Showing posts sorted by relevance for query obama. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query obama. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Obama’s Last Minute Plot Against Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen. – Woody Guthrie

On 23 December 2016, lame-duck President Barack Obama struck back at Israel for her insouciant refusal to acquiesce to the empowerment of her deadly enemy, Iran; and at the same time at least partly kept his promises to pro-Palestinian activists, who had been disappointed by what they saw as his insufficient firmness toward Israel.
On that day, the US abstained on a vote and allowed the UN Security Council to pass resolution 2334, which declared all “settlements” outside of the pre-1967 lines – including eastern Jerusalem – “illegal under international law,” and “call[ed] upon all States … to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,” a provision which has been used to justify discriminatory labeling and boycotts of Jewish products from the territories. The resolution asserted that Israel was in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention and demanded that she “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities…”
This was the first anti-settlement Security Council resolution that the US had not vetoed since the Carter Administration. It directly contradicts the position of the Israeli government, which views the territories as disputed, not occupied, and the Jewish communities there as entirely legal (see here and here).
While creating dangerous precedents (e.g., for the prosecution of Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court and for the justification of BDS activity), the resolution was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter and not Chapter VII, which would justify the application of economic sanctions or even military action against Israel.
Although the resolution was introduced by Malaysia, New Zealand, Senegal and Venezuela (it was originally proposed by Egypt, but Israel persuaded the Egyptians to withdraw it), a spokesman for PM Netanyahu said that Israel received “ironclad information” via Arab countries that “this was a deliberate push by the United States and in fact they helped create the resolution in the first place.” Netanyahu said that he had asked Russian President Putin to veto resolution 2334, but Putin (although Russia apparently did try to delay the vote) would not do so.
Recently, PM Netanyahu told the Israel Hayom newspaper that Obama had planned to go even further:

He and his staff began working on another UNSC resolution, which would have forced Israel to agree to a Palestinian state based on the 1948 borders. Israel's UN ambassador at the time, Danny Danon, sounded the alarm.

At the time, the US administration denied the Israeli claim that another resolution, in addition to UNSCR 2334, was going to be brought before the UN Security Council.

Did Bibi exaggerate? Hardly. A clue to the details of this second resolution was provided by a contemporaneous article by Nathan Thrall, who described, on the basis of interviews with “top US officials” what such a resolution might look like:
…to set down the guidelines or “parameters” of a peace agreement—on the four core issues of borders, security, refugees, and Jerusalem—in a US-supported UN Security Council resolution. Once passed, with US support, these Security Council-endorsed parameters would become international law, binding, in theory, on all future presidents and peace brokers.

Top US officials see a parameters resolution as Obama’s only chance at a lasting, positive legacy, one that history might even one day show to have been more important to peace than the achievements of his predecessors.

As we know, Obama’s position on borders was that permanent ones had to be “based on” the 1949 armistice lines, with only small swaps to accommodate some settlement blocs, requiring that the Palestinians be compensated for the swaps with land from the pre-1967 state of Israel. In contrast to the Israeli view that Israel held title to the territories (although she would consider ceding some of the area in return for a peace agreement), Obama saw all of the land across the Green Line as “occupied Palestinian territories.”
Any agreement that would result in Israel losing control of the Jordan Valley and the high ground of Judea and Samaria would render the country indefensible. Israel cannot afford to allow those borders to be imposed under any circumstances.
Obama’s view was at odds with the 1949 armistice agreement as well as UNSC 242, the grandmother of all UNSC resolutions concerning the Israeli-Arab conflict, and the Oslo Accords. The armistice agreements clearly stated that the cease-fire lines simply represented the areas under control of the sides at the time of the cessation of hostilities, and that they had no political significance. UNSC 242 called for “secure and recognized boundaries” that would be arrived at by negotiation between the parties (at that time Israel and the Arab nations). Oslo replaced the Arab nations with the Palestinian Authority, but also made the question of borders a final status issue to be settled by negotiation.
Obama wished to upend all that and reward the Palestinians with the whole enchilada prior to negotiation. Whether such a resolution would indeed have “become [binding] international law” is not at all clear, but there is no doubt that it would be used as justification for continued pressure on Israel. If it had passed, it would have been used as an argument against the Trump plan, which is in essence a 2-state solution that is not based on the 1949 lines.
According to Netanyahu, when he heard about Obama’s intention, he called “his friend” Vladimir Putin, and convinced him that it was a bad idea. And Putin agreed to veto it if it came up. The Obama administration realized that this would be an embarrassment which would hurt the Democrats domestically without gaining anything, and so decided not to push it.
If Netanyahu’s story is true – and the Thrall article, which obviously represents Obama Administration thinking suggests strongly that it is – then what lessons can be drawn from it?
The main one is that Israel should beware of Obama and his gang, who have not gone away and will be very influential again if the Democrats win the coming election. We should think about this very carefully when considering when to apply Israeli law to the strategic Jordan Valley.
Another is that if indeed Putin intervened, it is evidence that Israel cannot afford to become a ward (or a satellite!) of one of the great powers. It must maintain friendly connections with all sides. A small country in the Middle East won’t survive otherwise.
And one more: Woody Guthrie was right. Not every enemy comes at you with a gun.

Thursday, March 12, 2020

03/12 Links Pt2: Obama is back; Bernie Sanders and the End of Sharia-Bolshevism; IfNotNow Endorses Bernie Sanders for President

From Ian:
Jonathan S. Tobin: Obama is back
The centerpiece of Obama's foreign policy was an attempt to bring about a rapprochement with Iran that would, in the words of the former president, give the Islamist regime a "chance to get right with the world."

Unfortunately, Iran was never interested in that opportunity and exploited Obama's eagerness for a nuclear deal that would be his signature foreign-policy accomplishment. The result was a weak pact and an emboldened Iranian regime.

Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal has been denounced by Democrats, as well as Obama's "media echo chamber." But his "maximum pressure" campaign against Tehran has put the regime on its heels and given other states in the region hope that its quest for regional hegemony can be stopped.

The other major difference concerns the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

Biden has sounded more supportive of Israel than his boss or most of his 2020 Democratic competitors. But the former vice president also remains an enthusiastic supporter of Obama's efforts to pressure the Jewish state into concessions that the majority of its people have rejected as irresponsible and a danger to their security.

Biden opposes Trump's efforts to end Obama's policy of more "daylight" between the United States and Israel, such as the move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory and the effort to force the Palestinian Authority to stop funding terrorism.

Instead, a Biden administration – staffed by Obama alumni – may take the region back to the old failed US policies that believed Israel had to be saved from itself, and which also rejected the strong consensus among the Jewish state's voters that there is no viable Palestinian peace partner.

Turning back the clock to the way the world looked four years ago may sound good to Trump's critics, but in the Middle East, it will be also be good news for a dangerous regime in Iran and Palestinian rejectionists who long for the days when America was joining with the mob trying to pressure Israel rather than standing up to it. Unless and until Biden is ready to say where he differs from the man he served so faithfully, he will be vulnerable to criticism that his election will be a rerun of Obama's Middle East policies that have already been tried and failed.


Bernie Sanders and the End of Sharia-Bolshevism
The men running Senator Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party nomination may have been oblivious to how ordinary Americans feel about his close relationship to Sharia-supporting Muslims, but the rest of the country, including liberal Muslims and Indian Americans, found his close association with more radical Muslims deeply disturbing.

Sanders' advisors make for a strange combination. His Campaign Co-Chair is Rep. 'Ro' (Rohit) Khanna who, despite being a Hindu of Indian ancestry joined the 'Pakistan Caucus' in the U.S. Congress; a move hailed by Pakistan's Ambassador, but condemned by 230 Indian American organizations.

Sanders' campaign manager Faiz Shakir, also of Pakistani Muslim ancestry, was believed to be instrumental in getting the Senator to speak at a convention of the controversial group Islamic Society of North America.

If the objective was to add an extra (Muslim) 2-3% of the vote to an already enthusiastic base of young Americans, blue-collar white workers and the Latino vote bank, it is not difficult to understand why on the eve of Super Tuesday One, Sanders was pictured hugging controversial Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

As if this wasn't enough, liberal and reform-minded American Muslims tell me, even the socialists and social democrats among them have said goodbye to America's "democratic socialist."

Some of us are old enough to have seen the failings of the mainstream left in Europe, Iran, India, Turkey, the Arab World and Africa. The Islamists latched on to the 'anti-Americanism' of the Marxists and then decimated the left like a parasite.

Today, they would rather live with a President Biden or even a re-elected Trump than see a potential Islamist in the White House.

Rasha Al Aqeedi, Managing Editor of Raise Your Voice magazine, put the feelings of liberal and secular U.S. Muslims in a tweet: "Seriously who is advising Sanders? It's not a marginal issue when we have been for months hearing about "Muslims support Sanders." Either drop that line if you don't want to hear the counter perspective or change it to "opportunist sectarians support Sanders."
California State University Professor Claims Israel Will Place Arab Coronavirus Patients in ‘Mass Prisons’
A professor at California State University, Stanislaus, with a long history of anti-Israel and antisemitic statements claimed on Sunday that the Jewish state was planning to discriminate against Arab coronavirus victims and put them in “mass prisons,” and then blamed subsequent complaints on the work of “Zionist hoodlums.”

Asad Abukhalil, a professor of political science, tweeted on March 8, “Israel will — I am sure — have different medical procedures for Jews and non-Jews. Non-Jews will be put in mass prisons.”

The response was immediate, with many pointing out that there is equality of treatment and employment in Israeli hospitals, with many Arab doctors and nurses.

“I’m so surprised you would say that,” said one response. “My Israeli mom was hospitalized for 2 months in Israel. Her supervising Dr. & many of her Drs & nurses were Israeli Arabs working side by side w Israeli Jews. They were wonderful.”

“Are you suggesting that those Arab doctors will discriminate???” it asked.

Another respondent said, “Ive personally been in Israeli hospitals seeing Jewish & Arab Israeli staff treating Jewish & Arab citizens w/ same protocols in same rooms.”

On Tuesday, Abukhalil said he had been merely joking, and then went on a tirade about “Zionist hoodlums” reporting his tweet.

“If mocking Israeli racism is anti-Semitism, how do you deal with the true racism of the Israeli state, which was founded on series of discriminatory law [sic] and which has only been adding more Racist discmriminatory [sic] laws ever since it was founded atop the Palestinian nation,” he tweeted.

Wednesday, December 02, 2020

12/02 Links Pt2: Obama’s memoir: The anatomy of Iran-appeasers and bash-Israel-firsters; The End of Arab Nationalism; A Cautionary Tale for Democrats: The UK Labour Party

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Obama’s memoir: The anatomy of Iran-appeasers and bash-Israel-firsters
Feeling guilty about America’s past dishonors, Obama believed he could engage Iran’s mullahs honorably. And uncomfortable with the West’s disproportionate power globally, he decided that “given the asymmetry in power between Israel and the Palestinians... it was reasonable to ask” Israel, “the stronger party, to take a bigger first step in the direction of peace.”

Ideologically, in pressuring Israel while engaging Iran, Obama overcompensated for America’s previous “sins.” That’s why he sanitizes the Palestinian turn from negotiation toward terrorism in 2000 by describing a mutual “lure of violence,” while underplaying how the terrorism Palestinians initiated betrayed and traumatized Israelis. Instead, he decides ”Israeli attitudes toward peace talks had hardened, in part because peace no longer seemed so crucial to ensuring the country’s safety and prosperity.” This obsession with Israel’s economic and military power blinds him to Israelis’ feelings of vulnerability and Palestinian culpability.

Personalities played a part, too. Obama writes that Bibi Netanyahu’s “vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power.” In our new book, Never Alone, Natan Sharansky agrees that Netanyahu “believes his staying in office keeps Israel alive, an equation that only grows more significant the longer he stays in power.” Sharansky, however, writes with admiration, tinged with occasional frustrations; Obama exudes contempt.

Obama believes his position is equitable, idealistic – and resents the criticism he received, especially from AIPAC. But his European-style obsession with power dynamics and America’s lack of exceptionalism made him too indulgent of the sins of dictators and terrorists like the Iranians and the Palestinians, and too harsh regarding the missteps of liberal democrats like the Israelis.

President-elect Joe Biden and his new team should correct Obama’s mistakes, not repeat them. Look peripherally, not just bilaterally. It’s not just about borders or nukes: Palestinian leaders must stop terrorizing Palestinians and Israelis; Iranians must stop terrorizing the world. Rather than bashing friends like Israel and coddling enemies like the Iranians and the Palestinians, restore the true moral order to the universe: Support your friends, your fellow liberal-democrats, and confront our enemies.


The End of Arab Nationalism
When last summer the Trump administration brokered the Abraham Accords—a peace agreement between Israel and the two Gulf states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates—much commentary focused on their immediate causes, particularly the signatories’ shared fear of Iran. Reports of a recent face-to-face meeting in Saudi Arabia between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will only reaffirm that explanation.

Yet the historic character of the accords lies elsewhere. The accords recognize the Jewish and Arab people’s common ancestry in the region, accepting that Jews as a people and their faith are indigenous to the Middle East and have a legitimate right to be there. This affirmation discards two central tenets of Arab nationalism: the inherent rejection of a Jewish state as an alien, colonialist presence in the region and the idea that Arab-Israeli peace must defer to Palestinian grievances. The affirmation thus marks the end of Arab nationalism. Henceforth, the Arab countries that join the accords signal that they intend to pursue their national interest and seek alliances with the Jewish state, each on their own terms and without the need of a pan-Arab strategy.

Proximate causes, to be sure, matter. After all, it was President Jimmy Carter’s misguided foreign policy in the Middle East—alongside Israeli intelligence’s tipping off of Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, of a Libyan assassination plot against him—that propitiated Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem in November 1977. His trip set off direct bilateral peace talks that would culminate in the 1978 Camp David Accords and the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty. But those events simply flicked a switch. Peace ensued not only because strategic interests suddenly aligned, but because worldviews turned upside down.

The same can be said of the Abraham Accords. Common cause against an ascendant Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and radical Islam have driven Gulf countries closer to Israel. So has the desire to leverage full peace against Israel’s avowed intention to annex portions of the West Bank earlier this year. And no doubt, the election of Joe Biden as the next U.S. president raises the possibility that the United States will rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a move both Arab countries and Israel firmly oppose. Both enthusiasts and detractors of the accords have mostly focused on these catalysts of historical change rather than recognize that a paradigm shift has emerged as a result of long-term trends.

Friday, January 24, 2020

01/24 Links Pt2: President Trump leads the fight against antisemitism; Auschwitz and The New York Times, 75 Years Later; This must never happen again, says Saudi cleric as Muslim group tours Auschwitz

From Ian:
David Friedman: President Trump leads the fight against antisemitism
Some say – with breathtaking error – that protecting Israel has nothing to do with fighting antisemitism. The State of Israel is the ultimate defense against this evil force. It is the sanctuary to which Jews fled when they were expelled from North Africa or escaped the former Soviet Union and had no place else to go. When Jews were singled out for execution on the tarmac in Entebbe, Uganda, it was Israel that saved them in one of history’s most daring rescues. When Jews were persecuted in Yemen and Ethiopia, it was Israel that brought them to safety on missions such as Operation Moses, Operation Solomon and Operation Magic Carpet. To this day, Israel helps support local governments and NGOs around the world in defending the Jewish people.

The recent rash of antisemitic attacks in the United States is repugnant and shocking. But apart from baseless pronouncements from armchair pundits and opportunistic politicians, they have nothing to do with the president. Quite to the contrary, President Trump, in empowering law enforcement, preserving individual rights to self-defense, supporting tighter security in schools and places of worship and advocating for more protective mental health policies, is directly addressing concrete measures to keep us all safer and more secure.

Many have called for a softening of our public discourse and more education regarding the evils of hatred as a means of reducing antisemitic attacks. As one who has spent the better part of the past three years in Israel, where regrettably such attacks occur far more frequently but with far less international coverage than attacks in the United States, I can’t help but doubt the seriousness of that plan. We can always use better education and more civility, but those who will commit acts of antisemitism are not going to be the ones who attend the course. I have yet to see anyone present an effective method to identify in advance and arrest or cure the unstable and hate-filled miscreants who are attacking Jews. As in Israel, the primary approach must be increased security, better surveillance and intelligence, self-defense and mental health reform. President Trump is exactly in the right place on these initiatives.

I have an important message for the Trump haters who think they are fighting antisemitism by fighting Trump: In five years, President Trump will be out of office and your hysterical hyperbole will not have made a dent in combating this evil scourge. Whatever other policy differences you may have with the president, if you truly oppose antisemitism, then you have a friend and ally in the White House.
Caroline Glick: A great – but fragile – triumph of Zionism
A decade ago, the anti-Zionist forces scored their greatest political victory. On June 4, 2009, the new American president Barack Obama delivered his "Address to the Muslim World," at American University in Cairo. Before an audience that included a large contingent of Muslim Brotherhood members, specifically invited by the White House, Obama resonated their rejection of Jewish history and denial of the Jewish roots and rights to the Land of Israel.

In Cairo, Obama asserted that Israel’s establishment was a product of "a tragic history … Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust."

Obama pointedly failed to utter a word about the nation of Israel’s historic ties to its homeland.

Instead, he announced that he would travel from Cairo to Buchenwald concentration camp. Jerusalem was not on his itinerary.

Obama’s speech was the single most hostile act any US leader ever took against the Jewish state. Speaking to a room full of Israel’s enemies, Obama resonated their lies and propaganda.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly stunned by the existential hostility towards Israel and the Jewish people Obama displayed at Cairo. But once he recognized the nature of the problem Netanyahu spent the next ten years insisting on the truth. Despite catcalls of criticism from the Israeli left, from liberal American Jews, from the EU, and from the Obama administration, Netanyahu and the governments he led insisted on telling the truth about Israel and Zionism over and over and over again and insisted that the truth be acknowledged. At every opportunity, Netanyahu stated and restated that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people and was never the capital of any other nation. He stated and repeated endlessly that Israel is the homeland and the nation-state of the Jewish people and was never the homeland or nation-state of any other people.

Over time, it made a difference.
Auschwitz and The New York Times, 75 Years Later
Perhaps The New York Times, which buried the Holocaust in its inside pages when it even deigned to mention that unprecedented horror, will finally take notice of what happened at Auschwitz. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, a proud American Reform Jew, fiercely opposed singling out Jews as victims of Nazi annihilation. Jews who were deported to death camps were identified in his newspaper as “persons,” not Jews. Its first published account of the Nazi extermination plan, duly identified as “probably the greatest mass slaughter in history,” appeared on an inside page at the bottom of a column of unrelated stories.

It got worse. In the summer of 1942, the Times cited a report by Szmul Zygielbojm of the Polish National Council documenting the slaughter of 700,000 Jews: “Children in orphanages, old persons in almshouses, the sick in hospitals, and women were slain in the streets.” For months, Germans had been “methodically proceeding with their campaign to exterminate all Jews.” But the Times front page that day featured articles about tennis shoes and canned fruit. Auschwitz horrors never received front-page attention.

The Times described the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in brief inside-page stories. Its first account, nearly three weeks after the revolt began, was four paragraphs long. Its solitary editorial about the uprising referred to 400,000 “persons” who were deported to Treblinka. There was no indication that those “persons” were Jews. As Sulzberger explained to a friend, “We chose to think of Jews as human beings instead of any particular religious group.” Only once in four years was the fate of Jews mentioned on the front page or as the subject of a lead editorial. Their horrific plight never qualified for the daily Times ranking of important events.

The Times can never erase its inexcusable dereliction of journalistic responsibility. At the upcoming Auschwitz memorial observances, it will be interesting to read its coverage of what it buried in insignificance 75 years ago, along with the six million murdered Jews who were deemed too inconsequential for notice in its pages.

Thursday, December 17, 2020

12/17 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace; Iran's Plan to Topple Arab Leaders; With arms embargo lifted, Iran races to upgrade its arsenal

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace
For 72 years, U.S. presidents sought to achieve peace between Israel and the Arab world. For 72 years, they largely failed.

What for so long eluded presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama seems to have come effortlessly to President Donald Trump. In the space of just four months, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has achieved four peace deals between Israel and Arab states—twice the number achieved by all his predecessors combined. Last Thursday, Trump announced Morocco has joined the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Sudan in the Abraham Accords normalization agreements with Israel. Three or four more Arab states are likely to join the circle of peace in Trump's final weeks in office.

Not only has Trump brought more peace to the Middle East, more comprehensively and faster than all of his predecessors combined, but he made it look easy. Israel's ties with its Abraham Accords partners are expanding massively by the day. Tourists from the UAE are streaming into the country. And with one in seven Israeli Jews descended from the Moroccan diaspora, the potential for business and cultural ties between Israel and Morocco is almost limitless.

Trump's sundry Middle East peace deals are humiliating for his predecessors. Not only did they fail where Trump has succeeded, but they insisted that his achievements were impossible.

For instance, John Kerry, who as Barack Obama's secretary of state oversaw the administration's failed Middle East peace efforts, insisted back in 2016: "There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world."

Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Kerry continued emphatically: "I want to make that very clear with all of you. I've heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, 'Well, the Arab world is a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we'll deal with the Palestinians.' No. No, no, no and no. ...There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality."

The "several prominent politicians in Israel" certainly included Netanyahu. It was during the Obama administration that Netanyahu began developing close strategic ties with a number of Arab states—particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The sides came together due to mutual distress over the negative impact of Obama's Middle East policies.

What was it about Obama's policies that brought them together?
Jonathan S. Tobin: In praise of diplomatic quid pro quos
The ability of the Trump foreign-policy team to succeed in doing something its predecessors failed to do was based on two factors. One was that its members were not blinded by ideology when it came to Israel and the Palestinians, as were the Obama, Clinton and both Bush administrations. The other was that they took a more openly transactional approach to diplomacy.

The foreign-policy establishment likes to dress up agreements based on mutual interests in high-sounding language about principles. But the Trump team, which was composed to a large extent of people like White House senior adviser/presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner with a background in real estate, didn't get bogged down in such meaningless and ultimately counterproductive exercises, and stuck to dealing with the world as it is rather than as they'd like it to be. They strove to make deals that made sense for both sides. And as a result of what some consider a crass rather than a principled approach, they advanced the cause of peace far more than any of the experts who mocked them as shallow amateurs.

With American foreign policy about to fall back into the hands of Obama alumni, some are lamenting the Trump administration's achievements in expanding the circle of governments with normal relations with Israel as boxing them and ignoring their obsession with forcing a two-state solution that the Palestinians don't want. Instead, the Biden team should learn from their predecessors. More Trump-style quid pro quos – and less magical thinking and expert ideological condescension from Washington – will make the world a safer place.
What Happens to Israel When Democrats Are in the White House?
Biden and his team have been harshly critical of Trump’s symbolic efforts to tilt U.S. policy toward the Jewish state, such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and allowing the word “Jerusalem” to appear on the passports of Jews born in that city. But symbolic actions can have tangible effects. The muted reaction to the embassy move throughout the Middle East revealed the hollowness of the long-standing threat that the “Arab street” would greet any thaw with Israel with violence and revolution. Given how low the cost was, and the fact that the embassy move was directed by U.S. law, it is hard to imagine that a President Biden would expend any political capital on an effort to return the embassy to Tel Aviv. And indeed, Biden has indicated he does not plan to do so.

Another traditional lever used against Israel is U.S. military aid. Biden has both supported aid and threatened cutting it to Israel in the past, but aid to Israel is a bipartisan policy. The current levels are set out in a Memorandum of Understanding established under the Obama administration, and the Biden team has said it does not plan to make that aid conditional. Even more telling, U.S. aid is no longer the existential necessity for Israel that it once was—so threatening to limit it no longer provides the leverage over Israeli decision-making that it once did.

But it is very likely that the Biden administration will put more rhetorical pressure on Israel to strike a deal with the Palestinians. It’s not clear, however, what policy leverage the U.S. has to push Israel in this regard while the Middle East landscape is changing—or whether the Palestinians will even consider some kind of a deal in any case. Still, Biden could, as Obama did, support UN resolutions critical of Israel. He could also sternly lecture Israeli officials, as he has intermittently throughout his career. Biden is on the record unambiguously about restoring the U.S.–Iran nuclear deal.

Looking at all of this, one can discern the outlines of a policy framework toward Israel—call it Bidenism. It will be supportive of continued aid to Israel and unlikely to publicly question the wisdom of such aid. Rhetorically, Biden will repeatedly present himself as a friend of Israel and of Prime Minister Netanyahu, even as he questions whether Netanyahu is too far to the right and as he exerts private pressure for concessions with the Palestinians.

Bidenism will seek a return to the problematic Iran deal in some form but will continue to profess its concerns about Iran getting nuclear weapons and will be unlikely to try to stop Israel from allying with Sunni Gulf states as a counterweight to Iran. Bidenism will not seek to move the U.S. Embassy from Jerusalem—but it won’t encourage other nations to move their embassies from Tel Aviv. And Bidenism will likely be muddled when it comes to the woke left’s intersectional hostility toward Israel—willing to condemn certain outrageous and anti-Semitic statements but ever careful not to offend and, on occasion, will even apologize if its condemnations produce too much blowback.

Israel’s relationship with the outgoing administration was extraordinary. We shall not see its like again. The question going forward is whether the Biden administration will take the recent successes into account as it makes its own way in the Middle East—or whether the powerful urge to restore the status quo ante of the Obama administration will set the course for the next four years.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

What was Joe Biden's role in pushing UNSC 2334?

In the waning days of the Obama administration, the US pushed the UN Security Council to pass UNSC 2334, which called on all nations “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967” and which explicitly included "East Jerusalem" in the definition of occupied territories.

It was the first anti-Israel resolution not vetoed by the US in the Security Council since 2002. It essentially strips the rights of Jews to the entire Old City, including the Jewish Quarter, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. 

It soon became apparent that the US orchestrated this resolution and cajoled all the other Security Council members to support it, where a US abstention would allow the resolution to pass.

Clearly this was a deliberate message from the Obama administration to Netanyahu. But what role did Joe Biden have in it?

According to Vladislav Davidzon writing in Tablet magazine, Biden directly participated in pressuring Ukraine to vote for the resolution:

A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a UN vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign—both directly and through Great Britain—to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.

Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.

“Did Biden put pressure on the Ukrainians? Categorically yes,” said a highly-placed figure within the Israeli government with strong connections to Ukrainian government sources, who confirmed to Tablet that the Americans had put direct pressure on both the Ukrainian delegation—and on Poroshenko personally in Kiev. “That Biden told them to do it is 1000% true,” the source affirmed.

The phone call between Poroshenko and Biden, which took place on December 19th, has been officially acknowledged by both parties. The Ukrainian presidential administration’s official statement on the particulars of the discussion contains no mention that the settlement vote was discussed. Vice President Biden’s national security advisor Colin Kahl—who, incidentally, was one of the staffers instrumental in a failed attempt to have any mention of Jerusalem removed from the 2012 Democratic Party platform—has tweeted several denials.

But a spokesman for the Ukrainian Presidential administration pointedly refused to either confirm or deny that a section of Biden’s call not covered in the read-out consisted of the US Vice President personally lobbying Ukraine to vote “Yes” on the Security Council resolution. The American pressure campaign, according to multiple sources, went beyond the single phone call between Poroshenko and Biden; according to these sources, the Ukrainians had wanted to postpone the vote by several days as a gesture to the Israelis, but the U.S. refused.

The Jerusalem Post seems to confirm the story:

 Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin claimed to The Jerusalem Post on Monday that US Vice President Joe Biden intervened ahead of Friday's vote on UN Resolution 2334 in order to persuade Ukraine to vote in favor of the resolution.

In response, the vice president's office intensely denied Elkin's comments as utterly false.

The resolution is the first in Security Council history specifically condemning Israel for its settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Elkin said openly that Biden spoke to the Ukrainians, and that they would have abstained had he not intervened. A source said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's office confirmed that Biden called but would not confirm or deny that the conversation had to do with Israel.

Given that the US was working furiously behind the scenes to get this vote passed - and that the Obama administration denied that they were behind it - plus given the fact that Biden clearly called Poroshenko at the same time, indicates strongly that Colin Kahl's denials are untrue. (Dan Shapiro and Ben Rhodes also denied that the US had anything to do with the timing or text of the resolution.) 

 Interestingly, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, in an article about Biden's Israel record, chooses a different tack when discussing Biden's role in UNSC 2334. Instead of distancing him from the vote, they try to downplay the resolution altogether:

Fixating on a lone U.N. vote to call Obama’s commitment to Israel into question is absurd. By that standard, every previous administration’s commitment to Israel could be called into question, because every previous administration since at least 1967 abstained and voted against Israel more than the Obama administration.

What made Obama different from previous administrations in this respect was not that he broke with Israel on a U.N. vote, which all administrations have done, but that he only did it once, and on a vote with little if any practical effect on Israel.

They are conflating Security Council resolutions with regular General Assembly resolutions. And the denials by Obama administration officials that the US had anything to do with the resolution 


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Wednesday, August 14, 2019

08/14 Links Pt1: The Palestinian Problem Is Dying of Natural Causes; UNRWA Is Even Worse Than You Think It Is; Team Obama in exile

From Ian:
The Palestinian Problem Is Dying of Natural Causes
By 2040, the stone-throwing kids of the First Intifada will be close to retirement age, and the gun-toting young men who dominate today's Palestinian employment picture (or those who still are alive) will have families. If they missed out on high-tech jobs, the spillover from the West Bank's economic growth—driven in turn by Israel's economic miracle—will keep them employed in service industries. Absent additional violence, the West Bank will flourish while Egypt and Syria descend into penury and chaos.

There is no urgency to make peace, except in the minds of the Palestinians' present leaders. The world has allowed them to rule a little fiefdom as warlords of private armies, with little accounting for billions in foreign aid, and the opportunity to indulge in a grand ideological tantrum on the tab of Western donors.

The window is closing for radical Islam. That makes the present an exceptionally dangerous period, because the radicals know that it is closing. Contrary to what Obama said on May 22, the radicals understand better than anyone else that time and demographics are against them. The Palestinians of the West Bank are better off than any other Arabs in the region by any tangible measure—health, literacy, higher education, per capital income. They have the good luck to reside next to one of the world's most dynamic economies. In a generation the world may have moved beyond the likes of Mahmoud Abbas. That gives Abbas an incentive to gamble while he still has chips on the table. If the radicals can be contained through the present generation, though, they can be extirpated in the next.
The UN Agency for Palestinians Is Even Worse Than You Think It Is
Last month, news broke that the Swiss head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA)—the organization that caters to Palestinian refugees and their descendants—promoted his mistress so that she could join him on his frequent and expensive travels, which his subordinates complain have kept him away from his duties. His deputy, meanwhile, used her influence to have her husband promoted. While these revelations have been greeted with outrage by some of the European governments that fund UNRWA, Alex Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky argue that these abuses are the natural consequence of what has long been known about the organization:

In the past, UNRWA has . . . employ[ed] Hamas members and us[ed] anti-Semitic textbooks [in its schools]. Rockets have also been found hidden at UNRWA schools on several occasions. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that an organization so corrupt at the bottom is even more corrupt at the top. . . .

One lesson to be learned from this scandal is that funders must demand internal controls, external audits, and public access to information. . . . Scrutiny is also needed on the Palestinian Authority, which uses foreign aid to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in pensions to terrorists and their families.

A second lesson concerns the danger of devoting an international organization to a single population. UNRWA was effectively taken over by Palestinians decades ago. Politicization began at the bottom with school curricula, but crept upward. . . .

This latest scandal is an opportunity for the U.S., together with other angry donors, to demand a phase-out plan for the entire organization. UNRWA’s 30,000 employees could join the Palestinian Authority, which would take over its health, education, and welfare responsibilities like the state it claims to be. UNRWA’s expensive international cadre, including lobbyists in Washington and Geneva, should be disbanded. And Palestinian residents of Arab states . . . should become citizens of those states, as they are in Jordan, or of the Palestinian Authority. If Palestinians truly desire a state, they should join the call for UNRWA’s abolition.

PMW: The PA initiated clashes on the Temple Mount
A guide to the Temple Mount published in 1925 by the Supreme Moslem Council of Mandate Palestine declares that its "identity with Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute." This senior Muslim authority repeated this confirmation of Jewish and Christian traditions in 1950 in a new guide, when Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were then under Jordanian rule. Despite these repeated affirmations by the top Muslim authority of the land, the Palestinian Authority is constantly attempting to rewrite even Muslim tradition, by denying the Jewish nature of the Temple Mount. Accordingly, it refers to visits by Jews to this holy site as "invasions" and calls on Palestinians and the International community to defend the site and prevent its "Judaization." The PA deceptively refers to the entire Temple Mount as the "Al Aqsa Mosque", even though the actual mosque sits on a relatively small area in the south-western corner of the mount.

On Sunday, Israel marked the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av. According to Jewish tradition, on that day both the first and second Temples were destroyed. The same day marked the start of the Moslem Eid Al-Adha [Feast of the Sacrifice]

While some sources have blamed the Sunday clashes on the Jordanians, Palestinian Media Watch can show that it was the PA who was most instrumental in instigating the clashes and ensuing violence.

In an attempt to disrupt Jews' right to access the Mount on Sunday, the PA took a number of steps, including changing the times of the Moslem prayers on the Mount and calling for mosques around Jerusalem to remain closed in order to "recruit" as many people as possible to defend the site against the "invasions."

While the published time schedule for the 5 daily Moslem prayers, set the first prayer time for 04.29, the second (last morning prayer) for 05.56, and the third (first afternoon prayer) for 12.44 on Aug. 9, 2019 the PA appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories decided to delay the second morning prayer to 07.30. The goal was to ensure that as many people would be present on the Temple Mount when the Jews were scheduled to start arriving.

Friday, June 29, 2018

  • Friday, June 29, 2018
  • Elder of Ziyon

It looks like leftover Obama "MIddle East experts" would prefer war to a Trump-led peace



The new article in The Atlantic, Jared Kushner’s Middle East Fantasy by former Obama administration Philip Gordon and Prem Kumar, is fascinating - but not because of their analysis.

They argue that the Kushner interview in Palestinian newspaper Al Quds shows that he is hopelessly naive or, as they say, deeply cynical.

They say that, based on this interview, Kushner is suffering from a series of fantasies:

The first fantasy is the notion that the obstruction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas—who refused to meet with Kushner on his latest trip—can be countered by taking the peace plan “directly to the Palestinian people.” Kushner suggests that Abbas is avoiding him because he’s “scared we will release our peace plan and that the Palestinian people will actually like it.” That’s not likely. Abbas is indeed unpopular with most Palestinians—his approval rating hovers just above 30 percent—but it’s hardly because he’s too hardline on Israel. In our own extensive discussions with Abbas and his negotiating team as White House Middle East advisers during the Obama administration, we found them deterred most of all by the fear they could not sell further concessions to their people, who were seething about years of continued Israeli settlement expansion, land confiscation, and increased limits on Palestinian movement.
Did it never occur to these "experts" that Abbas was using his people as an excuse not to make peace, and that in fact the people want to end this useless situation already if only he would accept a couple more of Israel's security demands? If there was peace, Abbas would actually have to govern - balance the books, no longer rely on foreign aid for nearly everything, actually build institutions on his own instead of relying on European NGOs. But a long as he keeps refusing any peace offers, he keeps what he wants - Palestinians in the headlines, occasional flare-ups, boundless opportunities to bash Israel.

The biggest proof that Abbas doesn't want peace is his pretending that his people are against it. He never pushed real peace with Israel in any speech, any statement - he only bragged that he hasn't changed the PLO's positions since 1988.

Our "experts" have been fooled by believing Palestinian leaders uncritically instead of using some of the skepticism they dedicate to Netanyahu to Abbas as well.

Kushner’s second fantasy is the idea that he and the administration he represents are better placed to succeed than all their failed predecessors—a goal that seems to animate Trump as much as achieving Middle East peace itself. But while it is already clear that Trump is a terrible dealmaker who has yet to conclude any significant international agreement (the unilateral concessions to North Korea in exchange for a vague pledge to “work towards” denuclearization do not qualify), Middle East peace may be the issue on which he is least well-placed to succeed. While all U.S. administrations have always been closer to Israel than to the Palestinians, they all at least tried to play the role of honest broker in the name of finding some workable compromise, and were seen as necessary partners in the eyes of Palestinians.
How has this "even handedness" worked out so far? And in fact, the Obama administration demanded from Israel far more that they demanded from Palestinians, at least in public - which is where it matters.

Even so, the Palestinians spurned them.

So a new approach is not such a bad idea. The Obama approach failed spectacularly. And yet he still blamed Israel.

The third Kushner fantasy is that the Arab Gulf states, Egypt, and Jordan will help him overcome these major challenges. ...There is no doubt Kushner heard positive words from Arab friends in private meetings on his just-finished four-day trip to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar, before going to Israel. But he should not hold his breath waiting for those leaders to publicly embrace positions on peace that the Palestinians—and the vast majority of their populations—reject. This is especially true on the issue of Jerusalem, where any softening of the Saudi or Egyptian backing for Palestinians would be immediately denounced—and taken advantage of—by their rivals in Iran, Qatar, and Turkey.
It's happening already. These "experts" are not looking at Gulf media. There is a sea change. There is public lip service to Palestinians but the anger at the Hamas/PA split has been growing for a decade. There will always be a reticence to publicly embrace Israel but the pro-Israel tilt of Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi and Bahraini leadership is hard to ignore.

Iran already accuses Saudi Arabia of being "Zionist." It has for a long time. Has it hurt the Saudis at all?

The fourth fantasy is that the Palestinians can be bought off with economic assistance to compensate for political losses. In his interview with the Palestinian newspaper, Kushner suggested that the Trump administration could “attract very significant investments in infrastructure … that will lead to increases in GDP and we also hope a blanket of peaceful coexistence.” Putting aside that the Trump administration has not even made or been able to attract major investments in U.S. infrastructure, which makes one wonder about the West Bank and Gaza, this emphasis on economic issues has been tried unsuccessfully many times before. During the Oslo era of the 1990s, then the 2002 Roadmap for Peace and the Bush administration’s Annapolis process, and finally Secretary of State John Kerry’s effort during the Obama administration, successive U.S. administrations have tried to enhance the prospects for peace by improving conditions on the ground. It is of course laudable to promote much-needed economic development in the West Bank and Gaza, but Kushner should know by now that prosperity will never substitute for political peace. The key issues remain borders and sovereignty; security; settlements and occupation; refugees; and Jerusalem. No Palestinian leader can survive in office by promising economic benefits alone.
The media leaks of the Kushner/Trump plan is far, far more expansive and global than anything the previous peace pushes had. Because they were all thinking in terms of economic benefit only for Palestinians, and not economic benefits to the entire region.

Ordinary Palestinians who have not yet been thoroughly brainwashed by decades of incitement by "peacemaker" Abbas just want to raise their families in peace. Arguably, the biggest reason things are relatively quiet in the West Bank is because some 100,000 Palestinian Arabs work in Israel - for wages that are double what they can make in the territories - and this is a significant part of their GDP.

They aren't the BDSers that Gordon and Kumar pretend they are, based on Abbas' lies about how his people are so radical and are forcing him to reject peace. They want to make money, they want easy access to jobs, they want good schools and hospitals.
Finally, there is the problem that Israelis under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will almost certainly never agree to the sort of deal that would be necessary to make Palestinian or Arab acceptance even remotely feasible. 
This is a non-sequitor. Here is a plan that Netanyahu can almost certainly accept - it is the Palestinian leaders who will reject it. Which they did for the plans that were far more tilted their way. Why blame Netanyahu?

Notice the bias: Palestinians rejecting peace plans is Israel's fault because Palestinian demands and preconditions are reasonable and Israel's are not.

This is not analysis - it is an after the fact attempt to pretend that the Obama vision still has relevance.

Because Gordon and Kumar are dinosaurs. They are so certain that their vision of a two state solution is the only viable one that they are too blind to admit that there is a chance - still remote, of course, but a chance - to build a new Middle East based on shared interests, on Israel cooperating more and more with Arab states, a model that can eventually benefit Palestinians as well.

As long as they continue their rejectionism, the plan is indeed to sideline the Palestinians until the Palestinians themselves understand that they can partake in the new economic boom that can result from closer Israeli ties with the major Arab states. I'm guessing, but I would think that the plan will include Arab states allowing Palestinians to become citizens, and many would take advantage of that to move to the Gulf and enrich the Gulf economy and also to send money to family back home. Saudi Arabia wants to modernize - Palestinians are the least lazy, best educated and most motivated Arabs that can help them out.

Gordon and Kumar are looking at the Middle East through the glasses of their own Obama fantasies, not reality.

From what I can tell from leaks about the plan, it is astonishing in breadth and scope, as well as audacity. We know the Obama methods crashed and burned - why try to make the same mistake dozens of times?

As unlikely as the Kushner/Greenblatt/Trump plan is, it is generating far more interest from Arabs than anything Obama ever did. It is more ambitious. And it correctly looks at the entire region rather than continue the utterly useless Oslo model where the Palestinian leadership is encouraged and rewarded to always reject peace in hope that something better will come along.

In the Oslo days, Palestinians could tell the Arab world to reject any plan not to their liking. And they did, often, to buttress their positions. Those days are very, very numbered - but Western diplomats haven't caught up with reality. The frustration in Palestinian media and leadership with Jordanian and Egyptian deals with Israel, and with Saudi rejection of Palestinian intransigence, is palpable.

But invisible to these "experts."

Think about it - these two former Obama dinosaurs are unwilling to even support a peace plan. Their own plans encouraged terror and intransigence, but anything to them is better than the idea that Trump's team can make peace.

They'd rather have war.



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Thursday, October 08, 2020

10/08 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: It's Time for Trump to Soberly Confront the Rising Turkish Threat; Noah Rothman: Biden’s Repudiation of Obama’s Foreign Policy; Israel and Jordan sign historic airspace agreement

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Biden’s Repudiation of Obama’s Foreign Policy
In 2013, Obama invited Moscow to play peacemaker in the Syrian conflict, and his administration insisted—all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding—that Russia had successfully negotiated the liquidation of Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile. The fateful move preserved the Assad regime, set the stage for Russian military intervention in the conflict in 2015, and preserved the conditions that eventually gave rise to the Islamic State. Only after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 did the Obama administration reluctantly impose targeted economic sanctions. But Obama dismissed the invasion and annexation of sovereign European territory as a sign that Russia was a mere “regional power” exerting “less influence” on the global stage. The extent of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions would not become clear to the president until Moscow brazenly interfered with the 2016 election cycle—too late.

By contrast, and despite President Trump’s sordid compulsion to praise Vladimir Putin, this administration preserved Obama-era sanctions on Moscow and tightened the screws. This White House imposed Magnitsky Act sanctions on Russia’s Putin-linked elite—sanctions that the Obama administration lobbied Congress against. The Trump administration provided lethal arms to the Ukrainian government, expelled Russian diplomatic personnel, and seized Russian consular property. The U.S. military under Trump has engaged in set-piece land battles with Russian mercenaries in Syria. This administration oversaw the expansion of the NATO alliance, despite covert Russian action intended to derail that effort, and abandoned the defunct 1987 intermediate-range nuclear-forces treaty, a compact to which even the Obama administration conceded only the United States was beholden.

If Joe Biden has determined that it is in America’s interest to get tougher on the rogue regimes that govern these two states, that’s great. There is, however, precious little evidence to suggest that Biden has had a genuine change of heart.

The former vice president has, in fact, pledged to end Cuba’s economic and diplomatic isolation, which he claims stifles Cuban entrepreneurs and strengthens the regime in Havana. His vague but detectable hostility toward fracking would relieve the economic pressure America’s virtual energy independence has imposed on the Kremlin. He has tacitly endorsed a de facto partition of Syria, pockets of which would be administered by Russia and the Western coalition—a move that would legitimize Russia’s troop presence in the Levant and commit the U.S. to an open-ended conflict in defense of no well-defined interest.

Though he didn’t do much to prove his thesis, Diehl is right: Joe Biden does seem to have learned from past mistakes. In the case of these two pariah regimes, those mistakes were Barack Obama’s, not Donald Trump’s.
In Phone Call, Israel’s Netanyahu and Russia’s Putin Discuss Iranian ‘Aggression’ in Middle East
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to a statement put out by Netanyahu’s office, the two leaders talked about “regional security issues, the Iranian aggression and the situation in Syria.”

“They also discussed advancing bilateral cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus,” it added.

A Kremlin statement listed Netanyahu as one of a dozen world leaders who called Putin on Wednesday to wish him a happy 68th birthday.

“In every conversation, the leaders touched upon the development of bilateral relations as well as topical regional problems,” the Kremlin said.
Caroline Glick: It's Time for Trump to Soberly Confront the Rising Turkish Threat
All of these aspects of Trump's foreign policies are vital for developing and maintaining a successful U.S. policy toward Erdogan's Turkey, as Erdogan exposes himself as a foe interested in pitting all sides against one another to enable his efforts to construct a new Ottoman Empire. Many commentators advocate expelling Turkey from NATO. But it isn't clear that a head-on confrontation with Erdogan would neutralize him. It could well empower him by helping him to rally the Turkish public behind him at a time when Turkey's economy stands on the brink of collapse.

Given Erdogan's multipronged aggression, the first goal of a realistic policy would be to diminish his power by severely weakening Turkey economically. This may mean imposing economic sanctions on Turkey for its aggression against Greece and Cyprus. Or it may mean simply giving Turkey a gentle push over the economic cliff.

Without raising the issue of removing Turkey from NATO, the U.S. can simply not sell Turkey advanced platforms while demonstrating its support for Greece and Cyprus, as well as Israel and its Arab partners.

True, China is already seeking to supplant the U.S. in sponsoring the Turkish economy and selling Turkey arms—but by keeping Turkey in NATO, the U.S. still has more leverage over Turkey than China.

A passive-aggressive policy for diminishing Erdogan's power and the threat he can mount is right up Trump's alley. Trump doesn't often directly attack his opponents. He embraced North Korean leader Kim Jong-un even as he imposed the harshest economic sanctions ever on North Korea and redesignated it a state sponsor of terrorism. He has acted similarly with Putin and with Erdogan himself.

Erdogan's belief that he can rebuild the Ottoman Empire while attacking EU and NATO members, the U.S., its key allies in the Middle East as well as Russia, owes to his narcissism that Obama and Biden did so much to feed.

With Erdogan now openly threatening multiple U.S. allies, it is increasingly apparent that the largest and fastest rising threat to stability and peace in the Middle East is Turkey—and the victor in next month's U.S. presidential election will have no lead time to deal with it.

Trump's reality-based foreign policy, his preference for indirect confrontations and empowerment of U.S. partners to defend themselves from aggression, rather than dictating their actions or fighting their battles for them, give the president the flexibility to diminish Erdogan's maneuver room, his economic independence and his popularity at home—while also empowering U.S. allies directly affected by the strongman's aggression to stand up to him effectively, with or without direct U.S. involvement.
Tarek Fatah: Expel Turkey from NATO
Turkey's Erdogan denounced the call for a ceasefire and, according to reports, has lent its US-supplied F-16s to Azerbaijan's forces along with drones that are equipped with Canadian technology.

This forced Ottawa to act. On Oct. 5, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne halted all military export permits to Turkey.

The reaction by Turkey was swift. The foreign ministry in Ankara accused Ottawa of "double standards" arguing: "There is no explanation for blocking defence equipment exports to a NATO ally while."

NATO ally? That's quite rich for Turkey's pan-Islamists to invoke NATO as their defence.

The only role Turkey has played in NATO since the collapse of the USSR is that of a Fifth Column. A country that has been a conduit for ISIS jihadis, the Muslim Brotherhood. A country that deploys refugees to threaten Europe and Greece while occupying Cyprus and festering war in Libya, is no NATO ally.

Time has come for Canada to ask for Turkey's expulsion from NATO. Turkey is a menace to Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Syria and Libya. It has eyes on Bulgaria, Rumania and the Balkans, which it had to relinquish in the Lausanne Treaty that is approaching its centennial.

Don't be surprised if Erdogan annuls the century-old treaty to re-establish the Ottoman Caliphate that will make Central Asia its Turkic backyard after Armenia, the only obstacle, is eliminated.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

We Need to Talk About Joe (Judean Rose)

Joe Biden is ahead of President Trump in key battleground states, according to a new Fox News poll, and the lead is significant. Biden passed Trump by 11 percentage points in Pennsylvania, 13 points in Minnesota, and 9 points in Michigan. The question is why, considering a Rasmussen poll released June 29, found that 38% of voters believe that Joe Biden has dementia. That’s almost four out of ten voters.

It’s no secret the mainstream media is pulling for Joe Biden. They want Donald Trump dethroned and a Democrat—any Democrat—installed in the White House. In spite of this fact, they too, cannot help but notice Joe Biden’s little (and not so little) brain farts. 

The media has tried hard to recast Biden’s strange utterings as “gaffes.” See, for instance, here, here, here, and here. But it’s not a “gaffe” when he falls asleep during Hillary’s endorsement. 
It's not a gaffe when he has his wife do the talking so he won’t have to speak. 

It's not a gaffe when he has brain freeze. 

Not a gaffe, but a memory issue, when he forgets the President’s name.

Especially not when the name of the president he served under is forgotten not once, but several times. 
Which is why Obama told Joe Biden he didn’t have to do this—didn’t have to run for president. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Joe Biden’s brain issues, of course, may not actually be dementia. The fact is, the presidential candidate has had surgery for not one but two aneurysms. Remember the bloody eye incident when Biden’s eye literally filled with blood on live television?

The hubbub surrounding this event prompted Biden to talk about his experiences with brain surgery in 1988. From the Washington Examiner:

“I ended up with what they call a cranial aneurysm,” Biden said at a campaign event on Friday. “I had to be rushed to a hospital in the middle of a snowstorm, and the fact is, the president was nice enough to offer a helicopter to get me there. I couldn’t go up because of the altitude. My fire company got me down in time for [a] 13-hour operation and saved my life.”

Biden suffered the burst aneurysm in 1988, when he was a Delaware senator. Believing that he was close to death, a Catholic priest was preparing to administer Biden's last rites. Surgeons clipped a second aneurysm before it bust a few months later.

A later piece goes into a bit more detail:

At the time of Biden’s brush with death in 1988, his wife, Jill Biden, feared that he would never be the same. In a forthcoming autobiography, “Where the Light Enters," Jill recounts Joe's doctor telling the family that there was a significant chance he’d have permanent neurological damage, particularly after he suffered a second aneurysm, a condition in which an artery becomes weak and bulges out.

"Our doctor told us there was a 50-50 chance Joe wouldn't survive surgery," she wrote. "He also said that it was even more likely that Joe would have permanent brain damage if he survived. And if any part of his brain would be adversely affected, it would be the area that governed speech."

This is a candid account of what happened back in 1988. But does this past history have implications for the present? And are Biden and his wife still being upfront with the public today? From the same piece:

The last time Biden disclosed information about his health was in 2008 when Dr. Matthew Parker, a physician the Obama campaign selected when Biden was the running mate, spoke to the press. Biden’s actual doctor, John Eisold, the physician who attended to Biden and the rest of Congress, was not the one to present the medical records...Parker said he didn’t know whether Biden had more aneurysms, and said “everything that could be done is being done.”

From the information revealed, it was not clear how often Biden has been screened for aneurysms, and there wasn't any other information provided when he was vice president. In contrast, records show that Barack Obama had at least four medical checkups during his presidency.

No law requires presidents, vice presidents, or candidates to have a medical checkup or to disclose what comes of it.

The article also makes the point that if Joe Biden had two aneurysms, he could well have another:

Dr. Babu Welch, a neurological surgeon with University of Texas-Southwestern’s O’Donnell Brain Institute, said that people who have had one aneurysm can always have another. People are supposed to undergo regular screenings shortly after they have an aneurysm, but then can space them out further as time goes on, he said.

Dr. Gavin Britz, director of the Houston Methodist Neurological Institute, said his research has revealed that people have a decrease in life expectancy after an aneurysm. The key, he said, is to make sure to catch them before they rupture.

The New York Times asks whether Joe Biden might have developed another aneurysm going so far as to suggest that having had two aneurysms, Biden is actually “more likely” to have a third:

A question arises: Has Mr. Biden developed a new aneurysm over the last two decades that could burst?

Doctors, who long thought that berry aneurysms were a once-in-a-lifetime event, now generally believe that they can recur. About 5 percent or less of patients who have had a berry aneurysm develop new ones at the original site or elsewhere in the brain.

“Over the last two decades,” said Dr. Robert F. Spetzler of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, “we have learned much more about aneurysms, and the fact is that when you have had one aneurysm, you are more likely to develop another one. Although the likelihood is very low, it does exist.”

Are Joe’s “gaffes” a result of his aneurysm, or from his brain surgeries? And what would happen if another aneurysm were to burst while Joe was in office? That last may be a bit difficult to predict, but Wikipedia offers a history of what happened at that time, pointing out that Biden had a serious complication. We also learn that back then, Biden was sidelined from work for a full seven months, and that he was told his chances for a full recovery were somewhat slim (emphasis added):

In 1988, Biden suffered two brain aneurysms, one on the right side and one on the left. Each required surgery with high risk of long-term impact on brain functionality. In February 1988, after suffering from several episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, Biden was taken by long-distance ambulance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center and given lifesaving surgery to correct an intracranial berry aneurysm that had begun leaking. While recuperating, he suffered a pulmonary embolism, a major complication.

Another operation to repair a second aneurysm, which had caused no symptoms but was at risk of bursting, was performed in May 1988. The hospitalization and recovery kept Biden from his duties in the Senate for seven months.

In retrospect, Biden's family came to believe the early end to his presidential campaign had been a blessing in disguise, for had he still been campaigning in 1988, he might well not have stopped to seek medical attention and the condition might have become unsurvivable. In 2013, Biden said, "they take a saw and they cut your head off" and "they literally had to take the top of my head off." He also said he was told he would have less than a 50% chance of full recovery.

Biden has, until now, failed to share any appraisal of his cognitive state. And some voters may be getting nervous about that with November not so far away. The Hill had a piece in early July entitled, “Joe Biden must release the results of his cognitive tests — voters need to know.” The piece references more voter polls:

A recent Zogby poll found that 55 percent of likely voters surveyed thought it was “much more” and “somewhat more likely” that Biden is in the early stages of dementia, while 45 percent thought it was less likely. That number included 56 percent of independents and 32 percent of Democrats.

More worrisome for Biden, perhaps, is that about 60 percent of young voters between the ages of 18 and 29 thought it likely that Biden is suffering early-onset dementia, along with 61 percent of Hispanics. The good news is that only 43 percent of blacks doubted Biden’s mental capacity.

Another piece, from Chicago Sun Times (July 26), asks, “Can Joe Biden keep it together?” and speaks of “whispered doubt” suggesting the public may be concerned about Biden’s fitness for office:

There is a dreadful possibility, a whispered doubt that lurks at every Biden appearance.

“I watched, and sometimes cringed, at his performances in debates and other public appearances,” Laura Washington writes. “Biden stumbled over and mangled names, facts and concepts. At times, he seemed confused.”

It is only natural that Trump supporters would attempt to capitalize on Joe’s oopsies. Hence we have this ad from the Committee to Defend the President which speaks not about “gaffes” but asks if Joe Biden “has the mental capacity to keep America safe,” and then comes right out with it: “Does Joe Biden have dementia?”

Politico (July 3) emphasized the meanness of the dementia accusations referring to this election cycle as “The Dementia Campaign.”  An excerpt:

Just listen to Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night, the day after Joe Biden’s big Super Tuesday victory and the victory speech in which he was momentarily confused over which side of the podium his wife and sister were standing. “As a smart friend said last night, Joe Biden has spent his entire life trying to succeed in presidential politics,” the Fox News host chortled, “and now he has: Too bad he’s not there to enjoy it. Pretty funny.”

Politico wants to de-emphasize the dementia/brain damage and shift the focus to the mild impairment of age, stressing that we have a geriatric political culture:

The issue is especially acute now that so much power in American government is held by people older than 65. While rates of dementia are going down gradually in the United States, 65 is the age at which 20 to 25 percent of people have mild cognitive impairment and 10 percent have dementia, according geriatric researcher Kenneth Langa at the University of Michigan. Six members of the Supreme Court are over 65, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will turn 80 on March 26, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last month turned 78.

Joe’s brain issues, however much the liberal left wants to distract us, make it really difficult to resist watching and laughing at his latest “gaffes” such as the one about nurses blowing into his nostrils to get him moving.

That “go home and get me pillows,” sends me into giggle fits, each and every time. But then I feel a little bit mean and even voyeuristic. And I can’t help but think: It’s not nice they’re putting this brain damaged guy out there like this. Why are they doing this: running this guy with brain damage?

I know what the conspiracy theorists think: if Biden wins the presidency, which he might win in spite of dementia, because he’s the Not Trump, he won’t be the one making the decisions. Instead, he will be a puppet. The Manchurian Candidate come to life. 

So who is really running the show? Deep State? Soros? Obama?

Someone/something else? And what does this mean for Israel, and for the world at large? 

Will Biden hang in there, or will the pressure and stress become too much, say during a debate with President Trump? And if it does become too much for the man who has twice undergone the neurosurgeon's knife, what happens next? Who will step in and take over the show?

Your guess is as good as mine. Which means that about all we can do is sit back and watch this public circus with guilty pleasure and not a little incredulity at the fact that, should nothing and no one intervene, the Democrats will vote for Joe Biden, despite his cognitive issues, come November. 

Because they definitely choose brain damage over Trump. 

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Friday, January 17, 2020

01/17 Links Pt1: Right from wrong - Neda Soltan’s message from the grave; UK adds entire Hezbollah movement to terror blacklist; 120 Members of Congress Issue Letters of Support to CAIR

From Ian:
Ruthie Blum: Right from wrong - Neda Soltan’s message from the grave
ON JUNE 29, nine days after Neda’s cruel end, Iran’s Guardian Council conducted a “vote recount” at the behest of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – who had declared Ahmadinejad’s victory a “divine assessment” – and concluded, of course, that the election results were sound.

Shouts of “death to the dictator” from balconies throughout Iran ensued. Though the chanting was in Farsi, placards denouncing Ahmadinejad all were written in English – a clear signal of the protesters’ plea for outside sympathy and aid.

Unfortunately for the trapped and subjugated Iranian people, however, the administration in Washington was now headed by Barack Obama. Obama had entered the White House a mere few months earlier with the aim of reversing the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, especially those relating to the Middle East in general and the Iranian threat in particular.

Believing that the path to ridding Iran of its nuclear and hegemonic ambitions would be through goodwill gestures to the mullahs, Obama not only abandoned the Bush-coined term “axis of evil” to define state sponsors of terrorism – with Iran at the top of the list – but referred to the militia-monitored election process there as a “robust debate.”

He then continued to stress that America was going to engage in diplomacy with the Islamic Republic, regardless of who was at the helm.

Well, the proud “leader from behind” certainly kept his word on that one. As the regime in Tehran jailed, tortured and mowed down enough demonstrators to make the others recoil in fear – and Neda’s image faded from global consciousness – Obama got busy with his P5+1 counterparts in China, France, Britain, Russia and Germany orchestrating and pushing for the bogus nuclear deal with Iran that was reached in July 2015.
There's a revolution going on in the Mideast. Why doesn't the West see that?
Surveying the anti-government protests in Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, as well as the refusal of the Syrian revolutionaries to surrender, the Canadian journalist Terry Glavin writes:

There is a revolution going on. It has been underway in fits and starts for years. It unites Lebanese, Syrians, Iranians, and Iraqis. Its object is the sundering of a bloody Khomeinist despotism that runs from the [Islamist dictatorship] in Tehran through the Assad regime in Damascus to Hizballah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Hashd al-Shaabi militias in Iraq, which have now insinuated themselves into every branch of the Iraqi state.

It’s all very well for Canada’s Justin Trudeau and the United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson and Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Emmanuel Macron to want to force Tehran to get back in line with Barack Obama’s nuclear-rapprochement arrangement, which Donald Trump has renounced. But the genie will not be put back in the bottle so easily.

It was Obama’s nuclear deal that freed up [Iran’s] Quds Force to enforce its ghastly Khomeinist hegemony throughout the region in the first place, and now, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani is warning that European soldiers in the region, not just American soldiers, may soon find themselves on the Quds Force’s target list. Counseling a return to the Obama-era status quo is not a call to de-escalation. Don’t believe it.

It is profoundly ill-advised. It may suit the purposes of some Canadian and European firms that are scraping for a place for themselves in the Iranian economy, much of which is owned and controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But it would be a profound betrayal of the people of Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, who have already known little but betrayal from six successive Democratic and Republican administrations in the United States, and from the “West” generally, Canada included.
UK adds entire Hezbollah movement to terror blacklist
Britain's finance ministry on Friday said it had added Lebanon's entire Hezbollah movement to its list of terrorist groups subject to asset freezing.

The ministry previously only targeted the Shiite organisation's military wing but has now listed the whole group after the government designated it a terrorist organisation last March.

The change requires any individual or institution in Britain with accounts or financial services connected to Hezbollah to suspend them or face prosecution.

The group had "publicly denied a distinction between its military and political wings," the Treasury said in a notice posted on its website.

"The group in its entirety is assessed to be concerned in terrorism and was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK in March 2019," it added.

"This listing includes the Military Wing, the Jihad Council and all units reporting to it, including the External Security Organisation."

A finance ministry spokesman said the change followed its annual review of the asset freezing register, and brought it into line with the 2019 decision by the interior minister to blacklist all of Hezbollah.

"The UK remains committed to the stability of Lebanon and the region, and we continue to work closely with our Lebanese partners," the spokesman added.

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