So much has been said and written about Barack Obama that, barring some shattering revelation, very little remains to be rehearsed. As columnist Barry Rubin bemoaned, “I don’t want to keep writing every day about the Obama Administration’s Middle East policy. There are many other topics I’d prefer, but the problem is that they keep doing things.” I could not agree more, and not concerning the Middle East alone. Yet the issues continuing to swirl about the president need to be revisited, not only because Obama is arguably the most polarizing figure of our times, but because he is also the most potentially catastrophic.

This statement will be regarded by many as rhetorical overkill, but I would contend that the election of Obama to the most powerful office in the world is quite possibly the most significant political—and dangerous—event of recent times. By being proactive and making informed decisions, he has the ability to create a slightly safer world. By misreading the historical text, making bad choices, engaging half-heartedly in certain conflicts (Afghanistan, Iraq), coming down on the wrong side of another (Israeli/Palestinian), and flinching before yet another challenge of far greater urgency (Iran), he invites retribution. This latter direction is plainly the one he has taken. As such I believe that intense concentration on the man and his compliant administration, and its public reiteration, is both warranted and necessary.

Indeed, the presidential dilemma we are facing is complex and far-ranging. Leaving aside the ongoing “birther” controversy focusing on the vexed issue of the president’s legitimacy, the “Obama problem” really has to do with the conundrum of his political identity. Is he a bone-stock socialist or a far-left radical determined to impose a neo-Marxist regime upon republican America, or merely a “person of advanced views and reactionary feeling,” as Theodore Dalrymple says of Virginia Woolf? Perhaps, as Jonah Goldberg suggests, coining a phrase, he is a “neo-socialist” who believes “in the power of government to extend its scope and grasp far deeper into society”? Is Obama a closet Islamist, as some have alleged? Is he a media artifact, the digital remastering of an epic hero enacting an ancient fantasy of salvation? Is he a volatile prevaricator, saying one thing, then saying another, making solemn promises and regularly breaking them, whose erratic behavior must leave us bewildered before an ever-widening credibility gap? Or is he a university-educated postmodernist for whom the concept of truth has been relativized beyond recognition? Is he just a political rookie whose lack of executive experience shows up alarmingly in a capricious and anemic foreign policy? An old KGB hand like Vladimir Putin must look at him and think, “What a patsy.” Ditto Hugo Chavez, King Abdullah, Bashir Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Castros and a host of other shrewd manipulators and world-wise autocrats.

Who really knows? Perhaps, as Pajamas Media founder Roger Simon proposes, he is frankly deranged, meriting the title of President Weirdo? Children’s author Sarah Durand concurs, diagnosing Obama as suffering from liberalomania, archly defined as a “degenerative form of dementia” evidenced in his highly skilled capacity as a blame gamer, his extreme narcissism and his delusions of grandeur. Or is he merely an updated version of tall-tale artist and windy opportunist Christy Mahon in John Millington Synge’s comic drama The Playboy of the Western World, “the laughing joke of every woman [read: person] where four baronies meet”—the man who flies Air Force One to dinner, practices his golf swing while a national crisis is unfolding, and throws Budweiser-like parties in the White house, as if to “keep the good times going”? Or is he none of these but, quite the opposite, the “sort of god” whom Newsweek’s Evan Thomas worships, “The One” venerated by Oprah, Louis Farrakhan’s “Messiah”? Who? What? Searching for Obama is like mining for unobtanium.

Iranian-born journalist Amir Taheri is troubled by Obama’s lack of identifiable character. Commenting on Obama’s casting himself as a bridge between America and the Islamic world (Al- Arabiya TV, January 27, 2009), Taheri notes that “Obama appeared unsure of his own identity and confused about the role that America should play in global politics. And that is bad news for those who believe that the United States should use its moral, economic and political clout in support of democratic forces throughout the world.” Obama himself admitted in The Audacity of Hope, “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” Pretty damaging, this confession. And when it comes to Obama’s famous “hope,” among the most antiquated of imaginable pieties whether audacious or sentimental, American poet C.J. Sage has it about right: “Solve for this: where x is hope/and y is your future, what is surely finite?” Something worth keeping in mind when listening to a political mesmerist.

The question remains open. Who is this guy? And what does so enigmatic a figure augur for the United States and, indeed, for the future of us all? No matter what hypothesis or conviction one espouses concerning his definitive DNA, it seems fair to say that a shadow of the clandestine—or if one prefers, the inscrutable—envelops this president.

Even Obama’s most avid supporters, if they are honest, must allow that, compared to his POTUS predecessors, unambiguously little is known about his antecedents or, for example, the salient facts of his academic career—many of his records are still under seal, his college and university transcripts have not been released and, broadly speaking, his significant documentation is rather flimsy. There is not much of a paper trail here; for that matter, there is scarcely a Hansel-and-Gretel bread crumb trail. How such a man could be elected to the presidency boasting a curriculum vitae with more blank pages in it than a Danielewski novel remains a riddle for the sphinx. Nor should it surprise us that it is precisely a blank page, like the blank screen Obama mentions, that solicits conjecture or projection, much of it skeptical or unfavorable.

In any event, there can be no doubt that the dossier is scanty and that this is a truly amazing deficiency. We simply do not have a clear portrait or a crisply factual biography of the president. But what we do know about his close affiliates—America-and-Jew bashing Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, hysterical and racially divisive Cornel West, unrepentant Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, unscrupulous entrepreneur Tony Rezko—is profoundly unsettling. To adapt Obama’s ringing slogan, borrowed or plagiarized from African-American poet June Jordan, are they the ones we’ve been waiting for? But on the whole, the asymmetric relation between what we know and what we don’t know must distress any rational person curious about so influential an actor on the current political scene.

That Louis Farrakhan, like millions of others, feels that Obama was “selected” for our times should give us further pause. On the contrary, it may not be out of place to suggest that we are now afflicted with the worst possible president at the worst possible time, with Iran darting toward the nuclear finish line, the Palestinians as intransigent as ever, the Russians moving back into the Caucasus region, negotiating with Venezuela and solidifying ties with Iran, Syria and Turkey, terrorism (oops—“man-made disasters”) on the rise and U.S. citizens increasingly at the mercy of the jihadists, China holding massive quantities of American Treasury notes, Obama considering ruinous cap-and-trade legislation at a time when the AGW consensus is collapsing, the American debt estimated to hit 100% of GDP in 2011 and its unfunded entitlement liabilities totaling over $US 100 trillion, leading to the prospect of monetary collapse. None of these critical issues have been substantially addressed by the president, except insofar as his actions in some cases, lack of action in others, have only exacerbated them. The collateral fact that we really have no valid and comprehensive notion of who exactly is leading us at this crucial historical juncture boggles the mind.

It should be added, however, that we do know something about the ideas which govern his policies: the redistribution of wealth, the expansion of state control at the expense of the private sector, extensive regulation of more and more aspects of quotidian life, bureaucratic bloat, a paternal administration accompanied by the leveling of individual initiative to a lowest common denominator—all very old doctrines gussied up with a defensive terminology like “social justice,” “progressivism,” “equality of outcome,” “only the people will save the people”—which have been tried before and failed spectacularly. The best that can be said of Obama is that, in the realm of political theory, he does not believe in granny dumping, though the dogmas and paradigms he embraces should long ago have been put out of their misery.

We might have twigged by now. Each new measure he introduces or intends to introduce is a camel’s nose presaging future debilities. But the president’s youthful vigor, toggle-switch charm and exotic presence seem to apply a veneer of novelty to ideological obsolescence. He is like the word “proverbial” which we insert into a tired simile in order to avoid the skank of platitude, as in “smart as the proverbial whip” or “dumb as the proverbial ox.” America is saddled with a proverbial president, a man whose principal function is to renovate clichès and make them palatable.

This appears to be as far as we can go for now, with more to come to a political theater near us. One thing, however, seems undeniable: so far, not so good.

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Militant Pakistani, not a White Male Tea Partier

by Eric Dondero

Oh how things have changed so dramatically in this 24 hour news cycle of ours. Yesterday, the Right was on the defensive, fearing that indeed the Terrorist in New York would turn out to be some crazed Militia type, or Tea Party supporter. NPR led off their news report, “Top suspect a White Male…”

As Sister Toldjah describes below, some of the usual leftwing suspects, chimed in with the same talking points:

This is great news, and I hope the Feds have indeed got “their guy,” and I also hope that he leads them to other Islamofascist terrorists who were involved in this plot and perhaps who have been in the proceess of planning future terror attacks on Americans and other innocents both on our soil and abroad.

That said, I won’t hold my breath waiting for apologies from Democrat strategist Bob Beckel and Democrat Congressman Jerrold Nadler, both of whom yesterday suggested the Times Square bomber might well have been part of some “right wing” plot. Liberal NYC Mayor Bloomberg speculated it might be someone who “didn’t like the healthcare bill.” Beneath contempt all.

Watch the story now die a slow death on the back pages of the NY Times, WaPo, and relegated to the sidebar at CNN.com.

TeaBagger Pakistani?

HuffPo (h/t Memeo) is already spinning, saying that the bigger story of the day is the court ruling in Detroit on the alleged Militia members, the Hutaree. A liberal judge released them on bail saying the Feds had not made a strong enough case. Wrote HuffPo writer Louis Klavas, an NYU prof. “Do the Hutaree Militia Members Pose a Terrorist Threat?”:

On Monday, while Americans were fixated on the hunt for and subsequent arrest of Faisal Shahzad for his alleged role in the Times Square bomb plot, an equally important terrorism-related story that was breaking in Detroit went relatively unnoticed.

It’s also going to be interesting to watch the “head-in-the-sand” on Islamo-Fascism leftside of the libertarian movement. Leftwing libertarians, with the notable exception of Nick Gillespie of Reason, always seek to downplay the importance and the threat of Radical Islam. It doesn’t fit their template. After all, if they acknowledge the threat, than they also have to offer a solution. And that solution more than not, involves their dreaded foreign intervention with US Troops.

We on the rightside of the libertarian movement acknowledge the threat we face, recognize it, and wish to fight back on all fronts. The bombing two days ago in Times Square just highlights how much we’ve been right all along, and all our opponents, liberals, pacifists, paleo-libertarians, paleo-conservatives, socialists, and most especially Obama Democrats have been dead wrong.

Steve

From Blogsphere:

For all of you who voted for Obama. Take note. Shari’a (Islamic law) is here. Using the “how to boil a frog” principle, it is creeping in. And few people even noticed. Nancy Pelosi said to Congress that they should vote the bill in so that we could see what is in it. Little by little we are seeing what the bill has in it. How many of you want to “support your Muslim neighbors”?

For more info ifetch “Muslim exempt Healthcare”

Here is one site:
[link to changingworldviews.blogspot.com]

Word of the Day: Dhimmitude

Dhimmitude is the Muslim system of controlling non-muslim populations conquered through jihad. Specifically, it is the TAXING of non-muslims in exchange for tolerating their presence AND as a coercive means of converting conquered remnants to islam.
| The ObamaCare bill is the establishment of Dhimmitude and Sharia muslim diktat in the United States . Muslims are specifically exempted from the government mandate to purchase insurance, and also from the penalty tax for being uninsured. Islam considers insurance to be “gambling”, “risk-taking” and “usury” and is thus banned. Muslims are specifically granted exemption based on this. How convenient. So I, Ann Barnhardt, a Christian, will have crippling IRS liens placed against all of my assets, including real estate, cattle, and even accounts receivables, and will face hard prison time because I refuse to buy insurance or pay the penalty tax. Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan will have no such penalty and will have 100% of his health needs paid for by the de facto government insurance. Non-muslims will be paying a tax to subsidize muslims. Period. This is Dhimmitude.
| Dhimmitude serves two purposes: it enriches the muslim masters AND serves to drive conversions to islam. In this case, the incentive to convert to islam will be taken up by those in the inner-cities as well as the godless Generation X, Y and Z types who have no moral anchor. If you don’t believe in Christ to begin with, it is no problem whatsoever to sell Him for 30 pieces of silver. “Sure, I’ll be a muslim if it means free health insurance and no taxes. Where do I sign, bro?”
| I recommend sending this post to your contacts. This is desperately important and people need to know about it – quickly.

Barack Obama has an Israel problem. I won’t say a Jewish problem, because that wouldn’t be “politically correct.” As we all know, anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism (or is it?).

Anyway, the President’s Israel problem couldn’t be more obvious and it seems to have increased, or should I say metastasized, in parallel with his popular decline, almost in the way that classic Jew hatred increased during times of economic downturn (Weimar Republic, etc.) Not that anyone who spent two decades in Reverend Wright’s church with its hero worship of Louis Farrakhan and generally racist tinge was likely to be philo-Semitic. But things have gotten worse. Indeed, his very close friends at the New York Times [1] are now reporting that the President, in the wake of the supposedly surprise announcement of new Jewish housing units in Jerusalem, “has seized control of Middle East policy himself.” They go on to note : “Mr. Obama, incensed by that snub, has given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a list of demands, and relations between the United States and Israel have fallen into a chilly standoff.”

Incensed by the snub? List of demands. Chilly standoff? In other words, as we say in Hollywood, this time it’s personal. But should it be? How odd. A week or so ago, I wrote a post describing Barack Obama as President Weirdo [2]. Indeed here we have more evidence of this psychological disturbance, because this response to Israel is not in the realm of the rational. It is highly neurotic. Somewhere in the unconscious of Barack Obama are a stew of forces now directed (or cathected) on the Jewish state and its leader. Not a healthy state of affairs for anyone. (Well, maybe for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.)

Until now Jewish leaders had been relatively silent on the matter. Some of the more famous ones in my hometown of Hollywood (Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, David Geffen – supposedly great friends of Israel) have been as quiet as clams. But finally one is speaking up. Ron Lauder of the World Jewish Congress has written a strong letter of protest to Obama [3], which is being published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post – not, interestingly, in the aforementioned pro-Obama newspaper that notoriously misreported [4] the Ukrainian Holodomor and underreported [5]the Holocaust. In his letter, Mr. Lauder writes:

“Israel has publicly declared support for a two-state solution. Conversely, many Palestinians continue their refusal to even acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

The conflict’s root cause has always been the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Every American President who has tried to broker a peace agreement has collided with that Palestinian intransigence, sooner or later. Recall President Clinton’s anguish when his peace proposals were bluntly rejected by the Palestinians in 2000.”

Of course that is not the root cause in the mind of Barack Obama. It is Israeli intransigence. As Michael Ledeen [6] wrote in these pages, he is like an undergraduate at a bull session, sucking on a joint as he nods in agreement with the clichéd jargon of an “anti-imperialist” foreign exchange student. He hid this, to some extent, during his political campaign but now, under stress, the Tea Party parvenus more popular than he, he can no longer repress his true impulses. Out they have popped, ungoverned as dreams.

One wonders what his advisors, my landsmen Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, must think. My guess is they are very confused fellows with many sleepless nights. They deserve them. Whatever advice they may have given their President, it appears not to have been good. Or perhaps he has completely overrun their advice. Who knows? Whatever the case, his behavior has certainly not won the hearts and minds of the Israeli public. A gigantic 91% [7] oppose Obama’s possible attempt to impose a deal on Israel, an unheard of number in opposition to an American president – and that from a populace that tends to the liberal, a country where one of the few, if only, socialist successes ever flourished, the kibbutz.

Of course, Obama’s actions are making every Israeli into a dreaded Likudnik. Why wouldn’t they? When a man acts on inchoate impulses tinged with rage, there’s no telling what he will do. If this goes on much longer, he may even change the voting patterns of the American Jewish public. Stranger things have happened. Just wait.

Article printed from Roger L. Simon: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/04/14/obamas-israel-problem/

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Professor Louis René Beres

Lt. General (USAF/Ret.) Tom McInerney

Major General (USA/Ret.) Paul Vallely

What sort of national security policy can we expect from a president who seeks a “world free of nuclear weapons?” In principle, this is a reasonable objective. In reality, especially considering actual and probable nuclear proliferation by North Korea, Iran and possibly their proxies, it is preposterous. For the United States, any policy based on such an unrealizable objective is very dangerous.

In matters of national security policy, every intellectual failure may be dense with implication. President Obama, by failing to identify serious strategic threats and objectives, has ignored the core expectations of national survival logic in an anarchic world. Before a safer America could ever be born from any policy of worldwide nuclear disarmament, a gravedigger would have to wield the forceps. Any further nuclear proliferation should be curtailed, but, ironically, this commendable goal would be degraded by the president’s proposals. By themselves, nuclear weapons are neither good nor evil. In certain circumstances, these weapons may even be indispensable to national security and deterrence. The nuclear stalemate between this country and the former Soviet Union played a critical role in preventing World War III. And however “ambiguous,” Israel’s implicit nuclear deterrent is required for that tiny country’s capacity to simply endure.

The naïve nuclear hopes of President Obama and his advisors represent an elaborate fiction. What we require, instead, is a model of international relations that reflects, realistically, the prevailing passions and principles of all our potential enemies in world politics. Such a model, wherein strategic threats and opportunities would be called by their correct names, would be drawn not from Mr. Obama’s idealized visions, but from the informed and indisputable awareness that America’s multiple enemies, still crouched in the bruising darkness, often remain stubbornly face down to peace with the United States.

When Pericles delivered his Funeral Oration, with its praise of Athenian civilization, his perspective was inner-directed. As recorded by Thucydides, Pericles remarked: “What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies is our own mistakes.” Later, in Rome, the philosopher/statesman Cicero inquired: “What can be done against force without force?” Today, a president of the United States must still understand that in a world of international anarchy, foreign policy must aim above all at maintaining and improving his country’s relative power position.

America needs nuclear weapons for deterrence. More precisely, we need to continually upgrade and refine these weapons, as well as their associated strategic doctrine. We need to recapitalize our national nuclear deterrent, and ensure that we can maintain all essential global power projection capabilities. This means, at a minimum, a re-examination of nuclear targeting doctrine, this time with regard to current threats from other countries and their proxies. It also means preparing for a world in which both our national and sub-national enemies may sometimes be irrational. In all of these matters, the president’s current glide path to a nuclear-free world is counterproductive.

President Obama may wish to distance himself from the prior Bush administration’s defense policies, but a key concern of U.S. strategic doctrine must still be preemption. Like it or not, there are major threats on the horizon that may still call for anticipatory self-defense. In our uncertain strategic future, where enemy rationality cannot always be assumed, and where the essential effectiveness of national ballistic missile defense would be too low, the only reasonable alternative to an American preemption could be surrender or defeat.

Sea power still has its proper place. Observing actions of Iran, Russia, China and North Korea, future enemy missile launches could come from container ships off our shores. Launches against Israel could likely also come directly from Iran, so a modernized U.S. anti-missile fleet capability should be positioned in the Mediterranean, Red and Arabian seas. For Israel, its current Dolphin class submarines may have to be upgraded, and so may its ever-improving system of ballistic missile defense.

A nuclear threat to American cities need not come from enemy missiles. It could also come from cars and trucks, and from ships used only for “dirty-bomb” dispersals. Ballistic missile defense would be of no use against any such attacks.

Could we make enemy states and their surrogates believe that proxy acts of nuclear terrorism would elicit an unacceptable retaliation against them directly? Perhaps we could, but functional answers can never emerge from a futile plan for global nuclear disarmament.

America’s strategic doctrine must rest on the idea that significant threats of war and terrorism may now derive from a “clash of civilizations,” and not merely from narrow political or ideological differences. This does not mean that President Obama is wrong in his expanding emphasis on negotiation and diplomacy, but only that he should also acknowledge that some of our principal enemies will be unresponsive to traditional deterrent policies. These enemies, sworn to otherworldly ideals of Jihad, will be animated not by the ordinary secular promises of hegemony, wealth and privilege, but rather by power over death.

Some of these enemies could come to resemble the suicide bomber writ large. Such enemies, Mr. Obama should understand, may not concede even an inch to such conventionally accepted international norms as compromise, coexistence and peaceful settlement.

If launched at any time of grave national instability, an act of nuclear terrorism against the United States could have existential consequences. To prevent the “Ryder truck scenario,” which could involve either a radiological or “real” (authentic chain reaction) nuclear weapon, President Obama’s strategic policy would have to hold the state sponsors accountable. This policy, of course, should initially offer these states a suitable diplomatic option.

If, however, such an outreach should fail, the president must then make clear that any terrorist proxy nuclear explosion in this country would certainly elicit an unacceptably damaging retaliation. This means, among other steps, that we (1) unambiguously target these sponsor states; and (2) plainly and regularly war-game retaliatory options with our National Command Authorities. Although the circumstances are different in several key respects, this “exercising” was done with evident success during the Cold War.

Nuclear weapons are not going to go away. Despite his personal wishes and visions, the president must now learn to base our national strategic policy on precisely this sober understanding. Soon, therefore, Mr. Obama must begin to construct a broad, coherent and compelling strategic plan from which specific policy options can be extrapolated. This plan should prepare to deal effectively with both our national and sub-national adversaries, some of whom might sometimes even be willing to act irrationally.

Louis René Beres (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue University.

Thomas McInerney, Lt. General (USAF/Ret) is co-author (with MG Paul E. Vallely) of The Endgame: Winning the War on Terror. General McInerney is retired Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force.

Paul E. Vallely, Major General (USA/Ret.) is an author, military strategist and Chairman of Stand Up America and Save Our Democracy Projects.

First posted November 2, 2009

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When Hillary Clinton addressed AIPAC’s 2010 annual convention, she had the perfect opportunity to show that the United States still stands with Israel despite the manufactured crisis over Ramat Shlomo. She could have done so by conceding that Jerusalem neighborhoods are not “settlements” and were always excluded from the temporary building freeze. She also could have recognized Israel’s many concessions for peace and declared that the U.S. would no longer tolerate the Palestinian Authority’s antisemitic incitement and support for terrorism. Instead, she glossed over the PA’s lack of commitment to real peace, equated Israeli civilian deaths with those of terrorists and the Arab civilians they put at risk, and subtly gave voice to Mr. Obama’s revisionist canards. But even more disturbing than her distortions were the applause and standing ovation she received from many of the convention delegates.

Clinton’s performance should have surprised no one. As Secretary of State with marching orders from her President, she was merely articulating Mr. Obama’s anti-Israel agenda despite her fuzzy claims of support. Obama’s true feelings regarding Israel were apparent from the early days of his campaign based on his personal, political and philosophical allegiances to the likes of Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi, Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Despite these troubling relationships, Obama kept a reasonably low profile on controversial Mideast issues during the campaign, and he was aided by liberal Jews who shamelessly vouched for his mythical pro-Israel and philo-semitic bona fides.

After his inauguration, Obama was swift to show his true colors, beginning with his solicitation of the Arab-Muslim world, his adoption of the revisionist Palestinian narrative, and his enabling of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. He never missed an opportunity to blame Israel for sabotaging the peace process, but never faulted the PA or even Hamas for continuing to call for Israel’s destruction or engaging in terrorism. Whenever his disdain for Israel became too obvious to ignore he would trot out Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, or proxies from J Street, to savage his critics and paint them as reactionaries. Not once did he recognize that only Israel had complied with its obligations under the moribund Oslo Process or the Roadmap.

This dynamic is sadly reminiscent of the Second World War, when Roosevelt used Jewish political allies, such as Rabbi Stephen Wise and the American Jewish Committee, to discredit Jews who publicized the Holocaust as it unfolded and criticized the administration for failing to act. Among their targets were the Bergson Group, the Aggudat Ha-Rabbonim, and all those who refused to be silenced by secular Jewish political elites who were more interested in being good New Dealers than in helping their own people in Europe. Although history has not judged Roosevelt’s political lackeys very kindly, their dubious acts in the name of progressive politics are being replayed today as Mr. Obama seeks to throw Israel to the wolves.

It was maddening to watch as convention delegates applauded, exuded warm emotion, and then rose to their feet as Clinton spouted nonsense. Without a trace of embarrassment, Clinton condemned Hamas, not Fatah, for dedicating a town square in Ramallah to a Fatah terrorist who killed dozens of Israeli civilians. Clinton knows, of course, that Ramallah is located in the Fatah-controlled “West Bank” – not Gaza – and that Fatah was honoring one of its own for an act of terror it had sponsored. But Clinton’s deception was consistent with Obama’s policy of portraying the PA as a moderate entity worthy of a state. With a nod and a wink, Obama and his foreign policy stooges ignore that Fatah remains a terrorist organization that continues to engage in anti-Israel and antisemitic incitement and whose charter still calls for the destruction of Israel and the extermination of her people.

In addition to whitewashing the Palestinian Authority, Clinton misrepresented the Administration’s supposed commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran. However, in light of Obama’s record of appeasement and his abject failure to impose any meaningful sanctions, Clinton’s statements were simply preposterous. On her watch as Secretary of State, Iran has increased to at least 8,000 the number of working nuclear centrifuges and has expanded its satellite and missile delivery capabilities. AIPAC’s members are not rubes – they are truly committed advocates for Israel. So how could they applaud such babble?

Only after the fact did AIPAC offer any criticism of Clinton’s revisionist utterances. But the time for meaningful rebuke passed the moment she left the room. Her public excoriation of Netanyahu over Jerusalem construction was rewarded with photos of an enthusiastic reception by Jews who are supposed to know better, but who instead politely listened to her absurd statements. What AIPAC should have done was have a representative stand up immediately and address Clinton’s remarks point-by-point, and then have her reactions recorded on videotape. The organization’s strategists should have anticipated Clinton’s disingenuous performance in light of her disgraceful comments during the Ramat Shlomo “crisis” the week before. Clearly, the delegates should neither have applauded her misrepresentations nor risen to their feet.

Clinton’s remarks insulted the intelligence of anybody with a historical sense of the Mideast conflict. And as an organization committed to Jewish political self-awareness, AIPAC should have immediately challenged Mrs. Clinton. Instead, the response of its delegates gave the appearance of organizational tolerance, even if all they intended was civility and tact. Politeness, however, did not require an enthusiastic response or warm embrace. That J Street may have endorsed Clinton’s remarks is not surprising because it deals in deception and revisionism; but AIPAC should be counted on to behave more responsibly. By not challenging Clinton’s remarks at the time she made them, AIPAC missed a critical opportunity to articulate the growing discomfort of the Jewish mainstream regarding Obama’s treatment of Israel.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time the organization wilted in the face of the Obama mystique. When Candidate Obama addressed the convention in 2008, AIPAC did not make issue of his associations with antisemitic zealots such as Wright and Farrakhan. He bamboozled that convention by solemnly pledging that Jerusalem would forever remain the indivisible capital of Israel, only to repudiate his own words within a day. Nevertheless, Rahm Emanuel received a warm reception when he addressed the convention the following year. Moreover, AIPAC formally endorsed the two-state concept even though the PA’s continuing antisemitic incitement, support for terrorism and calls for the destruction of Israel clearly show that the Palestinians have no desire for such a resolution.

Some of AIPAC’s critics argue that it should become more right-wing, but its political orientation per se is not the issue. Rather, since the 2008 presidential campaign AIPAC has seemed more concerned with not offending critics or making waves than in asserting strong positions that may not be politically popular among liberals and Democrats. But by offering only tentative criticism of Mr. Obama’s treatment of Israel, the organization has failed to fully address a turn in American foreign policy that is detrimental to the continuity of the Jewish State. Thus, the issue is not whether AIPAC should turn to the right, but whether it should cast off the apparent Diaspora mentality that seems to be taking hold. Although many Jews are loath to be seen as ethnocentric, they need to wake up and recognize that the Arabs and their political allies have no problem being chauvinistic and demonizing all who disagree with them.

Historically, AIPAC has a strong record of advocacy and has long been an effective and respected lobbying organization. However, its responses to the Administration’s recent treatment of Israel – as illustrated by the reaction to Clinton’s speech – have been far too deferential. Instead of showing polite restraint, the organization needs to speak more bluntly when Israel is unfairly threatened and bullied. It can start by recognizing that the Obama Administration is charting a course that bodes ill for Israel’s survival, and by challenging the Administration’s representatives whenever they engage in dissimulation.
http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=22038#more-22038

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here are consequential, disturbing revelations to be found when flipping through the visitors list at the White House. Bill Ayers is there no less than three times, Louis Farrakhan at least once, but there is also a separate visit for his family, and the infamous hater Jeremiah Wright is there at least five times (four times under Jeremy, one under Jeremiah). Contemptuously, Farrakhan’s visit is tagged as “MEETING WITH SCIENCE CLUB MEMBERS”…Al Sharpton is there twice, and Jesse “hymietown” Jackson is a regular (six times). It bears noting that despite solid evidence that Obama was tight with these haters, inciters and revolutionaries and traitors, he distanced himself from them during the campaign and outright lied about his ties to them. Mr. Ayers, for example, was dismissed as “a guy who lives in my neighborhood” and “somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know.”

Obama lied about his friends and nefarious colleagues because he he knew that his connection to them was deadly. He knew these were bad characters, and that his being involved with them would not sit well with the American people. He knew. And so he lied. And now they are regulars at the White House (while the Dalai Lama and Netanyahu are begrudgingly ushered in the side door or seen chilling with the trash).

These are terrorists, inciters to genocide, America haters, the underbelly of an ugly America — and they are in the House.

Much thanks to Mark.

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U.S.-Israeli relations have hit a 35-year low over the contentious east Jerusalem building project. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said: “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975…a crisis of historic proportions.” This is because, according to Barack Obama, Jewish homes in the Jewish homeland “hinder peace” with Muslims. According to the Associated Press:

Israel’s already strained relationship with the U.S. hit a new low last week when it announced the construction plans during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden. The timing of the announcement deeply embarrassed the Obama administration and put plans for indirect peace talks with the Palestinians in jeopardy.
What about the timing of the Palestinian Authority’s “honoring” of a mass-murdering female genocidal bomber, for whom the Palestinians are naming a square in Ramallah? The Jerusalem Post reported: “The ceremony was scheduled to take place on the 32nd anniversary of the attack, the worst terrorist incident in Israel’s history, in which terrorists commandeered a bus and murdered 37 people, including 10 children.” It too was scheduled to take place during Biden’s visit, but was postponed for a week after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, to get the Palestinians to cancel it.

“The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obama adviser David Axelrod also said: “This was an affront, it was an insult, but most importantly, it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region. For this announcement to come at that time was very, very destructive.”

Neither Clinton nor Axelrod mentioned anything about the honoring of the jihad terrorist being insulting. And it will still take place, just a week late. Yet Obama is pressuring Israel, not the Palestinians. Jews living in their holiest city is unacceptable, but senior Palestinian Authority officials joining the Fatah youth movement in a “popular inauguration” ceremony for a square named for a terrorist is just fine. The stalkers of the Jews are no hindrance to peace.

What is insulting is America’s abandonment of our most loyal and trusted ally in a region that can only be described as a hot mess, full of backward, oppressive, and brutal hellholes — save for Israel.

America is profoundly pro-Israel; yet Barack Obama is taking on our best friend and most strategic ally in the Middle East and creating an environment, a free zone, for rampant anti-Semitism.

It is no coincidence that as all this unfolded, Palestinian Arabs were rioting every day in Jerusalem and elsewhere, because of their false charge that Israel is trying to destroy Islamic holy sites. And instead of working to calm the situation, the “moderate” Palestinian Authority is trying to make things worse by fabricating yet another libel against the Jews: now they’re saying that Israel tried to burn down Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1969.

This is eerily reminiscent of many of the blood libels spread by Muslim leaders against the Jews throughout history, specifically the ones that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, spread in the Muslim world before he co-conspired with Hitler to exterminate the Jews during the Holocaust.

On April 4, 1920, there was carnage in Jerusalem. Muslims spent four days massacring Jews and burning down buildings in the Jewish quarter. The future Mufti was arrested and charged with incitement to violence. Historian Maurice Pearlman in his 1947 book The Mufti of Jerusalem explains that the riots were touched off by al-Husseini’s “inflammatory articles in the newspaper, Suriyahal Janubiyah.” Pearlman adds: “In the weeks preceding the attack faked pictures had been disseminated among the Arabs showing the Mosque Omar in ruins. The caption beneath declared that it had been destroyed by Jewish infidels who were now seeking to build on its site the Jewish Temple.”

Fast forward to today, and the situation is eerily similar. According to Palestinian Media Watch, “a non-Jewish Australian started a fire in the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Aug. 21, 1969. The fire was extinguished and the damage was repaired. More than ten years ago the Palestinian Authority initiated the lie that Israel was involved in the arson or that it was a Jew who started the fire with the Israeli government’s help.”

And now they have revived it. Obama should be telling the Palestinians that their libels “hinder peace.” Instead, we are seeing why Obama is at home with Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Bill Ayers, Hugo Chavez, Edward Said –

– Rashid Khalidi, Samantha Power and self-loathing Jews – as I explain in my forthcoming book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America (coming in July from Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster).

I warned the Jews repeatedly: Obama is an anti-Semite. (I reject the Leftist/Islamic supremacist claim that one can be anti-Israel but not anti-Semitic. The two are essentially related and inseparable, and the claim that they can be separated is part of the anti-Semitic narrative.)

He has worked hard to make the world a safe place for Jew-haters to run amok. Today, in Jerusalem, that’s what they’re doing, and he remains silent.

His silence indicts him.
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The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed criticism of the Obama Administration for the failure of the U.S. delegation to the United Nation Security Council to alter or oppose the critical statements about Israel following acts of Palestinian violence in Jerusalem last Friday. Israeli police were forced to put an end to Palestinian rioters threatening Jews at the Western Wall, beneath Temple Mount. The Jerusalem Post reported that “Eighteen Israeli policemen were lightly wounded while attempting to restore order after Arab youths emerging from Friday prayers started hurling rocks down onto those worshiping at the Wall. Having restored calm by use of stun grenades and following helpful intervention by other Muslim worshipers to defuse the clash, police eventually withdrew in coordination with the Wakf Islamic trust to allow older worshipers to leave the Mount”’ (Abe Selig, ‘“Israeli actions against int’l law,”’ Jerusalem Post, March 7, 2010). Yet, at the Security Council, Israeli security and police measures became part of “provocative acts” by “all sides,” thus failing to name culprits and tarring legitimate Israeli security and police measures with the brush of acts worthy of criticism, which were also described in having occurred in “Palestinian territories.”

Gabon’s U.N. Ambassador Emmanuel Issoze-Ngondet, president of the Security Council for March, said on behalf of a consensus of the Council that “The members of the Security Council expressed their concern at the current tense situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem … They urged all sides to show restraint and avoid provocative acts.” The permanent Palestinian observer to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, welcomed the Council statement, saying that the apparent U.S. decision not to block it “is a signal that the United States wants this effort to succeed” and Israel to restrain itself.

The U.S. has generally prevented Council issuing non-binding statements that condemn Israel. In explanation as to why the U.S. had not done so on this occasion, an unnamed U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that that the American delegation had not agreed with the statement and said it was adopted due to what the official described as “procedural confusion.” Yet, as the Reuters news reports notes, “It was not immediately clear what the ‘confusion’ was … Several council diplomats familiar with the negotiations on the statement, however, told Reuters that the U.S. delegation made no attempt to raise any objections to the final version of the text, which they said was adopted by consensus” (Louis Charbonneau, ‘U.S. repudiates U.N. council remarks on Mideast clash,’ Yahoo News, March 6, 2010).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We are frankly critical of the Obama Administration’s failure to act. It should have had no hesitation opposing a Security Council statement that likens wholly legitimate Israeli police measures against acts of violence instigated by Palestinians as ‘provocative acts.’ This failure means that Israel is labeled responsible for violence Palestinians start, which is both untrue and unwise. Such a Council statement is itself a form of encouragement of Palestinian violence, as it demonstrates that Palestinians can attack Jews without being condemned, merely cautioned, along with Israelis who attacked noone.

“The words of the Palestinian observer, Riyad Mansour, show exactly why the Obama Administration should have opposed it. Mansour correctly sees in this statement world pressure on Israel, not on the Palestinian side, even after having resorted to violence.

“It is obvious from what has been reported that the Obama Administration took no steps to modify or oppose this statement, despite the contrary statement of an unnamed American diplomat which does not tally with the known facts. The Obama Administration should put itself on record as opposing this statement and in condemning the Palestinian resort to violence. Failure to do so only increases the likelihood of further Palestinian assaults in the future.”

Zionist Organization of America
Jacob & Libby Goodman ZOA House, 4 East 34th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016
(212) 481-1500 Fax: (212) 481-1515 email @ zoa.org www . zoa . org

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