Misinterpretating confusion for weakness?

Joshua Muravchik has written an op ed piece entitled "The Winds of War" in today's WSJ and I urge all to read. In it he recounts the various "victories" which Iran's leadership believes it has recently acheived and, accordingly, is beginning to "sow its oats" so to speak. Muravchik explains wars have begun when there has been a misreading of the mood of the adversary.

In essence it is quite possible the weakness displayed by the U.N., the EU, Olmert, the Democrats as well as George Bush, may actually be emboldening Iran and causing them to believe the West has lost and victory is at hand. This is why I have always urged it is unwise to show weakness in the face of the rage of mice.

It would be ironic, indeed, if the likes of Obama, Clinton, Murtha and Sheehan actually brought about a wider war because their message of defeat is sending the wrong impression to Ahmadinejad and he has concluded we are weak as opposed to confused.

As I wrote recently in a memo dealing with spine and spin, I noted Sen.Obama has some questionable skeletons in his closet. Lasky has brought one out and discussed him and sees Obama's failing to address the implications as a sign of weak moral character. Particularly in view of his "healing" message. (see 1 below.)

Mubarak shows the other side of his face and proves once again he cannot be trusted and his word is worthless but Olmert does not seem to comprehend. (See 2 and 6 below.)

And Eldar lays much of the blame for the recent turn of events at Israel's best friend - GW Bush. (See 3 below.)

A message for weak knee Democrats from al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. Are they listening? Certainly their top campaigners cannot afford to listen because it would ruin their support from the far-left of their Party. (See 4 below.)

Youssef Ibrahim suggests the Administration's bankrupt policies are worse than giving money to a child in a candy store and will perpetuate the Arab problem of immaturity.
(See 5 below.)

Steinitz urged Olmert not to go yesterday but he did and paid the price. Olmert loves being made a fool. (See 6 below.)

Dick

1) Obama and Moral Courage
By Ed Lasky

This past weekend, Barack Obama passed up two key opportunities to stand up and be counted when it comes to making good on his campaign themes of bringing people together, healing, and fighting cynicism. But instead of action to realize his proclaimed goals, all we got was slippery evasion and bland talk. If you think Obama can be a leader, examine his brhavior this past weekend and draw your own conclusions.

Background

While many Christians, notably the evangelical community, are deeply supportive of Israel, the leaders of a few Christian church groups in America have issued anti-Israel resolutions over the last few years. These are often established groups that are politically liberal (and often have become so secular that they are suffering a decline in membership). The anti-Israel Resolutions are typically one-sided and blame Israel for the problems of the Palestinians.

These resolutions often encourage boycotts and divestment proposals. They rarely find any failing among the Palestinians. They are silent regarding the teaching of hate in Palestinian schools. They are either silent regarding Palestinian terrorism (including violence within Palestinian society) or serve as apologists for such violence. They ignore the many examples of Muslim oppression of Christians throughout the Arab world, and also ignore Israel's very highly regarded approach to its own Christian population.

Needless to say, these liberal Christian groups generally also ignore or do not emphasize much more severe severe human rights violations in a wide swath of nations (Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma, Saudi Arabia, Iran and on and on). By obsessively focusing on Israel, they betray a certain perspective that has unsettled many, including many of their own parishioners.

Among these churches is one that does not fit the mold of established liberal Protestant groups: the United Church of Christ (UCC). The UCC, primarily an African-American denomination, has taken a pronounced lead in anti-Israel invective. So pronounced that a broad coalition of major Jewish groups has publicly rebuked (usually these types of disagreements are not aired publicly) the United Church of Christ for its unbalanced treatment of Israel. The coalition noted that the UCC failed to mention Israeli peace overtures, Palestinian rejection of those overtures, and the "brutal Palestinian campaigns of terror aimed at innocent Israeli children and families".

Obama's church and Obama's spiritual mentor

It so happens that aspiring Presidential candidate Barack Obama is a prominent - almost certainly the most prominent - member of the United Church of Christ. Obama has made political hay from emphasizing the role that his church and his faith have played in his life and career. He has credited his Pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for being his inspiration and spiritual mentor.

But now that Obama is in the midst of his political campaign and raising money and support from prominent Jews among many others, he has tried to bury this relationship, because Wright's philosophy and teachings have a very pronounced anti-Israel bias and are divisive on the issue of black-white relations in America. These views of Obama's church would have significant political repercussions for Obama, if they were more widely known. Even Pastor Wright recognizes that this history would be a problem, noting that he has been temporarily shunted aside because his views and relationship with Obama would hurt Obama's image.

How has Obama, who wants to appeal to people of faith, responded? Has he faced the issues raised by his mentor's radical racialist rhetoric and hard line against Israel? No.

He has tried to burnish his image with the help of other ministers who have a less controversial past. Welcome to political theatre!

Obama has a problematic view toward the American-Israel relationship and questions about his commitment towards the alliance have dogged him throughout his campaign. He has had several opportunities to address the issue, but has tried to muddle through. He has apparently blown some prime opportunities to clarify his views, and he has missed what could have been his "Sister Souljah moment."

A missed opportunity

This past Saturday, Obama spoke to a group of 300 delegates at the United Church of Christ state convention in Iowa.

He delivered his usual bromides, including an attack on the "Christian Right." He did not mention Israel or the controversial anti-Israel positions that the United Church of Christ has taken. Not a word. Here is a man who preaches tolerance and the coming together of people, a man whose voice is a powerful instrument and can be used to heal wounds. He chose to remain silent about the bias within his own church.

Obama again had a chance to try to heal the rupture between the United Church of Christ and supporters of Israel when he addressed the important 26th annual synod of the United Church of Christ in Hartford, Connecticut. This event was attended by thousands of members and will help to set church policy in the years ahead (comparable to "platforms" established by political parties).

Did he bring up-did he even touch upon-the issue of the church's views towards Israel? Did he touch upon the church's silence regarding Palestinian Muslim violence against its own Christian community? Did he use his powerful voice to appeal to the church members to listen to the concerns of their fellow Americans who were so upset that they issued a public letter to express their sorrow that the church would so single-mindedly attack Israel-a nation besieged by enemies and threatened by an Iranian dictator with a genocidal dream? Did he use his gifts of oratory to ask the church to reconsider its positions and to reach out to those it has harmed-to help heal wounds? In a word, No.

Within his silence, there is a powerful message.

2) Sudden Egyptian decision to lift anti-Hamas blockade of Gaza, day after condemning Hamas Gaza takeover as illegal coup



President Hosni Mubarak’s astonishing U-turn renders pretty pointless the conference he convened in Sharm al Sheikh Monday, June 25, to discuss the Hamas takeover crisis. Only Saturday, he denounced Hamas for staging an illegal coup. Sunday, June 24, our exclusive intelligence sources report an official VIP convoy headed by Hamas’ interior minister Siad Sayam – who is believed to have masterminded the Hamas coup in Gaza - was allowed to drive out of Gaza with 15 senior Hamas commanders who led the military action against Fatah last week. Their cars bore official Palestinian government plates. Egyptian security units escorted the convoy from Rafah to Cairo international airport, where the Hamas delegation emplaned for Damascus.

Egyptian intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman then held a long telephone conversation with Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, who later made a speech declaring “resistance” (codeword for terror) was the only way forward for the Palestinian people.

Cairo’s action as a slap in the face for the three leaders he invited to the Sharm el-Sheikh conference, Jordan’s King Abdullah, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. He called the get-together in the first place to discuss ways of isolating Hamas into submission.

His reversal was also a message for Israel’s new defense minister Ehud Barak, who attended his first cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Sunday. By helping the Hamas minister in charge of defense take off for military consultations with Syrian leaders, the Mubarak government was informing Israel that it would line up with Hamas against any Israeli military action ordered by Barak against the Islamist rulers of Gaza. Since the Hamas takeover, Qassam missiles and mortar attacks against Israel are a daily occurrence. One of the new defense minister’s tasks is to devise means of halting the attack.

3) With friends like these...
By Akiva Eldar

Heavy clouds will float over today's summit in sunny Sharm el-Sheikh. The Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Jordan and Egypt will be hovering above the four leaders participating in the talks, as will the zealots of worldwide jihad. Iran and Hezbollah will be with them on the other side, while the extreme right-wing national religious camp awaits in the corner. It is hard to say which of the leaders' chairs is shakiest and to guess where the next evil will come from - from Syria, which once again has remained on the outside; from Al-Qaida, which is rearing its head in Iraq and casting its eye on the horizon; or from the Egyptian opposition, which smells weakness in the leadership and is amassing power in anticipation of the inheritance battle.

And who isn't coming to this sad party? The United States, the superpower with the lion's share of responsibility for the deteriorating situation in the Middle East. Who stayed home? President George W. Bush, the one whose semi-hallucinatory dream of democratization has become a genuine reality of anarchy; whose adopted vision of two states - Israel and Palestine - has become during his tenure a distant dream. It is difficult to think of an American president who has caused more damage to Israeli interests than the president who is considered one of the friendliest to Israel of all time. No leader has done more than Bush - by commission as well as omission - to destroy the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.

It was Bush who imposed the wretched elections on the Palestinians, despite Hamas' refusal to fulfill the terms of the Oslo II Accords concerning the participation of political parties in the democratic process. Bush gave his blessing to sacrificing the road map on the altar of unilateral disengagement, an act of charity toward the Palestinian "refusal front" and a death blow to the already damaged peace camp.

When Hamas was dragged into the unity government and the cease-fire agreement, with great effort, the Bush administration spared no effort to defeat the new alliance. And now, after cooking up the stew, Bush is leaving his "friends" to eat it alone, while exhorting the use of obsolete tricks to raise the dead, such as removing checkpoints in the West Bank and releasing Palestinian prisoners. The two-state vision will have to wait for the next president. What's the rush?

It's a good thing Bush wasn't around 30 years ago, when Egyptian president Anwar Sadat decided the time had come to end the war with Israel and regain the Sinai Peninsula. Bush would probably have recused himself, saying something like, "they can handle their own negotiations with Egypt. If the prime minister wants to negotiate with Egypt, he doesn't need me to mediate," as the leader of the free world said after his meeting last week with Ehud Olmert, with regard to the U.S. stance on promoting a peace process with Syria.

There is no way of knowing how Israel and the entire Middle East would look today had former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, considered problematic for Israel, sent Sadat off to work things out for himself with prime minister Menachem Begin instead of inviting them both to the peace summit at Camp David.

American intervention was one of the primary considerations leading to the Egyptian, Palestinian and Jordanian decision to reach a diplomatic settlement with Israel. Bashar Assad knocked on Bush's door and asked him to send a representative to talks with Israel, despite America's overt declarations concerning their special relationship with Israel and their commitment to its qualitative superiority. The U.S. president's shrugging off of responsibility for the peace process that began in Madrid in 1991, under his father's baton, ruined one of Israel's most important strategic assets: the belief, which bought a grace period from its neighbors, that the only place that was selling tickets to Washington and the right to enjoy its favors was in Jerusalem.

Officials in Olmert's government are sighing in great relief over the lowering of the American profile. To understand the depth of these leanings, one must go to Damascus. Vice President Farouk Shara interpreted Bush's statements using the following harsh, but accurate, words: "The American president does not want peace between Israel and Syria." Israeli intelligence officials are already warning that the opposite of peace is imminent war between Israel and Syria. This means that Bush is refusing to help prevent another round of blood-letting. What an outcry would erupt here were he to refuse to aid us by shipping a cannon or a helicopter over, and sending us out alone with the Arabs to handle the next war.

4) Al-Qaida leader urges Hamas to implement Islamic rule in Gaza

Al-Qaida's deputy leader called on Muslims around the world to back Hamas with weapons, money and attacks on U.S. and Israeli interests in a Web audiotape Monday, urging the Palestinian militant group to unite with Al-Qaida's holy warriors after its takeover of Gaza.

The message from Ayman Al-Zawahri, who is Osama Bin Laden's top deputy, marked a major shift by Al-Qaida, which in the past criticized Hamas for being in a government with the U.S.-supported Fatah faction.

The audiotape was clearly made after Hamas' takeover of Gaza earlier this month, marking a rapid response from Al-Qaida's top leadership to the events. Its authenticity could not be independently confirmed, but it was posted on a Web forum where Al-Zawahri has issued messages in the past.

Al-Zawahri urged Hamas to implement Islamic law in Gaza, telling it, Taking over power is not a goal but a means to implement God's word on earth.

"Unite with mujahedeen (holy warriors) in Palestine ... and with all mujahedeen in the world in the face of the upcoming attack where Egyptians and Saudis are expected to play part of it", he added, "suggesting that the two countries intend to attack Hamas to uproot its control of Gaza".

"Provide them (Hamas) with money, do your best to get it there, break the siege imposed on them by crusaders and Arab leaders traitors", Al-Zawahri said, addressing Muslims around the world. "Facilitate weapons smuggling from neighboring countries".

"We can support them by targeting the crusader and Zionist interest wherever we can", Al-Zawahri said.

In a Der Spiegel interview last week, Top Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar was asked if Hamas wants to establish an Islamic state in Gaza.

Zahar answered "of course", but then want on to say that "at the moment we can't establish an Islamic state because we Palestinians have no state. As long as we don't have a state, we will try to form an Islamic society."

5) Arabs losing faith in ‘the cause’
By Youssef M. Ibrahim


Why is America trying to pour new money and more weapons into Palestinian Arab hands barely days after the Gaza debacle? It is an ill-considered policy, both premature and useless. The only sure result will be that warring gangs in the West Bank will use every new weapon to continue the mayhem and that the millions paid out won't buy as much as a bottle of milk for Palestinian Arab civilians. Instead, the money will end up in the pockets and bank accounts of the same crooks who lost Gaza.


Indeed, why try to recreate a world that has just crumbled? America and Israel may want to wait for what may turn out to be a changing of the guard: Arab voices, both expert and popular, are rising in vociferous denunciations of the once sacrosanct Palestinian Arabs.


"It is idle to think that Gaza could be written off as a Hamas dominion while Fatah held its own in the towns of the West Bank," Fouad Ajami of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies noted in a sobering analysis published Tuesday in the New York Times. "The abdication and the anarchy have damaged both Palestinian realms. Nablus in the West Bank is no more amenable to reason than is Gaza; the writ of the pitiless preachers and gunmen is the norm in both places."


While Mr. Ajami's commentary is poised, there is no such thing:


"Palestinians today need to be left without a shred of a doubt" as to what other Arabs think of them, a widely read opinion commentator for the Saudi daily Asharq Al Awsat, Mamoun Fandy, thundered on Monday. "We need to tell them the only thing they have proven over 50 years is that they are adolescents who cannot and should not be trusted to run institutions of state or any other important matters."


While it could be argued that the overwhelming public outrage in Saudi Arabia reflects resentment over the collapse of the much-vaunted reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah — which was personally brokered by King Abdullah earlier this year in Mecca — the anger expressed across the Muslim Arab world reflects deep embarrassment at the discredit Hamas has brought, in the name of Islam, through its savagery against Fatah.


For its part, the Egyptian press has become unhinged, spewing vile denunciations of what is universally known as "the cause" — support for the Palestinian Arabs — and describing it as dead. Egypt's government pulled its embassy out of Gaza on Tuesday.


Kuwaitis, who have harbored contempt for Palestinian Arabs ever since they allied themselves with Saddam Hussein's occupation in 1990-91, also dropped all restraint. "Palestinians are neither a modernized nor a civilized people," Ahmad Al Bughdadi wrote Monday in Al Siyassah, an influential Kuwaiti daily. "They are not statesmen. If what happened in Gaza is what they do without a state, what then shall they do when they get one?"


If there could be an editorial coup de grace, it surely was delivered by no less than Abdelbari Atwan, undoubtedly the Palestinian Arabs most influential and respected journalist and a familiar face on both Western and Arab television.


Writing in the London-based Al Quds International, his painfully felt commentary, "Yes, We Have Lost the World's Respect," argued that "the cause" may have lost its legitimacy: "Many, myself among them, find it difficult to speak of Israeli crimes against our people in view of what we have now done," Mr. Atwan wrote. "I never thought the day would come when we would see Palestinians throwing other Palestinians from the tops of buildings to their death, Palestinians attacking other Palestinians to tear their bodies with knives, Palestinians stripping others naked to drag them through the streets."


All of which suggests letting this Arab storm run its course: It may be a purging of the Arab mindset that creates new realities and opportunities.


For instance, throughout the Arab Gulf region, starting with Al-Jazeera of Qatar and Al-Arabiya of Saudi Arabia, the press has long been controlled by Palestinian Arabs practiced in spewing anti-Western and anti-American propaganda. But the Gaza conundrum has left them stymied, opening space for "local sentiments," which differ markedly.


Instead of pouring good money after bad in the western part of the Arab world, it may be wiser for America to help foster the revolutionary new thinking unfolding in its East — perhaps by nudging along a propaganda purge among friendly Arab regimes.

6)Olmert, don't go: PM humiliated during previous Sharm summit, should reconsider this one
by Yuval Steinitz

Mr Olmert, I am calling on you again to reconsider your participation in the Sharm summit in Egypt. I am doing this after your participation in the previous meeting at the same location not only did not lead to any achievements, but rather, only brought needless humiliation. I believe the facts below will cool your enthusiasm for the summit and require you to reexamine the issue.


1. The US Congress decided over the weekend to undertake an unprecedented cut of $200 million from the defense aid to Egypt in light of its failure to crack down on the smuggling of arms and funds to Hamas in Gaza. By so doing, the Americans are signaling that they are fed up with Egypt's double standards regarding Hamas' rise to power in Gaza.



2. In addition, dozens of American senators recently signed an open letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, calling on her to press the Egyptians to honor their obligation to engage in an all-out war on arms and funds smuggling into the Strip (including their obligations in the framework of the "Philadelphi Agreement.")


3. I remind you that your predecessor, Ariel Sharon, had the courage to cancel his participation at the Sharm summit, despite President's Bush presence, by claiming that the venomous incitement against him in the Egyptian media and the refusal to release Azzam Azzam made it difficult for him to visit Sharm. A year later, Sharon received a royal reception in Sharm, while securing Azzam Azzam's release from prison and seeing a considerable decrease in the level of media incitement.


4. I remind you that several months ago you were warned by the undersigned, and many others, not to go to the previous Sharm summit without
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proper preparation, without pre-conditions, and without a date for a reciprocal visit by Mubarak to Israel. All this was aimed at preventing you from being humiliated. As you remember, Mubarak used your visit to condemn, in your presence, IDF actions in the territories, announced he would allow the transfer of funds to Hamas, and even declared in your presence the initiation of a nuclear project in Egypt?


Mr Prime Minister, your visit to Egypt at this time may undermine the efforts of Israel's friends in Congress to press Egypt to fight the smuggling of arms and funds to the Strip, and even expose you to pressures and humiliation of the type you have already experienced.



Please, reconsider the matter.