Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Obama Swore To Defend America and Attend Intelligence Briefings. We Wound Up Paying Him To Play Golf and Attend Fund Raisers.

Israel has no viable partner to negotiate with based on Abbas' speech at the U.N.

Obama and Perry may think otherwise for their own nefarious political reasons but then we know better  ( See 1 below.)
                                                                         and
 An analysis by Israel's Defense Minister regarding what Israel accomplished in the recent Gaza War. Yes, it was a war!  (See 1a below.)
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Muslims are proliferating and will can result in  a very radical world for our children and grandchildren etc
Click on:. http://www.youtube.com/embed/6-3X5hIFXYU
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Obama swore to defend America but apparently he decided playing golf, raising money for Democrats and not doing the job he is paid to do was more fun!

Who qualifies for the JV team now ? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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A non-Jewish Professor responds to those who hate Israel for reasons that are hateful and irrational but lamentably growing and particularly is this the case among unwashed students on college and university campuses worldwide.! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)

Author:  Lt. Col. (ret.) Jonathan D. Halevi 


  • Mahmoud Abbas’ speech to the UN General Assembly reflects the political reality that there is no Palestinian partner today for a settlement with Israel based on compromise.
  • He revealed the true face of the Palestinian Authority with its open support for terror as a legitimate tactic.
  • Abbas charged Israel with genocide and blamed Israel for the Islamist terrorism sweeping the region. He never mentioned Hamas terrorism or the thousands of rockets fired at Israel’s cities from Gaza.
  • Abbas promised to “maintain the traditions of our national struggle established by the Palestinian [Fatah] fedayeen” as far back as 1965.
Abbas UN
On September 26, 2014, Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) gave a speech to the UN General Assembly that once again revealed his radical positions on terror and the peace process.
Abbas only used the phrase “state of Israel” once while calling Israel “the occupying state” five times, including two uses of the phrase “settlement occupation state” and two uses of “racist occupying state.” He used the word occupation (or “settlement occupation” or “racist occupation”) an additional 23 times, usually as a synonym for “state of Israel.”
Abbas portrayed Israel as the apex of human evil and as the wellspring of terror, incitement, hatred, and the Islamic radicalism that is sweeping the Middle East and the world at large.
Abbas accused Israel of a “new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people… the third war waged by the racist occupying state in five years,” and of planning another nakba (mass expulsion of Palestinians). He made no mention at all of terror attacks and the firing of thousands of rockets from Gaza at Israeli cities, strategic facilities, and its international airport.
Abbas denied any Israeli right to self-defense and justified the warfare and terror attacks of Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations, declaring that “the Palestinian people hold steadfast to their legitimate right to defend themselves against the Israeli war machine and to their legitimate right to resist this colonial, racist Israeli occupation.”
“War Crimes” and “Racism”
Abbas demanded that Israel pay the full price for its “war crimes” while directing no such demand at the Palestinian terror organizations (including Fatah, which he heads) for firing rockets at Israeli civilian communities. “Yet,” he said, “we believe – and hope – that no one is trying to aid the occupation this time in its impunity or its attempts to evade accountability for its crimes.”
Abbas also accused Israel of systematically derailing any possibility of peace with a long list of measures including settlement building, land confiscation, home destructions, massacres and mass arrests, forceful expulsion of Palestinians from their West Bank homes, tightening the “unjust” blockade on Gaza, trying to change the nature of Jerusalem with an emphasis on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and “criminal” activity of “racist and armed gangs of settlers.”
Israel, in Abbas’ words, is cultivating “a culture of racism, incitement and hatred [as] glaringly manifested in the despicable, appalling crime committed months ago by fascist settlers, who abducted the young Jerusalemite boy Mohammed Abu Khdeir, burnt him alive and killed him. We hope that this will remind you of something in history.” In that last sentence Abbas hinted at the Holocaust.
Abbas completely ignored the wall-to-wall condemnation of the murder in Israel along with the capture and arraignment of the suspects. This stands in stark contrast to the Palestinian Authority’s systematic failure to arrest or charge the perpetrators of terror attacks against Jews, while glorifying Palestinian terrorists and granting them lifelong economic security.
Praise for Terror and “Political Prisoners”
Praise for terror is a constant motif in Abbas’s speeches, and in his latest UN speech he again referred to all Palestinian terrorists whom Israel has prosecuted for murder or attempted murder as “political prisoners,” and declared that the Palestinian Authority demands their immediate release.
Indeed, Abbas does not view Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis – from stabbings to suicide bombings – as war crimes but as part of a legitimate struggle that comports with international law.
As he put it:
At the same time, I affirm that our grief, trauma and anger will not for one moment make us abandon our humanity, our values and our ethics; we will always maintain our respect and commitment to international law, international humanitarian law and the international consensus, and we will maintain the traditions of our national struggle established by the Palestinian fedayeen and to which we committed ourselves since the onset of the Palestinian revolution in early 1965.
Abbas was thereby referring to the first Fatah terror attack on Israel, an attempted bombing of the national water carrier, on January 1, 1965. Thus, he justified all aspects of the armed struggle that Palestinian terror organizations have been waging ever since.
Abbas attributed terror and the roots of terror to Israel, which, he says, was established in 1948 by expelling innocent and peaceful Palestinians from their homes. Apart from the gross distortion of history and the obfuscation of Palestinian and Arab terror, Abbas pinned the blame for the phenomenon of Islamic terror, as recently manifested by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, on Israel.
As he declared:
We, and all the Arab countries, have constantly cautioned about the disastrous consequences of the continuation of the Israeli occupation and the denial of freedom and independence for the people of Palestine. We have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that allowing Israel to act as a state above the law with impunity and absolving it of any accountability or punishment for its policies, aggression and defiance of the international will and legitimacy have absolutely provided fertile ground and an environment conducive for the growth of extremism, hatred and terrorism in our region.
Confronting the terrorism that plagues our region by groups – such as “ISIL” and others that have no basis whatsoever in the tolerant Islamic religion or with humanity…requires much more than military confrontation. What is primarily needed is a comprehensive, credible strategy to dry out the sources of terrorism…. It requires the creation of solid foundations for a reasonable consensus that makes the fight against all forms of terrorism in any place everywhere a collective task…. It requires, in this context and as a priority, bringing an end to the Israeli occupation of our country, which constitutes in its practices and perpetuation, an abhorrent form of state terrorism and a breeding ground for incitement, tension and hatred.
After denying both the existence of Palestinian terror and the Israeli right to self-defense, Abbas said that “Palestine refuses to have the right to freedom of her people…remain hostage to Israel’s security conditions.”
Not only does Abbas fail to recognize Israel’s security needs, he also claims that it is the Palestinians “who are subjected to the terrorism by the racist occupying Power and its settlers” and who “are actually the ones who need immediate international protection….”
In the speech Abbas also presented his vision for peace:
We want…a sovereign and independent State living in peace and building bridges of mutual cooperation with its neighbors; that respects commitments, obligations and agreements; that strengthens the values of citizenship, equality, non-discrimination, the rule of law, human rights and pluralism; that deepens the Palestinian enlightened traditions of tolerance, coexistence and non-exclusion; that strengthens the culture of peace; that promotes the role of women; that establishes effective administration committed to the standards of good governance….
It is impossible, and I repeat – it is impossible – to return to the cycle of negotiations that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question. There is neither credibility nor seriousness in negotiations in which Israel predetermines the results via its settlement activities and the occupation’s brutality. There is no meaning or value in negotiations for which the agreed objective is not ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the independence of the state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital on the entire Palestinian Territory occupied in the 1967 war. And, there is no value in negotiations which are not linked to a firm timetable for the implementation of this goal.
We reaffirm…our commitment to achieve a just peace through a negotiated solution…. a lasting solution and a just peace….
[This means] ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the two-State solution, of the state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, over the entire territory occupied in 1967, alongside the state of Israel and reaching a just and agreed upon solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees on the basis of resolution 194, with a specific time frame for the implementation of these objectives as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative. This will be linked to the immediate resumption of negotiations between Palestine and Israel to demarcate the borders, reach a detailed and comprehensive agreement and draft a peace treaty between them.
Abbas’ vision of peace does not indicate any real intention to reach a historic compromise with Israel on dividing the land into two states that would live peacefully side by side. He called for a political agreement via negotiations, but stipulated the results of the negotiations as a precondition for holding them. Moreover, Abbas lauded the Palestinian Authority’s formation of a unity government with Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations, even though it does not signal that the terror organizations have accepted the diplomatic route but, instead, that Abbas has gone in their direction.
Hamas wields complete control of Gaza and in recent months also tried to overthrow Abbas’ regime in the West Bank, a plan the Israeli security services managed to foil. Hamas’ military power and popularity in the Palestinian street, including the West Bank, constitutes veto power over any political settlement based on recognizing Israel and/or a political compromise of any kind.
Abbas wants the world to think he is taking a constructive political position. In actuality, he is merely reiterating the “just peace” formula and rejecting the Israeli “peace through compromise” formula.  [“A just and agreed upon solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees on the basis of resolution 194.”] The “just peace” formula means uncompromising insistence on what the Palestinians call the “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees and generations of their descendants to Israel itself. That, in turn, means forcing Israel to take in five to seven million Palestinians while ejecting millions of Jews from their communities so that the Palestinians can move in. In other words, the “just peace” formula is a prescription for putting an end to the state of Israel, and forms the ideological basis of the Palestinian unity agreement that Fatah has forged with Hamas and the other Palestinian terror organizations.


1a)

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Author:  Mitch Ginsburg 


After a punishing 50-day campaign in Gaza, Hamas has retained only 20 percent of its rocket arsenal, totaling roughly 2,000 projectiles, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Monday at Bar Ilan University.
The organization lost 40 senior operatives, Ya’alon said, along with 10 Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders.
Predominantly, however, Ya’alon contended that Operation Protective Edge – in which 72 Israelis and over 2,000 Palestinians, mostly militants, were killed – established a deterrence that will show its worth over time.
“I’m familiar with the longing for the Six Day War, and again and again I remind [you]: the undeniably glowing military victory did not bring quiet for but a limited amount of time,” he said, referencing the border skirmishes in the Jordan Valley that began shortly after the war and the onset of the War of Attrition in the Sinai.

Israeli army troops operating in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge
(photo credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
“The nature of the achievement of Operation Protective Edge will be tested by time,” he said, adding that there is ample reason to believe that Israel and Egypt, the only countries bordering the Gaza Strip, can help stop Hamas’ re-armament.
“I hope that the future proves that this operation attained a long period of quiet and deterrence not merely vis-à-vis Gaza, but in the entire region,” he said.
Addressing charges leveled at him and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – namely that both charted a policy that failed to adequately harm Hamas and that Israel failed to attain a decisive victory – Ya’alon said that “we navigated the operation according to our compass and not the weather vane that was heated from outside.”
As for victory, he added, “a decision, from my perspective, is to bring the other side to a ceasefire in accordance with your conditions.”

Former Southern Command – chief Tal Russo right
(photo credit:  IDF Spokesperson/Flash90)
On Sunday, in a conference focused on the tunnel threat, which proved to be a central component of Hamas’ battle plans during the operation, drawing Israel into a ground war, the former OC Southern Command, Maj. Gen. (res) Tal Russo, said that Israel “made no shortage of mistakes” in addressing the subterranean threat prior to the operation, but stated that “there are one hundred opinions on the matter and everyone is certain that they’re right.”
Speaking at The Institute for Policy and Strategy at the IDC Herzliya, Russo said that Hamas workers, “from Operation Protective Edge and till today, are pulling bodies out of the tunnels; there is the stench of death.”
The central goal for Israel in combating the tunnel threat, he added, does not so much revolve around “the perfect solution” — a technology that can detect all underground digging — but rather how “to turn them into death traps.”
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2)

GAI: Obama Skipped Over Half His Daily Intel Briefs

Image: GAI: Obama Skipped Over Half His Daily Intel Briefs(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters/Landov)
Tuesday, 30 Sep 2014 10:00 AM
By Drew MacKenziek |
  
In the fallout over President Barack Obama blaming the intelligence community for the rise of the Islamic State, a new report has surfaced showing that he attended less than half of his daily intel briefings.

The Government Accountability Institute, an investigative research organization, said the president went to only 42.1 percent of his intelligence meetings, known as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB, in the 2,079 days of his presidency through Monday, according to Breitbart.

The GAI report also revealed during his first term he attended 42.4 percent of the briefings, while Obama has even reduced that number in his second term, with just a 41.3 percent attendance record.

During an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, the president claimed that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had failed to warn the Obama administration that the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS, was gaining a strong foothold in Iraq and Syria.

“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” he said.

The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake alleged on Monday that as long as eight months ago Obama’s senior intelligence officials had alerted the White House that ISIS was growing in power while attempting to create a caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

“In the beginning of 2014, ISIS fighters had defeated Iraqi forces in Fallujah, leading much of the U.S. intelligence community to assess they would try to take more of Iraq,”wrote Lake, adding that members of the Defense department were “flabbergasted” by Obama’s statement.

“Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s (lying),” a former senior Pentagon official who knew of the threat posed by Sunni extremists told the Beast.

Breitbart noted that following his controversial TV comments Obama has been accused by people in the intelligence community of lacking interest in “live” PDBs, which allow the president to ask follow-up questions, demand further information and challenge intel suppositions.

Meanwhile, an Obama national security staffer told the Daily Mail that the PDBs have included threat assessment on ISIS since 2012.

“It's pretty well-known that the president hasn’t taken in-person intelligence briefings with any regularity since the early days of 2009,” the staffer said. “He gets them in writing.

“Unless someone very senior has been shredding the president's daily briefings and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions about (ISIS) have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the election.”

The White House said that the president prefers to read his intelligence briefings on his iPad instead of having in-person briefings, according to reports.

But Breitbart said, “The question remains whether a 42 percent attendance record on daily intelligence briefings is good enough for most Americans.”


2a)Letter from the parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn of SEAL Team VI: Please resign, Mr. President
Special to WorldTribune.com
Billy and Karen Vaughn
 After finally choosing to view the barbaric, on-camera beheading by ISIS of freelance war correspondent James Foley, I have been left with a level of rage known only to those of us who have sacrificed unspeakable offerings on the altar of world peace.
 My offering was my only son — Aaron Carson Vaughn. Aaron was a member of SEAL Team VI. He was killed in action when a CH47D Chinook, carrying thirty Americans and eight Afghans was shot down in the Tangi River Valley of Afghanistan on Aug. 6, 2011.
 http://www.worldtribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/endorse1.jpg
 Many times over the past three years, I have been asked what drove my son to choose his particular career. What made him want to be a Navy SEAL? My answer is simple.Aaron Vaughn was a man who possessed the courage to acknowledge evil. And evil, once truly acknowledged, demands response. Perhaps this is why so few are willing to look it in the eye. It is much simpler — much safer — to look the other way.
 That is, unless you are the leader of the Free World.

As Commander-in-Chief, your actions — or lack thereof — Mr. President, cost lives. As you bumble about in your golf cart, slapping on a happy face and fist-pounding your buddies, your cowardly lack of leadership has left a gaping hole — not only in America’s security — but the security of the entire globe. Your message has come across loud and clear, sir: You are not up to this job. You know it. We know it. The world knows it.
 Please vacate the people’s house and allow a man or woman of courage and substance to seize the reigns of this out-of-control thug-fest and regain the balance we, America, have provided throughout our great history.
 Thanks to your “leadership” from whatever multi-million dollar vacation you happen to be on at any given moment, the world is in chaos. What’s been gained, you’ve lost. What’s been lost, you’ve decimated. You’ve demolished our ability to hold the trust of allies. You’ve made a mockery of the title “President.” And you’ve betrayed the nation for which my son and over 1.3 million others have sacrificed their very lives.
 But this should come as no surprise, since your wife uttered a vile statement on Feb. 18, 2008, during the primary campaign — one that speaks volumes of your true convictions. “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country,” she said.
 I am sure my deceased son thanks you for that, Mrs. Obama. Oh, and you’re welcome.

Never in my lifetime have I witnessed such despair and such growing fear that the world’s last best hope, America, has finally been dismantled. Perhaps the better word is transformed — fundamentally transformed. Come to think of it, it’s become difficult — if not impossible — to believe things haven’t gone exactly as you planned, Mr. President.
 Amazingly, in five short years, your administration has lurched from one disaster to another. You spearheaded the ambitious rush to end the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan — with no plan on how to do so effectively. Also, the release of “the Taliban five” in exchange for one American — without consulting Congress — is also on your shoulders.
 You have been at the helm during unprecedented national security leaks — including, but not limited to the outing of SEAL Team VI on the Bin laden raid, the outing of the Pakistani doctor who provided the intelligence for that raid, the outing of Afghanistan’s CIA station chief, and the outing of your personal “kill list” to make you look tough. In addition, 75 percent of American deaths in Afghanistan and 83 percent of Americans-wounded-in-action have occurred on your watch, according to icasualties.org.
 And now, we have this recent, heinous event: the beheading of an American citizen by a barbaric organization you foolishly referred to as “the JV team” in your statements to the New Yorker magazine in January.
 You, sir, are the JV team. It’s time for you to step down and allow a true leader to restore our honor and protect our sons and daughters.America has always been exceptional. And she will be again. You, Mr. President, are a bump in our road.
 Billy & Karen Vaughn are Gold Star parents of Special Operations Chief (SEAL) Aaron Vaughn, KIA 6 Aug 2011. Billy is the author of Betrayed: The Shocking True Story of Extortion 17. 
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3)-Dr Denis MacEoin, a non-Jewish professor,  responds to the motion put forward by The Edinburgh Student's Association to boycott all things Israeli, in which they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime. Denis is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs and was a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly. Here's his letter to the students. 
TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.
May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain 's great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.
I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel . 
That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.
Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I'm not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I'm speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a "Nazi" state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel , precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.
It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.
Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.
That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country's 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha'is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population).
In Iran , the Bahai's (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren't your members boycotting Iran ? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa . They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks were able to do in South Africa .
Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. 
On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.
In Israel , women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. 
Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.
It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran , where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.
Intelligent students thinking it's better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the
Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?
University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.
I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel . I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it's clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.
Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and Iran . They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world's freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Bahai's.... Need I go on?
The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. 
Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument.
They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930's (which, sadly, there was not), don't you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?
 
 
Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence.

It's up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

 Denis MacEoin
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Monday, September 29, 2014

The Buck Never Stops on Obama's Desk Because He Owns A Golf Bag! Netanyahu Might As Well Talk To The Wall!

Unable to transfer and post pictures from Bourland's travelogue.  Sorry!
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Obama is allowing Iran to go nuclear as if he ever had a believable and sincere intention of doing otherwise.

Meanwhile, he has us engaged in another war with those he claimed were defeated and  which is the direct result of his precipitous withdrawal from Iraq. ( Ah, but once again Obama blames others and most particularly our intelligence agencies yet, G.W was called a liar for listening to his intelligence agencies.)

Furthermore, Obama is unlikely to take the advice of his military advisers because he is politically motivated and has no desire to do what it might take to win against Isis. Air strikes alone will not be determinative. So we are back to square one.

What tragedies this incompetent ideologue has gotten us into and I suspect matters will only worsen.

To make things more disheartening , if that is possible, Senators Reid and Warren are busy spending tax payer money to buy off one group after the other in order to hold onto the Senate

Eventually Americans might awake to the fact they have been defrauded and played for fools. When, and if, that occurs there is no telling where their anger and disgust will lead, particularly in the event Obama's War turns south..

Meanwhile, investigations of various alleged Obama Administration Scandals continue as Obama and his appointees continue to stonewall Congress, refusing to produce necessary documents to clarify what happened and why.  Once again, the nation's future rests in the hands of the federal judiciary.. (See 1 below.)
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Noonan writes what I have been saying when it comes to the continuing Republican campaign and strategy dysfunction. (See 2 below.)
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Netanyahu tries to get the West to focus on Iran but I doubt he will be successful.

He made a powerful and blunt speech, did not mince words and held out his hand to the Arab/Muslim World. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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The New York Times continues to distort when it comes to Israel.  Why are the owners of "The Gray Lady" so disingenuous?  Is it because they are intellectual German Jews who continue struggling with their insecurities and need to be accepted by New York's Society?  You decide!  (See 4 below.)
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Dick

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1) Iran Makes the Rules

Tehran holds firm while the U.S. keeps making nuclear concessions.

Iranian President Hassan RouhaniENLARGE
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Obama sucked up most of the media oxygen at the United Nations last week with his call for collective action against the Islamic State and other jihadists. But if anyone made real news from the General Assembly's green-marble podium, it was Iranian President Hasan Rouhani. The fabled Iranian moderate's unsubtle message: You'll play by our rules now.
"The people of Iran," he said, "cannot place trust in any security cooperation between their government and those who have imposed sanctions." That was a kick in the shins to U.S. diplomats who have made little secret of their desire to make common cause with Tehran against the Islamic State—albeit a kick dressed up as an inducement to lift the sanctions. It follows Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's claim last week that Secretary of State John Kerry is "lying" about the nature of U.S. overtures toward Iran. How's that for improving the diplomatic mood music?
Mr. Rouhani also gave no ground on nuclear negotiations, whose latest deadline is late November, in time for the lame duck Congress in case Republicans retake the chamber. Iran would continue to enrich uranium, said Mr. Rouhani, never mind Security Council resolutions demanding a suspension of enrichment.
He also claimed that Iran had honored its obligations under the interim nuclear agreement. That's despite a report this month from the International Atomic Energy Agency noting that Tehran continued to stymie its efforts to investigate the "possible military dimensions" of Iran's nuclear program. "These activities," the IAEA reported, "are likely to have further undermined the Agency's ability to conduct effective verification."
All of this explains why nuclear negotiations have gone nowhere after nearly a year—and after President Obama made a point of quashing a Congressional effort to revive sanctions if Iran fails to negotiate in good faith. Harder to explain is why the Administration is now seeking ever more creative ways to give the mullahs what they want.
The latest Administration brainstorm is to abandon the longstanding demand that Iran dismantle its uranium-enriching centrifuges, of which it currently has installed about 10,000, with an additional 9,000 built. Under one Western proposal, Iran would merely be asked to disconnect some of the pipes connecting one centrifuge to the next. Another idea, according to the Associated Press, is to allow Iran to keep as many as 4,500 centrifuges, provided Iran agrees to enrich uranium at a lower rate.
Then there are Iran's ballistic missiles, an essential component of its nuclear-weapons program. Security Council Resolution 1929 "decides that Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons." Yet over the summer Mr. Khamenei called on his Revolutionary Guards to mass-produce ballistic missiles, and now the Administration is looking for an accommodation.
Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told a House committee in July that Resolution 1929 is "not about ballistic missiles per se," but about nuclear-armed missiles. But that ignores that a ballistic missile that can carry a conventional warhead, or a satellite, can also carry a nuclear warhead.
The larger problem is that these diplomatic gambits rest on the fanciful notion that the same regime that is stonewalling the IAEA can be trusted not to reconnect its centrifuges on short notice or increase their rates of uranium production or develop more powerful rockets. Iran has spent a decade taking advantage of the diplomatic process to buy time and advance its nuclear programs.
"The Iranian nuclear game is to compromise on the elements of the program they've already perfected in order to gain time on the elements they haven't," says Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. "They've perfected enrichment so they can suspend it for the time being. What they've gained in exchange is time to work on advanced centrifuge R&D. The more efficient the centrifuges, the fewer they need; the fewer they need, the easier they are to hide."
All this is happening while America's attention has been consumed by the rise of the Islamic State and Vladimir Putin's depredations in Europe. But permitting Iran to get to the edge of nuclear capability would be the worst setback to U.S. and world security so far in the Obama era, which is saying something. Members of both parties on Capitol Hill need to start speaking up about the Administration's dangerous concessions to Iran's rules.
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2)

Republicans Need a Direction

They could win by default, but that's not good enough.

ENLARGE
MARTIN KOZLOWSKI
In a year when Republicans are operating in such an enviable political environment, why aren't their U.S. Senate candidates holding big and impressive leads? Why does it look close? Why are party professionals getting worried?
The Democratic president is unpopular. What progress can be claimed in the economy is tentative, uneven, feels temporary. True unemployment is bad and people who have jobs feel stressed and hammered by costs. Americans are less optimistic than they've ever been in the modern era, with right-track/wrong-track numbers upside down. Scandals, war, uncertain leadership—all this has yielded a sense the whole enterprise of the past six years just did not work.
But Republicans aren't achieving lift-off. The metaphor used most often is the wave. If Republicans can't make, catch and ride a wave in an environment like this, they've gone from being the stupid party to the stupid loser party.
What's wrong?
An accomplished establishment Republican this week shrugged and noted the obvious: Every race is state-by-state and has its own realities; some candidates prove good and some are disappointing. Another establishment figure, an elected officeholder, observed with satisfaction that Republicans in Washington have done a good job making sure local candidates weren't nutty persons who said nutty things.
But is that enough? Kellyanne Conway of The Polling Co. says no: "It's not enough for voters to have a candidate who doesn't say something controversial. They need something compelling."
The party's consultants say it comes down to money: Republicans are raising less than Democrats and need more. But Ms. Conway notes that in 2012, well-funded Republicans George Allen, Connie Mack, Linda McMahon, Josh Mandel and Tommy Thompson all went down to defeat. It's not all about money.
The question this week is whether the election should be nationalized, lifted beyond the local and given power by clear stands on some agreed-upon national issues. Those who resist say the election has already been nationalized by Barack Obama. His and his administration's unpopularity are all the unifying force that's needed.
But put aside the word "nationalized." Shouldn't the Republican Party make it clear right now exactly what it is for and what it intends to do?
Here the views of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and much of the Washington-based GOP election apparatus have held sway. If you are explicit in terms of larger policy ideas, you just give Democrats something to shoot at. Don't give them a target. ObamaCare, the foreign-policy mess, the IRS—these are so unpopular they're more than enough reason to vote Republican. Don't give voters a reason not to!
This sounds like the hard practicality of big-time politics, and it has a certain logic. But it doesn't take into account some underlying realities.
One is the rising air of public crisis. Many voters, especially in the Republican base, feel America is under threat and we are losing our country. They feel they are fighting to save it. In a time of alarm, vagueness doesn't seem clever but oblivious—out of touch and unaware.
Asecond reality is the GOP's brand problem. Everyone knows about it and is tired of saying it; the Democrats continue exploiting it because it's almost all they have. Moreover, history suggests a political brand problem gets resolved only by a vivid figure like FDR or Reagan, who through their popularity and power changed how people saw their parties. Republican politicians can't sit around waiting for a vivid figure to come along, so they don't talk about the problem anymore.
The cliché is that Republicans are old, white, don't like women or science, are narrow, numeric and oppose all modern ways. The cliché probably isn't as powerful as it used to be because the president has made so many new Republicans, but it's still there.
But Republicanism right now has a special duty to be dynamic and serious. It has to paint a world of the possible. It has to make people feel that things can be made better. The spirit animating the party should be "This way, we will take that hill and hold it. Together, now, let's march." To rouse people you have to tell them your plans.
And it would be especially welcome at this moment. The Democratic Party in the last years of Obama is running on empty, pushing old buttons. To judge by their current campaigns, their only bullets are mischief and malice. The mischief includes a wholly fictional Republican war on women and the malice involves class-mongering and "check your privilege" manipulation. Only the young seem idealistic; older Democrats seem like a sated force.
The Democrats' reputation is suffering, but the point here is the Republicans'. When you have a poor brand, do you spend all your time saying the other guy is worse? Or do you start rebuilding your reputation? In politics that means saying what you are for, not what you are against, and what you will do, not what the other guy will do if the voters let him.
A third reason to go with the idea of avowed meaning is the suspicion some voters must have that while to vote Democratic this year is to vote for the potential of more trouble, to vote Republican may be a vote for nothing changing or improving very much.
Both parties in Washington use stasis as a strategy. I suspect there are Republicans on the ground who intuit the Republican version of this. Republican inertia was outlined to me this spring, ironically, by a GOP congressman:
The 2010 election, he explained, was about winning the House, don't rock the boat. Twenty twelve was all about the presidential—again don't rock the boat, don't mess things up with anything controversial, win the presidency to effect change. In 2014, he said, it's all about the Senate—win it, hold the House. Then in 2016 it's going to be all about the presidential and holding the Senate. In 2018, he said, it will be all about holding Congress for a Republican president or against a Democratic one. Then in 2020 it will be all about the presidential.
After that, he said, we might do something!
His point was that party professionals think the party has to keep winning, so—wait. For what?
Republican political professionals need to get the meaning of things back. Otherwise, if Republicans do take the Senate, their new majority will arrive not having won on the basis of something shared. They will not be able to claim any mandate for anything. That will encourage them to become self-driven freelancers in a very pleasant and distinguished freelancer's club, which is sort of what the Senate is.
It's good to win, but winning without a declared governing purpose is a ticket to nowhere.
Some feel a vague list of general stands might solve the problem and do the trick. They think it's probably too late to do more than that. But there are 6½ weeks before the election, and plenty of voters would be asking for more information and open to changing their minds. In such circumstances, explicit vows are more likely to be taken seriously than airy sentiments.
Republicans need to say what they're for. They need to make it new and true—not something defensive but something equal to the moment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3) Netanyahu to Push Iran as Bigger Threat Than Islamic State at UN
By: Calev Ben-David

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will urge world leaders to keep up the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program even as they confront the threat of Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.
Netanyahu, addressing the United Nations General Assembly today, will expand on his Sept. 22 remarks mocking “esteemed commentators in the West” who say “the major powers need to go easy on Iran’s nuclear program so that Iran will fight” Islamic State, according to aides familiar with his speech. They asked not to be identified because it hasn’t been delivered.

Two years ago, Netanyahu pulled out a cartoon bomb at the same forum to argue time was running out to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb. With efforts to crush Islamic State overshadowing the General Assembly session, his message may be tougher to sell this time.

“Netanyahu has a big problem, because the main issue in this UN General Assembly is the Islamic State, and he’s coming with Iran, which people will say is not as important,” said Eytan Gilboa, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv. “As in previous General Assemblies, Netanyahu may have a message, but no audience.”
Netanyahu’s diplomatic efforts at the UN and a White House visit on Oct. 1 will also be clouded by new frictions with the Palestinians. Over the weekend, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked the UN to set a timetable for establishing a Palestinian state and accused Israel of perpetrating a “war of genocide” in Gaza -- a charge Netanyahu denounced as “slander and lies.”
Existential Threat

World powers are trying to reach a nuclear deal with Iran as a U.S.-led military coalition strikes Islamic State, an al- Qaeda splinter that has seized parts of Iraq and Syria and gained notoriety for beheadings and crucifixions. Although Iran isn’t part of that alliance, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said it has a role to play in defeating Islamic State.
Kerry will have a private meeting with Netanyahu in New York this evening, said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

Netanyahu says a nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to Israel’s survival and dismisses the Iranian government’s claims that its atomic program is peaceful. Having brandished the threat of a possible military strike, he has urged that any nuclear deal between Iran and world powers force Iran to end its uranium enrichment and other activities that could be used in bomb making.

Iran says its nuclear work is designed for energy and medical purposes and has rejected those conditions. On Sept. 25, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the General Assembly his country is “committed to continue our peaceful nuclear program, including enrichment, and to enjoy our full nuclear rights on Iranian soil.”
Hard Work

After addressing the UN, Netanyahu will make a brief trip to Washington to meet with President Barack Obama. The two men have had tense relations and at times Netanyahu has turned to allies in Congress seeking support for Israeli government policies on Iran and other issues.

The president, in his own remarks to the General Assembly on Sept. 24, only briefly mentioned the nuclear talks with Iran, assuring its leaders they can “reach a solution that meets your energy needs while assuring the world that your program is peaceful.”

Obama focused more on other threats to global security, including Islamic State, Russian actions in Ukraine, and Africa’s Ebola virus epidemic. With U.S.-led Mideast peacemaking in tatters, he also declared that “the violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace.”
Common Ground

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in April, and were followed by an Israeli military offensive against Gaza militants in July and August. Israel was censured internationally for a Gaza death toll that topped 2,100, including hundreds of women and children. Israeli officials say the tally ballooned because Palestinian militants used civilians as human shields. Seventy-two people died on the Israeli side, almost all of them soldiers.
Finding common ground with the U.S. on Iran and other regional issues might require Netanyahu to be show more flexibility with the Palestinians, according to analyst Gilboa. “Both the defeat of Hamas and the threat of Islamic State produced an opportunity to move forward with Israeli-Arab relations,” he said.

Obama probably will want to hear from Netanyahu what the Israeli leader has meant in recent months with his repeated references to a new “political horizon,” Gilboa added.

Retired Major General Yaakov Amidror, Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, says he thinks that means new opportunities for cooperation with Arab nations that view radical Islamic states and groups as potential threats, rather than new moves on the Palestinian front.

“For the first time in the Middle East for many years there is a common interest among so many nations in the region to fight against common threats, which might serve as a basis of cooperation,” Amidror said. “How to do actually go about that, how to manage it, that’s the big question.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Calev Ben-David in Jerusalem at cbendavid@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alaa Shahine atasalha@bloomberg.net Amy Teibel
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4)  

New York Times: New Year, Same Old Distortions


It’s somewhat ironic that the New York Times chose to publish an opinion piece on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, entitled “How Israel Silences Dissent.” For it is anoft used tactic of Israel’s detractors to take advantage of Jewish holidays, Shabbats and the like to disenfranchise many Jews from a conversation.
As for the opinion piece itself, the ominous sounding headline is indicative of an attempt to paint Israel as some sort of police state where minority views are not only frowned upon but actively persecuted, more in keeping with many of Israel’s Middle Eastern neighbors rather than a free and liberal democracy.

The “Bad News from the Netherlands” project and others like it were created, using the Netherlands as an example, to demonstrate that media coverage can degrade a country’s image by using selective news without context. And so Mairav Zonszein takes some examples from the extremes of the Israeli discourse and uses them to tarnish an entire country and its people.
According to Zonszein:
The vilification of the few Israelis who don’t subscribe to right-wing doctrine is not new. Similar acts of incitement occurred before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. But now they have multiplied, escalated and spread.
This would suggest that the majority of Israelis are “right-wing” despite evidence such as the current makeup of the Knesset that suggests otherwise. (A significant number of Knesset members belong to centrist or left-wing parties.) But when you come from the place on the political spectrum occupied by Zonszein, it isn’t surprising that most Israelis appear to be right-wing in her eyes.
Mairav Zonszein
Mairav Zonszein
Zonszein’s bio on the radical left +972 Magazine where she writes, states that she is an activist with Ta’ayush, “a direct-action Arab-Jewish group whose activism focuses on the rural Palestinian communities of the South Hebron Hills.” According to NGO Monitor, Ta’ayush emphasizes the language of demonization and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Over and over Zonszein treats us to a polemic whereby Israelis are portrayed as rabid religious nationalists hellbent on rooting out dissenting voices:
The aggressive silencing of anyone who voices disapproval of Israeli policies or expresses empathy with Palestinians is the latest manifestation of an us-versus-them mentality that has been simmering for decades.
. . .
Israeli society has been unable and unwilling to overcome an exclusivist ethno-religious nationalism that privileges Jewish citizens and is represented politically by the religious settler movement and the increasingly conservative secular right.
. . .
Israelis increasingly seem unwilling to listen to criticism, even when it comes from within their own family. Not only are they not willing to listen, they are trying to silence it before it can even be voiced. With a family like that, I would rather be considered one of “them.”
Zonszein evidently doesn’t see the irony of her own biography which states:
I began working as an editor with Haaretz.com in 2012. Before that I was an editor with +972, and have also worked for various NGOs, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Ir Amim.
All of this is evidence of a very healthy civil society and a free press, something that Zonszein cannot bring herself to acknowledge in her opinion piece.
That a majority of Israelis do not subscribe to Zonszein’s politics does not make it a tyranny of the majority. It does, however, appeal to the holier than thou attitude of the New York Times towards Israel, which regularly gives a voice to dissenting opinions on how Israel should conduct itself.


3a)

PM tells crowd that "ISIS and Hamas are branches of same poisonous tree" and that world must not get too caught up in ISIS threat, losing sight of scope of Iranian threat.


By Herb Keinon
Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a photograph as he addresses the 69th United Nations General Assembly. (photo credit:REUTERS)


Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the UN general assembly on Monday in New York and warned the crowd of the threat of radical militant Islam.

He said that the Arab world, for the first time, was beginning to recognize the benefit in aligning themselves with Israel and seeing they have a common enemy.

He also said that he is willing to make a "historic compromise" with the Palestinians.

The prime minister spoke in his speech of the correlation between Hamas and ISIS, saying the two are "branches from the same poisonous tree."

He warned that the escalation of the radical groups is similar to that of the Nazi's and continued to warn about Iran, saying that Iran is not actually willing to give up nuclear weapons, rather just wants to get rid of the sanctions against them.

Netanyahu then spoke about Operation Protective Edge, saying that the IDF is the most moral army in the world.

Netanyahu said that Israel "faced a propaganda war because in an attempt to gain sympathy, Hamas used human shields, homes and hospitals to fire rockets at Israel while Israel surgically struck military targets."

He said that Israel took steps to minimize civilian casualties and that "Palestinians were tragically and unintentionally killed. Israel was not targeting citizens."




Prior to leaving for the US on Sunday, Netanyahu said that his speech would "deflect all the lies about us, and tell the truth about the heroic soldiers of the IDF, the most moral army in the world."

Netanyahu's comments followed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's speech at the UN on Friday, in which he accused Israel of "committing genocide in Gaza."

In what appears to be a new phase in the Palestinian diplomatic drive for unilateral recognition of statehood, Abbas said that he would seek the approval of the Security Council for a draft resolution that establishes a timetable for independence.

"During the past two weeks, Palestine and the Arab Group undertook intensive contacts with the various regional groups in the United Nations to prepare for the introduction of a draft resolution to be adopted by the United Nations Security Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to push forward the efforts to achieve peace," he said.

Netanyahu was scheduled to discuss Palestinian unilateralism and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapon in his meeting with US President Barack Obama on Wednesday.
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