Labels: Charles Krauthammer, Donald Trump, United Nations
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:31 PM
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1. U.S. Nuclear Inspectors Are Banned From Inspecting Iran’s Nuclear Sites
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The administration’s claim that the deal provides inspections “anytime, anywhere” is also false. Obama’s deal allows Iran to block inspector access to any undeclared nuclear site. As Charles Krauthammer notes, “The denial is then adjudicated by a committee—on which Iran sits. It then goes through several other bodies, on all of which Iran sits” and the whole process may take up to 24 days.
2. Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal Lifts Economic Sanctions that Could Boost Iran’s Economy with $150 Billion in Revenue
As the Washington Post reports, “Yet another worry is that the lifting of tough economic sanctions on Iran would provide it with as much as $150 billion in revenue. Some of that money would be spent on infrastructure and the Iranian people. Some of it, critics say, would go to the likes of Hezbollah, Syrian Bashar al-Assad and Iraqi militias that no long ago were killing Americans.”
3. The Obama Administration Admits That ‘We Should Expect’ Iran Will Spend Some of the $150 Billion in Revenues Obama’s Deal Gives Them On Their Military and Possibly Terrorism
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4. On the Very Week Obama Brokered His Iran Nuclear Deal, Large Crowds Across Iran Could Be Heard Chanting “Death to America”—And Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Declared ‘Death to America’ Just Months Ago
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5. Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal Does Not Require Iran to Release Any American Prisoners
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6. Obama’s Deal Allows Russia and China to Supply Iran with Weapons
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Krauthammer argues that “the net effect of this capitulation will be not only to endanger our Middle East allies now under threat from Iran and its proxies, but to endanger our own naval forces in the Persian Gulf.” He added, “Imagine how Iran’s acquisition of the most advanced anti-ship missiles would threaten our control over the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, waterways we have kept open for international commerce for a half century.”
7. 77 Percent of Americans Oppose Obama’s Lifting of Sanctions Against IranWhy did Obama-Kerry negotiate such a bad deal? Because they wanted a deal at all costs. The New York Times published a shocking story last week that shows just how Kerry and Wendy Sherman were defeated every step of the way.
At one point last week the simmering tension between the two negotiators boiled over when Mr. Zarif felt his American counterpart was pressing too hard. “Never threaten an Iranian!” he shouted. At the other end of the table Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, who has had his share of disputes with Mr. Kerry, tried to break the tension. “Or a Russian!” he said, as the room broke out in nervous laughter.
But during a break on one particularly discouraging March day in Lausanne, Switzerland, where negotiations were held before adjourning to Vienna, Mr. Zarif struck a different tone as he invoked the names of the key figures on two sides, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the top energy officials of the United States and Iran, Ernest J. Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi.
Breitbart adds:“We are not going to have another time in history when there is an Obama and a Biden and a Kerry and a Moniz again,” he said, according to notes of the conversation. “And there may be no Rouhani, Zarif and Salehi.”
[The Iranians] understood all along that their bargaining position was superior, because Obama needed a deal at any cost — as his critics have said all along, he would take a bad deal over no deal, especially as he got deeper into the process, and it became more obvious that both Obama’s ego and political needs made backing away from the table unthinkable. Obama and Kerry doubled down with every losing hand, until the Iranians cleaned them out.
The NYT is essentially saying that Obama’s top priority was collecting some good press and personal accolades for a deal, and dumping the Iran problem into someone else’s lap while he gets through his lame-duck years.
Late in the article, it is mentioned that Obama grew embarrassed about how obvious his thirst for a deal had become, and tried telling his aides, “I don’t need this.” The aides guessed that he meant Supreme Court wins on ObamaCare and gay marriage had given him enough political cover to make delaying the Iran deal feasible.
One way to appreciate how badly America lost in this lousy deal is to look at how many side issues it does include – every last one of them a win for Iran. “Imprisonment of dissidents and even some Americans” does not directly relate to nuclear weapons… but neither does ICBM technology, and Iran won concessions there.
Read the whole thing.Obama’s apologists are spinning this debacle by claiming the only alternative was a huge, bloody war, beginning immediately. Secretary of State Kerry actually wound up sobbing about how he had managed to avert another Vietnam. Meanwhile, Iran is boasting about defeating “unfair” sanctions that never should have been leveled against it, forcing the Great Satan to acknowledge its Allah-given right to atomic power, and rather openly stating it is still unafraid of fighting a war against what the Ayatollah describes as the nexus of “global arrogance” in America.
Labels: Ali Akbar Salehi, Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, John Kerry, Mohammad Javad Zarif, nuclear weapons, P 5+1, Wendy Sherman
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:33 PM
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Labels: anti-Semitism, Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer, France
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:39 PM
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Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Charles Krauthammer, George W. Bush, Iranian nuclear threat, Ronald Reagan, US-Israel relationship
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:03 PM
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Forget about Israeli interests. Forget about Arab interests. The American interest is to endorse and solidify this emerging axis of moderate pro-American partners (Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states, and the Palestinian Authority) intent on seeing Islamist radicalism blunted and ultimately defanged.
Yet America’s secretary of state doesn’t see it. Speaking of Hamas-run Gaza, Kerry actually said in Paris: “The Palestinians can’t have a cease-fire in which they think the status quo is going to stay.” What must change? Gazans need “goods that can come in and out . . . a life that is free from the current restraints.”
But the only reason for those “restraints,” why goods are unable to go in and out, is that for a decade Hamas has used this commerce to import and develop weapons for making war on Israel.
Remember the complaints that the heartless Israelis were not allowing enough imports of concrete for schools and hospitals? Well, now we know where the concrete went — into an astonishingly vast array of tunnels for infiltrating neighboring Israeli villages and killing civilians. (More than half a million tons, estimates the Israeli military.)
Lifting the blockade would mean a flood of arms, rockets, missile parts and other implements of terror for Hamas. What is an American secretary of state doing asserting that Hamas cannot cease fire unless it gets that?
Moreover, the fire from which Hamas will not cease consists of deliberate rocket attacks on Israeli cities — by definition, a war crime.
Whatever his intent, Kerry legitimized Hamas’s war criminality. Which makes his advocacy of Hamas’s terms not just a strategic blunder — enhancing a U.S.-designated terrorist group just when a wall-to-wall Arab front wants to see it gone — but a moral disgrace.Read the whole thing.
Labels: cease fire, Charles Krauthammer, Gaza, Hamas, John Kerry, Operation Protective Edge, terror tunnels
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:54 PM
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To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the U.N.’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defense.
In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, the depravity of Hamas begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the U.N. ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years that nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.
It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.Read the whole thing.
Labels: Charles Krauthammer, fierce moral urgency, Gaza, Hamas rockets, moral equivalence, moral relativism, morality, Operation Protective Edge
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:35 PM
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Labels: Abu Mazen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Charles Krauthammer, Fatah, Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, Middle East peace process
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:32 AM
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Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Russia, Ukraine
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:39 AM
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Former Harvard president Larry Summers called the ASA actions “anti-Semitic in their effect if not necessarily in their intent.” I choose to be less polite. The intent is clear: to incite hatred for the largest — and only sovereign — Jewish community on Earth.
What to do? Facing a similar (British) academic boycott of Israelis seven years ago, Alan Dershowitz and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg wrote an open letter declaring that, for the purposes of any anti-Israel boycott, they are to be considered Israelis.
Meaning: You discriminate against Israelis? Fine. Include us out. We will have nothing to do with you.
Thousands of other academics added their signatures to the Dershowitz/Weinberg letter. It was the perfect in-kind response. Boycott the boycotters, with contempt.
But academia isn’t the only home for such prejudice. Throughout the cultural world, the Israel boycott movement is growing. It’s become fashionable for musicians, actors, writers and performers of all kinds to ostentatiously cleanse themselves of Israel and Israelis.
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In this sea of easy and open bigotry, an unusual man has made an unusual statement. Russian by birth, European by residence, Evgeny Kissin is arguably the world’s greatest piano virtuoso. He is also a Jew of conviction. Deeply distressed by Israel’s treatment in the cultural world around him, Kissin went beyond the Dershowitz/Weinberg stance of asking to be considered an Israeli. On Dec. 7, he became one, defiantly.
Upon taking the oath of citizenship in Jerusalem, he declared: “I am a Jew, Israel is a Jewish state. . . . Israel’s case is my case, Israel’s enemies are my enemies, and I do not want to be spared the troubles which Israeli musicians encounter when they represent the Jewish state beyond its borders.”
Full disclosure: I have a personal connection with Kissin. For the past two years I’ve worked to bring him to Washington to perform for Pro Musica Hebraica, a nonprofit organization (founded by my wife and me) dedicated to reviving lost and forgotten Jewish classical music.
We succeeded. On Feb. 24, Kissin will perform at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall masterpieces of Eastern European Jewish music, his first U.S. appearance as an Israeli.Read it all. And any of you who are anywhere near Washington DC on February 24, please consider showing up to show your support.
Labels: academic boycott, BDS, Charles Krauthammer, Evegny Kissin, liberal academia
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:39 PM
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Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:02 PM
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Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:55 PM
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Right after shipping responsibility for authorizing an attack on Syria, President Barack Obama returned to his comfort zone: The golf course.
Obama’s motorcade left the White House at 2:30 p.m., about 30 minutes after completing his statement.
Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are playing at Fort Belvoir, Va., along with White House trip director Marvin Nicholson and Walter Nicholson, according to the White House.Aren't you glad you elected and reelected this creep? I can't tell you how little I think of him....
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer, golf, John Bolton, Syria
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:22 AM
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“The only constant in all of this is Obama as a candidate, as a Senator, decided we should be out of these wars, we should be out of the Middle East, the tide of war is receding, he repeats it over and over again and pretends it’s true,” Krauthammer said. “We’re not in Iraq, we’re not in Syria, we’re not in Libya – we’re getting killed in Libya as we did – we’re not in Egypt. We are doing nothing. All the other actors are in play – the jihadists, the Russians, the Iranians, Hezbollah, but not the United States. We are irrelevant.”Let's go to the videotape.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Egypt, Libya, Syria
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:58 PM
2 comments
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Egyptian democracy, Mohammed Morsy, Muslim Brotherhood
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:42 PM
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Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bill Clinton, Charles Krauthammer, Internal Revenue Service, Richard Nixon, Tea Party, Z Street
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:37 PM
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Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Bashar al-Assad, Charles Krauthammer, Free Syrian Army, Syrian uprising
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:33 PM
4 comments
There is nothing inevitable about Brotherhood rule. The problem is that the secular democratic parties are fractured, disorganized and lacking in leadership. And are repressed by the increasingly authoritarian Morsi.
His partisans have attacked demonstrators in Cairo. His security forces killed more than 40 in Port Said. He’s been harassing journalists, suppressing freedom of speech, infiltrating the military and trying to subjugate the courts. He’s already rammed through an Islamist constitution. He is now trying to tilt, even rig, parliamentary elections to the point that the opposition called for a boycott and an administrative court has just declared a suspension of the vote.
Any foreign aid we give Egypt should be contingent upon a reversal of this repression and a granting of space to secular, democratic, pro-Western elements.
That’s where Kerry committed his mistake. Not in trying to use dollar diplomacy to leverage Egyptian behavior, but by exercising that leverage almost exclusively for economic, rather than political, reform.
Kerry’s major objective was getting Morsi to apply for a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. Considering that some of this $4.8 billion ultimately comes from us, there’s a certain comic circularity to this demand. What kind of concession is it when a foreign government is coerced into … taking yet more of our money?
We have no particular stake in Egypt’s economy. Our stake is in its politics. Yes, we would like to see a strong economy. But in a country ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood?
Our interest is in a non-Islamist, nonrepressive, nonsectarian Egypt, ruled as democratically as possible. Why should we want a vibrant economy that maintains the Brotherhood in power? Our concern is Egypt’s policies, foreign and domestic.
If we’re going to give foreign aid, it should be for political concessions — on unfettered speech, on an opposition free of repression, on alterations to the Islamist constitution, on open and fair elections.
We give foreign aid for two reasons: (a) to support allies who share our values and our interests, and (b) to extract from less-than-friendly regimes concessions that either bring their policies more in line with ours or strengthen competing actors more favorably inclined toward American objectives.
That’s the point of foreign aid. It’s particularly important in countries like Egypt whose fate is in the balance. But it will only work if we remain clear-eyed about why we give all that money in the first place.Unless, of course, Obama's interest is in keeping the Muslim Brotherhood in power. Ya' think?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Egypt, John Kerry, Mohammed Morsy, Muslim Brotherhood, US foreign aid
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:24 PM
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Labels: censorship, Charles Krauthammer, Islam
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:55 PM
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Labels: Benghazigate, Charles Krauthammer, David Petraeus
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:25 PM
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Labels: Benghazi, Charles Krauthammer, Fox News, Libya
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:24 PM
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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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