Elections, Gaza and the Corbynization of the Democratic party - by Caroline Glick

The Israeli public cannot influence the outcome of the US elections. But on Monday, it will determine how Israel will respond to aggression against it – whether that aggression emanates from Gaza or from Washington.

Caroline Glick..
Israel Hayom..
28 February '20..
Link: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/gaza-elections-and-the-corbynization-of-the-democratic-party/



The hundred rockets and missiles that Gazan terrorists launched into Israel this week served as yet another reminder that we have an account to manage with Gaza.

"Manage," not "settle," because we lack the opportunity to settle our score with Gaza. There is not today, and for the foreseeable future, there will not be any regime in Gaza that will agree to set aside its war with Israel and leave us alone.

Gaza, like Judea and Samaria, is a long-term problem that requires management, not resolution. To understand what needs to be done, we have to focus on the two sides of the problem.

First, Gaza is a military problem. To successfully and permanently quell the security threat Gaza poses to Israel, the IDF requires the capacity to operate freely in Gaza – as it does in Judea and Samaria. Israel built its capacity to operate throughout Judea and Samaria during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.

In 1995, Israel signed the Interim Agreement with the PLO. The deal set out the basis for the transfer of authorities and powers to the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.

The PLO agreed to combat terrorism in all the areas transferred to its authority. Area A, which encompasses the Palestinian cities in Judea and Samaria was an area under full Palestinian security and civilian authority. In Area B, which includes the Palestinian villages, the PLO received full civil authority and police authorities, while Israel retained what was referred to as "overriding security authority," or, in plain English, the authority to conduct counterterrorism operations at will.

Area C encompasses the rest of Judea and Samaria, including all Israeli military installations, Israeli cities, towns and villages and Jordan Valley. There the PLO received limited civil authority and no military authority.

From 1996, when the PLO set up shop in Judea and Samaria until Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the PLO transformed Area A into one large terrorist infrastructure. The suicide bombers that massacred Israeli civilians on a near-daily basis from 2000 through 2002 were trained and equipped in the bomb factories and terror bases in Area A.

Following a month in which 130 Israelis were slaughtered in suicide bombings and shootings, including 30 in the Seder massacre at the Park Hotel in Netanya, in April 2002, the government ordered the IDF to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.

The implication was clear. The strategic goal of the operation was to militarily transform Area A, where the PLO had a free hand to behave like the Taliban, into Area B, where the IDF was capable of breaking up terror cells before they got up and running.

AIPAC, Israel and the poisonously ambiguous concept of “two states” - by Vic Rosenthal

...AIPAC hoped to fend off attacks from J Street and similar groups without weakening its support from pro-Israel elements, by employing the time honored method of political triangulation. By adopting some of the ideas of its opponents on the Left, it hopes to bring them into the fold, while its supporters on the Right will have nowhere else to go. But this is a poor strategy because the progressives among the Democrats no longer accept AIPAC’s primary objective, which is support for Israel. It’s not that they think, as the Israeli Left does, that “ending the occupation” will be likely to lead to peace, or that their vision of Israel will be more democratic, or that another partition of the Land of Israel will prevent a demographic crisis. They have absorbed the narratives of the international Left and are simply anti-Israel. They are not coming back to AIPAC.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
08 March '18..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2018/03/the-poisonously-ambiguous-concept-of-two-states/

AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr created a stir Sunday when he called for “two states for two peoples: one Jewish with secure and defensible borders and one Palestinian with its own flag and its own future.”

Kohr deliberately echoed the words of Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University in 2009. Netanyahu said then,

In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other. …

I have already stressed the first principle – recognition. Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel. …

Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths.

Bibi’s statement was a mistake. His enemies on the right pounced on him for giving up his historical opposition to a Palestinian state, while the Arabs and the Left derided him as insincere. He got nothing in return from Obama and lost whatever reputation he still had for principled opposition to concessions for the PLO. Most damaging to Israel was the fact that the Americans and the PLO “pocketed” his statement, making it almost impossible for him or any subsequent Israeli Prime Minister to walk it back. From then on, anyone could say “Israel officially supports a Palestinian state.”

The root of the problem is that the concept of “two states” is poisonously ambiguous. Everyone can understand it to mean something different, up to embracing diametrically opposite ideas.

Netanyahu, Congress, AIPAC and the PLO - by Caroline Glick

...Like Sunday’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem, it ought to go without saying that these actions are all acts of war against Israel. The reason it is necessary to state what ought to be the self-evident fact that the PLO is a terrorist organization engaged in a total war against Israel and the Jewish People is because the people that are supposed to act on this reality insist on denying it. The Netanyahu government, the US Congress and US Jewish organizations led by AIPAC still refuse admit the truth about the PLO and draw the necessary conclusions. Those necessary conclusions are similarly self-evident. Israel and the US should cut all ties to the PLO. The PLO should be re-designated as the terrorist group it never stopped being and treated accordingly.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
09 January '17..
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-World-Netanyahu-Congress-AIPAC-and-the-PLO-477940

It is not in the least surprising that the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority did not condemn the terrorist attack on Sunday. It is not surprising because the PLO-controlled PA encouraged the attack.

As Khaled Abu Toameh wrote for the Gatestone Institute, in the aftermath of last month’s US-enabled passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which criminalizes Israel, the PA went on the warpath.

Among other things, Muhammad Abu Shtayyeh, who serves as a close adviser to PLO chief and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas called for an intensification of terrorist attacks against Israelis. Shtayyeh said that now is the time to “bolster the popular resistance” against Israel.

As Abu Toameh noted, “‘Popular resistance’ is code for throwing stones and petrol bombs and carrying out stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.”

Sunday’s terrorist murderer probably was inspired by Islamic State, and its adherents’ recent truck ramming murder sprees in Nice and Berlin, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

But Sunday’s 28-year-old cold blooded killer hailed from Jerusalem, not Nice.

His brain was washed since he was five years old by the PLO-controlled PA’s steady cycle of jihadist incitement. From the time he was in preschool, the killer was indoctrinated to aspire to commit the mass murder of Jews he carried out on Sunday.

For 23 years, Israel and the US have empowered the PLO.

During this period, the terrorist group never took any concrete steps to promote peace. At no point in the past generation has a PLO leader ever told the Palestinians or supporters abroad that the time has come to bury the hatchet and accept Israel.

Instead, for 23 years, the PLO has openly supported Israel’s annihilation. Often that support has been stated in code words like “popular resistance” which everyone understands means murder.

AIPAC’s Post-Trump Hangover - by Jonathan Tobin

...The job of a bipartisan lobby in age of hyper-partisanship is not easy. But it must be done. Pinkus should save her tears and her apologies. Once the Trump hangover wears off friends of Israel are going to have their work cut out for them in trying to maintain the alliance between these two great democracies no matter who wins in November. That’s going to mean working with lots of people that a lot of don’t like. AIPAC activists and their critics need to get used to it. It’s called democracy.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
23 March '16..

Donald Trump surprised a lot of people on Monday night when he read a fairly standard pro-Israel speech at the AIPAC conference. But while his performance got mixed reviews as even those, like me, who were willing to give him some credit for repudiating his claim of “neutrality” and saying a lot of sensible things about the conflict with the Palestinians and the Iran nuclear deal, understood that the gap between scripted Donald Trump and the unscripted version that has said very different things is too great to be ignored. In the aftermath of the speech, Trump has gone on to say more outrageous things about different subjects (the latest being a thuggish threat aimed at Ted Cruz’s wife) but the pro-Israel lobby seems to have been shaken by the criticism the organization received for applauding the candidate’s address.

The best evidence of this came the morning after when Lillian Pinkus, the new president of AIPAC took the stage at the conference and tearfully apologized for some of the things Trump said. The GOP frontrunner had taken some harsh shots at President Obama about his policies toward Iran and Israel. He cheered the notion that it was the president’s final year in office and then added, in a deviation from his script, that Obama was, “maybe the worst thing to happen to Israel.” Obviously, that last line was a piece of classic Trump hyperbole. If compared to Yasir Arafat, Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas, Obama doesn’t seem quite so bad even to his critics.

But Pinkus’s apology wasn’t so much about what Trump said but the fact that the vast majority of the 18,000 AIPAC conference attendees applauded him. The expectation prior to the speech was that a great many of those at the event would walk out as the candidate spoke or that he might be booed or heckled. That was a not unreasonable expectation since Trump is despised by a great many Jewish conservatives as well as liberals. But while a few staged a symbolic walkout or stayed away — something that was barely noticed in a packed arena — the AIPAC crowd gave him a respectful hearing as they did the other candidates.

More than that, when Trump told them things they wanted to hear about support for Israel, the Iran deal or even Obama, they didn’t sit on their hands. They laughed at his jokes and applauded. Trump’s appeal as a performer is a lot greater than his critics, including me, have been willing to acknowledge. And for some, including apparently some of AIPAC’s leaders, that applause was an unforgivable sin for which the organization must make amends.

Let’s specify that by naming Obama in the way that he did, Trump used what we might term unparliamentary language in a setting where even partisans understand that bipartisanship is the order of the day. But, to be fair, despite Pinkus’ tearful apology about “ad hominem attacks” that were “levied against the president of the United States from our stage,” this wasn’t the first time a sitting president was criticized at an AIPAC conference. Moreover, by Trump’s admittedly debased standards, merely saying Obama was the “worst thing” or saying “yay,” about the prospect of him leaving office barely registered even as a mild insult. But Pinkus’s apology for a guest speaker that spoke only for himself and not AIPAC was, as the Washington Post noted, unprecedented.

Why did she do it?

A glorious defeat by Caroline Glick

...On Wednesday, after Maryland’s Sen. Barbara Mikulski became the 34th senator to support Obama’s nuclear deal, PBS’s senior anchorwoman Gwen Ifill tweeted, “Take that, Bibi.” Obama’s win is Bibi’s loss. Bibi failed to convince 12 Democratic senators and 44 Democratic congressmen to vote against the head of their party. But by fighting against this deal, Netanyahu removed the main obstacle that kept Israel from taking action that will prevent Iran from going nuclear. He reduced Obama’s power to harm Israel. The fight strengthened American and American- Jewish opposition to the nuclear deal, paving the way for a Democratic renewal after Obama leaves office. And finally, Israel’s public battle against Obama’s deal paved the way to its abrogation by his successor.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
03 September '15..

Sometimes you have to fight battles you cannot win because fighting – regardless of the outcome – advances a larger cause.

Israel’s fight against the nuclear deal the major powers, led by US President Barack Obama concluded with Iran was such a battle.

The battle’s futility became clear on July 20, just six days after it was concluded in Vienna.

On July 20, the US administration anchored the deal – which paves the way for Iran to become a nuclear power and enriches the terrorism-sponsoring ayatollahs to the tune of $150 billion – in a binding UN Security Council resolution. Once the resolution passed, the deal became unstoppable.

Most of the frozen funds that comprise the $150b.

would have been released regardless of congressional action. And the nonproliferation regime the US developed over the past 70 years was upended the moment the deal was concluded in Vienna.

The fight in Congress itself probably couldn’t have succeeded even if the administration hadn’t made an end run around the lawmakers at the Security Council.

After Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, passed the law obligating Obama to secure the support of a mere third of the members of either House to implement his nuclear deal, its implementation was a foregone conclusion. The US Constitution gives sole power to approve international treaties to the Senate and requires a minimum of two-thirds approval for passage. Corker turned the Constitution on its head when he went forward with his bill. Far from curbing Obama’s executive overreach, Corker gave Obama unprecedented power to enact his radical, reckless nuclear agenda.

So if the fight against the deal was doomed to fail, why did the Israeli government decide to fight it for all it was worth? And why is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still fighting it even though there is no longer any way to stop Obama from enabling Iran to sprint across the nuclear finish line? By fighting Obama’s nuclear deal, Israel seeks to advance two larger efforts. First, it uses the battle to expand its capacity to act without the US to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Second, it is shaping its relations with the US both for the duration of Obama’s presidency and for the day after he leaves office.

As far as Iran’s nuclear program is concerned, Obama’s deal has not impacted Israel’s options for preventing the mullahs from getting the bomb.

Even before the US betrayed Israel, its Arab allies and its own national security interests and closed a deal that will transform Iran into a nuclear power and a regional hegemon, there was no chance that the Americans would take action to prevent Iran from developing atomic warheads.

That prospect was taken off the table in November 2007. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program published that month falsely – and scandalously – asserted that Tehran abandoned its nuclear weapons program at the end of 2003.

The NIE was a bureaucratic coup. CIA analysts, notorious since the 1970s for their biased and politicized analyses, used the falsified NIE to block then-president George W. Bush from dealing with Iran. After losing the public’s support for the war in Iraq, and after failing to find Saddam’s WMD (which magically fell into the hands of Islamic State 11 years after the US invasion), Bush was powerless to oppose an official assessment of the intelligence community that claimed Iran was not a nuclear proliferator.

As for Obama, in early 2008, even before he secured the Democratic presidential nomination, he announced that he wanted to negotiate with then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

At no time since was there any evidence supporting the notion that Obama would lift a finger to prevent Iran from going nuclear.

Israel's PM Doesn’t Take Obama’s Bait

...The most effective answer to Obama’s taunts is patience since events will soon overtake the president’s positions on both the Palestinian and Iranian fronts, as well as in other debacles around the globe that have popped up because of Obama’s weak leadership. Though the disparity in the relative power of their positions inevitably means Netanyahu must worry about Obama’s barbs, the bottom line here is that it is the president and not the prime minister who is in big trouble.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Mgazine..
04 March '14..

The last time President Obama ambushed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Israeli gave as good as he got. This time he turned the other cheek. The reason for this turnabout by the normally combative prime minister tells us everything we need to know about the relative strength of the positions of these two leaders.

While the assumption on the part of most pundits was that Obama has Netanyahu in a corner, the latter’s reaction to the assault the president launched at him in an interview with Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg this past weekend shows us this isn’t true. Though Netanyahu had to be infuriated by the president’s single-minded determination to blame Israel for the lack of peace as well as his obtuse praise for Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, he felt no need to publicly respond to it. Far from feeling threatened by Obama’s tirade, Netanyahu’s decision to ignore the president’s attack shows that he understands the dynamics of both the peace process and U.S. foreign policy actually give him the upper hand over the weak and increasingly out-of-touch lame duck in the White House.

Obama’s decision to give his faithful admirer Goldberg an interview in which he blasted Israel was odd since it came at a time when the Israelis have shown their willingness to accept Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework for Middle East peace negotiations and the Palestinians have publicly declared the same document to be unacceptable. More than that, the fact that he chose this particular moment to get in another shot at his least favorite foreign leader just when the world was focused on Russia’s seizure of the Crimea and awaiting an American response to this aggression can only be considered bizarre. Not only did this make his attack on Netanyahu seem both petty and personal, it also guaranteed that the international media that might have otherwise have jumped on the story was distracted elsewhere and diminished its impact. But Netanyahu’s seeming dismissal of this broadside shows that Obama is not in as strong a position vis-à-vis Netanyahu as he thinks.

Back in May 2011, Obama chose to give a speech attacking Israel’s stand on the peace process and demanding that it accept the 1967 borders as the starting point for negotiations just as before Netanyahu arrived in Washington. Obama had picked fights with Israel in 2009 and 2010 over Jerusalem and settlements but this was a direct attack on the prime minister. Netanyahu’s response was just as direct. When he met with Obama in the White House, he launched into a lengthy lecture to the president about Israeli security that made it clear to the president that he would not take the insult lying down. Netanyahu doubled down on that the next day when he received more cheers while addressing a joint meeting of Congress than the president had ever gotten.

But this time, Netanyahu chose to ignore the president’s slights. There were no public or even off-the-record remarks from his party expressing anger. And in his speech to AIPAC today, Netanyahu barely mentioned the president.

Obama Kills the Peace Process. Surprise!

...Though the president warned Netanyahu that he wouldn’t be able to protect Israel if peace talks falter, his interview with Goldberg guaranteed that this is exactly what will happen. From here on in, everything else he says about the topic is moot.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
03 March '14..

President Obama may have thought he was being very clever ambushing Prime Minister Netanyahu with scathing comments about Israeli policies that would be published just before he arrived in the United States for a meeting at the White House and to speak at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). By slamming Netanyahu’s policies as the primary, if not the sole obstacle to peace in the Middle East, in the now infamous interview with Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the president put the Israeli on the defensive and undermined his attempts to rally support for his positions with both AIPAC members and Congress. That should also have made it more difficult for Netanyahu to resist American pressure to make concessions to the Palestinians in order to help the negotiations sponsored by Secretary of State John Kerry succeed. But the president’s move had to leave those who have actually been following the talks with the Palestinians scratching their heads.

Kerry’s current objective is to get both parties to agree to a framework for continued talks. As has been widely reported, Netanyahu has already signaled his consent to the framework even though he and his Cabinet have grave misgivings about where the talks may eventually lead. By contrast, the Palestinians have repeatedly and publicly rejected the framework. The Palestinians have angrily rejected the framework’s requirement that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which is to say they agree to end the conflict rather than merely pause it. They also reject the West Bank security guarantees included in the framework even though it also contains their basic demands about a Palestinian state whose borders will be based on the 1967 borders while leaving open the possibility of territorial swaps. In other words, the Israelis have already given Kerry what he wanted while the Palestinians have done the opposite. Yet Obama still treats Israel as the truant and lauds Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas as a trustworthy warrior for peace even though his government is a font of incitement for hatred against Jews and Israelis and he has repeatedly rejected every previous offer of statehood because he and his people remain unable or unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn.

By speaking in this manner about Israel, Obama has pleased the Palestinians, Netanyahu’s Jewish critics and Israel-bashers everywhere. But it will also do something else that perhaps the president never intended. He has killed any chance that Kerry’s peace talks could possibly succeed.

By abusing Netanyahu even though he knows the Israelis have agreed to the peace framework, Obama vented his spleen at what is obviously his least favorite foreign leader. But rather than cheering his scolding of Netanyahu those who claim to be “pro-peace and pro-Israel” ought to be gravely concerned.

Unfortunately, the audience for the Goldberg interview was wider than the membership of AIPAC or the Israeli Cabinet. The Palestinians were also listening and what they heard will constitute a far greater impediment to peace than settlements or the Israeli prime minister.

U.S. Credibility Will Decide Syria Vote, Not “Israel Lobby”

...While Israel certainly has an interest in the survival of American influence in the Middle East, the idea of shifting the discussion from one that revolves around America’s credibility and national security to one that seeks to parse the decision as either good or bad for the Jewish state is a profound misreading of the administration’s problem.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
03 September '13..

There was never much doubt that sooner or later any debate about U.S. action on Syria would get around to an effort to drag the “Israel Lobby” canard out of the closet. While some on the right are wrongly characterizing the case for striking the Assad regime’s ability to use chemical weapons as Obama’s war for “al-Qaeda in Syria,” some on the left are back to riding their own favorite hobbyhorses and blaming the whole thing on Israel. That’s the upshot of a piece published on the Atlantic’s website in which James Fallows posted a lengthy quote from William R. Polk in which the author and former State Department staffer seeks not only to claim that the proof of chemical weapons was cooked up by Israel but that the Jewish state used chemical weapons in Lebanon and Gaza. Suffice it to say the former charge is contradicted by the large body of evidence about what happened in Syria that has been made public in the last week as the impact of the most recent use of chemical weapons by Assad became clear. The latter charges are simply lies.

That such weak and nasty stuff should get an airing at the Atlantic is troubling. But it is just as unfortunate to read accounts in other mainstream outlets such as the New York Times that the Obama administration appears to be counting on supporters of Israel to pull the president’s chestnuts out of the fire on Syria. While Israel certainly has an interest in the survival of American influence in the Middle East, the idea of shifting the discussion from one that revolves around America’s credibility and national security to one that seeks to parse the decision as either good or bad for the Jewish state is a profound misreading of the administration’s problem. No endorsement from Israel or AIPAC can substitute for the ability of the president and his team to articulate a case for the sort of action that they know they must take.

Does Israel benefit from U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war, as Polk claims? In principle, the answer to that question has always been no. Israel has no friends in Syria and no matter which side wins that struggle it will be on its guard. But, like every other friend of the United States across the globe, the Jewish state cannot look on at the spectacle of impotence and indecision on the part of President Obama last week with anything but dismay. If the White House requires a congressional vote to get up the nerve to keep his word about a “red line” on chemical weapons, it’s no surprise that many Israelis, like its President Shimon Peres, who is a dedicated fan of Obama, hope he will get it.

To Be Expected - Syria and Israel Lobby Conspiracy Theories

...But those willing to subscribe to conspiracy theories in which Israel provides the explanation for every mystery and misery on the planet now find themselves searching for an Israel angle about Syria. But other than the fact that Israel will be blamed for the outcome no matter what happens, there is none.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
28 August '13..

Israelis were lining up for gas masks and dusting out their air raid shelters today as the prospect of U.S. attacks on Syrian targets this week provoked threats of retaliation against the Jewish state. That Israelis as well as their neighbors seem to take the idea that they should be attacked because Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians as nothing out of the ordinary. This is par for the course in the Middle East where Israelis have always served as the all-purpose scapegoats for everything that happens. But though Americans may not be quite as jaded to this sort of thing, some in our nation’s capital also seem to subscribe in some ways to the Arab world’s conspiratorial view of Israel. That was evident in a Politico story published last night that pondered why it was that the so-called “Israel lobby” was “silent on Syria.”

The assumption behind the story and the headline seems to be that anything that happens in the Middle East or any foreign policy initiative undertaken by the United States has to be in some way the result of machinations by supporters of Israel even if the conflict in question is one on which they have no rooting interest. That Jerusalem doesn’t have a favorite in a fight between a genocidal maniac dictator and an opposition that is heavily infiltrated by people related to Al Qaeda is a given. But the fact that backers of Israel are as divided about what the U.S. should do about Assad’s atrocities as the rest of the country is seen as somehow anomalous. But, like the Iraq War, which was, contrary to the anti-Semitic conspiracy mongers, not fought at Israel’s behest, there seems to be no stopping those who subscribe to the Walt-Mearsheimer “Israel Lobby” thesis that claims the Jewish state and the wall-to-wall bipartisan coalition that supports it somehow manipulates U.S. foreign policy against the best interests of the nation. However, in this case the slow march of the Obama administration to act on Syria gives the lie to the idea that Israel is the tail that wags the dog in Washington.

Apparently for the editors of Politico, the lack of a concerted effort on the part of pro-Israel groups either in favor of or against intervention in Syria is like the dog that doesn’t bark in Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. If you start thinking in Walt-Mearsheimer terms in which everything revolves around Israel, then the absence of pro-Israel groups in a debate must seem suspicious or at least odd. But there’s nothing unusual about neutrality on Syria, especially since the Jewish state has good reason to distrust both sides in the civil war and will probably suffer if the U.S. attacks.

Anyone Surprised NY Times Blames Israel and AIPAC for Prolonging Egypt's Agony?

So why rely on dubious, unattributed sources like "the Israelis" and "Western diplomats " and "the diplomats believed," and General Sisi "appeared to be" etc.? Could it be that on-the-record pronouncements would have spoiled the conspiratorial atmospherics favored by the Times' reporters? And not given the Times a pretext to build a breach between Israel and the United States?

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
19 August '13..

It's the lead story on the Sunday front page of the New York Times -- a lengthy piece on how frantic, behind-the-scenes efforts by U.S. and European diplomats supposedly came close to building a path toward ending the bloody conflict in Egypt between the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the military-backed interim government.

In the end, as we all know, external prodding failed. But in allotting blame for why diplomacy didn't succeed, the Times gratuitously points an accusing finger at Israel and AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, for allegedly siding with the Egyptian military and undermining U.S. diplomacy ("How a U.S. Push to Defuse Egypt Ended in Failure -- Barrage of Diplomacy -- Despite 17 Calls from Hagel, Cairo Chose Confrontation" by David Kirkpatrick, Peter Baker and Michael Gordon).

The article not only gets the most prominent spot up front, but continues inside the paper with a spread, including photos, that takes up an entire inside page.

Yet length doesn't guarantee accurate reporting. In fact, the Times dispatch is built on a deeply flawed premise that outside pressures somehow might have been able to bring Egypt's agony to an end, especially if President Obama had shown more backbone and cut off $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Cairo. The reality, ignored by the Times, is that Egyptians and only Egyptians can put an end to this bloody affair. Suspension of U.S. military aid would be more than offset by more generous military aid from Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Arab oil states.

But in pursuit of external meddlers aligned against Washington diplomacy, the Times prefers to build a case against Israel and AIPAC. Here's how Kirkpatrick, Baker, and Gordon put it:

(Video) Israel - Taking a shattered nation and make it live again

That is what I see in Israel. Every time I visit Israel I find among Israelis, secular or religious, an absolute unswerving dedication to Moshe Rabbenu’s great command Uvacharta Bachayim, “Choose life.” Israel is the sustained defiance of hatred and power in the name of life because we are the people who sanctify life.

chiefrabbi.org..
12 March '13





The Will to Life – Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks speaks to the 2013 AIPAC Policy Conference

Beloved friends, I’m actually only here to give you a change of accents; I just hope you don’t need simultaneous translation. (Laughter.) But I’m here as part of an English delegation to give you the view from Europe. And the view from Europe is that AIPAC is something out of this world. It is just amazing.



Friends, it reminds me, if I can just you this story, lovely story about Yossi, an Israeli, who opened a falafel bar in Golders Green. Golders Green is the English Brooklyn. And Yossi’s falafel bar was one day visited by the tax inspector who was reading through his books and he was saying, Mr. Yossi, this falafel of yours, this is a kind of Jewish takeaway; am I right?

And Yossi, with a big smile, says, yes. The tax inspector says, Mr. Yossi, I understand where you’ve written down as expenses rent, electricity, materials; but why have you written down under business expenses two trips to Miami and three trips to Tel Aviv? And Yossi, with a big smile, said, that’s easy; we deliver! (Laughter.)

Friends, AIPAC, you deliver. You deliver—(applause)—a strong Israel and a strong Jewish people. May God bless you and may you continue to bless the people in the state of Israel.

Friends, I want to tell you how things are looking like in Europe today. When I was a child, there was one line in the Haggadah that I never understood. [Hebrew.] It was not one alone who stood against us. [Hebrew.] But in every generation they did so. And always as a child I used to say, that belongs to my parents’ generation; not to us; not to us born after the Holocaust. I grew up; in all my life I never experienced a single incident of anti-Semitism until 11 years ago.

Eleven years ago, our youngest daughter, who was studying at a British university, came home in tears. She had been at an anti-globalization rally which quickly turned into a tirade first against America, then against Israel, then against Jews. And with tears in her eyes she said, Dad, they hate us. That is a terrible situation, but it’s reality in Europe today.

Kushner - From Israel: All Right!!

Arlene Kushner..
06 March '12..

Prime Minister Netanyahu truly got it right-- and eloquently so -- when he spoke at the AIPAC Conference last night. For this I thank Heaven.

So much talk, so much worry, about the possibility of his caving to Obama's pressure. For naught. Actually, in the statement he made after he met with Obama earlier in the day, it was already apparent where he was going.

Below you will find a link that provides the text of his speech and a video of the entire speech (with appreciation to ElderofZion for putting it up).

He touched all of the right bases:

He stated unequivocally that we have a right to act in our own self-defense, and that we will not depend on any other nation. (This addresses the position taken by Obama in his AIPAC talk a day earlier, which I will get to.)

"In every generation, there are those who wish to destroy the Jewish people. We are blessed to live in an age when there is a Jewish state capable of defending the Jewish people...


"As Prime Minister of Israel, I will never let my people live under the shadow of annihilation.


"...Today we have a state of our own. The purpose of the Jewish state is to secure the Jewish future. That is why Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat. (Emphasis added)


"We deeply appreciate the great alliance between our two countries. But when it comes to Israel's survival, we must always remain the masters of our fate." (Emphasis added)

(Video) Prime Minister Netanyahu's Speech to AIPAC

05 March '12..

Full text and video of the speech delivered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delegates at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington D.C. 2012. (H/T algemeiner.com for text)


Thank you for the warm reception. It could be heard as far away as Jerusalem – the eternal and united capital of Israel. More than two thirds of the Congress is in attendance here tonight. I deeply appreciate your being here.



Last May when I addressed the Congress, you stood up to applaud the state of Israel. Now I ask the 13,000 friends of IL here to stand up and applaud you, the representatives of the American people. Democrats and Republicans alike, we applaud your unwavering commitment to Israel.

I want to recognize Yossi Peled who is here tonight. Yossi was born in Belgium. His parents hid him with a Christian family during World War II. His father, and many other members of his family, were murdered at Auschwitz. His mother survived the Holocaust, returned to reclaim Yossi, and brought him to Israel. He became one of Israel’s bravest and greatest generals.

And today, Yossi Peled serves as a minister in my government. Yossi’s life is the story of the Jewish people – the story of a powerless and stateless people who became a strong and proud nation able to defend itself. And ladies and gentlemen, Israel must always reserve the right to defend itself.

Fresnozionism - The AIPAC speech

Obama speaks at AIPAC yesterday.

Fresnozionism.org..
05 March '12..

Politicians tailor their speeches to their audiences, so President Obama’s AIPAC speech will represent the most pro-Israel interpretation of his positions.

It is very important for him to improve his relationship with the pro-Israel segment of the US Jewish community before the election. This is an older demographic, Jews who vote and donate to their party — and many of them live in the important swing state of Florida. Many of these Jews would very much like to vote for Obama because of his social and economic policies, but are deterred by the anti-Israel image that he has developed.

So despite the fact that Jews make up 1.7% of the population (and Jews that care about Israel less than this), it is important for the President to woo these voters. There is also a large community of pro-Israel Christians, but they overwhelmingly lean Republican, and his stance toward Israel is only one of many reasons that they dislike Obama.

The AIPAC speech is the best we will get; even if Obama does not explicitly renege on his commitments, the interpretation of them as actual policy after the election will be somewhat less positive. Keep in mind that many administration functionaries are actively hostile to Israel.

So let’s look at the important points of the speech.

First, there are a lot of statements about “America’s unbreakable bond” and the the President’s “unprecedented” commitment to Israel’s security. While they produce a warm feeling, they do not imply specific actions. They are vague enough that they have been used to justify, for example, pressuring Israel to make dangerous concessions to the Palestinians. With all due respect, this is fluff which is best ignored.

Weinberg - Read Obama’s body language

This US President is not going to order a military strike on Iran. No amount of rhetoric can cloak his true feelings.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
05 March '12..






Liberal commentators are already bemoaning the fact that “diehard Obama skeptics” aren’t giving the US President due credit for his “pro-Israel” speech at AIPAC yesterday. “There are many people in both America and Israel who wouldn’t believe Barack Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security even if he sang Hatikvah, enlisted in the IDF and did reserve duty guarding an isolated West Bank outpost,” writes Chemi Shalev in Haaretz today.

“(Yet) Obama’s speech was as solid and supportive as could be expected from any US president,” continues Shalev. “Obama reiterated his unequivocal pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He dismissed any notion that he might accept a nuclear Iran as a fait accompli and adopt a policy of ‘containment’. He acknowledged Israel’s sovereign right to serve its own national security interests and to act in its own self-defense. He pleaded for more time for diplomacy and sanctions to work, but for the very first time explicitly listed the military among those proverbial options that are always on the table.”

Yes, but read Obama’s body language – not just his words. Obama’s body language tells a different story.

Few politicians are as physically graphic as US President Barack Obama. His intonation and inflection, pace of speaking, facial gestures and body movements are sensual, emotional, instinctive and distinctive. I have long taught executives whom I instruct in public speaking to observe and appreciate Obama’s speaking style. He is a pleasure to watch and actually quite easy to read.

Rubin - Obama At AIPAC

Barry Rubin..
Rubin Reports..
pjmedia.com..
04 March '12..



“Promise her anything but give her Arpege.” –Perfume advertising slogan

It is good to have the president of the United States on your side, especially if he may be reelected to another four year term, meaning he will govern America for the next five years. And so ultimately here’s the bottom line: How do we know President Barack Obama supports Israel?

Answer: He says so.

This is the key point about Obama’s well-received speech to AIPAC. And that’s why the speechwriters, several of whom are no doubt Jewish, wrote it that way.

Jews are a very misunderstood people in part because both enemies and friends think them self-consciously powerful. Antisemites and anti-Israel activists, two groups with a lot of overlap, think pro-Israel Jews run the U.S. government and media.

But Jews look back at a long history of powerlessness, victimhood, and mass murder. They know that much of the Middle East bays for their blood, that a lot of the mass media won’t give Israel a fair break, and that on many campuses Jewish students are feeling intimidated and pro-Israel activities are besieged.

And so the great majority of American Jews are profoundly grateful that an American president—even if they gave him 79 percent of their votes—will, verbally at least, stand by them.

What happens after he wins reelection and no longer needs their votes? Well, we can hope for the best, right?

I have read a number of articles, papers, and talking points lately that portray Obama as a pro-Israel presence. They consist of four themes:

Tobin - What’s Missing From Obama’s AIPAC Speech? Red Lines on Iran and Palestinians

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
05 March '12..

President Obama’s charm offensive with Jewish voters was again in evidence today during his speech to the AIPAC conference. The president’s bragging of his “deeds” left little doubt that his desire to be seen as the Israel’s best friend ever in the White House is due to fears of a decline in support from Jewish voters this year. Obama’s doubling down on his tough rhetoric on Iran — he specifically disavowed any thought of “containing” Tehran — and the complete absence in the speech of any of any interest in pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians– (a hallmark of his administration’s policies during his first three years in office) was a signal defeat for Jewish leftists like the J Street lobby that once hoped to wean the Democrats from AIPAC.

But even more significant was the fact that despite his repeated vows to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, there was little indication that Obama is prepared to make the leap from talking about the danger to actually doing something. His call for continued efforts towards negotiations on the issue undermined all the hard line rhetoric intended to appease wavering Jewish Democrats. Though his campaign will spin this speech as more proof that Obama has “Israel’s back,” Iran’s leaders may read it very differently and assume they are free to go on building their weapon with little fear the U.S. really is contemplating the use of force.

Blind to His Own Ideological Prejudices

Peter Wehner
Commentary/Contentions
23 May '11



http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/05/23/blind-to-his-own-ideological-prejudices/

In his address to AIPAC on Sunday, President Obama—attempting to do furious damage control—asserted that his speech the previous Thursday, arguing that negotiations for a Palestinian state should be based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders, was old hat. “There was nothing particularly original in my proposal,” Mr. Obama said reassuringly; “this basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous U.S. Administrations. . . . It was my reference to the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps that received the lion’s share of the attention,” he said later in the same speech. “And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what ‘1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps’ means.”

In fact, as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler points out,

In the context of this history [Israel’s borders], Obama’s statement Thursday represented a major shift. He did not articulate the 1967 boundaries as a “Palestinian goal” but as U.S. policy. He also dropped any reference to “realities on the ground”— code for Israeli settlements—that both Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton had used. He further suggested that Israel’s military would need to agree to leave the West Bank. Obama did not go all the way and try to define what his statement meant for the disputed city of Jerusalem, or attempt to address the issue of Palestinians who want to return to lands now in the state of Israel. He said those issues would need to be addressed after borders and security are settled. But, for a U.S. president, the explicit reference to the 1967 lines represented crossing the Rubicon.

Kessler does us the favor of quoting presidents from Lyndon Johnson in 1968 (“It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of 4 June 1967 will not bring peace. There must be secure and there must be recognized borders”) to Ronald Reagan in 1982 (“In the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel’s population lived within artillery range of hostile armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again”). Their views were decidedly not Obama’s views.

As in so many other areas of our national life, President Obama is staking out a position that is fairly extreme by ordinary American standards. But his positions on Israel are not extraordinary by the standards of America’s elite colleges and universities. In those precincts, what the president argued—which is essentially that the burden rests on Israel to make the “hard choices” for peace—is common fare. Among those on the left, Israel is the problem, the cause of unrest, the alien state, the aggressive power. And the only reasonable approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is to put pressure squarely on Israel to make unilateral concessions in order to jumpstart the “peace process.”

This view is, in every one of its particulars, not only wrong but the opposite of reality. Yet this worldview appears to dominate the thinking of the president. And my own theory—a theory originally advanced by Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal—is that the explanation for this, at least in part, is that Obama has been marinated in the ideology of the modern academy, where hostility to Israel is not only widespread but very nearly uniform.

There are, thankfully, political realities that act on a check on the president’s more irresponsible impulses. But his premises and predilections seem to have their roots in places like Columbia and Harvard. And that may well explain why the president is so puzzled. He articulated a position that was, for academics, a given. He is abruptly finding out that what is assumed to be true at Columbia and Harvard isn’t true for the parts of the nation.

The president may think there was nothing particularly original in his proposal, but the fierce response he generated on the matter of Israel’s borders is evidence that there was. Once again Obama shows that, as much as any president in modern times, he is blind to his own ideological prejudices. The rest of us are not.

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.
.

Speech by PM Netanyahu, AIPAC 2011 (Video + transcript)

IMRA
24 May '11




Part 1



Part 2



Transcript

23/05/2011

Speech by PM Netanyahu, AIPAC 2011

http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/PMSpeaks/speechaipac230511.htm

My friends, before I talk about things about Israel, I want to say something about the scenes on television that I saw today and you have been seeing as well. When tragedy strikes America, Israel -- Israel feels an immediate identification. And tragedy has struck America. In recent days floods and tornadoes have claimed the lives of hundreds of Americans, including today in Joplin, Missouri. All I can say is, America, we're with you on this day, on every day.

And that's very evident from the things I just heard from my two close friends. Speaker of the House John Boehner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, you lead the many friends who are here today, the distinguished senators and congressmen and congresswomen of the United States of America.

I want to greet AIPAC President Lee Rosenberg. Rosy, I learned the other day that if I take you on, it's not going to be in basketball. It will be in soccer. And Executive Director Howard Kohr - Howard, you I'm not going to take on in anything.

I want to welcome here also the representatives of the Government of Israel, Members of Knesset, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jim Cunningham, Ambassador-designate Dan Shapiro, my beloved wife and the mother of our two boys, Sara, and finally, our terrific Ambassador to the United States, a man who knows a few things about the U.S.-Israel alliance, Michael Oren.

To all our supporters in this great hall and to the millions of supporters across this great land, the people of Israel thank you. Thank you for your staunch commitment to Israel's security. Thank you for defending Israel's right to defend itself. Thank you for standing by Israel as it seeks a secure peace.

An Anti-Israel President

Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
24 May '11

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576341212934894494.html

The president's peace proposal is a formula for war.

Say what you will about President Obama's approach to Israel—or of his relationship with American Jews—he sure has mastered the concept of chutzpah.

On Thursday at the State Department, the president gave his big speech on the Middle East, in which he invoked the claims of friendship to tell Israelis "the truth," which to his mind was that "the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace." On Friday in the Oval Office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his version of the truth, which was that the 1967 border proposed by Mr. Obama as a basis for negotiating the outlines of a Palestinian state was a nonstarter.

Administration reaction to this reciprocal act of friendly truth-telling? "That was Bibi over the top," the New York Times quoted one senior U.S. official, using the prime minister's nickname. "That's not how you address the president of the United States."

Maybe so. Then again, it isn't often that this or any other U.S. president welcomes a foreign leader by sandbagging him with an adversarial policy speech a day before the visit. Remember when the Dalai Lama visited Mr. Obama last year? As a courtesy to Beijing, the president made sure to have the Tibetan spiritual leader exit by the door where the White House trash was piled up. And that was 11 months before Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S.

When this president wants to make a show of his exquisite diplomatic sensitivity—burgers with Medvedev, bows to Abdullah, New Year's greetings to the mullahs—he knows how. And when he wants to show his contempt, he knows how, too.

The contempt was again on display Sunday, when Mr. Obama spoke to the Aipac policy conference in Washington. The speech was stocked with the perennial bromides about U.S.-Israeli friendship, which brought an anxious crowd to its feet a few times. As for the rest, it was a thin tissue of falsehoods, rhetorical legerdemain, telling omissions and self-contradictions. Let's count the ways.

For starters, it would be nice if the president could come clean about whether his line about the 1967 line—"mutually agreed swaps" and all—was pathbreaking and controversial, or no big deal. On Sunday, Mr. Obama congratulated himself for choosing the hard road to Mideast peace as he prepares for re-election, only to offer a few minutes later that "there was nothing particularly original in my proposal."

Yet assuming Mr. Obama knows what he's talking about, he knows that's untrue: No U.S. president has explicitly endorsed the '67 lines as the basis for negotiating a final border, which is why the University of Michigan's Juan Cole, not exactly a shill for the Israel lobby, called it "a major turning point."

Mr. Obama would also know that in 2009 Hillary Clinton had described this formula as "the Palestinian goal." Now it's Mr. Obama's goal as well, even as he insists that "no peace can be imposed."

Then there was Mr. Obama's use of his favorite professorial trope: "Let me repeat what I actually said." What followed was a rehearsal of what he supposedly said on Thursday.

But Mr. Obama's problem isn't, as he supposes, that people aren't paying close enough attention to him. On the contrary, they've noticed that on Thursday Mr. Obama called for Israel to make territorial concessions to some approximation of the '67 lines before an agreement is reached on the existential issues of refugees and Jerusalem. "Moving forward now on the basis of territory and security," he said, "provides a foundation to resolve these two issues in a way that is just and fair, and that respects the rights and aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians."

Mr. Obama neglected to mention these points on Sunday, hence the telling omission. But the essence of his proposal is that Israel should cede territory, put itself into a weaker position, and then hope for the best. This doesn't even amount to a land-for-peace formula.

That's not all. Mr. Obama got some applause Sunday by calling for a "non-militarized" Palestinian state. But how does that square with his comment, presumably applicable to a future Palestine, that "every state has a right to self-defense"? Mr. Obama was also cheered for his references to Israel as a "Jewish state." But why then obfuscate on the question of Palestinian refugees, whose political purpose over 63 years has been to destroy Israel as a Jewish state?

And then there was that line that "we will hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions and their rhetoric." Applause! But can Mr. Obama offer a single example of having done that as president, except perhaps at the level of a State Department press release?

What, then, would a pro-Israel president do? He would tell Palestinians that there is no right of return. He would make the reform of the Arab mindset toward Israel the centerpiece of his peace efforts. He would outline hard and specific consequences should Hamas join the government.

Such a vision could lay the groundwork for peace. What Mr. Obama offered is a formula for war, one that he will pursue in a second term. Assuming, of course, that he gets one.

Write to bstephens@wsj.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.
.