Time to lead from the front on Iran

"MAKE HIM AN OFFER HE CAN'T REFUSE."

ISRAEL MATZAV

Sunday, June 17, 2012

 Jamie Fly and William Kristol write that it's time for the United States to at least present Iran with a credible threat to use force to stop its nuclear weapons program.

President Obama says a nuclear Iran is unacceptable. The real and credible threat of force is probably the last hope of persuading the Iranian regime to back down. So: Isn’t it time for the president to ask Congress for an Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iran’s nuclear program?

Instead of running away from it, administration officials could be putting the military option front and center and ensuring it is seen as viable. And if the administration flinches, Congress could consider passing such an authorization anyway. While any commander in chief has the constitutional authority to take urgent action to protect Americans and their interests, such legislation would give weight to the president’s commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It would strengthen the president’s hand. It would show Tehran that America’s policy of preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon is a credible one. Bipartisan support for such an authorization would remove the issue as much as possible from the turmoil of election year politics. And the authorization could also make clear that the United States would come to Israel’s aid in the event that it decides it needs to take action.

We don’t expect the Obama administration to request an Authorization for Use of Military Force. But Congress can act without such a request. By doing so, it would serve the nation’s interest, and, indeed, the administration’s, if the administration means what it says.

At the end of his “period of consequences” remarks in the House of Commons in November 1936, Churchill said:

Two things, I confess, have staggered me, after a long Parliamentary experience, in these Debates. The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That, I am bound to say, I never expected. I never would have believed that we should have been allowed to go on getting into this plight, month by month and year by year, and that even the Government’s own confessions of error would have produced no concentration of Parliamentary opinion and force capable of lifting our efforts to the level of emergency.

Surely it is time for a concentration of congressional opinion and force capable of lifting our efforts to the level of emergency. The Obama administration may be committed to leading from behind, but Congress can choose to lead from the front.

Perhaps that's what's behind the Congressional letter that was issued on Friday. And if that's the case I can only wish 'Godspeed' to our friends and allies in Congress.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:27 PM

At the Edge of the Abyss

June 12, 2012

JEWISH IDEAS DAILY

By Elliot Jager

Bernard Wasserstein is a non-Zionist historian sympathetic to Israel while critical of its policies. Now based at the University of Chicago, the London-born Wasserstein has focused much of his intellectual energies on matters Jewish. He does so again in On the Eve, a rich and nuanced history of the 10 million Jews of Europe before the Second World War that aims to "capture the realities of life in Europe in the years leading up to 1939, when the Jews stood, as we now know, at the edge of an abyss."  The new book is a sort of prequel to his Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe Since 1945, published 16 years ago.

Eastern Europe  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Eastern Europe's past was being re-imagined well before the Holocaust.  SAVE

Out of Europe  Bernard Wasserstein,  Jewish Chronicle.  Though the Holocaust could not be predicted, many sensed the end of European Jewry was imminent.  SAVE

The striking thesis of On the Eve is that even before Hitler came to power in 1933, the prognosis for European Jewry was bleak: "The demographic trajectory was grim and, with declining fertility, large-scale emigration, increasing outmarriage, and widespread apostasy, foreshadowed extinction. Jewish cultural links were loosening . . . many Jews wanted to escape from what they saw as the prison of their Jewishness."  Millions of Jews abandoned Europe in the interwar period—perhaps 10 percent of the Jewish population; many headed to America. Wasserstein's well-chosen epigraph is from historian Simon Dubnow (whose quixotic championing of an autonomous Diaspora-based Jewish nationalism is itself a historical footnote): "The historian's essential creative act is the resurrection of the dead." 

Wasserstein proves himself to be most adept at the task.  He breathes life into old quarrels, both political and theological: Agudas Yisroel against the Reform; both against the Zionists; the anti-Zionist extremist Hasidim of Satmar against the anti-Zionist fanatics of Munkacz; the General Zionists versus Revisionists, and so on.  Economically, most Jews made their living in commerce or in the professions since anti-Semitic strictures essentially closed academia, government, and agriculture to them. Demographically, by the early 1930s most Jews in Germany were marrying out.

Against all this, Wasserstein's portraits of life in heder, niggun-composing Hasidic rebbes, the workings of yeshivot in Mir, Lublin, and Ponevezh, and a sketch of the Mussar movement show an Orthodoxy in decline but no means defeated.  It faced minor competition from the non-Orthodox whose Budapest rabbinical school, for example, allowed its seminarians to attend (gasp) the cinema. In much of Europe, the real challenge to tradition came from newfound access to the outside world—while in the Soviet Union it was the jealous god Stalin.

The book is not all doom and gloom. There is a charming segment on Luftmenshn, those who had no visible means of support to sustain their lifestyles which ranged from poor to comfortable. The remarkable devotion of Jewish parents to their children also gets nice treatment. Bit by bit, as the doors were closing, thousands of children were brought to safety in the 1932-33 youth aliyah, the brainchild of a little known heroine named Recha Freier; the Kindertransport later delivered 10,000 children to England.

Wasserstein's treatment of "anti-Jewish Jews" is compelling, given the abundance of ashamed Jews coming out of the woodwork in our own day. In their Selbsthass or self-hatred, some Jews parodied anti-Semitic tropes. Of course, as Wasserstein points out, they did not literally hate themselves so much as they despised other Jews. Some were outspokenly disdainful of the Nazis; most were fixated by Jewish issues; many ultimately renounced Judaism and assailed Jewish solidarity—but paradoxically abhorred Jewish powerlessness. (Except for his gratuitous hatchet job on Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Wasserstein approaches pre-war European Zionism with comparative sympathy.)  There is also a sketch of earlier far-Left Jews who had quit Palestine to return to Russia after the 1917 Revolution to create Jewish colonies in the Crimea. 

No less engrossing is Wasserstein's treatment of the Jewish press. A considerable number of dailies were owned and edited by Jews, and read religiously by a mixed Jewish-Gentile audience: Budapest's liberal Pester Lloyd, Berlin's Tageblatt, and Vienna's Neu Freie Presse, which employed one Theodor Herzl. Mirroring our own day, "such papers did not, however, see themselves as Jewish publications."  Add to this mix the scores of polemical and party newspapers of every stripe that did cater exclusively to Jews. And on the Yiddish-language and cultural fronts were the composers, artists, cantors, filmmakers, and authors, whose books all but radiated with intellectual and artistic vibrancy.

Dispensing with maudlin nostalgia, On the Eve is a heartrending, unabashedly compassionate portrait of doomed European Jewry. Wasserstein emphatically makes the point that they "were by no means all of a kind. Indeed, they were probably the most internally variegated people of the continent." In the absence of a sovereign Jewish state, however, they were friendless, powerless, and trapped—everything and everyone they possibly could have counted on failed them. 

The Palestinian movement and Jew hatred

FRESNO ZIONISM
Sunday, June 17, 2012
We keep hearing how there is a big difference between Jew hatred and anti-Zionism. Those who are promoting boycotts of Israeli goods, academics, athletes, etc. until Israel provides ‘justice’ to Palestinian Arabs — which is defined in terms that would preclude the existence of the Jewish state — vehemently insist that they have no problem with Jews per se.


Often they themselves are Jews. “How can we be Jew-haters,” they ask?
This position is belied by their double standards and by the pathological obsessiveness of their focus on Israel. But they nevertheless maintain that the logical distinction between hating Jews and ‘opposing’ (in fact, hating) Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs means that social sanctions against antisemitism (and in some countries, legal ones) do not apply to them.
But if we look at the Palestinian movement that they are supporting,it is joined at the hip with ideas and people that represent classical racist Jew hatred of the most murderous kind.


We can quickly dispose of Hamas, whose charter — which has not changed since its inception — contains anti-Jewish material taken directly from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But did you know thatthe Palestinian Authority (PA) published a textbook for children in 2004that asserts that the forged Protocols are historically true?


The PA media and religious appointees also continue to describe Jews as descendants of apes and pigs. Does this count as ‘criticism of Israeli policies’?
We know that the first ‘Palestinian’ leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, fomented pogroms against Jews in Palestine in the 1920′s and in Iraq in 1941. Then he went to Germany and helped Hitler raise a Bosnian Muslim SS division to fight in Eastern Europe. After the war he helped clandestine networks resettle wanted Nazi war criminals in Arab countries (Egypt and Syria), where some served as military or political advisers. Both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas praised him as a Palestinian hero.


It’s well-known that Mahmoud Abbas wrote a ‘doctoral’ dissertation(see also here) in which he claimed that there were fewer than 900,000 Jewish Holocaust victims, that the Nazis did not murder Jews in gas chambers, and that Zionists encouraged Hitler to murder Jews in order to gain the world’s sympathy!


It’s also documented that Abbas, working under the direction of Arafat,provided funds to terrorist Abu Daoud to carry out the massacre of Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics 40 years ago this September.


Now it turns out that he and Arafat had help from neo-Nazis. Here isanother link in the chain between Palestinian Arab terrorism and Nazi evil:

Berlin – Newly released files from Germany’s domestic intelligence agency reveal that neo-Nazis plotted with the Palestinian group Black September in the 1972 Munich Olympic terror attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes, according to a Der Spiegel magazine story on Sunday.
According to the online Spiegel report, police in the city of Dortmund sent a notice to the German domestic intelligence agency, Verfassungsschutz (BfV), in which “Saad Walli, an ‘Arab looking man’ met conspiratorially with the German neo-Nazi Willi Pohl.” The meeting took place roughly seven weeks before the 1972 terror attack in Munich.
Saad Walli was the cover name for Abu Daoud, who is widely believed to be the ringleader of the 1972 terror attack in Germany. Pohl bragged to his employer about his contact with the extremist PLO wing…
Pohl, the neo-Nazi, is now a crime fiction author and said, “I chauffeured Abu Daoud throughout the entire Federal Republic where he met in different cities with Palestinians.” Pohl helped Daoud obtain false passports and other documents, according to the report.

The Palestinian movement, both the Islamic and nationalist branches, has always worked hand-in-glove with its natural allies, the Nazis and neo-Nazis. It emphasizes anti-Jewish doctrines in Islam, and promulgates the long-discredited myths of European antisemitism.


If you support the Palestinian movement and its goals of replacing Israel with an Arab state — even if you hide behind the fantasy of a ‘democratic state of all its citizens’ — you need to understand exactly who you are supporting and what you have  signed up for.

To Obama, Fool Me Once, Shame on You; Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me

ISRAPUNDIT
By Matthew M. Hausman

Eighty percent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama four years ago despite his associations with antisemites and anti-Israel hatemongers. Mainstream leaders knew of his ?friendships with Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said, but proclaimed him good for Israel nonetheless. From the “Rabbis for Obama,” to Congressional Jewish Democrats, to the usual assortment of Hollywood activists, the fawning chorus sang about his affinity for Israel despite troubling evidence to the contrary. They were unbothered by his 20-year affiliation with an antisemitic church, his political alliance with the Nation of Islam in Chicago, his doublespeak to AIPAC about his commitment to an indivisible Jerusalem, and his cagey silence regarding ?Israel during his brief tenure in the U.S. Senate. And now, after several years of policies that have facilitated the rise of Islamist regimes, enabled Iran’s nuclear ambitions, excused doctrinal Jew-hatred, and compromised Israel’s security and national integrity, polls suggest that nearly 60% are likely to vote for him again.


When Mr. Obama’s Jewish supporters discuss his treatment of Israel, they offer platitudes that are short on facts; and when they mention his relationships with characters like Wright and Khalidi, it’s to assure us that they were fully vetted in 2008 and, thus, should be of no concern to voters today. In truth, though, his dubious associations were never investigated, but instead were ignored by a partisan media that shielded its chosen candidate from any unpleasant controversy. Although a Republican’s involvement in a white supremacist church would certainly be front-page news, the press glossed over Mr. Obama’s longstanding membership in Wright’s congregation and refused to question his relationships with demagogues and bigots. To this day, the LA Times refuses to release video of Mr. Obama at an event sponsored by anti-Israel Palestinians, where he reportedly toasted Mr. Khalidi, a friend from his Chicago days, whose negative views and writings on Israel are well-known.

These relationships should have provided insight into the man’s character and beliefs, but they were consistently ignored – as has been his contemptuous treatment of the Jewish State ?since his first days in office. Despite Mr. Obama’s adversarial relationship with Israel, Jewish Democrats continue to parrot his unfounded claims of support, which he compulsively spouts ?before any Jewish audience.

At AIPAC’s annual convention last October, the President said: “I try not to pat myself  too much on the back, but this administration has done more in terms of the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.” This address was part of a calculated attempt to ?shore up Jewish support for his campaign, so some hyperbole was certainly expected. But what he failed to mention is that American strategic support for Israel during his administration is part of an ongoing, ten-year commitment made by President Bush in 2007 and is supported by Congress; it is not the fruit of his own policies, which have been overtly hostile. His actual record consists of bullying Israel over so-called settlements, obsequiously courting an Arab-?Muslim world that rejects western values, and delegitimizing Israel by persistently using the propaganda-laden term “occupation” to describe her dominion over much of her territory, ?including Jerusalem, and refusing to acknowledge the Jews’ historical connection to their ancient homeland.?

Vice President Biden continued this revisionist public relations farce when he proclaimed in May that: “No President since Harry Truman has done more for Israel’s physical security than Barack Obama.” In stating thus, Mr. Biden displayed selective amnesia concerning his own role in the Ramat Shlomo crisis, which the administration created by labeling Jewish North Jerusalem ?a “settlement” and calling for a construction freeze that was not even contemplated under the Oslo Accords. Biden and Secretary of State Clinton knowingly misrepresented the status of ?Ramat Shlomo even though this residential neighborhood was specifically excluded from the temporary freeze to which Netanyahu had agreed. This manufactured crisis was emblematic of Mr. Obama’s pattern of characterizing residential areas as settlements, demanding that Israel cease construction, and then chastising her for supposedly impeding peace by continuing to build on Jewish soil. Interestingly, Mr. Obama has never criticized illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem or elsewhere – which is widespread – or condemned the Arab-Muslim rejectionism and doctrinal antisemitism that long preceded the existence of any “settlements.”

Unfortunately, the President has many enablers in the mainstream media and among Congressional Jewish Democrats, including the party’s National Committee Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D. Florida), who stated that, “[t]he president has a rock-solid record on Israel.” If Rep. Wasserman-Schultz and liberal establishment organizations really believed this, they would not have pleaded publicly with pro-Israel groups and rival Republicans to refrain from making Israel a “wedge issue” during this election cycle. It would have been unnecessary to attempt to quell critical discussion of Mr. Obama’s policies regarding Israel and the Mideast if they believed he could stand on his record.

An examination of Mr. Obama’s statements and policies suggests that, contrary to the claims of his apologists, he has been the most hostile president towards Israel since Jimmy Carter. From the beginning of his administration, he has advocated a revisionist Palestinian narrative based on myth and a denial Jewish history. Rather than acknowledge the incongruity of Palestinian claims to a country that never existed in a land with an undeniably Jewish ?provenance, he used his Cairo speech in 2009 to reinforce the canard that Israel exists only because of European guilt over the Holocaust, which he then compared to the Palestinian situation. In this speech he negated Jewish history, delegitimized ancestral Jewish claims, and reinforced the fantasy that Palestinian “suffering” is equivalent to genocide. Since then, he has ?continued to target “settlements” as the source of conflict – all the while ignoring that Arab-?Muslim rejectionism long preceded their existence and that nobody sought a Palestinian state during the 19 years when Judea, Samaria and Gaza were illegally controlled by Jordan and Egypt. Despite constantly haranguing Israel, he has never chastised the Arabs for engaging in antisemitic incitement, maintaining charters that advocate genocide and the destruction of Israel, or publicly proclaiming that they will never recognize a Jewish State.

Mr. Obama sounded similar themes when he spoke in Turkey earlier in 2009, where his policies have reinforced an Islamist regime, and at the United Nations in 2010, where he refused ?to condemn Arab-Muslim antisemitism before the body most responsible for facilitating its spread. Most egregious was his May 2011 State Department speech, which advanced the discredited theory of “linkage” (which holds that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the root of all geopolitical problems in the Mideast), and in which he called on Israel to retreat to indefensible 1949 armistice lines and negotiate an Arab “right of return.” In this speech the President demanded nothing of the Palestinians, and even equivocated on whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. His defenders claimed that these positions were no different than those of prior ?administrations, but in fact no other President ever made such outrageous demands of Israel.?

The President has set a most unfriendly tone in his speeches and public pronouncements, and his attempts to intimidate Israel by word, deed and omission leave little doubt that he has no respect or empathy for the Jewish State, and no regard for her historical integrity. It is ?astounding that so many Jews who claim to hold Israel dear can continue to support a president whose record is marked by slight after gaffe after snub, and which includes the following lowlights, among many others.?

Since his inauguration, Mr. Obama has travelled to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where he has made revisionist speeches and bowed to a foreign king; yet he has never visited Israel, America’s only stable, reliable ally in the region.

He has compared the Palestinians’ circumstances to the Holocaust, though they are not the victims of genocide and although Arabs in Israel and the territories enjoy the highest standard of living of any Arab population in the Mideast as measured by income, literacy, longevity and low infant mortality. (The same could not be said of Jews who perished during the Holocaust or, for that matter, who lived as dhimmis under Sharia law in the Arab-Muslim world.)
He has demanded unprecedented concessions from Israel but none from the Palestinians, and has publicly lectured Jewish leaders that “Israelis must engage in self-reflection,” as if to imply that they are not committed to the search for peace. Glaringly, he has never commented on the need for Palestinian “self-reflection.”

He does not criticize the Palestinians for the antisemitic and anti-western materials included in their school curricula, or the Palestinian Authority for failing to amend its charter calling for Israel’s destruction.
He has made Israeli construction freezes preconditions for peace talks, though they were never required under any negotiating framework, not even Oslo, or by U.N. Resolution 242.

He repudiated a letter sent by President Bush to Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004, which underscored America’s commitment to “final status” negotiations that would take into account “new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, [and that] it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” This letter was endorsed by nearly unanimous resolutions in both Houses of Congress, and Sharon relied on its assurances in deciding to disengage from Gaza in 2005. Nevertheless, in his State Department speech last year Mr. Obama demanded indefensible borders based on the armistice lines, which Abba Eban famously described as “Auschwitz” borders.?

In the name of restraint he discourages Israel from responding to any provocations or acts of terror – no matter how deadly – but has never demanded restraint of the Palestinians. Neither has he publicly rebuked them for continuing to engage in terrorism.

He was silent when Mahmoud Abbas announced that the PA will never recognize Israel as a Jewish State. This declaration of non-recognition was stated at the fifth convention of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, which “affirm[ed] its rejection of the so-called Jewish state, or any other formula that could achieve this goal.” Abbas has repeated this rejectionist vow numerous times since, and the Obama White House has never challenged him.
The President has lauded the PA as moderate, both directly and through his proxies Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, despite its commitment to non-recognition, its glorification of terrorists who kill Jews, and its unity pact with Hamas.

He failed to comment when Abbas and the PA publicly honored Amin al-Hindi, the mastermind behind the 1972 Munich Massacre. (Abbas, who was known as Abu Mazen at the time, reportedly was the PLO operative who helped secure funding for the terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli Olympic athletes.) Despite such clear and provocative antisemitic displays, Mr. Obama continues to promote Abbas and the PA as negotiating partners, and to condemn Israeli “settlements” ?and “hardliners” as the barriers to peace.

Mr. Obama was silent when the PA renamed a public square in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, the Fatah terrorist who killed 37 Israeli civilians in 1978. The PA honored this murderer one day after five members of an Israeli family, the Fogels, were killed by Palestinian terrorists. The only time any administration official condemned the apotheosis of Mughrabi was when Hillary Clinton appeared before AIPAC in 2010 and falsely claimed that it was Hamas, not the PA, which had publicly honored this terrorist.

During a state visit by Israeli officials, Mr. Obama attempted to humiliate Prime Minister Netanyahu by forcing him to enter the White House through a service entrance, deliberately serving non-kosher food to his retinue and refusing to dine with him. The President later implied that if Mr. Netanyahu could not resolve the conflict, a “peace plan” would be imposed on Israel.
After insulting Mr. Netanyahu, the President hosted Abbas at the White House and, despite the latter’s continuing antisemitic incitement and unity government ?with Hamas, increased American assistance to the PA by $70 million.During the Gaza Flotilla fiasco, Turkey sponsored U.N. resolutions condemning Israel and calling for an international inquiry, which Mr. Obama refused to veto. Instead, he attempted to pressure Israel to apologize to Turkey for casualties on board the flotilla, though it was shown that Israeli commandos acted in self-defense after being attacked first, and that many of the “activists” on board were actually armed terrorists. The President never criticized the Turkish IHH for its links to Hamas, but imperiously demanded that Israel take responsibility for mending fences with the Turks, Egyptians and Palestinians.?


Mr. Obama refused to criticize Abbas when he gave a U.N. speech denying the Jews’ historical connection to the Land of Israel, and during which he stood before a regional map from which Israel had been erased. According to many observers, Obama’s disparagement of Jewish claims and embrace of the Palestinian narrative encouraged Abbas’s quest for U.N. recognition.

He has consistently minimized Israeli concerns about Iran, and has employed a policy of “engagement” that has only enabled Iran in advancing its nuclear ambitions. The failure to employ real containment measures has provided Iran with time and cover to bring more centrifuges online and enrich copious reserves of uranium.

He has legitimized the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups after facilitating their political fortunes by: mishandling the so-called Arab Spring; ignoring their genocidal goals; and calling on Israel to negotiate with them despite their charters calling for her destruction.

As it did four years ago, the media has continued to protect Mr. Obama, going so far as to dub him “the first Jewish president” to imply a false affinity with Jewish values. This observation is absurd given his record of belittling Jewish historical claims, and considering that the only Jews he embraces politically are those on the left who themselves denigrate Israeli sovereignty and traditional values. Mr. Obama’s true feelings were exposed in his inopportune, open-microphone remarks disparaging Mr. Netanyahu to former French Prime Minister Sarkozy. Those Jews who continue to support the President despite such displays of malice and hostility ?are only deluding themselves.

Or maybe they’re not. Perhaps, despite all their claims of devotion to Israel, they really don’t care about her safety, integrity and continuity as a Jewish state. That certainly seemed to be the case in Florida on May 15th during a debate involving the Palm Beach County Democratic Chairman and Tom Trento, a Christian Zionist. In justifying his continuing support for the President, the Democratic spokesman implied that Mr. Obama’s policies are consistent with Jewish values, which he equated with social justice as defined by liberal ideology. In the final analysis, commitment to Israel for him seemed beside the point, as he stated to the crowd: “There is more to this election than merely Israel.” (Debate highlights can be accessed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds-pSs6JA8g.)

If one accepts the premise that liberalism is synonymous with Jewish values, then Jews historically should have always supported the parties that: (a) promoted universal suffrage, government regulation of industry, eight-hour workdays, minimum wages, and compulsory social ?insurance; or (b) endorsed government work programs, legislation to reduce unemployment, and federal spending to stimulate economic growth. If these were the only criteria influencing Jews’ political choices, however, they would have supported Mussolini’s Fascist party in the first instance and the Hitler’s National Socialists in the second. Clearly, eliminating Jewish priorities from the equation would lead to untenable results.

It took Mr. Trento, a Gentile supporter of Israel, to drive this point home. In a world clouded by Iranian nuclear threats, encroaching jihadism, intractable Muslim rejectionism, and an American President who seeks rapprochement with antisemitic and anti-American regimes, this election truly is about Israel. Sadly, some Jews do not agree, while others simply don’t understand. But those who choose to support the President by ignoring statements and policies that have imperiled Israeli sovereignty and security would do well to remember the old adage: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Posted by Ted Belman @ 6:22 am | 23 Comments »

Nearly half the Senate tells Obama to cut off talks with Iran

ISRAEL MATZAV
Sunday, June 17, 2012
 44 Senators - nearly half the Senate - signed a letter to President Obama sponsored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ, pictured) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo) urging President Obama to cut off talks with Iran unless three specific concessions are made by Iran in Monday's session in Moscow.

"It is past time for the Iranians to take the concrete steps that would reassure the world that their nuclear program is, as they claim, exclusively peaceful," wrote 44 senators in a Friday bipartisan letter organized by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Roy Blunt (R-MO). "Absent these steps, we must conclude that Tehran is using the talks as a cover to buy time as it continues to advance toward nuclear weapons capability. We know that you share our conviction that allowing Iran to gain this capability is unacceptable."

The senators wrote that the "absolute minimum" Iran must do immediately to justify further talks is to shut down the Fordo uranium enrichment facility near Qom, freeze all uranium enrichment above 5 percent, and ship all uranium enriched above 5 percent out of the country.

"We understand that this was the very proposal that the P5+1 advanced during the Baghdad meeting," the senators wrote, referring to the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. "Were Iran to agree to and verifiably implement these steps, this would demonstrate a level of commitment by Iran to the process and could justify continued discussions beyond the meeting in Moscow."

Few expect the Moscow meeting to yield unilateral steps by Iran of the nature sought by the senators.

...

The senators urge the president not to ease or delay the embargo, writing that only when the Iranian government believes the sanctions are to be "unremitting and crippling" will a diplomatic breakthrough will be possible.

"On the other hand, if the sessions in Moscow produce no substantive agreement, we urge you to reevaluate the utility of further talks at this time and instead focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions and making clear that a credible military option exists," they wrote. "As you have rightly noted, ‘the window for diplomacy is closing.' Iran's leaders must realize that you mean precisely that."

I'm going to embed the letter below, because when I saw this, my reaction was that there are 41 Republican Senators, plus Joe Lieberman, and they got two Democrats to sign on. But if you look at the signatures, you will see that is not the case, and in fact there are 24 Democrats plus Liberman signed on. I suspect strongly that many Republicans were not even asked to sign because they really wanted it to be a balanced letter. More after the embed.

Obama Letter P5+1 Final

If that wasn't clear enough, there's this:

"The message of this letter is that Congress' patience is running out when it comes to meetings that don't yield results," said a senior Senate aide. "The Iranians have been given every last opportunity to demonstrate their good faith and step back from the brink. Instead, they keep pushing forward with their nuclear program, and we keep asking for yet another round of talks. This is not sustainable."

It's not. And it's time for Congress to try to force the President to behave as if there's something more important than the timing of his reelection campaign.

Three Reasons Why Iran's Mullahs Must Go

HOLGER AWAKENS

This article at Family Security Matters details three reasons why the mullah regime in Iran must be removed...I can come up with 25 more on top of this but the article is spot on.  The world's single biggest trouble maker is Iran...has always been Iran and always will be Iran unless we get these madmen out of power (most of you know my ideas on HOW to take them out).

Three Reasons to Overthrow Iran’s Mullahs Now

The world is at a breaking point in 2012. The issue of Iran will likely reach a crescendo this year. The wisest course is narrowing down to the only course: regime change in Tehran.

This does not mean military action, nor does it mean invasion, conquest, or occupation. In the case of Iran, regime change means open support for a "Persian Spring." It means replicating the Reagan-Thatcher model vis-à-vis Lech Walesa in Poland and the late Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia: supporting Iranian dissident and opposition groups rhetorically, politically, financially, materially, and morally until a popular uprising-simmering in Iran since the Green Movement in 2009-brings down the few hundred theocratic mullahs threatening the world.

We must do this for many reasons, but three paramount ones come to mind.

1. To avoid war.

If the Iranian regime is not replaced, it will lead to war. The Israelis may preemptively attack Iran's nuclear facilities. If the Israelis do not take action, the United States might do so. And if neither Israel nor the U.S. takes action, the Iranians themselves will continue to be the aggressors geopolitically. Should Iran get an atomic weapon, this hypothetical conflict could even become a nuclear one.

Bringing down the mullahs internally would likely turn our most hostile enemy into a natural ally. It is unclear what type of Iranian government would emerge following the downfall of the mullahs. But one thing is clear: unlike Egypt and Libya and other Arab uprisings, where the Muslim Brotherhood might take over for good, the Iranian people are far friendlier to the United States. Iran's 70 million people are amongst the youngest in the world. They want to be connected to the rest of the planet. They want the freedom to worship-or not worship-as they please. They want to be able to go on the Internet free from censure; to assemble free from threat; to read, write, and speak free from intimidation. They do not want war with the West.

2. To avoid nuclear blackmail, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear terrorism.

Should nothing be done-should the mullahs obtain a nuclear weapon-the world will enter, as Churchill once phrased it, "the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science." Never before would such apocalyptic individuals have attained such cataclysmic technology.

The issue need not be a mushroom cloud. Imagine the Iranian Supreme Leader making demands of the world, with the implicit threat of a nuclear suitcase-armed Hezbollah or al-Qaeda operative in Washington D.C., London, Paris, or Tel Aviv ready to "blow" should these demands not be met. This will be the world we will have in this new decade should Iran be allowed to go nuclear. The whole planet would be held hostage to the nuclear blackmail of the mullahs.

In addition, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Turks, and maybe even the Jordanians would all pursue nuclear weapons to deter Iranian belligerence. (Not to mention the Israeli, Pakistani, and Indian nuclear arsenals.) We would have a wide-ranging Middle East nuclear arms race. Nobody in their right mind should think such a development would end well.

3. Peace in the Middle East.

When it comes to state sponsorship of jihadist terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the "mother-ship." Iran supports every relevant terrorist group around the world, including al-Qaeda. The mullahs have waged war against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, and have the blood of thousands on their hands. For these reasons alone, the Iranian regime should be overthrown in its own right. But should the Iranians gain nuclear weapons, the entire Middle East would fall under Tehran's dominion-including Iraq.

Should Iraq fall under the sway of Iran, this would turn the eight-year war from a tenable victory into a defeat. All of our sacrifices will have been for naught. Yet should the Iranian regime fall, success in Iraq is secured. So too would about half of the Afghan insurgency be defeated. The Syrian regime-Iran's little brother; Mussolini's Italy to Hitler's Germany-would probably collapse. The Hezbollah terrorist regime in Lebanon would follow. The Hamas terrorist group in Palestine, without sponsors, would also likely implode. This could potentially allow the Israelis and good-natured Palestinians to make a deal. With the fall of the mullahs, the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas nexus may come to an end.

In short, regime change in Iran would mean the U.S. "wins" the entire Middle East, from Tehran to Jerusalem, from Persia through Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean. The so-called "Shi'ite crescent" would be pacified.

Regime change in Iran would prevent a regional war; prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism; do away with the world's largest supporter of terrorism; turn an enemy into a genuine friend; defeat the Shi'ite-wing of Islamic fanaticism; and, bring stability and peace to the Middle East. There is not a greater, more imminent, more advantageous strategic objective to the United States than overthrowing the mullahs. Considering the hostility of the Iranian regime and the comparative warmth of the Iranian population, there is no starker cost-benefit ratio in all the Middle East.

Excluding Israel from Counterterrorism Conference

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2012

WHY DID THE U.S. EXCLUDE ISRAEL FROM THE NEW COUNTERTERRORISM FORUM?

MIDDLE EAST AND TERRORISM

by Eileen F. Toplansky

In a letter penned on June 11, 2012, Senators Joseph Lieberman and Mark Kirk wrote to Secretary of State Clinton to "express [their] surprise and disappointment of the absence of ...Israel, from the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF)" which she attended in Istanbul last week.

Established in 2011, the Global Counterterrorism Forum:

is a new multilateral counterterrorism body with 30 founding members (29 countries plus the EU) from around the world. Launched by Secretary Clinton on September 22, 2011, the GCTF is a major initiative within the Obama Administration's broader effort to build the international architecture for dealing with 21st century terrorism. It will provide a unique platform for senior counterterrorism policymakers and experts from around the world to work together to identify urgent needs, devise solutions and mobilize resources for addressing key counterterrorism challenges. With its primary focus on capacity building in relevant areas, the GCTF aims to increase the number of countries capable of dealing with the terrorist threats within their borders and regions. In addition to the adoption of the GCTF's founding political declaration and remarks from GCTF Foreign Ministers, the launch included the announcement of two deliverables - one on the rule of law and one on countering violent extremism - thus highlighting the GCTF's action-oriented focus from the outset.

The founding members of the GCTF are:

Algeria, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, Egypt, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Conspicuously absent is Israel, a country which has been the brunt of terrorism since its inception in 1948 and whose expertise in dealing with terror is unsurpassed.

Equally alarming is the fact that:

The United Nations is a close partner of and participant in the GCTF and its activities. The GCTF serves as a mechanism for furthering the implementation of the universally-agreed UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and, more broadly, complements and reinforces existing multilateral CT efforts, starting with those of the UN.

Given the unrelenting anti-Israel stance of the United Nations, this close partnership should raise credible suspicion that the GCTF will not serve as a counterterrorism forum by any means. At Anne Bayefsky's website, she explains that after the horrors of World War II:

The foundational UN principles of equality, universal human rights and fundamental freedoms emanated from a real and immediate sense of wrong and responsibility. As the Nuremberg Tribunal taught, 'Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities.' The UN was to play a central role in the so-called 'naming and shaming' of transgressors, and where necessary, was to garner the political will to stop egregious violations of dignity and freedom. The UN, however, has not lived up to the task of 'naming,' let alone shaming or intervening. [Sadly], the 'UN human rights system has squandered the commitment and passion of its original benefactors.'

The United Nations regularly condemns Israel and from1967 to 1989 alone the UN Security Councilpassed 131 resolutions directly addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict. They are rife with overwhelming bias against Israel and completely ignore the ongoing aggression of Arab countries. Recall also that arch-terrorist Yassir Arafat and Iran's genocidal President Mahmoud Ahmadinajad have been cordially received at the U.N.

According to Peter Collier, Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Reagan showed her mettle and commitment to Israel when she charged that the:

Arab-Israeli conflict at the world body 'has nothing to do with peace, but is quite simply a continuation of war against Israel by other means.' [In essence] she said that the UN, as a result, had become a place where 'moral outrage was distributed like violence in a protection racket'; a place where Israel is regularly and routinely attacked for manufactured crimes amidst deafening silence 'when 3 million Cambodians died in Pol Pot's murderous utopia... when a quarter million Ugandans died at the hands of Idi Amin... and when thousands of Soviet citizens are denied equal rights, equal protection of the law; denied the right to think, write, publish, work freely or emigrate.'

Peter Collier, author of Political Woman: The Big Little Life of Jeane Kirkpatrick asserts that Kirkpatrick repeatedly pointed out that:

hatred of Israel deformed all aspects of UN operations: 'A women's conference is suddenly transformed into a forum for the denunciation of Israel' because of assertions that 'the biggest obstacle to the realizations of women's full enjoyment of equal rights in the world is Zionism....A meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency becomes so absorbed in negotiations and debate over a resolution to expel Israel that it almost forgets to worry about nuclear non-proliferation.'

These entrenched attitudes have become stronger and they are certainly emboldened by the anti-Israel animus of Obama advisors who openly disdain Israel. There is no "passionate indignation" over the treatment of Israel at the U.N. under the Obama presidency. After all Obama ignores the fact that "Turkey opposes calling Hamas a terrorist organization, even though Hamas is included on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations."

According to Globes, "the US blocked Israel's participation in the Global Counterterrorism Forum's first meeting in Istanbul...even though Israel has one of the most extensive experiences in counterterrorism." The reason given was that the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected to Israel's presence.

A top US official stated that "the GCTF sought from the outset to bridge old and deep divides in the international community between Western donor nations and Muslim majority nations." One surely hears echoes of Obama's reaching out to the Muslim world to the detriment of the West. The latest information that Obama is secretly involving the jihadist terrorist group The Muslim Brotherhood in direct talks and information sharing is no secret any more.

Thus, it is no great surprise, given the affinity of Obama's desire to downplay Islamist terror that he would "deepen ties with the Muslim world at Israel's expense." Ironically, "Saudi Arabia, long known for spreading the radical Wahhabist ideology to which many terrorists adhere" is a member of the GCTF. Can one posit that the U.S.-Turkey Alliance tossed Israel under the bus?"

According to Sharona Schwartz, of the Blaze, "Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palor stated that Israel "never planned to go [to the conference] and it wasn't on the schedule." Palmor would 'not say if any Israeli officials had asked to attend, but pointed out that Israeli and U.S. officials held [their] own counterterrorism dialogue...days before the Istanbul meeting.'" Yet, an unnamed Israeli official blamed Israel's exclusion on Turkey and stated that "[t]he Turks have been behaving with irrational rage when it comes to Israel."

When questioned as to whether Israel requested membership to the Global Counterterrorism Forum and whether the United States, as a co-host of the forum, sought to get Israel involved, the State Department responded with the following:

Answer: Our idea with the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) was to bring together a limited number of traditional donors, front line states, and emerging powers to develop a more robust, yet representative, counterterrorism capacity-building platform. A number of our close partners with considerable experience countering and preventing terrorism are not included among the GCTF's founding members.We have discussed the GCTF and ways to involve Israel in its activities on a number of occasions, and are committed to making this happen.

Don't hold your breath!

Eileen F. Toplansky can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

Source:http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/excluding_israel_from_counterterrorism_conference.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Video: Pictures of The Beautiful People and Land of Israel

Eating the State - by Sultan Knish

Saturday, June 16, 2012


In Gotham, Michael the First, King of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and the rebellious province of Staten Island, has returned from celebrating his successful campaign against large sodas, to consider expanding the ban to large popcorn and milkshakes. Los Angeles has voted to ban the plastic bag and add a 10 cent fine for paper bags.

Where does the future of the Nanny State lead? In Sweden, the Left Party is calling for men to be banned from urinating standing up. And why not? If the government should have a say in what food you eat and what you carry the groceries you buy in, why not have it complete the cycle and tell you how to eliminate them?

We have laws that strictly control every aspect of the production, packaging, distribution and sale of food. From there we moved on to laws controlling the consumption and consumer transportation of it. Once every step in the process from planting the seed in the earth to actually putting it in your mouth has been legislated and regulated; all that's left is a government mandated bathroom experience.

Liberals like to claim that they don't believe the government should be in your bedroom. Apparently, they believe that it should be in your bathroom instead. Not to mention in your kitchen and digging through your trash like raccoons on steroids.

The Left Party's rationale for playing bathroom police, is the same one put forward by Bloomberg's soda police and the same one that was used to take complete control of food production. Health.

"Party speakers cited medical research they said shows men empty their bladders more efficiently while seated. Improved bladder evacuation reduces the risk for prostate problems, according to the party."

Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the formerly free world is being treated to Party lectures on the proper way to use the bathroom. There may even be a little red book with the words of some Socialist leader to inspire us to properly go about our day in harmony with the will of the Party, whose enlightened wisdom informs every moment of our lives.

It's a short hop and skip from the government deciding to fight heart attacks by banning sodas to fighting prostate cancer by banning urination. When government controls health care, it also has complete authority over every aspect of your life. The old public health crises were infectious diseases. The new public health crisis is absolutely everything. And the authorities are in crisis mode all the time fighting wars on a hundred fronts against the habits of the human race.

Want to ban people from swallowing without chewing their food? Invite in a panel of experts to put on a spreadsheet show proving that swallowing without chewing kills 400 people a year and costs the government three billion dollars in health care expenses. And before you know it, that three billion will be used to dispatch food monitors to every public eatery and private kitchen.

During the ObamaCare debate, Keith Olbermann aired one of his more ridiculous broadcasts with the title,. "Health Care Reform: The Fight Against Death". But everyone dies. Not everyone lives. And some live lives of quiet desperation, waiting for the police to arrive and arrest them for their large soda, carried in a plastic bag and then improperly eliminated.

During the American Revolution, it was, "Give me Liberty or give me death." Today it's, "Give me Universal Health Care or give me death." And the alternative to death is a nanny state that controls every aspect of our lives, only for us to die anyway. Fighting for Liberty may occasionally make men immortal, but fighting for government bureaucracy just makes them slaves. 

If health is dependent on government health care, and government health care is dependent on everyone being so healthy that they don't need government health care, an irresolvable failure loop develops in which money is being spent on preventative social engineering to avoid spending money on health care, which has to be spent anyway. 

Instead of pioneering the treatment of diseases, the money is spent on totalitarian gimmicks like the War on Obesity, while shortchanging patients once they actually do need medical treatment. We are moving toward a health care establishment in which there will be 40 unionized nurses to run weight-loss clinics, but a three-month waiting list to see a heart specialist.

As the health care costs keep climbing, so do the nanny-state gimmicks, with armies of snake oil experts arriving with patent medicine preventative cures for everything, until we're down to a political party proposing to legislate urination. And if you think that's where it ends, you are mistaken. It doesn't end anywhere, because there is no limit.

Give a maniac a gun and he'll shoot up a whole lot of people. Give activists the power to regulate and ban... and they will regulate and ban every single thing that they can think of. If one ban doesn't do it, then they'll try ten more. They won't stop until someone takes away the gun that shoots bills, unloads it and then hides it on a high shelf that they can't reach.

Tyranny doesn't stop where you think it should. It doesn't stop with, "Okay, this might be a good idea". It doesn't stop with "Wait, what?!" And it doesn't stop with "They can't do that." It doesn't stop at all. That's why they call it tyranny.

In a democracy, it has to start slow, sidling up to you like a con artist with a hard luck story at a fair. There's always a good cause, a compelling reason and then eventually a gun to your head when you realize that you've been had and you want out. Because there's no way out. Either you keep falling for the con or the gun comes out.

After September 11, liberals spent the better part of the decade whining that civil liberties had been swallowed up by paranoia over terrorism. Meanwhile they were swallowing up civil liberties by paranoia over absolutely everything else. Terrorism and crime are the only two threats that liberals don't think merit restricting civil liberties for. In their eyes, 9/11 wasn't as big a threat to America as an extra-large Coke.

Why bother fighting Al-Qaeda, when we can fight plastic bags. It's time to stop locking up terrorists and time to start locking up ice cream men. The War on Terror has given way to the War on Obesity and the War on Everything Else.  

Today, we need an ID to buy cough syrup, but not to vote. New York is considering legalizing marijuana but is busy outlawing soda. Los Angeles has already legalized marijuana but outlawed plastic bags. If this goes on, ten years from now heroin will be legal, but ketchup, sneakers and free speech will be considered offenses against the state. But that's when happens when the people making the law smoke pot but don't use plastic bags. When they understand gay marriage but not why anyone would be so gauche as to order a large soda.

This is where it's ending up, but this is not where it began. How many people were concerned when farmers were being arrested for selling unpasteurized milk? That was a "legitimate" public health issue because it barred people from making their own decisions about what kind of milk they wanted to drink. And now we have an array of "legitimate" public health issues that are being crammed down our throat. Like in the Soviet Union, first they come for the farmers, then they come for everyone else.

In Wickard v. Filburn, it was established that Roscoe Filburn couldn't grow wheat for his own use on his own land, because the government said he couldn't. The case was based on FDR's Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, which replaced the even more unconstitutional Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, which began the collectivization of the American farmer, right around the same time that Franklin's good buddy in Moscow, "Uncle Joe," was hard at work on the same task. 

Now here we are in 2012 seventy years after Wickard v. Filburn, and we have as much control over the food we eat, as Roscoe Filburn did over his land. The left begins by seizing control of the means of production, only to control those who consume the production. Now that the means of producing food are seized, we are being told what we can and can't eat, and how we may and may not transport it home from the store. The last stop on the train is to tell us how to use the bathroom. And if there is anything that a government which cannot control its spending is expert at, it's waste management.

A government that begins by telling the people what to eat will end with a state so vast that it eats up the people, their substance, their freedom and their very lives. 

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/