Obama defends Kerry and repeats he has confidence in him. (See 1 below.)
Mt father was President of The Southeastern Division of the ZOA in the late '40's and helped The State of Israel defend itself when it was established. For this and other reasons, I remain staunchly supportive of Israel and I do not feel any divided loyalty because they are America's best friend as is America their's.
With Obama the claimed support may be there but not with the same understanding of the issues. Obama must believe you can negotiate with terrorists when history proves otherwise. Obama has made every mistake in the book when it comes to his foreign policy 'lead from behind' strategy and even when he gets out in front matters turn out wrong as well. (See 1a below.)
Another view of Obama. (See 1b,1c and 1d below.)
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AIPAC commends the Senate for approving critical additional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. In the wake of Hamas’ firing of over 2,600 rockets against the Jewish state, the Senate gave its approval to $225 million in additional funding for the current fiscal year, acting expeditiously on a request from the Israeli government that was submitted to Congress by the Administration.
AIPAC applauds the bipartisan leadership of the Obama Administration, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) , Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) , Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in ensuring that these essential funds were expedited at this critical moment. AIPAC urges the House to act quickly and approve the Iron Dome funding.
The Iron Dome system has saved countless lives and prevented untold damage since Hamas launched its unprovoked war against Israel.
The problem with The Iron Dome's success is that it allowed Israel to have less casualties so that means they lost the war of proportionality.
The problem with The Iron Dome's success is that it allowed Israel to have less casualties so that means they lost the war of proportionality.
Obama signed the bill after The House voted to approve.
Meanwhile The U.N. condemned Israel for not allowing Hamas to have The Iron Dome.
Had The U.N. been in existence during WW 2, I guess they would have condemned America for not allowing Hitler and Hirohito to have the Atomic Bomb..
The UN has lost all moral authority and we should stop funding it. A waste of money and New York parking spaces.
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Not applicable to me because I am only 81!
Not applicable to me because I am only 81!
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Dick
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1) Obama and Kerry behind one of most strategic mistakes in military history
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This past week, of the 47 members of the UN Human Right Council, 29 nations voted to set up a commission to launch an international, independent inquiry, effectively passing a resolution to look into: “all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Gaza Strip in the context of military operations conducted since mid June.” In this upside-down world of make believe we live in today, they criticized Israeli military operations for unleashing “widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms.” But since they’ve already come to that conclusion, you have to wonder, what’s the need for the inquiry?
The discussions would cover Hamas’ demands relating to opening border crossings between Gaza and Israel; opening the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt; the release of recently rearrested prisoners from the Shalit deal; the release of some 30 convicted terrorists, including Israeli Arabs, who were set to go free under the collapsed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in late March; widening Palestinian fishing rights off the Gaza coast, and the establishment of a Gaza seaport. Why not an international airport as well?
Active malevolence toward mainstream America is very much in character for the hard left. They hate you and me for what Joe McCarthy did sixty years ago to the Stalinist left; and the more we learn about that history, the more it seems that the anti-communists were right. Their list of America-haters is endless: Jerry Wright preached hatred for 20 years to the Obamas. Franklin Marshall Davis, Obama’s teenage “mentor”, the Hawaiian CPUSA rep and soi-disant poet, specialized in the poetry of racial rage. Bill Ayers stands by his old demand to “kill your parents.” Chris Matthews, who seemed sane and balanced when he worked for Tip O’Neill, is getting paid by his bosses at Comcast and GE for genuine hate speech against the rest of us.
1) Obama and Kerry behind one of most strategic mistakes in military history
by Steven Emerson
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July 22, 2014: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri in Cairo.AP
The obsession by the Obama-Kerry administration with imposing a cease-fire on the warring parties in the Hamas-Israel war will go down in history as one of the most strategic mistakes in military history.
Here is a fact the administration deliberately and maliciously ignored: In the history of modern warfare, no terrorist group has ever honored a cease-fire. Hamas has broken every cease-fire it ever said it would honor. Every single one.
Even the Israel-Hamas 2012 cease fire, brokered by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was simply agreed to by Hamas to give it an opportunity to restock its military arsenal, pressure Israel to lift its restrictions on the import of cement and steel into Gaza – material that Clinton said would be used to build hospitals and schools, but in fact was used to build a network of underground tunnels into Israel and build a subterranean network of underground bunkers, weapons storage facilities and launching pads.
Hamas simply used the cease-fire to rebuild its military infrastructure and as predicted by Israeli military intelligence, would simply break the cease-fire when it felt ready to take on the Israelis once again.
And on Friday, Hamas did the exact same thing. It agreed, through its main financial backer Qatar (which is the world's largest financial sponsor of terrorist groups including Hamas, Hizbollah, Al Qaeda and Al Nusra in Syria) and which the U.S. inexplicably anointed as its interlocutor to Hamas, that it would honor a 72-hour cease-fire initiated by the Obama-Kerry administration.
On Thursday night, Kerry proudly announced the cease-fire. But read the main sentence of his press conference.
"Then, as soon as the cease-fire is underway tomorrow morning – I talked to the Egyptian foreign minister tonight – Egypt will issue invitations to the parties to come to Cairo immediately in order to engage in serious and focused negotiations with Egypt to address the underlying causes of this conflict."
"Underlying causes?" What in God's name is Kerry talking about? That would be the equivalent of announcing a cease-fire with Al Qaeda after it killed 3000 Americans on 9-11 on the grounds that it needed to "address the underlying causes" of Al Qaeda's war against the United States and the West.
Here is a little secret for Mr. Kerry: The underlying causes of the current Israeli-Hamas war, initiated by Hamas with its launching of tens of thousands of missiles into Israel and its use of underground tunnels from Gaza to carry out murderous attacks against Israel civilians, is that Hamas, like Al Qaeda, is a nihilistic radical Islamic organization dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.
The term "underlying causes" directly implies there are legitimate rational grievances by Hamas. Yes, the same "underlying causes" that motivated Adolph Hitler to carry out a worldwide war of conquest, including the Holocaust of six million Jews. Hamas is the embodiment of pure evil. And its motivation is the same as that of Al Qaeda and ISIS.
On Fox News, the former U.S. Ambassador to Bahrain, Adam Ereli, summed up the conflict in words that accurately described the "underlying causes" behind the war between Israel and Hamas:
"…[W]hat we're seeing happen between Israel and Gaza is not a localized conflict, but is much, is part of a much bigger regional war. And that war has Iran, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood on one side and it has the forces of what I would call reason and moderation on the other side – being Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the countries of the Gulf. And United States has an interest in ensuring that the forces of reason and moderation prevail."
Mr. Ereli was right on point. But somehow this administration lost sight of its real strategic interests and instead embraced an agenda that has resulted in extensive damage to our national interests, which in turn has resulted in increasing the strategic threat to American national security.
This administration believes that Al Qaeda is bad but the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the parent of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as that of Al Qaeda, is a rational organization with "legitimate grievances" that can be negotiated with on the same basis that the U.S.can negotiate with Canada or Germany. That is why this administration has embraced the Muslim Brotherhood, starting with the first speech Mr. Obama gave in Cairo in February 2009, where the first two rows of "dignitaries" were 20 leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt hand-selected by the Obama administration.
Moreover, the Obama administration, according to an investigation carried out by my organization, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, lifted all visa restrictions on Muslim Brotherhood officials in their applications to visit the United States. In a report our organization will be releasing next week, more than 25 senior Muslim Brotherhood officials who had publicly called for jihad against the United States or the West, or had openly expressed their support for Hamas and Hezbollah, visited the United States in the past three years and met with senior U.S. officials. One of them, who served as vice president of a Muslim Brotherhood group that had called for the killing of Americans, actually met with President Obama in the White House.
So the "underlying causes" of the current war of annihilation carried out by Hamas against Israel is very simple: It believes that Israel needs to be destroyed paralleling the same agenda of Al Qaeda that believed the United States should be destroyed. We are talking about an organization that won't be satisfied in the short term until every Jew in Israel is dead and in the long term until Western civilization is destroyed replaced by a worldwide Islamic caliphate.
Hamas on Friday succeeded in kidnapping an Israeli officer, after launching a suicide bombing against Israeli soldiers in a well-planned operation 90 minutes after the cease-fire had gone into effect.Immediately following the suicide bombing that killed several Israeli soldiers (still unreported), a group of up to 10 Hamas terrorists immediately descended upon the scene of the bombing where chaos reigned supreme, and kidnapped the Israeli officer in charge of the company stationed in Gaza.
Then Musa Abu Marzuk, a leader of Hamas in Cairo, who was invited to participate in the talks with the U.S. and UN officials on the cease fire, had the audacity to announce the kidnapping took place BEFORE the cease-fire went into effect. This was a manifestly demonstrable lie, as Israel would never have agreed to a cease-fire if it knew one of its soldiers had been kidnapped.
The Obama-Kerry administration's obsession with imposing a cease-fire on Israel on the grounds that too many civilians were being killed in collateral damage (caused by the fact that Hamas used the Gaza population as human shields to protect its launching of missiles ensconced in hospitals, mosques, kindergartens and civilian apartment buildings) somehow convinced itself that Hamas was an organization with "legitimate" political grievances. Yes, the same type of radical Islamic group whose agenda parallels exactlythat of the same radical Islamic groups that has killed thousands of Americans and Europeans and whose wars of aggression has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians in Syria and Iraq.
At this point the administration, if it truly wants to limit the damage to our own national security and reverse the strategic threat to the survival of Israel, needs to be honest with itself and acknowledge its historic mistake in its approach to the Muslim Brotherhood and its stepchild, Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood is the godfather of all Sunni terrorist groups, from Al Qaeda to Hamas, a fact these groups openly admit.
This is a classic war of good versus evil. The only difference between the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist offspring is the deception perpetrated by the Muslim Brotherhood in portraying itself as opposed to violence and committed to political pluralism. Nothing could be further from the truth. All one needs to do is read the covenant of the Muslim Brotherhood in which it states its commitment to carry out jihad to dominate the world, read the contemporary incendiary statements of Muslim Brotherhood officials issued in Arabic and not in English, and observe the Muslim Brotherhood hatred and persecution of of Christians, secular women, non-believing Muslims, infidels and gays.
This administration's current policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood extends from the legitimacy it has conferred on the Muslim Brotherhood organization overseas and its chief patron, Qatar, to the embrace of Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the United States. This administration has gone so far as to ban the mention of the term "radical Islam" and to claim that the word jihad means only peaceful struggle and not violent commitment to impose Islam, which is the genuine historic and religious definition of jihad.
Reversing these policies would not only help protect the long term strategic interests of the United States but would also protect and help in the growth of the community of genuine Muslim moderates who in the end are the only key to reversing the growing threat of radical Islam in the world today.
Steven Emerson is executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and the executive producer of a new documentary about the Muslim Brotherhood in America "Jihad in America: the Grand Deception."
1a) In Defense of Zionism
The often reviled ideology that gave rise to Israel has been an astonishing historical success.
By Michael B. Oren
A Jewish State: See some key moments in the history of Zionism and Israel Robert Capa/ICP/Magnum Photos
They come from every corner of the country—investment bankers, farmers, computer geeks, jazz drummers, botany professors, car mechanics—leaving their jobs and their families. They put on uniforms that are invariably too tight or too baggy, sign out their gear and guns. Then, scrambling onto military vehicles, 70,000 reservists—women and men—join the young conscripts of what is proportionally the world's largest citizen army. They all know that some of them will return maimed or not at all. And yet, without hesitation or (for the most part) complaint, proudly responding to the call-up, Israelis stand ready to defend their nation. They risk their lives for an idea.
The idea is Zionism. It is the belief that the Jewish people should have their own sovereign state in the Land of Israel. Though founded less than 150 years ago, the Zionist movement sprung from a 4,000-year-long bond between the Jewish people and its historic homeland, an attachment sustained throughout 20 centuries of exile. This is why Zionism achieved its goals and remains relevant and rigorous today. It is why citizens of Israel—the state that Zionism created—willingly take up arms. They believe their idea is worth fighting for.
Yet Zionism, arguably more than any other contemporary ideology, is demonized. "All Zionists are legitimate targets everywhere in the world!" declared a banner recently paraded by anti-Israel protesters in Denmark. "Dogs are allowed in this establishment but Zionists are not under any circumstances," warned a sign in the window of a Belgian cafe. A Jewish demonstrator in Iceland was accosted and told, "You Zionist pig, I'm going to behead you."
In certain academic and media circles, Zionism is synonymous with colonialism and imperialism. Critics on the radical right and left have likened it to racism or, worse, Nazism. And that is in the West. In the Middle East, Zionism is the ultimate abomination—the product of a Holocaust that many in the region deny ever happened while maintaining nevertheless that the Zionists deserved it.
What is it about Zionism that elicits such loathing? After all, the longing of a dispersed people for a state of their own cannot possibly be so repugnant, especially after that people endured centuries of massacres and expulsions, culminating in history's largest mass murder. Perhaps revulsion toward Zionism stems from its unusual blend of national identity, religion and loyalty to a land. Japan offers the closest parallel, but despite its rapacious past, Japanese nationalism doesn't evoke the abhorrence aroused by Zionism.
Clearly anti-Semitism, of both the European and Muslim varieties, plays a role. Cabals, money grubbing, plots to take over the world and murder babies—all the libels historically leveled at Jews are regularly hurled at Zionists. And like the anti-Semitic capitalists who saw all Jews as communists and the communists who painted capitalism as inherently Jewish, the opponents of Zionism portray it as the abominable Other.
But not all of Zionism's critics are bigoted, and not a few of them are Jewish. For a growing number of progressive Jews, Zionism is too militantly nationalist, while for many ultra-Orthodox Jews, the movement is insufficiently pious—even heretical. How can an idea so universally reviled retain its legitimacy, much less lay claim to success?
The answer is simple: Zionism worked. The chances were infinitesimal that a scattered national group could be assembled from some 70 countries into a sliver-sized territory shorn of resources and rich in adversaries and somehow survive, much less prosper. The odds that those immigrants would forge a national identity capable of producing a vibrant literature, pace-setting arts and six of the world's leading universities approximated zero.
Elsewhere in the world, indigenous languages are dying out, forests are being decimated, and the populations of industrialized nations are plummeting. Yet Zionism revived the Hebrew language, which is now more widely spoken than Danish and Finnish and will soon surpass Swedish. Zionist organizations planted hundreds of forests, enabling the land of Israel to enter the 21st century with more trees than it had at the end of the 19th. And the family values that Zionism fostered have produced the fastest natural growth rate in the modernized world and history's largest Jewish community. The average secular couple in Israel has at least three children, each a reaffirmation of confidence in Zionism's future.
Indeed, by just about any international criteria, Israel is not only successful but flourishing. The population is annually rated among the happiest, healthiest and most educated in the world. Life expectancy in Israel, reflecting its superb universal health-care system, significantly exceeds America's and that of most European countries. Unemployment is low, the economy robust. A global leader in innovation, Israel is home to R&D centers of some 300 high-tech companies, including Apple, Intel and Motorola. The beaches are teeming, the rock music is awesome, and the food is off the Zagat charts.
The democratic ideals integral to Zionist thought have withstood pressures that have precipitated coups and revolutions in numerous other nations. Today, Israel is one of the few states—along with Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the U.S.—that has never known a second of nondemocratic governance.
These accomplishments would be sufficiently astonishing if attained in North America or Northern Europe. But Zionism has prospered in the supremely inhospitable—indeed, lethal—environment of the Middle East. Two hours' drive east of the bustling nightclubs of Tel Aviv—less than the distance between New York and Philadelphia—is Jordan, home to more than a half million refugees from Syria's civil war. Traveling north from Tel Aviv for four hours would bring that driver to war-ravaged Damascus or, heading east, to the carnage in western Iraq. Turning south, in the time it takes to reach San Francisco from Los Angeles, the traveler would find himself in Cairo's Tahrir Square.
In a region reeling with ethnic strife and religious bloodshed, Zionism has engendered a multiethnic, multiracial and religiously diverse society. Arabs serve in the Israel Defense Forces, in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. While Christian communities of the Middle East are steadily eradicated, Israel's continues to grow. Israeli Arab Christians are, in fact, on average better educated and more affluent than Israeli Jews.
In view of these monumental achievements, one might think that Zionism would be admired rather than deplored. But Zionism stands accused of thwarting the national aspirations of Palestine's indigenous inhabitants, of oppressing and dispossessing them.
Never mind that the Jews were natives of the land—its Arabic place names reveal Hebrew palimpsests—millennia before the Palestinians or the rise of Palestinian nationalism. Never mind that in 1937, 1947, 2000 and 2008, the Palestinians received offers to divide the land and rejected them, usually with violence. And never mind that the majority of Zionism's adherents today still stand ready to share their patrimony in return for recognition of Jewish statehood and peace.
The response to date has been, at best, a refusal to remain at the negotiating table or, at worst, war. But Israelis refuse to relinquish the hope of resuming negotiations with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. To live in peace and security with our Palestinian neighbors remains the Zionist dream.
Still, for all of its triumphs, its resilience and openness to peace, Zionism fell short of some of its original goals. The agrarian, egalitarian society created by Zionist pioneers has been replaced by a dynamic, largely capitalist economy with yawning gaps between rich and poor. Mostly secular at its inception, Zionism has also spawned a rapidly expanding religious sector, some elements of which eschew the Jewish state.
About a fifth of Israel's population is non-Jewish, and though some communities (such as the Druse) are intensely patriotic and often serve in the army, others are much less so, and some even call for Israel's dissolution. And there is the issue of Judea and Samaria—what most of the world calls the West Bank—an area twice used to launch wars of national destruction against Israel but which, since its capture in 1967, has proved painfully divisive.
Many Zionists insist that these territories represent the cradle of Jewish civilization and must, by right, be settled. But others warn that continued rule over the West Bank's Palestinian population erodes Israel's moral foundation and will eventually force it to choose between being Jewish and remaining democratic.
Yet the most searing of Zionism's unfulfilled visions was that of a state in which Jews could be free from the fear of annihilation. The army imagined by Theodor Herzl, Zionism's founding father, marched in parades and saluted flag-waving crowds. The Israel Defense Forces, by contrast, with no time for marching, much less saluting, has remained in active combat mode since its founding in 1948. With the exception of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the ideological forbear of today's Likud Party, none of Zionism's early thinkers anticipated circumstances in which Jews would be permanently at arms. Few envisaged a state that would face multiple existential threats on a daily basis just because it is Jewish.
Confronted with such monumental threats, Israelis might be expected to flee abroad and prospective immigrants discouraged. But Israel has one of the lower emigration rates among developed countries while Jews continue to make aliyah—literally, in Hebrew, "to ascend"—to Israel. Surveys show that Israelis remain stubbornly optimistic about their country's future. And Jews keep on arriving, especially from Europe, where their security is swiftly eroding. Last week, thousands of Parisians went on an anti-Semitic rant, looting Jewish shops and attempting to ransack synagogues.
American Jews face no comparable threat, and yet numbers of them continue to makealiyah. They come not in search of refuge but to take up the Zionist challenge—to be, as the Israeli national anthem pledges, "a free people in our land, the Land of Zion and Jerusalem." American Jews have held every high office, from prime minister to Supreme Court chief justice to head of Israel's equivalent of the Fed, and are disproportionately prominent in Israel's civil society.
Hundreds of young Americans serve as "Lone Soldiers," without families in the country, and volunteer for front-line combat units. One of them, Max Steinberg from Los Angeles, fell in the first days of the current Gaza fighting. His funeral, on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, was attended by 30,000 people, most of them strangers, who came out of respect for this intrepid and selfless Zionist.
I also paid my respects to Max, whose Zionist journey was much like mine. After working on a kibbutz—a communal farm—I made aliyah and trained as a paratrooper. I participated in several wars, and my children have served as well, sometimes in battle. Our family has taken shelter from Iraqi Scuds and Hamas M-75s, and a suicide bomber killed one of our closest relatives.
Despite these trials, my Zionist life has been immensely fulfilling. And the reason wasn't Zionism's successes—not the Nobel Prizes gleaned by Israeli scholars, not the Israeli cures for chronic diseases or the breakthroughs in alternative energy. The reason—paradoxically, perhaps—was Zionism's failures.
Failure is the price of sovereignty. Statehood means making hard and often agonizing choices—whether to attack Hamas in Palestinian neighborhoods, for example, or to suffer rocket strikes on our own territory. It requires reconciling our desire to be enlightened with our longing to remain alive. Most onerously, sovereignty involves assuming responsibility. Zionism, in my definition, means Jewish responsibility. It means taking responsibility for our infrastructure, our defense, our society and the soul of our state. It is easy to claim responsibility for victories; setbacks are far harder to embrace.
But that is precisely the lure of Zionism. Growing up in America, I felt grateful to be born in a time when Jews could assume sovereign responsibilities. Statehood is messy, but I regarded that mess as a blessing denied to my forefathers for 2,000 years. I still feel privileged today, even as Israel grapples with circumstances that are at once perilous, painful and unjust. Fighting terrorists who shoot at us from behind their own children, our children in uniform continue to be killed and wounded while much of the world brands them as war criminals.
Zionism, nevertheless, will prevail. Deriving its energy from a people that refuses to disappear and its ethos from historically tested ideas, the Zionist project will thrive. We will be vilified, we will find ourselves increasingly alone, but we will defend the homes that Zionism inspired us to build.
The Israeli media have just reported the call-up of an additional 16,000 reservists. Even as I write, they too are mobilizing for active duty—aware of the dangers, grateful for the honor and ready to bear responsibility.
Mr. Oren was Israel's ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2013. He holds the chair in international diplomacy at IDC Herzliya in Israel and is a fellow at the Atlantic Council. His books include "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East" and "Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present."
1b)
| Netanyahu to U.S.: Don't second guess me on Hamas |
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/Netanyahu-to-us-don't-second-guess-me- on-Hamas- Following the quick collapse of the cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the White House not to force a truce with Palestinian militants on Israel. Sources familiar with conversations between Netanyahu and senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, say the Israeli leader advised the Obama administration "not to ever second guess me again" on the matter. The officials also said Netanyahu said he should be "trusted" on the issue and about the unwillingness of Hamas to enter into and follow through on cease-fire talks. The Obama administration on Friday condemned "outrageous" violations of an internationally brokered Gaza cease-fire by Palestinian militants and called the apparent abduction of an Israeli soldier a "barbaric" action. The strong reaction came as top Israeli officials questioned the effort to forge the truce, accusing the U.S. and the United Nations of being naive in assuming the radical Hamas movement would adhere with its terms. The officials also blamed the Gulf state of Qatar for not forcing the militants to comply. With the cease-fire in tatters fewer than two hours after it took effect with an attack that killed two Israeli troops and left a third missing, President Barack Obama demanded that those responsible release the soldier. Obama and other U.S. officials did not directly blame Hamas for the abduction. But they made clear they hold Hamas responsible for, or having influence over, the actions of all factions in the Gaza Strip. The language was a distinct change from Thursday when Washington was focused on the deaths of Palestinian civilians. "If they are serious about trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released as soon as possible," Obama told reporters. He added that it would be difficult to revive the cease-fire without the captive's release. "It's going to be very hard to put a cease-fire back together again if Israelis and the international community can't feel confident that Hamas can follow through on a cease-fire commitment," he said. His comment reflected uncertainty in the U.S. and elsewhere that Hamas was actually responsible for the incident or if some other militant group was to blame. At the same time, Obama called the situation in Gaza "heartbreaking" and repeated calls for Israel to do more to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties. Despite the collapse of the truce, Obama credited Kerry for his work with the United Nations to forge one. He lamented criticism and "nitpicking" of Kerry's attempts and said the effort would continue. Kerry negotiated the truce with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon in a marathon session of phone calls over several days while he was in India on an official visit Kerry had spent much of the past two weeks in Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and France trying to mediate a cease-fire with Qatar and Turkey playing a major role because of their close ties with Hamas. Those efforts failed with Israel saying it could not trust Hamas and some Israelis and American pro-Israel groups complaining that the U.S. was treating the group a foreign terrorist organization as designated by the State Department as a friend. Late Thursday, however, Israel accepted Kerry and Ban's latest proposal, despite its reservations. Once the truce was violated, though, Israeli officials hit out at not only Hamas, but the United States and Qatar for it's failure. An Israeli official said the Netanyahu government viewed both Hamas and Qatar as having violated the commitment given to the U.S. and the U.N. and that it expected the international community to take practical steps as part of a "strong and swift response," especially regarding the return of the abducted soldier. In a phone call with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, Netanyahu vented his anger, according to people familiar with the call. Netanyahu told Shapiro the Obama administration was "not to ever second-guess me again" and that Washington should trust his judgment on how to deal with Hamas, according to the people. Netanyahu added that he now "expected" the U.S. and other countries to fully support Israel's offensive in Gaza, according to those familiar with the call. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter by name. They said Netanyahu made similar points to Kerry, who himself denounced the attack as "outrageous," saying it was an affront to assurances to respect the cease-fire given to the United States and United Nations, which brokered the truce. |
1c) Israel and Gaza in an Upside Down World
As if a ceasefire between Israel and messianic, Islamic terrorists could ever hold true. Just the same as the five “humanitarian” truces all upheld by Israel but broken by Hamas ever meant anything. No matter, but for the sake of God and the Iron Dome, thousands of Israelis would be dead and wounded from incessant, indiscriminate shelling. Add the labyrinth of connecting tunnels hidden beneath Gaza to infiltrate and murder Israelis. Take into account Hamas‘ use of human shields, storing weapons in mosques, hospitals, and schools. Throw in firing rockets from private residences and you should get a pretty good idea who the aggressor in this conflict is. Israel, of course.
This past week, of the 47 members of the UN Human Right Council, 29 nations voted to set up a commission to launch an international, independent inquiry, effectively passing a resolution to look into: “all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Gaza Strip in the context of military operations conducted since mid June.” In this upside-down world of make believe we live in today, they criticized Israeli military operations for unleashing “widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms.” But since they’ve already come to that conclusion, you have to wonder, what’s the need for the inquiry?
So much for them, the “Human Rights Commission” is a recognized joke and should be discounted, what’s shouldn’t be is the Obama administration’s dreadful response to Israel’s righteous struggle.
Secretary of State Kerry, spiraling past ineptitude and rapidly approaching irrelevance, has exposed his boss and himself to be no friendsof Israel. If there was any doubt, his ceasefire proposal last Friday, rejected out of hand by Israel, should put it to rest.
Forty-eight hours following a complete halt to hostilities Kerry’s proposal calls for the start of contacts between Israel, Palestinian, and Egyptian delegations in Cairo. The talks in Egypt would include a discussion of Hamas’s call for the lifting of the so-called “siege” of the Gaza Strip, and other demands. It doesn’t get any better.
Shelling of Israeli towns unabated for nine years; no mention. Kidnapping and murder of soldiers and citizens alike; no mention. A vast network of tunnels used to store weapons and infiltrate Israel is likewise absent from this document. The “state” ordered kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli teenagers; just Hamas being Hamas. Nothing about human shields, Hamas war crimes, or raising the casualty count of its own citizens for propaganda purposes.
Forget instant rejection by the Israeli cabinet of this ill-conceived plan. Writing for the liberal newspaper, Haaretz, columnist Avi Shavit expressed the feelings of Israelis on all sides of the political spectrum: “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ruined everything.” He was relentlessly vilified in other media as well. Their main issue: why was the Israeli demand for a demilitarized Gaza Strip not on Kerry’s proposed agenda? Likewise, both the government and a vast majority of Israeli’s resent terrorists being elevated to equal status particularly by their main ally the United States.
If nothing else, Kerry was successful at doing something few have been able to accomplish, uniting Jews in Israel to rally around the leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu. According to a poll taken at the University of Haifa, 91% of Israeli Jews support his self-defense campaign and a continuation of Operation Protective Edge. Only 4.2% believe the operation is a "mistake."
How has the administration responded to this repudiation? "It's simply not the way partners and allies treat each other," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki shilled. “Partners and allies?” They must have hired her for her sense of humor.
For his part, President Obama, even to his most ardent supporters both here and in Israel agree, the past few days have left little doubt as to where he leans, or as some may say, outright supports. From his opening gate Middle Eastern tour and Cairo speech in 2009 to his latest intrusion into the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, he has either exhibited extreme naiveté or an arrogant bias against Israel.
In a bizarre phone call to Netanyahu, he called for a ceasefire "that both allows Palestinians in Gaza to lead normal lives and addresses Gaza’s long-term development and economic needs." Somehow Israel once again didn’t show up in this equation. He paid usual homage to his increasingly hollow mantra, “Israel has a right to defend herself.” He condemned Hamas's construction of tunnels and continuation of rocket fire into civilian areas. But he inexplicably once again placed the onus of Gaza’s casualties on Israel rather than the terrorists using their own people as human cannon fodder.
Although denied by both the White House and the prime minister’s office, according to an Israeli Channel 1 report, a transcript of the phone conversation went like this:
“I demand that Israel agrees to an immediate, unilateral cease-fire and halt all offensive activities, in particular airstrikes,” Obama reportedly said. Netanyahu then asked what Israel would get in exchange? To which the President replied: “I believe that Hamas will cease its rocket fire, silence will be met with silence.”
Claiming authenticity of the transcript given to him by a senior U.S. official, journalist Oren Nahar claims Obama went on to say: “The pictures of destruction in Gaza distance the world from Israel’s position.” The president then demanded: “Within a week of the end of Israel’s military activities, Qatar and Turkey will begin negotiations with Hamas based on the 2012 understandings, including Israel’s commitment to removing the siege restrictions on Gaza.” Turkey and Qatar? If you believe the report, and judging by recent actions, many tend to do so, having Turkey and Qatar mediate on Israel’s behalf is like having a Wolf mediate with a Mountain Lion on behalf of Chickens in a hen house. Regardless, one thing seems certain, nowhere in the conversation did Obama offer a solution addressing Israel’s current or long-term security or what he meant on March 21, 2013 when he spoke at the Jerusalem Convention Center.
“Israel cannot accept” rocket attacks from Gaza, and we have stood up for Israel’s right to defend itself. And that’s why Israel has a right to expect Hamas to renounce violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist.” Recognizing the ceaseless rocket attacks was an admission that despite the truce he helped broker in 2012, the one he wishes to back Israel into today was already violated countless times during that one year. He concluded his predictably cavernous five thousand word pontification with the catchphrase he’s “the president of a country that you can count on as your greatest friend.” A skeptic might say, “with a friends like this...” What he or Kerry didn’t say was more telling than what they did.
A more astute secretary of state, and a more discerning president might see the humanitarian benefits to Palestinians as well as Israelis of the eradication of Hamas. It’s scary to think they both would have the same mentality if we in the United States were being attacked.
Eschewing Israel’s security needs, one also has to wonder if either man ever considered the political benefits a demilitarized Gaza Strip would be to the Middle East. Or how a de facto alliance between Israel and Egypt less Hamas is a formidable bulwark against the daddy of all terrorist movements, Iran.
Like many Germans during World War II, there is no doubt some Gazans would like nothing more than to live out their lives in peace with their children but are held sway by these fanatical fiends. Concerned with “Gaza’s long-term development and economic needs,” how does Obama expect to fulfill those concerns with Hamas still in power? Can he possibly believe rhetoric alone can talk these murderers into becoming good guys?
At all costs, Israel should be encouraged to win this war, not fight to a stalemate. This is another battle between Western civilization and the forces of 7th century barbarism employing 21st century technology. If Israel stands fast and abstracts this abscess from the Gaza strip it will be a seminal moment. She will not only have rid herself of her blood sworn enemy, Hamas. She will have given the West their first victory over a radical Islamic element since 1979. As a law of unintended consequences, it will serve notice to every Islamic terrorist group in the Middle East and Africa. There is one Western democracy in their neighborhood willing to fight to the finish.
1d) Obama's Inexplicable Love for the Dark Side
Even the American left is finally realizing that this is the strangest administration in living memory. Obama simply has no real precedents, which is why he seems so utterly foreign. American presidents tend to be pragmatists, but Obama is locked into a simpleminded ideology of Good vs. Evil. Obama is Good, and anybody who disagrees with him is Evil.
Much of this oddity stems from the president’s personality, which many people have described as a mix of major narcissism, borderline personality disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. Personality disordered people can be very functional in their jobs. But they are very destructive to others. People with such disorders rarely admit they can be wrong. Narcissism is almost defined by that feature: someone who knows with godlike certainty that he is right all the time, who cannot admit a fault, and who therefore needs to blame others every time something goes wrong. Obama does this with almost robotic regularity.
Historically, the most destructive leaders are malignant narcissists with a sociopathic streak, superficially charming and impressive, but manipulative, heartless, and intent on constantly smearing their perceived enemies.
Bill Clinton is also a major narcissist, but as an adult he did not have a compulsion to constantly malign other people. Clinton has recently said that hetruly hates Obama, and he knows the man. Imagine the firestorm if any Republican said that.
Now it seems that Obama wants to torpedo Hillary’s campaign and support Elizabeth Warren, the phony affirmative action Indian at Harvard Law, to force more leftist radicalism on the American people. Hillary looks tired and confused, while Warren is a major rabble-rouser for the left, just like our current Occupant.
(Research supports the idea that these destructive traits can be solidified by years of drug use, especially crystal meth, but also cannabis.)
The most ironic thing is to watch the left complaining about “divisiveness” when the rest of America will not bow to them --- revealing their sense of narcissistic entitlement. Like any closed cult, they know they are completely right, and therefore entitled to power over others, no matter how corrupt and illegal. Lois Lerner has now been shown to have this kind of entitled rage. It cannot be overemphasized that these are standard features of psychiatric disorders.
Obama grew up among such people, as he tells us in his autobiographies. His amazing sense of more-than-human entitlement combines his own history -- the fact that he was rejected at age ten by his mother, who sent him to Hawaii -- together with the radical cult that raised him. Obama is so cocksure that he can’t imagine how sane and decent people could disagree. This is different from other presidents: Clinton and LBJ certainly were power hungry, but they knew when to compromise.
The parallels with violent Muslims are striking. Aggressive Muslims feel they are entitled to rule the world. Any competing faith makes you an enemy -- Buddhist, atheist, Christian, Jewish. They are told so every Friday night by their imams and mullahs -- which is why Muslim mobs have always gone on rampages on Fridays. There is a strong link between hate preaching and terrorist violence in the Muslim world. The Saudis have long sponsored Nazilike hate radio and TV through the Arab and Persian media (see MEMRI.org for daily translations.)
The obvious reason for Hamas and other theocratic Israel-haters is the fact that Israel owns most of Jerusalem. Liberals never seem to understand that idea, because they live in a fantasy world where religion is on its way out, and soon we will live in soft Marxist paradise, atheists one and all. Nobody in Russia and China believes that anymore, because Stalin and Mao tried to abolish religion for decades and failed. Today, Putin acts like a Russian Orthodox believer (when it suits him), and the Chinese are constantly suppressing religious revivals in Beijing. Only the Western left believes in that ole-time religion of militant atheism.
In sum, Obama is deeply stuck in his mental quarrel with America. His anti-American, anti-middle class rhetoric is remarkably stereotyped, which raises the possibility that he is cognitively rigid -- unable to change his mind in the face of facts. Rigid leaders can’t adjust when the facts change, as they always do in politics.
Which brings me to the genuine Dark Side of humanity, and the stunning support this administration gives to it.
YouTube and social media have now penetrated the liberal media defense against Islamofascist cruelties.
Ask yourself whether we are not honestly seeing the face of evil in this list. Please show it to your liberal friends.
1. Boko Haram stealing 300 little Nigerian girls for sexual slavery. (“Boko Haram” means “education is forbidden”.)
2. This video of a Syrian elder surrounding himself with five little children, right next to a mortar firing shells.
3. This ISIS propaganda video showing mass murder by decapitaton of captured Iraqi soldiers.
4. This article by Alan Dershowitz, a leftist, about the tiny tribal regime ofQatar financing Hamas and other killers. (The Saudis, Egyptians and other Arab regimes are currently fighting Qatar for fear of the greater enemy, Iran.)
5. This heroic Saudi blogger, mercilessly whipped and imprisoned for founding a Saudi human rights organization.
6. This Dutch woman, severely beaten for flying the Israeli flag from her balcony -- in the Netherlands.
7. This Canadian lawsuit accusing Pamela Geller of racial incitement for ads aimed at abused and threatened women in Muslim families.
7. This lovely group photo of five black-clad women demanding harsher persecutions by ISIS (an Al Qaida offshoot) in Iraq.
8. This Australian jihadist, surrounded by severed heads of his victims in Syria.
9. This Muslim child-rape gang in England.
10. This Pakistani mob, killing a mother and two little girls for their Ahmadiyya faith.
I know that American Thinker’s readers are aware of these things. My constant question is: Why do Obama and our political-media elite pretend they don’t know? Obama lived four years in Jakarta, Indonesia, in the aftermath of exactly this kind of jihadist civil war. He knows, he knows.
The answer has to be that our ruling left has simply chosen to appease or support the Dark Side.
Whether they are bribed by the oil regimes, or whether they have utterly immoral beliefs, they are no longer interested in fighting evil. In fact, in all cases listed above, the United States under Obama and his crowd has actively supported the worst side.
When all is said and done, the answer is simple.
This administration, and our political-media elites, no longer supports good against evil.
That is why they must be fired and discredited as soon as possible
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