Israel Commentary

A terrifying litany of nation-destroying policy

By JEFFREY T.KUHNER

The Washington Times, February 15, 2010

Civilizations die from suicide, not murder,” said the great historian Arnold Toynbee. Under President Obama, America is losing its superpower status. It is in decline, slowly being transformed into a second-tier nation. America’s collapse has been sudden and stunning — soaring deficits, economic stagnation, appeasement of radical Islam and revolutionary socialism. Mr. Obama’s policies are undermining U.S. pre-eminence on the world stage.

Once the world’s largest creditor, we have become the greatest debtor nation. Two weeks ago, Mr. Obama unveiled his fiscal 2011 budget. The $3.8 trillion in federal outlays is the highest ever. The budget deficit will be a record $1.6 trillion. The administration brags about the need to make “tough choices?’ But, the budget dramatically augments spending on pet Democratic projects. Mr. Obama wants $25 billion in new spending for Medicaid, $100 billion for a so-called “jobs program’ huge boosts in expenditures for low-income family programs, education and health research. In total, Mr. Obama’s proposals represent a nearly 30 percent increase in federal spending since 2008.

His reckless agenda of big government~ big deficits and big spending are driving America toward national bankruptcy From 2009 to 2011, Mr. Obama will have added $3.7 trillion to the national debt. He will have accumulated more debt in three years than in the first 225 years of our nation’s history. This is the road to fiscal suicide. Mr. Obama seeks to implement huge spending programs and runaway deficits to achieve one fundamental goal: permanent, massive tax increases that will empower the ruling liberal elite to exert greater control over the private sector.

Mr. Obama is demanding $2 trillion in tax increases over the next decade. His soak-the-rich class-warfare strategy will strangle economic growth, curb capital formation and cripple job creation. Unemployment~~ remains at 10 percent — and likely will rise over the next several years. Mr. Obama believes he is finishing the liberal project begun by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Contrary to popular myth, however, FDR was one of the most destructive US leaders in the 20th century. His New Deal failed to restore economic recovery and prolonged the Great Depression.

FDR often railed against “economic royalists” and “the forces of selfishness,” blaming them for the country’s misery. His war on business and bankers may have struck a populist chord, but it did nothing to reverse high unemployment or kick-start industrial productivity. In fact, it badly damaged economic confidence, hampering much-needed investment and entrepreneurship.

Moreover, FDR was a liberal internationalist in foreign policy. Diplomatic multilateralism trumped America’s national interests. He slashed military spending for most of the 1930s. He championed the appeasement of Nazi Germany. He deliberately did nothing to save the Jews during the Holocaust — for example, refusing to order Allied bombing of Nazi railroad lines carrying Jews to the death camps. At Yalta, he sold out Eastern Europe to Soviet domination.

FDR’s policies contributed to the outbreak of World War II, the 50 million deaths it caused and the enslavement of Christian Eastern European nations by communism. Rather than being a great defender of freedom, he was its very opposite: a globalist progressive who wrecked capitalism at home and emboldened America’s totalitarian enemies abroad.

Many of FDR’s disastrous mistakes are being repeated by Mr. Obama. His crushing tax increases and Keynesian deficit spending threaten America’s long-term prosperity. His drive for a bloated public sector and expensive new entitlement programs are draining the private sector, subordinating the market to a bureaucratic, corporatist state.

His decision to grant the Underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Miranda rights, as well as give the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a trial in civilian court reflects a lack of will in defeating Islamist terrorism. Mr. Obama’s appeasement of the apocalyptic mullahs in Iran is enabling them to acquire the nuclear bomb, potentially triggering an all-out Middle East war. He has betrayed Eastern Europe by scrapping the promised missile-defense shield, abandoning the region to Russia’s sphere of influence.

He also is undermining America’s military strength. He has reduced our nuclear arsenal. His attempt at nation building in Afghanistan is another Vietnam. The troop surge without a clear strategy for victory bogs down the U.S. in a protracted guerrilla campaign, expending precious blood and treasure. Mr. Obama’s push to have homosexuals openly serve in the military will fracture unit cohesion, decimate troop morale and erode discipline. It is the worst thing a president could do in the middle of two wars.

Nature abhors a vacuum. The West’s decline is being replaced by the dynamic capitalist economies of the East. Wealth is being transferred to Asia — and with it, growing might. The United States’ chief rival, China, remains embarked on an unprecedented military buildup. Beijing is simultaneously flexing its muscles while buying up much of our national debt. America was to imperial Britain a century ago what China is to us today: a rising regional colossus determined to achieve global hegemony.

Mr. Obama’s policies have led to the loss of US power and prestige. They have left us weaker — economically, politically and militarily. His presidency is America’s attempt at suicide.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute, a Washington think tank

Go West!

www.gowest2010.com

By Jerome S. Kaufman

Just a few days ago, I had the great privilege of listening to an American patriot. He reminded me of Jack Kennedy – bright, personable, easy and an eloquent speaker. No teleprompter, no notes, no microphone and yet he kept an audience of near 200 spell-bound for an hour and a half. His name is Lt. Colonel (retired) Allen West. He is the Republican candidate for Congressman in the 22nd District of Florida. Moreover, even if you do not vote in the Florida election, please read what Lt. Colonel West has to say on his web page listed above and support candidates in your own districts that believe as he does.

He spoke before a non-partisan political group called Act! For America, Palm Beach County, Florida Chapter. Lt. Col West, like the current president is black. However, there, the similarity ends. He also speaks of the “dreams of his father” but his father was a little different. His father was born in Ozark, Alabama and his mother in Camilla, GA. His grandfather and father both served in the US military.

His parents’ primary ambition was that he become an officer in the US Army. Lt. Col. West fulfilled their ambition when he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Army, July 1, 1982. This American family tradition continues with Lt. Col. West’s son now serving as a Captain in the US Artillery corps. His father died at age 86 and his mother at 94. They are buried side by side in an Atlanta, GA cemetery.

The father also taught Lt. Col West free market economics – make your own living, do a competitive job to earn your keep and become a victor rather than a victim dependent upon the largess of the government. Don’t look for bail-outs. He also never heard the word, “entitlement” but rather the emphasis was always on achievement. Lt Col was educated within a strict Catholic school system, went on to graduate from the University of Tennessee and obtained a Master’s degree in political science from Kansas State University. He regularly attended a Methodist Church, experienced many different ministers but never recalls any of them damning the United States of America.
Lt. Col West is also proud to speak of this country as founded on Judeo-Christian principles, well documented in the works of our founding fathers. He has no animosity to any other religion and has no problem with its practice in the United States as long as it obeys the Constitution of the United States, the Federal Papers and the other basic instruments upon which this country was founded.

Lt. Col. West spoke of the abject failure of the current political leadership and listed the obvious reasons this country is losing in the International arena and in our war against Islamic terrorism. He never confused or obfuscated the identity of our enemy with the politically correct but fraudulent term, “War on Terrorism.”He stated our leadership has failed and we are losing when:

· The present administration wants to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, grant Miranda rights and the civilian courts to foreign enemies that have no right to those privileges.

· Prosecutes CIA officers for using interrogation techniques disfavored by the American Civil Liberties Union

· Approaches the war on Islamic terrorism and supremacism as a legalistic exercise distorting its primary goal - our destruction.

· Surrounds the Presidency with people like Rahm Emmanuel who “ never let a crisis go to waste (especially one he has created himself, in this administration’s race to dismantle the American free enterprise system and turn us into a socialist state)

· Has the US government virtually take over the auto industry, the banking industry and attempt to take over the entire energy industry if they are able to pass so-called Cap and Trade.

· Turn the entire health care system over to the government and in one fatal blow assume control of 1/6 of the American economy.

· Appoint 110 additional government agencies and 30 plus Obama “Czars” thus by-passing the elected representatives of the American people.

· Fails to recognize Islamic terrorism as our mortal enemy and allow Islam to impregnate our entire culture, our school system and even the way we do banking.

· Allows the construction of gigantic, deliberately intimidating Islamic mosques financed by Saudi Arabia all over the United States while the Saudis allow not one church or synagogue or any form of worship or presence other than their own fanatical Islamic Wahhabism.·

Through taxes, dramatically increase the entitlement class vs. those that actually produce, adopting socialism as the government modus operendi, at least until, as PM Margaret Thatcher stated, “ You run out of other people’s money.”

It was a fantastic speech by a fantastic guy – hard hitting, direct and motivated in the best interests of the United States of America. Lt. Col. West ended his presentation by warning us that the 2010 election is crucial. If we continue with Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chas. Schumer, the Obama Czars in power and hundreds of other dedicated appointed lackeys in place, there will be nothing left to save by the time 2012 comes along. So, please get out to campaign, vote and donate to people in your own areas like Lt. Col. West, right this moment, before it is too late

Jerome S. Kaufman

Also, if you are a Palm Beach County resident, please send me your snail mail address and I will return a petition for you to sign and mail in making sure Lt. Col. West is included on the Republican Primary Ballot.

Send address to: israelcommentary@comcast.net

The Homegrown Terrorist Threat

Redacted from an article By James Kirchick

COMMENTARY February 2010

IF 2001 WAS the year when international terrorism hit American soil, then 2009 was the year when Americans became the targets of domestic terrorism. In November, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, born in Virginia to Palestinian Muslim parents, killed 13 and wounded 30 in his one-man attack on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas. The massacre, which Senator Joseph Lieberman properly labeled “the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11,” capped a year of terrorist plots or conspiracies inside the United States, most of which were stopped by law enforcement in their planning stages. The notable fact about all these cases is that they are examples of so-called homegrown terrorism—meaning that, they were planned by individuals either born or raised in the United States and executed, without significant assistance, from overseas networks.

In October, the American-born David Coleman Headley, who had changed his name from Daood Sayed Gilani to disguise his half-Pakistani origins, was arrested for planning an attack on the Danish newspaper that published cartoons depicting Muhammad in 2006 and for providing assistance to the Pakistan-based terrorist group that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 170 were killed.

Two days after Headley was charged. Pakistani authorities arrested five Muslim men born and raised in and around Washington. D.C. for planning to take up arms against coalition forces in Afghanistan. The Washington Five were all college students - “fun-loving, career-focused children that had a bright future for themselves,” in the words of a youth coordinator who knew them?

On June 1. 2009, a 23-year-old Army recruiter in Little Rock was shot and killed by an African-American convert to Islam who, upon his arrest, began complaining about American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. A week before that, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which coordinates some 40 local and federal law-enforcement agencies, arrested four men for attempting to shoot down military planes based at a National Guard base in Newburgh, New York, and detonate bombs at two synagogues in the Bronx.

Of the 30-odd attempted terrorist plots against the United States or American installations abroad that have been foiled since 9/11, roughly a third have uncovered in the past year alone. What is new, particularly frightening, about these recent attacks is that the budding perpetrators were initially indoctrinated inside the United States, with help from extremist websites or Islamic preachers. It was only after had been brought some ways along the road to holy war, that at least some of these would-be jihadists sought training and logistical support from al-Qaeda and others overseas.

... ULTIMATELY, there is little more that the United States can do to prevent homegrown terrorism, other than maintain the counter-terrorism policies enacted by the Bush administration in the aftermath of 911, policies that proved so successful in preventing another terrorist attack on American soil. Given the rhetoric and actions of the present administration, which wants to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, prosecute CIA officers for using interrogation techniques disfavored by the American Civil Liberties Union, and generally approach the war on Islamic supremacism as a legalistic exercise, it is hardly certain that such a course will be followed. But, the least we can ask of our nation’s political and intellectual elite is that they stop wailing about the phantom menace of “right-wing” terrorism and start paving more attention to the genuine article.

(Incidentally, how about we stop obfuscating the source of the terrorism by referring to it as some vague, politically correct nonsense called, “War on Terrorism”? Virtually 100% of the time, it has been a war against Islamic terrorism. If this honest terminology is finally accepted perhaps our huge but stifled investigative agencies can function properly) jsk

JAMES KIRCHICK is an assistant editor of the New Republic and online columnist for the New York Daily News.

An Intelligence Agency Misused Passports: Oh My Gosh!

By Alan M. Dershowitz

March 2, 2010 2:38 PM

The complaints leveled against Israel by European countries and Australia, regarding the alleged misuse of passports by the Mossad in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, ring hollow and smack of blatant hypocrisy. Whoever did kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh—whether it was the Israeli Mossad or someone else—clearly did have their agents use stolen or forged passports. Big deal.

Every good intelligence agency uses stolen and forged passports. The British have been especially adept at this means of spycraft. No country that uses fake passports in their intelligence operations has the moral authority to complain about the alleged misuse of passports in this case. The only ones that have a legitimate grievance are those individuals whose passports may have been misused without their knowledge.

I guess it’s the job of foreign ministries to complain publicly when other nations do what they themselves do secretly. Hypocrisy is, after all, the homage that vice pays to virtue. I’m reminded of the famous scene in Casablanca, when officer Renault declares, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” A croupier then approaches Renault, and hands him a roll of currency: “Your winnings, sir.” The hypocrisy in this case seems even more blatant than usual. Is it because Israel is the alleged offender, and the world has gotten accustomed to singling out Israel for double standard condemnation?

Shortly after the terrorist attacks in Bali, which killed a large number of Australian tourists, I had the opportunity to meet with the Australian Prime Minister. I was writing a book at the time on pre-emption, and I asked him whether he would have authorized a preemptive attack on the terrorist who killed Australian citizens, if such an attack would have saved their lives. His response was that Australia would have done anything it could, to prevent these terrorist attacks. Anything, I guess, except misusing passports? Is there anybody who believes that Australia would not have used forged or stolen passports to prevent the Bali massacres?

If Great Britain could have stopped the London subway attack by misusing passports, would M6 have allowed the terrorism to go forward in the name of preserving passport integrity? Of course not! The same is true of Spain with regard to the Madrid bombing and to every other country in the world that seeks to prevent terrorism. Well, if the Mossad did in fact kill al-Mabhouh, they too did it to prevent the killing of their innocent civilians.

The Israelis are always accused by their enemies, and sometimes even by their friends, of taking “disproportionate” action to stop terrorists. But, what could be more proportionate than a carefully planned and specifically targeted attack on an admitted terrorist who boasted of being an active combatant? Whoops! I guess I forgot about those darn passports. That must be the disproportionate action complained about. Saving innocent lives, on the one hand—misusing passports on the other. I guess the right moral resolution, according to some foreign ministries, is to let innocent victims die—at least as long as its only Israeli victims.

It’s interesting, and disturbing, that more criticism is being directed against Israel for allegedly using stolen passports than for allegedly killing a terrorist. That’s because no Western country wants to appear to be sympathetic to a terrorist. The “victims” of passport fraud are innocent civilians, but the injury they have suffered pales in comparison to the injuries—deaths prevented by the well-deserved death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. If the deaths of a small number of innocent civilians is deemed “proportional” to the killing of a terrorist combatant, than surely the discomfort of a small number of innocent victims of passport fraud is proportional.

The high dudgeon expressed by foreign ministries over stolen passports is worse than hypocritical. It undercuts the war against terrorism. There ought to be concern, among Western democracies, about how easy it is to use forged or stolen passports. Dubai should be conducting an investigation, but the focus should be on how simple it was for those carrying these phony passports to get into their country. The misuse of passports is, after all, a primary tool used by terrorists to smuggle themselves into Western countries, from which they can engage in worldwide terrorism. There are thousands of forged and fraudulent British passports circulating around the world today. Many are in the hands of terrorists. That should be the focus of any investigation, not the occasional and controlled misuse of passports by Western intelligence agencies to combat terrorism.

Whoever sneaked into Dubai using fake passports may have done that country a service in warning them to tighten up their passport procedures. Next time, it may be a terrorist who tries to enter the country. Wait! Isn’t that exactly what happened when al-Mabhouh walked through security using a real passport with his real name? I guess in Dubai you don’t have to use a fake passport if you’re a terrorist, but you do if you’re trying to stop terrorists—at least if the terrorism is directed only against Israel. I guess Dubai is less concerned about letting terrorists into their country with real passports than in letting those who would stop terrorism into their country with fake passports. It’s a topsy turvy world out there.

Our Misinformed and Misdirected Approach to Arab Culture

What’s the matter with Umma?

By LEE SMITH
Random House, 256 pages

Redacted from a review by MICHAEL C. Moynihan
COMMENTARY February 2010

Jabbing a thick finger in my direction, the former al-Qaeda recruiter and veteran of the Afghan mujahideen proposed a unified theory for the cultural, political, and economic malaise afflicting the peoples of the Middle East. The problems of the Islamic umma (all encompassing Islamic society) would melt away, he explained with mechanical certainty, if only the United States abdicated it’s superpower role and stopped interfering in the affairs of Muslim countries. Naturally, this entailed first and foremost scrubbing its alliance with imperial Israel.

This is a shopworn and deeply unconvincing explanation of the problems afflicting countries that have been ruled by his co-religionists for the better part of a century. But, it is one that stubbornly persists, propped up with the help of many Western academics and pundits who seem more interested in issuing indictments of American policy than in confronting the political and social backwardness fettering much of the Arab world. Together they have set out a narrative whereby America is but the latest colonial power to have insinuated itself into the Muslim world and impaired its culture.

Increasingly dissatisfied with the narrow and disingenuous Orientalist critique of the West, Smith engages in years of on-the-ground investigation, moving about the Middle East in search of a narrative that places the people and political leaders of the region at the center. Two years into the occupation of Iraq, he has concluded that a top-down imposition of democracy will falter. Arab liberals, many frustrated by the policies of the Bush White House, submit that a reorientation of society must advance from the bottom up. Democracy is “society’s flower, not its root,” Smith writes. And, everywhere he travels in the region, it becomes uncomfortably clear that the flower is not on the verge of blooming.

To those who believe that an infusion not of Western military might but of culture—in the form of television, films, and music—can have a profound impact on regional mores, Smith says that this, too, is a chimera. When he turns to the retailing of Middle Eastern history by Western journalists and intellectuals, Smith bracingly dispenses with comfort able shibboleths. Though the crimes of Western imperialism are frequently hauled into the dock by such thinkers, Smith reminds us that “the umma was an imperial power of the first order,” and “the Islamists want to restore the umma to its rightful place in world affairs to be the strongest tribe?’ They are frank, unapologetic and unselfconscious about this. ... “The United States is hated not because of what it does, or because of what it is. The United States is hated for what it is not, not Arab and not Muslim.”

The search for Arab moderates, Smith continues, has led Western Arabists to grade using a steep curve. The Arab nationalism of the recent past may have “looked like secularization,” he says. “But, it was merely a veneer laid over a society that had been proudly Muslim for over a millennium.” Many of those who appeared to be voices of moderation were only moderate relative to the dominant politics of the region.

...The history of the entire region has led Smith to the unavoidable conclusion that “violence is central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East?’ He finds this uncomfortable truth lost on many in Washington. In his Cairo address last spring and on many other occasions, President Obama has said that if only America spoke directly to the citizens of the Middle East, it would convince them that there was no enmity between Islam and the West. This, says Smith, is simply a “delusion?’ Anti-Americanism is the “region’s lingua franca.”

What, then, does Smith see as the policy consequences of his discoveries? At the least, America should lower its sights and settle for reasonable facsimiles of Western democracy. “It was inevitable,” he writes, “that the Arabs would take a pass on some of the social values that Americans tend to associate with a democratic way of life, like gender equality and other issues like ‘anti-religious speech and behavior?”

But if American power can’t reverse illiberal impulses, and if popular culture has only a negligible impact on Arab culture, it isn’t clear how liberal forces can be empowered in any way to change the despotic governments under which they suffer. It is as though Smith has been so disappointed by his decade-long immersion in Islamic culture that he cannot see the signs that a peculiarly Arab version of democracy, with all its deficiencies, is indeed developing in Iraq—by Iraqis—with the help of steadfast American action.

Smith closes with a reminder that “despite the setbacks in Iraq, the reality is that American power is as great as it ever was?’ Power to do what or effect what he shies away from saying, and on the basis of the tale he has told, one senses that his feeling is: not very much. ‘

MICHAEL C. MOYNIHAN is a senior editor of Reason magazine.

For the Jews of the world its once again 1938

The Jews Of Shushan (Persia) (apx. 550 BCE)

By MOSHE FEIGLIN

The story of Purim, as related in the Megillat (book of) Esther, is the bridge between the destruction of the First Temple (apx. 586 BCE and the building of the Second Temple (apx 520-515 BCE with the return of the Jews from exile in Babylonia). Interestingly, the eastern gate to the Temple Mount is called the Shushan Gate, as if to symbolize that the path to the future Temple goes through Shushan.

The feast of Achashveirosh in Shushan was a low point in Jewish history. The Jews of Achashveirosh’s kingdom were so deep in exile mentality that they actually reveled and feasted at the Persian mega-party, despite the fact that the (kosher) food was served on the holy vessels of their destroyed First Temple. But, this low point was actually the first hint of future salvation.
The marriage of later Queen Esther to Achashveirosh led to the birth of Darius, who would eventually allow the reconstruction of the Second Temple to be completed.

Who were these Jews of Shushan? They were our forefathers, exiles from Eretz Yisrael. They were despondent after 70 years with no redemption in sight, as the Persian king defiled the treasures of the Temple. They lived at his mercy, thrown a few “kosher” royal crumbs at the year-long banquet that celebrated their defeat — unaware of the humiliation, and groveling for acceptance. But, one was not subservient. He was Mordechai the Jew, leader of the Jewish community. He would not attend the banquet, nor would he bow to the prime minister, the evil Haman.

Mordechai’s behavior frightened the masses. In their hearts, they agreed with him and admired him, but they did not follow him openly. Following an established pattern, they preferred the “safer” course of action: “Do not ruffle the king’s feathers; you will endanger us.” “Let us remain as slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.” Today the exact cowardly equivalent is “Give them land for peace; give them whatever they want.”

The Jews who offered gold for the golden calf later contributed gold to build the Mishkan. (The Tabernacle is known in Hebrew as the Mishkan. It was a portable dwelling place for the divine presence from the time of the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt through the conquering of the land of Canaan. Its elements were made part of the final Temple in Jerusalem about the 10th century BC).
It was all a question of leadership. Haman did not fret over the political aspirations of his subordinates. He was not troubled by political opposition or by rivals in the court. No, Haman worried only about Mordechai — Mordechai the Jew. Mordechai did not bend. He was prepared, with his agent, Esther, strategically placed in the king’s palace. With self-sacrifice, he and Esther waited. Haman’s evil decree threatened all the Jews of the kingdom, all the lands from Hodu to Cush, with no place to run. Fearing for their lives, the Jews of Shushan rallied behind Mordechai and Esther providing them with the support that they needed. And, for these miracles, the story of Purim highlights the eternity of the nation of Israel.

We are currently experiencing another period of darkness and despair. People may think it’s the year 2010, but it’s actually 1938 — with one major difference. Then, it was the Jews of Europe who had become de-legitimized. Now, it is the State of Israel that the world is de-legitimizing — putting the entire Jewish world in deep danger.

The solution is authentic, faith-based Jewish leadership for Israel. Manhigut Yehudit (the Israel political party of Moshe Feiglin) is building that Jewish leadership. Our job today is to make people aware, and to prepare ourselves to lead. If we persevere, we will have the support and tools to step in when the time is ripe. Then, when God deems fit, we will be poised to take the leadership reigns and bring the Jewish nation back from Shushan to Jerusalem — to itself, its God, and its Jewish destiny. True Jewish leadership will not bow to the Hamans of the world.

Syria - Another Obama Diplomatic Triumph

By MICHAEL FREUND

The Jewish Press, February 19, 2010

If you listened carefully this past week, you could almost hear the sound of champagne glasses clinking together loudly in Damascus, as Syrian President Bashar Assad undoubtedly raised a toast to celebrate Washington’s latest act of groveling before his autocratic government. Just days after Assad’s regime had engaged in a war of words with the Jewish state, threatening America’s closest ally in the region, Barack Obama decided to respond by conferring upon him yet another undeserved diplomatic gift.

In a truly breathtaking display of weakness, the U.S. State Department indicated it was ramping up its “dialogue” with Assad and had agreed to send a high-level American diplomat — Undersecretary of State William Bums — to pay him a courtesy call in the Syrian capital. Incredibly, when asked about the matter last Friday at the daily State Department press briefing, spokesman Phillip J. Crowley told reporters that the Burns visit “reflects our growing interest in working constructively with Syria and the leaders of that country.” Now isn’t that sweet.

The Obama administration would like to “work constructively” with a government that is allied with Iran, supports Hamas and Hizbullah terrorists, and has aided the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq to do battle with American servicemen. Good luck with that one, Mr. Bums.

Indeed, it was just two weeks ago, on February 3, that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem made the following “constructive” comments to reporters: “Don’t test the determination of Syria, Israelis. You know that war this time would move to your cities.” Muallem’s remarks raised eyebrows even among the Western press, with ABC News noting that, ‘The threatening language implied Syria would be willing and able to target Israeli population centers with long-range missiles in a conflict. It was the first time such a threat had been made.” But, that brazen act of intimidation on Syria’s part barely seemed to register with the White House, which appears determined to rush headlong into a warm embrace with Muallem’s boss.

Another compelling sign of the sea-change in American policy came last month. On a visit to Damascus, Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell reportedly notified Assad that a new American ambassador to Damascus would soon take up his post. This will mark the first time the U.S. is sending an ambassador to Syria since February 2005. At the time, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recalled diplomat Margaret Scobey after the Syrian government allegedly ordered the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Now, five years later, all that is forgotten, as Washington intensifies its inexplicable romance with this brutal regime.

To be sure, one could argue it is in America’s interests to attempt to pry Syria away from its Iranian allies, particularly in light of the mounting tension with Tehran over its nuclear program. And, there is no doubt that were Syria to change tack, and abandon its extremist policies, it would have a profound impact on the stability of the Middle East. That is precisely where Obama is making such a terrible and foolhardy mistake.

Attempts to woo Damascus into the so-called moderate Arab camp date back to the Clinton administration, and they have produced nothing but frustration and failure. Here is just one example: back in May 2003, Secretary of State Cohn Powell met with Assad and declared that Syria had promised to close the offices of terror groups such as Hamas which were operating in downtown Damascus. Nearly seven years later, that simple and very basic promise remains unfulfilled.

The fact is, Syria is firmly ensconced in the rejectionist camp and no amount of cozying up to Assad or kowtowing to his demands is going to change that. Moreover, the message Obama is sending is both hazardous and counterproductive, as Damascus has done nothing to deserve the gestures and attention that it is getting from Washington. If anything, the Syrians will see that they can persist with regional mischief-making while still reaping some handsome diplomatic rewards in the process.

Only a firm stance, which directly links American gestures to verifiable changes in Syrian behavior, can possibly hope to elicit any modification to Damascus’s policies. But, such an approach does not currently appear to be in the offing. Instead, Assad and his cronies will continue to enjoy a good laugh at Obama’s expense, as they surely marvel at how the last remaining superpower beats a hurried and ill-conceived path to their door. As for the rest of us, we can only look on in wonder and distress as America’s position and role in the world are weakened still further. And, that, of course, is no laughing matter.

Michael Freund served as deputy director of Communications & Policy Planning in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office under Benjamin Netanyahu from 1996 to 1999. He is founder and chairman of Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org), which reaches out and assists “lost Jews seeking to return to the Jewish people.”

Our National Destruction (G-d forbid) continues unabated

Obama cedes US future to Russia and China

By Charles Krauthammer
The Palm Beach Post, February 17, 2010

“We have an agreement - until 2012 that Russia will, be responsible for this,” says Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian space agency, about ferrying astronauts from other countries into low-Earth orbit. “But after that? Excuse me, but the prices should be absolutely different then!”

The Russians may be new at capitalism, but they know how it works. When you have a monopoly, you charge monopoly prices. Within months, Russia will have a monopoly on rides into space. By the end of this year, there will be no shuttle, no US - manned space program, no way for us to get into space. We’re not talking about Mars or the moon here. We are talking about low Earth orbit, which the U.S. has dominated for nearly half a century and from which it is now retiring with nary a whimper.

Our absence from low-Earth orbit was meant to last a few years, the interval between the retirement of the fatally fragile space shuttle and its replacement with the Constellation program (Ares booster, Orion capsule, Altair lunar lander) to take astronauts more cheaply and safely back to space. But, the Obama 2011 budget kills Constellation Instead, for the first time since John Glenn flew in 1962; the US will have no access of its own for humans into space — and no prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future. Of course, the administration presents the abdication as a great leap: Launching humans will now be turned over to the private sector, while NASA’S efforts will be directed toward landing on Mars.

This is nonsense. It would be swell for private companies to take over launching astronauts. But, they cannot do it. It’s too expensive. It’s too experimental. In addition, the safety standards for actually getting people up and down reliably are just unreachably high.

Sure, decades from now, there will be a robust private space-travel industry but that is a long time. In the interim, space will be owned by Russia and then China. The president waxes seriously nationalist at the thought of China or India surpassing us in speculative “clean energy.” Yet, he is quite prepared to gratuitously give up our spectacular lead in human space exploration.

As for Mars - more nonsense. If we can’t afford an Ares rocket to get us into orbit and to the moon, how long will it lake to develop a revolutionary propulsion system that will take us not a quarter-million miles but 35. million miles? To say nothing of the effects of long-term weightlessness, of long-term cosmic ray exposure, and of the intolerable risk to astronaut safety involved in any Mars trip — six months of contingencies vs. three days for a moon trip.

Of course, the whole Mars project as substitute for the moon is simply a ruse. It’s like the classic bait-and-switch for high-tech military spending: A classic example is the B-1 bomber, which was canceled in the 1970s in favor of the over-the-horizon B-2 stealth bomber, which was then killed in the 1990s after a production run of only 21 (instead of 132) in the name of post-Cold War obsolescence.

Moreover, there is the question of seriousness. When John F Kennedy pledged to go to the moon, he had an intense personal commitment. He delivered speeches remembered to this day. He dedicated astronomical sums to make it happen. At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was consuming almost 4 percent of the federal budget, which in terms of the 2011 budget is about $150 billion. Today the manned space program will die for want of $3 billion a year — 1/300th of last year’s stimulus package with its endless make-work projects that will leave not a trace on the national consciousness.

As for President Obama’s commitment to beyond-lunar space: Has he given a single speech, devoted an iota of political capital to it? Mr. Obama’s NASA budget perfectly captures the difference in spirit between Mr. Kennedy’s liberalism and Mr. Obama’s. Mr. Kennedy’s was an expansive, bold, out- -ward-looking summons. Mr. Obama’s is a constricted inward-looking call to retreat. Fifty years ago, Mr. Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Mr. Obama has just shut it.

Charles Krauthammer’s e-mail address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com

What’s with the US Census?

The Super-sized census boondoggle

By Michelle Malkin
The Washington Times, February 15, 2010

If only the federal government were as responsible with our money as Pepsi is with theirs. The soda giant has been in the Super Bowl ad business for more than two decades. But, this year, Pepsi determined it was economically unwise to pay $3 million for a 30-second spot. So, who’s foolish enough to pay for Super Bowl gold-plated airtime - You and me and Washington, D.C?
The U.S. Census Bureau squandered $2.5 million on a half-minute Super Bowl ad starring D-list celebrity Ed Begley Jr., plus two pre-game blurbs and 12-second “vignettes” featuring Super Bowl anchor James Brown. It’s a drop in the census boondoggle bucket (otherwise known as the tax-subsidized National Democratic Future Voter Outreach Drive).

The Obama White House has allocated a total of $340 million toward an “unprecedented” promotional blitz for the 2010 census. That’s on top of $1 billion in stimulus money siphoned off for increased census “public outreach” and staffing. In all, the census will triple its total 2000 budget to $15 billion. Ads pimping the census have already appeared during the Golden Globe awards and will broadcast during the Daytona 500 and NCAA Final Four championships.

Some $80 million will be poured into multilingual ads in 28 languages from Arabic to Yiddish. Racial and ethnic groups have been squabbling over their share of the pie.

The U.S. census is a decennial census mandated by our Constitution. Should Americans know about it? Sure. Should the P.R. budget become a bottomless slush fund in reversionary times? Surely not. Yet, no matter how you translate it, the census commercials to date have been an “Ishtar” style flop. Global ad agency Draftfeb, based in (Obama’s hometown) Chicago and New York, nabbed a $200 million four-year contract to oversee the Census Bureau’s direct marketing, online and offline general market media strategies. The agency hired comedian Christopher Guest to direct “viral” spots. One of the supposedly “humor-driven” videos directed by Guest and uploaded to YouTube a few weeks ago. It has racked up a measly 6,880 views. -“For a once-a-decade project involving every living American. That’s a pretty crummy return on investment:’ jeered Ad-Freak’s David Griner. “The video seems to be hampered by the same problem that plagues all campaigns meant to ‘go viral’ i.e., it’s simply not that funny. The joke is a chuckler at best, and dragged out to three minutes, that chuckle gets spread pretty thin?’ According to independent census watchdog Stephen Morse, the feds conducted a total of 115 focus groups in 37 markets across the country before settling on the dud of an a
That’s a lot of focus-grouping to get people to pay a little extra attention to government head-count questionnaires coming straight to their mailboxes.

Taxpayers are also footing ~ the bill for the Mother of all Government Junkets — a three-month road trip by lucky-ducky Census Bureau flacks traveling in 13 buses and cargo vans with trailers. They’ll be partying m New Orleans for Mardi Gras and at parades across the country. In case you were wondering about the anticipated Census Road Show carbon footprint, it’s an estimated 223 metric tons. But not to worry: The ecoteers of an Al Gore carbon offset firm called “Carbonfund.org” have become official government “partners” with the Census to offset all the vehicle emissions—and surf off the free publicity to garner more business.

As if overpriced TV ads, online videos no one watches and indulgent, cross-country caravans weren’t enough, the Census Bureau is also enlisting 56 million schoolchildren to pester their parents and act as junior government enumerators. Educates are spending several billions more on math and social studies lessons peddling the census. Overzealous census partners such as the National Association of Latino Elected Officials have distributed recruitment propaganda urging constituents to participate because “Joseph and Mary participated in the census.” Goodness knows what kind of fear-mongering curricula the kids are being served in the name of counting heads — and shaping the electoral landscape.

“When times are tough, you tighten your belts:’ President Obama lectured us. “ You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas.” Coincidentally, the Census Road Tour junketeers just wrapped up a visit in Vegas. Next stop? You guessed it: the Super Bowl in Miami. Taxpayers should start crying foul.

Michelle Malkin is a nationally syndicated columnist.

Barack Obama, Al Gore and Osama bin Laden all agree on Global Warming

The Washington Times, February 8, 2010

In his State of the Union address two weeks ago, President Obama said there was “overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.” In his most recent message to the world, Osama bin Laden said that climate change “is not an intellectual luxury but an actual fact?’ It’s nice to see these two leaders can agree on something. The hitch is that the man-caused catastrophic global warming theory is dead, and it needs to be buried. Evidence had been mounting for years that there were problems with the global warming model; most telling was that the globe refused to warm up. Carbon emissions continued apace, but the world began cooling. This is why true believers abandoned the “global warming” brand name and tried to shift the debate to the more ambiguous label “climate change,” which is something the rest of us like to refer to as “weather.”

The dam broke with Climategate when hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit revealed that global warming advocates had for years attempted to hide conflicting data and silence their professional critics. British authorities have determined that the university broke freedom-of-information laws by denying information to scientists seeking to check claims that global warming was caused by human activity.

Evidence is emerging that the data had been rigged all along. Russian analysts noted that British temperature calculations excluded data from 40 percent of Russian territory, much of which showed no increase in temperature in the past 50 years. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cherry-picked data, cutting Canadian data sources from 600 to 35 and relying on only one monitor for all of Canada above the Arctic Circle. This was done even though Canada operates 1,400 weather stations, 100 of which are in the Arctic.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is having its own scandal regarding a finding in its Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2007 report that glaciers in India were rapidly disappearing. It is now revealed that this dramatic claim was based not on years of patient observation and research but anecdotes from a hiking magazine and a student’s master’s thesis. IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri knew about the erroneous information before December’s Copenhagen climate summit but maintained the falsehood. He even denounced a report from India that showed the glaciers were in far less jeopardy as “unsubstantiated research.” Last month, Mr. Pachauri published a sexually explicit novel, further diminishing his professional reputation.

Climate scientists have to come to grips with some highly inconvenient truths. World temperatures continue to decline as carbon emissions increase. Chilly Scotland is facing its coldest winter in a century. Arctic sea ice is not vanishing. Polar bears are experiencing a baby boom. Water vapor appears to play as important a role in the climate as carbon emissions. Sunspot activity may be more important than both combined. Meanwhile, climate change fanatics seek to blame capitalism and productivity for global warming, global cooling, too much snow, not enough snow, hurricanes, tornadoes and even the Haiti earthquake.

The simplistic and increasingly discredited theory of carbon-based, man-caused global warming needs to be discarded, and the scientists who sought to squelch skeptics and artificially inflate their own reputations must be disciplined. Alas, Mr. Obama, (Mr. Gore) and Mr. bin Laden need to update their talking points.

Are you guilty of contributory negligence? Did you pick the “leadership,” the synagogue?

Michael Steinhardt criticizes Failures Of Jewish Leadership

By Avi Yellin
The Jewish Press, January 15, 2010

Michael H. Steinhardt, one of world Jewry’s most generous philanthropists and a co-founder of Birthright Israel, has delivered a scathing criticism of all that he sees wrong with the Jewish world today, singling out non-Orthodox life. In an interview with Mark S. Golub of Shalom TV, Steinhardt expressed his deep disappointment with the traditional Hebrew school system and characterized many of the young people he has met through Birthright Israel as “Jewish barbarians” who have never in their lives even experienced a Sabbath dinner.

Steinhardt, who identifies himself as anything but an Orthodox Jew, had especially harsh criticism for non-Orthodox Jewish life in the Diaspora. He expressed his disappointment and anger with those often described as “wonderful educators” in the Reform and Conservative movements for having done “such a poor job under-educating our next generations” and for failing to distinguish Jewish values from Christian ones.

From Steinhardt’s perspective, it has become virtually impossible to identify a non-Orthodox Jewish student from a non-Jewish student at any secular university. “I think that many of the trends that we have seen — such as the fact that 55-60 percent of non-Orthodox Jews are marrying out; such as the fact that only 15 percent of total philanthropy of Jews goes to Jewish causes — are reflective of that fact that non-Orthodox Jewish education in America has been, and continues to be a shandah, a shame, an abysmal failure”

Steinhardt also blasted Jewish leadership in America, saying there has been too much emphasis on the Holocaust — “an event of extraordinary enormity” — and misplaced fears about anti-Semitism in America. “Anti-Semitism,” he said, “has always been far more mythical than real in America; it’s as if organizations have to create the bogeyman of anti-Semitism in order to raise money.” Steinhardt further argued that concern about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism detracts “from our ability to think about the Jewish future — because it’s hard to be focused intensively on the Holocaust and, at the same time, to think about what we want to accomplish and what we want to be in the 21st century.” Steinhardt offered a foreboding assessment for the future of Diaspora Jewry:

“It is a moribund Jewish world, continuously losing its young people, whose charities have dramatically changed where only a small fraction of total philanthropy is going to Jewish causes; interest in Israel is declining; the number of American Jews going to Israel is not growing; where the culmination of Jewish life seems to be the bar mitzvah — and from there it is all downhill.”

While Steinhardt maintains that the most effective tool in instilling a sense of Jewish identity in young people is for them to visit Israel, he does not hold back from criticizing Israeli politicians and post-Zionist aspects of modern Israeli culture. “Israel’s politicians,” he said, “are, writ large, awful; its businessmen are of less than glorious quality; and when you walk down Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv and you look around at these people you say, ‘This is who you admire?’
“I often say it’s easier to be a Zionist in Manhattan than it is in Tel Aviv.”

Despite the challenges that exist in the modern Jewish state, Steinhardt said Israel has always been his great love and he expressed joy and appreciation for being able to contribute to and participate in Jewish life to the extent he has.

Mr. Scott Brown (aka Jimmy Stewart) Goes to Washington

Redacted from article by Wm. Kristol, Editor

The Weekly Standard, February 1, 2010

Life doesn’t simply imitate art. There are important differences between the Scott Brown story and Jefferson Smith’s. And the differences make Brown’s actual achievement more impressive than Smith’s fictitious one. For example, Smith (Jimmy Stewart) was appointed to his seat in the Senate. Scott Brown won his in an upset electoral victory. And at the climactic moment in the film, Smith collapses in a faint, but his cause is saved by a fellow senator, Joseph Paine (Claude Rains), who has had sudden pangs of conscience.

By contrast, at a key moment in Brown’s effort, the televised debate a week before Election Day, it was Brown all alone, relying on his own wits, who seized the moment. He responded to David Gergen’s patronizing question as to whether he was willing to “sit in Teddy Kennedy’s seat” and block liberal health care policies by saying, coolly and calmly, “Well, with all due respect, it’s not the Kennedy’s’ seat, and it’s not the Democrats’ seat, it’s the people’s seat.”

But there are also similarities between the sagas of Smith and Brown. Both had happy endings, featuring the upset victory of a god (and good-looking!) guy, who sought to represent the public interest and was in touch with public sentiment, over an entrenched, corrupt, and out-of-touch political machine. And both victories horrified the political establishment. When Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington premiered at Constitution Hall in Washington in October 1939, half the Senate was in attendance. The senators were outraged by the film’s depiction of widespread venality and corruption in that august body. Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley denounced Mr. Smith as a “silly and stupid” movie that “showed the Senate as the biggest aggregation of nincompoops on record.”

When Scott Brown won last Tuesday night, once again more than half the Senate was surely outraged and or shell-shocked. And today’s majority leader, Harry Reid, followed in Barkley’s footsteps by issuing a grudging and graceless statement, which included no congratulations to Scott Brown (“The people of Massachusetts have spoken”) and no recognition that the public was sending any sort of message. "While Senator-elect Brown’s victory changes the political math in the Senate ... there is much work to do to address the problems Democrats -inherited last year, and we plan to move full speed ahead.”

Another similarity between art and life was provided by the Kennedy family. The patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, was ambassador to Great Britain in 1939, and he complained to the head of Columbia Pictures that Mr. Smith would harm “America’s prestige in Europe.” Indeed, he urged that it be withdrawn from European release. Seventy years later, various Kennedys campaigned against Scott Brown’s upstart effort to capture the Senate seat held by Joe’s youngest son for 47 years.

But, the biggest similarity is this:
Americans liked an underdog in 1939. They liked one in 2010. When the establishment is arrogant and unresponsive, they tend to side with a Jefferson Smith/ Scott Brown figure. In 1939, that establishment seemed to be made up of conservative economic royalists. Today, that establishment seems to consist of liberal political royalists.

This difference is, politically, a big deal. It is at the heart of the Republicans’ opportunity to build on what Scott Brown has accomplished. It suggests the GOP, and the conservative movement, should embrace the kind of enlightened, good-natured, constructive populism that Brown demonstrated in his campaign. And it means resisting the twin perils of Republican establishmentarian royalism on the one hand, and a bitter and destructive populism on the other.

Critics in 1939 were surprisingly lukewarm about Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But, the public liked it, and the film struck a chord around the world. Supposedly, when American-made films were banned in German-occupied France in 1942, some theaters showed Mr. Smith as the last movie before the ban, and one theater owner in Paris showed the film for 30 days running after the ban was announced.

Pundits today may not be crazy about Scott Brown’s victory. But, the public seems to approve. And, Brown’s momentum will carry Republicans along for at least 30 days. Still, it’s a long ten months until November, and Republicans will need more than just momentum and sentiment. They’ll need policy proposals that advance the cause of democratic capitalism against crony capitalism, the public interest against the special interests, and free markets against big government and, yes, at times against big business. If they can begin to fill out this agenda while standing resolute against the dictates of the liberal establishment, then Scott Brown could be followed to Washington by many more underdog conservative citizen-legislators in November.

—William Kristol

An Analogy – Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama!

“Dictatorships and Double Standards” - A Redux

Professor Jeane Kirkpatrick’s seminal article and what it has to teach us about the condition of Obama’s foreign policy

These are just excerpts from a marvelous analogy By Ilan Wurman

COMMENTARY January 2010

THIRTY years ago, an article criticizing the Carter administration’s foreign policy appeared in these pages under the title “Dictatorships and Double Standards.” Its author was Jeane Kirkpatrick, then a professor of political science at Georgetown University: “Dictatorships and Double Standards” went on to become one of the most controversial and influential articles published in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century.

Kirkpatrick’s central argument was very much focused on the singular events of the year 1979, one of the most difficult in American history, and therefore would seem to have limited application to the very different world order to be found in 2009. Nonetheless, “Dictatorships and Double Standards” remains a potent and devastating critique of how American progressives think about U.S. power and foreign policy and the approach it condemns—the way in which the Carter administration viewed the world and conducted American policy.

It is worryingly similar to the approach of the Obama administration today. Certain policies pursued by the Carter administration, ostensibly in the name of American principles and interests, Kirkpatrick argued, were in fact undermining those interests and leading to America’s international isolation and a loss of power and authority: -

... THE disastrous state of American foreign policy under Jimmy Carter was neatly encapsulated in Kirkpatrick’s blunt opening: “The failure of the Carter administration’s foreign policy is now clear to everyone except its architects.” But, worse was yet to come. Kirkpatrick did not know that, only a week after COMMENTARY’S November 1979 issue hit the newsstands, the U.S. embassy in Tehran would be raided and 52 of its American employees taken hostage—nor could she have imagined that the hostage crisis would last 444 days.

The year would come to a close with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. We are not even a year into Barack Obama’s term, but given what we have seen of it so far, we have reason to fear that the “Dictatorships and Double Standards” of our time will see its way into print more quickly than Kirkpatrick’s, which appeared in the 33rd month of Carter’s ignominious single term.

ILAN WURMAN, making his first appearance in COMMENTARY, is a student at Claremont McKenna College.

The Anti-Defamation League with Director Abe Foxman runs credit report on Barack Obama

07 Feb 2010

By: Jim Meyers

The Anti-Defamation League’s National Director Abraham Foxman gives President Barack Obama an "F” - a failing report card grade after his first year in office for his accomplishments in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In an exclusive Newsmax interview, Foxman also criticized the Obama administration for failing to show leadership in supporting reformers in Iran in the wake of their recent presidential election. He also warns about the growing threat posed by homegrown Islamic terrorists and sleeper cells in the United States.

The Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, the nation's premier civil rights organization, was founded in 1913 to battle defamation and discrimination against Jews, but its scope has broadened and today it is at the forefront fighting against bigotry of all kinds. Foxman has led the ADL for 23 years and is known around the world as one the United States' most respected Jewish-American leaders. He is the recipient of many awards, including the French Legion of Honor, France's highest civilian award.

In a sit-down interview with Foxman conducted this weekend, Newsmax TV Kathleen Walter asked Foxman how he would rate Obama's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian situation.

“I would give him an A for effort, a C-minus for strategy, and an F for accomplishment.” Foxman responded without hesitation. ”I think the intentions were good. I think the strategy to put pressure on Israel, to put forward the settlement issue as a litmus test, not to put pressure on the Arab countries, not to put pressure on the Palestinians, not only failed but it set the peace process back. In the past administration, under Bush, [the November 2007 peace conference] at Annapolis brought the two parties together. They talked about all kinds of issues while settlements were being built. Now for us to get to where we were before will take a great deal of effort.

Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to restart negotiations with Israel unless certain preconditions are met, including a complete halt to Jewish settlement construction. Walter asked Foxman what the Obama administration can do to move the process along. ”I think the president and his administration should put more pressure on the Palestinians, embarrass them a little bit,” he said. “Why are they making preconditions? If peace is important, why is there a need to set all these preconditions which didn’t exist before? I would like to see the administration also move a little more directly on the Arab states, on the moderate Arab states, on the Saudis, on the Egyptians, on the UAE, for them to put pressure on the Palestinians to go back to the table. There’s also the issue of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

I believe the president has a bully pulpit. He has a very clear moral voice. I have not heard it in terms of the world community singling out Israel. It would be nice to hear it publicly. I think that may bring back the balance and maybe move the peace process closer. Foxman’s impatience and disappointment in Obama seems to reflect a growing unease among American Jews about the president’s Middle East policies. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, expressed concern about Obama in a June interview with Newsmaxs Chief Washington Correspondent Ronald Kessler. ” There’s a lot of questioning going on about what he really believes and what does he really stand for.” Hoenlein said. [Jews] are genuinely very concerned.” he added.

On the home front, the ADL has grown increasingly concerned about domestic terrorism. A recent report by the Anti-Defamation League’s magazine, ADL on the Frontline, warned of a growing threat from American Muslim extremists. In the past two years, the report noted, more than 30 of these extremists have been arrested on various terror-related charges including providing material support to terrorists and plotting to plant bombs in the United States. When Newsmax’s Walter asked about this worrisome threat, Foxman said, “There’s no question that there are sleeper cells in this country.”

”There’s no question that fundamentalist Islam has targeted the U.S. The 9/11 [attacks] on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did not begin with flying planes and box cutters. It began with hate, hateful words, teachings of hate. And we know throughout the world, including the United States, there are individuals who have been taught to hate, who have been inspired to hate, who have been taught to do violence, and we know they have been placed in various places around the United States to act at certain moments. It is a clear and present danger which I think we are finally becoming aware of, that we need to focus on and take seriously.”

Turning to Iran, Walter referred to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to wipe Israel off the map and asked Foxman what options Obama has in dealing with the Islamic Republic and its nuclear development program. One of the options that needs to be on the table, as long as a sovereign state is threatening the destruction of another state time and time again, is a military option” Foxman said. It should be the last option, but I don’t think anything else will work unless the Iranians understand how serious would be their consequences.” When violence broke out in Iran following disputed elections, the United States hesitated,” Foxman added. We were not out there very clearly in support of the reformers and all those who were ready to risk their lives.

I think the United States needs to show leadership. Secretary of State Clinton said we need crippling sanctions. Whether we get Russia or China with us or not, the United States should push forward aggressively in the United Nations. And if they can’t get the United Nations, then bring together those who are willing to stand up and say to Iran, this is not the way. Other courses of action may succeed if there is a military option. If there is no military option, why should the Iranians even bother to listen to all kinds of verbal threats? World peace is being threatened. It’s not only Israel. Israel is the first calling card. It’s the (so-called) moderate Arab states. It’s the Persian Gulf. It’s Saudi Arabia. It’s Europe. And eventually, it’s the United States and its relationship to the world.”

Walter referred to the June 2009 incident at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., when anti-Semite James von Brunn shot and killed a security guard, and asked if there is growing anti-Semitism in the U.S. The United States is probably the least of all countries that suffer anti-Semitism, but we are not immune,” Foxman responded. We have measured attitudes in this country, and the attitude 40 years ago was that 30 percent of the American people were infected with anti-Semitism. Today we are about 12 to 14 percent. It’s an improvement, but that still means 30 or 40 million Americans are infected with the disease of anti-Semitism. Most people don’t act on it. What we saw at the Holocaust Museum are manifestations where there’s anger, there’s hatred that moves to the surface. So far what we’ve seen are lone wolves, people acting on their own. But, it’s there. The infection is there.

What the trigger is for these individuals who have harbored this bigotry, this prejudice, to act out violently, we don’t know. Whether it’s unemployment, whether it’s blaming the government, whether it’s because they’re angry because there’s an African-American president, we don’t know what it is. But, it may trigger and therefore we are a lot more concerned about the safety of synagogues and Jewish institutions than we have been in a long time. Foxman also said the greatest threat to freedom, to democracy, to our values, is fundamentalist, extremist Islam.

Exactly what happened to Barack Obama?

As Predictable As Clockwork

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, (Political analyst extraordinaire)
The Jewish Press, February 5, 2010

I think we could see what was coming. This presidency has about as much subtlety in plot as a grade-B western, soap opera or teenage tantrum. A lackluster McCain candidacy, the September 2008 meltdown, weariness with eight years of Bush incumbency, conservative anger over spending, liberal furor over Iraq, a toady media, and Republican congressional corruption all led to a 50/50 electorate that was open to being mesmerized by Obama’s rhetoric and the dream of the nation’s first African-American president.

With congressional majorities, a compliant press, soaring public support, a soon-to-be President Obama was convinced, as he had been convinced by his success in the Ivy League, in Chicago, and in the Senate that he had a left-wing mandate. He believed he could hope and change his way to almost anything he wanted, despite the thin record, self-contradictions, constant inconsistencies and general confusion.

The hard left was salivating that at last it had an effective delivery system that could usher in a long awaited European-style socialism. Therefore, what followed was predictable: In his hubris, Obama cast off the campaign mask of moderation. Thick and fast came proposals for state-run healthcare, government takeovers, talk of nationalizing the student loan program, bailouts, mega-deficits, more, borrowing as stimulus, multicultural mea culpas abroad, loony symbolic appointments, and promiscuous talk of higher income, payroll, inheritance, and healthcare taxes, but only on “them.”

In other words, we saw in a trendy, cool form the age-old attempt to institutionalize equality of result, as freedom and liberty give way to mandated egalitarianism and fraternity. But wait — two thorny problems arose. The country is not quite yet left wing, but voted for Obama for the perfect-storm reasons outlined above. Anyone who had read the history of America could see that it was always a different sort of place than France, Germany, or Sweden — and will be, at least for a while longer.

So to ram down a left-wing agenda, the thespian Obama would have to continue his role as the bipartisan healer, centrist, reformer, purple-state uniter, trans-racial unifier, etc. But, alas, old habits die hard and the public soon began, here and there, to get glimpses of the old reality behind the new mask.

The wages of years with Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, the easy path through the Ivy League, the Axelrod-at-our throat politics and the snow job that had wowed deans, philanthropists and suburbanites all reappeared. Even as Obama sought to convince the farmer, plumber and insurance agent to accept state healthcare, a landscape of windmills and a EU-foreign policy, he slipped back into his old self. Thus, we got Van Jones and his racist, 9/11 truther bombast. Anita Dunn praised Mao. Commissars at the NEA boasted of the new Caesar.

The Professor Henry Gates incident prompted the president to trash the police first and get the facts second. Creditors were politically rescheduled for bailed-out businesses. The president thoughtlessly weighed in on everything from the Special Olympics and the tea party movement to Fox News and America’s purported sins. Suddenly we were no longer exceptional, but the Muslim world in fact had-jump-started the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The old bad guys — Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chavez and Putin — earned new, kind talk; the prior U.S. president was reduced to satanic status.

Conservatives are in a “I told you so mood” as the 2008 talk-radio bombast about Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, “re-distributive” spread the wealth, European socialism, etc., turned out not to be bombast at all. Moderates and independents sigh, “I can’t believe this is happening to me; he seemed just like Clinton with all that balanced budget talk, balanced energy policy, and mainstream help-the-little-guy talk. What happened to the Barack we trusted?” Liberals wonder, “Why is the coolest guy around suddenly flubbing every opportunity to get our agenda passed?” The hard left laments, “This guy is a triangulator who gave us a nibble, then pulled away the bone.”

His supporters counter: “See, he is a pragmatist and centrist who alienates the extremes.” No, No, No. He alienates them, but now the middle as well. What keeps his approval ratings in the forties is only the idea that the American people cannot quite yet accept a failed presidency after a mere 12 months — a presidency in which they had invested such hopes after the poll-crashing of Bush’s final two years.

Finger pointing and blame-gaming have begun because no one can properly address the real and only problem: Obama has had no previous identity or independent ideology. By osmosis (rather than by careful study or lifelong experience) he absorb the trendy left-wing cant that variously manifested itself wherever he traveled, from the Occidental lounge dorm to the Ivy League salon groupthink to Chicago organizing to Rev. Wright’s pulpit to the liberal caucuses of the U.S. Senate.

For a while, it was all as easy as sonorously thundering “hope and change. He never before had to articulate his leftism in any real detail, defend it, debate it, or analyze it. Now as his polls dip, we hear instead gripes over tactics, not the essence of the problem, which is the absence of an identity confidently and honestly expressed. So we get nonsense: “He’s too detached and cool.” He outsourced his agenda to the polarizing, corrupt and inept Reid/Pelosi wing.” “He surrounded himself with one too many shady Chicago polls.” “He took on too much all at once.”

What’s next? We can predict it in our sleep. He will continue the “let me be perfectly clear,” “fat-cat banker” talk to his base, do his selected-audience hope and change rants while trying to do a move-to-the-center light. Oh yes - a commission to balance the budget - sorta. Tough talk abroad — kinda. Health-care reform we can all agree on - maybe.

In the past, every time Obama has been in a jam, two things followed. He first threw under the bus perceived liabilities (yesterday’s Rev. Wright and grandmother will be this year’s Rahm Emanuel, Timothy Geithner and Janet Napolitano). Second, he adopted bipartisan “there is only one America” rhetoric. Yes, soon we can expect to hear of American exceptionalism, and a thing called “the war on terror,” and deficits that must be paid back and “working across the aisle.”

I doubt we’ll get genuine effort at balancing the budget, keeping businesses competitive, cutting waste, restoring American alliances, securing borders, centrist appointments, real bipartisanship, or a simplified tax system.

Instead, we’ve gone from the idealistic-sounding, centrist candidate Obama, to the Carter McGovern President Obama, to the wannabe Clinton triangulator. The only constant is no real identity, no firm belief, no core convictions from which to make the argument that his left-wing vision is good for the country. Obama never had to make that argument. Left-wing dogma was always a state religion in his circles and once Obama the nightingale started his song, few of the hypnotized worried about the inane message that followed. Being president is all so... so unfair!

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of numerous works on military history.

Deliberate lies re: Israel and the Middle East

Redacted from FLAME - Logics and Facts About the Middle East

In a previous installment in this series of clarifying messages about Israel and the Middle East, we examined certain myths which, by dint of constant repetition, had acquired currency and acceptance. We looked at the myth of “Palestinian nationhood,” the myth of Judea/Samara (the “West Bank”) being “occupied territory,” the myth that Jewish settlements in these territories are “the greatest obstacle to peace,” and the myth that Israel is unwilling to “yield land for peace.” In addition, we cleared up the greatest myth of all - namely that Israel’s administration of the territories and not the unrelenting hatred of the Arabs against the Jews is the root cause of the conflict between the Arabs and Israel. But, those are not all the myths; there are more.

What are more of these myths?

• Myth: The Arabs of Israel are a persecuted minority.
Reality: The over one million non-Jews (mostly Arabs) who are citizens of Israel have the same civil rights that Jews have. They vote, are members of the Knesset (parliament) and are part of Israel’s civil and diplomatic service, just as their Jewish fellow citizens. Arabs have complete religious freedom and full access to the Israeli legal, health and educational systems — including Arabic and Muslim universities. The only difference between the “rights” of Arabs and Jews is that Jewish young men must serve three years in the military and at least one month a year until age 50. Young Jewish women serve for two years. The Arabs have no such civic obligation. For them, military service is voluntary. Not too surprisingly, except for the Druze, very few avail themselves of the privilege.

• Myth: Having (ill-advisedly) already given up control of the Gaza Strip, Israel should also give up the administration of Judea/Samaria (the “West Bank”) because strategic depth is meaningless in this age of missiles.
Reality: Israel is a mini-state about half the size of San Bernardino County in California. If another, even smaller mini-state were carved out of it, Israel would be totally indefensible. That is the professional opinion of 100 retired U.S. generals and admirals. If the Arabs were to occupy whatever little strategic depth Israel has between the Jordan River and its populated coast, they would not need any missiles. Artillery and mortars would suffice, since Israel would be only nine miles wide at its waist. Those who urge such a course either do not understand the situation or have a death wish for Israel.

• Myth: If Israel would allow a Palestinian state to arise in Judea and Samaria it would be a democratic state and would be totally demilitarized.
Reality: There is no prospect at all that anything resembling a democratic state could be created in the territories. There is not a single democratic Arab state — all of them are tyrannies of varying degrees. Even today, under partial Israeli administration, Hamas and other factions fight for supremacy and ruthlessly murder each other. Another Lebanon, with its incessant civil wars, is much more likely. The lawlessness and chaos that prevail in Gaza since Israel’s withdrawal is a good prospect of what would happen if Israel — foolishly and under the pressure of “world opinion” — were to abandon this territory.

As for demilitarization, that is totally unlikely. Because — with Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, most of which are in a declared state of war with Israel, at its borders — an irresistible power vacuum would be created. Despite pious promises, the arms merchants of the world would find a great new market and the neighboring hostile Arab countries would be happy to supply anything else that might be needed.

Myth: Israel should make “confidence-building gestures” for the sake of peace.
Reality: What really is it that the world expects Israel to do for the sake of peace? Most of the 22 Arab countries consider themselves in a state of war with Israel and don’t even recognize its “existence.” That has been going on for over sixty years. Isn’t it about time that the Arabs made some kind of a “gesture?” Could they not for instance terminate the constant state of war? Could they not stop launching rockets into Israel from areas that Israel has abandoned for the sake of peace? Could they not stop the suicide bombings, which have killed hundreds of Israelis and which have made extreme security measures — such as the defensive fence and convoluted bypass roads — necessary? Any of these would create a climate of peace and would indeed be the “confidence-building gestures” that the world hopes for.

Countless “peace conferences” to settle this festering conflict have taken place. All have ended in failure because of the intransigence of the Arabs. President Clinton, toward the end of his presidency, convened a conference with the late unlamented Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak, the prime minister of Israel at that time. Mr. Barak offered virtually everything that Arafat had requested, except the partition of Jerusalem and the acceptance of the so-called refugees, their descendants having swollen from the 650,000 who fled the nascent state of Israel during the War of Liberation, to an incredible 5 million. Arafat left in a huff and started his infamous Intifada instead, a bloody war that has cost thousands of Palestinian and Israeli lives. Israel is America’s staunchest ally and certainly its only true friend in that area of the world. It is in our national interest that reality, not myths, governs our policy.