Comments on Reads 7/2

Ben Smith: Obama to shore up Jewish support

Obama’s top presidential campaign advisers are putting together a plan to go on the offensive against critics of his stance on Israel, I’m told, and are assembling a team of high-profile surrogates who are well respected in the Jewish community to battle criticism in the media and ensure that it doesn’t go unanswered.
Obama’s supporters say the plan is in effect an acknowledgment that conservative attacks on Obama’s Israel stance have made defections among Jewish voters and donors a possibility they must take seriously. Obama’s advisers see a need to push back even harder on the attacks than they did in 2008, in part because Obama now has a record on the issue to defend — a record that even Obama’s supporters concede has not been adequately explained.
A group of well-known figures in the Jewish community has been in discussions with senior Obama adviser David Axelrod about how to respond to the criticism, which is expected to intensify as the campaign heats up. Among them: Alan Solow, the former head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; former Congressmen Mel Levine and Robert Wexler; and executive Penny Pritzker.

FP: So not only do we have Jews who vote for Obama, but also Jews who advise Obama how to fool Jews. Hardly surprising. See the comment in my previous post on not underestimating the gullibility of American Jews and not overestimating their connection to Israel.

Israel Matzav: Whatcha gonna do about it?

Hillary Clinton shook her finger at Bashar al-Assad from Lithuanian on Friday.

"They must begin a genuine transition to democracy and allowing one meeting of the opposition in Damascus is not sufficient action toward achieving that goal," Clinton, standing beside Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, told reporters.
"So I am disheartened by the recent reports of continued violence on the borders and in Aleppo, where demonstrators have been beaten, attacked with knives by government-organized groups and security forces," she said.
"It is absolutely clear that the Syrian government is running out of time. They are either going to allow a serious political process that will include peaceful protests to take place throughout Syria and engage in a productive dialogue with members of the opposition and civil society, or they're going to continue to see increasingly organized resistance."

I guess she means 'organized resistance' by brave Syrians and not by the US or its NATO allies. And that makes her statement meaningless - there's nothing backing it up. How does she know what the 'organized resistance' is planning?
She talks the talk but she doesn't walk the walk.

FP: She’s not smart enough to even obscure how pathetic the US is. Demise.

Foreign Policy: Google Searches For Peace

Google Ideas, the Silicon Valley giant's self-proclaimed "think/do tank," just wrapped up its Summit Against Violent Extremism in Dublin. According to the director of Google Ideas, former U.S. State Department official Jared Cohen, the purpose of the summit was to "initiate a global conversation on how best to prevent young people from becoming radicalized and how to de-radicalise others." To this end, the summit organizers gathered an impressive array of policymakers, activists, and former militants — from neo-Nazi skinheads to Islamist radicals to Irish ultranationalists — to discuss the problem. A worthy endeavor, no doubt.

FP: Scary. Always be afraid when powerful globally dominating corporations start involving themselves into societal progress, peace and other on the face of it non-profit endeavors.

Burak Bekdil: Shooting the fiddler on the roof

The longer-term risk to peaceful relations between Turkey and Israel is not about whether the Mavi Marmara sets sail for Gaza or remains anchored in Turkish waters. The risk is not about whether Israel should apologize or instead reiterate regret for last year’s deadly attack on the Mavi Marmara. It is not about low chairs or reparations for the Turkish victims either. The risk is about the systematic injection of Islamist sentiments about Israel into the minds of younger, ordinary Turks, especially in the past two and a half years.
…
Box office figures show that since its debut on Jan. 28, over 2 million Turks watched “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine,” making it the year’s third most popular film and generating over $10 million in revenues. The figures exclude private screening and DVD sales.
Can anyone guess how unlikely (or likely) it is that one of the young viewers of the film, applauding Alemdar and cursing the “blood-thirsty Israelis,” will become Turkey’s prime minister in 20 or so years? How unlikely is it that someone from the film’s younger fans today will one day occupy the seat Mr. Davutoğlu today occupies?

FP: Such propaganda is effective because the Turkish public is open to it.