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Gen. Dempsey may tell Obama what he does not wish to hear. (See 1 below.)
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European hypocrisy knows no limits yet always seems to find its way to Israel. (See 2 below.)
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Returns to his true colors! (See 3 below.)
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Westerners have a penchant for funding wealthy terrorists. (See 4 below.)
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Obama should preside as Sweden's King! (See 5 below.)
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An elitist professor, named Jonathan Gruber, thinks voters are goobers and makes video mockery of Obama's stupid loyal supporters. How does it feel suckers? You voted for the man who now believes you are stupid You were lied to by your saviour and you swallowed it hook line and sinker. Maybe Gruber was right - progressives really are stupid!
Has an arrogant Ivy League professor unwittingly provided Republicans with ammunition to get rid of Obama's albatross legislation? Time will tell. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1) Boots on the Ground! US Troops May Help Retake Mosul
The military campaign against Islamic State (ISIS) militants could expand to include U.S. forces fighting alongside Iraqi troops, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey says.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in testimony before Congress on Thursday, praised Iraqi forces for doing a better job, but said a mission to move into Islamic State forces-controlled Mosul, or to restore the Iraqi border with Syria, will be much tougher and more complex, according to Military Times.
"I'm not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by U.S. forces, but we're certainly considering it," Dempsey told the House Armed Services Committee.
The United States has a force in Iraq now that serves as advisers and trainers, Dempsey said, and "any expansion of that, I think, would be equally modest."
"I just don't foresee a circumstance when it would be in our interest to take this fight on ourselves with a large military contingent," he said, Military Times reported.
Dempsey's remarks matched the testimony he gave to Congress in September when he raised the possibility of an expanded U.S. role. President Barack Obama has said the operation won't involve U.S. ground troops.
The New York Times reports the congressional testimony illustrates the challenge facing Obama to hold to his vow of no boots on the ground in Iraq — even as his generals are hinting there may be no other way to defeat the Islamic State militants.U.S. and coalition forces have conducted about 900 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, fighting a core militant force of 15,000 to 18,000 fighters, according to Military Times.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, also testifying Thursday, said the coalition has grown with 16 new members since September and has made progress, with the militants' advances stalling and in some instances reversed by airstrikes and other military operations, Military Times reports.
"This pressure is having an effect on potential [ISIS] recruits and collaborators — striking a blow to morale and recruitment," Hagel said. "We know that. Our intelligence is very clear on that. And as Iraqi forces build strength, the tempo and intensity of our coalition's air campaign will accelerate in tandem."
The testimony came the same day the leader of the Islamic State group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ratcheted up the rhetoric in an audio recording, urging the militants to fight and declaring, "We see America and its allies stumbling in fear, weakness, impotence, and failure."
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2)
FUNDAMENTALLY FREUND: FROM GAZA TO CATALONIA: EUROPE'S INSUFFERABLE HYPOCRISY
By Michael Freund
This past Saturday, European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini set a world record for diplomatic duplicity and haste. Barely seven days after assuming her new post, the former Italian foreign minister rushed to pay a visit to Gaza and Ramallah, where she managed to call for the division of Jerusalem, denounce housing construction for Jews in Judea and Samaria, and insist on the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Mustering up all the moral bluster that European diplomats are so fond of, she did not hesitate to lecture Israel, as if she knew better than the Jewish state what its own national interests might be. Dead Syrians may be littering the streets of Aleppo while Islamic State is busy beheading Kurds and Christians in Iraq, and Saudi women might be struggling to be allowed to drive cars, but Mogherini appears to have a one-track mind when it comes to the Middle East. And it revolves only around Israel.
This is European hypocrisy of the highest order. It is sickening in its scope and magnitude. And it is time for it to stop.
As the continent where more Jewish blood was spilled over the past 2,000 years than any other, Europe has a special responsibility and a moral obligation to support Israel.
Yes, that’s right. You read that correctly: Europe owes Israel.
They have an eternal debt to pay to the Jewish people for the slaughters, massacres, blood libels, anti-Semitism, forced conversions, expulsions, Crusades and Inquisitions which they inflicted upon our ancestors for two millennia.
All of this might sound like ancient history to Mogherini and her colleagues, who probably don’t see what it has to do with compelling Israel to create a Palestinian state. So just in case, let’s highlight a more recent example of European hypocrisy, one that is closer to home and can be found in Europe’s own back yard: Catalonia.
This past Sunday, millions of men and women across the northeastern Spanish region made an historic cry for liberty. Bravely defying heavy-handed threats and intimidation from Madrid, some two million Catalans took part in a referendum on independence, peacefully exercising their basic human right to decide on their own future.
And the results were decisive. Over 80 percent of voters backed Catalonia’s independence from Spain, prompting Catalan leader Artur Mas to declare that the ballot “made it very clear that we want to govern ourselves.”
“We deserve to vote in a legal and binding referendum,” Mas said, adding, “and this is what we are going to do.”
Curiously, however, the Catalonians’ roar for independence doesn’t seem to interest the rest of Europe as much as that of the Palestinians, even though the former have a much better case for having their own state.
To begin with, there actually once was a Catalonian state, albeit briefly, in the 17th century, whereas there has never been an independent Palestine in all of history. Even if one does think the Palestinians have been living under occupation since 1967, Spain has occupied Catalonia for 300 years, making it a longer-running dispute, and justice delayed is justice denied.
And whereas Catalans can legitimately claim to be a nation with their own distinct language and culture, the Palestinian Arabs cannot.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t appear to bother Europe one whit, as it completely ignores the Catalan case for statehood while championing that of the Palestinians.
Adding to the irony is that the Spanish parliament in Madrid – the same one that will not countenance freedom for Catalonia – is set to vote on recognizing “Palestine” as an independent country.
This only goes to prove that when it comes to Israel, Spain’s policy amounts to “do as we say, not as we do.”
I’d like to think that the new European push to recognize a Palestinian state stems from naiveté, from some misguided belief that doing so will somehow dull the threat posed by Islamic extremism. Or that perhaps they are simply wallowing in ignorance and truly believe the Palestinians to be the aggrieved party in the conflict with Israel.
But I know better – and I hope you do as well. The hypocrisy is so egregious and so blatant that it cannot and must not be ignored.
Sadly, what we are witnessing now is little more than a continuation of Europe’s mistreatment of the Jews, but with a new twist. After all, for 2,000 years, Europeans told the Jews to leave and “go to Israel.” Now that we are finally here they want us to abandon it and hand it over to our foes.
And yet when it comes to a long-running dispute in the heart of Europe, they don’t even think of suggesting a division of Barcelona or the creation of a Catalonian state living side-by-side with Spain in peace and security.
So perhaps it is time for someone to pull Mogherini aside and politely whisper into her ear: before you start offering unsolicited advice to Israel, you might want to get your own hypocritical house in order.
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3) OP-ED: ABBAS' HOLY WAR OF LIES
By Jack Engelhard
Well this much is for sure. The play-acting is no more and Mahmoud Abbas isn’t even pretending to be a “peace partner.” He’s gone rogue.
These days this Fatah warlord openly calls for the murder of any and all Israelis and the Jewish blood that’s been spilled from Jerusalem onward — men, women, 3-month-old babies – places him at the heart and center of the reign of terror now being inflicted upon the Jewish State.
His PA (Palestinian Authority) gangs heed him word for word when he demands Jewish blood “by any means.”
Murder by automobile is the latest Islamic trick, and if that doesn’t work, Palestinian Arabs are urged to slash their victims to death.
This the Arabs have been doing repeatedly and gladly.
(Where, by the way, is the Left that was so outraged against the Price Taggers? Hello? We can’t hear you!)
Fattened by standing ovations at the UN, intoxicated by support from the EU, bloated by the wishful romance of a Palestinian State (to exact further terror), adopted by the Left, embraced by the media, it is no wonder that this man Abbas feels that the world belongs to him.
All that he takes as a signal that Israel is his pastime – and he misses no chance to insist that the entire Land belongs to him and his worthless goons. He claims the Temple Mount for himself and his gang of rowdies without being able to name King Solomon as an ancestor – a heritage that is available to every Jewish man and woman.
So finally the mask is off. The double-talking, the double-dealing, the fakery of tolerant coexistence – this is finished.
We know the score. Even Israelis – led throughout the decades by such dreamers as Shimon Peres – know when the jig is up.
Rude awakenings come slowly to the Jewish People.
Sometimes they have to be hit over the head and sometimes they have to be literally slashed and burned before they quicken to what’s happening.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally named Abbas as an instigator, “not a partner,” and after the latest atrocity, added:
“We are not prepared to tolerate more demonstrations in the heart of our cities in which Hamas or ISIS flags are waved and calls are made to redeem Palestine with blood and fire, calling in effect for the destruction of the State of Israel. I have instructed the Interior Minister to use all means, including evaluating the possibility of revoking the citizenship of those who call for the destruction of the State of Israel.”
What took so long?
But yes, if the Enemy Within quits pretending, it is time for Israel to quit pretending.
Finally, Netanyahu is cracking down: “We will continue to act in every way against incitement, against all actions of terror.”
For too long Israeli leaders sought favorable world opinion over and above the safety of their citizens.
Well The New York Times is a lost cause.
So is an international community that within its own borders welcomes and justifies the “beauty” of mindless brute force, namely Radical Islam.
They wish the same on Israel and no day goes by without another demand from some European for a “Palestinian State.”
This is a wink to mean the establishment of a terrorist state in place of a democracy – to be led by a fanatical Islamist who guarantees highway madness.
There is no better time like the present to exact pain for pain to win back all roads leading to Jerusalem.
Or as Menachem Begin put it: “They want a holy war? We will give them a holy war.”
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. New from the novelist, media bias fully exposed in The Bathsheba Deadline – and the heralded anti-BDS thriller Compulsive.
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4)
WEALTHY TERRORISTS DON'T NEED FOREIGN AID
By Jonathan Tobin
Last month, a group of international donors including the United States gathered in Cairo to make pledges to give financial aid to help rebuild Gaza in the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas this past summer. The amount pledged totaled $5.4 billion with the U.S. kicking in a few hundred million. The bulk of the money will go to aid organizations with the Palestinian Authority also getting a share. But while the world was told that all the money would be used for civilian purposes and to help those who lost their homes in the fighting, there was little doubt that the Hamas rulers of the strip would wind up getting their hands on a good deal of it. But the most curious thing about this exercise in international philanthropy was that no one thought to ask Hamas to pay for at least some of the damage they caused by igniting a bloody war. That’s the question that comes to mind today when you read that the Islamists have been named the world’s second-richest terrorist group.
According to Forbes Israel, Hamas is the runner-up to ISIS in the competition for the title of wealthiest terror organization. ISIS has $2 billion in assets while Hamas has only $1 billion. The former’s advantage is that it is now in control of some of Iraq’s oil flow and pulls in up to $3 million a day in revenue from that lucrative business. ISIS also was able to loot hundreds of millions from Mosul’s main bank when it seized that city. It also profits from the brisk trade in hostage ransoms with European nations anteing up large sums to save its citizens in ISIS’s hands. To its credit, the Obama administration has refused to play along, a principled policy that has led to the brutal murders of American captives.
Hamas has no oil fields or banks at its disposal. But it has something almost as good: An overpopulated strip of land where more than a million people live at their misery. Though Hamas long maintained an image as an efficient provider of social services to the people of Gaza, the reality is that it is—like its Fatah rivals in the West Bank—more akin to a mafia family than a government and rakes in money extorted or taxed from Gazans hand over fist. Hamas also profited handsomely from control of the smuggling tunnels that used to link Gaza to Egypt and also rakes in huge amounts of aid from its Gulf State patrons like Qatar.
Since Fatah now masquerades as a legitimate government and even a peace partner in the West Bank, it was not listed. But if it were, it’s likely that the considerable assets of this supposedly reformed terror group would also be considerable, considering the amount of money it and its leaders have looted from the billions in international aid that have poured into them since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
But the minutiae about which of these groups has the most cash ignores the more pertinent question about Gaza. While the West has committed itself to waging a half-hearted war to “degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS” in President Obama’s words, it has chosen to tolerate Hamas and let it remain in control of Gaza, even if it meant condemning a large civilian population to be used as human shields for its terror operations. And it has been allowed to save or re-invest its considerable fortune in rearming its cadres and rebuilding its defenses in the aftermath of the terrorist war it launched this year.
The world looks at the ruined homes of Gaza and rightly expresses its sympathy and its desire to help its people. But the problem with the international aid process is not merely that it is not likely to keep all of the billions coming in out of the clutches of Hamas. It is that so long as we are prepared to tolerate Hamas’s continued sovereignty over the independent Palestinian state in all but name in Gaza, more war and bloodshed is likely to ensue. The threat from ISIS as it seeks to overrun all of Iraq and Syria is one that the U.S. and its allies needed to address. But the danger of allowing terrorist groups to become rulers of populations is not limited to those places with oil. In the absence of a commitment to overthrow Hamas, money donated to Gaza is an investment in future war, not peace or humanitarian values. Its place on the list of wealthiest terror group mocks the West as much as it does the Palestinians who suffer under their rule.
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5) A Quiet Clash at the Swedish Foreign Ministry
by Daniel Pipes
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WT title: "Sweden's wishful thinking on the Mideast: Naive notions about Iran and 'Palestine' smell like nonsense"
Sweden is arguably the most "European" of European countries by virtue of its historically cohesive nationhood ("one big family"), militaristic and socialist legacies, untrammeled immigration, unmatched political correctness, and a supercilious claim to the status of a "moral superpower." In this context, I offer a summary and paraphrase of my discussion with two senior members of the permanent bureaucracy in the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) held during a recent visit to Stockholm. Our affable but pointed discussion focused on the Middle East, on which we agreed on almost nothing; I might as well have been in Sudan's or Syria's MFA.
Arvfurstens Palats, an eighteenth century royal palace occupied since 1906 by the Swedish Foreign Ministry.
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The following contains the seemingly sober officials' more colorful statements, then my responses. First, we discussed the Iranian nuclear program:
- The IAEA inspection regime in Iran is the most intense ever mounted anywhere; it includes cameras that watch the Iranian installations around the clock, so we definitely know what's going on there.My response: How does the Swedish MFA know that those cameras cover every last nuclear installation? In fact, neither Stockholm nor any other capital has any idea what's going on. The Iranians' program could be far more advanced than is known; indeed, Tehran could have even purchased nuclear weapons from North Korea or Pakistan.
- The Islamic Republic of Iran abandoned its program to build nuclear bombs in 2003.My response: The Iranian government, as its president, Hassan Rouhani himself has indicated, never for a moment stopped its nuclear program.
- If an outside power attacked the Iranian nuclear sites, this would counterproductively cause Tehran to get really angry and decide to build The Bomb.My response: The notion that striking the installations would inspire the Iranians to proceed is precisely backward. Also, recall that both the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs collapsed after being struck by Israeli jets.
Iran's centrifuges, as shown by the government news agency.
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We also discussed the Arab-Israeli conflict in the context of the Swedish government's very recent decision to recognize a state of "Palestine":
- This move is aimed, I was told, not to punish Israel but to give heart to those Palestinians despairing of the two-state solution, consisting of an Israel next to a Palestine. As such, it is not hostile to Israel (where government and population back the two-state solution) but hostile to Hamas (which rejects this outcome).My response: The Israeli government and population reacted very negatively to the Swedish decision and will, no doubt, be annoyed to learn that it was patronizingly intended for their own good. Conversely, Hamas has hailed this move and called on other governments to follow Stockholm, in order to isolate Israel.
- Israeli "settlements" on the West Bank (which I prefer to call "towns") render impossible the two-state solution, making it urgently imperative to prevent their further expansion.My response: I flip this around and see Israeli building as constructive pressure on the Palestinians to get serious about ending the conflict. The longer Palestinians procrastinate, the less land remains.
- The many statements and posters in which Fatah endorses "car jihad" are unimportant because Fatah is not the official Palestinian "government." So, the Swedish MFA does not concern itself with this homicidal incitement.My response: Fatah, the PLO, ad the Palestinian Authority are three names for the same entity. Making a legalistic distinction among them permits Mahmoud Abbas, the head of all three, to get away with murder.
- The demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is a trap for Abbas, who cannot do so because of the many Arabs living within Israel.My response: Not to accept Israel as the Jewish state means rejecting the entire Zionist enterprise. Nor is this demand a trap; rather, it responds to changes on the Israeli Arab side in 2006. Why else would Ehud Olmert, then Israel's prime minister – who displayed a Swedish-like fervor for an accord with Abbas – have initiated this demand?
Fatah endorsed Palestinian car jihad in a cartoon showing an Aqsa-like car and the words "The killing of Israelis by running-over operations in Jerusalem."
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This complete disagreement on facts, interpretations, and predictions points to an enormous and ever-widening gap between countries and governments founded on like values. At a time when the ranks of enemies are proliferating, that those who should be realistic and friendly prefer instead fumes of fantasy leaves me discouraged about the future of Europe. What disaster will it take to awaken the Swedes -- starting with their estimable foreign policy functionaries?
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © 2014 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
6)
Pelosi Claims Not To Know Jonathan Gruber, But Talked About His Work In 2009
Botox and short memory
Now we see the arrogance that lay behind Obama’s smooth
reassurances.
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