===
Then we have Obama's blind Justice Department completely absolving Lois Lerner for selecting which citizen organizations she decided the IRS would approve and stiff. Lois was excused of any culpability.
Government employees make twice what is earned in the private sector and yet are not subject to being fired. What fools and suckers tax payer citizens have become.
But Obama has taken care of adult citizens. (See 1 below.)
===
The Demwit party has swung so far left they no longer appear recognizable. This is a short and incomplete list of radical alterations.
They:
Have turned against law enforcement.
Embrace specious global warming research and turned a deaf ear against challenges to their beliefs and evidence.
Have a Socialist for the top office of our country, the Castro brothers, have thrown our democratic ally, Israel, over the cliff, increased our deficit and now are offering programs which will double it over the next ten years, proposed more welfare programs offering voters increased government dependency. (See 1a below.)
Have diminished our influence as a leader of free nations and diminished our military capabilities so we no longer can meet the challenges and threats from Russia and China as well as from Islamist terrorists like al Quaeda and ISIS.
Have radically altered our own freedoms and choice with respect to health care.
Have disregarded constitutional governance but over expanded use of executive discretion.
Have allowed agencies to act in illegal manners and protected employees who have broken laws and acted selectively toward one group over another.
Have lost the confidence of former allies they can depend upon us and our word and, in the process, weakened NATO as an effective force against Putin's rapacious appetite.
Have continued to stay on message regardless of whether doing so means constantly lying because that is what they do - win at any cost! (See 1b below.)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/
===
More of the same. (See 2 below.)
Jeff Jacoby, speculates on whether Rabin would have corrected his blunder. (See 2a below.)
Jonathan Schanzer is a very bright and informed person as is the organization he work for. (See 2a below.)
===
JEB, right and decent candidate at wrong time and has not been able to demonstrate he has the required fire and Ryan may be elected Speaker but at the terrible cost of his Chairing House Ways and Means Committee, because he is the only person who could probably get tax reform legislation passed. Wasting talent of a good man.
===
Dick
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1)Medicare Part G
For all you seniors out there . . . . . might even be considered a public service
Say you are an older senior citizen and can no longer take care of yourself and need Long-Term Care, but the government says there is no Nursing Home care available for you. So, what do you do? You opt for Medicare Part G.
The plan gives anyone 75 or older a gun (Part G) and one bullet. You are allowed to shoot one worthless politician. This means you will be sent to prison for the rest of your life where you will receive three meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating and air conditioning, cable TV, a library, and all the health care you need. Need new teeth? No problem. Need glasses? That’s great. Need a hearing aid, new hip, knees, kidney, lungs, sex change, or heart? They are all covered!
As an added bonus, your kids can come and visit you at least as often as they do now!
And, who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you they can’t afford for you to go into a nursing home. And you will get rid of a useless politician while you are at it. And now, because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any more income taxes
Is this a great country or what?
Now that you have solved your senior Long-Term Care problem, enjoy the rest of your week!
1a) Israel Haters Only Like The History That Suits Them
By David Harsanyi
Yes, the intellectual and spiritual founder of Palestinian independence was a Nazi.
The other day, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Adolf Hitler only had plans to expel Jews from Europe until his infamous meeting with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who instructed him to “burn them.”
You can imagine what happened next.
Now, it should be said that there’s zero historic evidence that Hitler’s conversation with al-Husseini instigated any change in Nazi plans for the Jews. Netanyahu should not have claimed otherwise. But it was a big speech, and Netanyahu’s larger point, as he later clarified, was just as important:
But this is what Haj Amin al-Husseini said. He said, ‘The Jews seek to destroy the Temple Mount.’ My grandfather in 1920 seeks to destroy…? Sorry, the al-Aqsa Mosque. So this lie is about a hundred years old. It fomented many, many attacks. The Temple Mount stands. The al-Aqsa Mosque stands. But the lie stands too, persists.
Netanyahu makes a case that much of the paranoia about Jews in the Middle East is not new. Long before any “occupation,” Husseini supported the Holocaust and had a desire to import Nazi tactics to the Middle East. In an effort to inflame violence and anti-Semitism, Arabs had, as they’re doing today, spread false rumors about the intention of Jews to occupy or expel Muslims from holy sites. This is what Haj Amin al-Husseini did. This is what Yasser Arafat did. This is what Fatah is doing today, as Palestinians continue to stab Jewish civilians in another spasm of irrationally murderous and self-destructive behavior.
Before Israel ever existed, much less retook East Jerusalem, the mufti helped to personally engineer or incited massacres of Jews in 1920, 1929, and 1936. The Hebron massacre in 1929 saw 70 Jewish civilians killed, many of them students and teachers, after the mufti (like Fatah does today) spread rumors about Jews taking control of the Temple Mount.
Today the only people not allowed to openly pray at their holiest site in Jerusalem are the Jews. Israel protects holy sites of all faiths.
It’s also worth noting that today the only people not allowed to openly pray at their holiest site in Jerusalem are the Jews. Israel protects holy sites of all faiths. Meanwhile, Joseph’s Tomb is being desecrated by a mob of Palestinians, which is apparently less newsworthy.
Husseini also directly participated in war on Jews during World War II. As a guest of Hitler, after a failed coup in Iraq, he helped recruit thousands of Muslims to join a division of the Waffen-SS—who then played an active role in the destruction of Yugoslavian Jewry. On Berlin radio, the Husseini speeches would include lines like: “Kill the Jews wherever you find them—this pleases God, history and religion.” He personally, with the backing of Himmler, Eichmann, and others, intervened to stop the issuing of at least 400,000 visas to Jews trying to emigrate to British Palestine. Most of those people ended up in concentration camps.
In 1943, after hearing that some Germany allies were negotiating with the International Red Cross and others to transport thousands of Jewish children to Palestine to avoid death, he lobbied to prevent the rescue, pushing to have them sent to Poland to perish. Husseini was accused of war crimes by the Nuremberg tribunal. He escaped prosecution.
In Howard Sachar’s “A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to our Time,” the author contends that al-Husseini wasn’t only effective in helping hasten the blood-soaked modern thinking that has infected the Arab world (to be fair, if it wasn’t him, it would probably have been someone else), but that he added another ingredient that would later make the conflict even more combustible: religious xenophobia.
Husseini was accused of war crimes by the Nuremberg tribunal. He escaped prosecution.
“Unlike earlier Arab spokesmen,” writes Sachar, “the Mufti had no illusions that the British would cooperate in the suppression of the Jewish National Home. He taught his followers to regard the mandatory as an infidel tyranny in alliance with other, Jewish, non- believers.”
Today, Palestinian groups utilize comparable tactics and language to perpetrate their own violence. Justifications for those acts are churned out by the far Left and Right here and in Europe, and Husseini is still revered by Palestinian leaders. In the book “Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam,” David Dalin and John Rothmann document in detail that Husseini is considered the “George Washington” of the Palestinian people. Should we be offended?
It is somewhat ironic that so many Palestinians deny the Holocaust when one of their founding fathers was intimately part of that ugly history. Netanyahu clarified his statement. But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s 1982 dissertation, “The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism” is one part Holocaust denialism and one part conspiracy theory, claiming that Zionists collaborated with Nazis as a way to spur Jewish immigration to British Palestine. Shouldn’t we be offended?
But back to Netanyahu. It’s completely plausible that the Husseini would have asked Hitler to “burn them,” though it’s doubtful the Fuhrer would have cared very much what the Husseini had to say or that he needed much prodding. But the two certainly shared a similar attitude towards the Jews. Yet we’re supposed to believe Netanyahu views Hitler as a “moderate,” as Glenn Greenwald preposterously claims? And Israel’s sins are never to be forgotten. Surely pointing out that Arab leadership played an active role in the Holocaust, and that its leadership today still venerates the man who led the charge, is worthwhile. too.
1b) Do Hillary's Lies Matter?
It is of little concern to me that the corporate media says Hillary aced the Benghazi hearing, To me she didn’t, and I care more that the public is being inured to public officials’ lying. Were I running for president against her I’d produce a simple campaign video.
My campaign video would be short -- it would be Hillary before the caskets of the four Americans slaughtered in Benghazi blaming an obscure video and its maker for the incident; Hillary telling the father of one of the deceased, Ty Woods, that the video maker would be arrested (“we are going to have the film maker arrested who was responsible for the death of your son"), and her testimony before the committee that she never blamed it on the video. The ad would take just a couple of minutes. . Message at end -- are you ready for a president who lies over the bodies of dead American patriots?
Maybe I’ve misjudged the voters. Maybe they really would like a brazen, self-seeking consummate liar. Because that’s what she certainly is.
She dissembled so often in the hearings I cannot possibly keep you awake while detailing them all. Let me pick just a few of her more outrageous lies -- the video and her correspondence with Sidney Blumenthal.
Hillary’s Cock and Bull Story About the Video.
Sept. 11, 2012: U.S. Embassy in Cairo:
U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious Incitement
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims -- as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.[snip]
Sept. 13, 2012: Hillary Clinton, secretary of state:
I also want to take a moment to address the video circulating on the Internet that has led to these protests in a number of countries. Let me state very clearly -- and I hope it is obvious -- that the United States Government had absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and message. America's commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. And as you know, we are home to people of all religions, many of whom came to this country seeking the right to exercise their own religion, including, of course, millions of Muslims. And we have the greatest respect for people of faith.
To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.
Sept. 14, 2012: Jay Carney, White House press spokesman:
We also need to understand that this is a fairly volatile situation and it is in response not to United States policy, not to obviously the administration, not to the American people. It is in response to a video, a film that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting. That in no way justifies any violent reaction to it, but this is not a case of protests directed at the United States writ large or at U.S. policy. This is in response to a video that is offensive to Muslims.
[snip]
Sept. 16, 2012: Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations:
[B]ased on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what - it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. [...]
[T]his is a spontaneous reaction to a video, and it’s not dissimilar but, perhaps, on a slightly larger scale than what we have seen in the past with The Satanic Verses with the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
[snip]
Sept. 20, 2012: President Barack Obama:
Here's what happened. ... You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character who -- who made an extremely offensive video directed at -- at Mohammed and Islam.
Sept. 25, 2012: President Barack Obama:
In every country, there are those who find different religious beliefs threatening; in every culture, those who love freedom for themselves must ask how much they are willing to tolerate freedom for others
That is what we saw play out the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well – for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and religion. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion – we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.
Some even went so far as to suggest the provocation was so extreme, free speech needed to be curtailed. To his shame, the article notes Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School:
The vile anti-Muslim video shows that the U.S. overvalues free speech. [...]
Americans need to learn that the rest of the world -- and not just Muslims -- see no sense in the First Amendment. Even other Western nations take a more circumspect position on freedom of expression than we do, realizing that often free speech must yield to other values and the need for order. Our own history suggests that they might have a point. [...]
So symbolic attachment to uneasy, historically contingent compromises, and a half-century of judicial decisions addressing domestic political dissent and countercultural pressures, prevent the U.S. government from restricting the distribution of a video that causes violence abroad and damages America’s reputation. And this is a video that, by the admission of all sides, has no value whatsoever.
Of course, the record shows only about 10 people ever saw the video before the administration falsely seized on it as the reason for the attack, Perhaps Professor Posner ought to review his first year law school notes which remind students that facts are the most important part of the case, and here, the facts he relied on -- and which he could with a moment’s googling have learned -- were not supportive of his argument in the least.
At any rate, the record is clear. The video was not the precipitating factor in the assault at Benghazi. Hillary sent an email (on her illicit server) 45 minutes after the attack to her daughter saying “an Al-Qaeda-like group” and the following day in a call with the Egyptian prime minister told him, “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack -- not a protest.” Despite this, she was happy to demonize an innocent bumpkin who’d dared to make a ridiculous video to get herself off the hook for failing to secure the facility despite dozens of ever increasingly urgent requests for assistance in Libya. Others in the administration were happy to go along with the fiction to protect the re-election of Obama who’d bragged that Al-Qaeda was no longer a threat.
Judy Woodruff of PBS says, “why does it matter” that she lied about the video?
I expect she’s not alone in the media who’d say much the same thing if they saw her strangle a puppy with her bare hands.
Woodruff only underscored what Richard Fernandez said:
Benghazi wasn’t a screen test for the part of Ronald Reagan. It was for Richard Daley.
In some environments it is not following the law that impresses, but the ability to slug a cop and have him rise from the pavement only to clean your shoes. Hillary showed beyond any shadow of a doubt that she could utter the most improbable nonsense and make it stick, able to shrug off the puny efforts by Congress to bring her to book. In a world where power is the coin of the realm, her immense fortune was on display. All too often conservatives think that the prize goes to the fittest. In truth it often goes to the most ruthless.
b. Sid Vicious and the Source Doesn’t Matter
Gowdy: Madam Secretary, is there any question that the 15 that [Blumenthal’s lawyer] James Cole turned over to us were work related? There’s no ambiguity about that. They were work related.
Mrs. Clinton: No. They were from a personal friend, not. . . any government official. And they were, I determined on the basis of looking at them, what I thought was work related and what wasn’t. And some I didn’t even have time to read, Mr. Chairman.
Cost notes that in March Mrs. Clinton asserted that she “provided all my emails that could possibly be work-related” and that those that weren’t were limited to “emails about planning Chelsea’s wedding or my mother’s funeral arrangements, condolence notes to friends as well as yoga routines, family vacations, the other things you typically find in inboxes.”
Now she’s saying she was under no obligation to turn over emails about Libya because they came from a “personal friend.” Yet emails earlier released showed that she forwarded his Libya “intelligence” to other State Department officials, and yesterday Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that she also sent them to the White House with Blumenthal’s name removed. (As we noted in March, Blumenthal earned the administration’s enmity by sending around derogatory emails about Obama during the 2008 primary campaign, and the White House nixed Secretary Clinton’s plan to hire him at the State Department.)
Mrs. Clinton also claimed twice that Blumenthal “was not advising me” -- which may mean nothing more than that he was not paid by the government to advise her. An Associated Press “fact check” notes that Mrs. Clinton claimed Blumenthal’s Libya advisories were “unsolicited,” but an email from her to him urged: “Keep them coming.”
Adding to her blatant effort to conceal her reliance on Blumenthal’s reports is her testimony that she didn’t know who actually authored Blumenthal’s reports and her disingenuous tap dance respecting who was paying him. He was on the Clinton Foundation payroll for over $10,000 a month at the time, and received even more from the disreputable Media Matters as well as from people desirous of establishing business relations in Libya.
In sum, she was aiding a confederate -- someone the White House had forbidden her to hire -- in his private business dealings. She urged officials to rely on his reports without knowing or caring whether the information was even accurate and on occasion hiding the fact that Blumenthal was the ultimate source. She expressed no concern about the truth of the reports she transmitted on for Blumenthal’s benefit heedless of national security, a disregard demonstrated as well in her persistent reliance on insecure communication methods.
C. Lying as a Way of Life
If voters aren’t concerned about this pattern of concealment and deception, it may be because it has become commonplace and consequence free.
This very week we learned that Lois Lerner, the Stasi-like figure in the IRS who deliberately targeted Obama’s opponents in the last election will go scott free of criminal prosecution.
One of the targets of her misdeeds, True the Vote, responded:
“This is the act of a lawless Administration. Consider all we’ve already seen on their watch, from the Fast and Furious murders to Benghazi and Hillary Clinton’s abuse of top secret emails -- the FBI’s closing of their investigation is par for course in the Obama Administration, where criminals walk free and honest Americans fear their government,” True the Vote Founder Catherine Engelbrecht said.“To say there is no evidence of discrimination makes a grand mockery of all the hearings held over the past two years, when average citizens testified before Congress about IRS targeting. There is a trail of documentation that clearly shows the abuse of American citizens who’d been singled for their perceived political views. The evidence is all readily available. Yet, this very minute I’ve still not been interviewed about the abuses we endured because the DOJ has refused to meet with me unless they can pack the room with the same group of lawyers who are currently fighting against True the Vote by defending the IRS in court,” Engelbrecht continued.
“The FBI has failed to protect the interests of the American people, choosing instead to help a political party tidy up loose ends before a presidential election. But come November, voters can do what bureaucrats won’t – they can choose to clean house in DC and end the rampant lawlessness of an Administration that is corroding our Country from the inside out.”
True the Vote’s lawsuit against the IRS continues with hearings before the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. in early 2016.
Newly unsealed documents in a lawsuit against the state Government Accountability Board further reveal a rogue agency all in from the beginning of a political John Doe investigation into dozens of conservative groups and the campaign of Gov. Scott Walker -- even as their hapless special prosecutor was “really questioning the validity of the case.”
Thursday evening, Waukesha County Court released 182 pages of emails, transcripts of closed-door meetings and other previously sealed documents after attorneys for the GAB and the plaintiffs came to terms on precisely what can be made public -- for now. The judge in the case has said more records will be made public when the lawsuit goes to trial.
The records release comes just as the Legislature takes up a bill that would overhaul the troubled accountability board.
[snip]
[Former staff counsel Shane Falk] seems to take the reins early on, getting the investigative wheels in motion.
“As you may know, things are really heating up here,” he wrote to Robles in an email dated Feb. 28, 2013. “Kevin (Kennedy) and Jon (Becker) would like a status on what is happening with Badger Doe and update you on a communication Kevin had with the IRS.”
Kennedy, as we have learned in recent months, is a longtime “personal friend” of former IRS tax-exempt director Lois Lerner, who led the IRS division accused of targeting conservative groups seeking 501(c)(4) nonprofit status.
The Wall Street Journal in July reported that John Doe investigators asked the IRS to look into a conservative group that was a primary target of the probe.
[snip]
Board members wondered whether reserve Judge Barbara Kluka, who was presiding over the Milwaukee County investigation, would authorize the GAB to conduct an investigation. GAB Judge Gerald Nichol, now chairman of the accountability board, said he was confident Kluka would, “based on conversations he had previously” with the judge in which she said she “would be open to any requests from the G.A.B. to get involved in the John Doe.”
Nichol, it appears, was gaming the system before the GAB officially jumped into the investigation.
Kluka, who removed herself from the case a few weeks after the home raids citing a conflict of interest, has been accused of being a “rubber stamp” for the prosecutors and the GAB.
I’m finding it increasingly hard to dispute Charles Krauthammer’s observation that we are living in an age where lying doesn’t matter.
When the lies are finally after great effort exposed, the damage has been done and those hurt by them wait forever for redress. The damage to civil society is even worse. We’ve grown accustomed to public officials lying to us, but the fabric of society requires we maintain a reasonable level of trust in those we’ve elected to protect our interests.
When you’ve abused that trust, you invite chaos and misery.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)
A Pop Culture That Fuels Jew Hatred
The latest wave of Palestinian terrorism continues to take its toll of Israeli dead and injured this week with stabbings, shootings, fire bombings and attempts to run over Jewish pedestrians. That means millions of Jews in Jerusalem and the West Bank, not to mention cities throughout the country where attacks have occurred, remain on alert. But Israelis aren’t getting much sympathy these days no matter what the Palestinians do.
Though the violence is being driven by lies about mythical Jewish plans to destroy the Temple Mount mosques, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization voted this week to condemn Israeli “aggression” in Jerusalem while determining that various Jewish shrines throughout the country were solely Muslim. UNESCO gave official sanction to the blood libels fueling a new holy war as well as condemning Israel because so many of the terrorists attacking Jews were killed before they could stab or shoot more of them. Yet until now, relatively little attention has been given to the way Palestinian popular culture has embraced not so much a new wave of nationalism as a spirit of blood lust. But while a front-page article in today’s New York Times devoted to the topic was, in that sense, a breakthrough, it was perhaps to be expected that the only critical notes about this dismaying trend in the piece concerned the poor musical quality of the hit tunes extolling murder.
Indeed, the focus on the mosques on the Temple Mount, a standard theme of Palestinian leaders dating back, as I noted earlier today, to Hitler’s Palestinian ally, the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, is a reminder that the real issue for the Palestinians isn’t borders or settlements but the Jewish presence anywhere in the land. In their eyes, the “settler” that the song wants to run over can be a resident of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem as much as a Jew living in a West Bank settlement.
Nor is there any divide within Palestinian society between those urging peaceful protest and those cheering murder. As the Times points out, a Palestinian, who won the “Arab Idol” television song contest and was appointed a United Nations goodwill ambassador, released a new song this past week that specifically references stabbing incidents in Jerusalem and Afula. The common denominator that runs between these more sophisticated offerings and more crude efforts is the shedding of Jewish blood and willingness to glorify anyone who kills Jews as a hero whether it is a youngster with a knife or Hamas fighters launching rockets at Israeli cities.
The response to this lamentable situation from Israel’s critics is to blame the victims and to urge Israel to redouble its efforts to make peace and thus ally the anger that is driving this culture of hate. Yet prospects for such gestures are not bright. While Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has been one of the chief inciters of the violence, refuses to accept Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s offer of negotiations without preconditions, there have been some efforts to defuse tensions over the Temple Mount. Despite the lies Abbas has spread, Israel has pledged not to change the status quo at that holy site which keeps it under the culture of a Muslim Wakf and discriminates against Jews by forbidding non-Muslim prayer. But in order to calm the disturbances Abbas caused, the PA and Jordan are now demanding that the status quo be altered to make all visits to the holiest site in Judaism contingent on Muslim approval. In other words, their goal is to render the area Jew-free.
That same sentiment was reflected in the original text of the UNESCO resolutionpassed this week that treated the Western Wall as part of the Al Aqsa mosque and a Muslim place with no Jewish connection. While that offensive clause was eliminated, the final resolution passed by an overwhelming vote still omitted any reference to the fact that the Temple Mount or Jerusalem is linked to Jewish history and faith and declared shrines such as Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs to be similarly without a Jewish connection.
What has this to do with Palestinian popular songs? Plenty.
Both reflect a view of the conflict that has nothing to do with disputes about borders or settlements that we are constantly told is what is making the Palestinians so angry. In the eyes of those making claims on Jewish holy places at the United Nations as well as the composers of Palestinian snuff songs, or those taking up knives, guns, and firebombs to slaughter, the conflict is a zero-sum game. Their goal is the same as that of Palestinian nationalists in the time of the Mufti of Jerusalem: Reverse the history of the last century and end the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty over any part of the country. Just as Abbas won’t accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, the people hearing his lies about the Temple Mount who go out to murder aren’t killing for the sake of a better border.
Withdrawals from territory or even concessions in Jerusalem won’t satisfy this blood lust any more than a withdrawal of every settler, soldier, and settlement from Gaza prevented it from being turned into a terrorist state run by Hamas. The reality of this culture of hate isn’t easy to accept for those who prefer to believe Abbas really is a man of peace and that a two-state solution is viable. But it remains the real obstacle to peace.
Perhaps someday, when Palestinians pop culture is no longer dominated by anti-Semitic visions of Jewish blood, that solution will be possible. But until then, those urging Israel to weaken itself to appease those singing such songs are doing no favors to the Palestinians or the Jewish state. Rather than encourage more violence with actions like the UNESCO resolution, the world would do better to tell the Palestinians to sober up and realize their only path to empowerment must begin by renouncing violence and hate.
2) Would Rabin have pulled the plug on a ‘peace process’ that failed
By Jeff Jacoby
HAD YITZHAK RABIN lived, would the Oslo Accords have nurtured genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
It has been 20 years since the assassination of Israel’s fifth prime minister in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish fanatic who considered Rabin a traitor and bitterly opposed the Oslo process. The murder traumatized Israel and its friends, and the recriminations still reverberate. To this day there are those who argue that Amir’s terrible crime killed not only the country’s democratically-elected leader and renowned military hero, but also the “land-for-peace” paradigm with the Palestinians that he had championed.
From the perspective of two decades, however, it seems clear that Rabin’s assassination, far from sinking the Oslo process, actually prolonged it.
Oslo was a disaster from the outset, arguably the worst self-inflicted wound in Israel’s history. By 1995, it was widely regarded as a failure by Israelis; polls showed public approval of Rabin and his Labor Party sinking to record lows. Oslo’s architects had promised that empowering Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization with their own quasi-state in Gaza and the West Bank was the best way to suppress terror attacks and improve Israel’s security. Rabin’s government took the gamble, but the “peace process” didn’t deliver peace. It delivered bus bombings and suicide attacks. More Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists in the 24 months following the famous handshake on the White House lawn than in any similar period in Israel’s history.
In public, Rabin professed to be undaunted, repeatedly insisting that the engagement with Arafat must proceed: “We have to fight terror as if there were no peace talks, and we have to pursue peace as if there were no terror.”
But privately, Rabin was having grave doubts.
According to Efraim Inbar, head of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University and the author of “Rabin and Israel’s National Security,” Rabin was no starry-eyed peacenik. He was a pragmatic leader for whom peace, in and of itself, was never a core value. The Oslo concessions could be justified only to the extent that they left Israel more secure. As it became apparent that instead of land for peace, Israel had exchanged land for terror, incitement, and hatred, Inbar said Wednesday in a lecture at Boston University, there is good reason to believe he would have pulled the plug.
Others have said the same thing. Dalia Rabin, the prime minister’s daughter (and a former deputy defense minister), recalled in 2010 that she had been told by many of her father’s confidants “that on the eve of the murder he considered stopping the Oslo process because of the terror that was running rampant in the streets, and because he felt that Yasser Arafat was not delivering on his promises.” And Moshe Ya’alon, who in 1995 was Israel’s chief of military intelligence, was told by Rabin that he intended to “set things straight” with Oslo after the 1996 election, since Arafat’s commitments were plainly worthless.
Would he have done so? Of course we cannot know for sure, but as Inbar notes, Rabin did believe that Oslo was reversible. When critics expressed alarm at an agreement committing Israel to arm a Palestinian police force, he replied that there was nothing to fear. “There is no danger that these guns will be used against us,” Rabin said. “The purpose of this ammunition for the Palestinian police is to . . . fight against Hamas. They won’t dream of using it against us, since they know very well that if they use these guns against us once, at that moment the Oslo Accord will be annulled.”
But he waited too long.
Amid the emotional public backlash that followed Rabin’s assassination, any repudiation of Oslo would have been deemed a victory for his assassin. So even though the Labor Party was defeated in the 1996 election, the new Likud prime minister — a young Benjamin Netanyahu — could claim no mandate to annul the accords. The Oslo process continued. Follow-up agreements were negotiated and signed. But fresh concessions from Israel only encouraged fresh violence from the Palestinians. Ten years after Rabin’s death, the “land-for-peace” mindset reached its apotheosis with Israel’s unilateral retreat from the entire Gaza Strip. Result: a takeover of Gaza by Hamas, more than 16,000 rockets and mortars fired at Israeli civilians, and torrents of lurid propaganda that extol the spilling of Jewish blood.
Had Rabin lived, the Oslo calamity might have been reversed long ago and the “peace now” delusion abandoned as a gamble that failed. But the bullets that killed a courageous prime minister also killed the chance of undoing his greatest blunder. The worst self-inflicted wound in Israel’s history still bleeds.
2a) Warming Ties Between Hamas and South Africa
by Jonathan Schanzer
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas sent a delegation to South Africa earlier this week. The delegation, led by head of Hamas' politburo Khaled Meshal and his deputy Mousa Abu Marzouk, met with senior officials from the African National Congress (ANC), including South African president Jacob Zuma. The ANC reportedly signed a "letter of intent" with Hamas to build a long-lasting relationship with the organization. The Israeli government expressed "shock and outrage" over the visit.
While Israel's outrage may be understandable, its shock is misplaced. Pretoria has been building ties with Hamas for years.
Last year, five representatives of the Lebanon-based al-Quds International Foundation, an organization sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury for "being controlled by and acting for or on behalf of Hamas," traveled to South Africa to participate in programs across the country. The group also sent Hamas operative Abdul Aziz Umar to South Africa in 2012 to promote the release of Hamas prisoners. Umar has been identified by Israel as the mastermind behind a 2003 Hamassuicide bombing operation in Jerusalem.
In 2011, officials from the South African Embassy in Ramallah held a publicized meeting with Hamas parliamentarians. South Africa also maintains a diplomatic presence in Gaza City.
In 2007, South Africa's intelligence minister, Ronnie Kasrils, invited Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas's prime minister in Gaza, to lead a delegation to South Africa. Kasrils demanded that the international community lift the embargo imposed against Hamas since its electoral victory in January 2006.
The historic embrace of the Palestinian cause by South Africa's leaders is well known. Famously, Nelson Mandela eulogized PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 2004 as "one of the outstanding freedom fighters of this generation." And yet, while Mandela was critical of Israeli policy, he also recognized Israel's right to exist.
South Africa's warming ties with Hamas, a group that seeks Israel's destruction, is a worrying development. During his speech in Cape Town, Meshal vowed continued Hamas violence against Israel. Neither the ANC nor the South African government has condemned this statement. This can only be interpreted as tacit approval for Hamas's current campaign of violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
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