Bedouins, Haaretz and Bikel's Blood Libel Film

...There is nothing like the expulsion of the Jews in Fiddler on the Roof to accentuate the tragedy, and to play on the most sensitive heartstrings of the world in general, and of Jews in the U.S. in particular. Here we have one more proof of what Israel is doing to its minorities. Here is one more proof of apartheid, racism, and other accusations from the familiar list. There is, of course, just one problem with the plot of this film. It never happened.

Ben-Dror Yemini..
Times of Israel..
29 November '13..

For the past several months a campaign has been under way in Israel and around the world, backed by an endless budget, aimed at aggravating the relationship between the State of Israel and the Bedouins. This campaign included the recent release of a propaganda film portraying the expulsion of Bedouins from their land.

The main star of the film is Theodore Bikel, who was recruited for this role mainly because of his past portrayal of Tevye the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof. The film, in a propagandized play on words, is called Fiddler with no Roof, and that is nothing compared to the film’s content. The Bedouins are portrayed as the victims of the terrible expulsion decree that was issued against the Jews in the dark days of the anti-Semitic Tsarist regime, as described at the plot of Fiddler on the Roof. And a plot is just what it is. Difficult to believe, but the film was produced by Rabbis for Human Rights.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with this film, as usual, is Haaretz, which provides innumerable articles, all with the same angle, all presenting the same position, about the thieving and oppressing state, and about the expelled Bedouins. Freedom of debate and expression has never looked as neglected as it appears in this uniform, Bolshevist perspective of the newspaper for people who all think the same.

The debate over the proper procedure of the settlement of the Bedouins is an important debate. Some say that the Bedouins are nomads, that their entire claim to land ownership is fictitious, while others claim that the state should recognized their claims of ownership even if these are not consistent with recognized registration methods, from the Ottoman period, then the British, and now, of course, the Israeli.

For years the Israeli authorities have been struggling with this issue. On the one hand, the ownership claims have been rejected outright in legal proceedings. In some of the claims, the assertions of “ownership for hundreds of years” were exposed as fraudulent. Aerial photographs from the last century proved that “a settlement that had existed for centuries” had not even existed for a few decades.

Despite the legal determinations, the state decided on a generous arrangement. Every Bedouin family is entitled to a plot of land in one of the Bedouin towns built in the region where they live, and there are plans for the construction of many more towns. These arrangements attempt to approximate the Bedouin tradition and heritage as much as possible.

For this reason a plot of land in a Bedouin town is nearly one dunam (1/4 acre), which is much larger than the plots in other towns. On the other hand, this is an arrangement that is in line with accepted practices in modern countries, in which land ownership requires registration, and in which human habitations require infrastructure, running water, connection to the electricity grid and paved roads.

This is no simple matter. There is a clash between a nomadic tradition and a modern country. Israel is not the only country that, over the course of its establishment, has had to contend with the claims of population groups with different lifestyles. Australia had issues with its aborigines, in the U.S. it was the Native Americans, in Scandinavian countries it is still the Samis who complain about historical and current deprivation, and many other countries have gypsies.

The propaganda film does not present the tough dilemmas. The film makes life easy for itself. Israel is portrayed as the cruel anti-Semitic ruler, expelling and disinheriting and destroying and robbing, and the poor Bedouins stand helpless in the face of this abysmal cruelty. There is nothing like the expulsion of the Jews in Fiddler on the Roof to accentuate the tragedy, and to play on the most sensitive heartstrings of the world in general, and of Jews in the U.S. in particular. Here we have one more proof of what Israel is doing to its minorities. Here is one more proof of apartheid, racism, and other accusations from the familiar list.

There is, of course, just one problem with the plot of this film. It never happened.

Rare insider's insight into how the Abbas regime views chances of achieving peace with Israel

In light of this unusually candid admission from the highest level of the Palestinian Arab kleptocracy, those who executed master terrorist Yasser Arafat's last will and testament and who have presided over the relentless descent of the PA to its current depths, we are left with this one question

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
29 November '13..

A person would have to be entirely disconnected from the news emanating from this part of the world, or an employee of the US State Department, to be unaware of the rising levels of terrorism (yes, rock-throwing at speeding cars meets every element of the definition of terrorism, even when some of the throwers are minors) that endanger the lives of ordinary Israelis on a daily basis.

Notwithstanding, the government of Israel entered into an undertaking during this past summer to free from its prison some 104 killers, every one of them convicted on one or more counts of willful homicide, and - as far as anyone can tell - entirely unrepentant.

(Here's a sampling of those acts of "courage" for which they were sent to long terms behind Israeli bars: "30-Oct-13: The bogus manufacture of heroes and legends" - and trust us when we say, on the basis of many meetings with politicians, journalists and opinion-makers: outside of a small circle of us here in Israel, plus of course regular readers of this blog, the crimes of the 104 are mostly not known and not understood, especially by people who claim that they do know and do understand.)

Even if some of them genuinely were ready to own up to the horrors of which they were convicted by judges and courts, which is a theoretical possibility, the reception extended to them in the most public way by the despicable political leadership of the Palestinian Arabs has turned them into heroes with fat, foreign-aid-funded salaries. (We have more about those salaries here: "10-Nov-13: Who finances those savage acts of terror? And why is this so poorly understood?") Not one of them is ever going to say "I did terror, and I deeply regret what it did to my soul and to the ethos of my people". Not now, not ever.

The reason why Israel agreed to free the 104, and in fact has already set loose 52, depends on whom you want to believe.

(Continue)

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A very powerful discovery which highlights the most unbreakable bond

On the eve of Hanukkah in the year 5774 (2013), many generations after the drama which yielded the Festival of Lights unfolded some 2,150 years ago, Dr. Eilat Mazar, an accomplished archaeologist, is recreating her earth-shattering rediscovery of the "lost menorah" at the foot of the Temple Mount. This discovery took place seven months ago but was only revealed in September.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
29 November '13..

When the Hasmoneans returned to the Temple only to discover that the golden menorah was stolen by the Greeks, they quickly put together a makeshift candelabrum with seven lamps using scraps of iron. They lit the menorah using pure oil, according to the story as it is written in the Book of Maccabees.

On the eve of Hanukkah in the year 5774 (2013), many generations after the drama which yielded the Festival of Lights unfolded some 2,150 years ago, Dr. Eilat Mazar, an accomplished archaeologist, is recreating her earth-shattering rediscovery of the "lost menorah" at the foot of the Temple Mount. This discovery took place seven months ago but was only revealed in September.

For many years, Mazar has excavated the hidden corners of this land. The ground she dug held thousands of discoveries and archaeological treasures. Still, nothing could have prepared Mazar, the granddaughter of Professor Benjamin Mazar, who is thought of as the pioneer in excavations of artifacts from the biblical era, for the 1,400-year-old discovery, not to mention the reverberating responses, from the prime minister himself to colleagues from abroad to "regular folks," among them Jews and Arabs.

These unforgettable moments are seared into her consciousness. It was the start of the fourth excavation season at the City of David, also known as the Ophel, on the southern rim of the Temple Mount complex. The project is overseen by the Hebrew University.

The area itself was first excavated by her grandfather 40 years ago. During that initial period, the diggers, including students from Ambassador College in Oklahoma, devoted their efforts to removing the uppermost layer of earth from the area designated for excavation. They "uncovered" dozens of plastic cups, aluminum foil, and worn-out old shoes that appear to have been used by construction workers during their lunch breaks. At that stage of the dig, they didn't expect to come across anything special.

Mazar was thus surprised when on the fifth day of her own dig, this past summer, Ariel Winderbaum, the archaeologist in charge of Area C, showed her a large golden earring that was particularly dense. It was uncovered in one of the rooms attached to the structure that hosted the shops in the Byzantine area. From here, things began to unfold quickly. Before Mazar managed to absorb the significance of what had been found, another earring was found nearby. It matched the first earring.

A few minutes later, several golden coins were also found. And minutes afterward more artifacts were uncovered. Mazar was concerned that the news of the golden findings would attracted unwanted guests to the complex. She asked Winderbaum to make sure that the workers who uncovered the 36 coins and earrings -- Cari and Ahinoam -- continue with their work while maintaining strict confidentiality. Mazar herself was quick to leave the vicinity so as not to arouse attention.

Now Mazar is releasing a Hebrew-language book entitled "Discovering the Lost Menorah at the Foot of the Temple Mount." In it, she describes the moments that fired the imagination of archaeologists and millions of Jews from around the world. It also provided yet another rejoinder to the deceitful claims propagated for years by the Palestinians whereby Jewish links to Jerusalem and the existence of the temple are a fallacy.

"I asked Ariel to photograph the findings," Mazar writes in her book. "Perhaps we will be able to say more about the coins after we examine the photographs, but Ariel came to me and said, 'Eilat, you have to come and see something up close.'"

"I thought to myself, 'This must be just more coins.' I told him I'd be right there, but he insisted more forcefully. 'Eilat, you have to come now.' So I went to take a look. Cari was digging right up against the room's western wall. It wasn't the same collection of coins. She carefully cleared out the margins of a shallow indentation in the base of the limestone floor and inside there was a shiny, round gold medallion. On the medallion we noticed a partial image of something that we couldn't make out, but now we could clearly discern that it was the image of the seven-lamp menorah."

The West's Great Betrayal by Mordechai Kedar

...The Geneva agreement tore the mask from the face of hypocrisy that characterizes the political behavior of many politicians in the West today. From their point of view the eighty million Iranians can continue to live lives of misery, oppression and degradation under an illegitimate, cruel and bloodthirsty regime that spreads terror and death all over the world and is directly or indirectly responsible for the murder of many thousands in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Israel and in many other countries.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar..
29 November '13..

Since the signing of the Geneva agreement between Iran and the group of six countries at the end of last week, media outlets the world over have been discussing the agreement and the easing of sanctions, what Iran will give in return and the ability - which exists or does not exist - to oversee whether the Iranians, who have lied and cheated the world for many years, will faithfully carry out what they agreed to and signed on. There were those who wondered about the absence of the demand for Iran to dismantle the plutonium reactor in Arak, whose purpose is only military, and there were those who calculated the time that would be required for the Iranians to renew the activity toward producing a bomb. The media outlets of the world dealt quite a bit with Israel's concern, the rage of the Saudis' and people in the Gulf Emirates, and everyone wonders what Israel will do, who is not part of the agreement.

The common element among most of those who have been discussing the matter is that everyone sees only two sides, Iran and the West, and ponders which of these two sides has gained more from the agreement. Most of the commentators ignore the third party, large but silent, in pain but obedient, who experienced a major defeat as a result of the agreement. This party is the majority of eighty million Iranians. It is no secret that the great majority of Iranian citizens hate the regime of the Ayatollahs with all their hearts, and from time to time express this hatred with demonstrations and street disturbances, such as those that swept the streets of Iran after the "elections" for presidency in June of 2009 and which brought about the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators who were champions of liberty and hungry for freedom.

They, the restless young men and women, secular up to their ears, aspiring to freedom but living under oppression, educated but unemployed, suffering from the terrible corruption that the regime of the ayatollahs is immersed in, hoped that the economic sanctions on the dark regime would suffocate it and bring it to its end. This was not a wild hope: in the past it was learned that at the height of the wave of protest demonstrations about the stealing of the elections in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "reelected" in 2009, the rulers of Iran had two jets prepared in order to leave the country and escape from the raging masses.

Now, after the agreement that was signed in Geneva, the sanctions are eased and the regime is beginning to breathe more easily. The Iranian Rial - which had lost about half of its value in recent years - rose last week by two percent. The economic optimism causes new blood to flow in the clogged veins of the regime, and all of the freedom seekers in Iran feel that the historic opportunity to rid themselves of the dark fanatics who rule their lives and deaths has been squandered. The sanctions, which were a non-violent weapon, could have subdued one of the most violent regimes in the world, if the Western countries had only maintained them.

Dear Chris, What's Good for Arabs Should Be Good Too For Jews, Yes?

...Isn't there something wrong in permitting Arabs their narrative while demanding that Jews accept the right of Arabs to deny our narrative?

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
29 November '13..




In a story about an exhibit of photographs from UNRWA, we read:

Christopher Gunness, an agency spokesman, said...“Everyone has a right to understand, to study and feel a part of their history,” he said. “Are we supposed to engage in denial of the events of 1948? The refugee experience is an essential part of Palestinian identity.”

Fine. As long as the facts are facts.

Bloodlust and lies - Herein reside the very glaring differences between our societies

...The lie binds. Spurious grievances confine and scourge those they ensnare. The Arabs (who before Israeli independence fanatically spurned the Palestinian moniker as a British imperialist import – which it indeed was) were victims of their own belligerence. They murdered their own brethren and sabotaged their own economy. In 1936 Haj-Amin instigated a self-inflicted disaster, a harbinger of the 1948 one which would follow the onslaught by seven Arab armies on day-old Israel.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
29 November '13..

A lot of astonishment mingled with shock was expressed in our midst when it emerged that it was a 16-year-old, from an Arab village near Jenin, who slit the throat of Eden Attias earlier this month. Eden was a rookie soldier, just a couple of years older than the teen who slew him while he napped on the bus that took him back from sick leave to boot camp.

The beautiful people just couldn’t get their sensitive heads around it. The cold-blooded knifer was just a boy, whose soul is assumed to be pure.

While most liberal sorts remained atypically tongue-tied, the few who at all regarded the slaughter as worthy of their didactic attention implied that our sins were what drove a mere youth to such hopeless desperation. There had to be a reason (one that clearly conformed to their logical constructs). Violence doesn’t spring from a psychosocial vacuum, they tell us.

The cover-story wasn’t late in coming. The underage butcher was merely avenging the incarceration of his cousins in Israel. The abiding impression is that the two are victims of the ruthless repression of Israeli occupation – prisoners of conscience, persecuted altruists and political-philosophers unjustly put behind bars.

This indeed was the theme replayed unremittingly in the Palestinian Authority’s controlled official propaganda organs – the press, the schools and the mosques. A new overnight icon and adulated role model was born.

So what if one terrorist cousin was duly convicted of a double-homicide and the other of multiple homicide attempts? Sooner or later they’ll be released – either as part of a lopsided swap or in the framework of goodwill gestures to entice implacable enemies to pose as indignant peace-makers in made-up negotiations. Indeed the16-year-old isn’t likely to grow old in durance vile.

Odds are that, after doing too little time, he too will be liberated to be triumphantly feted in Ramallah and jubilantly accorded a hero’s homecoming in Jenin.

Massacring Jews has long been glorified in Mahmoud Abbas’s fiefdom and no one – least of all Barack Obama, John Kerry and the screeching chorus of sanctimonious EU notables – have mumbled the slighted murmur of objection to the ongoing incitement and indoctrination.

But what resonates in every ear throughout the PA and the entire Arab/Muslim realm beyond is of paramount significance. Foremost it marks the core difference between us and them. It shows how malicious it is to judge Israel and its neighbors by inherently hypocritical double standards.

What tells us apart is our underlying culture of pluralism and tolerance versus their underlying culture of bloodlust and lies. To deny this is to willfully distort history and, no less willfully, to misrepresent the present.

Is it really only in the Israeli context that Arabs spill blood?

To confer credence on the false narrative that this region’s ills all began with Israel’s birth in 1948 or with its so-called occupation in 1967 is to recycle deceit – whether knowingly or stupidly.

The NY Times, Uranium enrichment and Israeli settlements

...The absurdity of Rudoren’s comparison is risible. Israel clearly does not oppose the deal because it generally disapproves of interim, confidence-building steps, but because it sees this one as a failure to contain the nuclear ambition of a country whose Supreme leader just days ago debased Zionists as sub-human and forecast their demise.

Ricki Hollander..
Times of Israel..
27 November '13..

Over the past weeks, The New York Times has used the Israeli prime minister’s vocal apprehension about the appeasement of Iran as a hook on which to hang repeated attacks against him in editorials, columns and news stories.

The Times has now turned the topic of President Obama’s interim nuclear deal with Iran into yet another opportunity to indict Israel.

The newspaper deployed its Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, to come up with a new offensive. Having already used up her cache of pejorative labels (“strident,” “stubborn,” “shrill” ) on the Israeli prime minister, Rudoren resorts to inanely equating the continued enrichment of uranium with the establishment of Israeli homes in the West Bank, suggesting that this somehow constitutes Israeli hypocrisy. The resulting column illuminates the Times’ readiness to forgo logic in its eagerness to put forth any kind of condemnation of Israel, quickly and often. Rudoren writes:

“Israeli leaders on Monday condemned the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program as an exercise in appeasement by the Western powers and a delaying tactic by Iran. Yet many of them see the same strategy of interim confidence-building steps as the only realistic route to resolving their long-running conflict with the Palestinians.

Israel is outraged that, under the deal signed Sunday, Iran is not required to stop enriching uranium or to dismantle centrifuges while negotiating a final agreement with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany. At the same time, Israel continues to build West Bank settlements while negotiating with the Palestinians, prompting similar outrage from the international community.

…Do these alternate approaches to parallel issues that are crucial to Israel’s future amount to hopeless hypocrisy? Or are they simply a sign of the profound differences in the way Israel views the two problems and its starkly different role in the two sets of talks?”

The absurdity of Rudoren’s comparison is risible. Israel clearly does not oppose the deal because it generally disapproves of interim, confidence-building steps, but because it sees this one as a failure to contain the nuclear ambition of a country whose Supreme leader just days ago debased Zionists as sub-human and forecast their demise. By permitting such a regime, which is set on acquiring nuclear weapons, the right to continue to enrich uranium and allowing its centrifuges to remain in place, critics of the deal argue, the entire concept of nuclear non-proliferation is undercut.

Rock-hurling attack scores direct hit on prime target in Jerusalem tonight

...This ongoing war is fueled by the hatred of the rock-throwers and those who sent them. The children whom they seek are not in the crossfire. They are precisely the target.

Photo: Noam Dvir

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
28 November '13..

There's another reminder this evening of the reality of living in an environment in which terrorism is both encouraged and denied by the Palestinian Authority even as it impacts with growing frequency and ferocity on our lives.

Haaretz reports in the past hour (it's now 7:00 pm in Israel):

A two-year-old girl was wounded on Thursday in Jerusalem when assailants hurled rocks at a car she war riding. She sustained a moderate head injury. According to initial reports, the incident took place on Asher Viner Street in the capital, at the entrance to the Armon Hanetziv neighborhood. The area is located on the Green Line, near the village of Sur Baher. Paramedics who responded on the scene evacuated the girl to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center. Her condition was initially defined as serious, but later was reassessed as moderate.

The story which exploded in the southern suburbs of Israel's capital city is still unfolding, and reports are not entirely clear and consistent at this stage. We will provide updates when we know them.

As of 7:05 pm, we understand that the toddler regained consciousness even before she reached the hospital.

There's a tendency in the media and in some polite circles to treat injured little children like tonight's victim as having had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the crossfire and so on. This is nonsense. When Palestinian Arab terrorists are pressed to explain their calculations [here, for instance], they speak of the pride they take in hitting Jewish children, hurting them (or worse) and by extension their families and their society because the hitters have a burning need for vengeance, for justice, for their own country, for a new set-top console. We have heard them; we have watched them from up close.

(Continue)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 
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A flare of light from the darkness that comes to remind us of what was, is and can still be

...But that old light is still the light of possibilities. It burns to remind us of the extraordinary things that our ancestors did and of the extraordinary assistance that they received. We cannot always expect oil to burn for eight days, just as we cannot always expect the bullet to miss or the rocket to fall short. And yet even in those moments of darkness the reminder of the flame is with us for no darkness lasts forever and no exile, whether of the body of the spirit, endures. Sooner or later the spark flares to life again and the oil burns again. Sooner or later the light returns.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
27 November '13..

A candle is a brief flare of light. A wick dipped in oil burns and then goes out again. The light of Chanukah appears to follow the same narrative. Briefly there is light and warmth and then darkness again.

Out of the exile of Babylon, the handful that returned to resettle and rebuild the land faced the might of new empires. The Jews who returned from the exile of one evil empire some twenty-six hundred years ago were forced to decide whether they would be a people with their own faith and history, or the colony of another empire, with its history and beliefs.

Jerusalem's wealthy elites threw in their lot with the empire and its ways. But out in the rural heartland where the old ways where still kept, a spark flared to life. Modi'in. Maccabee. And so war came between the handfuls of Jewish Maccabee partisans and the armies of Antiochus IV’s Selecuid empire. A war that had its echoes in the past and would have it again in the future as lightly armed and untrained armies of Jewish soldiers would go on to fight in those same hills and valleys against the Romans and eventually the armies of six Arab nations.

The Syrian Greek armies were among the best of their day. The Maccabees were living in the backwaters of Israel, a nation that had not been independently ruled since the armies of Babylon had flooded across the land, destroying everything in their path.

In the wilderness of Judea a band of brothers vowed that they would bow to no man and let no foreigners rule over their land. Apollonius brought his Samaritan forces against the brothers, and Judah, first among the Macabees, killed him, took his sword and wore it for his own.

Seron, General of the army of Coele-Syria, brought together his soldiers, along with renegade Jewish mercenaries, and was broken at Beit Haran. The Governor of Syria who dispatched two generals, Nicanor, and Gorgias, with forty thousand soldiers and seven thousand horsemen to conquer Judea, destroy Jerusalem and abolish the whole Jewish nation forever. So certain were they of victory that they brought with them merchant caravans to fill with the Hebrew slaves of a destroyed nation.

Judah walked among his brothers and fellow rebels and spoke to them of the thing for which they fought; “O my fellow soldiers, no other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully, you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshiping God.

"Since therefore you are in such circumstances at present, you must either recover that liberty, and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws, and the customs of our country, or to submit to the most opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain if you be beat in this battle. Fight therefore manfully; and suppose that you must die, though you do not fight; but believe, that besides such glorious rewards as those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you shall then obtain everlasting glory.

"Prepare yourselves, therefore, and put yourselves into such an agreeable posture, that you may be ready to fight with the enemy as soon as it is day tomorrow morning."

Though the Macabees were but three thousand, starving and dressed in bare rags, the God for whom they fought and their native wits and courage, gave them victory over thousands and tens of thousands. Worn from battle, the Macabees did not flee back into their Judean wilderness, instead they went on to Jerusalem and its Temple, to reclaim their land and their God, only to find the Temple and the capital in ruins.

The Macabees had fought courageously for the freedom to worship God once again as their fathers had, but courage alone could not make the Menorah burn and thus renew the Temple service again. Yet it had not been mere berserker’s courage that had brought them this far. Like their ancestors before them who had leaped into furnaces and the raging sea, they had dared the impossible on faith. Faith in a God who watched over his nation and intervened in the affairs of men. And so on faith they poured the oil of that single flask in the Menorah, oil that could only last for a single day. And then having done all they could, the priests and sons of priests who had fought through entire armies to reach this place, accepted that they had done all they could and left the remainder in the hands of the Almighty.

If they had won by the strength of their hands alone, then the lamps would burn for a day and then flicker out. But if it had been more than mere force of arms that had brought them here, if it had been more than mere happenstance that a small band of ragged and starving rebels had shattered the armies of an empire, then the flames of the Menorah would burn on.

The sun rose and set again. The day came to its end and the men watched the lights of the Menorah to see if they would burn or die out. And if the flame in their hearts could have kindled the lamps, they would have burst into bright flame then and there. Darkness fell that night and still the lamps burned on. For eight days and nights the Menorah burned on that single lonely pure flask of oil, until more could be found, and the men who for a time had been soldiers and had once again become priests, saw that while it may be men who kindle lamps and hearts, it is the Almighty who provides them with the fuel of the spirit through which they burn.

120 years after the Maccabees drove out the foreign invaders and their collaborators, another foreign invader, Herod, the son of a Roman Idumean governor, was placed on the throne by the Roman Empire, disposing of the last of the Maccabean kings and ending the brief revival of the Jewish kingdom.

UN declares ‘Year of Palestine’, condemns Israel 6 times

...After all, if the secretary-general could voice disappointment at the Human Rights Council’s “decision to single out Israel as the only specific regional item on its agenda, given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world,” why can’t he endorse the virtually identical sentiment expressed by the interpreter at this year’s absurd amount of General Assembly resolutions singling out Israel?

Hillel Neuer..
Times of Israel..
27 November '13..

The UN General Assembly yesterday condemned Israel in six resolutions, the most significant of which declares 2014 a “Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

The new year is now liable to bring escalated politicization within UN agencies worldwide, doing nothing to help Palestinians or Israelis on the ground, while inflicting yet further damage to the world body’s effectiveness and credibility.

The one-sided resolutions were adopted in tandem with the UN’s observance Monday of its annual “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”

Regrettably, that highly politicized event was praised by British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant as equivalent in importance to the International Day on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Mark Lyall Grant        ✔ @LyallGrant

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Monday doubly important UN day. Int day for elimination of violence against Women & Day of Solidarity w/ Palestinian people. @UN_Women.

5:38 PM - 24 Nov 2013

Yesterday’s six resolutions endorsed the UN’s infrastructure of anti-Israel demonization, which includes an entire UN staff division dedicated to promoting an anti-Israel narrative with conferences held around the world.

The UN’s drumbeat of excessive, disproportionate and one-sided condemnations of Israel causes polarization, threatens to push the parties further apart, and is counterproductive to the already fragile peace process.

The UN General Assembly’s lopsided adoption, by the end of this year, of an expected 21 resolutions on Israel, and only four on the rest of the world combined, eclipses the plight of millions of truly needy human rights victims in places like China, Russia, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia, whose critical issues are being treated with indifference, if not contempt—indeed the UN just elected each of those tyrannies to its 47-nation Human Rights Council.

Consider the absurdity and hypocrisy in just two of today’s resolutions:

The More the Merrier? Enter the Salafists

Lerner said... the cell was the "first substantial indication" of violent activity by jihadi Salafis in the West Bank... Jihadi Salafis believe in a global jihad, or holy war. The ideology is linked to that of al-Qaida. Many have flocked to Syria to fight alongside the rebels trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad... A Palestinian security official said jihadi Salafis in the West Bank are a cause of concern, but declined to give an estimate on how many there are.

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
27 November '13




Wikipedia defines Salafism as "the fastest growing" Islamic movement, but for those inclined to see this as connected to acts of jihadist murder, it says Salafist

groups and individuals that carry out terrorist attacks are regarded as being out of the fold of the methodology of the Salaf, misguided and deviant... [Wikipedia]

If only the world worked like Wikipedia describes it.

Numerous other sources take a considerably more robust view of the connection between murderous jihadism and the Salafists. A major PBS Special Report for instance, "The Salafist Movement: An examination of the ideology that has inspired the global jihad and the emergence of its most dangerous incarnation" by Bruce Livesey [online here]. An extract:

Salafism is an ideology that posits that Islam has strayed from its origins. The word "salaf" is Arabic for "ancient one" and refers to the companions of the Prophet Mohammed. Arguing that the faith has become decadent over the centuries, Salafists call for the restoration of authentic Islam as expressed by an adherence to its original teachings and texts. "Salafists originally are supposedly not violent," [Prof. Gilles Kepel, chair of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris] explains. "They are not advocating the revolt against one who holds power, against the powers that be. They are calling for re-Islamization at the daily level."

By the mid-'90s, Kepel saw an alarming change among Europe's Muslims. Increasingly he was coming across Salafists who had embraced jihad -- in other words, who felt violence and terrorism were justified to realize their political objectives. Kepel explains that when Salafists, who tend to be alienated from mainstream European society, meet and mingle with jihadists, it fuses into a volatile mixture. "When you're in the state of such alienation you become easy prey to the jihadi guys who will feed you more savory propaganda than the old propaganda of the Salafists who tell you to pray, fast and who are not taking action," he says. "And this is why the [Islamist terrorists] who had been arrested were often good Salafists in the beginning."

Kepel labeled these Muslim fundamentalists "Salafist jihadists", a term that he extends to include the followers of Al Qaeda. Salafist jihadists are now a burgeoning presence in Europe, having attempted more than 30 terrorist attacks among E.U. countries since 2001.

Tonight (Wednesday night), while most of us Israelis are home taking care of our Hannukah candles and enjoying traditional doughnuts and potato latkes, our neighbours the Palestinian Arabs - in their thousands - have their minds on matters of a far less congenial but arguably no-less-traditional nature. An Associated Press report that went to air in the past hour sets the scene, pointing out that this particular brand of terror has been unknown in our area until now.

(Continue)

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.

Some thoughts on the motives and objectives of US policy toward Israel

...So what in fact are the motives and objectives here (assuming that there is more behind our policy than ignorance and incompetence) as they affect Israel? I believe that there are two motivations here, one pragmatic and one ideological.

Fresnozionism.org..
27 November '13..

With the US jumping to promote an interim agreement with Iran which weakens sanctions — probably forever — and does little or nothing to prevent Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, many people are asking “what are the intentions of the Obama Administration in the Middle East?” The answer will be particularly important to Israelis, who see the development of an Iranian weapon as an existential threat.

Israelis also wonder about US policy concerning the conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, which seems to be moving to a far more anti-Israel place than before. The idea expressed by UNSC resolution 242 and accepted by previous administrations, that secure borders need to be negotiated between the states in the area, is being replaced by the radical position that the 1949 armistice lines are the legitimate borders of the state of Israel. The administration has also studiously avoided taking a position (the Bush Administration did) against the extraordinary and unacceptable demand for a “right of return” to Israel for the descendants of Arab refugees.

While it might have been possible in the past to attribute a tilt against Israel to pressure from the oil-producing Gulf states, in particular Saudi Arabia, this explanation has less force today as the US approaches energy independence. And of course the Sunni Arab regimes are even more threatened by Iran than Israel.

It is also hard to explain the administration’s cooperation with Russia to ensure the maintenance of the Assad regime in Syria, and its status as an Iranian satellite, or its support for the radical Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — something that undermined one of the bases of Israel’s regional security, the Camp David treaty. Although the army can’t be called pro-Israel, it is at least pragmatic and not interested in upsetting the status quo.

So what in fact are the motives and objectives here (assuming that there is more behind our policy than ignorance and incompetence) as they affect Israel? I believe that there are two motivations here, one pragmatic and one ideological.

The pragmatic aspect is that the Obama Administration has decided that Islamism and in particular revolutionary Shiite Islamism, is the strong horse in the region, and it is placing its bets on it. The expectation in Washington is that Iraq and Syria will be firmly in the Iranian column, soon followed by Lebanon. The influence of the House of Saud will be greatly diminished, and perhaps the royal family will be overthrown. In overwhelmingly Sunni nations, like Jordan and Egypt, conservative governments will be replaced by Islamist ones (this has so far proven false in Egypt, where the Islamists took power but were unable to hang on).

Chanukah - The Holiday of Resistance

...The lights of the menorah embody the spirit of the Jewish people. A spirit that has outlived the atrocities of every tyrant. In the heart of the flame that has burned for a thousand years lives the soul of a people.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
First Posted 08 December '12..

The first night of Chanukah marks the beginning of a holiday that for many of its celebrants has no identity, that celebrates 'celebration', with no thought to what it is celebrating. For many Americans, Chanukah appears to overlap with Christmas, but there is no similarity between the two other than the season. The more appropriate analogy is to the 4th of July overlaid with Thanksgiving, a celebration of divine aid in a military campaign against tyrannical oppression.

The overt militarism of the Chanukah story has made it an uncomfortable fit for many Jews who have found it easier to strip away its dangerous underlying message that a time comes when you must choose between the destruction of your culture and a war you can't win. In those dark days a war must be fought if the soul of the nation is to survive.

There are worse things than death and slavery, the fates waiting for the Maccabees and their allies had they failed, the fates that came anyway when the last of the Maccabees were betrayed and murdered by Caesar's Edomite minister, whose sons went on to rule over Israel as the dynasty of Herod.

Nations can survive the mass murder of their bodies, but not the death of their spirit. A nation does not die, until its soul dies, and the soul of a nation is in its culture and its faith, not in the bodies of its citizens.

Tonight that first candle, that first glimmer of flame over oil, marks the night that the Maccabee forces entered Jerusalem, driving out the enemy armies and their Jewish collaborators, and reclaiming their people's culture and religion.

The light of the flame was a powerful message sent across time, that even in the darkest hour, hope was not lost. And Divine Providence would not abandon the people. Time passed the Maccabees fell, Jerusalem was occupied and ethnically cleansed over and over again, and still the menorah burned on. A covert message that still all hope was not lost. That Israel would rise again.

The UN is one of the most underrated – and expensive – comedy shows ever

...But at UN headquarters, none of this matters – or even registers. Because it is not important. The UN has no time for these minor matters. What the UN has time – and money – for is to proclaim (wait for it – you’re really going to enjoy this one) …

Ilya Meyer..
IlyaMeyer.com..
27 November '13..




UN member state the Philippines has been devasted by a recent typhoon, with huge loss of life and the eradication of many communities and population centres.

UN member state Syria increasingly resembles an apocalyptic graveyard.

UN member state Lebanon is once again gradually imploding into sectarian violence.

UN member state Afghanistan is currently debating legislation to allow the public stoning of people accused of infidelity.

UN member state Saudi Arabia chops off the hands of thieves.

UN member state Iran hangs gays, political dissidents and criminals from construction cranes in public squares.

UN member state Egypt is subsiding into anarchy, despotism and increasingly bold attacks on its original Coptic Christian population – people who have been living in Egypt since several centuries before Islam was even invented.

UN member state China still occupies Tibet.

UN member state Great Britain still occupies Gibraltar. And the Falkland Islands.

As the battle over the Temple Mount rages on, Hanukkah is our time to respond

...They call it "Al-Mazoum," meaning the miniscule thing, attempting to paint Jewish claims as imaginary, mendacious, not based in reality. At the same time, such individuals have been busy for years trying to hide the truth, destroying archeological evidence of the Jewish Temple that threatened to invalidate their lies.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
27 November '13..

Today, some 2,150 years after the Maccabees victoriously returned to the Temple Mount to resume divine service in the Jewish Temple and light the menorah, the commemoration of the Hanukkah miracle could serve as an opportunity to revisit historical, Jewish roots in Jerusalem and at the Temple Mount. But Israel has long since given up on that battle.

For more than a generation, the Palestinians have been systematically working to deny the existence of the Jewish Temple. Their stubborn refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish state is not unrelated to that denial. At Camp David in 2000, then-President Bill Clinton was shocked to hear such claims straight from the mouth of Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. At first, Arafat insisted that the Jewish Temple existed in Nablus. Two years later, he "reformed" his opinion, stating that Temple never existed in Palestine at all. Senior PLO official Nabil Shaath, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, senior PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo and PA President Mahmoud Abbas all question the very existence of the Jewish Temple at the Temple Mount, called Haram al-Sharif in Arabic. The denial is common in Islamic circles, the academic world, and, of course, in the Arabic media -- it is a preponderant belief in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and other Gulf countries.

The prevalent theory has been documented by authors such as Yitzhak Reiter, Shmuel Berkowitz, Dore Gold and others. From the Palestinians and Arab perspective, the Temple is simply a figment of the Jewish imagination. They call it "Al-Mazoum," meaning the miniscule thing, attempting to paint Jewish claims as imaginary, mendacious, not based in reality. At the same time, such individuals have been busy for years trying to hide the truth, destroying archeological evidence of the Jewish Temple that threatened to invalidate their lies.

Such colossal fraud would not be very hard to settle but Israel, whether out of indolence or the desire to avoid "holy wars" that could invariably push the conflict toward religious lines, has opted out. That's a big mistake. We are already fighting religious wars; the root of the conflict is religious. Trying to isolate the national-territorial elements of the conflict is totally naive. Also, denying the Jewish Temple's existence is a phenomenon that has already begun to penetrate certain circles in Europe.

The time has come to fight back. The mission at hand is not so complex. To support our argument, the fact remains that up until 1967, we constantly told the story of the Jewish Temple and shared details about the structure. The destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar is a firmly established, undeniable motif prevalent throughout Islamic literature. Take, for example, Jerusalemite Arab geographer and historian Al-Muqaddasi from the 10th century. Take 14th-century Iranian legal scholar Al-Mastufi, the poetry of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi from the 13th century, or even books and travel guides from the time of Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Jerusalem religious leader who struck an alliance with the Nazis.

EU, Israel Reach "Compromise" - A de facto EU boycott of Israeli institutions

...The Israeli government has hailed the November 26 diplomatic breakthrough—in which both sides ostensibly agree to disagree—as a victory for Israel and the Israeli technology sector. But the true winner appears to be the EU, which has not budged at all from its insistence on using the agreement to impose its pro-Palestinian polices on Israel.

Soeren Kern..
Gatestone Institute..
27 November '13..

Israel and the European Union have reached a tentative agreement on a compromise formula that will make it possible for Israel to participate in a prestigious and financially lucrative European scientific research program.

The compromise paves the way for Israel to participate in Horizon 2020, the EU's flagship research and development program—despite Israeli objections to a contentious new policy that prohibits the EU from funding Israeli institutions that operate anywhere beyond the Green Line, including eastern Jerusalem.

The Israeli government has hailed the November 26 diplomatic breakthrough—in which both sides ostensibly agree to disagree—as a victory for Israel and the Israeli technology sector.

But the true winner appears to be the EU, which has not budged at all from its insistence on using the agreement to impose its pro-Palestinian polices on Israel.

Israel and the EU both stand to benefit from Israel's involvement in the €70 billion ($95 billion) program, which begins on January 1, 2014 and will run for a period of seven years.

Israel—the only non-EU country that has been invited to join Horizon 2020—is expected to invest €600 million in the program and receive €900 million in inbound research grants and other investments. For its part, the EU will benefit from Israeli research and technology, which is widely believed to surpass the capabilities of many EU member states.

But Israeli participation in Horizon 2020 became jeopardized after the EU politicized the project by linking it to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The new EU directive—the long title of which is "Guidelines on the Eligibility of Israeli Entities and their Activities in the Territories Occupied by Israel since June 1967 for Grants, Prizes and Financial Instruments funded by the EU from 2014 Onwards"—forbids EU organizations and institutions from funding or cooperating with any Israeli entities based in Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.

“Death to America” - What is there about it that you don’t understand?

...Israel, on the other hand, understands that it will be in mortal danger from a nuclear Iran. Whether it will succeed in stopping Iran is an open question today — but it would be ironic if, at the end of the day, the fate of America should depend on Israel.

Iranians celebrate anniversary of
1979 takeover of US embassy
by burning flags, shouting
“Death to America” earlier this month.

Fresnozionism.org..
26 November '13..

The US has often been criticized for supporting unsavory regimes for pragmatic reasons. Chiang Kai-shek and the Shah of Iran, for example, were not paragons of democracy and liberalism, but they were anti-communist. Remember Fulgencio Batista, Castro’s predecessor? And don’t forget that we were for Saddam Hussein before we were against him.

But the Obama Administration has opened a whole new chapter. By supporting the Islamist regimes of Mohammed Morsi and Sayyid Ali Khamenei, the US helps regimes that not only oppress their own population and threaten their neighbors, but make no secret of their hatred and desire to destroy the US itself.

Morsi is gone, thank goodness, but the recent agreement which rescues Iran’s economy and negates six UN Security Council resolutions against its enrichment of uranium is a shocking example of feeding — with nuclear arms — the mouth that wants to bite you.

This is not just about Israel, folks. The German newspaper Die Welt reports that Iran is building missile bases in Venezuela. If true, this means that Iran would have the capability to hit the US with missiles that they already have!

Even a single small nuclear bomb detonated at high altitude could do enormous damage to our national infrastructure as an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapon. Such a weapon could be put together in secret in a few weeks — and could even be launched from a cargo ship miles from our shore.

There will not be an accommodation between Western liberalism and radical Islam because the latter wants to supplant the former, both in world leadership and in cultural supremacy. Radical Islam — unlike conservative dictatorships — is essentially expansionist, and we are in its way.

The NY Times Most Nonsensical Attack on Israel (Yet)

And yet, today’s Times piece is something of a landmark achievement. It gets everything wrong: the history of the peace process, the Iran deal, international law. There is not a word that redeems the paper’s decision to publish this assault on reason.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
26 November '13..

Twitter has been accused of helping to coarsen the culture, increase partisan rage, and further erode the line separating the personal and the political. But there is at least one advantage for writers: Twitter can be an outlet for a curious or ironic observation that has no shelf life and no coherence beyond 140 characters. Some thoughts are tweet-appropriate and nothing more.

Which means there is really no excuse for the New York Times’s decision to publish today’s installment of its ongoing Jodi Rudoren experiment. Rudoren has earned her share of corrections for false claims that editors really should have caught, but everyone makes mistakes, and being dropped into the middle of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the education beat perhaps deserves an adjustment period. But today’s story is not one that gets a few facts wrong or leans heavily toward the Palestinian side of the issue. It’s based on a nonsensical thesis that makes the paper look so desperate to attack Israel that it will throw everything it can find at the Jewish state.

Under the headline “Israelis See Ticking Clock, and Alternate Approaches, on Iran and Palestinians,” Rudoren discusses the supposed hypocrisy on the part of Israel’s government because it opposed the interim deal with Iran but supports interim deals with the Palestinians. (As a side note, this is a lesson the Israelis learned the hard way: they will be criticized for striking agreements and criticized for not striking agreements. It almost literally, as Joe Biden might say, doesn’t matter what Israel does in the opinion of the Western press.)

I’ll let the Times put forth this thesis in Rudoren’s own words:

Israeli leaders on Monday condemned the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program as an exercise in appeasement by the Western powers and a delaying tactic by Iran. Yet many of them see the same strategy of interim confidence-building steps as the only realistic route to resolving their long-running conflict with the Palestinians.

Israel is outraged that, under the deal signed Sunday, Iran is not required to stop enriching uranium or to dismantle centrifuges while negotiating a final agreement with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany. At the same time, Israel continues to build West Bank settlements while negotiating with the Palestinians, prompting similar outrage from the international community.

Easing economic sanctions against Iran, Israel argues, will only remove the pressure that brought Tehran to the table in the first place. Yet Israel — as well as the United States — sees initiatives to improve the Palestinian economy as a critical companion to the political and security discussions.

Because so much gets written about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and because of the media’s blatant left-wing bias, consumers of news on the Middle East are often bombarded with exceptionally dimwitted thoughts. It’s more than just the Bibi Derangement Syndrome that makes even rational liberals lose their grip on reality when Benjamin Netanyahu is involved. It’s a propensity on the part of some news organizations to erase the line between the news and editorial pages and go on the attack any time Israeli officials have the temerity to speak up for their country’s interests.

And yet, today’s Times piece is something of a landmark achievement. It gets everything wrong: the history of the peace process, the Iran deal, international law. There is not a word that redeems the paper’s decision to publish this assault on reason.

(Video) A Couple Moments With the Nefesh B'Nefesh & FIDF Lone Soldiers Program

Nefesh B'Nefesh...
21 November '13..

Hear firsthand all about the NBN/FIDF Lone Soldiers Program and meet some of the brave young men and women who chose to serve in the Israel Defense Forces upon making Aliyah.



Learn more about the Lone Soldeirs Program by visiting http://www.nbn.org.il/lsp/index.php/en/

Produced by: Noam Oz Setter Video Productions and Tani Kramer

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Check-it out! 

Oh my! Erekat resigns again...and again...and

...This was Erekat's sixth or seventh "resignation" over the past two decades. Erekat will probably enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of times he supposedly resigned.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
26 November '13..

Since the signing of the Oslo Accords 20 years ago, PLO leaders and officials have threatened to resign each time they wanted something from the international community or Israel.

Saeb Erekat, the chief PLO negotiator, who is currently heading the PLO negotiating team with Israel, tendered his last "resignation" earlier this month in protest against "continued settlement construction."

This was Erekat's sixth or seventh "resignation" over the past two decades. Erekat will probably enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of times he supposedly resigned.

Each "resignation" was intended to exert pressure on the international community to comply with various PLO demands. Sometimes, however, the "resignations" are aimed at extracting concessions from the PLO leadership itself. For most Palestinians, Erekat's repeated "resignations" have become a laughing matter. Each time they hear or read about the "resignation" of Erekat or any other top PLO official, many Palestinians react with a wide smile.

Palestinians understand that the "resignations" are mainly aimed at prompting the US and Western countries to exert pressure on Israel to make concessions to the PLO. Others see the move as a "political maneuver."

Erekat's journey with "resignations" dates back to 1993, when he and two other negotiators, Hanan Ashrawi and Faisal Husseini, announced that they were quitting over a dispute with Yasser Arafat. The dispute erupted after Erekat and his two colleagues discovered that Arafat and the PLO leadership had been conducting secret negotiations with Israel behind their backs. Arafat then rejected the "resignations" and asked Erekat and his colleagues to stay on, according to a dispatch from Associated Press in August 1993.

Better to put as much daylight as possible between themselves and the White House

...If the White House never tipped off Hezbollah or the Iranians prior to Israeli strikes on convoys carrying strategic weapons from Syria to Hezbollah, they nonetheless repeatedly leaked to the press after the fact that Israel was responsible. Jerusalem was frantic, fearing that broadcasting their military operations might compel Assad or Hezbollah to seek retaliation. But the administration had other priorities than to keep their traditional ally out of war—to indicate to the Iranians that, if necessary, Obama was able and willing to deter the Israelis.

Lee Smith..
The Weekly Standard..
25 November '13..

In the wake of the interim deal that the White House signed with Iran Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry said on the Sunday talk shows that nothing has changed, not with the American position in the Middle East, or with the U.S. alliance system in the region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is screaming his head off, but Israel has nothing to worry about says Kerry. “Israel and the United States absolutely share the same goal here. There is no daylight between us.”

In reality, the deal implicitly acknowledging Tehran’s right to enrich uranium puts the White House and its regional partners, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, in opposing camps. In order to protect his deal with the Iranians, Obama will have to clamp down on these American allies, an action that Iran may well see as signaling carte blanche to pursuse its various regional interests, particularly in Syria. In order to protect their own interests, Jerusalem and Riyadh may have no choice but to put as much daylight as possible between themselves and the White House.

The interim deal makes official what Obama has long been pursuing—a strategic realignment integrating Iran into a multipolar Middle East, where once traditional American allies will no longer enjoy a privileged relationship with Washington. The signs pointing to Obama’s new configuration, downgrading Saudi Arabia and Israel and upgrading Iran, have long been apparent, if incredible. For instance, when Obama backed off on striking Bashar al-Assad and instead signed on to a Russian initiative to rid the Syrian despot of his chemical weapons, the president not only angered U.S. Arab allies, but turned against them and partnered instead with Assad and Putin. When Obama announced at the U.N. General Assembly in September that negotiations with Iran were an administration priority, he not only turned Iranian president Hassan Rouhani into a partner, but also sheltered Iran from any potential Israeli attack. In short, Obama switched sides.

However, it is only in the last few days with reports of secret U.S.-Iran talks conducted behind the backs of U.S. allies that we understand to what extent Obama abandoned the traditional regional order. Again, it’s useful to consider the White House’s Syria policy, not least because this has been Tehran’s key battleground for the last two and a half years. Accordingly, Obama saw Syria not in terms of how the outcome might affect traditional allies, but primarily in light of how it might affect his negotiations with Iran.

If some administration officials believed Obama seemed “impatient or disengaged” during deliberations on Syria policy, that’s only evidence that they hadn’t been clued in yet regarding the White House’s secret Iran talks. Discussions about arming the Syrian rebels or striking Assad were irrelevant because Obama’s mind had been made up long before. Similarly, it’s now clear that the so-called “walk-and-talk” in the Rose Garden where Obama ostensibly changed his mind after bouncing ideas off of White House chief of staff Denis McDonough was nothing but a clever piece of stagecraft out of The West Wing. There was never any chance Obama was going to strike Assad because he feared that targeting an Iranian ally, one in whom Tehran had invested men, weapons and money to ensure his survival, might anger his negotiating partner.

Virtually every move Obama made regarding Syria was calculated to keep the Iranians at the table, while he fended off domestic opponents on Capitol Hill and circled traditional allies. The White House engineered an almost two-year long information campaign exaggerating the al Qaeda element in Syrian rebel units to push back against U.S. domestic critics like Sen. John McCain demanding more robust assistance in helping to topple Assad. In the same vein, the White House moved against Gulf Arab allies, like Kuwait, to close down private donors and charities from assisting Salafist groups fighting Assad. Turkey was also told to get in line behind the administration. After several leaks suggesting that Ankara’s intelligence chief Hakan Fidan was reckless and untrustworthy, the Turks showed their willingness to comply with the White House’s pro-Iran policy by firing on Salafist units to whom they’d previously turned a blind eye. What we see now is that the White House’s problem with Salafist fighters in Syria was less with their ideological character than the fact they were instruments—and among the most effective—employed by a Sunni consortium determined to crush an Iranian ally. To show his bona fides to Tehran, Obama not only refrained from assisting rebel units, he prevented others from doing so as well.

After all, the administration collaborated with an Islamist organization every bit as vicious, and much more dangerous than al Qaeda, when the CIA shared information with Hezbollah, Iran’s long arm in Lebanon, to warn of an impending al Qaeda operation against Hezbollah targets. If the White House never tipped off Hezbollah or the Iranians prior to Israeli strikes on convoys carrying strategic weapons from Syria to Hezbollah, they nonetheless repeatedly leaked to the press after the fact that Israel was responsible. Jerusalem was frantic, fearing that broadcasting their military operations might compel Assad or Hezbollah to seek retaliation. But the administration had other priorities than to keep their traditional ally out of war—to indicate to the Iranians that, if necessary, Obama was able and willing to deter the Israelis.