OMG: She actually said this....
Yes,
she actually said it.
From the Right Scoop via Weasel Zippers:
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.
Labels: Iranian nuclear threat, Islamic State, Marie Harf, US foreign policy, US State Department, useful idiots, Wendy Sherman
But he won't say it in Arabic
'
Moderate' '
Palestinian' President
Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen has told one of America's most useful idiots - Marc Schneier - that the Holocaust was the ‘single greatest tragedy in modern-day history.’Of course, Abu Mazen
only said it in English, and he still hasn't disavowed his
Holocaust-denying thesis. He also didn't say it to anyone except Schneier, which has to remind you of last week's
statement to Israel's Leftist MK's, which was
subsequently denied. This is from the third link.
According to Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Foundation for Ethnic
Understanding, a Jewish-Muslim interfaith group, Abbas agreed to make a
public declaration on behalf of Holocaust-remembrance efforts around the
world, as well as to speak out against attempts to ban circumcision and
ritual slaughter in several European countries.
Abbas told Schneier that “remembrance should be an issue of increased
concern to both Jews and Muslims,” the rabbi said after the meeting.
With regard to the part I bolded, don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. And if it does happen, you can bet it will be in English and not in Arabic.
Abbas has been a subject of criticism in some Israeli circles over
accusations of Holocaust denial because of his graduate thesis, written
while studying in the former Soviet Union, which asserted that “a
partnership was established between Hitler’s Nazis and the leadership of
the Zionist movement” and that the Zionist movement “gave permission to
every racist in the world, led by Hitler and the Nazis, to treat Jews
as they wish, so long as it guarantees immigration to Palestine.”
Last year Abbas defended his thesis, saying that he “challenges anyone
who can deny that the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis before
World War II,” according to a report in the Palestinian news service
Ma’an.
He won't deny the thesis this year either.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Holocaust denial, Marc Schneier, useful idiots
Medea Benjamin's miraculous 'recovery'
On Thursday, I posted part of Medea Benjamin's rant about
her group's detention at Cairo Airport on its way to Gaza. I posted it together with the picture above rather than the picture below, because I focused on the group, rather than on the rock star. I should have known better.
By the way, the caption of that picture says that she is being 'welcomed home by loved ones.' Do you see any?
In describing her ordeal, Benjamin
claimed:
Little did I know I would be stopped at the Cairo airport, detained, held overnight in a cell, then in the morning brutally assaulted by Egyptian authorities. They threw me to the ground, stomped on my back, handcuffed me so tightly they dislocated my shoulder, and then deported me to Turkey.
But by Friday, Benjamin had miraculously 'recovered.' Here's a guest post by Kristinn Taylor on Jim Hoft's
Gateway Pundit.
Three days after she claimed to have been brutally attacked, stomped
on, her arm ripped out of its socket and ligaments torn by Egyptian
authorities trying to deport her from the Cairo aiprport, Susan ‘Medea’
Benjamin appeared to be miraculously healed as shown on a video of an interview recorded Friday.
Benjamin, leader of the terrorist support group Code Pink, spoke to
Bill Hughes at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The camera
shot is tight from the shoulders up. Benjamin looks quite healthy. No
scabs, no bruises, no swelling, no torn scalp, no broken teeth. When the
camera pulls back to show her torso, her left arm which she claimed was
broken, dislocated and had ligaments torn, is seen free of any sling,
cast, or means of support. Benjamin is wearing two pullover shirts,
meaning she had to lift her arms to get dressed. She does however hold
her left arm folded against her abdomen.
Let's go to the videotape.
More
here. That's an awfully fast 'recovery,' isn't it?
Labels: Code Pink, lies, Medea Benjamin, useful idiots
Another 'Palestinian' flytilla on the way?
It looks like there may be
another 'Palestinian' flytilla on the way at the end of August. But they're flying to Amman and trying to cross the Allenby bridge. This is from a Google translation:
Since Israeli officials have said publicly last April (see video on this site) that we had been blocked because we wanted to go through the Tel Aviv airport to make us in the West Bank, while the passage would have been appropriate, according to them, to pass through Jordan and the Allenby Bridge, so we decided to take their word.
We wish to respond to the invitation of the governor and the mayor of Bethlehem, as well as that of the Palestinian organizations to come and meet with them this summer, a few days to share their lives and prepare them with the new school year, in a context where the education of Palestinian children is made more difficult by the colonization and occupation.
Women, men and children from several countries have already responded to this call and present have taken their airfare, via Amman. Do the same! Contact us at contact@bienvenuepalestine.com information if you do not find on this site.
We call on governments to support the Palestinians' right to receive visitors, and the right to their respective nationals to freely visit Palestine.
Palestinians urge us, as participants in the mission Welcome to Palestine in August 2012, asking to pass unhindered through the Allenby Bridge, where it would be difficult for our leaders to invoke any "Israeli sovereignty."
The dates are August 24-31. What could go wrong?
Labels: flytilla, useful idiots
Useful idiots attend #Occupy Wall Street Conference in Tehran
A group of useful idiots from American college campuses (called professors) attended an Occupy Wall Street Conference in Tehran.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip:
Jack W via
Weasel Zippers).
I trust that at least these people have condemned themselves to being strip-searched every time they try to board a plane in the United States.
Labels: Occupy Wall Street, Tehran, useful idiots
Obama campaign preparing big offensive for Jewish community
The Obama campaign is preparing a big offensive to shore up its support - and financial contributions - from the
Jewish community (Hat Tip:
Ben Smith).
A group of well-known figures in the Jewish community has been in discussions with senior Obama adviser David Axelrod about how to respond to the criticism, which is expected to intensify as the campaign heats up. Among them: Alan Solow, the former head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; former Congressmen Mel Levine and Robert Wexler; and executive Penny Pritzker.
“We will have highly credible spokespeople and surrogates speak out in a general manner in support of what this administration has done, and articulate it in a way that we think will resonate with voters who care about this issue,” Solow said in an interview. “We will meet with supporters who have expressed concerns or want to be briefed on these issues on a one-on-one basis.”
“We got close to 80 percent of the vote among Jewish Americans in 2008, but we had to aggressively bat down efforts to divide the community and to inflame,” David Axelrod told me. “Plainly we have to be at least as assiduous about it this time. If we’re passive in response it would be a mistake.”
Politico reported this week that many Jewish Dems and donors are privately expressing doubts about Obama’s Mideast policies. But the piece was largely anecdotal, and a recent Pew poll found that a plurality of Americans who identify themselves as sympathetic to Israel think his Mideast policies get the balance right between Israelis and Palestinians. And pundits have been predicting that Obama is perpetually on the verge of losing Jewish support since before the 2008 election.
But the difference now, Obama’s supporters say, is that conservatives are having some success in distorting his record. Obama supporters do in fact worry about the concerns conservatives have succeeded in sowing among Jewish Democrats, and they expect conservatives to invest substantial resources in continuing that effort.
“I can’t deny that people express to me concerns about the president’s policies,” Solow said. “But when I run through the record with them, they are by and large convinced that the president’s policies are correct.”
The effort to make this point, I’m told, will also be proactive, with surrogates publishing op ed pieces that represent the White House’s point of view. And it will include a renewed effort to highlight other aspects of Obama’s record that have gone under-discussed, like increased military cooperation between Israel and the United States.
Useful idiots all of them. No President has ever had approval ratings in Israel that are as low as Obama's. Does anyone really believe that all Israeli Jews are fools?
These people are looking for an excuse to base their vote on abortion rights rather than on the continued existence of a State of Israel. And the Obami will happily help them salve their consciences.
What could go wrong?
Labels: American Jewish indifference to Israel, Barack Hussein Obama, useful idiots
NIF fights dirty, smears NGO Monitor
You will recall that last Monday I reported that
Deutche Bahn, the German national railway, was withdrawing from consulting role in the high speed railway that is under construction between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The withdrawal came about as a result of pressure from something called the Coalition of Women for Peace.
On Tuesday, I reported that - surprise! - the Coalition of Women for Peace is funded by the
New Israel Fund with help from hostile European governments and liberal American Jews, many of whom may be clueless about what they are funding.
On Thursday, NGO Monitor issued a
report on the funding and activities of the Coalition of Women for Peace. Among other things, it showed:
- Israeli NGO, the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), describes itself as a "feminist organization against the occupation of Palestine and for a just peace." It has ten constituent member organizations.
- Funded directly and indirectly by the governments of Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Germany; the New Israel Fund; aid organizations such as Oxfam Novib, SIVMO, and Kvinna Till Kvinna; and private individuals.
- This funding is used by CWP to promote global campaigns to de-legitimize Israel under the Durban strategy, including "Israel Apartheid Week," anti-Israeli rallies, the "Free Gaza Movement"; targeting Israel in the UN; lobbying the British Government on prosecution of "Israeli War Criminals" (lawfare); and hosting related events and lectures.
- CWP is a leader in the boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. With radical allies such as "Code Pink," it advocates boycotting products from all of Israel, not restricted to the "occupied territories." Campaigns include the UC Berkeley divestment effort (2010), the Norwegian Government's Pension Fund which led to divestment from Elbit, and targeting of banks, security companies, civil infrastructure facilities, and private firms.
- CWP's flagship BDS project "Who Profits?" is an online database initiated "in response to the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel," and "a key asset to the global movement of economic activism and BDS."
For its troubles, NGO Monitor was accused by the New Israel Fund of '
knowingly publish[ing] false information."
The most recently available public NIF grant information shows CWP received nearly $300,000 from 2006-2009. In addition to this grant, CWP's website continues to state that NIF accepts tax-exempt donations in the U.S., UK, and Switzerland on their behalf and on behalf of the "Who profits?" project. NIF still has not published its 2010-2011 grant information.
If you go
here, you can also see that donations to CWP are directed through the New Israel Fund.
If you look around CWP's web page, you will find that much of its activity relates to boycotting Israel (and seeking to break the 'siege' on Gaza, which prevents at least some weapons from being brought in to there). A bunch of
useful idiots.
Labels: BDS sewer system, Coalition of Women for Peace, New Israel Fund, NGO Monitor, useful idiots
Hamas' useful idiots: The American Left, Ban Ki-Moon and the European Union
James Kirchick has pretty much got it right when he summarizes the consequences of the Hamas-Fatah unity pact on the 'peace process' and the Western
useful idiots who support it.
Most perverse has been the attempt by the unity agreement's Western backers to conflate it with the democratic movements sweeping the Arab world. As soon as rumor of the agreement broke, the Guardian editorialized that, "The Arab spring has finally had an impact on the core issue of the region, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Carter deemed the agreement the "Palestinian contribution to the "Arab awakening.'" Earlier this year, on the sidelines of the Al Jazeera Forum, Levy told an interviewer that, "Islamists are going to be part of this democratic tapestry. Deal with it. Put aside your prejudices."
Note that these are the very same people who consider Israel-supporting evangelical Christians apocalyptic extremists, yet applaud the empowerment and legitimization of actual, not imagined, religious fascists.
Hamas is everything that self-professed liberals should be "prejudiced" toward: obscurantist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, warlike and rejectionist.
29 United States Senators - all Democrats - decided on Friday that they would not sit on the sidelines as America's biggest useful idiot supports Hamas. They have sent a letter to President Obama urging him to
cut off aid to the 'Palestinian Authority' if it allows Hamas to join.
"The decision of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to form a unity government with Hamas - a designated terrorist group - threatens to derail the Middle East peace effort for the foreseeable future and to undermine the Palestinian Authority's relationship with the United States," begins the letter, which was spearheaded by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Robert Casey (D-PA).
Menendez is the third ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Casey chairs SFRC's Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs subcommittee. The letter was also signed by Democratic heavyweights Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.
...
"As you are aware, U.S. law prohibits aid from being provided to a Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless the government and all its members have public committed to the Quartet principles," they wrote. "We urge you to conduct a review of the current situation and suspend aid should Hamas refuse to comply with Quartet conditions."
The full letter is below the fold.
It sounds like a similar House letter will not be long in coming.
House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) agrees. "No taxpayer funds should go, they must not go" to the new Palestinian unity government, she told the Washington Post May 4.
Also over the weekend,
Israel turned down a request from another useful idiot for Hamas - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon - to release tax money to the 'Palestinian Authority.'
Israel, as of Saturday night, has refused to agree to a request by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to continue to transfer tax funds to the PA.
The request came during a phone call on Friday between Ban and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to discuss the stalled Middle East peace process and the Fatah- Hamas reconciliation.
...
As of Saturday night, the Prime Minister’s Office had not publicly responded to Ban’s request.
But on Friday, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel Radio that the government had no intention of handing money over to Hamas.
“It was important to send a clear red warning to the Palestinian Authority and also to the world that we cannot countenance a terrorist government that on one hand talks about peace, and on the other hands continues, with the money that we transfer to it, to buy missiles and to rearm,” Steinitz said.
But don't worry because the useful idiots from the European Union have already made up the shortfall.
The European Commission on Friday approved the transfer of 85 million euros to the PA at the request of its Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
He had made the request for urgent financial assistance before the deal was reached with Hamas.
But the European Commission approved the matter two days after Fatah and Hamas signed their unity agreement.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Friday that the funding decision “renews our commitment to support the most vulnerable among Palestinians, and is part of our support to the Palestinian Authority’s institution-building program, contributing to the salaries and pensions of PA civil servants who work in health and education. It is important that access to essential public services remains uninterrupted and the right to social services is respected.”
She spoke despite statements by leaders from the EU, the US and even Ban that any new PA government would have to conform to the three Quartet principles: renounce terrorism, recognize Israel and abide by past agreements.
Hamas has refused to accept these conditions.
While Europe and the international community continue to send strong messages to the Palestinians about their expectations regarding its new government, in practice they have continued business as usual, including their expectations that Netanyahu continue to take bold moves for peace.
With all these useful idiots in action, what could go wrong?
Here's the Senators' letter:
5-06-11 Menendez-Casey Ltr to Obama on Fatah-Hamas Unity GovernmentLabels: Barack Obama, Catherine Ashton, European foreign aid, Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, Palestinian tax transfers, useful idiots
The freaks at Mondoweiss go after Noah Pollak
I try not to link to Mondoweiss. Frankly, I think they're scummy kapo Jews and I don't want to send them the traffic. But they've personally attacked my friend Noah Pollak, the Executive Director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, and frankly, enough is enough.
What bothers Mondoweiss is two tweets that Noah wrote on Thursday night when the Vittorio Arrigoni story broke. I have reproduced them below.
That's mild compared to some of the stuff I have posted on this blog about Arrigoni. Mondo refers to what Noah has written as '
disgusting venom.' Well, no it's not.
To anyone who is concerned about the future of Israel and the Jewish people, the ISM is an organization that is a Westernized Hamas or Hezbullah. They are no better. They may even be worse.
Arrigoni himself was a
virulent anti-Semite. Why should any of us weep at his death? Especially when his death happened at the hands of the 'Palestinians' themselves proving that he - and by extension the ISM - were and are nothing but useful idiots.
Now, I'm getting slammed in the comments (and for the most part I have let them through) for calling Arrigoni a useful idiot. Many of those comments are coming from Italians from Arrigoni's hometown (I discovered on Saturday night that one of the commenters is actually a city councilor in his hometown), who are discovering that it's okay to call Jews 'Christ killers' again (I deleted that comment, but yes, I got one like that). But for those of you who are not totally blind, please look at the definition of '
useful idiot' and if you think I'm wrong, tell me why.
In political jargon, the term useful idiot was used to describe Soviet sympathizers in Western countries. The implication is that though the person in question naïvely thinks themselves an ally of the Soviets or other ideologies, they are actually held in contempt by them, and were being cynically used. The term is now used more broadly to describe someone who is perceived to be manipulated by a political movement, terrorist group, hostile government, or business, whether or not the group is Communist in nature.
Anyone think that Arrigoni doesn't fit the definition of a useful idiot? For that matter, does anyone think that Mondoweiss doesn't fit the definition of a useful idiot?
Noah Pollak's head is screwed on as well as anyone I know. He got it right. Mondoweiss - as usual - got it wrong.
Labels: Emergency Committee for Israel, Noah Pollak, useful idiots, Vittorio Arrigoni
Hamas is pleased
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis
stopped in their tracks for five minutes at 11:00 am on Tuesday morning to mark the five years that Gilad Shalit has been held by Hamas.
Rather than the customary one minute of silence, Ofer Ben Tal, one of the organizers for the campaign to free Gilad Schalit, asked the public to stop for five full minutes, one minute for the nearly five years Schalit has been held in captivity by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Traffic jams were observed throughout Tel Aviv, as cars stopped in the streets in Schalit's honor.
"For the past five years, the entire nation has been united in its hearts in the hope that Gilad Schalit will be here with us, healthy and whole," President Shimon Peres said at Tuesday's Negev Conference in Eilat.
"Schalit family, we feel like a part of your family. Gilad is a soldier in the IDF, and the entire country will not rest until he comes home," he added. "The negotiations for his release are difficult and painful. We are fighting an organization that has no law and no heart, but we will not give up."
Noam Schalit, the captured soldier's father, said: "It is very encouraging that the nation woke up and that a citizen's took the initiative and asked 'how can this be?'"
And Hamas is pleased. Because what none of the newspaper websites is telling you is that once again, the stupid Jews called on their government to work for Shalit's release and blamed their government for the fact that Shalit is imprisoned. And once again, Hamas got off scot-free.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Gilad Shalit, useful idiots
Kadima's useful idiot
For those of you who wonder how Israeli 'security experts' could be such fools as to believe that 'Palestinian' savagery exists in a vacuum, please meet Gideon Ezra. MK Ezra (from the unprincipled Kadima party, of course), is a former Minister of the Environment, but also spent 33 years in the Shabak, Israel's General Security Service, rising to become its Deputy Director.
Here's what MK Ezra had to say about Friday night's terror attack.
MK Gideon Ezra (Kadima), who arrived on the scene of Saturday's murder in the Itamar settlement, said that according to his estimations, the crime was organized locally. "The stabbers don't characterize the Arab public in the last two years," he said. "We must renew the talks, 'Price Tag' activity will only worsen the situation. We don't know what it might come to."
Ezra said that he arrived in Itamar because he wanted "to see what happened, and show sympathy for the brave people here."
The
stabbers don't
characterize the
Arab public in the
last two years? Where has he been living? Does he really believe that the reduction in 'Palestinian' terror attacks is attributable to a decline in desire to murder Jews? What could go wrong?
Labels: Gideon Ezra, Palestinian terrorism, useful idiots
