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Obama being played just right by Iranians.
When you cook a turkey you need to set the temperature and timer just right. (See 1 below.)
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"What difference does it make." if your identity is stolen? (See 2 below.)
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Is Eli whistling in the dark? Time will tell. (See 3 below.)
And my friend Ne'eman on Kerry's efforts. (See 3a below.)
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Friedman on Ukraine. (See 4 below.)
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Just back from surgery. Dr. Savory was able to get a lot of scar tissue surgically removed and said with a lot of hard therapy work I should have a straight knee that can bend up to 95% degree or more.
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Memos will be sporadic from this point forward.
These are items I read while in the hospital. (See 5 below.)
My friend Avi continues to highlight what a fraud UNRWA is. (See 5a below.)
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Obama believes in big government and yet his big government has failed at everything it has tried.
Government does not create jobs it restricts the private sector and until we get rid of bloated rules and regulations, a tax code that is incomprehensible and which creates uncertainty and channels resources to unproductive areas and we rid society of government agencies that are costly and counterproductive and even destructive our economy will not recover to its full potential.
If anyone believes they can defend this Administration's policies, though their espoused intentions may sound good, they are dreaming on another planet.
Obama and his radical progressives have their hands on the nation's throat and they will not stop choking the private sector until it is without breath.(5b below.)
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Dick
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1)Walkout: Iran Playing Obama Perfectly
By Jonathan S. Tobin
Anyone who thinks Iran’s leaders aren’t cognizant of what’s going on in Washington got a reminder this weekend just how closely they follow the Obama administration’s political line. After weeks in which President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have been communicating their fears about the Iranians breaking off talks if Congress has the temerity to pass new economic sanctions, Tehran decided to make the president’s point. On Thursday, in an effort to prove that they weren’t lying down for the Islamist regime, administration officials announced that it would expand the list of businesses and individuals being targeted for prosecution for doing business with Iran. Contrary to the headline of the New York Times article about the measure, this wasn’t a case of new sanctions but merely a belated effort to enforce existing laws that have often been evaded either by exemptions granted by the Treasury Department or a lack of interest on the part of the U.S. government. This was supposed to demonstrate to a skeptical Congress that Obama and Kerry weren’t fibbing about being serious about keeping sanctions in place.
But the Iranian response to this tepid plan wasn’t long in coming. As Voice of America reports, the Iranian delegation to the meeting being held in Vienna to work out the implementation of the nuclear deal reached last month in Geneva walked out of the talks to protest the American move:
Iran said on Friday a new U.S. measure targeting companies and individuals for supporting its nuclear program violated the spirit of the Geneva deal.
Let’s get this straight. While Obama and Kerry said passing new sanctions in order to be sure the Iranians give up their nuclear ambitions would “break faith” with their diplomatic partners, the Iranians are going even further. They are now saying that even enforcing the current sanctions is not in the spirit of the Geneva deal. And in a very real sense, they’re right.
After all, the spirit of Geneva is, contrary to administration spin, a total Western surrender of the demands they’ve been making on Iran for the last decade. For the first time, The U.S. has tacitly recognized Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium as well as given up on the notion that sanctions could ever force them to dismantle their nuclear infrastructure, which is likewise left in place with U.S. approval. In return for giving up virtually nothing other than a temporary freeze on higher-end refinement—a meaningless point since the centrifuges are still turning and their product could be converted to weapons grade fuel later—the Iranians have gotten the U.S. to ease sanctions for the first time.
They also know that during the months of the secret talks they’ve been holding with Obama’s representatives, the U.S. has eased up on enforcement of the tough sanctions that the administration opposed but now brags about. So it’s little wonder that they believe any effort toward enforcing the sanctions is against the rules.
Of course, as even the initial reports about the Iranian walkout acknowledge, Tehran will soon return to the table. Why not? Every time they sit down with Americans they win. But by sending this not-too-subtle warning they have also reinforced the president’s point about the Iranians running away from diplomacy at the least provocation. Rather than responding to this provocation by reminding the Iranians they are the ones who benefit from the Geneva deal, the U.S. and its European partners are predictably adopting a supine posture. They are clearly more worried about offending the Islamist tyrants than they are in making it clear that they mean business about stopping their nuclear project. While the Iranians made no bones about the fact that they had been ordered home, Western sources were trying to paper over the disruption and to pretend as if there was no problem.
No doubt, this incident will soon be forgotten as the Iranians eventually come back to the table more certain than ever that the Americans are easily pushed around. But members of Congress pondering whether to take the administration’s warnings about not offending the Iranians should take this to heart. Rather than accepting a state of affairs in which the Iranians get to dictate not only the terms of nuclear agreements but also whether U.S. laws will be enforced, the Senate should call the Iranians’ bluff. Passing the next generation of sanctions that will make it impossible for the Iranians to go on selling oil—even if enforcement would be put off until after the six months of talks—would be the perfect message to send to Tehran that the United States isn’t impressed by their histrionics.
Unfortunately, that won’t be the reaction of President Obama, who is still chasing a naive vision of détente with Iran rather than one in which he fulfills his repeated promise of stopping Iran from getting a bomb. For five years, Tehran has been playing him like a piano and this most recent incident is an indication that they still have his number.
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2)Issa: Obamacare Navigators Put Americans at Risk From Identity Theft
The staff report also reveals that the very navigators who are supposed to help people enroll in health insurance plans are urging consumers — in certain cases — to lie and commit fraud to qualify for or enhance their government subsidies.
The navigator program was launched by the White House supposedly to help guide consumers through the confusing Obamacare sign-up process, including navigating around the troubled HealthCare.gov website.
But the report, which was released in conjunction with a Monday field hearing in a Dallas suburb, warns that ill-trained navigators are violating navigator rules and procedures while also giving bad advice to applicants about the insurance marketplace and the enrollment process.
Issa, a California Republican who is chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the Department of Health and Human Services "lacked a contingency plan for the navigator program after HealthCare.gov failed, leaving consumers open to the risk of identity theft" due to confusion surrounding enrollment for health exchanges."
"Major problems have plagued the Navigator and Assister programs in the first 10 weeks of enrollment," his committee's report states. "Poorly-trained navigators gave consumers incorrect information about the healthcare exchanges, violated HHS rules, and even encouraged applicants to commit tax fraud in some instances."
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has admitted that navigators do not need a background check before becoming certified, which means criminals — including those who have been convicted of identity theft — can become Obamacare assisters. They can then get access to sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, date of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and annual income.
The report was drawn up by the committee after HHS officials, including Gary Cohen, the deputy administrator and director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, briefed it last month on the troubled navigator outreach program.
The report said, "[The] documents call into question the effectiveness of the navigator program and the Obama administration's ability to safeguard consumer information."
The system "induces fraudulent behavior and poses real threats to the safety of consumers' personally identifiable information, such as one's Social Security number, yearly income, and other sensitive tax information," the report said.
The Oversight Committee also learned that there have been instances where Obamacare navigators have "encouraged consumers to commit tax fraud by underreporting income in order to qualify for Obamacare's health insurance subsidies."
The navigators have assisted applicants before even completing their five- to 20-hour online training course, according to the report, and mailed applications for consumers, which violates "the rule that applicants must mail in the application themselves."
The committee quoted a video released by conservative activist James O'Keefe's Project Veritas in that navigators from the Urban League of Greater Dallas were seen urging consumers to lie on their health insurance applications to qualify for tax subsidies. They were also captured telling one consumer to lie about her smoking habit to reduce her monthly premium.
In another case, an alleged navigator gave a TV interview in which she incorrectly told viewers that credit scores would affect their eligibility for some health insurance plans. It was later revealed that she was not a certified navigator, but a volunteer with a navigator organization.
Also, a navigator organization in North Carolina, Mountain Project Inc., has been mailing application for consumers, disregarding HHS rules.
On Monday, Issa joined forces with Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions to attack the navigator program in an op-ed in The Dallas Morning News, saying that "while President Barack Obama and other allies of Obamacare continue to publicly tout the law, they have done too little to address serious problems that come with it."
Issa and Sessions said the point of the field hearing in Richardson, Texas, on Monday, one of several investigating "the flawed implementation" of Obamacare, was to help the American people understand the problems surrounding the navigator program.
"The American people deserve to know why the administration believes that inadequately trained navigators are qualified to help guide them through such an important process as signing up for healthcare," they said.
The lawmakers were particularly concerned about the lax security surrounding the navigators when proper consumer privacy protection should be imperative in a program like Obamacare, which requires Americans by law to purchase health insurance or face a fine for noncompliance.
"Fortunately, states such as Texas have proposed rules that will protect Americans' private information by requiring health navigators to pass background checks and complete additional privacy training," Issa and Sessions wrote.
3)To John Kerry
United States Secretary of State
A Secure Israel is a Condition for Peace
| Eli E. Hertz
Objectively, how vulnerable is Israel? To say that Israel is a tiny nation does not begin to describe the state’s predicament. Slightly larger than the Canary Islands, more or less the size of the state of New Jersey, Israel fits into Lake Michigan with room to spare.
Israel’s pre-1967 borders – the borders Palestinian Arabs want Israel to pull back to – lacked rhyme or reason and reflect the deployment of Israeli and Arab forces when the 1948 armistice agreement was signed. This pre-1967 frontier with the West Bank is known as the Green Line simply because a green pencil was used to draw the map showing the armistice line in 1948, a demarcation that is neither ‘sanctified’ nor a border.
At one of the narrowest points in central Israel, the entire width of the state from the Mediterranean coastal town of Netanya to the Green Line is a mere nine miles – just about three times the length of John F. Kennedy Airport’s runway (14,570 feet or 4,441 meters). Not surprisingly, proximity has made Netanya, nearby Hadera and other Israeli communities along the narrow Sharon coastal plain just north of Tel Aviv, popular targets where Palestinian handlers drop off suicide bombers. If Israel would relinquish the foothills on the east side of the Green Line to Palestinian control, Ben-Gurion International Airport would be within range of shoulder-fired ground-to-air missiles, Katyusha rockets and mortars. The heart of Tel Aviv, Israel’s New York City, is merely 11 miles from the West Bank.
The West Bank juts into Israel like two clenched fists. No major Israeli city is more than 22 miles from a former Arab border. Until the Six-Day War, the Golan Heights escarpment – once bristling with Syrian gun emplacements and minefields – towered above Israelis living in the upper Galilee. In an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel in November 1969, the late Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, a lifelong dove, described Israel’s pre-Six-Day War borders as ‘Auschwitz’ lines’ that threaten Israel’s survivability. IDF Major General (res.) Yaakov Amidror puts Eban’s ‘Auschwitz’ metaphor in operational terms in regard to the West Bank. In a 2005 analysis of what ‘defensible borders for a lasting peace’ entail, Amidror explained that even from a technical standpoint, the Green Line lacks minimum ‘defensive depth’ – an overarching principle of military doctrine for all armies: There is insufficient battle space for a defensive force to redeploy after being attacked, there is no room for reserves to enter or counterattack and there is no minimal distance between the battle front and the strategic interior necessary for any army to function.
U.S. Generals on Israel’s Security after the Six-Day War
American military experts have recognized the importance of shoring up Israel’s borders to provide some territorial depth. In a study published immediately after the 1967 Six- Day War, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Earl Wheeler said that “the minimum required for Israel’s defense includes most of the West Bank and the whole of Gaza and the Golan Heights.” The need for territorial depth has not decreased over time. Lt. General (ret.) Tom Kelly, who served as Chief of Operations during the 1991 Gulf War, said in the wake of the Gulf War:
“I cannot defend this land (Israel) without that terrain (West Bank) … The West Bank Mountains, and especially their five approaches, are the critical terrain. If an enemy secures those passes, Jerusalem and Israel become uncovered. Without the West Bank, Israel is only eight miles wide at its narrowest point. That makes it indefensible.”
This sentiment was echoed in the assessment of the late Admiral James Wilson “Bud” Nance, who told Congress in 1991 that there was:
“No logical reason for Israel to give up one inch of the disputed areas. Quite to the contrary, I believe if Israel were to move out of the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it would increase instability and the possibility of war, increase the necessity for Israel to preempt in war and the possibility that nuclear weapons would be used to prevent an Israel loss, and increase the possibility that the U.S. would have to become involved in a war.”
The prospects of a new Arab state, a Palestinian state, on Israel’s border have raised concern by U.S. policymakers, as well. Writing in Commentary in 1997, Douglas Feith, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, said such a state would give the Arab world “a much greater capacity than they now have to facilitate terrorism against Israel, conduct anti-Israel diplomacy, assist or join enemy armed forces in the event of war, and destabilize local states (such as Jordan and Egypt) that cooperate with Israel.”
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was even more candid, remarking in a talk with Pentagon employees in August 2002:
“If you have a country that's a sliver and you can see three sides of it from a high hotel building, you've got to be careful what you give away and to whom you give it.”
In the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, after three Arab armies converged on Israel’s nightmarish borders, even the United Nations was forced to recognize that Israel’s pre-Six-Day War borders invite repeated aggression. Thus, UN Resolution 242 – which formed the conceptual foundation for a peace settlement — declares that all states in the region should be guaranteed “safe and secure borders.”
Czech author Milan Kundera once defined a small nation as “one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment; a small nation can disappear, and it knows it.” Israel is even smaller than Czechoslovakia was in 1939 before it was gobbled up by Germany.
Despite this, Israel has been willing to take great risks to make peace with the Palestinians and is prepared to reach a territorial compromise that settles for far less than what these leading American military experts view as the necessary minimum. In the wake of Hamas’ victory in the January 2006 elections, however, Douglas Fieth’s words about “a greater capacity to facilitate terrorism” and Admiral Nance’s warning of the “destabilizing effect” a Palestinian state could wrought and the ramifications of pressuring Israel to take ‘one risk too many’ seem almost prophetic.
A study done by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff on June 29, 1967 under Gen. Earl Wheeler points to the minimum territory Israel required “in order to permit defense against possible conventional Arab attack …” The study content was considered so explosive and contrary to State Department policy, it was stamped ‘Top Secret’ until the Wall Street Journal revealed it in 1983.
The hostility of its neighbors goes beyond conflicting claims to territory and recognized borders, rivalry or regional domination. The object of Israel’s enemies is neither to dominate nor reach parity with Israel, it is to destroy Israel as a state and send surviving Jews back to where they came from. No other nation is the target of such a potentially genocidal threat.
Under International Law, Palestinian Arab illegal aggression cannot and should not be rewarded.
3a)Kerry's Interim Agreement
by Yisrael Ne'eman
US Sec. of State John Kerry is wholeheartedly brokering what he hopes will be a permanent status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. This being unachievable we can expect he advance an extensive interim accord. There is no choice. The four major issues are security, borders, Jerusalem and refugees. When all is said and done, Israel's bottom line is "End of Conflict" – a commendable but unrealistic goal. However there is room and need for agreement on what is attainable at the moment.
The talks are being held without publicity but a few facts are known. Israeli concerns over security are the first big issue which if addressed, borders can be discussed. Economic development in the Palestinian Authority (or interim State) is of paramount importance. The Fatah/PA government compromised itself by just interacting with Israel over a two-state solution and therefore must compensate their population at least in part through material advancement. Both Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu and former Palestinian Authority PM Salam Fayyad who wrote up the draft for an independent Palestinian State in 2009 believe in an "economic peace" although the political conditions are seen in a very different light. Conflict resolution begins with what is agreed upon and tackles the tougher issues later. In essence we are speaking of Stage II in the Bush Road Map of ten years ago.
To ensure economic development there needs to be security. Everyone fears Hamas and Islamic terrorism in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) or worse, an overthrow of the ruling Fatah apparatus. Should there be a Palestinian civil war this would constitute a direct security threat to Israel, in particular by missile attack on her major cities and international airport. General Keith Dayton's US trained Palestinian police (with help from Israel if needed) are expected to be up to the job. The external security issue, Israel's presence in the Jordan Rift Valley, is just as vital to guarantee Israeli security along the natural geographic Jordan River border. Since 1967 Israel fears an overthrow of the pro-western Hashemite monarchy of Jordan just to the east by radical forces whether they be secular or Islamist. Leaks from the talks point to an Israeli-Palestinian compromise leading to a 15 year Israeli presence on the western side of the Jordan River within the framework of a multi-national force to include Palestinians. After 15 years there is to be a review, examining the future of the security arrangement. Israel consistently makes it clear that her security border is the Jordan River and not the 1949-67 armistice line between Tulkarm and Netanya some 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the Mediterranean Sea.
On the political-diplomatic level one can expect an American demand for recognition of the two-state solution by both sides. A declaration as such may be requested at the conclusion of the interim stage negotiations or drawn up and only implemented with the conclusion of a permanent status agreement. Both the Hamas/Islamists and the Israeli right wing/religious factions will find themselves with a fait accompli and in full opposition to any accord. Rumors have it that Kerry may ask for a deliberate statement recognizing Israel as the nation state of the Jewish People. The geographical contours of Palestine will be defined essentially as the West Bank and Gaza. The hope is to bring in full international diplomatic and financial support, particularly from Europe. So far they are offering billions of euros in funds provided there be a final accord. The EU needs to readjust its expectations to reality should they want to aid in the peace process. Developmental support in the wake of a wide ranging interim accord will be very helpful. The West will become the PA/Fatah patron in full putting Israel and the PA/Fatah Palestinians in the same category. One can expect billions of dollars and euros in investment for Palestinian development as compensation and incentives for state building alongside Israel.
Next are borders – a very tricky issue. To determine the exact boundaries is to arrive pretty much at a permanent status accord. As of May 2011 and Pres. Obama's declaration that Israel must withdraw to the 1967 lines with "land swaps" the border issue is more defined. Israel speaks of defensible borders and today demographics play a role when discussing Israeli settlement across the armistice lines. Most Israelis living in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) live within a few kilometers of the old lines and lands can be exchanged. For those living deep in Judea and Samaria they will be given to understand that they will not be residing in the State of Israel in the future, even if the interim borders are not finalized. Municipal funding may be cut to a minimum as happened at different times in the 1990s and 2000s when the government sought to send such a message. Certainly Israel will be asked to remove road blocks and security installations in agreed upon regions for Palestinian sovereignty. The Palestinian police will take over security in these areas.
Jerusalem is a formidable stumbling block. A statement concerning the Jerusalem "region" serving as a capital for both Israel and the Palestinians may be on the table. Years ago the Palestinians were planning a parliament building in Abu Dis, a suburb to the east. Supposedly the structure was to be several meters outside the Jerusalem city limits. From the Israeli side it is unacceptable to speak of dividing the "united" capital of the State of Israel and the Jewish People. Today Palestinian Arabs make up close to 40% of Jerusalem's population when in 1967 they formed around 24%. Anyone keeping track of the demographics knows Jerusalem will have an Arab majority within a decade or so. Arab neighborhoods east and north of the city could be brought under Palestinian jurisdiction and Jewish neighborhoods would be retained by Israel in a municipal system of borough's encouraging local initiative in what would become a semi-divided city. Residents would live in Israel or Palestine yet share municipal services and development. Such a solution is being discussed for the past generation. This could be the beginning of partial agreement to move some of Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods over to Palestinian control. It is a long shot but could set a precedent for negotiations over Jerusalem. There would need to be reciprocal recognition by the Palestinians that Jewish neighborhoods across the 1967 lines are now part of Israel. The hardest nut to crack involves the Old City, Temple Mt. and holy basin spanning up to the Mt. of Olives. We can expect this to be left for the final accord. Many suggest internationalization, others to draw borders. Whatever happens there will need to be a free flow of people from one side of the city to the other.
Should all the above come true, this would be the most serious movement towards conflict resolution since Oslo II (1995) and prove the whole process is still alive. Even such a partial accord will attract much opposition, certainly from Hamas and Fatah rejectionists, but also from Netanyahu's coalition partners, the Jewish Home faction and the right wing of his own Likud party. Netanyahu might be able to bring in the Labor party to replace the Jewish Home faction and even outvote his own internal opposition but it will be a serious struggle. As for the Palestinians, Hamas and their allies will agitate for serious civil unrest and possibly an overthrow of the PA. Would the PA be able to halt civil conflict without turning it into a civil war? All will have to be nipped in the bud otherwise the Palestinians will join the instability raging in the Arab/Muslim world.
What cannot be achieved – a permanent status agreement.
First, foremost and by far of greatest significance is the fact that no one has ever prepared the Palestinian refugees and their descendents for no return to Israel proper. Israel might agree to a symbolic return of some actual refugees, those born before 1948, as a gesture of good will. Mahmoud Abbas and the PA/Fatah have never had any official policy besides demanding full refugee return. To do otherwise will have them declared "traitors" by Hamas and Fatah rejectionists and lead to an overthrow of the present PA leadership. It is doubtful whether any power could halt such an uprising. The issue is even more complicated as the Palestinian refugees are the only ones in the world where one passes down refugee status unto the furthest generations, serving as a great incentive not to seek any solution where Israel survives as a Jewish State.
On the Israeli side the Jewish Home party junior partners fully oppose a two-state solution and represent the settlement interest more than anyone. It is believed that 75-80 percent of Jews living in the West Bank can be brought into Israel through land swaps. This does not interest the solid religious and right wing factions embodied in the Likud and Jewish Home party. They believe in the Greater Land of Israel and no Palestinian State. For Netanyahu to take them on means the destruction of the coalition, his Likud party and quite possibly the end to his own political career. Israeli acceptance of a two-state solution at this stage would lead to serious civil disorder. For years the Israeli public has been notified that a two-state solution is under negotiation. The message continues to take time to sink in.
Netanyahu promised a referendum in lieu of a peace accord. But what of another interim agreement, even should it be wide ranging? On an interim accord he could hold his coalition together despite losing the right wing of the Jewish Home party. Should the entire faction leave he will need to bring in Labor. Labor and the left opposition will vote for the accord as will most of the Likud/Yisrael Beitainu senior partners. There may be a few abstentions. The centrist Yesh Atid will vote for the accord along with Tzippi Livni's Tnua party. Many in the moderate right will want to test Palestinian intentions and not take unnecessary gambles. They could go with a long term interim accord seen as bringing stability (and putting off a final agreement). With a two-state solution the declared objective the dangers of a bi-national state will recede.
If and when concluded both Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas will face enormous American and EU pressure to ratify the interim framework. It will not be easy but certainly possible.
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4)
Ukraine: On the Edge of Empires
By George Friedman
The name "Ukraine" literally translates as "on the edge." It is a country on the edge of other countries, sometimes part of one, sometimes part of another and more frequently divided. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was divided between Russia, Poland and the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, it was divided between Russia and Austria-Hungary. And in the 20th century, save for a short period of independence after World War I, it became part of the Soviet Union. Ukraine has been on the edge of empires for centuries.
My father was born in Ukraine in 1912, in a town in the Carpathians now called Uzhgorod. It was part of Austria-Hungary when he was born, and by the time he was 10 the border had moved a few miles east, so his family moved a few miles west. My father claimed to speak seven languages (Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and Yiddish). As a child, I was deeply impressed by his learning. It was only later that I discovered that his linguistic skills extended only to such phrases as "What do you want for that scrawny chicken?" and "Please don't shoot."
He could indeed make himself understood in such non-trivial matters in all these languages. Consider the reason: Uzhgorod today is on the Slovakian border, about 30 miles from Poland, 15 miles from Hungary and 50 miles from Romania. When my father was growing up, the borders moved constantly, and knowing these languages mattered. You were never sure what you'd be a citizen or subject of next or who would be aiming a rifle at you.
My father lived on the edge until the Germans came in 1941 and swept everything before them, and then until the Soviets returned in 1944 and swept everything before them. He was one of tens of millions who lived or died on the edge, and perhaps nowhere was there as much suffering from living on the edge than in Ukraine. Ukraine was caught between Stalin and Hitler, between planned famines and outright slaughter, to be relieved only by the grinding misery of post-Stalin communism. No European country suffered as much in the 20th century as Ukraine. From 1914 until 1945, Ukraine was as close to hell as one can reach in this life.
Asking to be Ruled
Ukraine was, oddly enough, shaped by Norsemen, who swept down and set up trading posts, eventually ruling over some local populations. According to early histories, the native tribes made the following invitation: "Our land is great and rich, but there is no law in it. Come to rule and reign over us." This is debated, as Anne Reid, author of the excellent "Borderland: Journey through the History of Ukraine," points out. But it really doesn't matter, since they came as merchants rather than conquerors, creating a city, Kiev, at the point where the extraordinarily wide Dnieper River narrows.
Still, few historians doubt that some offer of this type was made. I can imagine inhabitants of what became Ukraine making such an offer in ways I can't imagine in other places. The flat country is made for internal conflict and dissension, and the hunger for a foreigner to come and stabilize a rich land is not always far from Ukrainians' thoughts. Out of this grew the Kievan Rus, the precursor of modern Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. There are endless arguments over whether Ukraine created Russia or vice versa. Suffice it to say, they developed together. That is more important than who did what to whom.
Consider the way they are said to have chosen their religion. Volodymyr, a pagan ruler, decided that he needed a modern religion. He considered Islam and rejected it because he wanted to drink. He considered Catholicism and rejected it because he had lots of concubines he didn't want to give up. He finally decided on Orthodox Christianity, which struck him as both beautiful and flexible. As Reid points out, there were profound consequences: "By choosing Christianity rather than Islam, Volodymyr cast Rus' ambitions forever in Europe rather than Asia, and by taking Christianity from Byzantium rather than Rome he bound the future Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians together in Orthodoxy, fatally dividing them from their Catholic neighbors the Poles." I suspect that while Volodymyr liked his drink and his women, he was most concerned with finding a balance between powers and chose Byzantium to create space for Ukraine.
Ukraine, Europe and Russia
Ukraine is on the edge again today, trying to find space. It is on the edge of Russia and on the edge of Europe, its old position. What makes this position unique is that Ukraine is independent and has been so for 18 years. This is the longest period of Ukrainian independence in centuries. What is most striking about the Ukrainians is that, while they appear to value their independence, the internal debate seems to focus in part on what foreign entity they should be aligned with. People in the west want to be part of the European Union. People in the east want to be closer to the Russians. The Ukrainians want to remain independent but not simply independent.
It makes for an asymmetric relationship. Many Ukrainians want to join the European Union, which as a whole is ambivalent at best about Ukraine. On the other hand, Ukraine matters as much to the Russians as it does to Ukrainians, just as it always has. Ukraine is as important to Russian national security as Scotland is to England or Texas is to the United States. In the hands of an enemy, these places would pose an existential threat to all three countries. Therefore, rumors to the contrary, neither Scotland nor Texas is going anywhere. Nor is Ukraine, if Russia has anything to do with it. And this reality shapes the core of Ukrainian life. In a fundamental sense, geography has imposed limits on Ukrainian national sovereignty and therefore on the lives of Ukrainians.
From a purely strategic standpoint, Ukraine is Russia's soft underbelly. Dominated by Russia, Ukraine anchors Russian power in the Carpathians. These mountains are not impossible to penetrate, but they can't be penetrated easily. If Ukraine is under the influence or control of a Western power, Russia's (and Belarus') southern flank is wide open along an arc running from the Polish border east almost to Volgograd then south to the Sea of Azov, a distance of more than 1,000 miles, more than 700 of which lie along Russia proper. There are few natural barriers.
For Russia, Ukraine is a matter of fundamental national security. For a Western power, Ukraine is of value only if that power is planning to engage and defeat Russia, as the Germans tried to do in World War II. At the moment, given that no one in Europe or in the United States is thinking of engaging Russia militarily, Ukraine is not an essential asset. But from the Russian point of view it is fundamental, regardless of what anyone is thinking of at the moment. In 1932, Germany was a basket case; by 1941, it had conquered the European continent and was deep into Russia. One thing the Russians have learned in a long and painful history is to never plan based on what others are capable of doing or thinking at the moment. And given that, the future of Ukraine is never a casual matter for them.
It goes beyond this, of course. Ukraine controls Russia's access to the Black Sea and therefore to the Mediterranean. The ports of Odessa and Sevastopol provide both military and commercial access for exports, particularly from southern Russia. It is also a critical pipeline route for sending energy to Europe, a commercial and a strategic requirement for Russia, since energy has become a primary lever for influencing and controlling other countries, including Ukraine.
This is why the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 was critical in transforming Russia's view of the West and its relationship to Ukraine. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had a series of governments that remained aligned with Russia. In the 2004 presidential election, the seemingly pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, emerged the winner in an election that many claimed was fraudulent. Crowds took to the streets and forced Yanukovich's resignation, and he was replaced by a pro-Western coalition.
The Russians charged that the peaceful uprising was engineered by Western intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA and MI6, which funneled money into pro-Western NGOs and political parties. Whether this was an intelligence operation or a fairly open activity, there is no question that American and European money poured into Ukraine. And whether it came from warm-hearted reformers or steely eyed CIA operatives didn't matter in the least to Vladimir Putin. He saw it as an attempt to encircle and crush the Russian Federation.
Putin spent the next six years working to reverse the outcome, operating both openly and covertly to split the coalition and to create a pro-Russian government. In the 2010 elections, Yanukovich returned to power, and from the Russian point of view, the danger was averted. A lot of things went into this reversal. The United States was absorbed in Iraq and Afghanistan and couldn't engage Russia in a battle for Ukraine. The Germans drew close to the Russians after the 2008 crisis. Russian oligarchs had close financial and political ties with Ukrainian oligarchs who influenced the election. There is a large pro-Russian faction in Ukraine that genuinely wants the country to be linked to Russia. And there was deep disappointment in the West's unwillingness to help Ukraine substantially.
Beyond the Orange Revolution
On the day we arrived in Kiev, two things were going on. First there were demonstrations under way protesting government tax policy. Second, Yanukovich was in Belgium for a summit with the European Union. Both of these things animated the pro-Western faction in Ukraine, a faction that remains fixated on the possibility that the Orange Revolution can be recreated and that Ukraine must enter the European Union. These two things are linked.
The demonstrations were linked to a shift in tax law that increased taxes on small-business owners. The main demonstration took place in a large square well-stocked with national flags and other banners. The sound systems in place were quite good. It was possible to hear the speeches clearly. When I pointed out to a pro-Western journalist that it seemed to be a well-funded and organized demonstration, I was assured that it wasn't well-organized at all. I have not been to other Ukrainian demonstrations but have been present at various other demonstrations around the world, and most of those were what some people in Texas call a "goat rodeo." I have never seen one of those, either, but I gather they aren't well-organized. This demonstration did not strike me as a goat rodeo.
This actually matters. There was some excitement among politically aware pro-Westerners that this demonstration could evolve into another Orange Revolution. Some demonstrators were camping out overnight, and there were some excited rumors that police were blocking buses filled with demonstrators and preventing them from getting to the demonstration. That would mean that the demonstration would have been bigger without police interference and that the government was worried about another uprising.
It just didn't seem that way to me. There were ample police in the side streets, but they were relaxed and not in riot gear. I was told that the police with riot gear were hidden in courtyards and elsewhere. I couldn't prove otherwise. But the demonstration struck me as too well-organized. Passionate and near-spontaneous demonstrations are more ragged, the crowds more restless and growing, and the police more tense. To me, as an outsider, it seemed more an attempt by organization leaders and politicians to generate a sense of political tension than a spontaneous event. But there was a modicum of hope among anti-government factions that this could be the start of something big. When pressed on the probabilities, I was told by one journalist that there was a 5 percent chance it could grow into an uprising.
My perception was that it was a tempest in a teapot. My perception was not completely correct. Yanukovich announced later in the week that the new tax law might not go into effect. He said that it would depend on parliamentary action that would not come for another week but he gave every indication that he would find a way to at least postpone it if not cancel it. Clearly, he did not regard the demonstrations as trivial. Regardless of whether he would finally bend to the demonstrators' wishes, he felt he needed to respond.
European Dreams
On the same day the demonstrations began, Yanukovich left for Brussels for talks about Ukraine entering the European Union. I had an opportunity to meet with an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before he departed for Brussels as well. The official had also been with the ministry during the previous administration. He was a member of the group that had been part of the numerous programs run by the United States and Europe for turning Eastern Europeans into proponents of the West, and he was certainly that. My meeting with the official taught me one of two things: Either Yanukovich was not purging people ideologically or he wanted to keep a foot in the pro-EU camp.
From where I sat, as an American, the European Union appeared at best tarnished and at worst tottering. I had met in Istanbul with some European financial leaders who had in past discussions dismissed my negativism on the European Union as a lack of sophistication on my part. This time they were far less assured than ever before and were talking about the possibilities of the euro failing and other extreme outcomes. They had traveled quite a road in the past few years to have arrived at this point. But what was fascinating to me was that the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry official was not only unshaken by the Irish situation but also saw no connection between that and the EU appetite for Ukraine becoming a member. For him, one had nothing to do with the other.
The troubles the European Union was facing did not strike pro-EU Ukrainians as changing the basic game. There was no question in their mind that they wanted Ukraine in the European Union, nor was there any question in their mind that the barriers to entry were in the failure of the Ukrainians to measure up. The idea that EU expansion had suffered a fatal blow due to the Irish or Greek crises was genuinely inconceivable to them. The European Union was not going to undergo any structural changes. Nothing that was happening in the European Union impacted its attractiveness or its openness. It was all about Ukraine measuring up.
In many countries we have visited there has been a class difference for EU membership. The political and economic elites are enthusiastic, the lower classes much more restrained. In Ukraine, there is also a regional distinction. The eastern third of the country is heavily oriented toward Russia and not to the West. The western third is heavily oriented toward the West. The center of the country tilts toward the west but is divided. Linguistic division also falls along these lines, with the highest concentrations of native Ukrainian speakers living in the west and of Russian speakers in the east. This can be seen in the election returns in 2010 and before. Yanukovich dominated the east, Timoshenko the west, and the contested center tilted toward Timoshenko. But the support in the east for the Party of Regions and Yanukovich was overwhelming.
This division defines Ukrainian politics and foreign policy. Yanukovich is seen as having been elected to repudiate the Orange Revolution. Supporters of the Orange Revolution are vehement in their dislike of Yanukovich and believe that he is a Russian tool. Interestingly, this wasn't the view in Poland, where government officials and journalists suggested that Yanukovich was playing a more complex game and trying to balance Ukraine between Europe and the Russians.
Whatever Yanukovich intends, it is hard to see how you split the difference. Either you join the European Union or you don't. I suspect the view is that Yanukovich will try to join but will be rejected. He will therefore balance between the two groups. That is the only way he could split the difference. Certainly, NATO membership is off the table for him. But the European Union is a possibility.
I met with a group of young Ukrainian financial analysts and traders. They suggested that Ukraine be split into two countries, east and west. This is an idea with some currency inside and outside Ukraine. It certainly fits in with the Ukrainian tradition of being on the edge, of being split between Europe and Russia. The problem is that there is no clear geographical boundary that can be defined between the two parts, and the center of the country is itself divided.
Far more interesting than their geopolitical speculation was their fixation on Warsaw. Sitting in Kiev, the young analysts and traders knew everything imaginable about the IPO market, privatization and retirement system in Poland, the various plans and amounts available from those plans for private investment. It became clear that they were more interested in making money in Poland's markets than they were in the European Union, Ukrainian politics or what the Russians are thinking. They were young and they were traders and they knew who Gordon Gekko was, so this is not a sampling of Ukrainian life. But what was most interesting was how little talk there was of Ukrainian oligarchs compared to Warsaw markets. The oligarchs might have been way beyond them and therefore irrelevant, but it was Warsaw, not the European Union or the power structure, that got their juices flowing.
Many of these young financiers dreamed of leaving Ukraine. So did many of the students I met at a university. There were three themes they repeated. First, they wanted an independent Ukraine. Second, they wanted it to become part of the European Union. Third, they wanted to leave Ukraine and live their lives elsewhere. It struck me how little connection there was between their national hopes and their personal hopes. They were running on two different tracks. In the end, it boiled down to this: It takes generations to build a nation, and the early generations toil and suffer for what comes later. That is a bitter pill to swallow when you have the option of going elsewhere and living well for yourself now. The tension in Ukraine, at least among the European-oriented, appears to be between building Ukraine and building their own lives.
Sovereign in Spite of Itself
But these were members of Ukraine's Western-oriented class, which was created by the universities. The other part of Ukraine is in the industrial cities of the east. These people don't expect to leave Ukraine, but they do understand that their industries can't compete with Europe's. They know the Russians will buy what they produce, and they fear that European factories in western Ukraine would cost them their jobs. There is nostalgia for the Soviet Union here, not because they don't remember the horrors of Stalin but simply because the decadence of Leonid Brezhnev was so attractive to them compared to what came before or after.
Add to them the oligarchs. Not only do they permeate the Ukrainian economy and Ukrainian society but they also link Ukraine closely with the Russians. This is because the major Ukrainian oligarchs are tied to the Russians through complex economic and political arrangements. They are the frame of Ukraine. When I walked down a street with a journalist, he pointed to a beautiful but derelict building. He said that the super-wealthy buy these buildings for little money and hold them, since they pay no tax, retarding development. For the oligarchs, the European Union, with its rules and transparency, is a direct challenge, whereas their relation to Russia is part of their daily work.
The Russians are not, I think, trying to recreate the Russian empire. They want a sphere of influence, which is a very different thing. They do not want responsibility for Ukraine or other countries. They see that responsibility as having sapped Russian power. What they want is a sufficient degree of control over Ukraine to guarantee that potentially hostile forces don't gain control, particularly NATO or any follow-on entities. The Russians are content to allow Ukraine its internal sovereignty, so long as Ukraine does not become a threat to Russia and so long as gas pipelines running through Ukraine are under Russian control.
That is quite a lot to ask of a sovereign country. But Ukraine doesn't seem to be primarily concerned with maintaining more than the formal outlines of its sovereignty. What it is most concerned about is the choice between Europe and Russia. What is odd is that it is not clear that the European Union or Russia want Ukraine. The European Union is not about to take on another weakling. It has enough already. And Russia doesn't want the burden of governing Ukraine. It just doesn't want anyone controlling Ukraine to threaten Russia. Ukrainian sovereignty doesn't threaten anyone, so long as the borderland remains neutral.
That is what I found most interesting. Ukraine is independent, and I think it will stay independent. Its deepest problem is what to do with that independence, a plan it can formulate only in terms of someone else, in this case Europe or Russia. The great internal fight in Ukraine is not over how Ukraine will manage itself but whether it will be aligned with Europe or Russia. Unlike the 20th century, when the answer to the question of Ukrainian alignment caused wars to be fought, none will be fought now. Russia has what it wants from Ukraine, and Europe will not challenge that.
Ukraine has dreamed of sovereignty without ever truly confronting what it means. I mentioned to the financial analysts and traders that some of my children had served in the military. They were appalled at the idea. Why would someone choose to go into the military? I tried to explain their reasons, which did not have to do with wanting a good job. The gulf was too vast. They could not understand that national sovereignty and personal service cannot be divided. But then, as I said, most of them hoped to leave Ukraine.
Ukraine has its sovereignty. In some ways, I got the sense that it wants to give that sovereignty away, to find someone to take away the burden. It isn't clear, for once, that anyone is eager to take responsibility for Ukraine. I also did not get the sense that the Ukrainians had come to terms with what it meant to be sovereign. To many, Moscow and Warsaw are more real than Kiev.
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5)The Left against Zion
By Caroline B. Glick
The Left's doctrinaire insistence that Israel is the root of all evil is not limited to campuses
The Left against Zion In the 1960s, the American Left embraced the anti-Vietnam War movement as its cri de coeur.
In the 1970s, the Left's foreign policy focus shifted to calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament by the US and its Western allies.
In the 1980s, supporting the Sandinista Communists' takeover of Nicaragua became the catechism of the Left.
In the 1990s, the war on global capitalism - that is, the anti-globalization movement - captivated the passions of US Leftists from coast to coast.
In the 2000s, it was again, the anti-war movement.
This time the Left rioted and demonstrated against the war in Iraq.
And in this decade, the main foreign policy issue that galvanizes the passions and energies of the committed American Left is the movement to delegitimize Israel's right to exist.
This week has been a big one for the anti-Israel movement. In the space of a few days, two quasi academic organizations - the American Studies Association and the Native Americanand Indigenous Studies Association - have launched boycotts against Israeli universities. Their boycotts follow a similar one announced in April by the Asian Studies Association.
These groups' actions have not taken place in isolation. They are of a piece with ever-escalating acts of anti-Israel agitation in college campuses throughout the United States.
Between the growth of Israel Apartheid Day (or Week, or Month) from a fringe exercise on isolated campuses to a staple of the academic calendar in universities throughout the US and Canada, and the rise of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement to wage economic war against the Jewish state, anti-Israel activism has become the focal point of Leftist foreign policy activism in the US and throughout the Western world.
Every week brings a wealth of stories about new cases of aggressive anti-Israel activism. At the University of Michigan last week, thousands of students were sent fake eviction noticesfrom the university's housing office. A pro-Palestinian group distributed them in dorms across campus to disseminate the blood libel that Israel is carrying out mass expulsions of Palestinians.
At Swarthmore College, leftist anti-Israel Jewish students who control Hillel are insisting on using Hillel's good offices to disseminate and legitimate anti-Israel slanders.
And the Left's doctrinaire insistence that Israel is the root of all evil is not limited to campuses.
At New York's 92nd Street Y, Commentary editor John Podhoretz was booed and hissed by the audience for trying to explain why the ASA's just-announced boycott of Israel was an obscene act of bigotry.
Many commentators have rightly pointed out that the ASA and the NAISA are fringe groups.
They represent doctorate holders who chose to devote their careers to disciplines predicated not on scholarship, but on political activism cloaked in academic regalia whose goal is to discredit American power. The ASA has only 5,000 members, and only 1,200 of them voted on the Israel- boycott resolution. The NAISA has even fewer members.
It would be wrong, however, to use the paltry number of these fringe groups' members as means to dismiss the phenomenon that they represent. They are very much in line with the general drift of the Left.
Rejecting Israel's right to exist has become part of the Left's dogma. It is a part of the catechism.
Holding a negative view of the Jewish state is a condition for membership in the ideological camp. It is an article of faith, not fact.
Consider the background of the president of the ASA. Curtis Marez is an associate professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, San Diego. His area of expertise is Chicano Film and Media Studies.
He doesn't know anything about Israel. He just knows that he's a Leftist. And today, Leftists demonize Israel. Their actions have nothing to do with anything Israel does or has ever done. They have nothing to do with human rights. Hating Israel, slandering Israel and supporting the destruction of Israel are just things that good Leftists do.
And Marez was not out of step with his fellow Leftists who rule the roost at UCSD. This past March the student council passed a resolution calling for the university to divest from companies that do business with Israel.
Why? Because hating Israel is what Leftists do.
The Left's crusade against the Jewish state began in earnest in late 2000. The Palestinians' decision to reject statehood and renew their terror war against Israel ushered in the move by anti-Israel forces on the Left to take over the movement. And as they have risen, they have managed to silence and discredit previously fully accredited members of the ideological Left for the heresy of supporting Israel.
This week, Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz retired after 50 years on the law faculty. His exit, the same week as the ASA and the NAISA announced their boycotts of Israeli universities, symbolized the marginalization of the pro-Israel Left that Dershowitz represented.
For years, Dershowitz has been a non-entity in leftist circles. His place at the table was usurped by anti-Israel Jews like Peter Beinart. And now Beinart is finding himself increasingly challenged by anti-Semitic Jews like Max Blumenthal.
The progression is unmistakable.
5a)The Unique Tragedy of the Palestinian Refugees
by Avi Jorisch
Al-Arabiya
Al-Arabiya
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, is tasked with assisting Palestinian refugees. The films, pictures, slides and prints the organization has collected on the refugees' plight will now be displayed in Jerusalem's Old City in an exhibit entitled "The Long Journey," which will then tour Europe and North America. The images, available online, are heartbreakingly powerful and emotive.
Like all refugee stories, Palestinian stories of displacement and loss needs to be told. The question is what lessons one takes out of it. For Israel, as many prominent Israeli intellectuals, historians and politicians have argued for decades, the Palestinian plight is one that must be confronted and acknowledged with honesty.
What about the rest of the world, and particularly Muslims, Arabs and the Palestinians themselves?
The Palestinian refugees have an emotional hold in the Muslim world unlike any other refugee group. No other Muslim refugee problem, including those of conflicts in Sudan, Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan, generates such indignation. Why is that? What makes the Palestinians unique?
Remarkably, Palestinians refugees in the Levant are the only refugee group to have a special UN agency dedicated to them. All others across the world are handled by one agency, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). According to the UN, the special treatment of the Palestinians is justified by "the scale and uniqueness of the Palestinian refugee problem."
Yet by any measure, the scale of the Palestinian refugee problem is dwarfed by numerous refugee events of the 20thCentury. In 1948, credible estimates recorded approximately 700,000 refugees, and in 1967 approximately 300,000.
To put these numbers in perspective, the displacement of the Palestinians occurred within the context of the largest population transfers in history, in the aftermath of World War II. In 1947, around the same time that the British mandate of Palestine was being portioned into one state for Jews and one for Arabs, India was partitioned to create a state for Muslims - Pakistan. This resulted in the largest movement of refugees in history, with over 14 million people displaced and the death of over 1 million Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs.
Meanwhile, at least 12 million ethnic Germans fled or were expelled from Eastern and Central Europe (where they had lived for centuries) from 1944–1950, in the largest population transfer in modern European history.
In 1923, Greece and Turkey engaged in a forcible population exchange that turned 2 million people into refugees. And since the 1950s, numerous African nations have fought civil wars that led to massive refugee flight. The UNHCR estimates that in 1992, there were over 6.5 million refugees across Africa, with that number remaining high in 2004 at over 2.7 million.
How many people have studied these events or were even aware of them? Most were forgotten because after one generation, or two at most, the refugees were integrated into other countries.
And that points to one aspect of the Palestinian problem that is in fact unique: unlike most others, it has lasted for generations. The original estimated 700,000-1 million refugees now number approximately 6.5 million. That is not just a problem, it is a tragedy. Imagine if the Palestinians had been allowed to integrate into neighboring Arab countries – often less than 20 miles away from their original homes? Germany took in ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern and Central Europe, though they had not lived in Germany for centuries. India accepted Hindu refugees from the newly created state of Pakistan. Israel absorbed an estimated 800,000–1 million Jewish refugees who were expelled or fled from Arab countries between 1948 and the early 1970s.
The Arab League has instructed Arab states to deny citizenship to Palestinian refugees and their descendants "to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland." The result is that six decades later, Palestinians languish in camps throughout Lebanon, Jordan and Syria – instead of becoming productive citizens, as they have in other countries where they have emigrated. While the Arab world urges Israel to face its responsibility, it should not be an excuse to ignore its own.
Painting the Palestinian problem as the most serious issue facing Muslims today minimizes the plight of refugees everywhere. Even through the narrower lens of the Muslim world, the Palestinian experience is not exceptional. Pakistan is far from the only case. In Darfur, an estimated 2.5 million people have become refugees since 2003 because of the Janjaweed militia, backed by the Sudanese army. In Afghanistan, from the Soviet invasion in 1979 until the ouster of the Taliban in 2002, 6 million refugees fled to Pakistan and Iran (5 million of whom have been repatriated since). Today an estimated 2 million Syrians have left their country to escape the civil war that began in 2011. Other refugees in the Muslim world include 1.6 million Iraqis fleeing civil war in the past decade and several hundred thousand Feyli Kurds forcibly expelled by Saddam Hussein starting in the 1970s.
Displacement as a result of war is not distinctive. History is replete with refugee suffering, and it would be difficult to argue that Palestinians have suffered infinitely more than others in recent times.
It is hard to see what good can come from this false sense of uniqueness. Arguable, it causes even greater pain and trauma. It also makes it harder for Palestinians to envisage peacemaking rather than revenge, and strengthens extremists who feed on hatred and oppose any prospect for peace.
Is it possible to have a more nuanced understanding of the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict that does not absolve Israel of all wrongdoing, but doesn't demonize it either? Similarly, is it feasible to recognize the pain individual Palestinians underwent but concedes that this tragedy is similar to that experienced by millions of others? Answers to both questions may ultimately help bring an end to this sad Middle Eastern chapter
5b)
During the 3-1/2 years of World War 2 that started with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and ended with the Surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, the U.S. produced 22 aircraft carriers, 8 battleships, 48 cruisers, 349 destroyers, 420 destroyer escorts, 203 submarines, 34 million tons of merchant ships, 100,000 fighter aircraft, 98,000 bombers, 24,000 transport aircraft, 58,000 training aircraft, 93,000 tanks, 257,000 artillery pieces, 105,000 mortars, 3,000,000 machine guns, and 2,500,000 military trucks.
We put 16.1 million men in uniform in the various armed services, invaded Africa, invaded Sicily and Italy, won the battle for the Atlantic, planned and executed D-Day, marched across the Pacific and Europe, developed the atomic bomb and ultimately conquered Japan and Germany.
It's worth noting, that the Obama administration couldn't build a functioning web site.
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