Category: Politics

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Obama’s Transparent Presidency

President Barack Obama promised that his would be the most transparent administration in US history. And the truth is, it was. At least in relation to his policies toward the Muslim world, Obama told us precisely what he intended to do and then he did it.

A mere week remains of Obama’s tenure in office. But Obama remains intent on carrying on as if he will never leave power. He has pledged to continue to implement his goals for the next week and then to serve as the most outspoken ex-president in US history.

In all of Obama’s recent appearances, his message is one of vindication. I came. I succeeded. I will continue to succeed. I represent the good people, the people of tomorrow. My opponents represent the Manichean, backward past. We will fight them forever and we will prevail.

Tuesday Obama gave his final interview to the Israeli media to Ilana Dayan from Channel 2’s Uvda news magazine. Dayan usually tries to come off as an intellectual. On Tuesday’s show, she cast aside professionalism however, and succumbed to her inner teenybopper. Among her other questions, she asked Obama the secret to his preternatural ability to touch people’s souls.

The only significant exchange in their conversation came when Dayan asked Obama about the speech he gave on June 4, 2009, in Cairo. Does he still stand by all the things he said in that speech? Would he give that speech again today, given all that has since happened in the region, she asked.

Absolutely, Obama responded.

The speech, he insisted was “aspirational” rather than programmatic. And the aspirations that he expressed in that address were correct.

If Dayan had been able to put aside her hero worship for a moment, she would have stopped Obama right then and there. His claim was preposterous.

But, given her decision to expose herself as a slobbering groupie, Dayan let it slide.

To salvage the good name of the journalism, and more important, to understand Obama’s actual record and its consequences, it is critical however to return to that speech.

Obama’s speech at Cairo University was the most important speech of his presidency. In it he laid out both his “aspirational” vision of relations between the West and the Islamic world and his plans for implementing his vision. The fundamentally transformed world he will leave President-elect Donald Trump to contend with next Friday was transformed on the basis of that speech.

Obama’s address that day at Cairo University lasted for nearly an hour. In the first half he set out his framework for understanding the nature of the US’s relations with the Muslim world and the relationship between the Western world and Islam more generally. He also expressed his vision for how that relationship should change.

The US-led West he explained had sinned against the Muslim world through colonialism and racism.

It needed to make amends for its past and make Muslims feel comfortable and respected, particularly female Muslims, covered from head to toe.

As for the Muslims, well, September 11 was wrong but didn’t reflect the truth of Islam, which is extraordinary. Obama thrice praised “the Holy Koran.” He quoted it admiringly. He waxed poetic in his appreciation for all the great contributions Islamic civilization has made to the world – he even made up a few. And he insisted falsely that Islam has always been a significant part of the American experience.

In his dichotomy between two human paths – the West’s and Islam’s – although he faulted the records of both, Obama judged the US and the West more harshly than Islam.

In the second half of his address, Obama detailed his plans for changing the West’s relations with Islam in a manner that reflected the true natures of both.

In hindsight, it is clear that during the seven and a half years of his presidency that followed that speech, all of Obama’s actions involved implementing the policy blueprint he laid out in Cairo.

He never deviated from the course he spelled out.

Obama promised to withdraw US forces from Iraq regardless of the consequences. And he did.

He promised he would keep US forces in Afghanistan but gave them no clear mission other than being nice to everyone and giving Afghans a lot of money. And those have been his orders ever since.

Then he turned his attention to Israel and the Palestinians. Obama opened this section by presenting his ideological framework for understanding the conflict. Israel he insisted was not established out of respect of the Jews’ national rights to their historic homeland. It was established as a consolation prize to the Jews after the Holocaust.

That is, Israel is a product of European colonialism, just as Iran and Hamas claim.

In contrast, the Palestinians are the indigenous people of the land. They have been the primary victims of the colonial West’s post-Holocaust guilty conscience. Their suffering is real and legitimate.

Hamas’s opposition to Israel is legitimate, he indicated. Through omission, Obama made clear that he has no ideological problem with Hamas – only with its chosen means of achieving its goal.

Rather than fire missiles at Israel, he said, Hamas should learn from its fellow victims of white European colonialist racists in South Africa, in India, and among the African-American community.

Like them Hamas should use nonviolent means to achieve its just aims.

Obama’s decision attack Israel at the UN Security Council last month, his attempts to force Israel to accept Hamas’s cease-fire demands during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, his consistent demand that Israel renounce Jewish civil and property rights in united Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, his current refusal to rule out the possibility of enabling another anti-Israel resolution to pass at the Security Council next week, and his contempt for the Israeli Right all are explained, envisioned and justified explicitly or implicitly in his Cairo speech.

One of the more notable but less discussed aspects of Obama’s assertion that the Palestinians are in the right and Israel is in the wrong in the speech, was his embrace of Hamas. Obama made no mention of the PLO or the Palestinian Authority or Fatah in his speech. He mentioned only Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which shares the Brotherhood’s commitment to annihilating Israel and wiping out the Jewish people worldwide.

Sitting in the audience that day in Cairo were members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak rightly viewed Obama’s insistence that the brothers be invited to his address as a hostile act. Due to this assessment, Mubarak boycotted the speech and refused to greet Obama at the Cairo airport.

Two years later, Obama supported Mubarak’s overthrow and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to replace him.

Back to the speech.

Having embraced the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian branch, branded Israel a colonial implant and discredited the US’s moral claim to world leadership, Obama turned his attention to Iran.

Obama made clear that his intention as president was to appease the ayatollahs. America he explained had earned their hatred because in 1953 the CIA overthrew the pro-Soviet regime in Iran and installed the pro-American shah in its place.

True, since then the Iranians have done all sorts of mean things to America. But America’s original sin of intervening in 1953 justified Iran’s aggression.

Obama indicated that he intended to appease Iran by enabling its illicit nuclear program to progress.

Ignoring the fact that Iran’s illegal nuclear program placed it in material breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Obama argued that as an NPT signatory, Iran had a right to a peaceful nuclear program. As for the US and the rest of the members of the nuclear club, Obama intended to convince everyone to destroy their nuclear arsenals.

And in the succeeding years, he took a hacksaw to America’s nuclear force.

After Obama’s speech in Cairo, no one had any cause for surprise at the reports this week that he approved the transfer of 116 tons of uranium to Iran. Likewise, no one should have been surprised by his nuclear deal or by his willingness to see Iran take over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. No one should be surprised by his cash payoffs to the regime or his passivity in the face of repeated Iranian acts of aggression against US naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Everything that Obama has done since he gave that speech was alluded to or spelled out that day.

Certainly, nothing he has done was inconsistent with what he said.

The consequences of Obama’s worldview and the policies he laid out in Cairo have been an unmitigated disaster for everyone. The Islamic world is in turmoil. The rising forces are those that Obama favored that day: The jihadists.

ISIS, which Obama allowed to develop and grow, has become the ideological guide not only of jihadists in the Middle East but of Muslims in the West as well. Consequently it has destabilized not only Iraq and Syria but Europe as well. As the victims of the Islamist massacres in San Bernardino, Boston, Ft. Hood, Orlando and beyond can attest, American citizens are also paying the price for Obama’s program.

Thanks to Obama, the Iranian regime survived the Green Revolution. Due to his policies, Iran is both the master of its nuclear fate and the rising regional hegemon.

Together with its Russian partners, whose return to regional power after a 30-year absence Obama enabled, Iran has overseen the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Sunnis in Syria and paved the way for the refugee crisis that threatens the future of the European Union.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Islamist leader, was a principle beneficiary of Obama’s admiration of Islamism. Erdogan rode Obama’s wave to destroy the last vestiges of the secular Turkish Republic.

Now he is poised to leave NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia.

Obama and his followers see none of this. Faithful only to their ideology, Obama and his followers in the US and around the world refuse to see the connection between the policies borne of that ideology and their destructive consequences. They refuse to recognize that the hatred for Western civilization and in particular of the Jewish state Obama gave voice to in Cairo, and his parallel expression of admiration for radical Islamic enemies of the West, have had and will continue to have horrific consequences for the US and for the world as a whole.

Cairo is Obama’s legacy. His followers’ refusal to acknowledge this truth means that it falls to those Obama reviles to recognize the wages of the most transparent presidency in history. It is their responsibility to undo the ideological and concrete damage to humanity the program he first unveiled in that address and assiduously implemented ever since has wrought.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

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TRUMP’S JEWS AND OBAMA’S JEWS

The Left is losing the culture war within the Jewish community.

Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn. Around that red wedge are districts where Hillary won 90 percent of the vote and Trump was lucky to get 5 percent. Inside it, he beat her in district after district.

The voters who handed him that victory are the Chassidic Jews of Williamsburg who dress in fur hats and black caftans. Their districts, crammed in by hipsters and minorities, are a world away from the progressive activist temples whose clergy went into mourning at Hillary’s loss.

East of Prospect Park, in a vast sea of blue, is what looks like a red sofa. Trump won here with the Chabad Chassidim of Crown Heights. He won in the more mainstream Orthodox Jewish communities of Flatbush. He won by huge margins among the Russian Jewish immigrants of Brighton Beach who listen to a man dubbed the “Russian Rush Limbaugh.”

As the left-wing Forward put it, “Nearly every election district that Trump won in Brooklyn was in a Jewish neighborhood.” But it was a certain type of Jewish neighborhood. The wrong type.

“You can compare them to Rust Belt voters,” a Forward source states. “They are hardworking people, not college educated.”

And then in Far Rockaway where the housing projects by the beach give way to the red Orthodox Jewish communities that extend into Long Island.

There’s a line that recurs again and again in the attacks on David Friedman; the man picked by President-elect Trump to serve as the ambassador to Israel. It’s not stated openly. It’s implied.

“David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island,” is the sneering summary.

Remnick, the New Yorker’s left-wing editor, took the sneering to a new level, titling his smear as “Trump’s Daily Bankruptcy.” Jewish identity, he declares, has never been a matter of “bankruptcy law.”

To a certain class of elites, it is self-evidently absurd that a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island be appointed to anything or be listened to about anything. David Remnick is a Washington Post man married to a New York Times woman who went on to inherit the editorship of the New Yorker and turn it into a left-wing echo chamber. He lives in a $3.25 million four-bedroom Manhattan apartment with a wood-burning fireplace.

And David Friedman is the Orthodox son of a Rabbi from Woodmere who still lives there. His father was a Republican who hosted President Reagan. He might occasionally be allowed to read the New Yorker.

And that’s about it.

Yet it’s hard to think of anything that might recommend Friedman more to Trump.

Over at New York Magazine, Frank Rich and Fran Leibowitz famously chuckled over Trump being “a poor person’s idea of a rich person.” David Brooks, the token slightly right of the left voice at the New York Times, full of contempt for Trump, in an infamous moment, studied Obama’s “perfectly creased pant” and came to the conclusion that, “he’ll be a very good president.”

“I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” Brooks has said.

Obama spoke like one of the collective “us”. Trump and Friedman don’t talk like “us”. Their voices are distinctly working class. Their New York values are those of a grittier and grimier country.

Trump’s calling card was, “Make America Great Again”. Obama’s was a memoir about race and identity that was a hit on college campuses. Two cultures could hardly be further apart.

The internal war in America and among Jews over Trump is not just about politics, it’s also about class. Trump’s victory was the uprising of a cultural underclass. That is equally true among Jews.

The same divide exists between the slick branding of J Street’s conferences stocked with self-appointed thought leaders who have never worked for a living and the hard-working Jewish communities who loathe the New York Times for its hostility to Israel. These are the Jews who have never been represented in national politics. Whom most of the left didn’t even know existed.

Friedman’s appointment led leftists like Remnick to undertake a baffled archeological survey of Arutz Sheva: a popular pro-Israel news site that no one at the New Yorker had ever heard of. The elites of the left have suddenly had to grapple with the existence of people who don’t talk like “us” or think like “us”.

And that for many voters, non-Jewish and Jewish, encompassed the thrill of Trump. Voting for Trump forced the elites that had ignored them out to acknowledge their existence for the very first time.

The split is as real among Jews as it is in the rest of America. Trump’s victory allowed Jewish communities that had been shut out of the national dialogue to have a voice. The divide over Israel is not only about policy, but about culture and class. The divide between readers of the Jewish Press and the Forward is as real as the yawning gap between country music listeners and the NPR audiences.

Trump and Obama both have inner circles filled with Jews. But they are as different as David Remnick is from David Friedman, as Jan Schakowsky is from Boris Epshteyn, or as J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami is from Jason Greenblatt, a Trump advisor who performed armed guard duty while studying in Israel.

Obama is legitimately baffled by accusations of anti-Semitism. His inner circle of left-wing Jews agree with him that the Jewish State is the problem and aiding Islamic terrorists is the solution. His echo chamber elevated marginal left-wing organizations like J Street or Yeshivat Chovevei Torah into representatives of American Jews. Meanwhile his people, like ADL boss Jonathan Greenblatt, took over already liberal Jewish organizations and turned them into lobbies for his anti-Israel agenda.

Now suddenly the President-elect is surrounded by a very different breed of Jews. Instead of tenured academics, progressive journalists and irreligious clergy for whom Jewish values, like American values, mean appeasement and surrender to terrorists, a very different kind of Trump Jew is now on the rise.

Trump’s Jews are scrappy businessmen and tough lawyers. They live in traditional suburban communities instead of hip urban neighborhoods. They are more likely to be religiously devout and have large families. And they don’t look or sound like the “us” of the leftist elites.  They don’t have the “perfectly creased pant”. Instead they look like the suburban dads and granddads that they are.

They believe that you have to work hard to get ahead. They know that you have to be tough to succeed. And they’ve learned to get ahead without caring what the liberal elites think of their manners and style.

In that they’re a whole lot like Trump. And a whole lot like the stereotypical Israeli.

It’s not just the substance of their message, pro-American, pro-Israel and pro-work, that horrifies the Remnicks of the left. It’s the conviction that they’re part of a social underclass that doesn’t belong on stage. The Remnicks have worked hard to ape the manners and attitudes of their progressive betters. There was a time when his ilk dared to be pro-Israel. But when the liberals went left, they went with them. They justified their betrayal by blaming Israel for “moving to the right” and alienating them.

But Trump’s Jews, whether it’s his advisers, who look like every other professional or small businessman in Long Island or Teaneck, or the Chassidic and Haredi Jews of Brooklyn who voted for him, make no apologies for who they are. They pray toward Jerusalem, not Martha’s Vineyard. They do not cringe inwardly when Israel takes out a terrorist. They are not politically correct. They are Biblically correct.

They are not ashamed of their Jewishness. And now their voice is being heard.

In the fall of ’84, President Ronald Reagan showed up at the home of a Long Island Rabbi for a Sabbath meal. David Friedman’s mother spent three days shopping and prepared stuffed chicken cutlets, apricot noodle pudding and an apple crumb cake. Reagan toasted her as “a woman who makes a meal better than a state dinner.” Meanwhile outside, left-wingers protested hysterically against the visit.

At Rabbi Friedman’s synagogue, President Reagan declared, “the so-called anti-Zionists that we hear in the United Nations is just another mask in some quarters for vicious anti-Semitism. And that’s something the United States will not tolerate wherever it is, no matter how subtle it may be.”

The United States has tolerated it for far too long from Barack Hussein Obama.

When Rabbi Friedman passed away, Donald J. Trump, a future Republican president, drove to Long Island through a snowstorm to pay a condolence call to his son. Trump has chosen the man who sat at the table with President Reagan, that “bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island” as ambassador to Israel.

The left is so angry because it senses that it is losing the culture war within the Jewish community. The future does not belong to David Remnick. It belongs to David Friedman.

Originally Published on FrontPageMag.

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New Zealand Foreign Minister’s Excuse for Backing Resolution 2334 Against Israel is Pathetic

It appears that the persistent criticism of McCully’s sponsoring of the anti-Israel UN Resolution 2334 has hit a nerve. On 12 January 2017 he published a defence of the move in The New Zealand Herald, in an opinion piece titled “Vote to rebuke Israel only option in push for peace”.

Unsurprisingly, it contained a continuation of the light-weight analysis, one-sidedness and wishful thinking that we have come to expect from our Foreign Minister.

McCully denies the charge made by critics that the resolution predetermines the outcome of any negotiations, without offering any real counter-argument. UN resolution 242, passed in the wake of the 1967 war, was specifically worded so as not to perpetuate the 1949 Armistice Line as the final borders in order to encourage negotiations. McCully seems to not understand that Israel’s ability to negotiate must be impaired by the new resolution – the Security Council has now declared any land over the 1949 Armistice Line to be “Palestinian Territory”. Why would Palestinian negotiators ever move back from that position? Why would Palestinian leaders enter negotiations when they can use the UN to pass resolutions like this one?

Again, without offering a counter-analysis, McCully denies that the resolution affects the rights of Israelis to access certain religious sites. This is an absurd statement if one reads the text of the resolution, which declares the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, the Western Wall, and Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount, to be part of “occupied Palestinian territory”. Resolution 2334 potentially criminalises Jews living in the ancient Jewish Quarter, rebuilt after the destruction during the years of Jordanian occupation (1948-67) and makes it illegal for Jews to pray at the Western Wall, the surviving structure of the Second Temple. Did Prime Minister Bill English and Cabinet truly support this?

Is McCully not aware of ‘moderate’ Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’ statements that the State of Palestine will not allow a single Israeli to live under their rule? A future Palestinian State will be Judenrein, just like when Jordan controlled the area. How does McCully intend to ensure access to Jewish holy sites for Jews?

McCully attempts to pass critics off as hard-liners, claiming (falsely) that “the focal point for much of the critics’ anger is the direct call for a halt to the settlements”. In fact, many of those who object to the Resolution also happen to be critics of the settlements. The true focal point for the critics’ anger is the danger to the survival of Israel through the imposition of indefensible borders and the assault of 2334 on Jerusalem, by designating the heart of it a settlement and thus criminalising residents. The resolution goes well beyond simple criticism of the current government’s settlement policy and this is where the anger lies.

Another focal point for the critics’ anger is the failure of the resolution – and McCully – to recognise the role of Palestinian rejectionism, violence and incitement in the current stalemate, and to hold only one side – the Israelis – to account for their actions. McCully declares in his NZ Herald justification that the resolution, “condemns the obstacles to a negotiated two-state solution: incitement and acts of violence and terror against civilians on all sides…”. McCully, a man who, for reasons known only to himself, refuses to use the term “terrorism” when it relates to murderous attacks by Palestinians on Israeli civilians, apparently equates the constant violent attacks by Palestinians against Israelis – stabbings, shootings, bombings and vehicle rammings – with the Israeli government’s attempts to prevent further terror attacks. He ignores the role of the Palestinian Authority in inciting these acts of terror and rewarding the families of those responsible.

In the last week, a Palestinian terrorist killed four young Israelis and wounded many others when he rammed his truck into a crowd on a Jerusalem street. The “successful” attack was met with jubilation on West Bank streets and the Palestinian Authority will pay the widow of the assailant a lifetime allowance. No condemnation for the attack has been made by President Abbas, nor by our own Minister McCully, whose claim to be vexed about violence and incitement (when against Israelis) has been shown to be little more than lip-service.

The lack of balance in the resolution is also evident in the both the rapturous reception by the Palestinian Authority and the widespread condemnation it received across the Israeli political spectrum, from many prominent left-wing proponents of the two-state solution.

McCully ended his defence with an unexpected revelation, when he explained why the resolution was hurried through in the last session of the year: “The truth is: the United States would not accept any resolution on this topic until after US presidential elections in November. The domestic politics would have been too difficult.” It is an astonishing admission, that the Obama administration knew that the resolution would lose the Democrats support before the election, so it waited until the “lame duck” period. What exactly does this say about the resolution and the “spirit of unanimity” that McCully takes cover behind, particularly in light of its subsequent bipartisan rejection by the House of Representatives?

This admission also contradicts statements made by both the Obama administration – which denied planning the anti-Israel resolution – and by New Zealand’s ambassador to the UN, who has been quoted saying, “We did not discuss the substance of the resolution at any time with the United States,” and further noting, “We did not know how the United States would vote.”

According to the Huffington Post:

Team Obama was not going to have their plan derailed by the Israelis or Donald Trump. Luckily, John Kerry already had that covered. In November, he spoke with New Zealand’s foreign minister, Murray McCully, about such a resolution. McCully, known for his anti-Israel leaning, was only too happy to oblige. The next day, New Zealand’s UN envoy, joined by Venezuela, Malaysia, and Senegal, picked up the baton and brought the resolution to a vote. It passed as the Obama administration originally planned, albeit a little later and with more blowback than they expected.”Huffington Post

So what really happened? Why the apparent contradiction? What mandate did McCully have – or could he have obtained in such a short space of time – and what spurred him to leap so quickly into gear to sponsor this anti-Israel resolution? What did Bill English know of any of this?

Many questions remain about how such a flawed and unbalanced resolution – and one that departs from longstanding NZ policy – can have been rushed through the Security Council with New Zealand’s connivance, and the answers are unlikely to come directly from McCully. What is clear, however, is that the legacy that McCully has sought to achieve for himself through this sorry episode will be an ignominious one.

Originally Posted in Shalom Kiwi.

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Rep. DeSantis: “All of this Land Belongs to the Jews”

Watch Rep. DeSantis of Florida, schools the left and the UN by injecting basic historical facts into the discussion regarding the “peace process” between Israel and the Arabs.

Rep. DeSantis points out the following:

  • The “West bank” otherwise known as Judea and Samaria is Jewish Land
  • The Arabs have rejected all “peace deals”
  • Even today’s Jordan originally belonged to the Jews

 

 

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[watch] Daniel Greenfield: Israel Must Kill the Two State Solution

To help the Glazov Gang please donate here.

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents the Daniel Greenfield Moment with Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the editor of Frontpage’s blog, The Point.

Daniel discussed Israel Must Kill the Two State Solution, explaining that, if it doesn’t, the two-state solution will kill Israel.

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OBAMA’S ENABLING OF PALESTINIAN TERROR

A leftist administration’s cruelty toward the Jewish state.

When we consider last months United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSC) 2334 that passed with deliberate U.S. abstention and later, justified in a speech by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, it makes the adage below come to mind. The Midrash (commentary on part of the Hebrew Scriptures) tells us, “He who becomes compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.”  Maimonides wrote in The Guide of the Perplexed that “the wicked and calculating person who killed intentionally and was sentenced to death – if he seeks sanctuary among us, we must not provide him with asylum, and not have mercy upon him, because compassion toward the wicked is cruelty to all beings.”

In supporting the Palestinian regime that seeks the destruction of the Jewish State as its ultimate goal, the Obama administration is being compassionate toward the wrong party.  The Obama administration is knowingly and deliberately supporting the creation of another unstable Arab authoritarian regime that has failed its people.  Mahmoud Abbas, like Arafat before him, albeit more subtle, seeks the same goal: undermining the Jewish state, and replacing it with an undemocratic Palestinian state.  Abbas wouldn’t return to the negotiating table unless he is heavily bribed, and like Arafat, at the crucial moment when all reasonable concessions had been made, he walked out.

At their September 16, 2008 meeting in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert agreed to forgo sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest site, and proposed that in the framework of the peace agreement, the area containing the religious sites in Jerusalem would be managed by a special committee consisting of representatives from five nations: Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestinians, the U.S. and Israel.  The advisors and Fatah officials heard that Olmert laid out for Abbas not only the details of the agreement but also a large map upon which he outlined the borders of the future Palestinian state.  Abbas, like Arafat in July, 2000, walked out.

Considering Palestinian terrorism incited by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority against Jewish civilians and soldiers alike, it becomes clear that the Obama administration has shown compassion toward Palestinian aspirations and contempt for Jews aspiring to settle in their ancestral regions of Judea and Samaria.  The Administration would be quite content on a “judenrein” West Bank.   In fact, the U.S. and its European allies support the PA with huge grants, portions of which goes to pay salaries to Palestinian terrorists with blood on their hands and their families.  They have likewise funded Palestinian-Arab construction projects, built illegally throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The Obama administration has also shown compassion for the Iranian regime by ending the economic sanctions against the radical Islamic Iranian regime, which hangs gays and lesbians as well as juveniles.  Amnesty International reported on January 26, 2016, that “Iran remains the leading executioner of juvenile offenders.”  The New York Post reported on August 3, 2016 that “The Obama administration quietly shipped $400 million stacked on wooden pallets in an unmarked plane to Iran in January – just as Tehran was releasing four Americans who had been detained there.”  This was done to appease the Islamic Republic, which is the leading state sponsor of terror around the world, and that has taken Americans in Iran as hostages.

U.S. Mideast mediator Dennis Ross pointed out that the Obama administration was so enamored with the so-called “moderate” Iranian President Rouhani, that it “showed readiness to accept an industrial-scale Iranian nuclear program and not to roll it back.”  The Obama administration was willing to bend its principles in order to foster a relationship and perhaps an alliance of sorts (against the Islamic State in Iraq) with the Ayatollahs regime that promised “to wipe Israel off the map.”

 In the summer of 2009, the Iranian people voted for freedom and against the choices of the theocratic regime that oppressed them. They demonstrated in the millions with signs that read “Obama, are you with them or with us.”  Obama did not respond. He proved to have little compassion for the oppressed.

In Syria, the Shiite-Iranian Revolutionary Guards and their supported Iraqi-Shiite militias, as well as the Lebanese-Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah, are murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrian Sunni Muslims, Christians, and others civilians with impunity.  They are bolstering the dictatorship of the Alawi (offshoot of Shiite Islam) minority ruler Bashar Assad.  The Russians have also joined in the killing of Syrian civilians in the name of combating so-called “terrorists.”

The Palestinians of Hamas and the PA raise their children on hate and expound on the destruction of the Jewish state in schools, mosques, in the media, and in their policy directives.  The Palestinian intolerance towards Jews and Christians is deeply embedded, but due to political correctness, it has never been sufficiently reported in the western media, or by western governments.  Under the Palestinian regime, Christian Arabs have been victims of frequent human rights abuse by Muslims. There are many examples of intimidation, beatings, land theft, firebombing of churches and other Christian institutions, denial of employment, economic boycotts, torture, kidnapping, forced marriage, sexual harassment, and extortion. Palestinian Authority (PA) officials are directly responsible for many of the human rights violations. Muslims who have converted to Christianity are in the greatest danger. They are often left defenseless against cruelty by Muslim fundamentalists. Some have been murdered.

There is a clear dichotomy in determining who the compassionate side is, and who is the cruel. It comes together perfectly clear in the Syrian civil war arena.  Thousands of Palestinians are fighting on behalf of the Syrian dictator, and help in slaughtering the Syrian people who are fighting for their freedom.  The Palestinian radical group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) led by Ahmed Jibril, provided the Assad war machine with intelligence and ground support, when he laid siege to the Palestinian populated Yarmouk refugee camp.  The PFLP-GC, once a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) joined the Assad troops in killing fellow Palestinians.

Conversely, Israel has opened its hospital gates to wounded Syrians, both civilians and soldiers.  Prime Minister Netanyahu announced last month “We are prepared to take in wounded women and children, and also men if they are not combatants. Bring them to Israel, we will take care of them in our hospitals as we have done with thousands of Syrian civilians. We are looking into ways of doing this. It is being explored as we speak.”  Netanyahu added, “The suffering is great, and the one initiative we took is to help – as I said – thousands of Syrians who are sometimes mutilated beyond belief. We help them. I offered to do more today. I don’t know if we can resolve [the crisis in] Syria, but we can help mitigate some of the suffering. That is the best that Israel can do.”

Being compassionate toward the Palestinian’s aspirations to destroy the Jewish state in stages by forming a terrorist supporting state, the Obama administration is being cruel toward the Jewish state, which seeks to defend its people from the ongoing Palestinian terror.

Originally Published in FrontPageMag.

 

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Netanyahu, Congress, AIPAC, and the PLO

The whitewashing of the PLO must end.

It is not in the least surprising that the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority did not condemn the terrorist attack on Sunday. It is not surprising because the PLO-controlled PA encouraged the attack.

As Khaled Abu Toameh wrote for the Gatestone Institute, in the aftermath of last month’s US-enabled passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which criminalizes Israel, the PA went on the warpath.

Among other things, Muhammad Abu Shtayyeh, who serves as a close adviser to PLO chief and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas called for an intensification of terrorist attacks against Israelis. Shtayyeh said that now is the time to “bolster the popular resistance” against Israel.

As Abu Toameh noted, “‘Popular resistance’ is code for throwing stones and petrol bombs and carrying out stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.”

Sunday’s terrorist murderer probably was inspired by Islamic State, and its adherents’ recent truck ramming murder sprees in Nice and Berlin, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

But Sunday’s 28-year-old cold blooded killer hailed from Jerusalem, not Nice.

His brain was washed since he was five years old by the PLO-controlled PA’s steady cycle of jihadist incitement.

From the time he was in preschool, the killer was indoctrinated to aspire to commit the mass murder of Jews he carried out on Sunday.

For 23 years, Israel and the US have empowered the PLO.

During this period, the terrorist group never took any concrete steps to promote peace. At no point in the past generation has a PLO leader ever told the Palestinians or supporters abroad that the time has come to bury the hatchet and accept Israel.

Instead, for 23 years, the PLO has openly supported Israel’s annihilation. Often that support has been stated in code words like “popular resistance” which everyone understands means murder.

To make it easy for Americans and Israelis to continue funding, arming, training and of course, recognizing the PLO as a “moderate” organization despite its continued sponsorship of terrorism, PLO members are always happy to talk about a “two-state solution” with Westerners that wish to be lied to.

But they do not hesitate to threaten anyone who rejects their lies about Jews and Israel. For instance, Abbas reacted to US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to abide by the US law requiring the State Department to move the US embassy to Jerusalem by threatening him.

Trump’s plan will have “serious implications” for the US, Abbas told a group of visiting Israeli leftists.

PLO Executive Committee chairman Saeb Erekat said that if Trump moves the US embassy to Israel’s capital, the PLO will lobby Arab states to expel the US ambassadors from their capitals.

Jebl Mukaber, the Jerusalem neighborhood where Sunday’s terrorist lived, used to be just an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem. It wasn’t particularly friendly.

But it also wasn’t particularly hostile.

But then for about five minutes in 1993, the PLO pretended it wasn’t a terrorist group. To the delight of the US, Israel responded by giving it operational bases in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. The PLO then went about indoctrinating residents of the areas under its control as well as throughout Israel that they must reject all forms of coexistence with Israel and work toward its destruction.

These acts of war on the ground have always been complemented by PLO efforts to destroy Israel in the court of world opinion through its unrelenting and ever escalating worldwide political war against the Jewish state.

In keeping with this state of affairs, following 2334’s passage, at the same time its members called for intensifying terrorist attacks against Israel, the PLO Executive Committee decided to escalate its international economic boycott campaign against Israel and ratchet up its campaign to convince the International Criminal Court to convict Israelis of imaginary war crimes.

Like Sunday’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem, it ought to go without saying that these actions are all acts of war against Israel.

The reason it is necessary to state what ought to be the self-evident fact that the PLO is a terrorist organization engaged in a total war against Israel and the Jewish People is because the people that are supposed to act on this reality insist on denying it. The Netanyahu government, the US Congress and US Jewish organizations led by AIPAC still refuse admit the truth about the PLO and draw the necessary conclusions.

Those necessary conclusions are similarly self-evident.

Israel and the US should cut all ties to the PLO.

The PLO should be re-designated as the terrorist group it never stopped being and treated accordingly.

Last week, the US House of Representatives passed non-binding Resolution 11, which condemned resolution 2334. Resolution 11 was shepherded through the House by AIPAC, with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s support.

The House resolution, which is set to be followed by a nearly identical Senate resolution in the coming days, is based on the proposition that 2334 is bad not because, as the Simon Wiesenthal Center rightly said, it was the worst antisemitic act of 2016. Rather, the congressional resolution rejects 2334 because it harms the chance of Israel and the PLO reaching a negotiated peace that will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Resolution 11 is marginally helpful because it rejects economic and political warfare against Israel. But substantively, in regard to the PLO and its legitimacy, the greatest difference between Resolution 11 and 2334 is that while 2334 embraces the PLO’s anti-Jewish rejection of all Jewish ties to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Resolution 11 recognizes Israel’s right to the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter.

Beyond Jerusalem’s Old City, Congress’s resolution accepts the pro-PLO position that it is a good idea to work toward the forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria to make room for a Jew-free Palestinian state led by PLO terrorists.

To credit its position, the House resolution states that 2334’s refusal to distinguish between Jerusalem’s Old City and Judea and Samaria means it equates “these sites with outposts in the West Bank that the Israeli government has deemed illegal.”

The problem with this wording is that it ignores the fact that the Knesset is about to pass a law that would effectively cancel that delineation. Similarly, it ignores that the delineation of Israeli communities built since 2000 in Judea and Samaria as illegal was done by a radical Justice Ministry attorney who now heads the post-Zionist New Israel Fund.

In other words, Congress’s resolution reflects the view of the far-left fringes of the Israeli political spectrum.

Supported by Netanyahu, AIPAC shepherded this resolution through the House, despite harsh opposition from the House Freedom Caucus whose members wish to end US support for the PLO and for a PLO state.

Although AIPAC condemned the Obama administration’s refusal to veto 2334, it continues to fervently support the PLO and Palestinian statehood. Indeed, just days after 2334 passed, AIPAC officials and missions were meeting with Erekat and other PLO operatives in Ramallah, as if there is anything pro-Israel about meeting with people who just got the Security Council to resolve that Israel is a criminal state.

AIPAC’s continued support for the PLO no doubt stems in part from its desire to keep the Democratic Party inside the pro-Israel tent. Unfortunately, that ship seems to have sailed.

Nearly 40% of House Democrats including minority leader Nancy Pelosi and assistant leader Jim Clyburn voted against the PLO state supporting resolution.

Rep. Keith Ellison, who is the front-runner to be elected Democratic National Committee chairman later this month, also voted no. Two thirds of the 95 Democrats supported by J Street opposed the resolution.

Most of the Democrats that supported Resolution 11 may well have supported it even if it had left out the goal of giving the PLO a state. It cannot be credibly argued that Reps. Elliot Engel and Steny Hoyer would have opposed Resolution 11 if it had simply stated that 2334 was antisemitic.

Certainly it is hard to argue they would have opposed it if the vote was delayed until January 21. Indeed, it is hard to understand why it was necessary to pass the resolution while President Barack Obama – who partnered with the PLO to pass 2334 – is still in office.

Resolution 2334’s passage must be viewed as an inflection point. It is no longer possible to credibly argue that the PLO is remotely interested in peace with Israel. Sunday’s murderous terrorist attack Jerusalem was further testament of this truth.

The time has come for Israelis and Israel’s supporters in the US to demand that our leaders – from Prime Minister Netanyahu to AIPAC to members of Congress – finally recognize and act of this truth. The whitewashing of the PLO must end.

 

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 

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Mr. Obama, your legacy is secure

The recent reluctance of the US to veto UN resolution 2234, which essentially singles out Israeli construction as the main obstacle to a two state solution has been seen by some as the final nail in the coffin in a combative relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu that has endured throughout both terms of the Obama presidency.

While this may be obvious, I doubt it will silence those who are still convinced Obama is a strong, reliable friend to Israel. Indeed, in his post UN resolution justification speech at the State Department, Secretary of State John Kerry said “no American administration has done more for the security of Israel than Barack Obama.”

Such self-promoting observations make convincing sound bites, regardless of their accuracy. However, since the door is about to close permanently on the Obama administration, it might be worthwhile to check Kerry’s comment against the facts.

A stroll down memory lane of the Obama tenure recalls the following:

Right out the starting gate his first phone call to a foreign leader in January, 2009 was to Mahmould Abbas, letting him know he was the first foreign leader he called as President of the United States.

In June 2009 his first foreign speech was delivered in Cairo where he signaled a new era in US-Muslim relations. He made the following comments during the speech:

“the United States does not accept the continued legitimacy of Israeli settlements.”

“they (Palestinians) endure daily humiliation, large and small, that come with occupation.”

He signaled a new approach toward Iran (the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism) by letting Israel know their flexibility toward the Palestinians would influence Obama’s approach to Iran. In effect he was invoking diplomatic blackmail against Israel.

He demanded Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and threatened to expose a 40 year old confidential understanding between Israel and the US about its Dimona nuclear facility if Israel didn’t sign the NNPT. Israel did not. Obama retaliated by interrupting routine travel of Israeli nuclear scientists between the two countries.

In 2010 after seeing a clear pattern of hostility toward Israel, over 50 retired US Generals signed a letter to Obama demanding he stop treating Israel so poorly and treat them like ally they are.

Also in 2010, in an unprecedented move, both houses of Congress having seen the same hostile pattern,  signed letters telling Obama to stop treating Israel so poorly.

Apparently Obama didn’t get the message. The same year he walked out on a White House meeting with Netanyahu, leaving him sitting alone. While Obama had dinner with his wife Michelle Netanyahu was let in and out of a side door to the White House with no diplomatic fanfare.

Subsequent to this Mahmoud Abbas was welcomed with full diplomatic protocol and fanfare.

In 2011 Egypt ousted Hosni Mubarak, a 30 year US ally, replacing him with Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim fundamentalist and member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama openly supported Morsi. This brought a further chill in US-Israel relations.  A little over a year later the Egyptians voted Morsi out. Obama voiced his opposition to Morsi’s purging. Today, Morsi remains in prison.

In May 2011 while Netanyahu was airborne in route to Washington, to address a joint session of Congress Obama spoke to Congress urging any two state solution should be based on ’67 lines, with mutual land swaps. The timing of Obama’s speech was seen as an effort to sabotage Netanyahu. Following Obama’s speech, in an unprecedented bi-partisan move, Republican and Democratic leaders condemned Obama’s speech and publically distanced themselves from the President.  When Netanyahu delivered his speech to the joint session of Congress he received 30 standing ovations, which was largely seen as a rebuke of President Obama, who along with Vice President Biden and John Kerry, were noticeably absent during Netanyahu’s speech.

In March 2013 in Ramallah Mahmoud Abbas referred to Israel’s 1948 rebirth as “the Nakba,” (the catastrophe), while Obama stood next to him in silence.

During Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 war with Hamas (who has fired over 15,000 rockets into Israel against innocent civilians) Obama threatened to stop US arms supply to Israel.

In 2015 Israel was gearing up for new elections. Jeremy Bird, a democratic strategist who helped the 2012 Obama campaign, was dispatched to Israel in an effort to help defeat Netanyahu. This brought harsh criticism of Obama for what was seen as a direct effort to influence Israeli elections. In the end the effort failed as Netanyahu was re-elected. Today he has become the longest serving Prime Minister in Israel’s history.

Finally, in what was called by many as the single most damaging decision Obama made is the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. No other move has caused greater concern for Israel’s security than this agreement. While there remains robust disagreement on the deal’s justification, there is little doubt Israel has the most to lose.

To be fair to Obama, there has been an occasional bright spot. For example the US did award Israel a $38 billion 10 year defense package, which is the largest ever. Yet,  it does part from previous such packages in that by year three 100% of the funds must be spent in the US. Prior agreements allowed Israel to award up to 24% of the funds to their own defense contractors.  The absence of this option will have a severe impact on small – medium companies and put thousands of Israeli’s out of work.

There are numerous other examples of how the Obama administration has been a blight on relations with the strongest ally the US has in the Middle East, however I believe the short list contained herein constitutes more than enough facts to render Kerry’s words about the Obama Administration commitment to Israel’s security little more than what they are- mere words, with little or no facts to corroborate them. The reality shows the Obama administration has been one of, if not the most hostile ever toward Israel.

Meanwhile 4 more Israeli’s were just murdered in the ongoing wave of Palestinian terrorism which began in October, 2015. To date President Obama has not held Palestinian leadership accountable for a single Israeli death.

As the old saying goes, with “friends” like this…..

President Obama, your legacy has been secured. Time for an actual friend of Israel to take over…..

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Here’s how we’re getting it wrong on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, targeting the Jewish population in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, has given a new impetus to a discussion on violent conquest, occupation and colonization, which most of the international community rightly understands as immoral and illegal.

However, when taking into account 3,000 years of history and context, Palestinian Arabs, not indigenous Israeli Jews, become the offending party.

If one people violently conquered the territory of an indigenous people, forced them to declare allegiance to the conquering nation and creed at the point of a sword, foisted a culture, religion and language on the conquered people and treated those who refused as second-class citizens with far fewer rights, there would rightly be outcry, derision and, above all, condemnation.

If such actions are wrong and unconscionable in principle, it should not matter when they took place — whether it was a few decades or a number of centuries ago.

Nevertheless, this principle is not accepted by the United Nations. In fact, it is turned on its head.

Around 1,300 years ago, descendants and followers of the Prophet Mohammad from Arabia poured out of the Peninsular in an orgy of conquest, expansionism and colonization. They first annihilated ancient Jewish tribes in places like Yathrib (known today as Medina) and Khaybar before sweeping north, east and west, conquering what is today known as the Middle East, North Africa and even southern Europe.

Wherever Arab and Islamic rulers conquered, they imposed their culture, language and — most significantly — their religion.

At first, Arab settlers and conquerors did not want to intermingle with their indigenous vassals. They often lived in segregated quarters or created garrison towns from which they imposed their authority on native populations.

Over time, non-Arab converts to Islam were assimilated into Arab-Muslim society through tribal “clientage,” which Abd Al-Aziz Duri describes in The Historical Formation of the Arab Nation, as “help[ing] to promote both the spread of Arabic and the expansion of Arabisation,” while slavery became rampant and unfettered.

Slowly, but surely, the “Arab world” that we know today was artificially and aggressively imposed.

Ancient communities were destroyed, cultures suppressed and peoples were expelled. Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians were given the status of al-Dhimma, a people who were heavily oppressed and taxed under law, with few civil rights and constantly under threat of expulsion or annihilation in many parts of the region.

Even today, Arab elites refer to their origins in the Arabian Peninsular, and many villages and tribes across the Middle East keep lineage records to stress their origins far from where their families may have resided for generations.

In the Land of Israel, which was renamed Syria Palaestina after the Roman suppression and expulsion of the indigenous Jewish inhabitants in 135 CE, some Jewish communities remained on their lands and in their cities for hundreds of years. Even Arab writer Muqaddasi complained in 985 CE that “the Jews constitute the majority of Jerusalem’s population.”

The Jews, the last people to hold sovereignty and independence in the land, were subsequently harassed and unequally treated by a series of Roman, Byzantine and Muslim conquerors, whether Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk or Ottoman.

Still, the Jewish presence never disappeared.

Jewish holy sites, like the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb, were built over with mosques, and with the imposition of a new Islamic religious and cultural imperialism, Jews were given limited or no rights of worship.

When many Jews started returning to their ancestral land in the late 19thand early 20th centuries after an extremely difficult dispersion, they never sought to disrupt or disturb those whose ancestors had conquered and occupied the territory while they were in their long exile.

Unfortunately, today, in most people’s view of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — a self-identity barely two generations old — the colonized have become the colonizers and the role of the native Jewish population turned upside down.

According to the United Nations, indigenous people are identified as having a history of pre-settler or colonial societies; a distinct language, culture and political system; and a place where the foundations of their civilizations were created.

In this conflict, only one people — the Jews — meet the criteria of indigeneity, while it is abundantly clear from a cursory understanding of history that the Arab Palestinians do not, as their origins, language, culture and religion came from elsewhere.

One of the most remarkable but overlooked elements of Israel’s history is that the majority of its Jews, almost a million of whom were ethnically cleansed from the Middle East and North Africa in the 20th century, threw off the language and elements of the culture that had been imposed on them throughout the Arab world to reclaim their ancient linguistic and cultural heritage in their ancestral homeland.

This is the long misunderstood historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is absolutely a conflict between an oppressed people fighting every day for the freedom to live in their ancestral and indigenous homeland against settlers and occupiers.

If the lens of history is widened, it becomes clear that the current paradigm of the Jewish people as settlers and colonizers and the Palestinians as native to the territory is the opposite of the truth.

The opposition to violent conquest, occupation and colonization is either a matter of principle, which should render it timeless, or there is a statute of limitations against these immoral and illegal acts, which should provide succor to those who continue to rule the lands belonging to other peoples.

Originally Published in The Hill.

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