State Department spox John Kirby reaches bottom, keeps digging
State Department spokesman John Kirby almost makes you long for the days of ditzy Marie Harf. Yesterday, he reached bottom and kept digging.
At a daily press briefing on Wednesday, U.S.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said Israel, which has set up
roadblocks in Palestinian neighborhoods of Israeli-occupied East
Jerusalem to try to stem attacks, has a right and responsibility to
protect its citizens.
He added:
"Now, we have seen some – I wouldn’t call the checkpoints this - but
we’ve certainly seen some reports of what many would consider excessive
use of force.
"Obviously, we don’t
like to see that, and we want to see restrictions that are elevated in
this time of violence to be as temporary as possible if they have to be
enacted," Kirby said, without citing specific incidents.
Asked on Army Radio
about the remarks, Yaalon said: "Are we exercising excessive force? If
someone wields a knife and they kill him, is that excessive force? What
are we talking about?"
...
Kirby's comments touched a nerve in Israel,
especially after allegations by Abbas, in a televised speech in Arabic
on Wednesday, that Israeli forces were "executing our sons in cold
blood, as they did with this child, Ahmed Manasra, and other children in
Jerusalem and other places in Palestine".
Many Palestinians
were incensed by amateur video that had shown Manasra, 13, lying on the
street in Pisgat Zeev, a Jewish settlement on the northern edge of
Jerusalem, with blood coming from his head. Israeli police said that he
and a cousin stabbed two Israelis there on Monday.
The
15-year-old cousin was shot dead, and Israel said that day that Manasra
was alive and taken to hospital after being hit by a car during the
attack. On Thursday, after Abbas's address, Israel's Government Press
Office released a video, without sound, showing a youth it identified as
Manasra being spoon-fed in a bed in Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital. A
doctor said he could be discharged soon.
I'll have that video for you in the next post, so make sure to check back. And the Prime Minister has called a press conference for this evening at which he will be flanked by Dore Gold (Director General of the Foreign Ministry these days) and Tzipi Hotovely (Deputy Foreign Minister) at which the video will undoubtedly be shown.
But at least Kirby was forced to walk back one outrageous comment.
Clarification from today's briefing: I did not intend to suggest that status quo at Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif has been broken.
Marie Harf and the Washington Post lie about Israeli support for Iran deal
Some of you may have seen this tweet by former State Department spokescritter Marie Harf, and the underlying article from the Washington Post, last week.
.@JohnKerry now: How the Iran deal is good for Israel, according to Israelis who know what they’re talking about: https://t.co/y8YrN3kuoM
Tharoor first mentions Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, and links to a Daily Beast piece entitled "Ex-Intel Chief: Iran Deal Good for Israel."
Unfortunately for Tharoor (and
for Daily Beast commentator Jonathan Alter), Ayalon, who begrudgingly
supports the deal because it is "the best plan currently on the table"
and because he believes there are no available alternatives, nonetheless
has said in no uncertain terms, "I think the deal is bad. It's not good."
Tharoor then cites former intelligence chief Efraim Halevy, but strangely links to an Op-Ed Halevy wrote after a framework agreement was finalized in Lausanne last April but before the details of this final deal were agreed upon in Vienna this month. In a more recent (and thus relevant) Op-Ed,
Halevy described what he sees as several strong points in the agreement
and concludes that it is "important to hold a profound debate in Israel
on whether no agreement is preferable to an agreement which includes
components that are crucial for Israel's security."
He didn't explicitly state which side of the debate he favors,
although there is a sense that leans toward the idea that Israel must
get behind the deal. But like Ayalon, his tepid defense of the deal, if
it is even that, seems to hinge on the idea that this agreement makes
the emergence of any other, better deals unrealistic. "There will be no
other agreement and no other negotiations," Halevy says in his recent
Op-Ed.
What he does not say is that the deal signed in Vienna is, as a whole, "good." In an interview with Israel's Channel 2, he repeats his call for national debate, and paints a much more equivocal picture: "This is not an agreement that is entirely bad,"
Halevy said. "There are positive elements in it." Later, he added
that "this agreement has a number of very good elements for Israel, and
there are elements that are not as good." That quote, with its shades of
gray, might not make for as dramatic a headline as the one chosen by
the Washington Post.
But if equivocation is what the newspaper
has to work with, then equivocation is what it should be capturing in
its headlines—even if that means the piece can't be used by State
Department officials.
Next, Tharoor mentions Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israel's
Military Intelligence branch. It is not clear why: Yadlin, who has
cautioned against panic and excesses on the part of Israel's government,
nonetheless believes, as explained in an interview with Israel's Ynet, "This is not a good deal. This a problematic deal. You also could call it a bad deal."
Tharoor's article intially gave no hint of Yadlin's criticism of the
deal, but sometime later the author snuck in a throw-away
statement noting that Yadlin is "not a fan of the deal." (The stealth
correction appears to violate the newspaper's correction policy.)
Finally, the Washington Post blogger mentions Meir Dagan, another former Mossad chief. It appears, though, that Dagan has not gone on record
one way or another about the nuclear deal finalized in Vienna. (We
looked for any recent statements by him in Hebrew or English, and came
up with nothing. We will of course add an update if we find any relevant
commentary by Dagan from before Tharoor wrote his article.)
Video: Matt Lee owns new State Department spokesperson John Kirby on Jerusalem
John Kirby just became State Department spokesperson last month and I can already tell you that he's no better than Marie Harf.
Watch him squirm as he tries to figure out US policy on Jerusalem while under questioning from @APDiploWriter Matt Lee about Monday's Supreme Court decision that Congress overstepped its bounds in trying to require the State Department to register Jewish children born in Jerusalem (like four of mine) as having been born in Israel.
Let's go to the videotape.
Keep making them feel uncomfortable Matt! They'll find a policy one of these days.
Epic Twitter battle: State Department's @marieharf v. NY Times @SangerNYT
This has to be the first time in a long time that the media in the US has actually done its job.
After Tuesday's New York Times story about Iran's increasing its nuclear fuel supply by 20% over the last 18 months, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf had it out with New York Times reporter and story co-author David Sanger over the story. Or at least Harf had it out - Sanger only tweeted once at the beginning. Harf's argument essentially comes down to this: It doesn't matter how much nuclear fuel Iran has until the deadline, when it will all magically disappear.
Yes, she really said that. Read her last tweet in the rant.
.@SangerNYT You can tweet all the ISIS reports you want - doesn't change the fact that main contentions in your story were wrong.
Ankara (Turkey) Mayor calls Marie Harf a dumb blonde
This is what happens, dear West, when your mind is so multi-culti open that your brains fall out. This is the result of years of coddling Islam. Now, Islam is biting you back. The Mayor of Ankara, Turkey, who answers to Barack Hussein Obama's Best Friend Forever Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says that State Department spokescritter Marie Harf is a dumb blonde (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
The mayor of Turkey’s capital has challenged a U.S. State Department
spokesperson by referring to a pro-government media report that slammed
her as “stupid blonde.”
“Come on blonde, answer now,” Ankara
Mayor Melih Gökçek said in a tweet early April 29. The tweet also
included an image from the recent riots in Baltimore, as well as the
photo of Marie Harf and a caption that reads: “Where are you stupid
blonde, who accused Turkish police of using disproportionate force?”
Gökçek
was referring to a report on Ensonhaber.com, a staunchly pro-government
online news website. “U.S. police displayed a harsh attitude against
the activists in Baltimore. But U.S. State Department spokesperson Marie
Harf, who had been repeatedly criticizing Turkey during the Gezi
incidents, is now silent,” it said.
Many national and
international organizations had criticized Turkish police officers for
using disproportionate force during the massive Gezi Park protests in
2013.
I can't say I disagree with his assessment of Harf. Still, any of Obama's predecessors (with the exception of Jimmy Carter) would have called in the Turkish ambassador over this.
And again: AP's Matt Lee PWN's State Department's Marie Harf
You will recall that Wednesday's Wall Street Journal had an article by former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz that called President Obama's Iran deal a disaster. As you might imagine, the article came up during Wednesday's State Department briefing. The questioner was the always entertaining Matt Lee, and he once again made Marie Harf look like a birdbrain, with Harf dismissing the article as 'lots of big words and big thoughts.'
Let's go to the videotape.
Harf has become a symbol of blind, clueless support for this administration's policies. More here.
Defending an emerging nuclear deal, President Barack
Obama said Iran would be kept a year away from obtaining a nuclear
weapon for more than a decade, but conceded Tuesday that the buffer
period could shrink to almost nothing after 13 or more years.
Obama, whose top priority at the moment is to sell the framework deal
to critics, was pushing back on the charge that the deal fails to
eliminate the risk because it allows Iran to keep enriching uranium. He
told NPR News that Iran will be capped for a decade at 300 kilograms —
not enough to convert to a stockpile of weapons-grade material.
“What is a more relevant fear would be that in Year 13, 14, 15, they
have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at
that point, the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero,”
Obama said.
Iraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Congress on
Tuesday that a potential nuclear deal being negotiated by major powers
including the United States “paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”
Netanyahu, who vehemently opposes the Obama administration’s ongoing
negotiations with Iran, said that world leaders must instead work to
“stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation and terror.”
“It doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb,” he said of the potential
deal as he appeared at the Capitol in front of hundreds of American
lawmakers. “It paves Iran’s path to the bomb. ”
“For over a year we’ve been told that no deal is better than a bad
deal,” he added. “Well, this is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We are
better off without it.”
Quizzed on Obama's interview later Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf was saved by a power outage. Start watching at the 9:05 mark of that video.
Meanwhile, a French fact sheet seen by the Times of Israel on Tuesday took a very different view of the agreement with Iran than the US view.
A French government fact sheet on the Iran framework deal, which has not
been made public by Paris but which has been seen by The Times of
Israel, provides for Iran to gradually introduce the use of advanced
centrifuges to enrich uranium after 12 years, in contrast to the US
official parameters, which make no such specific provision.
The use of the more advanced IR-2 and IR-4
centrifuges, as permitted according to the French fact sheet, would
enable Iran to more rapidly accumulate the highly enriched uranium
needed to build nuclear weapons, accelerating its breakout time to the
bomb.
The French fact sheet also specifies that Iran
will be allowed to continue R&D work on the advanced IR-4, IR-5,
IR-6 and IR-8 centrifuges, the last of which can enrich uranium at
20-times the speed of Iran’s current IR-1 centrifuges, whereas the
American parameters are less specific.
Differences between the texts issued by Paris
and Washington also extend to the question of inspection and supervision
of Iran’s activities, with the French document indicating that the
IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, will be able to visit any
suspect site in Iran — so-called “anywhere, anytime” access — whereas
the US document is less far-reaching.
The two documents also differ in their terminology as regards the scale and timing of sanctions relief as the deal takes effect.
I guess once they sign the deal, we can all read the deal. What could go wrong?
Iran would not
necessarily have to ship its stockpile of highly enriched uranium abroad
under a nuclear pact with major powers, U.S. State Department
spokeswoman Marie Harf said on Monday.
"You don't have to ship it out
of the country to get to a year breakout time," she said in a conference
call, referring to the goal of stretching the amount of time it would
take Iran to acquire enough fissile material to make one atomic bomb.
"You can have some other dispositions for it that get us where we need to be in terms of our bottom line," Harf said.
Obama State Department: Netanyahu apology 'insincere'
'Israeli Arabs' may accept it, but State Department spokescritter Marie Harf says that the State Department has decided that Prime Minister Netanyahu's apology isn't 'sincere.'
"When he says one thing one day and another thing another it's
impossible to tell if he's sincere," State Department deputy spokeswoman
Marie Harf told reporters on Monday. "We can't read his mind."
But don't worry - the 'Israeli Arabs' aren't accepting it either.
Joint (Arab) List head Ayman Odeh called Netanyahu's statement
unacceptable and said a sincere apology should come in the form of
passing laws intended to make state funding allocations in Israel more
equal. He noted that after the meeting with the Arab leaders, Netanyahu
met with Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett and spoke to him about
advancing nationalist legislation.
"This is just another zigzag
by a man known for his zigzags," Odeh said. "He should return the
mandates he received for his incitement. We are waiting for a real
apology, which means real equality."
Netanyahu needs to be consistent like Ayatollah Ali Khameni, who consistently says that Israel must be destroyed. Oh... wait.... They don't believe Khameni either.
Liberals might think that conservatives are happy to have any
opportunity to criticize Obama (hence the “Thanks, Obama” meme), and
especially when it involves an Obama administration statement that is so
utterly wrong as to invite a social media pile-on. But the truth is
there are really two kinds of critiques of Obama. There are those when
Obama gets something trivial wrong, and when he gets something
significant wrong. The latter is no fun; it means lives are in Obama’s
singularly incapable hands.
And getting terrorism wrong is significant. Additionally, it has long
since ceased being enjoyable to correct the purveyors of Harf’s “root
causes” fallacy regarding the economic motivations of terrorist
recruits. This is the national-security version of a flat-earther. We
use flat-earthers as an example; we don’t actually still engage with
flat-earthers, if there are any left. There’s nothing fun about
rehashing an argument your side won long ago.
But Harf can’t be dismissed or ignored, because she speaks for the
Obama administration. And yet it is downright tedious to have this
conversation for the millionth time. Here, for example, is Charles
Krauthammer explaining
the root-cause fallacy–thirty years ago. Harf’s career in the American
government never coincided with a time when the root-cause theory
prevailed.
Which raises a broader question: Where does Obama find all these
staffers who are so far removed intellectually from the issues they deal
with? To populate an administration with such incompetents, you’d
almost have to go back in time. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of
the Obama administration, then, is how easily Obama has been able to
find fellow dissenters from reality.
...
The other part of Harf’s statement is likewise absurd: “we cannot win
this war by killing them.” Harf might be surprised to hear this but
yes, you can win wars by succeeding on the battlefield. It’s happened
before, I swear. Wars have been won–quite a lot of them, in fact–by
defeating the enemy. Maybe it sounds too obvious to be true. Could it
really be that simple? You can win a war by winning a war? Wonders never
cease.
"We need to provide ISIS with good paying jobs"
-- Spokesperson Marie Harf
There should be at least 1 available today at the State Dept.
— WH PRESS SECRETARY (@weknowwhatsbest) February 17, 2015
MATTHEWS: How do we stop this? I don’t see it. I see the
Shia militias coming out of Baghdad who are all Shia. The Sunnis hate
them. The Sunnis are loyal to ISIS rather than going in with the Shia.
You’ve got the Kurds, the Jordanian air force and now the Egyptian air
force. But i don’t see any — If i were ISIS, I wouldn’t be afraid right
now. I can figure there is no existential threat to these people. They
can keep finding places where they can hold executions and putting the
camera work together, getting their props ready and killing people for
show. And nothing we do right now seems to be directed at stopping this.
HARF: Well, I think there’s a few stages here. Right now what we’re
doing is trying to take their leaders and their fighters off the
battlefield in Iraq and Syria. That’s really where they flourish.
MATTHEWS: Are we killing enough of them?
HARF: We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep
killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians.
They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing
them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to
longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these
groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs, whether —
MATTHEWS: We’re not going to be able to stop that in our lifetime or
fifty lifetimes. There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always
going to be poor muslims, and as long as there are poor Muslims, the
trumpet’s blowing and they’ll join. We can’t stop that, can we?
HARF: We can work with countries around the world to help improve
their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can
have job opportunities for these people…
Many things about this story trouble me. I suppose the most troubling
thing is that she started her career in DC as a Middle East analyst for
the CIA. Let that sink in.
Two comments:
1. Who's more dangerous to the Western civilization? Marie Harf or Wendy Sherman?
Sherman is a total incompetent who is in way over her head. In fact, one
has to wonder whether the real reason that Kerry rushed to Geneva last
weekend was because the administration has no confidence in Sherman, who
is nothing but a hack. Here's Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week.
In 1988, the former social worker ran the
Washington office of the
Dukakis
campaign and worked at the Democratic National Committee. That
was the year the Massachusetts governor carried 111 electoral votes to
George H.W. Bush's
426. In the mid-1990s, Ms. Sherman was briefly the CEO of
something called the Fannie Mae Foundation, supposedly a charity that
was shut down a decade later for what the
Washington Post
called "using tax-exempt contributions to advance corporate interests."
From
there it was on to the State Department, where she served as a point
person in nuclear negotiations with North Korea and met with
Kim Jong Il
himself. The late dictator, she testified, was "witty and
humorous," "a conceptual thinker," "a quick problem-solver," "smart,
engaged, knowledgeable, self-confident." Also a movie buff who loved
Michael Jordan
highlight videos. A regular guy!
Later Ms. Sherman was to be found working
for her former boss as the No. 2 at the Albright-Stonebridge Group
before taking the No. 3 spot at the State Department. Ethics scolds
might describe the arc of her career as a revolving door between
misspending taxpayer dollars in government and mooching off them in the
private sector. But it's mainly an example of failing up—the
Washingtonian phenomenon of promotion to ever-higher positions of
authority and prestige irrespective of past performance.
This
administration in particular is stuffed with fail-uppers—the president,
the vice president, the secretary of state and the national security
adviser, to name a few—and every now and then it shows. Like, for
instance, when people for whom the test of real-world results has never
meant very much meet people for whom that test means everything.
2. Harf at least has the excuse that she's blonde - Sherman's hair is white so you can't really tell what it used to be. Heh.
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
