Coming soon: "The Fallout From the UN Debacle: What's Next?"
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote
Dan Senor - The Wall Street Journal, September 14th, 2011
He doesn't have a 'messaging' problem. He has a record of bad policies and anti-Israel rhetoric.
New York's special congressional election on Tuesday was the first electoral outcome directly affected by President Obama's Israel policy. Democrats were forced to expend enormous resources in a losing effort to defend this safe Democratic district, covering Queens and Brooklyn, that Anthony Weiner won last year by a comfortable margin.
He doesn't have a 'messaging' problem. He has a record of bad policies and anti-Israel rhetoric.
New York's special congressional election on Tuesday was the first electoral outcome directly affected by President Obama's Israel policy. Democrats were forced to expend enormous resources in a losing effort to defend this safe Democratic district, covering Queens and Brooklyn, that Anthony Weiner won last year by a comfortable margin.
A Public Policy Poll taken days before the election found a plurality of voters saying that Israel was “very important” in determining their votes. Among those voters, Republican candidate Robert Turner was winning by a 71-22 margin. Only 22% of Jewish voters approved of President Obama's handling of Israel. Ed Koch, the Democrat and former New York mayor, endorsed Mr. Turner because he said he wanted to send a message to the president about his anti-Israel policies.
This is a preview of what President Obama might face in his re-election campaign with a demographic group that voted overwhelmingly for him in 2008. And it could affect the electoral map, given the battleground states—such as Florida and Pennsylvania—with significant Jewish populations. In another ominous barometer for the Obama campaign, its Jewish fund-raising has deeply eroded: One poll by McLaughlin & Associates found that of Jewish donors who donated to Mr. Obama in 2008, only 64% have already donated or plan to donate to his re-election campaign.
The Obama campaign has launched a counteroffensive, including hiring a high-level Jewish outreach director and sending former White House aide David Axelrod and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to reassure Jewish donors. The Obama team told the Washington Post that its Israel problem is a messaging problem, and that with enough explanation of its record the Jewish community will return to the fold in 2012. Here is an inventory of what Mr. Obama's aides will have to address:
• February 2008: When running for president, then-Sen. Obama told an audience in Cleveland: “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel.” Likud had been out of power for two years when Mr. Obama made this statement. At the time the country was being led by the centrist Kadima government of Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Shimon Peres, and Prime Minister Olmert had been pursuing an unprecedented territorial compromise. As for Likud governments, it was under Likud that Israel made its largest territorial compromises—withdrawals from Sinai and Gaza.
• July 2009: Mr. Obama hosted American Jewish leaders at the White House, reportedly telling them that he sought to put “daylight” between America and Israel. “For eight years”—during the Bush administration—”there was no light between the United States and Israel, and nothing got accomplished,” he declared.
Nothing? Prime Minister Ariel Sharon uprooted thousands of settlers from their homes in Gaza and the northern West Bank and deployed the Israeli army to forcibly relocate their fellow citizens. Mr. Sharon then resigned from the Likud Party to build a majority party based on a two-state consensus.
In the same meeting with Jewish leaders, Mr. Obama told the group that Israel would need “to engage in serious self-reflection.” This statement stunned the Americans in attendance: Israeli society is many things, but lacking in self-reflection isn't one of them. It's impossible to envision the president delivering a similar lecture to Muslim leaders.
• September 2009: In his first address to the U.N. General Assembly, President Obama devoted five paragraphs to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, during which he declared (to loud applause) that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” He went on to draw a connection between rocket attacks on Israeli civilians with living conditions in Gaza. There was not a single unconditional criticism of Palestinian terrorism.
• March 2010: During Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, a Jerusalem municipal office announced plans for new construction in a part of Jerusalem. The president launched an unprecedented weeks-long offensive against Israel. Mr. Biden very publicly departed Israel.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton berated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a now-infamous 45-minute phone call, telling him that Israel had “harmed the bilateral relationship.” (The State Department triumphantly shared details of the call with the press.) The Israeli ambassador was dressed-down at the State Department, Mr. Obama's Middle East envoy canceled his trip to Israel, and the U.S. joined the European condemnation of Israel.
Moments after Mr. Biden concluded his visit to the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority held a ceremony to honor Dalal Mughrabi, who led one of the deadliest Palestinian terror attacks in history: the so-called Coastal Road Massacre that killed 38, including 13 children and an American. The Obama administration was silent. But that same day, on ABC, Mr. Axelrod called Israel's planned construction of apartments in its own capital an “insult” and an “affront” to the United States. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went on Fox News to accuse Mr. Netanyahu of “weakening trust” between the two countries.
Ten days later, Mr. Netanyahu traveled to Washington to mend fences but was snubbed at a White House meeting with President Obama—no photo op, no joint statement, and he was sent out through a side door.
• April 2010: Mr. Netanyahu pulled out of the Obama-sponsored Washington summit on nuclear proliferation after it became clear that Turkey and Egypt intended to use the occasion to condemn the Israeli nuclear program, and Mr. Obama would not intervene.
• March 2011: Mr. Obama returned to his habit of urging Israelis to engage in self-reflection, inviting Jewish community leaders to the White House and instructing them to “search your souls” about Israel's dedication to peace.
• May 2011: The State Department issued a press release declaring that the department's No. 2 official, James Steinberg, would be visiting “Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank.” In other words, Jerusalem is not part of Israel. Later in the month, only hours before Mr. Netanyahu departed from Israel to Washington, Mr. Obama delivered his Arab Spring speech, which focused on a demand that Israel return to its indefensible pre-1967 borders with land swaps.
Mr. Obama has made some meaningful exceptions, particularly having to do with security partnership, but overall he has built the most consistently one-sided diplomatic record against Israel of any American president in generations. His problem with Jewish voters is one of substance, not messaging.
Mr. Senor is co-author with Saul Singer of “Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle” (Twelve, 2011). He served as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003 and 2004.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
The BDS Movement, Apartheid and The Real Racism
Students everywhere have been propagandized by anti-Israel and anti-Zionist groups to partake in the BDS (Boycott-Divestment-Sanction) movement. Taking advantage of the typical impressionable passion and altruism of college students (of which I remember all too well!), the movement, which is supported by liberal faculty world-wide has gained some traction over the past few years. Utilizing mostly disingenuous vitriol and founded upon one-sided and illusory theories, this movement has converted many young men and women who have fallen for it hook, line and sinker as they hear so-called intellectuals and thinkers preach their brand of hatred.
To acknowledge that many departments within our most well-known Universities and other institutions of higher learning are funded by anti-Israel organizations and governments should not be a surprise to most. To contend that there is a connection between the shift in dialogue to extreme anit-Israelism amongst these same institutions and the funding of those institutions would be attacked as libelous by some. One can do the research themselves quite easily through a relatively brief internet search of major funders if Institutions that are the loudest to voice anti-Zionist appeals. Although, as scientists, we are taught to never assume that an association determines causality, these facts do give one pause to reflect.
Fortunately, there are many "voices in the wilderness" arising out of the ashes of this anti-Semitic fire. One group, of which I am a member, the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, attempts to carry on a balanced dialogue within the community of educators and help to bring some semblance of sanity to the fragile world of secondary and tertiary education. Their mission is as follows:
"Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, [SPME), is a grass-roots community of scholars who have united to promote honest fact based, and civil discourse, especially in regard to Middle East issues. We believe that ethnic, national, and religious hatreds, including anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, have no place in our institutions, disciplines and communities. We employ academic means to address these issues.
We welcome scholars from all disciplines, faiths, and nationalities who share our desire for peace and our commitment to academic freedom, intellectual integrity, and honest debate."
The world in which education lays, which is supposed to be founded upon integrity, balanced and thorough research, and passionate but respectful debate, has been nothing of the sort in recent times, at least with respect to Middle East politics. Although SPME is filled with scholars from various backgrounds and many disparate opinions - of which I am not always enamored - it is a breath of fresh air amidst this sometimes loathsome world that impacts our youngest and most brilliant minds and prospective leaders.
Apartheid as a concept has been at the core of the anti-Israel BDS movement on campuses throughout the world. Accusing Israel of being an apartheid state vis-a-vis the so-called Palestinians, is intentional. Its goal is to create inflammatory rhetoric and engender visions of hatred and the ethnic suppression of black South Africans of the late twentieth century.
There may be much to criticize about any nation's policies, with Israel not excluded, and every one of us should participate in the world dialogue to better all of human relations and interactions. But, to attack one of the freest nations on Earth and one which is clearly THE SINGLE MOST inclusive amongst an entire Middle East region filled with religious and ethnic exclusivity as an apartheid state is more than disingenuous...it is more than extremism...it is at best without any merit whatsoever and at worst itself wholly racist.
A simple question that one might ask as a litmus test for the apartheid accusation is this: would one rather be a "minority" Arab citizen in Israel - with full and equal rights and citizenship along with the Jewish majority - or a "minority" ANYTHING in Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.? Yet, none of these countries whose leadership continuously turns a blind eye to and very often itself sanctions regular and continuous suppression and even murder of minorities based on ethnic or religious grounds, have been met by any similar calls for BDS. One might also ask the question: why are there no more Jews in these countries, many of which have had large and flourishing Jewish populations throughout their histories? Could it be due to persecution, suppression, and even murder along ethnic and religious lines? History gives us the answer to that question and it is a resounding YES!
Apartheid is defined variously and loosely as: A policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race, creed, color, religion or ethnicity. The term is much more broadly defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as a crime against humanity:
For the purpose of this Statute, 'crime against humanity' means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
It seems to me that many of the regimes that actually fund the BDS projects can easily fit the very definition of apartheid that they are accusing Israel of. Might that attempt at fire-branding and vilification be a magician's sleight of hand to distract from the realities of the true forces of apartheid that these regimes support? I'll leave that question for you to answer yourselves.
Denis M. MacEoin is a novelist and a former lecturer in Islamic Studies. His academic specializations are Shi'ism, Shaykism, Babism, and the Bahai Faith, on all of which he has written extensively. His novels are written under the pen names Daniel Easterman and Jonathan Aycliffe. While I do not hold to all of Dr. MacEoin's perspectives on religion, spirituality and life in general, I respect him as a fellow member of the SPME and one who has a balanced and objective view of Islam and the people of the Middle East. Dr. MacEoin recently published a letter to the Edinburgh University Student Association after their decision to participate in a BDS project by voting to boycott Israel as an "apartheid" state. The letter follows:
The Committee
Edinburgh University Student Association
May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain’s great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field.
I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote. I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves.
Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby. Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a ‘Nazi’ state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nüremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.
Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled things in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is. That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country’s 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha’is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world centre; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran, the Baha’is (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren’t your members boycotting Iran?
Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks could do in South Africa. Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.
In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home. It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief. Intelligent students thinking it’s better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?
University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak. I do not object to well documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it’s clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens. Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world’s freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Baha’is.... Need I go on? The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott.
I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument. They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930s (which, sadly, there was not), don’t you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it? Of course he would, and he would not have stopped there. Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense to you. I have given you some of the evidence. It’s up to you to find out more.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Denis MacEoin
I do thank G-d above for men and women with a voice of reason who maintain a balanced but integrity filled understanding of world-wide affairs. Unfortunately, their voices have indeed been more a part of "the wilderness" rather than the mainstream. It is time for us to direct our prayers that sanity would somehow return to the world of secondary and tertiary education...something that has been missing from the mainstream for decades as liberalism and left-wing agendas have become an established majority on campuses. That is not to say that liberalism and left-of-centeredness is necessarily a pejorative description. After all, freedom of thought is the foundation for higher education - freedom to express all opinions. None-the-less, balance and integrity are keys to freedom's success, no matter what part of life we are talking about.
To acknowledge that many departments within our most well-known Universities and other institutions of higher learning are funded by anti-Israel organizations and governments should not be a surprise to most. To contend that there is a connection between the shift in dialogue to extreme anit-Israelism amongst these same institutions and the funding of those institutions would be attacked as libelous by some. One can do the research themselves quite easily through a relatively brief internet search of major funders if Institutions that are the loudest to voice anti-Zionist appeals. Although, as scientists, we are taught to never assume that an association determines causality, these facts do give one pause to reflect.
Fortunately, there are many "voices in the wilderness" arising out of the ashes of this anti-Semitic fire. One group, of which I am a member, the Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, attempts to carry on a balanced dialogue within the community of educators and help to bring some semblance of sanity to the fragile world of secondary and tertiary education. Their mission is as follows:
"Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, [SPME), is a grass-roots community of scholars who have united to promote honest fact based, and civil discourse, especially in regard to Middle East issues. We believe that ethnic, national, and religious hatreds, including anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, have no place in our institutions, disciplines and communities. We employ academic means to address these issues.
We welcome scholars from all disciplines, faiths, and nationalities who share our desire for peace and our commitment to academic freedom, intellectual integrity, and honest debate."
The world in which education lays, which is supposed to be founded upon integrity, balanced and thorough research, and passionate but respectful debate, has been nothing of the sort in recent times, at least with respect to Middle East politics. Although SPME is filled with scholars from various backgrounds and many disparate opinions - of which I am not always enamored - it is a breath of fresh air amidst this sometimes loathsome world that impacts our youngest and most brilliant minds and prospective leaders.
Apartheid as a concept has been at the core of the anti-Israel BDS movement on campuses throughout the world. Accusing Israel of being an apartheid state vis-a-vis the so-called Palestinians, is intentional. Its goal is to create inflammatory rhetoric and engender visions of hatred and the ethnic suppression of black South Africans of the late twentieth century.
There may be much to criticize about any nation's policies, with Israel not excluded, and every one of us should participate in the world dialogue to better all of human relations and interactions. But, to attack one of the freest nations on Earth and one which is clearly THE SINGLE MOST inclusive amongst an entire Middle East region filled with religious and ethnic exclusivity as an apartheid state is more than disingenuous...it is more than extremism...it is at best without any merit whatsoever and at worst itself wholly racist.
A simple question that one might ask as a litmus test for the apartheid accusation is this: would one rather be a "minority" Arab citizen in Israel - with full and equal rights and citizenship along with the Jewish majority - or a "minority" ANYTHING in Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.? Yet, none of these countries whose leadership continuously turns a blind eye to and very often itself sanctions regular and continuous suppression and even murder of minorities based on ethnic or religious grounds, have been met by any similar calls for BDS. One might also ask the question: why are there no more Jews in these countries, many of which have had large and flourishing Jewish populations throughout their histories? Could it be due to persecution, suppression, and even murder along ethnic and religious lines? History gives us the answer to that question and it is a resounding YES!
Apartheid is defined variously and loosely as: A policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race, creed, color, religion or ethnicity. The term is much more broadly defined in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as a crime against humanity:
- Murder;
- Extermination;
- Enslavement;
- Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
- Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
- Torture;
- Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
- Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
- Enforced disappearance of persons;
- The crime of apartheid;
- Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health
Later in Article 7, the crime of apartheid is defined as:
The 'crime of apartheid' means inhumane acts of a character similar to those referred to in paragraph 1, committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.
It seems to me that many of the regimes that actually fund the BDS projects can easily fit the very definition of apartheid that they are accusing Israel of. Might that attempt at fire-branding and vilification be a magician's sleight of hand to distract from the realities of the true forces of apartheid that these regimes support? I'll leave that question for you to answer yourselves.
Denis M. MacEoin is a novelist and a former lecturer in Islamic Studies. His academic specializations are Shi'ism, Shaykism, Babism, and the Bahai Faith, on all of which he has written extensively. His novels are written under the pen names Daniel Easterman and Jonathan Aycliffe. While I do not hold to all of Dr. MacEoin's perspectives on religion, spirituality and life in general, I respect him as a fellow member of the SPME and one who has a balanced and objective view of Islam and the people of the Middle East. Dr. MacEoin recently published a letter to the Edinburgh University Student Association after their decision to participate in a BDS project by voting to boycott Israel as an "apartheid" state. The letter follows:
The Committee
Edinburgh University Student Association
May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain’s great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field.
I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote. I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves.
Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby. Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a ‘Nazi’ state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nüremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.
Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled things in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is. That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country’s 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha’is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world centre; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population). In Iran, the Baha’is (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren’t your members boycotting Iran?
Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa. They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews - something no blacks could do in South Africa. Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theatres.
In Israel, women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home. It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran, where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief. Intelligent students thinking it’s better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?
University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak. I do not object to well documented criticism of Israel. I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it’s clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens. Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world’s freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Baha’is.... Need I go on? The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott.
I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument. They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930s (which, sadly, there was not), don’t you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it? Of course he would, and he would not have stopped there. Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense to you. I have given you some of the evidence. It’s up to you to find out more.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Denis MacEoin
I do thank G-d above for men and women with a voice of reason who maintain a balanced but integrity filled understanding of world-wide affairs. Unfortunately, their voices have indeed been more a part of "the wilderness" rather than the mainstream. It is time for us to direct our prayers that sanity would somehow return to the world of secondary and tertiary education...something that has been missing from the mainstream for decades as liberalism and left-wing agendas have become an established majority on campuses. That is not to say that liberalism and left-of-centeredness is necessarily a pejorative description. After all, freedom of thought is the foundation for higher education - freedom to express all opinions. None-the-less, balance and integrity are keys to freedom's success, no matter what part of life we are talking about.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Cliche-based Foreign Policy
Since I couldn't have said it any better than Caroline Glick, I decided to post her most recent op-ed:
Column One: Cliche-based Foreign Policy
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
09/02/2011 16:58
US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, kicked up a political storm this week. On Tuesday, Ros-Lehtinen introduced the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act. If passed into law it would place stringent restrictions on US funding of the UN’s budget.
The US currently funds 22 percent of the UN’s general budget. That budget is passed by the General Assembly with no oversight by the US. America’s 22% share of the budgets nonvoluntary, meaning the US may exert no influence over how its taxpayers’ funds are spent.
If Ros-Lehtinen’s act is passed into law, the UN will have two years to enact budgetary reforms that would render a minimum of 80% of its budget financing voluntary. If the UN does not make the required reforms, the US government will be enjoined to withhold 50% of its nonvoluntary UN budget allocations.
Beyond this overarching demand for UN budgetary reform, the act contains several specific actions that are directed against UN institutions that advance anti-American and anti-Israel agendas.
Ros-Lehtinen’s act would defund the UN Human Rights Committee until such time as it repeals its permanent anti-Israel resolution, and prohibits countries that support terror and are under UN Security Council sanctions from serving as its members. It would also prohibit the US from serving as a member of the UNHRC until such reforms are enacted.
Ros-Lehtinen’s bill defunds all UN activities related to the libelous Goldstone Report, and the anti- Semitic Durban process. It vastly curtails and conditions US funding of UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency permeated by members of terrorist organizations. UNRWA’s facilities are routinely used to plan, execute and incite terrorism against Israel and to indoctrinate Palestinians to seek Israel’s destruction.
The bill pays special attention to the Palestinian Authority’s plan to have the UN SecurityCouncil and General Assembly vote in favor of Palestinian statehood later this month. The bill would cut off US funding to any UN agency or organization that upgrades the Palestinian mission to the UN in any way in the aftermath of a General Assembly vote in favor of such an upgrade in representation.
Ros-Lehtinen’s bill, which has 57 co-sponsors, provides detailed explanations for how the targeted UN agencies and activities harm US interests. It notes that the US’s membership since 2009 in the UN Human Rights Council has had no impact whatsoever on the UNHRC’s anti-Israel and anti- American agenda. The US has been unable to temper in any way the UNHRC’s actions and resolutions, including its decisions to form the Goldstone Committee and to endorse the findings of the Goldstone Report, and its continued support and organization of the anti-Semitic Durban conferences in which Israel is attacked and libeled as an illegitimate, racist state.
The bill notes that despite US efforts to extend oversight over UNRWA’s hiring process, UNRWA continues to hire members of terrorist organizations. The bill provides a long list of UNRWA employees who have perpetrated terrorist attacks.
Ignoring its fact-based assessment of UN failings, the Obama administration has rejected the Ros- Lehtinen bill out of hand. Speaking to Politico, an administration source panned the bill, claiming, “This draft legislation is dated, tired and frankly unresponsive to the positive role being played by the UN.”
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland attacked the bill, saying it would “seriously undermine our international standing and dangerously weaken the UN as an instrument to advance US national security goals.”
Since taking office, Barack Obama has taken concerted steps to place cooperation with the UN at the top of his foreign policy agenda. Through word and deed, Obama has shown that he believes that the US should minimize the extent to which it operates independently of the UN on the global stage.
Obama and his advisers give four arguments to support their view that the UN should effectively replace the US as the global leader. First, they say that the US cannot operate unilaterally on the global stage.
Second, they insinuate that operations undertaken outside the UN umbrella are somehow illegitimate.
To support this contention, they intimate that the reason the US was bogged down in Iraq following its 2003 invasion was because it did not receive specific Security Council permission to invade. In contrast, they point to the current Security Council-sanctioned military operation in Libya and the 1991 Security Council-sanctioned Persian Gulf War as success stories. And they attribute those missions’ successes to their conduct under the UN aegis.
The third argument, which comes across clearly in Nuland’s statement, is that to have credibility in global affairs, the US must not throw its weight around at the UN. If it objects too strenuously to the way things are done, or makes its support for the UN conditional on UN actions, then all the other UN members will be offended and refuse to cooperate with the US.
The final argument they make is reflected in the statement the unnamed administration source gave to Politico. Quite simply, in their view, trying to hold the UN accountable for its actions is old fashioned. In today’s world, accountability is out. And anyone who doesn’t understand that is simply out of touch, “dated, tired.”
All of these arguments are false. In the first instance, it is simply untrue that the US is incapable of operating unilaterally. Aside from Saudi Arabia in 1991 and Kuwait in 2003, the US did not need its partners in Iraq. Of all the non-American participants in the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, only Britain made an impact on fighting. And frankly, the US would have secured Saudi, Kuwaiti and British cooperation without ever involving the UN.
Indeed, under both Democrat and Republican administrations, the US has frequently acted successfully outside the UN framework. In 1999, the Clinton administration could not get UN Security Council agreement to fight in Kosovo, and so it ignored the UN and fought alongside its NATO allies.
The US had 21 allied militaries fighting alongside its forces in Iraq, despite the fact that the operation was conducted outside the UN Security Council umbrella.
The US-initiated Proliferation Security Initiative founded in 2003 is arguably the US’s most successful multilateral effort to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Operating completely outside the UN framework, the PSI has 98 members.
As for the two major US military operations that have been carried out in recent memory by force of UN Security Council resolutions, the jury is still out on both. Due to theSecurity Council’s restrictions on the mission of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the US permitted Saddam Hussein to remain in power after removing his invasion forces from Kuwait.
In the 12 years between that war and the 2003 Iraq war, Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who – at US urging – tried to overthrow him. He exploited theSecurity Council sanctions to starve his people for propaganda purposes while he and his cronies enriched themselves through corrupt UN oil-for-food contracts.
Had Saddam been overthrow in 1991, his replacement by a pro-Western successor regime could have been enacted more smoothly and at far smaller cost to the US and the Iraqi people.
As for Libya, reports from Tripoli indicate that critics of the UN mission were correct. In overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi, the US has apparently enabled a situation in which any successor regime will likely be dominated by al-Qaida-aligned political and military forces allied with Iran.
The claim that the US will lose influence in international affairs if it is perceived as bossy by its fellow UN nation states is similarly groundless. The hard truth is that no one goes along with the UN simply because it is the UN. States are reasonably and consistently opportunistic in their cooperation with the UN. They support the UN when it supports their interests and they ignore the UN when it opposes their interests.
States do not oppose the US at the UN because they consider it bossy. They oppose the US at the UN because they believe it serves their national interests to oppose the US and its interests.
It is due to clashing interests, not the comportment of US representatives, that the Obama administration to fail to exert any influence over the UNHRC’s agenda despite its commitment to “engagement.”
Clashing national interests are the reason the Obama administration has failed to secure Security Council support for anything approaching effective measures against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
The final administration argument – that it is déclassé to demand that the UN stop advancing the causes of America’s enemies – is not simply peevish and insulting. It is indicative of the culture that motivates the administration to cling to its UN-centered agenda despite its obvious and repeated failure.
As the easy refutation of all the administration’s arguments makes clear, the agenda is not a product of rational thought. It is the product of the groupthink that is endemic at the universities whence Obama and his advisers have emerged. This groupthink is directed by unquestioned clichés that are passed off as sophisticated reasoning. These include such pearls of wisdom as “global governance,” “Twitter revolution,” “multilateralism” and “interdependence.”
These clichés have become articles of faith that are impermeable to fact and reality. As a consequence, those who adhere to them will never acknowledge their failure to deliver on their utopian promises. Instead they attack anyone who points out their failure as “dated,” and as “tired” old fogies who are too unsophisticated to understand the world.
We see this attitude at work in all aspects of Obama’s foreign policy. For instance, Obama came into office with the view that the reason all efforts to date to successfully complete a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians failed because the Palestinians didn’t trust the US to “deliver” Israel. To remedy this perceived problem, Obama has consistently sought to “put daylight” between the US and Israel. This policy has failed abysmally, as the PA’s current UN statehood bid shows. And yet the administration continues to cling to it, because acknowledging its failure would involve renouncing a cliché.
So, too, the administration’s policy of engaging Iran has brought the mullocracy to the brink of a nuclear arsenal, empowered it to violently repress pro-American democracy protesters, expand its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, take over Lebanon, and make inroads in Egypt, Libya and beyond. And yet, despite all of this, the administration refuses to admit its policy is wrong and adopt a more effective one, because doing so would involve acknowledging that “engagement” is not the panacea it was cracked up to be.
Ros-Lehtinen’s bill is expected to be blocked in the Democrat-controlled Senate before Obama has the opportunity to veto it. This is a pity not simply because the bill would advance US interests and the cause of freedom. It is a pity because it shows that the foreign policy debate in the US is now a fight between those who trust facts and those who trust clichés.
Column One: Cliche-based Foreign Policy
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
09/02/2011 16:58
US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, kicked up a political storm this week. On Tuesday, Ros-Lehtinen introduced the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act. If passed into law it would place stringent restrictions on US funding of the UN’s budget.
The US currently funds 22 percent of the UN’s general budget. That budget is passed by the General Assembly with no oversight by the US. America’s 22% share of the budgets nonvoluntary, meaning the US may exert no influence over how its taxpayers’ funds are spent.
If Ros-Lehtinen’s act is passed into law, the UN will have two years to enact budgetary reforms that would render a minimum of 80% of its budget financing voluntary. If the UN does not make the required reforms, the US government will be enjoined to withhold 50% of its nonvoluntary UN budget allocations.
Beyond this overarching demand for UN budgetary reform, the act contains several specific actions that are directed against UN institutions that advance anti-American and anti-Israel agendas.
Ros-Lehtinen’s act would defund the UN Human Rights Committee until such time as it repeals its permanent anti-Israel resolution, and prohibits countries that support terror and are under UN Security Council sanctions from serving as its members. It would also prohibit the US from serving as a member of the UNHRC until such reforms are enacted.
Ros-Lehtinen’s bill defunds all UN activities related to the libelous Goldstone Report, and the anti- Semitic Durban process. It vastly curtails and conditions US funding of UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency permeated by members of terrorist organizations. UNRWA’s facilities are routinely used to plan, execute and incite terrorism against Israel and to indoctrinate Palestinians to seek Israel’s destruction.
The bill pays special attention to the Palestinian Authority’s plan to have the UN SecurityCouncil and General Assembly vote in favor of Palestinian statehood later this month. The bill would cut off US funding to any UN agency or organization that upgrades the Palestinian mission to the UN in any way in the aftermath of a General Assembly vote in favor of such an upgrade in representation.
Ros-Lehtinen’s bill, which has 57 co-sponsors, provides detailed explanations for how the targeted UN agencies and activities harm US interests. It notes that the US’s membership since 2009 in the UN Human Rights Council has had no impact whatsoever on the UNHRC’s anti-Israel and anti- American agenda. The US has been unable to temper in any way the UNHRC’s actions and resolutions, including its decisions to form the Goldstone Committee and to endorse the findings of the Goldstone Report, and its continued support and organization of the anti-Semitic Durban conferences in which Israel is attacked and libeled as an illegitimate, racist state.
The bill notes that despite US efforts to extend oversight over UNRWA’s hiring process, UNRWA continues to hire members of terrorist organizations. The bill provides a long list of UNRWA employees who have perpetrated terrorist attacks.
Ignoring its fact-based assessment of UN failings, the Obama administration has rejected the Ros- Lehtinen bill out of hand. Speaking to Politico, an administration source panned the bill, claiming, “This draft legislation is dated, tired and frankly unresponsive to the positive role being played by the UN.”
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland attacked the bill, saying it would “seriously undermine our international standing and dangerously weaken the UN as an instrument to advance US national security goals.”
Since taking office, Barack Obama has taken concerted steps to place cooperation with the UN at the top of his foreign policy agenda. Through word and deed, Obama has shown that he believes that the US should minimize the extent to which it operates independently of the UN on the global stage.
Obama and his advisers give four arguments to support their view that the UN should effectively replace the US as the global leader. First, they say that the US cannot operate unilaterally on the global stage.
Second, they insinuate that operations undertaken outside the UN umbrella are somehow illegitimate.
To support this contention, they intimate that the reason the US was bogged down in Iraq following its 2003 invasion was because it did not receive specific Security Council permission to invade. In contrast, they point to the current Security Council-sanctioned military operation in Libya and the 1991 Security Council-sanctioned Persian Gulf War as success stories. And they attribute those missions’ successes to their conduct under the UN aegis.
The third argument, which comes across clearly in Nuland’s statement, is that to have credibility in global affairs, the US must not throw its weight around at the UN. If it objects too strenuously to the way things are done, or makes its support for the UN conditional on UN actions, then all the other UN members will be offended and refuse to cooperate with the US.
The final argument they make is reflected in the statement the unnamed administration source gave to Politico. Quite simply, in their view, trying to hold the UN accountable for its actions is old fashioned. In today’s world, accountability is out. And anyone who doesn’t understand that is simply out of touch, “dated, tired.”
All of these arguments are false. In the first instance, it is simply untrue that the US is incapable of operating unilaterally. Aside from Saudi Arabia in 1991 and Kuwait in 2003, the US did not need its partners in Iraq. Of all the non-American participants in the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, only Britain made an impact on fighting. And frankly, the US would have secured Saudi, Kuwaiti and British cooperation without ever involving the UN.
Indeed, under both Democrat and Republican administrations, the US has frequently acted successfully outside the UN framework. In 1999, the Clinton administration could not get UN Security Council agreement to fight in Kosovo, and so it ignored the UN and fought alongside its NATO allies.
The US had 21 allied militaries fighting alongside its forces in Iraq, despite the fact that the operation was conducted outside the UN Security Council umbrella.
The US-initiated Proliferation Security Initiative founded in 2003 is arguably the US’s most successful multilateral effort to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Operating completely outside the UN framework, the PSI has 98 members.
As for the two major US military operations that have been carried out in recent memory by force of UN Security Council resolutions, the jury is still out on both. Due to theSecurity Council’s restrictions on the mission of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the US permitted Saddam Hussein to remain in power after removing his invasion forces from Kuwait.
In the 12 years between that war and the 2003 Iraq war, Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who – at US urging – tried to overthrow him. He exploited theSecurity Council sanctions to starve his people for propaganda purposes while he and his cronies enriched themselves through corrupt UN oil-for-food contracts.
Had Saddam been overthrow in 1991, his replacement by a pro-Western successor regime could have been enacted more smoothly and at far smaller cost to the US and the Iraqi people.
As for Libya, reports from Tripoli indicate that critics of the UN mission were correct. In overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi, the US has apparently enabled a situation in which any successor regime will likely be dominated by al-Qaida-aligned political and military forces allied with Iran.
The claim that the US will lose influence in international affairs if it is perceived as bossy by its fellow UN nation states is similarly groundless. The hard truth is that no one goes along with the UN simply because it is the UN. States are reasonably and consistently opportunistic in their cooperation with the UN. They support the UN when it supports their interests and they ignore the UN when it opposes their interests.
States do not oppose the US at the UN because they consider it bossy. They oppose the US at the UN because they believe it serves their national interests to oppose the US and its interests.
It is due to clashing interests, not the comportment of US representatives, that the Obama administration to fail to exert any influence over the UNHRC’s agenda despite its commitment to “engagement.”
Clashing national interests are the reason the Obama administration has failed to secure Security Council support for anything approaching effective measures against Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
The final administration argument – that it is déclassé to demand that the UN stop advancing the causes of America’s enemies – is not simply peevish and insulting. It is indicative of the culture that motivates the administration to cling to its UN-centered agenda despite its obvious and repeated failure.
As the easy refutation of all the administration’s arguments makes clear, the agenda is not a product of rational thought. It is the product of the groupthink that is endemic at the universities whence Obama and his advisers have emerged. This groupthink is directed by unquestioned clichés that are passed off as sophisticated reasoning. These include such pearls of wisdom as “global governance,” “Twitter revolution,” “multilateralism” and “interdependence.”
These clichés have become articles of faith that are impermeable to fact and reality. As a consequence, those who adhere to them will never acknowledge their failure to deliver on their utopian promises. Instead they attack anyone who points out their failure as “dated,” and as “tired” old fogies who are too unsophisticated to understand the world.
We see this attitude at work in all aspects of Obama’s foreign policy. For instance, Obama came into office with the view that the reason all efforts to date to successfully complete a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians failed because the Palestinians didn’t trust the US to “deliver” Israel. To remedy this perceived problem, Obama has consistently sought to “put daylight” between the US and Israel. This policy has failed abysmally, as the PA’s current UN statehood bid shows. And yet the administration continues to cling to it, because acknowledging its failure would involve renouncing a cliché.
So, too, the administration’s policy of engaging Iran has brought the mullocracy to the brink of a nuclear arsenal, empowered it to violently repress pro-American democracy protesters, expand its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, take over Lebanon, and make inroads in Egypt, Libya and beyond. And yet, despite all of this, the administration refuses to admit its policy is wrong and adopt a more effective one, because doing so would involve acknowledging that “engagement” is not the panacea it was cracked up to be.
Ros-Lehtinen’s bill is expected to be blocked in the Democrat-controlled Senate before Obama has the opportunity to veto it. This is a pity not simply because the bill would advance US interests and the cause of freedom. It is a pity because it shows that the foreign policy debate in the US is now a fight between those who trust facts and those who trust clichés.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Turmoil in Egypt is a Real Threat to Israel
From TownHall.com...
Michael Youssef
Turmoil in Egypt is a Real Threat to Israel
On the first night of the so-called “Arab Spring” in Egypt, I sat for three hours at a desk at CNN (video at the end of the article). That night, I did my best to convince an inexperienced, and not very knowledgeable young anchor that this was not the kind of democracy that he and all those in the liberal Western press were making it out to be.
Given my first-hand knowledge of the situation, both empirically and academically, I sought to give him and his viewers a distinct picture of what would unfold. I warned that Islamists would soon sweep these well-meaning young people under the Egyptian sand.
Here we are, nearly eight months later, and I have never been invited back to CNN because they know I have every right to say, “I told you so.”
What was about to happen was apparent to those of us who have watched Islamists who, for years, were salivating to destroy public enemy number one in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. For years they have longed to destroy the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel for which Mubarak was a guardian. As they waited, they quietly organized while supporting and supplying Hamas behind the scenes.
To be sure, the hard work and heavy price of the uprising was paid for not by the Islamists, but by a small group of genuine liberals from among Egypt’s educated young people. The Islamists watched from the shadows while some of these young people paid the ultimate price and died for the revolution. Once the revolution succeeded and Mubarak resigned, the Islamists came out of hiding and began flexing their muscles and are now running the country through intimidation and fear. Sadly, for some of us, but not the Obama administration, this was expected.
Today the Salafists, who are heavily funded by their fellow Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, are literally forcing a weak and ineffective government’s hand to appoint cabinet members and governors who are sympathetic to them.
All of this is taking place under the watchful eye of the wavering Egyptian army who has prosecuted civilians who criticize them while Islamists and the criminal elements in society are exercising true power. The Egyptian army’s main focus in the last eight months has been to rebuild the army’s multi-billion dollar businesses that were undermined by Jamal Mubarak and his new entrepreneurial class, all of whom are now under arrest with the former president.
However, the unintended consequence of the army’s passivity and decriminalizing of Al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorist elements is that jihad fighters have moved in force into the Sinai Desert from Afghanistan, Yemen, and Gaza. One Egyptian newspaper estimated that at least 6,000 Al-Qaeda fighters are now in Sinai.
First, they overwhelmed the police and took their weapons and now they are reaching their longed for goal –to attack Israel.
On August 17, 2011, some of these Al-Qaeda fighters crossed the Egyptian-Israeli border, reportedly dressed in Egyptian army uniforms. They killed eight Israeli bus passengers and wounded 44 more. Israel mistakenly killed three Egyptian soldiers in the confusion and crossfire, inciting the wrath of a mass of Islamists in front of the Israeli Embassy in Egypt. There they demanded the end of diplomatic relations with Israel.
Finally, the Egyptian army moved into Sinai, breaking the spirit of the Camp David agreement in order to “quell the unrest.” Still, Al-Qaeda is daily increasing in number in the Sinai desert, posing a real serious threat to Israel.
So the question is this: Does the Egyptian army have the will and the stomach to fight the thousands of Al-Qaeda fighters who have the support of millions of Islamists in Egypt, especially now that they see their goal of menacing Israel is in sight? This is going to be the ultimate test for the Egyptian army who has been funded for years by billions of American tax dollars.
Where is the Obama administration that was quick to turn their backs on one of America's oldest and most loyal Arab leaders? Oh yes, they condemned the attack on Israel. How noble!! The American administration needs to be more forceful in its fight against terrorism, regardless of where it originates.
Michael Youssef
Michael Youssef, PhD is an Egyptian-born American and founding rector of The Church of The Apostles. His messages are broadcast 3800 times a week into 200 countries through Leading The Way Ministries. He holds a PhD from Emory University in Social Anthropology.Saturday, August 20, 2011
PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND THIS...
I am baffled! I just don't get it! After Israeli civilians are brutally murdered by a cell that entered Israel from the Egyptian Sinai belonging to The Popular Resistance Committees, a loosely held Gaza-based terror group with clear ties to the Hamas, Israel retaliates by rapidly organizing a surgical strike on the leader of the PRC's military wing. He and several of his henchmen were killed...forestalling perhaps in some small way future attacks on innocent Israeli lives. The tragedy was that, unbeknownst to the Israelis, these savages who ordered the attack that murdered 8 innocent civilian lives had a 9-year old child with them…even after it was well known that Israel had targeted them for retaliation. Why was a 9-year old child with these known terrorists who were attempting to hide from the IDF?
Shaath: Israel's madness will not deter us
Expressing sharp criticism of IDF response to Thursday's terror attacks, senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath says Israel bears full responsibility for escalation, consequences: 'This is war crime'
Following Israel's assassination of two senior members of the Popular Resistance Committees' military wing on Thursday, senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath expressed sharp criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza.
According to Shaath, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is interested in military escalation in the Strip in a bid to divert attention from the socio-economic crisis in Israel.
He further accused Israel of seeking regional escalation in order to torpedo Palestinian efforts vis-Ã -vis the United Nations in September. "Israel's madness will not deter the Palestinian leadership from appealing to the UN, the opposite is true, and it will push the leadership to work harder in its efforts."
In a press release on Friday Shaath alleged that Israel was looking for an excuse to carry out collective punishment against the Palestinian people saying: "This is a war crime aimed at causing efforts by the Palestinian Authority and other factions to avoid armed conflict to fail.
Shaath has called on the international community to act swiftly to stop what he calls "Israeli aggression". He further noted that Israel bears full responsibility for what is happening and the consequences that could drag the entire region into the unknown.
The Fatah Foreign Relations Commission stated that since the escalation, Shaath has held deliberations with foreign officials "in order to explain the truth about what is happening and explain the aims behind Israel's aggression against Gaza".
The Hamas interior ministry in Gaza announced that it is prepared for any new Israeli military escalation in the Gaza Strip. Ministry spokesman Ihab al-Rasin said that "the interior ministry and the security forces are prepared to deal with any Israeli escalation.
"In spite of the occupation's attempt to bring us to our knees – we will not raise the white flag. We promise our people that we are not afraid of the threats and will remain steadfast on our land."
Nabil Shaath and Saeb Erekat, senior PA members CONDEMNED ISRAEL for, of all things, using these attacks in an attempt to thwart the PA's statehood bid and WARNED ISRAEL that there will be consequences of any reprisal against the terrorists.
There is an old Hebrew word: CHUTZPAH - meaning "insolence", "audacity", and "impertinence"! Believe me, we all wish that ALL the killing would stop (at least Israelis and those non-Israelis who have any veneer of sanity). We all wish that everyone could live in peace in this Holy Land. But, as long as those who are the vilest of individuals continue to INTENTIONALLY attack the innocent, there is no opportunity for such a dream. Any attempt at creating even a semblance of moral equivalency between what the terrorists did and the attempt at focused retaliation by the IDF is not only a prevarication, but absolutely unconscionable.
What is mind-boggling to me is the audacity of the PA leadership to instantly turn this around and vilify Israel's retaliatory response with no attempt at framing the issue at all by the murderous rampage of their fellow “Palestinians”. Please, help me understand this. And to think, the red carpet is being laid out as we speak for entrance into the hall of shame known as the United Nations for these impenitent so-called leaders. There is NO JUSTIFICATION for the cowardly and senseless murder of innocent civilians, no matter what the cause. There is EVERY JUSTIFICATION for the attempt at an immediate and precise response by those who are called to protect the innocent while making every attempt at minimizing collateral injury.We should never stop praying for the Peace of Jerusalem...and I never will. But, how can there be faithful and expectant negotiations for a true and lasting peace with a non-partner such as this? There is no fathomable attempt at logic that can create a foundation for negotiations with this kind of mind-set - NONE. Hence, unless there is a fundamental...and I mean a deeply principled and axiomatic alteration in the dogma and moral fiber of the general Arab population of this region AND its leaders, it seems to me impossible without some miraculous intervention for anything approaching peace and security to be established today.
It is sickening. It is disgusting. And, what's worse is that, if you look at the worldwide press, there is a clear minimization of the terrorist attack with clear mounting anti-Israel sentiment as a result of their very appropriate and ethically substantive response.
The Y-NET article on the Palestinian Authority's derisory rhetoric follows:Shaath: Israel's madness will not deter us
Expressing sharp criticism of IDF response to Thursday's terror attacks, senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath says Israel bears full responsibility for escalation, consequences: 'This is war crime' Elior Levy
|
Following Israel's assassination of two senior members of the Popular Resistance Committees' military wing on Thursday, senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath expressed sharp criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza.
According to Shaath, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is interested in military escalation in the Strip in a bid to divert attention from the socio-economic crisis in Israel.
He further accused Israel of seeking regional escalation in order to torpedo Palestinian efforts vis-Ã -vis the United Nations in September. "Israel's madness will not deter the Palestinian leadership from appealing to the UN, the opposite is true, and it will push the leadership to work harder in its efforts."
In a press release on Friday Shaath alleged that Israel was looking for an excuse to carry out collective punishment against the Palestinian people saying: "This is a war crime aimed at causing efforts by the Palestinian Authority and other factions to avoid armed conflict to fail.
Shaath has called on the international community to act swiftly to stop what he calls "Israeli aggression". He further noted that Israel bears full responsibility for what is happening and the consequences that could drag the entire region into the unknown.
The Fatah Foreign Relations Commission stated that since the escalation, Shaath has held deliberations with foreign officials "in order to explain the truth about what is happening and explain the aims behind Israel's aggression against Gaza".
The Hamas interior ministry in Gaza announced that it is prepared for any new Israeli military escalation in the Gaza Strip. Ministry spokesman Ihab al-Rasin said that "the interior ministry and the security forces are prepared to deal with any Israeli escalation.
"In spite of the occupation's attempt to bring us to our knees – we will not raise the white flag. We promise our people that we are not afraid of the threats and will remain steadfast on our land."
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Caroline Glick: Norway's Jewish problem
In the wake of Anders Breivik's massacre of his fellow Norwegians, I was amazed at the speed with which the leftist media throughout the US and Europe used his crime as a means of criminalizing their ideological opponents on the Right. Just hours after Breivik's identity was reported, leftist media outlets and blogs were filled with attempts to blame Breivik's crime on conservative public intellectuals whose ideas he cited in a 1,500 page online manifesto.
My revulsion at this bald attempt to use Breivik's crime to attack freedom of speech propelled me to write my July 29 column, "Breivik and totalitarian democrats."
While the focus of my column was the Left's attempt to silence their conservative opponents, I also noted that widespread popular support for Palestinian terrorists in Norway indicates that for many Norwegians, opposition to terrorism is less than comprehensive.
To support this position, I quoted an interview in Maariv with Norway's Ambassador to Israel Svein Sevje.
Sevje explained that most Norwegians think that the Palestinians' opposition to the supposed Israeli "occupation" is justified and so their lack of sympathy for Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism was unlikely to change in the wake of Breivik's attack on Norwegians.
Since my column was a defense of free speech and a general explanation of why terrorism is antithetical to the foundations of liberal democracy - regardless of its ideological motivations - I did not focus my attention on Norwegian society. I did not discuss Norwegian anti- Semitism or anti-Zionism. Indeed, I purposely ignored these issues.
But when on Friday, Norway's Deputy Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide published an unjustified attack on me on these pages, he forced me to take the time to study the intellectual and political climate of hatred towards Israel and Jews that pervades Norwegian society.
That climate is not a contemporary development. Rather it has been a mainstay of Norwegian society.
In a 2006 report on Jew hatred in contemporary Norwegian caricatures published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Erez Uriely noted among other things that Norway banned kosher ritual slaughter in 1929 - three years before a similar ban was instituted in Nazi Germany.
And whereas the ban on kosher ritual slaughter was lifted in post-war Germany, it was never abrogated in Norway.
As Uriely noted, Norway's prohibition on Jewish ritual slaughter makes Judaism the only religion that cannot be freely practiced in Norway.
Fascism was deeply popular in Norway in the 1930s. In the wake of the Nazi invasion, Norwegian governmental leaders founded and joined the Norwegian Nazi Party. Apparently, sympathy for Nazi collaborators is strong today in Norway.
As the JCPA's Manfred Gerstenfeld noted in a report on the rise in Norwegian anti-Semitic attacks during 2009, two years ago the Norwegian government allocated more than $20 million in public funds to commemorate Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun on the occasion of the Nobel laureate for literature's 150th birthday. As The New York Times reported, in February 2009, Norway's Queen Sonja opened the, "year-long, publicly financed commemoration of Hamsun's 150th birthday called 'Hamsun 2009.'"
But while Hamsun may have been a good writer, he is better remembered for being an enthusiastic Nazi. Hamsun gave his Nobel prize to Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels. During a wartime visit to Germany, Hamsun flew to meet Adolf Hitler at Hitler's mountain home in Bavaria.
And in 2009, Norway built a $20 million museum to honor his achievements.
As Uriely explained in his report, "Norwegian anti- Semitism does not come from the grassroots but from the leadership - politicians, organization leaders, church leaders, and senior journalists. It does not come from Muslims but from the European-Christian society."
Despite indignant claims that the two are unrelated, Norway's elite anti-Semitism merges seamlessly with their anti-Zionism. An apparently unwitting example of this fusion is found in Eide's attack against me in last Friday's Post.Eide's attack on me revolved around my citation of Ambassador Sevje's interview with Maariv. In his column Eide wrote, "Several other Israeli media have latched on to this [interview] as well."
While this may be true, I first learned of Sevje's interview in the US media. Specifically, I read about the interview at Commentary Magazine's website, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's website, and the website of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) before I read the original interview on Maariv's website.
Commentary, JTA and CAMERA are not Israeli organizations or outlets. They are Jewish American organizations and outlets. Eide's conflation of them with the "Israeli media" indicates that the deputy minister has a hard time separating Jews from Israelis, (and by extension, Jew hatred from Israel hatred).
One of the Jewish Americans who attacked the Norwegian ambassador's willingness to distinguish between Palestinian terrorist murderers of Israelis and Breivik's terrorist murder of Norwegians was Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz said, "I know of no reasonable person who has tried to justify the terrorist attacks against Norway. Yet there are many Norwegians who not only justify terrorist attacks against Israel, but praise them, support them, help finance them and legitimate them."
In March Dershowitz experienced Norway's elite anti- Semitism-qua-anti-Zionism firsthand. Dershowitz was brought to Norway by a pro-Israel group to conduct lectures at three Norwegian universities. All three university administrations refused to invite him to speak. Student groups acting independently of their university administrations in the end invited Dershowitz to give his lectures.
As Dershowitz explained in a Wall Street Journal article, he was the victim of an unofficial Norwegian university boycott of Israeli universities. The unofficial boycott is so extensive that it bans not only Israeli academics, but non-Israeli, Jewish academics that are pro-Israel.
And lest someone believe Norway's anti-Jewish boycott is due to the so-called "occupation," as Dershowitz pointed out, the petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel begins, "Since 1948 the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land."
The Norwegian elite's rejection of Israel's right to exist, and ban on pro-Israel Jewish speakers from university campuses goes a long way in explaining Norway's support for Hamas. If Norway's opposition to Israel was merely due to its size, rather than its very existence, it would be difficult to understand why Norway maintains friendly contact with Hamas. Hamas is after all a genocidal, terrorist group, which like the Nazis seeks the annihilation of the Jewish people as a whole. Yet Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store wrote an article justifying his relations with Hamas as in line with Norway's embrace of "dialogue."
As Store's deputy Eide's unrestrained and unjustified attack against me, and as Norway's academic - and to a large degree media - boycott of pro-Israel voices make clear, Norway's embrace of dialogue is as selective as its condemnation of terrorism.
Here we should recall that Norway's ruling class supported Hamas against Israel in Operation Cast Lead.
Israel's dovish Kadima government only began the operation in Gaza because it had no choice. For months then prime minister Ehud Olmert sat on his hands as southern Israel was pummeled with unprovoked barrages of thousands of missiles and rockets from Gaza. Olmert was forced to take action after Hamas massively escalated its rocket and missile attacks in November and early December 2008.
While silent about Palestinian aggression, Norway's government attacked Israel for defending itself. As Store put it, "The Israeli ground offensive in Gaza constitutes a dramatic escalation of the conflict. Norway strongly condemns any form of warfare that causes severe civilian suffering, and calls on Israel to withdraw its forces immediately."
Two of Store's associates, Eric Fosse and Mads Gilbert, decamped to Gaza during Cast Lead and set up shop in Shifa Hospital. The two were fixtures in the Norwegian media, which constantly interviewed them throughout the conflict, and so spread their libelous charges against the IDF without question.
Fosse and Gilbert never mentioned that Hamas's high command was located at the hospital in open breach of the laws of war.
When they returned home, they co-authored a book in which they accused the IDF of entering Gaza with the express goal of murdering women and children.
Store wrote a blurb of endorsement on the book's back cover.
Store visited Israel in January. During his visit he gave an interview to the Post where he ignored diplomatic protocol and attacked the Knesset's contemporaneous decision to form a parliamentary commission of inquiry into foreign funding of anti-Zionist Israeli NGOs.
The basic rationale for the commission was that Israelis have a right to know that many purportedly Israeli groups are actually foreign organizations staffed by local Israelis. And many of the most virulently anti-Zionist NGOs staffed by Israelis operating in Israel are funded by the Norwegian government. Store arrogantly opined, "I think it is a worrying sign" about the state of Israeli democracy.
During Operation Cast Lead, Oslo was the scene of unprecedented anti-Semitic rioting. According to Eirik Eiglad, protesters who participated in anti-Israel demonstrations - and even a supposedly pro-peace demonstration - called out "Kill the Jews" and attacked policemen who tried to prevent them from rioting. Demonstrators at a pro-Israel demonstration were beaten. The Israeli embassy was threatened. Pro-Israel politicians who participated in the pro-Israel rally were beaten and received death threats.
It is a fact that the day before Breivik's massacre of teenagers at the Labor Party's youth camp on Utoya Island, Store spoke to them about the need to destroy Israel's security fence. The campers role-played pro- Hamas activists breaking international law by challenging Israel's lawful maritime blockade of the Gaza coastline.
They held signs calling for a boycott of Israel.
Despite their obvious animosity towards Israel and sympathy for genocidal, Jew hating Hamas terrorists, at no point did I or any of my Jerusalem Post colleagues do anything other than condemn completely Breivik's barbaric massacre of his fellow Norwegians. And yet, the Norwegian government attacked us for merely pointing out in various ways, that Norway should not use Breivik's attack as justification for further weakening Norwegian democracy.
Following the massacre, the Post published a well-argued, empathetic editorial making these general points. In response, the paper was deluged by unhinged attacks claiming that the editorial was insensitive and excused Breivik's crimes. In response, the Post published a follow-up editorial last Friday apologizing to the Norwegian people for the earlier editorial.
I was not consulted about this editorial ahead of time, and the editorial does not reflect my views. However I understand the moral impulse of not wishing to pour salt on anyone's wounds, which stood behind the decision to write it.
For my part, I will not request a similar apology from the Norwegian government for gratuitously attacking me. I will not request a similar apology from the Norwegian government and elites for libelously defaming my military, my country and my people. I will not request a similar apology from Norway for limiting Jews' freedom of religion in Norway. I will not request a similar apology from Norway for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and celebrating Norwegian Nazis.
I will not request such an apology because there are certain actions that are simply unforgivable.
Caroline Glick
Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post, where this article first appeared.
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