not talk about the crisis that will occur in entitlement funding for the American poor, once additional millions of Mexican nationals overburden a finite system of health, housing, and food subsidies.
There will absolutely no discussion of the $40 to $50 billion that is sent annually back to Latin America in remittances, a great part of it by illegal aliens, who, in turn, rely on American federal, state, and local governments to make up the shortfall in their weekly paychecks. In effect, the off-the-hook Mexican government is the beneficiary of American tax dollars.
Expect silence about the current status of legal immigration from Mexico — specifically, that we accept more legal immigrants from Mexico than from any other nation in the world, hardly the behavior of a racist or nativist society.
Also, don’t mention the deleterious effects that sudden influxes of millions of illegal immigrants have on the processes of assimilation, intermarriage, and integration — the traditional mechanisms by which legal arrivals successfully melt into the American mainstream. To suggest that one’s tribe, race, or ethnicity should be incidental to being an American, or to point out that vast enclaves of unassimilated aliens live in virtual segregation, is now a heresy of the first order.
We can be sure that no one on the left side of the aisle will cite the utter cynicism of the Mexican government, which exports poor brown people from its interior, whom it does not wish to help, even as it welcomes largely rich white people to its picturesque coast. What else but cynical is it to provide little housing support for millions of your own in Oaxaca while encouraging second-home construction by foreigners in Baja?
So Obama and his congressional allies will make every effort to prevent discussion of the issues, because they revolve around a simple matter of following the law and ensuring that those who emigrate from Mexico do so in the same manner as thousands do from Kenya, South Korea, or Russia — legally and in reasonable numbers.
There would be no debate if each day freighters were arriving to unload on the coast of Texas or California 3,000 illegal aliens from Nigeria or China, most of whom did not speak English or have a high-school diploma.
So-called immigration reform, in other words, is not about the concept of illegal immigration from poor countries in general; rather, it is about massive illegal immigration from Latin America and in particular Mexico — and it hinges entirely on political considerations.
Millions of illegal aliens have become citizens through past blanket amnesties, and they are likely, at least for a while, to vote in bloc for liberal and/or Hispanic candidates. The idea of enlarging that pool of loyal constituents by another 5 to 6 million people of voting age is too great a temptation to refuse, especially given the decisive effects to be expected on close elections in the American southwest. The more entitlements are extended to illegal aliens, the more liberal politicians can remind continued generations that they alone were responsible for such institutionalized federal subsidies.
For a smaller fringe of Hispanic activists — found largely in academia, the foundations, journalism, and politics — illegal immigration is a matter of ethnic pride, some racial chauvinism (cf. the old MEChA slogan, “For the race everything; outside the race, nothing”), and a welcomed sense of irony that demography is now redefining the old Spanish northern provinces once lost through war. After all, in 2010 there is still a national lobbying organization with the fossilized name La Raza (The Race), a racially chauvinistic term that would be considered uncouth if employed by whites — but one that enhances a small group of Spanish-surnamed elites through their self-appointed representation of millions of illegal aliens.
Unfortunately, though, this is not only a left-wing issue. The corporate Right in many industries — tourism, hotels, restaurants, meat-packing, landscaping, agriculture — also welcomes illiegal immigrants. These employers are as happy to have hard-working first-generation poor immigrants on their payroll as they are willing to outsource the subsequent problems of acculturation to society at large.
Will the bill pass?
We can be assured only that the debate will be as nasty as the one over health care. Yet recent developments may suggest greater difficulty than the administration imagines.
We are in a deep recession. Unemployment is still over 9 percent in some of the southwestern states, and nearly 20 percent in the inland counties of California. The old myth that native-born Americans will not clean hotel rooms or weed gardens is fading, as the unemployed now seem willing to work at jobs once considered taboo. That trend will only increase if the recession endures and unemployment benefits finally wind down.
State budgets are in a mess, and even liberals grant, for example, that some part of the California meltdown is due to the presence of some 5 to 7 million resident illegal aliens, which drives up the cost of everything from education to incarceration. Liberal teachers — California has the highest-paid teachers in the nation while its student scores rank nearly dead last — don’t like to acknowledge that the abject failure of their public schools is due to poor teaching and administration rather than in part the presence of millions who do not speak English.
The public is sensitive to the overused charge of racism. When everything from health care to immigration law is to be defined in terms of racial prejudice, it has a dulling effect. This round of the immigration debate comes after the acrimony over Eric Holder’s “cowards,” the president’s “acting stupidly” reference in the Professor Gates affair, Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina,” Van Jones’s “white polluters” — all on top of the president’s earlier quips about a “typical white person” and rural whites’ “clinging” to guns and religion. By now millions see the evocation of race as more reflective of the biases of the accuser than his target.
In 2010 we are also subjected to almost nightly news stories of horrific violence in Mexico, much of it along the border. Fairly or not, many Americans associate Mexico with lawlessness, corruption, and mayhem — the death tolls there have been far higher recently than in either Afghanistan or Iraq — and want its problems to stay on the southern side of the border.
A wiser administration would call in opponents and, in bipartisan fashion, agree to finish the border fence, toughen up employer sanctions, issue a tamper-proof ID, deport alien felons and recent arrivals, and then work out a process through which illegal aliens who are long-standing residents of the United States could reapply for residency and embark on a pathway to eventual citizenship, contingent upon payment of fines, lack of criminality, compliance with current law, and mastery of English. Then legitimate debate could take place over the thorny issue of whether aliens would first need to return home in order to begin going through these legal channels and processes.
Instead, we will see a replay of the health-care controversy. The administration has decided that winning another legislative victory in an agenda aimed at remaking America is worth the cost of dividing the country and whipping up heroes and demons. Momentum, not compromise, is the order of the day.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NzJiODEzYjQwMDI0ZjdhNWI2ZTQ2NjI5YzU3NWE3NzA=
What we will — and will not — hear in the upcoming debate over illegal immigration.
After the health-care fight, we can expect the Obama administration to use the same template to pass “comprehensive immigration reform.” That is a euphemism for permanently ceasing construction of the still-incomplete border fence; institutionalizing a large guest-worker program; treating illegal residents as de facto citizens in terms of receiving earned-income credits, health care, and general entitlements; and providing virtual amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens. And what exactly is that model for passage of something that promises to be so unpopular?
We know the boilerplate well after a year of health-care acrimony. First, immigration policy — like health care, and cap-and-trade to come — will be cast as a civil-rights issue. That is, free access to the United States and, for some, its entitlement industry for millions of impoverished Mexicans will be redefined as comparable to ending discrimination in the South in the 1960s.
Next, skeptics will be branded “racists” and “nativists,” as is being done now to the tea partiers. A few House members will wade through anti-illegal-immigration rallies, and within minutes the media will announce “racial slurs” and “a scary atmosphere” suggesting “violence” and “hatred.”
This polarization is critical for the bill’s passage, since it does not have 50 percent public support — and won’t unless a series of constituencies can be united to see the issue in polarities such as us vs. them, whites vs. people of color, rich vs. poor. Blacks will be told it is Birmingham all over again. The Mexican-American middle class, highly skeptical of open borders, will be told that opposition to amnesty is “anti-Hispanic.”
So the debate will be personalized — and, above all, blurred. Opponents, we will also be told, are not bothered by illegal immigration per se. Rather they are “anti-immigrant” — as the issue is transmuted into one of hating real people rather than opposing an illegal activity.
Fence-sitting House members will be promised all sorts of special multi-million-dollar earmarks to allay “voter concern.” Executive orders will be pledged to override the more disturbing elements of congressional legislation. Anecdotes about starving children, and accusations of responsibility for the deaths of hundreds trying to cross the border in the desert, will pepper the rhetoric of open-border advocates.
The key will be to redefine as liberal something as inherently illiberal as illegal immigration. Thus there will be no discussion of what the surge over the last two decades of more than 11 million illegal aliens has done to poorer American workers.
We won’t hear from the Democrats that upper-middle-class suburbanites — many quite liberal —apparently see themselves as aristocratic, at least in the sense of being entitled to cheap labor for their lawn care, domestic cleaning, and child care.
They will not talk about the crisis that will occur in entitlement funding for the American poor, once additional millions of Mexican nationals overburden a finite system of health, housing, and food subsidies.
There will absolutely no discussion of the $40 to $50 billion that is sent annually back to Latin America in remittances, a great part of it by illegal aliens, who, in turn, rely on American federal, state, and local governments to make up the shortfall in their weekly paychecks. In effect, the off-the-hook Mexican government is the beneficiary of American tax dollars.
Expect silence about the current status of legal immigration from Mexico — specifically, that we accept more legal immigrants from Mexico than from any other nation in the world, hardly the behavior of a racist or nativist society.
Also, don’t mention the deleterious effects that sudden influxes of millions of illegal immigrants have on the processes of assimilation, intermarriage, and integration — the traditional mechanisms by which legal arrivals successfully melt into the American mainstream. To suggest that one’s tribe, race, or ethnicity should be incidental to being an American, or to point out that vast enclaves of unassimilated aliens live in virtual segregation, is now a heresy of the first order.
We can be sure that no one on the left side of the aisle will cite the utter cynicism of the Mexican government, which exports poor brown people from its interior, whom it does not wish to help, even as it welcomes largely rich white people to its picturesque coast. What else but cynical is it to provide little housing support for millions of your own in Oaxaca while encouraging second-home construction by foreigners in Baja?
So Obama and his congressional allies will make every effort to prevent discussion of the issues, because they revolve around a simple matter of following the law and ensuring that those who emigrate from Mexico do so in the same manner as thousands do from Kenya, South Korea, or Russia — legally and in reasonable numbers.
There would be no debate if each day freighters were arriving to unload on the coast of Texas or California 3,000 illegal aliens from Nigeria or China, most of whom did not speak English or have a high-school diploma.
So-called immigration reform, in other words, is not about the concept of illegal immigration from poor countries in general; rather, it is about massive illegal immigration from Latin America and in particular Mexico — and it hinges entirely on political considerations.
Millions of illegal aliens have become citizens through past blanket amnesties, and they are likely, at least for a while, to vote in bloc for liberal and/or Hispanic candidates. The idea of enlarging that pool of loyal constituents by another 5 to 6 million people of voting age is too great a temptation to refuse, especially given the decisive effects to be expected on close elections in the American southwest. The more entitlements are extended to illegal aliens, the more liberal politicians can remind continued generations that they alone were responsible for such institutionalized federal subsidies.
For a smaller fringe of Hispanic activists — found largely in academia, the foundations, journalism, and politics — illegal immigration is a matter of ethnic pride, some racial chauvinism (cf. the old MEChA slogan, “For the race everything; outside the race, nothing”), and a welcomed sense of irony that demography is now redefining the old Spanish northern provinces once lost through war. After all, in 2010 there is still a national lobbying organization with the fossilized name La Raza (The Race), a racially chauvinistic term that would be considered uncouth if employed by whites — but one that enhances a small group of Spanish-surnamed elites through their self-appointed representation of millions of illegal aliens.
Unfortunately, though, this is not only a left-wing issue. The corporate Right in many industries — tourism, hotels, restaurants, meat-packing, landscaping, agriculture — also welcomes illiegal immigrants. These employers are as happy to have hard-working first-generation poor immigrants on their payroll as they are willing to outsource the subsequent problems of acculturation to society at large.
Will the bill pass?
We can be assured only that the debate will be as nasty as the one over health care. Yet recent developments may suggest greater difficulty than the administration imagines.
We are in a deep recession. Unemployment is still over 9 percent in some of the southwestern states, and nearly 20 percent in the inland counties of California. The old myth that native-born Americans will not clean hotel rooms or weed gardens is fading, as the unemployed now seem willing to work at jobs once considered taboo. That trend will only increase if the recession endures and unemployment benefits finally wind down.
State budgets are in a mess, and even liberals grant, for example, that some part of the California meltdown is due to the presence of some 5 to 7 million resident illegal aliens, which drives up the cost of everything from education to incarceration. Liberal teachers — California has the highest-paid teachers in the nation while its student scores rank nearly dead last — don’t like to acknowledge that the abject failure of their public schools is due to poor teaching and administration rather than in part the presence of millions who do not speak English.
The public is sensitive to the overused charge of racism. When everything from health care to immigration law is to be defined in terms of racial prejudice, it has a dulling effect. This round of the immigration debate comes after the acrimony over Eric Holder’s “cowards,” the president’s “acting stupidly” reference in the Professor Gates affair, Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina,” Van Jones’s “white polluters” — all on top of the president’s earlier quips about a “typical white person” and rural whites’ “clinging” to guns and religion. By now millions see the evocation of race as more reflective of the biases of the accuser than his target.
In 2010 we are also subjected to almost nightly news stories of horrific violence in Mexico, much of it along the border. Fairly or not, many Americans associate Mexico with lawlessness, corruption, and mayhem — the death tolls there have been far higher recently than in either Afghanistan or Iraq — and want its problems to stay on the southern side of the border.
A wiser administration would call in opponents and, in bipartisan fashion, agree to finish the border fence, toughen up employer sanctions, issue a tamper-proof ID, deport alien felons and recent arrivals, and then work out a process through which illegal aliens who are long-standing residents of the United States could reapply for residency and embark on a pathway to eventual citizenship, contingent upon payment of fines, lack of criminality, compliance with current law, and mastery of English. Then legitimate debate could take place over the thorny issue of whether aliens would first need to return home in order to begin going through these legal channels and processes.
Instead, we will see a replay of the health-care controversy. The administration has decided that winning another legislative victory in an agenda aimed at remaking America is worth the cost of dividing the country and whipping up heroes and demons. Momentum, not compromise, is the order of the day.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, the editor of Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome, and the author of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NzJiODEzYjQwMDI0ZjdhNWI2ZTQ2NjI5YzU3NWE3NzA=
Deputy Minister: If US Balks at Veto, Shun 'Hussein Obama'
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136783#replies
by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com) Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara reacted acerbically to a BBC report that the United States may abstain from using its veto power if the UN Security Council votes to condemn Israeli building for Jews in eastern Jerusalem.
"If Israel does not receive backing from the United States in the Security Council and the US does not veto a resolution of condemnation,” said the Deputy Minister for Development of the Negev and Galilee, “we should cut off all contacts with Hussein Obama and call upon the American people to raise a cry of dissent against the belligerent policy that has been implemented of late – first and foremost by the president of the US.” Enough 'abuse'
The “abuse” and “aggression” toward the prime minister is abuse of each and every Israeli, he said, in a reference to the humiliations Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has undergone in his visits to the White House.
Kara intentionally used Obama's Muslim middle name, leaving out his first name, which is also of Muslim origin.
Kara said Netanyahu should receive maximum backing within Israel, and particularly inside the Likud party.
Dep.-Min. Kara was hosted for the Passover seder at Pisgat Ze'ev, along with dozens of Christian Zionists who came from the US to celebrate Passover in Israel.
Dep.-Min. Kara, a Druze, is one of the most proudly and aggressively Zionist members of the current coalition. He has compared his connection to the Jewish people to that of Yitro (Jethro) and Moses. The Druze see Yitro – whom they call Shuaib – as their greatest prophet.
A senior US source has denied the BBC report, saying that no resolution of condemnation of Israel over construction in Jerusalem is expected in the UNSC.
by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com) Deputy Minister Ayoub Kara reacted acerbically to a BBC report that the United States may abstain from using its veto power if the UN Security Council votes to condemn Israeli building for Jews in eastern Jerusalem.
"If Israel does not receive backing from the United States in the Security Council and the US does not veto a resolution of condemnation,” said the Deputy Minister for Development of the Negev and Galilee, “we should cut off all contacts with Hussein Obama and call upon the American people to raise a cry of dissent against the belligerent policy that has been implemented of late – first and foremost by the president of the US.” Enough 'abuse'
The “abuse” and “aggression” toward the prime minister is abuse of each and every Israeli, he said, in a reference to the humiliations Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has undergone in his visits to the White House.
Kara intentionally used Obama's Muslim middle name, leaving out his first name, which is also of Muslim origin.
Kara said Netanyahu should receive maximum backing within Israel, and particularly inside the Likud party.
Dep.-Min. Kara was hosted for the Passover seder at Pisgat Ze'ev, along with dozens of Christian Zionists who came from the US to celebrate Passover in Israel.
Dep.-Min. Kara, a Druze, is one of the most proudly and aggressively Zionist members of the current coalition. He has compared his connection to the Jewish people to that of Yitro (Jethro) and Moses. The Druze see Yitro – whom they call Shuaib – as their greatest prophet.
A senior US source has denied the BBC report, saying that no resolution of condemnation of Israel over construction in Jerusalem is expected in the UNSC.
The Ruins of Byblos
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/the_ruins_of_byblos.html
March 31, 2010
By Joel B. Pollak
Imagine, for a moment, that Iran and Syria had begun feuding publicly over the fate of the ruins in Byblos, Lebanon. Imagine that some Syrian-backed party in the Lebanese government had begun restoring the buildings of the early Islamic period, leaving evidence of Persian rule for a time of greater budgets and ambitions. Imagine, then, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had taken to the airwaves to denounce the Syrian insult. What would we think, as outsiders with a vested interest in weakening Syria's alliance with Iran? We would, of course, seize the moment. We might take the opportunity to topple the brutal Syrian regime -- or, more likely, offer inducements to dictator Bashar al-Assad to encourage him to open his country to the western world. Either way, we would see a superficial spat over a few buildings as evidence of a deeper, emerging divide.
Imagine further that a prominent Syrian figure on the international stage -- or someone of Syrian descent, like Syrian-American novelist Mona Simpson, for argument's sake -- had stepped forward to lead a UN fact-finding mission on Syria, which aimed to document "brutal violations of human rights and suppression of democracy." Barred from entry by the regime, the mission would still interview dissident exiles and international NGOs.
Now imagine that in the wake of the lengthy, strident report produced by Simpson and approved by the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council had passed five resolutions condemning Syria and established a new UN body to monitor compliance with the Simpson report. Would we not feel a sense of momentum, an expectation that the regime would soon crack? Would we not try to ratchet the pressure ever higher?
That is exactly what Israel's enemies feel at the moment, watching President Barack Obama join international condemnation of Israel over a housing project in Jerusalem, watching a prominent Jewish intellectual like Richard Goldstone accuse Israel of crimes against humanity, watching the UN Human Rights Council devote the bulk of its efforts to attacking Israel's right to defend itself from genocidal terrorist groups on its borders.
The motives for anti-Israel hatred are surely irrational, but the encouragement that anti-Israel forces are drawing from the events of recent weeks is surely rational. And with the Obama administration's emerging hostility towards the Netanyahu government, anti-Israel groups and governments see the dawn of the longed-for day when the U.S. would stand aside, no longer willing to help Israel for moral or even strategic reasons.
Barring regime change in Iran -- which would deny Israel's enemies the weapons, money, and inspiration they need to keep fighting -- the Obama administration's disastrous policy towards Israel has created an impression of weakness that will be extremely difficult to undo. Not even another decisive Israeli victory in a war with Hamas or Hezb'allah will be enough to contradict prophecies of her destruction as they acquire a force of their own.
In retrospect, Israel's own actions -- the Lebanon withdrawal, which was followed by the Second Lebanon War; the Gaza disengagement, which was followed by the Gaza war -- helped create an impression of weakness. At the time, many Israelis saw these steps as necessary sacrifices for peace. But Israel's enemies saw them as retreats -- as did that part of the west so easily convinced of the irrationality of Israel's existence to begin with.
Israel very nearly made peace with Syria, in 1999. Back then, the question was always whether an agreement that Israel made with a dictator would be upheld by his inevitable successor. Few thought to question whether agreements made with one U.S. president would survive into the administration of the next. The potentially cataclysmic transfer of power in a third-world dictatorship worried us more than routine democratic transitions.
It turns out that the 2008 election was anything but a routine transition for the U.S.-Israel relationship. An unconditional friendship has become a conditional entente, just as the "special relationship" with Britain has been transformed into something ordinary and dispensable. That may not have been what many Americans thought they were voting for, but it is certainly real change. Our enemies, quite reasonably, have taken note.
Joel B. Pollak is the GOP nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 9th district of Illinois.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/the_ruins_of_byblos.html at March 31, 2010 - 04:17:16 AM CDT
March 31, 2010
By Joel B. Pollak
Imagine, for a moment, that Iran and Syria had begun feuding publicly over the fate of the ruins in Byblos, Lebanon. Imagine that some Syrian-backed party in the Lebanese government had begun restoring the buildings of the early Islamic period, leaving evidence of Persian rule for a time of greater budgets and ambitions. Imagine, then, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had taken to the airwaves to denounce the Syrian insult. What would we think, as outsiders with a vested interest in weakening Syria's alliance with Iran? We would, of course, seize the moment. We might take the opportunity to topple the brutal Syrian regime -- or, more likely, offer inducements to dictator Bashar al-Assad to encourage him to open his country to the western world. Either way, we would see a superficial spat over a few buildings as evidence of a deeper, emerging divide.
Imagine further that a prominent Syrian figure on the international stage -- or someone of Syrian descent, like Syrian-American novelist Mona Simpson, for argument's sake -- had stepped forward to lead a UN fact-finding mission on Syria, which aimed to document "brutal violations of human rights and suppression of democracy." Barred from entry by the regime, the mission would still interview dissident exiles and international NGOs.
Now imagine that in the wake of the lengthy, strident report produced by Simpson and approved by the UN General Assembly, the UN Human Rights Council had passed five resolutions condemning Syria and established a new UN body to monitor compliance with the Simpson report. Would we not feel a sense of momentum, an expectation that the regime would soon crack? Would we not try to ratchet the pressure ever higher?
That is exactly what Israel's enemies feel at the moment, watching President Barack Obama join international condemnation of Israel over a housing project in Jerusalem, watching a prominent Jewish intellectual like Richard Goldstone accuse Israel of crimes against humanity, watching the UN Human Rights Council devote the bulk of its efforts to attacking Israel's right to defend itself from genocidal terrorist groups on its borders.
The motives for anti-Israel hatred are surely irrational, but the encouragement that anti-Israel forces are drawing from the events of recent weeks is surely rational. And with the Obama administration's emerging hostility towards the Netanyahu government, anti-Israel groups and governments see the dawn of the longed-for day when the U.S. would stand aside, no longer willing to help Israel for moral or even strategic reasons.
Barring regime change in Iran -- which would deny Israel's enemies the weapons, money, and inspiration they need to keep fighting -- the Obama administration's disastrous policy towards Israel has created an impression of weakness that will be extremely difficult to undo. Not even another decisive Israeli victory in a war with Hamas or Hezb'allah will be enough to contradict prophecies of her destruction as they acquire a force of their own.
In retrospect, Israel's own actions -- the Lebanon withdrawal, which was followed by the Second Lebanon War; the Gaza disengagement, which was followed by the Gaza war -- helped create an impression of weakness. At the time, many Israelis saw these steps as necessary sacrifices for peace. But Israel's enemies saw them as retreats -- as did that part of the west so easily convinced of the irrationality of Israel's existence to begin with.
Israel very nearly made peace with Syria, in 1999. Back then, the question was always whether an agreement that Israel made with a dictator would be upheld by his inevitable successor. Few thought to question whether agreements made with one U.S. president would survive into the administration of the next. The potentially cataclysmic transfer of power in a third-world dictatorship worried us more than routine democratic transitions.
It turns out that the 2008 election was anything but a routine transition for the U.S.-Israel relationship. An unconditional friendship has become a conditional entente, just as the "special relationship" with Britain has been transformed into something ordinary and dispensable. That may not have been what many Americans thought they were voting for, but it is certainly real change. Our enemies, quite reasonably, have taken note.
Joel B. Pollak is the GOP nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives from the 9th district of Illinois.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/the_ruins_of_byblos.html at March 31, 2010 - 04:17:16 AM CDT
Could this book turn your child against Israel?
Written by Atara Beck
Monday, 29 March 2010
TORONTO – “Reading this book made me want to go to Palestine and kill Israelis,” commented a teenaged girl who “likes Jews” and has attended three Bat Mitzvahs. Her comments on the book she refers to – The Shepherd’s Granddaughter by Anne Laurel Carter – can be found on the book-promoting goodreads.com web site.
On the same site, another young student who read it compared the Israeli regime to Nazis. As a quick read of the book shows, The Shepherd’s Granddaughter is a work of fiction based on the political situation in the West Bank that demonizes the Jewish state, presenting a completely one-sided, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel view with absolutely no balance or background information. For example, in the novel, the Israelis poisoned the likeable Palestinian protagonist’s sheep for no reason, and the driver of a bulldozer tried to run her over. The Palestinians are portrayed as completely innocent and helpless victims, while the cruel Israelis pursue a goal of ethnic cleansing.
The book came to the attention of the Jewish Tribune through writer Brian Henry, a contributor to this paper. The father of a Grade 6 student in the public school system, his open letter of concern to Ontario’s education minister is on page 14.
Recognized as a Book of the Year for children by the Canadian Library Association (CLA) and nominated for the prestigious Red Maple Award 2010 (geared to grades 7 and 8) of the Ontario Library Association (OLA), The Shepherd’s Granddaughter is highly recommended by Toronto District School Board (TDSB) teachers and librarians. The Jewish Tribune, after seeing Henry’s letter, picked up the book – which was in high demand – at a local library. There were 44 copies of the book in circulation in Toronto libraries and only one was available.
The CLA did not return any calls on this issue before publication deadline.
According to Shelagh Paterson, OLA’s executive director, “the committee did not think this was propaganda; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been chosen.”
She defended the choice with the assertion that children in the Red Maple program could “pick their favourite author. They don’t have to read all the books. It is not part of the curriculum. It’s recreational book club material and encourages love of reading and discussion…. Usually discussions are welcome. Teachers help sort out thoughts.”
Ruth Dameron, a teacher at Eitz Chaim’s middle school who is not a member of the Jewish community, said: “I find it difficult to believe that this book, which [I think] encourages antisemitism, is being circulated in Ontario schools for young, impressionable children.
“Every teacher has a different perspective on politics, therefore, how could the OLA be so sure that a teacher would necessarily provide another point of view or challenge the message in the book?”
“I don’t know of any books that are balanced or unbiased,” Paterson declared. “I think the best opportunity to be exposed to controversial issues is when they’re learning. The committee does carefully select [each book]…. It is not setting out to upset anyone. They want to ensure there’s a richness to it.”
Asked whether the committee would have considered a compelling and well-written work of fiction with an equally biased message against another ethnic group – for example, insinuating that African-Americans are intellectually inferior – she responded: “They read To Kill a Mockingbird.”
(To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, published in 1960, is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novel taught widely in North American schools. Its message is a powerful condemnation of racial injustice.)
Trustee James Pasternak (York Centre) said that he “received a complaint and forwarded it over to our executive director of equity, Lloyd McKell. He said it was starting to get on our radar screen. We’re going to be reading it.
“The initial reports are that this book is disconcerting to us and it is unbalanced political propaganda. However, senior staff is looking into it. We have a responsibility to follow up on all complaints and this is one of them. We will take it very seriously. We have very strict rules governing political activity in schools. Everyone must abide by them regardless of their political views. We would vigorously forbid the distribution of materials that smacked of political agendas, especially views from conflict zones.”
McKell was out of town and unavailable for comment.
Shari Schwartz-Maltz, the Toronto board’s manager of media, said there is a formal process for parents to deal with this kind of situation and the first thing they should do is discuss it with the school principal. She was unaware of any formal complaint.
“Decisions about the use of books are the responsibility of the school board,” asserted Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ontario education ministry. “District school boards select and approve all supplementary learning resources. Boards and schools have their own internal procedures for selecting and approving various books and resources.”
“It concerns me that this book is getting positive reviews and students are reading it without any guidance,” said Associated Hebrew Schools librarian Bev Birkan. “This is one book that definitely should have unbiased adult supervision.”
“I’m Israeli,” said Ettie Stubbs, president of the Association of Jewish Libraries. The book “neglected to mention any background. Kids that know nothing about the conflict will read it and that is the impression they will get.”
Ross Virgo, spokesperson for the York Region District School Board, was “very familiar with the book. We have provided some advice to our teachers and librarians. It is considered to be a sensitive issues text, raising subject matter and concepts that merit some informed, contextual discussion. They would certainly understand that it carries a distinctive point of view.”
The book “was researched by the OLA, which is fairly representative of Canadian communities,” he added. “We have 162 elementary schools and I believe it is probably in many of the school libraries.”
Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith Canada’s executive vice-president, has written to the provincial education minister calling for the removal of the book, which is “so clearly biased against Israel,” from any school’s recommended reading list. “This is not just a matter of political differences with Israeli policy. Having these types of one-sided books in the classroom marginalizes Jewish children and is definitely not in the spirit of the TDSB, which recently banned the hate-fest known as ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ from its schools.”
Sorry, no url, received via email
Monday, 29 March 2010
TORONTO – “Reading this book made me want to go to Palestine and kill Israelis,” commented a teenaged girl who “likes Jews” and has attended three Bat Mitzvahs. Her comments on the book she refers to – The Shepherd’s Granddaughter by Anne Laurel Carter – can be found on the book-promoting goodreads.com web site.
On the same site, another young student who read it compared the Israeli regime to Nazis. As a quick read of the book shows, The Shepherd’s Granddaughter is a work of fiction based on the political situation in the West Bank that demonizes the Jewish state, presenting a completely one-sided, pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel view with absolutely no balance or background information. For example, in the novel, the Israelis poisoned the likeable Palestinian protagonist’s sheep for no reason, and the driver of a bulldozer tried to run her over. The Palestinians are portrayed as completely innocent and helpless victims, while the cruel Israelis pursue a goal of ethnic cleansing.
The book came to the attention of the Jewish Tribune through writer Brian Henry, a contributor to this paper. The father of a Grade 6 student in the public school system, his open letter of concern to Ontario’s education minister is on page 14.
Recognized as a Book of the Year for children by the Canadian Library Association (CLA) and nominated for the prestigious Red Maple Award 2010 (geared to grades 7 and 8) of the Ontario Library Association (OLA), The Shepherd’s Granddaughter is highly recommended by Toronto District School Board (TDSB) teachers and librarians. The Jewish Tribune, after seeing Henry’s letter, picked up the book – which was in high demand – at a local library. There were 44 copies of the book in circulation in Toronto libraries and only one was available.
The CLA did not return any calls on this issue before publication deadline.
According to Shelagh Paterson, OLA’s executive director, “the committee did not think this was propaganda; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been chosen.”
She defended the choice with the assertion that children in the Red Maple program could “pick their favourite author. They don’t have to read all the books. It is not part of the curriculum. It’s recreational book club material and encourages love of reading and discussion…. Usually discussions are welcome. Teachers help sort out thoughts.”
Ruth Dameron, a teacher at Eitz Chaim’s middle school who is not a member of the Jewish community, said: “I find it difficult to believe that this book, which [I think] encourages antisemitism, is being circulated in Ontario schools for young, impressionable children.
“Every teacher has a different perspective on politics, therefore, how could the OLA be so sure that a teacher would necessarily provide another point of view or challenge the message in the book?”
“I don’t know of any books that are balanced or unbiased,” Paterson declared. “I think the best opportunity to be exposed to controversial issues is when they’re learning. The committee does carefully select [each book]…. It is not setting out to upset anyone. They want to ensure there’s a richness to it.”
Asked whether the committee would have considered a compelling and well-written work of fiction with an equally biased message against another ethnic group – for example, insinuating that African-Americans are intellectually inferior – she responded: “They read To Kill a Mockingbird.”
(To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, published in 1960, is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novel taught widely in North American schools. Its message is a powerful condemnation of racial injustice.)
Trustee James Pasternak (York Centre) said that he “received a complaint and forwarded it over to our executive director of equity, Lloyd McKell. He said it was starting to get on our radar screen. We’re going to be reading it.
“The initial reports are that this book is disconcerting to us and it is unbalanced political propaganda. However, senior staff is looking into it. We have a responsibility to follow up on all complaints and this is one of them. We will take it very seriously. We have very strict rules governing political activity in schools. Everyone must abide by them regardless of their political views. We would vigorously forbid the distribution of materials that smacked of political agendas, especially views from conflict zones.”
McKell was out of town and unavailable for comment.
Shari Schwartz-Maltz, the Toronto board’s manager of media, said there is a formal process for parents to deal with this kind of situation and the first thing they should do is discuss it with the school principal. She was unaware of any formal complaint.
“Decisions about the use of books are the responsibility of the school board,” asserted Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ontario education ministry. “District school boards select and approve all supplementary learning resources. Boards and schools have their own internal procedures for selecting and approving various books and resources.”
“It concerns me that this book is getting positive reviews and students are reading it without any guidance,” said Associated Hebrew Schools librarian Bev Birkan. “This is one book that definitely should have unbiased adult supervision.”
“I’m Israeli,” said Ettie Stubbs, president of the Association of Jewish Libraries. The book “neglected to mention any background. Kids that know nothing about the conflict will read it and that is the impression they will get.”
Ross Virgo, spokesperson for the York Region District School Board, was “very familiar with the book. We have provided some advice to our teachers and librarians. It is considered to be a sensitive issues text, raising subject matter and concepts that merit some informed, contextual discussion. They would certainly understand that it carries a distinctive point of view.”
The book “was researched by the OLA, which is fairly representative of Canadian communities,” he added. “We have 162 elementary schools and I believe it is probably in many of the school libraries.”
Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith Canada’s executive vice-president, has written to the provincial education minister calling for the removal of the book, which is “so clearly biased against Israel,” from any school’s recommended reading list. “This is not just a matter of political differences with Israeli policy. Having these types of one-sided books in the classroom marginalizes Jewish children and is definitely not in the spirit of the TDSB, which recently banned the hate-fest known as ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ from its schools.”
Sorry, no url, received via email
Fatah: Escalate popular intifada
KHALED ABU TOAMEH 01/04/2010 03:58 Protests aim to generate int'l pressure over settlements, security barrier.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction on Wednesday called for escalating the “popular struggle” against the security barrier and the settlements in the West Bank.The call came as Palestinians expressed skepticism about a pledge by the recent Arab League summit in Libya to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars to boost the Arab presence in Jerusalem.
Veteran members of the Fatah Central Committee, including Nabil Shaath, Mahmoud al-Aloul, Muhammad Dahlan, Hussein al-Sheikh and Jibril Rajoub, said that the decision to escalate popular protests against the security fence and settlements was part of the faction’s political platform.
They said the Sixth General Assembly of Fatah, which met last year in Bethlehem for the first time in over 20 years, had endorsed “popular resistance” as a means of confronting Israel’s measures in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Aloul, a former PA governor of Nablus whose son was killed in clashes with the IDF during the second intifada, said that the coming weeks would witness an upsurge in peaceful and popular protests in the West Bank.
He predicted that Israel would also toughen its measures against the protesters to foil the “popular resistance.”
Aloul said the IDF’s arrest of Abbas Zaki, a veteran Fatah leader, during a peaceful march on Sunday near Bethlehem against the settlements and the security barrier, indicated that Israel had begun taking the protests more seriously.
Security forces dispersed about 200 Palestinians and left-wing activists on Wednesday who were demonstrating on the “Palestinian side” of the Beitunya crossing, 14 km. north of Jerusalem, and threw stones at border policemen and IDF soldiers.
Three border policemen were lightly wounded and treated on the spot. Two demonstrators were arrested on suspicion of stone-throwing. The Beitunya crossing was closed to traffic.
The demonstrators were protesting the arrest of 10 senior Palestinian officials during the demonstration in Bethlehem.
Protesters tried to breach the roadblock in an attempt to reach the Ofer Prison, where the Palestinian officials – including Zaki and former Palestinian tourism minister Ziad al-Bendak – were being held.
Rajoub, for his part, emphasized that Fatah’s decision to step up the “popular resistance” did not mean that the faction had abandoned other options – an implicit reference to the “armed struggle” choice.
The former PA security chief said that Fatah was now working to develop and spread the models of the villages of Bil’in, Ni’lin and Nabi Saleh, where Palestinians and foreign activists have held weekly protests against the security fence.
Shaath, a former PA foreign minister, said that peaceful protests were now a popular demand to confront Israel’s policies in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
“We need to strengthen and back this option in the face of the Israeli occupation’s policies,” he said. “We can’t return to the negotiations unless Israel halts all settlement construction in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem.”
Shaath urged the US administration to pressure Israel to stop its policy of settlement construction, which, he claimed, jeopardized US interests in the region.
Some of the Fatah officials have decided to take an active role in the protests. Zaki was leading the demonstration near Bethlehem at which he was arrested.
The Fatah leaders expressed hope that the popular protests would erupt into a “peaceful intifada” which would eventually spark enormous international pressure on the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines.
PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, during his weekly radio address to the Palestinians, voiced support for the idea of waging peaceful protests. He said that the “popular resistance” had strengthened the Palestinians’ “national program.”
Fayyad also reiterated his call for boycotting settlement products, adding that the campaign was gaining momentum and becoming increasingly effective.
“The campaign to boycott goods and products of the settlements is the weapon the Palestinians are using to emphasize the fact that the settlements are illegal and in violation of international law,” he said. “The PA institutions are continuing to fulfill the instructions of our government to ban settlement products from entering the Palestinian market.”
Hamas condemned Fatah’s call for a popular intifada, saying the decision implied that Abbas’s faction had renounced the option of an armed struggle against Israel.
“This decision turns Fatah into one of many Palestinian civic institutions because it has abandoned the armed struggle option,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Omar Abdel Razek, a Hamas legislator in the West Bank, also accused Fatah of double standards, claiming that the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank were actually doing their utmost to prevent demonstrations against Israel.
“Abbas’s security forces are taking repressive measures against anyone who demonstrates in protest against Israel,” he charged. “Just this week we saw and heard how these security forces assaulted Palestinian journalists and protesters during an anti-Israel demonstration near Bethlehem.”
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Islamic Jihad organization also rejected the idea of waging a peaceful intifada against Israel. The two groups said the Palestinians should not abandon the option of armed struggle “as long as Israel continues to occupy Palestine.”
Meanwhile, Palestinians said they were not pinning any hopes on a pledge by the last Arab League summit to raise $500 million to support the Arab residents of Jerusalem.
They pointed out that similar promises in the past by the Arab countries had never been fulfilled.
“Every year we receive more and more promises,” said Hatem Abdel Kader, holder of the Jerusalem portfolio in Fatah. “The Arab and Islamic countries must wake up and take immediate and urgent steps to stop Israel from Judaizing Jerusalem.”
Hamas leader Ahmed Bahr said most Palestinians were “deeply disappointed” with the outcome of the Arab summit in Libya “because it did not carry anything new for them.”
Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, chairman of the Supreme Islamic Council, expressed hope that the Arab summit’s decision to support the Arabs of Jerusalem “would not remain ink on paper.”
Comment: There is a direct cause and effect between this call for action by Abbas and President Obama's behavior toward Israel. Obama's policies applied to Israel have cued Abbas to do what he does best-complain, whine and agitate as these three actions resonate in the West. There is no doubt that the West is responsible for Abbas' latest edict. The Fatah organization has not nor does it have the desire to turn its energies and foreign support into constructive actions, e.g., develop roads, build much needed sewage systems, develop free trade zones for commerce . They are not committed to peace and have been rewarded with monies, prestige afforded them by Western nations and the lifestyle they are accustomed to-in behavioral terms this conditioning continues 45 years of inappropriate behavior with no sign of change in the future. You want to promote peace in this region? Stop rewarding the Palestinian behavior, mandate personal responsibility, hold them accountable and hold them to a higher standard of daily actions. This will begin the change Obama so often speaks of and does nothing about!!
Middle East Cage Match: Bibi or Barry?
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/middle-east-cage-match-bibi-or/
Middle East Cage Match: Bibi or Barry?
March 31, 2010 - by James Lewis
Was Winston Churchill “in real trouble” when he took over from Neville Chamberlain before war broke out in 1939? Not at all — the English supported Churchill because they could see no alternative to war. Churchill projected strength, and that is what they needed most of all. It was Chamberlain who had to resign as prime minister and apologize in public for his failed appeasement policy. Chamberlain was in trouble, not Churchill. his week the pundits seem to have decided all together that Benyamin Netanyahu is in real trouble today, supposedly because Barack Obama has “humiliated him” and put him in a double bind. It ain’t so, and the attempt by leftoids to portray Netanyahu as “humiliated” is nonsense.
Yes, Obama, in his usual subtle fashion, attempted to humiliate Netanyahu. But Obama is also an expert liar and faker, who believes that “the appearance of power” is power. It’s all by the book, Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
This whole media narrative is nonsense, for any number of reasons. Here are just some.
1. Humiliation?
Someone can spit in my face to try to humiliate me. Whether I am therefore humbled and shamed — actually humiliated — as a result of that is up to me. Netanyahu comes from a people who thugs and gangsters have attempted to humiliate since the first millennium BCE. Egyptian slavery is humiliation, but it became part of the defining narrative of the Jews. In the Hebrew Bible every single imperial power in the neighborhood invades the land of Israel and the land of Judah. They still keep their identity — and they are not really as peaceful as they’re sometimes cracked up to be. The dynamic of humiliation by an enemy followed by fierce resistance is pretty much coded in their biblical genes.
The same thing goes on in the Christian Bible. The Romans were brutal conquerors, after all, and Jesus was a rebel against Imperial Rome and its local puppets. So there’s nothing new about resistance to thuggery in the history of Israel.
2. Netanyahu isn’t Obama
Most men and women in Israel have faced the possibility of violent death – not just their own, but that of their children and parents. Israel was founded by such people. They train and train to meet that danger without flinching, if there is no alternative. Jonathan Netanyahu, Bibi’s brother, was killed at Entebbe leading a rescue raid of El Al air passengers who were being held hostage by thugocrat Idi Amin. Bibi’s father fought with the Irgun. His kids have done their service in the IDF.
Netanyahu is a hundred times the man Obama could ever be. Obama is a manipulator, an ideologue, and a liar. He sat for twenty years at the feet of a real racial hate monger, Jeremiah Wright. There is simply no doubt about these facts. Even the Democrats can’t deny it anymore.
Would you bet on a Chicago pol against an Israeli special ops guy? I wouldn’t.
3. More support
Since Obama administered his “public humiliation,” more Israelis and friends of Israel have come out in support of Israel and its prime minister than ever before. This isn’t personal. Netanyahu is the highest elected official of a sovereign people. Imagine Gorbachev trying to publicly humiliate Ronald Reagan in this way. How would Americans have felt? Even the Democrats would have had to fake a little public protest to cover their rears.
Only 9% of Israelis now believe that Barry is actually pro-Israel. The mask is off. In addition, the Israeli left is now being deeply embarrassed. This is important because it is a very delusional left, just like ours. The parliamentary opposition can’t afford to look like they are kneeling down to Barack Obama, or they will lose whatever popular support they still have.
Obama and Rahm Emanuel have been trying to play Israel’s left wing ever since Obama was nominated. They started long before he got elected. Obama has constantly tried to kiss up to the truly bloodthirsty regimes of Syria and Iran, and his big Cairo speech was hosted by Al Azhar University, which also happens to be the mainstay of endless Sunni hate propaganda against Israel and Jews.
The more Israelis perceive Obama to be an enemy, the stronger the support for Netanyahu will become — provided that he doesn’t back down. If Bibi does back down, they’ll just have to find somebody else to be Winston Churchill. This is a time for Churchills, not Chamberlains.
4. The worst Barry can do
According to Noah Greenberg, Obama can threaten some real moves – not Alinsky head fakes.
Barry can stop military aid to Israel.
Not a chance. The Democrats are in enough trouble already. That would just add fuel to the flames of anger against Obama’s nedi-fraud. Israel’s military aid money from the United States goes right back to American military manufacturers, who are trying to ride out the Obama recession, as well as the military budget cuts they think are bound to come. Republicans would love to see Obama try this.
Egypt and Israel receive equal amounts of military aid, and the Egyptians don’t want that treaty arrangement changed either. With Iran getting nukes, the Arab world is going to need Egyptian clout to aid the Saudis and the Gulf states against Iranian aggression — especially if Obama bugs out of the Gulf. Even the French have a carrier in the Gulf now.
Barry can mobilize European and UN opinion against Israel.
He’s been trying to do that, behind the scenes, ever since he got elected in the phoniest election since Jimmy Carter’s teeth carried him into power. The UN hates Israel just like it hates America, so that’s no loss. But the Arab states are quietly hoping that “the two Satans” — Israel and America — will knock out Iranian nukes for them. Sure, the Arabs would love to see Israel driven into the sea, but not at the cost of their own lives. Sunnis understand exactly what Khomeini was about when this regime came into power, even if Jimmy Carter hasn’t figured it out yet. Iran represents political Shiism, which has always laid claim to the true lineage of Mohammed. The Iranians want to conquer Mecca and Medina, and for the Arabs that would be worse than losing Jerusalem.
There’s more. The Europeans do have a huge stream of anti-Israel agitation in their government-supported media. Still, the Germans cannot afford to be perceived as falling back to National Socialism. The French are led by Nicolas Sarkozy, who is half-Jewish and Polish to boot — not a formula for an appeaser. If anybody is going to walk away from Israel, the Europeans want it to be Barry.
In addition — in spite of all the hatred in the European media against Israel, the continent is full of people who have not forgotten their history. Even the Russians haven’t. What is more likely is that the Russians will try to draw Israel into their own orbit, by selling them arms. Putin just put down a hellish Islamofascist rebellion in Chechnya with naked force. He doesn’t want another Islamist regime with nukes within missile range of Russia.
Barry can recognize the Palestinians as a state.
This is a wonderful idea that the Pals have been trying to dodge forever, because real statehood would give them real responsibility — for the welfare of their own people and for the suppression of attacks against Israel. Israel is at peace with Jordan, Egypt, and even Lebanon, neighbors who have the responsibility of statehood. Israel is not at peace with Fatah, Hamas, and Hezbollah, because they can dodge those responsibilities. How many sovereign states in the world have received massive welfare payments for sixty years for four generations of “refugees” who make their living from international terrorism?
Obama is on the run.
Obama’s key move is always to fake brute force and power. Then, when he is challenged, he backs down. That’s why Putin isn’t afraid of Barry. It’s also why the Chinese, who actually took him to the woodshed in public over the weakening U.S. dollar, don’t fear him. Even the GOP isn’t afraid of Barry anymore.
In fact, nobody is afraid of Barry except the people who rely on American resolve and strength. They should realize clearly that ultimately they only have themselves to rely on. If the Israelis are reawakening to that elementary fact, then Barry’s “humiliating” moves may actually do some good.
Barack Obama is now on the down side of his power curve. The Democrats are running scared. A lot of them are going to lose in the fall. In off-years the party in power always loses congressional seats, and the American people are ready to get amazingly angry at this grossly irresponsible administration. These people are just too wacky, too obviously incompetent, and too anti-middle class America to get away with their phony bluff forever.
The emperor is stark raving naked in front of the whole public. Just watch what happens when people really get that.
When he feels threatened, Barry always strikes out — verbally. It’s his personality, a mix of grandiosity and slippery evasion. He also tends to overreach over and over again. After all, most Americans don’t hate insurance companies, or Wall Street, or the car companies. That’s all leftie fantasy land. It’s pure Obamanoia.
The trick with Barry is to let him be himself. He’s his own worst enemy. Netanyahu has already won this game of perception with a Jiu Jitsu move. Watch the silent supporters of real democracies in the world, like Israel, turn against Barry on this one. How do you suppose Taiwan looks at this today? South Korea? France? The Iranian democracy protesters? All the other democracies that count on us?
The Europeans and UN-uchs like to play off all the Muslim regimes against Israel in public, just like they love to scapegoat the United States in their media. It gets them off the hook — they hope. But when push comes to shove they know who their survival depends on.
They know it’s not Obama.
Guest Comment:No one is Barry Obama except the people who rely on American resolve and strength...they should realize fast that ultimately they only have themselves to rely on...Barry will not defend them. The Israelis must reawake to the elementary fact that all of Barry’s “humiliating” moves may actually do some good for them.
The more Israelis perceive Obama to be their enemy, the stronger the support for Netanyahu will become — provided that he doesn’t back down! If Bibi backs down, the Israelis will just have to find somebody else to be their Winston Churchill. This is a time for Churchills, not Chamberlains!
Nurit
Middle East Cage Match: Bibi or Barry?
March 31, 2010 - by James Lewis
Was Winston Churchill “in real trouble” when he took over from Neville Chamberlain before war broke out in 1939? Not at all — the English supported Churchill because they could see no alternative to war. Churchill projected strength, and that is what they needed most of all. It was Chamberlain who had to resign as prime minister and apologize in public for his failed appeasement policy. Chamberlain was in trouble, not Churchill. his week the pundits seem to have decided all together that Benyamin Netanyahu is in real trouble today, supposedly because Barack Obama has “humiliated him” and put him in a double bind. It ain’t so, and the attempt by leftoids to portray Netanyahu as “humiliated” is nonsense.
Yes, Obama, in his usual subtle fashion, attempted to humiliate Netanyahu. But Obama is also an expert liar and faker, who believes that “the appearance of power” is power. It’s all by the book, Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
This whole media narrative is nonsense, for any number of reasons. Here are just some.
1. Humiliation?
Someone can spit in my face to try to humiliate me. Whether I am therefore humbled and shamed — actually humiliated — as a result of that is up to me. Netanyahu comes from a people who thugs and gangsters have attempted to humiliate since the first millennium BCE. Egyptian slavery is humiliation, but it became part of the defining narrative of the Jews. In the Hebrew Bible every single imperial power in the neighborhood invades the land of Israel and the land of Judah. They still keep their identity — and they are not really as peaceful as they’re sometimes cracked up to be. The dynamic of humiliation by an enemy followed by fierce resistance is pretty much coded in their biblical genes.
The same thing goes on in the Christian Bible. The Romans were brutal conquerors, after all, and Jesus was a rebel against Imperial Rome and its local puppets. So there’s nothing new about resistance to thuggery in the history of Israel.
2. Netanyahu isn’t Obama
Most men and women in Israel have faced the possibility of violent death – not just their own, but that of their children and parents. Israel was founded by such people. They train and train to meet that danger without flinching, if there is no alternative. Jonathan Netanyahu, Bibi’s brother, was killed at Entebbe leading a rescue raid of El Al air passengers who were being held hostage by thugocrat Idi Amin. Bibi’s father fought with the Irgun. His kids have done their service in the IDF.
Netanyahu is a hundred times the man Obama could ever be. Obama is a manipulator, an ideologue, and a liar. He sat for twenty years at the feet of a real racial hate monger, Jeremiah Wright. There is simply no doubt about these facts. Even the Democrats can’t deny it anymore.
Would you bet on a Chicago pol against an Israeli special ops guy? I wouldn’t.
3. More support
Since Obama administered his “public humiliation,” more Israelis and friends of Israel have come out in support of Israel and its prime minister than ever before. This isn’t personal. Netanyahu is the highest elected official of a sovereign people. Imagine Gorbachev trying to publicly humiliate Ronald Reagan in this way. How would Americans have felt? Even the Democrats would have had to fake a little public protest to cover their rears.
Only 9% of Israelis now believe that Barry is actually pro-Israel. The mask is off. In addition, the Israeli left is now being deeply embarrassed. This is important because it is a very delusional left, just like ours. The parliamentary opposition can’t afford to look like they are kneeling down to Barack Obama, or they will lose whatever popular support they still have.
Obama and Rahm Emanuel have been trying to play Israel’s left wing ever since Obama was nominated. They started long before he got elected. Obama has constantly tried to kiss up to the truly bloodthirsty regimes of Syria and Iran, and his big Cairo speech was hosted by Al Azhar University, which also happens to be the mainstay of endless Sunni hate propaganda against Israel and Jews.
The more Israelis perceive Obama to be an enemy, the stronger the support for Netanyahu will become — provided that he doesn’t back down. If Bibi does back down, they’ll just have to find somebody else to be Winston Churchill. This is a time for Churchills, not Chamberlains.
4. The worst Barry can do
According to Noah Greenberg, Obama can threaten some real moves – not Alinsky head fakes.
Barry can stop military aid to Israel.
Not a chance. The Democrats are in enough trouble already. That would just add fuel to the flames of anger against Obama’s nedi-fraud. Israel’s military aid money from the United States goes right back to American military manufacturers, who are trying to ride out the Obama recession, as well as the military budget cuts they think are bound to come. Republicans would love to see Obama try this.
Egypt and Israel receive equal amounts of military aid, and the Egyptians don’t want that treaty arrangement changed either. With Iran getting nukes, the Arab world is going to need Egyptian clout to aid the Saudis and the Gulf states against Iranian aggression — especially if Obama bugs out of the Gulf. Even the French have a carrier in the Gulf now.
Barry can mobilize European and UN opinion against Israel.
He’s been trying to do that, behind the scenes, ever since he got elected in the phoniest election since Jimmy Carter’s teeth carried him into power. The UN hates Israel just like it hates America, so that’s no loss. But the Arab states are quietly hoping that “the two Satans” — Israel and America — will knock out Iranian nukes for them. Sure, the Arabs would love to see Israel driven into the sea, but not at the cost of their own lives. Sunnis understand exactly what Khomeini was about when this regime came into power, even if Jimmy Carter hasn’t figured it out yet. Iran represents political Shiism, which has always laid claim to the true lineage of Mohammed. The Iranians want to conquer Mecca and Medina, and for the Arabs that would be worse than losing Jerusalem.
There’s more. The Europeans do have a huge stream of anti-Israel agitation in their government-supported media. Still, the Germans cannot afford to be perceived as falling back to National Socialism. The French are led by Nicolas Sarkozy, who is half-Jewish and Polish to boot — not a formula for an appeaser. If anybody is going to walk away from Israel, the Europeans want it to be Barry.
In addition — in spite of all the hatred in the European media against Israel, the continent is full of people who have not forgotten their history. Even the Russians haven’t. What is more likely is that the Russians will try to draw Israel into their own orbit, by selling them arms. Putin just put down a hellish Islamofascist rebellion in Chechnya with naked force. He doesn’t want another Islamist regime with nukes within missile range of Russia.
Barry can recognize the Palestinians as a state.
This is a wonderful idea that the Pals have been trying to dodge forever, because real statehood would give them real responsibility — for the welfare of their own people and for the suppression of attacks against Israel. Israel is at peace with Jordan, Egypt, and even Lebanon, neighbors who have the responsibility of statehood. Israel is not at peace with Fatah, Hamas, and Hezbollah, because they can dodge those responsibilities. How many sovereign states in the world have received massive welfare payments for sixty years for four generations of “refugees” who make their living from international terrorism?
Obama is on the run.
Obama’s key move is always to fake brute force and power. Then, when he is challenged, he backs down. That’s why Putin isn’t afraid of Barry. It’s also why the Chinese, who actually took him to the woodshed in public over the weakening U.S. dollar, don’t fear him. Even the GOP isn’t afraid of Barry anymore.
In fact, nobody is afraid of Barry except the people who rely on American resolve and strength. They should realize clearly that ultimately they only have themselves to rely on. If the Israelis are reawakening to that elementary fact, then Barry’s “humiliating” moves may actually do some good.
Barack Obama is now on the down side of his power curve. The Democrats are running scared. A lot of them are going to lose in the fall. In off-years the party in power always loses congressional seats, and the American people are ready to get amazingly angry at this grossly irresponsible administration. These people are just too wacky, too obviously incompetent, and too anti-middle class America to get away with their phony bluff forever.
The emperor is stark raving naked in front of the whole public. Just watch what happens when people really get that.
When he feels threatened, Barry always strikes out — verbally. It’s his personality, a mix of grandiosity and slippery evasion. He also tends to overreach over and over again. After all, most Americans don’t hate insurance companies, or Wall Street, or the car companies. That’s all leftie fantasy land. It’s pure Obamanoia.
The trick with Barry is to let him be himself. He’s his own worst enemy. Netanyahu has already won this game of perception with a Jiu Jitsu move. Watch the silent supporters of real democracies in the world, like Israel, turn against Barry on this one. How do you suppose Taiwan looks at this today? South Korea? France? The Iranian democracy protesters? All the other democracies that count on us?
The Europeans and UN-uchs like to play off all the Muslim regimes against Israel in public, just like they love to scapegoat the United States in their media. It gets them off the hook — they hope. But when push comes to shove they know who their survival depends on.
They know it’s not Obama.
Guest Comment:No one is Barry Obama except the people who rely on American resolve and strength...they should realize fast that ultimately they only have themselves to rely on...Barry will not defend them. The Israelis must reawake to the elementary fact that all of Barry’s “humiliating” moves may actually do some good for them.
The more Israelis perceive Obama to be their enemy, the stronger the support for Netanyahu will become — provided that he doesn’t back down! If Bibi backs down, the Israelis will just have to find somebody else to be their Winston Churchill. This is a time for Churchills, not Chamberlains!
Nurit
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