By Caroline Glick
Have American Jews abandoned Israel in favor of President Obama? This is a central question in the minds of Israelis today.
In a poll of Israeli Jews conducted in mid-June by the Jerusalem Post, a mere 6 percent of respondents said they view Obama as pro-Israel. In stark contrast, a Gallup tracking poll in early May showed that 79 percent of American Jews support the president.
These numbers seem to tell us that U.S. Jews have indeed parted company with the Jewish state.
No American president has ever been viewed as similarly ill disposed toward Israel by Israelis. With only 6 percent seeing the administration as friendly, it is apparent that distrust of Obama is not a partisan issue in Israel. It spans the spectrum from far left to right, from ultra-Orthodox to ultra-secular. But with his 79-percent approval rating among U.S. Jews, it is clear the American Jewish community is quite sympathetically inclined toward Obama.
Appearances of course can be deceptive. And it is worth taking a closer look at the numbers to understand what they tell us about American Jewish sentiments regarding Obama and Israel. First, however, we should consider what it is about Obama that makes nearly all Israeli Jews view him as an adversary.
The Jerusalem Post poll showed a massive divergence between Israeli Jews and Obama on the issue of Jewish building beyond the 1949 armistice line. The Obama administration has refused to budge in its hard-line demand that Israel end all Jewish building in north, south, and east Jerusalem as well as in Judea and Samaria.
For its part, the Netanyahu government has refused to bow to this demand. Seventy percent of Israeli Jews support the Netanyahu government's handling of the issue with the Obama administration and 69 percent oppose a freeze on Jewish building.
Beyond Obama's agitation on the issue of Jewish construction, Israelis are dismayed by what they perceive as the generally hostile approach he has adopted in dealing with the Jewish state. This approach was nowhere more in evidence than in his speech to the Islamic world in Cairo on June 4.
It wasn't just Obama's comparison of Palestinian terrorism to the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, the American civil rights movement and antebellum slave rebellions that set people off. There was also Obama's inference that Israel owes its legitimacy to the Holocaust.
It is that claim - Obama repeated it during his visit to Buchenwald - which forms the basis of the Islamic narrative against Israel. It argues that Jews are not indigenous to the Middle East, and that the only thing keeping Israel in place is European guilt about Auschwitz. Not only do Israelis of all political stripes reject this as factually false, they recognize it is inherently anti-Semitic because it ignores and negates 3,500 years of Jewish history in the land of Israel.
With Israeli distrust of Obama so apparent, and so easily explained, two questions arise: How has Obama managed to maintain American Jewish support despite his unprecedented unpopularity in Israel? And what is the likelihood that when push comes to shove, American Jews will stand with Israel against the president they so admire?
Obama's great success in maintaining support among American Jews owes much to the fact that most American Jews do not pick up the same messages from Obama's statements as do Israeli Jews. Whereas Israeli Jews recognize that it is morally obscene, strategically suicidal and historically inaccurate to suggest that Israel has no rights to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and that Jews have no right to live there, American Jews do not intuitively understand this to be the case. Consequently, while Israeli Jews recognize Obama's calls for a total freeze in Jewish construction in these areas as inherently hostile, most American Jews do not.
Beyond this, for the past 15 years, Holocaust education - more so than Zionist education or Jewish religious education - has become the hallmark of American Jewish identity. As a consequence, American Jews may not see anything objectionable in Obama's inference that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust.
If the divergence in U.S. Jewish and Israeli attitudes toward Obama is simply a consequence of a lack of American Jewish awareness of the significance of Obama's positions and policies for Israel, then the disparity in views can be easily remedied by a sustained issues awareness campaign by Israel and by American Jewish organizations. For many of Israel's core American Jewish supporters, such a campaign would no doubt go a long way in energizing them to challenge the administration on its positions vis-à-vis Israel.
But there are other factors at work. According to the American Jewish Committee's 2008 survey of American Jews, some 67 percent of American Jews feel close to Israel. These numbers, while high, are not significantly higher than similar support levels among the general U.S. population. (A survey of general American sentiment toward Israel conducted this month by the Israel Project shows that support for Israel has dropped by 20 percent in the past nine months - from 69 to 49 percent. Presumably, Jewish American support for Israel has also experienced a drop.)
More significantly, the AJC survey showed that in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential elections, only three percent of American Jews said a candidate's position on Israel was the most important issue for them. Indeed, according to survey after survey of American Jewish opinion over the past decade, U.S. Jewish support for Israel, while widespread, is not particularly deep. This sentiment lends to the conclusion that American Jews will not abandon or temper their support for Obama simply because he is perceived as being hostile to Israel.
The picture, then, is a mixed bag. Support for Israel against Obama will likely rise as a consequence of a sustained educational campaign among American Jews about the issues in dispute and their importance for Israel's security and national well-being. But even in that event, it is unclear how dramatic the shift would be. Given the shallowness of U.S. Jewish support for Israel, no doubt many American Jews will not care enough to reassess their positions on either Israel or Obama.
The one bit of encouraging news in all this is the persistence of support for Israel relative to Palestinians among rank and file Americans. Palestinians are supported by a mere five percent of Americans.
No doubt it is this disparity that is motivating leading Democratic politicians - most recently Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey - to publicly distance themselves from the administration's Mideast policies.
If U.S. Jewish leaders and pro-Israel activists can educate just a fraction of the American Jewish community, and motivate them to stand with Israel in a significant way against administration pressure, this will likely motivate still more lawmakers and politicians from both parties to maintain support for Israel against the administration. Certainly it will help convince Israelis we haven't been abandoned by American Jewry. And that in itself would be no mean achievement.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
An Israeli Professor comments....
Israeli Take on Obama's Policies
By Prof. Ira Sharkansky
Allow me to ride my horse somewhat further along the path of criticizing the Obama administration's campaign to stop all construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including some neighborhoods that have been part of Jerusalem for 40 years.
Recall that I do not claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim, some other kind of demon, or beholden to the Palestinians and other Arabs.
However, I wonder at an American president who says that he wants to engage with Iran, Palestine, and other Arab authorities, and is dictating the small details of policy that he insists that Israel adopt.
The absurdity is stark in the presence of Israel's democracy, with a high level of education and political interest among its citizens along with an active and critical media, in contrast with authoritarian governments, controlled media, and low levels of education in Muslim countries.
Obama is dictating to the democrats and engaging with dictators and religious fanatics. Israelis know their country's problems at least as well as Americans. They are more familiar with their country's problems of security than Americans are familiar with their own problems of security, and infinitely better informed about Israel's problems of security than are Americans. Jewish
education in security begins with concerns inherited along with family memories of persecution, along with the present realities of living in a small country that has been at war at least five times in its 60 year history, and maybe eight times, depending on what one counts as a war. Most Israeli adults have served in the military, with numerous men active in the reserves for 30 years. Their parents served, and much of the population over the age of 50 has children in the military. Israelis know the pressures and the imperfections of national defense. Endless discussions on radio, television and in the press keep them abreast of political maneuverings by officials of Israel and neighboring countries. Neither the perspectives of the military nor the government are anything close to monolithic. Israel's Jews debate military and political options, and are better equipped than anyone else to decide what is best for them.
The men and women who make policy for Israel have not sprung overnight or even in a few years from business, the universities, or local government. The story of Benyamin Netanyahu is not unusual among those at the pinnacle of government. He began his government career in 1982, was Ambassador to the United Nations 1984-88, elected to the Knesset in 1988, served as head of several ministries and an earlier term as prime minister. One does not have to admire his style of speaking or his body language to recognize that he has considerable experience, and currently has assembled a government supported by a substantial majority of the population. One can be suspicious about claims of a political mandate to follow one policy or another, insofar as voters choose their candidates or party for a variety of reasons. Yet it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Israeli electorate supports a government that is reluctant to move toward recognizing a Palestinian state or stop all construction in the settlements or Jerusalem's neighborhoods. Among the elements producing those postures are the intifada that began in 2000, seven years of rocket attacks from Gaza, and the widely perceived weakness, stubbornness, and unreliability of the Palestinians responsible for the West Bank.
Against this, Barack Obama's commitment to engage personally in the Middle East, and his pressuring Israel to halt all construction over the 1967 borders, appears naive in the extreme. He may be brilliant, but there is much that he does not appear to know, or to recognize. Likewise for his military and political advisers. Some of them may have learned Arabic and spent time in the Middle East, but they cannot compete with the street smarts of Israelis who have lived all their lives close to their neighbors, and who hear the comments of Arab leaders on a daily basis.
We can disagree about what is best for Israel. Israelis themselves disagree. My point is that Israelis are well enough informed to ponder the alternatives and decide for themselves how to deal with their challenges.
Among those challenges are the demands coming from American and European governments. (Those from other regions do not count for much.) No matter how ill informed and mistaken those demands appear to be, Israeli officials are careful not to ignore them.
Long ago the Jews learned how to deal with powerful others. Lesson #1 is not to annoy them.
What we hear in public are the efforts of Israel's prime minister and foreign minister to dissuade Americans and Europeans from demanding a total freeze on construction. So far the undiplomatic language from the Secretary of State and her spokespersons indicate that the message is not getting through.
Whether Israel or the United States wins this tussle, the greater test is how the Obama policy of engagement will work with the Palestinians, as well as with Iranians, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis. Others have tried before him. Humility is not widely recognized as a trait of Americans who think themselves capable of deciding what it best for others.
Past performance does not encourage optimism.
--------------------
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel
By Prof. Ira Sharkansky
Allow me to ride my horse somewhat further along the path of criticizing the Obama administration's campaign to stop all construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including some neighborhoods that have been part of Jerusalem for 40 years.
Recall that I do not claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim, some other kind of demon, or beholden to the Palestinians and other Arabs.
However, I wonder at an American president who says that he wants to engage with Iran, Palestine, and other Arab authorities, and is dictating the small details of policy that he insists that Israel adopt.
The absurdity is stark in the presence of Israel's democracy, with a high level of education and political interest among its citizens along with an active and critical media, in contrast with authoritarian governments, controlled media, and low levels of education in Muslim countries.
Obama is dictating to the democrats and engaging with dictators and religious fanatics. Israelis know their country's problems at least as well as Americans. They are more familiar with their country's problems of security than Americans are familiar with their own problems of security, and infinitely better informed about Israel's problems of security than are Americans. Jewish
education in security begins with concerns inherited along with family memories of persecution, along with the present realities of living in a small country that has been at war at least five times in its 60 year history, and maybe eight times, depending on what one counts as a war. Most Israeli adults have served in the military, with numerous men active in the reserves for 30 years. Their parents served, and much of the population over the age of 50 has children in the military. Israelis know the pressures and the imperfections of national defense. Endless discussions on radio, television and in the press keep them abreast of political maneuverings by officials of Israel and neighboring countries. Neither the perspectives of the military nor the government are anything close to monolithic. Israel's Jews debate military and political options, and are better equipped than anyone else to decide what is best for them.
The men and women who make policy for Israel have not sprung overnight or even in a few years from business, the universities, or local government. The story of Benyamin Netanyahu is not unusual among those at the pinnacle of government. He began his government career in 1982, was Ambassador to the United Nations 1984-88, elected to the Knesset in 1988, served as head of several ministries and an earlier term as prime minister. One does not have to admire his style of speaking or his body language to recognize that he has considerable experience, and currently has assembled a government supported by a substantial majority of the population. One can be suspicious about claims of a political mandate to follow one policy or another, insofar as voters choose their candidates or party for a variety of reasons. Yet it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Israeli electorate supports a government that is reluctant to move toward recognizing a Palestinian state or stop all construction in the settlements or Jerusalem's neighborhoods. Among the elements producing those postures are the intifada that began in 2000, seven years of rocket attacks from Gaza, and the widely perceived weakness, stubbornness, and unreliability of the Palestinians responsible for the West Bank.
Against this, Barack Obama's commitment to engage personally in the Middle East, and his pressuring Israel to halt all construction over the 1967 borders, appears naive in the extreme. He may be brilliant, but there is much that he does not appear to know, or to recognize. Likewise for his military and political advisers. Some of them may have learned Arabic and spent time in the Middle East, but they cannot compete with the street smarts of Israelis who have lived all their lives close to their neighbors, and who hear the comments of Arab leaders on a daily basis.
We can disagree about what is best for Israel. Israelis themselves disagree. My point is that Israelis are well enough informed to ponder the alternatives and decide for themselves how to deal with their challenges.
Among those challenges are the demands coming from American and European governments. (Those from other regions do not count for much.) No matter how ill informed and mistaken those demands appear to be, Israeli officials are careful not to ignore them.
Long ago the Jews learned how to deal with powerful others. Lesson #1 is not to annoy them.
What we hear in public are the efforts of Israel's prime minister and foreign minister to dissuade Americans and Europeans from demanding a total freeze on construction. So far the undiplomatic language from the Secretary of State and her spokespersons indicate that the message is not getting through.
Whether Israel or the United States wins this tussle, the greater test is how the Obama policy of engagement will work with the Palestinians, as well as with Iranians, Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis. Others have tried before him. Humility is not widely recognized as a trait of Americans who think themselves capable of deciding what it best for others.
Past performance does not encourage optimism.
--------------------
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, Israel
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
The Iranian people speak... the only question is what did they say?
One of the fascinating things about the demonstrations in Iranis the way both the press, and of course, the administration misunderstood them for so long.
As I have written in my blog for years now, one of the fascinating aspects of the Middle East, is that the so called moderate governments inevitably are controlling the most radicalized populations, e.g. Egypt, and the most radical governments tend to be controlling the most moderate populations, e.g. Iran.
However, the choice of candidates in the Iranian elections was between hardliner, hardliner, and hardliner.
What was really going on was that the old guard, principally led behind the scenes by former President Rafshanjani, was chafing at the way they had been pushed out by the young Turks led by Ahmadinejad.
So, there was really no benefit to be had for us whoever won.
This is in addition to the fact that the country is run by the Ayatollah, anyway. As evidenced by the violent and anti semitic speech by Khameini this week which demonstrated that all Ahmadinejad has been doing is mouthing the policies dictated to him.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the protests.
While titularly about the votes for Mousavi, they were really about the Iranian people's desire to return to a Western style life.
Memories of the terror and repression of the Shah have largely been forgotten. What is remembered is the freedoms, the Western lifestyle that was enjoyed.
Add to that the new generations desire for these things, and you get the grass roots movement that was basically ignored by Clinton, and almost totally by Bush. Although the Bush doctrine of promoting democracy around the world, clearly had an impact.
What is also lost on the pundits, both in government and out, is the VAST difference between the Persians and the Arabs, and not just in Shia versus Sunni Islam.
The irony is that a democratic Iran would inevitably be one of the US and Israel's greatest allies BECAUSE of the historic Persian distrust and dislike of the Arab peoples.
But where is our human rights, freedom loving President?
Oh right, he still wants to talk to the little Hitler.
Good thing, that.
As I have written in my blog for years now, one of the fascinating aspects of the Middle East, is that the so called moderate governments inevitably are controlling the most radicalized populations, e.g. Egypt, and the most radical governments tend to be controlling the most moderate populations, e.g. Iran.
However, the choice of candidates in the Iranian elections was between hardliner, hardliner, and hardliner.
What was really going on was that the old guard, principally led behind the scenes by former President Rafshanjani, was chafing at the way they had been pushed out by the young Turks led by Ahmadinejad.
So, there was really no benefit to be had for us whoever won.
This is in addition to the fact that the country is run by the Ayatollah, anyway. As evidenced by the violent and anti semitic speech by Khameini this week which demonstrated that all Ahmadinejad has been doing is mouthing the policies dictated to him.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the protests.
While titularly about the votes for Mousavi, they were really about the Iranian people's desire to return to a Western style life.
Memories of the terror and repression of the Shah have largely been forgotten. What is remembered is the freedoms, the Western lifestyle that was enjoyed.
Add to that the new generations desire for these things, and you get the grass roots movement that was basically ignored by Clinton, and almost totally by Bush. Although the Bush doctrine of promoting democracy around the world, clearly had an impact.
What is also lost on the pundits, both in government and out, is the VAST difference between the Persians and the Arabs, and not just in Shia versus Sunni Islam.
The irony is that a democratic Iran would inevitably be one of the US and Israel's greatest allies BECAUSE of the historic Persian distrust and dislike of the Arab peoples.
But where is our human rights, freedom loving President?
Oh right, he still wants to talk to the little Hitler.
Good thing, that.
Happy Birthday America!! Really?
In what is an almost impossible to believe move, HRH Obama has invited Iranian diplomats from around the world to come to American Embassies on July 4th.
When asked today if the recent events in Iran affected this invitation he said no.
When asked if the fact that we didn't even have diplomatic relations with Iran might make a difference, he essentially harumphed and avoided the question.
I am simply astounded. I have lost the ability to describe my offense at the behaviour of this man.
As I pointed out during the campaign, there is a segment of the Democratic pary that genuinely thinks that the US is a force for evil. That we are an hegemonistic, colonial power.
I warned that you would hear this kind of language and, of course, you have.
But I can think of nothing more disgusting than this move.
Of couse, what Obama and his minions have scrupolously avoided discussing is the Ayatollah Khameini's speech the other day.
What are they not discussing?
Well, just like his stepchild, President Ahmadinejad, Khameini blamed the demonstrations on the Zionist conspiracy, and added his own bit Holocaust denial.
Yup, let's invite him to our birthday party.
When asked today if the recent events in Iran affected this invitation he said no.
When asked if the fact that we didn't even have diplomatic relations with Iran might make a difference, he essentially harumphed and avoided the question.
I am simply astounded. I have lost the ability to describe my offense at the behaviour of this man.
As I pointed out during the campaign, there is a segment of the Democratic pary that genuinely thinks that the US is a force for evil. That we are an hegemonistic, colonial power.
I warned that you would hear this kind of language and, of course, you have.
But I can think of nothing more disgusting than this move.
Of couse, what Obama and his minions have scrupolously avoided discussing is the Ayatollah Khameini's speech the other day.
What are they not discussing?
Well, just like his stepchild, President Ahmadinejad, Khameini blamed the demonstrations on the Zionist conspiracy, and added his own bit Holocaust denial.
Yup, let's invite him to our birthday party.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Media gives up without a fight....
Well, it finally happened. No more pretense. No last dying gasp of objectivity.
No cries of "but really...."
It is now officially state controlled media to go along with state controlled every thing else.
We are all now officially living in a totalitarian state.
Why do I say this?
ABC news announced today that next week, on June 24th, the World News Tonight will be broadcast FROM the White House, devoted exclusively to coverage, with HRH Obama of his new health care plan.
Funny, but I don't remember them doing this when Clinton tried to change health care.
In addition to the evening news with Charles (he prefers Charlie, to make you think he's a regular guy) Gibson, ALL their programs that day, starting with "Good Morning Obamastan.... er America"
will be devoted to this effort.
No cries of "but really...."
It is now officially state controlled media to go along with state controlled every thing else.
We are all now officially living in a totalitarian state.
Why do I say this?
ABC news announced today that next week, on June 24th, the World News Tonight will be broadcast FROM the White House, devoted exclusively to coverage, with HRH Obama of his new health care plan.
Funny, but I don't remember them doing this when Clinton tried to change health care.
In addition to the evening news with Charles (he prefers Charlie, to make you think he's a regular guy) Gibson, ALL their programs that day, starting with "Good Morning Obamastan.... er America"
will be devoted to this effort.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Betcha didn't notice...
Most people don't realize that when we discuss the national debt, or deficit, what we are talking about is the sale of Treasuries. Bill, notes, and bonds (the name is determined by the length of the IOU to maturity).
Well, the most recent sale of the Treasuries was last week and was an unmitigated disaster.
What this means is that at current interest rates (and this is not the "Fed funds rate" you hear about at the FOMC meetings, but the current, principally 30 or 10 year, rate) no one was interested in buying our debt.
What this means, and it is not a speculation, but actual fact, is inflation of the deficit and debt beyond what is currently projected.
Why? Because we will have to finance at higher interest rates. In other words, to borrow $10 dollars may now cost us 60 cents as opposed to 50. Extrapolate that to 10 TRILLION dollars and you get an idea of just how big a deal this is.
As I have often said, the brilliance of Clinton and his economic team, lay in their understanding of the association of long term interest rates with the overall economic health of the country.
Worse, the Russians have announced that they are going to fight the use of the Dollar as the international currency exchange.
This would be an unmitigated disaster.
The single biggest issue for the Obama administration, economically, should be to cut the DEBT.
Well, the most recent sale of the Treasuries was last week and was an unmitigated disaster.
What this means is that at current interest rates (and this is not the "Fed funds rate" you hear about at the FOMC meetings, but the current, principally 30 or 10 year, rate) no one was interested in buying our debt.
What this means, and it is not a speculation, but actual fact, is inflation of the deficit and debt beyond what is currently projected.
Why? Because we will have to finance at higher interest rates. In other words, to borrow $10 dollars may now cost us 60 cents as opposed to 50. Extrapolate that to 10 TRILLION dollars and you get an idea of just how big a deal this is.
As I have often said, the brilliance of Clinton and his economic team, lay in their understanding of the association of long term interest rates with the overall economic health of the country.
Worse, the Russians have announced that they are going to fight the use of the Dollar as the international currency exchange.
This would be an unmitigated disaster.
The single biggest issue for the Obama administration, economically, should be to cut the DEBT.
More "change"
Once again, echoing the worst of the Bush administration, HRH Obama has decided that the White House Visitor's logs are privileged.
What that means is you can't find out who came and went.
Change you can believe in.
What that means is you can't find out who came and went.
Change you can believe in.
If it weren't so funny...
I'd scream!!
Isn't it nice to know you're paying for the first released Guantanomo prisoners, the so called "wiggers" to live in a resort in Bermuda?
Where can I sign up for that deal?
Isn't it nice to know you're paying for the first released Guantanomo prisoners, the so called "wiggers" to live in a resort in Bermuda?
Where can I sign up for that deal?
Saturday, June 13, 2009
The 4 Horseman of the Apocalypse.... or Obama
Betcha didn't know that George Mitchell and his staff are now part of the Israeli government?
That's right, unlike any special Middle East envoy for any other President, Obama has now bought him permanent office space in Jerusalem.
Why? Because he now has a staff there and there are members of his staff supervising EVERY department of the Israeli government.
Particularly the security apparatus.
Why? Furthering Obama's contention that it is only Israel that is preventing peace.
Wonder what he will think when the Israelis, as they have done over and over and over and over and over and over and over, give up whatever it is that Obama wants them to, and he discovers that the bombings and the Jew murders continue?
Anyway, there are 4 heads that have been installed. Each one more pro Palestinian than the next.
1) Mara Rudman is the head of the George Soros funded (the man whose goal it is to eliminate Israel from the world and yes, he's a Jew and a Holocaust survivor. He blames the Holocaust on his Jewishness) Center for American Progress.
2) Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton who has been training Palestinian security forces for some time and who recently said that it is likely that the Palestinians would use those weapons and training against the Israelis if they do not allow "Judenfrie" (jewfree) state in Judea and Samaria.
3) Fred Hoff, who has led the charge in the Obama administration for renewing ties with Syria, that bastion of international terrorism and the murderer of the Lebanese President and who demands that the Israelis give up the Golan Heights.
4) David Hale, the architect of the plan to build up Hizbollah, under the guise of the "Lebanese Army" creating yet another official state sponsor of the "destroy Israel" policy.
All of these appointments continue to make abundantly clear the Obama agenda.
Give away enough land, and what is left of Israel is the dessert. But that won't work either because it will be intersected by this new path from Gaza to the west bank.
So, in other words, as I have been saying... No Israel.
That's right, unlike any special Middle East envoy for any other President, Obama has now bought him permanent office space in Jerusalem.
Why? Because he now has a staff there and there are members of his staff supervising EVERY department of the Israeli government.
Particularly the security apparatus.
Why? Furthering Obama's contention that it is only Israel that is preventing peace.
Wonder what he will think when the Israelis, as they have done over and over and over and over and over and over and over, give up whatever it is that Obama wants them to, and he discovers that the bombings and the Jew murders continue?
Anyway, there are 4 heads that have been installed. Each one more pro Palestinian than the next.
1) Mara Rudman is the head of the George Soros funded (the man whose goal it is to eliminate Israel from the world and yes, he's a Jew and a Holocaust survivor. He blames the Holocaust on his Jewishness) Center for American Progress.
2) Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton who has been training Palestinian security forces for some time and who recently said that it is likely that the Palestinians would use those weapons and training against the Israelis if they do not allow "Judenfrie" (jewfree) state in Judea and Samaria.
3) Fred Hoff, who has led the charge in the Obama administration for renewing ties with Syria, that bastion of international terrorism and the murderer of the Lebanese President and who demands that the Israelis give up the Golan Heights.
4) David Hale, the architect of the plan to build up Hizbollah, under the guise of the "Lebanese Army" creating yet another official state sponsor of the "destroy Israel" policy.
All of these appointments continue to make abundantly clear the Obama agenda.
Give away enough land, and what is left of Israel is the dessert. But that won't work either because it will be intersected by this new path from Gaza to the west bank.
So, in other words, as I have been saying... No Israel.
Friday, June 12, 2009
The Shooting, Anti-Semitism and Blogging
Lincoln Mitchell
Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics, Columbia University
I am preparing myself for the comments to this post and am not expecting to feel good about what I read. However, I welcome this exercise in free speech and will read and think about even the most hateful comments. I would hope that all who read this post will approach it in that same spirit.
The shooting at the Holocaust Museum, and killing of Stephen Tyrone Johns yesterday is a terrible event and a reminder that words do occasionally lead to deeds. It is good to see so many progressive voices, on the Huffington Post and elsewhere, condemning this bigoted and twisted act of violence. However, much of the analysis of this incident seems to skirt a more troubling and confounding question.
That question is whether or not it is possible to reconcile our anger and disgust about this incident with the constant drumbeat not so much of anti-Israel rhetoric, but of the suggestion of, for lack of a more delicate way of saying it, a Jewish cabal driving American foreign policy, that one often finds in the comment section of this and other "progressive" websites? I recognize that this is a confrontational, not very pleasant, and perhaps even rude, question, but the point should not be ignored. You can't have it both ways, expressing righteous indignation when a white supremacist attempts to shoot visitors to the Holocaust Museum, while no longer being startled by the suggestion that the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States as well as millions of hard working, tax paying and voting Americans somehow don't have America's best interest in mind and are disloyal to their country, because of their support for Israel. Nonetheless, these suggestions are made almost daily in the comments section of this website.
The notion that one can be critical of Israeli policy without being anti-Semitic is, of course, true. Many, if not most, American Jews are critical of various aspects of Israeli policy while being far from anti-Semitic. However, the logic of this must end somewhere because too often this truism is interpreted to mean that anti-Israel sentiment can never be anti-Semitic. When it is suggested that Jews are subverting or controlling American foreign policy, putting what is good for Israel ahead of what is good for the US, or hoodwinking good Christians into supporting Israel, the criticism is no longer targeted on Israel. While one can criticize Israel without being an anti-Semite, suggestions of Jewish conspiracies or that Jews are not loyal citizens cannot so easily be made without being anti-Semitic. Historically, these have been at the core of the very definition of anti-Semitism
It is not just criticism of Israel that is the issue here. It is the regularity with which, in these comments and elsewhere, virtually every foreign policy issue is related back to Israel and somehow the Jews are blamed. Some friends and I play a game with foreign policy blogs on the Huffington Post where we try to guess how long it will take before Israel or the Jews are mentioned. Usually this occurs by the tenth comment, regardless of the ostensible topic of the piece in question. This is an obsession that is not healthy and goes beyond simply garden variety criticism of Israel.
Obviously the people making those comments are not going out and trying to kill Jews, but it is both a symptom and a contributing cause of a climate which facilitates, and which will very possibly continue to facilitate, violence of the sort we saw Wednesday.
This is an issue which should be of concern to all of the readers, bloggers, commenters and others who consider ourselves part of the Huffington Post community. We are all guilty of something, possibly hypocrisy, neglect or moral cowardice when we let these comments go unanswered and then loudly condemn acts of violence targeted at Jews. The connection, while not direct, is real. Those of us who call ourselves progressives have a special responsibility to speak out against bigotry in all forms, even when it starts out as being against Israel and seeps into anti-Semitism.
I must confess that I have not been a profile in moral courage on this either. I am a professor of international politics who no longer writes on foreign affairs on the Huffington Post because I got tired of reading comments, on mine and other posts, which reduced so many issues to being about the Jews. For example, I am a prominent scholar who is broadly published and quoted on Georgia, but it was only after reading the comments section of my piece on this website about the Georgia-Russia war last August that I learned that conflict too was the fault of the Jews.
Criticism of Israel, as well as any other country, should be legitimate and important parts of our political dialog. Similarly, probing the value and nature of American relationships with all foreign countries is also important. Upon this we should all be able to agree. We should also all be able to agree that attempting to murder people for the crime of visiting a museum lies outside any notion of morality. Unfortunately, history has shown us that blaming Jews and imagining cabals and conspiracies has been a bridge between these kinds of things. Today, while we in the Huffington Post community may be relieved that the shooter was a right wing white supremacist, we should ask ourselves how we would feel if the shooter was a left-wing anti-Israel fanatic and then have the integrity and honesty to recognize the future possibility and danger of that happening.
Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics, Columbia University
I am preparing myself for the comments to this post and am not expecting to feel good about what I read. However, I welcome this exercise in free speech and will read and think about even the most hateful comments. I would hope that all who read this post will approach it in that same spirit.
The shooting at the Holocaust Museum, and killing of Stephen Tyrone Johns yesterday is a terrible event and a reminder that words do occasionally lead to deeds. It is good to see so many progressive voices, on the Huffington Post and elsewhere, condemning this bigoted and twisted act of violence. However, much of the analysis of this incident seems to skirt a more troubling and confounding question.
That question is whether or not it is possible to reconcile our anger and disgust about this incident with the constant drumbeat not so much of anti-Israel rhetoric, but of the suggestion of, for lack of a more delicate way of saying it, a Jewish cabal driving American foreign policy, that one often finds in the comment section of this and other "progressive" websites? I recognize that this is a confrontational, not very pleasant, and perhaps even rude, question, but the point should not be ignored. You can't have it both ways, expressing righteous indignation when a white supremacist attempts to shoot visitors to the Holocaust Museum, while no longer being startled by the suggestion that the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States as well as millions of hard working, tax paying and voting Americans somehow don't have America's best interest in mind and are disloyal to their country, because of their support for Israel. Nonetheless, these suggestions are made almost daily in the comments section of this website.
The notion that one can be critical of Israeli policy without being anti-Semitic is, of course, true. Many, if not most, American Jews are critical of various aspects of Israeli policy while being far from anti-Semitic. However, the logic of this must end somewhere because too often this truism is interpreted to mean that anti-Israel sentiment can never be anti-Semitic. When it is suggested that Jews are subverting or controlling American foreign policy, putting what is good for Israel ahead of what is good for the US, or hoodwinking good Christians into supporting Israel, the criticism is no longer targeted on Israel. While one can criticize Israel without being an anti-Semite, suggestions of Jewish conspiracies or that Jews are not loyal citizens cannot so easily be made without being anti-Semitic. Historically, these have been at the core of the very definition of anti-Semitism
It is not just criticism of Israel that is the issue here. It is the regularity with which, in these comments and elsewhere, virtually every foreign policy issue is related back to Israel and somehow the Jews are blamed. Some friends and I play a game with foreign policy blogs on the Huffington Post where we try to guess how long it will take before Israel or the Jews are mentioned. Usually this occurs by the tenth comment, regardless of the ostensible topic of the piece in question. This is an obsession that is not healthy and goes beyond simply garden variety criticism of Israel.
Obviously the people making those comments are not going out and trying to kill Jews, but it is both a symptom and a contributing cause of a climate which facilitates, and which will very possibly continue to facilitate, violence of the sort we saw Wednesday.
This is an issue which should be of concern to all of the readers, bloggers, commenters and others who consider ourselves part of the Huffington Post community. We are all guilty of something, possibly hypocrisy, neglect or moral cowardice when we let these comments go unanswered and then loudly condemn acts of violence targeted at Jews. The connection, while not direct, is real. Those of us who call ourselves progressives have a special responsibility to speak out against bigotry in all forms, even when it starts out as being against Israel and seeps into anti-Semitism.
I must confess that I have not been a profile in moral courage on this either. I am a professor of international politics who no longer writes on foreign affairs on the Huffington Post because I got tired of reading comments, on mine and other posts, which reduced so many issues to being about the Jews. For example, I am a prominent scholar who is broadly published and quoted on Georgia, but it was only after reading the comments section of my piece on this website about the Georgia-Russia war last August that I learned that conflict too was the fault of the Jews.
Criticism of Israel, as well as any other country, should be legitimate and important parts of our political dialog. Similarly, probing the value and nature of American relationships with all foreign countries is also important. Upon this we should all be able to agree. We should also all be able to agree that attempting to murder people for the crime of visiting a museum lies outside any notion of morality. Unfortunately, history has shown us that blaming Jews and imagining cabals and conspiracies has been a bridge between these kinds of things. Today, while we in the Huffington Post community may be relieved that the shooter was a right wing white supremacist, we should ask ourselves how we would feel if the shooter was a left-wing anti-Israel fanatic and then have the integrity and honesty to recognize the future possibility and danger of that happening.
The iPod and the Queen, the Kindle and the King
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Former Dutch Parliamentarian
Posted: June 10, 2009 06:15 PM
It was not an April Fools' joke. When President Barack Obama met with the Queen of the Commonwealth at Buckingham Palace, he gave her an iPod. Last week, I was half expecting the president to show up in the Middle East laden with Kindles.
He could have started with a special reading selection when he met Saudi King Abdullah. The day after, when the president spoke to the Muslim world at Al-Azhar University, I pictured him handing out another Kindle to Muhammed Sayyid Tantawy, the university's grand sheikh. Obama might have had a third Kindle for the ambassador of Iran to Egypt (for this man represents the ayatollah, who is the highest authority for Shia Muslims), who attended the presidential address.
Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one. The king of Saudi Arabia; the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar University (the largest, and in the eyes of many Muslim scholars, most prestigious Islamic center of learning); and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran all make equal claims to represent the heart and soul of the umma.
They have their differences. The king is the protector of the holy shrine of Islam and a political leader. The grand sheikh has no formal political power, but it is not an exaggeration to say his institution is one of the most influential in the Muslim world. And Iran not only claims spiritual power but pursues political and military dominance. The issue of who speaks for Islam is perhaps the worst nightmare for the U.S.; this is not fully appreciated by the crafters of American foreign policy. This makes a discussion of the relationship between Islam and the West much more problematic than the president's speechwriters realize.
Like former U.S. presidents, Obama denounced Islamic extremism without once associating Islam with extremism. He firmly stated that America is not at war with Islam and will never be; and he invited the Muslim world to join hands with the U.S. to fight extremism tooth and nail.
However, Islamic extremism can be read in two ways. The first is in its foreign policy implications for the United States -- that is, in its expansionist or jihadi meaning. Al-Qaida-like attacks on American soil against Americans or American interests will be met with force, the president promised. That's an easy position to take because for the United States; it's a position of self-defense. It is not America that is at war with Islam. It is Islam that is at war with America.
The second sense of the word "extremism," used many times by the president, is as a euphemism for the application of Islamic law, or sharia, in Muslim countries. This, the president evidently hopes to counter by wooing the Muslim street.
The courtship articulated in his speech was peppered with false praise (". . . it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed . . . our mastery of pens and printing"), feigned common principles and made ridiculous promises to fight negative stereotyping of Islam wherever he encounters it.
This is all part of political rhetoric, but it really doesn't lead to concrete change. This, in my view, is the wrong strategy. Instead of pretending that Muslims invented printing, the president should be confronting them with the key products of the Western printing press. And it's here that Kindles really could be of use.
I imagined him offering the king, the sheikh and the ayatollah each a Kindle with Abraham Lincoln's passionate case that he made against slavery and for equality. Obama reminded the Muslim world that "black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding."
Nowhere in the world is bigotry so rampant as in Muslim countries. No difference is greater between American and Islamic principles than the founding ideals of both. It is on the basis of the founding ideals of Islam that al-Qaida and other Muslim puritans insist on the implementation of sharia law, jihad and the eternal subjection of women. It is on the basis of the founding ideals of America that blacks and women fought for -- and gained -- equal rights and gays and new immigrants continue to do so. I wish the president were so candid as to say that. But, perhaps, that is something for a later stage in the courtship.
I would also include Thomas Jefferson's improvements on the New Testament. The king, the sheikh and the ayatollah might not cut and paste the Quran, but together they have the authority to rule that parts of the Holy Book no longer apply in the modern world. For instance, the edicts of sharia law that reject innovation and scientific inquiry and order all Muslims to spread Islam.
Of course, no reading selection would be complete without a copy of the United States Constitution, highlighting (because you can do that in a Kindle) the Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment.
And for good measure, I would also add JFK's inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. . . . To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required. . . . To those nations who would make themselves our adversary ... (w)e dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. . . . Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Not to mention woman.
Obama promised to launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim majority countries to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create more jobs. Does he realize that the transfer of ideas also creates opportunities for the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Saudi Arabia to punish the practice of un-Islamic ideas?
That poor girl in Qatif, Saudi Arabia, who, after seven men raped her, was sentenced to flogging, had succumbed to the novel idea of flirting by cell phone. In the Kingdom, every Friday, cruel and unusual punishment is perpetrated, far worse than anything John Adams saw in his time. The hands of those suspected of stealing -- mostly poor, immigrant workers -- are amputated.
The more one is dark-skinned in Saudi Arabia, the bleaker his circumstances, not to mention hers. For in the Kingdom, black is still considered to be inferior. Men and women convicted of adultery, apostasy, treason and other "offenses" are beheaded. Thousands of women are rotting in Saudi jails, waiting to be flogged, or are flogged daily for acts such as mingling with men, improper attire, fornication and virtual relationships on the Internet and cell phones.
Promotion of literacy for girls, which the president wants to help pursue, is a noble cause. But, unless sharia laws are repealed, more girls will find themselves in flogging pens rather than rising up the career ladder.
Barack Obama, a historic president in a historic moment, promised to host a summit of entrepreneurship in Muslim-majority countries "to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Muslim countries around the world."
I wish he would host a reading summit where we truly "say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts that too often are said only behind closed doors." For too many of us born into Islam, saying those things openly can land us in jail or in the graveyard.
Former Dutch Parliamentarian
Posted: June 10, 2009 06:15 PM
It was not an April Fools' joke. When President Barack Obama met with the Queen of the Commonwealth at Buckingham Palace, he gave her an iPod. Last week, I was half expecting the president to show up in the Middle East laden with Kindles.
He could have started with a special reading selection when he met Saudi King Abdullah. The day after, when the president spoke to the Muslim world at Al-Azhar University, I pictured him handing out another Kindle to Muhammed Sayyid Tantawy, the university's grand sheikh. Obama might have had a third Kindle for the ambassador of Iran to Egypt (for this man represents the ayatollah, who is the highest authority for Shia Muslims), who attended the presidential address.
Unlike the United Kingdom or the Commonwealth, the umma, or Muslim community, has no symbolic leader, let alone a formal one. The king of Saudi Arabia; the grand sheikh of Al-Azhar University (the largest, and in the eyes of many Muslim scholars, most prestigious Islamic center of learning); and the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran all make equal claims to represent the heart and soul of the umma.
They have their differences. The king is the protector of the holy shrine of Islam and a political leader. The grand sheikh has no formal political power, but it is not an exaggeration to say his institution is one of the most influential in the Muslim world. And Iran not only claims spiritual power but pursues political and military dominance. The issue of who speaks for Islam is perhaps the worst nightmare for the U.S.; this is not fully appreciated by the crafters of American foreign policy. This makes a discussion of the relationship between Islam and the West much more problematic than the president's speechwriters realize.
Like former U.S. presidents, Obama denounced Islamic extremism without once associating Islam with extremism. He firmly stated that America is not at war with Islam and will never be; and he invited the Muslim world to join hands with the U.S. to fight extremism tooth and nail.
However, Islamic extremism can be read in two ways. The first is in its foreign policy implications for the United States -- that is, in its expansionist or jihadi meaning. Al-Qaida-like attacks on American soil against Americans or American interests will be met with force, the president promised. That's an easy position to take because for the United States; it's a position of self-defense. It is not America that is at war with Islam. It is Islam that is at war with America.
The second sense of the word "extremism," used many times by the president, is as a euphemism for the application of Islamic law, or sharia, in Muslim countries. This, the president evidently hopes to counter by wooing the Muslim street.
The courtship articulated in his speech was peppered with false praise (". . . it was innovation in Muslim communities that developed . . . our mastery of pens and printing"), feigned common principles and made ridiculous promises to fight negative stereotyping of Islam wherever he encounters it.
This is all part of political rhetoric, but it really doesn't lead to concrete change. This, in my view, is the wrong strategy. Instead of pretending that Muslims invented printing, the president should be confronting them with the key products of the Western printing press. And it's here that Kindles really could be of use.
I imagined him offering the king, the sheikh and the ayatollah each a Kindle with Abraham Lincoln's passionate case that he made against slavery and for equality. Obama reminded the Muslim world that "black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding."
Nowhere in the world is bigotry so rampant as in Muslim countries. No difference is greater between American and Islamic principles than the founding ideals of both. It is on the basis of the founding ideals of Islam that al-Qaida and other Muslim puritans insist on the implementation of sharia law, jihad and the eternal subjection of women. It is on the basis of the founding ideals of America that blacks and women fought for -- and gained -- equal rights and gays and new immigrants continue to do so. I wish the president were so candid as to say that. But, perhaps, that is something for a later stage in the courtship.
I would also include Thomas Jefferson's improvements on the New Testament. The king, the sheikh and the ayatollah might not cut and paste the Quran, but together they have the authority to rule that parts of the Holy Book no longer apply in the modern world. For instance, the edicts of sharia law that reject innovation and scientific inquiry and order all Muslims to spread Islam.
Of course, no reading selection would be complete without a copy of the United States Constitution, highlighting (because you can do that in a Kindle) the Eighth Amendment banning cruel and unusual punishment.
And for good measure, I would also add JFK's inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. . . . To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required. . . . To those nations who would make themselves our adversary ... (w)e dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. . . . Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." Not to mention woman.
Obama promised to launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim majority countries to help transfer ideas to the marketplace so they can create more jobs. Does he realize that the transfer of ideas also creates opportunities for the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Saudi Arabia to punish the practice of un-Islamic ideas?
That poor girl in Qatif, Saudi Arabia, who, after seven men raped her, was sentenced to flogging, had succumbed to the novel idea of flirting by cell phone. In the Kingdom, every Friday, cruel and unusual punishment is perpetrated, far worse than anything John Adams saw in his time. The hands of those suspected of stealing -- mostly poor, immigrant workers -- are amputated.
The more one is dark-skinned in Saudi Arabia, the bleaker his circumstances, not to mention hers. For in the Kingdom, black is still considered to be inferior. Men and women convicted of adultery, apostasy, treason and other "offenses" are beheaded. Thousands of women are rotting in Saudi jails, waiting to be flogged, or are flogged daily for acts such as mingling with men, improper attire, fornication and virtual relationships on the Internet and cell phones.
Promotion of literacy for girls, which the president wants to help pursue, is a noble cause. But, unless sharia laws are repealed, more girls will find themselves in flogging pens rather than rising up the career ladder.
Barack Obama, a historic president in a historic moment, promised to host a summit of entrepreneurship in Muslim-majority countries "to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the U.S. and Muslim countries around the world."
I wish he would host a reading summit where we truly "say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts that too often are said only behind closed doors." For too many of us born into Islam, saying those things openly can land us in jail or in the graveyard.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
An Important Letter
Brigitte Gabriel is a Lebanese Christian woman thrown out of her home by Palestinians. You should read the letter below she wrote to Obama. It's called: Because they Hate.
Brigitte Gabriel - Letter to President Obama.
Dear Mr. President,
You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them.
I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are.
I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I'm sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a "student of history," it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts,
however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce.
A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion. With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam.
You began in your speech by asserting that "tensions" exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.
A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.
These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history, acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur'an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.
A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed's death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and
India, eventually creating an empire larger than Rome's was at its peak.
The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300 million. What's more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the "jizya," a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.
These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.
You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years.
Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.
The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence.
The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews?
What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?
What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only "crime" was allowing her students to name their teddy bears "Mohammed"?
What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund, or provide nurture to terrorist organizations?
What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels?
What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a church or synagogue?
To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other "root causes," most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.
Lastly, I must address your statement that "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance." Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule.
Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion.
For instance, Christians and Jews became "Dhimmis," a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad's Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later.
I witnessed first-hand the "tolerance" of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970's, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the "proud tradition" of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced in the cause of Islamic jihad.
Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world.
Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur'an and the Hadith. Who regard "infidels" as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting.
Who support "cultural jihad" as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur'an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam by force if necessary and bring it under the rule of Allah.
Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail.
Sincerely,
Brigitte Gabriel
Brigitte Gabriel - Letter to President Obama.
Dear Mr. President,
You face difficult challenges in matters such as achieving peace in the Middle East and protecting America from the threat of radical Islam and terrorism. These are challenges that have vexed past presidents, going as far back as our second president, John Adams. I have no doubt you appreciate both the gravity of these challenges and the enormous obstacles that exist to solving them.
I also have no doubt that you and your staff understood that, no matter what you said in your speech last Thursday in Cairo, there would be those who would take issue with you. That is always the case when attempting to solve problems that are as deep and emotionally-laden as these challenges are.
I am assuming it is your sincere hope that the approach you have chosen to take, as evidenced by what I'm sure was a carefully crafted speech, will ultimately prove successful. However, it pains me to say this sir, but, while you said in your speech that you are a "student of history," it is abundantly clear that, in these matters, you do not know history and thus, as Santayana noted, you are doomed to repeat it. In doing so your efforts,
however well-intentioned they may be, will not produce what you profess to hope they will produce.
A wise man once said that if you start with the wrong assumptions, no matter how logical your reasoning is, you will end up with the wrong conclusion. With all due respect Mr. President, you are starting with certain assumptions that are unsupported by history and an objective study of the ideology of political Islam.
You began in your speech by asserting that "tensions" exist between the United States and Muslims around the world, which, of course, is correct. Unfortunately, you then proceeded, incorrectly, to lay virtually all the blame for these tensions at the feet of America and the West. You blamed western colonialism, the Cold War, and even modernity and globalism.
A student of American history, who is not trying to reconstruct it to fit a modern politically correct narrative, would state that tensions between America and Muslims began with the unprovoked, four-decades long assault by the Muslim Barbary pirates against American shipping in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I find it telling that you mentioned the Treaty of Tripoli in your speech but ignored the circumstances that led to it. That treaty was but one of numerous attempts by the United States to achieve peace with the jihadists of the Barbary Coast who were attacking our shipping and killing and enslaving our citizens and our soldiers and who by their own admission were doing so to fulfill the call to jihad.
These jihadists were not acting to protest American foreign policy, which was decidedly isolationist, and there was no state of Israel to scapegoat. They were doing what countless Islamic jihadists have done throughout history, acting upon the hundreds of passages in the Qur'an and the Hadith that call upon faithful Muslims to kill, conquer or subjugate the infidel.
A student of world history would know that, for all the acknowledged evils of Western colonialism, these evils pale in comparison to the nearly 14 centuries of Islamic colonialism that began in Arabia under the leadership of Mohammed. The student of history would know that Islamic forces eradicated all Jewish and Christian presence from Arabia after Mohammed's death, and then succeeded in conquering all of North Africa, most of the Middle East, much of Asia Minor, and significant portions of Europe and
India, eventually creating an empire larger than Rome's was at its peak.
The number of dead and enslaved during these many centuries of Islamic imperial conquest and colonialism have been estimated to total more than 300 million. What's more, the wealth of many of the conquered nations and cultures was plundered by the Islamic conquerors, and millions of non-Muslims who did survive were forced to pay onerous taxes, such as the "jizya," a humiliation tax to the Islamic caliphs. Indeed, in some areas Christians and Jews were made to wear a receipt for the jizya around their neck as a mark of their dishonor.
These facts have not been invented by Christian or Jewish historical revisionists, but were chronicled by Muslim eyewitnesses throughout the past 14 centuries and are available to be researched by any person seeking an objective understanding of how Islam spread throughout the world.
You say in your speech that we must squarely face the tensions that exist between America and the Muslim world. That is a laudable notion with which I agree, but by casting Islam as the historical victim and the West (and by implication, America) as the aggressor, you do not face these tensions squarely, but alleviate the Muslim world from coming to grips with the jihadist ideology embedded in its holy books and acted upon for 1,400 years.
Even worse, you empower and embolden militant Islamists who regard your gestures as signs of weakness and capitulation.
The issue is not that all Muslims are terrorists or radicals or extremists. We all know that the majority of Muslims are not. We also know that many peace-loving Muslims are victims of Islamist violence.
The issue is this: what drives hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide to call for the death of Jews?
What drives millions of Muslims to riot, destroy property, and take innocent lives in reaction to the Danish cartoons?
What drives tens of thousands of Muslims to demand the execution of a British teacher whose only "crime" was allowing her students to name their teddy bears "Mohammed"?
What drives countless Muslims worldwide to actively participate in, or fund, or provide nurture to terrorist organizations?
What drives Muslims in mosques in America to proclaim and distribute materials that call for hatred of and the destruction of infidels?
What drives entire Islamic countries to prohibit the building of a church or synagogue?
To assume, as you apparently do, that what drives these actions is not an ideology embedded in the holy books of Islam, but rather other "root causes," most of which you lay at the feet of America and the West, is at best naïve and at worst dangerous.
Lastly, I must address your statement that "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance." Unfortunately, the examples you gave are the exception rather than the rule.
Historically speaking, I seriously doubt the Egyptian Copts, the Lebanese Maronites, the Christians in Bethlehem, the Assyrians, the Hindus, the Jews, and many others who have been persecuted by Islamic violence and supremacism, would agree with your assertion.
For instance, Christians and Jews became "Dhimmis," a second class group under Islam. Dhimmis were forced to wear distinctive clothing; it was Baghdad's Caliph Al-Mutawakkil, in the ninth century, who designated a yellow badge for Jews under Islam, which Hitler copied and duplicated in Nazi Germany nearly a thousand years later.
I witnessed first-hand the "tolerance" of Islam when Islamists ravaged my country of birth, Lebanon, in the 1970's, leaving widespread death and destruction in their wake. I saw how they re-paid the tolerance that Lebanese Christians extended toward them. My experience is not an isolated one. When you make an unfounded assertion about the "proud tradition" of tolerance in Islam, you do a great disservice to the hundreds of millions of non-Muslims who have been killed, maimed, enslaved, conquered, subjugated or displaced in the cause of Islamic jihad.
Mr. President, those of us like me who are ringing the alarm in America about the threat of radical Islam would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world.
Most Americans would like nothing better than to peacefully co-exist with the Muslim world. The obstacle to achieving this does not lie with us in America and the West. It lies with the hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide, including many of their spiritual leaders, who take seriously the repeated calls to jihad in the Qur'an and the Hadith. Who regard "infidels" as inferior and worthy of conquering, subjugating and forcibly converting.
Who support "cultural jihad" as a means to subvert non-Muslim societies from within. Who take seriously the admonitions throughout the Qur'an and the Hadith to convert the world to Islam by force if necessary and bring it under the rule of Allah.
Unless you are willing to courageously and honestly accept this, your aspirations for worldwide comity and peace in the Middle East are doomed to fail.
Sincerely,
Brigitte Gabriel
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Steven Tyrone Johns.... RIP - Hero
Details will emerge in the next few hours and days, but by all accounts, Mr. Johns, the guard at the National Holocaust Museum, threw himself in the line of fire of the psychotic murderer whose intention it was to take as many bodies with him as possible.
It is no small coincidence, and irony, to me, that Johns is an African American, there to protect the Museum that, decorated with Eisenhower's statement of the danger of forgetting, commemorates the event that so many in his community, would claim never happened.
Mr. Johns life stands as a testament to that lie. And for that, as much as for his immediate heroism, we all owe him our eternal thanks.
He is, in fact, the latest victim of the Holocaust.
All thoughts and prayers go out to officer Johns, and his family. A truer hero there has not been.
To call him a great American would not be sufficient to ease the grief that his friends and family must be feeling tonight.
On a general note, I hate to say that I told you so, but as I have been discussing, the tenor of the country is so rabidly anti semitic now as to be truly frightening.
The story disappeared in hours, but it was only 10 days ago that a synagogue 10 miles from me was the subject of a conspiracy to kill Jews.
Fascism and hatred of the right is the same as of the left.
We all need to be vigilant.
One of the greatest concerns that I have is that the President's blame Israel policy will simply give a green light to this festering movement that I have seen all too up close and personally in this country.
I don't necessarily say that he is doing it with antisemitic motives (although I think it likely) but even just out of incredible ignorance.
As I pointed out in my post about his speech at Buchenwald, he failed to note the absolute desperation of the Germans to kill Jews, to the point of sacrificing the war itself to that end, as the days of the war came to an end.
This speaks to the level of hatred that continually festers, and that he has given a green light to.
As I have also written here many times, if you were to do an internet search on "Jew" or "Anti semitism" or any such term, what would come up are hundreds of thousands of web sites exactly like the one that this murderer posted. That in and of itself, speaks to the sheer volume of this hatred.
Be vigilant, America, be vigilant.
It is no small coincidence, and irony, to me, that Johns is an African American, there to protect the Museum that, decorated with Eisenhower's statement of the danger of forgetting, commemorates the event that so many in his community, would claim never happened.
Mr. Johns life stands as a testament to that lie. And for that, as much as for his immediate heroism, we all owe him our eternal thanks.
He is, in fact, the latest victim of the Holocaust.
All thoughts and prayers go out to officer Johns, and his family. A truer hero there has not been.
To call him a great American would not be sufficient to ease the grief that his friends and family must be feeling tonight.
On a general note, I hate to say that I told you so, but as I have been discussing, the tenor of the country is so rabidly anti semitic now as to be truly frightening.
The story disappeared in hours, but it was only 10 days ago that a synagogue 10 miles from me was the subject of a conspiracy to kill Jews.
Fascism and hatred of the right is the same as of the left.
We all need to be vigilant.
One of the greatest concerns that I have is that the President's blame Israel policy will simply give a green light to this festering movement that I have seen all too up close and personally in this country.
I don't necessarily say that he is doing it with antisemitic motives (although I think it likely) but even just out of incredible ignorance.
As I pointed out in my post about his speech at Buchenwald, he failed to note the absolute desperation of the Germans to kill Jews, to the point of sacrificing the war itself to that end, as the days of the war came to an end.
This speaks to the level of hatred that continually festers, and that he has given a green light to.
As I have also written here many times, if you were to do an internet search on "Jew" or "Anti semitism" or any such term, what would come up are hundreds of thousands of web sites exactly like the one that this murderer posted. That in and of itself, speaks to the sheer volume of this hatred.
Be vigilant, America, be vigilant.
Where is our Miltiades?
If you don't know who that is, look it up!!
One of the great things about a Columbia education is that you read most of the great works of western civilization.
I was in college, during the dark days of the Reagan Presidency.
My Contemporary Civilization Professor, was a Professor of European Intellectual History (one of the other great things about Columbia College is that full professors taught even the smallest of classes).
He used to scream at us, about the current administration (Reagan's):
Do you think any of these guys have read any of this? Do you think they have ever asked themselves these questions?
Well, when you understand who Miltiades is, you will understand why I posed that question above.
I have my ideas, but it is looking grim...
One of the great things about a Columbia education is that you read most of the great works of western civilization.
I was in college, during the dark days of the Reagan Presidency.
My Contemporary Civilization Professor, was a Professor of European Intellectual History (one of the other great things about Columbia College is that full professors taught even the smallest of classes).
He used to scream at us, about the current administration (Reagan's):
Do you think any of these guys have read any of this? Do you think they have ever asked themselves these questions?
Well, when you understand who Miltiades is, you will understand why I posed that question above.
I have my ideas, but it is looking grim...
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Suicide at Gitmo. Where's the coverage...
Once again the Obama administration managed to manage the news cycle.
Last week, a Yemeni detainee, who had allegedly been on a hunger strike, apparently committed suicide.
What is interesting is that there was a full press contingent (there for coverage of a military tribunal procedure) present at the camp at the time that it became known.
But the news was not released until immediately AFTER the press left.
hmmm, sound familiar?
Change you can believe in.
Last week, a Yemeni detainee, who had allegedly been on a hunger strike, apparently committed suicide.
What is interesting is that there was a full press contingent (there for coverage of a military tribunal procedure) present at the camp at the time that it became known.
But the news was not released until immediately AFTER the press left.
hmmm, sound familiar?
Change you can believe in.
Amazing - the Huffington Post criticizes press coverage of Obama....
Love or Lust, Obama and the Fawning Press Need to Get a Room
Phil Bronstein
Executive Vice President and Editor-at-Large, San Francisco Chronicle
Posted: June 8, 2009 07:06 PM
When Barack Obama decided that questions from the German press about his trip agenda in that country were too pesky, he told the reporters, "So, stop it all of you!" He just wanted them to ask things he wanted to talk about. Well, what politico wouldn't want that?
OK, dad. We'll behave.
And according to a new Pew Research Center poll, we are behaving...like fans. On domestic press, it showed that "President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House" with "roughly twice as much" Obama coverage about his "personal or leadership qualities" than was the case for either previous president.
Back in the US, NBC's Brian Williams' two-part "Living Large With the Top Dog" feature on Mr. Obama's life included a plug for Conan O'Brien's new show and mention of cable talkies where Mr. Obama only cited MSNBC personalities. Accident? I don't think so. There were a few probing moments in there, but they were overshadowed by the flash of hanging out in the back of the Auto One limo and having burgers. A little navel-gazing among journalism standards hall monitors about whether the thing had been too soft came and went.
Then, this Sunday in the NY Times, there was full-on chick-flick swooning over Barack and Michelle Obama's heavily scented "date night" in NY City and its high bar standard effect on our relationship culture, with just a hint of controversy over the taxpayer costs to add some spice. I swear I've seen this movie, only Michael Douglas was the president. Or Harrison Ford. Or one of those cool and languid characters you'd want to like you. George Bush needed to be beer-bar likable to get elected. His successor has managed to get a lot of people to want to be liked by him.
And in Paris, Mr. Obama talked about how he'd love to take his wife for a romantic tour of the City of Lovers, but couldn't. Then he did. I'm guessing some regular-Joe freedom fries weren't on the menu.
This guy is good. Really good. And, frankly, so far, we're not.
You can't blame powerful people for wanting to play the press to peddle self-perpetuating mythology. But you can blame the press, already suffocating under a massive pile of blame, guilt, heavy debt and sinking fortunes, for being played. Some of the time, it seems we're even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?
If I wanted to see highly manicured image management I'd just take some No-Doz and read Gavin Newsom's tweets. But the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we're the girl. (In California, there's no other option.)
I thought that the Maxfield Parrish, heroic days of the Kennedy Administration PR, where the press and the president were pretty much all in on the same screenplay and the same jokes, couldn't happen in our modern era, what with paparazzi and tabloids and talk shows, citizen sound-bite scavengers and voracious 24/7 news cycles. But now that the stumbling Bushes and smirking Clintons are out of the White House, time has compressed back on itself like the machine in the Denzel Washington movie, "Deja Vu." It's the early 1960s and Camelot all over again:
Very attractive wife, cute, precocious kids and the hopes and dreams of at least 63 percent of the population sitting on the athletic shoulders of a young, charismatic, mold-breaking leader, Blah, blah. (Oh, and a Chicago Mayor Richard Daley helped make it possible. We can play the Lincoln-Kennedy parallels game here.) Only there's a puppy now instead of a pony and it seems like Barack Obama may be less socially, self-destructively libertine than Mr. Kennedy. In fact, he's downright conservative on things like same-sex marriage. (It's smart to have a wholesome life -- though very clearly, in the sinuous world of the Obamas, not to the point of abstinence -- when you're pushing programs that get labeled as socialist.)
So we're in love, lust, or just a whole lot of like. Clearly we get something in exchange, whether it's a little reflected exuberance, a sense of history or just some very minor role in a fun movie. If you want to appear in a movie with John Travolta, you go willingly with him to the LA Scientology Center and are happy about it. "I'm clear, man. Hand me the cans."
I'm not sure Mr. Obama is necessarily getting away with anything here. In Cairo, when he spoke of the "principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," more than a few writers pointed out that this meant unless you're the Egyptian government or two gay people wanting to get married. What the president was saying overseas, to mostly purplish commentators' delight over the symbolic significance of the event, Dick Cheney was actually meaning in his own "freedom means freedom for everyone" speech about same-sex weddings.
The style-over-substance hit followed him from continent to continent. "While the president is popular among Europeans," the Wall Street Journal wrote, "he returned from his second trip to Europe with little more progress on key issues" than he got on his first visit. That's the Journal. But the Washington Post, where the John Kennedy myth was nurtured like a golden statue, managed a cautionary op-ed column from Robert Samuelson warning that "our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power." He meant checks from the press.
Samuelson was one of the few in the media to give some room to the Pew Research Center poll.
So far, this is all about image and character and press "opportunities." But with what CNN financial reporter Elizabeth Cohen called this morning "gazillions of dollars" of our money at stake and crazy people with nukes bristling from around the edges of the world, we can't afford not to keep a closer eye on the substance thing.
Phil Bronstein
Executive Vice President and Editor-at-Large, San Francisco Chronicle
Posted: June 8, 2009 07:06 PM
When Barack Obama decided that questions from the German press about his trip agenda in that country were too pesky, he told the reporters, "So, stop it all of you!" He just wanted them to ask things he wanted to talk about. Well, what politico wouldn't want that?
OK, dad. We'll behave.
And according to a new Pew Research Center poll, we are behaving...like fans. On domestic press, it showed that "President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House" with "roughly twice as much" Obama coverage about his "personal or leadership qualities" than was the case for either previous president.
Back in the US, NBC's Brian Williams' two-part "Living Large With the Top Dog" feature on Mr. Obama's life included a plug for Conan O'Brien's new show and mention of cable talkies where Mr. Obama only cited MSNBC personalities. Accident? I don't think so. There were a few probing moments in there, but they were overshadowed by the flash of hanging out in the back of the Auto One limo and having burgers. A little navel-gazing among journalism standards hall monitors about whether the thing had been too soft came and went.
Then, this Sunday in the NY Times, there was full-on chick-flick swooning over Barack and Michelle Obama's heavily scented "date night" in NY City and its high bar standard effect on our relationship culture, with just a hint of controversy over the taxpayer costs to add some spice. I swear I've seen this movie, only Michael Douglas was the president. Or Harrison Ford. Or one of those cool and languid characters you'd want to like you. George Bush needed to be beer-bar likable to get elected. His successor has managed to get a lot of people to want to be liked by him.
And in Paris, Mr. Obama talked about how he'd love to take his wife for a romantic tour of the City of Lovers, but couldn't. Then he did. I'm guessing some regular-Joe freedom fries weren't on the menu.
This guy is good. Really good. And, frankly, so far, we're not.
You can't blame powerful people for wanting to play the press to peddle self-perpetuating mythology. But you can blame the press, already suffocating under a massive pile of blame, guilt, heavy debt and sinking fortunes, for being played. Some of the time, it seems we're even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?
If I wanted to see highly manicured image management I'd just take some No-Doz and read Gavin Newsom's tweets. But the Obama-press dance is a more consensual seduction where, in the old-fashioned sense, we're the girl. (In California, there's no other option.)
I thought that the Maxfield Parrish, heroic days of the Kennedy Administration PR, where the press and the president were pretty much all in on the same screenplay and the same jokes, couldn't happen in our modern era, what with paparazzi and tabloids and talk shows, citizen sound-bite scavengers and voracious 24/7 news cycles. But now that the stumbling Bushes and smirking Clintons are out of the White House, time has compressed back on itself like the machine in the Denzel Washington movie, "Deja Vu." It's the early 1960s and Camelot all over again:
Very attractive wife, cute, precocious kids and the hopes and dreams of at least 63 percent of the population sitting on the athletic shoulders of a young, charismatic, mold-breaking leader, Blah, blah. (Oh, and a Chicago Mayor Richard Daley helped make it possible. We can play the Lincoln-Kennedy parallels game here.) Only there's a puppy now instead of a pony and it seems like Barack Obama may be less socially, self-destructively libertine than Mr. Kennedy. In fact, he's downright conservative on things like same-sex marriage. (It's smart to have a wholesome life -- though very clearly, in the sinuous world of the Obamas, not to the point of abstinence -- when you're pushing programs that get labeled as socialist.)
So we're in love, lust, or just a whole lot of like. Clearly we get something in exchange, whether it's a little reflected exuberance, a sense of history or just some very minor role in a fun movie. If you want to appear in a movie with John Travolta, you go willingly with him to the LA Scientology Center and are happy about it. "I'm clear, man. Hand me the cans."
I'm not sure Mr. Obama is necessarily getting away with anything here. In Cairo, when he spoke of the "principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," more than a few writers pointed out that this meant unless you're the Egyptian government or two gay people wanting to get married. What the president was saying overseas, to mostly purplish commentators' delight over the symbolic significance of the event, Dick Cheney was actually meaning in his own "freedom means freedom for everyone" speech about same-sex weddings.
The style-over-substance hit followed him from continent to continent. "While the president is popular among Europeans," the Wall Street Journal wrote, "he returned from his second trip to Europe with little more progress on key issues" than he got on his first visit. That's the Journal. But the Washington Post, where the John Kennedy myth was nurtured like a golden statue, managed a cautionary op-ed column from Robert Samuelson warning that "our political system works best when a president faces checks on his power." He meant checks from the press.
Samuelson was one of the few in the media to give some room to the Pew Research Center poll.
So far, this is all about image and character and press "opportunities." But with what CNN financial reporter Elizabeth Cohen called this morning "gazillions of dollars" of our money at stake and crazy people with nukes bristling from around the edges of the world, we can't afford not to keep a closer eye on the substance thing.
IAEA affirms Israeli fears
Friday night in Geneva the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed what the Israelis have been saying, if not worse.
That the Iranians will have the capability of producing a nuclear weapon before the end of the year at the Natanz nuclear facility.
This figure does not include any of the clandestine facilities that the IAEA has had no access to at all.
The following is a report:
According to the calculations of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency in its new report, Iran will be able to produce one nuclear bomb by the end of this year, doubling that figure in 2010. Military sources note that these estimates only apply to uranium enrichment at Natanz. They do not factor in the product of Iran's clandestine enrichment plants.
Friday night, June 5, officials in Vienna disclosed that Iran was found to have accumulated quantities of low-enriched uranium (1,339 kilos produced since November 2008 plus 839 kilos in stock) - enough to convert into the amount of high-enriched uranium needed for making a single nuclear bomb.
(On June 1, Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, director of Israeli military intelligence (AMAN) research division estimated that Iran will have accumulated enough fissile material to build its first nuclear bomb by the end of this year. Iran's nuclear clock, he said, is ticking away faster than international diplomacy.)
More than 7,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges were installed at Natanz, adding an extra 2,000 from February, the agency has found.
At this rate, 10,000 centrifuges will be spinning at Natanz with a capacity to enrich enough uranium for 2 bombs by the end of the year, double the IAEA's modest estimate by its own figures.
From January, when US president Barack Obama took office, Tehran has won a year's grace for developing its nuclear program. Direct dialogue on which he insists will not begin before July. Progress will be evaluated at year's end, a six-month deadline accepted by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Iran has therefore been granted plenty of time to make hay i.e. make nukes - free of diplomatic or military constraints.
The IAEA admits its investigations are stalled both in Iran and Syria, where its inspectors also reported Friday the discovery of new traces of man-made uranium near Damascus.
Iranian officials insist their nuclear program is peaceful and refuse to answer questions or cooperate in any way with UN inspectors. At one point in its new report, the IAEA asked for cameras with different wide-range angles for Natanz, indicating that even there, the Iranians are playing cat and mouse to conceal the real scale of their activities from view.
Damascus is similarly stonewalling on the international inspectors' inquiries about the new traces of man-made uranium particles. Military sources note that these particles could come from only two sources:
One is a new enrichment site. This site has reported repeatedly in the past year that Syria had secretly restarted its banned nuclear activities at three concealed locations which were constructed after Israel destroyed its unfinished plutonium reactor on Sept. 6, 2007.
Alternatively, Syria may be importing enriched uranium smuggled out of Iran, North Korea or Kazakhstan.
That the Iranians will have the capability of producing a nuclear weapon before the end of the year at the Natanz nuclear facility.
This figure does not include any of the clandestine facilities that the IAEA has had no access to at all.
The following is a report:
According to the calculations of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency in its new report, Iran will be able to produce one nuclear bomb by the end of this year, doubling that figure in 2010. Military sources note that these estimates only apply to uranium enrichment at Natanz. They do not factor in the product of Iran's clandestine enrichment plants.
Friday night, June 5, officials in Vienna disclosed that Iran was found to have accumulated quantities of low-enriched uranium (1,339 kilos produced since November 2008 plus 839 kilos in stock) - enough to convert into the amount of high-enriched uranium needed for making a single nuclear bomb.
(On June 1, Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, director of Israeli military intelligence (AMAN) research division estimated that Iran will have accumulated enough fissile material to build its first nuclear bomb by the end of this year. Iran's nuclear clock, he said, is ticking away faster than international diplomacy.)
More than 7,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges were installed at Natanz, adding an extra 2,000 from February, the agency has found.
At this rate, 10,000 centrifuges will be spinning at Natanz with a capacity to enrich enough uranium for 2 bombs by the end of the year, double the IAEA's modest estimate by its own figures.
From January, when US president Barack Obama took office, Tehran has won a year's grace for developing its nuclear program. Direct dialogue on which he insists will not begin before July. Progress will be evaluated at year's end, a six-month deadline accepted by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Iran has therefore been granted plenty of time to make hay i.e. make nukes - free of diplomatic or military constraints.
The IAEA admits its investigations are stalled both in Iran and Syria, where its inspectors also reported Friday the discovery of new traces of man-made uranium near Damascus.
Iranian officials insist their nuclear program is peaceful and refuse to answer questions or cooperate in any way with UN inspectors. At one point in its new report, the IAEA asked for cameras with different wide-range angles for Natanz, indicating that even there, the Iranians are playing cat and mouse to conceal the real scale of their activities from view.
Damascus is similarly stonewalling on the international inspectors' inquiries about the new traces of man-made uranium particles. Military sources note that these particles could come from only two sources:
One is a new enrichment site. This site has reported repeatedly in the past year that Syria had secretly restarted its banned nuclear activities at three concealed locations which were constructed after Israel destroyed its unfinished plutonium reactor on Sept. 6, 2007.
Alternatively, Syria may be importing enriched uranium smuggled out of Iran, North Korea or Kazakhstan.
Caveat Lector.... Let the reader beware.
By David Harris
Say you're a newspaper editor.
You have articles and analyses that merit inclusion in the next day's edition.
They include: "At Least 56 Killed as Islamist Groups Fight Over a Somali Town", from Reuters; "New Focus on Settlements," a news analysis from your Jerusalem correspondent; "Iran Has Centrifuge Capacity for Nuclear Arms," based on a new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); and "U.S. Charges Ex-State Department Official and Wife With Spying for Cuba."
Do any of the four warrant front-page placement? If so, above the fold, where they are sure to be noticed, or below, where they are less certain to catch the eye? If not, where should they be placed?
Should any have accompanying photos, which help draw attention and stimulate reaction?
And how many column inches should each piece get, as space is always at a premium?
None of this is an exact science. It's about human judgment. And different editors will take into account different factors before making decisions. But let's be clear. Those decisions can have far-reaching consequences.
They tell readers what are deemed the most consequential stories of the day. In doing so, at times they reflect national priorities; at other times, they seek to create them. They shape outlook. They affect moods.
I don’t pretend to be an impartial reader, any more than any other reader is. I bring with me my interests and biases. There are certain stories I read with more care than others. At the same time, I’ve always sought to understand the enormous challenge a serious newspaper faces in presenting the news.
All that said, I read the June 6th issue of the New York Times with particular interest. In just one edition, it triggered many vexing questions.
The four pieces mentioned above were all in the paper’s news section.
But the only one that made it to the front page – and above the fold – was the news analysis on settlements.
Moreover, it was the only one with an accompanying photo, and a sizable one at that – ten inches by six inches.
And to complete the Triple Crown, it had far more column inches than any of the others.
The analysis itself covered thirty column inches, whereas the Somali carnage, at the top of page five, got fourteen inches of text; the Iran nuclear story, at the bottom of page six, eighteen inches; and the Cuba spy revelation, at the top of page eleven, twenty inches.
If the deadly battles had been reported not from Mogadishu but, say, Gaza or the West Bank and had involved Israeli troops, would the story have been on the front page, accompanied by photos? No doubt. The record amply proves the point.
But then again, the sad truth is that Muslim-on-Muslim violence doesn’t always have the same media appeal. This neglect inevitably diminishes the intrinsic value of the human lives lost.
More, we are often told, is "expected" of Israel, hence its greater newsworthiness, as if it could successfully wage battle by the Marquess of Queensberry rules alone while its adversaries embrace gutter methods.
And if there had been a spying charge involving Israel, would a place have been found on the front page?
In this case, a Justice Department official called the accused American spies' activity for Cuba, over a span of three decades, "incredibly serious," yet it didn’t make the cut for top billing.
Of course, had it been Israel, we would have been told, it involved a friendly country acting in an unfriendly way, hence its heightened media appeal. Yet, without for a single moment justifying espionage by any friendly country, surely the danger to American security is far greater still when a hostile country gets access to our national security secrets.
But the biggest puzzle in the June 6th issue was the treatment of the Iran issue.
Yes, the Israeli settlements issue is now on the table, front and center. Yes, the Obama Administration has made clear its aim to put a halt to all Israeli settlement-building. Yes, this is a source of bilateral friction. All true.
Still, in the scheme of things, I’d say the Iranian news easily trumped the paper’s now nearly daily treatment of the settlements issue.
Consider these stunning excerpts from the account on Iran:
# "Atomic inspectors reported Friday that the country [Iran] has sped up its production of nuclear fuel and increased its number of installed centrifuges to 7,200 – more than enough, weapons experts said, to make fuel for up to two nuclear weapons a year, if the country decided to use its facilities for that purpose."
# The total number of centrifuges "represents an increase of 30 percent in the total number of installed centrifuges since a February report."
# The IAEA report “noted that Iran is refusing not only to let inspectors visit a heavy-water reactor that Tehran has under construction, but also to let them verify design information about the sprawling project, as the agency’s statutes require."
# And it said that "Tehran had refused to give access to 'relevant Iranian authorities' who could address allegations surrounding Iran’s research on the design of nuclear warheads," meaning that the IAEA "will not be in a position to provide credible assurance about nuclear materials and activities."
In other words, Iran is expanding its enrichment capacity on President Obama’s watch and – despite recent U.S. overtures to Tehran – reaching the capability to produce sufficient fuel for nuclear weapons.
In my book, that’s the stuff of a banner headline – and the stepped-up public discussion that accompanies it.
After all, on the scale of Middle East foreign policy challenges, I'd argue that the Iranian nuclear issue easily comes out on top. And I’d be in good company. Not only would Israel agree, but so would many Arab nations who are no less frightened about the prospect of a nuclear Iran and its dire implications for the region.
So why didn’t the Iranian story make the front page, but instead was relegated to the bottom of page six, while the settlements analysis got pride of place in the paper’s most highly-prized real estate – the upper right-hand quadrant of the front page? Has the world become so accustomed to Iran’s nuclear advances that they don’t even warrant sustained high-profile treatment in the media?
It’s worth asking the Times.
Oh, and while you’re at it, you might raise one other matter.
In an article on the Lebanese elections in the same edition, the reporter notes: "If Hezbollah and its allies win a majority for the first time – and the race is likely to be very close – there will be concern in Washington and Tel Aviv."
Hmm, last time I looked, Washington was America’s capital and Jerusalem was Israel’s.
Sloppy reporting and editing, or deliberate decision?
Either way, caveat lector. Let the reader beware.
Say you're a newspaper editor.
You have articles and analyses that merit inclusion in the next day's edition.
They include: "At Least 56 Killed as Islamist Groups Fight Over a Somali Town", from Reuters; "New Focus on Settlements," a news analysis from your Jerusalem correspondent; "Iran Has Centrifuge Capacity for Nuclear Arms," based on a new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); and "U.S. Charges Ex-State Department Official and Wife With Spying for Cuba."
Do any of the four warrant front-page placement? If so, above the fold, where they are sure to be noticed, or below, where they are less certain to catch the eye? If not, where should they be placed?
Should any have accompanying photos, which help draw attention and stimulate reaction?
And how many column inches should each piece get, as space is always at a premium?
None of this is an exact science. It's about human judgment. And different editors will take into account different factors before making decisions. But let's be clear. Those decisions can have far-reaching consequences.
They tell readers what are deemed the most consequential stories of the day. In doing so, at times they reflect national priorities; at other times, they seek to create them. They shape outlook. They affect moods.
I don’t pretend to be an impartial reader, any more than any other reader is. I bring with me my interests and biases. There are certain stories I read with more care than others. At the same time, I’ve always sought to understand the enormous challenge a serious newspaper faces in presenting the news.
All that said, I read the June 6th issue of the New York Times with particular interest. In just one edition, it triggered many vexing questions.
The four pieces mentioned above were all in the paper’s news section.
But the only one that made it to the front page – and above the fold – was the news analysis on settlements.
Moreover, it was the only one with an accompanying photo, and a sizable one at that – ten inches by six inches.
And to complete the Triple Crown, it had far more column inches than any of the others.
The analysis itself covered thirty column inches, whereas the Somali carnage, at the top of page five, got fourteen inches of text; the Iran nuclear story, at the bottom of page six, eighteen inches; and the Cuba spy revelation, at the top of page eleven, twenty inches.
If the deadly battles had been reported not from Mogadishu but, say, Gaza or the West Bank and had involved Israeli troops, would the story have been on the front page, accompanied by photos? No doubt. The record amply proves the point.
But then again, the sad truth is that Muslim-on-Muslim violence doesn’t always have the same media appeal. This neglect inevitably diminishes the intrinsic value of the human lives lost.
More, we are often told, is "expected" of Israel, hence its greater newsworthiness, as if it could successfully wage battle by the Marquess of Queensberry rules alone while its adversaries embrace gutter methods.
And if there had been a spying charge involving Israel, would a place have been found on the front page?
In this case, a Justice Department official called the accused American spies' activity for Cuba, over a span of three decades, "incredibly serious," yet it didn’t make the cut for top billing.
Of course, had it been Israel, we would have been told, it involved a friendly country acting in an unfriendly way, hence its heightened media appeal. Yet, without for a single moment justifying espionage by any friendly country, surely the danger to American security is far greater still when a hostile country gets access to our national security secrets.
But the biggest puzzle in the June 6th issue was the treatment of the Iran issue.
Yes, the Israeli settlements issue is now on the table, front and center. Yes, the Obama Administration has made clear its aim to put a halt to all Israeli settlement-building. Yes, this is a source of bilateral friction. All true.
Still, in the scheme of things, I’d say the Iranian news easily trumped the paper’s now nearly daily treatment of the settlements issue.
Consider these stunning excerpts from the account on Iran:
# "Atomic inspectors reported Friday that the country [Iran] has sped up its production of nuclear fuel and increased its number of installed centrifuges to 7,200 – more than enough, weapons experts said, to make fuel for up to two nuclear weapons a year, if the country decided to use its facilities for that purpose."
# The total number of centrifuges "represents an increase of 30 percent in the total number of installed centrifuges since a February report."
# The IAEA report “noted that Iran is refusing not only to let inspectors visit a heavy-water reactor that Tehran has under construction, but also to let them verify design information about the sprawling project, as the agency’s statutes require."
# And it said that "Tehran had refused to give access to 'relevant Iranian authorities' who could address allegations surrounding Iran’s research on the design of nuclear warheads," meaning that the IAEA "will not be in a position to provide credible assurance about nuclear materials and activities."
In other words, Iran is expanding its enrichment capacity on President Obama’s watch and – despite recent U.S. overtures to Tehran – reaching the capability to produce sufficient fuel for nuclear weapons.
In my book, that’s the stuff of a banner headline – and the stepped-up public discussion that accompanies it.
After all, on the scale of Middle East foreign policy challenges, I'd argue that the Iranian nuclear issue easily comes out on top. And I’d be in good company. Not only would Israel agree, but so would many Arab nations who are no less frightened about the prospect of a nuclear Iran and its dire implications for the region.
So why didn’t the Iranian story make the front page, but instead was relegated to the bottom of page six, while the settlements analysis got pride of place in the paper’s most highly-prized real estate – the upper right-hand quadrant of the front page? Has the world become so accustomed to Iran’s nuclear advances that they don’t even warrant sustained high-profile treatment in the media?
It’s worth asking the Times.
Oh, and while you’re at it, you might raise one other matter.
In an article on the Lebanese elections in the same edition, the reporter notes: "If Hezbollah and its allies win a majority for the first time – and the race is likely to be very close – there will be concern in Washington and Tel Aviv."
Hmm, last time I looked, Washington was America’s capital and Jerusalem was Israel’s.
Sloppy reporting and editing, or deliberate decision?
Either way, caveat lector. Let the reader beware.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
The speech...
"In my view the strongest force of all, one which grew and took fresh shapes and forms every day was the force not of any one individual, but was that unmistakable sense of unanimity among the peoples of the world that war must somehow be averted..... The peoples of the United States are at one with the PEOPLE of Iran, of France of England, of Germany, of Russia... and their anxiety, their intense desire for peace, pervades the whole atmosphere ... Ever since I assumed my present office my main purpose has been to work for the pacification of those that would wage war. For the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air. The path which leads to appeasement is long and bristles with obstacles. The question of nuclear proliferation is the latest and perhaps the most dangerous. Once we have gotten past it, I feel that it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity."
President Obama on the Beaches of Normandy. June 6, 2009
Sounds like him, doesn't it?
In actuality this speech was given in the House of Lords, on October 3rd, 1938, by Neville Chamberlain, 3 days after his infamous "peace of our time" speech. And both times, the cheers drowned out Chamberlain.
Sound familiar?
Ask yourself why you were able to imagine Obama saying these things.
The actual speech...
"In my view the strongest force of all, one which grew and took fresh shapes and forms every day was the force not of any one individual, but was that unmistakable sense of unanimity among the peoples of the world that war must somehow be averted..... The peoples of the British Empire were at one with those of Germany, of France and of Italy, and their anxiety, their intense desire for peace, pervaded the whole atmosphere ... Ever since I assumed my present office my main purpose has been to work for the pacification of Europe, for the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air. The path which leads to appeasement is long and bristles with obstacles. The question of Czechoslovakia is the latest and perhaps the most dangerous. Now that we have got past it, I feel that it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity.
President Obama on the Beaches of Normandy. June 6, 2009
Sounds like him, doesn't it?
In actuality this speech was given in the House of Lords, on October 3rd, 1938, by Neville Chamberlain, 3 days after his infamous "peace of our time" speech. And both times, the cheers drowned out Chamberlain.
Sound familiar?
Ask yourself why you were able to imagine Obama saying these things.
The actual speech...
"In my view the strongest force of all, one which grew and took fresh shapes and forms every day was the force not of any one individual, but was that unmistakable sense of unanimity among the peoples of the world that war must somehow be averted..... The peoples of the British Empire were at one with those of Germany, of France and of Italy, and their anxiety, their intense desire for peace, pervaded the whole atmosphere ... Ever since I assumed my present office my main purpose has been to work for the pacification of Europe, for the removal of those suspicions and those animosities which have so long poisoned the air. The path which leads to appeasement is long and bristles with obstacles. The question of Czechoslovakia is the latest and perhaps the most dangerous. Now that we have got past it, I feel that it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity.
My unintended break....
Some of you (the few that actually care!!) may have noticed a break from my posting, and specifically from my political posts.
There was a very good reason for this. As many of you know, I openly discussed my fears about what the election of Obama would mean for this country, and specifically for me.
My break has been due to my abject fear. NOT a fear of speaking out - the silence was over not knowing any other way to continue to say what I have been saying. But, fear, in a way that I have never felt before. Not necessarily for me, but certainly for my children.
What has been witnessed the last two weeks has been nothing less than the end of America as we know it, and as we hope for it.
For me personally, what it has been, has been the acceptance, finally, of a world without Jews.
Oh, this won't take place tomorrow, or the next day. But it will happen. And the last of the biblical peoples will be thrown from the earth.
What most don't understand, is that the next group to go will be the Jews' baby brothers and sisters, the Christians.
How long do you think it is from "no natural growth" in Judea and Samaria, to the suburbs of Paris, Madrid, London, and New York?
(btw, have you noticed that there is no discussion of the "natural growth" of the Arab settlements in Israel? i.e. the Arab citizens of Israel? Wonder why that is?)
"No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons."
Is it hard to translate this to "no single nation can pick and choose which nation murders indiscriminately"?
The slippery slope has been greased, and we are picking up speed on the downhill.
Obama likes to fashion himself a modern day FDR (I would agree with him, but not for the reasons he thinks. His lack of historical perspective, and knowledge, is stunning in it's totality).
Do you think FDR felt that way about the German effort to acquire nukes? Or Truman the Russians? Or Chinese?
No one paid much attention to that part of the speech, just as no one noticed the disgusting comparisons made by Obama at the Buchenwald Concentration camp.
He failed to even note that his uncle, who had helped liberate a WORK subcamp of Buchenwald NOT the death camp, was so horrified by what he experienced that when his nephew, the President, invited him to tour the camp, he STILL, 60 years later, could not bring himself to return.
Obama stood next to Elie Wiesel, and compared that place, not to Armenian Genocide, or the killing fields (neither of which are apt comparisons, but at least within in the context of genocide) but rather to the scourge of child soldiers, or rape as a tool of war (something that has existed since the beginning of human history - no excuse for it, but not genocide).
Worse, and perhaps the greatest danger to me, and to Jews everywhere, he bought, repackaged in his brilliant oratory, the myth that Israel was a creation of the Holocaust.
The the ONLY reason for the existence of a Jewish state is the 6 million murdered.
Even if this fiction were true, Obama might have noted that Hitler, and all of Europe, were so desperate to rid the world of Jews, that he sacrificed his own war effort to accelerate the murder as the war was ending for Germany.
That in the years after the war, Stalin did the same thing, engaging in a mass murder of the Jews of Russia.
But the fiction, the myth propagated by the Arabs for the last 60 years has found it's seed in the mind of this megalomaniac.
No one dares tell the emperor his clothes are not there.
Perhaps someone might mention to him what exactly was meant by the "Mandate" of Palestine.
What was the mandate given to the British in 1922?
The following is the preamble to the mandate and the agreement referenced is the Balfour Declaration.
Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
Mr. Obama, are you listening? Hitler was an army private at the time. No Holocaust, no guilt, no WWII.
Below, is the map that designated what was to be Israel.
You will note, that not only are Gaza and Judea/Samaria, part of Israel, but the land EAST of the Jordan River is as well.
What has happened over the last two weeks, taken with the handing over of GM to the unions, as was Chrysler, is the full blown retreat of the United States into second class citizenry.
These two companies now exist solely for the benefit of their retired workers, the unions. (more on that another time. GM, with 90,000 workers, is paying more than ONE MILLION people benefits)
We, like Europe has been for the last 20 years, or so, are now apologists to the rapidly encroaching second Ottoman Empire.
Why was 9/11 so universally shocking for those in the West, particularly Western Europe? Because after appeasing for most of the 1990's, they thought that they had, as the Saudis before them, bought peace.
What did Obama say in Cairo? "We're sorry, please don't kill us anymore."
We will give you anything. Just stop blowing us up.
The Israelis tried this for six decades. And all they got for their trouble was more death, and an American President who is happy to see them go.
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