Israel Matzav: The Obama administration chooses its coverage

The Obama administration chooses its coverage

The Obama administration is preventing the Boston Herald, the city's right-leaning major daily, from covering President Obama's Boston fundraiser on Wednesday.

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

“My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits,” Lehrich wrote.

That incident happened in March.

Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who has followed White House-press relations at right-leaning Instapundit.com, said a pattern appears to be developing.

“It’s all about control,” Reynolds said. “At some point this will blow back on them. Most presidents behave in a more refined fashion. Experience has shown that acting presidential is good politics and to their advantage.”

I wonder who will be in the press pool to cover Prime Minister Netanyahu's meeting with President Obama on Friday.

Thank God for the internet and bloggers.

Israel Matzav: The Obama administration chooses its coverage

Love of the Land: Another Triumph of Smart Power

Another Triumph of Smart Power

John Noonan
The Weekly Standard
26 March '10

Over at the Washington Post, Jackson Diehl dives into an unnecessarily tense meeting between Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and President Obama.

Obama has added more poison to a U.S.-Israeli relationship that already was at its lowest point in two decades. Tuesday night the White House refused to allow non-official photographers record the president’s meeting with Netanyahu; no statement was issued afterward. Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length. That is something the rest of the world will be quick to notice and respond to. Just like the Palestinians, European governments cannot be more friendly to an Israeli leader than the United States. Would Britain have expelled a senior Israeli diplomat Tuesday because of a flap over forged passports if there were no daylight between Obama and Netanyahu? Maybe not.

President Obama's stewardship of the special U.S.-Israel relationship has been nothing short of shameful. But, beyond that, his behavior towards Netanyahu doesn't make a lick of sense. There's no quantifiable end game here. Obama is either so caught up in his own personality cult that he honestly believes he can drive a wedge between the Israeli electorate and Netanyahu's fragile government (unlikely), or he's just that infantile -- throwing a temper tantrum over an ill-timed settlement announcement.

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Love of the Land: Another Triumph of Smart Power

Love of the Land: Obama’s Disgraceful Conduct Toward Israel

Obama’s Disgraceful Conduct Toward Israel

P. David Hornik
Frontpagemag.com
26 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

On Wednesday night in Washington Israeli and American officials worked feverishly—but failed—to produce a document stating Israel’s commitments regarding proximity talks with the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. was reportedly supposed to take the document to the Palestinians and then to the Arab League meeting in Tripoli, Libya, this weekend.

Days earlier Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had outlined such commitments in a letter to secretary of state Hillary Clinton. It was deemed insufficient and, in Washington, President Barack Obama sent Netanyahu and his accompanying officials back to the drawing board. According to one report, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman advised Netanyahu not to sign any such document that night, and to wait to return home and discuss the matter with the Israeli inner cabinet.

The commitments Obama seeks are variously reported to be: some sort of Israeli undertaking about a construction moratorium in the West Bank (where one is already in place) and East Jerusalem; a promise to engage in such final-status issues as refugees, borders, and Jerusalem in the proximity talks; and “gestures” to the Palestinian Authority such as the removal of additional checkpoints and the freeing of Palestinian security prisoners.

The pressures Obama directed at Netanyahu were severe, in one account even inducing a “panic” reaction in the Israeli leader. The total media blackout that accompanied their meeting led the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl to comment that “Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arm’s length.” Obama was further riled by news about an approval to build 20 apartments for Jews in a compound in East Jerusalem owned by an American Jewish millionaire since 1985—situated in a mostly-Arab neighborhood.

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Love of the Land: Obama’s Disgraceful Conduct Toward Israel

Love of the Land: The Lessons of 1956: Nostalgia for a Betrayal of Israel

The Lessons of 1956: Nostalgia for a Betrayal of Israel

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
23 March '10

If you want an object lesson as to where contemporary Israel-bashing in the United States is headed, you can do no better than read an article published today in the Daily Beast by Kai Bird, the former Nation staffer, MacArthur Foundation “genius,” and Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The title, “Time to Talk Tough with Israel,” promises the familiar tiresome refrain about how America must slap the Israelis around for their own good and doesn’t disappoint. But Bird’s frame of reference isn’t just the usual slander about AIPAC running American foreign policy. Instead, he writes from the perspective of an important event in his childhood: the 1956 Sinai campaign, which took place while Bird’s father was serving in the American consulate in East Jerusalem. At that time, about half the city was illegally occupied by the Kingdom of Jordan. Jews were forbidden entry into the Old City, and Jewish holy places such as the Western Wall were abandoned and desecrated.

In 1956, Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser massed his army in the Sinai and allowed Palestinian terrorists to use Egyptian-occupied Gaza as a terrorist sanctuary. Acting in conjunction with Britain and France, who were angry about Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal, Israel cleaned out both Gaza and the Sinai, dealing a serious blow to Nasser’s aggressive ambitions. But the United States, which hadn’t been consulted, wound up backing Nasser against the former colonial powers and their Israeli ally. In the end Nasser wasn’t compelled to make peace with Israel. Instead, Israel was forced to withdraw from the Sinai. All it got in exchange was the presence of a United Nations observer force on the border.

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Love of the Land: The Lessons of 1956: Nostalgia for a Betrayal of Israel

Love of the Land: Obama and Israel: Making the Same Mistake Again and Again

Obama and Israel: Making the Same Mistake Again and Again

Jeffrey Dunetz
American Thinker
20 March '10

The Bible says that the Jews are descended from twelve brothers, and they have always acted that way. Throughout recorded history, Jews have spent almost as much time fighting each other as they have fighting their enemies. Yet each time they are attacked from the outside, they coalesce and support their brothers like a close-knit family. And that pattern goes double for the multi-party world of Israeli politics.

Last time I checked, there were twelve different political parties that received enough votes to be part of the Knesset, and many of those parties are part of the governing coalition. The different parties, though they may be serving in the same government, remain very partisan. When you add to that the fact that cabinet ministers have a lot more independent authority than what you would see in an American president's cabinet, you can see how the results become very wild at times. But when their nation is under attack, either militarily or simply via international political pressure, the various parties in an Israeli cabinet coalesce to fight off the threat.

If Barack Obama bothered to take the time to understand the "soul" of the Israelis, he might be much closer to restarting talks between Israel and the Palestinians than he is today. His own arrogance, however, and his refusal to believe that anybody would not see the world as he does, prevents him from achieving progress in the region. Obama's arrogance is so strong that last week, he made the exact same mistake on the settlement issue as he made just four months ago.

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Love of the Land: Obama and Israel: Making the Same Mistake Again and Again

Love of the Land: Obama and Israel: Not Smart

Obama and Israel: Not Smart

John Podhoretz
commentarymagazine.com
15 March '10

In both politics and diplomacy, actors must think at least one move ahead. They need to be reasonably sure that when they say or do A, then the other party will say or do B. And they should want the other party to say or do B, otherwise it makes no sense to say A in the first place. The purpose of action isn't just to act, in other words, but to make sure that the reaction you get advances your purposes and your interests. Which is why the administration's behavior in deepening and perpetuating its latest confrontation with Israel is actually rather bewildering. Let's start out by acknowledging that what happened during Vice President Biden's trip last week — the announcement of new housing starts in East Jerusalem — was an affront to the United States. I believe Israel has every right to do what it is doing, but the view of the visiting representative of the administration is that what it is doing is wrong and injurious to future prospects for peace, and this conflict of visions is not going to be resolved. Biden was embarrassed, his visit overshadowed, and expressions of diplomatic dismay appropriate as a result. The Israeli prime minister, who did not know about the announcement, apologized to the visitor and was embarrassed as well by the way in which the dysfunctional Israeli political system was exposed to international view.

All of that happened in a day — on Tuesday. It happened, it was reported on, the administration made its displeasure known, with Biden himself condemning the announcement. Prime Minister Netanyahu's office made clear he had been blindsided by the announcement, which was made by the head of a party inside his coalition government. On Wednesday, privately and publicly, he and other Israelis made their own shame known, and it was clear that there were going to have to be fences mended. Fence-mending is what diplomacy is usually all about, especially by an administration that seems to think its predecessor didn't spend enough time at it.

And then matters escalated. And they escalated because the United States escalated them. Hillary Clinton called up Bibi Netanyahu on Friday and, if one reads between the lines in the reporting on their conversation, basically screamed at him for 45 minutes. Then her spokesman went out and told the world she had done so, and used startlingly violent language — calling the announcement a "deeply negative signal."

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Love of the Land: Obama and Israel: Not Smart

Love of the Land: Obama’s Appalling Double Standards

Obama’s Appalling Double Standards

Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
14 March '10

The Obama-Israel showdown is an example of high hypocrisy, double standards, and political stupidity, all on display for a global audience.

As Barry Rubin reminds us:

For more than four months the U.S. government has been celebrating Israel agreeing to stop construction on settlements in the West Bank while continuing building in east Jerusalem as a great step forward and Israeli concession deserving a reward. Suddenly, all of this is forgotten to say that Israel building in east Jerusalem is some kind of terrible deed which deserves punishment.

Israelis are used to this pattern: give a big concession and a few months later that step is forgotten as Israel is portrayed as intransigent and more concessions are demanded with nothing in return.

The administration is using an instance of bad timing to revisit the terms of the settlement freeze to accomplish what was impossible before — a freeze in Jewish construction in Jerusalem. Robert Gibbs said this morning on Fox News that condemning construction in Obama-disapproved Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem “is, and has been, the policy of the United States.”

Chris Wallace should have asked Gibbs how he reconciles such a statement, and the administration’s behavior over the past week, with the U.S. endorsement of the settlement freeze four months ago that explicitly exempted Jerusalem. In fact, it might make sense for the Israelis to ask for such a clarification. It’s obvious that Obama is trying to change the terms of the agreement by bullying and unilateralism, not by negotiation.

And it is important to note that the kind of rhetoric and outrage we are witnessing on Israel has never been employed by the administration against Syria, Iran, Hamas, North Korea, or any of America’s actual enemies. Regarding “announcements about expanding settlements,” a “senior Obama administration official” told Reuters that “the Israelis know the only way to stay on the positive side of the ledger — internationally and with us — is to not have them recurring.”

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Love of the Land: Obama’s Appalling Double Standards

Love of the Land: Clinton warns Israel: If you make concessions that rely on U.S. support it may not be there if you err?

Clinton warns Israel: If you make concessions that rely on U.S. support it may not be there if you err?

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
14 March '10

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

"In her call, Clinton appeared to link U.S. military support for Israel to the construction in East Jerusalem"

Bottom line: After the miserable failure of President Obama's appeasement policy towards Iran - and the passage of his 2009 "deadline" for Iran we now have a reminder to Israel that the U.S. could threaten Israel in the future if it finds itself in a policy dispute.

So the warning: the last thing Israel can afford to do is take "risks for peace" that rely on American support since there is always the possibility that a future policy dispute will lead to that support being subject to question.?]


Clinton rebukes Israel over East Jerusalem plans, cites damage to bilateral ties

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 13, 2010; A01
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031202615.html

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rebuked Israeli Prime Minister
Binyamin Netanyahu on Friday about the state of the U.S.-Israeli
relationship, demanding that Israel take immediate steps to show it is
interested in renewing efforts to achieve a Middle East peace agreement.
.....

Some analysts applauded the administration's tough stance, saying it may jar the right-leaning Israeli government into making gestures to the Palestinians. But others said Clinton's call risked emboldening Arab and Palestinian officials to make new demands before talks start, if only so as not to seem softer than the Americans.

In her call, Clinton appeared to link U.S. military support for Israel to the construction in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as the site for their future capital. "The secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States' strong commitment to Israel's security," Crowley said. "She made clear that the Israeli government needed to demonstrate, not just through words but through specific actions, that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process."

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Love of the Land: Clinton warns Israel: If you make concessions that rely on U.S. support it may not be there if you err?

Love of the Land: A New Low

A New Low

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
13 March '10

It is hard to imagine that U.S.-Israeli relations could have reached this point. But they have. The Washington Post aptly described where we stand: “Ties Plunge To A New Low.” In short, “relations with Israel have been strained almost since the start of the Obama administration. Now they have plunged to their lowest ebb since the administration of George H.W. Bush.” And there is no improvement in sight. After the public and private scolding by the vice president over the building of housing units in Jerusalem, Hillary Clinton continued the hollering, this time in a conversation with Bibi Netanyahu that was eagerly relayed to the media:

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described the nearly 45-minute phone conversation in unusually undiplomatic terms, signaling that the close allies are facing their deepest crisis in two decades after the embarrassment suffered by Vice President Biden this week when Israel announced during his visit that it plans to build 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem.

Clinton called Netanyahu “to make clear the United States considered the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip,” Crowley said. Clinton, he said, emphasized that “this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.”

As the Post points out, the relationship has been rocky from the get-go. (”From the start of his tenure, President Obama identified a Middle East peace deal as critical to U.S. national security, but his efforts have been hampered by the administration’s missteps and the deep mistrust between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”) Actually, it is the mistrust between Israel and the U.S. that is at the nub of the problem. We hear that the Obami intend to use this incident to pressure Israel to “something that could restore confidence in the process and to restore confidence in the relationship with the United States.” And it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Obami are escalating the fight — making relations more tense and strained — to achieve their misguided objective, namely to extract some sort of unilateral concessions they imagine would pick the lock on the moribund “peace process.”

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Love of the Land: A New Low

Love of the Land: Un-Smart Diplomacy

Un-Smart Diplomacy

Rick Richman
Contentions/Commentary
13 March '10

Friday’s State Department news conference lasted only 10 minutes and was devoted primarily to another harsh public condemnation of Israel:

Secretary Clinton also spoke this morning with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to reiterate the United States’ strong objections to Tuesday’s announcement, not just in terms of timing, but also in its substance; to make clear that the United States considers the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship – and counter to the spirit of the Vice President’s trip; and to reinforce that this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process, and in America’s interests. The Secretary said she could not understand how this happened, particularly in light of the United States’ strong commitment to Israel’s security. And she made clear that the Israeli Government needed to demonstrate not just through words but through specific actions that they are committed to this relationship and to the peace process.

Netanyahu and his Interior minister had apologized after both said they had been unaware of the announcement beforehand, pledged there would be no actual building during the “proximity talks” or the anticipated period of any direct talks thereafter, and promised such an incident would not happen again. Only three days after, Clinton issued a statement as harsh as any from the Obama administration — on any issue, foreign or domestic. In it, she voiced “strong objections” to the “substance,” an accusation of a “deeply negative signal” about the “bilateral relationship,” an assertion that it undermined “trust and confidence” in “America’s interests,” an implicit rejection of Netanyahu’s explanation, and a demand for “specific actions” to show Israel is “committed” to its relationship with the U.S.

The harshness is an indication that the administration believes its only Middle East accomplishment in the last 14 months – an agreement to begin “proximity talks” – is in jeopardy. The U.S. demand for “specific actions” arises in the context of the Palestinians demanding, yet again, a Jerusalem building freeze as the price of their participation in discussions about giving them a state.

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Love of the Land: Un-Smart Diplomacy

Love of the Land: Biden in Public and Private

Biden in Public and Private

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
11 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Joe Biden delivered his much-anticipated (and we are told, tweaked) speech in Israel today. It was the usual mix of what we have come to expect from the Obami — broad declarations of support for Israel mixed with an obsessive desire to move forward on the “peace process” and a fixation on building activity. On Iran, Biden pronounced, “The United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, period.” But how, and what options remain? He didn’t say. As for East Jerusalem, the vice president harped on what he deemed the “hardest truth.” That is parlance for the Obami’s insistence that it is building in Israel’s capital, not the persistence of terrorism or the refusal to recognize the Jewish state, that serves to “undermine trust.” As skewed and as unwelcome as much of that public message was to many onlookers here and in Israel, what went on in private was jaw-dropping. We are told:

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Love of the Land: Biden in Public and Private

Love of the Land: I Hate That Verb "Stand By"

I Hate That Verb "Stand By"

Batya Medad
Shilo Musings
10 March '10

And I consider the idea of "taking risks for peace" a very dangerous oxymoron. Yes, you have to be quite a moron to think that there will be peace if you take risks like the ones those American politicians keep demanding from us. Yes, they promise to "stand by" us and watch the #!%#&!! fly.

Biden: U.S. will always stand by those who take risks for peace

As a certified/diploma-ed (not cuckoo) English teacher I know that there are idioms which don't mean what the words taken separately mean. That's no comfort when I hear American politicians promising to "stand by Israel," because one of that verb's accepted meanings is just to observe:
I don't want the world to watch us being attacked and then debate suitable response, judge who's guilty and then sympathize with our enemies. We all know that the world--including the United States of America-- is more concerned with satisfying the Arabs than defending our needs.

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Love of the Land: I Hate That Verb "Stand By"

Love of the Land: The Middle East Peace Scam

The Middle East Peace Scam

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
09 March '10

For nearly twenty years the great sham of the Middle East Peace Process has dragged on. And this despicable scam has consisted of only one policy, only one platform and only one plan. Pressuring Israel for more concessions.

Year in and year out, new peace conferences were declared and new plans for peace were hammered out. All of them had one thing in common, they carved up Israel for a non-existent peace. When Arafat and his gang of terrorists made a concession, it was to demand 5 percent less of Israel in the current phase of negotiations. When Israel made a concession, it was to turn over another 10 percent of land to its worst enemies in this phase of negotiations... in exchange for them putting off their demands for that 5 percent into the next phase of the negotiations. And this sick charade in which Israel gave and the terrorists took was the peace process.

While this great surrender process was going on, outside the bombs went on exploding, tearing apart buses, restaurants, malls and families-- the politicians and diplomats in charge excused the terrorists and damned Israel if it so much as lifted a finger to defend itself, or erected a single checkpoint to catch at least one of the terrorists on the way to kill a dozen people in Jerusalem.

And now finally the Vice President of the United States arrives in Israel to reaffirm his absolute commitment to Israel's security, a commitment he and just about every other politician who let that phrase trip lightly off their lips, honors by pressing Israel to surrender again the terrorists. He arrives and condemns the greatest impediment to peace. Jewish families living in the capital of their own nation.

Biden did not take the time to condemn Abbas for his failure to hold elections, for his attendance at a funeral for the terrorists in his own militia who murdered an Israeli Rabbi, for his violation of the Gaza Jericho agreement or for his recent threats of a Holy War against Israel. Not even the Palestinian Authority naming a municipal square two days ago after Dalal Mughrabi, one of the Coastal Road Massacre bus hijackers, resulted in any statements of condemnation. Let us for a moment balance the horrifying scene of Jews moving into new apartments in Jerusalem, vs the Coastal Road Massacre in which Fatah terrorists murdered Gail Rubin, an American nature photographer, hijacked a bus, and murdered 38 passengers, 13 of them only children.

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Love of the Land: The Middle East Peace Scam

Love of the Land: Are They Being Smart Yet?

Are They Being Smart Yet?

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
09 March '10

Joe Biden arrived in Israel. A ticker-tape parade he did not receive. As this report notes:

Vice President Biden arrived in Israel on Monday to boost U.S. efforts to mediate talks between Israelis and Palestinians amid criticism that the Obama administration has set back the peace process.

Biden’s four-day visit — in addition to reassuring Israeli leaders about the U.S. commitment to curb Iran’s nuclear program — is designed to prod Israel and the Palestinians to get talks moving again. With a speech in Tel Aviv on Thursday, he will also try to court the Israeli public, some of whom felt snubbed in the past year by President Obama, who has visited Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia but has yet to come to Israel.

All George Mitchell could muster were so-called “proximity” talks, indirect discussions between parties that have little to discuss and, in the case of the Palestinians, little authority or willingness to make a “deal.” So the grousing has begun:

After so many years of direct talks that wrestled with the core issues of the future of Jerusalem, borders, security and Palestinian refugees, Mitchell’s announcement felt to some observers more like a setback than a success.

“It’s hardly a cause for celebration that after 17 years of direct official talks we are regressing to proximity talks,” said Yossi Alpher, co-editor of a Middle East blog and a former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Saeb Erekat, the longtime Palestinian negotiator, told Israel’s Army Radio that the indirect talks were a last attempt “to save the peace process.”

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Love of the Land: Are They Being Smart Yet?

Love of the Land: Revelation at Harvard: Who Wrote Obama's Cairo Speech?

Revelation at Harvard: Who Wrote Obama's Cairo Speech?

"I Cannot Tell a Lie - I Wrote it."

Parrhesia
Jstreetjive.com
05 March '10

For nearly ten months questions have swirled around the country about the identity of the speechwriter responsible for Obama's controversial address to the Muslim and Arab world delivered at Cairo University on June 4, 2009. In attendance was the Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi of that other great seat of learning and tolerance, Al Azhar (co-sponsor of the speech); the Sheikh has stated that there are "good Jews and bad Jews": "The good ones convert to Islam...the bad ones do not." Dr. Andrew Bostom excerpts some of Sheikh Tantawi's interfaith gems in his groundbreaking work, "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism."

The much ballyhooed speech, originally scheduled for Morocco, was changed to Cairo to have the greatest impact in "correcting" the perceived Muslim hostility to the U.S.engendered by George.W. Bush. The Wall St. Journal and Politico guessed it was the product of Ben Rhodes, Obama's only foreign policy speechwriter (and erstwhile novelist: "The Oasis of Love") who traveled with him for his first major European speech, often dubbed the "Blame America First" speech.

Well, speculate no more. The writer wasn't Ben Rhodes or Chris Brose, former foreign policy speechwriter for Condoleeza Rice. If we can believe him - and there is no reason to doubt his word - it was Stephen P. Cohen. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called Cohen a week before the trip and asked him to prepare a first draft for the speech, "A New Beginning."

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Revelation at Harvard: Who Wrote Obama's Cairo Speech?

Love of the Land: Biden's lost cause

Biden's lost cause

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
05 March '10

US Vice President Joseph Biden's job is about to stop being easy. Indeed, it is about to become impossible.

On Monday Biden will arrive in Israel for a three-day visit. Biden, who will meet with Israel's leaders, will be the most senior official in the cavalcade of senior US officials that have descended on Israel in recent weeks. Biden will replace Senator John Kerry, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who was here this week. Kerry himself replaced Adm. Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was here two weeks ago.

In his press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Kerry explained the purpose of these visits. As he put it, "...I am here and other people were here and Vice President Biden is coming shortly... to make sure we are all on the same page and that we are all clear about [Iran]."

Although Biden is just the latest senior US official to visit Israel to try to coerce the government not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, his visit is novel in one respect. In addition to his meetings with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the rest of Israel's senior officials, Biden intends to make a case for the Obama administration's policies towards Iran, the Palestinians and Israel directly to the Israeli public. During his trip he will give what is being billed as a major policy speech at Tel Aviv University.

In light of the gaping disparity between the Obama administration's policies and those of the Israeli government, the apparent goal of Biden's address is to shore up the position of the Israeli Left as an alternative to Netanyahu. Apparently, the picture emerging from all of the senior US officials' meetings with Netanyahu is that Israel's leader still feels comfortable defying them. Presumably, they now believe that the only way to force him to toe their line is by making him believe that the price of defiance will be his premiership.

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Love of the Land: Biden's lost cause

Love of the Land: Obama Talks, Syria Mocks

Obama Talks, Syria Mocks

Elliot Abrams
The Weekly Standard
06 March '10

The Obama administration has from the start seen Syria as a leading case for engagement. Barack Obama said so during his presidential campaign (announcing he would meet Bashar al Assad without preconditions) and repeated this policy view again last summer:

We’ve started to see some diplomatic contacts between the United States and Syria. There are aspects of Syrian behavior that trouble us, and we think that there is a way that Syria can be much more constructive on a whole host of these issues. But, as you know, I’m a believer in engagement and my hope is that we can continue to see progress on that front.

The engagement with Syria continues apace. Here are the key elements.

* High level envoys have been sent to Damascus: Under Secretary of State William Burns visited Syria in mid-February, the highest ranking U.S. official to set foot there in more than five years, and Middle East envoy George Mitchell has visited three times. High-ranking Central Command officers have been sent to Damascus to discuss cooperation against terrorism.

* President Obama has now nominated an ambassador to Damascus, the first since Margaret Scobey was withdrawn in 2005 after the murder of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in Lebanon (which was widely blamed on the Assad regime).

* The president has also removed the American block to Syria’s attempt to join the World Trade Organization.

* The United States has eased some export licenses for Syria, mostly in the area of aircraft.

* Syria’s deputy foreign minister was invited to Washington in October, the first such visit in several years.

So there is certainly “progress on that front,” to use the president’s words. But when does “engagement” become “appeasement”? The case of U.S. policy toward Syria suggests that, here at least, the two approaches may not be far apart.

Love of the Land: Obama Talks, Syria Mocks

Love of the Land: Why the Palestinians Don't Want a State

Why the Palestinians Don't Want a State

David Gutmann
American Spectator
05 March '10

President Barack Obama will soon be entering the lion's den of Middle East politics with the same conviction that has guided all his predecessors -- that the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict lies in the Two-State Solution, leading to the early establishment of a Palestinian state.

The received wisdom has it that the Palestinians wish above all things to have a state of their own, but that their fervent wishes are frustrated by Israeli delaying tactics, such as endless arguments over West Bank settlements, security fences, water rights, and the like.

While the Israelis probably do not want a Palestinian state on their borders, an entity that could easily become Hamastan II (and yet another missile launching platform), there is increasing evidence that the Palestinians themselves are of two minds about the prospect of their own statehood.

The first piece of evidence is the unchallenged observation that Palestinian leaders have rejected or sabotaged every proposal for statehood since 1947. In that year the Palestinians rejected the UN-sponsored division of the former British mandate into Jewish and Arab states on the grounds that they did not want to share Palestine with the infidel Jews. Instead of developing trheir own state, they tried through armed conflict to eradicate the nascent Jewish state. Their leaders took this big step just two years after the end of the Holocaust; and, guided by Hitler's associate Haj Amin Al-Husseini, their implicit goal was to continue the slaughter. But if you start a war of politicide plus extermination you had better win it; otherwise, like Hitler, or Tojo, or the Palestinians of 1948, you will very likely end up with a bombed-out wasteland, or -- in the Palestinian case -- as a defeated rabble of landless refugees.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Why the Palestinians Don't Want a State

Love of the Land: Bashar Assad: What you see is what you get

Bashar Assad: What you see is what you get

Syria’s president is not a ‘pragmatist’ but fiercely anti-Israel, which is why efforts to lure him out of Iran’s orbit aren’t working.


Jonathan Spyer
Middle East/JPost
03 March '10

In Damascus last week, the full array of leaders of the so-called “resistance bloc” sat down to a sumptuous meal together.

Presidents Ahmedinejad of Iran and Assad of Syria were there, alongside a beaming Khaled Mashaal of Hamas and Hizbullah General-Secretary Hassan Nasrallah. There were some lesser lights, too, to make up the numbers – including Ahmed Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a fossil from the old alphabet soup of secular Palestinian groups.

The mood – replicated a few days later in Teheran – was one of jubilant defiance.

The reasons underlying Syria’s membership in the “resistance bloc” remain fiercely debated in western policy discussion. It has long been the view of a powerful element in Washington – strongly echoed by many in the Israeli defense establishment – that Syria constitutes the “weakest link” in the Iranian-led bloc. Adherents to this view see the Syrian regime as concerned solely with power and its retention. Given, they say, that Syria’s ties to the Iran-led bloc are pragmatic rather than ideological, the policy trick to be performed is finding the right incentive to make Damascus recalculate the costs and benefits of its position.

Once the appropriate incentive tips the balance, it is assumed, the regime in Damascus will coolly absent itself from the company of frothing ideologues on display in Damascus and Teheran last week, and will take up its position on the rival table – or at least at a point equidistant between them.

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Love of the Land: Bashar Assad: What you see is what you get

Love of the Land: The Vision Thing

The Vision Thing

Emmanuel Navon
For The Sake Of Zion
03 March '10

The man whom George W. Bush used to dismissingly call “The Eye Doctor” seems to be doing fine without glasses. Bashar al-Assad, an ophthalmologist who inherited his father’s hereditary job only because his older brother was killed in a car accident, has turned the tables on the United States. Five years ago, he complied with the American injunction to pull his troops out of Lebanon. Today, he is publicly humiliating the United States.

In February 2005, the US withdrew its ambassador to Syria following the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Assad’s involvement in Hariri’s murder was so obvious that former French President Jacques Chirac, a personal friend of Hariri (and long-term guest in his Paris apartment), has been boycotting Assad ever since. By recalling its ambassador, the US was also expressing its discontent with the fact that Syria hosts and shields Palestinian terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, transfers weapons from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, lets terrorists crossing into Iraq, supports Iran’s foreign policy goals, and cooperates with Iran and North Korea to develop nuclear capabilities (concerns about Syria’s suspected nuclear program were brought to the world’s attention by the Israeli bombing of an alleged nuclear facility in eastern Syria in 2007).

Last month, five years exactly after the scolding of the Bush Administration, President Obama nominated Robert Ford as the new US Ambassador to Syria. The rationale of the current US Administration is that Assad can be sweet-talked into trading his alliance with Iran for a deal with America. Obama’s gamble has produced immediate results, but not the expected ones. Shortly after the nomination of Ambassador Ford, Ahmadinejad paid an official and pompous visit to Damascus (where he also met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah). Baffled, Hillary Clinton asked Assad why he was doing the opposite of what her government’s policy was supposed to produce. Assad responded as follows: “We have a hard time understanding Clinton, either because of a translation problem or because of our limited capabilities.” Hillary Clinton is being pushed around by Middle Eastern machos and America is being ridiculed.

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Love of the Land: The Vision Thing