CNN's Zakaria: Couldn't He Just Call Netanyahu a Slut? by William Tate

Published in American Thinker

Just when you thought the Obama-Kool-Aid-swilling media couldn't sink any further into their foul muck, along comes ersatz expert-on-everything and Obama sycophant Fareed Zakaria. Attempting to defend Obama's imperious effort to force Israel back inside its indefensible pre-1967 borders, Zakaria has tried to link Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with a central figure in one of the most vicious anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli regimes in history.

Zakaria compared Netanyahu to former Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in an opinion piece in the Washington Post this week, claiming petulantly that Netanyahu has become, like Gromyko, "'Doctor Nyet,' a man who will be bypassed in history."

Beyond proving that Zakaria has a tin ear, his column proves beyond all doubt that anyone who criticizes, or even disagrees with, Obama -- even in the interest of protecting their own country -- will be savaged by the media beyond any sense of decency, let alone fairness.
It is an attack that is vile, vituperative, and -- as we shall see -- viciously personal. And all because Netanyahu didn't roll over for Obama on a matter vital to his nation's security. (As an aside, one can't help wonder why Netanyahu didn't just tell Obama, much like Obama infamously told Republicans in 2009: We won. Get over it.)

Zakaria compared the Prime Minister of Israel to a man who played a key role in a regime that implemented anti-Israeli policies abroad and an anti-Jewish agenda at home, a regime that actively and systematically persecuted Jews. And Gromyko was the architect of a foreign policy that forced Israel, the world's lone Jewish state and the Middle East's only democracy, into two bloody wars for its very existence.

Gromyko served as Soviet Foreign Minister for most of the Cold War, including during the Six Day War in 1967, in which Israel won the more-defensible territories which Obama would now have it relinquish. Records released since then show that Gromyko's foreign policy helped instigate that battle for Israel's survival.
According to a June, 2000 report in the UK's Guardian newspaper:

The Soviet Union had played a central role in escalating tension in the Middle East and had falsely accused Israel of massing forces on the Syrian border... In memoirs published recently, Nikita Khrushchev said the USSR's military command persuaded its political leadership to support these steps, knowing they were aimed at starting a war to destroy Israel.

As Foreign Minister, Gromyko was a principal member of that political leadership.

And the records also revealed that, when it appeared Israel was poised to win a total victory over the Soviet's Middle Eastern client states, Gromyko's USSR was, itself, prepared to intervene militarily. By way of the hotline between the two superpowers, Gromyko warned then-US President Lyndon Johnson:

A very crucial moment has now arrived which forces us, if military actions are not stopped in the next few hours, to adopt an independent decision. We are ready to do this. However, these actions may bring us into a clash which will lead to a grave catastrophe ... we purpose [sic] that you demand from Israel that it unconditionally cease military action... we purpose to warn Israel that if this is not fulfilled, necessary actions will be taken, including military...

Then Defense Secretary Robert) McNamara recalled: "In effect it said: Mr. President, if you want war, you'll get war."

After Kosygin's menacing message was received, the US under-secretary of state, Nicholas Katzenbach, was dispatched from the Situation Room to 'call in the Israeli ambassador and put pressure on the Israelis to accept a ceasefire'. The Israelis, presumably informed of the Soviet threat, did - after completing their conquest of the Golan.

By most accounts, the Soviet regime, in which Gromyko served so prominently, intensified its internal campaign against Jews after the humiliating rout of its Arab allies.

The hard-won 1967 borders proved vital to the Jewish state's survival when Israel was caught off-guard by a multiple-front, coordinated attack by Syria and Egypt: the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

It was a sneak attack of which Gromyko, and the Soviet Union, were aware -- if not actively involved in the planning -- beforehand.

In his book, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, Abraham Rabinovich wrote that the Soviets, and Gromyko, had armed Egypt and Syria with the modern arms necessary to wage war on Israel. Gromyko was even aware of the timing of the surprise assault. Two days before Syria and Egypt attacked, Gromyko summoned his top aides. "What they were about to hear, he said, must be kept completely confidential. Egypt and Syria were to open war on Israel on Saturday at 2 P.M."

Rabinovich noted that Gromyko "was skeptical of the Arabs' chances but acknowledged that a surprise attack might improve their odds."

Overlooking the historical and policy implications of Zakaria's contemptuous comparison, there is the personal aspect as well. Yonatan Netanyahu, "one of Israel's most celebrated heroes," was born in New York City in 1946. He died thirty years later, on the Fourth of July. At the time of his death he was a commander of the elite Israeli commando unit, Sayeret Maktal -- more or less the equivalent of our Navy SEALs. The best of the very best. He was killed during the Entebbe raid, in which the unit he headed rescued 103 hostages held aboard an Air France passenger plane in Uganda.

The Soviet Union, under the foreign policy directed by Gromyko, was the principal supplier of arms to Uganda and its dictator, Idi Amin.

The bullet which killed Yonatan Netanyahu was most likely provided to his killer through the largesse of Andrei Gromyko. The same man to whom Zakaria now compares Yonatan's younger brother, Binyamin.

Perhaps Zakaria just hadn't thought of calling Binyamin Netanyahu, the elected leader of a sovereign nation and a stalwart US ally, a talk show slut.

With Zakaria's column, it becomes clear that Barack Obama's mainstream media will stoop to any low, no matter how vile or disgraceful or personal, to protect their guy.

Just writing about Zakaria's comments leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. And it's not Obama Kool-Aid.

William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author.

DNC Chairman Debbie Wasernan-Schultz

DNC Chairman not aware that illegal alien are committing a crime:

Word of the Decade: 'Unsustainable', by Peggy Noonan

Word of the Decade: 'Unsustainable'

By Peggy Noonan · Saturday, May 28, 2011

We're at a funny place. The American establishment has finally come around, in unison, to admitting that America is in crisis, that our debt actually threatens our ability to endure, that if we don't make progress on this, we are going to near our endpoint as a nation. I am struck very recently by the number of leaders in American business, politics and journalism who now get a certain faraway look at the end of an evening or a meal and say, "It's worse than people think, you know." The debt crisis in Europe is not easing but worsening, the U.S. bond markets could bail tomorrow, the culture of Washington will kill any serious attempts at reform . . .

The American establishment, on both sides of the political divide, is admitting as never before that we are in an existential challenge. And this is progress. It was not always so! It wasn't so two years ago.

That's one takeaway from this week's Peterson Foundation fiscal summit in Washington. Bill Clinton spoke of "permanent structural deficits" and warned that "arithmetic still matters." We must focus on entitlement spending, he said, "for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: That's where the money is." Virginia's Democratic Sen. Mark Warner: "Congress is Thelma and Louise in that car headed for the cliff." Obama administration economic adviser Gene Sperling -- more on him in a minute -- called for "serious discussion" of the specifics of a debt-reducing plan.

Republicans were on the same page. No one said, "We can grow our way out of this thing," or "The negative effects of chronic debt are exaggerated, let's look at the positive side." They would have been laughed out of the room.

The people, of course, saw the crisis coming before most politicians did, and every elected official in Washington is now quick to preface interviews with, "The people were ahead of us on this." They say this with an air of discovery, the little Sherlocks. The people were ahead of them. Public concern began to deepen in the polls after the introduction of the new spending bills that followed the crash of 2008. Voter concern was made vivid in the 2009 and 2010 elections, when centrists voted like old-style Republicans who worried about red ink.

Elected officials began to get the message. Now they've got it. Our spending and debt are -- and it is interesting that this is the first great buzzword of the new decade -- "unsustainable."

But here's how we're in a funny place. The great question now is whether the people who alerted the establishment to the crisis will trust that establishment to deal with it. The people have been like Paul Revere riding through the night warning, "The bankruptcy is coming!" It's unclear whether they'll now trust the politicians to take the right action.

There are many reasons the public might resist Washington's prescriptions, and we know what they are. There are data demonstrating that people like government programs but not government costs. Many people feel they've personally played by all the rules and will reject any specific cuts or taxes that will put new burdens on them.

There's also this. The very politicians who are trying to get us out of the mess are the politicians who got us into the mess. Why would anyone trust them? As Alan Simpson admitted, for generations politicians "were told to go to Washington and bring home the bacon. Go get the money!" Now they must change: "You can't bring home the bacon anymore, because the pig is dead."

Some of the politicians talking about how to stop the spending crisis are the same politicians who, for many years, said there was no crisis. They're like forest creatures who denied there was a fire when everyone else could smell the smoke and hear the crackle. Then the flames roar in, and the politicians say, "Follow me, I know the path out of the blaze!" It will be hard for them to win the trust that will get the American people to back a path out and through.

Rep. Paul Ryan was at the summit, soldiering on. His main problem on Medicare is that people fear the complexities and demands of a new delivery system.

People who draw up legislation, people capable of mastering the facts of the huge and complicated federal budget, often think other people are just like them. It's almost sweet. But normal people don't wear green eyeshades. Republicans think people will say, when presented with new options for coverage, "Oh good, another way to express my freedom! I can study health insurance now and get a policy that will benefit not only me but our long-term solvency!" But normal people are more likely to sit slouched at the kitchen table with their head in their hands. "Oh no, another big decision, another headache, 50 calls to an insurance company, another go-round with the passive-aggressive phone answerer who, even though she's never met me, calls me Freddy as she puts me on hold."

Republicans believe government gives insufficient respect to the ability of people to decide things for themselves, and that's true. But it's also true that normal humans don't relish making informed decisions about things they're not sure of, and that carry big personal implications.

Here's the great thing about Medicare: You turn 65 and it's there. They give you a card and the nurse takes it.

Supporters of Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan must talk very specifically about how this would all work, and why it would make your life better, not worse. They also have to make two things clearer. One is that if nothing is done to change Medicare, the system will collapse. You'll give the card to the nurse and she'll laugh: "We don't take that anymore." This already happens in doctors offices. Without reform it will happen more often.

Democrats, on the other hand, should be forced to answer a question. If you oppose the highly specific Ryan plan, fine, but tell us your specific proposal. How will you save Medicare? Will you let it die?

If Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling's presentation at the summit was indicative of White House strategy, then we're in trouble. Because that strategy comes down to windy and manipulative statements about how "we're all in this together" but GOP proposals "will lead to millions of children . . . losing their coverage." He added: "We are not criticizing their plan, we are explaining it."

It is a long time since I've seen such transparent demagoguery, such determined dodging. It's obvious the White House political plan for 2012 is this: The Democrats will call for fiscal discipline and offer no specifics or good-faith starting points. They will leave the Republicans to be specific, and then let them be hanged with their candor. Democrats will speak not of what they'll do but only of what they would never do, such as throw grandma out in the snow. In honeyed tones, Mr. Sperling said both parties should "hold hands and jump together," like Butch and Sundance. But it was clear Sundance was going to stop at the edge of the cliff and hope Butch gets broken on the rocks.

David Mamet's Coming Out Party

In March 2008, David Mamet was outed in the Village Voice. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright had a comedy about an American president running on Broadway, and—perhaps to help with ticket sales—decided to write an article about the election season. The headline was subtle: "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal.'"

"They mistitled it," he insists. Mr. Mamet had given the piece the far more staid title, "Political Civility." But the Voice's headline was truth in advertising. "I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind," Mr. Mamet wrote, referring to his prior self as, yes, a "brain-dead liberal."

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An Anti-Israel President, by Bret Stephens

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.

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Nakbacide, by Daniel Greenfield

Imagine if every year on the 7th of May, Germans held an annual commemoration of the defeat of the Nazi state, complete with Swastikas, anti-Jewish chants and slogans, and a historical narrative claiming that the Volksdeutsche expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the real victims of WW2. That disgusting spectacle is exactly what takes place on May 15th as Arab Muslims chant and riot to protest their unsuccessful genocide of a regional minority.

It's hard to think of a more repulsive spectacle of historical obliviousness, than a regional majority responsible for multiple genocides dressing up as the victims because their invasion of Israel ended in a stalemate, rather than a genocidal purge of its residents. Perhaps only the Japanese, with their annual commemorations of a history that begins briefly before Hiroshima and ends after Nagasaki, leaving out Nanking and Pearl Harbor, are a match for the Palestinian Nakba.

The Arab history of Israel leaves out thousands of years of history of the original Jewish inhabitants and a thousand years of persecution under Arab rule. It leaves out the massacres and atrocities carried out by the Arab Muslim invaders against the Jewish inhabitants in the 20th century, including the Hebron Massacre, and the Nazi collaboration of their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Instead it begins and ends with Deir Yassin and angry old women holding up oversized housekeys and reminiscing about the good times they had massacring Jews.

There are about as many Jewish refugees from the Muslim world, as there are Arab refugees from Israel. The difference is that the Jewish refugees were a minority fleeing the violence of a brutal majority. And the Arab refugees were a regional majority making a strategic withdrawal in response to calls from the Syrian and Iraqi Prime Ministers. The Nakbaites were supposed to be the beneficiaries of a genocide to be carried out by the armies of seven Arab nations. Instead they had to settle down in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere around the region. An easy thing to do since they are the same people, speak the same language and have the same culture. The only difference between a Jordanian Arab and a Jordanian Palestinian is a few miles and about twenty-five years.

The Nakba commemorations are only possible in a culture with no sense of responsibility. A religion which has killed more people and wiped out more cultures than Stalin and Hitler combined, still remains convinced that it is the victim. A victim of their own failed genocidal war. The Nakba is really the Nakbacide. A dream of mass murder that was frustrated when their victims fought back.
Had the Israeli War of Independence been fought between local Jews and Arabs, the Nakba circus might not be as bankrupt as it is. But it was actually a war fought between local Jews and the armies of seven Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq and Syria, overseen by two British commanders. Despite all this, the Arab Muslim invaders still failed to do more than seize half of Jerusalem, and Gaza, Judea and Samaria. And that's what really gnaws at them.

The ugly truth of the Nakba is that it blunted the nationalistic ambitions of Arab Muslims who were dreaming of replacing the Ottoman and British empires. Losing a war to a European world power wouldn't have hurt as much as losing a war to a despised regional minority. A people whose name is an insult in the mouth of every Arab. Yahood. Lower than a dog. Yahood. Transformed into apes and pigs in the Koran. Yahood. Second class citizens in every Muslim country. Who somehow beat back seven Muslim armies and took back their lands that had been conquered by the Caliphs.
But in Muslim culture time never passes. The words, "You Lost a War, Get Over It", have no meaning. Arab Muslims still think Spain is theirs. Every time they see a European army, they mutter about the Crusades. Jews are greeted with chants of "Khaybar ya Yahood" recalling Mohammed's massacre of the Jews, a historical event that is much closer to what the Nakba only claims to be. Nothing is ever forgotten. Old hatreds are nurtured into violent rages that cannot be calmed by any treaty. The purpose of hate is hate. The purpose of Nakba is Nakba.

History is a dead word. The Muslim world has no history. It has pervasive myths that feed the Arab Muslim need for self-glorification and victimization. Muslim history is one long cry of "Mine, Mine, Mine" and "Give it Back". Millions of Arab Muslims believe that they discovered America, that European science was stolen from them, that the entire world used to be Muslim, that the Holocaust was made up, that Neil Armstrong heard the Islamic call to prayer on the moon, that Jacques Cousteau converted to Islam and that the Koran invented light bulbs. The Nakba makes as much sense as any of these.

When Muslims win a war, it's because Allah is on their side. When they lose a war, it's because they were undermined, cheated and betrayed. The other side didn't play fair. And then come the cries of, "Time Out", "We Want a Do Over" and of course, "Mine, Mine, Mine! Give it Back!" Followed by oaths of vengeance, ululating cries of old women who just got done drowning their own daughters, Hashish crazed mobs torching flags that they bought for just that purpose and old men gritting their teeth at the camera. What a glorious Nakba it was, same time again next year?

Their fictional Palestinian identity, with its imagined roots in a country they hardly ever lived in, has turned millions of people into the militias of the Arab world. Their flags and chants about statehood hiding the fact that they are nothing more than proxies of countries which deny them citizenship because it makes them into better weapons, not just against Israel, but against each other. When an Arab country wants some thugs to smash in the heads of protesters, some cheap labor or even cheaper reason to get their people all worked up, they bring in the faux Palestinians, with their keffiyahs, their Arab-Socialist tricolor flags and their chronic unemployment.

The historical irony, is that it is the very gullibility of these Arab-Muslims, their willingness to accept a Palestinian identity, that keeps them displaced in the countries they live in. Had they demanded the right to be citizens of Jordan, Syria or Lebanon-- international pressure would have given them a new life. Instead by embracing the dubious honor of continuing the Jihad against the Jews, they trapped themselves in a no man's land of their own making. As long as they remain willing to be killers, sacrificing their own children to the fiery moloch of the bomb vest, then they will be forever pariahs in their own countries. 

The Nakba is a tiresome reminder that Muslims don't want peace. That they're not mature enough to handle it. What they really want is to rehash grievances and sullenly plot another genocide, instead of coming to terms with the consequences of their own actions. The actual history in which Neil Armstrong didn't hear any Arabic on the moon and the Koran didn't invent the lightbulb, is also the one in which the Israelis have made concession after concession back to the mandate days, and the Arab-Muslims have responded with obstinate treachery and violence at every turn.

There is an anecdote about an Israeli driver who accidentally hits a sheep belonging to an Arab. The driver gets out and offers to pay for the sheep. The Arab refuses. The driver offers to pay for five sheep, for ten sheep. The Arab still refuses. "What do you want?" the frustrated driver asks. "I want that sheep," the Arab says, pointing to the dead sheep. That is the Nakba in a nutshell. The Arabs don't want to negotiate an agreement like adults. They want the dead sheep that represents their dreams of a united Arab empire ruling over the region. And the wars will go on until they finally learn that they can't have it back.

Daniel Greenfield blogs at SultanKnish.blogspot.com

Obama's achievement: the mouse that roared, by Melanie Phillips

Melanie Phillips in The Spectator

I don’t know what strategic purpose Obama had in mind for addressing the Middle East impasse when last Thursday he made the first of a series of speeches on the subject. Whatever this may have been, that speech produced one satisfactory result. The Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for once started to tell the west a few home truths about what it was doing.

With the world’s cameras trained upon him and looking Israel’s potential nemesis in the eye, Netanyahu at last did what he and other Israeli prime ministers should have done a long time ago. He seized the moment, and used the presence of the icily immobilised President to speak electrifyingly over his head to the American people and the world about the likely terrible consequences for Israel of the President’s policy. He began to strip away the pretence, to tear off the fig-leaf. This President’s stated policy would destroy Israel’s existential security. It’s a message the American people need to hear, over and over again.

This morning, the consequences were already plain. Obama had shifted his position. Not much, but enough to demonstrate one crucial fact: that Israel’s most potent weapon of all is the truth, and when it chooses to wield that weapon its tormentors begin to crumble.
This is what Obama said last Thursday:

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.’

Here’s the thing. Obama spoke correctly when he referred to the ‘1967 lines’ rather than ‘borders’. There are no 1967 borders. Israel actually has no borders. All it has are the 1949 ceasefire lines, which is where Israel was left when it fought off the attempt by five Arab armies to exterminate it at birth. These lines were referred to as the ‘Auschwitz borders’ because within them no country could possibly defend itself against its enemies. They left Israel at its narrowest point a mere nine miles wide -- as Netanyahu said, less than the Washington Beltway. A return to the 1967 lines would mean exposing Israel once more to the likelihood of destruction, and such a proposal runs counter to the spirit and the letter of UN Resolution 242. True Obama added ‘with land swaps’. But no realistic land swaps could make up for this fatal vulnerability.

When Obama was interviewed by a star-struck Andrew Marr on BBC TV this morning, he said the ‘1967 lines’ formula had always been accepted as the basis for a solution. Not true, as Dore Gold and Robert Satloff explain here. Not true, as Glenn Kessler explains in the Washington Post. Successive administrations carefully stepped round this minefield in accordance with Resolution 242. It is the Palestinians who talk about returning to the ‘1967 borders’. The sting in what Obama did was to adopt the Palestinian position as US policy. Wrote Kessler:

He did not articulate the 1967 boundaries as a ‘Palestinian goal’ but as U.S. policy... for a U.S. president, the explicit reference to the 1967 lines represented crossing the Rubicon.

What’s more, he appears to have ambushed Netanyahu with it. So the Bibimouse finally roared.
By Marr’s interview this morning, Obama was signalling that he was shifting his position. Now the 1967 lines were to be not the basis of the solution but the basis for negotiations. In his speech to AIPAC today, although he reverted to his original formulation he did so to cover his tracks as he further finessed this shift in his position:

By definition, it means that the parties themselves -– Israelis and Palestinians -– will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. (Applause.) That’s what mutually agreed-upon swaps means. It is a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation. It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years. (Applause.) It allows the parties themselves to take account of those changes, including the new demographic realities on the ground, and the needs of both sides.

So from being the basis for a solution, the 1967 lines had become 'a border that is different'. It was also notable that, on both occasions, Obama offered the Palestinians nothing. He said the Fatah/Hamas deal was not on. He said Israel couldn’t be expected to sit down with people who were intent on its destruction.

True, he didn’t say what he should have said: namely, that the US would now accordingly cut off the funding to the Hamas/Fatah alliance. Nor did he say that the PA could also not be a partner for peace until it too repudiated its refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state and stopped inciting its people to murder Jews. For the real problem, of course, is that Obama insists that Mahmoud Abbas is a true partner for peace, even though he is just as much of a rejectionist as is Hamas. As the Washington Post sternly observed:

The president appears to assume that Mr. Abbas is open to a peace deal despite growing evidence to the contrary.

And the paper suggested that the precondition for any diplomatic success by the President in the Middle East would be

restoring trust with Israel, rather than courting a feckless Palestinian leader.

Instead, Obama has adopted in these speeches what might be termed the Mafia Gambit: the implied threat to Israel that either it accepts the ‘1967 Auschwitz borders’ or runs the gauntlet of UN recognition and further western delegitimisation.

As a set of demonstrably meaningless and cynical platitudes, Obama’s speech to AIPAC today -- with all its ambiguities and narcissistic petulance skilfully captured here by the Telegraph's Toby Harnden -- was a corker. Try this for example:

And we will hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions and for their rhetoric.

Hey, the man should go into vaudeville. So far, Abbas and co have had a laughably free pass despite their serial aggression, bad faith, reneging on treaties and repeated expressions of exterminatory aggression and incitement to hatred and murder of Jews. Yet it’s Israel alone upon which Obama has dumped, by expecting it to make suicidal concessions to its attackers. At best, Obama remains even-handed between Judeophobic exterminators and their victims; that puts him on the side of the exterminators.

The fact is that, for all his ludicrous protestations of friendship towards Israel, Obama believes the Palestinians have a legitimate grievance over the absence of their state. He thus believes their propaganda of historical falsehoods and murderous blood libels. He therefore believes it is a just solution to reward murderous aggression. And that makes Obama a threat not just to Israel but to free societies everywhere.

Nevertheless, it is a shocking fact that the British government‘s position is now even more hostile towards Israel than is Obama’s. For while Obama was very clear that the alliance between Hamas and Fatah was insupportable, the British Foreign Secretary William Hague actually expressed delight at this deal. As the Telegraph’s Benedict Brogan pointed out on his blog about Obama’s proposal:

William Hague on the Politics Show today backed the plan enthusiastically. ‘I hope Israel and the Palestinians will treat the whole change that is now going on in the Middle East as a case for the, the added urgency of the peace process rather than as an excuse not to engage in the peace process,’ he said. Asked by Jon Sopel whether it wasn’t a bit much for Israel to reduce itself to a 10m wide strip when Hamas and its state sponsors still work for its destruction, the Foreign Secretary sounded weirdly optimistic about what a Fatah/Hamas team up could achieve: ‘The reconciliation of the two Palestinian factions is something that is potentially an important step forward because it means there’s a united Palestinian entity for Israel to negotiate with, but it does require them to enter into negotiations in the right spirit and recognising Israel’s right to exist.’

To stretch an already tired metaphor beyond endurance: Obama threw Israel under the bus, but after cries of horror from passers-by stopped and offered the casualty a sip of water; the British, however, proceeded to kick the injured party’s head in.

Bottom line: Obama has started his re-election campaign. Nothing he says is to be taken more seriously than his need to whip the feeble American Jews back into line. And that’s not hard. The few crumbs he threw out to pacify them should do the trick, despite the unusually wary reception he seems to have received at AIPAC today.

Bottom bottom line: it’s all a pile of steaming irrelevance. The Arabs aren’t going to play anyway. The immediate reason for the nine-decade war thus remains firmly in place. The deeper reason, that the aggressor is indulged and rewarded by the west and thus has every incentive to ratchet up his rejectionism and aggression, also remains firmly in place.

That is what Netanyahu has to address. He has to tell America and Britain that this murderous impasse is their fault -- and that only they can end it by refusing for the first time to indulge and reward those committed to the destruction of Israel, the real cause of the continuation of this conflict. Netanyahu did well last Friday. Now he has to turn telling truth to power into a new strategic approach.

A Tale ofTwo Betrayals. by Steve McCann

A Tale of Two Betrayals

The President of the United States has willingly and with forethought placed our long term ally, Israel, whose existence America has guaranteed since 1948, in an untenable situation by his attempt to impose a course of action that, if not followed by Israel, will further inflame the Muslim world and cause international sentiment to turn against Israel.

President Obama is attempting to force a settlement on terms dictated by the Arabs in the Middle East. By setting as a pre-condition the surrender of territory commensurate with the pre-1967 boundaries in any negotiations with the Palestinians, he has instead guaranteed further conflict.

Mr. Obama, the smartest and ablest person to ever occupy the Oval Office (as confirmed by his demeanor and sycophants in the media), either is naive and overweening (synonymous with the Left) or unaware of the failures throughout history caused by intimidating one's ally into giving up land in exchange for peace with someone bent on their destruction.

However, in case the President wasn't aware, about this time 73 years ago there was an eerily similar situation taking place in Europe. Czechoslovakia was a country formed out of the re-drawing of boundaries after the horrific slaughter of World War I and the surrender of Germany and Austria. Much of the Czech border was adjacent to what was left of Germany. But it was defensible border against a nation which for decades exhibited a particularly aggressive stance against its neighbors.

The new nation quickly developed its own economy, government and military while avoiding much of the financial and political chaos taking place in Germany during the 1920's and 30's. However, along its border with Germany was a region called Sudetenland which contained many ethnic Germans, who for the most part were quite content to live within the boundaries of Czechoslovakia.

Adolf Hitler upon assuming power in Germany almost immediately began to cast his eye on recapturing and re-instituting the old German-speaking empire in Europe. Once he realized that the other strong Western European powers would not stand in the way of his immediate ambitions, such as the re-occupation of the Rhineland (controlled by France), he cast his eye toward Czechoslovakia.

In April of 1938, Hitler, together with his allies in the Sudeten Nazi party, issued a demand that Sudetenland by made autonomous and allied with Nazi Germany. A request if granted would leave Czechoslovakia nearly unprotected, as almost all its border defenses were located in this region, as well a large portion of its industry. The Czech government refused to acquiesce to these absurd demands.

Hitler then, knowing that the governments of France and the United Kingdom were set on avoiding war at any cost, ratcheted up his demands and threatened to begin a war by invading Czechoslovakia. Both France and Britain advised the Czech government to accede to Hitler's demands or they would not support them in the event of a war.

Hitler and his henchmen then began to foment unrest in the Sudetenland, which prompted military action by the Czech army in an attempt to restore order. Hitler then claimed that the Czech were indiscriminately slaughtering Sudeten Germans (a wholly false accusation). He demanded that the French and British acquiesce to the German takeover of the region. They agreed and issued an ultimatum to the Czechs, making their commitment to Czechoslovakia's existence contingent on accepting Hitler's demands.

The Czechs reluctantly accepted; however Hitler then increased his demands once more insisting that the claims of ethnic Germans in Poland and Hungary also be satisfied which would have the effect of further decreasing not only the border with Germany but also that of Poland to the north and Hungary to the South. The remaining Czechoslovakia could not survive in such a diminished state.

The Czech government refused these new demands and began to mobilize its military. On September 28, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlin, appealed for a conference with Hitler on this matter along with France and Italy. Czechoslovakia was not invited.

A deal was reached the next day. The German army was to occupy the Sudetenland by October 10, 1938, and an international commission would decide the fate of the other disputed areas; Hitler agreed that he had no further designs on the country and would leave the balance of the Czechoslovakia in peace. The allies would therefore guarantee the survival of the remainder of the country.

Czechoslovakia was informed by Britain and France that it could resist Nazi Germany alone, as they would not honor their defense agreements with Czechoslovakia or submit to the annexations and the terms of the Agreement. Given that option the Czechs capitulated.

Neville Chamberlin flew back to London and proclaimed this Agreement, now known as the "Munich Pact", together with a new peace treaty with Germany as "Peace in our time."

Within six months Czechoslovakia ceased to exist as:

1) October 1938: Germany occupies the Sudetenland
2) October 1938: Poland occupies parts of northern Czechoslovakia
3) November 1938: Hungary occupies parts of southern Czechoslovakia
4) March 1939: The remaining Czech territories were annexed and became part of Germany

Hitler having so successfully intimidated and bullied the European allies over Czechoslovakia and other territory then set his sights on Poland which was invaded in September of 1939 thus triggering the most devastating war in the history of mankind.

It is not a casual observation to notice how many parallels there are with the saga of Czechoslovakia and today's Israel.

Many of the immigrants to the new state of Israel in 1946-1948 originated in the cauldron that was Europe in the 1930's and 40's. They and their progeny remember what happened to Czechoslovakia and other countries that relied on the guarantees of so-called allies for their survival. Israel is surrounded by those whose primary ambition is to destroy and annihilate the people of that country. Barack Obama, by his recent actions, has forced a major question to be asked: will the United States reprise the role of France and Britain in 1938? Will Israel be intimidated and bullied into accepting terms that will have as their end-game the dissolution of the country?

Despite numerous efforts over the past forty years by Israel to negotiate and surrender some land, among other concessions, nothing has or will accomplish peace with the Palestinians and Muslim radicals unless and until all parties have an equal commitment to peace, and most importantly respect for each other. It would do well for the President to understand not only history but human nature before he attempts to satisfy his misguided ambition for an exalted place as the savior of the Middle East. His ham-handed attempt to force a settlement by appeasing the radical Arab street at the expense of Israel will only lead to a potential world-wide conflagration as Iran and it's jihadist allies will only be emboldened to seek more concessions and ultimately war.

Thomas Friedman application of globalization theory to Arab-Israeli conflict is delusional. by Giulio Meotti

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4071894,00.html

Thomas Friedman is one of journalism’s greatest celebrities, the single most famous US interpreter of the Middle East and the liberal columnist who has the most influence on the way Americans understand Israel. His 1989 book “From Beirut to Jerusalem” has been a best-seller, as was “The world is flat.”

Friedman also plays a major role in shaping Obama’s rhetoric about Israel’s return to the pre-1967 armistice line, which the late Abba Eban dubbed the “Auschwitz borders.”

For the first time now, the four digits (1967) have become formal American policy. It was also a Friedman victory. It was he, after all, who invented the so-called “Saudi plan for peace in the Middle East.” And it was Friedman who wrote that the White House is “disgusted” with Israeli interlocutors.

In Manhattan, Friedman is an elegant and wealthy Jewish intellectual. But what are the consequences of his ideas for Israel, the only UN member surrounded by neighbors willing to kill themselves to destroy the Jews, and the nation globally elected to be an emblem of evil?

Friedman has created a myth of personal disillusionment with Israel that is designed to lend credibility to his indictment against the Jewish State. His method is simple and delusional: Applying the globalization theory to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Mutual respect, money, education, computers, Internet, hedonism and modernity are Friedman’s solutions to the nationalistic bloodbath. Economics trumps politics in his technocracy.

As a Jewish reporter in Beirut and Jerusalem, Friedman confessed, he was unable to remain objective because of the “tribal” nature of the conflict. He has described his personal biography as the story of “a Jew who was raised on . . . all the myths about Israel, who goes to Jerusalem in the 1980s and discovers that it isn’t the summer camp of his youth.”

The famous columnist has always been a militant of the Palestinian cause. By the time he graduated from Brandeis University, he was identifying with “Breira”, a pariah group within the American Jewish community. He belonged to the steering committee of a self-styled “Middle East Peace Group” that vigorously opposed the mounting storm of protest among American Jews over Yasser Arafat’s appearance before the United Nations in a time when the Palestinian leader proudly claimed Jewish lives.

In 1985, after the Shiite hijacking of a TWA airliner, Friedman attacked Israel for not releasing the 700 terrorists whose freedom the hijackers were demanding. Israel’s refusal, he claimed, “certainly contributed” to the hijacking.

Friedman has always defended Yasser Arafat and failed to draw attention to his evident connections to terrorism. Friedman then demonized Ariel Sharon, while praising Arab dictators such as Saudi Prince Abdullah. Friedman also “criticized” the Israeli settlers, an entire population group that loyally serves in the army, pays its taxes and defends the state, demonizing them in global columns.

According to the US columnist, Israeli settlers are a “cancer for the Jewish people” and those who “collaborate” in the building of settlements are “enemies of peace” and “enemies of America’s national interest,” no less. Friedman has compared Islamist fanatics who want to destroy Israel to the “lunatics of the Likud” and Arab dictators whose endorsement of suicide bombings threatens Islam to the “collaborators” whose support for a “colonial Israeli occupation” threatens coexistence.

Friedman has always been diligently undermining Israel’s claim to the moral high ground by placing victims of terrorism on the same plain as their barbaric perpetrators. “What Israeli settlers and Palestinian suicide bombers have in common is that they are each pushing for the maximum use of force against the other side,” he wrote after the killing of Kobi Mandell.

For Friedman, building a home on disputed territory is apparently the moral equivalent of stoning Jews to death. To equate the two, as Friedman always does, is to create moral mush. At age fourteen, Kobi was immobilized and stoned to death, his body hidden in a cave. The terrorists soaked their hands in the boy’s blood and smeared the walls of the cave with it.

Friedman also compared terrorist militias in Iraq, who butchered Americans and Iraqis alike, to the Jewish inhabitants of Judea and Samaria. One of Friedman’s columns in 2004 was particularly shocking: “…Mr. Sharon has the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat under house arrest in his office in Ramallah, and he’s had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates.”

Friedman’s language resembled that of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His incredible words, coming at a time when anti-Semitism is skyrocketing globally, were repulsive. From Friedman’s mansion in the Maryland’s woods the Middle East maybe looks really flat. But that’s not an excuse for pushing what can be called Zionicide.

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism

Mark Steyn: The unzippered princeling and the serving wench

Back when he was still the officially designated Next President of France and not an accused rapist, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was glimpsed at the annual IMF soccer tournament wearing a T-shirt emblazoned "YES, WE KAHN!" (Monsieur le directeur was not participating in the game: The field he likes to play requires more horizontal exertions, as even the deferential and protective French media have begun belatedly to acknowledge.) In consciously mimicking the slogan of another and very successful presidential candidate, the IMF boss and Socialist Party candidate improved upon it – or, at any rate, made it more accurate. "Yes, We Can"? Er, no, actually, you can't. But yes, he Kahn!

A man is innocent until proven guilty, and it will be for a New York court to determine what happened in M Strauss-Kahn's suite at the Sofitel. It may well be that's he the hapless victim of a black Muslim widowed penniless refugee maid – although, if that's the defense my lawyer were proposing to put before a Manhattan jury, I'd be inclined to suggest he's the one who needs to plead insanity. Whatever the head of the IMF did or didn't do, the reaction of the French elites is most instructive. "We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization," sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was "not like other men" and wondering why "this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion." Bernard-Henri Lévy, the open-shirted, hairy-chested Gallic intellectual who talked Sarkozy into talking Obama into launching the Libyan war, is furious at the lèse-majesté of this impertinent serving girl and the jackanapes of America's "absurd" justice system, not to mention this ghastly "American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other."

Well, OK. Why shouldn't DSK (as he's known in France) be treated as "a subject of justice like any other"? Because, says BHL (as he's known in France), of everything that Strauss-Kahn has done at the IMF to help the world "avoid the worst." In particular, he has made the IMF "more favorable to proletarian nations and, among the latter, to the most fragile and vulnerable." What is one fragile and vulnerable West African maid when weighed in the scales of history against entire fragile and vulnerable proletarian nations? Yes, he Kahn!

Before you scoff at Euro-lefties willing to argue for 21st century droit de seigneur, recall the grisly eulogies for the late Edward Kennedy. "At the end of the day," said Sen. Evan Bayh, "he cared most about the things that matter to ordinary people." The standard line of his obituarists was that this was Ted's penance for Chappaquiddick and Mary Jo Kopechne – or, as the Aussie columnist Tim Blair put it, "She died so that the Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act might live." Great men who are prone to Big Government invariably have Big Appetites, and you comely serving wenches who catch the benign sovereign's eye or anything else he's shooting your way should keep in mind the Big Picture. Yes, Ted Ken!

Nor are such dispensations confined to Great Men's trousers. Timothy Geithner failed to pay the taxes he owed the United States Treasury but that's no reason not to make him head of the United States Treasury. His official explanation for this lapse was that, unlike losers like you, he was unable to follow the simple yes/no prompts of Turbo Tax: In that sense, unlike the Frenchman and the maid, Geithner's defense is that she wasn't asking for it – or, if she was, he couldn't understand the question. Nevertheless, just as only Dominique could save the European economy, so only Timmy could save the U.S. economy. Yes, they Kahn!

How's that working out? In the U.S., Geithner is currently running around bleating that we need to raise the $14 trillion debt ceiling another couple of trillion. On the Continent, the IMF, an institution most Westerners vaguely assume is there as a last resort for Third World basket cases, is intimately involved in the ever more frantic efforts to save the Euro from collapse. Good thing we had these two indispensable men on the case, or who knows how bad things would be.

The arrest of a mediocre international civil servant in the first-class cabin of his jet isn't just a sex story: It's a glimpse of the widening gulf between the government class and their subjects in a post-prosperity West. Neither Geithner nor Strauss-Kahn have ever created a dime of wealth in their lives. They have devoted their careers to "public service," and thus are in the happy position of rarely if ever having to write a personal check. At the Sofitel in New York, DSK was in a $3,000-per-night suite. Was the IMF picking up the tab? If so, you the plucky U.S. taxpayer paid around 550 bucks of that, whereas Strauss-Kahn's fellow Frenchmen put up less than $150. So if, as Le Nouvel Observateur suggests, France and America really do belong in entirely different civilizations, the French one ought to start looking for a new patron for the heroic DSK's lifestyle.

Full disclosure: I've often stayed at the Sofitel myself, though without billing Western taxpayers for the pleasure. Nor do I generally require the three-grand suite. Given how comfortable the Sofitel's more modest accommodations are, I wonder whether even M Strauss-Kahn does. Especially when he's presiding over an IMF with a budget deficit of some $400 million. But perhaps it would be unreasonable to ask so famously unzippered a man to tighten his belt. After all, according to Ben Stein, my former colleague at The American Spectator, DSK is "one of the most recognizable people on the planet." Many's the time I've seen him exiting a swank restaurant with Justin Bieber and Lindsay Lohan and said, "Hey, there's Dominique Strauss-Kahn with Wossname and Thingummy!"

Fortunately, when the burdens of recognizability get too great, M Strauss-Kahn is able to retreat to his house in Washington, or his apartment in Paris, or his second apartment in Paris, or his riad in Marrakesh. Oh, c'mon, you provincial bozos: A "riad" is a palatial Moorish residence built around an interior courtyard. Everyone knows that. A lifetime of devoted "public service" in "socialist" France isn't yet as remunerative as in Mubarak's Egypt or Saddam's Iraq, but we're getting there. As the developed world drowns under the weight of Big Government, the gilded princelings of statism will hunker down in their interior courtyards and guard their privileges ever more zealously. Once in a while, as in that Manhattan hotel suite, a chance encounter between the seigneurs and their subjects will go awry, but more often, as in the Geithner confirmation, it will be understood that the Great Men of the Permanent Governing Class cannot be bound by the rules they impose on the rest of you schmucks.

Yes, they Kahn. You, not so much. After Charlie Rangel, chair of the House committee that writes America's tax laws, was "censured" by Congress for multiple infractions of, er, America's tax laws, a Washington Times reporter invited him to imagine what punishment the "average American citizen" would have received had he done what the Congressman did. "Please," Rangel told her. "I don't deal in average American citizens."

If only.

©MARK STEYN

The news in Obama’s speech, by Charles Krauthammer

Herewith President Obama’s Middle East speech , annotated:

“It will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.”

With this Barack Obama openly, unreservedly and without a trace of irony or self-reflection adopts the Bush Doctrine, which made the spread of democracy the key U.S. objective in the Middle East.

“Too many leaders in the region tried to direct their people’s grievances elsewhere. The West was blamed as the source of all ills.”

Note how even Obama’s rationale matches Bush’s. Bush argued that because the roots of 9/11 were to be found in the deflected anger of repressed Middle Eastern peoples, our response would require a democratic transformation of the region.

“We have a stake not just in the stability of nations, but in the self-determination of individuals.”

A fine critique of exactly the kind of “realism” the Obama administration prided itself for having practiced in its first two years.

How far did this concession to Bush go? Note Obama’s example of the democratization we’re aiming for. He actually said:

“In Iraq, we see the promise of a multiethnic, multisectarian democracy. There, the Iraqi people have rejected the perils of political violence for a democratic process . . . Iraq is poised to play a key role in the region.”

Hail the Bush-Obama doctrine.

“President Assad now has a choice: he can lead that transition [to democracy], or get out of the way.”

The only jarring note in an otherwise interesting, if convoluted, attempt to unite all current “Arab Spring” policies under one philosophical rubric. Convoluted because the Bahrain part was unconvincing and the omission of Saudi Arabia was unmistakable.

Syria’s Assad leading a transition to democracy? This is bizarre and appalling. Assad has made all-out war on his people — shooting, arresting, executing, even using artillery against cities. Yet Obama is still holding out the olive branch when, if anything, he should be declaring Assad as illegitimate as Gaddafi. Clearly, some habits
of engagement/appeasement die hard.

“A lasting peace will involve . . . Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people.”

Meant to reassure Israelis that the administration rejects the so-called right of return of Palestinian refugees. They would return to Palestine, not Israel — Palestine being their homeland, and Israel (which would cease to be Jewish if flooded with refugees) being a Jewish state. But why use code for an issue on which depends Israel’s existence?

“The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

A new formulation favorable to maximal Arab demands. True, that idea has been the working premise for negotiations since 2000. But no president had ever before publicly and explicitly endorsed the 1967 lines.

Even more alarming to Israel is Obama’s omission of previous American assurances to recognize “realities on the ground” in adjusting the 1967 border, meaning U.S. agreement that Israel would incorporate the thickly populated, close-in settlements in any land swap. By omitting this, Obama leaves the impression of indifference to the fate of these settlements. This would be a significant change in U.S. policy and a heavy blow to the Israeli national consensus.

“The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves . . . in a sovereign and contiguous state.”

Normal U.S. boilerplate except for one thing: Obama refers to Palestinian borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel. But the only Palestinian territory bordering Egypt is Gaza. How do you get contiguity with Gaza? Does Obama’s map force Israel to give up a corridor of territory connecting the West Bank and Gaza? This is an old Palestinian demand that would cut Israel in two. Is this simply an oversight? Or a new slicing up of Israel?

Finally, in calling for both parties to “come back to the table,” the Palestinians have to explain “the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas. . . . How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist?”

Not a strong statement about Washington rejecting any talks involving Hamas. A mere placeholder.

On the other hand, Obama made no mention here of Israeli settlements. A mere oversight? Or has Obama finally realized that his making a settlement freeze a precondition for negotiations — something never demanded before he took office — was a disastrous unforced error? One can only hope.