Gulliver America! Thoughts Regarding Anti-Semitism! Who Is Obama?

And now for some humor:

DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?

This allegedly happened at a New York Airport.

An award should go to the United Airlines gate agent in New York for being smart and funny, while making her point, when confronted with a passenger who probably deserved to fly as cargo. 

For all of you out there who have had to deal with an irate customer, this one is for you.

A crowded United Airlines flight was cancelled. 

A single agent was re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travelers. 

Suddenly, an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk. He slapped his ticket on the counter and said, 

"I HAVE to be on this flight and it has to be FIRST CLASS."

The agent replied, "I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these folks first; and then I'm sure we'll be able to work something out."

The passenger was unimpressed. 

He asked loudly, so that the passengers behind him could hear, 

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO I AM?"

Without hesitating, the agent smiled and grabbed her public address microphone. 

"May I have your attention, please?", she began, her voice heard clearly throughout the terminal.

"We have a passenger here at Gate 14 WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS. If anyone can help him with his identity, please come to Gate 14."

With the folks behind him in line laughing hysterically, the man glared at the United Airlines agent, gritted his teeth, and said, "F*** You!" Without flinching, she smiled and said, "I'm sorry sir, you'll have to get in line for that, too." 

=== 

Before I sent out the below I received this from a long time client and dear friend. I asked could I post and he said I could:

" Dear Dick,

Although silent most of the time, I wish to confirm and emphasize how much I appreciate your e blasts of political commentary. Your views are always informative and interesting.  And by G---- L----'- definition, you are a genius. . .  His definition of genius was someone who thought as he did. 

Haven't seen (although I must admit I don't read every one of your emails cover to cover) and would have expected by now to hear you make comment on our friends in Korea.  While I have been bubbling with anger over cyber attacks since the advent of the Internet, the Korean episode makes me explode.  Where is our government in our defense of an attack by a foreign nation?  Where is our government in defense of our heritage, values, and freedom?  Although it was not my point of view, I supported protesters who burned our flag during the Vietnam era.  What other country in the world would allow such political dissent?  Although "The Interview" may offend the Korean communists, how can we allow them to dictate our freedom of speech?  How can our government allow an attack by a foreign nation to intimidate the free enterprise of one of our American businesses?  The whole idea of national defense is mutual defense - that no one citizen can defend himself against a concerted attack by a foreign nation, thus the need for collective defense.  Certainly national defense should apply here where a foreign nation condones or in fact is the perpetrator of a massive cyber attack against an American business.  Yes, Sony should do its part to protect its computer systems, but when attacked by the resources of a foreign state, isn't that the definition of when national defense applies?  Where is the FCC?  Where is the State Department?  Where is the Department of Defense?  Where is the voice of Dick Berkowitz?"

Yours truly,

S------  

My response: "Thanks and my next memo addresses this issue but I have been busy in meetings for the last few days and evening Holiday events etc. so I have not spent a great deal of time at my computer.  May I post, without attribution your comments and my response?  Me"

This is the comment I had already prepared but had not had time to send:

America seems to have reached a point where we can be 'hacked' and made the Gulliver type laughing stock of the world.  I suspect our president's feckless responses to challenges by Russia, China, ISIS, N Korea, Iran, Jihadist Terrorists, he declared no longer existed, etc.has emboldened what GW termed were "Evils."

Due to technology, war takes many forms and now we have the 'cyber' form which corporate America and our government are unprepared for and if Sony's timid/feckless management response is an indication it is increasingly evident how vulnerable and pathetic America has become. (See 1 below.)

===

The United Nations has become united in one thing - Anti-Semitism towards Israel.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/FSxhABcYo8E

But this blatant hypocrisy does not stop at the U.N.  It is a virus that is attacking campuses, governments etc. throughout the world and wherever countries have allowed Muslims and Mosques to infiltrate their societies - most particularly in Europe.(See 2 below.)

And rest assured, this virus is already leading to the elimination of the Christian population in the Middle East and Jihadism will not stop until it has engulfed the world in another war.

The weak, the sinister have always needed a 'pinata,' a group they can project their sickness on but it never remains contained to this one group. Hate eventually spreads, as it is now doing, and  is fed by weakness and blindness as the Western World is currently displaying and, in an historical sense, generally does as its initial response because it is fearful of upsetting the 'evil-doers!"

Don't stir the bees and they will remain happily in their nest making honey but it never proves to be the case.  (See 2a and 2b below.)

=== Using Obama's recent interview to gain insight into him. I had the distinct pleasure this morning to have breakfast with a bright and committed lady who believes Obama learned about our Constitution for the sole purpose of being able to destroy it. I believe she has an interesting point and , though I have not totally agreed, I believe she makes an interesting observation and she has caused me to rethink my view  that if Obama is as smart and intelligent as his supporters claim then I have a hard time believing his actions are not purposeful. (See 3 and 3a below.) === A further logical response from my dear friend who fled Cuba: "A physician in Cuba earns $25.00 a month.  What american product can he buy with less than a dollar a day?? We have a classmate in Havana who resigned her position in a hospital to rent her car out for more than $25.00 a month. Ws she talented? She was the president of the South American Pathological Association. Cubans are not allowed in restaurants in Cuba unless they pay with dollars!! THey have a ration card and one chicken a month for a family os four. You can only buy milk if you have a baby in the family. Etc. Ec. Etc." ===

Dick
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)  As 'The Interview' is pulled, does this mean North Korea wins?

By Timothy Stanley

Editor's note: Timothy Stanley is a historian and columnist for Britain's Daily Telegraph. He is the author of the new book "Citizen Hollywood: How the Collaboration Between L.A. and D.C. Revolutionized American Politics." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) -- There's a sad irony in the fact that one of the great tests of America's freedom of speech should involve a movie that, according to some reviewers, utterly sucks.

Variety calls "The Interview" an "alleged satire that's about as funny as a communist food shortage, and just as protracted." Yet this "comedy" about two TV guys tasked with assassinating North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has sparked a cyberterror campaign that amounts to extortion.

Timothy Stanley

What is being threatened? Well, it started with the leaking of Sony emails by online hackers, which has caused tremendous embarrassment to the company and a little humor for the rest of us. But now hackers claiming to be the "Guardians of Peace" -- the group that said it was behind the Sony hack -- seem to have quashed not only the New York premier planned for Thursday, but caused Sony today to announce that it would cancel the film's December 25 theatrical release. The hackers had threatened the lives of cinema-goers and those within the vicinity of theaters, and actively invoked memories of 9/11.

Is this assault on artistic license coming directly from the North Korean regime? We don't know. But it should never be forgotten that North Korea has financed terrorism in the past, including the bombing of passenger jets. Why would they take such offense at "The Interview"? Probably because it goes directly after the image of Kim.

North Korea isn't your typical atheist communist dictatorship. It's far more like the religious-nationalist regime of Japan during the Second World War, in which the leader is elevated to the status of a living god.

The tragedy is that all this fuss isn't about something approaching a serious work of art. But aside from being trashily commercial, modern Hollywood also has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to making movies about bad people overseas. We often see evidence of greedy capitalists on Wall Street, or nasty homegrown Christians attacking gays and lesbians. But serious films about the shocking homophobia of the African continent, anti-religious persecution in China or the obvious evil of North Korea are strangely few and far between.Put it all together and it's understandable why theaters chose to take the hackers seriously and pull the movie. Of course, it would be nice if they could take a stand for freedom of speech, but they have a wider responsibility to the physical safety of the public.

This may well be because the marketing people calculate that something so depressing won't exactly be box office gold. Thus totalitarianism crops up in U.S. cinema either as fantasy (the Empire in "Star Wars") or as something to laugh at ("Team America" also tackled North Korea, albeit with genuine wit). Proof positive of the essentially cowardly nature of Hollywood is that executives reportedly screened the ending of "The Interview" for the State Department -- and won official blessing.

Perhaps this cyberterrorism will convince Hollywood that there are wicked people beyond their shores and that it is worth making far more intelligent movies about them -- movies that go beyond cartoon stereotypes of East and West and deal with the realities of authoritarianism.

Until then, there are so many questions about the consequences of the recent threats: What happens if someone advertises a private screening of "The Interview"? If Netflix decides to make it available for home users, what would the terrorists threaten to do?

If the threats are the offspring of the regime's fetid imagination, perhaps it reveals something about their limited understanding of how the modern world works. In the age of the Internet, you can't easily censor a movie or withdraw it from the public domain. And do they really expect U.S./North Korean relations to hinge on the willingness of Washington to try?

There is something depressingly farcical about this whole story. Hopefully, it won't turn violent.

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2)

Harvard’s president stops an anti-Israel boycott against SodaStream By ALAN DERSHOWITZ Even the president and provost were unaware of the divisive decision until they read about it in Harvard's school newspaper.

The Harvard University Dining Service has been rebuffed in its efforts to join the Boycott Movement against Israel. A group of radical anti-Israel Harvard students and faculty had persuaded the dining service to boycott SodaStream, an Israeli company that manufactures soda machines that produce a product that is both healthy and economical. But Harvard President Drew Faust rebuffed this boycott and decided to investigate the unilateral action of the Harvard University Dining Services. I have visited the SodaStream factory and spoken to many of its Palestinian-Arab employees, who love working for a company that pays them high wages and manufactures excellent working conditions. I saw Jews and Muslims, Israeli and Palestinians, working together and producing this excellent product. The SodaStream factory I visited was in Ma’ale Adumim—a suburb of Jerusalem that Palestinian Authority leaders acknowledge will remain part of Israel in any negotiated resolution of the conflict. I was told this directly by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and by former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Moreover, in all the negotiations about borders and land swaps, the Palestinians have acknowledged that Ma’ale Adumim will remain within Israel’s borders. Accordingly, although the factory is in an area beyond the Armistice lines of 1949, it is not really disputed territory. Nor does it pose any barrier to a two-state solution. Moreover, Israel offered to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians in 2000-2001 and in 2008, but the Palestinian Authority did not accept either offer. Had these generous offers been accepted, the dispute would have ended and Ma’ale Adumim would have been recognized as part of Israel. So the Palestinian leadership shares responsibility for the continuation of the conflict and the unresolved status of the area in which SodaStream operates. Punishing only Israel—and Israeli companies—for not resolving the conflict serves only to disincentivize the Palestinian Authority from accepting compromise solutions. The students and faculty who sought the boycott of SodaStream invoked human rights. But it is they who are causing the firing of more than 500 Palestinian workers who would like to continue to earn a living at SodaStream. As a result of misguided boycotts, such as the one unilaterally adopted by the Harvard University Dining Services, SodaStream has been forced to move its factory to an area in Israel where few, if any, Arabs can be employed. This is not a victory for human rights. It is a victory for human wrongs. I have no doubt that some students and other members of the Harvard community may be offended by the presence of SodaStream machines. Let them show their displeasure by not using the machines instead of preventing others who are not offended from obtaining their health benefits. Many students are also offended by their removal. Why should the views of the former prevail over those of the latter? I’m sure that some students are offended by any products made in Israel, just as some are offended by products made in Arab or Muslim countries that oppress gays, Christians and women. Why should the Harvard University Dining Service — or a few handfuls of students and professors — get to decide whose feelings of being offended count and whose don’t? In addition to the substantive error made by Harvard University Dining Services, there is also an important issue of process. What right does a single Harvard University entity have to join the boycott movement against Israel without full and open discussion by the entire university community, including students, faculty, alumni and administration? Even the president and provost were unaware of this divisive decision until they read about it in the Crimson. As Provost Garber wrote, “Harvard University’s procurement decisions should not and will not be driven by individuals’ views of highly contested matters of political controversy.” Were those who made the boycott decision even aware of the arguments on the other side, such as those listed above? The decision of the HUDS must be rescinded immediately and a process should be instituted for discussing this issue openly with all points of view and all members of the university community represented. The end result should be freedom of choice: those who disapprove of SodaStream should be free to drink Pepsi. But those who don’t disapprove should be free to drink SodaStream. Economic boycotts should be reserved for the most egregious violations of human rights. They should not be used to put pressure on only one side of a dispute that has rights and wrongs on both sides. Alan Dershowitz is a Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School emeritus and author of Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israel’s Just War Against Hamas(Rosetta Books). 2a) When Jew-hatred comes to America By Vic Rosenthal At the end of the 19th century, Theodore Herzl and Max Nordau realized that Jews had no future in Europe. They understood that enlightenment and emancipation hadn’t put an end to Jew-hatred, and progressive politics wouldn’t either. Europe, they saw, gave the Jewish people two options: total assimilation or death (and later history showed that even assimilation wouldn’t save them). The catastrophe that actually befell the Jews of Europe was more severe than Herzl had imagined in his worst nightmares. The Jewish state that he inspired ultimately came to be, as he accurately predicted, but unfortunately it happened too late to save most of the European Jews. You can blame the British or the Arabs, and they certainly did their best to hold it back, but the main reason the state was not declared until 1948 was that so many Jews were unsure, diffident, afraid of provoking more Jew-hatred, or of the opinion that “something could be worked out” with the gentile world. For example, the influential British Jew Edwin Samuel Montagu, opposed the Balfour Declaration and was responsible for weakening its language. American Jews have had an ambiguous relationship with Zionism. The Reform Movement was anti-Zionist from its beginnings until the 1930s (and even today their position — although they claim to be “pro-Israel” — is, in my opinion, not constructive). But liberal American Jews since 1945 are convinced that their position is secure and that they don’t need the protection of a foreign country that seems, well, foreign, to them and that is at odds with their popular president. Now it appears that the Jews of Europe (this time there are fewer of them) are in trouble again.  I don’t think we can entirely blame the Muslims, either. Just as Hitler would not have been able to carry out his program without the cooperation of large segments of the non-Nazi European population, so today European Jew-hatred is not confined to Muslim immigrants, although they may be responsible for its most violent manifestations. We can divide Jew-hatred into two kinds: that of the mob, which is violent and infused with crudely false beliefs, and that of the elites, which is more sophisticated and better hidden. While they would never explicitly encourage the mob, the elites see its anti-Jewish behavior as a result of Jewish actions and (especially today) the actions and policies of the Jewish nation-state. They believe that they canunderstand Arab and Muslim violence against Jews because, after all, everyone knows that Israel is viciously oppressing the “powerless, indigenous Palestinian people.” So mob behavior tends to be tolerated, or at least not effectively suppressed. It’s important to note that official statistics about “anti-Semitism” — such as ADL surveys — are biased against Jew-hatred that expresses itself primarily as hatred of the Jewish state. Young people especially are very sensitized to avoid expressions of traditional prejudice against individual Jews, and will not respond to poll questions designed to elicit such attitudes. Studies of attitudes toward Israel, on the other hand, show increasing degrees of irrational hatred. However, the fact that Jew-hatred is expressed primarily as Israel-hatred does not imply that antipathy to individual Jews doesn’t exist. It is simply that the verbal expression — or even self-awareness — of these feelings has become taboo. So although it is often said that traditional Jew-hatred has mutated into Israel-hatred, “the new antisemitism,” I think it’s more correct to say that we express the same ugly impulses differently. A 2009 study confirms the hidden nature of much anti-Jewish feeling, due to the social opprobrium associated with admitting bias. It showed as well that Jew-hatred and opposition to Israel are closely related, with an increase in one causing an increase in the other. Although clearly it is possible to be opposed to Israel without hating Jews, the extreme and irrational nature of the Israel-hatred prevalent on the American Left implies that this is unlikely to be the case. Many diseases have incubation periods during which a pathogen reproduces inside particular organs without causing noticeable symptoms, and then suddenly bursts out as a systemic infection with tragic consequences for the patient. In America today, the virus of Jew-hatred is incubating in the universities, where a cadre of activists — including many teachers — employ powerful opinion molding techniques, especially including academic, social and physical intimidation, to indoctrinate students with a worldview in which Israel and Zionists play the role of the devil. In American universities today, the mob rules, with the direct support of the academic elites. Administrators often behave with striking cowardice, even while their cherished ideals of free inquiry, open debate and respect for others are trampled. A leader of the anti-Israel campaign is “Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP),” founded at Berkeley in 2001, coinciding with the beginning of the Second Intifada. According to Wikipedia, there were more than 80 chapters by 2010. Activism against Israel existed before that, but SJP has combined a Middle-Eastern disdain for truth and democratic norms with Berkeley-style confrontational politics. Along with the almost universal anti-Israel slant in the center-left media, it’s been remarkably effective at creating a generation of young people who vehemently oppose the continued existence of a Jewish state. These students will soon become the opinion-leaders, politicians, bureaucrats and executives of America. Somewhat arbitrarily, I take 2001 as the start of the incubation period of the Jew-hatred virus. And I think that in the last few years, we’ve seen the beginning of the breakout phase. One indication is the way anti-Jewish and anti-Israel themes appear in almost every protest movement or demonstration, like the ‘Occupy’ movement and now even the protests against alleged police racism that began in Ferguson, Missouri. Does this suggest that the position of American Jews will become more precarious in the near future, like that of European Jews? I think the answer is yes — especially if the social and economic decline that characterizes the US in recent decades continues, and violent expressions of Jew-hatred become more common, as they have in Europe. This means that American Jews, like the Europeans of the 1890s and today, will soon find themselves considering possible solutions to the “Jewish Question.” Some will certainly take the tack of assimilation. This seems to be the direction that will appeal to liberal Jews. But will they be prepared to totally discard all vestiges of Jewish identity? And even if they do, will it protect them against discrimination (or worse)? Will some of them move in the direction of an increased Zionism, either to actually consider aliyah or simply to align themselves with the Jewish state? Or will they, like Lord Montague, become even more anti-Zionist in the (mistaken) opinion that this will make them immune to the depredations of the Jew-haters? Tune in again in 5-10 years to find out. 2b)  Hamas-Iran Rapprochement Bodes Ill for Israel and U.S. Interests By Jonathan S. Tobin  With many European nations clamoring for recognition of Palestine as an independent state, the Palestinian state that already exists was busy reconciling with its most important patron. Hamas, which operates as an independent state in all but name operating in Gaza, quarreled with Iran about the Syrian civil war. But after several months of efforts to patch up that spat, it appears that relations between the two are now back on track. That should worry those who hoped that Hamas would be chastened by the disastrous war with Israel it launched last summer. It should also bother those who think the Obama administration’s effort to create a new détente with Tehran won’t have an impact on the rest of the Middle East and in particular, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. A resurgent Hamas-Iran alliance makes the region more dangerous for both the Jewish state and the United States. Iran was Hamas’s patron throughout the second intifada as it shipped arms and money to the terror group that enabled it to open a southern front to compliment the one on Israel’s northern border where Tehran’s Hezbollah auxiliaries operate. Iran played a crucial role in ensuring that not only could Hamas keep firing rockets on Israeli cities, towns, and villages but that the Islamists could wield an effective veto on any moves toward peace undertaken by the supposedly more moderate Palestinian Authority. That changed in 2011 when Iran and Hamas quarreled over Syria. Iran was fully committed to the survival of its ally, the brutal Bashar Assad regime. But Hamas, following the lead of some of its Gulf State friends as well as Turkey, backed Assad’s opponents. The decision stemmed in part from the one big difference that had always made Iran and Hamas an odd couple. As a Sunni group, Hamas felt closer to Sunni Arab states that feared the spread of Iran’s Shi’a sphere of influence. The result was that the political office of the group left Damascus and Iran turned off both the funding and the arms it had been sending Hamas. But as the West failed to act to oust Assad, it was soon clear that Hamas had bet on the wrong side. Fortunately for them, Iran seems to be willing to forgive and forget and Tehran, which had supported Hamas’s smaller Islamic Jihad rival, may now be ready to invest heavily in Gaza once again. For all of their religious and political differences, their mutual commitment to Israel’s destruction has once again brought Hamas and Iran together. The timing couldn’t be better for Hamas, which has been financially squeezed by the fall of its Muslim Brotherhood ally in Egypt and the consequent decision of Cairo to shut down the smuggling tunnels into Gaza that provided the terrorists with their principal source of income. It needs more money than the foolish Western nations that are contributing to the rebuilding of Gaza after last summer are willing to give. That’s because its goal isn’t to construct homes but rather to rebuild the strip’s military infrastructure (including terror tunnels along the border with Israel) and replenishing its arsenal of rockets and other munitions. While it was going to be able to divert some of the humanitarian aid donated by the West for this purpose, generous Iranian contributions will both speed up the process and ensure that Hamas will soon be in as strong a military position as it was before its foolish decision to start shooting at Israeli cities. But the implications of the move are broader than just the already tense front along the Israel-Gaza border. By rekindling its alliance with Hamas, Iran is demonstrating its ability to wield influence across the Middle East in a manner that is profoundly destabilizing for moderate neighboring Arab states such as Jordan and Egypt. With Hamas back in Tehran’s fold, it not only gives Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the ability to put military pressure on Israel from two directions. It also reinforces the impression that its grip on the region is growing with Assad still firmly in place in Syria and Hezbollah pulling the strings in Lebanon. Moreover, Iran’s growing power can’t be separated from the direction of the nuclear talks it is holding with the United States and other Western allies. With the Obama administration desperate to get Iran to sign a nuclear deal no matter how weak it may be, pressure on Tehran to modify its behavior is diminishing. It’s not just that it’s obvious that an agreement will signify Western acquiescence to Iran becoming a nuclear threshold power. Any deal, accompanied as it will be by the end of sanctions, will make it easier for the Islamist regime to aid Hamas and strengthen that terror group immeasurably because other Arab states will have good reason to fear Iran’s displeasure. The result of this series of events will not make Israel less secure. But U.S. influence will be similarly diminished and American allies will have good reason to worry about Obama’s determination to retreat from the region and embrace good relations with an Iran they rightly fear. Europeans are moving toward legitimizing Hamas, as the recent decision from the European Union court indicated. But in doing so, they are making it less likely that the Palestinian state or states they wish to establish will have any interest in peace. And with America appeasing Iran, there seems to be no reason for Sunnis who want to back the strong horse to avoid embracing Iran. Seen in that light, President Obama’s decision to appease Iran is even more dangerous than it seems. With a potentially nuclear Iran backing Hamas to the hilt, the prospect of peace between Israel and the Palestinians is more remote than ever ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3)- The Extraordinary Life of Barack Obama’s Imaginary Son C By Stephen Miller In an upcoming People magazine interview, Barack and Michelle Obama sit down and discuss life as the First Oppressed Couple of the United States. Hoping to shed light and relate to recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, Barack reached into the upstairs White House bedroom of his mind and called upon his famous imaginary son to make an appearance: The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced,” President Obama said. “It’s one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It’s another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed, or worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress. Once again, Barack Obama’s imaginary son has found himself unfairly in trouble with the law. If you recall, his imaginary son was also shot by an imaginary neighborhood watch guard in the same style as Trayvon Martin. But Obama’s imaginary son is plucky and resilient and has lived a hard life in the hood so he keeps bouncing back. In his life, Obama’s imaginary son has been shot at, concussed out of football, and racially profiled. Yet he keeps picking himself up and carrying on. Obama’s imaginary son should be an example to us all. No matter what kind of imaginary circumstances we find ourselves in, we can continue on with our imaginary lives. One day this country can hopefully move on from racism experienced by imaginary people — and, let’s face it, the country doesn’t have the best of history of its treatment of imaginary people. We have, however, made progress in the civil rights of imaginary people and for that we, as a country, should be proud. We shouldn’t ignore, however, the real truth that racism toward imaginary sons is still a real problem, as our President constantly reminds us. We can’t be afraid to have the conversation, no matter how painful it might be, about continuing the racial healing of imaginary people. President Obama, however, also should look inward and ask why his imaginary son continues to put himself in these situations. Perhaps it is also his own failings as an imaginary parent. Maybe his imaginary son is trying to rebel against the pressures that come with being the first imaginary son of the United States. Perhaps the President can get him some better-fitting clothes and tell him to stay in school instead of having constant run-ins with imaginary police. Obama himself has been racially profiled so much in his life that, in order to relate to the struggles in Ferguson, he has to cite an imaginary person out of thin air to prove it. Obama’s American story apparently isn’t overcoming an absent father, being raised by loving grandparents, attending Columbia and Harvard Universities, and becoming President of the United States. His story, as we are constantly reminded, is been being mistaken for a waiter, something his closest adviser also did to a four-star general. “Before [becoming president], Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs,” the First Lady said in the interview.  In the same conversation, Michelle Obama claimed a woman profiled her by asking for help to reach for something off a shelf during her (widely publicized) trip to Target: I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn’t see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn’t anything new. Silly racist peasant asking our Queen for assistance. The President of the United States seems more comfortable citing the struggles of his imaginary son than the privileged successes of his real daughters. In truth, Obama’s son would have attended private schools in Chicago, just like his daughters. He would then be attending Sidwell Private School in DC, just like his real daughters. Obama’s imaginary son would get his pick of any college in the world, just like his real daughters. His imaginary son would then go on to any career he chose, in medicine, law, Hollywood, or Wall Street, just like his real daughters. But that doesn’t fit the divisive racial narrative — so his son lives the hard-knock life. According to Obama, we still have much work to do in the race relations of imaginary people. Unfortunately, the healing can’t begin until the country moves on from this imaginary President 3a)Is Obama secretly working to replace Netanyahu? By AARON KLEIN

A dispassionate look at the sequence of events shows that the Obama administration has generated an unprecedented crisis in US-Israeli relations. 

Nurtured in the Saul Alinsky-style, ACORN-esque tactics of organizing revolution under the banner of "social change," Barack Obama, as a young community organizer in Chicago in the 1980s understood early on the importance of a crisis and how to ride the waves of an emergency to effect the fundamental transformation of society.

As the nation’s chief executive, President Obama has demonstrated a particular specialty in the use and perpetuation of crises to push through policies that the public otherwise might not willingly accept, including the wildly unpopular healthcare law, immigration reform, and the first-term "stimulus" legislation. It is therefore unsurprising to detect the international export of the Obama’s “crisis” game plan to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A dispassionate look at the sequence of events shows that the Obama administration has generated an unprecedented crisis in US-Israeli relations, a crisis utilized at every twist and turn by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political rivals, most notably those within his coalition, to try to shake up the country’s leadership. There is more than a hint of White House interference in helping to agitate the coalition drama that provoked Netanyahu’s hesitant decision last Tuesday to dissolve parliament and schedule early elections that could potentially see the prime minister unseated.

Before divining the Obama administration’s fingerprints on the events that led to Netanyahu’s predicament, the immediate question is just what about the Israeli premier makes him so problematic for this White House. The answer is fraught with policy implications that cut to the very heart of Obama’s dangerously myopic, academic view of the world and America’s place among friend and foe.

Unforgivable to the US president is Bibi’s stubborn refusal to acquiesce to the concept of a sweeping, final deal with Iran that many experts believe will leave the mullahs perpetually within months of a nuclear weapon. Never mind that Iran has numerous times threatened to wipe Israel off the map and is a main state sponsor of the Palestinian terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Obama is more than annoyed at Netanyahu’s Congressional activism of lobbying for tougher sanctions on Tehran at precisely the same time the US administration is working with European allies to extend sanctions relief until next June 30, as the deadline for nuclear talks was yet again postponed until that date. Netanyahu has repeatedly accused Iran of using the drawn-out negotiations as a smokescreen to develop an illicit nuclear infrastructure.

Also problematic for the White House is the breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian “peace” talks, with rhetoric from the Obama administration indicating that the US largely blames Netanyahu for the collapse of the negotiations. In the Alice's looking-glass lens through which Obama views the Middle East, the sturdy legs of the bargaining table broke because of Netanyahu’s decision to build Jewish homes in sections of Jerusalem that will most likely remain under Israeli sovereignty in any future deal. Also, like every other prime minister before him who engaged in these kinds of negotiations, Netanyahu had dared to insist that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, an understanding that Israelis see as central to peaceful co-existence.

Never mind that Netanyahu took the unprecedented step of freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank and sections of Jerusalem and even released Palestinian terrorists as “good will gestures” to help jumpstart talks with an intransigent Palestinian leadership.

Using a different lens on Palestinian complacency, the White House is blind to such infractions as Abbas’s decision to walk away from the talks and instead seek unilateral recognition at the United Nations; the near daily anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement in the official Palestinian media; the role of Abbas’s Fatah organization in helping to guide riots currently rocking Jerusalem; the question of whether or not Abbas, amid Hamas gains in Gaza and the West Bank, even represents the Palestinian people; and of course the Palestinians' long history of walking away from every other major international attempt to broker peace.

The White House has singled out Netanyahu as standing in the way of Obama's utopian vision for a new Middle East and Persian Gulf.   What better way to bypass this obstacle than aiding in Netanyahu’s removal from office?

Let’s look at the clues. Netanyahu’s decision last week to disband his coalition came when he dismissed his finance minister, Yair Lapid, and his justice minister, Tzipi Livni, both of whom have not disguised their ambitions for the country’s highest office. Tellingly, both took advantage of the steady stream of US criticism toward Netanyahu by leading an escalating public campaign in which they repeatedly accused Netanyahu of causing this dangerous rift in relations with Israel’s most important ally.

Case in point.  In October, Israel’s Ynet news website reported that a request by Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon to meet with US Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice during his visit to Washington had been denied by the White House. This reported move is highly unusual, and was a nearly unprecedented snub of Netanyahu’s government. It helped to set off a firestorm against Netanyahu in Israel, particularly among the center and the left, with Livni and Lapid leading the charge.

Also in October, in what can only be viewed as an orchestrated campaign, the US espoused uncharacteristically harsh language to oppose a plan for Israel to build 2,610 new homes on empty lots in Givat Hamatos, a Jerusalem neighborhood in the eastern section of the city where Palestinians want to build a future state.

Immediately following a meeting between Netanyahu and President Obama in October, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki and White House spokesman Josh Earnest took the Israeli leader’s delegation by surprise when they released nearly identical statements slamming the Jerusalem construction. They warned the housing plans could distance Israel from its “closest allies,” a clear euphemism for the US, and questioned whether Netanyahu was interested in peace. Netanyahu for his part said at the time that he was “baffled” by the US criticism, stating the American position “doesn’t really reflect American values.”

As if on queue, Lapid and Livni raced to endorse the US condemnation and accuse Netanyahu once again of damaging US-Israeli relations.  That month, Lapid took further issue with Netanyahu’s plan to build roughly 400 homes in Har Homa and about 600 in Ramat Shlomo. “This plan will lead to a serious crisis in Israel-US relations and will harm Israel’s standing in the world,” Lapid said.

In another seemingly orchestrated development, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg in October described relations between the US and Israel as a “full-blown crisis” and reported that senior Obama administration officials had called Netanyahu “chickenshit” on matters related to the so-called peace process.  Goldberg gratuitously added that Bibi is a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat.

This level of speech in a diplomatic confrontation between putative allies is close to unprecedented.  The Atlantic published a comically ruder exchange, but it was between enemies.

Lapid jumped on the puerile and vulgar remarks to release a vaguely nuanced criticism of Netanyahu: “I said only a few days ago that there is a real crisis in the relations and it needs to be dealt with responsibly,” he said, while faux-lecturing US and Israeli officials on the “need to tackle the crisis behind the scenes.”

Adding more fuel to the anti-Bibi firestorm, Ha'aretz reported last week the Obama administration had held a classified discussion a few weeks earlier about possibly taking more proactive measures against the “settlements,” including mulling sanctions or punishing Israel at the United Nations. While the State Department dismissed the claims as "unfounded and completely without merit," the Ha'aretz article is already providing more fodder to target Bibi.

Here’s the kicker. In March, an informed diplomatic source in Jerusalem told me that representatives of the Obama administration held meetings with Lapid to check him out politically and to discuss the kind of prime minister he would make if he won elections in the future. The diplomatic source said the Obama administration identified Lapid as a moderate who would support Israeli-Palestinian talks. While the alleged meeting might have been as innocent as getting to know the powerful finance minister, the claim does fuel the perception of Obama administration tentacles working surreptitiously to change the political order in the Jewish state.

At the end of the day, this political interference could backfire monumentally. Obama’s support among the Israeli populace is dismal. Just last week, The Jerusalem Post reported on a poll that showed the number of Israelis who believe Obama had either a “positive” or a “neutral” view of Israel has fallen sharply. Israelis largely see Iran as their single greatest existential threat and seem to react positively to Netanyahu’s tough stance against the US-led negotiations. And remarkably, Netanyahu has the quiet support of the Egyptian and Saudi governments for his regional policies. It remains to be seen if Israelis are ready to entrust their security to a relative political newcomer like Lapid or the perpetually evolving Livni in the face of mounting threats that even now engulf the Jewish state in all directions.

Aaron Klein is a weekend radio talk show host, author, and staffer for WorldNetDaily and columnist for The Jewish Press.