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President Obama is starting to feel the heat from his once-adoring friends in the mainstream media. NBC's Chuck Todd even opened a segment by saying that Obama’s actions rarely match his words. Scott Ott, Stephen Green and Bill Whittleexamine the media’s treatment of the president. Will the MSM finally report the truth about Obama? Join the discussion and share your thoughts.
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Understanding ultra orthodox politics in Israel, f you can or care to.(See 1 below.)
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Another read on the AIPAC Conference. (See 2 below.)
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Obama unbalanced? (See 3 and 3a below.)
And I doubt Obama is capable of seeing because his eyes and mind are shut (See 3b and 3c below.)
Obama: "We have no immediate debt crisis." Give him more time to spend and and he will create one.
Obama , obviously, hates Republicans and seems to have always hated a fiscally sane and strong America.
Today The Wall Street Journal reported on the new Chinese leader. The WSJ reported he believes America is in a death spiral and China's military must be on the ascendancy. If we continue to allow progressives, the far left and Obamaites to move us in their direction it is a sure bet we will decline as China and Islamist radicals rise and the world will become far more dangerous.
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Dick
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1)Shas, Theology and Divine Dilemmas
by Yisrael Ne'eman
The Sephardi ultra-orthodox (haredi) political party Shas is facing a stark dilemma, one built into its existence since its genesis in 1984, but never truly put to the test. The party was born from a political will to break the left (Labor) vs. right (Likud) stalemate of the 1980s. The leading misnagid rabbi (to differentiate from Hasidic) and scholar at the time, Eliezer Shach, became convinced of the necessity of a Sephardi haredi representation in Israel's parliament, the Knesset. Shach was a-Zionist, never supporting the modern political, secular Jewish State yet was a realist and willing to participate in the representative legislative framework should it prove beneficial to ultra-orthodox interests. Simultaneously he backed the development of Degel HaTorah, the purist Ashkenazi haredi faction which eventually joined forces with the Hasidic Agudat Yisrael and today comprise United Torah Judaism (UTJ) with 7 seats in the Knesset of 2013.
Sephardi scholarship and spirituality was and still is considered inferior by the Askenazis but the opportunity to expand the haredi influence in any way possible was not to be missed. Former chief Sephardi rabbi Ovadia Yosef, himself a student of the Ashkenazi misnagid haredi tradition despite being of Middle Eastern origin, became the spiritual mentor of the newly established Shas faction. Surprisingly for many, the political mentor was today's president Shimon Peres, who at the time was the Labor party chairman who served as prime minister from 1984-86 during the 1984-88 national unity government. Peres knew the left could not win an election if Sephardi votes were not be drawn away from the Likud. It was clear that religious and traditional Sephardi Jews would not vote for the secular Laborites but if a third party with its own interests was formed such a faction could be the balance between left and right. Labor could stand a chance of bringing them into a coalition as happened when Shas was a junior partner for a short time in the Rabin/Peres government of 1992 and again with Labor's Ehud Barak in 1999. Yet Shas, reflecting its constituency, always preferred a right wing religious arrangement when possible.
But other questions gnawed at Shas over the years. Rabbi Ovadia and others may have begun as Zionists close to 30 years ago but the party itself is more haredi and a-Zionist as it reflects the views of its hard line ultra-orthodox mentor, Rabbi Shach. Many religious and traditional Sephardi and Mizrachi (eastern) Jews see Shas in ethnic as well as religious terms thereby distancing themselves from the strongly Zionist national religious movement today represented by the Jewish Home (Bayit Yehudi led by Naftali Benett) faction, once known as the National Religious Party.
Nowadays Shas with 11 seats in the Knesset, has a fairly split electorate between those who are national religious in overall outlook and others who are haredi and either do not truly support the State of Israel or do so half heartedly. On the surface are all those arguments concerning military exemptions for yeshiva students to study Torah and funding for a non-Zionist haredi educational system where history, science and English are not taught or only barely touched upon. Overwhelming expenses are incurred by the public when state stipends are distributed for adult males (today totaling over 50,000) to spend their lives studying holy texts outside of the job market and the costs for state housing subsidies for haredi families often totaling ten or more members are added up. UTJ will not budge on these issues while many in Shas would like to go more mainstream.
Furthermore there are the "politics of poverty" as the Rabbi Ovadia and his advisors use the party to gain government funding for haredi institutions leaving their participants as virtual hostages to the haredi lifestyle and fully dependent on Shas to physically survive. How many of those yeshiva students who entered the system would really like to get out and find a job? Any reasonable plan to aid them in obtaining a profession or skilled trade will thrust them into the more secular Israel where people are concerned about making a living and enjoying a life beyond the confines of the synagogue or bet midrash (house of learning). Should Shas constituents become materially independent they might find themselves with other interests besides those originally set out by Rabbi Shach or insisted upon by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his Torah sages of today.
All of this brings us to a major theological issue. The national religious movement representing essentially modern orthodoxy blends together spiritual commitment, halacha (Jewish law) and a place in today's world. There is participation in the economy through work and spiritual achievement is gained by prayer and study. This is what the greatest ideologue of the movement Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook meant when speaking about the dual physical and spiritual redemption achieved through work and Torah. This was the road to a modern Jewish State serving as a framework for the ingathering of all Diaspora Jewry, ensuring Jewish existence and bringing about the coming of the Messiah who in turn will save Jewry and the world while ushering in universal peace and harmony.
Most haredi rabbis attacked Rabbi Kook at the time for aligning himself with the Zionist secularists whether of the left wing laborite types such as David Ben Gurion or coming from the right wing factions influenced by Zev Jabotinsky and the Revisionist movement (ancestors of today's Likud). For these rabbis living in the Land of Israel was acceptable but building anything but a theocratic Jewish State was either a waste of time or if one was anti-Zionist, an affront to God. A secular Jewish entity was out of the question. Jewish redemption would come about with the arrival of the Messiah and the holy community would continue suffering in the Diaspora until they followed Halacha as prescribed. The victory of Jewish law was to bring the Messianic End Time and theocracy, not a Jewish state led by secularists and ruled by secular laws.
Both Rabbi Kook's ideals and those of the haredi rabbis are embedded in Shas. Over the past 30 years the latter have gained the upper hand. Both the Jewish Home (national religious) party and the secular Yesh Atid are demanding virtually full haredi participation in the workforce and in the military. As opposed to UTJ Shas has many supporters participating in both yet its leadership holds fast to the traditional issue of Torah study for anyone who so desires as a sacred goal. Both parties are giving an ultimatum to Likud PM Benyamin Netanyahu to take them into the coalition without either of the haredi groups. Facing a lack of choice Netanyahu must either accept or face new elections. Any thought of the haredi and labor factions building a coalition with the Likud are out of the question.
Being more moderate than UTJ Shas is in crisis. Sitting in the opposition they will need to fully embrace the haredi agenda and make demands for aiding the poor. Labor and the left will demand help for the poor in the form of jobs, not monies for yeshivas. The mainly left opposition will demand cuts in funding for the ultra-orthodox religious institutions no less than the government - Shas can only lose. Yet to join the coalition and accept the Jewish Home and Yesh Atid platform demands for equality in shouldering the burdens of state building will show them as capitulating. Either way they are on the verge of losing funding and part of their constituency come the next elections.
So the question is how to rebuild in the aftermath of the election results. Loyal to Rabbi Shach many believe Rabbi Ovadia will prefer sitting in the opposition. One must trust in God and Divine Will. They younger generation has much less loyalty to Shach's memory but will not defy the 93 year old Rabbi Ovadia. They know that fully moving into the workforce and serving in the army are the only true ways to integrate with the state and benefit from the material well being and lifestyle enjoyed by the middle class. One need not give up religious belief but rather concede the intolerable dependency of constantly awaiting state stipends and subsidies. In any case these will disappear. Shas is being challenged to adopt much of the national religious ideology. To be enfranchised in the Israel of 2013 Shas needs to fully embrace the ideals of Rabbi Kook and accept a coalition agreement attesting to such a shift. Not to do so will leave them marginalized, losing support and following UTJ into a dead end.
In essence Shas is facing a deal where it may negotiate a few changes, but really cannot refuse.
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2) AIPAC and the Secret Worlds of PeoplehoodWashington was unseasonably cold last week when 13,000 pro-Israel delegates assembled here for the annual AIPAC Policy Conference. Normally this assemblage is a scene of high drama, but this year—with no American election, no Israeli government upheaval, no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and a litany of crises not quite at the boiling point—it was comparatively subdued. Thus, certain prosaic aspects of AIPAC were brought into higher relief. These may be more important than the dollar amounts of U.S. aid to Israel or the security cooperation between the two countries.
The conference takes 13,000 self-selected activists and raises both their hopes and their fears regarding Israel’s security. Key messages are conveyed repeatedly through video testimonies projected on eight titanic screens. The presence of many thousands of well-dressed high school and college students—who are constantly lauded from the podium by high-profile speakers—shows that cultivation of the next generation of activists is ongoing even in the absence of controversy.
One name hung unspoken over the conference: Chuck Hagel. Some people assailed AIPAC in advance for its presumed opposition to Hagel; then, when it took no stance, others criticized it for not joining the surprisingly small number of Hagel opponents. AIPAC’s position, which was as clear in public as it was in private conversations with staffers, is that it can and must work with any administration or presidential appointee. The coming uncertainty was written into the grim faces of these staffers as they declined to discuss the matter further. But AIPAC plays a long game, which outlasts any one administration. Bipartisanship and evenhandedness are AIPAC’s baselines. Every Democrat keynote speaker is automatically balanced with a Republican. Still, careful observers moving from the large plenary sessions to the smaller breakout groups would have thought they were attending two different conferences. In one breakout session after another, whether it was devoted to Egypt, Syria, the Palestinian Authority or, of course, Iran, the American strategic void was repeatedly noted and criticized. “Leading from behind” has turned out to be a neologism for inaction that has permitted worst-case scenarios to appear repeatedly.
The contrast became even sharper when Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird and former Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini spoke forcefully about the need for concerted policies regarding Hizballah and Syria and condemned the Palestinian Authority’s unilateral declaration of independence. All speakers pointed to a new kind of linkage theory: Iran remains the overarching threat to Israel, but the growing Shia-Sunni proxy war in Syria has now drawn in Lebanon and Hizballah, prompted Saudi and Qatari intervention, and been exacerbated by Turkish ineptitude. Iran is the hub, but American inaction on all these fronts is the weak link.In the plenary sessions, higher-level diplomats like Dennis Ross and Elliott Abrams took milder, generous or hopeful tones regarding the administration, as did elected officials, who staked out predictable ground. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s fear that “some of our nation’s leaders are complacent” about Israel’s enemies was matched by Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer’s reassurance of “our clear intent and firm commitment. America and Israel cannot leave any uncertainty in the minds of those who describe us as their
common foes.”
If individual speakers expressed dissatisfaction with American policy, and delegates privately displayed frank disappointment over the Hagel appointment, none of this was in evidence when Vice President Joe Biden took the stage. Biden delivered a bravura performance with his trademark homespun touches, including references to his father and to his own first meeting, as a young senator, with Golda Meir. It fell to Biden to state the administration’s positions forcefully. “President Barack Obama is not bluffing,” he warned, adding, “We are not looking for war. We are looking to and ready to negotiate peacefully. But all options, including military force, are on the table.”
Biden provided assurances that the United States will “prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.” Does this mean the technology, raw materials, final assembly, deployment, or use of a nuclear weapon? Biden did, to be sure, assert that the administration meant to “prevent, not contain” Iran, correcting once again Hagel’s misstatement on the subject during his disastrous yet ultimately successful confirmation hearings.But if Biden was well received, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was embraced by the crowd with the kind of warmth American Jews reserve for Israeli military heroes, as was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who spoke via video. These speeches, too, had a boilerplate character, and were all about Iran, Syria, and the twinned absolutes of Israel’s independence of action and its strategic partnership with the United States. But what does “strategic partnership” mean in an era when the American “war on terror” has been declared finished and its two land wars in Asia have ended in disarray? The Obama administration's answers to these questions remain unclear.
Under these circumstances, it is the responsibility of groups like AIPAC to go beyond speaking of Israel functionally as the Middle East’s only democracy, the scientific, technological and cultural success story that creates marvels like theReWalk, which permits paraplegics to walk, or SpaceIL, which aims to land an Israeli probe on the moon, or even as the country that is America’s closest ally in the region and acts as America’s largest aircraft carrier. Perhaps the “shared values and interests” that AIPAC cites in a general way need to be articulated in more specific terms: individual liberty, full equality for women, freedom of speech, religion, assembly and press, respect for law, the embrace of tolerance, and a strong sense of self-preservation and national identity founded in religious tradition.
These values are rarely discussed directly at AIPAC, in part because to do so would constitute too emphatic a reminder of their near-total absence in surrounding societies, some of which are U.S. allies or clients. But in their fullest sense, strategy and partnership are expressions of a kind of shared culture. The closest analogue to the U.S.-Israel relationship is the other, now diminished, special relationship, with the United Kingdom.These shared values also form the basis of what may be one of AIPAC’s most interesting and underestimated roles in American society. For one thing, while the word “Zionism” was mentioned only once from the main stage, AIPAC is perhaps the prime mover of Jewish peoplehood in America, whose cause is precisely the Jewish national home, bridging the religious-secular divide and moving across denominations and generations.Equally significant is the systematic construction of a unique cross-cultural entity, a sense of shared American-Israeli peoplehood. No cause, force, or organization brings Americans, primarily Jews but also Christians, together like the cause of Israel as managed by AIPAC. It creates a fuzzy hybrid, a cultural, quasi-religious nationalism rooted in history.
Steny Hoyer articulated this with unusual clarity: “America’s ties with Israel run far deeper than matters of security and statecraft. The United States, a young nation, and Israel, heir to an ancient birthright, were founded on the same values. These are the principles of human dignity and basic justice first laid out in the Torah and embraced by America’s Founders. A line connects the wisdom of our shared scripture to the hearts and minds of those who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and our Bill of Rights.”The closing ceremony of the policy conference—the roll call, where attending U.S. senators and congressmen are presented to the delegates—enthusiastically weaves American institutions, American Jews, and Israel into a single entity with a shared destiny. This is a modernized, ecumenical version of the historic Congregationalist vision of America as the New Jerusalem, linked practically as well as theoretically to the Old Jerusalem, restored under the Jews.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In the absence of educational and cultural systems that celebrate the “Hebraic” origins of American tradition, it is left to AIPAC and the occasional congressman to remind us and, more important, to defend this source of America’s strength.
3)Morning JoltBy Jim GeraghtyObama: We Don't Want a Balanced Budget Just for the Sake of BalanceWhen it comes to chasing a balanced budget, President Obama is not exactly Inspector Javert (or Samuel Gerard, depending on your pop-culture frame of reference). But he admitted Tuesday he was never really trying that hard:In an exclusive interview with ABC News, President Obama rejected calls to balance the federal budget in the next ten years and instead argued that his primary economic concern was not balancing the budget, but rather growing the economy."My goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. My goal is how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we are going to be bringing in more revenue," he said."We noticed," the guys at Weasel Zippers quip.In the broadest sense, Obama is right: A country with the economic resources and general stability that the United States has enjoyed through much of its history can afford to run a deficit. Wiser minds than me argue that the real measuring stick is the debt-to-GDP ratio.Our national debt is . . . $16,703,943,129,416.14, as of Monday. That's $16.7 trillion.Our nominal GDP is $15.6 trillion. Oof.Looking at the inflation-adjusted numbers for our annual deficit, year by year . . . you know what used to be considered "a lot"? $500 billion, in 2004. (That year, unadjusted for inflation, it came in at $413 billion.) Back in 1991, it came in at $453 billion. So a half a trillion was the pre-Obama all-time high.Now look at the Obama era: $1.5 trillion in 2009, $1.36 trillion in 2010, $1.32 trillion in 2011, $1.1 trillion in 2012. We're supposed to be really happy that this year it might come in under a trillion, in the $900 billion range.In other words, the best Obama has done is twice as bad as it's ever been.No, we don't need a perfectly balanced budget — which is one of the reasons I'm pretty "meh" on the notion of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. But we've got to get the annual deficit something closer to "only" a couple hundred billion each year.Anyway, if you were hoping for a grand bargain, rest assured that congressional Democrats will be every bit as helpful on entitlement reform as we've come to expect:Some liberals challenged Obama on his frequently repeated call to include entitlement savings in any grand bargain. Sen. Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, reiterated his opposition to adopting a less generous cost-of-living formula to calculate Social Security benefits."We were cautioning him about that: Be careful about this grand bargain," said Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. But, he told reporters, Obama informed them "that's something that's still open for negotiation."Obama did not promise the caucus that he would oppose raising the eligibility age for Social Security and Medicare, an issue Harkin brought up during the meeting. "He didn't make a commitment," said Harkin, "but he seemed to indicate that yes, there are other ways of solving the entitlement problem without doing things like that."
3a) Obama's Islamist Tilt
By Kyle Shideler
Important overseas populations are drawing the conclusion that the Obama administration is quietly realigning itself in the Middle East, toward the Islamists.
Recently returning from a visit to Egypt, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) noted that many of the Coptic Christian minorities he met believe the United States supports the Muslim Brotherhood's vicious rule there:
"I was told people think the United States is developing relationships with the Muslim Brotherhood because it believes the party is going to remain in power," Wolf said. "[T]he feeling is that as long as the Brotherhood protects the United States' interests in the region, it can act with impunity within its borders."
Such sentiments are increasingly common in Egypt. Protestors against Secretary of State John Kerry's visit to Cairo stood outside the Egyptian Foreign ministry, and accused the U.S. of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. The leadership of the primary Muslim Brotherhood opposition, the National Salvation Front, refused to meet with Kerry, citing his "pro-Morsi stance." And U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson has been repeatedly accused of leading an effort to transform Egypt "into Pakistan," which is to say, a militarized, hardline-Islamist state. For his trip to Cairo, Kerry brought with him news of the release of $250 million in aid for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood-led government, a figure which would have been larger still had Congress not intervened.
Nor are the Egyptian opposition the only ones convinced that America has become the strongest ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, or their even more violent Islamist brethren.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently accused the U.S. of partnering with the Taliban in a cynical strategy to prolong the military campaign in Afghanistan. Karzai's statement is ridiculous on its face since it's difficult to give credence to any argument in which the Obama Administration appears anxious to remain in Afghanistan.
But given the repeated U.S. efforts to conduct negotiations with the Taliban, grant them an embassy, and resist declaring them terrorists, one wonders if Karzai is quite as far off the mark as an objective observer would think he would be. Even if Karzai were speaking to a domestic audience only, shouldn't the idea that the U.S. is partnering with the Taliban be so laughable as to be completely inconceivable even among isolated Afghan tribal peoples?
And, of course, if the idea of the U.S. collaborating with the Taliban should be considered as likely as flying pigs, then the idea that, in Syria, the U.S. is actively arming Jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda-affiliates, should be an idea popular with only the tinfoil hat crowd.
But increasingly it's not.
The United States is helping arm and perhaps helping to train radical Islamist guerrillas who want a Sharia state in Syria, who believe Israel should be wiped off the map, and who may soon be murdering and oppressing Christians and other groups in Syria itself.
The State Department announced that it would provide $60 million in direct aid to the Syrian Opposition Coalition, an alliance of Syrian groups that has come out in support of the Al Nusrah Front after the US designated it as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and al Qaeda in Iraq's affiliate in Syria in December 2012.
The struggle for Syria is becoming a repeat of the prior situation in Libya. There, the U.S. provided assistance, including air cover, for Libyan rebels with openly admitted Al Qaeda ties. And we continue to reap the consequence0efits" of that decision today from Benghazi to Mali. Now, the U.S. is doing the same for the Al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian groups.
Apropos the concerns of the protesting Egyptians, not only does U.S. policy risk turning Egypt into Pakistan, but increasingly, in our own way, we are turning our own country into Pakistan. We are, objectively speaking, supporting Islamic fundamentalists, and yes, even terrorists with the one hand, while opposing them with the other. We have transformed ourselves, in the span of a decade, from a nation that declares, "You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists," to a nation that is credibly accused of arming terrorists.
And as in Pakistan, there is perhaps some room for debate over whether this schizophrenic policy is due largely to an increasingly incompetent bureaucracy (of the sort that invites a virulent twitter anti-Semite to be awarded a women's rights award) or if it is by Machiavellian design.
But there's no question over what gave rise to the increasing belief that the United States is backing the Muslim Brotherhood over religious minorities in Egypt, providing aid and comfort to the Taliban, or supporting violent jihad in Syria and Libya. What gave them that idea? We did.
Kyle Shideler is the Director of Research and Communications at the Endowment for Middle East Truth (www.emetonline.org).
3b)Obama Palestine Visit Mired in Controversy
Hamas calls for “third intifada” if Obama visits Al-Aqsa MosquePalestinians prepare to protest Obama's forthcoming visit to Jerusalem.
By Mohamed Ali Saleh
Washington, Asharq Al-Awsat—The Palestinian Authority (PA) is desperately
seeking to ensure some presence, even a symbolic one, when US President
Barack Obama visits Jerusalem next week.
Obama begins his three-day visit to Israel and the West Back on 20 March.
There are also reports that he intends to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque in Eastern
Jerusalem, which the Palestinian consider the capital of any future state.
Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad Al-Maliki told Palestinian National
Radio that any visit to Jerusalem must be coordinated with the Palestinian
side.
He said: “Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory and visiting it should
be coordinated with the Palestinian side, with Palestinian attendance and
participation.”
The Palestinians have asked the Americans to agree on the details of any
visit to eastern Jerusalem. Maliki also confirmed that the PA is contact
with the White House as part of attempts to reach an agreement over the
itinerary of Obama’s visit to the West Bank.
However it appears that Washington has so far failed to respond to the
Palestinian demands. A well-informed source told Asharq Al-Awsat that the
precise details of Obama’s visit remain unclear.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper claimed that Obama will also visit the Church of
the Nativity in Bethlehem. The Palestinian Foreign Minister said: “We
welcome the presence of the US president on the territory of the Palestinian
state whether this is in Bethlehem or Ramallah.”
Both the Israeli authorities and the PA are paying significant attention to
Obama’s upcoming visit, however not all Palestinians are as welcoming as the
Maliki. A number of Islamist groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Hamas have warned Obama against visiting Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Hamas spokesman, Mushir Al-Masri, warned that President Obama visiting the
Temple Mount would be a “declaration of war” against the Islamic world.
He called for a “third intifada” should Obama seek to visit Al-Aqsa Mosque
while it remains under Israeli occupation.
A Palestinian grassroots groups is also planning demonstrations against
Obama’s visit and expected pressure to resume what it has dubbed “useless”
peace negotiations with Tel Aviv.
“You are not welcome in Palestine,” read a banner on the “Palestinians for
Dignity” Facebook page, depicting an image of President Obama.
The group called on Palestinians to take to the streets and protest against
Obama’s visit, in addition to criticizing the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO) for ignoring Obama’s role in thwarting the Palestinian
bid for statehood.
An official statement issued by the group called on Palestinians to “reject
US President Obama’s visit to the occupied Palestinian territories expected
between 20-22 March and to demonstrate against the possible return to
negotiations.”
The statement emphasized: “President Obama’s visit to the occupied
Palestinian territory comes at a time when our prisoners are waging a hunger
strike battle in the face of Israeli government obstinacy, and in the face
of US silence towards the slow murder these heroes are being subjected to”
adding “moreover, the visit comes in light of the continued international
isolation of Israel and the ever-increasing boycott campaign against it.”
The statement concluded: “We call on the masses of the Palestinian people to
change this path and demonstrate against receiving he who considers Israel
‘the closest ally in the region’, and to refuse the return to futile
negotiations. We call for entrenching the sacrifices of the martyrs and
prisoners by refusing to surrender and to work with the Palestinians
everywhere to establish a strategic program of resistance, where political,
economic, military, popular, and various other forms of resistance and
duties are shared. We invite you to take to the street on the expected day
of the visit . . . to restore part of our dignity and reject Western
hegemony, and Zionist colonialism and internal consent.”
In Washington, Obama met with the leaders of several Arab-American
organizations at the White House earlier this week. The leaders called on
Obama to offer a positive message to the people of Palestinian during his
forthcoming visit.
In a statement issued following the meeting, the Arab-American leaders
welcomed the White House’s invitation to talks as a positive step, and
expressed hope that this would continue in the future. The statement read:
“We thank President Obama for engaging Arab American leaders in this
critical dialogue, and we look forward to using this meeting as a
springboard for robust on-going conversations on US policy in the Middle
East.”
The statement added: “Today’s meeting was an important opportunity for
Arab-Americans to share our views, and continue to serve as a bridge between
the US and the Arab world. Our meeting underscored the president’s
recognition of the importance of our community’s contributions to
discussions of policy in the region.”
However the official White House statement downplayed any potential effort
by Obama to restart peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The statement emphasized that during his meeting with Arab-American leaders,
Obama “underscored [that] the trip is an opportunity for him to demonstrate
the United States’ commitment to the Palestinian people—in the West Bank and
Gaza—and to partnering with the Palestinian Authority as it continues
building institutions that will be necessary to bring about a truly
independent Palestinian state.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Friday that Obama’s primary goals
for his upcoming visit are to demonstrate his commitment to Israel’s
security and discuss hot button issues in the Middle East with regional
leaders.
He said: “While the President is not going with any specific peace plan in
hand, the president’s views [are that] it’s in the best interest of both
parties, both Palestinians and the Israelis, to pursue a peace agreement.”
Raed Jarrar, Communications Director at the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), informed Asharq Al-Awsat that members
of the American Task Force for Palestine, the Arab American Institute, the
American Federation of Ramallah Palestine, and the ADC itself participated
in this meeting.
He added that the four institutes had issued a joint-statement confirming
that “the US, through its enduring and balanced commitment, can facilitate a
peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” adding “this is
something that is necessary for long-term security in the Middle East.”
Jarrar commended President Obama for putting aside time to speak with
Arab-American leaders and groups regarding this critical debate, saying that
the meeting represented the “beginning of an on-going dialogue regarding US
policies in the Middle East.”
He also revealed that the Arab-American delegation had expressed its
“displeasure” at the lack of any movement or progress in the peace process,
saying that Obama’s visit must focus on a number of key issues.
Jarrar also informed Asharq Al-Awsat that the four Arab-American groups had
put forward a number of proposals including “reviewing the unlimited US
financial support to Israel, imposing a freeze on Israeli settlement
building in the West Bank, removing any obstacles in the face of
inter-Palestinian reconciliation, if not actively supporting this, and
removing the obstacles imposed by Israel on Arab-Americans wanting to visit
their families [in Palestine].”
3c)From affirmative action to diversity
By Victor Davis Hanson
Sometime in the new millennium, "global warming" evolved into "climate change." Amid growing controversies over the planet's past temperatures, Al Gore and other activists understood that human-induced "climate change" could better explain almost any weather extremity -- droughts or floods, too much heat or cold, hurricanes and tornadoes.
Similar verbal gymnastics have gradually turned "affirmative action" into "diversity" -- a word ambiguous enough to avoid the innate contradictions of a liberal society affirming illiberal racial preferencing.
In an increasingly multiracial society, it has grown hard to determine the racial ancestry of millions of minorities. Is someone who is ostensibly one-half Native American or African-American classified as a minority eligible for special consideration in hiring or college admission, while someone one-quarter or one-eighth is not? How exactly does affirmative action adjudicate our precise ethnic identities these days? These are not illiberal questions -- given Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's past claims of being Native American to find advantage in her academic career.
Aside from the increasing difficulty of determining the ancestry of multiracial, multiethnic and intermarried Americans, what exactly is the justification for affirmative action's ethnic preferences in hiring or admission -- historical grievance, current underrepresentation due to discrimination, or both?
Are the children of President Barack Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder more in need of help than the offspring of first-generation immigrants from the Punjab or Cambodia ? If non-white ancestry no longer offers an accurate assessment of ongoing discrimination, is affirmative action justified by a legacy of historical bias or contemporary ethnic underrepresentation?
Does a recent arrival from Oaxaca who fled the racism and poverty of Mexico warrant special compensation upon arrival in the United States ? And if so, when? A day, a month, a year or a decade after crossing the border? How about a Chilean, Korean or Iraqi immigrant? Should particular coveted employment match the nation's racial composition -- jobs on the faculty, but not jobs in the NBA or in the Postal Service ?
How do we fairly allocate compensation for past collective sins against a bygone generation? Slavery, Jim Crow , internment of Japanese-Americans, racially exclusionary immigration laws and the denial of U.S. admission to Jews fleeing the Holocaust: All were reprehensible; but it is difficult to know the degree to which these injustices still distort the career paths of individual Americans, or who still alive is to blame.
In 2009, the University of California system changed its admissions policy allegedly to curtail admission to Asian-Americans. Such anti-affirmative action arose not because UC was a racist institution, but because as an applicant group, Asian-Americans were outperforming most other ethnic groups, in numbers disproportionate to the general population.
In other words, in the manner that the Ivy League turned away qualified Jews in the 1920s and '30s, so some university administrators apparently thought that engineering a campus "to look like America" was more important than simply admitting those with the strongest academic achievement.
Affirmative action -- fossilized for a half-century -- also made few allowances for class. Asian-Americans, for example, have higher per-capita incomes than Americans as a whole. Were affluent minority individuals eligible for affirmative action?
Will the children of multimillionaire Tiger Woods -- or of Jay-Z and Beyoncé -- qualify for special consideration on the theory that statistical underrepresentation in some fields or racial pedigrees will make their lives more challenging than the lives of poor white children in ruralPennsylvania or first-generation Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Mich. ?
If ossified racial preferences don't work in 21st century multiracial America, then the generalized idea of "diversity" -- just picking and choosing people without any rationale other than ensuring lots of different races and ethnic groups -- offers a better defense of extending preferences in lieu of strictly meritocratic criteria.
Yet diversity no more alleviates the problem of bias than does climate change end controversy over global warming. We really do not mean "diversity" in the widest sense of the word. No Ivy League law school is worried that its faculty profile is disproportionately 90 percent liberal, or lacks fundamentalist Christians commensurate with their numbers in the general population.
The idea of diversity, racial and otherwise, is deeply embedded in politics. President George H.W. Bush was not especially lauded for appointing the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas , apparently because Thomas was considered conservative. Liberal Attorney General Eric Holder was seen by the media as a genuinely diverse appointment in a way that a conservative predecessor, Alberto Gonzales , was not.
Like Prohibition, affirmative action and then diversity were originally noble efforts that were doomed -- largely by their own illiberal contradictions of using present and future racial discrimination to atone for past racial discrimination.
It is well past time to move on and to see people as just people.
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