Centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust created a moral imperative for a Jewish homeland, Israel, and demand of America that it safeguard that nation in the breach.
[T]he truth is almost the exact opposite. The extermination by the Germans of six million Jews during World War II came close to putting an end to the dream of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. The reservoir of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was decimated. Vladimir Jabotinsky, in his testimony before the Peel Commission in London on February 11, 1937, spoke of the aim of Zionism as the establishment of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River in which there would be room for "the Arab population and their progeny and many millions of Jews." At that time, the Jewish population of Palestine was no more than 400,000.
By the time the war had ended, millions of Jews had been exterminated in Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor and the killing fields of Russia. To Zionist leaders, it became clear that not only were there not enough Jews to constitute a solid Jewish majority, which was the condition for establishing a Jewish state, on both sides of the Jordan River, but that Jewish immigration would not even suffice to establish such a majority in the entire area west of the Jordan.
It was the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who grasped the full potential of the destruction of European Jewry for ending Zionist aspirations, and therefore allied himself with Hitler. Arab leaders in Egypt and Iraq similarly found good reason to hope for Hitler's victory. Yet after the war, the Yishuv (the Jewish community in pre-Palestine) and the remnants of European Jewry, who overcame British efforts to block their way to Palestine, had enough vitality and strength to bring about the establishment of the State of Israel in part of the territory that the League of Nations had originally mandated to Britain for the establishment of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River.
The U.S. objective is a two-state peace. But day by day, square meter by square meter, the physical space for the second state, Palestine, is disappearing.
Through violence, anti-Semitic incitation, and annihilationist threats, Palestinian factions have contributed mightily to the absence of peace and made it harder for America to adopt the balance required. But the impressive recent work of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the West Bank shows that Palestinian responsibility is no oxymoron and demands of Israel a response less abject than creeping annexation.
And this: the “existential threat” to Israel is overplayed. It is no feeble David facing an Arab (or Arab-Persian) Goliath. Armed with a formidable nuclear deterrent, Israel is by far the strongest state in the region. Room exists for America to step back and apply pressure without compromising Israeli security.
And this: Obama needs to work harder on overcoming Palestinian division, a prerequisite for peace, rather than playing the no-credible-interlocutor Israeli game. The Hamas charter is vile. But the breakthrough Oslo accords were negotiated in 1993, three years before the Palestine Liberation Organization revoked the annihilationist clauses in its charter. When Arafat and Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn, that destroy-Israel charter was intact. Things change through negotiation, not otherwise. If there are Taliban elements worth engaging, are there really no such elements in the broad movements that are Hamas and Hezbollah?
If there are not two states there will be one state between the river and the sea and very soon there will be more Palestinian Arabs in it than Jews. What then will become of the Zionist dream?
It would be a mistake to think that Israel’s lawyerly self-defense is of purely legal interest. This battle reflects a continuation of war and politics by other means. Indeed, the battle is fraught with weighty implications for all liberal democracies struggling against transnational terrorists.
As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this."
Red wrapping paper is also forbidden. The many Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia were warned not to do anything valentine-y in public on February 14th, including blowing kisses.
Here's the perfect gift for Saudi Valentine's Day! |
From Bruce Bawer's introduction to the interview: [Geert] Wilders, a member of the Tweede Kamer and head of the Freedom Party, is a target for countless individuals in the Netherlands who would murder him in the name of Islam, and is obliged to spend his life behind ... layers of protection in order to avoid the unthinkable. In the last decade, after all, there have already been two assassinations of famous Dutch critics of Islam, Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and Theo van Gogh in 2004. And yet Wilders’s opponents in parliament, whose lives are shaped by the impact of the high-level security procedures that have become an everyday routine at their workplace, act as if the very threat that makes these procedures vitally necessary is a chimera. Indeed, to listen to them, and to the media, and to the great majority of the professors and commentators and business leaders who make up the Dutch establishment, is to acquire the distinct impression that it is Wilders himself, and not his Islamic would-be murderers, who represents a danger to Dutch society. In the interview that follows, I cite an opinion piece that appeared on Thursday in Trouw, a major Dutch newspaper (I mistakenly refer to it as having been in De Volkskrant), in which Thomas Mertens, a law professor at universities in Nijmegen and Leiden, argues that Wilders, by seeking so urgently to clarify for the general public the truth about Islam, is actually undermining the central precept that underlies the Dutch social contract which has been in place for centuries: namely, the agreement among members of different faith traditions to tolerate their theological differences – to close their eyes, as it were, to one another’s truth claims. What Mertens and others like him refuse to acknowledge is that the willingness of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Catholics, Calvinists, Lutherans, and others to agree to disagree about theological abstractions has no relevance whatsoever to the present situation, in which the Netherlands, and the West generally, are confronting a faith tradition for whose most committed adherents theological abstractions have calamitous real-world consequences – not only terrorist attacks but such appalling practices as polygamy, forced marriage, honor killing, and the execution of apostates, gays, and adulteresses. Indeed, what we are speaking of when we speak about Islam is a religion whose holy book calls for the conquest of infidel-run territories in the name of Allah – a religion, that is, whose guiding beliefs leave no room for the kind of live-and-let-live mentality that Mertens and his ilk think, or pretend to think, can still be relevant in a country whose largest cities will soon have Muslim majorities. In a nation whose guiding philosophy for centuries has been “don’t rock the boat,” Wilders has dared to challenge this traditional attitude and address these terrible realities, and it is for having done so that he is now on trial for speaking his mind – and speaking the truth.
Claudia Rosett reports that Iran is running for a seat on the 'Human Rights Council.' While Iran's regime bloodies its dissidents, the nuclear weapons-loving mullahs are seeking a treat for themselves at the United Nations: Iran is running for a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Utterly perverse though it would be, Iran might snag that prize. The 47 seats on the Geneva-based Human Rights Council are parceled out among regional groups of U.N. member states. This year the Asian bloc has four seats opening up. Five contenders have stepped forward: Malaysia, Maldives, Qatar, Thailand--and Iran. The winners will be chosen in May, by secret ballot of the 192-member U.N. General Assembly--a notoriously thug-friendly body, run this year by a former foreign minister of Libya.
This development — indeed the potential of this ever coming to pass — should remind us how inept and foolhardy has been Obama’s engagement policy as well as his decision to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council. Rossett notes that on February 15, a report detailing Iran’s atrocities will come before the Council along with the mullahs’ own “Orwellian” report “claiming metiulous respect for human rights, as redefined by Tehran’s lights — arguing that because ‘the system of government in Iran is based on principles of Islam, it is necessary that Islamic standards and criteria prevail in society.’” It is a preview of things to come.
And from the Obami, can we expect robust opposition to Iran’s membership, a principled walk-out should Iran secure its seat, and a re-statement of our determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapon? No, no! That would only send the democracy protesters rushing into the arms of the regime and fritter away all the goodwill we have racked up (doing nothing to aid them), don’t you see? Welcome to the Alice-in-Wonderland diplomacy of the Obami. Feel safer yet?
Roger Simon interviews Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, Part 2. Watch it here (Hat Tip: Instapundit).
On Monday, I took Sarah Palin to task for endorsing Rand Paul and for her gushing enthusiasm for his father, the isolationist Ron Paul. I have since been taken to task by my friend Michael Fenenbock, who is far more politically savvy than I am (Google his name to see why), who told me "The Paul family. Who cares? If you're looking for purity, go to shul. You won't find it in politics." So with that in mind....Speaking of Palin: I think I commented once that, while governor, she had an Israeli flag in her office. What does Israel have to do with Palin, and vice versa? Well, nothing. But I imagine she feels solidarity with the country: because it is under siege, defamed, plucky, admirable — often heroic. (Although it would rather not be heroic, believe me. It would rather have a quiet life.) I feel the same solidarity — the same solidarity I’m guessing Palin does. If Israel had no enemies, or the normal quotient of enemies, I imagine I would go months and months without ever thinking of the country, the way I do, say, Uruguay.
I noticed that, at the tea-party convention the other day, Palin wore a “small pin with two flags,” as one account put it: “for Israel and the United States.” This is a little . . . unusual. Some might even find it creepy. But, again, I understand, or think I do. And I thought of something that Charles Krauthammer and I discussed, when I interviewed him for a National Review profile last fall. Hang on, let me just excerpt that profile, if I may:Many Jews, particularly American ones, are nervous or scornful about the support that American evangelicals have shown for Israel. They say that this support is double-edged, or bad news, or embarrassing. Krauthammer will have none of it. “I embrace their support unequivocally and with gratitude. And when I speak to Jewish groups, whether it’s on the agenda or not, I make a point of scolding them. I say, ‘You may not want to hear this, and you may not have me back, but I’m going to tell you something: It is disgraceful, un-American, un-Jewish, ungrateful, the way you treat people who are so good to the Jewish people. We are almost alone in the world. And here we have 50 million Americans who willingly and enthusiastically support us. You’re going to throw them away, for what? Because of your prejudice.’ Oh, I give ’em hell.”
I bet he does.
Dear Jay,
Apropos Sarah Palin’s visible support for Israel: It goes deeper than mere support. I was struck, during her debate with Joe Biden in the ’08 campaign, by the way she spoke so unapologetically and matter-of-factly about feeling “love” for Israel. I just looked up the transcript of that debate, and there is a point when she says, “I’m so encouraged to know that we both love Israel, and I think that is a good thing to get to agree on, Senator Biden. I respect your position on that.” She didn’t say it with any pointed emphasis — it came out as if it were the most natural sentiment in the world.
...
Have you ever heard any other American politician speak on a national stage about “loving” Israel? I never have. But such ardor is common among great numbers of Christian Zionists. Like Krauthammer, I am appalled by the hostility or suspicion so many (liberal) American Jews harbor toward evangelical Christians who embrace Israel. When I speak to Jewish audiences, I often tell them about the woman who called me one day from deep in bayou country after reading a column of mine on the Middle East. In her thick Louisiana accent she told me how she prays daily for Israel, and how in her front yard she has two flagpoles: one flying the Star-Spangled Banner and one flying the Israeli flag. And then I ask my audience how many of them fly an Israeli flag in their yard. Of course none of them would ever do such a thing — it would be too awkward, too parochial, too embarrassing. But this Louisiana Christian lady doesn’t worry about such things — she loves Israel and wants the world to know it.
Sarah Palin is like that too, and so are many, many Christian Zionists I have had the honor of meeting. I bless such people. I wish more of my fellow American Jews did likewise.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided that there will be no 'independent' Israeli inquiry into the charges arising from the Goldstone Report in connection with Operation Cast Lead. “Israel feels the report it gave was a serious, comprehensive, credible and complete answer to the UN secretary-general,” one senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office said.
“We believe that we conduct credible investigations and that we have procedures in place to investigate these types of matters that are as good as exist in any country in the world,” he said, adding that the IDF’s investigations were under the oversight of the attorney-general, and subject ultimately to Supreme Court review.
The UN General Assembly, which endorsed the Goldstone Commission report, does not have the authority to kick the issue over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and it is unlikely that it will be sent to the Security Council – which does have such authority – because of the likelihood that the US would cast a veto.
The problem, therefore, said Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, lies not necessarily with the UN or a threat to send the issue to the ICC, but with individual states – such as Britain or Spain – that could potentially initiate proceedings against Israeli officials and officers on the basis of what was written in the Goldstone Report.
Baker said that without the establishment of a commission, “we will have a non-ending series of issues with countries like Britain.”
...
Baker said that while Israel may have dodged the bullet at the UN, the issue would not likely disappear unless some type of commission – an official commission of inquiry or a committee set up by the government – looked at the policy-making process to dispel charges in the Goldstone Report that Israel deliberately targeted civilians.
The world doesn't want a commission of inquiry - it wants IDF soldiers court-martialed, kicked out of the army and put in jail so that the next time the IDF won't fight a war against terrorists because its officers won't want to risk their careers and their freedom to fight war that will result in their spending the rest of their natural lives in jail. The world wants a commission of inquiry so that the IDF will no longer be in the terror-fighting business, and therefore there will soon no longer be a Jewish state (God forbid). That's the real reason behind the calls for a commission of inquiry, led by a self-hating Jew who is willing to sacrifice his people for his own boundless personal ambition.
A commission of inquiry that confirms that IDF soldiers are innocent of war crimes will solve nothing.
A bipartisan group of US Senators planned on Thursday to introduce a bill that would force President Obumbler to levy sanctions against Iran's human rights abusers. The legislation is authored by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who usually sides with Democrats, and by Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican. A bipartisan group of Senators will co-sponsor the legislation.
The bill reflects a growing movement, in the U.S. and abroad, to put the Iranian government's treatment of internal dissidents at the top of the list of grievances against Tehran, alongside its nuclear program. The growing international unhappiness over Iran's human-rights practices was reflected over the weekend at an international security conference in Munich, where Iran's foreign minister tried, without much success, to downplay the regime's arrests and harassment of anti-government protesters.
...
The legislation will require that the president, within 90 days, produce a list of Iranians who have committed human rights abuses or acts of violence against Iranian citizens engaging in "peaceful political activity," said one Senate aide involved in drafting the legislation. Those on the list then would be hit with a variety of sanctions, including a ban on visas to the U.S. and a freeze on assets abroad.
“Ahmadinejad’s declaration, combined with the regime’s forceful actions against the opposition, show that the regime is determined to fight through its present domestic and international difficulties.”
“This is not a regime that fears being ‘isolated’ by Barack Obama, nor does it seem to fear the threat of additional sanctions,” Bolton says. “Iran remains on the path to nuclear weapons and entrenching its domestic power.”
“The history of sanctions suggests it is nearly impossible to craft them to compel a government to change on an issue it sees as vital to national security,” said Richard N. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “They can affect a government’s calculations, but it’s no solution.”
That was certainly the Bush administration’s experience. Starting in 2006, the United States led the drive at the United Nations Security Council to pass ever escalating economic sanctions.
The list of sanctions is now six pages long. But none have accomplished the central goal: forcing compliance with the Security Council’s demand that Iran halt uranium enrichment. Mr. Obama’s team acknowledges the potential political liability of passing a fourth round that proves equally ineffective. Some are scaling back expectations for what they once called “crippling sanctions.”
“This is about driving them back to negotiations,” said one senior official, “because the real goal here is to avoid war.”
The Washington Post reports that despite Thursday's claims to have 20% enriched uranium, Iran is encountering 'technical setbacks' in its enrichment push. Beneath this rhetoric, U.N. reports over the last year have shown a drop in production at Iran's main uranium enrichment plant, near the city of Natanz. Now a new assessment, based on three years of internal data from U.N. nuclear inspections, suggests that Iran's mechanical woes are deeper than previously known. At least through the end of 2009, the Natanz plant appears to have performed so poorly that sabotage cannot be ruled out as an explanation, according to a draft study by David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). A copy of the report was provided to The Washington Post.
The ISIS study showed that more than half of the Natanz plant's 8,700 uranium-enriching machines, called centrifuges, were idle at the end of last year and that the number of working machines had steadily dropped -- from 5,000 in May to just over 3,900 in November. Moreover, output from the nominally functioning machines was about half of what was expected, said the report, drawing from data gathered by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
A separate, forthcoming analysis by the Federation of American Scientists also describes Iran's flagging performance and suggests that continued failures may increase Iran's appetite for a deal with the West. Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the federation's Strategic Security Program, said Iranian leaders appear to have raced into large-scale uranium production for political reasons.
"They are really struggling to reproduce what is literally half-century-old European technology and doing a really bad job of it," Oelrich said.
The findings are in line with assessments by numerous former U.S. and European officials and weapons analysts who say that Iran's centrifuges appear to be breaking down at a faster rate than expected, even after factoring in the notoriously unreliable, 1970s-vintage model the Iranians are using. According to several of the officials, the problems have prompted new thinking about the urgency of the Iranian nuclear threat, although the country has demonstrated a growing technical prowess, such as its expanding missile program.
"Whether Iran has deliberately slowed down or been forced to, either way that stretches out the time," said Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank.
...
"The IAEA measurements at Natanz are very crude and easily subject to intentional manipulation," said a former U.S. official who has closely monitored Iran's nuclear progress. He predicted that the watchdog agency eventually "will see that Iran is hiding production and is underreporting their success."
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As the ISIS study notes, the Natanz plant initially exceeded expectations, producing steadily higher amounts of low-enriched fuel. But sometime in late 2008 or early 2009, the output dropped from about 90 to 70 kilograms per month. Overall production improved slightly after that but struggled to return to 2008 levels, even as Iranian scientists installed more centrifuges, the report said. In late 2009, the 3,900 machines listed as functional were generating half the amount of enriched uranium expected, it said.
Neither Iran nor the U.N. watchdog have officially accounted for the slumping output, and U.S. officials have declined to speculate publicly about the reasons. The ISIS report identifies the likely cause as a combination of poor design and Iran's rush to put complex assemblages of centrifuges into production before working out the bugs. The report cites "daily attrition through breakage," as well as a failure to anticipate the difficulty of operating large numbers of machines simultaneously.
...
Also, while there is no hard evidence pointing to sabotage, ISIS acknowledges the possibility that Natanz's problems were caused by outside sources. "It is well known that the United States and European intelligence agencies seek to place defective or bugged equipment into Iran's smuggling networks," it said.
In the middle of ripping President Obumbler some new body parts for his handling of Iran over the past year, Jonathan Tobin lets fly some justified criticism of former President Bush. The defense for Obama’s feckless diplomacy put forward in the Times article is that Obama had to spend at least a year trying diplomacy so as to convince the world that he tried engagement after the confrontational Bush years. Blaming Bush is Obama’s all-purpose political tactic on all issues, but it won’t wash here. Bush not only failed to confront Iran; he also outsourced our diplomatic efforts on the nuclear issue to France and Germany in his second term. The utter failure of his engagement effort was clear by Bush’s last year in office, but rather than face the issue and take action, he decided to pass it off on his successor. This James Buchanan–like approach to a critical issue was one of Bush’s genuine failures, and the fact that he spent 2008 similarly vetoing any Israel action on Iran only makes Obama’s dedication to the same cause both ironic and scary. But however badly Bush blundered on Iran, the idea that we needed an additional year of diplomatic failure to justify subsequent action is a joke.
Jennifer Rubin sums up the Obama administration's policy goals in Iran. You see the goal is not to prevent Iran from going nuclear but rather to avoid war. So the Obami’s main obsession is now to deter Israel (which cannot tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran) from acting. (”Top officials — from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, to the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones — have visited Israel to argue that they should give sanctions time.”) But of course, we know that the chances of sanctions working are virtually nonexistent. So we are merely giving the mullahs, not sanctions, just more time.
The picture is becoming regrettably clear. International sanctions are a faint hope. Obama has come up with a rationalization to downsize U.S. sanctions. Our administration has already declared that conflict avoidance, not the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear threat, is the goal. And our real energies are devoted to stopping Israel while our sanctions pantomime plays out. This will not end well. At some point, the Obami’s “no war” will conflict with Israel’s fundamental commitment to protecting itself from an existential threat.
Meanwhile, where is the American Jewish community? Have they not noticed the retreat by the Obami on serious sanctions — and can they not anticipate the moment at which the Obami will declare Iran’s nuclear status a fait accompli? You would think they would be sounding the alarm and registering disapproval of the administration’s sleep-walking-toward-containment gambit. But it seems that they, too, are slumbering. Meanwhile, the mullahs inch forward with their nuclear program as Obama dreams up reasons to do nothing.
Fed up with the description, the deposed Hamas Information Ministry last month issued a statement aimed at "defining the accurate idioms and explaining the confusion in some of the terms in use."
At the Weekly Standard, Lori Lowenthal Marcus writes that J Street broke a written agreement with Penn Hillel to give the impression that Hillel supports J Street (Hat Tip: Jennifer Rubin). The event involved a deception by J Street leadership on the local Hillel and the surrounding Jewish community. When it was discovered that J Street planned to have its new division roll-out from the Penn Hillel, many Israel supporters were concerned that the outside world would assume that Hillel had endorsed J Street, especially because J Street would be webcasting live from there to cities across the country. Not to worry, said J Street to the local Hillel leadership: We promise not to mention that we’re using your facility, and to make clear in our written and oral statements that Hillel does not endorse us. That condition was agreed upon—it was "not just a promise, it was an agreement"—according to Rabbi Howard Alpert, the executive director of all the Philadelphia area Hillels. On the strength of that essential agreement, Hillel went ahead and rented J Street its space.
And then? J Street’s Ben-Ami said exactly what he’d promised not to say—that he was speaking "here at Penn Hillel"—and failed to say a word about what he’d promised solemnly to make clear: that Hillel does not endorse J Street or its message.
In short, J Street manipulated the Hillel of Greater Philadelphia (of which I am a board member) into leasing to them space in the Hillel building for their J Street Local launch by entering into a firm agreement, and then ignoring that agreement to Hillel’s detriment. J Street’s deception made Hillel’s carefully planned and extensive pre-event efforts to soothe concerned donors, students, and others that there was no—and that it would be made very clear that there was no—connection between Hillel and J Street.
Six 'activists' were arrested at a trade show in Belgium this week after they impersonated El Al stewardesses and handed out materials claiming that El Al transports weapons for the IDF (note - that's a REAL stewardess in the picture and NOT an 'activist'). Six activists were arrested at a tourism expo in Brussels, Belgium on Monday, after they impersonated El Al stewardesses and handed out pamphlets smearing the Israeli airline.
The activists’ uniforms were exact down to the Hebrew name tags, and a number of expo attendees were reportedly fooled by the ruse.
The activists, who police say are members of an anti-war group called “Peace Action,” offered passers-by “vouchers” for a free flight to Israel and invited them to head over to the El Al and Israel Tourism Ministry booths for their free flight.
The “vouchers” were actually pamphlets written in Flemish, detailing what the group claimed was El Al’s role in transporting weapons for the Israel Defense Forces.
Security guards at the event contacted police, who held the activists for questioning for several hours before releasing them. The activists could face charges of disturbing the peace. An El Al spokesperson said the company did not know where the activists obtained the uniforms, or whether they were homemade.
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