If Carter ever had a soul the Saudis now own it! (See 1a below.)
===
Progressives believe 'if it ain't broke,break it!' (See 2 below.)
===
Have youthful Jews become brain washed by the liberal education they are being exposed to and Kool Aid they are drinking? (See 3 and 3a below.)
===
What's with Hamas? (See 4 and 4a below.)
Rosett on Hamas and The U.N. (See 4 b below.)
As Obama responds to ISIS from the air and ISIS begins to disperse their forces, I suspect Obama will, unwittingly, caused our air force pilots to kill civilians. Will Obama blame GW? If this happens, can Obama rationalize his attacks on Israel when their own air attacks killed innocent civilians used as shields by Hamas? Will that too be G.W's fault?
Meanwhile, Obama's instructions to respond the ISIS threat has left The Pentagon frustrated and confused because the orders are neither well thought out, clear nor actually represent a cohesive strategy.
===
America has no geographical ambitions but that does not mean Turkey has none.
Several years ago, Obama said Erdogan was his closest friend and ally and then Erdogan proved he was not.
Can Obama get anything right? (See 5 and 5a below.)
Apparently President Screw Up cannot. (See 5b and 5c below.)
It is becoming increasingly apparent, Obama does not believe in force, believes his engaging personality and silvery tongue are an effective substitute and because he is so enamored and imbued with his own expertise is he precluded from taking the advice of real experts?
Or, possibly Obama's actions are purposeful? Perhaps he knows exactly what he is doing. As his mission to reduce America's footprint creates vacuums he knows they will be filled by those closer to his world view?
Or, have things gone so awry he finds himself exposed and constantly behind the eight ball when it comes to figuring his way out of the mess his fecklessness creates?
Or even worse, is Obama not smart enough to size up a situation that should be obvious even to an idiot.
And then there is Ukraine. What will Putin do as Obama wrestles with all the demands caused by his incompetence and delayed and confused responses.
===
As America's school districts start opening the influx caused by Obama's closed cynical mind regarding the impact of illegal immigrant children should become evident. Many of the districts will not be able to finesse the increased costs. Student overload most assuredly will bring about suffering for everyone effected.
---
A refreshing thought. (See 6 below.)
And then more hate and call for sacrifice from this Muslim Cleric! (See 6a below.)
Westerners seem unable to comprehend they are under siege. By the time they wake up to this reality, as history shows, it will be very late if not too late.
==
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)
The Hillary Metamorphosis
Reasons to be skeptical about Mrs. Clinton's self-reinvention as a foreign-policy hawk.
Robert Gates, who is the Captain Renault of our time, recounts the following White House exchange between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, back when she was serving the president loyally as secretary of state and he was taking notes as secretary of defense.
"In strongly supporting a surge in Afghanistan," Mr. Gates writes in his memoir, "Duty," "Hillary told the president that her opposition in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the primary. She went on to say, 'The Iraq surge worked.' The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying."
Here's a fit subject for an undergraduate philosophy seminar: What, or who, is your true self? Are you Kierkegaardian or Aristotelian? Is the real "you" the interior and subjective you; the you of your private whispers and good intentions? Or are you only the sum of your public behavior, statements and actions? Are you the you that you have been, and are? Or are you what you are, perhaps, becoming?
And if Mrs. Clinton supported the surge in private—because she thought it would help America win a war—but opposed it in public—because she needed to win a primary—shall we conclude that she is (a) despicable; (b) clever; (c) both; or (d) "what difference, at this point, does it make?"
***
All this comes to mind after reading Mrs. Clinton's remarkable interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic. "Great nations need organizing principles," she said, in the interview's most quotable line, "and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle."
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, (1813-55). © Bettmann/CORBIS
That one is a direct riposte to the White House's latest brainstorm of a guiding foreign-policy concept. But it wasn't Mrs. Clinton's only put-down of her old boss.
She was scathing on the president's abdication in Syria: "I know that the failure"—failure—"to help build a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad . . . the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled." She was unequivocal in her defense of Israel, in a way that would be unimaginable coming from John Kerry : "If I were prime minister of Israel, you're damn right I would expect to have control over security [on the West Bank]." She was dubious about the nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and the administration's willingness to concede to Tehran a "right" to enrich uranium.
She blasted Israel's critics in its war against Hamas: "You can't ever discount anti-Semitism, especially with what's going on in Europe today." She hinted at the corruption of Mahmoud Abbas and his inner circle, "who are enjoying a better lifestyle and making money on all kinds of things." She blamed Moscow for "shooting down a civilian jetliner," presumably while the president waits for the results of a forensic investigation.
And she made the case for American power: "We've learned about the limits of our power to spread freedom and democracy. That's one big lesson out of Iraq. But we've also learned about the importance of our power, our influence, and our values." With Mr. Obama, the emphasis is always on the limitations, period.
All this sounds a lot like what you might read on this editorial page. Whatever happened to the Hillary Clinton who was an early advocate of diplomatic engagement with Iran, and who praised Bashar Assad as a "reformer" and pointedly refused to call for his ouster six months into the uprising? Wasn't she the most vocal and enthusiastic advocate for the reset with Russia? Didn't she deliver White House messages to Benjamin Netanyahu by yelling at him? Didn't she also once describe former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak as a family friend?
And didn't she characterize her relationship with Mr. Obama—in that cloying "60 Minutes" exit interview the two of them did with Steve Kroft —as "very warm, very close"? Where's the love now?
***
There are a few possible answers to that one. One is that the views she expressed in the interview are sincere and long-held and she was always a closet neoconservative; Commentary magazine is delivered to her mailbox in an unmarked brown envelope. Another is that Mrs. Clinton can read a poll: Americans now disapprove of the president's handling of foreign policy by a 57% to 37% margin, and she belatedly needs to disavow the consequences of the policies she once advocated. A third is that she believes in whatever she says, at least at the time she's saying it. She is a Clinton, after all.
There's something to all of these theories: The political opportunist always lacks the courage of his, or her, convictions. That's not necessarily because there aren't any convictions. It's because the convictions are always subordinated to the needs of ambition and ingratiation.
Then again, who cares who Mrs. Clinton really is? When the question needs to be asked, it means we already know, or should know, how to answer it. The truth about Mrs. Clinton isn't what's potentially at stake in the next election. It's the truth about who we are. Are we prepared to believe anything?
We tried that with Barack Obama, the man who promised to be whatever we wanted him to be. Mrs. Clinton's self-reinvention as a hawk invites us to make the mistake twice.
1a)Ex-President Sold to the Saudis
Carter is making more money selling integrity, than he ever made selling peanuts. An Ex-President owned by the Saudis.
I have known Jimmy Carter for more than 30 years. I first met him in the spring of 1976 when, as a relatively unknown candidate for president, he sent me a handwritten letter asking for my help in his campaign on issues of crime and justice. I had just published an article in The New York Times Magazine on sentencing reform, and he expressed interest in my ideas and asked me to come up with additional ones for his campaign. Shortly thereafter, my former student Stuart Eisenstadt, brought Carter to Harvard to meet with some faculty members, me among them. I immediately liked Jimmy Carter and saw him as a man of integrity and principle. I signed on to his campaign and worked very hard for his election. When Newsweek magazine asked his campaign for the names of people on whom Carter relied for advice, my name was among those given out. I continued to work for Carter over the years, most recently I met him in Jerusalem a year ago, and we briefly discussed the Mid-East. Though I disagreed with some of his points, I continued to believe that he was making them out of a deep commitment to principle and to human rights.
Recent disclosures of Carter’s extensive financial connections to Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia, had deeply shaken my belief in his integrity. When I was first told that he received a monetary reward in the name of Shiekh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan, and kept the money, even after Harvard returned money from the same source because of its anti-Semitic history, I simply did not believe it. How could a man of such apparent integrity enrich himself with dirty money from so dirty a source?
And let there be no mistake about how dirty the Zayed Foundation is. I know because I was involved, in a small way, in helping to persuade Harvard University to return more than $2 million that the financially strapped Divinity School received from this source. Initially I was reluctant to put pressure on Harvard to turn back money for the Divinity School, but then a student at the Divinity School — Rachael Lea Fish — showed me the facts They were staggering. I was amazed that in the 21st century there were still foundations that espoused these views. The Zayed Centre for Coordination and Follow-up – a think-tank funded by the Shiekh and run by his son – hosted speakers who called Jews “the enemies of all nations,” attributed the assassination of John Kennedy to Israel and the Mossad and the 9/11 attacks to the United States’ own military, and stated that the Holocaust was a “fable.” (They also hosted a speech by Jimmy Carter.) To its credit, Harvard turned the money back. To his discredit, Carter did not.
Jimmy Carter was, of course, aware of Harvard’s decision, since it was highly publicized. Yet he kept the money. Indeed, this is what he said in accepting the funds: “This award has special significance for me because it is named for my personal friend, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan.” Carter’s personal friend, it turns out, was an unredeemable anti-Semite and all-around bigot.
I sadly concluded that Jimmy Carter of the 21st century has become complicit in evil.
In reading Carter’s statements, I was reminded of the bad old Harvard of the 1930s, which continued to honor Nazi academics after the anti-Semitic policies of Hitler’s government became clear. Harvard of the 1930s was complicit in evil. I sadly concluded that Jimmy Carter of the 21st century has become complicit in evil.
The extent of Carter’s financial support from, and even dependence on, dirty money is still not fully known. What we do know is deeply troubling. Carter and his Center have accepted millions of dollars from suspect sources, beginning with the bail-out of the Carter family peanut business in the late 1970s by BCCI, a now-defunct and virulently anti-Israeli bank indirectly controlled by the Saudi Royal family, and among whose principal investors is Carter’s friend, Sheikh Zayed. Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the bank, gave Carter “$500,000 to help the former president establish his center…[and] more than $10 million to Mr. Carter’s different projects.” Carter gladly accepted the money, though Abedi had called his bank-ostensibly the source of his funding-”the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.” BCCI isn’t the only source: Saudi King Fahd contributed millions to the Carter Center- “in 1993 alone…$7.6 million” as have other members of the Saudi Royal Family. Carter also received a million dollar pledge from the Saudi-based bin Laden family, as well as a personal $500,000 environmental award named for Sheikh Zayed, and paid for by the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates.
It’s worth noting that, despite the influx of Saudi money funding the Carter Center, and despite the Saudi Arabian government’s myriad human rights abuses, the Carter Center’s Human Rights program has no activity whatever in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have apparently bought his silence for a steep price. The bought quality of the Center’s activities becomes even more clear, however, when reviewing the Center’s human rights activities in other countries: essentially no human rights activities in China or in North Korea, or in Iran, Iraq, the Sudan, or Syria, but activity regarding Israel and its alleged abuses, according to the Center’s website
The Carter Center’s mission statement claims that “The Center is nonpartisan and acts as a neutral party in dispute resolution activities.” How can that be, given that its coffers are full of Arab money, and that its focus is away from significant Arab abuses and on Israel’s far less serious ones?
No reasonable person can dispute therefore that Jimmy Carter has been and remains dependent on Arab oil money, particularly from Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that Carter has necessarily been influenced in his thinking about the Middle East by receipt of such enormous amounts of money? Ask Carter. The entire premise of his criticism of Jewish influence on American foreign policy is that money talks. It is Carter-not me-who has made the point that if politicians receive money from Jewish sources, then they are not free to decide issues regarding the Middle East for themselves. It is Carter, not me, who has argued that distinguished reporters cannot honestly report on the Middle East because they are being paid by Jewish money. So, by Carter’s own standards, it would be almost economically “suicidal” for Carter “to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine.”
Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position.
By Carter’s own standards, therefore, his views on the Middle East must be discounted. It is certainly possible that he now believes them. Money, particularly large amounts of money, has a way of persuading people to a particular position. It would not surprise me if Carter, having received so much Arab money, is now honestly committed to their cause. But his failure to disclose the extent of his financial dependence on Arab money, and the absence of any self reflection on whether the receipt of this money has unduly influenced his views, is a form of deception bordering on corruption.
I have met cigarette lobbyists, who are supported by the cigarette industry, and who have come to believe honestly that cigarettes are merely a safe form of adult recreation, that cigarettes are not addicting and that the cigarette industry is really trying to persuade children not to smoke. These people are fooling themselves (or fooling us into believing that they are fooling themselves) just as Jimmy Carter is fooling himself (or persuading us to believe that he is fooling himself).
If money determines political and public views-as Carter insists “Jewish money” does-then Carter’s views on the Middle East must be deemed to have been influenced by the vast sums of Arab money he has received. If he who pays the piper calls the tune, then Carter’s off-key tunes have been called by his Saudi Arabian paymasters. It pains me to say this, but I now believe that there is no person in American public life today who has a lower ratio of real to apparent integrity than Jimmy Carter. The public perception of his integrity is extraordinarily high. His real integrity, it now turns out, is extraordinarily low. He is no better than so many former American politicians who, after leaving public life, sell themselves to the highest bidder and become lobbyists for despicable causes. That is now Jimmy Carter’s sad legacy.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) Attacking Achievement
By Thomas Sowell
New York's mayor, Bill de Blasio, like so many others who call themselves "progressive," is gung-ho to solve social problems. In fact, he is currently on a crusade to solve an educational problem that doesn't exist, even though there are plenty of other educational problems that definitely do exist.
The non-existent problem is the use of tests to determine who gets admitted to the city's three most outstanding public high schools -- Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. These admissions tests have been used for generations, and the students in these schools have had spectacular achievements for generations.
These achievements include many Westinghouse Science awards, Intel Science awards and -- in later life -- Pulitzer Prizes and multiple Nobel Prizes. Graduates of Bronx Science alone have gone on to win five Nobel Prizes in physics alone. There are Nobel Prize winners from Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech as well.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a motto that Mayor de Blasio and many other activist politicians pay no attention to. He is also out to curtail charter schools, which include schools that have achieved outstanding education results for poor minority students, who cannot get even adequate results in all too many of the other public schools.
What is wrong with charter schools and with elite high schools like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech? Despite their educational achievements, they have political problems.
The biggest political problem is that the teachers' unions don't like them -- and the teachers' unions are the 800-pound gorilla among the special interests in Bill de Blasio's Democratic Party.
The next biggest political problem is that people who don't pass the tests for the elite public high schools don't want to have to pass tests to get in.
Their politicians have been denouncing these admissions tests for decades, and so have various other ethnic community "leaders." These include spokesmen for "civil rights" organizations, who think their civil rights include getting into these elite schools, whether they qualify or not.
Finally, there are the intelligentsia, who all too often equate achievement with privilege. In times past, such people called Stuyvesant "a free prep school for Jews" and "a privileged little ivory tower."
That was clever, but cleverness is not wisdom. Back in those days, Jewish youngsters were over-represented among the students at all three elite public high schools. Today it is Asian students who are a majority at those same schools -- more than twice as many Asians as whites in all three schools.
Black and Hispanic students are rare at all three elite public high schools, and becoming rarer.
Many among the intelligentsia and politicians express astonishment that the ethnic makeup of these schools is so different from the demographic makeup of the city.
But such differences between groups are common in countries around the world. But in each country there are people who say that it is strange -- and demand a "solution" to this "problem."
In Malaysia, for example, before group quotas were established at the country's universities, students from the Chinese minority earned more than 400 engineering degrees in the 1960s, while students from the Malay majority earned just 4.
When a university was established in 19th century Romania, there were more German students than Romanian students, and most of the professors were German. The same was true for most of the 19th century when a university was established in Estonia.
In none of these cases did the group that was over-represented have any power to discriminate against groups that were under-represented.
If racism is the reason why there are so few blacks in Stuyvesant High School, why were blacks a far higher proportion in Stuyvesant in earlier times, as far back as 1938? Was there less racism in 1938? Was there less poverty among blacks in 1938?
We know that there were far fewer black children raised in single-parent homes back then and there was far less social degeneracy represented by things like gangsta rap. If Mayor de Blasio wants to solve real problems, let him take these on.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3) As Jews unite, is US youth moving to anti-Semitism ‘at light speed’?
While top Diaspora Jewish leaders tout an almost unprecedented solidarity with Israel, a new poll speaks otherwise for young adults
Writers
As Operation Protective Edge continues into its fourth week, US Jewish leaders describe in excited terms an almost unprecedented atmosphere of unity among American Jews.
Citing the widespread pro-Israel rallies held throughout the country, these leaders say the support of US Jews for Israel is nearly unanimous, regardless of political or religious views.
In addition to the wave of solidarity trips organized by numerous Jewish organizations (some filling trip quotas in a matter of hours before setting off the following day), this Monday saw a “day of action” sponsored by the
Conference of Presidents of Major Organizations. Hundreds of Jewish community leaders met with Congress members in Washington, DC, at a quickly organized summit while large-scale pro-Israel rallies saw a combined total of up to 17,000 supporters in New York and Chicago.
Emphasized repeatedly to The Times of Israel is the cross-denominational, inter-political nature of these high-profile events. From a 2,200-strong rally in Colorado to Manhattan’s mega event, politicians of all stripes and religious persuasions are speaking in defense of Israel alongside Jewish community representatives.
However, there is another narrative being voiced as well.
A recent Pew poll highlights an age group that is less than “supportive.” Instead of standing with Israel, the poll finds that a third of all young Americans aged 18-29 (Jews and non) in fact blame Israel for the Gaza conflict.
Reader Steven Colodny from the University of Texas at San Antonio argues the poll’s findings are the result of a mix of historical ignorance, trendy Twitter campaigns and a US media with an anti-Israel bias.
In a comment on a Times of Israel news article about the poll he writes: “In the US, according to recent surveys, it is largely the younger generation (18-29), the self-proclaimed liberals that chastise Israel the most, yet this is the same generation that cannot point to Israel, Iraq, or Afghanistan on a map (there are many surveys to back that up, too). Empty, misguided conviction in other words.
“Trendy twitter campaigns guide them and they get their news from The Daily Show, Colbert Report if watching the news at all,” he writes.
Jon Stewart: Gaza on the map (YouTube screenshot)
Colodny bemoans the age group’s lack of historical background behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and belittles the scant understanding it has acquired as coming from a few movies on World War II.
He concludes his comments with a warning, “…Because being anti-Israel or anti-Zionist is the ‘in thing’ right now, many normal people don’t realize they’re being led to anti-Semitism at light speed until they are there. Let’s hope this wave of hatred phases out, perhaps after people find the next ‘Harlem Shake’ or ‘Gangnam Style’ dance to distract them from serious issues… but Jews can rely on hope only so much.”
So, The Times of Israel wonders: is this a watershed moment of pro-Israel support for the US Jewish communities — or just another notch in the belt of an ever-encroaching anti-Semitism?
“The watershed moment is there,” says the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman. “From an internal Diaspora Jewish perspective, it’s a very dramatic moment.”
Abraham Foxman (photo credit: David Karp/JTA)
“It usually takes a crisis, tragedy, but in the last several military encounters [between Israel and Hamas], there wasn’t this sense of solidarity, unity, coming together,” says Foxman.
Foxman points to the combined 50,000 Israelis who attended the funerals of two US-citizen volunteer “lone soldiers,” or soldiers without family in the country, for Sean Carmeli in Haifa and Max Steinberg at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl.
“This is symbolic and emblematic of this situation of unity: It’s safe to say that Israel, in a large sense, poured out to embrace these two soldiers. I think it’s maybe a throwback to the days of the ‘beautiful Israel,’” says Foxman, when there weren’t overriding contentious issues dividing Israel and the Diaspora.
Other leaders are more wary of committing to the historicity of the moment, but concede willingly that Diaspora Jewry is at “a critical point.”
“I don’t know what the long-term impact will be, but there is a coming together that is unique, a unity of standing with Israel,” says Conference of Presidents head Malcolm Hoenlein. “We haven’t seen this kind of unity in many, many years.”
Hoenlein finds it notable that in many cases, Jews who are usually unaffiliated with mainstream communities are coming out of the woodwork in support of Operation Protective Edge, including the Israeli-American and Russian-Jewish-American communities.
Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
He says there is a sense that the so-far unconfirmed rumors of a “Rosh Hashanah plot” of a planned coordinated tunnel attack was a “game changer” for many otherwise indifferent American Jews.
Others see a worldwide Jewish unity atmosphere having dawned several weeks prior to the Gaza military operation. In Israel on his third solidarity mission in a month, Jewish Federations of North America CEO Jerry Silverman echoes Hoenlein’s sentiments but dates the unity phenomenon to the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens, Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Sha’ar and Naftali Fraenkel, which pushed Jews worldwide to pressure their governments to support Israel’s widespread search operation in the West Bank.
“I think it really started with the three boys. When they were kidnapped the whole world came together in prayer, in vigils, rallies to bring back ‘our’ boys. I’ve said to all three families — I saw the Sha’ars last night — we feel like these boys became part of the world family,” says Silverman, who spoke while in transit visiting soldiers in hospitals and traumatized children in the south.”The connection it created really stirred something in world Jewry, Diaspora Jewry, and especially in North American Jewry,” he says.
Like Foxman, Silverman says tragedy has birthed a stronger Jewish peoplehood. He lists a very partial summary of the recent horrors visited upon Jews around the globe, saying murderous “anti-Semitic actions in Belgium, the shooting in Kansas City, anti-Semitism in Paris and various places have brought Jews together. We are a small people, but we are all connected,” says Silverman.
The Jewish leaders explain away the recent Pew poll, saying this age group is heavily swayed by popular media and has less of a sense of history than older Americans.
Jerry Silverman, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, at the 2012 General Assembly in Baltimore, Md. (photo credit: JFNA/JTA)
To stave off widespread ignorance of Israel’s existential fight, however, Silverman suggests using Birthright alumni or “young people who have been educated well as ambassadors” to their peers.
Though Silverman has personally seen a decrease in anti-Semitism on campuses over the past decade, “the only information they’re getting is what they see in the media.” And the go-to sources for this age group are often Comedy Central, the echo chamber of like-minded thinking on social media.
Silverman and Hoenlein both feel US Jewry in particular, however, is well informed of the upswing of anti-Semitism taking place globally, as well as the Israel Defense Forces’ efforts to combat terrorism locally.
“The awareness of what is taking place is really clear, the heroic measures of the IDF in stopping infiltrations — they’re heroes,” says Silverman, adding this awareness is shared not only by US Jewry, but “all over the US the public is now understanding [Israel's plight].”
“You have terrorists coming out of the tunnels into backyards that are reaching kilometers into Israel!” says Silverman.
3a)
Japanese View of the Palestinians - Couldn't said it better!
Talk about one picture being worth a THOUSAND words!
Is the world just plain stupid? An interesting questionnaire for Palestinian Advocates
by Yashiko Sagamori
If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history," I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:
1. When was it founded and by whom?
2. What were its borders?
3. What was its capital?
4. What were its major cities?
5. What constituted the basis of its economy?
6. What was its form of government?
7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat? (Note: I wish to point out that Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo and went to school in Cairo. He was named a “Palestinian Leader” when he was 40).
If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history," I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:
1. When was it founded and by whom?
2. What were its borders?
3. What was its capital?
4. What were its major cities?
5. What constituted the basis of its economy?
6. What was its form of government?
7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat? (Note: I wish to point out that Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo and went to school in Cairo. He was named a “Palestinian Leader” when he was 40).
8. Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
9. What was the language of the country of Palestine?
10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?
11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese Yuan on that date.
12. And, finally, since there is no such country as Palestine today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?
You are lamenting the "low sinking" of a "once proud" nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of?
And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?
I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day "Palestinians" to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.
The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it "the Palestinian people" and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the "West Bank" and Gaza, respectively?
The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called "Palestinians" have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation" -- or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.
In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.
That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?
I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day "Palestinians" to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.
The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it "the Palestinian people" and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the "West Bank" and Gaza, respectively?
The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called "Palestinians" have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a nation" -- or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.
In fact, there is only one way to achieve peace in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.
That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In today’s New York Times, Yediot Aharonot military analyst Ronen Bergman has some sobering conclusions about the fighting in Gaza. While he agrees that in an objective sense, Hamas was defeated on the battlefield by the Israel Defense Forces, it must be acknowledged that the terrorist group exposed some of the army’s deficiencies and may well have established itself as “an equal party in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.”
For those who have acted as if Hamas is the victor in the fighting because it forced Israel to counter-attack and thus created havoc in Gaza, our John Podhoretz’s opinion on this issue published last week in the New York Post still holds. Hamas didn’t win. It lost much of its arsenal and saw its carefully built network of border tunnels destroyed before they could be used to pull off a massive terrorist atrocity. And for all the talk about Israel losing in the court of public opinion, it’s not clear that the latest war changed a thing in that battle. Due in no small measure to the rising tide of anti-Semitism, hatred for Israel is greater than ever. But support for the Jewish state here in the United States remains high.
And yet, as the always insightful Bergman notes, the IDF has plenty of lessons to learn from the last month. Iron Dome proved to be one of the greatest technological advances in recent military history as it effectively negated Hamas’s vast arsenal of long- and medium-range rockets (something that was very bad news indeed for Hezbollah which now realizes that their rocket threat on Israel’s northern border is now also officially useless). But along with the high-tech victory, there were also obvious intelligence failures. The Israelis underestimated the size of Hamas’s arsenal as well as the fighting ability of its cadres in Gaza. Nor was the army ready for the size or the scope of the tunnel threat once the fighting started. It will have to invest heavily in efforts to detect tunnel building or face a rerun of that episode in the future. Bergman also notes correctly that Israel’s special forces proved unable or unwilling to pull off any major operations that might have either inflicted great damage on Hamas or deal a devastating blow to the Islamists’ morale.
Does that all add up to a situation in which the war ends pretty much the way it started but “with significant damage to Israel’s deterrence,” as Bergman summed it up?
The hope within Israel’s Defense Ministry is that the devastating damage done to Hamas’s infrastructure will mean that it will be years before the terrorists think about starting another round. But considering that with Hamas seemingly determined to keep the rockets flying until it gets want it wants in negotiations, it is far from certain that this war is really over. Hamas is hoping to keep up a war of attrition and that is the sort of conflict that is hard for any democracy, even one, like Israel, that understands it is locked in a battle for the survival of their homeland, to win.
Moreover, Bergman’s conclusion about Hamas improving its status in negotiations with Egypt and Israel is inarguable. By surviving this war of choice that it started, Hamas can claim a victory of a sort. No matter how badly its forces are whipped in the field or how pathetic its rocket offensive has become with almost no real damage done to Israel despite thousands of attacks, as long as it is still standing when the shooting stops, it hasn’t entirely lost.
Nor does the talk about replacing Hamas with the supposedly more moderate and utterly irrelevant Palestinian Authority—at least at the border crossings—amount to much. Anyone who expects the humanitarian aid—including the concrete for rebuilding Gaza—that will inevitably flow into the strip to be kept out of Hamas’s hands is dreaming. Hamas isn’t giving up power voluntarily and there is no sign that it can be overthrown.
What Bergman’s conclusions do mean is that, as John noted last week, Israel’s only option in this conflict is to stay strong and prepare as best it can for the inevitable next round of a long war. Contrary to President Obama and others who want to save the Jewish state from itself, that war can’t be ended by territorial withdrawals on the West Bank that would create a larger and more dangerous version of Gaza.
Israel has good reason to be proud of its army after the last month. But no one should assume that their victories mean that the threat from Hamas has really been diminished. No one wants to give the murderers and war criminals of Hamas any credit but while their organization remains in charge in Gaza, they haven’t really been defeated. If Israel wants to change that unpalatable strategic conclusion, it’s going to have to do what it understandably appears unwilling to do: re-occupy Gaza and finish the Islamist terror movement once and for all.
4a) Hamas official: This is second and final cease-fire with Israel
| By JPOST.COM STAFF |
A senior Hamas official said on Tuesday that his group was locked in "difficult" talks in Egyptian-mediated efforts in Cairo to forge a lasting cease-fire in Gaza with Israel.
"We are facing difficult negotiations. The first truce passed without notable achievements. This is the second and final cease-fire," Palestinian news agency Ma'an quoted Mousa Abu Marzouk as saying in light of the three-day halt in fighting that started Sunday. Last week, Hamas refused to extend a first 72-hour halt in fighting with Israel unless their demands, particularly the opening of border crossings with Gaza and the construction of a seaport, were met.
A Palestinian official with knowledge of the cease-fire talks in Cairo told Reuters on Tuesday that another day was needed in the indirect talks before it would be evident whether a truce between Israel and Hamas could be achievable.
"So far we can't say a breakthrough has been achieved ... Twenty-four hours and we shall see whether we have an agreement," said the official speaking on condition of anonymity.
According to an Israel Radio report, Israeli officials predicted Tuesday that another 72 hours were be needed to cement a long-term cease-fire deal with Hamas, in addition to the three-day truce that went into effect on Sunday.
The radio station reported that the delegation was expected to agree to ease some restrictions in Gaza, including extending fishing rights, increasing the number of materials that enter Gaza, along with Israel allowing funds to enter the Strip to be used to pay the salaries of Hamas officials.
The Israeli delegation reiterated that it was not going to give any concessions regarding Hamas' demands to open a seaport and airport in Gaza.
However, a report by the BBC quoted an official in Cairo as saying that the Palestinian delegation had waived, for now, an Israeli proposal to allow a seaport in Gaza pending the demilitarization of the Strip and the disarming of Hamas.
Hamas has shown no inclination to disarm in talks thus far.
An Israeli official told Israel Radio that there had been no progress in the talks so far, as the gaps between the sides remained too vast.
Meanwhile, a member of the Palestinian delegation to Cairo said on Tuesday that the negotiating team now in the midst of cease-fire talks, was not prepared to waive any of its demands which have been presented during the first round of the Egyptian-mediated talks.
However, the source told the al-Quds newspaper, that members of the delegation, including representatives from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad were willing to accept a gradual opening of the seaport and airport in the enclave.
That issue has proved to be the main stumbling blocks during talks, according to the source.
The delegation held a meeting Monday that lasted more than 10 hours, as the Egyptian mediators tried to bridge the gaps between the the Israelis and the Palestinians.
4b) The U.N. Handmaiden of Hamas
The relief agency in Gaza, financed in part by the U.S., has become a patron of Palestinian grievance.
By Claudia Rosett
On Wednesday, as a truce held between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon briefed the U.N. General Assembly. "The senseless cycle of suffering" must end, he said, asking: "Do we have to continue like this: build, destroy, and build, and destroy?"
For answers, the secretary-general would do well to look at the U.N.'s own main agency in Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, better known as Unrwa. Bankrolled chiefly by the United States and the European Commission, with headquarters split among Gaza, Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, the agency is one of the U.N.'s most perverse, destructive creations. In Gaza it essentially functions as Hamas's handmaiden.
During the clashes of recent weeks as Israel sought to stop rocket attacks by Hamas and to destroy the organization's terror tunnels, Unrwa has loomed large on the public stage—with a pronounced Palestinian tilt. Its commissioner-general, Pierre Krahenbuhl, has publicly condemned Israel, accusing the Israelis of "serious violation of international law." On Al Jazeera television, the agency's spokesman, Christopher Gunness, has wept for the Palestinians.
Yet the U.N. representatives in Gaza helped cater the conflict and are already setting the table for the next round. Officially, Unrwa is a strictly humanitarian agency, providing Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and the West Bank, as well as Gaza, with "assistance and protection" in the form of schools, hospitals, construction, loans, jobs and other help. By the agency's own account, in its 2014-15 budget "the core services UNRWA provides are comparable in nature and scope to those provided by a local or national government."
But Gaza under Hamas is a place with only two basic industries: aid and terrorism. These are much entwined, and not solely because Hamas controls Unrwa's staff unions in Gaza, where in 2012 a Hamas-affiliated slate swept 25 of 27 seats. In effect the U.N. group subsidizes Hamas. Among U.N. agencies in the Middle East, Unrwa is the largest employer, with a regular budget for 2014 of $731 million, and a total budget that, with emergency appeals, tops $1 billion.
The agency has roughly 30,000 staff on its payroll, almost all Palestinian. Some 12,500 work in Gaza, home to 1.2 million Unrwa-registered refugees, who account for about two-thirds of Gaza's population. The U.N. agency's welfare programs relieve Hamas of many of the costs of servicing the enclave it controls as its launchpad for terror.
With the agency handling household chores, Hamas—especially since its bloody takeover of Gaza in 2007, ousting the Palestinian Authority's Fatah—has found the time and resources to amass rocket arsenals (Unrwa last month reported finding rockets stashed in three of its vacant schools), to bombard Israel (sometimes in close proximity to Unrwa premises), and to build miles of concrete-reinforced tunnels extending into Israel for terrorist attacks. Israel, in its counteroffensive, has been accused by the U.N. of deadly strikes on Unrwa schools serving as shelters.
How did it come to this? Created by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949, Unrwa began operations in 1950 as an emergency jobs and aid program for Palestinian refugees. It was supposed to be temporary but has been repeatedly renewed. The agency has now carried on for 64 years, vastly expanding its budget, programs and refugee rolls.
Unrwa is unusual among U.N. agencies in ways that render it especially unaccountable, even by U.N. standards. All other refugees world-wide fall under the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Only the Palestinians have their own dedicated U.N. refugee agency, offering special access to the perquisites of the U.N. logo, stage and fundraising.
Almost all other U.N. agencies report to an executive board, allowing at least some chance of functional oversight. Unrwa reports directly to the entire 193-member General Assembly, where responsibility is broadly dispersed and easily avoided. According to a paper in 2010 by the agency's own chief of legal affairs, Lance Bartholomeusz, Unrwa enjoys the added flexibility of having no clearly defined mission: "its mandate is not conveniently stated in one place and must be derived from all other relevant resolutions and requests."
Thus unencumbered, Unrwa has ensured its own survival by transforming itself into the patron of Palestinian grievance, conferring refugee status down the generations, an unusual practice. The agency's website reports that since 1950 its roster of registered refugees has grown from an original 750,000 to 5.3 million—a sevenfold increase, all eligible for the Unrwa dole. For the Palestinians, this has been ruinous, fostering within an otherwise enterprising culture a crippling sense of entitlement and dependency.
The agency does face one hurdle: Its funding comes almost entirely from voluntary contributions. But hundreds of millions roll in every year from the U.S., which is the largest donor (contributing $294 million in 2013), followed by the European Commission ($216 million). According to State Department historical data, the U.S. since Unrwa's inception has given the agency funds totaling $4.9 billion (closer to $7 billion in constant 2014 dollars).
In 2011 the agency opened an office in Washington run by two former U.S. government insiders: Matthew Reynolds, previously the State Department's assistant secretary for legislative affairs, and Chris McGrath, previously a media-events director for Sen. Harry Reid. The job descriptions include representing the U.N. agency's interests to the State Department and monitoring Congress on a daily basis to yield an "advocacy strategy dedicated to optimizing Unrwa's relations with Congress."
Thus U.S. tax dollars fund Unrwa officials now lobbying in Washington to obtain yet more money for an agency entwined with the rocket-launching, tunnel-digging rulers of Gaza. Mr. Reynolds, reached by phone this week, said he doesn't answer questions from the media. Christopher Gunness, the agency spokesman, did not respond to repeated queries.
With this week's truce between Israel and Hamas appearing to hold as the weekend neared, Unrwa is ready for what comes next. The organization has embarked on a $187 million flash appeal to rebuild Gaza. Thus will Hamas be spared the expense of cleaning up after the warfare it provoked.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5) Turkey's Geographical Ambition
By Robert D. Kaplan and Reva Bhalla
Editor's Note: We originally ran this Global Affairs with Robert D. Kaplan column on May 1, 2013. We are republishing it in light of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Aug. 10 election as Turkey's new president.
By Robert D. Kaplan and Reva Bhalla
At a time when Europe and other parts of the world are governed by forgettable mediocrities, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister for a decade now, seethes with ambition. Perhaps the only other leader of a major world nation who emanates such a dynamic force field around him is Russia's Vladimir Putin, with whom the West is also supremely uncomfortable.
Erdogan and Putin are ambitious because they are men who unrepentantly grasp geopolitics. Putin knows that any responsible Russian leader ensures that Russia has buffer zones of some sort in places like Eastern Europe and the Caucasus; Erdogan knows that Turkey must become a substantial power in the Near East in order to give him leverage in Europe. Erdogan's problem is that Turkey's geography between East and West contains as many vulnerabilities as it does benefits. This makes Erdogan at times overreach. But there is a historical and geographical logic to his excesses.
The story begins after World War I.
Because Ottoman Turkey was on the losing side of that war (along with Wilhelmine Germany and Hapsburg Austria), the victorious allies in the Treaty of Sevres of 1920 carved up Turkey and its environs, giving territory and zones of influence to Greece, Armenia, Italy, Britain and France. Turkey's reaction to this humiliation was Kemalism, the philosophy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (the surname "Ataturk" means "Father of the Turks"), the only undefeated Ottoman general, who would lead a military revolt against the new occupying powers and thus create a sovereign Turkish state throughout the Anatolian heartland. Kemalism willingly ceded away the non-Anatolian parts of the Ottoman Empire but compensated by demanding a uniethnic Turkish state within Anatolia itself. Gone were the "Kurds," for example. They would henceforth be known as "Mountain Turks." Gone, in fact, was the entire multicultural edifice of the Ottoman Empire.
Kemalism not only rejected minorities, it rejected the Arabic script of the Turkish language. Ataturk risked higher illiteracy rates to give the language a Latin script. He abolished the Muslim religious courts and discouraged women from wearing the veil and men from wearing fezzes. Ataturk further recast Turks as Europeans (without giving much thought to whether the Europeans would accept them as such), all in an attempt to reorient Turkey away from the now defunct Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and toward Europe.
Kemalism was a call to arms: the martial Turkish reaction to the Treaty of Sevres, to the same degree that Putin's neo-czarism was the authoritarian reaction to Boris Yeltsin's anarchy of 1990s Russia. For decades the reverence for Ataturk in Turkey went beyond a personality cult: He was more like a stern, benevolent and protective demigod, whose portrait looked down upon every public interior.
The problem was that Ataturk's vision of orienting Turkey so firmly to the West clashed with Turkey's geographic situation, one that straddled both West and East. An adjustment was in order. Turgut Ozal, a religious Turk with Sufi tendencies who was elected prime minister in 1983, provided it.
Ozal's political skill enabled him to gradually wrest control of domestic policy and -- to an impressive degree -- foreign policy away from the staunchly Kemalist Turkish military. Whereas Ataturk and the generations of Turkish officers who followed him thought in terms of a Turkey that was an appendage of Europe, Ozal spoke of a Turkey whose influence stretched from the Aegean to the Great Wall of China. In Ozal's mind, Turkey did not have to choose between East and West. It was geographically enshrined in both and should thus politically embody both worlds. Ozal made Islam publicly respected again in Turkey, even as he enthusiastically supported U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the last phase of the Cold War. By being so pro-American and so adroit in managing the Kemalist establishment, in the West at least Ozal -- more than his predecessors -- was able to get away with being so Islamic.
Ozal used the cultural language of Islam to open the door to an acceptance of the Kurds. Turkey's alienation from Europe following the 1980 military coup d'etat enabled Ozal to develop economic linkages to Turkey's east. He also gradually empowered the devout Muslims of inner Anatolia. Ozal, two decades before Erdogan, saw Turkey as a champion of moderate Islam throughout the Muslim world, defying Ataturk's warning that such a Pan-Islamic policy would sap Turkey's strength and expose the Turks to voracious foreign powers. The term neo-Ottomanism was, in fact, first used in Ozal's last years in power.
Ozal died suddenly in 1993, ushering in a desultory decade of Turkish politics marked by increasing corruption and ineffectuality on the part of Turkey's sleepy secular elite. The stage was set for Erdogan's Islamic followers to win an outright parliamentary majority in 2002. Whereas Ozal came from the center-right Motherland Party, Erdogan came from the more openly Islamist-trending Justice and Development Party, though Erdogan himself and some of his advisers had moderated their views over the years. Of course, there were many permutations in Islamic political thought and politics in Turkey between Ozal and Erdogan, but one thing stands clear: Both Ozal and Erdogan were like two bookends of the period. In any case, unlike any leader today in Europe or the United States, Erdogan actually had a vision similar to Ozal's, a vision that constituted a further distancing from Kemalism.
Rather than Ataturk's emphasis on the military, Erdogan, like Ozal, has stressed the soft power of cultural and economic connections to recreate in a benign and subtle fashion a version of the Ottoman Empire from North Africa to the Iranian plateau and Central Asia. Remember that in the interpretation of one of the West's greatest scholars of Islam, the late Marshall G.S. Hodgson of the University of Chicago, the Islamic faith was originally a merchants' religion, which united followers from oasis to oasis, allowing for ethical dealing. In Islamic history, authentic religious connections across the Middle East and the Indian Ocean world could -- and did -- lead to wholesome business connections and political patronage. Thus is medievalism altogether relevant to the post-modern world.
Erdogan now realizes that projecting Turkey's moderate Muslim power throughout the Middle East is fraught with frustrating complexities. Indeed, it is unclear that Turkey even has the political and military capacity to actualize such a vision. To wit, Turkey may be trying its best to increase trade with its eastern neighbors, but it still does not come close to Turkey's large trade volumes with Europe, now mired in recession. In the Caucasus and Central Asia, Turkey demands influence based on geographic and linguistic affinity. Yet Putin's Russia continues to exert significant influence in the Central Asian states and, through its invasion and subsequent political maneuverings in Georgia, has put Azerbaijan in an extremely uncomfortable position. In Mesopotamia, Turkey's influence is simply unequal to that of far more proximate Iran. In Syria, Erdogan and his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, thought -- incorrectly, it turns out -- that they could effectively mold a moderate Islamist Sunni opposition to replace President Bashar al Assad's Alawite regime. And while Erdogan has gained points throughout the Islamic world for his rousing opposition to Israel, he has learned that this comes at a price: the warming of relations between Israel and both Greece and the Greek part of Cyprus, which now permits Turkey's adversaries in the Eastern Mediterranean to cooperate in the hydrocarbon field.
The root of the problem is partly geographic. Turkey constitutes a bastion of mountains and plateau, inhabiting the half-island of the Anatolian land bridge between the Balkans and the Middle East. It is plainly not integral to a place like Iraq, for example, in the way that Iran is; and its Turkic language no longer enjoys the benefit of the Arabic script, which might give it more cultural leverage elsewhere in the Levant. But most important, Turkey is itself bedeviled by its own Kurdish population, complicating its attempts to exert leverage in neighboring Middle Eastern states.
Turkey's southeast is demographically dominated by ethnic Kurds, who adjoin vast Kurdish regions in Syria, Iraq and Iran. The ongoing breakup of Syria potentially liberates Kurds there to join with radical Kurds in Anatolia in order to undermine Turkey. The de facto breakup of Iraq has forced Turkey to follow a policy of constructive containment with Iraq's Kurdish north, but that has undermined Turkey's leverage in the rest of Iraq -- thus, in turn, undermining Turkey's attempts to influence Iran. Turkey wants to influence the Middle East, but the problem is that it remains too much a part of the Middle East to extricate itself from the region's complexities.
Erdogan knows that he must partially solve the Kurdish problem at home in order to gain further leverage in the region. He has even mentioned aloud the Arabic word, vilayet, associated with the Ottoman Empire. This word denotes a semi-autonomous province -- a concept that might hold the key for an accommodation with local Kurds but could well reignite his own nationalist rivals within Turkey. Thus, his is a big symbolic step that seeks to fundamentally neutralize the very foundation of Kemalism (with its emphasis on a solidly Turkic Anatolia). But given how he has already emasculated the Turkish military -- something few thought possible a decade ago -- one should be careful about underestimating Erdogan. His sheer ambition is something to behold. While Western elites ineffectually sneer at Putin, Erdogan enthusiastically takes notes when the two of them meet.
Editor's Note: Writing in George Friedman's stead this week are Stratfor's Chief Geopolitical Analyst Robert D. Kaplan and Vice President of Global Analysis Reva Bhalla.
5a) Clueless or complicit: Obama and Islam's war with America
There are grave questions about whether our president has any appreciation for the threat that Islam represents to America, or possesses a willingness to do anything about it if he does.
One thing the brutal, cruel and utterly inhumane march of ISIS through Iraq has made clear is that Islam is at war with the West. The equation is now plain: it's America vs. Islam, God vs. Satan, good vs. evil.
This will be a war to the death. This very day ISIS has warned the Yazidi that they must "become Muslims by noon today ... or we kill all of you."
It is their intention to do the same thing to the United States. ISIS leaders have flatly stated, "We will raise the flag of Allah in the White House" – and, "If America attacks Iraq every American embassy in the world will be exposed and attacked with car bombs."
Another communique vowed: "If the United States bomb Iraq, every American citizen is a legitimate target." Well, Obama has bombed Iraq. You do the math.
Al Qaeda fighters are transferring their allegiance to ISIS in bunches for a simple reason: ISIS is more serious about Islam and the caliphate than Al Qaeda could ever hope to be. Yep, beheading Christian children and putting their heads on sticks in a public park, that's the Islamic way.
What about this is remotely difficult to understand? We may not be at war with fundamentalist Islam, but it is clearly at war with us, a war to the death. Their agenda is clear: Armageddon, with Christian America lying at their feet in a pile of ashes.
We know that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Americans have gone to Syria for battlefield training in jihad. Our own State Department has admitted that as many as a dozen have returned to America and they have no idea where some of them are.
And who has the responsibility to protect us from this insidious and demonic evil? A president whose own religious sympathies are in question and whose foreign policy team is headed by valley girls (Jen Psaki), librarians (Marie Harf) and the oafish John Kerry who bumbles about the world stage haughtily blind to his own utter cluelessness.
It turns out that it's not ISIS that's the "JV team," it's Obama's bunch.
There are grave questions about whether our president has any appreciation for the threat that Islam represents to America, or possesses a willingness to do anything about it if he does. Everywhere – everywhere – he has used his influence, he has ended up advancing the cause of radical Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the rise of the caliphate. His interventions in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have in every case resulted in the advance of the armies of Allah.
A president who was serious about protecting America from Islam would do three things for starters: suspend Islamic immigration, end Muslim service in the U.S. military, and urge states to stop the building of mosques. A president who isn't serious about protecting America from Islam will do, well, just about everything our president is doing.
Whether he intends to do it or not – and God help us if he means to do it – President Obama is not our commander-in-chief but Islam's enabler-in-chief.
5b) A Presidency of Missed OpportunitiesUnlike Nixon in the wake of Vietnam, Obama has failed to offset retrenchment with a strategic initiative.
By Robert E. Zoellick
When President Obama assumed office, he wanted to reverse what he perceived as President Bush's overreach in foreign policy. He determined on withdrawal from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the risks of unraveling that we are witnessing today. Then his administration failed to offset retrenchment with a strategic initiative. In contrast, as America retreated from Vietnam, President Richard Nixon and his adviser Henry Kissinger seized the strategic initiative by opening relations with China and resetting the geopolitical chessboard to U.S. advantage.
Even cautious leaders, such as Mr. Obama, need to shape events rather than just react to them. The "prudent" George H.W. Bush steered a peaceful end to the Cold War and reversed Iraq's aggression, while also laying foundations for the future through an enlarged North Atlantic Treaty Organization; by negotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement; with global trade negotiations that created the World Trade Organization, Central America and Middle East peace processes; and by promoting the start of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
There are opportunities today to adapt the world to America's benefit that do not involve U.S. military force. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations could advance international trading rules while underscoring U.S. economic interests in East Asia and Europe.
But the trade talks are faltering because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has blocked a vote on the president's request for Trade Promotion Authority, which allows a president to submit a trade agreement to Congress for a straight up-or-down vote. Even though the president has Republican support, he has not insisted on getting the key congressional committees to at least begin action on Trade Promotion Authority. Mr. Obama's lack of commitment leads U.S. trading partners to hesitate. As negotiating momentum slows, the emboldened opponents of open trade circle to strike.
The combination of energy innovation across North America and Mexico's bold economic reforms creates an opportunity to build a stronger continental economic base. Mr. Obama should capitalize on this opportunity with new North American energy infrastructure, upgrades of Nafta, modernized and faster border crossings, and partnerships on issues ranging from human capital to security. The U.S. should be helping Mexico's reformers show the benefits of liberalization through, for example, grid interconnections that would lower electricity costs. Yet the Obama administration has instead thwarted North American integration by blocking the Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada and blocking the participation of Mexico and Canada in the TTIP negotiations with Europe.
The tragedy of Central America's children fleeing the violence and poverty of their home countries is a sad reminder of the security risks south of the border. In the late 1990s, President Bill Clinton worked with his Colombian counterpart and a Republican Congress to design Plan Colombia, an initiative to foster better security and governance in a country torn apart by terrorists and narco-traffickers. Today, Colombia is a successful democratic partner in the region. A new Plan Central America to promote better security, governance and economic development in the region should mobilize support from Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Canada.
The U.S. also needs a new partnership with Germany, the most important country in Europe. The first step should be a customized intelligence arrangement. The U.S. government doesn't need to spy on Chancellor Angela Merkel or the German Bundestag, but it does need information on terrorists. Despite an embarrassing incident, the administration ignored German political opinion and bungled again by paying an inept spy to get information of questionable use.
The best antidote to Russian aggression is for Ukraine to become a successful democracy with a strong economy. If Ukraine makes economic reforms, as it is starting to do, the U.S. and Europe need to mobilize more resources. We can choose to invest in success or pay the price of failure. We need to work with Ukraine's political factions as they build a republic worthy of its courageous people. And we should provide Ukrainians with weapons and intelligence to resist the Russian subversion strategy that NATO's Supreme Commander Phil Breedlove recently described in an op-ed for this newspaper. The U.S. must also reinforce East European NATO allies in their efforts to improve defenses against Russia's use of sleeper cells, cyberattacks, and internal strife.
The Obama administration's "pivot" toward Asia hasn't fared much better than its "reset" with Russia. Since the Sunnylands Summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping more than a year ago, the administration hasn't taken steps to define what it and Beijing are calling "a new type of great power relationship." China's economic reformers seek to increase consumption, expand service industries and open capital markets, goals that could fit well with U.S. interests, while China's defense hawks seek to push the U.S. out of the Western Pacific. Yet the administration appears to have no one connecting the strands of Sino-American relations. The U.S. will be better positioned to deal with China if it strengthens ties with longtime allies in the Pacific, especially overcoming tensions between Japan and South Korea.
The wider Middle East now faces a long period of upheaval—with conflicts between Sunni and Shia, Arabs and Persians, and tribes and modernizers. The rapid expansion of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham shows the danger of disengagement. If the U.S. does not want to fight enemies directly, it needs to supply partners who share our interests—whether they be Kurds, Free Syrians, or tribal leaders. Instead, both friendly Gulf States and Israel fear they cannot count on the U.S.
The president can also take a strategic lead through actions at home. The House and Senate have passed competing bills to strengthen private-sector cybersecurity, with no compromise in sight. As a matter of national security, the president should press Congress to reach a compromise.
President Obama must do more than claim to be on the right side of history. His predecessors shaped history. The rest of the world is watching to see if the U.S. will again mold the world to mutual advantage.
Mr. Zoellick has served as president of the World Bank Group, U.S. trade representative and deputy secretary of state.
5c) Scorched Earth Politicians
Barack Obama’s poll numbers are plummeting -- for many good reasons -- as the midterm elections approach. Republicans naturally are trying to nationalize the election, since the GOP can legitimately claim every Democrat has empowered Barack Obama to fundamentally transform -- that is, damage -- America. Since Barack Obama is increasingly considered a failure -- his former secretaries ofDefense and State are both openly criticizing, if not mocking, him (with more to follow as officials seek to rewrite history) -- he and his fellow Democrats are desperate to cling to whatever power and seats they can. As Mike Lillis writes inThe Hill, Democrats are throwing the kitchen sink at Republicans ahead of the midterms. But they are doing more than throwing issue after issue at Republicans. They are – and have been for quite a while -- engaging in disgraceful conduct that should earn the contempt of all Americans -- a contempt that must be shown in the voting booths this November.
Recall Barack Obama’s declaration that so electrified America back in 2004:
“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America, There is a United States of America.”
As Ben Shapiro notes, he repeated this promise to unify us many times. After his Iowa caucus victory he said:
You [voters] said the time has come to move beyond the bitterness and ager and pettiness that's consumed Washington; to end the political strategy that's been all about division. And instead make it about addition; to build a coalition for change that stretches through red states and blue states.”
He repeated variations of the same pabulum many times -- the slogan and game plan was basically plagiarized from Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who had previously used David Axelrod as his campaign strategist.
How nice the sentiments; how sweet the words. They meant nothing.
They were only words -- con man patter cleverly crafted to create votes and then dispensed with after elections.
But Obama’s words and actions once in office have had the opposite effect. He has created divisions in America -- and made us less whole.
“Out of many, one” has been transformed into “out of one, many”.
Democrats routinely shift blame for their own failure to Republicans who are repeatedly characterized by Democrats as bomb-throwers, hostage takers, terrorists, obstructionists motivated by greed.
The most inflammatory charge has been that Republicans and many whites are racists. Joe Biden charged that Mitt Romney would “put y’all back in chains”. Democrats have all but depicted Tea Party activists and their sympathizers as being KKK members whose robes were at the dry cleaners. When Democrats such as John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver claimed that racial epithets and saliva were hurled at them, they offered no proof and the late Andrew Breitbart compelled the New York Times to issue a correction to the claim that the Tea party had done so. But the race card is too useful to be left in the deck.
Barack Obama’s enforcer, Attorney General Eric Holder, cannot stop claiming racism is pervasive in America. We are a nation of cowards when it comes to discussing racism (circa 2009 but a sentiment he still holds as of July, 2014); racism was behind the “treatment” meted out to him and to President Obama (circa April 2014); the question was not when affirmative action would end but when does it begin… when do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled; his people are not Americans but African-Americans, are so it can be surmised given his retort when questioned about his refusal to pursue a clear-cut case against the Black Panther Party for voter intimidation.
Alexander Jaffe of The Hill wrote in “Democrats push race issues”:
Democrats are injecting race into the 2014 midterm elections amid fears that a drop-off in minority voters could severely cost them at the polls this fall.Democratic leaders in Congress and administration officials have suggested GOP opposition to policies ranging from immigration reform to ObamaCare are, at least partly, motivated by race.Democrats haven’t shied away from using it as a tactic. Earlier this year, both Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Republican opposition to immigration reform was partially motivated by racism.Their comments came the same week that Attorney General Eric Holder told a crowd of civil rights activists that his tenure had been marked by “unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity.”More recently, retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) drew a firestorm of criticism when he suggested some of the GOP’s opposition to ObamaCare was based on race. And just two weeks ago, longtime civil rights crusader Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), never one to ignore the issue, said the Tea Party opposed Obama because of his race.
The list of Democrats charging Republicans with racism is a long one. Amplified by networks such as MSNBC (Chris Mathews and Al Sharpton have verbal tics on this issue; a form of Tourette’s that should be treated -- a medical leave of absence would probably help ratings of that beleaguered, Obama-lovin’ network) it has created a corrosiveness in the American body politic that will last long after Obama has left the Oval Office.
Democrats have a penchant for rubbing raw those wounds of discontent.
Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi and President Obama have cheered on the antics of the Occupy Wall Street protesters (a vulgar collection of phonies, public defecators, trespassers, criminals, and anti-Semites) who preached the need for class warfare. Pelosi semi-sanctified them when she said “God Bless Them”. Obama embraced the movement,stating that “we are on their side” and -- giving credit where credit is due (something as rare for him to do as a solar eclipse) -- told them “You are the reason I became president.” Now we know who to blame.
Democrats have certainly stoked class divisions in America, constantly harping on the greed of doctors, bankers, insurance companies, energy companies, and basically every productive and profitable enterprise in the country (not one of which was built by the people who built them; somehow they just appeared in ready-to-tax form).
Companies legally seeking to minimize their taxes to be competitive with foreign companies are derided as “unpatriotic.” Are they as unpatriotic as Michelle Obama --Princeton, Harvard, fancy law firm, overpaid job created just for her, White House -- who was proud of her country for the first time only when her husband was nominated for the presidency? Barack Obama should be careful hurling charges about others’ patriotism.
Democrats seek to create controversy with false charges -- facts be damned. They want to stoke anger and division. Former White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe disclosed what has been called the “Stray Voltage” political strategy:
The theory goes like this: Controversy sparks attention, attention provokes conversation, and conversation embeds previously unknown or marginalized ideas in the public consciousness.
So a fake statistic on the pay gap between men and women can be ginned up as agitprop to rile up women, play into the War on Women theme, and depict businesses and businessmen -- and the Republicans who are there proxies -- as misogynists. Facts don’t matter; smoke (screens) are perceived as being caused by fires. Fantasy impeachment stories are floated for fundraising purposes and to anger the base and floating the idea that Republicans want to impeach the nation’s first black president will further hurt Republican support among blacks.Democrats are obsessed with impeachment; not Republicans.
It is a disgraceful practice that uses lies to generate anger among us. Hypocritically, it is Obama who constantly hectors Americans not to be cynical about politics. How could that ever happen?
What Hillary Clinton claimed was the politics of personal destruction has been honed and wielded by Democrats.
Mitt Romney was brutalized by one unfair accusation after another as he became the first actual human carcinogenic. Senator Harry Reid devoted much of his time as Majority Leader accusing Romney of law-breaking; he was protected from lawsuits by making his attacks from the Senate floor (so much for the so-called do nothing Congress).Reid has become kooky on the Kochs -- further inflaming the unhealthy conspiracy theories that course through America at times. And of course, before all that was caustic commentary and lies about McCain and Palin.
Climate-change skeptics are derided as climate-change deniers (redolent of Holocaust deniers); members of the Flat Earth Society who believe the moon is made of cheese. Does all this mockery of Americans make Barack Obama feel good? If your coworker engaged in endless sarcasm would you want to work with him; would you want a leader to be so addicted to this uninspiring, cheap tactic?
People who want secure borders are xenophobes (i.e., Republicans) who hate Hispanics and want them eaten by alligators (Barack Obama, 2011 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-mocks-gop-jokes-they-want-border-moat/ ; they should be punished as enemies (has Barack Obama ever identified Islamic extremists as America’s enemies?) since people should vote for revenge.
People should vote for revenge -- has any American president ever said anything so disgraceful? Obama’s legacy will be an ugly one.
Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats have plotted and planned to divide and conquer America. “Out of many, one” has been “fundamentally transformed” to “out of one, many”.
As the failures of their agenda become even more visible (trust in government is at an all- time low) they will increasingly engage in divisive rhetoric and actions. Barack Obama has privately expressed his desire to going Bulworth in his second term. Can anyone imagine the hate speech that will follow as his bitterness spews forth?
He and his allies should be denied the power to do more harm to America. They should not be allowed to control any branch of government. Obama should be isolated and Democrats should no longer be allowed to do his bidding in Congress. Then he can experience firsthand the feeling of the sores of discontent being rubbed raw.
Maybe we should abide by Barack Obama’s express wish and vote for revenge; but even better, vote Republican.
But if you are a responsible individual like me you find that sort of thing insulting. People of the Responsible Self don't want some community organizer drilling them in a street protest; we just want a government that defends us from enemies foreign and domestic.
Defending against enemies foreign and domestic is what governments are actually supposed to do. But America has another little problem right now. You know what it is. America is suffering from a plague of the liberal moral bullies with nothing better to do than humiliate people that don't agree with them.
Even as we speak, the indefatigable Michelle Malkin reports that all the best cities now have their own social justice magnet school. Really? America needs to encourage more kids to become social justice activists? I'd say a bigger need is magnet schools in every bland suburb to teach ordinary American kids how to defend themselves against the liberal bullies and the social-justice activists.
That's why we need a leader, right now, ready to defend Americans against the social-justice activists.
We need a presidential candidate saying: “As president, I will defend America against the moral bullies.”
When you think about it, it is a scandal that the leaders of the Republican Party appear to be utterly clueless about defending good honest conservatives from the liberal community activists and moral bullies. It's no less a scandal because, asAlastair Roberts writes, the “empowered and privileged” activist getting outraged on behalf of people “supposed to be offended” is doing the easiest job in the world.
There are few people more zealous in offence-taking and outrage-making than persons doing so on behalf of the ‘subject supposed to be offended’... Such persons regard themselves as sensitive and caring protectors of the weak and oppressed. Offence-taking and outrage-making is not a mere prerogative for them, but is a noble duty and calling. The more of an outrage they create on others’ behalf, the more virtuous they feel.
I've written about all this at great length here.
Remember when students of race used to say that blacks couldn't be racists because they didn't have the power? Maybe that was true 50 years ago, but they certainly have the power today. At least they have the power to call people nasty names on national TV. Do you have that kind of power?
In America today it is unjust when privileged liberal activists get to Alinskyize their targets, and freeze, personalize, and polarize them. It's unjust unless their targets are truly powerful people. Which probably means they are liberals with a smartphone full of powerful contacts and a get-out-of-jail-free app.
When President Obama took the side of a powerful African American professor against a powerless policeman just doing his job, he was acting like a moral bully. When President Obama took the side of powerful race-card activists in the Trayvon Martin case against a powerless “white Hispanic” he was acting like a moral bully.
And America cannot be true to its founding and its promise so long as it cowers before the liberal moral bullies. To quote a prominent American: It's just not who we are.
All I want in 2016 is a Republican presidential nominee with the courage and the moxie to say “I will defend ordinary Americans against the moral bullies.” And then do it. Again and again.
Perhaps in some presidential exploratory committee at this very moment, some young staffer -- that one day will be a household name – is working out the operational plan and the detailed tactics of how to do this: how to stick it to the moral bullies and how to make them cringe in shame, and rout them out of the moral high ground forever.
Friday Sermon among Ruins of Gaza Mosque: We Are Willing to Sacrifice Two Million Martyrs
Author(s): Clip No. 4411
Source: MEMRI.
Source: MEMRI.
In a Friday sermon delivered among the ruins of the Al-Sousi Mosque in Gaza on August 8, 2014, the cleric said: “The Palestinian nation is ready to sacrifice two million martyrs.” The sermon was broadcast by the Al-Jazeera network.
Following are excerpts:
Unnamed cleric: Oh sons of Judaism, oh sons of slavery [i.e., Arab rulers], no matter how much you kill us, we will not let go of our weapons.
We will not let go of our weapons, even if the number of martyrs exceeds two million, not just 2,000. The Palestinian nation is ready to sacrifice two million martyrs, for the sake of the holiest and most just cause on the face of the Earth. We are ready to sacrifice all the sons of the Palestinian people for this holy cause.
[...]
Oh Allah, destroy the Jews. Oh Allah, destroy the Jews, those who support the Jews, those who side with the Jews, cooperate with the Jews, trade with the Jews, or open a gateway for them into the land of Islam.
[...]
No comments:
Post a Comment