Mr. Kerry: The Problem Is Not Cynicism But Naiveté

Kerry’s Embarrassing ‘Peace Process’ Obsession
Originally published at Rubin Reports.
By: Barry Rubin

There’s an old saying: it’s better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to speak and prove it.

That is Secretary of State John Kerry’s problem. What is remarkable is how Kerry has painted himself into a corner, not just staking his term as secretary of state on making Israel-Palestinian peace but in doing so in a matter of weeks.

"If we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance," Kerry told the American Jewish Committee. "I have heard all of the arguments for why it is too difficult to end this conflict," he added. "Cynicism has never solved anything. It has never given birth to a state, and it won’t."

Well, not exactly. First, Kerry is practically begging the Palestinian Authority to accept a state. The problem is not cynicism but naiveté.  The cynicism is based on long experience and a careful evaluation of the political, economic, and strategic factors involved.

Second, Kerry hasn’t heard that the last chance already happened thirteen years ago at the Camp David meeting in 2000. No amount of wishful thinking will make it otherwise. In fact, that endangers people.

"The problem is not cynicism but naiveté.  The cynicism is based on long experience and a careful evaluation of the political, economic, and strategic factors involved."

Let’s review:

–PLO, Palestinian Authority, and Fatah leader Yasir Arafat turned down an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem and around $20 billion in aid as a starting point in further talks.

–He launched a five-year-long war of terror against Israel in which around 2000 Israelis were killed.

–When offered an even better deal by President Bill Clinton Arafat turned it down.

–Even when besieged in his headquarters—saved only by U.S. intervention from total, humiliating defeat—Arafat still rejected compromise.

–In the 13 years since the Camp David meeting the Palestinians have not pursued any serious negotiations.

–About half the territory and people the Palestinian Authority claims to negotiate for is not even under its control but is being ruled by Hamas which advocates genocide against the Jews and is totally opposed to peace on any terms. Hamas would do everything possible to wreck any deal made by the PA and that group has about 20 to 30 percent support on the West Bank.

–In the present climate of Islamist triumphalism, Hamas has more state support than the PA and the PA is terrified of being “traitorous moderates.”

–The PA strategy is clearly to get maximal recognition of a state without having to make a deal with Israel. Kerry’s recent offer of $4 billion (for tourism development!)–how much will the U.S. government pay off the PA for pretending to negotiate?–was turned down by the PA within 24 hours even though they could use the money for the leadership’s Swiss bank accounts.

Might some of these facts be relevant?

Kerry gave the typical line that unless Israel gets a two-state solution, it will have to choose between its Jewish and democratic nature.

Ludicrously untrue. If that didn’t happen when Israel occupied the whole of the territories captured by it in 1967 and governed the Arabs there on a daily basis—a period of 27 years in the West Bank and about 35 in the Gaza Strip—it isn’t going to happen now. There was a time when Israelis advocated annexation of these territories but that hasn’t been true for many years. Of course, Israel will not have to choose.

Who cares about how many Palestinians there are, they aren’t being ruled by Israel and they are not Israeli citizens. Absent as usual from Kerry’s analysis are the risks that Israel would take if it accepted a Palestinian state under current conditions.

"Both sides are pretending to weigh choices in order to avoid insulting you."

Consider these statements by Kerry:

The belief that a security fence and the status quo could bring Israel security are “lulling themselves into a delusion….The absence of peace is perpetual conflict. … We will find ourselves in a negative spiral of responses and counter-responses….”

The problem, however, is an unspoken premise that if the status quo changed and there was an independent Palestinian State, the conflict would go away and there would be full peace. In fact what would happen is that the conflict would continue under worse strategic conditions for Israel.

"I am confident that both sides are weighing the choices that they have in front of them very, very seriously."

No. Both sides are pretending to weigh choices in order to avoid insulting you. A serious analysis of the factors involved show that nothing is going to happen. An accurate view of reality should be the foundation for policymaking.

A case can be made for Kerry showing himself as working hard for peace in order to defuse any possible effect on events elsewhere in the region. But by working too hard, spending too much of his time on the issue, and making absurd claims that he is going to succeed, Kerry is setting himself up for an embarrassing fall.

Also by promising quick results he is destroying the chance for the United States to pretend it is laboring around the clock supposedly–what?–to ease the situation with a civil war in Syria, a nuclear bomb in Iran, a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt, etc.

More Misery Ahead For Israel?

President Obama's Pick For New UN Ambassador May Very Well Be More Evidence That His Policies And World View Remain Tepid Toward Israel And The Middle East

Despite all of the feel-good rhetoric in support of Israel's national interests during his first and only trip to that nation as commander-in-chief in March, President Obama's actions have spoken volumes to the contrary. Witness the appointments of outspoken critics of Israel: John Kerry as Secretary of State, Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, John Brennan as CIA Director. Witness the leaks of classified documents regarding the building of Israeli military bases, the continued explicit political, financial and military support of anti-Israel leaders like Erdogan and Morsi and the waffling on Iran and Syria. These are but a few examples that shoot holes in the theory of some that the POTUS has changed to a more supportive perspective vis a vis Israel and its place in the middle east.

Now, his latest move has supporters of Israel and those in the know regarding middle-east events shuddering at the news. President Obama's pick for UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, former chair of his Atrocities Prevention Board once called for the United States to force troops into Israeli-controlled territory in order to end abuses she said were being committed by both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Recently working at the State Department under Hillary Clinton and as National Security Council Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, Samantha Power once said in an interview with UC Berkley's Harry Kreisler that "external intervention" in the form of a "mammoth protection force" was necessary to separate the Israelis and the Palestinians. She acknowledged that forcing our way in was undemocratic but insisted it was necessary.

"Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. I mean, It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic," she said.

The new leader of Obama’s UN agenda, in the same interview, failed to refute a suggestion by the interviewer in 2002 that the Israelis themselves might commit genocide. The interviewer asked,

"Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine – Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would in response to current events would you advise to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, lest if one party or another be looking like they might be moving toward genocide?"

Instead of getting up and walking out on this “thought experiment,” Power responded by appearing to imply a moral equivalence between the Israelis and the Palestinians, who were then waging an Intifada against the Jewish state.

She spoke of “major human rights abuses” occurring in the conflict and quoted New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman’s use of the term “Sharafat” to describe then-leaders Yassir Arafat and Ariel Sharon, both of whom she said had been “dreadfully irresponsible” and were “destined to destroy the lives of their own people.”

Here is a segment of the interview.

Power, you’ll notice, spoke sarcastically of the influence of U.S. Jews, saying with a chuckle her proposal to force troops upon Israel “might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.” She also suggested the United States was wasting its money supporting the Israeli Defense Forces, which safeguards Israel against another genocide, sneering at the “billions of dollars” we spend “servicing Israel’s military.”

Power backs the goals of the “Responsibility to Protect” movement, or “RtoP,” which advocates international military intervention in countries where the most egregious human rights abuses are occurring. She was reportedly a key force behind President Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya.While Power has been a significant voice and a passionate proponent for anti-genocide activity, she has been criticized for being tendentious and militaristic, for answering a "problem from hell" with a "solution from hell."

Her second book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide offers a survey of the origin of the word genocide, the major genocides of the 20th century, as well as an analysis of some of the underlying reasons for the persistent failure of governments and the international community to collectively identify, recognize and then respond effectively to genocides ranging from the Armenian Genocide to the Rwandan Genocide. This work and related writings have been criticized by the historian Howard Zinn for downplaying the importance of "unintended" and "collateral" civilian deaths that could be classified as genocidal.

That Power has indicated that she equates Israel's focus on defensible borders, its commitment to protecting its citizens and its directed and patient responses to continuous attacks on its cities as a substrate for genocidal activity by Israel toward Palestinians is at best misguided, but at worst a manifestation of an apoplectic anti-Israel stance. This view, widely held and continuously preached by the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist movement and others is both erroneous and, some would argue, only a mask for anti-Semitism.

Only time will tell what impact the latest pick for an important Administration post will have on foreign affairs and world politics. But, if the past is any indicator of future events, it does not bode well for Israel's future relationship with one of its only remaining allies.

Portions of this blog were taken from Keith Koffler's article on Samantha Power on his website White House Dossier dated April 24, 2012

Holocaust Remembrance Day - A Day of Grief, A Day of Hope

Sixty-seven years ago, my father and mother along with my uncle Zvi and aunt Vita moved from Trieste, Italy to Bat Galim.  Bat Galim was a small beach area in the heart of the port city of Haifa in the then British colony of Palestine.  The four of them took up residence in a one bedroom apartment because it was all they could afford, and that barely.  The two best of friends, having fought side-by-side in the Palestinian unit of the British Army against the Germans for 6 years, were still part of the British service but had to work at night driving taxis to make a little extra money for their fledgling families to survive.

It was a difficult life in the post-war middle-east territory.  The dream of all Jews after the Holocaust and World War II - to have a place to call home where Jews could live in peace for the first time in nearly 2000 years - was a struggle.  As a British colony, the spoils of victory over the Ottomans in World War I, the region was controlled by British "occupiers" whose soldiers and service workers didn't want to be there and were dealing with constant conflict, both politically and physically.

Despite a commitment by the British government through Lord Balfour in 1917 of developing the territory as a homeland for the Jewish people and the mandate of the League of Nations to divide the land into Jewish and Arab regions, politicking had usurped promises and World War II had taken attention away from this mandate.  But, in the shadow of the Holocaust, Jews who were now desperately trying to move to the region despite strict quotas by the British, were more determined than ever to re-establish their identity as a people in their ancient homeland.

Less than one year prior to their move from Italy, my father along with his best friend Zvi and their battalion had finished sweeping up the boot of Italy and cleansing it of German troops.  They had been camped at their new base in Trieste, a northern port town near the border of Italy and Yugoslavia.  The Jewish boys, part of that Palestinian unit of the British Army, had been befriended by a small group of local Jewish young adults.  It was a moment of destiny for those two boys - my father and his friend Zvi - in many ways.

At an evening gathering at a local club, Zvi had met Vita, a beautiful Italian-born Jewish girl whose family had escaped the pogroms of Russia two decades earlier.  It didn't take long for him to fall deeply in love with this brash and fiesty 22 year old.  Three months later they were married in a civil ceremony attended by his fellow soldiers and many of the small local Jewish community that they had befriended.  Of course, my mother, Vita's sister - her bride's mate - attended the wedding with her then fiancé.  Sadly for her fiancé, who wasn't much of a dancer, Zvi's best friend was also part of the group reveling in the celebration.

My father and mother met on the dance floor that night and for three hours danced until the blisters on their feet cried out for mercy.  The rest, as they say, is history.  The next day, my mother returned the engagement ring to her poor former fiancé, and began spending every moment she was able to with my father.  They planned on marrying some time soon.  Unfortunately, the joy of that moment of providence was short-lived.

It had been seven years since my father had escaped Czechoslovakia during the German occupation of
The Sudetenland after his mother put him along with a dozen other Jewish 14 and 15 year old boys on a train to Denmark.  That event foretold an ominous future for the Jews of Eastern Europe.  Soon thereafter, although they desperately tried, it was impossible for the Jewish boys to return to Prague and my father and his group made the fateful decision to attempt the journey to the Palestinian territory where thousands of other Jews were attempting to go.  After multiple harrowing experiences during their three month journey, they arrived in the middle east, soon after joined the British Army and fought for nearly six years against Rommel in Northern Africa before being moved to the European front.

So, after seven years, Czechoslovakia was finally liberated from German control and my father was granted a weekend pass from his unit in Trieste to return to Prague to find his family.   My mother, with memories of her father being arrested by the SS and having found out not long before that he died on a train to one of the German death camps, had a very foreboding sense about this trip, but could not - would not - let my father know about her feelings.  He had to go.  As my father left in his British Army Jeep, my mother suddenly felt very alone.  The memories of her own six years of terror were running through her mind - hiding from the SS with her mother and Vita in rat infested attics, sleeping in barns, narrowly escaping capture time and time again.

Three days later there was a knock on my mother's door.  She opened it to find my father, exhausted from no sleep, tears streaming down his face.  They fell into each others arms, both crying uncontrollably - he didn't have to say a word.  She knew.

For the next several hours they locked themselves in the bathroom and sat on the cold tile floor crying together, my father too embarrassed to allow anyone else to see him in this state.  He told her the story, from arriving in Prague, finding no one he knew in all the old houses in the Jewish neighborhoods he grew up in and ultimately, going to the city hall and researching the records of his family.  You see, the Germans kept meticulous records.

And there, his worst nightmares were revealed.  His mother, father, two sisters...his brother-in-law and niece...his aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents...all gone...taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau...gassed, burnt...dead.  He alone was left.  My father was never the same after that.  Although, he and my mother did eventually marry, moved to Bat Galim, and began to put the pieces of life back together.

In partnership with my uncle, my father was part of the underground - helping to obtain and hide weapons for the Haganah and Palmach in their struggle for independence from the British and against Arab terrorism.  They helped to establish the fledging State of Israel during its war of Independence and thereafter.  My brother was born in 1948 and soon after, my cousin Ruthi was born.   The two families living together at times to make ends meet, raising their children together...surviving with memories...and with a hope that never again will the Jewish people be defenseless against evil and tyranny.

My parents eventually moved to the United States to be with my grandmother who had moved to the US from Italy after the war.  I was born not long after.  My aunt Vita, uncle Zvi, and my other aunt and uncle - Olga and Jackie, who had moved to the region before World War II had ended - remained in Israel and each raised two beautiful children, several grandchildren and many great grandchildren.  They went on to endure more bloodshed, wars, terrorism, and grief.  My oldest cousin was killed by a mine around the time of the Six Day War.

My mother is the sole surviver of her family now, her mother, sisters, brother - who all survived the holocaust - all since have passed on to their eternal home.  My father has passed also, having lived with a grief that no one should ever have to bare...a survivor's guilt that a boy emotionally entrenched at the age of 15 could never begin to understand.  He was a man who quietly, constantly ruminated over the question...if I was only there, could I have saved my family...could I have protected them?  His best friend, my uncle Zvi, has also passed on, leaving a legacy of strength that will never be forgotten.

Today, Israel commemorates a national holiday - if one can call it that.  It is Yom HaShoah (literally, The Day of The Holocaust) - the date on the calendar that we remember the Six Million men, women and children whose lives were prematurely taken by evil in human form.  It is a day filled with grief - to most it is a collection of stories, of distant memories one, two and three generations removed from the event.  Nevertheless, it is faithfully commemorated and will be for as long as Israel exists throughout generations to come.

But, it is also a day filled with thanksgiving and hope.  We give thanks for and honor men like uncle Zvi and my father, women like Vita and my mother, who didn't just survive the holocaust, but fought through and somehow transcended the grief and the living memories...to build a nation from dirt and rock into what is now "a land filled with milk and honey."  We have hope that the children of the survivors, the grandchildren and great grandchildren can one day live in peace, focused only on how they can help the world become a better place and less on surviving the next onslaught of anti-semitic treachery.

Today, Holocaust Remembrance Day, reminds us that our Creator, the G-d of this universe, is not a puppet master.  He has given us out of His great love for us, the free will to choose...we have the capability as a race and as individuals to do enormous evil.  We also have the capacity to do tremendous good.  The Torah says in the book of Deuteronomy, "I call heaven and earth to witness today that before you is life and death, the blessing and the curse.  Therefore, choose life, so that you will live, you and your descendants, loving Adonai your G-d, clinging to Him..."  WE have been given the ability to choose between good and evil, between life and death, between becoming a blessing or a curse to others, to be beneficent or malevolent.

Yom HaShoah also reminds us that even if others have chosen evil over good, the curse over the blessing, death over life, we still have the capacity to survive even the most vile onslaught to our humanness and to rebuild in hopes of a better day.  Today, we traditionally say, "Never again...never forget!"  But, we also say, "The nation of Israel lives" - Am Yisrael Chai!

Happy 65th Birthday, Israel!

An Essay By  David Harris

For many nations, a 65th birthday may not generate much excitement. But if the country happens to be Israel, which celebrates its birthday this year on April 15-16, it's another story.

Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only UN member state whose right to exist is regularly challenged, whose elimination from the world map is the aim of at least one other UN member state (Iran), and whose population centers are deemed fair game by Hamas-controlled Gaza and Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon.

None of the countries that are serial human-rights violators--not Iran, North Korea, Belarus, Zimbabwe, Sudan, or any of the others--gets anything near the relentless, obsessive, guilty-till-proven-innocent scrutiny that democratic Israel receives from UN bodies, with their built-in, anti-Israel majorities, in New York and Geneva.

Indeed, Israel is the only nation in the world which has a permanent, separate agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council. All other countries in the world are lumped together under another agenda item.

No other country is the target of such non-stop, well-funded, and highly-organized campaigns to discredit, delegitimize, and demonize a sovereign state.

No other country faces systematic attempts to launch boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions against it, not to mention flotillas and flytillas. All the while those behind the efforts, claiming to speak in the lofty name of human rights, studiously ignore places like Syria, where more than 70,000 have been killed in the past two years alone and numberless more wounded, homeless, exiled, and detained. Why this lack of interest in Syria? Presumably because no Israeli connection can be claimed.

No other country has its right to self-defense challenged as Israel does, even though it acts no differently than any other nation would if confronted by periodic terrorist assaults and deadly missile and rocket attacks.

And no other country is as microscopically examined in the media, from the BBC to the Financial Times, from CNN International to the wire services, leading to such typical whoppers as the New York Timesheadline on April 4th - "Tensions Rise As Israel and Gaza Swap Strikes." Rockets were fired from Gaza at Israel, Israel responded to defend its citizens, and to the newspaper of record, it's an antiseptically 50-50 equation between the attacker and the attacked.

I have enormous admiration for Israel - for its resolve, resilience, courage, and ingenuity.

What it has achieved in the past 65 years is breathtaking: the rebirth of a state with a rock-solid democratic foundation; the ingathering of millions of refugees and immigrants from just about every corner of the world; the creation of a world-class economy; the building of a first-rate army; and a determination to overcome one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after another.

Other nations might have succumbed, after 65 years of uninterrupted hostility, to enemies trying everything under the sun to destroy them, and short of that, to demoralize and isolate them. But Israel has not flinched. It refuses to cave. It keeps confounding its foes.

Its commitment to a two-state accord with the Palestinians, polls repeatedly reveal, remains unshakeable, even as many Israelis can't help but wonder if the Palestinians, given one chance after another for sovereignty, truly share Israel's aim of Jewish and Palestinian states living side by side in peace and harmony.

Moreover, in global surveys Israel comes out among the "happiest" countries in the world; Tel Aviv ranks as one of the top "go-to" destinations for young people; and Israelis' life expectancy exceeds that of Americans'.

How can it be, Israel's adversaries ask, that these "sons of monkeys and pigs," as radical Muslim preachers openly refer to the Jews (and as Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi declared three years ago, while a Muslim Brotherhood leader), manage to stand tall, strong, and, yes, optimistic? How can it be that this nation of just eight million, grown from only 650,000 at its birth in 1948, repeatedly defeats far more populous Arab foes that have arrayed themselves against it? How can it be that these Jews, seemingly led to slaughter like sheep by the Third Reich, suddenly learned how to defend themselves and vanquish larger Arab armies, within three years of V-E Day? And how can it be that Israel, with no natural resources to speak of until recent natural gas findings, could achieve a first-world economy, catapulting it into the OECD; double-digit winners of Nobel Prizes; top-three ranking in new NASDAQ listings; and global recognition as a leader in innovation and entrepreneurship?

Too often, Israel's adversaries have come up with misguided if self-satisfying answers, usually elaborate conspiracy theories inspired by anti-Semitic tropes.

In reality, though, the answer is much simpler. It derives from an age-old connection among a land, a faith, and a people. Many have tried to sever the link. All have failed.

Consider the words of Ezekiel, expressed some 2,700 years ago:

Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all sides, and bring them to their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, upon the mountains of Israel... And the desolate land shall be tilled... And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden.

Or, to fast forward from the ancient prophet Ezekiel to the prophetic Winston Churchill:

The coming into being of a Jewish State in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even three thousand years.

Churchill added that the state's establishment was "one of the most hopeful and encouraging adventures of the 20th century."

Indeed, so it continues to be in the 21st century.

To be sure, Israel, like all democratic societies, is a permanent work in progress. Much remains to be done.

From grappling with a less-than-ideal electoral system to dealing with religious zealots who invoke a "higher authority" than the state, from addressing a yawning gap between rich and poor to balancing the Jewish and democratic nature of the country, from the decades-long pursuit of peace with its neighbors to the defense of the country in an ever more turbulent region, Israel has no shortage of challenges.

But, above all, Israel is a wondrous "adventure." I feel privileged daily to see the fulfillment of the prayers of generations longing for a return to Zion from forced exile.

Witnessing Soviet Jews arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport even as Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles came raining down, while Israel did not miss a beat in welcoming the newcomers, reveals the country's character.

So, too, being in Rambam Hospital in Haifa during Hezbollah missile attacks. One minute, a siren would sound and everyone would calmly go, or be moved, to the bomb shelters. The next minute, after the all-clear signal, the scientists would return to their labs to continue cutting-edge research in cancer, diabetes, and stem-cell therapy.

Or visiting Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, where victims of Hamas strikes against Israel were taken for medical care, and seeing Palestinian patients from Gaza in rooms adjoining the Jewish wounded.

Or getting to know Save a Child's Heart, an Israeli program that provides life-saving pediatric heart surgery. Many of the children come from Arab countries that deny Israel's very existence.

Or seeing the scrawling on a Tel Aviv wall shortly after 21 young Israelis were killed at a discotheque -- "They won't stop us from dancing."

Or watching an Israeli Arab Supreme Court justice -- who, incidentally, refuses to sing Israel's national anthem -- sit on a panel that upheld the conviction of an Israeli ex-president on charges of rape.

Or imagining the role Israel could one day play in the region in helping advance food security, water security, energy security, environmental security, public health security, and knowledge security, all of which will be towering issues in the 21st century.

No, this Israel may not now feature prominently in the media, I'm sorry to say, but it is the Israel that pulsates daily with a love of life, of freedom, and of the land.

Happy 65th Birthday, Israel!

*This essay is an adaptation of an earlier version written by the author.

David Harris has been Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) since 1990. AJC has been described by the New York Times as “the dean of American Jewish organizations.” Harris has been honored by the governments of Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Spain and Ukraine for his work on transatlantic relations, human rights, historical memory and intergroup understanding. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and London School of Economics. He was a Junior Associate at Oxford University’s St. Antony’s College (1977-78), a Visiting Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (2000-02), and a Senior Associate at St. Antony’s College (2009-11). Since 2001, he has broadcast a weekly commentary on the CBS Radio network, and since 2007, he has had a blog on international affairs at theJerusalem Post.

Israel, The Palestine Mandate and International Law

Professor Eugene Kontorovich, Professor of Law at Northwestern University gives us a lesson in International law vis a vis Israel.  This remarkable video helps us frame the truth that has been hidden behind the so-called Arab-Israeli conflict, a modern narrative that has rewritten history and International law.  If you are a supporter of the position that the Arabs of the former Palestine Mandate have a legal right to create a state anywhere on the land west of the Jordan River, you will be disappointed, but much more informed.  A must see.....

Chutzpah: College Sophomore Should Inspire Us All

Chloé Simone Valdary: ‘Jews of Brooklyn, Take your Place!’

Responding to an anti-Israel BDS (Boycott-Divestment-Sanction) event taking place at Brooklyn College tonight, University of New Orleans sophomore Chloe Valdary took to the pen and paper to write a letter of encouragement to the Jewish contingency of Brooklyn.  Lori Lowenthal Marcus published this letter in the Jewish Press today and it is well worth reading.  Oh that all pro-Israel, pro-Zionist individuals would be inspired to write and speak with as much chutzpah - boldness and clarity - to make the truth known...

Chloé Simone Valdary started the group Allies for Israel at the University of New Orleans, where she is a sophomore.  Although not Jewish, she became alarmed while researching a paper she chose to write about the Arab-Israeli conflict during her freshman year, and she resolved to do what she could to fight Jew-hatred.  When Valdary found out about the BDS event that is taking place tonight, at Brooklyn College, the goal of which is to portray Israel as an “Apartheid State,” and an “evil occupier,” she wrote the following.

Letter to the Jews of Brooklyn:

I can neither scream nor shout through the ink that flows on this page. You can not see the expression on my face as I write this nor feel the intensity, the rate at which I type. But I pray that these words be made manifest through the actions you take. I pray that the absence of noise on this hollow page be consumed by the shouts you take to the streets of New York. Jews of Brooklyn, take your place. It is not time for timid cowardice, for paralyzing fear that too often stops those who would otherwise speak from doing so. It is time for the trumpet blast. It is time for the shofar. It is time to cry aloud and spare not. It is time to lift up your voices like instruments of sounding brass. It is time to speak.

You who have risen up out of the ashes of Auschwitz and Dachau, take your place. You bear the weight of six million souls whose memories you carry, who must never be forgotten. The legacy of centuries of pogroms and expulsions displays its ugly head before you. Take your place. Oh that the victims of that Crystal Night could see you now! That they could take solace in knowing that their sons and daughters rose and made known through thunderous noise their protest against those who would destroy them! Take your place!

Do not fear the dissenting naysayer who does not believe in your existence, let alone your right to speak. Nor be faint of heart for time is running out. Do not fear the bombastic speeches of the evil anti-Semites, for though they stand as giants before you, their voices will soon fade and you will triumph just as the young boy with the slingshot did in times past. ‘Who are you that you should be afraid of a man that will die, or of the son of man that will be made as grass?’ Fear not the tiny voice nagging at you, whispering that you will fail. Fear not your own power. It is tremendous. Embrace it and you will change the world. Remember that G-d is the judge of all and your cause is just. Take your place.

Be not only for yourselves, but take your place for the Miriam Monsenegos. Take your place for the Aryeh and Gavriel Sandlers. Take your place for the Josef Blosche’s, the Fogel families, the dolphinariums blown to bits, the Sbarro Pizza shops dismantled. Take your place for the busses in Bulgaria filled with lives gone before their time. Take your place for the Israeli reservists lynched in Ramallah. Take your place for the children tortured by the terror ridden ground in Sderot and the children who must live under the reign of murderers in Gaza. For the lives gone and for the families who remain and wake with that empty space inside them. For the Jew that determines to live in his sacred land, who chooses life, who chooses to be free, take your place.

For the moment is now and it will never come again.

Chloé Simone Valdary

[Follow Chloe on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/chloe.valdary]

WARNING: IF YOU ARE AN ANTI-ZIONIST OR AN ANTI-SEMITE, THIS VIDEO MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO...IF:
1. You want to hold on to the belief that all of today's students have fallen for the anti-semitic garbage filling our college campuses
2. You don't want to be awakened to the reality of anti-semitism in the world
3. You get angry when someone speaks the truth about Israel and its place in the world
4. You are a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause and are not open to another world view
5. You have high blood pressure and you are a Neo-Nazi anti-semitic moron (unless you WANT to have a stroke - never mind...WATCH THIS VIDEO!)
6. You have high blood pressure and are a member of an anti-Zionist BDS NGO (never mind...WATCH THIS VIDEO!)

WATCH THIS VIDEO...IF:
You have a heart for the truth, love Israel and need a good cry!!!!

Part 1

Part 2

The Holocaust Survivors: Who Are They and What Is Their Responsibility?

Yesterday, January 27th, marked the day the United Nations General Assembly has set aside as International Holocaust Remembrance Day - the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

On this annual day of commemoration, every member state of the UN has been charged with honoring the victims of the Nazi era.  Of course, more often than not, in a deliberate attempt to take advantage of the memorial and the Holocaust's single most effected people, the Jewish people, many across the globe have used this day to vilify Israel, as causing a new holocaust in the Middle East vis a vis the Palestinians.

Yesterday, the Sunday Times of London took this contempt and set it in stone by publishing a cartoon depicting a large-nosed Jew hunched over a wall, building it with the blood of Palestinians as they writhe in pain within it: stereotypical blood-libel Anti-Semitism intended deliberately to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance day.

A significant plurality of UN member states not only do not honor the victims of Hitler's ultimate evil, but continue to foment categorically that the Holocaust, at least the Jewish portion, either never occurred or has been blown significantly out of proportion by Jews to gain support for the creation and propitiation of the Jewish State of Israel.

Such is the world we live in.  And it is the world we live in that suffers both by cause and effect as a result of the denigration of this Memorial.  For holocausts continue as we see the true suffering of genocide, mass murder and repression throughout the world, with little or no response...we have certainly not seen any cynical cartoons vilifying the death dealer who has caused 40,000 Syrian men, women and children to breathe their last.

So, who is responsible for declaring the world as misguided because of its continual obsession with maligning the Jews?  And let us not make the fruitless argument that it is not the Jews that are the victims of any calumniation, but the Israelis, who continue to repress the poor Palestinians - they are deserved of correction through any means possible.  No, it was not an Israeli in yesterday's cartoon, but a large-nosed Jew...let us not mistake the intentionality of equating Israel with the Jewish people in all anti-Zionist propaganda...we are one and the same.  It is not the Israeli that is depicted daily in the Arab press as the sons of pigs and apes, but the Jew.

Who shall stand up and say, "Enough!" - and refuse to allow the Jews to be effected by the scapegoating for the ills of the world?  Whose responsibility is it to remind the world, indeed, to stand up to the world and proclaim that the right of the Jewish people to live in freedom AND security in their homeland is undeniable?  Whose obligation is it to announce the truth that the reason there is no peace between Jew and Arab in the Middle East has nothing to do with the repression of an indigenous population...but is unequivocally a result of the ultimate aspiration of the majority of the Arab population to eliminate the Jews of the region - by any and all means possible?

It is, of course, the Holocaust survivors' responsibility first and foremost.  Those who survived the "Final Solution" to obliterate the world's vermin Jews, they are the ones tasked with the burden to "Never Forget" more than anyone else...to remind all of what can happen when one's destiny is in another's hands.  The Holocaust survivor cannot rely on others to take up their cause.  Moreover, the Holocaust survivor cannot rely on others to sympathize with them...as alliances are fickle and can easily be manipulated by selfish or misguided means.

In fact, it is incumbent upon the Holocaust survivors to strengthen themselves with a fortitude that says not only "Never Forget" - but "Never Again"!  And that even if the entire world attempts to deny the rights of the Jewish people their land, their freedom, their destiny and Israel and its Jewish people are friendless, alone and held in contempt by all, it is the Holocaust survivor who must not even blink when responding..."Not on my watch, not an inch, not even a millimeter of our freedom and destiny will we give back!  Never again will we place in others' hands the ability to deny us protection."

My father Zvi would have been 89 had he still been alive...he was the only survivor of his entire family - all murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  My mother Ina, who still remembers clutching her sister, my aunt Vita, G-d rest her soul, while they watched the SS capture their father - my grandfather...gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  I've met hundreds, maybe thousands of others over the years who have survived and whose loved one's memories they never relinquished...whether they chose to talk about it or not.

The youngest survivors of the death camps are in their late 70's by now...most of the rest either no longer with us or old, frail and often have lost the fire of remembrance and some even the memories themselves.  But, who are the survivors, really?  As the generation that saw, that experienced the vilest form of human hatred and evil this world has yet seen...as they flitter like butterflies one by one to the Heavens to join those who went before them...who are the Holocaust survivors?  

The answer: I am!  My children are!  All of Israel and, in fact, every Jew on the face of this Earth is!  We are now the Holocaust survivors.

I have heard the argument, from Jews nonetheless, that we cannot live in the past.  We must move on from the memory of the death camps and the slaughter and begin an era of engagement, of assimilation into our "New" world.  My response is, Baruch HaShem.  As soon as the "New" world demonstrates that it is ready to move on from scapegoating the Jews...as soon as the "New" world is ready to give up its obsession that the "Old" world had with the "Jewish Problem" - whether it be in the Middle East, Asia, Europe or the Americas - I'm ready.

Unfortunately, for the better part of 4000 years the world has demonstrated that it's not ready, or willing, to move on.  It is not paranoia or delusion, it is simply historical fact.  From the Amelikites and Philistines of ancient days, through the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, ancient Muslims to the present day, history has repeated itself.  The Jews, for many reasons beyond the scope of this discourse, have been targeted for annihilation.  Of course, we are not alone in this as I pointed out above...witness Darfur, Somalia, Bosnia, and now Syria.  None of these unfortunate peoples have been targeted for centuries simply because they were born...Jews.  The reasons have evolved, the regions have changed...but the facts remain the same.

More than one-third of the world's Jewish population was exterminated in the death camps of the 1930s and 40's.  Had the Third Reich completed its task of conquering the world, not one Jew would have survived.  And so, every Jew, whether of European descent or otherwise, is a survivor...a Holocaust survivor.

My uncle Zvi, G-d rest his soul, fought side by side with my father against Rommel in North Africa, lived with the memory of many of his family members...massacred in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  He and my aunt Vita settled in Israel along with my parents in 1946.  They helped build the nation, the Jewish nation of Israel, with their bare hands.  But, they were not the only survivors of the Holocaust.

My cousin, Ruthi, and her brother, Villi, G-d rest his soul, their children and grandchildren, the four generations of our family to live in the Jewish Nation of Israel - THEY ARE THE SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST!  My brother, Benny, G-d rest his soul, born in Israel, his two children and their children - THEY ARE THE SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST!

Unless we as Jews, no matter where we are from, understand that WE ALL are the survivors of the Holocaust...unless we ALL take up the gauntlet and say, "ENOUGH" to the agenda of much of the world to limit our destiny, what will the end result be?  It is time to put political correctness aside.  It is time to extract the notion that the Jewish people will be loved by the world if they and the Israelis can only make peace with the Palestinians.  We must open our eyes to the reality around us.

The isolation Israel is facing today is not a result of the stubbornness of Netanyahu, the Israeli right, the "settlers" of Judea and Samaria or any other person or group of Jews.  It is purely and simply the result of others attempting to usurp the right of Israel, the National Homeland of the Jewish people, to control their own destiny and security...end of story.  No land for peace agreement, no two-state solution will ever alter that conclusion.  We have been there, we have done that...

Yes, we must never stop praying for peace.  Yes, we must follow the understanding that we have been given a divine responsibility, a mandate from Heaven, to stand up and to say to the world, "We are here for a purpose - we will do good, will we do right, we will be a light to the world, we will glorify our Maker with our actions and deeds."

Yes, we must align ourselves with those few in the world that are truly our friends, those who support us both ethereally and materially.  But, in doing so, we must not twist ourselves into thinking we can place our trust in anyone but our Maker above and our unity and strength together.  And, above all, we must understand that we, Jews throughout, are responsible for fulfilling our purpose as SURVIVORS.  We owe that much to those that gave the ultimate sacrifice - to forever resolve...NEVER AGAIN.

So, I adjure you, all of those who call themselves Jews, all of those who support the Jews, all of those who pray earnestly for the Jews, to let go, not of the notion of doing good, but of thinking that doing what may be expedient and good by the world's standards will gain our acceptance and bring peace and safety.  It will not.  It is a fait accompli.  And, we must, with it, also let go of the notion that we can surrender even one millimeter of land in Israel, or even support that notion.  For, if we do, we place our people at risk and we void our responsibility - our commitment as Holocaust Survivors - to those who have gone before us.

Andrew C. McCarthy tells about The "Real" John McCain

Michele Bachman or John McCain...who understands the Middle East reality better?

I wonder if the jihadists of eastern Libya are still “heroes” to John McCain. That’s what he called them — “my heroes” — after he changed on a dime from chummy Qaddafi tent guest to rabid Qaddafi scourge.

See, the senator and his allies in the Obama-Clinton State Department had a brilliant notion: The reason the “rebels” of eastern Libya hated America so much had nothing to do with their totalitarian, incorrigibly anti-Western ideology.   No, no: The problem was that we sided with Qaddafi, giving the dictator — at the insistence of, well, McCain and the State Department — foreign aid, military assistance, and international legitimacy. If we just threw Qaddafi under the bus, the rebels would surely become our grand democratic allies.

This, of course, was a much more sophisticated theory than you’d get from lunatics like Michele Bachmann. Sit down for this, because I know it’s hard to believe anyone could spout such nutter stuff, but Bachmann actually opposed U.S. intervention in Libya. She claimed — stop cackling! — that many of McCain’s heroes might actually be jihadists ideologically hostile to the U.S. and linked to groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terror enterprise’s North African franchise. She even thought — yeah, I know, crazy — that if Qaddafi were deposed, the heroes would get their hands on his arsenal, ship a lot of it to AQIM havens in places such as Mali and Algeria, and maybe even turn rebel strongholds such as Benghazi into death traps for Americans.

Good thing we listened to McCain, no?

This week, while the guys the senator and the Obama administration aligned us with in Libya (and would like to align us with in Syria) were busy taking Americans and other foreigners hostage in Algeria, in addition to using Qaddafi’s arsenal to fight the French in Mali, McCain was working his magic in Cairo.

An unfortunate hiccup: McCain and his entourage, including fellow Libya hawk Lindsey Graham, showed up on President Mohamed Morsi’s doorstep just as it was revealed that Morsi, while a top Muslim Brotherhood official in 2010, had inveighedagainst Jews, calling them “blood-suckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs” and claiming it was incumbent on Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” toward them.

Thank goodness Morsi was able to explain to McCain that his remarks had been “taken out of context.” I mean, you can see how that could happen, right? You’re making a few benign remarks about perpetuating hatred for enemies you describe as subhuman and all of a sudden they’re calling you an anti-Semite. Why, next thing you know, they’ll be saying Morsi could be an Islamic supremacist who is hellbent on imposing a sharia constitution on Egypt when he’s not otherwise rolling out the red carpet for Hamas and demanding the release of the Blind Sheikh!

Not to worry: McCain & Co. have promised to go to bat for Egypt’s swell president. Sure, he has imposed a sharia constitution just as crazies like Michele Bachmann predicted the Muslim Brotherhood would do if it took power. That would be the same sharia that, less than two years ago, McCain condemned as “anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned.” Back then, McCain was warning that the Brotherhood had to be kept out of the government if there was to be any hope for democracy in Egypt. After all, he explained, the Brothers “have been involved with other terrorist organizations.”

Now, however, McCain says he will push for American taxpayers to fork up another $480 million for Morsi. Or, to be accurate, borrow another $480 million. You see, the United States is already so deep in the red that a $16.3 trillion debt ceiling is not high enough. In fact, we’re such a basket case that our debt-service and “entitlement” payments alone put us in a quarter-trillion-dollar deficit hole even before we borrow and print another trillion-plus for such ancillary expenses as the Defense Department, the Obama family’s vacations, and the $80-odd million that funds “democratization” programs at McCain’s International Republican Institute. But hey, no problem — what’s another $480 million on top of the $2 billion–plus the Obama administration has already extended to Morsi’s regime . . . to say nothing of the sizable U.S. taxpayer chunk of the $4.8 billion IMF loan the Brotherhood government is also about to get its mitts on?

Naturally, “extremist” conservatives like Michele Bachmann are wet blankets when it comes to this gravy train, too. Get this: She thinks that when you get to the point where you have to borrow in order to pay the interest on the loans you already can’t pay off, somebody needs to cut off your credit line — not inflate it by another two or three trill. Even more daft: She thinks that if you subsidize an organization, like the Brotherhood, that promotes sharia and Hamas, you’re apt to get more sharia and more terrorism.

But look, that’s the kind of passé thinking we’ve come to expect from Bachmann. She’s the one, you may recall, who had the audacity to argue last year that it might not be a good idea for the secretary of state to keep as a key staffer a woman who worked for several years with a notorious al-Qaeda financial backer whose “charity” is formally designated as a terrorist organization — indeed, worked with him at a sharia-promotional journal he founded and in charge of which he put her parents, Muslim Brotherhood operatives (the surviving one of whom runs an Islamist organization, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, that is part of an umbrella entity called the Union for Good — a designated terrorist organization run by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist).


Congresswoman Bachmann was acting on the obviously irrational belief that Muslim Brotherhood influences in our government might lead to pro-Islamist policies detrimental to American security and interests — as if the State Department might tell pro-American Egyptian military rulers that they should stand down so the Brotherhood could take over; as if the Obama administration might order that information about Islamist ideology be purged from the materials used to train our intelligence agents; as if the Brotherhood, even as it counted its American aid dollars, would impose sharia, prosecute its detractors, and green-light the persecution of minority Christians.

Such insane, Islamophobic scaremongering! Insane enough that McCain, between praising his Islamist “heroes” and championing ever more funding for Islamist Egypt, made certain to lambaste Bachmann on the floor of the Senate over her concerns about Brotherhood infiltration of our government – leading other influential Republicans to follow suit. And now, aping that display, People for the American Way — “PAW,” the outfit created by a hard-left Hollywood icon to smear Robert Bork and derail his Supreme Court nomination — is campaigning to have Bachmann booted from the House Intelligence Committee.
There is a war on over the course of American foreign policy and the security of the United States. The Left has aligned with the Brotherhood — some naïvely relying on the fiction that the Brothers are not the enemy vanguard, others seeing the Brothers as comrades in the quest for a utopian, post-American future. In opposition, the GOP can either continue looking to McCain for leadership or rally behind Bachmann the way the Left always circles the wagons around its stalwarts.

Anyone want to bet me on which way the Republicans will go?

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which was published by Encounter Books.

Obama Courting The New Egyptian Leadership...

Business As Usual: The Obama Administration Continues To Court The Muslim World At The Expense of Its Allies

The US has committed F-16 jets and dozens of new Abrams tanks to Egypt...against who will they be used?  Was this a signal to Netanyahu to "get in line or else?"

No matter what face of moderation the Muslim Brotherhood's new leader of Egypt puts on to the world, it has and always will be clear what Mohammed Morsi and the Brotherhood stand for. 

And no matter what duplicitous stance this administration takes toward the middle east in its rhetoric, the actions on the ground tell the true story of were the intentional alliances are being drawn.  The results will be disastrous for both the US and its only true ally in the middle east, Israel.

As to the foundation of Morsi's goals vis a vis Israel and the US, Rachel Avraham writes a poignant article for "United With Israel" that helps us understand the true intentions of Morsi and what he envisions his new "Democracy" to nurse their children on - "hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them."  This further helps us grasp the backdrop for why the policies of the Obama administration are so misaligned.

"MEMRI has uncovered that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi evidently stated, “One American president after another – and most recently, that Obama – talks about American guarantees for the safety of the Zionists in Palestine. Obama was very clear when he uttered his empty words on the land of Egypt. He uttered many lies, of which he couldn’t have fulfilled a single word, even if he were sincere – which he is not.”

Morsi continued, “Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them. They must be nursed on hatred. The hatred must continue.” Morsi furthermore declared, “Who is our enemy? The Zionists. Who occupies our land? The Zionists. Who hates us? The Zionists. Who destroys our lands? The Zionists. The land of Palestine will not be freed except through resistance.”

These above statements proves yet again why Israelis find it very difficult to trust that a Muslim Brotherhood dominated Egypt will honor the peace treaty and why many people are opposed to the United States sending advanced weapons to Egypt at this time. Indeed, this latest revelation from MEMRI follows the publication of another anti-semitic statement by Morsi, where he declared, “These bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pig,” in a reference to the Jews of Israel. In the past, Morsi has also compared Zionists to Dracula’s and vampires, another clearly anti-semitic imagery.

The revelation of all of these anti-semitic statements follows an increased atmosphere of repression within Egypt, where minority groups, women’s rights activists, liberals, and any one else opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood is facing difficult times. History has demonstrated that how a society treats the Jews is often a litmus test for how other groups of marginalized people are treated.Given this, the fact that almost all of Egypt’s Jews have been expelled, that the few Jews who remain in Egypt live in fear, should be taken as a warning sign for other oppressed groups in Egypt.

As Egyptian-American human rights activist, and founder of Arabs For Israel, Nonie Darwish, once stated regarding the situation in Egypt, “Minorities have left or been pushed out of Muslim countries. Today the Copts of Egypt are departing in large numbers. It’s reminiscent of the time when close to 900,000 Jews were driven from Arab countries, a terrible loss. I know from personal experience that the culture of Egypt was never the same. Israel is the only non-Muslim state in the Middle East. That’s why it’s a target; many Muslims want the Middle East to be exclusively under Muslim control.” Nonie Darwish, as a strong advocate for religious diversity, sees a connection between the persecutions of Egyptian minority groups and hatred for Israel. Indeed, the same people who hate Israel often mistreat non-Muslim minority groups and other repressed peoples within the Middle East."  [United With Israel]