Another candidate for Foreign Ministry House Cleaning: Philly consul general to join J Street rally
I have pointed out many times that much of the Foreign Ministry bureaucracy is left over from the days when the Ministry was under Leftist control. Unfortunately, Foreign Minister Lieberman seems more interested in trying to destroy yeshivoth by drafting every last yeshiva student than he is in cleaning house in his own ministry, and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon is tone deaf to what's going on out in the field (see below). Or perhaps, the Foreign Minister shares at least one goal with J Street, as we will see below.As a result, we have clowns like Daniel Kutner, now Israel's Consul General in Philadelphia, who participated on Thursday night in a rally designed to promote J Street's vision of the Middle East, a Middle East without a state that's 'too Jewish.' Adam Kredo reports.
J Street’s Philadelphia-based affiliate announced today that Daniel Kutner, the Consul General of Israel to the Mid-Atlantic Region of the United States, would participate in a “Future of Pro Israel” rally in Philadelphia intended to foster support for J Street’s political agenda.Now, you might be wondering why an Israeli diplomat is attending an American political rally that clearly supports one party's agenda. The response from Israel's Foreign Ministry is the usual: Yihye b'seder (it'll be okay).
“This election year, we’re not going to sit on the sidelines while those who claim to be pro-Israel advocate for policies that harm it. We’re not going to watch as the window for a two-state solution closes,” states the email announcing Kutner’s participation. “As one J Street leader in Chicago put it, we’re going to go from ‘house to house, from synagogue to synagogue, from congressional district to congressional district and we’re going to make our voices heard.’”
The event is scheduled to take place this evening at Philadelphia’s Jewish Community Services Building, though J Street noted that the city’s organized Jewish community did not explicitly endorse, sponsor, or support the event.
J Street chastises conservative pro-Israel advocates, including Irving Moskowitz and William Kristol, in promotions for the event. The group accuses such individuals of “turning Israel into a partisan wedge issue with no regard for the actual impact on the future peace and security of the country and its neighbors.”
“We should all be deeply concerned that a handful of far-right funders and groups like Bill Kristol’s Emergency Campaign for Israel [sic] are turning Israel into a partisan wedge issue with no regard for the actual impact on the future peace and security of the country and its neighbors,” states another J Street email blast touting similar events to the one scheduled to take place in Philadelphia.
J Street’s Philadelphia affiliate bills itself as an explicitly political organization, raising questions about Kutner’s stance on the American elections. The event is billed under the guise of J Street’s “Future of Pro-Israel” movement, which is operated by the organization’s lobbying arm, which is registered as a 501(c)(4).I wonder why all those Jewish organizations who objected to Sarah Palin speaking a rally against Iranian nuclear weapons four years ago aren't shouting about this. Is it not political enough? Oh wait - it was J Street that decided that Palin couldn't speak, wasn't it?
A spokesperson for the Embassy of Israel did not immediately return a request seeking clarification on Kutner’s participation.
However, an email obtained by the Free Beacon indicates that Kutner’s office sees nothing wrong with the event.
“After looking into this issue, the Consul General was invited to an advocacy event and not a political one,” a spokesperson for Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon wrote to Lori Lowenthal Marcus, a pro-Israel advocate, when asked about the event. “There for [sic] he has received all the relevant approvals.”
At the end of the day, maybe J Street and the Foreign Ministry have a shared goal for Israel: A 'Jewish state' that's denuded of its ancestral territory and therefore not quite so Jewish.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Avigdor Lieberman, Danny Ayalon, Israel's Foreign Ministry, J Street
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:49 PM
4 Comments:
Actually, these Israeli govt people have been at this Dem promotion (maybe forever, but) at least since '08. Somehow, the sheen of the Progressive label has outweighed the Torah's admonishment to organize things to maximize quality (and duration) of life.
Israel's govt people are less damaging than the high tech people, who are focused on "alternative energy" as a Progressive value. As President Peres parties in California with the Silicon Valley people, Hollywood and participates in a camoflaging medal process with Pres. Obama, Israel's solar people and plug in car people are helping to create the USSR. No one cares what happens to the poverty stricken Navajo Tribe in having the dictator's EPA shut down coal mining/power producing. But I was out in California last week and heard of an impending disaster... Huntington Beach (which is the high end of the Progressive juggernaut) has issues. The San Onofre nuclear power plant has some kind of (huge) maintenance issues that will take it offline for an extended period. At the same time, Obama's dictator EPA tool is about to shut down their coal fired plant. Of course, Israel's technology people have joined in coating the dessert with solar panels. Israel has gotten famous for it, not because it has proven able to replace these other electricity sources, but because Israeli companies (and lots of others, no question) have reaped $billions in confiscated or borrowed revenue to impose these inadequate systems on this country. These systems don't put a dent in the quantity of electricity those CA people use in their daily lives.
And if you wonder what is coming along with the rolling brownouts and blackouts that I've been ringing the alarm about here? Look what the *Democrat* voters did in the West Virginia primary... huge numbers voted for a prank Texas prisoner rather than Obama. If Israel thinks that is only because they are WV hicks, you may end up being surprised. If Israel stays lined up with Obama in taking away people's normal electricity while reaping $billions, I don't think it will be good for your carefully constructed public image in the U.S., although most of Israel's supporters in the U.S. are knowledgeable enough to discriminate out the Leftist Enterprise...
Funny but scheduled summer electric brown-outs were just announced in Israel in yesterday's press.
Sympathy pains.
Sunlight, nobody mentions that the San Onofre Nuclear Plant (all 3 reactors) was found, after construction and the first unit going online, to have been built just a few miles from a major faultline, part of the San Andreas faultline. Much of the Calif state bureaucracy, the electric company and the politicians are in denial of this. They've even bought off geologists to totally disparage the danger. God forbid these chickens ever come home to roost!
I'm not anti-nuclear power, I'm pro-nuke power, pro oil, natural gas, coal power. I think that "Global Warming", "Climate Change" is a vast global con job, supported by corrupted science and scientists. IMO, there are no energy shortages in the world, the problems are entirely political. However, building a nuke plant next door to an earthquake fault line is, um, not a good idea.
And yes, the EPA has become a malevolent dictatorial entity antagonistic to the American peoples' rights. You could write a book about the stupid or malevolent actions of the EPA. It should have most of its powers statutorily removed, half its staff laid off and much of the top bureaucracy fired.
I'm in favor of competitive and proven environmental *technology*, integrated with energy, water, transportation, etc. etc. etc. I've driven a Prius (fabulous!) since '06 and spent years working at environmental firms.
What I am fighting tooth and nail is an environmental tool (the EPA, DOE, etc.) used by a potential dictator to overthrow the constitution and market system of the U.S. And to leave the poor (such as the Navajo Nation) in the dark and cold. Can't stomach that.
As far as San Onofre and the San Andreas fault (I spent years living along it!), one thing that would *really* help the (open!) discussion would be a team of scientists and engineers, obviously under Japan's direction, doing an inventory of performance of *all* of their nuclear facilities in and after their earthquake. I think I've read that they have taken them all offline, but our gift to Japan and the rest of us would be to evaluate them, and Japan possibly finding that it would be ok to keep a bunch (almost all?) of them running and sharing the experience. What happened to those plants was beyond any of the design parameters and effects modeling. Lots to learn from it. Sounds like the one that actually was bad was pretty much their oldest one that had not been upgraded to the newer stuff.
Well, if Israel still has enough independence from the Leftist Juggernaut, maybe someone like President Peres could initiate something like that, rather than cavorting with Leftists in the U.S. It could be as beneficial to the world as agriculture research programs in Africa. Stay on your track, Israel! Don't follow the Leftist Obama!
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