Why Not Get Out Of The U.N and Netanyahu Speaks!

If liberals heeded Roosevelt's advice: "they would have nothing to fear but fear itself."

Maybe Roosevelt even got that wrong. (See 1 below.)
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For those who take the time to read my gibberish you have seen me write that all too often voters fixate on a single issue and fail to give appropriate weight to all their concerns or what should be their concerns, ie. abortion coming before defense of our nation etc.

Being Jewish, I understand those concerned over Obama's treatment of Israel as well as his failed policies in The Middle East. However, for me, the real issue is broader. Obama's failure to support a democratic Israel reverberates beyond the Middle East. Because of his background and associates,past and present, Obama is not prone to support democracies period. To my mind, his policies, statements and positions are anti-Capitalistic and anti-American so his ineptitude towards Israel is simply a manifestation of my much great concern.

When it comes to social issues, I hear from liberal friends how they 'fear' the Far Right intruding religion into the political arena and how they want to prevent women from having abortions and how the Republicans are going to poison the nation's air and water and The Tea Party is going to destroy what is left.

They ignore reality and adherence to established law so they can justify their over reaching concerns and conclusions in order to remain safe in their self-imposed ignorance. Perhaps Liberals actually distrust adherence to law because they, all too often, have proven they themselves actually want to change existing precedence.

I do not want government paying for abortions but I believe women have a right to their bodies. I believe we need to return some faith values back into our lives and rebuild the family, if that is still possible, because we have become a more godless and thus, sicker and more dangerous society.

As for The Tea Partyers, they believe we ought to balance the nation's books and run government more efficiently which means a smaller and less intrusive one. Their views track quite well with those who drafted our Constitution. Obviously, this frightens the editorial board of the likes of The New York Times and the radicals mouthing off at MSNBC.

The arguments single issue liberals raise are mainly smoke and mirror efforts to avoid defending their hair brained ideas which have failed and spending more money on them is beyond the pale of rational behaviour.

Specific to the article I have posted below I have written the Jewish vote is likely to drop to around 50% from 78% in 2012. Because it is concentrated in large urban cities within critical states Jewish disaffection can become magnified. Carter blamed Jews for his defeat but then Carter is always blaming someone else for his own failures. Sound familiar?

The second article suggests only palm trees are swaying in Florida. If that be the case it is because the coconuts have decided to hang with Obama.

So with that off my chest, have a nice weekend. (See 2 and 2a below.)

And for those interested in what Ahmadinejad has to say at The U.N. go to:
http://gadebate.un.org/sites/default/files/gastatements/66/IR_en.pdf


While I am on the U.N. what would really happen if we dropped out of this organization? We would save a ton of money. We would be freer to regain control over our foreign policy and even other domestic policies. We would be able to rent the building and New York would receive more tax revenue as it would free up a lot of parking spaces and police time to patrol other areas.

Seems we have one foot out the door already because our diplomats walk out when some Islamist nut speaks as they did yesterday when Iran's fruitcake took the podium.

Russia and China could then spend their own time arguing with Arabs and Muslims and vetoing Britain, France and Germany.

The U.N. has proven worthless other than being a place where heat is dissipated through speechifying. Perhaps that is worth something but The U.N. is so far off the path of its true intent it seems we should truly debate why we remain a member.
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Lately, we seem to go from one crisis to another. Is it possible the world has become alcoholic having drunk too much from the Liberal Cup of hope and change nuttiness? (See 3 below.)

Here is what Netanyahu had to say at The U.N. Would it not be nice if we had a president capable of making such a speech and we the confidence he meant every word?(See 3a below.)

Now let's hear what Abbas has to say. Seems Obama provided him with a great cover and he has run with the ball all the way to The U.N. (See 3b below.)

Seems Abbas, Arabs/Muslims in general are incapabale of understanding quid pro quo when it comes to having peace, when it comes to renouncing hatred, when it comes to being citizens of the world.

Like children, they want it all and Obama's policies continue to feed their neurosis. By putting pressure on Israel, for concession after concession, Abbas and Arafat, before him, have learned resistance pays.

If the U.S. and Europe stopped funding, Abbas would be at the table in two seconds negotiating. You don't feed a bully but our State Department is incapable of such thinking.(See 3b below.)
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A dear friend of mine is involved in health care and has been talking with a young woman from Pakistan. During their discussion the woman from Pakistan, who is in America learning medical techniques etc. said: "... Would anyone ever believe that I’m saying 'There is so much more freedom to do the right thing in Pakistan than in America because I am not subject there to all of the legal restrictions and regulations that you faced here.' More freedom to do the right thing in Pakistan than in America! We were both stunned.

But it’s true. The burdens of litigation and regulation are strangling America’s businesses and its health care providers."

It is impossible to quantify the negative impact government red tape and bureaucrats have on our daily life both as to cost and restraint on our freedom of choice. It might even exceed the cost of crime and terrorism.

Another friend of mine, who I was with last night, made the analogy that Obama was nothing but a pick pocketer and his class warfare rhetoric was the simple act of taking your attention away from the act of his picking your pockets.
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On one hand Obama has assisted Israel in a military sense but on the other his policies have made Israel's position and security more untenable. (See 4 below.)
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Iran intransigence and Carter's own ineptness led to his defeat. Is it possible Iran could help elect Obama as a result of misreading our response to an attack by them on our troops - assuming Obama responded authoritatively and not like he did in Libya? (See 5 below.)
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Have a great weekend.
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Dick
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1)Fears Gnaw at Liberalism
By ERIK ECKHOLM

Judy Rothman is a lifelong Democrat who says, “I’m not 100 percent sure yet that I won’t vote for Obama.” She finds herself leaning that way, though — solely because of “a vague sense of unease” about the depth of President Obama’s support for Israel.

Ms. Rothman, 47, and her family moved from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to this Philadelphia suburb five years ago, buying a house near the Lower Merion Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation. A physical therapist who works with infants, she knocked on doors for Mr. Obama in 2008. Back then, at dinner parties with the more hawkish couples who dominate their new synagogue, her husband kicked her under the table when her defenses of Mr. Obama got too passionate.

But those conversations were “eye-opening,” and now she feels torn between her liberal ideals and her fear for Israel. Her concern is visceral because her brother and sister live there, she said, and anti-Israel passions unleashed by the Arab Spring have deepened it. She feels that Mr. Obama asks Israel to make too many unilateral concessions.

“I just want a stronger show of support,” she said.

Local Jewish leaders say most of the more than 200,000 Jews who live in greater Philadelphia, many of them scattered through the western suburbs known as the Main Line, remain Democrats and are almost sure to support Mr. Obama in 2012. But they also say many Jews struggle with the agonizing counter-pulls expressed by Ms. Rothman — devotion to liberal social policies but a primal, if to some irrational, sense that Republican hawks might be better for Israel.

Rabbis compare notes on how to handle Israel-related issues in their congregations because they are so contentious, said Rabbi Adam Zeff of the Germantown Jewish Center in Philadelphia. He said that his congregation, which includes many urban professionals, tends to be liberal and more focused on domestic issues, and that most members were comfortable with Mr. Obama’s Israel stance. Yet he struggles to know what to say about Israel without setting off acrimony.

Murray Lefkowitz, 85, a retired furniture repairer, said that if he had a complaint about Mr. Obama, it was that the president had not fought hard enough against the Republicans.

“I do worry that the Republicans might offer stronger support of Israel,” Mr. Lefkowitz said after exercising at the Kaiserman Jewish Community Center in the Main Line suburb of Wynnewood, “but I’m a professional worrier.” He cannot understand why Jews would forsake their history of liberal social thought to become Republicans.

Bill Rubin, 53, a test tutor taking a basketball break at the center, was more pointed. “I think the mainstream Jewish community is too reflexively supportive of anything done by Israel,” he said. “I do care about Israel, and I don’t mistrust Obama on Israel.”

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, 53, is one of those dinner-party guests who urged Ms. Rothman to be more hawkish. She voted against Mr. Obama in 2008 and expects to support the Republicans in 2012.

A lawyer who fought for abortion rights, she said her thoughts on Israeli security had hardened since 9/11. Now, she runs a Zionist campaign from home that supports Israeli settlements and strong defense policies.

Sean Collins Walsh contributed reporting from Philadelphia.
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2)While Republicans see an opening among Jewish Americans for 2012, Lori Lowenthal Marcus of suburban Philadelphia was already an anti-Obama voter in 2008.
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

American Jews have long proved a solid voting bloc for the Democratic Party, with about four out of five voting for President Obama in 2008, according to exit polls. Jewish voters are driven by a broad range of concerns, but for some the security of Israel is dominant. Now, with the peace process in the Middle East at a stalemate and Palestinians taking their case for statehood directly to the United Nations, Republicans are stepping up their efforts to peel off Jewish voters.

While this constituency is clearly in play, a new Gallup poll shows that Jews are no more disillusioned than other Americans are with Mr. Obama. According to the poll, his Jewish support has declined since the election in 2008 — but at a rate no different from that of Americans as a whole. Even with that drop-off, 54 percent of Jewish voters told Gallup in August and September that they approved of the job the president was doing (compared with 41 percent of American voters over all). In fact, Jews continue to be far more enthusiastic about Mr. Obama than other Americans — a 13-point difference that has remained sizable throughout the president’s term.

The fresh focus on Jewish voters was prompted in part by the victory of a Republican, Bob Turner, in a special election last week in New York’s Ninth Congressional District. With a heavy concentration of Orthodox Jews, the district is not representative of Jewish voters nationwide; the Orthodox lean far more Republican than the vast majority of American Jewry.

Nevertheless, the election generated excitement among Republicans that the Jewish vote could be up for grabs. Reporters visited three communities with heavy concentrations of Jewish voters for impressions of any shift in their allegiances.

2a)Only Palms Are Swaying
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Munching on a buttered bagel at a bookstore, Helen Wagner and her partner, Clifford Turkel, said they knew exactly why President Obama looked to be stumbling and sliding his way toward the election.

But they also know there are no easy answers. It’s true, they said: Mr. Obama needs to be more astute on Israel, and Jews in general are wary of his stance. Israel is his friend, and in a region soaked with enemies, friends should not be squandered, and yet a truce also is necessary. And, yes: The economy is reeling, people are livid, progress seems ephemeral, and yet Mr. Obama began his term with an outsize load of turmoil.

So will Ms. Wagner, a dynamic 86-year-old, and Mr. Turkel, a 77-year-old born in the Bronx, both Reform Jews, vote for the president again?

“Of course, of course,” Ms. Wagner said.

“Absolutely,” chimed in Mr. Turkel. Then he offered a dollop of advice. “He should be more aggressive on his handling of the Republicans,” he said. “He should give them a little hell, the way Truman did.”

Outside supermarkets and restaurants, inside bookstores and candy shops, Jewish voters in this affluent yet diverse Jewish community in north Miami said they planned to mostly stay the course. If they did vote for Mr. Obama in 2008, many of them — Reform and Conservative alike — said they planned to do so again, although not quite as enthusiastically.

Those who did not vote for the president the last time — mostly Orthodox, with a smattering of Conservatives like Jay Weinberg — were more convinced than ever that they had made the right choice. “He has thrown Israel under the bus,” said Mr. Weinberg, 64, a former educator. “What is he going to give them — the Golan Heights, too?”

Renata Bloom, 73, a Conservative and a real estate agent who plans to vote for Mr. Obama, like last time, said the Arab Spring had frightened Jews and turned some against Mr. Obama. “People are questioning him now,” she said.

Not Holly Royce Ginsberg, 69, who described her support for the president as “unshakable.” A former teacher, dental hygienist, Playboy bunny and “super liberal,” Ms. Ginsberg said Mr. Obama had been “handed a rotten bunch of fruit.” She said that on the question of Israel, people just had a “knee-jerk reaction.”

But Ruth Fertig, 81, standing near a kosher candy shop, said that while Israel was key, her criticism of Mr. Obama went beyond that: It’s the economy, his lack of leadership, the people who surround him in Washington.

A retired New York City teacher, Ms. Fertig said that she had voted for him once, and that once was enough. She will probably stay home on Election Day.

Could she change her mind?

“I don’t believe in miracles,” she said.
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3)Pimco's El-Erian: World on Eve of Another Financial Crisis

The world is on the eve of the next financial crisis, with sovereign debt its epicenter, said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the biggest bond fund.

The European Central Bank hasn’t put in place a “circuit breaker” to contain the region’s debt crisis, El-Erian, who is also Pimco’s co-chief investment officer, said at an event in Washington today.

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 are meeting in Washington this weekend as markets tumble on concern the world economy is slowing and Europe’s sovereign debt crisis threatens to spread beyond Greece. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index sank 4.6 percent to 214.89 at the 4:30 p.m. close in London, the lowest since July 2009.

“There has been a significant increase in the financial requirements of international intervention,” El-Erian said. “You need a lot more firepower in order to be a circuit breaker. Look at how much the ECB has put in and ask yourself the question: has it created a circuit breaker? The answer is no, even though the amounts involved have been massive.”


French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said the G-20 nations will coordinate a response to the European sovereign debt crisis. Baroin, speaking to reporters today in Washington, said European nations must approve a July 21 accord on further financial aid to Greece.

Greek Budget Cuts

The Greek government said today it will accelerate budget cuts to keep emergency loans flowing, extending austerity measures that have deepened a recession and failed to ease doubts that it can avoid default. The latest round of deficit fighting was demanded by international lenders to ensure Greece reaches targets in a 110 billion-euro ($151 billion) bailout and receive a payment due next month.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the global economy is “in a danger zone,” and his counterpart at the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said “downside risks” are high.

“We’re in it together and we will be able to solve it together,” Lagarde, a former French finance minister, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said Europe will act “with more force” to combat its debt crisis.

In the U.S., stocks tumbled on concern central banks are running out of tools to prevent another recession and after the Federal Reserve said yesterday it saw “significant downside risks” to the economy. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 2.9 percent to 1,133.09 at 12:51 p.m. on New York.



3a)Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the UN General Assembly


Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.

I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events.

Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews.

Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler?s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father's two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.

But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.

What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!

Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong.

History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries.

In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.

It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.

The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially.

It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.

I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing, absolutely nothing, from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians, Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.

We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.

Delegates of the United Nations,

Will you accept this farce?

Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.

If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why.

When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What self-defense?

The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us, my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!

Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

All of Israel wants peace.

Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples. A Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it. We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.

Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.

We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity.But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.

That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.

We want peace.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.

Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong."

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachibility of mankind" is for once proven wrong.I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come


3b)Abbas Applies for UN Membership,

Denies Jewish Links to Israel•Abbas delivers harsh, hate-filled speech at UN•Palestinians don't have the votes in the Security Council•Abbas puts all the blame on Israel


Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas presented a bid for full membership in the United Nations on Friday, knowing that he lacked the votes to bring the matter to the Security Council. He then delivered a harsh, distorted, hate-filled speech to the General Assembly.

Abbas blamed the failure of the peace process entirely on Israel. He said he would not return to negotiations unless Israel freezes building in the territories. Israel is ready to renew negotiations immediately – but without preconditions.

Abbas shocked observers with the harshness of his speech. He stated that a future Palestine should include East Jerusalem, including the Jewish Quarter of the city and the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. And he called for a return to the 1967 lines – which security experts say are impossible to defend.

Abbas also mentioned that he came from the Holy Land, a place holy to Muslims and Christians. He totally omitted any mention of Jewish links to the land of the Bible.

In his 40-minute speech, Abbas also said he would not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
He condemned the security fence that has saved countless lives, both Palestinian and Jewish, as a “racist annexation wall.”

He called for the release of terrorists held in Israeli jails.

He even condemned archaeology that has uncovered much evidence of the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judea.

Abbas also praised his “reconciliation” with Iran-backed Hamas terrorists in Gaza. He condemned Israeli attacks on Gaza but did not mention the thousands of rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians.

Despite his harsh rhetoric, Abbas does not have the votes to pass his resolution. The United States, Germany, Italy and many other key nations oppose granting Palestinian statehood without negotiations with Israel – the only way to reach a final peace agreement.

“This was a counterproductive and harsh speech that offered nothing to Israelis,” said former National Security Council official Richard Haas. “It was a very disappointing speech.”

"Israel wants peace and a Palestinian state," said The Israel Project's Founder & President Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi. "Sadly, sometimes they seem to want it more than the Palestinians. I deeply hope that President Abbas will recognize that the issues of security, borders, water and refugees need to be resolved with mutual respect and agreements...and cannot be imposed by the United Nations. He should drop his preconditions and hate and come to peace talks right away. Israel is ready for this conflict to end so both sides can have a better future."

3b) By accepting a Jewish state, Palestinians can have their own.
By MICHAEL OREN

The Palestinian Authority, which has already made a pact with the Hamas terrorist organization, now seeks recognition for a unilaterally declared state at the United Nations. President Barack Obama, though deeply committed to Palestinian statehood, declares his intention to block that scheme, even by exercising an American veto in the Security Council. Congress, for its part, threatens to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority if it breaches its commitment to direct talks with Israel and pursues unilateralism.

American mediators, meanwhile, lobby other members of the Middle East Quartet—the U.S., the European Union, the U.N., and Russia—in an attempt to forge a new framework for renewing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. And Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waits for the Palestinians to rejoin him at the negotiating table.

Sound confusing? Indeed it was for many observers of this past week's dizzying diplomacy in New York. They asked themselves what exactly had transpired at the U.N., and why? What had spurred the Palestinians to turn their backs on a sympathetic U.S. president and a strong Israeli statesman capable of leading his skeptical people to peace? How could the Palestinians risk all they had achieved in recent years—a thriving economy, restored law and order, and significant U.S. aid—in a reckless bid to snatch the statehood that they could easily have earned?

Confusing, perhaps, but the answer is simple. The Palestinians came to the U.N. to get a state, but without giving Israel peace in return.

Understanding the Palestinians' decision requires a review not only of this past week's events but of one that occurred nearly 64 years ago at the same U.N. On Nov. 29, 1947, the General Assembly voted to partition British-controlled Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, that would live side-by-side in peace. The Jews accepted the agreement, but the Palestinians rejected it and joined with five Arab armies in an ultimately thwarted attempt to destroy the Jewish State of Israel.

Forty six years later, in 1993, the Palestinians received another chance to accept the two-state solution. In the Oslo Accords, which the U.S. co-signed, Palestinians and Israelis pledged to resolve all outstanding issues through face-to-face negotiation and to achieve an historic peace. In fact, these discussions produced two Israeli peace proposals, in 2000 and 2008, that met virtually all of the Palestinians' demands for a sovereign state in the areas won by Israel in the 1967 war—in the West Bank, Gaza and even East Jerusalem.

But Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejected the first offer and Mahmoud Abbas ignored the second, for the very same reason their predecessors spurned the 1947 Partition Plan. Each time, accepting a Palestinian State meant accepting the Jewish State, a concession the Palestinians were unwilling to make.

In between Israeli peace offers, the Palestinians waged a terror war that killed and maimed thousands of Israelis. When Israel uprooted all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, the Palestinians failed to create a peaceful enclave and instead created a Hamas terrorist stronghold that fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. Yet, in spite of their rejection and trauma, Israelis continued to uphold the vision of two peaceful adjacent states.

That goal was embraced by Mr. Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, in a speech at Bar Ilan University in June 2009. Turning to "our Palestinian neighbors," he declared, "let's begin negotiations immediately without preconditions." But Mr. Abbas refused to negotiate. Nevertheless, Mr. Netanyahu ordered the removal of hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, facilitating remarkable economic growth and dramatically increased transport in and out of Gaza. When President Obama asked him to freeze construction in West Bank settlements, Mr. Netanyahu announced an unprecedented 10-month moratorium. But over the course of two and a half years, Mr. Abbas negotiated for a total of six hours, and then refused to discuss Israel's security needs.

Those needs have grown immensely in the wake of the upheaval in the Arab world, the rise of Iranian proxies, and the deployment of tens of thousands of terrorist rockets on our borders. Though doubtful of the Palestinians' readiness for genuine peace, Israelis retain the hope of a two-state solution. Mr. Netanyahu championed that hope and even brought it to the U.N. this week. "I am extending my hand, the hand of Israel, in peace," he told Mr. Abbas—and the world—on Friday. "I hope you will grasp that hand."

Unfortunately, Mr. Abbas did not come to New York to shake Mr. Netanyahu's hand but to grab a state which, he wrote earlier this year, "will pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict" and "pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations."

The U.S. and other principled nations are standing strong, though, and Mr. Netanyahu is ready to negotiate today—if only Mr. Abbas is willing. While the circumstances have changed since 1947 and even 2008, the formula for peace remains unaltered. By accepting the Jewish State, the Palestinians can have their own.

Mr. Oren is the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
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4)Subject: Obama Sold Israel Bunker-Buster Bombs

Eli Lake is a great reporter and has great connections where they matter on foreign policy issues. If this story is true, you need to give props to the Prez.

Let's hope they don't have to use them.


While Obama publicly pressured Israel to make concessions to the
Palestinians over settlements, he secretly sold Jerusalem deep-penetrating
bombs it had long sought. Eli Lake previews an exclusive story appearing in
Monday's Newsweek.

While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the
Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to
the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs
known as bunker busters, Newsweek has learned.

In an exclusive story to be published Monday on growing military cooperation
between the two allies, U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the
GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military
strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just
several months after Obama took office.

The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for
Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying
political relations between the two countries in public.

The Israelis first requested the bunker busters in 2005, only to be rebuffed
by the Bush administration. At the time, the Pentagon had frozen almost all
U.S.-Israeli joint defense projects out of concern that Israel was
transferring advanced military technology to China.

In 2007, Bush informed Ehud Olmert, then prime minister, that he would order
the bunker busters for delivery in 2009 or 2010. The Israelis wanted them in
2007. Obama finally released the weapons in 2009, according to officials
familiar with the still-secret decision.

James Cartwright, the Marine Corps general who served until August as the
vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Newsweek the military
chiefs had no objections to the sale. Rather, Cartwright said, there was a
concern about “how the Iranians would perceive it,” and “how the Israelis
might perceive it.” In other words, would the sale be seen as a green light
for Israel to attack Iran’s secret nuclear sites one day?

“If we say yes, have we somehow given someone a green light without
intending to? Whether that green light was an Israeli green light to go do
something or whether it was a message to the Iranians, OK these guys aren’t
serious about talking, they are starting to arm themselves,” Cartwright
explains.

U.S. and Israeli officials told Newsweek that Israel had developed its own
bunker-buster technology between 2005 and 2009, but the purchase from the
U.S. was cheaper.

Uzi Rubin, the first director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization,
between 1991 and 1999, and currently a military technology consultant to
Israel’s Ministry of Defense, says U.S. officials originally had concerns
about “how you use the bomb, where you use the bomb. These could be used in
civilian areas because Hamas and Hezbollah intentionally bury their rockets
in villages and towns,” he explained.

Would the sale be seen as a green light for Israel to attack Iran’s secret
nuclear sites one day?

Obama’s security cooperation extended beyond bunker busters. According to
Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ), who serves on the committees that fund both the
U.S. military and foreign aid, Obama gave “orders to the military to ratchet
up the cooperation at every level with Israel.”

While the Obama administration has touted some public cooperation with the
Israeli military, Newsweek’s article Monday will reveal other covert efforts
by the U.S. military to aid Israel in the volatile Middle East region, and
the impact the improving military cooperation has had on the sometimes
chilly relations between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and
the president’s popularity in the American Jewish community.
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5)Iran Considering Attacking U.S. Facilities in Mideast
By Reza Kahlili

Destroying American military positions in the Middle East is the most effective method to get the "Great Satan" to abandon the region, Iran now believes.

"The Islamic Awakening in the region has overthrown many of the heads of states who were puppets of the West," according to a recent analysis by the Mahramaneh online website, which is close to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "It is simple-minded for us to assume that America and the West in general would sit by and forget about devising new conspiracies for derailing and taking control of the revolutions."

Therefore, the analysis concludes, an America weakened by economic and military crises makes preemptive assaults on U.S. targets all the more inviting.

The radicals ruling Iran have long believed that due to internal U.S. problems, America can no longer sustain its activities in the Middle East and is bound to pack up and leave eventually. Now these radicals believe that they could attack American forces in the region, starting a regional war with America, and have a good chance at winning it.

They further believe that by initiating such a war, not only will they further influence the Islamic movement in the region, but they will come out as the leaders of this movement worldwide.

"Evidently what America and the West are currently pursuing," the analysis says, "is, in the first place, the veering of the populist revolutions toward their large Middle East project (Western-style governments), and in case that project fails, they will do everything in their power to start a religious war among the Muslims; a Sunni-Shia war would be their choice."

Deadly conflict continues in Iraq between Sunnis and Shias, and Muslim backlash festers in such places as Egypt, Yemen, and Bahrain. Iran, predominately Shia, is vying for influence in the region against such Sunni powers as Saudi Arabia.

"This does not mean that we should forget the behavior of the Saudi rulers in the slaughter of the innocent people of Bahrain, with the excuse of falling into the trap of preventing religious wars, and sit idly by," the analysis says. "There is indeed a better solution: crush the snake's head (America)."

The American political leadership and its war machinery are controlled by Western investors, the analysis says, and America will get involved in a war only if the end result is financial gain. "Based on the situation at hand, is it wise for us to stand by and let the enemy take its time and make plans for his future since they started the guns of war?"

The analysis says that the United States would not launch a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, either by itself or with Israel. Instead, it would start a proxy war through Saudi Arabia.


"First, by starting a war via the Saudis, Americans would not have to be liable for any possible defeat," the analysis says:

and furthermore it would make that (Saud) family ever more reliant on the West, and out of gratitude they would hand over control of their oil interests to the West.

Second and most important is that by starting such a war, the Western media machine would publicize it as a religious war, preventing unity of the Muslims against the West and therefore the disintegration of the revolutionaries of the region.

The Iranian website then concludes that if the Islamic Republic, quietly and without any media hype, attacks American installations throughout the region, the United States will have but two choices: either it will be forced to keep quiet and the media will freeze out the information, or it will be forced to go to war with Iran, in which case the war would then be out-and-out known to be a war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the West and America.

Certainly with such a preemptive attack policy, the West and America will be utterly confused and bewildered, the analysis says, and instead of starting a war they cannot win, they should cease their power-grabbing, pack up their wares, and leave the Middle East, "returning to the hell they crawled out of; that is the way of Islam's victory."

Ayatollah Khamenei, days ago, stated that the current uprisings in the region are but a prelude to greater movement in which Islam will rule the world. Now, with his blessing, the website analysis raises the possibility of conflagration.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons. He is a senior fellow with EMPact America and the author of A Time to Betray, a book about his double-life as a CIA agent in Iran's Revolutionary Guards, published by Threshold Editions, Simon & Schuster, April 2010. A Time to Betray was the winner of the 2010 National Best Book Award and the 2011 International Best Book Award.
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