Say it ain't so: Shmuely Boteach calls Samantha Power one of his heroes
Oy vey.... I knew I wasn't going to like this article when in the second paragraph, Orthodox Rabbi Shmuely Boteach described the Irish-born shikse married to a JINO (Jew in Name Only) as 'one of my heroes.' It gets worse from there. It sounds like Boteach was overly impressed with the fact that she invited him to meet with her at the White House.
The principal comments attributed to her come from an interview she granted in 2002, when she was asked to respond to a “thought experiment” regarding what she would advise an American president if it seemed that either party in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were moving toward genocide. Power, fresh on the national scene, was baited and answered that preventing such a genocide could entail being prepared to alienate a powerful constituency – by which she meant the American-Jewish community – and sending in a protective force. From these comments – putting Israel and the possibility of genocide in a single sentence – Power has been conflated with other enemies of Israel.
In our conversation, she rejected utterly the notion she had any animus toward Israel and acknowledged that she had erred in offering hypothetical comments. She said opponents of Obama had unfairly taken her disorganized comments further and characterized them as “invade Israel” talk. She said that if she really believed Israel could even be remotely accused of genocide, then the correct forum for that view would have been in the 664 pages of her book, wherein she details all the genocides of the 20th century.
They're not the only comments - we'll come back to the others - but although I have shown it before, let's once again go to the videotape of that infamous 2002 interview.
Does that sound like a friend of Israel?
Rabbi Boteach goes on to cite another point in Power's favor.
In addition, some leading members of the American Jewish establishment told me that Power was instrumental in having America decline attendance at Durban II in April 2009, otherwise known as the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, which promised to be, like Durban I in 2001, a UNsponsored Israel hate-fest.
How's that for a vague description? Who were these 'leading members of the American Jewish establishment'? Will they come to Power's defense too? If not, why not?
Actually, it 's worse than just vague. Recall that by the time the US pulled out of Durban II, it was too late to torpedo the conference. In fact, Power did everything she could to turn the conference into something that the US would feel it could attend. She is also an admirer of Durban II Secretary General Mary Robinson, who received a President's medal along with the Jew-hating South African Bishop Desmond Tutu - probably both on Power's recommendation.
And then Boteach really goes off the deep end.
THERE HAVE been other comments by Power that have been interpreted as hostile to Israel, but the interpretations rely on the presumption, generated in 2002, that she is anti- Israel. Based on Power’s clarification – and much more importantly, her actions – I believe this perception to be without merit.
Huh? Let's look at some of Power's comments that were hostile to Israel other than that original video and see whether they stand in their own right.
In a lengthy article on President Obama's on President Obama's foreign policy advisers during the 2008 campaign, Ed Lasky had a lot to say about Samantha Power. Here are some highlights that have nothing to do with that 2002 video.
Power also showed her animus toward Israel in another instance, appearing to argue with the New York Times for more negative coverage of Israel in the paper. As Noah Pollak writes:
"Martin Kramer points us to an interesting quote from the 2003 book Ethnic Violence and Justice, in which Samantha Power, one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisers, asks a question of David Rohde, a reporter who covered the intifada for the New York Times. The quote is as follows:
Samantha Power: I have a question for David about working for the New York Times. I was struck by a headline that accompanied a news story on the publication of the Human Rights Watch report. The headline was, I believe: "Human Rights Report Finds Massacre Did Not Occur in Jenin." The second paragraph said, "Oh, but lots of war crimes did." Why wouldn't they make the war crimes the headline and the non-massacre the second paragraph?
(The article to which Power refers is here, and its headline is: "MIDEAST TURMOIL: INQUIRY; Rights Group Doubts Mass Deaths in Jenin, but Sees Signs of War Crimes." Obviously, Power has misremembered the headline.)
Here we have another window into the thinking of Power: Israel is accused in sensational press reports of a massacre in Jenin, and is subjected to severe international condemnation; Human Rights Watch finally gets out a report and says there was no massacre; the NYT reports this as its headline; and Power thinks the headline still should have been: Israel guilty of war crimes!"
Revelations regarding Power's views of Israel can be found in her new book, Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight to Save the World, a biography of the UN official killed in Baghdad in a 2003 terrorist bombing. A series of terrorist attacks emanating from the mini-terror state created in Southern Lebanon by the PLO had led to an Israeli occupation of the southern portion of Lebanon. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon had been inserted to quell the conflict, but was proving ineffectual. Israeli forces remained in place.
Power wrote:
" Israeli forces refused to comply with the spirit of international demands to withdraw and the major powers on the Security Council were not prepared to deal with the gnarly issues that had sparked the Israelis invasion in the first place: dispossessed Palestinians and Israeli insecurity".
The "spirit of international demands" to withdraw? Aside from wondering what that means and the enforceability of such a spirit, how about that phrase "dispossessed Palestinians and Israeli insecurity"? The dispossessed Palestinians had left Palestine mostly at the behest of calls by their Arab brethren to step out of the way as armed forces invaded Israel upon its founding. They and their descendants were denied rights by Lebanon and were unable to assimilate -- unlike the 600,000 Jews who were stripped of their possessions in Arab lands and whom Israel welcomed. The term "Israeli insecurity" makes it seem as if the Israelis were suffering from an emotional or psychological condition. In fact, it was not insecurity, per se, that the Israelis suffered from. It was Palestinian terrorism that the Lebanese government refused to prevent.
There is more from Ms. Power. Israel warned UNIFIL of its upcoming move into Southern Lebanon. Power talked of this move as a "ploy" and then wrote of "humiliation" that was to come as Israel ignored UN efforts to stop them. She wrote:
"Israel had thumbed its nose at the Security Council resolutions that demanded that Israel stay out of Lebanon, and in the course of invading a neighbor, its forces had trampled on the UN peacekeepers in its way".
She quotes the subject of her book -- really a hagiography -- calling the Israelis "bastards". She writes that the degradations suffered by UNIFIL before the Israeli invasion was felt far worse after the Israelis came into Lebanon. She writes that the Israeli authorities "threatened the peacekeepers and denigrated them".
She sat down for an interview with England's New Statesman magazine and what she said may surprise many Americans. During the interview, she stated that President Obama would engage with President Ahmadinejad, North Korea, and Syria. Then she is asked, "...is there anyone he wouldn't talk to"?
She responded that there was no one among "elected heads of state. He won't talk to Hamas, but he would talk to Abbas". The interviewer points out that inconsistency inherent in her answer by informing the Harvard foreign policy expert that Hamas was a democratically-elected government and that Abbas' Fatah party lost the last popular vote.
Professor Power backtracked and then said that Barack Obama would talk to "heads of state" and swiftly veered off into a discussion about how America has supported dictatorships in the past. This seems to cut both ways. Would President Obama talk to Hamas? Is Hamas a dictatorship, democratically elected?
...
Even the interviewer doubts Power's sincerity at that point, titling the next section " The Odd Fib" and indicating that he did not believe she's convinced by what she is saying and that dissembling does not come easy to her (for confirmation of this, see her defensive interview with Shmuel Rosner and the critique of the same by Paul Mirengoff of Powerline.)
The interviewer notes (presumably because America is in the heat of the primary season)
"...it is politically impossible for Obama to talk to Hamas, even if he wants to. She can't say that, though" because of what he depicts as internet smears. The interviewer characterizes these criticisms as allegations that she is anti-Semitic. So far as I have seen, nobody has ever made this allegation. The focus has been on her policy principles.
Then, in the money quote, Power plaintively complains:
"So much of it is about: 'Is he going to be good for the Jews?'"
How much comfort can pro-Israel voters take in a candidate whose possible Secretary of State feels free to characterize legitimate concerns and questions as revolving around the issue of "is it good for the Jews"? Ms. Power might be unaware that support for our ally Israel is widespread across America and cuts across all religious and ethnic groups.
This is what Boteach calls a 'friend of Israel'?
In this article from February 2010, Power was also critical of Israel's handling of the Goldstone Report:
Heading the Israeli delegation was the Foreign Ministry's deputy director for international organizations, Eviatar Manor. The delegation met with officials including the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, Michael Posner, and President Barack Obama's adviser on human rights, Samantha Power.
The Americans were interested to hear whether Israel had decided on whether to set up a committee to investigate Operation Cast Lead. Power asked about Israeli public opinion on this issue.
Power did not hide her criticism of Israel's handling of the Goldstone report; she asked whether Israel's thinking on the issue was "strategic or tactical."
"Is the correct strategy fighting Goldstone on all fronts?" she asked.
A main message of the U.S. officials was that the humanitarian situation in Gaza was directly linked to the ability of Israel's critics to push the Goldstone report forward and the ability to block the report's consequences.
Translation: Power to Israel: 'You brought Goldstone on yourselves, and we're not going to help you out of it unless you ease up on Hamas.' A pro-Israel attitude, Shmuely?
I searched in vain for quotes from Samantha Power decrying Muslim hatred or Islamic terrorism. I didn't find any. I did, however, find this from the New Statesman interview cited above:
All we talk about is 'Islamic terrorism'. If the two words are associated for long enough it's obviously going to have an effect on how people think about Muslims. But I think Obama's going to do wonders for closing those chasms. Even just opening up a conversation is going to get us some of the way. And it's not insignificant that he spent time in a Muslim country, that he is half Kenyan - a lot of barriers have been bust through.
She's likely one of the architects of the Obama administration's newspeak in which 'Islam' and 'terrorism' are never used together (and 'terrorism' isn't used at all).
Rabbi Boteach seems enamored with Power. He has fallen completely for the spin that will try to present her as a fitting choice for Secretary of State if God forbid Obama should be re-elected. Whether Boteach was impressed by the visit to the White House, or by Power's opposition to his next door neighbor, Muammar Gadhafi (which may have resulted in the US supporting al-Qaeda-backed rebels at Power's behest), Boteach seems to have fallen for Power lock, stock and barrel. We should not make the same mistake.
Oh my: JTA ISN'T taken in by spoof of Power's testimony (CORRECTED)
The "Global Jewish News Source" was NOT taken in by what was apparently a spoof of Samantha Power's testimony at her confirmation hearing last week.
Samantha Power, President Obama’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to
the United Nations, said she would press for Israel to have a rotation
on the Security Council.
“The Security Council seat is one that has eluded Israel, despite its
many contributions across the years, and I commit to you wholeheartedly
to go on offense,” Power told Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) during her confirmation hearing
on Wednesday.
Menendez has pressed for such a rotation, which has for decades
eluded Israel, in part because it does not belong to any of the regional
groupings that advance nominations for temporary membership on the
council.
The source for the story wasthis spoof, which was promoted in an email (which I have) sent out by International Solidarity Movement leader Paul Larudee, followed.
Samantha Power, President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace outgoing
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, has promised to push for a UN Security Council seat for Israel.
(Loyalty to Israel is considered a prerequisite for high office, and
creative ways of advancing Israel’s agenda are often rewarded with
career advancement.)
“The United States has no greater friend in the world than the State
of Israel,” Power told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at her
confirmation hearing on July 17, 2013.
At the end of the day, I met with her to get further details. Here is a transcript of our discussion:
Barb Weir: Ms. Power, your advocacy for Israel in
the hearings today is impressive, but how can you get Israel onto the
Security Council? Aren’t most of its neighbors in the Middle East and
the Muslim world opposed to being represented by Israel?
Samantha Power: That’s true, Barb, but we consider
Israel to be part of Western Europe, which of course it is, if you
ignore geographic considerations. It would take one of the European seats and represent Europe.
Barb Weir: How do the Europeans feel about that?
Samantha Power: That’s been an obstacle until now,
but with our urging, many of them will be willing to do almost anything
for Israel. We are also hoping to add Qatar to Europe, which will
improve chances for Israel.
Barb Weir: And if they don’t, what’s plan B?
Samantha Power: In that case, we’ll simply give the
U.S. seat to Israel. That is in practice no different from the current
situation, but if Israel can get a European seat, that means it will
have two. And two are better than one.
I've already posted on the possibility that Samantha Power will become Secretary of State in a second Obama administration. After reading this post, the question you should be asking yourself is why should she bother? She already has enough influence over President Obama's thinking - she is his intellectual soulmate - and he is already implementing her foreign policy without the need for a Senate confirmation hearing or constant Congressional oversight. Stanley Kurtz demonstrates how and why.
A survey of Power’s writings indicates her long preoccupation with a series of issues now associated with Obama’s most controversial foreign-policy moves. In a 2003 piece for the New York Times, for example, Power bemoaned the reluctance of American policymakers to apologize to other countries for our supposed past mistakes. While Obama’s controversial (and so far unproductive) willingness to engage with the leaders of rogue states was initially attributed to a novice error during a 2007 debate with Hillary Clinton, the need to deal directly with even the worst rogue states is a major theme of Power’s second book, Chasing the Flame. That book was written in 2007, while Power was advising Obama’s presidential campaign. A 2007 piece by Power in The New York Times Book Reviewattacked the phrase “War on Terror,” which of course the Obama administration has since dropped.
In an appearance at Columbia University, just hours before the president’s Libya address, Power herself identified the protection of the citizens of Benghazi as the core purpose of our current intervention. Yet it should not be thought that Power’s shaping of Obama’s reasons and actions ends there. Almost a decade ago, Power laid out a series of secondary, interest-based justifications for humanitarian interventions — e.g., avoiding the creation of militarized refugees who might undermine regional stability, and flashing a discouraging signal to regional dictators — all of which were featured in Obama’s speech to the nation. To be sure, these “interest-based” justifications were largely rationalizations for an intervention driven overwhelmingly by humanitarian considerations. Yet Power’s broader and longstanding framing of the issue has been adopted wholesale by Obama.
In Power’s view, to be credible, humanitarian interventions must respond to immediate danger (thus Obama’s waiting until the militarily unpropitious moment when Benghazi itself was under imminent threat), must be supported by multilateral bodies (thus the resort to the U.N., NATO, and the Arab League in preference to the U.S. Congress), “must forswear up front . . . commercial or strategic interests in the region” (thus the disavowal of regime change as a goal of our multilateral action), and must “commit to remaining for a finite period” (as Obama has pledged to do in Libya). Even NATO’s threat to bomb the rebels if they kill civilians (which struck many as unrealistic, and at cross-purposes with our supposed military goals) is foreshadowed in Power’s writings, which highlight the need to police both sides in any humanitarian action.
...
The novel doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” which Power means the Libyan action to enshrine in international law, could someday be used to justify military intervention to impose a “two-state solution” on Israel (apparently this is one of Power’s longstanding goals, although she now disavows it). The International Criminal Court, which Power has long defended, may someday enable the leftist Europeans who run it to place American soldiers and politicians on trial for supposed war crimes. The Obama administration’s troubling acquiescence in the development of sweeping international prohibitions on “aggression” may one day make virtually any use of force not pre-approved by the United Nations subject to international sanctions. These are the long-term goals of Power’s policies, although they are seldom confessed or discussed.
On rare occasions, Power comes straight out and admits that the sorts of interventions she favors constitute an almost pure cost to American national interest, traditionally defined. More often, she retreats into the language of “pragmatism” and “self-interest” to justify what she knows Americans will not support on its own terms. That is Samantha Power’s way and, not coincidentally, Barack Obama’s way as well.
For Israel, which is loathed by Power, this is especially bad news.
Samantha Power had her confirmation hearing to be US Ambassador to the UN on Wednesday, and Anne Bayefsky reports that it went far better than Power deserved.
The actual record, notwithstanding, Susan Rice ended her term by
appearing before the cameras at U.N. Headquarters on June 25 and
reciting a list of Team Obama’s purported achievements. Among other
things, Rice claimed that she had saved American taxpayer dollars going
to the U.N. and had created new “transparency.”
Actually, in 2010 the Obama administration stopped reporting the
total U.S. contributions to the U.N. and has never produced this figure
since. Every indication is that the amount has gone up, not down.
So where does Samantha Power fit in this sorry state of affairs? In
general, Power will parrot the Obama/Rice mantra that it’s all about
issuing in “a new era of engagement to the United Nations.”
In fact, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic
Communications and Speechwriting, Ben Rhodes informs us that Power has
already been hard at work applying the “engagement” agenda. The
specifics reveal a troubling record on Israel, a subject which has
become a touchstone for her appointment.
Speaking to the Israeli paper Haaretz in June – as part of an evident
campaign to repair her pro-Israel credentials – Rhodes said: “Sam had
been the point person at the White House on all issues related to Israel
at the U.N.”
This is not a plus.
The U.N. Human Rights Council, the U.N.’s top human rights body,
might be described as Israel-delegitimization headquarters. But instead
of delegitimizing the delegitimizers, Power has urged the president to
do just the opposite and lend the prestige of the world’s leading
democracy to this human rights sham. Consistent with her advice, the
administration joined the Council and remains a member.
An unnamed “senior U.S. official” also told Haaretz: “Power
claimed…in discussions with the White House… that joining the Human
Rights Council would give the United States better tools to protect
Israel from discrimination…” and he continued: “It was manifestly
true…We were able to rally Europeans to stand with us against
anti-Israel resolutions…creating…a moral majority.”
Here's yet another reason to vote ABB - Anyone but Barack - in the 2012 elections. With Hillary Clinton having announced that she is stepping down at the end of Obama's term, this woman could be Barack Obama's next Secretary of State.
Let's go to the videotape.
Yes, the Irish News is reporting that Samantha Power, the woman being interviewed in the video above, may become the next Secretary of State.
A flattering New York Times profile has increased speculation that Samantha Power, the Dublin-born aide to President Obama, could be his next Secretary of State or National Security Adviser.
She has been the main architect, along with Hillary Clinton, of the Libya policy and has an increasing influence in the White House inner circle.
No Irish-born person in recent history has had such influence on a president. Power, now 40, moved to the US from Ireland at age 10.
With Hillary Clinton due to step down after Obama’s first term, she would be a live candidate to succeed her if Obama wins re-election.
The Times reported that on Monday night last, Samantha Power took to the podium at Columbia University in New York two hours before President Obama was due to address the nation on Libya and received a rock star reception.
Power, who is one of Obama’s key advisers on foreign policy, insisted that Libya was not going to be the main topic of conversation.
“I’m not going to talk much about Libya,” she said, as quoted in The Times.
However, when later questioned she defended the administration’s decision in establishing a no-fly zone, adding failure to do so would have been “extremely chilling, deadly and indeed a stain on our collective conscience.”
I hope and pray that whoever wins the Republican nomination this time will go after Obama full force and not like John McCain did with kid gloves. There is much to attack about Power, and Obama he can no longer disclaim his association with her as he did in 2008.
The appointments of Rice and Power not only represent the ascension of
women to top roles on Obama’s national security team, but the rise of
two officials who have made human rights a priority — at a time when the
U.S. faces an agonizing decisions over Syria where President Bashar
Assad has killed tens of thousands of civlilans.
...
People close to Obama expect Republicans on the Hill to continue
their anti-Rice drumbeat, but they have no authority to stop her
selection — the position is one of the few at the senior level that
requires no Senate confirmation. Power, however, will face confirmation
hearings for her nomination.
Obama is eager for that fight, and was embittered by the attacks
against Rice to an extent unmatched by nearly any other episode in his
fight-filled presidency.
Conservatives responded quickly — and negatively — to the Rice pick.
Power was forced to resign from Obama's campaign in March 2008 after
calling former Secretary of State and then Obama rival Hillary Clinton a
'monster.'
But in the Jewish community, Power is better known for another
undiplomatic 'slip of the tongue.' For those who have forgotten or for
whom the name doesn't ring a bell, let's go to the videotape.
Rice may be drawing the attention, but Congress can do nothing to stop Rice's nomination and it's a lot less worrisome to Israel's supporters than Power's nomination.
Republican Jewish Coalition statement on Samantha Power nomination
The Republican Jewish Coalition has issued a statement in reaction to the announcement that Samantha Power has been nominated to replace Susan Rice at the United Nations, as Rice is moving up to the National Security Council.
In 2008, as an academic who taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Samantha Power suggested
that the U.S. should invade Israel militarily to impose a settlement to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and protect “a new state of
Palestine.” Her writing and public appearances reflected her views that special-interest lobbies in this country (read, the “Israel lobby”) have too great an impact on our foreign policy in the Middle East.
More recently, she served as the first director of President Obama’s
new Atrocity Prevention Board. In her months in that role, the APB was
silent about the thousands of civilians killed by the Syrian government,
the attacks by the Sudanese government of the Nuba tribes in South
Sudan, and other crises around the world. The APB has no web site or social media presence, and has not responded to letters from human rights activists and genocide scholars regarding ongoing atrocities.
Sounds like she'll fit right in the Obama White House and the United Nations.
But her bit of nastiness seems to be tinged with a bit of anti-Semitism as well.
When concerns arose in 2008 regarding Barack Obama and his views towards Israel it generated wrath from Ms. Power,
who was a key foreign policy adviser to candidate Obama. She let loose
in a radio interview while in Europe, "So much of it is about: 'Is he
going to be good for the Jews?" Her writings and sayings are laced with
more of anti-Semitism.
She even went so far as to call Israelis "bastards"
She even promoted Palestinian propaganda that a massacre was committed in Jenin-even telling off a New York Times reporter (!) who did not agree with her view
She also wanted to impose a settlement on Israel, backed up with the placement of US troops (Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel thinks likewise, btw).
Her
adherence to the Soros-funded principle of Responsibility to Protect as
an international policy can be used as a cudgel against Israel when it
comes to the Palestinians and any actions Israel may be compelled to
take in Lebanon to defend herself from Hezb'allah (now busy committing
war crimes in Syria at the behest of the mullahs in Iran).
Ms. Power also derided concerns about Iran's nuclear weapons program in a Time magazine column,
stating that it was a figment of the imagination conjured up and
promoted by George Bush to gin up pressure on Iran . She counseled, what
else, outreach and engagement not further pressure. She will be great
at the United Nations: great for Iran, great for Hezb'llah, great for
Hamas.
She will be widely welcomed in that hotbed of hatred.
Samantha Power, formerly a professor at Harvard, is now the director of multilateral affairs at the National Security Council. She was forced to resign from the Obama campaign after the video I am about to show you came to light, but after Obama was elected, she was given a position in the White House anyway.
Let's go to the videotape and see why Power left the Obama campaign.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the Obama administration is supporting the implementation of a United Nations doctrine that would approve military action in order to prevent genocide. While not legally required to act, the countries supporting the doctrine (including the U.S., China, and Russia) have all expressed the political will to act in the case of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity.
While sounding well intentioned, I fear that the Obama administration and every Israel-hating member of the United Nations will use this doctrine as a weapon against Israel.
...
So here we have a high ranking member of the Obama administration who believes that “major human rights abuses” are occurring in Israel and that in order to correct that situation, military aid to Israel should cease. Instead, this high ranking government official is advising the President that US taxpayer dollars should be used to invest in “Palestine” and to sustain a military presence in Israel in order to impose her ideology on a US ally.
Furthermore, the U.S. is now on board with a UN doctrine that would support military intervention in order to prevent human rights abuses. This is a doctrine that would be enforced by an anti-Semitic international peace-keeping organization that has passed innumerable resolutions condemning Israel yet ignored human rights violations the world over (not to mention the human rights violators that sit on the Security Council and Human Rights Council that will be making these determinations).
Behind a paywall at Boston's Jewish Advocate, Elihu Richter calls on new 'atrocities board' chief Samantha Power to speak out against verbal genocide. The call is likely in vain (Hat Tip: Ricky G).
Rwanda served as a reminder that words kill. It was a lesson we previously learned at the Nuremberg Trials, where Julius Streicher, the editor of the viciously anti-Semitic newspaper Der Sturmer, was executed for incitement. In February 2006, the International Association of Genocide Scholars endorsed a resolution calling on the world to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide, Holocaust denial, human rights abuses and pursuit of nuclear weapons. The US House of Representatives passed its own resolution backing that of the association.
In July 2007, I wrote Power – then a professor at Harvard – asking her to lobby the US government to take executive action. I followed up by calling her research assistant.
Power never answered.
At the time, then-Senator Joseph Biden – chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee – personally blocked introduction of the House resolution in the Senate, according to the Jerusalem Post. As Barack Obama marched to the White House, the soon-to-be victorious Democrats embraced “engagement with Iran” – which in retrospect bore disturbing parallels to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler.
To date, despite economic sanctions, Iran continues to incite genocide with its propaganda, invite Armageddon with its nuclear program, and promote terror with its support of Hezbollah and Syria’s suppression of rebels.
I call upon Power to push for a doctrine of Zero Tolerance for Incitement. That means:
• Applying existing international laws to deter and punish hate language and incitement by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and all other powers in the region;
• Using the lever of US aid to set tough ground rules against incitement for the Islamist regimes who have taken over in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as in Pakistan;
• Using the lever of US aid to stop Palestinian incitement, such as President Mahmoud Abbas’ glorification of terrorists who intentionally kill civilians; and
• Mobilizing international pressure to protect and guarantee the human rights of all threatened minorities, including
Copts in post-revolution Egypt; Armenians, Christians and Assyrians in Turkey and Iraq; Baha’i and Kurds in Iran; and Christians and Jews in territory under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
If Power’s Prevention Board is to live up to its name, it must respond to the warning signs of atrocities, not sit back until the slaughter begins.
Writing in today's Jerusalem Post, Congressman Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) attacks my friend and colleague Marc Zell for an article Marc published last week about Democratic Presidential candidate Barack (it's not politically correct to say Hussein) Obama:
Barack Obama's record speaks for itself. He has longstanding support among the Jewish community in Illinois, who know first hand his unshakable commitment to Israel's security. In the US Senate, he has established himself as a strong friend of Israel. As a candidate, he has made clear his commitment to deepen the US-Israel relationship and to defend Israel's security as a Jewish state.
Yet Senator Obama is still the target of poorly sourced smears and innuendo, often anonymously circulated in mass e-mails. Sadly, these baseless attacks have been transformed into official Republican talking points. In his February 21, 2008 JPost.com op-ed ("Obama and the Jews") Marc Zell, the Co-Chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel, compiled a greatest hits of fiction and distortion about Barack Obama culled from one false email after another.
Wexler goes on to try to answer several points that have been used to attack Obama. But I'd like to note two points that Wexler does not address that are among the most troublesome about Obama. The first is Obama's relationship with Ali Abunimah, one of the founders of the Electronic Intifada - an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate site - who had the following to say about Obama:
Ali Abunimah gives us a hint of where Obama's real loyalties may lie:
The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.
As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"
And Abunimah suggests that Obama's courting of Israel supporters is insincere and just a matter of electoral convenience:
But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency." He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his early backers was Penny Pritzker -- now his national campaign finance chair -- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors.
Obama has also been close to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice. His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more balanced policy towards Palestine.)
If disappointing, given his historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence on the border with Mexico.
Is Obama pro-Israel or is he looking to get elected? And if he's looking to get elected, will he have to be as pro-Israel on a national scale as he would have to be to stand a chance in the Jewish suburbs of Chicago? Clearly not.
The second point that Wexler does not address is Samantha Power. Wexler goes through the usual list of suspects whose names have been mentioned as being part of Obama's foreign policy team (Brzezinski, Malley, Lake and Susan Rice) and either claims that they are not on the team or that their advice has been 'unsolicited.' Power's name isn't even mentioned. Power - a professor at Harvard - actually does work for the Obama campaign and may be Obama's national security adviser. Here's how Power said she would advise 'the President' if she were his national security adviser:
A follow-up to my post yesterday about the troubling views of one of Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power. In 2002 she sat for an interview with Harry Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following question:
Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine - Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?
Get a load of Power’s response:
What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line. [Emphasis mine. CiJ]
...
Just so we’re clear here: Power said that her advice to the President would be to 1) “Alienate” the American Jewish community, and indeed all Americans, such as evangelical Christians, who support the state of Israel, because 2) Israeli leaders are “destroying the lives of their own people.” 3) Pour billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money into “the new state of Palestine”; 4) Stage an American ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian territories — what else can she mean by a “mammoth protection force” and a “military presence” that will be “imposed” by “external intervention”? — in order to do the exact same thing that she considers the height of arrogance and foolishness in Iraq: an American campaign to remake an Arab society.
Note that this wasn’t her response to a question about her personal views of the conflict, or about what she envisions might be a utopian solution to the conflict; it was a response to a question about what she would tell the President of the United States if she was his adviser. Yesterday Barack Obama took a large stride toward the presidency–helped in some small measure by the speeches on behalf of the Obama campaign that Power has delivered–and it is time that someone asked him, while he is still a candidate, what he thinks of the perverse things his many foreign policy advisers have said about Israel and the Middle East.
Wexler ignores these points because he has no answer to them. Instead, he personally attacks Zell.
Unfortunately, Zell is more interested in using falsehoods to win an election than standing up for Israel and American-Israeli relations. But across America, Jewish voters have had no trouble sorting out fact from fiction, and have found no cause to shy away from supporting Barack Obama. Indeed, they are rallying to his campaign in ever-growing numbers, inspired by his leadership, judgment, and the possibility he represents for truly transformational leadership. Nothing that Marc Zell says can change that.
Zell, who lives in a Jewish town in Judea, is nothing if not an advocate for Israel and an American patriot. He has lived in Israel for nearly twenty years and spends much of his law practice on a who's who of clients who are involved in Israel advocacy (I'll throw out just one example: MEMRI). To accuse Marc of being more interested in using falsehoods to win an election than in standing up for Israel and American-Israeli relationships is a charge that is simply beyond absurd.
Does Wexler have an answer to the two points he skipped? I doubt it. Would Wexler vote Republican if he were convinced that the Democratic candidate would sell Israel down the river? I doubt that too. So who is he to criticize Marc Zell?
Ben Smith has some highlights of a two-hour shmooze with Israel-hating Samantha Power at Bir Zeit on the Hudson on Monday.
A foreign policy adviser to President Obama said this evening that the Administration has "rehabilitated" the concept of human rights, tarnished by the Iraq war, in a way that laid the groundwork for international collaboration.
Samantha Power, a senior director on the National Security Council best known for her human rights advocacy before she entered the White House, spoke at Columbia University in New York City two hours before the president's planned speech in Libya tonight.
Obama "has used his pulpit and a number of speeches ... to kind of clear the brush that had gathered around the norms in previous years, rehabilitating some of the principles and cleaning up some fo the associations," she said, referring to international values of democracy and human rights.
"The words 'democracy' and 'human rights' have come to acquire meaning and content that Barack Obama and his administration provided," she said.
"His success in rehabilitating those norms or providing that ocntent has actually made it easier for other governments to stand with us," she said. She didn't refer directly to the coalition now battling the Libyan government.
One of the key elements of this "clearing of the brush," she said, had been "recognizing that human rights had to begin at home, and that his task and the Administration's task was to strenghten the power of our example."
She cited Obama's torture bank, his "return to the Geneva Conventions, and his push to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
"He also renounced the imposition of democracy by military force," she said.
Well, Gitmo is still open and I don't see Obama or anyone else pushing to close it. A bow in the direction of reality perhaps.
But let's leave 'human rights begin at home' for a second and look at some of the ways in which the Obama administration has 'cleared the brush' and 'rehabilitated' the concept of human rights. We'll leave Israel for last:
1. Obama gave a speech to the Muslim world in Cairo that included no words of opprobrium for the hosts but did defend the 'rights' of women to wear the burkha.
2. Obama didn't 'impose' democracy on Iran, but instead sat on the sideline while the Ahmadinejad regime stole an election and then brutally suppressed those who would have 'imposed' democracy on Iran.
3. Obama attempted to assist a dictator in Honduras who wanted to ignore his country's constitution by making himself President for life. Only the brave Honduran people prevented this attempt to impose an undemocratic regime on them.
4. Obama joined the United Nations 'Human Rights Commission,' where he has subjected the American people to the embarrassment of, having their human rights record critiqued by such notable bastions of democracy and fair play as Iran, Cuba, Libya (until recently), China, Russia, Saudi Arabia etc. His representative to that lofty commission voted 'present' when Iran was named to its commission on women.
5. Obama has subjected American foreign policy to the United Nations, where over 100 dictatorships are available to ensure that repressive policies are able to pass.
6. Obama rushed to pull US troops out of Iraq, based on the date on the calendar and not on facts on the ground, thus ensuring that the Iraqi people will not have a democratic government in place for long.
7. Obama has attempted to 'engage' with some of the world's most repressive regimes, including Iran, Syria, Venezuela and Bolivia, and with terror organizations like Hezbullah and Hamas, thereby proving that one can be a repressive regime that disrespects human rights and still be respected by the United States.
8. Obama has sacrificed former American allies - like Georgia and Poland - that were bulwarks against repressive regimes in their respective neighborhoods - in the interest of making nice to America's enemies.
9. Obama has dismissed the idea that the Syrian people might be entitled to democracy by smearing Congress as holding the view that Bashar al-Assad is a 'reformer.'
10. Obama has attempted to suppress the will of the people of Israel as expressed through their democratically elected government.
But in Power's view, all this prepares the groundwork for 'international collaboration.' 'International collaboration' to do what?
I've discussed the possible use of R2P ('responsibility to protect') against Israel a couple of times already. R2P is the doctrine behind the current intervention by the 'international community' in Libya. This is probably the simplest scenario for its use against Israel (Hat Tip: Lisa Graas).
Might R2P also be invoked by Israel’s enemies to target the Jewish State in its war of national survival against the Palestinians? This has already become a reality. Michael Rubin, writing at Commentary Contentions, reports that the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arnç said last week, “We wish that the United Nations had made such resolutions and countries had taken action in the face of incidents in Gaza, Palestine and the other regions.”
Does this explain the surprising decision of the Arab League to allow for R2P to be invoked for Libyan intervention? Recall that the Arab League, the African Union, and numerous other regional developing world organizations originally opposed the concept of R2P. Could the prospect of a UN intervention in Gaza have encouraged the Arab League to back the Libyan adventure?
Even if it didn’t, you can rest assured that the next time Israel feels compelled to defend itself by going into Gaza and taking out terrorists who are attacking it, the League will be crying out for an international response to the “atrocities.” It will contend that Israel is not living up to its “responsibilities” to protect Palestinians. Such an argument will convince many — especially those who are predisposed to hate Israel in the first place. The US will then be in the unenviable position of being forced to veto such action in the Security Council, opening itself up to charges of hypocrisy.
Would we veto such a resolution? With NSC adviser Samantha Power‘s influence on Obama, it is highly questionable. Power is an avid R2P advocate; her 2002 book on the issue, A Problem from Hell, so affected Obama that he invited Power to join his Senate staff as a foreign policy fellow. She also briefly served on his campaign foreign-policy brain trust.
Power is also credited with influencing the president to adopt R2P as part of his foreign policy. But it is her views on Israel that should concern us most of all. She hasa long record of antipathy toward the Jewish State. In a widely scrutinized interview with UC Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies, Power said that “a mammoth protection force” through an “external intervention” were “required” to impose a settlement between Israelis and the Palestinians. Her rather rambling and convoluted statement on the conflict clearly accused Israel of human rights violations, which warranted (R2P) intervention in the same way that the Rwandan genocide did. Such an action “might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import” and would involve sacrificing billions the U.S. spends “servicing” the Israeli military to “invest” in a Palestinian state. Clearly, Power is someone who would readily impose a R2P solution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But with her anti-Israeli disposition so apparent, one shudders to think what this would actually look like.
So how do we fight against this? I would say that when we have to go into Gaza (and it's when, not if), we go in quickly, we get everything we can done quickly and then we withdraw quickly, before the UN has a chance to deploy troops against us. I'd guess we have no more than a day or two.
Andrew Sullivan signs up for Samantha Power's wet dream
Remember Samantha Power, the nut case from Harvard who was fired as an Obama adviser after it came to light that she had called for sending American troops to invade Israel establish 'Palestine'? In case you've forgotten, let's go to the videotape.
Power has a new fan. His name is Andrew Sullivan and he writes a blog called the Daily Dish on the Atlantic's web site. Earlier this evening, I blogged an op-ed from Haaretz written by a woman (yes, Andrew, that's a woman's name) named Karni Eldad, who argued that the 'settlement freeze' is a form of racial segregation that would not be tolerated in the United States. Andrew Sullivan blogged the same column (Hat Tip: Memeorandum) and after disparaging Eldad as a tribal fundamentalist (and accusing Prime Minister Netanyahu of using one of George Carlin's seven dirty words on President Obumbler), Sullivan reaches this conclusion:
Any Israeli government beholden to these people will be incapable of making peace on its own. Increasingly, it seems to me, NATO or US troops will have to intervene on the border to enforce a separation and an end to these settlements for good and all.
What border did you have in mind Andrew? The one where the troops happened to be when the 1949 armistice was declared? What are we negotiating (or what were we negotiating) about for the last 16 years? Why should American troops be used to establish a terror state? Why should American troops be used to fight the only democracy in the Middle East instead of the Islamist entities that surround it? What legal rights do the imaginary people called 'Palestinians' have to land to which the last legal claimant before the State of Israel was the British government under a mandate to establish a Jewish state?
When you can answer those questions, maybe you'll stop calling Israeli Jews 'tribal fundamentalists.'
And yes, I believe God promised us this land - read your bible. But that's not our only argument.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power has all but admitted that the Obama administration's claims to have destroyed '96% of Syria's chemical weapons' are false.
Samantha Power spoke to reporters after the Security
Council received a briefing from Sigrid Kaag, who heads the
international effort to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
The joint mission of the United Nations and the
Organization for the prohibition of Chemical Weapons will end at the end
of the month after destroying nearly all of Syria’s declared stockpile.
But Kaag said the OPCW is still working with Syria to resolve
discrepancies in its declaration, which she said range from outdated
records to discrepancies on the volume of materials.
Power said the U.S. is concerned not only that President
Bashar Assad’s regime still has chemical weapons but that any stockpiles
left behind could end up in the hands of the Islamic State group, which
has seized large swaths of Syria and Iraq.
Gee, ya think? Well, yeah....
[D]oubts shadow the Assad regimes statements. The main one is
whether Assad is hiding undeclared poison gases and there is an
investigation into reports of alleged chlorine gas use in some Syrian
towns. Chorine is not specifically classified as a chemical weapon.
So here are the solid facts – Syria has not give up even a
small portion of its chemical weapons. Assad is a master of deception
and he found himself in front of a naive west that believed him.
Syria has one of the most advanced chemical warfare (CW)
capabilities in the Middle East. The country’s initial CW capability was
provided by Egypt prior to the October 1973 war against Israel. Since
then, Syria appears to have acquired an indigenous capability to develop
and produce chemical weapons agents, including mustard gas and Sarin,
and possibly also VX nerve agent. Chemical weapons agents have allegedly
been produced since the 1980s at facilities located near the Hama,
Homs, and Al-Safira villages in the Aleppo region. However, Syria
remains dependent on foreign sources for some dual-use equipment, and
for the precursor chemicals critical to CW agent production. In recent
years, Iran has been identified as a supplier of technical assistance
and facilities for developing and producing CW-related precursors. Syria
possesses Scud-B and Scud-C ballistic missiles, artillery shells, and
rockets that are believed to be capable of delivering chemical warheads.
Until recently, Syria had refused to become a member of the Chemical
Weapons Convention (CWC)
The problem isn't that the West is naive. The problem is that Obama never wanted to deal with Assad's chemical weapons capacity in the first place (particularly because it might have verified claims by the hated George W. Bush administration that Saddam Hussein transferred chemical weapons to Syria for safekeeping before the Second Gulf War).
Former NSA official joins chorus accusing Obama of ordering Kerry and Power to miss Netanyahu speech
As those who follow me on Twitter know, I've been trying to get AP's Matt Lee to question the State Department on Secretary Kerry's and Ambassador Power's absences from Prime Minister Netanyahu's UN speech on Thursday.
Rick Grenell was for years the spokesman at the US Mission to the UN and is a very well-informed observer according to former National Security official Elliott Abrams (Hat Tip: Abu Yehuda).
Think of how petty that instruction, which can only have come from
the White House, really is. To sit in the seat and listen to Netanyahu
isn’t endorsing his remarks, it is the politeness we owe an ally.
Deliberate absence recalls the years in which dozens of delegations,
Arab and “Third World,” would leave the chamber when any Israeli rose to
speak. This administration is still griping about diplomatic errors
Netanyahu has made, but a refusal to have the US ambassador listen to
his speech is petty and damaging, hinting to anti-Israel delegations
that the United States may be willing to let all sorts of anti-Israel
measures go without opposition or criticism.
This is a low point for seven years of Obama diplomacy. I’ll admit to
surprise that Kerry, who appears to value diplomatic niceties greatly
(and arguably too much) let this happen. But perhaps he knew nothing
about it or was overruled by the White House.
As for Samantha Power, one has to wonder what was running through her
mind when she was instructed to stay away. Is this really why she left
the academic and intellectual life– to be used by the Obama
administration to insult and damage Israel?
Abrams gives Power too much credit - she's an Israel hater too. But his criticism of Obama's pettiness (which we've seen many times before) is spot-on.
You might all want to retweet the tweet below (and this post) to see if we can get Matt to hit the State Department on Power's (and Kerry's) absence.
The United Nations has barred Jews from attending a Monday meeting of the United Nations Division of 'Palestinian' Rights reports Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust (IHRH), a U.N.-approved NGO group, claims the U.N. Division for Palestinian Rights
(UNDPR) has unjustly barred 18 pro-Israel Jews from attending a Monday
event marking the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian
People.”
U.N. security officials initially had granted the Touro Institute
credentials permitting 18 Birthright Israel alumni to attend the daylong series of meetings, which will be attended by the U.N.’s most high-level officials.
However, those credentials were quickly revoked at the behest of the
UNDPR, according to IHRH officials and e-mails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The incident has sparked a pointed back-and-forth between U.N.
officials and IHRH director Anne Bayefsky, who accuses the body of
allowing the UNDPR to effectively bar pro-Israel groups from attending
major events regarding the Palestinians.
Bayefsky is concerned that this behavior is part of a larger trend by
the Palestinians to control the narrative at the U.N. and prevent
dissenting voices from being heard.
Bayefsky has registered her concerns with multiple U.S. officials and
even U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, who has yet to reply.
“This is the face of modern anti-Semitism by the U.N.,” Bayefsky told the Free Beacon
when asked about the days-long back-and-forth. “This is the how
discrimination works in the real-life operation of the U.N. Where is
Ambassador Samantha Power?”
Well I sure hope she's fighting anti-Israel bias like she promised. Still waiting for someone in the Obama administration to speak up about this. Not holding my breath....
President Obama speaks at the Holocaust Memorial Museum
President Obama spoke at the Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday. As part of his remarks, he announced new sanctions against Iran and Syria, "for using technologies to monitor and track and target citizens for violence. " The rest of Obama's speech was the usual prattle about how the Obama administration has always supported Israel and Jews. Right....
Rafael Medoff wrote a much better speech than the one Obama delivered (Hat Tip: Lance K).
“An American ally, Israel, is today threatened with genocide. Iran’s rulers have vowed to wipe Israel off the map, and they seem determined to build the weapons of mass destruction needed to achieve that goal. I have urged the Israelis to refrain from taking military action against Iranian nuclear facilities so long is there is a chance of stopping Iran’s nuclear development through pressure, sanctions, and negotiations. Israel is concerned about the sanctions process dragging on so long that it enables the Iranians to complete construction of atomic weapons. Israel’s concerns are valid.
“And so today, I want to make it clear to Tehran that the round of talks which is now under way will be the last round. These talks must succeed within 30 days, or we will conclude that Iran was never is not serious about a negotiated solution. And we and our allies will act accordingly.
“I want to conclude my remarks by announcing a symbolic step that I will be taking, today, to reaffirm America’s commitment to preventing genocide. Jonathan Pollard has been incarcerated for the past 27 years for providing Israel with classified data that, among other things, revealed attempts by certain extremist regimes to develop weapons with which to destroy Israel. I am in no way condoning Mr. Pollard’s actions when I acknowledge that he was motivated by a desire to prevent a second Holocaust. As a small symbol of my administration’s own commitment to preventing another genocidal assault on the Jewish people, I have today granted clemency to Mr. Pollard.
“Speaking out against genocide, interrupting mass murder, apprehending the perpetrators, preventing the development of weapons of genocide – these must be the hallmarks of American policy around the world in the 21st century.”
In 1976, a man with 2% name recognition decided to run for President of the United States. He was such an unknown quantity that when he told his own mother he was running for President, she asked "of what?" But when you read the story of Carter's campaign it sounds very much like today:
Carter became the front-runner early on by winning the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. He used a two-prong strategy. In the South, which most had tacitly conceded to Alabama's George Wallace, Carter ran as a moderate favorite son. When Wallace proved to be a spent force, Carter swept the region. In the North, Carter appealed largely to conservative Christian and rural voters and had little chance of winning a majority in most states. In a field crowded with liberals, he managed to win several Northern states by building the largest single bloc. Initially dismissed as a regional candidate, Carter proved to be the only Democrat with a truly national strategy, and he eventually clinched the nomination.
The media discovered and promoted Carter. As Lawrence Shoup noted in his 1980 book The Carter Presidency and Beyond:
"What Carter had that his opponents did not was the acceptance and support of elite sectors of the mass communications media. It was their favorable coverage of Carter and his campaign that gave him an edge, propelling him rocket-like to the top of the opinion polls. This helped Carter win key primary election victories, enabling him to rise from an obscure public figure to President-elect in the short space of 9 months."
One thing Carter did not have was foreign policy expertise. As a result, he relied on his foreign policy advisers, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (who was a partner in a major New York law firm) and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor at Columbia University. The results were disastrous. Under Carter, the US allowed the Shah of Iran to fall and the Islamist Ayatollahs to take over. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan and Carter sent aid to the anti-Soviet Islamists. He drastically slashed support for South Korea. These policies are still causing repercussions thirty years later with Iran and North Korea both developing nuclear weapons and al-Qaeda being based in Afghanistan.
But for Jews, the worst thing Carter did was to damage Israel. He forced Israel into a deal (Camp David) where "every last grain of sand" in the Sinai was given to Egypt, down to an arbitration over the Taba resort south of Eilat. This set a precedent in which the Arabs expect never to have to compromise on territory. What's worse, instead of telling Anwar Sadat to drop the pan-Arabism and stick to Egypt's interest, he forced Menachem Begin to accept a compromise plan to grant 'Palestinian autonomy' in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, acknowledging the fictitious 'Palestinian people' as a national entity.
Carter was defeated in his bid for re-election due to the Iranian hostage crisis that festered for the entire last year of his term and due to his disastrous handling of the US economy which saw the Prime Interest Rate reach 20% around the time he left office. More on Carter here.
Why does Carter matter? Because in many ways, Carter is the archetype for Barack Hussein Obama, now the front runner for the Democratic nomination. Like Carter, Obama is an unknown who has come out of nowhere. Like Carter, Obama is a creature of the leftist media. Like Carter, Obama is relatively young (he's 47 years old - Carter was 52). Obama is a first-term Senator from the State of Illinois. That's right - he was elected to the Senate in 2004 and started serving in January 2005, just three years ago. But here's the key to why Obama is like Carter: Three years in the Senate, even as a member of the foreign relations committee, does not give one the experience to run the country's foreign relations. So Obama, like Carter before him, will be dependent upon his foreign policy advisers at a crucial time for both the US and Israel. Without his advisers, Obama has no clue how to set a foreign policy agenda. As former Israeli ambassador to the US Danny Ayalon wrote in the JPost last week:
Since early on in his campaign he has said that he would meet with the President of Iran - but we are left in the dark as to what agenda he would pursue on this issue. With the exception of promoting American divestment from Iran, an idea he adopted during a meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, Obama has largely avoided highlighting what specific demands he would make of Ahmadinijad and any timetables he would establish for the Iranians to dismantle their nuclear program. The threat of Islamic terrorism and the expanding scourge of fanaticism are also concepts which have been addressed by Obama in only the most ambiguous of terms.
As far as Israel is concerned, Obama has yet to suggest specific measures he would enact regarding the Jewish State's Qualitative Military Edge that allows us to defend ourselves against our current and future enemies. Given the increasingly tense security environment Israel is confronting on all sides, now is not the time for American leaders to shy away from such fundamental questions.
Who are Obama's foreign policy advisers? That's the most troubling question of all.
His key foreign policy advisers include Samantha Power, author on human rights and genocide, and former Clinton administration officials Anthony Lake and Susan Rice.
Let's look at those advisers and see what their views on Israel are. I believe that after you see those views, you will agree with me that no one who believes Israel's continued existence is important should vote for Barack Hussein Obama. Let's start with Brzezinski and Malley. Here's Brzezinski:
This ought to give you some idea where Brzezinski stands on Israel. It's from the height of last summer's war in Lebanon:
4. Brzezinski stated: "I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect -- maybe not in intent -- the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages."
"Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing."
...
6. It's becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian, problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other.
The next line - left unsaid - is that the way for the US to extricate itself from Iraq is to sacrifice Israel on the altar.
Brzezinski also sided with Obama, who was criticized by Clinton as being ``irresponsible'' and ``naive'' for saying he would meet in his first year as president with leaders of adversaries such as Iran and Syria. ``What's the hang-up about negotiating with the Syrians or with the Iranians?'' Brzezinksi said. ``What it in effect means'' is ``that you only talk to people who agree with you.''
In today's WaPo, Malley and Miller have co-authored an op-ed, in which they claim that it is in both Hamas' and Israel's interests to work together to calm the environment so that Hamas can 'govern' and Israel can carry out its convergence surrender plan. But for calm to prevail, Malley and Miller argue that Israel and the United States must recognize three 'realities':
First, Hamas will not accept the three conditions put forward by the international community (recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence, acceptance of past agreements), certainly not now and certainly not under threat. Instead, these should be redefined in terms that are both meaningful and realistic: Is the government solidifying the cease-fire and restoring law and order? Is it dealing pragmatically with Israel on issues of mutual concern? Has it endorsed the Arab League's Beirut resolution, which, by calling for normalization of relations with Israel once a peace agreement has been reached, implicitly entails recognition? These are benchmarks that most Palestinians would accept -- and that most Palestinians would blame Hamas for rejecting.
This is nonsense on several counts. First, so long as Hamas does not renounce violence and actively work to oppose it, violence will continue, whether perpetrated by Hamas or by Islamic Jihad and others with Hamas' blessing. Without a renunciation of violence 'solidifying the cease fire' and 'restoring law and order' are meaningless. It would allow violence to resume at any time. Second, so long as Hamas does not recognize Israel, it will not deal with Israel - pragmatically or otherwise. In Hamas' view, dealing with Israel means making demands on it, which Israel has no reason to fulfill. Third, the endorsement of the Beirut resolution is meaningless because it is contingent upon Israel accepting the 'right' of 'Palestinian refugees' to return to their 'homes' in Israel - which Israel can never accept without forfeiting its character as a Jewish state. Sure 'Palestinians' would accept these 'benchmarks.' They'd be happy to see Israel agree to commit national suicide.
A little family history may be in order to understand the genesis of Robert Malley's views. Normally, one should be reluctant in exploring a person's family background -- after all, who would want to be held responsible for the sins of one's father? However, when close relatives share a strong current of ideological affinity, and when a father has a commanding persona, it behooves a researcher to inquire a bit into the role of family in forming views. That said, Robert Malley has a very interesting father.
His father Simon Malley was born to a Syrian family in Cairo and at an early age found his métier in political journalism. He participated in the wave of anti-imperialist and nationalist ideology that was sweeping the Third World.
He wrote thousands of words in support of struggle against Western nations. In Paris, he founded the journal Afrique Asie; he and his magazine became advocates for "liberation" struggles throughout the world, particularly for the Palestinians.
Simon Malley loathed Israel and anti-Israel activism became a crusade for him-as an internet search would easily show. He spent countless hours with Yasser Arafat and became a close friend of Arafat.
He was, according to Daniel Pipes, a sympathizer of the Palestinian Liberation Organization --- and this was when it was at the height of its terrorism wave against the West. His efforts were so damaging to France that President Valerie d'Estaing expelled him from the country.
Malley has seemingly followed in his father's footsteps: he represents the next generation of anti-Israel activism. Through his writings he has served as a willing propagandist, bending the truth (and more) to serve an agenda that is marked by anti-Israel bias; he heads a group of Middle East policy advisers for a think-tank funded (in part) by anti-Israel billionaire activist George Soros; and now is on the foreign policy staff of a leading Presidential contender. Each step up the ladder seems to be a step closer towards his goal of empowering radicals and weakening the ties between American and our ally Israel.
Robert Malley's writings strike me as being akin to propaganda. One notable example is an op-ed that was published in the New York Times (Fictions About the Failure at Camp David). The column indicted Israel for not being generous enough at Camp David and blamed the failure of the talks on the Israelis.
Malley has repeated this line of attack in numerous op-eds over the years, often co-writing with Hussein Agha, a former adviser to Yasser Arafat (see, for example, Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors ). He was also believed to be the chief source for an article by Deborah Sontag that whitewashed Arafat's role in the collapse of the peace process, an article that has been widely criticized as riddled with errors and bias.
Malley is a revisionist and his views are sharply at odds with the views of others who participated at Camp David, including Ambassador Dennis Ross and President Bill Clinton. Malley's myth-making has been peddled in the notably anti-Israel magazine, Counterpunch and by Norman Finkelstein, the failed academic recently denied tenure at DePaul University . Malley's Camp David propaganda has also become fodder for Palestinians, Arab rejectionists, and anti-Israel activists across the world.
His story of the talks is also plain wrong.
Samantha Power may be even worse. This is from Noah Pollak writing at Contentions:
A follow-up to my post yesterday about the troubling views of one of Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, Samantha Power. In 2002 she sat for an interview with Harry Kreisler, the director of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley. Kreisler asked her the following question:
Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine - Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?
Get a load of Power’s response:
What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.
...
Just so we’re clear here: Power said that her advice to the President would be to 1) “Alienate” the American Jewish community, and indeed all Americans, such as evangelical Christians, who support the state of Israel, because 2) Israeli leaders are “destroying the lives of their own people.” 3) Pour billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money into “the new state of Palestine”; 4) Stage an American ground invasion of Israel and the Palestinian territories — what else can she mean by a “mammoth protection force” and a “military presence” that will be “imposed” by “external intervention”? — in order to do the exact same thing that she considers the height of arrogance and foolishness in Iraq: an American campaign to remake an Arab society.
Note that this wasn’t her response to a question about her personal views of the conflict, or about what she envisions might be a utopian solution to the conflict; it was a response to a question about what she would tell the President of the United States if she was his adviser. Yesterday Barack Obama took a large stride toward the presidency–helped in some small measure by the speeches on behalf of the Obama campaign that Power has delivered–and it is time that someone asked him, while he is still a candidate, what he thinks of the perverse things his many foreign policy advisers have said about Israel and the Middle East.
In 2003, Anthony Lake (along with Brzezinski, among others) signed on a letter supporting Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo's 'Geneva Peace Initiative':
The Geneva and People’s Voice Initiatives ['People's Voice' is Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh. CiJ] both reflect that public opinion, and can help give it new momentum. On the Israeli side, they can help undo the myths taking hold since the collapse of the peace process and onset of violence: that the Palestinian people are not prepared to accept a two state solution and Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. On the Palestinian side, they can offer an alternative to the current mindset that sees in violence the only possible means of ending the occupation. They send a powerful signal that an alternative to the current situation exists. They have the potential to transform the domestic political dynamics on both sides.
International support will be crucial to translate these endeavors into a concrete mechanism to bring about a lasting peace. The international players most relevant for this purpose – the U.S., E.U., Russia, UN ‘Quartet’, and the members of the Arab League – should wholeheartedly back these initiatives. They should urge both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority to be guided by the outcomes most of their peoples want. And they should make clear their own willingness to lend all the political, economic and military support needed to help implement a comprehensive peace agreement.
It goes without saying that neither of those 'plans' reflects Israeli public opinion.
Then there's Susan Rice and here's Ed Lasky's take on her:
Susan Rice was John Kerry's chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. One of the major steps Kerry suggested for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint James Baker and Jimmy Carter as negotiators. When furor erupted at the prospect of two of the most ardent foes of Israel being suggested to basically ride "roughshod" over Israel, Kerry backtracked and blamed his staff for the idea. His staff was Susan Rice.
Supporters of Israel must be deeply troubled by the prospect of Brzezinski, Malley, Power, Lake and Rice running US foreign policy for the next four years. Therefore, people who support Israel should not support the candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama.
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
Oy vey.... I knew I wasn't going to like this article when in the second paragraph, Orthodox Rabbi Shmuely Boteach described the Irish-born shikse married to a JINO (Jew in Name Only) as 'one of my heroes.' It gets worse from there. It sounds like Boteach was overly impressed with the fact that she invited him to meet with her at the White House. 
