Underdog Israel beats Cuba in baseball, is one win from semi-finals
If you've been in a cave for the past week, you probably don't know that Israel's baseball team advanced to the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Classic, defeating 3rd ranked South Korea, 4th ranked Taiwan and 9th ranked Netherlands to get there. Israel's team was ranked 41st going into the tournament, despite having ten major leaguers on its roster.
On Sunday in Tokyo, the Israeli team beat 5th ranked Cuba 4-1, and now needs just one win against top-ranked Japan or 9th ranked Netherlands (which they have already beaten) to advance to the semifinals at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. (If you're wondering, the US is ranked second).
Israel’s batters overcame an early 1-0
deficit, and the team’s pitchers kept the heavily favored Cuban team to
just five hits, continuing the squad’s unlikely Cinderella run.
Cuba inched ahead in the second inning with a
home run from Alfredo Despaigne, the player who singlehandedly sent his
country into the second round when he scored all of Cuba’s runs against
Australia on Thursday.
But after that, it was entirely Israel’s game.
Team Israel took a 2-1 lead in the sixth when
Zach Borenstein singled to right scoring Ty Kelly from second base.
Blake Gailen made it 3-1 with a two-out double to right that scored Nate
Freiman.
Israel tacked on another run in the eighth on a sacrifice bunt by Gailen that scored Borenstein from third.
Josh Zeid pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the ninth when he got Willian Saavedra to ground out to third with two out.
The Israeli team has become the tournament’s unlikely darlings on its way to a 4-0 start in the international tournament.
Now we all know that there may not be 10 Israelis who aren't American born who know how to play baseball. So how does Israel have 10 major leaguers on its squad? It's a rule quirk.
Nearly all the members on Team Israel are American Jews. By WBC rules, a
player may compete for a country if he is eligible for citizenship
under its laws. Israel extends the right of automatic citizenship to
Jews, their non-Jewish children, grandchildren and the non-Jewish
spouses of their children and grandchildren.
Uh huh.
But they should have taken me along to read the Megillah for them (I've read it from a scroll more than 70 times to as many as 800 people). Let's go to the videotape.
Israel will face the Netherlands at Noon on Monday Israel time.
The win over Cuba gives Israel a strong mental boost ahead of games against the Netherlands and host Japan to advance in the quarterfinal round, which is played as a round robin. One win in those two games could be enough to bring Israel to Dodger Stadium for the semifinals.
...
[Manager Jerry] Weinstein rebuffed critics who have called Team Israel really a second Team USA. "The attitude in our clubhouse is we are representing Israel. We are not the Junior Varsity team for Team USA. We are Team Israel, and make no mistake about that."
After Sunday's win, starter [Jason] Marquis noted "We have quality baseball players on this team; guys who have big league experience, a lot of young prospects who have bright futures, and a good mix of veterans who can help these guys through these tournament games."
Marquis did revel a little in becoming a role model in the United States. "It's a great story for people back home who follow the game and who are in our shoes - have Jewish heritage - to look up to players like us who may not have otherwise had that opportunity."
I don't know about that. For most American Jews your Bar Mitzva is that time when you realize that you are far more likely to own a team than to play for one.
UNESCO's World Heritage Committee is meeting now, and despite insistence by Lebanon and Cuba that its resolution denying the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount be adopted by 'consensus,' there is going to be a secret ballot due to the insistence of Tanzania and Croatia.
Developing....
UPDATE 11:32 AM
Voting has just concluded @UNESCO World Heritage Committee on Palestinian-Jordanian Jerusalem resolution. Now counting the secret ballots. pic.twitter.com/aOXyeqX8kz
Hezbullah, which already has operations in Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela
and Mexico (the article doesn't say Mexico, but I've reported that in
the past) is setting up operations in Cuba to serve as a base for an
attack on Israeli interests in Latin America to avenge the death of
master terrorist Imad Mughniyah. The report in YNet is based upon an article in Italy's Corriere della Sera.
According
to the report, three Hezbollah members have already arrived in Cuba
with the purpose of establishing a terrorist cell there. The cell is to
include 23 operatives, hand-picked by Talal Hamia, a senior member
tasked with heading the covert operation.
The operation, titled "The Caribbean Case," was reportedly allocated
a budget of $1.5 million. The Cuba base is to be initially used for
logistics purposes, including intelligence collection, networking and
document forgery.
Four days after I wrote that post, Hillary Clinton confidante Sid Blumenthal (who was not a US government employee) sent Hillary an email informing her that the Mossad has confirmed the existence of a Hezbullah base in Cuba.
The dispatch read:
During the week of
September 5, 2011 extremely sensitive sources reported in confidence
that the Israeli Intelligence and Security Service (Mossad) has informed
the leadership of the Israeli Government that Hezbollah is establishing
an operational base in Cuba, designed to support terrorist attacks
throughout Latin America.
The confidential intelligence report from Blumenthal to Clinton continued:
These sources believe
that Hezbollah supporters have been instructed to also begin casing
facilities associated with the United States and the United Kingdom,
including diplomatic missions, major banks, and businesses in the
region. These individuals believe that the Hezbollah military commanders
in Lebanon and Syria view these U.S. and U.K. entities as contingency
targets to be attacked in the event of U.S. and British military
intervention in either Syria or Iran, at some point in the future.
The real question here is what the Obama administration did about Hezbullah establishing bases in Latin America. The answer: Absolutely nothing.
For those who don't recognize the picture, it's Iranian Neda Agha Soltan shortly after being shot by Iranian thugs in the streets of Tehran in June 2009. The suppression of the Iranian revolution in 2009 (the two opposition candidates remain under house arrest six years later) is one reason why Leon Wieseltier is critical of President Hussein Obama's insistence on forgetting history (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
This is nothing other than the mentality of disruption applied to
foreign policy. In the realm of technology, innovation justifies itself;
but in the realm of diplomacy and security, innovation must be
justified, and it cannot be justified merely by an appetite for change.
Tedium does not count against a principled alliance or a grand strategy.
Indeed, a continuity of policy may in some cases—the Korean peninsula,
for example: a rut if ever there was one—represent a significant
achievement. But for the president, it appears, the tradition of all the
dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
Certainly it did in the case of Cuba, where the feeling that it was time
to move on (that great euphemism for American impatience and
inconstancy) eclipsed any scruple about political liberty as a condition
for movement; and it did with Iran, where, as Rhodes admits, the
president was tired of things staying the same, and was enduring history
as a rut. And in the 21st century, when all human affairs are to begin
again!
Obama’s restlessness about American policy toward Iran was apparent
long before the question of Iran’s nuclear capability focused the mind
of the world. In his first inaugural address,
he famously offered an extended hand in exchange for an unclenched
fist. Obama seems to believe that the United States owes Iran some sort
of expiation. As he explained
to Thomas Friedman the day after the nuclear agreement was reached, “we
had some involvement with overthrowing a democratically elected regime
in Iran” in 1953. Six years ago, when the streets of Iran exploded in a
democratic rebellion and the White House stood by as it was put down by
the government with savage force against ordinary citizens, memories of
Mohammad Mosaddegh were in the air around the administration, as if to
explain that the United States was morally disqualified by a prior sin
of intervention from intervening in any way in support of the
dissidents. The guilt of 1953 trumped the duty of 2009. The Iranian
fist, in the event, stayed clenched. Or to put it in Rhodes-spin, our
Iran policy remained in a rut.
But it is important to recognize that
the rut—or the persistence of the adversarial relationship between Iran
and the United States—was not a blind fate, or an accident of
historical inertia, or a failure of diplomatic imagination. It was a
choice. On the Iranian side, the choice was based upon a worldview that
was founded in large measure on a fiery, theological anti-Americanism,
an officially sanctioned and officially disseminated view of Americanism
as satanism. On the American side, the choice was based upon an
opposition to the tyranny and the terror that the Islamic Republic
represented and proliferated. It is true that in the years prior to the
Khomeini revolution the United States tolerated vicious abuses of human
rights in Iran; but then our enmity toward the ayatollahs’ autocracy may
be regarded as a moral correction. (A correction is an admirable kind
of hypocrisy.) The adversarial relationship between America and the
regime in Tehran has been based on the fact that we are proper
adversaries. We should be adversaries. What democrat, what pluralist, what liberal, what conservative, what believer, what non-believer, would want this Iran for a friend?
When one speaks about an unfree country, one may refer either to its
people or to its regime. One cannot refer at once to both, because they
are not on the same side. Obama likes to think, when he speaks of Iran,
that he speaks of its people, but in practice he has extended his hand
to its regime. With his talk about reintegrating Iran into the
international community, about the Islamic Republic becoming
“a very successful regional power” and so on, he has legitimated a
regime that was more and more lacking in legitimacy. (There was
something grotesque about the chumminess, the jolly camaraderie, of the
American negotiators and the Iranian negotiators. Why is Mohammad Javad
Zarif laughing?) The text of the agreement states
that the signatories will submit a resolution to the UN Security
Council “expressing its desire to build a new relationship with Iran.”
Not a relationship with a new Iran, but a new relationship with this
Iran, as it is presently—that is to say, theocratically, oppressively,
xenophobically, aggressively, anti-Semitically, misogynistically,
homophobically—constituted. When the president speaks about the people
of Iran, he reveals a bizarre refusal to recognize the character of life
in a dictatorship. In his recent Nowruz message,
for example, he exhorted the “people of Iran … to speak up for the
future [they] seek.” To speak up! Does he think Iran is Iowa? The last
time the people of Iran spoke up to their government, they left their
blood on the streets. “Whether the Iranian people have sufficient
influence to shift how their leaders think about these issues,” Obama
told Friedman, “time will tell.” There he is again, the most powerful
man in the world, backing off and bearing witness.
If
I could believe that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action marked the
end of Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon—that it is, in the president’s
unambiguous declaration, “the most definitive path by which Iran will
not get a nuclear weapon” because “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is
cut off”—I would support it. I do not support it because it is none of
those things. It is only a deferral and a delay. Every pathway is not
cut off, not at all. The accord provides for a respite of 15 years, but
15 years is just a young person’s idea of a long time. Time, to borrow
the president’s words, will tell. Even though the text of the agreement
twice states that “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran
ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons,” there is no
evidence that the Iranian regime has made a strategic decision to turn
away from the possibility of the militarization of nuclear power. Its
strategic objective has been, rather, to escape the sanctions and their
economic and social severities. In this, it has succeeded. If even a
fraction of the returned revenues are allocated to Iran’s vile
adventures beyond its borders, the United States will have subsidized an
expansion of its own nightmares.
I don't believe that Obama is so stupid as to decide to ignore history entirely. I think he wanted change - a different policy - that aligned the United States with rogue regimes like Iran and Cuba. Those are the people with whom he feels most comfortable. Another reminder.
It was a moment of high symbolism. More than 50 years after the Cuban
Revolution, the United States and Cuba still do not have diplomatic
relations. The President has eased some of the economic embargo and
travel restrictions that the administration of President George W. Bush
strongly enforced, but relations still are tense. Cuba continues to
imprison an American citizen, Alan Gross, who was arrested in 2009 on
charges of attempting to destabilize the Cuban government.
Obama knew, of course, that Castro would be on stage. But refusing to
shake Castro's hand would not have been in keeping with Mandela's
legacy of reconciliation. And it was not the first handshake between
American-Cuban leaders. In 2000, at the United Nations, then-President
Bill Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban
Revolution, its first revolutionary president, and Raul's brother.
Obama says he wants to improve relations with Cuba, but disagreements
over human rights violations and other issues continue to keep the
countries apart.
The handshake came before Obama's speech, in which he made remarks about reconciliation.
Somehow, I think Ronald Reagan would have avoided that handshake. And somehow, if Netanyahu or Peres had shown up, I can think of a lot of 'world leaders' who would have avoided shaking their hands.
The IAEA voted 31-1 with three abstentions to condemn Iran for defying demands to curb uranium enrichment and failing to clarify mounting concerns about its suspected research into atomic bombs. Egypt was one of three countries that abstained. Cuba, which has benefited from loosened sanctions by the Obama administration, was the only country on the IAEA board to vote against.
The resolution faults Iran for disregarding UN resolutions calling on it to suspend uranium enrichment - a conduit to producing fuel for nuclear power stations or bombs - and open up to investigations of signs that it wants nuclear arms know-how.
Six world powers had tabled a resolution text on Wednesday, aiming to raise pressure on Iran to relent, a day after Israel signalled it was almost out of patience with the use of diplomacy and sanctions to try to rein in the Islamic Republic.
World powers are keen for a diplomatic breakthrough that would avert another, potentially devastating Middle East war.
But President Obama will reward Egyptian President Morsy with a White House reception at the end of this month, while snubbing the Prime Minister of his close ally - with whom 'cooperation has never been better' - that happens to occupy the top spot on Iran's victims list.
And you wonder why Netanyahu keeps saying he's going to attack Iran?
There's something very strange about this story. Hezbullah, which already has operations in Paraguay, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico (the article doesn't say Mexico, but I've reported that in the past) is setting up operations in Cuba to serve as a base for an attack on Israeli interests in Latin America to avenge the death of master terrorist Imad Mughniyah. The report in YNet is based upon an article in Italy's Corriere della Sera.
According to the report, three Hezbollah members have already arrived in Cuba with the purpose of establishing a terrorist cell there. The cell is to include 23 operatives, hand-picked by Talal Hamia, a senior member tasked with heading the covert operation.
The operation, titled "The Caribbean Case," was reportedly allocated a budget of $1.5 million. The Cuba base is to be initially used for logistics purposes, including intelligence collection, networking and document forgery.
Sorry but this seems strange. Maybe they just like cigars?
Most of you think this is why Hillary Clinton went to Geneva to speak at the UN 'Human Rights Council' on Monday.
Let's go to the videotape.
But Anne Bayefsky explains that Clinton did not come to Geneva to call for Libyan President Muammar Gadhafi's resignation. She came to Geneva for something else: To save the Obama administration's investment in the 'Human Rights Council.'
The explicit reason that the administration joined the Council was to engage “from the inside” in a reform process. When the Council was created in 2006 by the General Assembly, it was given five years to review its progress and reform anything found lacking. On Thursday, that review process came to its conclusion – and today Clinton tried to do everything possible to hide its abysmal failure.
The Council has two obvious flaws. Number one it has a standing agenda that governs all of its operations, with ten items on it. One is dedicated to condemning the state of Israel and one is for the remaining 191 UN countries that it might be interested in should it ever decide there was another “human rights situations that require[d] the Council’s attention.” The singular effort to use its so-called human rights system to demonize the Jewish state has been a roaring success. Half of its special sessions on specific countries and half of all its resolutions and decisions critical of any state condemn Israel alone.
When the President Obama joined the Council it promised that changing the discriminatory agenda would be their first priority. On Thursday, we discovered, it was a hoax. The review process has been going on in the context of a working group of all interested members of the U.N. The working group adopted its report on Thursday by consensus – with the U.S. present. And in the usual opaque U.N. language, the consensus report states: “The Council’s agenda and framework for programme of work are as is specified in the annex to Council resolution 5/1.” In plain English, that means business as usual, resolution 5/1 being the discriminatory agenda adopted in June 2007.
The loss can be measured by the administration’s own words. On October 27 of last year the U.S. delegation placed on the table its demands for reform – duly transmitted to an American audience. Agenda reform was top of the list. “The most entrenched and indefensible manifestation of structural bias in this Council comes in the form of…the only agenda item devoted to one country…The United States believes strongly that…as a group charged with examining what must be done to improve the credibility and efficacy of this Council it is incumbent upon us to….to do what is right to help the Council become more evenhanded and depoliticized.”
Secretary Clinton today repeated the mantra. But what she did not say is that when the business-as-usual U.N. “reform” report was approved late Thursday, the only thing the U.S. delegation did was to make a short statement that it “did not support” the permanent Israel-bashing item. In the world of U.N. diplomacy that is backstabbing at its finest.
If the Obama administration had really wanted to stand on principle they could have said “we do not join consensus on this document.” They could have demanded that there be a vote in the Council on the document before sending it to the General Assembly for formal approval, and then voted against it for the world to see. And most importantly, they could have made it very clear that the absence of a change would result in the U.S. departure from the Council. They did none of the above.
Instead, Obama caved. Saving the Council was most important and the U.S. was going down with the ship. The “reform” process will now proceed merrily through the U.N. system without a glitch. The President of the General Assembly said this morning: “I congratulate the Working Group on adopting the Human Rights Council review by consensus.” The U.S. delegation was all present. Nobody peeped.
The second obvious flaw with the Human Rights Council that Hillary is trying her hardest to paper over is its membership. How did Libya get on the Council in the first place? U.S. Ambassador John Bolton pointed out – when the U.S. voted against the General Assembly resolution that adopted the Council – that it had no membership criteria. The only requirement is this: “when electing members of the Council, Member States [of the U.N. General Assembly] shall take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto.”
The U.N. set up a lovely website where candidates can deposit their “pledges.” Here is what Libya pledged last May, which was just fine by the vast majority of members of the General Assembly. “The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya is fully committed to the promotion and protection of human rights principles…including the right to direct participation in public life…The Libyan Arab Jamahiriya has paid great attention to human rights over the past 30 years.” That statement was good enough to garner the votes of 155 of 188 UN members and to send Libya to the Council.
But Libya was not alone. Saudi Arabia, China, Cuba and company are all members of this morally bankrupt institution which Secretary Clinton is doing her damnedest to save.
And then there’s this: On Friday, March 4, Iran – the country that buries women naked to their waist and then stones them to death for “adultery” – is going to take its seat as a full-fledged member of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
What the US should do - but won't - is to admit that its attempt to reform the Council from the inside is an abject failure, and resign. Instead, it is left to the likes of Anne Bayefsky, Fox News, and yours truly to point out the administration's epic failure to anyone who will listen.
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
