Labels: Harry S. Truman, Yom HaAtzmaut
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:46 PM
2 comments
Labels: Harry S. Truman, Ruby Rivlin
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:01 PM
0 comments
DEMOCRATS BELIEVE in furthering human rights and promoting liberty around the world. But Obama completely misreads the international scene. He called Syria’s Assad a “reformer,” yet has remained silent as Assad slaughters his own people. He abandoned president Hosni Mubarak to the Egyptian mobs. In addition, he allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to take control, not only threatening Israel but also terrorizing Egypt’s minorities.Read it all.
Nowhere has President Obama failed to live up to Democratic ideals more than in his relationship with democratic Israel. From his creation of “daylight” between our countries to constant public criticism of Israeli policy – does Obama do this to any other country? – Obama has allowed severe deterioration of our special relationship just as Israel and the world face extreme danger.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S open hostility to Israel’s prime minister, and his insulting true feelings caught on an open microphone, indicate antipathy towards the citizens of Israel. Obama’s administration does not even maintain symbolic gestures: at the recent opening of the United Nations Assembly, the United States sat and listened to the address by the president of Iran, yet Ambassador Rice was absent during the entire presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. This wasn’t lost on the leaders of Israel’s enemies.
Coming from Missouri, I take immense pride that President Truman had the courage, conviction and moral compass to recognize the nascent state of Israel. By comparison, President Obama has steered our relationship to an abysmal low.
In reviewing the above, I see no choice but to switch sides and cast my vote for the Republican candidate for President Mitt Romney, who better embodies our Democratic ideals. I ask you to join me.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, Harry S. Truman, Mitt Romney, Obama's obsession with Israel
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:10 PM
1 comments
Pity Josh Block."I'm glad we all know where everyone stands, even if they've decided to do it on Christmas Eve so nobody would notice," Block said. "Siding against people who raise concerns about this kind of speech clearly delineates where these progressive organizations are coming from."The original Truman - Harry - must be rolling over in his grave. He, like me, grew up believing that the Democratic party stood for free speech. As it happens, he was also the President who defied the State Department to make the United States the first country to recognize the nascent state of Israel. But the Democrats have replaced free speech with politically correct speech and insisted that all keep to the party line.
...
"This has nothing to do with your policy views, and is a decision solely made on the basis of the need for this community to privilege the ability to debate difficult topics freely, without fear of mischaracterization or character attacks," she said in the email. "Your actions outside the community have caused too many to fear conversation within the community. That fear is not baseless, given your own actions. As the point of the Truman Fellowship is to help the next generation of leaders think about hard topics together, we need people to feel that they can debate with security."
Kleinfeld's concern about open debate comes after decades of heated and sometimes personal debate inside the Democratic Party on questions of the Middle East. That argument has long run in both directions, and Truman is choosing a side here.
Block was fired, according to the Smith story, for calling out progressives for using inflammatory terms like Israel-Firster which prey upon ages-old anti-Semitic stereotypes of Jews being stateless and disloyal. I have pointed out the origins and use of “Israel-Firster” term many times before with regard to Glenn Greenwald, who stands by the term.For decades we were told that the Democrats were the party that was pro-Israel, and that it was the Republicans who were in bed with Arab oil interests and could not be trusted. That has now come full circle.
It would be easy to dismiss this incident as meaningless Beltway cat fighting, except for the fact that the nasty cats are the ones who seek to alter the historic relationship between the U.S. and Israel.
Labels: anti-Israel obsession, Harry S. Truman, National Democratic Party
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:45 PM
3 comments
Yoram Ettinger writes that saying 'no' - even to the United States - need not be the end of the World for Israel. In fact, Ettinger claims that saying no has worked out quite well. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. In 1982, he launched a comprehensive war on the Palestinian Liberation Organization's terrorist headquarters in Lebanon. Both operations were executed irrespective of bullying and pressure from the U.S. and notwithstanding the fragile 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Begin realized that failing to eradicate these threats would imperil Israel's survival, erode its power of deterrence and thus undermine Israel's deterrence-driven peace with Egypt and its strategic cooperation with the U.S.Read the whole thing.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Israel-Egypt peace treaty did not collapse. Once again, Arab leaders did not rush to rescue the PLO, demonstrating that the Palestinian issue was not a crown jewel of Arab policymaking. Moreover, Egypt – just like all other Arab countries – would not sacrifice its own national interests on the altar of the Palestinian issue.
While the U.S. Administration condemned Israel for the large scale military operations, and imposed a brief military embargo, these operations resulted in the 1981 and 1983 strategic Memoranda of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, which enhanced joint national security projects, upgrading Israel's long-term strategic posture.
From 1983 to 1992, during his two terms as prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir was severely criticized by U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush for crushing Palestinian terrorism during the First Intifada and expanding Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. At the same time, however, U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation was bolstered at an unprecedented level while he was in power. Washington recognized that U.S.-Israel cooperation never revolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict. Mutually-beneficial U.S.-Israel ties were based upon shared values, common threats such as Islamic terrorism, ballistic missiles and rogue regimes, and joint interests such as research and development and job creation in the high-tech market and in the defense industries.
In August 1948, U.S. Ambassador to Israel James McDonald recorded Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's response to the American demand (accompanied by a regional military embargo) to end the "occupation" of Arab land or agree to a land swap, to accept the internationalization of Jerusalem and to allow the return of the Arab refugees: "Speaking with solemn emphasis, [Ben Gurion] added that as much as Israel desired friendship with the U.S. and full cooperation with it and the U.N., there were limits beyond which it could go. Israel cannot yield to anything which, in its judgment, would threaten its independence or its security. The very fact that Israel is a small state makes more necessary the scrupulous defense of its own interests; otherwise it would be lost … Ben Gurion warned President [Harry S.] Truman and the State Department that they would be gravely mistaken if they assumed that the threat or even the use of U.N. sanctions would force Israel to yield on issues considered vital to its independence and security. [He] left no doubt that he was determined to resist, at whatever cost, 'unjust and impossible demands.' On these he could not compromise ["My Mission," 1951, pp. 49-50]."
Ben Gurion's defiance transformed Washington's image of the Jewish state from a strategic liability to a potential strategic asset.
Labels: David Ben Gurion, George H. W. Bush, Harry S. Truman, Menachem Begin, Ronald Reagan, Yitzchak Shamir
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:59 AM
2 comments
Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who passed away early Tuesday morning, was a friend of Israel. Born to a mother whose family was Jewish, he grew up an atheist but an idealist. He was not prominently involved in American-Israeli relations, but in a column in the Washington Post two years ago, he wrote that President Truman should be admired for having recognized Israel as a state in 1948.Wow.
His article also shed light on the deep animosity of the State Department towards Israel that has plagued Israeli governments ever since.
“In the celebrations next week surrounding Israel's 60th anniversary, it should not be forgotten that there was an epic struggle in Washington over how to respond to Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948,” Holbrooke wrote.
“The British planned to leave Palestine at midnight on May 14. At that moment, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, would proclaim the new (and still unnamed) Jewish state. The neighboring Arab states warned that fighting, which had already begun, would erupt into full-scale war at that moment.
"The Jewish Agency proposed partitioning Palestine into two parts -- one Jewish, one Arab. But the State and Defense departments backed the British plan to turn Palestine over to the United Nations. In March, Truman {pictured) privately promised Chaim Weizmann, the future president of Israel, that he would support partition -- only to learn the next day that the American ambassador to the United Nations had voted for U.N. trusteeship. Enraged, Truman wrote a private note on his calendar, ‘The State Dept. pulled the rug from under me today. The first I know about it is what I read in the newspapers! Isn't that hell? I'm now in the position of a liar and double-crosser. I've never felt so low in my life. . . .’
“To overrule State would mean Truman taking on Marshall, whom he regarded as ‘the greatest living American.’
"Beneath the surface lay unspoken but real anti-Semitism on the part of some (but not all) policymakers. The position of those opposing recognition was simple -- oil, numbers and history. ‘There are thirty million Arabs on one side and about 600,000 Jews on the other,’ Defense Secretary Forrestal told [Clark] Clifford. ‘Why don't you face up to the realities?’
“On May 12, Truman held a meeting in the Oval Office to decide the issue. Marshall and his universally respected deputy, Robert Lovett, made the case for delaying recognition -- and ‘delay’ really meant ‘deny.’ Truman asked his young aide, Clark Clifford, to present the case for immediate recognition.
“In the next two days, Clifford looked for ways to get Marshall to accept recognition. Lovett, although still opposed to recognition, finally talked a reluctant Marshall into remaining silent if Truman acted. With only a few hours left until midnight in Tel Aviv, Clifford told the Jewish Agency to request immediate recognition of the new state, which still lacked a name. Truman announced recognition at 6:11 p.m. on May 14 -- 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion's declaration of independence in Tel Aviv. So rapidly was this done that in the official announcement, the typed words "Jewish State" are crossed out, replaced in Clifford's handwriting with "State of Israel." Thus the United States became the first nation to recognize Israel, as Truman and Clifford wanted.”
Holbrooke added that despite the arguments and political considerations, “Israel was going to come into existence whether or not Washington recognized it. But without American support from the very beginning, Israel's survival would have been at even greater risk…. Truman's decision, although opposed by almost the entire foreign policy establishment, was the right one -- and despite complicated consequences that continue to this day, it is a decision all Americans should recognize and admire.”
Labels: Arabists, Harry S. Truman, recognition of State of Israel, Richard Holbrooke, US State Department
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:59 PM
1 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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