As I have said consistently, Iran will be allowed to go nuclear. Either because Obama wanted to allow them to do so or being a weak negotiator he lost the opportunity. (See 1 below.)
A Jerusalem free of Jewish neighborhoods will not bring lasting peace. Obama knows this but is unwilling to accept it because he is an ideologue committed to the views of radicals who have shaped his thinking. (See 1a below.)
Obama and radical PC driven members of his administration apparently believe the two greatest threats to 'tranquility' are: a) expanding Jewish settlements and b) the name "Redskins."
Yet, Obama and Kerry's naive belief that a nuclear Iran, along with 'containing' the amoebic spread of Islamist terrorism, lends itself to world stability is beyond comprehension.
Where are their heads? Where is their common sense? Where is their judgement? How can they look themselves in the mirror? How can they sleep at night?
And why stop there. This Harvard Law Professor seeks to educate our 'War Time" novice of a president. (See 1b below.)
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This was sent to me by a long standing Atlanta friend and fellow memo reader.
I know this Rabbi but was not a member of his Congregation. This is a very long sermon but well worth reading when you have the time. (See 2 below.)
For those who are not familiar with the meaning of Yom Kippur, I hope this proves interesting and I include many Jews in this comment. (See 2a below.)
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Dick
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1)How Iran Scammed America Out of a Nuclear Deal
This was sent to me by a long standing Atlanta friend and fellow memo reader.
I know this Rabbi but was not a member of his Congregation. This is a very long sermon but well worth reading when you have the time. (See 2 below.)
For those who are not familiar with the meaning of Yom Kippur, I hope this proves interesting and I include many Jews in this comment. (See 2a below.)
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Dick
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1)How Iran Scammed America Out of a Nuclear Deal
A year ago, Tehran was in crisis. Now it’s on the verge of a diplomatic triumph.
The Atlantic
You have to salute the rulers of Iran. They stand on the verge of scoring a stunning diplomatic triumph over the United States. Even more impressive: They did it all on bluff. Their adversaries possessed material advantages in terms of money, technology, military power, and more. But Iran’s rulers had clarity of purpose and the will to win. Without these qualities, the adversaries’ material advantages have seeped away.
A year ago, the rulers of Iran faced disaster. Their currency had lost three-quarters of its value, due in largest measure to the tough economic sanctions drafted by Senators Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez in 2011, and very reluctantly signed into law by President Obama at the beginning of 2012. Inflation was raging, unemployment was surging. Their most useful regional ally, the Syrian regime’s Bashar al-Assad, seemed doomed to destruction, attacked from within by a violent uprising and threatened from without by Obama’s commitment to intervene to stop Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
Today, the United States and Britain are coordinating bombing missions with Assad, not against him. Iran has obtained considerable sanctions relief. Its currency has strengthened, inflation has abated, and foreign trade and investment are reviving. The United States has progressively reduced its demands for nuclear limits on Iran. The New York Times reports that the Obama administration has retreated from the longstanding demand that Iran dismantle its nuclear centrifuges, instead merely calling for Tehran to disconnect them from each other. Iran’s nuclear-enrichment capacity would remain intact, and Iran could resume its progress toward a weapon at almost any time, at the price of only the delay necessary to reconnect the maze of tubing.
This most recent proposal marks the latest in a series of American climb-downs. Iranian negotiators have sniffed at each round of American concessions and insisted on more. As best as outsiders to the talks can tell, they have obtained them. On the present trajectory, any final agreement will leave Iran paused on the verge of nuclear-weapons capability—and this time, with the U.S. having signed away any non-military means of preventing Iran’s final drive to complete a bomb.
What an extraordinary negotiating achievement! They should teach it as a case study in business schools. How on earth did the rulers of Iran do it?
Iran entered negotiations with something to sell and something to buy. The thing to sell was the nuclear program; the thing to buy was a more normal relationship with the United States and the Western world.
The talks began because the United States possessed powerful means of compulsion against Iran: from sanctions, to sabotage, to military force. But the rulers of Iran took the measure of their opposite numbers. They recognized that their counterparts were nearly as averse to using those means of compulsion as were the Iranians themselves. A stick that your adversary dreads using is no stick at all.
The United States also had carrots to offer, above all the relaxation of sanctions and a more normal U.S.-Iran relationship. Yet even before ISIS advanced in northern Iraq, the Obama administration had made up its mind that this carrot was something that the United States needed even more than Iran did. Just as a stick that you dread using is no stick at all, so a carrot that you yourself crave ceases to be much of a carrot.
The unsurprising result: The United States—which began the nuclear talks from a position of strength—has acted throughout the negotiations like the weaker party. The U.S. visibly hungered for a deal, and Iran took advantage of that hunger. One noteworthy milestone on the way to the U.S. collapse was the July decision to grant a six-month extension of the nuclear talks just 20 days after Secretary John Kerry had published an op-ed in The Washington Post warning that no extension would be forthcoming unless Iran showed “genuine willingness to respond to the international community’s legitimate concerns.” Iran instead remained obdurate—and got the extension anyway. From that point onward, the Iranian negotiators had every reason to believe that they had gained the upper hand against their weaker-willed foes.
The rulers of Iran brilliantly upended the whole grammar of the negotiation. Instead of offering their nuclear program to get rapprochement, they began offering rapprochement in exchange for the U.S. accepting a higher level of Iranian nuclear capacity. They convinced the Americans that the thing Iran most desperately needed—a rapprochement with the United States—was in America’s interest even more than theirs. They convinced the Americans that it was America, not Iran, that should therefore make nuclear concessions to achieve this rapprochement. In the annals of flimflam, there stand few more impressive achievements. We are heading toward an outcome in which Iran will not only get everything it wanted, but also will pay nothing for it. And not only will the U.S. have been thoroughly scammed, but the victims of the scam will brief friendly journalists about their diplomatic triumph—and, even more pitifully, will believe it.
1a) Jew-Free Jerusalem Neighborhoods Won’t Bring Peace
1a) Jew-Free Jerusalem Neighborhoods Won’t Bring Peace
At first it seemed as if Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu escaped his meeting in the White House with President Obama yesterday without a renewal of their long running feud. But before the day was over, it was clear that the administration’s predilection for picking pointless fights with the Israelis hasn’t faded away even as the president appears to be more interested in fighting ISIS than on brokering Middle East peace. By focusing once again on Jewish building in Jerusalem and representing Israel’s actions as an obstacle, the U.S. was not only allowing itself to be distracted from the real problems in the Middle East. By reaffirming its opposition to Jews living in part of their capital, the Americans are also adopting a standard that will make real peace impossible.
As Eugene Kontorovich wrote earlier today, the willingness of the Obama administration to use the essentially deceptive terminology of marginal Israeli left-wing groups about settlements distorts the discussion. If you count every apartment built as a “new settlement” you get the impression that Israel is building hundreds, if not thousands of new neighborhoods and towns every year. In fact all they are doing is building homes in existing Jewish communities, the vast majority of which are located in areas that would, even under the parameters that have been suggested by the Obama administration would remain inside Israel even in the event of a peace treaty with the Palestinians.
But the arguments raised yesterday by the administration about new Jewish homes in Jerusalem — which echoed widespread condemnation of these projects by most of the international community — is troubling for more than just the usual reasons. If President Obama and his State Department truly believe that the presence of Jews in some neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem is an obstacle to peace that must be removed in order for an accord to be reached, then what they are doing is tacitly endorsing an Arab demand for Jew-free zones in the ancient capital as well as a Judenrein Palestine.
As Netanyahu pointed out, the notion that it is immoral for Jews to buy property or build homes in parts of the city but that there is nothing wrong with Arabs doing the same in neighborhoods that are predominantly Jewish is inherently prejudicial. The double standard here is appalling. Arabs build (often illegally) throughout the Arab majority neighborhoods of the city and no one thinks twice about it even though, if we were to use the same standard by which Israel is judged, that, too, could be construed as an obstacle to peace.
But the real problem is that treating Jewish building in the territories and especially in Jerusalem as offensive almost by definition confirms the Arab belief that there is something inherently illegitimate about the Jewish presence in the country. It is that concept and not Israeli actions that still constitutes the primary obstacle to peace.
After all, if the Palestinians main priority was in establishing an independent state alongside Israel they could accepted peace offers from Israel that would have given them almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and a large share of Jerusalem. But they turned those offers down in 2000, 2001 and 2008 and refused to negotiate seriously with Israel again this year even though Netanyahu had already signaled a willingness to compromise on territory. It wasn’t settlements that stopped them from grabbing independence but the fact that recognizing the legitimacy of a Jewish no matter where its borders are drawn was still anathema in their political culture. Indeed, when Hamas, which commands the support of the majority of Palestinians and far more than the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas, speaks of the “occupation,” they are not referring to the West Bank but to all of pre-1967 Israel.
While the majority of Israelis have drawn the appropriate conclusions from Palestinian rejectionism and understand that peace is nowhere in sight, most still hope that someday this will change. But there is no chance that the political culture of the Palestinians will one day make it possible for compromise over the land until the West stops giving moral support to demands for Jew-free zones.
Netanyahu does well to ignore these latest complaints just as he has done in the past, to the applause of the vast majority of Israelis, when the U.S. attacked the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem. If the Palestinians someday make peace and Jerusalem is split, does President Obama really think it can be done on the basis that both Jews and Arabs would populate the Israeli parts but that the Palestinian areas will be ethnically cleansed of all Jews? If so, then their bitter criticism of Jews moving into Silwan or the mixed neighborhood of Givat Hamatos makes sense. But if the goal is to have an open city in which coexistence prevails, then these arguments are counter-productive.
There are reasons why Israelis are wary about the idea of leaving behind Jews in areas that will, at least in theory become a Palestinian state. Most revolve around the fact that such holdouts will become immediate targets for terrorist murderers. But if the Palestinians are told by the United States that it is perfectly okay for them to demand that no Jew is allowed to live in areas that they might control, including in Jerusalem, then there is no incentive for them to peace on any terms.
1b)
The Education of a Wartime President
The Obama administration admits its rule on civilian casualties is unworkable in fighting ISIS. Fighting Hamas is no different.
Last year the Obama administration issued, with considerable fanfare, a new military policy designed to reduce civilian casualties when U.S. forces are attacking enemy targets. This policy required "near certainty" that there will be no civilian casualties before an air attack is permitted.
When Israel acted in self-defense this summer against Hamas rocket and tunnel attacks, the Obama administration criticized the Israeli army for "not doing enough" to reduce civilian casualties. When pressed about what more Israel could do—especially when Hamas fired its rockets and dug its terror tunnels in densely populated areas, deliberately using humans as shields—the Obama administration declined to provide specifics.
Now the Obama administration has exempted itself from its own "near certainty" standard in its attacks against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In a statement on Sept. 30 responding to questions by Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News, the administration said that in fighting Islamic State, also known as ISIS, the U.S. military can no longer comply with Mr. Obama's vow last year to observe "the highest standard we can meet."
The statement came after a Tomahawk missile last week struck the village Kafr Daryan in Syria, reportedly killing and injuring numerous civilians including children and women. The missile was directed at al Qaeda terrorists that the White House calls the Khorasan Group, but apparently the Tomahawk hit a home for displaced civilians. The Pentagon says it is investigating the incident, but YouTube video of injured children and the appearance by angry Free Syria Army rebel commanders at a congressional hearing about the attack—an attack that prompted protests in several Syrian villages—left little doubt about what happened.
If this sounds familiar, it is because in every attack on terrorists who operate from civilian areas, there will be civilian casualties. This is especially so when terrorists employ a policy of hiding behind civilian human shields in order to confront their enemies with a terrible choice: not attack a legitimate military target; or attack it and likely cause civilian casualties, which the terrorists can then exploit in the war of public opinion.
Hamas has employed this approach effectively in its periodic wars against Israel. Hamas fighters fire rockets at Israeli civilian targets from densely populated areas near United Nations facilities, mosques, hospitals and private homes. These areas, rather than the less densely populated open areas between the cities of Gaza, are intentionally selected. Hamas urges civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings that are used to store rockets and that serve as command-and-control shelters.
The fighters dare Israel to attack these shielded military targets. Israel responds by issuing warnings—by leaflets, telephone and noise bombs—to the civilians, urging them to leave. When civilians try to leave, Hamas fighters sometimes force them back at gunpoint. The fighters launch their missiles using a time delay, giving themselves the opportunity to hide in tunnels where only they are allowed to seek shelter; civilians are left exposed to Israel's efforts to destroy the rockets.
When Israel does attack military targets such as a rocket launcher or a tunnel entrance, and kills or injures civilians, Hamas operatives stand ready to exploit the dead for the international media, who are ever ready to show the victims without mentioning that they died because Hamas was using them as human shields.
Now ISIS and other jihadists in Iraq and Syria are beginning to emulate the Hamas strategy, embedding fighters in towns and villages, thus making military strikes difficult without risking civilian casualties. That is why the Obama administration has exempted itself from its theoretical "near certainty" policy, which has proved to be unworkable and unrealistic in actual battle conditions involving human shields and enemy fighters embedded in densely populated areas.
For the U.S., the fight against ISIS is a war of choice. Islamic State fighters pose no immediate and direct threat to the American homeland. For Israel, by contrast, Hamas poses an immediate and direct threat. Both the U.S. and Israel seek to minimize civilian casualties. Neither can do so under an unrealistic principle of "near certainty."
Israel has come closer to this high theoretical standard than have the United States and its various coalition partners—for instance, only Israel would employ small rooftop "knock-knock" explosives to warn civilians of a coming missile strike. Yet Israel is the only nation that is routinely condemned by the United Nations, the international community, the media, the academy and even the U.S. for "not doing enough," in Mr. Obama's words, to reduce civilian casualties. As the president is learning, war is hell. The possibility of waging it with "near certainty" of anything is a chimera.
There must be a single universal standard for judging nations that are fighting the kind of terrorism represented by ISIS and Hamas. The war against ISIS provides an appropriate occasion for the international community to agree on a set of standards that can be applied across the board. These standards must be both moral and realistic, capable of being applied equally to the U.S., to Israel and to all nations committed both to the rule of law and to the obligation to protect citizens from terrorist attacks.
The decision of the Obama administration to abandon its unrealistic "highest standard" pledge indicates the urgent need to revisit anachronistic rules with which no nation can actually comply, but against which only one nation—Israel—is repeatedly judged.
Mr. Dershowitz is a law professor emeritus at Harvard University. His books include "Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas" (RosettaBooks), available now as an e-book and in hardback next month
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To say his words are powerful is an understatement.
A few years ago a sermon of his went "viral."
Hopefully, this message will get national attention once again.
Please take the time to read this piece.
It summarizes the world dilemma and calls the nations of the world to act.
2a)
Based on ancient and contemporary Jewish sages
1. Yom Kippur commemorates God's forgiveness for the sin of the Golden Calf and God's covenant with the Jewish people.
2. Yom Kippur is a day of forgiveness only for sins committed against God. It is customary to dedicate the eve of Yom Kippur to apologies for sins committed against fellow human beings. However, an apology or compensation are not sufficient if they do not elicit an expressed forgiveness by the injured person. One is commanded to be community-sensitive and invite everyone, including transgressors, to participate in Yom Kippur services. Thus, Yom Kippur underlines unity, as synagogues become a platform for the righteous and the sinner.
3. Yom Kippur's focus on seeking forgiveness highlights humility, fallibility, faith, soul-searching, compassion, thoughtfulness, being considerate, accepting responsibility and magnanimity. Speaking ill of other people ("evil tongue,” Le'shon Ha'Ra, in Hebrew) may not be forgiven.
4. Yom Kippur is a happy Jewish Holiday, replacing vindictiveness and rage with peace-of-mind and peaceful co-existence between God and human beings and, primarily, between human beings.
5. Yom Kippur is observed on the tenth day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, whose astrological sign is Libra (♎). Libra symbolizes the key themes of Yom Kippur: scales, justice, balance, truth, symmetry, sensitivity and optimism. Libra is ruled by the planet Venus (Noga, נגה, in Hebrew), which reflects divine light and love of the other person. (Noga is the name of my oldest granddaughter). The numerical value of the Hebrew letters of נגה is 58 (נ-50, ג-3, ה-5), just like the numerical value of אזן, which is the Hebrew word for "ear," as well as, the Hebrew root of "listening," "balance” and "scale.”
6. Yom Kippur is observed on the tenth day of Tishrei - an Acadian word for forgiveness and Genesis. Ten has special significance in Judaism: God's abbreviation is the tenth Hebrew letter (Yod - י); there are ten attributes of God – Divine perfection – which were highlighted during the Creation; the Ten Commandments; the Ten Plagues; there are ten reasons for blowing the Shofar; The Prayer of Veedooi - וידוי (confession/reaffirmation in Hebrew), is recited ten times during Yom Kippur one is commanded to extend a 10% gift to God (tithe); Ten Martyrs (Jewish leaders) were tortured/murdered by the Roman Empire; there were ten generations between Adam and Noah and between Noah and Abraham; a ten worshipper quorum (Minyan in Hebrew) is required for a collective Jewish prayer; etc.
7. The Hebrew word Kippur, כיפור (atonement/repentance), is a derivative of the Biblical word Kaporet כפורת,, the cover of the Holy Ark at the Sanctuary, and Kopher, כופר, the cover of Noah's Ark and the Holy Altar at the Temple. Yom Kippur resembles a spiritual cover (dome), which separates between the holy and the mundane, between spiritualism and materialism. The Kippah, כיפה (skullcap, Yarmulka'), which covers one's head during prayers, reflects a spiritual dome.
8. The Hebrew spelling of "fast" (צם/צום) – abstinence from food - reflects the substance of Yom Kippur. The Hebrew word for "fast" is the root of the Hebrew word for "reduction" and "shrinking" (צמצום) of one's wrong-doing. It is also the root of the Hebrew words for "slave" (צמית) and "eternity" (צמיתות) – eternal enslavement to God, but not to human beings. "Fast" is also the root of עצמי (being oneself),עצום (awesome), עצמה (power),עצמאות (independence), which are gained through the process of fasting, soul-searching, spiritual-enhancement and faith in God.
9. A Memorial Candle, in remembrance of one's parents, is lit during Yom Kippur. This reaffirms the "Honor Thy Father and Mother Commandment," providing another opportunity to ask forgiveness of one's parent(s), as well as, asking forgiveness on their behalf.
10. The Scroll of Jonah is read on Yom Kippur. It demonstrates that repentance and forgiveness is universal. Among its lessons: commanding one to assume responsibility; getting involved socially/politically; sounding the alarm when wrong-doing is committed anywhere in the world; displaying compassion for all peoples and adhering to faith and optimism in defiance of all odds.
To read more on Yom Kippur, additional Jewish holidays, the Sabbath, the Jubilee, annual fasting days and the Jewish meaning of "holiday,” please clique http://amzn.to/1mwxchc.
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