All we need is some "soul food!"

Will anyone believe this administration after Iraq and WMD besides the Israelis? (See 1 below.)

What now Jimmy? Your brothers at Hamas have rejected the Egyptian peace deal and will be escalating their attacks on Israel. But then there is another side to the same story. I am betting that the first version is correct but in the Middle East one never knows.(See 2 and 3 below.)

Michelle Obama believes we need a dose of "Soul Food" and with her husband as chief chef we will all be saved. Caroline Glick is not so sure we should stomach this approach. (See 4 below.)

A different perspective - Henninger says Obama is their man! (See 5 below.)

Finally, The Christian Science Monitor discusses the challenge facing super Delegates and how Hillary and Pennsylvania have complicated their lives! (See 6 below.)

Dick


1) White House is convinced North Korea helped Syria build secret nuclear reactor


“We have good reason to believe that the reactor, which was damaged beyond repair on Sept. 6 of last year was not intended for peaceful purposes,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino in a statement Thursday, April 24, after intelligence officials briefed US lawmakers about the Syrian nuclear facility destroyed by Israel last year.

A Syrian nuclear reactor built with North Korean help was weeks away from functioning, a top U.S. official told lawmakers.

The Syrian ambassador denied the report as a “fantasy.” He said the US had a record of “fabricating evidence of nuclear activity in its allegations against Iraq before the 2003 invasion.”

Perino's statement, which broke White House silence on the raid, did not mention Israel. It said Syria was building a "covert nuclear reactor" in its eastern desert that was capable of producing plutonium.

Syria did not inform the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency about the construction of the reactor and after it was destroyed, Syria "moved quickly to bury evidence of its existence," the White House said.

The United States has long been "seriously concerned" about North Korea's nuclear weapons program and its proliferation activities and Pyongyang's cooperation with Syria was a "dangerous manifestation" of those activities, the White House said.

North Korea missed a December 31 deadline to make a declaration of its nuclear programs in a deal with the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea.

"The construction of this (Syrian) reactor was a dangerous and potentially destabilizing development for the region and the world," Perino said.

That development underscored the international community was right to be concerned about the nuclear activities of Iran and "must take further steps" to confront that challenge, she said.

2)Exclusive: Hamas rejects Egyptian-brokered deal for Gaza truce

The Palestinian terrorist group’s reply was handed to Egyptian intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman Thurs. April 24. It was delivered by Hamas leaders Mahmoud a-Zahar and Siad Siyam, who flew in to Cairo with their orders after Hamas’ Damascus-based leaders conferred with Syrian and Iranian intelligence officers in the Syrian capital. They also ordered Hamas-Gaza to step up its attacks on Israel.

Sources report:

The Hamas reply came in the form of consent to a six-month truce wrapped round in blatantly unacceptable conditions: Egypt and Israel must open all Gaza Strip border crossings and remove the economic and physical blockade clamped down on the terrorist-ruled enclave; Israeli cease all its counter-terror operations in stages, first in Gaza and then on the West Bank.

Hamas did accept Cairo’s requests for the return of European monitors which they had chased away from the Rafah crossing to Sinai. They also agreed to enter into reconciliation talks with the rival Fatah – to which the US and Israel does not agree.

The first sign of the negative reply ahead for Israel was Hamas’ call Thursday morning to the Gazan masses to stage “angry protests” after Friday worship at the mosques by mobbing the Erez border crossing to Israel and the Rafah crossing into Sinai.

Bracing for another round of Hamas-led violence, Egypt and Israel placed their forces went on high alert along their frontier and their borders with the Gaza Strip. The Israeli high command had been warned that Hamas was preparing to follow the protests up with another round of attacks on the Gazan-Israel border after earlier rounds in the last two weeks temporarily sealed the crossings. Wednesday, Israel reopened all the Gaza transit points for dozens of trucks to bring food, essential supplies and fuel to the Palestinian population.

3) Hamas set to agree on staged truce starting in Gaza Strip
By Avi Issacharoff, Amos Harel, and Yuval Azoulay

A delegation from Hamas on Thursday told Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman that Hamas is prepared to accept a temporary cease-fire with Israel, to begin in the Gaza Strip. The deal would extend after a predetermined time to the West Bank.

Hamas had previously demanded that a truce apply simultaneously to both areas, but Israel refused. In accepting Egypt's compromise proposal, Hamas can claim that it pushed Israel into agreeing to a cease-fire in both places.

The delegation from Gaza that met with Egyptian mediators included senior Hamas representatives Mahmoud Zahar and Saeed Seyam, who arrived in Cairo after consultations with Hamas leaders in Damascus.

According to Hamas' truce announcement, Israel will immediately cease all military activity in the Gaza Strip: arrests, assassinations and field operations. In return, Hamas will ensure an end to cross-border rocket fire at Israel or other militant operations, including arms smuggling into Gaza.

In addition, Israel and Egypt will permit the opening of the Rafah crossing, and ease cargo shipments into and out of the Strip.

Suleiman has called a meeting for next week with representatives of all the Palestinian factions to discuss the planned truce, as well as resolving the internal Palestinian conflict.

At the end of the meeting next week, Egypt is supposed to announce that a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is in effect.

Israel on Thursday refrained from responding officially to Hamas' announcement. In conversations with Egyptian mediators in recent days, Israel clarified its position on the truce proposal and apparently accepted most of its details.

Now Israel will monitor Hamas' compliance with its commitments to Egypt. If Hamas manages to keep things calm and rein in terrorist activity by the other Palestinian factions, the Israel Defense Forces will be instructed to refrain from taking offensive action in the Gaza Strip.

No such order was given on Thursday. Apparently, however, as of Friday a more cautious approach will be put in place for authorizing such operations, taking into consideration the new situation. Activity will focus on immediate warnings of planned terror attacks, which must be dealt with.

So far, the army has not received orders to lift ¬ even partially ¬ the siege on the Gaza Strip crossings.

Routine IDF activity

Before dawn on Thursday, before Hamas made its announcement, IDF troops from the Givati and Golani brigades operated in the southern and northern parts of the Gaza Strip. The IDF said this was routine anti-terror activity in these sectors.

During this activity the IDF arrested 30 Palestinians for interrogation in Israel.
There were also several airstrikes against armed Palestinian cells, some of which the
IDF reported hitting.

IDF soldiers operating east of Khan Yunis clashed with Palestinian militants. According to Palestinian sources, three armed members of Islamic Jihad were wounded in the firefight.

On the outskirts of Beit Hanun, a Givati force searching areas from which Qassam rockets are launched at Sderot clashed with armed Palestinians, the IDF said. It said an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at militants, and Palestinian sources claimed a 52-year-old civilian man was killed.


4) Obama the Savior
By Caroline B. Glick



Speaking in February of the man she knows better than anyone else does, Michelle Obama said that her husband, Illinois Senator and candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination Barack Obama, is the only candidate for president who understands that before America can solve its problems, Americans have to fix their "broken souls."

She also said that her husband's unique understanding of the state of souls of the American people makes him uniquely qualified to be President. Obama can do what his opponent in the Democratic race Senator Hillary Clinton, and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, cannot do. He can heal his countrymen's broken souls. He will redeem them.

But then, saving souls is hard work, and Mrs. Obama won't place the whole burden on her husband. He'll make the Americans work for him. As she put it, "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

At base, Mrs. Obama's statement is nothing less than a renunciation of democracy and an embrace of fascism. The basic idea of liberty is that people have a natural right to live their lives as usual and to be uninvolved and uninformed. And they certainly have a right to expect that their government will butt out of their souls.


IN CONTRAST, fascist societies, as Jonah Goldberg notes in the latest issue of National Review, are all about the notions of "unity" and "change" and melding our broken souls into a fixed, united will for change that Obama has made the core theme of his campaign. Goldberg compared "unity" with "patriotism," and explained that while the latter connotes the willingness to defend the moral values of a society, unity is bereft of any moral content. "The only value of unity is strength, strength in numbers - and... that is a fascist value. That's the symbolism of the fasces, the bundle of sticks that in combination are invincible."

Many commentators have argued that Jews in both Israel and the US have a specific reason to fear an Obama presidency. Much attention has been paid to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the anti-Semitic, black supremacist preacher who has served as Obama's spiritual guide for the past 20 years. Then too, there are Obama's foreign policy advisors who range from the viscerally hostile towards Israel (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, Samantha Power, Merrill Tony McPeak) to the messianically hostile towards Israel (Dan Kurtzer). Obama's close associations with Palestinian and pan-Arab champions and jihad apologists like the late Edward Said and Prof. Rashid Khalidi, and his stated intention to have open negotiations with Iran about the mullocracy's nuclear weapons program, his monetary ties to anti-Israel donors like George Soros and to anti-Israel organizations like Moveon.org are similarly pointed to as reasons for concern.

But the fact is that for all his associations with Israel-bashers, Obama's stated positions on the Palestinian and Arab conflict with Israel are all but indistinguishable from those of his opponent Senator Hillary Clinton. Both democratic candidates assert that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the root of the pathologies of the Arab world. Like President George W. Bush, both embrace the Fatah terror group as a legitimate organization and acceptable repository of Palestinian sovereignty. Both have hinted that they may be willing to open negotiations with Hamas. Both argue that the establishment of a Palestinian state will be a key foreign policy objective of their administrations.

While Sen. Clinton rejects Obama's desire to openly appease the Iran's mullahs, her announced strategy for contending with the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran would not necessarily be more effective than Obama's plan to appease the ayatollahs. Last week, Clinton explained that she believes that the US's position on Iran should be based on a credible threat of "massive retaliation" in the event that the mullocracy develops and uses nuclear weapons.


THERE ARE two reasons that a deterrence model will be as ineffective in curbing Iranian aggression as Obama's appeasement model. First, as last week's 25th anniversary of the Iranian-sponsored bombing of the US embassy in Beirut recalled, Iran has been attacking the US and its allies both directly and through proxies since 1979. To date, not only has the US failed to deter such attacks, it has never made Iran pay a price for them. With this abysmal track record against a non-nuclear Iran, it is hard to see how the US can threaten a nuclear-armed Iran with sufficient credibility to make a deterrence-based strategy successful.

The second reason that basing US policy towards Iran on a deterrence model will likely fail is because Iran's leadership has made clear that is not necessarily concerned about the survivability of Iran. From Ayatollah Khomeini to Ayatollah Khamenei to Ali Rafsanjani to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's leadership has made clear that they are not Iranian patriots but global Islamic revolutionaries. Given their millenarian, apocalyptic view of their country's purpose in world affairs, there is good reason to believe that a strategy based on some form of mutually assured destruction would have only marginal impact on Iran's decision-makers. So from a foreign policy perspective, there is little to distinguish Sen. Clinton from Sen. Obama. Indeed, there is little that distinguishes the two candidates from a domestic policy perspective. But that gets us back to the messianic business.


OPPONENTS OF Clinton claim that she is a soulless woman who will do whatever is necessary to have power, because she likes power and wants it. But if this is true it is hard to see why a power-hungry president is worse than a president who believes that he is the people's redeemer. It is hard to see why a leader who wants power because she likes power is less reasonable than a president who thinks he has a right to demand that the American people follow his lead and fix their souls in the name of unity. In the former case, opposition to the leader is a policy dispute. In the latter case, it is apostasy.

When someone wants power for power's sake, that person tends to be fairly pragmatic. In his first term of office, when former president Bill Clinton - another consummate pragmatist who liked having power - understood his wife's health care plan was about to be defeated overwhelmingly by Congress, he shelved the plan and cut his losses.

A messianic wouldn't do that. When a messianic leader is faced with failure, his tendency is to castigate the people, or his political opposition, or the media as evil and to continue on unmoved and bring his country down with him. President Woodrow Wilson's unpopular and unsuccessful championing of US membership in the League of Nations and former president Jimmy Carter's wooing of American enemies in the name of peace are examples of what happens when messianic redeemer types are confronted with reality.

So with this distinction between the two senators in mind, the question is, how will a President Hillary Clinton or a President Barack Obama respond after being shown that appeasement of the Palestinians has once again failed and that appeasement or deterrence of the Iranian regime has also failed once again? Given their distinct emotional makeup, it can be assumed that Obama will argue that reality is wrong and continue on - Carter-like - into the abyss and drag his country and Israel down with him. Acting in a Clinton-like way, Clinton on the other hand, would be more likely to pick a fight with Serbia - or call for a federal ban on chewing tobacco in a bid to change the subject.

What is most interesting about the danger that Obama constitutes for Israel is how un-unique it is. It is no different than the danger the prospect his presidency constitutes for America. The reason that pseudo-realist Israel bashers and messianic peace mongering Israel bashers support Obama is because they naturally gravitate towards a man on a mission to save the free world from itself.

An empowered, free citizenry will question the realism behind their decision to pretend that the global jihad is the figment of the Jewish lobby's imagination. A cowed, on its way to being redeemed by Obama's cult of personality citizenry will be in no position to argue with them.

The same is as true of domestic issues as it is of foreign policy. When the Obama/Clinton tax hikes and economic protectionism exacerbate the current US recession, under an Obama presidency, rather than debating the merits of the administration's failed economic policies, the American people will be told that they need to have more "discussions" about race to remind them how mean they are and how much they are in need of President Obama's spiritual healing. If they are again attacked by jihadists, they will be lectured by Rev. Wright's longtime follower, their president, about how black enslavement, his white grandmother, Israel, anti-abortion senators and their own "cynicism" played a role in convincing the jihadists to kill innocents.

US Jews have always had a weakness for messianic leaders and movements. Sometimes, as in the case of the civil rights movement, that tendency towards utopianism has had good results. More often it has not. In the current presidential race, American Jews, like all their fellow Americans, would be wise to consider if they are truly ready to accept Obama as their savior.

5) WONDER LAND
By DANIEL HENNINGER



The Democrats Have a Nominee


So what?

Other than ensuring the Greatest Show on Earth will continue, does it matter that Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama Tuesday in Pennsylvania by nine-plus points? Barack Obama is the nominee.

No matter how many kicks the rest of us find in such famously fun primary states as Indiana and South Dakota, it's going to be McCain versus Obama in 2008.

I believe the cement set around the Clinton coffin last Friday. The Obama campaign announced it had received the support of former Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia and David Boren of Oklahoma.
Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger says despite her primary win in Pennsylvania, it's over for Hillary. (April 23)

Both are what some of us nostalgically call Serious Democrats. They represent what the party was, but is no more: sensible on national security, spending and middle-class values. Obama receiving their imprimatur is like hands reaching out from the graves of FDR, JFK and LBJ to announce: "Enough is enough. This man is your nominee. Go forth and fight with the Republicans." Make no mistake: Superdelegates with sway took notice.

Former Sen. Nunn is sometimes mentioned as a possible running mate for Sen. Obama. In a better world, Sam Nunn (or a David Boren) would have been the party's candidate for president. Such candidacies remain impossible under the iron law of Democratic primary politics: No centrist can secure the party's nomination in a primary system dominated by left-liberal activists. The iron law produces candidacies such as McGovern (1972), Mondale ('84), Dukakis ('88), Gore ('00) or Kerry ('04), who pay so many left-liberal obeisances to win in the primaries that they cannot attract sufficient moderates at the margins to win the general election.

Bill Clinton, who broke that law twice, knows all this. His 1996 triangulation campaign dangled welfare reform and spending restraint. It worked.

Hillary Clinton knows all this. In 2005, just after George W. Bush won re-election buoyed by "moral values" voters, Sen. Clinton reached out to them in a January speech: "the primary reason that teenage girls abstain [from sex] is because of their religious and moral values. We should embrace this." By "we" she meant that voters still wedded to middle-class respectability, say in Ohio, should embrace her.

Thanks for the memories. Democrats will opt for a new magician.

She has worked hard as a member of the Armed Services Committee to establish her bona fides with general officers, and some have endorsed her. As well, her hedged, equivocal vote "for" the Iraq War was mainly a centrist investment to cash in fall 2008. (The left won't allow it; see iron law above.)

The 2008 nomination was hers. There was no competition. She was a lock to run for the roses against the Republican nominee. Republicans must have had this conversation a hundred times back then: "It's Hillary. She's got it. Get over it."

Sam Nunn and David Boren by political temperament should be in her camp. Instead, they threw in with Obama, who calls his campaign "post-partisan," a ludicrous phrase. The blowback at ABC's debate makes clear that Obama is the left's man. So what did Messrs. Nunn and Boren see?

The biggest event was the Clinton Abandonment. In a campaign of surprises, none has been more breathtaking than the falling away of Clinton supporters, loyalists . . . and friends. Why?

Money. Barack Obama's mystical pull on people is nice, but nice in modern politics comes after money. Once Barack proved conclusively that he could raise big-time cash, the Clintons' strongest tie to their machine began to unravel. Today he's got $42 million banked. She's got a few million north of nothing.

But it's more than that. Barack Obama's Web-based fund-raising apparatus is, if one may say so, respectable. The Clintons' "donor base" has been something else.

It is hard to overstate how fatigued Democratic donors in Manhattan and L.A. got during the Clinton presidency to have Bill and Hillary fly in, repeatedly, to sweep checking accounts. The Lincoln Bedroom rental was cheesy. Bill's 60th birthday gala (tickets $60,000 to 500K) was a Clinton fund-raiser. The 1996 John Huang-Lippo-China fund-raising scandal pushed Clinton contributors toward a milieu most didn't need in their lives. Hillary's 2007 Norman Hsu fund-raising scandal was an unsettling rerun of what the donor base could expect from another Clinton presidency.

It was all kind of gross, but the Clintons never seemed to see that. When Obama proved he could perform this most basic function in politics, it was a get-out-of-jail-free card for many Democrats. For some, this may be personal. For others, it is likely a belief that the party's interests lie with finding an alternative to the Clinton saga. One guesses this is what Sam Nunn and David Boren concluded.

Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania prove it won't be easy. Barack Obama himself said Tuesday night, "I'm not perfect." He heads to the nomination freighted with all the familiar Democratic tensions that keep a Sam Nunn off the ballot: race and gender obsessions, semi-pacifism and you bet, bitter white voters. So be it. For modern Democrats, winning the White House always requires some sort of magic to get near 50%. For the Clintons, that bag is empty. The Democrats have a new magician. It's Obama.

6) Superdelegates' superdilemma
Clinton's victory only enhances their role in deciding whose campaign style is the better.


Imagine being one of the 300 or so undeclared Democratic super delegates digesting the Clinton win in Pennsylvania. Forget that the high voter turnout reflects a wish not to let these party insiders pick the nominee – they probably will. Her win makes this privileged decision of the 300 more difficult.

The primary's numerical results only supersize the agony for the unelected Deciders whose levers aren't in voting booths. Their coming choice risks offending entire groups of the party's big, but increasingly torn, tent.

Take Mrs. Clinton's nearly 10-point victory over Barack Obama. It's far less than her 20-point lead in early opinion polls. And her victory doesn't give her much in delegates to catch Mr. Obama's lead. For super delegates, she has come-back momentum but not the narrative of a knock-out blow.

And in the national popular vote from primaries held so far (not counting Florida and Michigan), the Pennsylvania primary cut Obama's lead of about 700,000 by some 220,000. But a super delegate would only note that he could easily gain much of that back in coming primaries. And some portion of those Clinton votes came from Republicans tactically crossing party lines to boost her.

The Supers may see that Obama's pitch to be a uniter not a divider didn't unite Pennsylvania's Democrats behind him. They now have to wonder about his electability just as much as they have seen Clinton's once-inevitable electability fade away in earlier primaries.

Exit polls also muddy the picture. Obama made inroads on Clinton's strength by winning 37 percent of Pennsylvania voters over age 65 compared with his 26 percent in Ohio. And he took 44 percent of white men, up 5 points from Ohio. But in one big swing group, he was found wanting: Only 60 percent of Democratic Catholic voters said they would vote for him in a general election, while 21 percent said they would vote for John McCain.

In the end, such reading of primary tea-leaves may not sway the 300. Their choice could be more fundamental.

They need to decide if the party wants to adopt Obama's line that "going negative" in campaigns would only further feed the kind of political polarization and legislative inaction in Washington that voters resent. Or do they see in Clinton's "tough tactics" against her opponent the kind of ruthless leadership that would help Democrats steamroll the GOP in both the election and in Congress?

Many of Obama's "negatives," of course, are self-inflicted, such as his comments on "bitter" rural folk. And his past associations may yet erode his message of hope and change. But he's been relatively restrained in "going negative" compared with Clinton's recent barrage. "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," the narrator of the recent Clinton TV ad says.

Their campaign styles are telling of what kind of president each might be. For super delegates caught on the fence of interpreting primary results, they must ask if the party wants a nominee whose tactics will carry over to the general election against Mr. McCain, then the White House, and ultimately to creating a different America.

Clinton won this primary squarely, but 68 percent of voters thought that she had "attacked unfairly." With mixed messages like that, the 300 will need Solomonic wisdom.