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Skidaway Island Republican Club
Presents:
Meet the Candidates
Chatham County Sheriff
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Plantation Club
Cocktails/Cash bar : 4:30 PM
Presentation : 5:00 PM
Sustaining members – Free
Regular members - $5
Non-Members - $10
All Welcome
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By visiting this particular Mosque was Obama sending a signal to the Muslim World he condone's their radicalism and supports them? (See 1 and 1a below.)
When Obama went to Georgetown University to make a speech he insisted they cover a Cross displayed behind his podium but when he went to this Mosque the display of Muslim items was quite evident.
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Obama's Middle East U Turn! (See 2 below.)
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It is so nice to have friends like Abbas and his kind. (See 3 below.)
And what about Iran and Obama? (See 3a below.)
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When Hillarious was Sec. of State she should have offered to flip with the Chinese on a double or nothing for the debt we owe them. (See 4 below.)
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Obama the Imam! (See 5 below.)
One hears all kind of boasts but I will believe it when I see it should a Republican win The White House. (See 5a below.)
Finally, Netanyahu's political opposition are concerned about his reluctance to attack Hamas' tunnel digging and fear Israeli citizens will be attacked as they were in Gaza. (See 5b below.)
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Dick
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1)
Mosque Obama visited under FBI surveillance since 2010: one of its members plotted to blow up a federal building
By Robert Spencer
Obama is the President of the United States. He must know all this. That he could plead ignorance of it is inconceivable. So in light of it, why did he go? And when he went, why did he not bother to include even a word about how the Muslims in the U.S., who he thinks abhor and eschew jihad violence and share his view that the Islamic State is un-Islamic, need to be vigilant in policing their own communities and working with law enforcement officials? Why did he include nary a word about the need for mosques in the U.S. to institute programs to teach young Muslims such as Muhammad Hussain to reject the understanding of Islam that commands violence against unbelievers?
“Mosque Obama Visiting Graduated Terrorist Who Targeted Federal Building,” IBD, February 2, 2016 (thanks toPamela Geller):
Islamophilia: President Obama is conferring legitimacy on a Baltimore mosque the FBI just a few years ago was monitoring as a breeding ground for terrorists, after arresting a member for plotting to blow up a federal building.
IBD has learned that the FBI had been conducting surveillance at the Islamic Society of Baltimore since at least 2010 when it collared one of its members for plotting to bomb an Army recruiting center not far from the mosque in Catonsville, Md.
Agents secretly recorded a number of conversations with a 25-year-old Muslim convert — Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain — and other Muslims who worshipped there. According to the criminal complaint, Martinez said he knew “brothers” who could supply him weapons and propane tanks.
“He indicated that if the military continued to kill their Muslim brothers and sisters, they would need to expand their operation by killing U.S. Army personnel where they live,” FBI special agent Keith Bender wrote. Martinez said that in studying the Quran he learned that Islam counsels Muslims to “fight those who fight against you.”
Sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012, Martinez also stated in a social media posting that he wanted to join the ranks of the “mujahideen” in “Pakistan or Afghanistan (a country that struggle[sic] for the sake of allah).” Most of ISB’s board members are from Pakistan.
To help disrupt the plot, the FBI reportedly put an undercover agent in the mosque, which upset the leadership there. After protests, the FBI sent an official to ISB to take questions and mollify concerns the bureau was spying on Muslims.
Members of the mosque complained that the FBI tried to “entrap” Martinez and other Muslim terrorism suspects by sending “spies with Muslim names” into the mosque.
“If I was the president of the mosque, I would not let you come here without strip(-searching) you,” one member angrily told the FBI official, “because you might drop something (like a bug) to hear what’s going on here.” “The Muslim Link” newspaper described the questioner as Pakistani.
This is the mosque that will be honored with a visit from Obama on Wednesday, the first U.S. mosque visit of his presidency.
It’s now abundantly clear the White House failed to properly vet the venue. Reportedly, it let the Council on American-Islamic Relations choose the site, even though the FBI has banned CAIR from outreach because of known ties to the Hamas terrorist group.
“For a number of years we’ve been encouraging the president to go to an American mosque,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said. “With the tremendous rise in anti-Muslim sentiment in our country, we believe that it will send a message of inclusion and mutual respect.”
As we reported Tuesday, ISB is affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America — which federal prosecutors in 2007 named a radical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front and an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in a scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas suicide bombers — and ISB has helped organize the terror-tied ISNA’s conferences.
The Shariah-compliant mosque was led for 15 years by a radical cleric — Imam Mohamad Adam el-Sheikh — who once represented a federally designated al-Qaida front group. El-Sheikh also has argued for the legitimacy of suicide bombings, according to the Washington Post.
We also first reported that ISB board member and vice president Muhammad Jameel has blamed American foreign policy — namely, U.S. support for Israel — for terrorism and the rise of Osama bin Laden.
“I hope (his death) does not camouflage the bigger picture, which is to look at what gave rise to OBL and what are the root causes of terror,” Jameel said in a local 2011 interview. “Just eliminating him does not resolve the longer-term problems, which I consider to be (U.S.) foreign policy.”
ISB board members are required to have “an in-depth understanding of the Shariah,” and “must take Islam as the way of life,” according to recently amended articles of incorporation papers filed with the state of Maryland.
We have also learned that ISB invited one of the imams of the Boston Marathon bombers’ mosque to headline a 2013 fundraiser for its Islamic school.
Then-Islamic Society of Boston imam Suhaib Webb spoke at the 25th anniversary banquet of ISB’s Al-Rahmah School — even though two days before 9/11, according to an FBI surveillance report, Webb was raising cash for a Muslim cop-killer together with al-Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki, the hijackers’ spiritual leader.
So let’s recap. The mosque that is hosting the commander in chief, while receiving his historic benediction graduated a terrorist who plotted to blow up a local Army recruiting station, hired an imam who condoned suicide bombings and blames American “foreign policy” for terrorism.
Obama has to be willfully blind not to see all these ties to terror.
1a)
The US Mosque Obama Has Chosen For His First Presidential Visit Has Deep Extremist Ties
By Chuck Ross
The Baltimore mosque President Obama has chosen as the first U.S.-based mosque to visit during his presidency has deep ties to extremist elements, including to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The White House announced on Saturday that Obama will visit the Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) on Wednesday. He has visited several mosques overseas as president but has resisted visiting one in the homeland. The purpose of the trip, according to the White House, is to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”
But ISB is a curious choice for Obama’s first domestic visit.
The mosque is a member of a network of mosques controlled by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), a Muslim civil rights group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror case. Several executives with that organization were convicted of sending money to aid the terrorist group Hamas.
An imam who served at ISB for a total of 15 years has also been a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood network and has worked for an Islamic relief group that was designated as a terrorist organization by the Treasury Department in 2004.
Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh, who served two stints as ISB’s imam, from 1983 to 1989 and from 1994 to 2003, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan in the 1970s. He also co-founded the Muslim American Society, a Falls Church, Va.-based group that is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.
While in Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as a regional director for the Islamic American Relief Agency. That group’s parent organization is the Islamic African Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department says provided funds to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
After leaving Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as imam at the infamous Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church. That mosque has a lengthy roster of known terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Its imam during much of the 1990s was Mohammed al-Hanooti. He was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people.
Dar al-Hijrah came under the control of Anwar al-Awlaki in 2001. He’s the American al-Qaeda recruiter who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army major who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Nov. 2009, is said to have attended the Virginia mosque when al-Awlaki served there. The pair also reportedly exchanged emails. Two of the 9/11 hijackers also attended Dar al-Hijrah during al-Awlaki’s tenure.
El-Sheikh took over at Dar al-Hijrah in Aug. 2003, a little over a year after al-Awlaki left. While there he defended Palestianian suicide bombings against Israel.
“If certain Muslims are to be cornered where they cannot defend themselves, except through these kinds of means, and their local religious leaders issued fatwas to permit that, then it becomes acceptable as an exceptional rule, but should not be taken as a principle,” he said in 2004, according to a Washington Post article at the time.
As The Post reported Saturday, ISB’s website states that it seeks “to be the anchor of a growing Muslim community with diverse backgrounds, democratically governed, relating to one another with inclusiveness and tolerance, and interacting with neighbors in an Islamic exemplary manner.”
But that desire for tolerance — which President Obama frequently touts as well — does not appear to be a virtue shared by ISB’s resident scholar, Yaseen Shaikh.
A 2013 Youtube video shows Shaikh, who previously served as imam at a mosque in Plano, Tex., speaking out forcefully against homosexuality in Islam.
During an hour long diatribe, Shaikh called homosexuality a psychological disorder that has no place in Islam or society. He also lamented that gay rights groups have “hijacked” political discourse.
“This whole subject of homosexuality in the public sphere…is no longer a religious issue, unfortunately, as much as we want to use the religious card and try to defeat this, now it’s become a politicized issue,” Shaikh says in the video.
“Politicians are highly influenced by people who back them, and we find that these politicians who are calling for gay rights and marriage and supporting gay rights are lobbied and campaigned by gay activists, by gay groups. And they are throwing money at it left and right to gain some acceptance in society, to be considered normal people, to be treated normally.”
Obama is one such politician who has supported gay rights.
“We have to counter the efforts that are taking place elsewhere,” Sheikh says in the video, advising that “if our children are taught that [homosexuality is] okay, we have to teach them it’s not okay.”
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2)
America Makes a U-Turn in the Middle East
Obama’s long game is a complete restructuring of the balance of power in the region—but with what results?
By Tony Badran
The administration of President Barack Obama seldom missed an opportunity to insist that the alternative to the Iran nuclear deal was a war with Iran, a prospect that has now presumably been kicked further down the road. Middle Easterners are not so lucky: They get to fight their wars with Iran right now.
Where America stands on the question of the wars that Iran is fueling across the Middle East has been obscured to some extent by outdated expectations, diplomatic niceties, and deliberate smoke-screens. But it would be wrong to take pro forma statements about America’s alliances with old friends like Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, or Israel at anything like face value. The first thing the Obama Administration did following the recent burning of the Saudi embassy and consulate in Iran by a state-sponsored mob was not to condemn this assault on a longtime U.S. ally. Rather, the White House immediately launched a media campaign pushing the message that the problem was actually Saudi Arabia, and, as anonymous U.S. officials suggested on background, maybe it was time to reconsider America’s regional alliances.
Yet the president has actually been explicit about his dislike for the old American order in the Middle East. The “old order that had been in place for 50 years, 60 years … was unsustainable, and was going to break up at some point.” Obama proclaimed at a DNC event in 2014. The new order, he added, was not born yet. Earlier that same year, Obama was more explicit still about his intention to realign the United States away from its old alliances: “I think change is always scary. I think there was a comfort with a United States that was comfortable with an existing order and the existing alignments, and was an implacable foe of Iran.” Washington’s traditional “partners in the region,” the president made clear almost two years ago, were going to have to “adapt to change.”
The foundation of the new American-approved security framework was the recognition and respect of what Obama refers to as Iran’s “equities.” This translated into legitimization of Iranian spheres of influence throughout the region, especially in Iraq and Syria. For Obama, this recognition of Iran as a regional pillar worked on several levels, especially as it was in accord with the president’s clearly broadcast aversion to military intervention. Elevating Iran’s regional position provides the president with the possibility of establishing an alternative security structure, one that no longer relies on U.S. military power.
Obama has repeatedly described the foundation as well as purpose of this new structure as establishing “equilibrium” between “the Shiites”—which, for Obama, means Iran—and “the Sunnis,” primarily meaning the Saudis. But this was effectively meaningless. In practice, Obama was looking for Iranian cooperation on key regional issues in order for him to shrink the American military footprint in the region. However, the president needed a mechanism that would, in one fell swoop, reduce tension with Iran and open the door to pursue cooperation in other areas. This, in short, is the purpose of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Indeed, the administration’s sales pitch for the deal encouraged the promise of closer cooperation on regional affairs. In an interview in August of last year, Secretary of State John Kerry emphasized precisely the prospect of regional collaboration with Iran: “If we can get this deal done, then we’re ready to sit down and talk about the regional issues, and we may be able to work things in different places.”
Yet while Obama may hope for convergence, Iran has naturally been seizing the opportunity to leverage U.S. support to advance its own regional interests, which happen to run squarely against the traditional American alliance system. Even more fundamentally, Iran is a revolutionary actor, whose expressed objective is to overturn the existing order and replace it with Iranian hegemony.
True to form, the Iranians used their recent seizure of the U.S. Navy boats and their crew on the day of the State of the Union address two weeks ago to underscore this point, both to the United States and to its traditional regional allies. The newspaper Kayhan, a mouthpiece for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, ran a telling headline about the detention of the sailors, describing the episode as, “the humiliation of the godfather of the Gulf emirates.” The message is clear: Iran is manhandling America with impunity. Allies and clients of the United States have been put on notice.
Iranian impunity is not a function of Iran’s actual military power vis-à-vis the United States. Rather, it emanates from the Iranian understanding that Obama wants to extricate the United States from the region, has no interest in maintaining the old American order, and is therefore willing to recognize Iran’s position at the head of the regional table. Hence, the administration has found itself repeatedly acting as Iran’s lawyer, excusing and justifying its behavior, legitimizing its ambitions, and instead lashing out at old regional allies. These dynamics, which the administration set up in order to cooperate with Iran, were codified in the JCPOA and give Iran substantial leverage to determine the terms of the U.S.-Iranian relationship. Insofar as Obama has made the nuclear deal and cooperation with Iran his signature, legacy-setting policy, the United States must act as Iran’s advocate in the region, lest the deal and the promise of cooperation collapse. Sustaining the deal with Iran and gaining its cooperation in the region therefore requires the United States to downgrade traditional allies like Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, which are in direct conflict with Iran throughout the region, in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.
Because there is nothing very appealing to most Americans about the prospect of making a pro-Iranian U-turn in U.S. foreign policy, Obama has sought cover for this policy with the conceit of “fighting extremism,” namely ISIS. The president’s pitch is that American allies should put aside their concern with Iranian expansionism and instead cooperate with Tehran to fight the “real” danger facing the region and the world: Sunni extremism. As the president explained: “What’s possible is you start seeing an equilibrium in the region, and Sunni and Shia, Saudi and Iran start saying, ‘Maybe we should lower tensions and focus on the extremists like [ISIS] that would burn down this entire region if they could.’ ” Predictably, the Iranians understand the implications of Obama’s slogan and have integrated lines such as the priority to “fight extremism” and “combat terrorism” in their messaging—with the added caveat that this effort cannot succeed “without Iran.”
But the benefits of the cover of the anti-ISIS campaign extend beyond mere propaganda to real cooperation in Iraq and Syria, as well as Lebanon. In Iraq, the United States not only backs a government deeply penetrated by Iran, but also actively cooperates with Shiite militias run by the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC). A similar set-up, albeit on a much smaller scale, exists in Lebanon, where the United States is providing support to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), which act as an auxiliary force in support of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based long arm of the IRGC. The collaboration is such that the administration has used the LAF to indirectly pass on intelligence that has benefited Hezbollah. The pretext is the same: fighting ISIS and (Sunni) extremism.
In Syria, the White House has used the ISIS issue in order to force a shift in priorities in line with Iranian preferences and objectives. After retreating from its position that Bashar Assad must go, the administration is now working to compel its old regional allies and the rebel forces they support in Syria to effectively surrender and adopt its agenda: stop all operations against Assad and focus instead on fighting ISIS. Hence, under this pretext, the administration is pressuring Turkey to shut down its border, including a strip north of Aleppo vital to continued logistical support for rebel groups that are fighting Assad, the Iranians, and ISIS. Simultaneously, the administration is working with the Syrian franchise of the PKK, which is fighting against Turkey.
The “combating ISIS slogan” has proved useful to Iran’s Russian partners as well, as they are cynically using it while actually targeting all anti-Assad rebel factions and civilians alike.
The result of this policy is that Iran is allowed to protect its “equities” in Syria, as President Obama put it, while Washington’s former allies are pressured to recognize and come to terms with an Iranian victory in Syria at the negotiating table in Geneva.
If Iran turns out to be a force of peace that brings order and stability to the region, and in the process relieve the United States of that task, saving it the cost of wars in the Middle East, then the president’s gamble will have paid off big time. The thing is, there is no evidence whatsoever that such a scenario is transpiring or will transpire in the future. One is hard pressed to find any precedent for a forced integration of a revolutionary power with hegemonic ambitions in an existing structure, with which it is in direct conflict, and which it explicitly seeks to overturn.
Moreover, Iran’s projection of influence in the region is structurally dependent on destabilizing factors and assets—namely, sectarian militias that dominate weak states with fractured societies. Preserving the bridge for Iran’s presence in the eastern Mediterranean, for example, is predicated on sustaining a minority dictatorship in Syria, whose continuity in turn is based on the permanent subjugation by force of the Sunni Arab majority. And so, protecting Iranian “equities” in Syria means, by definition, the perpetuation of war, continued support to Hezbollah, and a continued flow of refugees into neighboring states and Europe.
Put differently, the people of Syria will continue to die and flee in large numbers. Only with the president’s Iran policy, the United States is now actively cooperating with the actor most responsible for their death and misery.
targeting Muslim and Christian holy sites,
in official PA daily cartoon
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Depicting Israel as a snake with its head a rifle, this official Palestinian Authority daily cartoon expressed visually the PA libel that Israel is targeting Muslim and Christian holy sites. The cartoon shows a snake with the head of a rifle coiled around a mosque and a church while aiming the rifle at the towers.
Palestinian Media Watch has documented this libel as well as the PA's portrayal of Israel as a snake, an octopus, wolves and rats threatening Jerusalem and the holy sites.
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The libel that Israel is working to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque to build "the alleged Temple" as well as the PA message that Israel seeks to "Judaize" the Old City of Jerusalem are constantly kept alive by PA and Fatah leaders to instill fear, anger, and hatred in the Palestinian population. Whenever the PA leaders want violence and terror attacks, they build on these feelings, intensify the libels and use them to justify calling Palestinians to use violence to "defend" and "protect" the holy sites.
Thus PA Chairman Abbas used these libels as a pretext for encouraging Palestinians to use "everything in our power" to "protect" the Al-Aqsa Mosque in a speech in September 2015, leading to the onset of the current wave of terror attacks:
"The Al-Aqsa [Mosque] is ours... and they have no right to defile it with their filthy feet. We will not allow them to, and we will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem."
In that speech, Abbas also promised Palestinians that "every Martyr" who engaged in the "protection" of the mosque against the Jews' "filthy feet" would "reach Paradise," and "everyone wounded" would be "rewarded by Allah" - a strong motivator for a religious population that has been made to believe that Israel wants to destroy its holy places:
"We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every Martyr (Shahid) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah."
[Official PA TV, Sept. 16, 2015
and official website of PA Chairman Abbas, Sept. 16, 2015]
3a) America’S Awkward Iran Dance – Aaron David Miller (CNN)
• A fundamental shift in the balance of power is taking place in the Middle East in Iran's favor. For a start, Iran gains access to frozen assets without having to end its support to the Assad regime in Syria, stop backing the Shiite rebels in Yemen who are fighting a proxy war with the Saudis or back off from its support to Lebanese Hizbullah.
• More broadly, Iran is rising as Arab states face increasing challenges to state authority; restive populations and worsening economies; and, in some cases, fragmentation.
• Moreover, America's dependence on Iran is actually increasing. Washington, having gone all-in on the nuclear deal, needs Iran to uphold its commitments. It also needs Iranian assistance in resolving the civil war in Syria and stabilizing Iraq - complex issues that may require formal U.S. recognition of growing Iranian influence.
• Iran's leadership saw the nuclear agreement as a way to consolidate its power. Getting international sanctions lifted allow it to improve Iran's economic conditions and defuse public discontent.
• The nuclear agreement is so advantageous to Iran that it just wouldn't be in Tehran's interest to violate the terms.
The writer is a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.
• Iran Deploys New Forces in Syria - Ali Alfoneh
The latest Iranian units deployed in Syria, to judge by a survey of Iranian nationals killed in combat there, are from the Saberin Brigade of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). According to Brig.-Gen. Morteza Mirian, a former commander of the brigade, Saberin was established in 2000 and modeled on Britain's Special Air Service. Maj.-Gen. Mohammad-Ali Jafari, the IRGC's current chief, served as the Saberin Brigade's first commander.
The writer is a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. (Arab Weekly)
See also Report: PA Arrests 5 Pro-Iran Operatives in West Bank
Palestinian Authority security forces recently arrested five members of the pro-Iranian a-Sabrin group in Bethlehem in the West Bank - who had previously been operating in Gaza - who were planning to carry out attacks against Israel, Israel Radio reported. (Jerusalem Post)
• Israel Sharing Military Intelligence with Allies Battling Islamic State - Aron Heller
IDF Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, who heads the Operations Branch, said Wednesday that Israel is essentially part of the international coalition against the Islamic State and is sharing intelligence with allies battling the extremists. "From Israel's perspective, we definitely see Daesh [ISIS] as an enemy," he said. (AP-ABC News)
• Abbas Meets Families of Terrorists after Deadly Jerusalem Attack
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday hosted the families of 11 Palestinian terrorists in Ramallah who had carried out attacks against Israelis, just hours after three Palestinians killed an Israeli Border Police officer and injured a second in Jerusalem. "Your sons are martyrs," Abbas told the families. (Times of Israel)
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4) Hillary Clinton Has The Most Statistically Improbable Coin-Toss Luck Ever
By Sam Leigh Munsil
DES MOINES, Iowa — One of the most bizarre details to emerge from Monday’s Iowa caucuses was that in six Democratic counties, the ownership of six delegates was decided by a coin flip.
A single delegate remained unassigned at the end of caucusing in two precincts in Des Moines, one precinct in Ames, one in Newton, one in West Branch and one in Davenport, The Des Moines Register reported.
In all six instances, the coin toss was won by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
There may have been more coin tosses, but those are the ones we know about for now.
Now, get ready to do some math.
In a single coin toss, the probability of calling the toss correctly is 50 percent, or one in two. Heads or tails.
But the probably of winning every flip out of six flips is one in 64, or 1.56 percent.
The online study tool “Coin Toss Probability Calculator” has a really intense formula that explains why, but the bottom line is, the probabilities stack on each other.
You’re 50 percent likely to win one coin flip. But you’re only 25 percent likely to win two consecutive coin flips, because there are now twice as many possible outcomes. So bump that up to six coin flips, and your chances of winning them all are slim:
And the bottom line is, Clinton won the Iowa caucuses on six coin flips.
Here’s why: Each coin flip decided a delegate.
Clinton’s final delegate count was 699.57, according to the Iowa Democratic Party. Sanders’ was 695.49.
If Sanders had won half of the coin tosses and split the six delegates three and three with Clinton, he would have finished at 698.49 delegates to Clinton’s 696.57.
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5) What Obama’s Mosque Speech Missed
The president wasn’t wrong to speak of religious freedom at a mosque. But by failing to challenge the Muslim world to confront the extent of the virus of hate and terror within it and by reinforcing the false backlash narrative, President Obama may have done more harm than good.
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| The Iran nuclear deal passed in the US because of a “parliamentary maneuver,” and as a result the next president might not feel bound by it, Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said on Tuesday. Hoenlein told The Jerusalem Post ahead of the conference’s annual meeting here in two weeks that although the deal went through, it was not a signed treaty and therefore the next president could rethink it. He pointed out that polls showed that 80 percent of the public was opposed. The deal went through on the strength of a parliamentary maneuver, “but you don’t have a signed agreement, “ he said. “You don’t have a treaty the president could sign, because he knew it couldn’t get passed. And the next president might not be bound by the deal.” According to Hoenlein, “I could see the next president want to reconsider it, look at the terms and see what steps have to be taken.” Hoenlein said it was not right to frame the deal as a defeat for the pro-Israel community in the US, since the debate was not about Israel, and that America is also threatened by an emboldened Iran flush with sanctions relief money and able to fund its proxies around the globe. He quoted a researcher in Washington as saying that there were between 30,000 to 40,000 Hezbollah agents in South America, and that they have dug tunnels into the US from Mexico. “Hezbollah people are in Mexico,” Hoenlein said. “Iran has weapons manufacturing plants in South America, all sorts of businesses, including one of the richest uranium fields, second only to Canada, in Venezuela.” Hoenlein said this uranium factory was located next to Russian and Chinese factories, “so if you bomb them you will have a big problem.” Hoenlein also said that Hezbollah runs an illicit cigarette ring with some 50 locations along the Canadian-US border, costing New York state some $300 million a year in lost tax revenue. In light of this, he said, it is a grave mistake for the US to think that Iran is solely an Israeli or a Middle East problem. Regarding the remaining 350 days of the Obama Administration, Hoenlein said that a month in the Middle East is a long time, let alone a year. “We have an administration in place, we have to work with them, and see what we can do with them,” he said, adding that he has been told by people in the administration that the Middle East is not going to be the focus of US President Barack Obama’s final year. “There are other issues the president will focus on as his legacy issues,” he said, adding that Secretary of State John Kerry has “clearly put a lot of emphasis on this [the diplomatic process], in part because they want to block initiatives like the French international conference and a UN Security Council resolution.” Hoenlein said that while there have been disagreements with the Obama administration, “we also have to acknowledge there are a lot of good things between Israel and the US.” He cited the close security and military cooperation, and also noted Obama’s speech at the Israeli embassy last week, the first president ever to speak at the embassy, saying this was a positive message of reconciliation. Regarding whether Obama would veto a Security Council resolution on the Mideast that Israel opposed, Hoenlein said this would depend on the text of the resolution. He said that he did not think that the current US elections campaign would play into Obama’s considerations. As to what he thought was behind the recent French initiative to call an international Mideast peace conference, and if that fails then to recognize a Palestinian state, Hoenlein said it was difficult to decipher France’s motives. “One day they are taking the best positions, and the next day they start these campaigns,” he said. Citing the large Muslim population in France, Hoenlein said domestic politics may be one factor. Further, he said, “they want to play a role in the international scene and take a lead on an issue. I think too often that countries, including France, try to stick it to the US.” He said he has not seen any evidence that the French moves were coordinated with Washington 5b) Can Israel Strike Before It is Hit? |
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