The PostWest

Lee Smith on the renewed respectability of anti-Semitism

2012-01-27T12:50:00.001-08:00

FP: It becomes increasingly harder not to realize the process of making anti-Semitism respectable again. I have argued it ever since Mearsheimer and Walt published their “paper”, not the “book”: they shrewdly sensed that in a major crisis American society has the same instinct as all others, scapegoat the Jews, and took opportunistic advantage of it to gain fortune and fame. And you ain’t seen nothing yet! This may well end same as in the 30’s. But the West should be careful because it may well destroy their only universal scapegoat which they can invoke when they screw up. But then again, the West may not survive to need it anyway.

The Hitler Test

The strongest evidence that the taboo against anti-Semitism is being eroded is the fact that obvious forms of verbal abuse are tolerated—even justified

Why is it that no one bats an eyelash when a former United States national security adviser says, “The Israelis have a lot of influence with Congress, and in some cases they are able to buy influence”? Last week in an interview, Zbigniew Brzezinski accused the government of Israel of a crime. If he has evidence that Israeli officials have broken the law by bribing U.S. politicians, law enforcement authorities should compel him to produce it. But of course Brzezinski’s not really talking about Israelis. What he means is that American Jews have subverted the interests of the United States on behalf of a foreign power.

You don’t need to know much about history to recognize that Brzezinski here is trading in a classic anti-Semitic trope. Why didn’t his Salon interviewer call him out on it? Why hasn’t anyone else? Where are the American elites—the intellectuals, writers, policymakers, and political activists—when it comes to vigilance against anti-Semitism?

The editors of magazines and newspapers have a responsibility as gatekeepers of polite society. It turns out the gatekeepers haven’t been vigilant. We live in a culture where the social taboo against anti-black racism is so fierce that violating the taboo means certain expulsion from polite company. But the very reverse process is taking place when it comes to anti-Semitism: The taboo is being rapidly eroded, and those who ought to confront it are enabling it.

***

Israel Firsters, dual loyalists, Likudniks, ziocons, neocon warmongers—in the wake of the Holocaust, such anti-Semitic rhetoric would have been unimaginable. Yet it became commonplace little more than half a century later at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003. Midlevel George W. Bush Administration officials with Jewish-sounding last-names—Wolfowitz, Abrams, Feith, and the rest of their neocon cabal—were accused of dual loyalty, sending American boys to die for the sake of the country that had their true devotion: Israel. According to this theory, administration principals like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and the president—policymakers with actual decision-making power—were merely instruments in the control of vast Zionist networks that were also manipulating the media and financial industries.

This theory reached full bloom in 2007, when Farrar, Straus and Giroux, one of America’s most esteemed publishing houses, handed the political scientists John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt a $750,000 advance for their book The Israel Lobby. As my colleague Adam Kirsch pointed out last week, the book’s impact was massive because it made it possible to say almost anything about Jewish money, and Jewish power, and the Jewish state. Walt and Mearsheimer’s thesis was praised as bracing, and to question their motives or their ideas was to traffic in McCarthyism. And so the book’s argument earned respect.

Today that discourse has made its way into a Washington-based think tank with close ties to the Obama Administration. Last month, the Center for American Progress found itself in the middle of controversy when some contributors to the organization’s Think Progress blog were accused of writing posts and Tweets that were out-and-out anti-Semitic. One blogger, Zaid Jilani, used the term “Israel firsters” to describe pro-Israel Obama donors. “Waiting 4 hack pro-Dem blogger to use this 2 sho Obama is still beloved by Israel-firsters and getting lots of their $$.”

American Jewish groups were incensed. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Washington Post that, “The language is corrosive and unacceptable.” Jilani left the organization and apologized for using the term, but his colleagues remain, only slightly chastened.

CAP’s chief of staff Ken Gude explained in response to the criticism that, “We have a zero-tolerance policy for racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, or any form of discrimination.” However, it would seem that Think Progress’ bloggers were well-suited to the general temperament of the organization. The problem isn’t just CAP-sponsored ephemera like blogs and tweets, but its more significant offerings relating to the Middle East, like its massive research project on Islamophobia. On Page 94 of that study, for instance, the authors take issue with the Middle East Media Research Institute, founded by Israelis. “MEMRI is respected in some circles for its work to combat hate language and anti-Semitism, but it is also criticized for its selective translations. The institute contends that it highlights moderate Muslim voices on its Reform blog. Yet MEMRI’s selective translations of Arab media fan the flames of Islamophobia.”

How do the Jews who run this translation organization promote Islamophobia, according to CAP? By translating the opinions of those who want to persecute and kill Jews. Try fitting this twisted reasoning into Gude’s zero-tolerance policy against any form of discrimination: Women’s rights groups stir up male hatred by collecting statistics of violence against women; the NAACP fans the flames of racism because it advocates on behalf of equal rights for African-Americans.

***

The root of this problem is not a twentysomething blogger writing something stupid on the Internet. Rather, it is that anti-Semitic rhetoric and logic are being protected and justified by those who are supposed to be gatekeepers. These people, often in the service of their larger political aims, are willing to apologize for or ignore what is obviously Jew-baiting and Jew-hatred.

Consider, for example, Robert Wright’s take on the CAP affair in a blog post at The Atlantic he titled “How to Smear a Washington Think Tank.” “I’m not Jewish,” writes the best-selling author, “so I always feel awkward weighing in on the question of what constitutes anti-Semitism.” What an odd statement. Presumably Wright, who is also not African-American, feels no such qualms about weighing in one what constitutes racism.

For Wright and so many others, anti-Semitism now seems to fall into a special category of prejudice. In this instance, you need to be Jewish to have an opinion. Instead of enforcing the limits, the limits are erased, making phrases like “Israel Firster” acceptable. The next step is to have that move validated by Jews who may not be interested in promoting anti-Semitism but are eager to push a separate political agenda that in order to silence opponents requires dirty tricks, including the use of anti-Semitic tropes. That’s the reason Wright cites an Israeli who appeared alongside him in a recent edition of the Internet debate forum Bloggingheads and who explains that the criticism of CAP is similar to the way his own Israel-based organization has been treated.

J Street’s founder Jeremy Ben-Ami chalked up the CAP blogger’s anti-Semitic rhetoric to mere semantics. “The use of the term ‘Israel Firster’ is a bad choice of words,” wrote Ben-Ami, but in his opinion it’s not really anti-Semitic. On the J Street website, he advised “American Jews and communal leaders [not to] overreach with charges of anti-Semitism in incidents like this. When real anti-Semitism actually rears its ugly head, people will be far less likely to listen.”

Apparently, Ben-Ami has postulated some sort of acid test in order to discern “real” anti-Semitism. The bar has been set so high that just about anyone can clear it, so long as they’re not a brown-shirt, neo-Nazi, or Klansman. Say whatever you will about the Jews, and we’ll give it a pass, so long as it meets the Hitler test. According to this standard, if someone wants to eliminate the Jewish state, then they’re just an anti-Zionist. It’s only when that sentiment comes from someone wearing a swastika and who has the resources to slaughter Jews wholesale that they’ve crossed the threshold into “real” anti-Semitism. Otherwise, raising a fuss makes you just the little boy who cried anti-Semitism.

This isn’t how the world works. Americans’ sensitivity to racist language directed at African-Americans has not made Americans insensitive to “real” anti-black racism. Rather it has made us scrupulous about our language, and subsequently our beliefs and practices have come to reflect, if not wholly fulfill, the promises embodied in this country’s founding documents.

What makes people insensitive to racism is when American political and intellectual elites refuse to confront racist language. The use of phrases like “Israel Firster” and “dual loyalist” that are based on anti-Semitic tropes is anti-Semitic. So is the belief that Jews fan the flames of hatred for discussing the opinions of those who hate them. What is even more vile than the anti-Semitic language impugning the political motives of pro-Israel American Jews is someone like Ben-Ami crying foul when those Jews object to being slandered as disloyal. In effect, the message is, don’t defend yourselves against the calumnies heaped upon you, Jews, because the more noise you make the more trouble there will be for you in the long run.

No doubt there are some in the Jewish community who would prefer that I—who, like Wright, am not Jewish—stay out of what they perceive to be essentially an intramural debate. Tough luck. This is not just about the Jews. Anti-Semitic ideas and language corrode our entire social fabric. It is my business. And there is something wrong with anyone, especially those who are not Jewish, who thinks this isn’t their problem as well.

JoshuaPundit on Western self-lobotomy

2012-01-27T11:59:00.001-08:00

FP: Why Western civilization won’t survive and, given the state it has reached, from an evolutionary standpoint, maybe it does not deserve to.

Muslim Shooting Out Of Car Shouting "Allahu Akbar" Pleads Guilty -WAPO: 'Motive Unclear'

Today's Washington Post provides a superb example of why the majority of the dinosaur media is not to be trusted when it comes to reporting about Islamists or about jihad activity, particularly in the United States.

Yonathan Melaku, an ex-marine reservist and a naturalized citizen from Ethiopia pled guilty today in a plea bargain to three counts, including shooting at the Pentagon on Oct. 19, 2010, and attempting to vandalize veterans’ memorials on U.S. property. As part of a plea agreement, Melaku admitted to shooting at the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the Pentagon and two military recruiting offices in October and November of 2010. Here's how the WAPO described this, under the headline 'Motive of Shooter is Unclear':

Yonathan Melaku was sneaking through Fort Myer and Arlington National Cemetery, his backpack filled with plastic bags of ammonium nitrate, a notebook containing jihadist messages, and a can of black spray paint. The 23-year-old former Marine was heading to the graves of the nation’s most recent heroes, aiming to desecrate the stones with Arabic statements and leave handfuls of explosive material nearby as a message.
Before police foiled the plan in June, the vandalism was to be Melaku’s sixth attack, months after he went on a mysterious shooting spree that targeted the Pentagon, the National Museum of the Marine Corps and two other military buildings in Northern Virginia. A video found after Melaku’s arrest showed him wearing a black mask and shooting a 9mm handgun out of his Acura’s passenger window as he drove along Interstate 95, shouting “Allahu Akbar!”

Yes, 'mysterious'. Wait, it gets better:

FBI officials and prosecutors said Melaku was on a personal terror mission. They said he researched jihadism on the Internet and had references to terrorism in a notebook and on his computer. It also seemed like he was gathering materials to make an improvised explosive device, though there was no indication how he would have used it.
Melaku wanted “to create fear and terror, which is what terrorists do,” said Dana Boente, first assistant U.S. Attorney in Alexandria.
Special Agent Jacqueline Maguire, of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said it was fortunate authorities caught Melaku before anyone was injured. She said it appears Melaku acted alone.
“This case shows that violent homegrown extremism is present in our community, whether by one person or by many,” Maguire said.

Even the FBI won't mention the words 'Islam' and 'terrorism' in the same sentence, but they at least mentioned an amorphous, undefined 'extremism' without mentioning the obvious. Listen to how the accussed's defense attorney is spinning this:

Gregory English, Melaku’s defense lawyer, said after the hearing that Melaku’s family is of the Coptic Christian faith and that they were stunned to learn of his involvement in the crimes and the references to Islamic jihad. English said the shootings were out of character for Melaku, and he wonders whether his client suffers from a psychological problem, which he has asked the court to evaluate.
“As bad as it is, this is someone who essentially broke windows,” English said. “It’s vandalism. He has no link to terrorism. . . . He had a message, but I don’t understand what that message was supposed to be.”

Either Mr. English is stupid, or he thinks we are [FP: He is just doing his job the way the US so-called “justice system” expects him to; and it works].The only reason this home grown jihadi didn't hurt anyone is because we were extremely lucky, and that luck might not have held if Melaku had managed to escape and proceeded to manufacture the IED for which he was already putting together the ingrediants. As for Melaku's Coptic background, here's a tip...find the imams he was associating with that converted him to Islam and you'll find where the 'violent homegrown extremism in our community' Special Agent Maguire was talking about is coming from.

Melaku agreed to the plea bargain which carried a sentence of 25 years only because he was looking at a possible mandatory sentence of more than 85 years in the face of solid hard evidence. He's only 23, and he'll likely be out in 10 to 15, and you'll notice that no one is talking about deporting him when his sentence is served.

'Ssssh! Don't mention the word jihad! Nothing to see here.

Martin Kramer on US Middle Eastern Incompetence and Decline (VIDEO)

2012-01-25T18:27:00.001-08:00

His speech at the 2011 Herzliya Conference at the Shalem Center

FP: Must Watch!!!! I find Martin speeches, like his writings, the best there are. At Herzlia his speech is almost always unique in its knowledge, reasoning, analysis and perspective on the Middle East.

NOTE: I WILL BE BACK POSTING BY THE END OF THE WEEK.

Challah Hu Akbar: US: Lieberman no, Muslim Brotherhood yes

2012-01-22T14:38:00.001-08:00

FP: The new US. Do you still think that my claim that the US is realigning itself with the Islamists is wrong? The US is now an enemy of Israel.

Obama Administration: No to Israel, Yes to the Muslim Brotherhood? (h/t Martin Kramer)

Israeli media recently reported that US officials are offering numerous excuses as to why they do not wish to meet with Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during his upcoming visit. The most outrageous claim was that “we [US officials] do not want to be photographed with him.”

While US officials say they do not wish to be photographed with Lieberman, the foreign minister of the only stable country in the Middle East that’s still a reliable US ally, they seem to have no qualms being seen with Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

Below is a photo of Anne Patterson, US ambassador to Egypt, meeting with Mohammad Badie, General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, on January 18. On January 11, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met with Mohammed Morsi, head of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. On January 12, former president Jimmy Carter also met with Badie.

It should be noted that Patterson and Carter are not the only “important” figures to be meeting with Badie lately. In late December, Badie met with Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh.

And on Saturday night, Hamas’s Khaled Meshal met with Badie and other Brotherhood officials.

While one could focus on the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel articles on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website, in this instance, we’ll focus on Badie himself.

In September 2010, Badie gave a sermon entitled “How Islam Confronts the Oppression and Tyranny.” During the sermon Badie said:

Today the Muslims desperately need a mentality of honor and means of power [that will enable them] to confront global Zionism. [This movement] knows nothing but the language of force, so [the Muslims] must meet iron with iron, and winds with [even more powerful] storms. They crucially need to understand that the improvement and change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.

He continued to say that

Resistance is the only solution against the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny, and all we need is for the Arab and Muslim peoples to stand behind it and support it.

In the same speech, Badie declared that “The U.S. is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.”

Avigdor Lieberman is certainly a controversial figure, who has made ill-advised statements, however, those statements pale in comparison, in fact they are in different universes, to those of Mohammad Badie.

Lieberman is the foreign minister of Israel, America’s strongest and most reliable ally in the region, thus US officials should be prepared to meet and take photos with him, especially if they are willing to meet with the anti-Israel and anti-American Muslim Brotherhood.

The Obama administration still has time to schedule a meeting before Lieberman arrives, however, should they refuse to meet with him they will be making a move that will surely cause problems with a key Democratic constituency with which they already have problems.

Robert Reilly on the dangerous Western wishful thinking

2012-01-22T14:24:00.001-08:00

FP: Validates my caims of Western cluelessness and projection.

The dangers of wishful thinking in the Middle East

Projecting Western ideas onto the Arab Spring seriously underestimates the danger of Islamism.

Last July Matthew Kaminski opined in the Wall Street Journal that the transition to democracy in the Middle East would be as easy as it was for the democracies that emerged after the fall of the Soviet empire. Alas, this was predictably not so, and has now been proven, as vote after vote has shown the strength of the Islamists, most particularly in Egypt, where they have won some 70 percent of the ballot. With his article on January 3, "Arab Democracy Is the Best Bet for a Muslim Reformation", Kaminski continues in this vein of false optimism, based upon his propensity to project Western conceptions and norms onto the Islamic world, where they are largely irrelevant.

Wishful thinking can be dangerous when it distorts reality. Here is a short list of misconceptions in his latest piece.

"The appeal of political Islam... grows when religiosity is repressed." Islamism is a reaction to modernity, not to repression. It would grow regardless. With the shackles off in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, watch it grow even more. To think that it will diminish because it is not repressed is a dangerous fantasy. Thanks to the Arab Spring, it now has the opportunity to seize control, and most likely will do so. Democratic elections have simply revealed the strength of the view that "Islam is the answer."

"Calls for Sharia to become state law emerged only in the twentieth century, as a result of Islam's encounter with the West." Really? Sharia existed for many centuries before this encounter. The first call for state sharia enforcement came from Ibn Taymiyya in the late thirteenth century when he declared the Mongol rulers (converts to Islam) apostates because they continued to live by their tribal law, rather than by Sharia. Taymiyya laid the basis for requiring a ruler to enforce sharia if he wished to maintain his legitimacy, which is why Taymiyya is so popular among the Islamists today. The only recent sharia states have been Saudi Arabia, Taliban Afghanistan, and Sudan – those with the least amount of exposure to the West. In any case, the sharia enforcement issue emerges from the struggle within Islam, not from the encounter with West.

"The Quran is politically agnostic and says nothing about the preferable form of government." Not quite. In Surah 3:110, the Qur'an speaks of the regime in Medina as "the best community [or nation] ever raised for mankind." Since the Qur’an is understood by almost all Muslims as coexisting eternally with God, this statement means that the Medinan concept of the "best community" obtains forever. This is why the Salafists desire to emulate it exactly, and why every major effort of reform in Islam goes back, instead of forward. It may also help explain why democracy has never arisen indigenously in the Arab Middle East.

"Salafists... practice Osama bin Laden's creed of Islam." No, bin Laden's creed of Islam is not Salafist, but came directly from the Muslim Brotherhood and is infected with its ideology, which was partially obtained from Western totalitarianism. His teacher in Saudi Arabia was Mohammed al Banna, the brother of the founder of the Muslim brotherhood, Hassan al Banna. Salafism, on the other hand, is an ancient and integral part of Islam.

Kaminski calls for a Reformation in Islam, without seeming to realize that Islamism is that Reformation. Be careful of what you wish for. One reason that the Islamic world became calcified is that the "gates of ijtihad" were closed in the Middle Ages. This meant that the authority for making original interpretations of the Koran or the hadith had been withdrawn because the sharia had, by that time, covered every possible situation in human life with a specific ruling. The Islamists today have reclaimed the authority of individual interpretation in order to wipe out the Islamic jurisprudence that stands in their way, most particularly in their use of indiscriminate violence and terrorism.

In the place of "rigid Kemalist secularism" in Turkey, Kaminski claims that there "has emerged a more dynamic society, more tolerant of differences." The 97 members of the news media in prison, including journalists, publishers and distributors (according to the Turkish Journalists’ Union), and the generals jailed by the AKP might disagree, as might the persecuted businessman, who were funding media that expressed differences with the ruling party until they were charged with tax violations. The idea that a mild dose of Islamism leads to diversity is almost hilarious.

Kaminski several times quotes Iranian philosopher Dr Abdulkarim Soroush, who undoubtedly is one of the most eloquent advocates of free societies within Islam -- which may help explain his exile in the United States. However, Kaminski seems to be unaware of the most important issue that Soroush has raised regarding the relationship between theology and democracy. Soroush has said,

“You need some philosophical underpinning, even theological underpinning in order to have a real democratic system. Your God cannot be a despotic God anymore. A despotic God would not be compatible with a democratic rule, with the idea of rights. So you even have to change your idea of God.”

Without a different theology within Islam, can one have democracy? This is the real problem. Unfortunately, Sunni Islam gives no sign of abandoning its theology of God as pure will and power, which has been the foundation of so much despotism in Islamic history. Muslim theologians and philosophers who propose a God of rationality often find themselves, like Dr Soroush, in exile. This is what is subverting the opportunity for a transition to democracy in the Arab Spring.

Kaminski's most egregious error comes with his closing quote of former Polish dissident and writer, Adam Michnik, "If Judaism can co-exist with democracy, any religion can." By this Kaminski means to suggest that this should be no problem for Islam. Judaism, however, gave us Genesis, in which man is described as having been created in the image and likeness of God. This revelation is the basis of our civilization, as well as the foundation of democracy. The Qur'an, on the other hand, makes explicitly clear that man is not made in God's image and to suggest otherwise is blasphemy. Therefore, it may not be as easy as Mr. Kaminski thinks.

Robert Reilly has worked in foreign policy, the military, and the arts. His most recent book is The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis.

Comments on reads 1/22

2012-01-22T13:30:00.001-08:00

Iran recants Hormuz threat

Iran lowers its tone after threatening several times to close the Strait of Hormuz • Deputy Commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami: U.S. ships in the strait do not constitute a change in the situation.

FP: So it’s not appeasement that works with Iran? Oh, wow, what a surprise!

Israel to probe Jerusalem mufti's call to kill Jews

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Hussein, on official Palestinian Authority television, preaches that Islamic holy text justifies killing Jews • Netanyahu asks attorney-general to launch investigation • Landau: "Mufti is inspired by Nazi Germany."

FP: Prediction: No action will be taken against the Mufti. In the unlikely case that action will be taken, except the West, including the US to to express concerns that such action is “not serving peace”. And watch the Mufti become an Arab hero.

David M. Weinberg: Tell me who your friends are …

Obama announced that he has a "friendship and bond of trust" with Erdogan. Woe be to us.

FP: Remmber Bush looking into Putin’s eyes? These are today’s leaders of the West and they are getting worse not better.

Boaz Bismuth: The future is ours

The Muslim Brotherhood wants to create the Egypt of tomorrow, while allowing the army to deal with today's pressing problems.

FP: The Egypt of tomorrow includes asn Islamized army.

Jewish conspiracy theories on the rise in 2011

Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein expected to submit report summarizing anti-Semitic incidents for 2011 • Anti-Semitism particularly prominent against backdrop of world economic crisis.

FP: See? What did I tell you? Scapegoating Jews in time of crisis may well be one of the most validated theories in social science.

GQ names Cantor most powerful man in Washington

Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, described by GQ Magazine as "the Republican whom Democrats – especially Obama – hate most" • GQ says that if Obama is unseated in the next election, it will be in large part thanks to Cantor.

FP: See? The Joos do control Congress.

Owner of Jewish weekly regrets calling for Israeli hit on Obama

Andrew Adler, owner of the weekly Atlanta Jewish Times, says he went too far and apologizes for what he wrote • "My view of the president is favorable,” Adler says • Anti-Defamation League head Abraham Foxman: "Apology cannot possibly repair the damage."

FP: Proof positive that not all Jews are smart.

Collected links

2012-01-21T22:39:00.001-08:00

Ron Rosenbaum: Revisiting The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Mark Steyn: The Sinking of the West

Michael J. Totten: A Leaner, Meaner Brotherhood

LAWRENCE KADISH: Planning genocide in plain sight

Elder of Ziyon: EU publishes report based on false information

How China is advancing its military reach

Michael Ledeen: Who’s Really Killing Those ‘Nuclear Scientists’ in Tehran?

Daniel Pipes: Ending the Palestinian "Right of Return"

Daniel Pipes: Turkey Out of NATO: Other Voices

JD Dyer: Not much there there: A small, defensive military “build-up”

Philologos: Persons of (Linguistic) Interest (The Word 'Jew' Has Fallen Out of Favor)

Stratfor: Jihadism in 2012: A Persistent, Low-Level Threat

Sol Stern: Hannah Arendt and the Origins of Israelophobia

Jay Nordlinger: The Z-Word

Robert S. Wistrich: Islamist hatred for Jews

Aaraon D. Rubinger on European anti-Semitism

2012-01-21T22:36:00.001-08:00

FP: You ain’t seen nothing yet. US is following in the footsteps, all be it at a slower pace.

Déjà Jew

The term déjà vu brings to mind the English expression, been there, done that. The odd sensation of reliving something for the second time unnerves us precisely because it’s so convincingly familiar.
Over the course of 2 months, I visited Jewish communities in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France, Belgium and the UK and interviewed dozens of Jewish leaders as well as “laymen” – both Jews and non-Jews. While attempting to determine the seriousness of contemporary European Anti-Semitism, I experienced what I would term “déjà Jew” - the peculiar sense that we, the members of Jewish people, are reliving an experience from the past; that we have somehow time-traveled and are now re-experiencing occurrences that are all too familiar.

From the mid-1930s to early 1940s, Jews who recognized that they were no longer safe in Europe anxiously sought refuge abroad. Sylvain Zenouda, the co-founder and current vice president of the Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l"Antisèmitism—an organization which monitors and documents anti-Semitism in France—told me that educated young Jews in France with the financial means to do so have either fled the country or are making plans to flee. Again?

80 years ago, our people were being verbally abused and brutally assaulted in public places. And now it seems to be happening all over again. Viviane Teitelbaum, a minister in the Brussels Regional Parliament, related an incident that occurred this past November involving a 13-year old Jewish girl in Brussels. The girl was brutally assaulted at her school, resulting in her hospitalization for multiple injuries including a concussion. The attackers were not members of the Third Reich’s SS, but a group of female Muslim students at the same school. The ringleader pronounced her to be a “filthy Jew!” Apparently, in the weeks prior to the attack, the girl’s father had approached the authorities and the school with complaints that there had been threats made by fellow classmates against his daughter. Upon hearing that his concerns were simply brushed aside, I immediately thought of Yogi Berra’s famous gaff: “This is like déjà vu all over again!”

2 generations ago, some Jews sought to protect themselves by masquerading as Aryans. In an interview conducted in November, a Parisian mother related how the fear of being physically attacked by Muslim extremist thugs means that it is “not rare at all today” for French Jewish students to attempt to pass themselves off as Muslim - with some even going as far as to fast on Ramadan. One case in point was a Jewish girl of North African descent who for years was successful in this deception, until finally she was “exposed” when Muslim girls caught her eating matzah in the bathroom during Pesah. After her classmates beat her viciously, they invited their male Muslim friends to their school to participate in a gang rape.

Wait…didn’t this happen to us already?

In a perverse twist, historically such horrific violence against Jews has often been blamed on the alleged “crimes” of the victims themselves. This was particularly true of the pre and post-Holocaust era. Yet the remarks of the current US Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, seems to indicate that not much has changed in that regard. Gutman explains away the irrational hatred of Jews by Muslims in Europe as an outcome of Israeli policies towards Palestinians. Yes, Gutman is the child of a survivor; and yes, he too sought to “balance” his statement by acknowledging that terrorist attacks against Israel are, and I quote, “also not helpful.”

But Gutman’s remarks did not stem so much from malice as naïveté. Like the administration he represents, Gutman sadly suffers from another disorder, not déjà vu this time, but its opposite - jamais vu, or the illusion of the familiar being encountered for the first time. It is when that which should be familiar – in this case long standing Muslim hostility towards Jews and a Jewish State – is thought to be a novel development created only after June 1967. Such memory impairment and historical “misfacts”—especially when applied to areas like foreign policy—constitutes an extremely dangerous disorder that can have dire repercussions.

In the precursory period to the Holocaust, no one knew how bad things might get; the eternal hope was that things couldn’t possibly get worse. While enabling some with the strength to endure, such wishful yearnings ultimately proved tragically fatal. Likewise, in Europe today, to borrow Al Jolson’s words, we just “ain’t seen nothing yet.” In another interview with the president of France-Israel Association, Gilles-William Goldnadel asserted that if there will be a new provocation by the Arabs against Israel, with Israel subsequently defending itself, not only will huge demonstrations in Paris and other European capitals be inevitable, they will also likely be accompanied by en masse “organized physical violence.”

Joël Rubinfeld, the well-liked former-president of the Comité de Coordination des Organisations Juives de Belgique, echoes the above sentiment and suspects that in Belgium too “there is definitely a potential of physical violence coming against Jews.” He recalls an anti-Israel demonstration in Antwerp in April 2002 that was organized by the European-Arab League in which the throngs were shouting “Death to the Jews.” Rubinfeld describes how, immediately after the rally, “demonstrators walked in the direction of the Jewish neighborhood and broke diamond shop windows.” 2 months later at another anti-Israel rally, the crowd burned the effigy of a religious Jew.

Yet, just as there existed righteous gentiles during the Nazi era whose courage and moral decency led them to risk their lives in the battle against anti-Semitism, so too do there exist equally brave non-Jewish individuals today. One such person is Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris who, when asked on a televised debate to publicly acknowledge the reality of a "Palestinian Holocaust," responded by saying: "It is surely the strangest holocaust in human history when, during the so-called period of ‘genocide,’ the population of a people so dramatically increases." As a result of his steadfast defense of Israel, Millière is perpetually the recipient of death threats. As well as being denounced as "a filthy Jew," a bookstore in Paris that was carrying his latest book discovered that all its copies had been defaced with a swastika emblazoned on the front pages.

It is critical to keep in mind that in the end, déjà-vu is a delusion of the mind and as such the events that we are living through today are not synonymous with what went on before, during, and after the Holocaust. Yet, that being said, some things have not changed: anti-Semitism in the world is as real now as it was in the 30s and 40s; the lust for Jewish blood by our enemies is as ravenous today as it has ever been; even “passive” Europeans are, once again, the silent collaborators. However, today we thankfully have a State of Israel in which Jews from the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Sweden, the UK and elsewhere will always be welcomed. Perhaps then, it’s time to say goodbye to “déjà-Jew.”

Comments on reads 1/20

2012-01-20T13:02:00.001-08:00

Dore Gold: The risk of talking to terrorists

The Taliban and Hamas perceive dialogue as a sign of weakness.

FP: That is perhaps the most critical ignorance by the West: engagement, compromise, negotiations achieve the exact opposite of what is intended.

Poland to put Hitler's forest lair on tourist trail

Poland officials hope to turn Hitler's northeastern fortress complex into major tourist attraction • The site, which served as Hitler's military headquarters, was built between 1940 and 1941 to protect top Nazi officials during Operation Barbarossa.

FP: With most of the WW2 experiencing generation gone, the new wave of anti-Semitism includes initially small steps in turning Hitler and Nazism into just a “historic” figure and phenomenon.

David Bernstein: CJR on the New York Times and Israel

I’ve blogged before about the New York Times’ coverage of Israel, so I thought I’d point out a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review by former Times reporter Neil Lewis on that precise topic.

Unfortunately, it’s trite, largely repeating what any fair-minded observer already knows: first, that the Times is not hostile to Israel, per se, but its reporters’ and editors’ views of “proper” Israeli policy have for decades leaned far to the “left” of actual Israeli policy, which in turn makes much of its coverage implicitly adversarial (and which also explains why folks that are truly hostile to Israel think that the Times is a Zionist rag); and, second, that in a David vs. Goliath story, reporters tend to strongly favor David.

FP: First, this validates my claim that the West is clueless about the Middle East and tends to project from itself to it. A core component of that is the imposition of the left-right perspective on everything. While left/right can be applied to some of Israeli domestic policies, it has no relevance whatsoever to the Arab-Israeli conflict, except that the Western left sees what ought to be their nemesis, Islamism, as ally in bringing down the capitalistic West, which they cannot do by themselves. But that is a purely Western, not Middle-Eastern issue.

Patrick Clawson: Calculating Victory: How Iran Views Confronting the United States

If Washington does not demonstrate through both word and deed the risks that Tehran faces, overly optimistic Iranian hardliners may wrongly decide that the benefits of a confrontation in the Strait of Hormuz outweigh the costs.

…

For Washington's part, the proverb "if you want peace, prepare for war" holds true: the best prospect for persuading Khamenei to revert to his past cautiousness is to clearly lay out that the United States has red lines which, if crossed, will cost Iran dearly. Declaratory policy, such as President Obama's recent letter to Iran about red lines, helps. But Iran may be more impressed by deeds that back up those words. Peace is more likely to be preserved if the United States marshals its allies and demonstrates its power -- hopefully through military exercises alone, but also by vigorous response to any Iranian aggression if necessary.

FP: Exactly right. But Obama is not gonna do it.

Michelle Malkin: The Land of Obama Make-Believe

Instead of supporting new infrastructure jobs in America through an energy independence-enhancing project that has bipartisan legislative support on Capitol Hill, the president flew to Disney World to peddle looser visa restrictions in China and Brazil by executive order. He also will expand the Visa Waiver Program (a security loophole-ridden program that was suspended temporarily after the 9/11 terrorist attacks) to speed foreign travel.

In case anyone needs reminding, it was the relentless drive of the tourism industry and kowtowing State Department bureaucrats that led to the Bush-era Visa Express Program, which relaxed visa policies, eliminated in-person consulate interviews and opened the door to the 9/11 hijackers. Brazil is just the latest base for al-Qaida and other Islamic jihadi groups. It does not consider Hezbollah or Hamas terrorist groups, and it disbanded its anti-terrorism force in 2009.

The Visa Waiver Program and other efforts to expedite the tourist visa process also pose continuing security risks because — as the Government Accountability Office itself admitted last year — there is still no comprehensive, systematic way to track the 70 million-plus foreign visitors who enter the country on tourist and other short-term visas. Indeed, half of the nation’s estimated 20 million illegal aliens are visa overstayers.

…

How many of the new Disney foreign tourists whom Obama is touting as America’s economic salvation will fail to return to their home countries after their Obama World visas expire? We’ll likely never know. And Team Obama doesn’t care.

In his opening campaign ad salvo, Obama accuses his opponents of being “untethered to facts.” But this is an administration that believes lowering visa standards and risking homeland security to pump up Disney foreign tourism is a better path to economic recovery than supporting direct American job creation and enhancing energy security. Like the Disney characters he posed with this week, our cartoonish president is wholly untethered to reality.

FP: This is how decline is accelerated.

Caroline Glick on American anti-Semitism

2012-01-20T11:59:00.001-08:00

FP: I’ve been predicting this from the time Walt and Mearsheimer published their paper, the predecessor to their book and I even wrote and online article on the subsject. What accelerated this was the self-induced decline in the West: in crisis the almost universal instinct is to scapegoat the Jews. Today you can find in the print, online and broadcast media things that were unthinkable 10-15 years ago, not to mention violent attacks on Jewish targets. Try this against any other minority and see the reaction.

While Europe was and remains hostile to Jews, some argued that America is not like Europe. But, as it turns out, there is no American exceptionalism when it comes to Jews. The worse the crisis and decline become, the worse the Jew hatred will become.

Caroline Glick: Mainstreaming anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism may not yet be a litmus test for social acceptability in the US, but it has certainly become acceptable.

Proof of this dismal state of affairs came this week with the publication of a supportive profile of University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer in The Atlantic Monthly written by the magazine's in-house foreign policy guru Robert Kaplan.

Mearsheimer is the author, together with Harvard's Kennedy School of Government's Prof. Stephen Walt, of the infamous 2007 book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Since the book's publication, Mearsheimer has become one of the most high-profile anti-Semites in America.

Kaplan's article was a clear bid to rehabilitate Mearsheimer in order to advance his pre-Israel Lobby theory of realism in international affairs. Mearsheimer's realist theory argues that the international arena exists in a state of perpetual anarchy. As a consequence, the factor motivating states' actions in international affairs is their national interests. Morality, he claims, has no place in international affairs.

This theory's considerable intellectual underpinning rendered Mearsheimer one of the most prominent political scientists in America during the 1990s. As a realist himself, particularly in relation to the rise of China as a superpower, Kaplan perhaps believed that by rehabilitating Mearsheimer, he would advance his goal of convincing US policy-makers to adopt a realist approach to China.

But whatever his motivations for writing the profile, and whatever its eventual impact on US policy towards China, Kaplan's profile of Mearsheimer served to mainstream a Jew-hater and in so doing, to give credibility to his bigotry.

It has become necessary to rehabilitate Mearsheimer because in the years since he and Walt published their conspiracy theory against Israel and its American supporters, Mearsheimer has actively embraced fringe elements in the US and the world in order to advance his campaign to discredit Israel and its supporters. As Alan Dershowitz highlighted in November, Mearsheimer wrote an enthusiastic endorsement of a psychotically anti-Semitic book written by British jazz musician and prolific anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon.

The book, titled The Wandering Who? is replete with Holocaust denial, claims that Jews control the world and America, characterizations of the Jewish God as evil and corrupt, and claims that Israel is worse than Nazi Germany.

In his endorsement, Mearsheimer called the book "fascinating," and said it "should be read widely by Jews and non-Jews alike."

As far as Kaplan was concerned, Mearsheimer's embrace of Atzmon was a simple mistake. But it wasn't. It was part of an apparent decision on Mearsheimer's part to use his own celebrity to legitimize his anti-Semitic views.

In a speech to the Palestine Center in April 2010, for example, Mearsheimer distinguished between "righteous" Jews and "New Afrikaner" Jews. The former are Jews who oppose and attack Israel and the latter are Jews who support and defend Israel. By sanitizing Mearsheimer's bigotry in his sympathetic profile, Kaplan mainstreamed his hatred.

And Kaplan is not alone.

KAPLAN'S PROFILE of Mearsheimer is part of a larger trend in US letters, politics and culture in which anti-Semitism is becoming more and more acceptable. As Adam Kirsch noted in an article in Tablet online magazine this week, The Israel Lobby's central contention, that a cabal of disloyal Jews and sympathizers has forced the US to adopt a pro-Israel policy against its national interests, has found recent expression in the writings of mainstream journalists including New York Times' columnist Tom Friedman and Time's Joe Klein.

Last week, The Washington Post-owned online magazine Foreign Policy - which publishes a regular blog by Stephen Walt, published an article by Mark Perry claiming that in 2007 and 2008 Mossad agents posed as CIA agents in a false-flag operation whose aim was to build a cooperative relationship with the Pakistani/Iranian Baluchi anti-regime Jundallah terror group.

Perry's report was based solely on anonymous sources. Its obvious purpose was to discredit the very notion of Israeli-US intelligence cooperation on Iran.

Following the publication of Perry's article, Israel abandoned its general policy of never commenting on intelligence issues. The Foreign Ministry denounced his report as "utter nonsense."

What Foreign Policy failed to tell its readers is that Perry is not an objective reporter. He is a former adviser to Yassir Arafat and an advocate of US engagement with Hamas and Hezbollah. By failing to mention his biases, Foreign Policy became an accessory to the mainstreaming of anti-Semitism. Like The Israel Lobby, Perry's report in Foreign Policy adds to the legitimacy of the attitude that there is something fundamentally wrong with having a close relationship with the Jewish state.

Perhaps if Mearsheimer and Walt had published their updated version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1997 instead of 2007 they would have been received in the same manner.

That is, they would have sat in the mainstream doghouse for a few years but then gradually acceptance and support for their bigotry would have moved from the margins to the mainstream. And within five years they would have been rehabilitated by the establishment. But in all likelihood, that wouldn't have been the case.

It is a fact that since the turn of the century, and particularly in the wake of the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in 2000 - a collapse precipitated by Arafat's rejection of Palestinian statehood; and in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the US, anti-Semitism has become far more acceptable in the US and throughout the world. The volume of attacks against Jews has skyrocketed and the intellectual war against Israel and its Jewish supporters has grown ever more virulent.

The rise of anti-Semitism in the US has many causes, but three parallel developments stand out. First, the development of Arab satellite stations like Al Jazeera has brought the open Jew-hatred of the Arab world into the Western discourse.

True, most Westerners reject the Arab annihilationist form of anti-Semitic propaganda as crude and wrong. But the Jew-hatred propounded by these broadcasts has had a corrosive impact on the Western discourse. It has deadened observers to the lies at the heart of the propaganda.

That is, whereas they may reject the daily calls to destroy the Jews, Westerners have increasingly internalized the basic claim that Jews deserve to be hated. Take for instance a Washington Post story last week on Egypt's decision to bar Jewish worshipers from making their annual visit to the grave of Torah sage Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira.

The story claimed that the Egyptians oppose Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians and because the Egyptian cross-border terror attack on Israel last August "led to the killing of at least five Egyptian border guards as Israeli troops pursued alleged militants."

That is, according to the Washington Post, just as the pan-Arab media claims, Israel is entirely responsible for Arab hatred of Jews.

THEN OF course there is the European media.

This week, the Dutch Christian newspaper Trouw published an article about prenatal care in Israel written by Ilse van Heusden. Van Heusden wrote of the superior medical care she received in Israel where she lived temporarily and where she gave birth to a healthy son.

Rather than extol the dedicated care she received, van Heusden attacked it. She claimed that Israel's world class prenatal medicine is a product of its embrace of eugenics and its similarity to Nazi Germany. As she put it, "To be pregnant in Israel is comparable to a military operation. Countless ultrasounds and blood tests should produce the perfect baby, nothing can be left to the luck of the draw. The state demands healthy babies and a lot of them too."

Trouw's decision to publish van Heusden's anti-Semitic assault is of a piece with countless articles published in the European media portraying Israelis as evil Jews intent on using science and every other means at their disposal to advance the Jews' malign goals of global domination, genocide, apartheid, and general evil. When Israel dares to complain about these attacks, European politicians and media celebrities are quick to stand up and defend their right to freedom of expression.

So it was that Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt - who barred all the Muhammad cartoons from being published in the Swedish media - stood by Sweden's leading tabloid Aftonbladet when in 2009 it published an article accusing IDF soldiers of killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. In the mind of the anti-Semites, by trying to object to the blood libel, Israel was proving that it seeks to control the media.

The European media's lies about Israel have been translated into official government policies of lying about Israel. So it is that the French National Assembly published a report last month about the geopolitics of water that included a 20-page diatribe claiming that Israel uses water as a weapon of apartheid against the Palestinians.

To write the report, the French legislators had to ignore not only the content of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement on water in the 1995 Interim Agreement. They had to ignore the basic fact that Israel gives the PA far more water than the agreement requires it to give, and to associate malign intent to the Israeli government. That is, they had to embrace the irrationality of anti-Semitism.

Parallel to the penetration of Arab anti-Semitism into the Western discourse through the pan- Arabic media, and the embrace of overt anti-Semitism by the European media and political class, over the past decade, we have witnessed the development of an alliance between the West's political Left and Islamist movements.

The international Left's embrace of the likes of Hamas, the Taliban, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood has increased leftist and isolationist American policy-makers' comfort level in adopting hostile postures towards Israel. So it is that at the same time that the Obama administration is assiduously courting the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime, according to Channel 2, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has refused to meet with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during his upcoming trip to Washington. Channel 2 reported that senior US officials said that "Lieberman is an obstacle to peace. We don't want our pictures taken with him and with what he represents."

ANTI-SEMITISM IS a prejudice that is based on a rejection of reason. To fight it, it is not sufficient to disprove the contentions of the likes of Mearsheimer. He and his colleagues must be discredited and their enablers must be shamed.

But before this can happen, world Jewry and Israelis alike need to recognize what is happening.

Anti-Semitism is back in style. Its new justification is not race or religion. It is nationalism. Today's anti-Semitism is predicated on preferring Palestinian and pan-Arab nationalism to Jewish nationalism.

And like its racist and religious predecessors, its aim is to deny the right of Jews to be free.

In the face of this onslaught the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora have two choices. We can either succumb to our enemies, or we can fight back.

Victor Davis Hanson on civilizational decline

2012-01-19T13:12:00.001-08:00

FP: I will only add for those who have not noticed, that the title of this blog comes comes from Hanson.

Civilization in Reverse

In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem to discount.

News accounts abound now of impoverished Athens residents scrounging pharmacies for scarce aspirin — as Greece is squeezed to make interest payments to the supposedly euro-pinching German banks.

Such accounts may be exaggerations, but they should warn us that yearly progress is never assured. Instead, history offers plenty of examples of life becoming far worse than it had been centuries earlier. The biographer Plutarch, writing 500 years after the glories of classical Greece, lamented that in his time weeds grew amid the empty colonnades of the once-impressive Greek city-states. In America, most would prefer to live in the Detroit of 1941 than the Detroit of 2011. The quality of today’s air travel has regressed to the climate of yesterday’s bus service.

In 2000, Greeks apparently assumed that they had struck it rich with their newfound money-laden European Union lenders — even though they certainly had not earned their new riches through increased productivity, the discovery of more natural resources, or greater collective investment and savings.

The brief euro mirage has vanished. Life in Athens is zooming backward to the pre-EU days of the 1970s. Then, most imported goods were too expensive to buy, medical care was often premodern, and the city resembled more a Turkish Istanbul than a European Munich.

The United States should pay heed to the modern Greek Cassandra, since our own rendezvous with reality is rapidly approaching. The costs of servicing a growing national debt of more than $15 trillion are starting to squeeze out other budget expenditures. Americans are no longer affluent enough to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to import oil, while we snub our noses at vast new oil and gas deposits beneath our own soil and seas.

In my state, Californians for 40 years have hiked taxes; grown their government; vastly expanded entitlements; put farmland, timberland, and oil and gas lands off limits; and opened their borders to millions of illegal aliens. They apparently assumed that they had inherited so much wealth from prior generations and that their state was so naturally rich, that a continually better life was their natural birthright.

It wasn’t. Now, as in Greece, the veneer of civilization is proving pretty thin in California. Hospitals no longer have the money to offer sophisticated long-term medical care to the indigent. Cities no longer have the funds to self-insure themselves from the accustomed barrage of monthly lawsuits. When thieves rip copper wire out of street lights, the streets stay dark. Most state residents would rather go to the dentist these days than queue up and take a number at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hospital emergency rooms neither have room nor act as if there’s much of an emergency.

Traffic flows no better on most of the state’s freeways than it did 40 years ago — and often much worse, given the crumbling infrastructure and increased traffic. Once-excellent K–12 public schools now score near the bottom in nationwide tests. The California state-university system keeps adding administrators to the point where they have almost matched the number of faculty, though half of the students who enter CSU need remedial reading and math. Despite millions of dollars in tutoring, half the students still don’t graduate. The taxpayer is blamed in constant harangues for not ponying up more money, rather than administrators being faulted for a lack of reform.

In 1960, there were far fewer government officials, far fewer prisons, far fewer laws, and far fewer lawyers — and yet the state was a far safer place than it is a half-century later. Technological progress — whether iPhones or Xboxes — can often accompany moral regress. There are not yet weeds in our cities, but those too may be coming.

The average Californian, like the average Greek, forgot that civilization is fragile. Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility — and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.

A keen visitor to Athens — or Los Angeles — during the last decade not only could have seen that things were not quite right, but also could have concluded that they could not go on as they were. And so they are not.

Washington, please take heed.

Comments on reads 1/19 II

2012-01-19T11:54:00.001-08:00

PowerLine: Suicide Watch, Continued

I’m having way too much fun re-reading James Burnham’s Suicide of the West [FP: the book is on the recommended list on the right, which can be ordered from here to support this blog], and can’t resist sharing a few more gems from this wonderful book. Back in the 1960s we began to speak of “limousine liberals,” the worst being those who supported forced busing to achieve racial integration but sent their own kids to exclusive and homogeneous private schools. Today we have “Gulfstream liberals” who jet between their multiple mansions and hector us about our carbon footprint while excusing their own through bogus “carbon offsets.” Burnham had their number (page 190-191):

The more significant achievement of liberalism, by which it confirms its claim to being a major ideology, is its ability to handle the problem of guilt for large numbers of persons without costing them undue personal inconvenience. This is does by elevating the problem to representational, symbolic, and institutional levels. It is not necessary for me to go in person to the slum, jungle, prison, Southern restaurant, state house, or voting precinct and there take a direct hand in accomplishing the reform that will unblock the road to peace, justice, and well-being. Thanks to the reassuring provisions of liberal ideology, I can go about my ordinary business and meanwhile take sufficient account of my moral duties by affirming my loyalty to the correct egalitarian principles, voting for the correct candidates, praising the activists and contributing to their defense funds when they get into trouble, and joining promptly in the outcry against reactionaries who pop up now and then in a desperate effort to preserve power and privilege.

But hypocrisy and fooling the public is not the purview of just liberals. The entire US elite and particularly the political class, liberal and conservative, is playing that game with the plebos. Here’s JoshuaPundit: Bombshell - Newt's Ex-Wife Marianne Unloads On Camera :

Here's another nifty bit from the same 2010 Esquire interview, after Marianne found out about Newt's ongoing affair with Callista:

…
He asked her to just tolerate the affair, an offer she refused.
He’d just returned from Erie, Pennsylvania, where he’d given a speech full of high sentiments about compassion and family values.
The next night, they sat talking out on their back patio in Georgia. She said, “How do you give that speech and do what you’re doing?”
“It doesn’t matter what I do,” he answered. “People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”

These are the people responsible for American decline and certainly not the people to save from it. Suicide of the West indeed.

Rivlin forced to enter Irish Parliament through back door
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators block Knesset speaker's entrance in Ireland • Rivlin asks to speak with demonstrators directly but security personnel do not allow him.

Sammy Revel: Dear Europe, Israel isn't the problem
Assurance of Israel's existence, recognition and promotion of peace and direct contact are part of the solution leading to a stable, prosperous and safer Middle East.

FP: Europe and its good old anti-Semitism is the problem and it’s easy to prove. Europe has traded its Jews (by exterminating or driving them out) for Moslems and look where it is today. And it still blames the Jews.

Morton A. Klein: US should not engage Muslim Brotherhood
It is inexcusable to claim extremists are moderates while assisting them into taking power. Yet Obama is doing just that.
FP: Indeed, reality does not excuse and the US is declining.

PM seeks gradual IDF enlistment for two-thirds of haredim

Netanyahu working on compromise to Tal Law that would have army enlistment rates for ultra-Orthodox communities almost at par with secular levels in the long run, but also extends the controversial blanket exemption by one year.

FP: It’s about time, but (1) I doubt most of the Haredi recruits will be useful to IDF and reliable (2) there will be serious social conflict over this which Israel may not be able to withstand (3) most likely Netanyahu will cave. The chickens of religion and state are coming home to roost.

Comments on reads 1/19

2012-01-19T01:49:00.001-08:00

'Hezbollah has long-range surface-to-air missiles'

"Thousands of SAMs smuggled into Gaza"

FP: The chickens of Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War come home to roost.

Israel Matzav: Newt: 'Palestinians' must give up 'right of return' before negotiating peace

Republican candidate Newt Gingrich is making a big assumption in thinking that the 'Palestinians' want to negotiate peace, but if Newt wins, the 'Palestinians' might actually find themselves with little choice other than to negotiate or lay low for four years.

FP: It is useless to talk about relinquishing the right of return – no Palestinian leader can survive it – but I doubt that Israel wants it either. If Israel returns the land, what happens after the assassination and Hamas takes over and renegs? Would you buy a used car from the Palestinians?

Alex Fishman: Beware Iranian desperation

However, there is another possibility that is much more realistic, much closer to materializing, and unrelated to an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. This scenario asserts that the ones to first pull the trigger will be the Iranians, against the backdrop of Tehran’s economic chokehold and growing global isolation. Iran is starting to be pushed into a corner in the face of existing pressure, and more so as result of pressures to be exerted very soon.

Tehran’s economic collapse is already around the corner. The regime sees the thousands standing in line at banks these days in order to exchange the local currency for dollars – but there are none. On the black market, the gap already stands at 60%. Nobody can predict the breaking point that would prompt Ahmadinejad to act desperately; the point where the ayatollahs feel threatened enough to resort to a military provocation that would bully the world and exact such high price as to prompt the international community to lift the chokehold.

FP: Consistent with my argument that it’s the losing Islamists who are dangerous (see next). Mark Helprin writes in The Mortal Threat From Iran that

Iran can sea-launch from off our coasts. Germany planned this in World War II. If cocaine can be smuggled into the U.S. without interdiction, we cannot dismiss the possibility of an Iranian nuke ending up in Manhattan.

But as per my previous post, chances are better it will use its proxies around the world:

George Friedman: Iran, the U.S. and the Strait of Hormuz Crisis

But that's not how the Iranians operate. For all their rhetoric, they are cautious in their policies. This does not mean they are passive. It simply means that they avoid high-risk moves. They will rely on their covert capabilities and relationships. Those relationships now exist in an environment in which many reasonable Arab leaders see a shift in the balance of power, with the United States growing weaker and less predictable in the region and Iran becoming stronger. This provides fertile soil for Iranian allies to pressure regional regimes into accommodations with Iran.
…
An air campaign against Iran's conventional forces would play to American military strengths, but it has two problems. First, it would be an extended campaign, one lasting months. Iran's capabilities are large and dispersed, and as seen in Desert Storm and Kosovo against weaker opponents, such operations take a long time and are not guaranteed to be effective. Second, the Iranians have counters. One, of course, is the Strait of Hormuz. The second is the use of its special operations forces and allies in and out of the region to conduct terrorist attacks. An extended air campaign coupled with terrorist attacks could increase distrust of American power rather than increase it among U.S. allies, to say nothing of the question of whether Washington could sustain political support in a coalition or within the United States itself.
…
The problem for the United States is that the status quo ultimately works against it. If al Assad survives and if the situation in Iraq proceeds as it has been proceeding, then Iran is creating a reality that will define the region. The United States does not have a broad and effective coalition, and certainly not one that would rally in the event of war. It has only Israel, and Israel is as uneasy with direct military action as the United States is. It does not want to see a failed attack and it does not want to see more instability in the Arab world. For all its rhetoric, Israel has a weak hand to play. The only virtue of the American hand is that it is stronger -- but only relatively speaking.
…
We find ourselves in a situation in which neither side wants to force the other into extreme steps and neither side is in a position to enter into broader accommodations. And that's what makes the situation dangerous. When fundamental issues are at stake, each side is in a position to profoundly harm the other if pressed, and neither side is in a position to negotiate a broad settlement, a long game of chess ensues. And in that game of chess, the possibilities of miscalculation, of a bluff that the other side mistakes for an action, are very real.

FP: In short, another cold war, but for a weakening America and with a less rational enemy.

Comments on reads 1/18

2012-01-18T11:21:00.001-08:00

Michelle Goldberg and Lee Smith: Body Politics

Iran’s birthrate has fallen. Is it because Iranian women have greater opportunity? Or is it a reaction to the Islamist regime?

…

“Preposterous,” my colleague Michelle Goldberg writes in response. She argues that Iran’s fertility rate, similar to that of Iceland and Chile, is evidence of “fitful modernization.” Goldberg explains: “As education and opportunities increase for women, fertility rates go down. That’s as true of Iran, where women now outnumber men by two to one in universities, as it is anywhere.”

Goldberg’s argument ignores the thrust of my column, which was that the debate over whether or not Iran was rational or suicidal was beside the point. Instead, she fastened on to a marginal sentence to defend her version of first-world feminist orthodoxy. The perhaps unintended result is that she winds up arguing that the Iranian regime is actually pro-feminist.

FP: It’s been a major argument of mine that the West is clueless about the Middle East and tends to project from itself. Nowhere is that problem worse than the left and this actually explains the illogical affinity of its progressivism to Islamism. The left is incapable of comprehending anything that does not belong in the left-right framework and forces forces it on everything, even if it does not apply, like the Middle East. This is what explains, for example, why Chomsky is reasonably good at his analysis of the US system, but his perceptions of the ME are idiotic. And that also explains the feminists’ defensive stance on what ought to be their nemesis: the Islamist treatment of women. Ignorance and blind dogma leads to nonsense. (see next)

No love for Ahava as calls to boycott Dead Sea firm grow in UK

British scientists and filmmakers urge London Natural History Museum to pull out of study due to Ahava company’s participation • They say Ahava "extracts, processes and exports Palestinian resources to generate profits that fund an illegal settlement."

FP: Sure, why should Jews employ Palestinians when they can be dependent on UK’s taxpayers while Europe goes bankrupt?

'Hamas, Hezbollah would run riot under Iranian nuclear umbrella'

IDF Planning Directorate's Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel: "They will be more aggressive and will dare to do things that right now they would not dare to do" • Ehud Barak says Israel "very far" from decision to attack Iran.

FP: That’s the core danger of Iranian nukes which the West mostly ignores, stupidly focusing on whether Iran will use them or not. Barak’s declaration is the correct one particularly if you intended to attack, but recent pronouncements by the US and Israel create an impression of assuaging Iran more than anything else.

Daniel Doron: Are we in Sodom?

Tycoons could not have robbed the public without support from MKs and government officials who created the "legal" infrastructure to do so.

FP: Well, duh! The corporate welfare state is a universal characteristic of all capitalist states.

'IDF lost Second Lebanon War because it didn't pray enough'

Interior Minister and leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party Eli Yishai says that during the Six-Day War, when Israel had the weakest army and fought off numerous Arab countries, every Jew "raised his eyes to the Creator."

FP: And he is actually a minister in the country’s cabinet. How do you like him involved in policy making, including security?

Comments on reads 1/17 II

2012-01-17T22:26:00.001-08:00

FP: A personal note on the events in my native Romania. Be wary of any Western media reports and analysis (e.g. CNN, the Economist). They are clueless about the reality of life and politics in Romania and project from Western societies.

Romania has had for the last decade or more utterly corrupt, incompetent, kleptocratic governments and has been essentially a nonfunctioning, anarchic, failed state. It lacks any leadership and has had a thoroughly apathetic public. The latter seems to have snapped, but because of the former it is not clear that improvements are possible. These are all effects of decades of utter destruction by the communist regime of Ceausescu and if Romania ever emerges from these circumstances, it may take several more decades.

Israel Matzav: Barak asked for exercise cancellation?

According to 'Pentagon sources' cited by Jeffrey Goldberg, it was Israel's Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, and not the United States, that asked for the postponement of Operation Austere Challenge 12, the joint anti-missile exercise that was to have taken place in Israel in April.

One of the senior defense officials told me this: "Minister Barak called Secretary Panetta and asked if we could take the exercise off the calendar. The Israelis were concerned that they did not have the resources in place to carry it out effectively." The exercise, which was to begin with a live-fire drill, would have involved several thousand Israelis as well as several thousand American military personnel, and Barak told Panetta, according to these officials, that Israel could not pull together the resources necessary to stage the exercise successfully. "Our military is much bigger than theirs and this exercise was going to consume a much larger portion of their resources," the official said.

FP: Allow me to be skeptical of Goldberg and his senior defense official sources, but knowing Barak, it’s entirely possible. However, the important point here is why would US defence officials or even Goldberg publish that “Israel could not pull the resources for an exercise”, which is much less expensive than the real thing, if it comes? Not only does the US makes it clear to the Iranians that they have nothing to fear, but they also alert them that Israel does not have the resources to defend itself? Knowing Obama, that’s not surprising.

On the other hand, there were references in the media to and Israeli concern to have that size of an American contingent for an extended (indefinite?) time in Israel. If so, it may have not been a bad idea to cancel, which the Americans may not have liked, hence the American leak.

Matt Taibbi: The Best Politicians Money Can Buy

Courtesy of the peerless Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge, a hilarious graphic presentation:

A few days ago we presented a roster of the top contributors to Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign as reported by OpenSecrets. Today we have done the same for two other candidates, representing two previous election cycles: 2008 and 2004. The first table shows Romney's key contributors to date. The other two are the blacklined candidates. We are confident everyone can guess who they are, but just in case they are presented unredacted below the chart. It is ironic that nothing really changes at the end of the day in terms of whose bidding is ultimately performed by the president, whoever it may be. We have highlighted those Romney donors who are identical to previous campaign cycles.

Click here to see ZH's awesomely depressing charts.

FP: The kleptocratic mechanism revealed.

84 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, poll finds

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a new high — 84 percent of Americans — disapproving of the job Congress is doing, with almost two-thirds saying they “disapprove strongly.” Just 13 percent of Americans approve of how things are going after the 112th Congress’s first year of action, solidifying an unprecedented level of public disgust that has both sides worried about their positions less than 10 months before voters decide their fates.

FP: Can you figure out the implications for a re-elected Obama without any electoral constraints and the tendency to disregard constitutional constraints and congressional prerogatives?

Daniel Pipes: Egyptian Nuclear Power Plant Ransacked

Egypt Independent reports on vandalizing, looting, and fighting at the nuclear power plant being built at El-Dabaa, a town in the desert to the west of Alexandria.…

L'Institut d'Égypte, a nuclear power plant site … the situation has degenerated in Egypt to the point that nothing is safe.

The Islamists lack real power but they appear to be in charge; so as Egypt heads into economic decay and social anarchy, they will receive the blame. Could this be what the crafty military tyrants want, so they can swoop in and "save" the country?

FP: I doubt that the army is that sophisticated, but perhaps the old geezers on top might have that illusion. And events may initially develop that way. But as I wrote in the past, I believe that the lower to mid ranks in the miltary are either Islamist or can be readily Islamized. And given enough time and control of social nd education institutions, a process similar to that in Turkey may well occur, with much much more effectiveness and speed, because Egypt starts from a much more Islamized culture.

Elder of Ziyon: Hamas forces beat 20 Shi'ites in Gaza (updated)

UPDATE: Avi Issacharoff in Ha'aretz adds:

The Hamas-run government is convinced that Iran is expanding its influence in Gaza by means of Islamic Jihad.
Gazan sources told Haaretz that Islamic Jihad now contains a group of converts to Shia Islam. The group is led by Iyad al-Hosni, also a convert, who was ousted from Islamic Jihad but recently reinstated, probably under Iranian pressure: Islamic Jihad's leadership visited Iran two months ago, and afterward, al-Hosni was appointed a senior officer in its military wing.
Some of the men arrested on Friday issued a statement on Sunday urging Iran to stop funding Hamas due to its persecution of Shi'ites.
Tehran has already reduced its support for Hamas, among other things because Hamas has refused to support embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Becoming Shi'ite is a growing trend in the Gaza Strip: Hundreds of Sunnis, both Islamic Jihad activists and ordinary people, are known to have converted.

FP: The more they fight among Israel, the better for Israel. But they have the hatred of Jews to unite them, no matter what. But hey, you know that when such things occur, it is a sign of unity, Arab style:

Hamas really wants unity - with Islamic Jihad

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh today called for in-depth talks between Hamas and Islamic Jihad with an eye towards unifying the two terrorist movements.

Daoud Shihab, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad, confirmed that Hamas and Islamic Jihad actually begun in-depth dialogue at home and abroad, in order to achieve unity.

He said, "The unity of our movement with Hamas will form the nucleus of the unity of the Islamic movement in the world", indicating that the meetings "are at home and abroad, in Israeli prisons and are also conducted at the highest levels of leadership" of the two groups.
No doubt this is more evidence of Hamas' peace-loving and pragmatic ways that so many Western experts believe in.

Fatah is moving towards the positions of Hamas, and Hamas is embracing Islamic Jihad. All this is being studiously ignored by the wishful thinkers of the mainstream media who love to hang onto their memes of a pragmatic, compromising Hamas and a moderate, peace loving Palestinian Authority.

Israel Matzav: The invention of the 'Palestinians'

There's a new book out there and it supports the claim that the 'Palestinians' were invented. Here's a blurb about it.

Who are the “Palestinians”? When did they come into being? Why? And how so? What theological, political, historical, and ethical significance does their invention have? How should we understand the historical and religious significance of the recent invention of the “Palestinian people” and the possible invention of a new country called ‘Palestine’? In this groundbreaking text, 27 myth-shattering theses are put forth and argued in detail using the resources of Psychoanalysis, Talmud and Torah, Philosophy, and History. The author engages in criticisms of key thinkers (Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernesto Laclau, Edward Said, etc.) and relies on the work of writers as diverse as Joan Peters, Shlomo Sand, and Rashid Khalidi. Radical views are put forth on various topics including Judaism, the Middle East, and Theology. The Invention of the “Palestinians” is unlike any book you have read.

You can read more about it here. Yes, of course they were invented.

FP: It looks like the book overintellectualizing a basic simple fact: there was no such thing as the Palestinian nation or state. They were invented shortly before the 1967 war as an Arab weapon against Israel.

CAMERA: Carnegie Mellon's Prize for Bigotry

It's a cliché of the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic repertoire: The trusting young Jew who once believed in Israel's righteousness, but learns the "facts," wakes up to the reality that, actually, the nation is a criminal entity and then (heroically) speaks out. Young Jesse Lieberfeld not only produced a lurid screed on the theme, but won a prize for it sponsored by the Carnegie Mellon English department, Student Affairs, and the Office of the President.

Jesse laments that:

I was forever reminded ... to be proud of all the suffering our people had overcome in order to finally achieve their dream in the perfect society of Israel.
This last mandatory belief was one which I never fully understood, but I always kept the doubts I had about Israel's spotless reputation to the back of my mind. "Our people" were fighting a war, one I did not fully comprehend, but I naturally assumed that it must be justified...
Yet as I came to learn more about our so-called "conflict" with the Palestinians, I grew more concerned. I routinely heard about unexplained mass killings, attacks on medical bases and other alarmingly violent actions for which I could see no possible reason. "Genocide" almost seemed the more appropriate term, yet no one I knew would have ever dreamed of portraying the war in that manner; they always described the situation in shockingly neutral terms.

No one he knew would dream of portraying Israel harshly? How about Daniel Lieberfeld, his father, who signed an anti-Israel petition at the height of the terror war against Israel in August 2001?

Why is Jesse reminded of Martin Luther King in all this? When friends on his school bus are impervious to "a fresh round of killings" and urge him simply to "defend our race" Jesse recalls the civil rights leader:

Where had I heard that before? Wasn't it the same excuse our own country had used to justify its abuses of African-Americans 60 years ago?

Hence the essay and the accolades. Jesse explains that speaking out against Israel is like King speaking out against white supremacists.

Jesse's prize, part of a 2012 Martin Luther King Writing Award and brainchild of Jim Daniels, the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English, is described in a university press release.

Among many questions is why and how poet Jim Daniels came to hold anti-Israel views so extreme that he apparently believes the country is perpetrating a "genocide" (against a population that has been growing at a healthy clip for 60 years) and disregarded Martin Luther King's own strong support for the Jewish state.

FP: An excellent example of how anti-Semitic indoctrination has become part of the mainstream, even ivi-league Western academic system. Elder of Ziyon has more on how, sadly, these views were induced into Lieberfeld by his American Jewish environment, particularly his Rabbi. His letter to Lieberfeld is a recommended read. This is validation of my argument that most American Jews internalize rather than combat anti_semitism, a classic reaction by assimilating Jews.

Comments on reads 1/17

2012-01-17T19:05:00.001-08:00

JoshuaPundit: "I Got Bin Laden" - And Why Obama's Big Boast Might Have Been A Huge Mistake

"..Osama bin Laden will never again walk the face of this Earth. That’s what change is."

…

Osama bin Laden certainly deserved death if any one did. But foreign policy is based on strategic goals,not on simply meting out justice to those who've murdered Americans. If President Obama's chief concern was punishing people who've murdered Americans, we wouldn't be aiding the Palestinian Authority, Hamas or the Hezbollah-controlled government of Lebanon and Iran would be a smoking crater right now, with the mullahs, President Ahmadinejad and a lot of other members of that government would be halal crisps.

…

So let's reiterate, shall we? The chief foreign policy triumph President Obama continually boasts about consists of taking out a largely defanged terrorist. It cost us millions of dollars, inflamed an already unfriendly but necessary relationship between the US and Pakistan, burnt our intel network in that country, gave the Chinese and probably the Russians and Iranians a good look at American state of the art stealth technology that cost additional millions to develop, and helped relocate al-Qaeda to the heart of the Middle East after we had largely driven them out.

'Foreign policy achievement' or a fiasco being used for political effect? You be the judge.

FP: I keep arguing that the West has two, among others, major deficiencies: it lacks strategic thinking and cunning. These have increased exponentially with the Obama administration in power.

Obama has made more ridiculous statements but, unfortunately, it won’t make much of a difference. Between the ridiculous bunch of Republican candidates and the gullible American electorate, he’ll get re-elected. Boy do I wish to be proven wrong!

The Mighty Fahvaag: Comment on the post on Romney at the Optimistic Conservative blog.

The problem is that I don’t find Romney (fundamentally a Wealthy Wall Street Liberal Democrat masquerading as a Republican) persuasive at all. He’s an executive summary, talking points guy who speaks really fast, doesn’t believe a word of it, and doesn’t particularly care what you think anyway.

1. He failed miserably as Governor of Massachusetts. His re-elect numbers were scraping the bottom of Boston Harbor.

2. He is craven. He began running for President half way through that failed term, and took the decision to lie about why he wasn’t running again (political self-preservation) because if he had lost, he’d have been toast for higher office.

3. He is an unprincipled, rudderless, weathercock who swerves into the wind to suit whoever has the biggest paycheck for him.

If the Establishment GOP succeeds in nominating Willard, I refuse to vote for him. Not only that, but his probable Nixonian Presidency will be so liberal, feckless, and disappointing that it will finally kill off the current iteration of the Republican Party.

A Romney administration will be “no change”, and a Liberal nightmare… The election of 2016 will shape up to be a race between the Democrats and whatever Neo-Tory party forms to rule over the rubble pile.

…

The Dems are going to destroy Romney, they have been planning to since 2009. The Establishment and the Conservative media just walked right into the trap.

FP: Couldn’t have put it better myself. Romney vs. Obama: the dictionary definition of leadership crisis and accelerated decline.

Palestinian Media Watch: PA Mufti calls for the killing of Jews quoting Islamic Hadith (video at link)

FP: Somebody commented on Martin Kramer’s Facebook’s page that

The same video uploaded by PMW in youtube was almost immediately removed: "This video has been removed because its content violated YouTube's Terms of Service." I don't know if they also removed the original in Arabic with no translation... but I won't bet on that.

I responded:

It was removed not because of its content, but because such content should not be available to the West, it's doesn't fit the narrative that the Jews are the only villains/murderers in the world.

UPDATE by PMW:

In response to yesterday's PMW video-bulletin which showed the PA Mufti's speech that Muslims' destiny is to kill Jews, YouTube has frozen PMW's account. All PMW videos are working except this one but the account is frozen and PMW cannot upload new videos for the next two weeks.

Theodore Dalrymple: The European Crack-Up (Greeks aren’t German)

The journalist then asked whether I thought that nationalism was dangerous. The question implied that the choice before Europe was between the European Union and fascism: that all that stood between us and the ascension to power of new Mussolinis, Francos, and Hitlers were the free lunches of senior Eurocrats. I replied that dangerous forms of nationalism existed, of course, but that in the present circumstances, supranationalism represented by far the greater danger. Not only was such supranationalism undemocratic, for it reflected no widespread demand or sentiment among the population; it also risked provoking the very kind of nationalism against which it was to stand as the bulwark. Further, the breakup of supranational polities in Europe tends to be messy, as history demonstrates.

I was not entirely fair, however, in implying that no one could say what the European Project was. José Manuel Barroso, a fiery Portuguese Maoist student leader who became the preternaturally dull president of the European Commission—perhaps not as great a change as one might suppose, many a revolutionary being a frustrated bureaucrat—once let the cat out of the bag. Asked the same question that the journalist asked me, Barroso responded, “Sometimes I like to compare the European Union as a creation to the organization of empires.” He hastened to add that the E.U. was not a traditional empire. But it is surely the case that an empire in Europe, large, rich, and powerful, would assuage the feelings of a political class frustrated by having inherited a smaller role in world affairs than that of their predecessors, who ruled real empires many times larger than their own countries.

…

It happens that the central offices of the E.U. are located in Brussels. Yet the political difficulties of Belgium do not give the European unionists pause for thought—or, if they do pause, they reach a peculiar conclusion: that what has not worked in two centuries in a small area with only two populations will work in a few years in a much larger area with a multitude of populations. It does not occur to the unionists that different countries really are different: not a little bit, but radically, in culture, language, history, traditions, and economies. The term “European” is not meaningless, but whatever content the term may have, it is not sufficient for the formation of a viable polity.

…

Europeans have painted themselves into a corner. If the debts of European countries are mutualized, there can be only one country that lays down the rules of mutualization, and it won’t be France, struggling with a large deficit, large debts, and a large trade imbalance. The historian John Robert Seeley famously wrote that the British Empire had been formed “in a fit of absence of mind”; so could it be with German hegemony in Europe.

…

In short, the incontinent spending of many European governments, which awarded whole populations unearned benefits at the expense of generations to come, has—along with a megalomaniacal currency union—produced a crisis not merely economic but social, political, and even civilizational. The European Union that was supposed to put an end to war on the continent has resuscitated antagonisms that might end in bellicosity, if not in outright war. And the European Project stands revealed as what any sensible person could have seen it always was: something akin to the construction of a massive, post-Tito Yugoslavia.

FP: When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Unfortunately, it’s the nature of dominant power decline to accelerate, not attenuate.

Countries To Sell Natural Resources Bounty (h/t JoshuaPudit)

Canada is now looking to Asian countries to market its abundance of oil, natural gas and minerals as plans to build the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have stalled with the U.S. administration.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will travel to China next month to discuss selling Canada's bounty to the rapidly growing nation.

The preferred initial plan was to build the $7 billion Keystone pipeline to deliver Alberta's oilsands crude to refineries in Texas on the Gulf of Mexico.

Harper reasoned that the U.S. government would prefer to deal with a friendly neighbor to help meet its energy needs while creating thousands of jobs.

With widespread opposition by U.S. environmentalists, the Obama administration has delayed its decision on whether to approve the project proposed by energy giant TransCanada Pipelines.

The new plan would market to China and Asian countries through the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would transport Alberta's oil and natural gas to British Columbia for shipment by tankers.

FP: See what I mean by lack of strategic thinking?

PowerLine: Solyndra to Pay Bonuses!?!?

So says the Washington Times: up to $50,000 as “incentive” payments to top executives. ”Incentive” for what–burning up taxpayer dollars, with more taxpayer dollars?

FP: The pillar of corporate welfare state: Management can’t lose. When doing well, bonuses. When failing, not firing, but also bonuses, to “retain management”.

Comments on reads 1/16 (UPDATED)

2012-01-16T15:39:00.001-08:00

Elliott Abrams: How Not To React To Provocations From Iran

If there is any chance of avoiding a military confrontation with Iran or the Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, that chance will be the product of very resolute American policy toward Iran. In the last few days we have seen more evidence that such a policy is lacking.
First came the report that Iranian boats are harassing American naval vessels in the Persian Gulf.

Iranian Navy speed boats harassed US naval vessels in two recent incidents in the Strait of Hormuz, a senior US defense official said, confirming a CNN report. The first incident occurred as the USS New Orleans, an amphibious transport ship, was sailing last week through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. Three Iranian Navy speed boats rapidly approached within 500 yards of the US ship, according to US officials cited by CNN. The second incident involved a US Coast Guard cutter off the Kuwaiti coast, similarly approached by an Iranian speedboat. Sailors aboard the cutter USCGC Adak reported seeing Iranians aboard the speed boat brandishing AK-47 assault rifles and a heavy machine gun, CNN said. “I can confirm there was some harassment,” a senior official told AFP.

How do we respond to such provocations? Here is one possible answer:

Israel and the United States have postponed a massive joint defense exercise, which was expected to be carried out in the coming weeks, in order to avoid an escalation with Iran, Channel 2 reported on Sunday.

That is the wrong response, especially at a moment when Iran is going full steam ahead with its nuclear program and now indulging itself in direct threats to Gulf oil producers. Here is a new report:

Iran has starkly warned Gulf states not to make up for any shortfall in its oil exports under new U.S. and EU sanctions, adding yet another layer of peril to the international showdown over its nuclear programme. If Arab neighbours compensate for a looming EU ban on Iranian imports, “we would not consider these actions to be friendly,” Iran’s representative to OPEC, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, was quoted as saying by the Sharq newspaper on Sunday. “They will be held responsible for what happens” in that case, he said, adding ominously: “One cannot predict the consequences.”

Iran’s Arab neighbors are not rattled, as this story suggests:

Saudi Arabia says it has enough oil output capacity to meet global customers’ needs if new sanctions keep Iran from exporting oil, a top U.S. Republican lawmaker said on Friday. House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor spoke to Reuters by telephone from Europe after several days of meetings in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi was among the officials he met. “The Saudi government indicatedthat it was ready and able to meet needs of its customers,” Cantor told Reuters.

In fact, comparing this Saudi reaction to the cancellation of the US-Israel maneuvers, we are perhaps more rattled than they– which if accurate is a sad story, as is the story of failures to react to completely unprovoked harassment by the Iranian navy. Surely such an American stance will do nothing to persuade Iran’s rulers that we are serious about preventing their acquisition of nuclear weapons by whatever means necessary and that “all options are on the table.” Such a stance therefore makes an eventual confrontation between the United States and Iran, or U.S. acquiescence in the Iranian nuclear program, more likely.

FP: Didn’t I say that the US is deterred by Iran? Has been America.

Barry Rubin: The era of the Muslim Brotherhood

The alternative wishful-thinking theory is that being in power will moderate the brotherhood. Participating in elections, proposing laws in parliament, and running government departments is supposed to convert brotherhood leaders to compromise and pragmatism.

For Israelis, however, all of these claims sound precisely like the argument made during the 1990s’ peace process and regarding Yasser Arafat. This argument also didn’t work in Iran, Lebanon, or the Gaza Strip.
True, the radical regimes are more cautious in their pronouncements and don’t instantly launch wars. But that is because they are consolidating power at home and are just getting started. Even in Turkey, the Islamists in power have worked tirelessly to transform their societies, assure that they never lose power, and radicalize their foreign policies. Turkey’s break with Israel and alignment with Hamas and Hezbollah provides a vivid case study.

FP: Those who don’t learn from the past and defy reality, are doomed to repeat it and will not survive.

Hackers crash Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and El Al websites

Tit-for-tat cyberwar between Israeli and Saudi hackers escalates as alleged Saudi hacker threatens to target Israeli sites day before they crash • "0xOmar" taunts Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon in video interview broadcast on Israeli television.

Zappos Says Hackers May Have Accessed Customer Account Details
The account information for millions of customers at Zappos.com, an online shoe and clothing company, may have been compromised by a hacking attack, the company’s chief executive, Tony Hsieh, wrote on Sunday in an e-mail to employees.

FP: See what I mean? The online recorded life is in existential danger.

UPDATE: And Hamas knows a good thing when it sees it:

Hamas Calls for Escalation in Internet Hacking Against Israel
In this day and age it pays to not be automated and on the Net.

Ultra-Orthodox sect stages mass riots over fraud arrests

Following the arrest of five members of an extremist ultra-Orthodox sect on suspicion of massive financial offenses, members of the sect riot in the streets of Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh • Protesters pelt police with rocks, call them "Nazis."

FP: Israel’s other existential problem.

Comments on reads 1/15 II

2012-01-15T13:36:00.001-08:00

US-Israeli military drill cancelled due to 'budgetary reasons'

Set for May, "Austere Challenge 12" was supposed to be the largest drill ever held between the two countries • U.S. Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey to arrive in Israel later this week to receive assurances from Israel that it won't strike Iran.

FP: Do you remember when I wrote that Israel looks more and more like Czechoslovakia and Obama like Chamberlain? Here’s another warning: If Obama is re-elected Israel should consider the US an enemy. Please do not count on the “support of Congress and the American people”, it won’t make a difference. And the Palestinians see it:

Palestinians consider ending peace talks, turning to UN

PA official says there will be only one more Israel-PA meeting before Quartet's January 26 deadline for resuming direct negotiations; Abbas may ask UN to demand end to settlement building as alternative to talks.

The Palestinians are considering ending the talks with Israel in Jordan and searching for other alternatives, such as asking the UN to demand an end to construction in the settlements, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported Sunday.

What are the chances that Obama will veto it this time around?

Israeli officials reject report Mossad killed Iranian scientist

Time Magazine cites Western intelligence sources as saying Israel killed Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan last week • Iran blames U.S., Britain and Israel for assassination, threatens "tormenting" revenge.

FP: As I already suggested in a previous post, I would not bet against an attempt by the US to prevent hostile actions by Iran. The US is deterred by Iran and, as it usually does with allies, it is distancing itself from Israel (see previous) and signaling to Iran that Israel it’s on its own. Looks like the cancellation of the dril is further validation:

US EUCOM: Missile drill will take place later this year

Initially scheduled for April, "Austere Challenge" is billed as largest such joint drill ever; Israeli officials say drill was canceled amid concern it could lead to an escalation with Iran.

Now, what would you say, Iran perceives in all this?

Hezbollah rejects UN call to lay down arms

Hezbollah leader mocks U.N. concern over arsenal • Says Hezbollah needs weapons to confront Israel • U.N. chief Ban says he requested increased protection for international peacekeepers stationed in southern Lebanon.

FP: But of course, Hizb’allah know how ridiculous the UN is, and it sits on the UNSC!! Only the idiotic West relies on that monstruous atrocity.

67 percent of murder cases in 2011 involved Israeli Arabs

Joint effort by Public Security Ministry and police aims to improve individual and communal safety in the non-Jewish sector • Special police units stationed in predominantly Arab towns of Taybeh and Nazareth

FP: Culture is what it is and difficult to change. But, no doubt, it’s Israel’s fault, as an occupier.

Diaspora Jews join the cyberwar

Jewish hacker threatens to publish 30 million Arab email addresses • Hacker by the name of "Hannibal Lecter" will publish thousands of Arabs' email accounts daily for the next 55 years • Says he does not believe in publishing credit card information.

FP: As I already warned, we are not far from a first major disaster via the Internet which may bring the whole shabang down.

Ted Gup: Diss 'Like'

But having spent the last 30 years in the company of the possessed, I have come to view "like" as something more pernicious, a kind of carrier, like the flea that brings with it the plague. It is the byproduct of a culture that is loath to set standards, pathologically averse to confrontation, and prostrate in the face of precipitously declining verbal and writing skills. The endless cascade of "likes" is nothing more than the sound of our own collective dereliction, a verbal cue that we care less about our students and more about teaching to the test, conducting perfunctory self-assessments, winning student-evaluation pageants, and maintaining the illusion that all is well—the oral equivalent of grade inflation.

If we have succeeded in leaving no child behind, it is perhaps because we have condemned children to a common cluster of mediocrity, like, you know, unable to speak, and worse yet, unaware of the severity of their impediment. It is a form of cruelty, a velvet noose they will forever wear around their necks as they venture out into the world, presenting themselves in job interviews, addressing clients, patients, judges, customers, and peers, reminding one and all with whom they come into contact that, notwithstanding a diploma and high GPA, they have failed and, worse yet, we have failed them.

FP: Decline.

Casino plans sprout in US as states seek revenue

States have embraced casinos, after years of trepidation about their societal costs, for two simple reasons: a promise of a rich new revenue source, plus the possibility of stimulating tourism.

FP: More decline.

Collected links

2012-01-15T01:39:00.001-08:00

B. Chernitsky: Antisemitic and Anti-Israel Articles on Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Website

How to be a dictator (MUST READ!)

Erika Dreifus: Among the Literati

Ehud Yaari: Sinai: A New Front

Elliot Jager: Two Palestines, Complete

Giulio Meotti: Israel, the pistol nation

Paul A. Rahe : The Last Moderate Democrat Calls It Quits

Gareth Harding: The Myth of Europe

Bruce Thornton: Iran on the Brink

Adam J. White: Confirmation Bias: A Shameless Flip-Flop on Recess Appointments

Jackson Diehl: Obama’s foreign initiatives have been failures

Eric Trager: The Muslim Brotherhood's Radical Plan for Egypt

Y. Yehoshua (MEMRI): On Tunisian Al-Nahda Party Leader Rached Ghannouchi's Conflicting Statements in the U.S.

Shelby Steele: The Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood

Jonathan D. Halevi: Will Palestinian Reconciliation Lead to a Hamas Takeover of the PLO? (MUST READ)

Comments on reads 1/15

2012-01-15T01:34:00.001-08:00

Israel Matzav: Obama condemns assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist; Santorum disagrees

There are only two explanations for the Obama administration's actions. One is that Obama still thinks he can talk Iran out of developing nuclear weapons. Sorry, we Israelis are not going to stake our lives on that one forever.

The other is that Obama really doesn't care if the Iranians get nuclear weapons.
Unless you think Obama is delusional or stupid, I'd go with the second one.

FP: There is a third explanation, which I advanced here: the US does not have the wherewithal for a third war—it has lost a major one, is losing another and is bankrupt; Obama is doing his utmost to prevent Iran from starting it. Now we can see why the Iraq war was a disastruous strategic blunder.

I agree with Carl:

Some of you may recall that earlier this week, I was critical of Secretary of State Clinton for denying US involvement in Roshan's assassination rather than just saying "no comment." If Obama really means what he says about Israel being a US ally (and I honestly don't believe that he means it, but I believe that most of the American people do mean it), the two countries should be acting like a married couple with a unified approach to everything that's going on. That means letting the Iranians think that everyone is out to get them unless they stop pursuing nuclear weapons. Somehow, Time Magazine doesn't seem to see it that way.

At this point the Obama administration is an extremely unreliable ally. I find its denials of involvement – even if true – cowardly, disloyal, against US interests and certainly stupid (like the next). There is no ally that the US has not betrayed at one time or another and relying on it is a pretty dangerous game.

CAMERA: Ex-Arafat Advisor Mark Perry and the 'False Flag' Story

Mark Perry, the former advisor for Yasir Arafat and an advocate of U.S. engagement with Hamas and Hezbollah whose interpretation of General David Petraus' statements concerning U.S.-Israeli relations were discredited by Petraus himself, is at it again. Ha'aretz reports:

A senior Israeli government official rushed to denounce a report Friday which alleged Mossad agents had posed as CIA officers in order to recruit members of a Pakistan-based terror group to commit assassinations and attacks in Iran.
The Israeli official called the Foreign Policy article "absolute nonsense." Quoting U.S. intelligence memos, journalist Mark Perry's story reported that the Mossad operation was carried out in 2007-2008, behind the back of the U.S. government and infuriated then U.S. President George W. Bush.

Ha'aretz's description of Perry, the former advisor to Arafat whose foray into the Petraus affair was discredited, as simply a "journalist" is as unconscionable as Ynet referring to anti-Israel activist Richard Silverstein as simply a "U.S. blogger." (And Ynet was back in the act on this last week.)

FP: There are plenty of Arabists at the CIA and even those who envy the effectiveness of Israeli intelligence relative to the incompetence of the CIA. So I would not put it past them to use Perry, a known anti-Israel hack, as conduit for these claims.

Incidentally, the comments on Perry’s article are pretty instructive. The kind of blind anti-Semitism that used to characterize the lunatic fringe are now infiltrating mainstream media and blogs. Even elite schools:

Alan Dershowitz: Gilad Atzmon, vile anti-Semite, makes new Friends

The Friends Schools around the country are legendary. They are regarded as among the most elite schools in the world. Presidents’ children attend them; my own daughter and nephew were students. That is why it is so shocking that the Friends Seminary in New York has lent its imprimatur to a notorious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier.

…

The headmaster has not responded to my letter, but he had the director of development send me an email saying that Atzmon was invited “solely for his musical accomplishments” and that the invitation was extended by “the Meetinghouse Jazz Orchestra.”

I cannot imagine an overtly homophobic, sexist or racist musician being invited “solely for his musical accomplishments.” Atzmon is famous (really, infamous) not because he is a distinguished musician, but rather because he is a notorious anti-Semite whose blogs are featured on neo-Nazi websites all over the world. Moreover, when he was previously invited by the school to address a class, the teacher distributed one of his bigoted essays from his anti-Semitic website.

So, please, spare me the American exceptionalism claims. In crisis it behaves like everybody else: the scapegoating of Jews increase.

Report: Obama Refused To Take Pictures With American Troops During Trip To Baghdad…

Michael Hastings’ new book, The Operators, jabs at what could be a vulnerable spot for the Obama Administration, the president’s relationship with the troops.The book describes a visit to Baghdad:

After the talk, out of earshot from the soldiers and diplomats, he starts to complain. He starts to act very un-Obamalike, according to a U.S. embassy official who helped organize the trip in Baghdad.
He’s asked to go out to take a few more pictures with soldiers and embassy staffers. He’s asked to sign copies of his book. “He didn’t want to take pictures with any more soldiers; he was complaining about it,” a State Department official tells me. “Look, I was excited to meet him. I wanted to like him. Let’s just say the scales fell from my eyes after I did. These are people over here who’ve been fighting the war, or working every day for the war effort, and he didn’t want to take fucking pictures with them?”

FP: I can only repeat Carl (Israel Matzav): What a contemptible piece of ~~dirt~~ shit. See also Obama declares Fort Hood a 'work accident,' denies dead soldiers' purple hearts.

Israel Matzav: Why there's no peace in the Middle East

FP: If the argument that Islamists will moderate in power is true, why doesn’t Hamas confirm it? This should clarify why its proponents are so desperate to pretend that the slightest declaration by the Islamists to fool them is evidence for their argument.

comments on reads 1/14

2012-01-14T13:43:00.001-08:00

David Bernstein: “Israel-Firster”

The following passage from Kirchik’s piece is relevant: “While CAP publicly denied that its employees were trafficking in anti-Semitism, an e-mail from the organization’s vice president, obtained by The Jerusalem Post, deemed ‘Israel-firster,’ to be ‘terrible, anti-Semitic language.’” That’s further then I’d go, in the absence of proof of intent. But the point, once again, is that self-styled “Progressives,” as a rule, bend over backwards to be politically correct and hypersensitive on linguistic usage as pertains to members of minority groups. They wouldn’t deign to use the equivalent of Israel-firsters to refer to other minority groups (indeed, they’d likely be attacking “conservatives” for using such language), and if they did, they would surely take some care to examine the origins and implications of the phrase. But when it comes to using borderline anti-Semitic language, not only does sensitivity go by the wayside for certain Progressives, but they delude themselves into thinking that by ignoring Jewish sensitivities, they are “speaking truth to power.”

So I’m neither claiming that the bloggers in question are anti-Semitic, or had anti-Semitic intent, or that, in general, writers should engage in self-censorship on matters related to Israel. What I am arguing is that there is a double standard, in which standards that are applied to other groups are not applied to Jews. (I made a related point here.)

FP: I have argued that the Jews are the only minority group for which racism is permitted. See also

James Kirchick’s A case of leftist 'McCarthyism'?

The left is constantly complaining that the debate about Israel is restricted, that one can't criticize Israel without "risking" his career. Reality is in fact the opposite. Figures ranging from University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer to journalists Peter Beinart and Andrew Sullivan have all seen their careers blossom as a result of their harsh and unrelenting criticism of Israel. Indeed, obsessively attacking Israel is a bona-fide way to resuscitate one's career, not destroy it. As a measure, consider the fact that employees at mainstream liberal institutions feel comfortable using the sort of language popularized by white supremacists and Holocaust-deniers.

It isn't just figures on the medium and lower rungs of think tanks using such foul rhetoric: "Israel-firster" and "Likudnik" are favorites of Time's Joe Klein, as well as Salon's Glenn Greenwald, one of America's most popular liberal bloggers, who refers to "the many Israel-firsters in the U.S. Congress."

Since the 1950s, liberals have routinely accused conservatives of "McCarthyism." Now the tables have turned, and it is leftists questioning the loyalties of American Jews. Judging what's in a country's "interest" is highly subjective; it is the very reason why there exists such passionate and necessary debate about the purpose and tactics of American foreign policy. So-called "progressives" should stop mimicking the far right and engage in that debate without questioning the allegiance of their fellow Americans.

Mark Steyn: The Ron Paul Faction

America is responsible for about 43 percent of the planet’s military expenditure. This is partly a reflection of the diminished military budgets of everyone else. As Britain and the other European powers learned very quickly in the decades after the Second World War, when it comes to a choice between unsustainable welfare programs or a military of global reach, the latter is always easier to cut. It is, needless to say, a false choice. By mid-decade the Pentagon’s huge bloated budget will be less than the mere interest payments on U.S. debt. Much of which goes to bankrolling the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Nevertheless, faced with reducing funding for China’s military or our own, the latter will be the easier choice for Washington.

FP: I see nothing but the decline of the West in Steyn’s comment (see next).

Tony Badran: Assad finds his margin to maneuver

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is waiting for the monitors’ report before determining how to proceed. Leaks have emerged about the options the administration is mulling, and those continue to revolve mainly around plans for a strong Security Council resolution. However, this option remains unlikely in the near future, given the likelihood of continued Russian resistance. In other words, there seems to be nothing drastic on the horizon that would change the existing dynamic in Syria.

What has been remarkable about the administration’s policy is its apparent failure to anticipate the current quandary. In looking for the Arab League to assume leadership, Washington badly misread Arab dynamics. In that sense, betting so much on the Arab initiative was effectively a self-laid trap, of which Russia took full advantage.

The result of this approach has been to cede the initiative to the Russians. One thing Moscow has apparently tried to do is sponsor a national-unity government bringing together Assad and elements of the opposition, namely the National Coordination Body (NCB) led by Haitham Mannaa. This plan had Iranian support as well, as Tehran had reached out to Mannaa months ago.

FP: How pathetic to see the US to defer to the UN and the Arab League, lose and thus make its weakness clear. Get use to it, this is how the PostWest will operate, with China, Russia and Iran in the saddle.

Andrew McCarthy: Right, Wrong, and Romney

More to the point, the choice in a nomination contest is not candidate A versus one’s ideal nominee. It is candidate A versus candidates B, C, D, et al. On that score, the contest was no contest — Mitt was easily, in my mind, the best remaining in the field.

…

I’m still very worried that the match-up with President Obama does not favor Governor Romney. I don’t mean to overrate Obama’s strength or underrate the sundry weaknesses of the other GOP contenders. But Romney’s match-up problem is glaring.

FP: Ah, Andrew, but that’s precisely the problem: why is Romney the best in a large group that are even worse? Why can’t America offer anybody better? And my answer has been clear: leadership crisis. It is a major component of societal decline.

To reiterate: there seems to be no candidate able to beat the arguably worst US president. And, as JoshuaPundit has correctly argued, beating Obama is THE most important thing. Although, when it comes to domestic policies, who wins is really not important, as the Wall Street kleptocracy will own any president.

Matt Taibbi on the Wall Street owned kleptocracy ruling America

2012-01-14T11:59:00.001-08:00

FP: The main point here is how rotten the kleptocracy running this country is, without any difference as to who is elected in Washington.

But as an aside, sometimes blaming Jews is justified. We really don’t need such assholes to provide ammunition for anti-Semitism.

Everything You Need to Know About Wall Street, in One Brief Tale

If there was ever a news story that crystalized the moral dementia of modern Wall Street in one little vignette, this is it.

Newspapers in Colorado today are reporting that the elegant Hotel Jerome in Aspen, Colorado, will be closed to the public from today through Monday at noon.

Why? Because a local squire has apparently decided to rent out all 94 rooms of the hotel for three-plus days for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

The hotel’s general manager, Tony DiLucia, would say only that the party was being thrown by a "nice family," but newspapers are now reporting that the Daddy of the lucky little gal is one Jeffrey Verschleiser, currently an executive with Goldman, Sachs.

At first, I couldn't remember how I knew that name. But then I looked it up and saw an explosive Atlantic magazine story, published last year, called, "E-mails Suggest Bear Stearns Cheated Clients Out Of Millions." And then I remembered that piece, and it hit me: Jeffrey Verschleiser is one of the biggest assholes in the entire world!

The story begins at Bear Stearns, where Verschleiser used to work, up until the company exploded, in large part because of him personally.

Back in the day, you see, Verschleiser headed Bear’s mortgage-backed securities operations. Toward the end of his tenure, his particular specialty began with what at the time was the usual industry-wide practice, putting together gigantic packages of crappy subprime mortgages and dumping them on unsuspecting clients.

But Verschleiser reportedly went beyond that. According to a lawsuit later filed by a bond insurer called Ambac, Verschleiser also masterminded a kind of double-dipping scheme. What he would do is sell a bunch of toxic mortgages into a trust, which like all mortgage trusts had provisions written into their pooling and servicing agreements (PSAs) that required the original lenders to buy the loans back if they went into default.

So Verschleiser would sell bad mortgages back to the banks at a discount, but instead of passing the money back to the trust, he and other Bear execs allegedly pocketed the funds.

From the Atlantic story by reporter Teri Buhl:

The traders were essentially double-dipping -- getting paid twice on the deal. How was this possible? Once the security was sold, they didn't have a legal claim to get cash back from the bad loans -- that claim belonged to bond investors -- but they did so anyway and kept the money. Thus, Bear was cheating the investors they promised to have sold a safe product out of their cash. According to former Bear Stearns and EMC traders and analysts who spoke with The Atlantic, Nierenberg and Verschleiser were the decision-makers for the double dipping scheme.

Imagine giving someone a hundred bucks to buy a bushel of apples, but making a deal with him that he has to buy back any apples that turn out to have worms in them. That's what happened here: Bear sold the wormy apples back to the farmer, but instead of taking the money from those sales and passing it on to you, they simply kept the money, according to the suit.

How wormy were those apples? In one infamous email cited in the suit, a Bear exec colorfully described the content of the bonds they were selling:

Bear deal manager Nicolas Smith wrote an e-mail on August 11th, 2006 to Keith Lind, a Managing Director on the trading desk, referring to a particular bond, SACO 2006-8, as "SACK OF SHIT [2006-]8" and said, "I hope your [sic] making a lot of money off this trade."

So did Verschleiser himself know the mortgages were bad? Not only did he know it, he went so far as to tell his colleagues in writing that it was a waste of money to even bother performing due diligence on the bad bonds:

Jeffrey Verschleiser even said in an e-mail that he knew this was an issue. He wrote to his peer Mike Nierenberg in March 2006, "[we] are wasting way too much money on Bad Due Diligence." Yet a year later nothing had changed. In March 2007, Verschleiser wrote to Nierenberg again about the same due diligence firm, "[w]e are just burning money hiring them."

One of the ways that banks like Bear managed to convince investors to buy these bonds was by wrapping them in bond insurance through companies like Ambac, commonly known as “monoline” insurers. Investors who knew the bonds were insured were less worried about default.

Verschleiser, seeing that Bear had gotten firms like Ambac to insure its “sack of shit” bonds, saw here a new opportunity to make money. He first induced the monolines to insure the worthless bonds, then bet against the insurers! (Is it any wonder this guy ended up hired by Goldman, Sachs?) From the Atlantic story again:

Then in November 2007, Verschleiser wrote to his risk committee that he knew insurers for mortgage securities were going to have big financial problems. He suggested they multiply by ten times the short bet he'd just made against stocks like Ambac. These e-mails show Verschleiser's trading desk bragging to firm leadership that he made $55 million off shorting insurers' stock in just three weeks.

So in essence, Verschleiser was triple-dipping. First he was selling worthless “sacks of shit” to investors, representing them as good investments. Then, he kept the money from the return sales of the wormy apples. And then, on top of that, he made money by betting against the insurers he was sticking with these toxic assets.

We all know what happened from there. Bear, Stearns went under, thanks in large part to insane schemes like Verschleiser’s, and all of us were forced to pick up at least part of the tab as the Fed spent billions subsidizing Bear’s emergency takeover by JP Morgan Chase. In subsequent litigation, Chase has steadfastly refused to buy back the bad mortgages dumped on investors by the likes of Verschleiser, and has even fought tooth and nail to prevent the information in the Ambac suit from being made public.

Ambac went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010 for a variety of reasons, some of which had nothing to do with its losses in deals like these. But certainly Ambac and other monoline insurers like MBIA suffered for having insured worthless mortgage bonds sold onto the market by the Verschleisers of the world. Ambac in its suit asserted that it paid out over $641 million in claims related to the bonds from the Bear deals.

With all of this, though, Verschleiser landed happily on his feet. He reportedly heads Goldman’s mortgage division now. And after cutting a mile-wide swath of losses through the American economy, helping destroy two venerable firms in Bear and Ambac, bilking the taxpayer for untold millions more (he is also named in a lawsuit filed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency for allegedly speeding bad loans onto securitization before they defaulted), Verschleiser is now living the contented life of a proud family man, renting out a 94-room hotel for three days for his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

It’s certainly heartening that Verschleiser is spending this money on his daughter instead of, say, hiring a busload of Jamaican hookers to spend the weekend lounging with him in a hot tub full of Beluga caviar. People ought to give their children the best, I guess. But there’s this, too: at a time when one in four Americans has zero or negative net worth, renting a 94-room hotel for three days for a tweenager party might already be pushing the edge of the good taste/tact envelope. Even for the most honest millionaire in Aspen, it would seem a little gauche.

But for this burglarizing dickhead to do it? It’s breathtaking. I hope he at least invited his bankrupted investors to the pool party.

p.s. Since this blog was posted, I've received a number of letters all asking the same question -- how could it be possible that what Verschleiser did is not illegal? How is he not in jail?

The answer is that if the allegations in the Ambac suit are true, it certainly would seem to be illegal. Most notably, the pocketing of putback money almost has to be a form of theft or embezzlement.

The rest of Bear/Verschleiser's scheme, however, is also illegal, but in a more complicated way. If you read the complaint in the Ambac suit, what you see is a sort of extreme blueprint for how mortgage securitization worked in general during that period.

There is a veritable sea of fraudulent and corrupt practices one may gaze upon here, if the SEC were looking for something to target -- everything from withholding material facts from customers and ratings agencies, to threatening ratings agencies with lost business if they didn't overrate bonds, to lying in offering documents, to the manipulation of accounting procedures (this went on after the loans had moved onto Chase's books), etc. -- but the most flagrant violation in the suit involves the issue of due diligence, and here we do know a lot about Verschleiser's role.

It seems that when Bear did do due diligence in these deals, it very frequently overrode the firms they'd hired to do that due diligence, and put the loans in the deals anyway. In the third quarter of 2006, Bear overrode its due diligence firm an incredible 65% of the time, putting loans into their securitizations despite an outside firm finding red flags in the notes.

Even worse, Bear went out of its way to hide the evidence that it was knowingly ignoring due diligence. This is from the complaint:

Bear Stearns ignored the proposals made by the heads of its due diligence department in May 2005 to track the override decisions, and instead took the opposite tack, adopting an internal policy that directed its due diligence managers to delete the communications with its due diligence firms leading to its final loan purchase decisions, thereby eliminating the audit trail.

This is fraud because in its agreements with investors, Bear promised to conduct "due diligence," it promised to conduct "quality control" testing of the loan pools, it promised to "repurchase" defective loans, and it also promised to implement "seller monitoring," i.e. to prevent the securitization of loans from bad suppliers.

But it not only didn't do these things, it engaged the opposite behavior and knowingly covered up its fraud by deleting its communications.

Verschleiser was personally named in the evidence offered in the Ambac suit. In a letter to Ambac, Bear's RMBS Investor Relations managing director Cheryl Glory wrote that "Jeff will... provide you with the due diligence results of all three deals once complete."

But this is the same Jeff who we now have in writing saying this about those promised due diligence results: "We are wasting way too much money on Bad Due Diligence," and "We're just burning money hiring them."

It doesn't take a genius to deduce that Bear was not upholding its contractual obligations by delivering what it itself considered "bad due diligence" to Ambac. At the very least, this is actionable.

Verschleiser undermined due diligence in other ways. One good one was to demand that his due diligence people operate at speeds that made genuine due diligence impossible.

At one point during these deals, Verschleiser reamed out his immediate subordinate, co-head of mortgage finance Baron Silverstein, over the "problem" of the due diligence department taking too much time to do its work. Silverstein responded by issuing the following tirade to John Mongelluzzo, Bear's VP for Due Diligence, demanding that he not get in the way of Bear's insane goal of funding 500 mortgages a day:

I refuse to receive more emails from [Verchleiser] (or anyone else) questioning why we’re not funding loans every day. I’m holding each of you responsible for making sure we fund at least 500 each and every day… I was not happy when I saw the funding numbers and I knew NY would NOT BE HAPPY... I expect to see 500+ every day. I will do whatever is necessary to make sure you’re successful in meeting this objective.

Whenever any right-wing loon, or Bloombergite, tries to tell you the mortgage crisis was caused by the government forcing the poor banks to lend to broke black people, please direct them to this passage. The banks not only wanted to give out these loans, they wanted to give them out at the speed of light. They wanted to crank them out so fast that their own auditors literally couldn't read the writing on the loan applications. This was greed, not policy. Anybody who says anything else is high on something.

Anyway, given that much of Verschleiser's questionable behavior is in writing, his case sure seems court-ready. But for whatever reason, he has not been indicted.

One can almost understand a regulator not wanting to take on the whole circular securitization scheme -- Bear lends money to corrupt mortgage firm, mortgage firm makes bad loans, Bear packages bad loans and sells to investors, then takes the proceeds and creates more bad loans -- because it is so complex and difficult to prove.

But in this case there are simple issues of fraud and theft thatcould be taken on without having to prosecute broader crimes related to securitization. But prosecutors, apparently, just blew those off. In the current environment, regulators even miss the layups.

Comments on reads 1/13

2012-01-13T13:48:00.001-08:00

Melanie Phillips: America sails towards Scylla and Charybdis

The Republican nomination has taken on the character of a somnambulists’ boat trip into raging seas.

After coasting to victory in New Hampshire and his narrow win in Iowa, Mitt Romney is being regarded as having his party’s nomination in the bag. At the same time, however, the attacks on him by Newt Gingrich have drawn such blood that folk are wondering whether, in securing the nomination, Romney will have lost the presidency.

To repeat what I have been saying from the start, there is only one question that matters: can the Republican candidate beat Obama? And if the attacks by Gingrich – reprehensible and disloyal as they may be – are doing Romney such damage at this stage, just imagine what the Democrats will do to him once they get going!

As everyone can see, Romney is heading for the nomination purely because he’s the last man standing. That is not a formula for winning hearts and minds. If he does become the Republican presidential candidate, America will be forced to steer this November between the Scylla of national immolation and the Charybdis of vacuousness.

But between now and then, of course, anything may happen. Iran, where the undeclared war against the regime is hotting up, may this year become a political game-changer one way or another for global and thus American politics. Anyone like to bet that Obama has not factored this into his campaign strategy? Anyone like to bet that the Republican Party has?

FP: This is what a leadership crisis and decline look like.

Yoram Ettinger: Don't underestimate Congress

Next to a powerful U.S. president, there is an equally powerful Congress - a bastion of support for enhanced U.S.-Israel cooperation.

FP: I wouldn’t rely on that.

IDF: Report on soldier abduction attempts 'very disturbing'

Recent IDF Operations Directorate report says last year saw 11 attempted abductions of soldiers, and an four additional attempts have been made since the beginning of 2012 • IDF says it will launch campaign to prevent soldiers from hitchhiking.

FP: The chickens are coming home to roost (from the Shalit and previous deals). And the new rules for handling abducted prisoners will resolve nothing. The government could apply whatever rules it wanted in previous cases, it did not because it could not withstand the public pressure and because of the IDF policy to not abandon any prisoner. The same factors will be active and overriding in next kidnappings. And the kidnappers know that.

Elder of Ziyon: Latest libel: Israel's doctors are too careful with their patients' lives

The Dutch newspaper Trouw has an unbelievable article written by Ilse Van Heusden, who had pre-natal care done in Israel for her child.

Her verdict? "The Chosen People have to be perfect."

Van Heudsen's thesis is that Israelis value Jewish children's lives because they think they are better than everyone else. Therefore, they recommend all of these unnecessary tests to make sure that they have nice, perfect children. Israelis, she says, are obsessed with perfect children, and will abort any child who falls short of this standard.

It is, to her, irresponsible to care that much about a mere baby. Her implication is that it is borderline racist.

Here's the kicker: Tests showed that she had a virus, CMV. As a result, Israeli doctors recommended a battery of tests to ensure that her baby would not be infected with the virus, since 20% of babies with CMV develop serious health problems.

Most people I know would insist on doing everything possible to ensure the health of a baby. But Israel-haters are a special breed indeed.

She saw every test as proof of the Chosen People's absurd obsession with the health of an unborn child. She considered her Israeli doctor, doing everything possible to ensure the health of her baby, a scaremonger. She complains that "the Israeli health insurance reimburses unlimited fertility treatments for women to 45 years, until they have two children. In the Netherlands there is a limit to the number of treatments and there is debate about treating women older than forty."

How dare they!

She even says:

Finally we held this little baby boy in our arms that went through all those tests. When we admired his little fingers and toes we saw that one of his toes was too small. His personal revenge on the Israeli health system.

Yochanan Visser of Missing Peace has an excellent point-by-point critique of her article and points out the factual errors she makes about Israel's health care system.

But the article itself is very simple: A woman who hates Israel is trying to find a racist motive for the excellent pre-natal care she received.

Which just goes to prove that hate has no rhyme or reason, and that haters can take any fact and twist it in their minds to fit their pre-determined conclusions.

FP: This is not hatred, but dementia. And even more demented is the paper that published this garbage. Can you now understand the Jewish history and the Holocaust? To all those Jews who are internalizing anti-Semitism and distance themselves from Israel, beware! Oh, and EoZ refers to another dementia:

Jimmy Carter has "no problem" with Islamists in power (ElderToon)

AFP reports:

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter gave the thumbs up on Tuesday to Egypt’s parliamentary elections, saying the people’s will was “expressed accurately.”
“We have been very pleased,” Carter told reporters during a tour of a polling station at the Rod al-Farag girls’ secondary school in a working class district of the Egyptian capital
Asked about Islamists coming to power, Carter said: “I have no problem with that. The U.S. government has no problem with that either.”

The Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party's platform, when discussing women, says (in Arabic) that it aims to "Ensure that all women get their rights as long as these don’t contradict Islamic Sharia and as long as they are balanced against their duties." Meaning that the FJP is explicitly against equal rights for women.

The platform also criticizes the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

Yes, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and supposed defender of human rights - who quit the Southern Baptist Convention because of its stand towards women - has no problem with the most populous Arab nation being controlled by a group whose platform is explicitly against equal rights for women (not to mention its attitude towards Egyptian religious minorities.)

He should run again.

Wise move or ill-advised choice?

Yair Lapid’s entry into politics dealt a blow to Kadima, the National Left, the social justice protest movement and even Noam Shalit • It remains to be seen if this media superstar moved into politics too quickly.

FP: Celebrity politics – validation of the acute leadership crisis in Israel. Quite a universal aspect of the decline of the West.

Israeli hacker who leaked Saudi details: I'm defending Israel

Internecine cyberwar wages on between Israeli and Saudi hackers, with credit card data of countless people exposed • Israeli hacker 0xOmer - whose handle was inspired by Saudi hacker 0xOmar - claims to have accessed more than 800,000 Saudi accounts.

FP: Automating and recording the whole life on the Internet risks to ultimately bring the entire world down. See what I mean?

Andrew Malcolm: Michelle Obama sees Barack's 'wonderful progress' in jeopardy

According to a new book, Michelle Obama is seeking to play a more active role on the policy side of her husband's White House.

According to her recent schedule, she's certainly playing a more active role in the fundraising part of her husband's political life. Wednesday she was in Virginia and did two poilitical fundraisers, while her husband was in Chicago doing three political fundraisers.

…

[Michelle O.:] "Barack knows what it means when a family struggles. He knows what it means when someone doesn’t have a chance to fulfill their potential. Those are the experiences that have made him the man -- but more importantly, the President -- he is today. And we are blessed to have him."

FP: Did voters know that they actually elected Michelle rather than Barack? I’m sure that’ll make them feel better. And if you liked what he did in his first 4 years, you’ll love what she’ll do in the next four, without any electoral constraints.

By the way, how exactly does Barack “know what it means when a family struggles”? In his entire mature life has he ever had to struggle?

Barry Rubin on Thomas Friedman: Dumbo

2012-01-13T00:32:00.001-08:00

FP: I keep arguing that the Islamists are not a threat to the West. The West is. When god distributed ignorance and stupidity, Friedman stood several times in line.

Friedman Cheers as Egyptians Are Enslaved

Professor: [As the Martian ambassador starts disintegrating congressmen with his ray gun]: “Mr. Ambassador, please! What are you doing? This doesn’t make sense! It’s not logical! It’s not !” – Mars Attacks

It is distasteful when Western intellectuals, politicians, and journalists who pride themselves on their enlightened, humanitarian views watch people abroad fall subject to ruthless forces of dictatorship and dogma. When these same people actually cheer the new tyrannies, put their arms around the shoulders of those who despise them, and tell everyone else that there’s nothing to worry about, that’s actively disgusting.

Many in the West have so acted toward Egypt during the last year. They have previously done so toward the Gaza Strip, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. Perhaps no one has touted these ideas and policies more loudly and enthusiastically than Thomas Friedman has been one of them but In doing so, of course, he has echoed U.S. government policy.

Now, Friedman goes all-out to explain that the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t radical, isn’t a threat, in fact is a good thing, and will only become even more moderate once it is in power.

In a column called “Watching Elephants Fly” — obviously a reference to seeing something impossible happen — Friedman writes,

Here is what was so striking: virtually all the women we interviewed after the voting — all of whom were veiled, some with only slits for their eyes — said that they had voted for either the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafists. But almost none said they had voted that way for religious reasons.
Many said they voted for Islamists because they were neighbors, people they knew, while secular liberal candidates had never once visited. Some illiterate elderly women confided that they could not read the ballot and just voted where their kids told them to. But practically all of them said they had voted for the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafist candidates because they expected them to deliver better, more honest government — not more mosques or liquor bans.

My reaction is, “So what?” They voted for an authoritarian, Sharia regime (and let’s remember a hardline interpretation of Sharia, not the interpretation of Sharia offered by New York Times reporters). That’s what’s important. People also had diverse reasons for supporting Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. Indeed, they always voted for such regimes because “they expected them to deliver better, more honest government.” Hasn’t Friedman ever heard that Mussolini made the trains run on time, Hitler built the autobahns, and the Communists promised to give land to the peasants?

But there’s even more irony here. These women are already living lives governed by Sharia and, as traditionalists, are happy (and told to be happy) with that situation. Thus, they have ample reason for supporting Islamists. There is nothing surprising in their political behavior, except to people like Friedman who predicted last year they would back liberal, Westernized Facebook kids.

Once again, Friedman shows a striking inability to think logically. If women were voting on the basis of family orders — I’d bet on the husbands and fathers rather than the children so instructing them — how can he then say that they voted because of specific personal motives or (after reporting they were told what to do!) claim that their vote is a sign of freedom?

Why are all their neighbors Islamists? Because there are so few secular liberals they’ve never actually met one. A large portion of the voters for non-Islamist parties were Christians, who they’d never socialize with. And their Brotherhood and Salafist neighbors want an Islamist dictator?

As for “more mosques” being the supposed Islamist demand that they “reject” it shows ignorance on the author’s part. Egypt has plenty of mosques and the Brotherhood and Salafists don’t make mosque-building a top priority. The question is what will be taught in those mosques and how it will direct society.

Why is Friedman dishonest? Because if he claimed that these women weren’t interested in enforcing an “Islamic” lifestyle or destroying Israel or spreading Islamism elsewhere or enforcing on all Egyptian women the dress code they follow, then readers would see through such an argument and view it as ridiculous. So he must create silly demands for the Islamists so he can claim that the people don’t want those things.

The same point applies on the supposed disinterest in bans on liquor sales. How many of these people have ever seen a liquor store? There are already proportionately few in Egypt and they cater overwhelmingly to Christians and tourists. Such a ban would not affect their lives but would make them feel that Egypt was a moral, Islamically correct county.

Again, these are trivial issues. We can all think of far more serious ones that the Islamists and their supporters do focus on.

An aspect of Friedman’s work that makes it so popular is that he constantly invents simple new theories and catch phrases to explain Middle East politics. After reading his column it is possible to believe that one has easily achieved understanding of the region. Of course, the reason that he must come up with so many theories is that they almost always fail.

Now he has a new, materialistic explanation for why Islamists will become moderate: they need the money. He cites how Egyptian Islamists have issued conflicting statements about allowing tourists to have alcohol and bikinis as proving that they must make lots of accommodations with reality. No oil money, you see.

But I heard similar things about Iran in the late 1970s — they’ll have to be moderate because they need to sell the oil — and about Yasir Arafat at the start of the peace process in the early 1980s — he’ll have to be moderate because the Palestinians he rules will demand garbage collection and decent schools. One might just as well have posited that the Turkish government would never turn against Israel because Israeli tourists brought in so much money.

There have been many examples of the Friedman theory since Karl Marx first wrote that the means of production detemined the shape of society. When Lenin invoked the New Economic Policy to get the new-born USSR through its tough, post-World War I period, naive Westerners announced that Communism had been tamed. My relatives and their neighbors in Poland — I can document this — comforted themselves by thinking the Germans wouldn’t kill them because the Nazis needed their forced labor.

It is awesome how our political geniuses simply don’t learn from history.

The tourism problem is simple. Visitors will be segregated into specific areas like beach resorts where they can drink, party, and bikini away without contact with many Egyptians. The same applies to the up-the-Nile cruises to antiquities sites. Problem solved, except perhaps for the occasional Salafist terrorist attack.

I vividly remember the moment 30 years ago when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gave his own response to Friedman’s “new” theory. Allow me to paraphrase: Western observers don’t understand Iran’s revolution. They think it is about lowering the price of watermelons (i.e., material well-being) but it is about invoking the will of Allah. Once you have enough people who think this way, forget about Western-style materialistic pragmatism.

Much of the Western intelligentsia cannot conceive that there are many people who don’t think like them in other parts of the world. So much for cosmopolitan international sophistication. (Of course, they often make the same mistake about their own fellow countrymen, too.)

All of this, however, is standard Friedman and standard Western media. That’s not why what Friedman is doing now might be described as his Jane Fonda moment.

The first reason is his shocking enthusiasm for the Brotherhood, summed up in his reported phrase: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a legitimate, authentic, progressive alternative.” Mr. Friedman has responded that he was referring not to the Brotherhood but instead meant to say, “the Egyptian elections produced, for the first time legitimate, authentic, liberal, secular, nationalist, progressive alternatives to the Muslim Brotherhood and now the Brotherhood would have to compete with such alternatives — for the first time.”

If that is what he meant it is not very impressive. “Nationalist” alternatives to the Brotherhood have been running Egypt since 1952, after all, and “liberal, secular” movements were very active in the latter Mubarak years. I wonder who Friedman is referring to as “progessive,” the radical nationalist-Marxist parties? Moreover, under Egyptian law, the Brotherhood was outlawed and while it did function it was weak compared to now. So to act as if alternatives to the Brotherhood have now arisen is like saying after the fall of the czar and the Russian revolution that things were better because now there was an alternative to the Bolsheviks.

Friedman has never written anything critical about the Brotherhood and Salafists. He certainly didn’t say, “Great election, too bad about the result.” And so he and many others including the U.S. government have given not just grudging acceptance but absolute approval to a party with a long history down to the present day of anti-Americanism, antisemitism, and support for terrorism, as well as the desire to transform Egypt into a repressive society and a political dictatorship.

But since even Friedman agrees that he used such words, let’s examine them:

– “Legitimate.” Does “legitimate” merely mean here that a lot of Egyptians accept the Brotherhood as their leader? But by this definition Stalinism, Nazism, fascism, and Japanese racist militarism were all “legitimate” doctrines. What is an “illegitimate” doctrine? I suppose nowadays only Zionism gets presented as such. Friedman, who is never short of criticisms on Israel, finds revolutionary Islamism more to his taste.

On the other hand, it is not at all clear that secular and liberal groups are now “legitimate” since they have been overwhelmingly rejected by the voters and are likely to face significant harassment from the army, Brotherhood, and Salafists.

On broader grounds, Western leftist intellectuals cannot understand how a dictatorship can be popular and yet still be a dictatorship that those who believe in democracy and freedom should criticize. This was the basis of the great divide among leftist and liberal intellectuals of earlier generations over the Soviet Union and other left-wing dictatorships. Since real liberals today have been, at least temporarily, wiped out, few are left other than conservatives to make this point.

–”Authentic.” That usually means something arising from one’s society and properly fitting into it. But here’s a problem. Today, democracy as known in the West is not an “authentic” doctrine for Egyptians. It is seen as an import and doesn’t have a strong cultural, intellectual, political, economic, or religious basis. And since liberal parties didn’t get many votes, that tends to indicate that liberty, equality for women, tolerance, and all the other elements of a real democracy also aren’t “legitimate” in Egypt either.

–”Progressive.” In recent years, “progressive” has become a false flag for extreme left-wing movements in the West. Friedman says he did not apply that word to the Brotherhood, so let’s leave him out of it personally. Still, though, there is no doubt that many people who consider themselves “progressive” are also enthusiastic about the Brotherhood. In fact, I’ve never heard any such person criticize the group, or Islamists generally for that matter.

So “progressives” see revolutionary Islamism as the proper Middle East counterpart of the Western left. Observers often ask how these two forces can work together when their views and values are apparently so different. Here’s the answer: many or most Western leftists do view Islamism as a kindred movement. In part, that’s because they don’t understand Islamism; and in part they don’t understand Islamism because when they see it they shout not, “Down with the reactionary clerical-fascists!” but rather: “Comrade!”

Unfortunately, the Islamists don’t reciprocate this love.

Isn’t Friedman aware that real Egyptian democrats are rushing to get visas and leave the country? That many Christians are getting out and the rest are trembling?

Within hours of the Friedman statement, the Free Egyptians Party — the most “authentic” liberal party in Egypt — declared a boycott of the remaining elections, claiming electoral fraud. Personally, I don’t think electoral fraud was a major factor but, rather, the party is reacting out of hopelessness, knowing that an open democratic society has no chance now in Egypt and that it cannot depend on any help from Western governments, which support its enemies.

The real moderates and democrats are in despair, knowing what they will be living under. And Friedman cheers their oppressors and says there is nothing to worry about. How is this better than becoming a booster for some Latin American military dictator or African tyrant or ruthless Communist oligarchy?

In playing these games, Friedman and the U.S. government ignore the mature adult way to handle such issues. A foreign policy professional should say something like this:

The Muslim Brotherhood won elections and clearly enjoys support from many Egyptians. It is now up to the Brotherhood to live up to those hopes and fulfill the promise of true democracy. To do so, the Brotherhood will have to break with past beliefs and policies. We all hope this change does indeed happen. But we will be watching closely and never hesitate to point out when it acts in a different manner. The Brotherhood will have to prove, to Egyptians and the world alike, that it truly is now moderate and democratic. Only then would we accept such a claim.

You see the difference? My version says: We have an open mind, we are willing to work with you, but the burden is on you to prove your claims. We know enough about you to be skeptical and we will not be fooled.

His version says: Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Brotherhood! Brotherhood! yay, Brotherhood!

The second thing that disgusts me is Friedman’s attempts to win applause by sucking up to his Egyptian audience. He tells them that the U.S. Congress is profoundly corrupt. Aside from demeaning his own country and civilization, the signal that statement sends is: Hey, democracy doesn’t really work!

And what does an Egyptian audience think of when it hears this line about money ruling? Not insider stock-trading but rather the old Arab assertion that the Zionist lobby directs U.S. policy, that’s what.

If Friedman actually was knowledgeable on the Middle East he would have understood the message he is conveying to Egyptians and might have avoided such statements. Oh, wait, Friedman himself has made such a charge, saying that the Jewish lobby bought Congress’s enthusiastic reception of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, being saved from accusations of antisemitism only because he is the son of Jewish parents.

“Money will kill your democracy like it did ours,” said Friedman. So Egypt is now a democracy but America isn’t? And, again, who do Arab ideologues identify with using “money” to control politics? Answer: Not Tony Rezko.

Friedman calls Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum an example of an American extremist. This tells Egyptians: We have no right to criticize you! You now have leaders who openly call for genocide against Jews. Well, we have people who don’t favor gay marriage!

Friedman (and Obama) can’t think a move ahead. If (ok, when) the Brotherhood starts to crack down and at some point even Obama might feel inclined to criticize its repression, Egyptian leaders and writers will respond: How dare you criticize us! According to your own Friedman you are ruled by money, don’t have proper democracy, and are full of extremists. So mind your own business.

And yet at the end of his lecture in Cairo the audience was still reportedly critical of Friedman, one more proof that you cannot win over those who hate you on the basis of a seriously constructed worldview by flattering them and bashing your own side.

I’m almost done but there’s one more thing important for you to know. It’s from a column I wrote a year ago, in the midst of the revolution. The radical blogger Angry Arab made fun of Friedman back then. Referring to Friedman as a “Zionist,” the blogger mocked him for claiming that the revolution would produce a moderate pro-American Egypt ready to keep the peace with Israel. Every Arab understood, said Angry Arab, that the exact opposite would happen.

A humorous example of Friedman’s lack of self-awareness is the fact that he called his column, “Watching Elephants Fly.” Can many Americans hear that phrase and not think of a certain famous animated film by Walt Disney?

It’s title is most appropriate: Dumbo.

Comments on reads 1/12

2012-01-12T22:42:00.001-08:00

Dan Margalit: Silence is golden

Why do Israeli officials insist on adding a wink and a remark every time an Iranian nuclear scientist explodes?

FP: Part and parcel of the leadership crisis.

NYC Police Probe Wave of Anti-Semitic Attacks; Rabbi’s House Firebombed Today

Concern is mounting over an apparent wave of anti-Semitic assaults and vandalism in the New York City area since November, with the latest two incidents being investigated as hate crimes.

…

The two incidents follow at least 10 other assaults and acts of vandalism since November that appear to be motivated by anti-Semitism, according to a summary report by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and data gathered by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

FP: Does not sound like Islamophobia to me. Anyway, it looks like American exceptionalism does not extend to anti-Semitism: in crisis, there are Americans who scapegoat the Jews too, just like in every other country.

IDF official: Haredi soldiers will not have to listen to women singing

IDF Personnel Directorate official says military will keep ultra-Orthodox soldiers separated from women • Move seen as effort to minimize damage to IDF-Haredi community relations after IAF Chief Rabbi resigns and MKs call for Haredis not to enlist

FP: Talibanization of IDF. I wonder what the IDF women think of this treatment. And my guess is that they are much more valuable to the military than the haredim.

Religious Groups Given ‘Exception’ to Work Bias Law

In what may be its most significant religious liberty decision in two decades, the Supreme Court on Wednesday for the first time recognized a "ministerial exception" to employment discrimination laws, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference.

FP: Liberty from abiding the law is not the kind of liberty any country needs, certainly not for religion. And those countries who tolerate it better beware the law of unintended consequences.

Matt Taibbi: Revolving Door: From Top Futures Regulator to Top Futures Lobbyist

While America focused on New Hampshire, a classic example of revolving-door politics took place in Washington, going almost completely unnoticed. It’s a move that ranks up there with the hire of Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin to head the pharmaceutical lobbying conglomerate PhRMA -- at a salary of over $2 million a year -- immediately after Tauzin helped ram through the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill, a huge handout to the pharmaceutical industry.

In this case, the hire involves Walter Lukken, who toward the end of the Bush years was the acting head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. As the chief regulator of the commodities markets, it was Lukken’s job to spot and combat speculative abuses and manipulations that might have led to artificial price hikes and other disruptions.

…

So what was Lukken’s reward for helping the financial services industry avoid such reforms? Well, Lukken has just been named to head the Futures Industry Association, or FIA, the chief lobbying arm of futures investors.

…

It was a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach to government oversight, which had far-reaching consequences in that crisis year. The CFTC, remember, also has purview over derivatives, meaning the failure to prevent the disastrous swap positions accumulated by the likes of AIG also falls, in part anyway, at the CFTC's doorstep.

…

Obviously this kind of thing has been going on forever in Washington, but some revolving-door hires feel worse and more shameless than others, and this is one of those. But really it's the same old story: regulators keep falling down on the job, and keep getting rewarded for it by Wall Street, and nothing gets done about it.

Read it all.

FP: Quick: Do you think this election will make any difference in this area? Taibbi is absolutely right: elections are just for the gullible, a distraction from the really important things, like the kleptocratic nature of the system. You think more evidence is needed?

Guess who's raising money for Romney: Bigwigs from private equity firms

Mitt Romney faces continued criticism over his refusal so far to release the names of his campaign "bundlers" -- the big money fundraisers who have helped him rake in tens of million dollars for his presidential race.

But two invitations to Romney private fundraisers, obtained by NBC News, reveal where many of them come from: big private equity firms.

It's the same corporate buyout industry where Romney, as chief of Bain Capital, made his personal fortune and which, in recent days, has become a campaign lightening rod.

Steve Schwarzman, co-chairman of the Blackstone Group, the biggest of all Wall Street private equity firms, is listed as the "event co-chair" at both Romney events, including one tonight in Palm Beach, FL that is expected to bring in over $1 million.

The invite for the event -- at the home of Miami Dolphins owner Steve Ross -- states that event co-chairs are responsible for raising at least $50,000 a piece. (Other co-chairs include billionaire financier and Home Depot founder Ken Langone, sugar baron Pepe Fanjul, and energy executive Bill Koch, whose two brothers head Koch Industries.)

Schwarzman, whose firm has partnered with Bain Capital on deals since the 1980s, was dubbed by Fortune in a 2007 cover story as "The New King of Wall Street." He also kicked off a firestorm two years ago, when he compared the battle over President Obama's proposal to increase the tax rate paid by private equity partners to a "war" like "when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." (Schwarzman later apologized for what he called "an inappropriate analogy." )

But he is hardly the only Wall Street private equity baron that is bringing in large sums of cash for Romney's campaign.

Shifting Center of Gravity

The number of overseas branch campuses set up by universities has reached 200, with another 37 planned, as activity shifts from the Gulf region to Asia.

The findings come in the latest report from the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, published this month. British universities are at the forefront of growth, nearly doubling their number of outposts in the past two years to 25.

…

Lower-risk niche campuses focusing on specific subject areas "represent a trend which is likely to assume greater prominence in coming years – and may become the typical branch-campus model," the report adds.

FP: Two factors at work: the decline of education in the West and, following the West, the substitution of vocational training for education elsewhere.

Israel Matzav: EU and US selling Israel out (UPDATED)

2012-01-11T23:37:00.001-08:00

FP: I’ve been predicting this direction for a long time and I was accused of pessimism, defeatism and so on. For years I’ve been arguing that concessionsto appease the West is the road to perdition. Sadly, I’ve been right. Whether or not this is implemented, do you still maintain that the Palestinians have any incentive to genuinely negotiate for peace?

UPDATE: Israel Matzav has updated this post: Source of European idea to undermine Israeli control of Area C?. Dennis Ross. This is hardly surprising. A while ago I wrote that Prof. Aumann's argument about the "peace process" is the game-theoretical foundation underlying my long-time argument against Israeli concessions. If, as it is obvious, the Palestinians play the Blackmailer Paradox game and Israel is cooperating by continuous concessions, the only logical conclusion for a peace processor who wants to demonstrate effectiveness is to continue to push, even force Israel to concede everything. This is exactly what Ross is suggesting and it's something that comes naturally to EU and Obama.

Besides, having been accused of dual loyalties, Ross, like Judt, Friedman and many other Jews, must demonstrate they are "good Jews" and not appear pro-Israel.

Europeans to undermind Israeli control over Area C in Judea and Samaria; Obama to 'take on' Netanyahu after election

When Israel entered into the Oslo Accords in 1993-1995, the entire area of Judea and Samaria was split into three parts. 'Area A,' which mostly comprised the seven major cities in Judea and Samaria, and which contained most of the Arab population of the area, was to be under 'Palestinian' control. 'Area B' was to be under 'Palestinian' civilian control with Israel responsible for security. 'Area C,' which includes most of the Jewish cities and towns in Judea and Samaria, was to be under complete Israeli control.

Under the Oslo Accords, there were no restrictions on Israeli building in Area C. Those who negotiated the Oslo Accords envisioned an eventual 'Palestinian autonomy' within Areas A and B. There was no intent to establish a 'Palestinian state,' and certainly no promises from Israel that one would be established. In fact, the opposite was true. This is from Prime Minister Rabin's last speech to the Knesset - in which he was advocating for a Knesset endorsement of 'Oslo 2' - on October 5, 1995:

We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority. The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.
And these are the main changes, not all of them, which we envision and want in the permanent solution:
A. First and foremost, united Jerusalem, which will include both Ma'ale Adumim and Givat Ze'ev -- as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty, while preserving the rights of the members of the other faiths, Christianity and Islam, to freedom of access and freedom of worship in their holy places, according to the customs of their faiths.
B. The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.
C. Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Beitar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the "Green Line," prior to the Six Day War.
D. The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

That's a far cry from what the 'international community' and the Obama administration are attempting to push on us today.

It's important to keep these things in mind because the Oslo Accords are the only signed agreements between Israel and the 'Palestinians.'

The Europeans have decided that they are not going to let signed agreements between the parties get in the way of attempting to force Israel back to the indefensible ~~1967 borders~~ 1949 armistice lines that resulted from British efforts to quash the nascent Jewish state. The Europeans are going to attempt to undermine Jewish sovereignty over Area C - which as noted was agreed to by the 'Palestinians' themselves as part of the Oslo accords - by undertaking 'Palestinian' projects in that area without Israeli cooperation or approval.

Area C makes up 62% of the West Bank, but the Palestinians make up only 5.8% of its population.
The document, titled "Area C and Palestinian state building," harshly criticizes Israel's policies in the West Bank, claiming they have caused the Palestinian population in Area C to shrink significantly and recede into enclaves.
The document states that Europe will support road, water, infrastructure, municipal, educational and medical projects in the area, in order to "support the Palestinian people and help maintain their presence (in the area)."
The EU, the brief said, aims to:
Encourage Israel to change its policy and planning system for Area C and engage the Palestinian communities in access and developments
Reduce land and population vulnerability and facilitate better coordination of basic needs deliveries in Area C
Promote economic development in Area C
Increase visibility and accountability for the delivery of aid in Area C
The diplomats state that "The window for the two-state solution is rapidly closing… and Area C is the only contiguous area in the western Negev surrounding Area A and B. Area C compromises crucial natural resources and land for the future demographic and economic growth of a viable Palestinian state. State building efforts in Area C of the PA are therefore of utmost important in order to support the creation of a Palestinian state."
The EU, a western diplomat told Ynet, is primarily concerned about three aspects overshadowing the viability of the two-state solution: Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and Area C. The EU, he added, is worried that Israel's policies in Area C will prevent the PA from maintaining territorial continuity, perpetuating the current situation of a "patch-state."
The documents expresses the EU's concern that the dwindling Palestinian presence in Area C is "pushing the conception of a Palestinian state within the 1967 lines further away" and urges the immediate cessation of what it calls Israel's "demolition policy" in Palestinian villages.
...
A Western diplomat familiar with the document told Ynet that the Europeans have decided to simply skip Israeli regulations: "What Europe is essentially saying here is that because Area C is vital for sustaining a viable Palestinian state, we will support whatever needs to be done for the sale of Palestinian development in the area regardless of Israel's planning policy."
He confirmed that the step was meant to reduce the amount of necessary building permits, saying that "European funding of vital projects like water infrastructure will be independent of Israeli authorities' approval."

Der Independent adds:

With the number of Jewish settlers now at more than double the shrinking Palestinian population in the largely rural area, the report warns bluntly that, "if current trends are not stopped and reversed, the establishment of a viable Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders seem more remote than ever".
...
The report points out how dramatically the settler population – now at 310,000 – of Area C has increased at the expense of Palestinian numbers – estimated at around 150,000. In 1967, there were between 200,000 and 320,000 Palestinians in just the agriculture-rich Jordan Valley part of the zone.

I don't buy that 1967 number for Arabs in the Jordan Valley, but it doesn't really matter. The 'Palestinians' struck an agreement and now the Europeans are trying to cancel it and run roughshod over it on the 'Palestinians' behalf.
And what's worse is that if God forbid Obama wins reelection, he will join the Europeans and gang up on Israel.

The Obama administration asked the Palestinian Authority not to make any major demands until after the presidential election in November, a senior PA official told WND.
The PA official, speaking on condition his name be withheld, said that Obama promised to renew stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the basis of the 1967 borders, meaning an Israeli withdrawal from eastern sections of Jerusalem as well as from Judea and Samaria, also referred to as the West Bank.
“We were asked by the (U.S.) administration not to make special demands or scandals during the elections,” said the official.
“After elections, the negotiations will be renewed on basis of the Clinton plan and Obama’s speech in Cairo of the 1967 borders,” the official said.
...
The official, however, said the U.S. will press for a Palestinian state quickly if President Obama is reelected.
“The main message we received from the U.S. is that nothing will happen in a serious way before the 2012 elections,” said the official.
Earlier this month, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius said he expected Obama to “take on” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a second presidential term.
Appearing as a panel member on the syndicated “Chris Matthews Show,” Ignatius stated: “What I hear from the White House is looking towards a second term on foreign policy, which I cover, as an opportunity to do the broad things that would establish an Obama agenda. He came into office passionate about the Middle East, about the Palestinian issue. I’d see him taking another really strong crack at that.”

Comments on reads 1/11

2012-01-11T13:14:00.001-08:00

Greg Sheridan: Territorial compromise loses ground in Arab Spring

THERE is not the slightest chance of a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute any time soon. Western politicians who address the issue ever more urgently are not only mistaken analytically, but may well be making things worse.

The whole world, including the Israelis and the Palestinians, knows the kind of territorial compromise that will ultimately be necessary for a peace deal. In a sense the precise detail of what territory the Palestinians ultimately get for their state is not the most important question.

FP: I am not convinced that the West is willing to accept the impossibility of a settlement. My take is that because it is declining and in appeasing mode, it deludes itself that by abandoning Israel it can gain the Islamists’ friendship and maintain its influence in the ME (see next).

And not only is the territory not the most important question, it is entirely irrelevant. Because if the Palestinians refused to accept Israeli offers for 6+ decades while the circumstances were favorable to Israel, why would they accept it now, in the advent of Western decline and the rise of Islamism? Do you think that the Palestinians perceive worse or better conditions for their objective of destroying Israel?

US holds highest-level talks yet with Brotherhood

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns meets with Islamist group at Cairo HQ.

FP: The policy of appeasement. The MB will play the US like a violin and the US will ignore anything they will say or do that goes against that policy. Here’s a taste of things to come: The Brotherhood’s conflicting statements.

Lee Smith: Rationale

The reality is that it doesn’t matter whether the regime is rational or not. The issue is not whether the Iranians would use the bomb, but how Tehran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon would enhance the regime’s already reckless behavior. Moreover, it would severely limit the ability of the United States to respond to the provocations of this dangerous regime. For instance, if a nuclear-armed Iran actually closed the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. officials would be much less confident in their ability to re-open shipping lanes. American policy-makers already worried about high oil prices are not likely to risk the chances of a nuclear incident and even higher oil prices.

It’s pretty easy to make a strong case that the Iranian regime really is suicidal. This is the same ruling clique, after all, that pioneered the use of the suicide car-bombing during the course of the Lebanese civil wars from 1975 to 1990. The Iranians tapped their local allies, namely Hezbollah, for martyrdom operations against Israel, the United States, and other Western powers. The Iranians spent their own blood even more recklessly in the war with Iraq when they dispatched wave after human wave of teenage boys to march through minefields, clearing a path with their bodies. Perhaps most tellingly, the plummeting Iranian birthrate—from 6.5 children per woman a generation ago to 1.7 today—suggests that it is not just the regime, but an entire nation, that no longer wishes to live.

No country sets out purposefully to bring about its destruction. And yet history is nothing but the record of nations that have misunderstood the limits of their own power and the resources of their adversaries.

FP: Such issues requires strategic thinking, yet that is one area in which the West is terribly deficient.

US denies role in killing Iranian nuclear scientist

Clinton flatly denies US involvement "in any kind of act of violence inside Iran," calls Hormuz threats "provocative, dangerous."

FP: Why does the US rush to deny so flatly and what kind of signal does this send?

Yoram Ettinger Root causes of anti-US Islamic terrorism

No U.S. pressure on Israel would spare Washington the wrath of rogue Islamic regimes.

FP: That’s the Western delusion that I have reiterated here many times, but I doubt that the West will realize it before it’s too late.

Dan Margalit: A national outrage

The boycott on selling apartments to Ethiopians violates every Jewish, moral and democratic principle.

FP: True. But why then the only people speaking against it are mostly those who are not likely to be neighbors of Ethiopians?

Kadima members call for Livni's immediate resignation

Israel Hayom’s expose revealing financial misconduct and cronyism in Kadima has members furious with party leader Tzipi Livni • MK Avi Dichter: She hid millions in payments from the Knesset.

FP: Serious leadership crisis.

Elder of Ziyon on the gullibility of the Western media and intelligentsia

2012-01-11T00:14:00.001-08:00

FP: The Islamists are probably rolling of the floor with laughter about the fools who are playing their game. And a validation of the consequences of the decline of Western education, without which it is so easy for this propaganda to be channeled and take hold.

ISESCO denies Jewish Temples existed; publishes "media plan" on how to defeat Zionism

A press release from ISESCO, the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization:

The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) strongly denounced the Israeli occupation army’s publication of a photo of the Holy Aqsa Mosque without Qubat Al-Sakhra (the Dome of the Rock).
In a communiqué released today, ISESCO affirmed its rejection of what the so-called religious authority of the Israeli occupation army in the occupied city of Al-Quds did when they published a photo of Al-Aqsa Mosque without the Dome of the Rock. This photo, ISESCO underlined, depicts the true intention of the Israeli occupation authorities to judaize the city and establish the alleged Temple in the so-called “Temple Mount” on “the ruins” of Al-Aqsa Mosque, especially as a model of the Temple has been built in front of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the calls of the Jewish rabbis to demolish the First Qibla and the Third Holy Mosque have increased.

"Alleged" Temple? "So-called" Temple Mount?

I guess we can see the importance of education, science and culture to ISESCO.

Elsewhere, ISESCO makes its Temple denial more explicit:

[N]o trace was found of this temple after many excavations and archaeology digs carried out by Israeli and western archaeologists. An increasing number of Israelis refute the Jewish allegations about the temple, having conducted their own investigations, excavations and studies which all point to the non-existence of the temple in the alleged site at any time in history.

It is this document that proves that ISESCO is a sham organization, whose purpose has nothing to do with Islamic culture or history - but rather to uproot any vestige of Jewish history.

The document is called "Media Plan for Publicising the Cause of Al Quds Al Sharif in the West and Mechanisms for its Implementation." It looks like it was written in late 2004. ISESCO is the architect of a plan on how to spread Islamic propaganda in the West and how to counter Jewish claims to Israel and Jerusalem.

And it makes its goals quite clear, in this paragraph describing its idea of the Jewish view of Jerusalem:

Jerusalem is at the heart of the Jewish faith, the cornerstone of its spiritual and intellectual edifice and of the dream of rebuilding the Hebrew state in accordance with the false Zionist slogan of the “Return to Zion”, or “Return to Jerusalem”, ensuring its continuity and the continuity of the Israeli presence in the Arab region. This presence is vital for the West since Israel acts as a shield that protects the western civilisation from confronting the so called “Arab backwardness, barbarity and savagery”. Thus, Jerusalem is the cornerstone of the spiritual edifice and the Zionist Jewish entity. Were it to be dislodged, the whole edifice and the Zionist entity itself would crumble like a deck of cards.

That is the entire goal of this media plan! It describes short, medium and long term goals to do exactly this dislodging of Jerusalem from Judaism.

For example, do these objectives sound familiar?

1- Gaining the support of some intellectual, cultural and political role-players who can impact on the Western public opinion about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the question of Al Quds, by adopting the international resolutions of legitimacy and the related UN resolutions as a starting point in the media plan.
2- Penetrating Western activities or fields of activities, particularly those of influential media, cultural, intellectual and economic spheres in such a way as to ensure their responsiveness to the other’s point of view and their outlook on the official stance of their countries as subservient to and reflective of the interests of the Zionist movement with its various formations and bodies, and not of the interests of their own countries, in particular economic and vital interests.
3- Discreetly and indirectly encouraging trends critical of Zionism and the Israeli judaisation policies in Jerusalem within western circles and in a way that would prevent the targeting, isolation and annihilation of these trends by the Zionists movement and its concealed and visible tentacles.

It is almost as if Walt, Mearsheimer, Blumenthal, Friedman, Mondoweiss and others are acting in a play written by ISESCO!

Can you imagine a genuine cultural or educational organization creating a document on how to spread propaganda in order to destroy an entire culture?

Anyone who wants to truly understand how the anti-Israel crowd is using the media should read this document.

Comments on reads 1/10

2012-01-10T16:52:00.001-08:00

Walter Russell Mead: Israel Prosecutes Radical Settlers, Reaffirms Sovereignty

Now a radical fringe Israeli settler movement is harassing its neighbors, both Palestinian and Israeli alike in response to the Israeli’s government’s efforts to dismantle illegal West Bank ouposts and it seems as if Israel has decided that the time has come to reassert Ben-Gurion’s principle. This week’s prosecution of five Israeli settlers, reported in the New York Times, is a good start…

In the coming days, Israel must be sure to deal similarly with the radicals who attack their Palestinian neighbors. It is a difficult but morally and politically necessary step.

FP: Hard to escape the double standard, ain’t it? The Palestinians are chockful of splinter armed terror groups and even have two governments. And look at their unity: they can’t even pretend it for a while. And would Mead really want a unity government for them, with Hamas a participant? How about the other splinter groups? But I am sure Mead supports a Palestinian state even under these circumstances?

The truth, which the West refuses to accept and that Israel blundered strategically by ignoring at Oslos is the one expressed by Newt Gingrich: Israel was and is a nation, the Palestinians are not and never were. The rest is conversation.

Ely Karmon: Washington Is Playing With Islamist Fire

That's really new here is the obliviousness and naïve, wishful thinking evinced by the American policy makers and intellectuals proposing this "rapprochement" with the Islamist movements in the Arab world, which hijacked the uprisings of the young Arab modernist forces in Tunisia and Egypt and will probably do the same in Libya and Syria.

…

In Israel, too, some respected voices have proposed talking to Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in the name of realpolitik. The new Israeli ambassador to Cairo has been instructed to look for contacts with the Brotherhood leaders.

…

The Brotherhood victory in Egypt presents a serious dilemma indeed for US, European and Israeli leaders alike. They probably have no alternative but to engage with the new Islamist leaders who will control the leading Arab country and the less important ones.

The question is whether they will be able to challenge the Brotherhood's Islamist radical religious worldview and autocratic tendencies as it attempts to impose them on the Arab peoples and lead the region to an obscurantist era, in sharp conflict with Western democratic and liberal values.

FP: A declining West is in appeasement mode and are clearly signaling weakness. The Arab/islamist culture’s expertise is in detecting weakness and exploiting it. One of the most obvious indicator of weakness is the abandonment of Israel, the price the West is willing to pay in the delusion that the islamists will return friendship.

About the only leverage the West used to have was foreign aid, but Western bankruptcy has significantly reduced that and, besides, unlike the deposed dictators, the Islamists are much less likely to be influenced by Western aid, although they will take Jizziyah if it does not impose any conditions on them. And a West in appeasement mode is not likely to withhold aid for leverage purposes, it always fears worse if it does. The PostWest won’t be pretty.

Alexander Murinson: Strategic Realignment and Energy Security in the Eastern Mediterranean

Since the cooling of relations with Ankara in 2010, Israel has sought alternative allies in the Mediterranean region, courting Greece and Cyprus. An economic and security partnership between the three non-Muslim countries in the eastern Mediterranean benefits all. The most urgent strategic issue that unites them, however, is their need for energy security. The recent discovery of substantial natural gas fields in the Israeli and Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) challenge Turkey’s claim as the central energy hub for Europe. Turkey is employing threatening rhetoric as well as its navy to deter and harass Cypriot and Israeli exploration efforts. Greece, Israel and Cyprus should increase their strategic cooperation in order to contain such Turkish hostility.

FP: Not many other choices, but I wonder if a bankrupt Greece and a Cyprus half occupied by Turkey are any match for the pillar of US ME policy. Although, if Spengler is right:

Recall notice for the Turkish model

A disaster is in the making. Leave aside the economic ills of the southern Mediterranean generally, which will impinge Turkey's exports (about half of which go to the European community): Turkey's financial system is reaching the end of the rope. A sudden adjustment in the current account accompanied by large-scale bankruptcies among Turkish businesses and widespread unemployment will make 2012 an ugly year for the Turkish economy, and an even uglier year for Turkish politics.

Spengler also writes:

The West still believes in its own ability to fix all the problems of the world, and cannot abide the thought that success is to be found nowhere in the Muslim world (not counting Malaysia and Indonesia).

Now that Libya and Yemen are immersed in tribal warfare, Egypt is dissolving into chaos, Syria has dug in for a long sectarian bloodbath, and Iraq prepares for an ethno-confessional civil war, Turkey seems a pillar of stability by comparison. Not for long, if my calculations are correct.

Last year, I predicted that the "Arab Spring" would prove to be a symptom of societal failure rather than regime failure, and that Egypt as well as Syria would suffer a social breakdown. That has now become conventional wisdom, even among news outlets that inhaled the hashish smoke from Tahrir Square and predicted a glorious era of Arab democracy only a few months ago. The subject requires no elaboration here.

Western credulity over Turkey, though, has not quite departed. On January 6, for example, Peter Kenyon wrote yet another paean to the Turkish "economic miracle" for National Public Radio in the United States.

Now I predict that Turkey's economic crisis will undermine the stability of the Turkish state as well, leaving the Muslim world without a single enclave of stability from the Libyan-Algerian border to China's Xinjiang province.

FP: The problem is that the West is scared shitless of all this instability and will continue to pour funds into the ME to prevent it, unsuccessfully. In the process it will pump up the Islamists and weaken whatever little liberal/democratic constituency exists there.

Adam J. White: Confirmation Bias: A Shameless Flip-Flop on Recess Appointments

In support of Obama, Tribe asserts that the president's power to deem the Senate to be "in recess" and then make recess appointments "is clearly stated in the Constitution" and is further supported by "past practice." But against Bush, Tribe argued that "[t]he text, structure, purpose, function, and pre-1921 history of the Recess Appointments Clause all confirm . . . that the President may not make recess appointments during intra-session Senate breaks."

In support of Obama, Tribe argues that intra-session recess appointments are especially justified when the Senate is deliberately "frustrat[ing] presidential appointments." But against Bush, he argued the opposite: recess appointments are all the more illegitimate when the nominee in question already had been the subject of Senate debate yet "failed to obtain enough votes to go forward under Senate rules."

In support of Obama, Tribe argues that the Senate made itself "unavailable" by largely leaving Washington. But against Bush, he scoffed at the notion that the Senate was ever truly unavailable, thanks to modern technology: even during "holiday breaks that typically last one or two weeks," Senate business "can easily resume, if necessary, owing to modern communications and transportation."

In support of Obama, Tribe invokes Alexander Hamilton's Federalist 67 for the proposition that recess appointments, even intra-session appointments such as Cordray's, are justified when "necessary for the public service to fill without delay." Against Bush, by contrast, he invoked Federalist 67 for the proposition that "recess appointments would be 'necessary,' and thus permissible, only outside the 'session of the Senate"—i.e., never during type of intra-session break that President Obama exploited last week.

In defense of Obama's recess appointments, Tribe said that the president was setting a precedent that would apply "only in instances of transparent and intolerable burdens on his authority." But when Bush made recess appointments, Tribe warned of a slippery slope toward tyranny: We cannot "take comfort in the hope that no President is likely to abuse the recess appointment power" whenever the Senate opposes a nomination, because of the "hydraulic pressure inherent within" the presidency and other branches of government "to exceed the outer limits of its power."

The legal case in favor of President Obama "ought to be a slam dunk"; the same case, in favor of President Bush, was "novel" and "ominous." And so on.

So why is Tribe contradicting himself so shamelessly, especially when he has not hesitated to break ranks with the left in other controversial legal debates over presidential power? If I had to guess, Tribe's shameless double-standard on recess appointments owes to one crucial fact: If Republicans maintain or increase their power in the Senate in 2012, then President Obama may well choose to recess-appoint federal judges, perhaps even Supreme Court justices.

FP: The constitutional illusion: You can interpret it whichever way you want, particularly if it was written hundreds of years ago. One unelected lawyer out of nine can impose his/her interpretation on the nation, and if you rely on the integrity of lawyers (or academics), this is what you get. As we saw in the Bush vs. Gore case (Note: I did not care much for either Bush or Gore, I am interested in a fundamental systemic flaw).

Mati Tuchfeld: Trending now: celebrities in the Knesset

Once upon a time, a media personality was a superhero. But today it seems every media personality wants to be an MK.

Dan Margalit: A dangerous cover-up

Just how deeply was former IDF Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi's bureau corrupted?

Dr. Aviad Hacohen: Holyland's unholiness

This sorry affair should concern anyone who cares about Jerusalem and its unique beauty.

Documents reveal inflated salaries, cronyism in Kadima

Israel Hayom obtains documents showing Tzipi Livni's promise of new kind of politics has been supplanted by wasteful spending, lack of transparency • Party apparently pays businesses affiliated with its top officials large sums

FP: Israel is not what it used to be anymore and it can afford it much less than the US.

Matt Taibbi: Credit Card Firms: They Don't Just Steal From Cardholders

This story is another example of the central complaint against financial companies. They occupy a place in society in which they are a trusted part of our infrastructure. We allow many of our creditors to debit our bank accounts freely because we trust them not to simply steal our money without justification.

But the Bloomberg piece is just one more example of financial companies violating that trust. Episodes like the Utah business are apparently not uncommon, and other merchants have complained in recent years of an increasing tendency toward systematic overcharging in other areas…

Nobody minds banks and creditors being greedy. But we can't live with big firms simply taking money out of bank accounts for no reason, and daring people to sue to get the money back. That's theft by bureaucratic force, not mere greed.

FP: Just as I argued: a kleptocracy.

Comments on reads 1/9

2012-01-09T18:24:00.001-08:00

Jonathan D. Halevi: Will Palestinian Reconciliation Lead to a Hamas Takeover of the PLO? (MUST READ)

For Hamas, the central lesson from the Arab Spring is the U.S. administration's and the European Union's abandonment of the pro-Western regimes and their readiness, even haste, to support the popular revolutions and recognize the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate political actor. To Hamas this indicates that the West is weak and can do nothing but accept the reality that the rebelling peoples dictate, and that the more this process accelerates and is translated into political and military power, the greater its weight in shaping the Middle Eastern and international arenas.

Hamas has despaired of winning Western recognition based on its electoral victory as the leading party or for the government it has established in Gaza; instead it seeks to attain the great prize by taking over the PLO. Hence it is prepared for temporary tactical flexibility, thereby obligating Abbas to implement the reform of the PLO and hold general parliamentary and presidential elections in the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas believes that it is highly likely to prevail in these elections, and that once it has a majority in the PA and PLO institutions, it will be internationally recognized and replace Fatah in representing the Palestinian people both in Palestine and the diaspora. In the interim stage, through joining the temporary PLO leadership, Hamas has succeeded in subverting Abbas' independence in PLO decision-making and in binding him to decisions that the new leadership will make.

…

Traditionally, the main factor in the PLO's formulation of political strategy has been the regional balance of power. Analysis of that balance led to decisions to resort to political dialogue with Israel. The change in the regional balance of power to Israel's detriment amid the revolutions of the Arab and Islamic Spring alters the PLO's and the PA's assessments, and is another factor encouraging a tougher, uncompromising political line and the strategy of confrontation, spiced with a new language about renouncing recognition of Israel and a two-state solution to the conflict.

From Israel's standpoint the trends in the Middle East and in the Palestinian arena are ominous. The PA is forging a strategic alliance with radical Islamic elements, while at the same time the West recognizes their patron - the Muslim Brotherhood - and pursues a policy that in the Middle East appears as weakness. The move by Abbas ensures his regime's stability for a short time, but will likely emerge as cutting off the branch he sits on and building a bridgehead to Hamas' full takeover of the PA and the PLO institutions. That scenario would severely challenge Israel in the Palestinian arena and carry a potential for regional escalation.

Jordan, for its part, is closely following the Palestinian developments. Fatah and Hamas have agreed to exclude the Jordanian arena from the electoral process for the PNC. If the Palestinians in Jordan, who constitute a large majority of its population, vote for Palestinian national institutions, tensions with Jordan are the likely result, reopening the historical wounds in Jordanian-Palestinian relations and raising the question of the legitimacy of the Hashemite Royal House. Like Israel, Jordan faces an existential "Palestinian problem" that would emerge in its full severity after the birth of the Palestinian state, forcing the Palestinians in Jordan to decide the question of their loyalty.

FP: The only quibble I have is that Hamas has not despaired of winning the West. On the contrary, having lost some of its Iranian funds and Syrian support, Hamas has recognized that the West has abandoned Israel and is realigning itself with the Islamists and that all it needs is a fig leaf that allows it to rationalize the recognition of a Palestinian state (a phase in the Islamist genocide against Israel). Plaestinian “unity” and “pragmatism” are that fig leaf.

Department of State established Bureau of Counterterrorism

The U.S. Department of State recently announced the establishment of its Bureau of Counterterrorism, a recommendation made in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review completed in 2010.

The Bureau of Counterterrorism was created to head the department's activities to counter terrorist activities abroad with the support of U.S. allies. The bureau will immediately assume the responsibilities of the Office of the Coordinator of Counterterrorism.

"To secure our future, we must continue to strengthen our international coalition against terrorism, build foreign partner capacity to mitigate terrorist threats, reinforce resilience against attacks, and counter the ideologies and ideas that fuel violent extremism around the world," the Department of State said.

The new bureau will implement its mission through initiatives designed to strengthen existing diplomatic relationships with partner countries, regional organizations and the United Nations. It will lead the U.S. government's support of the Global Counterterrorism Forum, a multilateral program that is focused on setting the international counterterrorism agenda.

FP: That’s what counterterrorism needed, more DC bureaucracy. And since the new allies of the US are the Islamists, they are the ones that supposedly the new bureaucracy will cooperate with to combat terrorism. And they wonder the US is in decline.

Return of the Missile Gap

The Cold War's most successful arms control agreement is imperiling U.S. forces and increasing the probability of a conflict in Asia.

The U.S.-Soviet Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty contributed to stability in Europe during the Cold War's final years by eliminating both nuclear and conventionally armed ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

Now, however, the treaty is preventing the U.S. and Russia from responding to a growing threat from China, which has been expanding its missile force at an unparalleled rate. China now has at least hundreds of ground-launched intermediate-range missiles. By comparison, Russia and the U.S. have none.

The last time Americans worried about a "missile gap" - a phrase consigned to history along with the Soviet Union - Gerald Ford was U.S. president, Berlin was a divided city and Taiwan was a U.S. treaty ally. With the Cold War's end and the emergence of a unipolar era, Americans, it was supposed, no longer needed to worry about comparing numbers of tanks, bombers and missiles.

But while Washington and Moscow were busy eliminating entire classes of missiles and with good reason, on the other side of the Eurasian land mass Beijing was investing in missile technology. Today, missiles play a central role in Chinese military strategy. And so, 20 years after the Soviet Union's dissolution, the U.S. is once again facing a missile gap, and unlike the missile gaps of the Cold War, there is no question as to this one's existence.

Why does this matter? The U.S.-China missile gap (and the Sino-Russian one, as well) creates strategic instability in a way that the perceived Cold War missile gaps never did. With its ground-based missiles, China can target U.S. and allied bases in the Asia-Pacific as far away as Guam, including key U.S. facilities in South Korea and Japan.

With its new anti-ship ballistic missile, also ground-launched, the People's Liberation Army will likewise be able to attack U.S. aircraft carriers and other capital ships at sea.

FP: What a good time for Obama to reduce the military budget! But hey, to narrow the gap with China the US would have to … borrow from China. The PostWest.

Source (Translated from Hebrew): Noam Shalit Will Run for Knesset

After Yair Lapid, today's political bombshell has arrived: Noam Shalit informed Labor Party chairwoman Shelly Yehimovich this morning (Monday) that he intends to run for a spot on the Party's list for the next Knesset. The father of the abducted soldier Gilad Shalit said that he wishes to serve the public after several years of grueling public campaigning.
Yehimovich congratulated Shalit's decision and said that "the struggle of Noam and his family towards freeing Gilad became a struggle for the values of Israeli society, and a shining example of constrained and moral public campaign." According to the Labor chairwoman, "all of Israeli society unified in this struggle over joint values. Noam has been a Labor party person for many years, and I am convinced that his contribution to the Labor party as a Knesset member will be significant".

FP: Yuckh! Didn’t I say that his whole behavior was due to his being a lefty? Here is another proof that Israel suffers from a serious crisis of leadership.

SCOTUS upholds foreign money ban

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld a federal law that bars foreign nationals from spending to influence U.S. elections.

In the latest of a series of high-profile cases challenging limits to political contributions, the high court affirmed a lower court ruling that foreign citizens can be excluded from certain civic and political activities. The Supreme Court summarily upheld the lower court's decision in the Bluman v. Federal Election Commission case without comment.

FP: Hypocrisy: the US has criticized Israel for what itself does domestically.

Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin: The New Authoritarianism

A nightmare scenario would be a constitutional crisis pitting a relentless executive power against a disgruntled, alienated opposition lacking strong, intelligent leadership. Over time, the new authoritarians would elicit even more opposition from the “dodos” who make up the majority of Americans residing in the great landmass outside the coastal strips and Chicago. The legacy of the Obama years—once so breathlessly associated with hope and reconciliation—may instead be growing pessimism and polarization.

FP: That’s often been a mechanism in the decline fate of dominant powers in history and it has already been occurring in the US.

NGO Monitor Report on HRW in 2011

2012-01-09T11:07:00.001-08:00

Hi, we've just finished our annual report on Human Rights Watch for 2011; some interesting data from the past year given the Arab upheaval. HRW reduced its focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict by issuing more reports, press releases, op-eds, and other publications on Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen than on other countries in the MidEast and North Africa. But, Israel and the PA received more attention than Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. In its Libya reports, HRW erased its previous cooperation with the Qaddafi regime, including MENA Director Sarah Leah Whitson's central role in marketing Saif al-Islam Qaddafi as a reformer.

2011 demonstrated that HRW goes where the media go; otherwise, it is apt to largely ignore even the most brutal regimes. The full report is below and can be viewed here. Of course let me know if you have any questions or want to speak to Gerald.

HRW in 2011: More Balance, Less Credibility

The Impact of the Arab Turmoil on HRW's Middle East and North Africa Division

Summary:

In 2011, HRW's Middle East and North Africa Division (MENA) published 60% more documents than in 2010, with the majority relating to closed Arab societies involved in the turmoil and revolution. This represents a major increase over previous years, when HRW gave little attention to violations in closed, authoritarian regimes.
In its reports on Libya, HRW sought to erase the NGO's previous cooperation with the Qaddafi regime, including MENA Director Sarah Leah Whitson's central role in marketing Saif al-Islam Qaddafi as a reformer. The lack of an independent investigation of ties between HRW and the Qaddafi regime continues to stain HRW's reputation.
HRW reduced its disproportionate focus on the Arab-Israeli conflict by issuing more reports, press releases, op-eds, and other publications on Libya, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen than on other countries in MENA. However, "Israel and the Occupied Territories" [1] still received more attention than Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
For the first year since 1995, in 2011 HRW did not publish a major report focusing on Israel. HRW also published an almost equal number of documents criticizing Israel and the Palestinians. At the same time, HRW's bias on Israel continued. All op-eds on the Arab-Israeli conflict published in major international platforms focused on allegations against Israel.
MENA Director Sarah Leah Whitson published an op-ed (April 15, 2011) in the Huffington Post exploiting the US Civil Rights Movement to vilify Israel as a racist state and race bait American Jews.
In 2011, an alleged member of the PFLP terror organization, Shawan Jabarin, was appointed to the HRW Middle East Advisory Board.
James F. Hoge Jr.'s appointment as Chairman of HRW's Board has had no noticeable impact. In the Middle East and North Africa division (MENA), ideologues Sarah Leah Whitson and Joe Stork continue to control the agenda, at the expense of universal and credible promotion of universal human rights values.

**This report includes quantitative analyses of publications from HRW's Middle East and North Africa section, using a weighted scale methodology consistent with NGO Monitor's previous analyses.

mail@ngo-monitor.org

www.ngo-monitor.org

Collected links

2012-01-08T19:15:00.001-08:00

Alexander Jung: The Danger Debt Poses to the Western World

Amatzia Bar’am: Saddam Hussein's dreams of an end to the Zionist nightmare (MUST READ!)

Lee Smith: A Hezbollah Crack-up? (I DOUBT IT)

Andrew Malcolm: Obama's white flag on national security: 'Yes, our military will be leaner'

The Army and the Economy in Egypt

Daniel Pipes: South Sudan, Israel's New Ally

Michael Singh: The Real Iranian Threat in the Gulf

Comments on reads 1/8 III

2012-01-08T19:10:00.001-08:00

Israel Matzav: Turkey and Egypt prepare for war against Israel

Turkey and Egypt are conducting a massive naval exercise in the Mediterranean and you can guess who the target it.

FP: The West’s allies. Who do you think the West will side with in a war?

Robert Haddick: This Week at War: The Gathering Storm in the Gulf

Without discussing numbers, Panetta and his colleagues warned of deep cuts to the Army and Marine Corps. The accompanying strategic guidance document plainly states that "U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations" [italics in original]. It will be difficult to find many observers agitating for more "large-scale, prolonged stability operations." The risk, however, is that the United States could find itself caught short by simultaneous crises that boil over before the Pentagon can mobilize, retrain, and deploy Army and Marine Corps reservists.

The ability to cope with two major regional crises nearly simultaneously is a long-standing assumption that the Pentagon has been edging away from for a decade. The Obama administration is now definitively abandoning it. In the case of multiple crises in the future, the United States may find itself using heavy air and naval firepower in scenarios that in the past might have been deterred by the timely deployment of ground troops, troops that in the future might not be available.

…

While ground-force staffing, personnel costs, and some weapon systems will be cut or delayed, there are winners in the strategic review. Special operations forces, cyberwarfare programs, unmanned systems, and intelligence gathering will get more funding. More broadly, the new strategy is counting on forces that will be, in Panetta's words, "more agile, more flexible, ready to deploy quickly, innovative, and technologically advanced" to make up for what these forces previously possessed in numbers. How those troops that survive the budget cuts will become more agile, flexible, and innovative remains to be explained.

FP: Those who are not prepared to fight will lose to those who do. Reliance on air and naval firepower will be inhibited by the self-imposed requirement to avoid collateral damage. Technology is only good up to a point. As to US intelligence, give me a break. The rest is propaganda to obscure decline.

Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder: The Ally From Hell (via Elder of Ziyon)

Nuclear-weapons components are sometimes moved by helicopter and sometimes moved over roads. And instead of moving nuclear material in armored, well-defended convoys, the SPD prefers to move material by subterfuge, in civilian-style vehicles without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic. According to both Pakistani and American sources, vans with a modest security profile are sometimes the preferred conveyance. And according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, the Pakistanis have begun using this low-security method to transfer not merely the “de-mated” component nuclear parts but “mated” nuclear weapons. Western nuclear experts have feared that Pakistan is building small, “tactical” nuclear weapons for quick deployment on the battlefield. In fact, not only is Pakistan building these devices, it is also now moving them over roads.

What this means, in essence, is this: In a country that is home to the harshest variants of Muslim fundamentalism, and to the headquarters of the organizations that espouse these extremist ideologies, including al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba (which conducted the devastating terror attacks on Mumbai three years ago that killed nearly 200 civilians), nuclear bombs capable of destroying entire cities are transported in delivery vans on congested and dangerous roads. And Pakistani and American sources say that since the raid on Abbottabad, the Pakistanis have provoked anxiety inside the Pentagon by increasing the pace of these movements. In other words, the Pakistani government is willing to make its nuclear weapons more vulnerable to theft by jihadists simply to hide them from the United States, the country that funds much of its military budget.

FP: Forget climate change, it’s much too slow for nuclear Jihadis.

Israel Matzav: US and EU spearheading the end of free speech

The European Union has recently joined the United States in spearheading a movement designed to make criticism of Islam a crime that cannot take advantage of the ordinary protections of free speech in the West (Hat Tip: Dan F). From the laundry list of European countries that have already prosecuted people for speaking out against the Islamic cult, it sounds like the Europeans don't need a whole lot of help in terminating free speech for their citizenry anyway.

FP: Self-dhimmification in the PostWest. It won’t stop there.

Elder of Ziyon: Morning Link

Israeli ophthamologists from Tel Hashomer Hospital go to Nablus to help treat eye diseases, do a surgery marathon. A young boy asked why the Jews were helping his grandfather; his parents answered "not all Jews are bad."

FP: This is why there cannot be peace: the future Arab generations are imbibed with hatred.

Caroline Glick on the land-for-peace hoax and a treacherous West

2012-01-08T19:07:00.001-08:00

FP: My comments are embedded in the text.

The land-for-peace hoax

The rise of the forces of jihadist Islam in Egypt places the US and other Western powers in an uncomfortable position. The US is the guarantor of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. That treaty is based on the proposition of land for peace. Israel gave Egypt the Sinai in 1982 and in exchange it received a peace treaty with Egypt. Now that the Islamists are poised to take power, the treaty is effectively null and void.

The question naturally arises: Will the US act in accordance with its role as guarantor of the peace and demand that the new Egyptian government give Sinai back to Israel? Because if the Obama administration or whatever administration is in power when Egypt abrogates the treaty does not issue such a demand, and stand behind it, and if the EU does not support the demand, the entire concept of land-for-peace will be exposed as a hoax.

There are few who relied on US guarantees to date that has not realized what a mistake that was and so will Israel. Carter at the signing, Obama today—pretty reliable.

Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.

Then there are the supposedly iron-clad US and European security guarantees that accompany signed treaties. All the American and European promises to Israel - that they will stand by the Jewish state when it takes risks for peace - will be exposed as worthless lies. As we are already seeing today, no one will stand up for Israel's rights. No one will insist that the Egyptians honor their bargain.

As it has become more apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist parties will hold an absolute majority in Egypt's democratically elected parliament, Western governments and media outlets have insistently argued that these anti-Western, and anti-Jewish, movements have become moderate and pragmatic. Leading the charge to make the case has been the Obama administration. Its senior officials have eagerly embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf Qaradawi is reportedly mediating negotiations between the US and the Taliban.

These are, as usual, Western projections on the Jihadists: in a Western environment an extreme political party may be moderated by the effort to get elected and to govern. It has nothing to do with Arab culture and Islamist jihadis.

Qaradawi, an Egyptian who has been based in Qatar since 1961, when he was forced to flee Egypt due to his jihadist politics, made a triumphant return to his native land last February following the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak. Speaking to a crowd of an estimated two million people in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Qaradawi led them in a chant calling for them to invade Jerusalem.

Over the years, Qaradawi has issued numerous religious ruling permitting, indeed requiring, the massacre of Jews. In 2009, he called for the Muslim world to complete Hitler's goal of eradicating the Jewish people.

As for the US, in 2003, Qaradawi issued a religious ruling calling for the killing of US forces in Iraq.

I guess the US does not want the same fate for its forces in Afghanistan, so what better negotiator than Qaradawi?

BOTH THE Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists are happy to cater to the propaganda needs of Western journalists and politicians and pretend that they are willing to continue to uphold the peace treaty with Israel. But even as they make conditional statements to eager Americans and Europeans, they consistently tell their own people that they seek the destruction of Israel and the abrogation of the peace deal between Egypt and Israel.

It’s called taquiyah and the West will always fall for it.

As the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs' Jonathan D. Halevi documented last week in a report on Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist positions on the future of the peace between Egypt and Israel, while speaking to Westerners in general terms about their willingness to respect the treaty, both groups place numerous conditions on their willingness to maintain it. These conditions make clear that there is no way that they will continue to respect the peace treaty. Indeed, they will use any excuse to justify its abrogation and blame it on Israel. And they will do so at the earliest available opportunity.

Exactly what I predicted.

It is possible, and perhaps likely, that the US will cut off military aid to Egypt in the wake of Cairo's abrogation of the peace treaty. But it is impossible to imagine that the Obama administration will abide by the US's commitment as the guarantor of the deal and demand that Egypt return Sinai to Israel. Indeed, it is only slightly more likely that a Republican administration would fulfill the US's commitment as guarantor of the peace and demand the return of Sinai to Israel after Egypt's democratically elected Islamist regime finds an excuse to abrogate the peace treaty.

FP: I have argued for a long time that steep American decline will force the same appeasement policies on both Democrats and Republicans, regardless of the latter blabber in the heat of the horserace. Once the idea of realignment with Islamists is introduced and implemented by bringing them to power reversal becomes impossible. Call it Obamacare of foreign policy.

It is important to keep this sorry state of affairs in mind when we assess the prospects for a land-for-peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This week, following months of intense pressure from the US and the EU, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met face to face for the first time in 16 months. According to Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who hosted the meeting, the Palestinians submitted their proposal on security and border issues to Israel. The sides are supposed to meet again next week and Israel is expected to present its proposals on these issues.

There are several reasons that these talks are doomed to failure. The most important reason they will fail is that even if they lead to an agreement, no agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is sustainable. Assuming for a moment that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas goes against everything he has said for the past three years and signs a peace deal with Israel in which he promises Israel peace in exchange for Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, this agreement will have little impact on the Palestinians' view of Israel. Abbas today represents no one. His term of office ended three years ago. Hamas won the last Palestinian elections in 2006.

The main problem is that Israel has already agreed to a Palestinian state and is negotiating on 1967 borders without demanding to include the right of return and termination of conflict. This set a precedent and if Israel now insist on that, it will be deemed imposing “new obstacles” and being obstructionist. This is exactly what happened with the demand for recognition of a Jewish state. Israel does not learn from experience.

And Hamas's leaders - like their counterparts in the Muslim Brotherhood - make no bones about their intention to destroy Israel. Two weeks ago at a speech in Gaza, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh proclaimed, "We say today explicitly so it cannot be explained otherwise, that the armed resistance and the armed struggle are the path and the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and for the expulsion of the invaders and usurpers [Israel]... We won't relinquish one inch of the land of Palestine."

In his visit with his Muslim Brotherhood counterpart, Mohammad Badie, in Cairo this week Haniyeh said, "The Islamic resistance movement of Hamas by definition is a jihadist movement by the Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian on the surface, Islamic at its core, and its goal is liberation."

Haniyeh did the same in Tunisia and Turkey. So now instead of inciting just their own children and public, Hamas is inciting the whole Ummah. And without the dictators to constrain them this can readily get out of control.

WITH HAMAS'S Brotherhood colleagues taking power from Cairo to Casablanca, it is hard to imagine a scenario in which supposedly peaceseeking Fatah will win Palestinian elections. It is in recognition of this fact that Abbas has signed a series of unity agreements with Hamas since May.

Well, recently problems between them surfaced again. But either Abbas will yield, or Hamas will take over the West Bank—no scenario beneficial to Israel can be envisioned.

So the best case scenario for a peace deal with the Palestinians is that Abbas will sign a deal that Israel will implement by withdrawing from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and expelling up to a half a million Israeli citizens from their homes. Hamas will then take power and abrogate the treaty, just as its brethren in Cairo are planning to do with their country's peace treaty.

Bingo. This is so damn obvious, but I am not entirely sure that Netanyahu and certainly Barak are not in denial about this, in order to appease the West.

This leads us to the question of what the diplomatic forces from the US, the EU, and the UN who have worked so hard to get the present negotiations started are really after. What are they trying to achieve by pressuring Israel to negotiate a deal that they know will not be respected by the Palestinians?

In the case of some of the parties involved it is fairly obvious that they want to weaken Israel. Take the UN for example. In 2005, Israel withdrew all of its military forces and civilians from Gaza. Rather than reward Israel for giving up land with peace, the Palestinians transformed Gaza into a launching pad for missile attacks against Israel. And in June 2007, Hamas took over the territory.

Despite the fact that Israel is wholly absent from Gaza, and indeed is being attacked from Gaza, no one has called for the Palestinians to give the territory back to Israel. The UN doesn't even recognize that Israel left.

Last September, the UN published yet another report labeling Israel as the occupier of Gaza. And in accordance with this fiction, the UN - along with the EU and the US - continues to hold Israel responsible for Gaza's welfare.

Ironically, Hamas itself denies that Gaza is under Israeli occupation. In an interview with the Ma'an news agency on Tuesday, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar openly admitted that Gaza is not under occupation. Speaking of Fatah's plan to launch massive demonstrations against Israel, Zahar said, "Against whom could we demonstrate in the Gaza Strip? When Gaza was occupied, that model was applicable."

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Fatah can all freely tell the truth about Israel and their commitment to its destruction without fear of any repercussions. They know that the Western powers will not listen to them. They know that they will never have to pay a price for their actions. Indeed, they know they will be rewarded for them.

This is precisely what I argued was behind Hamas’ agreement to unity talks with Fatah: they realized that it was a good fig leaf for the West to give them a UN state which they would take over and continue with the phased destruction of Israel.

Since the inauguration of the land-for-peace process between Israel and the PLO 19 years ago, the Palestinians have repeatedly demonstrated their bad faith. Israeli land giveaways have consistently been met with increased Palestinian terrorism. Since 1996, US- and European- trained Palestinian security forces have repeatedly used their guns to kill Israelis. Since 1994, the PA has made it standard practice to enlist terrorists in its US- and European-funded and trained security forces.

The US and Europe have continued to train and arm them despite their bad faith. Despite their continued commitment to Israel's destruction and involvement in terrorism, the US and the EU have continued to demand that Israel fork over more territory. At no point have either the US or the EU seriously considered ending their support for the Palestinians or the demonstrably fictitious land-for-peace formula.

The West is now in the Palestinian/Islamist camp. Israel better devise a strategy to deal with it. Appeasement is not it.

As Israel bows now to still more US and EU pressure and conducts land-for-peace talks with Fatah, our leadership may be seduced by the faint praise they receive from the likes of The Washington Post or even from the Obama administration. But this praise should not turn their heads.

But it will. And they will still accept all sorts of guarantees that are proven to be empty.

To understand its feckless emptiness, all they need to do is direct their attention to what happened this week in Cairo, as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists secured their absolute control over Egypt's parliament. Specifically, our leaders should note the absence of any voices demanding that Egypt respect the peace treaty with Israel or return Sinai.

The time has come for Israel to admit the truth. Land-for-peace is a confidence game and we are the mark.

My guess is that it won’t. But even if it does, there have been so many strategic blunders that it may well be too late. I hope I am wrong.

Comments on reads 1/8 II

2012-01-08T14:20:00.001-08:00

Mark Steyn: Debate Night in the Titanic Ballroom

With respect to Hugh and Marc, after almost every one of these debates we at NR and elsewhere say “ABC lost. Big time.” and “Big loser: ABC News” – or CNN or MSNBC or whoever it is. And then ten days later (or, in this case, the following morning) there they all are again acquiescing in some condescending media bigfoot’s wish to spend 20 minutes discussing whether the Supreme Court has a right to ban diaphragms for transgendered adoptees or whatever hallucinogenic George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer were chugging down in the green room last night.

This country is broke, and the unprecedented scale of its brokeness is an existential threat. Yet, with the exception of Newt’s occasional flashes of contempt for the questioners, everyone else plays along with this absurd game. It’s not merely that the GOP is letting the left frame the contest but that a party willing to dignify this pitiful charade is sending a broader message about the likelihood of its mustering the determination to stand up to a Democrat-media establishment once in office and effect meaningful course correction.

I see Terence Jeffrey and Andy McCarthy are having a disagreement about the correct response to a question on gay adoption. The correct response is to take an unconstitutional federally-funded supersized condom, roll it over George Stephanopoulos’ head, and say, “That’s odd. I can no longer hear a word you’re saying. So let me throw in my two bits on impending multi-trillion-dollar ruin…”

FP: The media is one of the component of and factors responsible for the brokeness. But even if it asked the right questions, there isn’t anybody who would be able and willing to answer—there is no leadership. Note, by the way, that Steyn from the right does not have a much different opinion about the horserace from Taibbi from the left (see my earlier post): meaningless.

Robert Fulford: The Muslim Brotherhood’s big moment

This is an exciting time for the editors in Cairo who run Ikhwan, the official website of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has suddenly become popular, and there’s never a lack of news to report.

China’s ambassador to Egypt dropped in the other day for an informal talk with Mohamed Morsi, head of the Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party. Last week, it was the Russian ambassador who came to chat with Morsi — about democratic values, according to the report on Ikhwan.

Diplomats from Nigeria, Cuba, Spain and elsewhere are anxious to connect with the Brotherhood. They realize that it’s now part of Egypt’s political future, perhaps even the most important part.

…

The voting has produced a dangerous epidemic of wishful thinking, reaching all the way to Washington. The Obama government has quietly reversed the anti-Brotherhood policy of the United States. An anonymous but apparently important figure in the administration told The New York Times that it’s now essential to “engage with the party that won the election.” Senator John Kerry, chairman of the foreign relations committee, explained why he met with Brotherhood leaders: “The United States needs to deal with the new reality.” Washington apparently accepts, for the moment, the Brotherhood’s claim that it wants an Egyptian government that will respect religious freedoms, free markets and international commitments, including Egypt’s treaty with Israel.

FP: Israel looks like Czechoslovakia in the 1930’s to me.

Walter Russell Mead: Chaos on the Shores of Tripoli?

The fledgling government is struggling to establish a national police force and army and is unable to quell the fighting. NATO may have accomplished its ultimate goal of ousting Gaddafi, but it seems to have lost interest in its stated goal of ensuring civilian safety and dignity. Part of this is that the only part of Libya’s government that some westerners care about is working: the oil is flowing. Part of it is compassion fatigue: the world has only a very limited amount of political and military energy for humanitarian concerns. And part of it is what we can call Reconstruction Syndrome: as the Yankees discovered in the postwar South, it is much easier to defeat armies in the field than to build a new society on the ruins. Sooner or later, the carpetbaggers and the troops who back them give up and the good old boys are pretty much free to do what they want.

FP: All true. But I have kept asking a question that nobody in the West wanted answered: Was it sheer coincidence that there was no Arab state that was not a dictatorship? Certainly not, it was the only way to maintain a semblance of nations and states: by force. Take that away and this is what you’ll get. And you ain’t seen nothing yet. See also Jacques Neriah: Is Libya Disintegrating as a State? and Meade’s Iran Sees Opportunity in Iraq.

US Expels Venezuela Consul for Possible Involvement in Terrorism Against US

'It has recently come to our attention that Ms. Antonieta, assigned to the Venezuelan consul in Miami since March 2011, has been linked to a potential cyber attack on the United States involving affiliates of the Iranian, Cuban, and Venezuelan regimes,' Congressman David Rivera (FL-25), Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-21) and Congressman Albio Sires (NJ-13) wrote to Secretary Clinton in December.

FP: For all those who dismiss South American ties with Iran.

Yossi Beilin: The next kidnapping

Legislating the maximum price Israel would willingly pay for ransom is both foolish and dangerous.

FP: That sounds right, even if it comes from Beilin. Unfortunately, given the crisis of leadership and the Israeli public clueless and careless about how to negotiate in the bazaar, it may be necessary. But I suspect that the laws will be altered with each and every kidnapped for that very same reason.

Retired generals say it is time to draft ultra-Orthodox

Fifteen former major-generals sign petition calling on government to abandon policy of exempting ultra-Orthodox from IDF service, advocating mandatory service that is "tailored to all Israelis."

FP: Good luck with both drafting and tailoring.

Comments on reads 1/8

2012-01-08T00:48:00.001-08:00

Brotherhood: We did not promise to honor Israel peace treaty

Egyptian Islamist movement denies US State Department claim it had promised to honor 1979 peace deal. 'No one has the right to speak for Egyptian people,' party official says.

Nuland insisted that the various political parties in Egypt have offered the US "good guarantees" that the peace treaty will be observed. She stressed that Washington fully expects all of Cairo's political factions to honor the previous regime's international agreements.

FP: Islamist guarantees, now that’s a good one. Remember that I wrote the other day that the Obama administration seems to think that just wishing the Islamists to become allies will make them so? Looks like it does not work that way. And it gets worse:

Elder of Ziyon: Report: Egypt demanding $500 billion from Israel for Sinai damage

Egyptian media is reporting that Egypt has prepared a 750 page document detailing Israel's liability for damage done to the Sinai while Israel controlled it from 1967 to 1982.

Rose El Youssef says that the report being given to the UN. It details how Israel supposedly ravaged the Sinai and hurt the Egyptian economy. It includes some 190 maps.

Among the ludicrous charges:

Israel destroyed the fishing industry Israel destroyed 40% of the coral reefs
Israel took lots of oil from the Sinai
Israel stole 25% of the precious gems and marble, leaving worthless rocks behind
Israel took the entire contents of two gold mines, leaving nothing of value left
Israel disrupted international maritime trade through the Suez Canal, depriving Egypt of revenue
Israel killed 250,000 (!) Egyptians and injured a million more
Israel looted all Egyptian banks in Gaza the day before the Six Day War, in the "biggest military robbery in modern history"
Israel stole priceless artifacts from Egypt's museums in the Sinai and gutted archaeological sites there
Israel emptied out 30% of the fresh water wells in the Sinai, and placed there pipes that continue to drain Egyptian water towards Israel today
Israel stole millions of tons of valuable sand, worth $49 billion in today's prices
Israel used the Sinai to research desert agriculture Israel benefits from the research but the Sinai desert lands were weakened as a result
Israel destroyed Sinai's wildlife and stole many exotic animals to make medicines being sold to Europe
Israel shot down Libyan Airlines Flight 114 (that is true, details at Wikipedia; the plane strayed into Israel accidentally and purposefully refused to acknowledge the IAF pilots' attempts to contact them)
And, of course, Israel destroyed Egypt's air force "for no reason" at the beginning of the 1967 war

You can't make this stuff up.

I think if Israel managed to steal $50 billion worth of sand, then Egypt's cash flow problems are over - the rest of the sand in the Sinai must be worth trillions! Who needs oil when you have such valuable sand?

FP: I am not surprised. If Egypt is starving, what would be the Islamist instinct? Blame Israel and demand billions. These retarded nutters think that they can kill two birds with one shot: feed themselves and rob Israel. A natural. And in the current international climate I wouldn’t put it past the world to support such absurdities.

China warns US on Asia military strategy

China's state media have warned the US against "flexing its muscles" after Washington unveiled a defence review switching focus to the Asia-Pacific.

In an editorial, official news agency Xinhua said President Barack Obama's move to increase US presence in the region could come as a welcome boost to stability and prosperity.

But it said any US militarism could create ill will and "endanger peace".

…

Xinhua said the US role could be good for China in helping to secure the "peaceful environment" it needed to continue its economic development.

But it added: "While boosting its military presence in the Asia-Pacific, the United States should abstain from flexing its muscles, as this won't help solve regional disputes.

"If the United States indiscreetly applies militarism in the region, it will be like a bull in a china shop, and endanger peace instead of enhancing regional stability.

FP: Note how quick was Obama to reassure the Chinese that the US won’t “flex its muscles”.

But China should not worry. I’ll reiterate an online comment that “hopefully China won’t invade Taiwan, because then the US would have to borrow more from China to fight it”. The PostWest has new flexers and the old flexers can’t flex anymore and they make sure to declare it publicly.

'250,000 foreigners live in country'

Number of infiltrators from Sinai is expected to increase as border fence nears completion, according to Knesset report.

FP: Another strategic blunder.

Comments on reads 1/7

2012-01-07T12:38:00.001-08:00

'Michelle Obama sparred with advisers'

Popular first lady Michelle Obama has had testy relationships with some top White House advisers, and at times pushed the president to pursue politically difficult causes like healthcare and immigration reform, according to a new book.

"The Obamas" by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, paints Mrs. Obama as "an expert motivator and charmer" and "an increasingly canny political player" ahead of the 2012 presidential election, expected to be a tough fight for her husband, President Barack Obama.

…

Mrs. Obama fought against political tactics espoused by Rahm Emanuel, her husband's former chief of staff, and Robert Gibbs, the former White House press secretary, the book said, pushing her husband to replace advisers who she felt were "too insular, not strategic enough," according to excerpts from the book on the newspaper's website.

…

Mrs. Obama supported her husband's "instincts for ambitious but unpopular initiatives like the overhaul of health care and immigration laws, casting herself as a foil to aides more intent on preserving congressional seats and poll numbers," the excerpts say.

"She does think there are worse things than losing an election," said Susan Sher, her former chief of staff, in the book. "Being true to yourself, for her, is definitely more important."

FP: It’s been obvious for quite a while who wears the pants in the Obama household. Electing Obama was problematic enough, but it turns out that it was Michelle who got elected which, as policy outcomes demonstrate, it’s outright scary.

E-mail reveals anti-Semitism at US think tank

In the e-mail that the Post obtained exclusively from the CAP account of Faiz Shakir, who serves as editor-in-chief of the ThinkProgress.org website and is a vice president at CAP, he wrote, “Yes, I agree ‘Israel Firster’ is terrible, anti-Semitic language. And that’s why that language no longer exists on Zaid’s personal twitter feed, because he also knows and understands the implications.”

Zaid Jilani wrote on his Twitter account, where he identifies himself as a “Reporter-Blogger for ThinkProgress,” that “... Obama is still beloved by Israel-firsters and getting lots of their $$.”

FP: If I am not mistaken, CAP is a Soros-funded organization, so no surprise there. But note the names of its top members. That’s who advises the administration on the ME. And look at the consequences.

'Islamist success in Egypt puts Israel in peril'

Hamas's Haniyeh tells 'Independent' that Egypt will no longer support blockade, IDF military operations in Gaza.

FP: Now is it clear why Cast Lead was yet another strategic blunder, in that Israel did not destroy Hamas when it could? If Egypt protects Hamas missile launching on threat of war with Obama re-elected and Turkey supporting Hamas, Israel has bought it, Iran nukes or not.

ADL slams Santorum for 'Jesus' comment

US Republican presidential candidate criticized as "religiously exclusionist" for saying, "We always need a Jesus candidate."

FP: As distinct from liberalism and distancing from Israel, a good reason why US Jews are not Republican.

PowerLine: Hezbollah comes to the US, cont’d

During my visit to Tulsa last month I noted a story in the local news involving the search of a used car dealership as the result of a lawsuit alleging that it received about $20.2 million from Hezbollah members or Hezbollah-controlled entities to purchase and ship used cars. I subsequently wrote a little more about the civil lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York; the lawsuit attacks a complex cocaine and automobile smuggling enterprise in the United States and West Africa. The enterprise handles hundreds of millions of dollars each month and some of the profits are routed to Hezbollah through the Lebanese Canadian Bank. Terror finance expert Jonathan Schanzer’s New York Post column explains what’s happening here:

Last month, the US government filed suit against a number of American and Lebanese businesses that allegedly helped bankroll the Lebanese terrorist group. The civil indictment in Manhattan blew the lid off a vast criminal network that included money-laundering, cocaine deals and more — including 30 US car dealerships that helped the group launder cash.
As one investigator quipped, Hezbollah is the “Gambinos on steroids.”

FP: Hezbollah is not just any terror organization. It is the government of Lebanon and even sits on the UNSC. How do you like the PostWest?

Barry Rubin: Why Is an Anti-American Islamist Obama's Favorite Middle East Leader?

For the first time in forty years, Israel is not the American president’s favorite Middle Eastern ally. Instead, that role is played by Turkey’s government.

This would not be such a bad thing if we were talking about the “old” Turkey, the secular republic. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s favorite advisor among the regional leaders is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Pretend all you want but Obama really dislikes—hates?—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and truth be told Netanyahu has done nothing to deserve that treatment.

…

Erdogan’s record at home and abroad shows what he and his regime are all about. Indeed, what is truly bizarre about Obama’s judgment is that Erdogan has done nothing so beneficial to the United States and a number of things detrimental to it…

…

Wait a minute! Maybe that's what the "Turkish model," which the Obama Administration wants to spread to the Arabic-speaking world, is: an elected government that makes itself into a dictatorship.

Talk to almost any Turk, at least to those who aren’t regime supporters, and they’ll tell you that the only explanation they can figure out is a conspiracy in which the United States wants an Islamist regime in Turkey to prove its sympathy for Islam and possibly affect such groups elsewhere.

…

Cagaptay argues that to continue this economic success the Turkish government must avoid “a belligerent foreign policy.” But that’s a bit misleading. Turkey can have a radical, pro-Islamist foreign policy that is objectively anti-Western at little cost. It just has to avoid getting involved directly in wars, which it can easily do.

…

And with Obama following Erdogan’s advice and trying to help spread the “Turkish model”—electing radical Islamist regimes that will be repressive at home and backing radicals abroad—things look bright for Erdogan as he steadily consolidates control.

FP: There you have it: Obama’s US realignment with the Islamists. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you should know this already. Obama seems to think that if he just wishes Islamists to be friends of the US, they become so, and evidence to the contrary be damned.

Boaz Bismuth: Not everyone wants him hanged

In today's Egypt, having good relations with Israel is considered an offense requiring the death penalty.

FP: Land for peace agreements with Arabs. It's a good thing that Israel did not have sufficient time to let even more Egyptian army into the Sinai, isn't it?

Isi Leibler: Change the system but cease Haredi bashing

There are absolutely no grounds for Orthodox Jews living in a Jewish state surrounded by enemies to be exempt from serving their country.

FP: Absolutely, but Israel is neither able, nor willing to change the system, as that would lead to civil war. But even if it did change it, Haredi recruits without a basic education would be a serious liability for the army, even an enemy within.

Increasing evidence for the PostWest

2012-01-06T19:42:00.001-08:00

FP: I was reading the WSJ today and I fond the following among the news:

Obama proposed a major shift in US military policy, cutting troup size and shrinking spending, in a strategy that would curb US ability to fight two ground wars at once. Despite wishful thinking in the West, this is just the latest indicator of American decline.

Here are some of the consequences also in the news:

Karzai told the Us to hand over a prison holding insurgents to Afghan control this month and said US officials violate detainees’ rights.

You got that right: the puppet government that would not exist without US support—an Afghani government, mind you!—criticizes the US for human rights violations and makes demands on it.

Turkey foreign minister told Iran that Ankara wouldn’t let Turkish soil be used for an attack on a neighbor in a trip aimed at smoothing tie.

Turkey is the pillar of US’s ME policy and a member of NATO. What does it say about US power as perceived by others.

LawHawk: Arab League Asks Hamas For Help In Stabilizing Situation in Syria

The Arab League thinks it has a solution to the mess in Syria. It's calling on Hamas for help.

That comes just hours after the Arab League admitted that its monitors and Syria mission had made mistakes and were looking towards the United Nations for assistance.

Hamas has no interest other than self preservation when it comes to Syria. Hamas leaders have called Damascus home and the terror group has received aid and comfort from the Syrian regime led by Bashar al Assad. What kind of stabilization is the Arab League looking for here? Yet another extrajudicial militia running around Syria killing opponents of the regime? That's what would be the end result.

All the while, Assad's loyalists and security forces continue attacking protesters around the country and there was yet another bombing with 25 killed. Assad blames terrorists and the opposition demands an independent inquiry claiming that Assad's forces are carrying on a bombing campaign to implicate and discredit the opposition as well as justify the crackdown.

FP: I’m sure that between the Sudanese general and Hamas, Syria’s problems will be resolved. But consider the times we live in if an Arab international organization asks a massacrer to monitor another massacrer, and a terrorist organization for help with same.

Zbignew Brzezinski: 8 Geopolitically Endangered Species

With the decline of America's global preeminence, weaker countries will be more susceptible to the assertive influence of major regional powers. India and China are rising, Russia is increasingly imperially minded, and the Middle East is growing ever more unstable. The potential for regional conflict in the absence of an internationally active America is real. Get ready for a global reality characterized by the survival of the strongest.

FP: I don’t much care for Zbig, but he is describing the PostWest.

Dore Gold: US arms in Arab hands

Western technologies transferred to certain Arab states may eventually end up in Iranian hands.

Even if they don't end up in Iranian hands, they may end up being used against the West, certainly against Israel. Smart thing to do when you’re in decline, no?

(I also read that automakers are investing in China by building 5-6 car manufacturing plants there. The bankrupt US automakers are closing plants.)

So, how do you like the PostWest so far? An exciting new world order, no?

Aner Shalev: The two-state solution that already exists

2012-01-05T16:01:00.001-08:00

FP: Exactly what I have been arguing – see the last line.

The Haredi State

The Haredi State is a welfare state that would make the Scandinavians jealous. Most inhabitants are supported by pensions and stipends, and are almost completely exempt from income tax and municipal taxes.

Have you always dreamed about living to see the establishment of two states for two peoples? The dream has long since come true. Fantasized about a welfare state? Look no further, it's here. Demonstrated for affordable housing? Behold, it is now reality. Striving for a country not drained by enormous security budgets? You've already got it. Demanded classes with few pupils, a long school day, and free higher education? All these dreams have come true in the Haredi State, living in peace alongside the State of Israel.

The Haredi State is a welfare state that would make the Scandinavians jealous. Most inhabitants are supported by pensions and stipends, and are almost completely exempt from income tax and municipal taxes.

The state initiates huge housing projects which are made available to the public for affordable prices. The education system of the Haredi State has many advantages in comparison to its parallels in neighboring countries: fewer pupils per class, and students that aren't required to sweat over core studies or practical studies, allowing them to calmly concentrate on spiritual issues.

Fortunately, the Haredi State has no army and needs none, thanks to the defense treaty with its closest neighbor. Yes, it's difficult to be a woman in the Haredi State, but one cannot interfere in the internal matters of a sovereign state.
Lately, several border spats have occurred between Israel and the Haredi state, events that included spitting, cussing and humiliating Israeli citizens. Still, as Israel's Prime Minister and many of the pundits explained, these were the actions of miniscule splinter groups which don't represent the majority of ultra-Orthodox who eagerly support the peace agreement with Israel, and its benefits. According to these pundits, the victims of the fanatic splinter groups, trying to enforce Haredi laws within Israel's borders, are not the women who have been attacked, but rather the Haredi population as a whole, which is completely innocent.

Some claim that the latest border events stem from innocent territorial misunderstandings. Does the bus line running from Ashdod to Jerusalem, boarded by Tanya, run in Israeli or Haredi sovereign territory? And line 49A, boarded by Doron, the female soldier? And the pavement in Beit Shemesh, where 8-year-old Naama was afraid to walk? Could it be that Tanya and Naama encroached Haredi sovereignty unawares?

The fiscal agreements between the two states, regulating funding of the Haredi state by Israeli taxpayers, are ironclad, as are the military agreements guaranteeing protection from the Israeli army and the judiciary agreement giving the Haredi State control over matters of matrimony, divorce and burial. However, the actual border line between the new states has never been clearly drawn. Therefore it is only natural that the rapid growth of the Haredi population causes the border line to be moved every so often, as part of a slow - and ultimately justifiable - annexation of Israeli lands. This process of Haredi expansion and Israeli retreats has only one danger: The Haredi State might eventually lose the hand that feeds it.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai recently declared with surprising honesty that a Haredi-only city will have no income, and since it won't collect local taxes it can't survive. Yes, it's nice to feel needed every now and then.

The issue surrounding the exclusion of women by the ultra-Orthodox should not be reduced to strong condemnations and local enforcement of the law, as the government wishes. Its an opportunity to hold a frank and honest debate about money, power and exemptions handed out by all Israeli governments to the Haredi public in exchange for political support, a deal with a high price for many Israelis. This was one of the main causes of the social unrest last summer.

Israel should avoid this debate only if it wishes to commit suicide.

Comments on reads 1/5

2012-01-05T12:53:00.001-08:00

Israel Matzav: The first country to seek a waiver from the new US sanctions on Iran

So who's the first country that's going to seek a waiver from the Obama administration to continue dealing with Iran? No, it's not China, although they're laying the groundwork: China has cut its oil purchases by half as compared with 2011 levels in what will probably become a bid to get the Obama administration to exempt them from the sanctions under the 'significantly reduced dealings with Iran' clause. I'm talking about a country that has actually increased its dealings with Iran over the last several years, and wants to at least keep them on the same level. I'm talking Turkey .

FP: American ally and NATO member. A pillar of Obama’s ME policy. He surely knows how to pick them (see next).

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt says it will work with rivals

Top Islamist group says it will involve political rivals • Ballots to be cast on second day of phase three of vote • U.S. State Department criticizes Egypt's "Mubarak hold-overs."

FP: Boy, has Hillary found the real problem in Egypt’s elections!

Lee Smith: Minority Interest

Those inclined to discount the possibility of a Christian-free Middle East would do well to remember that Jews, in the recent past, had a significant place in the Ottoman Empire and Iran. Were it not for the birth of a sovereign Jewish state that took in Jewish refugees thrown out by countries that turned against them, this regional minority might well have disappeared half a century ago. Without an Israel of their own, if the Christians don’t get it right their era in the Middle East may be coming to an end.

FP: Except that the Christians have a plethora of Christian states to which they can—and do—go, and the Jews would have had none if not for Israel. And, in fact, the Europeans would be well advised to accept ME Christian immigrants, not just as a matter of compassion, but also to balance their unassimilating Moslem immigration. Instead, the Christians’ status is either ignored, or blamed on Israel. Another dimension of Western collapse.

MICHAEL COCKERELL: Lieutenant Gaddafi in Swinging London

Forty-five years ago Lieutenant Muammar Gaddafi was photographed walking down Piccadilly on his only visit to Britain. It was April 1966 and Gaddafi, then aged 23, had come over to be trained by the British Army. "I put on my Al-Jird [Arab robes] and went to Piccadilly," Gaddafi said later. "I was prompted by a feeling of challenge and a desire to assert myself."

…

Three years after his walk down Piccadilly, Gaddafi followed a tradition of foreign officers trained by the British Army. He made use of his new-found knowledge of signals, communications and intelligence to seize political power in his own country. Along with another group of young officers, he overthrew the ailing King Idris in a bloodless coup and promoted himself to Colonel, the same rank as his Egyptian hero Nasser, and the one he held to his death.

The 1969 coup took the Foreign Office in London by surprise and it sought our man in Tripoli's assessment of the new leader. The reply, in the National Archive, is to the point: "The simplest conclusion to draw would be that in his vision of himself as a new Arab Messiah, Gaddafi is bordering on the insane."

FP: The West has always been clueless about the ME and NA and has a lot to answer for. We are living today with the consequences of their colonial failures.

Israel Matzav on US and Jews: in a crisis, same as everybody else

2012-01-04T23:10:00.001-08:00

Egyptian Presidential candidate: If we close the Gulf of Aqaba, the Jews will suffocate and die

Here's Egyptian Presidential candidate Hazem Sallah Abu Ismail, telling us how he really feels about Israel and Jews.

(video at link)

FP: But they promised democracy, so let’s engage them, says Obama. Hey, what do you expect from a disciple of Rev. Wright?

Now, the US legal system is not yet there, but give it time:

California judge deems Muslim ramming Jew with shopping cart 'protected speech'

One can only wonder what Mr. Justice Holmes would say. A California judge has found that a Muslim student who rammed a Jewish student with a shopping cart was simply exercising a right to free speech.

On Thursday U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg said the harassment, even if true, constituted protected political speech and dismissed the case

FP: Would the judge have found the same if the deed had been by a Jew on a Muslim, or a white on a black, or a Hispanic, or an Asian?

And then there’s this:

60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl pounds Eric Cantor for being Jewish and not Liberal

In case any of you missed it, the Torah does not command that you be politically liberal. It does not favor abortion on demand, it does not favor Communism or Socialism. The Torah commands that you give charity, but to whom you give it is your prerogative, and in many instances how much you give is voluntary.

But Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes has no clue what the Torah says. And Eric Cantor, who does have a clue, let her off the hook.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Sunlight via Atlas Shrugs). I actually added a fuller interview to the excerpt that Pamela posted.

By the way, Judaism might want the community to take care of those in need - but that's the community and not the government. There's a difference.

Do you think she would have pressed these questions about religion to a Muslim? Still think the US is exceptional in a crisis, when it comes to Jews? This is how it starts.

Comments on reads 1/4 II

2012-01-04T14:41:00.001-08:00

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks yield agreement – to meet again

Yitzhak Molcho and Saeb Erekat renew contact between Israel and Palestinians in Jordan-sponsored meeting • Israel presents the Palestinians with document of "21 basic principles" for negotiations • Israel requests direct meeting between Netanyahu, Abbas.

FP: There are references to an agreement to continue talks secretly. If Israel has agreed to this, it demonstrates it has learned nothing from the lesson the Arabs and the West have constantly taught it: such secret negotiations will result, as before, in real concessions by Israel in return for Palestinian promises they either cannot or will not fulfill; when this result will leak or be disclosed, the Palestinian promises will be denied and a next set of negotiations will be pushed that have the Israeli concessions as their starting point.

Indeed, if these secret negotiations start from Olmert’s concessions, as the Palestinians demand, it will be a validation of my lesson unlearned argument.

In the current state in which Israel finds itself and to which it has itself contributed, any negotiations from now on that do not include renouncement of right of return and termination of conflict can be considered suicidal.

Dismissing Iran, US says it will continue to deploy ships in Gulf

Iranian Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Ataollah Salahi warns U.S. not to send its aircraft carrier back to the Persian Gulf • Washington says Iran is under pressure and the U.S. will continue its routine deployment in the Gulf as planned.

FP: If I had to bet, I would expect the US to find some reason to rationalize a delay in the return of the ship to the Persian Gulf, unless forces Obama’s hand before the election, which is about the only consideration in his mind.

IDF rabbi resigns post over regulation on singing by women

Chief Rabbi of Israel Air Force leaves project meant to recruit ultra-Orthodox men to IDF over decision to obligate observant soldiers to attend events involving women singing • Rabbi slated to retire from service altogether later this year.

FP: Releasing the ultra-orthodox from obligatory basic education, the IDF and the workforce carries with it not a lesser domestic danger than the foreign one. Accepting extreme religious restrictions just so a few of them can serve is absurd and useless.

JoshuaPundit: Iran Warns US: 'Keep Your Aircraft Carrier Out Of The Persian Gulf'

President Obama bought into this big time. He reluctantly ( his own words) finally signed tough sanctions passed by Congress against Iran into law that target their central bank and would make it difficult for them to process their oil payments.

The only problem is, they're meaningless because of how the Senate Democrats watered them down. Not only don't they take effect for six months, but President Obama has the wiggle room not to apply them if he judges doing so would not be in US interest.

There's no question in my mind that President Obama will almost certainly bend over again, swallow hard and engage with Iran. It's also almost a certainty the US will not enforce any sanctions while talks are going on, let alone any military action. And of course,Russia will see to it that the proposed talks go absolutely nowhere except to a highly watered down policy statement the Mullahs will use for toilet paper.

This is indeed a very bad time for America to have a leader like President Obama at the helm of the ship of state.

FP: I wish it weren’t, but this is correct. Obama has signed those sanctions as a “get tough” before the elections. If he is re-elected he’ll do exactly what is described above, while kissing Islamist ass everywhere else. A most likely policy: force Israel to de-nuclearize in return for Iran’s assurance not to build the bomb (but not to dismantle the infra-structure to build it).

BTW, JP also has this:

According to this AP story citing a Homeland Security report and internal documents, President Obama's appointees within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are pressuring rank-and-file officers to rubber-stamp immigrants’ visa applications, sometimes against the officers’ will and even when fraud or security questions are involved…

And here's a fact that will warm your heart. Immigration attorneys, who represent these visa applicants are very happy ( naturally) at the increased approvals, but complain that a lot of immigration officers are just looking for reasons to deny a case, and already demand a higher standard of proof than what is required.

The standard of proof that's required? A 51 percent likelihood that a fact is true.

Tell me...how would you like to be able to be judged by that standard as a citizen when it comes to traffic court or the IRS?

Lots of hope and change for illegal aliens, possibly known now as “undocumented Democrats”.

Yoram Ettinger: Intro to the Middle East

Western attempts to implement unsubstantiated policies often have served to inflame – not extinguish – regional fires.

FP: No kidding? Like, for example, funding genocide against Israel?

PowerLine: Landslide Mitt: Where Do Things Stand Post-Iowa?

Unless I am missing something, this ought to ensure that the GOP race remains interesting for some time to come. Even if Romney wins the first few primaries, it seems unlikely that the opponents then remaining in the race–some of them, anyway–will collapse. Rather, they will be on a path to winning a significant number of delegates. If opposition to Romney among a substantial portion of the party’s base is as persistent as it now looks, the other candidates will have every incentive to stay in the race. It seems entirely possible, even likely, that as of April 1, with most of the convention delegates chosen, Romney will have garnered well under one-half of them. If that is the case, the race could stay interesting for a long time.

FP: It also means a crisis of leadership and the likely re-election of the worst ever American president in history.

Matt Taibbi on the American quasi-democracy

2012-01-04T13:22:00.001-08:00

FP: I am not so certain about the effectiveness of what Taibbi deems the alternative real democratic process, but I sure agree with his perception of the official political system.

Iowa: The Meaningless Sideshow Begins

The 2012 presidential race officially begins today with the caucuses in Iowa, and we all know what that means …

Nothing.

The race for the White House is normally an event suffused with drama, sucking eyeballs to the page all over the globe. Just as even the non-British were at least temporarily engaged by last year’s royal wedding, people all over the world are normally fascinated by the presidential race: both dramas arouse the popular imagination as real-life versions of universal children’s fairy tales.

Instead of a tale about which maiden gets to marry the handsome prince, the campaign is an epic story, complete with a gleaming white castle at the end, about the battle to succeed to the king’s throne. Since the presidency is the most powerful office in the world, the tale has appeal for people all over the planet, from jungles to Siberian villages.

It takes an awful lot to rob the presidential race of this elemental appeal. But this year’s race has lost that buzz. In fact, this 2012 race may be the most meaningless national election campaign we’ve ever had. If the presidential race normally captivates the public as a dramatic and angry ideological battle pitting one impassioned half of society against the other, this year’s race feels like something else entirely.

In the wake of the Tea Party, the Occupy movement, and a dozen or more episodes of real rebellion on the streets, in the legislatures of cities and towns, and in state and federal courthouses, this presidential race now feels like a banal bureaucratic sideshow to the real event – the real event being a looming confrontation between huge masses of disaffected citizens on both sides of the aisle, and a corrupt and increasingly ideologically bankrupt political establishment, represented in large part by the two parties dominating this race.

Let’s put it this way. What feels more like a real news story – Newt Gingrich calling Mitt Romney a liar for the ten millionth time, or this sizzling item that just hit the wires by way of the Montana Supreme Court:

HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court restored the state's century-old ban on direct spending by corporations on political candidates or committees in a ruling Friday that interest groups say bucks a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court decision granting political speech rights to corporations…
A group seeking to undo the Citizens United decision lauded the Montana high court, with its co-founder saying it was a "huge victory for democracy."
"With this ruling, the Montana Supreme Court now sets up the first test case for the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit its Citizens United decision, a decision which poses a direct and serious threat to our democracy," John Bonifaz, of Free Speech For People, said in a statement.

Now that is real politics -- real protest, real change. Exactly the opposite of the limp and sterile charade in Iowa. This caucus, let’s face it, marks the beginning of a long, rigidly-controlled, carefully choreographed process that is really designed to do two things: weed out dangerous minority opinions, and award power to the candidate who least offends the public while he goes about his primary job of energetically representing establishment interests.

If that sounds like a glib take on a free election system that allows the public to choose whichever candidate it likes best without any censorship or overt state interference, so be it. But the ugly reality, as Dylan Ratigan continually points out, is that the candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.

That damning statistic just confirms what everyone who spends any time on the campaign trail knows, which is that the presidential race is not at all about ideas, but entirely about raising money.

The auctioned election process is designed to reduce the field to two candidates who will each receive hundreds of millions of dollars apiece from the same pool of donors. Just take a look at the lists of top donors for Obama and McCain from the last election in 2008.

Obama’s top 20 list included:

Goldman Sachs ($1,013,091)
JPMorgan Chase & Co ($808,799)
Citigroup Inc ($736,771)
WilmerHale LLP ($550,668)
Skadden, Arps et al ($543,539)
UBS AG ($532,674), and...
Morgan Stanley ($512,232).

McCain’s list, meanwhile, included (drum roll please):

JPMorgan Chase & Co ($343,505)
Citigroup Inc ($338,202)
Morgan Stanley ($271,902)
Goldman Sachs ($240,295)
UBS AG ($187,493)
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher ($160,346)
Greenberg Traurig LLP ($147,437), and...
Lehman Brothers ($126,557).

PowerLine on the PostWest

2012-01-04T13:07:00.001-08:00

FP: Are you aware that the US has not won one single war since WW2? And by winning I don’t mean Panama and Granada, I mean the kind of winning as in WW2 and of a serious war. Now, can you envision the US winning any serious war in the future? And is there any enemy that does not know that?

Obama’s Surrender of Afghanistan Continues Apace?

On New Year’s Eve, we cited news reports that, taken together, suggested that the Obama administration is in the process of negotiating a surrender to the Taliban. An AP report to which we linked said that certain “trust-building measures” were part of the process:

The U.S. outreach this year had progressed to the point that there was active discussion of two steps the Taliban seeks as precursors to negotiations, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Trust-building measures under discussion involve setting up a Taliban headquarters office and the release from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of about five Afghan prisoners believed affiliated with the Taliban.

Today the Guardian reported that these “trust-building measures” are moving forward: “Taliban leaders held at Guantánamo Bay to be released in peace talks deal.”

The US has agreed in principle to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantánamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents’ agreement to open a political office for peace negotiations in Qatar, the Guardian has learned.
…
The releases would be to reciprocate for Tuesday’s announcement from the Taliban that they are prepared to open a political office in Qatar to conduct peace negotiations “with the international community” – the most significant political breakthrough in ten years of the Afghan conflict.

So let’s get this straight: we agree to release key Taliban leaders from Gitmo, and the Taliban “reciprocates” not by releasing the one American they hold hostage, but by agreeing to “open a political office…in Qatar?” Wow, what a sacrifice! So basically, what is happening here is that Barack Obama is begging the Taliban to do business with him.

The Guardian turned to a former Obama adviser on Afghanistan, Vali Nasr, to help explicate the administration’s strategy:

Nasr, now a professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said the Taliban announcement on the opening of an office in Qatar was a dramatic breakthrough.

How in the world is the Taliban’s agreement to open an office “a dramatic breakthrough”? Could the Obama administration at least have the decency to let the terrorists manage their own spin, without doing it for them?

“The Qatar office is akin to the Taliban forming a Sinn Féin, a political wing to conduct negotiations,” Nasr said, but added: “The next phase will need concessions on both sides. This doesn’t mean we are now on autopilot to peace.”

Is this really an encouraging precedent? The Taliban is now willing to set up a fictitious “political” arm, in order to satisfy our need to surrender to someone? Pathetic. The Guardian consults another expert, Michael Semple, a former EU envoy in Afghanistan who is now at Harvard. Semple explains the politics of Obama’s apparent surrender:

Semple said he thought the release of a few prisoners from Guantánamo Bay was politically feasible for the Obama administration, even in an election year.
“The prospect of ending a costly war in Afghanistan is sufficiently attractive for the Obama administration to move forward with it,” Semple said.
“Even if all five of these people they release went straight back to Quetta [the Taliban stronghold in Pakistan] to rejoin a fight, it wouldn’t make any real difference.”

Well, that is candid, anyway. Basically, we are being told that the Afghan war is sufficiently unpopular that voters won’t really mind Obama’s surrender. That may well be true, but it is hard to escape the feeling that we are seeing a shameful chapter in our history unfold.

UPDATE: Our friend Tom Joscelyn, one of our foremost experts on terrorism, emails:

Great job on Obama’s ridiculous Afghanistan policy and attempt at negotiations with the Taliban. Just FYI: I’ve profiled the five Taliban commanders who the U.S. is reportedly considering repatriating, or transferring to a third country, to meet the Taliban’s demands. The key fact about the five is that they all have extensive al Qaeda ties. One of the Obama administration’s key goals with respect to talks with the Taliban is to get them to renounce al Qaeda.
I first profiled 4 of the 5 in March 2011 (using declassified documents):
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/03/afghan_peace_council_1.php
I profiled 4 of the 5 again in December 2011 (this time using leaked documents from Joint Task Force Guantanamo):
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2011/12/taliban_seeks_freedo.php
And I profiled the 5th Taliban leader (who was just named by the NY Times) today:
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/01/afghan_taliban_annou.php
At least 2 of the 5 are wanted for war crimes by the UN, by the way. The dossiers of these men do not inspire confidence that they are interested in peace, or could play any constructive role if freed.

As always with the Obama administration, political considerations are everything.

Comments on reads 1/4

2012-01-04T01:58:00.001-08:00

Elliott Abrams: What To Do About Egypt

The United States should use every tool at its disposal to persuade the Egyptian military to stop the assault on democracy and begin a real transition to civilian rule immediately. After a year of conversations with the SCAF by U.S. officials at all levels, it is clear that the message is not getting through; in fact, the SCAF’s behavior and social and economic conditions in the country have deteriorated markedly. Withholding military assistance is the only way to get the SCAF’s attention. The United States simply should not provide assistance to an Egyptian military that treats as criminals other Egyptians who also receive U.S. aid. The United States must show that if the military insists on continuing its disastrous course, it will do so without the support of the U.S. taxpayer.

FP: Abrams’ heart is in the right place but he has a blind spot: the illusion of democracy in the ME. He and the rest of the so-called “neo-cons” refuse to get it through their heads that ME religion and culture do not permit, within the foreseeable future, a democracy of the kind that Abrams has in mind. The choice in the short run is between military rule and Islamist rule and if they share power, in the long run only the Islamist rule will remain. It would have taken organizations like the ones the military raided several generations of uninterfered activity to give Egypt a chance of democracy, yet they were the ones the military stifles.

The letter to Clinton is a contradiction in terms: the military cannot both transition to a civilian rule immediately and stop the assault on democracy. The West should, indeed, stop their funding to the military but should not delude itself that this will bring democracy to Egypt.

Elder of Ziyon: New threats by Abbas

From Al Arabiya:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned to take more unilateral steps if Israel does not agree to halt settlement building in the occupied West Bank and recognize the borders of a future Palestinian state.
Speaking ahead of talks in Jordan between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, Abbas said Palestinians were ready to take "difficult" measures, but did not specify what they were.
Abbas said that if Israel agreed to halt settlement building and recognise "the vision and borders of the two-state solution", Palestinians would agree immediately to negotiations.
"If they don't ... there are measures that we could take. But we will not declare them now because they have not been finalized. But we will take measures that could be difficult," Abbas told a group of judges in Ramallah.
He said the two sides had until Jan. 26 to make progress. The date marks the three-month deadline, agreed on Oct. 26, for them to make proposals on issues of territory and security, with the aim of reaching a peace deal by the end of this year.

Ha'aretz has a list of what Abbas probably means:

* Asking the UN Security Council in February to pass a resolution that would condemn settlement construction and impose international sanctions on Israel. If a resolution were brought to a vote, all Security Council members other than the United States would be expected to vote in favor.
* Urging the International Criminal Court in The Hague to try Israel for war crimes related to Operation Cast Lead. If that fails, Palestinian officials are likely to encourage Palestinian citizens to file lawsuits against Israel in Western courts.
* Pushing for the implementation the articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention that ban the construction of communities and transfer of populations in occupied territory. The Palestinians have been trying for some time now to persuade the Swiss government to convene the signatories on the document for a special debate on the subject of applying the Geneva Convention in the West Bank.
* Asking the UN General Assembly or the UN Human Rights Council to send an international fact-finding committee to look into the settlement issue.
* Renewing efforts in the UN Security Council to secure full-membership status for Palestine, or asking the UN General Assembly for status as a nonmember state. A similar move was suspended last October after UNESCO, the United Nations' cultural agency, accepted Palestine as a member, in response to which Israel froze Palestinian tax revenues.
* Organizing mass rallies against Israel in the West Bank, as part of a non-violent popular uprising. In reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah, the head of the Hamas political bureau, Khaled Meshal, said the two movements would focus their activities on a popular uprising in an effort to draw international attention to the Israeli occupation.

Playing defense is not the way to win. Israel needs to do its own pro-active moves to put the PLO on the defensive - for example, lawfare for compensation for the terrorism committed during the intifada, or a call for a public investigation in Mahmoud Abbas' role in funding the Munich Olympic massacre.
Palestinian Arabs and their supporters use similar gimmicks all the time - so they would be far more offended when the same types of gimmicks are used against them.

FP: I predict Israel will do nothing of the kind and will cave again to Palestinian demands and Western pressure. And I much hope I will be proven wrong.

Elder of Ziyon: PLO members moving money from Jordan banks to foreign accounts

Jordan's Ad Dostour is reporting that there has been a large amount of money being transferred recently by Palestinian Arab officials from Jordanian banks to foreign banks.
The paper reports that a major investigation into PA corruption has been postponed. The conjecture is that PLO and former PLO officials are scrambling to hide their embezzled money before the investigation starts up again. (Or maybe some of them were tipped off.)
There have been a number of resignations lately in the PA because of embezzlement.
Meanwhile, the PLO plans to create a special committee to figure out exactly where all of its assets are hidden. According to the article, most of the PLO's real estate holdings are still unaccounted for. They are assumed to be in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

FP: The West should pump more millions into them. It’s in good shape for that.

Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh Meets with Turkish Prime Minister

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan greeted Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as a visiting dignitary during a 2½ hour meeting in Istanbul Sunday. The two exchanged praises and shared condemnations of Israel's naval embargo on Gaza, meant to cut off weapons supplies to the terrorist-led government there.

"Erdogan stressed that Hamas was a legitimate liberation movement which was elected by the Palestinian people and the will of the Palestinian people must be respected," according to a report posted on Hamas' Al Qassam website. "Erdogan also stressed that ending the siege on Gaza was one of the three conditions that Turkey put to mend relations with Israel."

FP: Would it have been wise for Israel to concede to Turkey’s ultimatum, as some advised, and find out after that that it still required an ending of the siege of Gaza?

I wonder if Erdogan considers the militant Kurds a liberation movement. Last time I looked whenever they attack Turkey, Erdogan’s army crosses the border into Iraq and bombs them. IDF does not do that in Gaza as often as his army does.

Israel must pay for fire damage, says Chilean senator

Israeli tourist awaits trial for negligently starting forest fire in Chile • Israel offers to send experts and donate seedlings • Chilean Senator Alejandro Navarro: When a citizen commits a crime in another country, his country must pay the damages.

FP: If the suspect had been a citizen of an Islamic state what would the chances be that his treatment would have been the same?

Comments on reads 1/3

2012-01-03T11:43:00.001-08:00

Aaron David Miller: Bibi and Barack

Obama's views came from another place: his own logic, the university environment in which he developed intellectually and his own moral sensibilities. And according to this view, the Arab-Israeli dispute isn't some kind of morality play that pits the forces of good against the forces of darkness. Instead, it's a more complex tale, not of heroes and villains but of a conflict between two rights and two just causes. It's also a conflict that is vital to American interests. And those interests are being threatened by the divide between those who want a solution and are serious about moving toward one, and those who aren't serious about finding a solution and throw up obstacles. After three years, the president has clearly placed the Israelis in the latter category and the Palestinians in the former.

The tendency to look at Israel analytically instead of emotionally, and to view the conflict through a national-interest prism rather than some sort of moral filter, dovetails with Obama's poisonous relationship with Netanyahu. Obama doesn't like him, doesn't trust him and views him as a con man. The Israeli prime minister has frustrated and embarrassed Obama and gotten in the way of the president's wildly exaggerated hopes for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he's been pursuing with more enthusiasm than viable strategy since his inauguration. To make matters worse, when the president went after a settlements freeze, Netanyahu called his bluff and Obama backed down — a terrible humiliation.

FP: Miller is a frustrated US peace processor. He and all others of his ilk failed on the Arab-Israeli conflict, because they rewarded the “blackmailer paradox” game played by the Palestinians and punished Israel’s appeasing strategy. For an ignorant mediator, that’s the expedient thing to do, which guarantees failure. And if one side’s objective is to annihilate the other and the other side reaches a point where it runs out of concessions that do not risk its existence, who do you think the peace processors will blame? Those who never budged or those who appeased?

Miller acknowledges, without realizing it, Obama’s ignorance: his reliance on just his own logic and “moral sensibilities”, his academic background (Khalidi and Said) and shallow pundits (Friedman, Zakaria, Powers) are exactly what made him such a monstruous failure in all his foreign policy. That arrogant ignorance left him open to indoctrination not with the notion of two just causes, but rather that the Palestinians’ is the only just cause. In other words, because of ignorance and inability to understand the roots, history and nature Obama fell for Palestinianism, which explains his categorization the two sides that inverts reality. So, you see, it is not Abbas, Arekat et. al., the con men by excellence, who cannot be trusted, but Netanyahu; and it’s a Palestinian terror state--that danced in the streets on 9/11--not Israel, that is in America’s interest, not Israel.

Ignorance, inability to reason and dogma that inverts reality are a recipe for disaster. And that is exactly what America got by confusing between friends and enemies: it lost the entire Middle East (see next).

Daniel Greenfield: The Year We Lost Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Most of the Middle East

This was the year that Obama helped topple several regimes that served as the obstacles to Islamist takeovers.

The ugly conclusion that must be drawn from the timing of the Iraq and Afghanistan withdrawals is that the wars were being played out to draw down around the time of the next election.

Iraq will likely fall to Iran in a bloody civil war.
Carter can breathe a sigh of relief. In one year the Obama Administration has done far more damage than the bucktoothed buffoon did in his entire term.

FP: Greenfield finishes on a hopeful note:

Evil has a way of destroying itself, and in his own backward way, Barry Hussein may have helped save civilization. It will be a long time before we know for sure, but giving the Brotherhood what it wanted before they were ready for it, and before we are so completely crippled by the left’s political correctness that we are left helpless, may be our best hope.
…
But 2011 is also a reminder that the world cannot afford another year of Obama. That it cannot afford the appeasement, the destructive policies or the post-American politics that have made his regime the worst administration in this country’s history. 2011 may be the year that we lost the Middle East, but let’s work to make 2012 the year that this country loses one Barack Hussein Obama.

I’m afraid this is all wishful thinking – which, given the West’s circumstances, is all that’s left. There is hardly a doubt that Islamist societies will be failed states, but that won’t help a fast collapsing West. Political correctness is not just a cause of Western decline, but also a consequence: self-destructing domestic policies have been bringing it down, which has induced a foreign policy of fear and, therefore, efforts to realign with the Islamists in the delusion that this will save the West from further decline and Jihad. In Europe Islamic immigration has been reinforcing the fear from the inside and while in America this is still in its infancy, it’s not zero and the Obama administration of 8 years is sure to strengthen it.

Walter Russell Mead: Egyptian Liberals Pushed Closer To The Edge

There is no way the liberals can win this fight. Having the fight at all publicizes the extent of their abject dependence on foreign funds. That makes them suspect to many average Egyptians. The right to be bribed by foreigners is not one that many Egyptians set much store by; to defend your organization’s right to receive foreign funds is to admit that you can’t survive on local support.

Game, set and match, really.

Some face saving way will likely be found for some designated groups to get foreign money even as the Egyptian authorities take credit for defending national sovereignty. But make no mistake: the marginalization of Egyptian liberals continues.

FP: Really? Last time I looked the Egyptian military is the biggest receiver of foreign funds. Can it survive without them? And if the foreign-dependent army can defend national sovereignty while entirely dependent on US billions, how can a small band of liberals damage it with much smaller amounts? That the Obama administration fails to see this is not surprising, but Mead?

NGO Monitor: HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson Conveniently Forgets Her Embrace of Gaddafi

2012-01-03T11:10:00.001-08:00

PRESS RELEASE

January 3, 2012

Contact:

Jason Edelstein

NGO Monitor
+972-52-861-2129

mail@ngo-monitor.org

JERUSALEM - In response to Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch writing about reforms needed in Libya ("In Libya, Building the Rule of Law," The New York Times, Dec. 29), NGO Monitor today released the following statement:

Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson has no moral authority or credibility on Libya or the rest of the Middle East. In fact, in 2009, Whitson visited Libya, claiming to have discovered a "Tripoli Spring" and ignoring the human rights atrocities of Gaddafi's regime. She praised Muammar Gaddafi's son Seif Islam as a leading reformer, saying that he created an "expanded space for discussion and debate," and that he was"the real impetus for transformation" via his Gaddafi Foundation and two semi-private papers.
Her embrace continued after a second visit later that year, when she referred to Gaddafi's heir-apparent as one of the "forces of reform," comparing his foundation to HRW ("Postcard from . . . Tripoli," Foreign Policy in Focus, February, 11, 2010). Although HRW officials were placed under constant surveillance, and its press conference was cut short by government agents and ended in "pandemonium," Whitson still spun her trip in a positive light.
She dangerously advanced a fiction of impending reform, when, in reality, Libya remained a closed totalitarian regime that kept its population under tight control. This had tragic results - Fathi Eljahmi, Libya's most prominent dissident, was imprisoned in 2004, tortured, held in solitary confinement, and who died as a result in 2009. His brother condemned HRW for hesitating "to advocate publicly for Fathi's case" for fear they would "antagoniz[e] Gaddafi."

Whitson has embraced other closed and brutal regimes. For years, HRW's Middle East and North Africa Division, headed by Whitson, gave very little attention to the daily human rights violations of the Assad dictatorship in Syria, and in Whitson's fundraising trip to Saudi Arabia, she used HRW's campaign on bringing "Israeli abuses to the US Congress" to solicit funds from "prominent members of Saudi society."

After failing to promote human rights during the long Arab Winter, Whitson and HRW are entirely unqualified to provide advice to those seeking to reverse the damage in what was once referred to as the Arab Spring.

###

mail@ngo-monitor.org

www.ngo-monitor.org

Comments on reads 1/2

2012-01-02T13:10:00.001-08:00

Abbas appoints terrorist released in Shalit deal as top adviser

Gen. Mahmoud Damara, who was released from Israeli prison in October, was one of the leaders of Fatah's Force 17 terror unit • Damara responsible for initiating shootings, bombings against Israelis.

FP: Let’s negotiate, then, and release more terrorists. Israel’s path to perdition.

'Peace treaty with Israel to be brought to Egyptian referendum'

Contradicting previously expressed views on the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, Rashad Bayumi, Muslim Brotherhood's second-in-command, tells London-based Al-Hayat, "No Muslim Brotherhood members will engage in any contact or normalization with Israel."

FP: Guess what the result will be. That’s what happens when you sign treaties with Arabs and give them strategic land for promises which they will disregard at first opportunity.

Caroline Glick: Obama's foreign policy spin

According to a Gallup poll from early November, the US public also believes that Obama's foreign policy has been successful. Whereas 67 percent of Americans disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy and the federal budget deficit, 63% of Americans approved of his terrorism strategy. So, too, 52% approved of his decision to remove US forces from Iraq. In general, 49% of Americans approved of Obama's handling of foreign affairs while 44% disapproved.

These support levels tell us a great deal about the insularity of the American public. For when one assesses the impact to date of Obama's foreign policy it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that if the US public was more aware of the actual consequences of his policies, his approval rating in foreign affairs would be even lower than his approval rating in domestic policy.

…

So how is that that while Carter was perceived by the majority of the American public as a foreign policy failure, a large plurality of Americans views Obama's foreign policy as a success?

Obama's success in hiding his failures from the American public owes to two related factors. First, to date the US has not been forced to contend directly with the consequences of his failures.

…

Then, too, Obama and his advisers have been extremely adept in presenting his tactical achievements as strategic victories.

FP: The spin has been effective for two reasons. First, the media cooperated in disseminating it. And second, the US public is insular because it lacks the proper knowledge and the ability to reason. It is, therefore, ideally suited to manipulation and exploitation in both the domestic and foreign domains. You want some evidence that this is how Obama views it? Read Marty Peretz’s Michelle and I Are Hosting…

PowerLine: Is Obama Preparing to Surrender Afghanistan?

That is what Andrew McCarthy thinks. He notes the significance of President Obama’s recruiting Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi to mediate secret negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban:

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban. …
For those who may be unfamiliar with him, he is the most influential Sunni Islamist in the world, thanks to such ventures as his al-Jazeera TV program (Sharia and Life) and website (IslamOnline.net). In 2003, he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq. …
Qaradawi urges that Islam must dominate the world, under a global caliphate governed by sharia. He maintains that Islam “will conquer Europe [and] will conquer America.” …
Thus does Sheikh Qaradawi champion Hamas, mass-murder attacks, and suicide bombings. “They are not suicide operations,” he brays. “These are heroic martyrdom operations.” Indeed, he elaborates, “The martyr operations is [sic] the greatest of all sorts of jihad in the cause of Allah.”

You get the drift. So, what sort of deal is Qaradawi charge with negotiating?

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.
It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

Yes, it would. But the Afghanistan war is deeply unpopular, and Obama wants to run for re-election next November on the boast that he “ended two wars.” The baleful consequences of re-installing the Taliban in Afghanistan will not appear until long after the next election campaign, which is all that Obama cares about. So if the outcome foreseen by Hindu and McCarthy comes to pass, it will be shameful indeed.

UPDATE: This AP news story of just a few hours ago appears relevant:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday welcomed remarks from the Obama administration saying that Taliban insurgents were not America’s enemies.
Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with Newsweek magazine that the Islamist militants did not represent a threat to U.S. interests unless they continued to shelter al-Qaida.
Biden’s comments came amid reports that the Obama administration and other governments are trying to establish a peace process with the Taliban to help end the 10-year war.
“I am very happy that the American government has announced that the Taliban are not their enemies,” Karzai said in a speech to the Afghan Academy of Sciences. “We hope that this message will help the Afghans reach peace and stability.”
A senior U.S. official has told The Associated Press that Washington plans to continue a series of secret meetings with Taliban representatives in Europe and the Persian Gulf region next year.
The U.S. outreach this year had progressed to the point that there was active discussion of two steps the Taliban seeks as precursors to negotiations, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Trust-building measures under discussion involve setting up a Taliban headquarters office and the release from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of about five Afghan prisoners believed affiliated with the Taliban.

If we have to negotiate with the Taliban, couldn’t we appoint John Bolton to do it? But then, what point could such negotiations have other than to sugarcoat a surrender?

FP: This is clear evidence for Obama’s intention to realign the US with the Islamists which is, in turn, evidence of American decline. Note that two modern superpowers, the former USSR and the US, as well as other older colonial powers were unable to pacify and progress Afghanistan. What does this say about the prospect of a collapsed West in a conflict with a emergent Islam? Who would you bet on?

Collected links

2012-01-02T12:43:00.001-08:00

Matt Taibbi: Goldman’s Latest Boiler-Room Stock: America

MARTIN SHERMAN: Into the Fray: Palestine: What Sherlock Holmes would say

Anthony Cordesman: Iran and the Threat to "Close" the Gulf

PZ Meyers: Why I Am an Amoral, Family-Hating Monster… and Newt Gingrich Isn’t

How Your Privacy Will Be Invaded in 2012

Paul Rahe: Unhand Us, Greybeard Loon! (MUST READ!)

Kimo Quaintance & Bernd Kaussler: Are Iran’s Leaders, Well…Crazy? (MUST READ!)

Josef Joffe: Declinism's Fifth Wave

Caroline Glick: Netanyahu's misleading lessons in governance

Bret Stephens: The Arab Revolt in Retrospect

Solyndra: Politics infused Obama energy programs

Lee Smith: Useful Fiction

JoshuaPundit on exactly what I have been predicting for a long time

2012-01-02T11:51:00.001-08:00

FP: I told you so. The purported strong support of the US public for Israel won’t make a bit of difference in the scheme of things. In fact, the policy would not change even if the Republicans won the election. A declining West is scapegoating the Jews and the US is not immune to that traditional response to crisis. Indeed, how do you think an anti-Semitic nutter has managed to be a congressman and a presidential candidate, who even almost won one primary and may win more?

How The U.S. Bribed 'Palestinians' To Begin Talks With Israel

An interesting if somewhat sickening story to start off the New Year.

One of the big surprise stories surfacing is that the 'Palestinians' have finally agreed to begin negotiations with Israel without any preconditions, although they're very careful to label them as 'talks about talks' rather than any actual negotiations. That's probably accurate, since it's almost certain nothing will actually be accomplished.

The talks are being held in Amman, Jordan with Jordan's King Abdullah as mediator in the context of a Middle East Peace Quartet meeting (The United States, Russia, European Union and the United Nations. The Israelis are sending Yitzhak Molcho, Israel's chief negotiator for talks with the 'Palestinians' and Fatah is sending Saeb Erekat, formerly the right fork of the execrable Yasser Arafat's tongue.
Two questions come to mind immediately. Why Jordan, and why did Fatah suddenly agree to sit down with the Israelis? The answers are simple once you connect the dots.

Why Jordan is simplicity itself. King Abdullah, along with a Bedouin minority rules over a country where 75% of the population identifies themselves as 'Palestinian', and where Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood are increasingly popular.Jordan is another of those Arab countries like Egypt without oil income and King Abdullah has attempted to bridge Jordan's economic gap by becoming a U.S. ally and accepting close to $1 billion in American foreign aid.

Jordan has already seen a certain amount of Muslim Brotherhood sponsored unrest, largely from his 'Palestinian' citizens, and the last thing he wants is a Hamas dominated state next door in Judea and Samaria that might seek to overthrow him and take Jordan over as the actual 'Palestinian' state the way Arafat and Fatah did in the 1970's. He has every reason to anxiously support some kind of Fatah ruled state in hopes that even if Hamas takes over, they'll concentrate on trying to destroy Israel. leave him in peace and be content with that. Obviously King Abdullah has forgotten what happened to his father Hussein in the 1970's when Arafat and Fatah tried to take over Jordan and turn it into a 'Palestinian' state in 1970 with a very similar scenario, but that appears to be what King Abdullah has in mind.

As for why Fatah agreed to sit down with the Israelis, the answer's even simpler. Money talks, and they have nothing to lose anyway.

Some of you may recall seeing this under reported story about the U.S. Congress agreeing to release 20 percent of $187 million in U.S. aid to the 'Palestinians' that had been frozen because of 'Palestine's' bid for U.N. membership. That happened just a few days ago, and now we see the 'Palestinians' grudgingly agreeing to meet with the Israelis for the first time in months.

As one of my notorious Little Birdies whom actually works within the 'Palestinian' Authority informed me, I was entirely correct when I guessed this is no mere coincidence.This person had told me back when the funds were first frozen that it was only a matter of time until the 'Palestinians' got their usual jizya from the Obama Administration. And in our latest exchange, he informed me quite openly that the Obama Administration had made a solid proposition to Abbas and Fatah in exchange for freeing up the funds, and just sitting down with the Israelis was the price.

The 'Palestinians' aren't totally stupid, they know President Obama is coming up for re-election and is trying to convince Jews to vote for him, and that even the appearance of progress towards that mythical two-state solution looks good. So they went along. And why not? They have nothing to lose.
Abbas and Fatah aren't in a position to make any kind of binding deal anyway, not without the consent of Hamas. And even if they were, they have absolutely no inclination to do so. As Abbas has said many times, he's not prepared to make even a single concession on 'Palestinian' demands, and those demands aren't anything the Israelis can realistically accept unless they're suicidal.

At worst, the 'Palestinians' will walk away again with remarks for their groupies on the press and the so-called international community about how the Israelis are refusing to negotiate. At best, some of the goons in the Quartet may even successfully lean on Israel for some more unilateral concessions. And the important thing is, they get the money, honey, a nice chunk of which will also go to Hamas.
The 'Palestinians' managed with the willing help of President Obama to obtain $545.7 million courtesy of the US taxpayers in 2011, including the part that was frozen. That money is characterized as development and humanitarian aid, but it really continues to fund the War Against The Jews, since Fatah and Hamas can use it to free up money they already have for use elsewhere. In other words, the US government is funding anti-Semitic incitement and outright terrorism to the tune of well north of half a billion per year.

And it's going to continue. President Obama has already asked Congress for $513.4 million in aid for the 'Palestinians' in fiscal year 2012.

Comments on reads 1/1

2012-01-01T23:51:00.001-08:00

Elder of Ziyon: More problems between Hamas and Fatah

Which means that while Fatah and Hamas make nice in public, they are continuing to scheme against each other behind the scenes.

I showed last week that Hamas has been arresting scores of Fatah leaders in Gaza. Now Hamas is accusing Fatah of doing the same, with the arrest of a 57-year old Hamas leader and sheikh in Qalqilya today.
It has taken years for Hamas to solidify its hold on Gaza. They succeeded; their power there is pretty much absolute. No one is seriously talking about combining the security forces of Fatah and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza, and it is inconceivable that such an action will take place in the foreseeable future. Hamas is not about to accept as equals the people they were throwing off of buildings a few years ago.
Without a single security force, there is no real unity, no matter how many photo-ops we see of Abbas and Meshal smiling together. The only chance of "unity" is if Hamas engineers a total takeover.
Given the inertia of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere, that is a very real possibility.

FP: EoZ is a pretty shrewd analyst of events in the ME, but I think he misses the point here. It is not real unity of Hamas and Fatah. Rather, it is an effort by both to give the West the pretense it wants in order to force a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and pressure Israel to accept it, without a resolution of the conflict. Both organizations are undergoing difficulties: Hamas, due to Iran sanctions and Syrian regime’s problems, Fatah due the collapse of “peace negotiations” and failure to obtain a state via the UN, in part precisely because of lack of unity. Hamas has realized that the West, in its decline, is pro-Palestinian and hostile to Israel, Fatah has reached an impasse in their phased-plan. While the “Arab spring”, on the one hand, endangers both rulers, on the other hand it empowers Hamas and weakens Fatah. By pretending unity they are betting on a UN state and will worry about handling each other later. Whether Fatah simply shifts to the Hamas stance, yields control to Hamas, or loses it to Hamas, the ultimate outcome is the same. If this occurs within a recognized Palestinian state without a conflict resolution, it will spell disaster.

Barak: Negotiations can prevent Israeli isolation

Defense Minister says negotiations good for Israel, even if they fail; Clinton welcomes announcement of first direct meeting between sides in more than a year; PA: "This is not a resumption of negotiations."

FP: And, as I predicted, Israel continues to delude itself in its strategy of appeasing the West. So it’s not only the West who continues the “peace process” charade regardless of what the Palestinians do, but Israel too does it too. Why should the Palestinians negotiate in good faith escapes me.

JoshuaPundit: Ron Paul:U.S. should not support Israel, Defends Hamas, Homicide bombing,Calls Gaza 'Concentration Camp'

This interview was done January 5th, 2009. On Iran's Press TV, no less. Tell me again he doesn't hate Jews.

FP: It should be obvious by now that Paul does not operate with all marbles. I reiterate: he is not the problem. The problem is the public who voted him into Congress and who are now supporting him in the primaries. His sheer presence as a candidate, let alone his support equivalent to Romney’s in Iowa is a disgrace for the US.

Dan Margalit: The burden of Casus belli

By committing in advance to war in the event of a kidnapping, Israel is allowing its enemies to dictate the timing of the next war.

FP: Isn’t this exactly what I wrote?

Elliott Abrams: Mubarakism without Mubarak

In his 30 years in power, Mubarak did not crush the Muslim Brotherhood. He made deals with it, setting, for example, how many seats it could have in parliament, while crushing the moderate, centrist parties. The Egyptian government refused time after time to allow the establishment of a moderate Islamist party that would have competed with the Brotherhood. And when a non-Islamist named Ayman Nour had the audacity to run against Mubarak in the 2005 elections, he was jailed. The policy during the Mubarak years was to attack and weaken the center, and then tell the U.S. and others that the only choice was Mubarak or the Islamist radicals.

Given recent election returns this seems to have been a self-fulfilling prophecy – and this is the real crime of Hosni Mubarak against his country…

In fact the only real bulwark is the work of Egyptians who seek a genuine democracy that respects human rights. We may not be able to stop the army from attacking them, just as Thursday it attacked American and European groups helping promote democracy and human rights in Egypt. But we should not pay for it. It is ludicrous to listen to army and other government spokesmen inveigh against dark forces who take money from foreigners — when the army takes $1.3 billion every year from the United States. Those payments should be suspended right now, and not resumed until everything seized in the raids is returned and we get promises from the military that these raids will not be repeated.

The Egyptian military plays positive and negative roles in Egypt, but the most significant single thing it did under Mubarak was to guarantee an Islamist victory once he left the scene. Mubarakism was a system that perpetuated military rule and U.S. aid by arguing that the military was the only alternative to the Brotherhood—and worse than the Brotherhood — while in fact it created perfect conditions for the Islamists to thrive.

FP: I do not believe that after the elections the army will be able to stay in control in the long-term. Most of the top officers are old and will retire. An Islamist government will promote Islamist officers to the top positions and there is evidence that there’s a lot of low and mid rank Islamists officers. If the “moderate” Islamists in Turkey managed to grasp control from a military system much stronger than the Egyptian one, what will a 70% Islamist government consisting of MB and Salafists do?