Labels: humor, hypocrisy, Islam, Ramadamadan
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:39 PM
1 comments
The flotilla diverted to Ashdod yesterday had absolutely no humanitarian equipment on it, per Israel's defense minister.
— Jonathan Schanzer (@JSchanzer) June 30, 2015
So the real reason for the flotilla was to open up a weapons passage... just like we said all along. Labels: flotilla of fools, Gaza, weapons smuggling
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:12 PM
0 comments
Over his 30-year political career, Kerry has long been knocked for delivering more talk than results. Achieving a nuclear deal he first began pursuing even before he became secretary of state could redefine his place in history.
And that, Republican critics, foreign officials, and even some ex-administration officials say, is a big problem. Kerry’s eagerness for a deal, they argue, risks that the Iranians will seduce him into a bad one.
“I don’t know how anyone who has observed Kerry over the past two years would think differently,” says a former administration official who worked on Iran issues.
...
The concern is that, in search of a historic accomplishment with his name on it, Kerry might succumb to wishful thinking. As a senator, Kerry was dogged by the critique that he authored few major bills over his 30-year career. He won the Democratic nomination in 2004 but lost his bid for the presidency. And since arriving at Foggy Bottom he has been frustrated in his efforts to contain Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and, above all, in his so-far fruitless quest for Middle East peace.
Allies say the conventional wisdom sells short his Senate and Foggy Bottom record, including his recent role brokering a peaceful resolution to Afghanistan’s disputed presidential election amid fears of a civil war.
...
Of course, many critics of the talks fret that Obama faces much the same pressure as Kerry for a legacy-making achievement, especially in the realm of foreign policy, where Obama has faced an unrelenting string of crises in recent months. A new article in the conservative Weekly Standard attacking Obama’s “capitulation” to Iran notes that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has likened an Iran deal to Obamacare in its importance to the administration.
Obama challenged the idea that he is overeager for a nuclear deal in an interview last month with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. “Twenty years from now … [if] Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this,” Obama said, adding: “I have a personal interest in locking this down.”
But Kerry’s own investment is also huge. He has pursued a nuclear deal since he was a senator, well before the administration’s direct diplomacy got underway: As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry secretly flew to Muscat in November 2011, where he asked the Sultan of Oman to help broker talks between Washington and Tehran. That set the stage for the administration’s first direct contacts with Iranian officials on the nuclear question.
It's unlikely that Iran will back down on any or all of those points - it's far more likely that the US will cave on them. And 20 years from now, Obama will be happily retired at US government expense and Kerry will likely have gone on to greener pastures (or to a much hotter place). They won't care about their 'legacy.'Striking a deal in Vienna this summer will require persuading Iran’s supreme leader to backtrack on his own stated red lines, including on the pace of sanctions relief and access of inspectors to Iranian military sites and nuclear scientists.
Dennis Ross, another former senior Middle East aide under Obama with long experience in diplomatic negotiations said the key to effective deal making is “being able to show you have a genuine interest in a deal but can live without one.”
“We should show little interest in a deadline and focus exclusively on our essential needs,” Ross added. If Iran won’t meet those needs, Ross said, then Kerry should “suggest a pause — but with the proviso that we will also reassess where we are, with the understanding that our positions are likely to harden.”
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, nuclear weapons, P 5+1
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:10 PM
2 comments
The Prime Minister’s Office penned a letter to be given to the some 50 people on the boats expected to be towed into Ashdod, sarcastically welcoming them to Israel and saying that they apparently got lost.
“Perhaps you meant to set sail for a place not far from here – Syria,” the letter reads.
“There the Assad regime is slaughtering its own people every day with the support of the murderous regime in Iran.”
By contrast, the letter reads, Israel is dealing with a reality whereby terrorist organizations like Hamas try to attack innocent civilians.No, they're not lost. This is not about humanitarian aid. It's about Jew hatred, pure and simple.
“Against these efforts we are defending Israeli citizens in accordance to international law,” according to the letter.
The letter spelled out the number of trucks, and tons of aid and material that go into Gaza each day, saying it adds up to about 500,000 times the number of boats in the flotilla. At the same time, he said, Israel is not willing to allow the smuggling of arms to the Gaza Strip via the sea, which has been done repeatedly in the past.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, flotilla of fools, Gaza, Jew hatred, Muslim Jew hatred
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:48 AM
3 comments
[T]he Orthodox Jewish community has a different view. This was voiced by, among others, the Orthodox Union and the Agudath Israel of America. The latter, in a statement Friday, warned that its members faced “moral opprobrium” and were in danger of “tangible negative consequences” if “they refuse to transgress their beliefs.”
To judge by recent events, they are understating the case. The whole campaign for same sex marriage, however high-minded its ideals and however real — and all too often violent — the injustices endured by same-sex couples, has been levied at the expense of religious Jews and Christians. The U.S. Supreme Court majority knows that full well. But it dodged the issue, with Justice Anthony Kennedy, author of the majority opinion, giving the fears of religious Americans less than a paragraph.
Kennedy emphasized that “religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned.” He noted that the First Amendment, part of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, “ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered.”
That was a reference to the free speech part of the First Amendment. But it was startling — shocking even — that the majority gave no mention at all of the Constitution’s second principle of religious protection, the right to the “free exercise” of religion. That is where the battle lines are being drawn by liberal and left-wing factions in America seeking to force religious individuals to embrace same-sex marriage.
In recent months, Americans have been reading about a Christian baker who has been the subject of an enforcement action in Colorado for declining to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding, a husband-and-wife clerical team that reportedly may have to close their for-profit wedding chapel because they won’t hold same-sex nuptials in it, and a New York family that is tangled in a legal proceeding for refusing to rent out their home for a same-sex wedding reception. A Catholic adoption agency that would not work with same-sex couples has been forced out of its charitable work.
“In all likelihood, many of these rear-guard actions against marriage equality will soon fall of their own weight,” Jeffrey Toobin, who covers the Constitution for the New Yorker, wrote after the Supreme Court spoke. “Like so many of their fellow-Americans, wedding photographers and the like will make their peace with the new rules that guarantee their neighbors an equal chance at happiness. (Besides, they need the business.)” Maybe, but I’m not so sure things will go as smoothly as he imagines in the Orthodox Jewish world.
“The issue here is not whether all human beings are created in the Divine Image, or whether they have inherent human dignity. Of course they are, of course they do,” the Agudah said in a statement after Obergefell vs. Hodges was handed down. But it went on to assert that “the truths of Torah are eternal, and stand as our beacon even in the face of shifting social mores.” At some point this is going to come to a head in a way that will test George Washington’s promise to the Jews to a degree that we haven’t yet seen.I'll shut the comments on this post if I have to, but I can tell you that I would not want my children taught by someone who is openly gay. No way. I want my children to be able to look up at their teachers as religious role models. Then again, since I live in Israel, it's unlikely that any of my children's schools (except for the children in university, which is a different category) could be forced to hire gay teachers.
Labels: Agudath Yisrael, American Jews, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, gays, Orthodox Jews, US Supreme Court
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:51 AM
8 comments
James McConnell, 78, is facing up to six months in prison for delivering a sermon in which he described Islam as "heathen" and "satanic." The message was streamed live on the Internet, and a Muslim group called the police to complain.
According to Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service (PPS), McConnell violated the 2003 Communications Act by "sending, or causing to be sent, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that was grossly offensive."
Observers say that McConnell's prosecution is one of a growing number of examples in which British authorities — who routinely ignore incendiary speech by Muslim extremists — are using hate speech laws to silence Christians.
McConnell, who turned down an offer to avoid a trial, says the issue of Christians being singled out for persecution in Britain must be confronted, and that he intends to turn his case into a milestone trial "in defense of freedom of speech and freedom of religion."
...
"The God who we worship and serve this evening is not Allah. The Muslim God, Allah, is a heathen deity. Allah is a cruel deity. Allah is a demon deity. A deity that this foolish government of ours ... pays homage to, and subscribes financial inducements to curry their favor to keep them happy....
"While in Muslim lands Christians are persecuted for their faith; their homes burned, their churches destroyed, and hundreds of them literally have given their lives for Christ in martyrdom. A lovely young [Sudanese] woman by the name of Miriam, 27 years-of-age, because she has accepted Christ as her Savior, will be flogged publicly and hanged publicly. These fanatical worshippers are worshippers of the god called Allah. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a fact and it cannot be denied and it cannot be refuted.
"I know the time will come in this land ... and in this nation to say such things will be an offense to the law. It would be reckoned erroneous, unpatriotic. But I am in good company, the company of [Protestant Reformers] Luther and Knox and Calvin and Tyndale and Latimer and Cranmer and Wesley and Spurgeon and such like him.
"The Muslim religion was created many hundreds of years after Christ. Mohammed, was born in 570. But Muslims believe that Islam is the true religion, dating back to Adam, and that the biblical Patriarchs were all Muslims, including Noah and Abraham and Moses, and even our Lord Jesus Christ.
Some day, historians will marvel at the way Western society destroyed itself. Or maybe they won't. By then, the Caliphate may not look kindly on such 'nostalgia' and history will have become too politically correct to discuss it."To judge by some of what I have heard in the past few months, you would think that Islam was little more than a variation of Christianity and Judaism. Not so. Islam's ideas about God, about humanity, about salvation are vastly different from the teachings of the Holy Scriptures. Islam is heathen. Islam is satanic. Islam is a doctrine spawned in Hell."McConnell's comments about Islam comprised less than ten minutes of a 35-minute sermon that focused on Christian theology.
Labels: Evangelical Christians, freedom of speech, Islam, Islamic Christian hatred, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:33 PM
1 comments
Eager for yet another war: Hamas "unveils" 3.5-km tunnel from Gaza, claims it goes into Israeli territory. (Ch 2) pic.twitter.com/YWoSzQUpji
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) June 28, 2015
What could go wrong? Labels: Gaza, Hamas, terror tunnels
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:20 PM
0 comments
“[Secretary General Ban Ki-moon] continues to believe that a flotilla will not help to address the dire situation in Gaza and reiterates his calls on the government of Israel to lift all closures, with due consideration of Israel’s legitimate security concerns,” Undersecretary General Jeffrey Feltman said at a Security Council briefing.
The statement comes days after Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor called on Ban to condemn the so-called “Freedom Flotilla,” amid preparations by the Israeli Navy to block its three boats from reaching Gaza.
“The international community must send an unambiguous message to the organizers and participants of these provocations that such initiatives only serve to raise tensions in our region,” Prosor wrote. “This attempt to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza holds the potential for dangerous consequences The flotilla’s sole purpose is to create provocations that pose security risks, and constitute a breach of international law.”
Ban is also 'deeply concerned' with the health of terrorists.Feltman said Ban was “closely following media reports” about the flotilla.
Feltman also said Ban was “deeply concerned” about Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, naming Islamic Jihad detainee Khader Adnan, who has been on hunger strike for nearly two months to protest his detainment under administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold prisoners without charging them.
He wouldn't be facing an immediate threat of death if he weren't starving himself. Maybe he should consider breaking his fast.... /Just sayin'....The Red Cross on Tuesday said Adnan faced “immediate risk of death.”
Labels: Ban Ki-Moon, flotilla of fools, Gaza plenty, hunger strike, Jeffrey Feltman
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:47 PM
0 comments
"We are now witnessing a clear withdrawal from the red lines set by the powers for themselves recently and publicly," Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu added that there was no reason to hurry to sign the deal with Iran, which he said was "getting worse by the day." He said that it was still not too late to insist on the demands that would prevent Iran from arming itself with a nuclear weapon and gain mass sums of money which he claimed would help it expand its regional aggressions.
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Netanyahu told ministers that in a U.S. State Department report released a few days ago, Iran was listed at the top of the world's human rights violators. "All claims made within the international community about how [Hassan] Rohani's election [as president] changed the character of the Iranian regime are firmly answered by this report," Netanyahu said.
He added that another State Department report, also released a few days ago, proved that Iran was escalating its involvement in terror activities. "Despite these reports, the talks are continuing as usual," Netanyahu said. "There are no demands being made by the powers to change Iran's behavior, and they are completely ignoring its violations."Obama is determined to have a foreign policy legacy even if it is one that will - God Forbid - someday lead to disaster. Anything to hurt Israel.... Netanyahu must feel like Chicken Little - no one will listen to him.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Iranian nuclear threat, P 5+1
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:42 PM
1 comments
Labels: Gaza, imagine, Operation Protective Edge, United Nations Human Rights Council, war crimes
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:01 PM
2 comments
Federal authorities have warned local law enforcement officials across the country about a heightened concern involving possible terror attacks targeting the July 4th holiday, a U.S. law enforcement official said.
While there was no specific or credible threat of attack, the official said the intelligence bulletin prepared by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI alerted local colleagues to the ongoing threats posed by the Islamic State and other homegrown extremists. The official was not authorized to comment publicly.
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The warning comes as federal investigators have worked to disrupt a number of Islamic State-inspired plots, including a planned assault earlier this month on police officers in Boston. In that case, authorities fatally shot Usaamah Rahim as he allegedly planned to attack police with military-style knives.
Also this month, a New York suspect in a Islamic State-related terror investigation was arrested after attacking an FBI agent with a kitchen knife during a search of his home.
Fareed Mumuni, 21, was charged with attempted murder, after he emerged as a suspect in alleged plots to use pressure-cooker explosives and knives to attack police.
In a statement Friday following attacks in Tunisia, France and Kuwait, DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said local law enforcement was being encouraged to be "vigilant and prepared'' in preparation for July 4th celebrations.I have been writing for years that what most concerns me about security in the United States is the delusion that it could never happen here. Unfortunately, it could.
Labels: Fourth of July, Islamic terrorism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:16 AM
0 comments
The Vatican signed its first treaty with the "State of Palestine" on Friday, calling for "courageous decisions" to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and backing a two-state solution.
The treaty, which made official the Vatican's de facto recognition of Palestine since 2012, angered Israel, which called it "a hasty step (that) damages the prospects for advancing a peace agreement".
Israel also said it could have implications on its future diplomatic relations with the Vatican.
The accord, which concerns the Catholic Church's activities in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, also confirmed the Vatican's increasingly proactive role in foreign policy under Pope Francis. Last year, it brokered the historic resumption of ties between the United States and Cuba.
Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican's foreign minister, said at the signing that he hoped it could be a "stimulus to bringing a definitive end to the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which continues to cause suffering for both parties".
To date, the 'Palestinians' have yet to make any 'courageous decisions' or to drop any of their demands. There is no compromising with them. They continue to seek the destruction of the world's only Jewish State, which happens to be the only state in the Middle East where Christians - including Catholics - are safe, and where their population has grown. Note this disingenuous statement from the article:
He called for peace negotiations held directly between Israelis and Palestinians to resume and lead to a two-state solution. "This certainly requires courageous decisions, but it will also offer a major contribution to peace and stability in the region," he said.
There are about 100,000 Catholics of the Roman and Greek Melkite rites in Israel and the Palestinian territories, most of them Palestinians.Actually, most of them live in Israel, although they may consider themselves 'Palestinians.'
Labels: Catholic Church, Christians in Israel, Christians in Muslim countries, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, Pope Francis I
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:48 PM
0 comments
In France, attackers stormed an American-owned industrial chemical plant near Lyon, decapitated one person and tried unsuccessfully to blow up the factory.
In Tunisia, gunmen opened fire at a beach resort, killing at least 27 people, officials said. At least one of the attackers was killed by security forces.
And the Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in one of the largest Shiite mosques in Kuwait City during Friday prayers. The bomb filled the hall with smoke and left dead and wounded scattered on the carpet, according to witnesses and videos posted online. Local news reports said at least 24 people had been killed and wounded in the assault, which was extraordinary for Kuwait and appeared to be a deliberate attempt to incite strife between Shiites and Sunnis.
In a message circulating on social media, the Islamic State called the suicide bomber “one of the knights of the Sunni people.”
The Kuwait terror attack is the first carried out by ISIS in a Gulf State and is sure to concern other Gulf States.
The French prosecutor has given a press conference, providing details of the incident:But let's keep fooling ourselves that Islam is a 'religion of peace.' Let's keep kissing up to the Islamists, treating their cult as a quaint religion with exotic things like iftar dinners (oops - let's not mention that the President of the United States hosted anti-Israel 'activists' at his). And eventually, they'll stop trying to murder us, right?
More details provided on the victim:
- Four suspected accomplices are being held in the attack on the factory in France. They have been arrested and are in interrogation.
- The suspect, his wife and sister are part of those arrested
- The victim was the suspect’s employer
- Part of the factory hangar was blown apart
- 43 people were in the factory at the time of the attack. 13 employees are still in a state of shock
- There were no more injuries so far
- The body of the victim was found near the suspect’s vehicle, where a knife was also found
- The severed head of the victim, was found hooked onto a railing with two flags with arabic inscription
More details on the suspect:
- The victim was a 54-year-old man
- He was the head of a transport company, from the Lyon area and had been a salaried employee of the company since March 2015
The inquiry has been given to the central direction of the judicial police and to the anti-terrorist unit, and the internal security services, the French prosecutor said.
- Yassin Salhi was named as the main suspect
- He was born on 25 March 1980
- He had been working at that same company as the victim
- He’s the father of three children and has been married for about 10 years
- He had not been found guilty of any previous crimes
- He has been under surveillance for “radical islamic activities” since 2006.
- Between 2011 and 2014, French security services had been investigating him for connections to salafist groups in the Lyon area
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, France, iftar dinner, ISIS, Islam, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Kuwait, Tunisia
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:11 PM
0 comments
"Whatever happens, Israel will always defend itself, and the Air Force plays a major role in this," Haaretz daily quoted Netanyahu as saying at a pilots' course graduation ceremony.
Netanyahu again expressed concern over the agreement and the concessions the world is prepared to do in order for Iran to sign the deal.
"These concessions are increasing Iran's appetite and every day it raises the bar, with the intention of extorting more concessions," he said.
"In recent days Iran ruler Ali Khamenei rejected even the most basic conditions in the bad agreement drafted in Lausanne," Netanyahu added.
"He said no to the restrictions on the nuclear program in the coming decade, no to conditioning the sanctions' revocation on Iran's keeping the agreement, no to [supervisors'] access to military sites. Even if Iran waives some of these demands in a few days, the powers' basic concession will be huge and it will be a clear withdrawal from red lines the powers had publicly set earlier."
Netanyahu said the supervision method the powers are discussing with Iran is "full of holes" and will enable the Iranians to create a nuclear bomb less than 10 years after the agreement's signature.
The agreement will bring a flow of billions of dollars to the Iranian economy, enabling Iran to increase its subversion in the Middle East, Netanyahu said.
"It's still not too late [for the powers] to come to their senses, to insist on a good agreement and it's certainly not too late not to advance a bad agreement," he added.
"As world leaders always say, no agreement is better than a bad agreement."Meanwhile, the P 5+1 admit that next week's June 30 deadline for an agreement 'might slip.' And Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khameni continues to list the many things Iran won't give up.
Amid unease in Iran's conservative-dominated parliament that Tehran is giving too much away, Khamenei, on Tuesday appeared to throw several spanners in the works.
Western powers have stressed sanctions will not be lifted until the IAEA has confirmed that Iran has carried out key steps under the accord.
But Khamenei, who will have the last word for Iran in the talks, said banking and economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the US must be lifted immediately after the agreement is signed.
"Other sanctions can be removed gradually by a reasonable timetable," Khamenei said.
He also reiterated that Iran would not permit the IAEA to visit military sites or conduct "unconventional inspections" at other facilities.
Khamenei also took issue with the length of time that some of the restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities would be in place.
In a further sign that Iran remains at odds with the West, Kerry unveiled a highly critical annual rights report slamming Iran for continuing to "severely restrict" civil liberties.One cannot help but be suspicious that even if a deal is reached, Iran will violate and the West will do nothing in response.
Labels: Ayatollah Ali Khameni, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, IAF, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, P 5+1
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:10 PM
0 comments
Nine Turkish citizens, including pro-government Star daily columnist Halime Kökçe, Ülke TV Editor-in-Chief Hasan Öztürk, head of the Turkish charity Sadakataşı and several activists, were detained at the airport. Kökçe said seven people from the group were deported while a cameraman and a reporter from state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) were allowed to enter the country.
On her personal Twitter account, Kökçe posted, “We were interrogated for six hours. We were searched for two hours.”
After coming back to İstanbul on Friday, Sadakataşı President Kemal Özdal, who was among those detained in Israel, said the group was on its way to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem for iftar (the evening meal to break the Ramadan fast) when they were stopped by the Israelis.
He said as soon as they arrived in Ben Gurion Airport by a Turkish Airlines flight, Israeli security officials accompanied the Turkish group and at passport control the group was detained by Israeli intelligence officials. Özdal said their passports and phones were taken and the group went through a long interrogation by the Israelis. According to Özdal, after the questioning they were deported and banned from entering Israel for the next 10 years. He also said President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, interim Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Foreign Ministry officials tried to help the group.
Öztürk from Ülke TV also made a statement at Atatürk Airport in İstanbul, saying he was in Israel only two months ago and he doesn't understand why this time he was deported without a valid reason. “Israel acts arbitrarily and it is an anti-democratic state. Others criticize Turkey for press freedoms. Go and tell this to the Israelis,” he said.
Kökçe said she hoped to see Al-Aqsa Mosque, Ramallah and Gaza but instead she was met with “Israel's real face.”Here's a hint that there might be more to it:
Civil Servants' Trade Union (Memur-Sen) Vice President Levent Uslu also said that the group had expected to be treated badly by Israel, but he didn't elaborate as to why. Uslu complained that they were asked odd questions such as the names of their grandfathers or which party they voted for in the last election.Haaretz reports that they were banned because of Hamas ties. The Hebrew version of the article, which can be accessed in full here, doesn't say any more except to add that the Israeli ambassador to Turkey was summoned on Friday morning to 'explain' why the group was barred from entering.
Labels: Ben Gurion Airport, Hamas, Islamic terrorism, Turkey
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:06 PM
0 comments
Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei feels confident enough, only a few days before June 30 (the deadline for a final-status nuclear deal with world powers), to thumb his nose at the international community, including the American government, and declare Iran's three noes: no to freezing its nuclear program, no to international oversight at its nuclear facilities, no to a phased lifting of sanctions (as proposed by the French). In other words, Khamenei is telling the world: Dear superpowers -- bite me.
Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, we have received an Associated Press report from Vienna that the U.S. and its partners conducting the negotiations with Iran are prepared -- for the sake of reaching a deal -- to even provide the Iranians with advanced nuclear reactors and equipment. This isn't a joke.
It's possible, perhaps, to imagine Khamenei rejecting this generous offer outright because the Americans aren't also including ballistic missiles in the package. If you're going to be generous, then you might as well go all the way.
Truth be told, this entire business to this point seems quite like a joke. The problem is that it's coming at our expense. And it's also not that funny.
...
In November 2013, as a reminder, we were just several days before the interim agreement. I remember how the Iranian and Western delegations leaked information about the many difficulties in the negotiations, but that in the end, in the middle of the night, the deal was born (how shocking). Eventually, we saw virtually the same scenario unfold in Lausanne this past March -- the numerous problems were made public, the deadline was extended by a few days, and finally on April 2 we received the framework deal.
We can assume that in the coming days we will get to see "the best show in town," at the end of which, in contrast to the previous rounds, we can expect a final status deal with an Iran that is not only slated to become a nuclear power but a stabilizing force in our crumbling Middle East.
Labels: Ayatollah Ali Khameni, Barack Hussein Obama, Hassan Rohani, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, nuclear weapons, P 5+1
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:45 PM
0 comments
Hamas website hamas.ps is hosted on CloudFlare in San Francisco CA. I'm sure @LegInsurrection and @ShuratHaDin can do something about it
— Judge Dan (@JudgeDan48) June 25, 2015
Here's their website. Labels: Hamas, web access
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:40 PM
0 comments
Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL), who has been instrumental in anti-BDS legislation, issued the following statement today:
Today, Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-06), co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, released the following statement after House and Senate passage of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) legislation, which includes bipartisan language Roskam authored to combat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. These provisions, which were originally introduced as Roskam’s H.R. 825, the U.S.-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act, were unanimously adopted into the House and Senate versions of TPA in April.
“Today, for the first time in nearly four decades, Congress sent legislation to the President’s desk to combat efforts to isolate and delegitimize the State of Israel. The recent wave of boycotts originating in Europe, including French telecom company Orange’s decision this month to sever ties with Israel, demands a robust response from the United States. This is that response. The bipartisan TPA provisions I authored are simple: if you want free trade with the United States, you can’t boycott Israel. After today, discouraging economic warfare against Israel will be central to our free trade negotiations with the European Union. Congress will not be complicit in the marginalization of our ally Israel by watching these attacks from the sidelines. Instead, we have decided to fight back against the BDS movement and ensure the continued strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”Those trade provisions, however, did not just happen.
The Jerusalem Post accurately traces the passage today of trade legislation with strong anti-boycott language directly to the ASA boycott (emphasis added):
“Four decades have passed since Congress last agreed on a law pushing back against boycotts of Israel worldwide. That streak was broken by the Senate Wednesday, at a moment perhaps prescient, as European capitals consider new measures to highlight and punish Israel’s continued “occupation” of the West Bank….
TPA, which passed through the Senate and landed on the president’s desk, includes roughly 150 trade negotiating objectives – requirements of the president, as mandated by Congress, to raise specific US priorities in its negotiations.
One of those objectives is to push back against efforts within the EU to sponsor the growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel….
The process began with a December 2013 op-ed in Politico Magazine written by Michael Oren, then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, which challenged Congress to respond to the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israel – by no means the first protest of its kind, but an early sign of what was to come from similar organizations based in Europe.
A letter of support circulated around Capitol Hill, signatures were collected, and a bill was ultimately passed reinforcing Congress’s commitment to academic freedom. But the concern lay in the tactic.
For more on the ASA's pivotal role in this legislation, read the whole thing.What if measures taken by ASA were used by other organizations against Israel as a form of economic warfare? Several congressmen, including Roskam, made note that the first free trade agreement signed by the US was with Israel. They sought a legislative solution with teeth: a bill that would establish any future trade pact with foreign nations boycotting Israel as being in direct contravention of the existing US-Israel Free Trade Agreement.That’s right folks, the ASA boycott may not have hurt Israel much, but it led directly to the trade legislation which has dealt a damaging blow to the BDS movement.
Labels: American Studies Association, BDS, boycott divest sanction, boycott Israel, epic fail, free trade
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:26 AM
3 comments
Inflamed by media reports suggesting some of the hundreds of wounded Syrians who have been admitted to Israel for medical care belong to jihadi rebel groups fighting the Druze in Syria, the crowds of Druze blocked two army ambulances for inspection.
One ambulance managed to escape with crew and patients unharmed. In the other, a Syrian casualty was killed and another seriously wounded in what Israeli officials described as a lynching. Two troops accompanying them were also injured.
Radical Islamists see the Druze, whose religion is an offshoot of Islam, as apostates to be combated. Druze in Syria and many in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, have long been loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Damascus's official news agency SANA on Tuesday described those behind the lethal ambulance attack as "heroic Syrian young men" and alleged they had targeted wounded insurgents from the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
Israel's stated policy is to offer medical treatment to Syrians regardless of possible affiliation to armed groups.
The West has never understood how much of the Middle East is tribal and clan-based. The 'countries' in the Middle East were creations of the era following World War I, and to this day, most of these peoples' loyalty is to their tribes and clans and not to the countries in which they nominally live. The Druze support Assad because they are a minority like him (Assad is an Alawite) and because they fear the Islamists (who consider them apostates) even more.
Druze communal and spiritual leaders from Israel and the Golan mobilized to stem further flare-ups, issuing an edict on Tuesday warning any Druze engaging in such violence that they risked ostracism from the close-knit sect.
Labels: ambulance, Bashar al-Assad, Druze, Golan Heights, Syria
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:23 PM
3 comments
According to a senior Palestinian official, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Amliki will present the documents concerning the results of the fighting in Gaza along with data on the damage caused by the war, and the damage to the civilian population. He will additionially provide information on settlement construction over the past year, as well as the issue of the Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, with an emphasis on administrative detention.
Since the signing of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court and Palestine's joining the ICC in April, the Palestinian National Council has prepared materials on a number of matters with the goal of presenting them to the ICC, said the senior Palestinian official.
Last month, Fatah central committee member Mohammed Ashtayya told Haaretz that the Palestinian reports were comprehensive and detailed accounts of Israel's contravention of international law and were intended to provide the court with a sufficient basis on which to decide whether to launch investigations.
The reports were compiled by a special committee established at the beginning of the year to collate all the material destined for the court. The committee was assisted by international jurists and advisers.
The Palestinian position has received renewed support as a result of the release of the Gaza report this week; and PA officials have said they are being aided by lawyers who specialize in international law, in order to prepare the documents for the ICC in expectation that this will speed up the court's decision to open an investigation against Israel.We can thank all the anti-Semitic European governments for funding the NGO's that issued this report.
Labels: Gaza, NGO's, Operation Protective Edge, William Schabas
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:41 PM
1 comments
#BREAKING US wiretapped France's last three presidents: media citing WikiLeaks
— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) June 23, 2015
Just a hunch, but I doubt that even if caught, any American will sit in a French jail for doing this for even a tenth of the time that Jonathan Pollard has been imprisoned in the United States.Labels: France, Jonathan Pollard, spying
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:13 PM
1 comments
Two senior administration officials confirmed to us that U.S. soldiers and Shiite militia groups are both using the Taqqadum military base in Anbar, the same Iraqi base where President Obama is sending an additional 450 U.S. military personnel to help train the local forces fighting against the Islamic State. Some of the Iran-backed Shiite militias at the base have killed American soldiers in the past.
Some inside the Obama administration fear that sharing the base puts U.S. soldiers at risk. The U.S. intelligence community has reported back to Washington that representatives of some of the more extreme militias have been spying on U.S. operations at Taqqadum, one senior administration official told us. That could be calamitous if the fragile relationship between the U.S. military and the Shiite militias comes apart and Iran-backed forces decide to again target U.S. troops.
American critics of this growing cooperation between the U.S. military and the Iranian-backed militias call it a betrayal of the U.S. personnel who fought against the militias during the 10-year U.S. occupation of Iraq.
“It’s an insult to the families of the American soldiers that were wounded and killed in battles in which the Shia militias were the enemy,” Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain told us. “Now, providing arms to them and supporting them, it’s very hard for those families to understand.”
The U.S. is not directly training Shiite units of what are known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, which include tens of thousands of Iraqis who have volunteered to fight against the Islamic State as well as thousands of hardened militants who ultimately answer to militia leaders loyal to Tehran. But the U.S. is flying close air support missions for those forces.
The U.S. gives weapons directly only to the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Security Forces, but the lines between them and the militias are blurry. U.S. weapons often fall into the hands of militias like Iraqi Hezbollah. Sometimes the military cooperation is even more explicit. Commanders of some of the hardline militias sit in on U.S. military briefings on operations that were meant for the government-controlled Iraqi Security Forces, a senior administration official said.In an email, Omri Ceren of The Israel Project adds:
A parade of horribles. From a political perspective, the U.S. is sharing a base with Iran-backed Shiite militias that killed American troops, which will be toxic publicly and on the Hill. From a military perspective, the U.S. is allowing itself to be spied on by groups that could use that intelligence if they're unleashed on American troops by Iran, which may deter the Obama administration from pressuring Tehran. And from a diplomatic perspective, the scoop will confirm fears across the region that the U.S. is realigning with Iran – or that, at the very least, Washington is literally and figuratively providing fuel for Iran's expansionist campaign across the region:Read the whole thing.
The U.S. is not directly training Shiite units of what are known as the Popular Mobilization Forces... but the U.S. is flying close air support missions for those forces. The U.S. gives weapons directly only to the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Security Forces, but the lines between them and the militias are blurry. U.S. weapons often fall into the hands of militias like Iraqi Hezbollah. Sometimes the military cooperation is even more explicit. Commanders of some of the hardline militias sit in on U.S. military briefings on operations that were meant for the government-controlled Iraqi Security Forces, a senior administration official said... “There’s no real command and control from the central government,” one senior administration official said. “Even if these guys don’t attack us... Iran is ushering in a new Hezbollah era in Iraq, and we will have aided and abetted it.”The fears have straightforward implications for the viability of any nuclear agreement with Iran.
Everything - everything - relies on Saudi Arabia not nuclearizing in the aftermath of an agreement later this month. If the Saudis take a pass, then maybe a deal can hold for a time. If they purchase a weapon from Pakistan or build a bomb over the medium term, then no force in the world short of a military campaign could prevent the IRGC from matching their capabilities. No one pretends that the Iranians will sit on the sidelines while the Saudis go nuclear. That scenario then becomes the worst of all worlds: the administration will have seeded a polynuclear Middle East, detonated Washington's alliances with its traditional allies, and shredded the sanctions regime - and it won't even have a denuclearized Iran to show for it.
The Saudis have been very clear about their decision calculus: they'll go nuclear not when Iran goes nuclear, but when Riyadh concludes that it's inevitable that the Iranians will go nuclear. They're not going to wait.
The Obama administration has rolled out three arguments for why that's not going to happen, at the risk of losing the ability to rationalize the JCPOA. The first is that the Saudis are too poor to go nuclear, which is difficult to square with the existence of the North Korean program. The second is that the Saudis are too afraid of an international oil embargo to go nuclear, which is an argument that - generously - does not immediately strike analysts as in line with geopolitics as it works in our reality.
The third is that American security assurances to the Gulf - specifically, that Washington will continue to push back against Iranian regional expansionism - will sufficiently reassure that Arab states that they don't have to chart their own course. But those security assurances can't survive revelations that we're aiding Iran in creating the “Hezbollah era in Iran [I think that should be "Hezbollah era in Iraq. CiJ].” And when they do fail the Saudis will go nuclear and the Iranians will back out of the JCPOA to match. Instead of a status quo of no deal and no nukes, it'll be a Middle East of no deal and lots of nukes - and in the meantime, the U.S. will have squandered decades-old alliances and the painstakingly-built international sanctions regime against Iran.
It will be interesting to see if, by tomorrow, the administration has settled on how its intends to address the scenario.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Hezbullah, Iran, Iranian nuclear threat, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:36 AM
1 comments
Tony Blair met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal twice in Doha to discuss ways to end the Gaza siege, the Middle East Eye website has reported, citing unnamed sources.
The website reported on Monday that the pair last met prior to Blair stepping down from his post as the representative of the Quartet of Middle East power brokers in May.
It was reported that they discussed ways to end the Gaza siege, including the possibility of a rolling ceasefire, and that Blair's negotiations were being supported by the UK, the United States and the European Union. Two Arab states and Israel were also reportedly aware of the discussions.
Though Blair has stepped down from his post with the Quartet, the discussions are reportedly continuing.
Neither the recognition of Israel, nor the decommissioning of Hamas' arsenal, would be a requirement for any potential deal, the website reported.Wonder which two Arab states? I'd bet on Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Labels: Gaza blockade, Hamas, IDF, Middle East quartet, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tony Blair, weapons smuggling
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:03 PM
1 comments
From @CAMERAorg: Even in naming a govt ministry, @NYTimes finds a way to disparage Israel. http://t.co/YG9R2i3sjx pic.twitter.com/OU86StDmij
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) June 21, 2015
Labels: anti-Israel media bias, CAMERA, Jeff Jacoby, New York Times
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:00 PM
1 comments
Whitewash: UN Gaza report omits mention of why Schabas was forced to resign: his undisclosed paid legal work for PLO. pic.twitter.com/hvpLsuHyh9
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) June 22, 2015
The UNHRC Arabic press release could have been easily written be Hamas' ministry of information.
— Shimrit Meir (@shimritmeir) June 22, 2015
The UN Commission actually cites the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism as proof that Israel still occupies Gaza. pic.twitter.com/YulpiLRhPF
— Gidon Shaviv (@GidonShaviv) June 22, 2015
And this is supposed to make the report 'even-handed'? https://t.co/j8ZOJ95Kxp
— IsraelMatzav (@IsraelMatzav) June 22, 2015
I'm sure you're all shocked.... Labels: Gaza construction, Hillel Neuer, NGO Monitor, Operation Protective Edge, United Nations Human Rights Council, United Nations Watch, William Schabas
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:14 PM
0 comments
Here is a link to the new @UN biased report about the last summer's Gaza conflict. http://t.co/DKouATRTRI pic.twitter.com/OdZEZogXmb
— Israel News Flash (@ILNewsFlash) June 22, 2015
How bad is it? Well, paragraph 591 cites Mads Gilbert as a reliable source....Labels: Mads Gilbert, NGO Monitor, Operation Protective Edge, United Nations Human Rights Council, William Schabas
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:34 PM
0 comments
Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren says he pressured Random House to publish his controversial new book “Ally” now, rather than during book season in September or October, because “Israel is at a fateful juncture” before the deadline of the Iran talks and the vote on the French initiative on Palestine in the Security Council. He said that one of his main objectives was to “motivate, animate and inspire my readers” in advance of these challenges “to do more than just stand there”.
“It’s about saying no” to an Iran deal that “everybody in the Knesset agrees is emphatically bad,” Oren said. He compared “this critical moment” to the Holocaust era, when American Jews had an opportunity to “intercede and perhaps save millions of Jews”.Oren received a surprisingly warm reception from the 92nd Street Y, where he made remarks that might be read by some as an indictment of American Jewry.
Oren discussed what he described as the unprecedented predominance of American Jews in the Obama administration – “there were discussions in the White House in which there were six Jews – 3 Americans and 3 Israelis, discussing a Palestinian state - and the only non-Jewish person in the room was the President or the Vice President.” He said that the non-Orthodox and the intermarried American Jews in the administration – “have a hard time understanding the Israeli character.”Well, yes, but that's not just the administration. That's true of American Jews in general. For years now, there's been a split between American Jewry and Israeli Jewry, but that split has been virtually non-existent among Orthodox Jews. Orthodox Jews also consistently vote Republican (or have since Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980), and the more Orthodox, the more consistent they are about that. And Orthodox Jews and most Israelis would disagree with Oren's statement that Obama is not anti-Israel. He most definitely is anti-Israel. As I said once before:
Oren doesn't go far enough. His claim that Obama was 'never anti-Israel' doesn't square with the facts that we knew long before Obama was elected President. The fact that the one example Oren gives of 'significantly strengthened security cooperation' under Obama relates to a natural disaster and not to a military action is telling.And Oren ties the Obama White House in with the anti-Israel bent of American academia.
Recounting his academic experience in America, Oren said that “1968 revolutionaries” had taken over the Middle East and international relations departments of American universities and that unless one published their “neo-Marxist ideas”, one would not get tenured or published. When he came to Washington in 2009, he encountered the same ideas in his talks with Obama administration officials in the White House and the State Department: “I could tell what professors they had.” Oren went on to claim that the term “Israel Lobby”, which was condemned when it was used by Professor Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, is now an accepted term in Washington discourse.Maybe that's why Oren made aliya.
Labels: anti-Semitism, Barack Hussein Obama, Iranian nuclear threat, Jimmy Carter, liberal academia, Michael Oren, Orthodox Jews, Republicans, Ronald Reagan, self-hating Jews
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:30 PM
2 comments
.@zeev_elkin: High Court backs terrorism supporters - overturned Central Elex C'tee vote 2 ban Zoabi & Ghattas learned he can join flotilla
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) June 22, 2015
On Sunday, I reported that 'Israeli Arab' MK Basel Ghattas plans to join the flotilla of fools that hopes to run the Gaza 'blockade' later this week and establish a sea route for Hamas weapons.The Marianne av Göteborg, is set to depart within the next few days. Three or four other ships have plans to join the Gaza flotilla, but only the Marianne av Göteborg is currently approaching Israel.Maybe she's afraid her Knesset immunity won't protect her from IDF responses to an act of war.
Zoabi penned a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, and made it clear that she wants to join the flotilla, however she has decided not to do so because she felt that the last flotilla was not completely effective, stating "unfortunately the Mavi Marmara did not end the blockade in Gaza."
She said that the Mavi Marmara did not succeed 100 percent, and therefore there is a need for more and more flotillas.
Referring to Israel, Zoabi said there will be "a need to prosecute those responsible politically and militarily for the situation in Gaza" if the blockade remains in place.
"Israel is in control of the situation, and is responsible according to international law. Those in Israel cannot expect to live a normal life when the occupation and the siege goes on in Gaza."
Labels: flotilla of fools, Gaza blockade, Hanin Zoabi, Israeli Arabs are a fifth column, Mavi Marmara
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:36 AM
2 comments
In Foreign Policy, Oren took Obama to task for not joining the solidarity march in France after the attack on Charlie Hebdo or the kosher supermarket earlier this year, nor for sending two senior officials who were in Paris at the time to the march. He also took the president to task for not admitting that the attack on the kosher market was directed a Jews, but rather an act perpetrated by “vicious zealots who... randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli.”Oren has been blasted by opposition MK's Tzipi Livni (goes without saying), Avigdor Liberman and Yair Lapid (the latter also goes without saying). But Lee Smith wrote some similar things in Tablet Magazine last week, but from a slightly different angle.
“Obama’s boycotting of the memorial in Paris, like his refusal to acknowledge the identity of the perpetrators, the victims, or even the location of the market massacre, provides a broad window into his thinking on Islam and the Middle East. Simply put: The president could not participate in a protest against Muslim radicals whose motivations he sees as a distortion, rather than a radical interpretation, of Islam,” he wrote. “And if there are no terrorists spurred by Islam, there can be no purposely selected Jewish shop or intended Jewish victims, only a deli and randomly present folks."
During his first year in office, Obama, Oren argued, offered in essence “a new deal in which the United States would respect popularly chosen Muslim leaders who were authentically rooted in their traditions and willing to engage with the West.”
...
Oren attributed this orientation to the intellectual milieu in which Obama grew up, as well as his personal history. “I could imagine how a child raised by a Christian mother might see himself as a natural bridge between her two Muslim husbands. I could also speculate how that child’s abandonment by those men could lead him, many years later, to seek acceptance by their co-religionists.”
The tragedy, he said, was that Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world was rejected.
“Historians will likely look back at Obama’s policy toward Islam with a combination of curiosity and incredulousness,” he wrote. “While some may credit the president for his good intentions, others might fault him for being naïve and detached from a complex and increasingly lethal reality.”
In the LA Times piece, headlined “Why Obama is wrong about Iran being 'rational' on nukes,” Oren quoted Obama’s comment in a recent interview that being anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn't preclude one from from being interested in survival, and that just because Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei is anti-Semitic “doesn't mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”
Oren wrote that the dispute whether Iran was a rational or irrational actor was “ever-present” in the discussions between the US and Israel when he was ambassador. While the American view the Iranians as logical actors, Israel could not rule out the idea that “the Iranians would be willing to sacrifice half of their people as martyrs in a war intended to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’”
“Obama would never say that anti-black racists are rational,” Oren argued. “And he would certainly not trust them with the means – however monitored – to reach their racist goals. That was the message Israeli officials and I conveyed in our discreet talks with the administration. The response was not, to our mind, reasonable."
Oren, while he served in Washington, was considered very cautious and diplomatic, and rarely caught flack for comments deemed “undiplomatic.”
Whether Obama is an honorary Jew or not, the evidence suggests that he keenly understands certain peculiarities of the Jewish communal psyche—survival strategies that distinguish the Jews from other American minority groups. The president’s use of Jewish aides and organizations to advance his policies with the Jewish community shows that Obama is correct in believing that Jewish politics are often motivated by fear, which can range from the existential fear of mass extermination to the more prosaic fear of looking shabby in front of the goyim. And Obama isn’t using his energy and inspiring leadership skills to help these people rise above their fear; he is instead capitalizing on it—masterfully, ruthlessly—by manipulating American Jews in ways that other minority groups would find unbelievably insulting.
Consider recent statements from Jewish aides to the president. Netanyahu is the kind of politician, said David Axelrod, “who run[s] for public office because they want to be somebody.” Israel doesn’t know what’s best for it, Obama’s former envoy to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process Martin Indyk told Israeli media last week. “You are an emotional nation, not a rational nation,” he sniffed. “You work from your gut and not your mind.”
It’s very hard to imagine Catholic policymakers helping a U.S. president undermine and insult the Vatican and then defending the president when he says that he understands what the church stands for better than the pope does. During the darkest moments of the AIDS crisis, there were no gay organizations that encouraged U.S. policymakers to cut funding for a cure. There are no transgender activists who argue that the real threat to the community comes not from people who fear and hate transgendered people, but from within the transgender community itself. Eric Holder doesn’t scold people of color that they’re an emotional, not a rational, people, or imply that black officeholders get into politics because they “want to be somebody.”
The issue in America today is clearly not that pro-Obama people or organizations are leading the American Jewish community to destruction. Yet at the same time, it is also clear that two millennia of diasporic dependence and insecurity have left a deep and probably permanent imprint on the Jewish communal psyche. Even in America, a free country in which Jews have never been subject to European-style mass oppression or persecutions, the role performed by “court Jews’ still makes structural and emotional sense to people who like to think of themselves as independent thinkers. Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why Obama still has the support of the majority of the Jewish community for policies that from any rational perspective—the perspective of any other minority group—cannot be seen as anything other than detrimental to the Jewish state.In other words, Oren is right about Obama's bad treatment of Jews as compared with any other ethnic group. Obama isn't playing any other ethnic group - only Jews. And according to Smith, Obama is playing the Jews like a master.
But what about the Jews who speak for the administration? None of several former high-ranking Jewish officials was willing to speak on the record on this subject, but every single one of them agreed that this moment was an extraordinary one. “No administration will always do what the Jewish community wants or what Jews think best for Israel, just as none will ever always do what Catholics want or Greek Americans or farmers,” said a former Jewish American policymaker who served in high-level positions in several administrations. “When you are in an administration you know this is coming. If the variance is in the particular area you cover, it can be painful. If it gets repeated, you need to change jobs or leave the government. That’s normal.”
But: “The Obama situation is not normal,” he continued, “due to the length and depth of the confrontation with Israel and the harm that’s being done. It should give rise to soul searching by Jewish appointees. In my view they’ve become enablers, in the worst sense of that word. That not one single Jew has left in protest is remarkable considering that relations have not been worse in a long, long time.”
By not resigning in protest, Obama’s Jewish aides have arguably not only harmed their community; they weakened their own position—which was, in a sense, ultimately far more detrimental. In a town where the appearance of power is power, Obama’s Jewish defenders had no idea which way the president was actually going. They got played, and now everyone knows it. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wasn’t in the room when Obama was making Iran policy with Ben Rhodes and Valerie Jarrett. Martin Indyk didn’t know that a central part of Obama’s Middle East policy—without which the Iran deal would be impossible—was to weaken AIPAC, the cornerstone of the pro-Israel community. AIPAC, in turn, didn’t see itself as a target of the Obama Administration. Instead, it kept telling itself that bipartisan support for Israel was the very premise of its power. Had these actors actually participated in helping the president pull a fast one on the Jewish community, at least they’d have showed they had connections to power. The biggest problem with the Jews around Obama is not that they spoke up on behalf of policies that may very well turn out to be harmful to the Jewish state; it’s that they were so clearly out of the loop—a status quo they will now bequeath to future administrations.
In this regard, even AIPAC’s ostensible rival J Street got played. As one senior official in the pro-Israel community told me, he believes that “their standing has diminished a lot. The administration used J Street and included them, and went to their conferences, because they believed they would be a useful tool.” But J Street is weakened not, as the pro-Israel official believes, because it plowed its own field recklessly. If you describe yourself as a pro-Israel organization then your power is directly proportional to how important a role Israel plays in American foreign policy. If your actions, like J Street’s, contribute to making Israel about as important to American foreign policy as Malaysia is, then you aren’t very important either.Read the whole thing.
Labels: Avigdor Lieberman, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, court Jew, Jack Lew, Martin Indyk, Michael Oren, Moshe Kahlon, poritz syndrome, Tzipi Livni, Yair Lapid
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:24 PM
2 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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