Caroline Glick :: September 2011 Archives

New Year's Greetings from Latma

Thank you for following our broadcasts at Latma each week.

Below is our Shana Tova greeting you and all of Israel, (and Israel's friends). Thanks to Matisyahu for writing the original.

I hope you all have a wonderful year.

And here's this week full Tribal Update. Enjoy!

Latma is funded through contributions to the Center for Security Policy in Washington. If you are in the United States and would like to support our efforts, you can contribute by clicking here. It takes you to the online contribution page for the Center for Security Policy through Network for Good. To earmark your donation to Latma, please write "Latma" in the box marked "designation."

If you live outside the US, we formed a non-profit organization in Israel to accept donations from outside the US called the Zionist Incubator.

Here is the information you need to make wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

First of all, here is the link to Latma's page for donating by credit card through PayPal.

Second, here is the information you need to wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

Bank Name: Israel Discount Bank Ltd.

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Branch Name: Mevasseret Zion

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Account Number (IBAN 23 digits): IL94-0115-1000-0010-4351-154

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Posted on September 28, 2011 at 8:52 AM

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A prayer for 5772

Upon his return to Ramallah from New York, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was greeted by a crowd of several thousand well-wishers. They applauded him for his speech at the UN. There, Abbas erased Jewish history from the Land of Israel, denied Israel's right to exist and pledged his commitment to establish a racist Palestinian state ethnically cleansed of all Jews.

Many of Abbas's supporters in Ramallah held posters of US President Barack Obama. On them Obama was portrayed as a monkey. The caption read, "The First Jewish President of the United States."

The fact that the Palestinians from Fatah and Hamas alike are Jew-hating racists should surprise no one who has been paying a modicum of attention to the Palestinian media and general culture. Since the PA was established in 1994 in the framework of the peace process between Israel and the PLO, it has used the media organs, schools and mosques it controls to spew out a constant flow of anti-Semitic propaganda. Much of the Jew-hating bile is indistinguishable from anti-Jewish propaganda published by the Nazis.

As for their anti-black bigotry, it is enough to recall the frequency with which Condoleezza Rice was depicted as a monkey and a devil in the Palestinian and pan-Arab media during George W. Bush's presidency to realize that the racist depiction of Obama was not a fluke. Moreover, and more disturbingly, it is worth recalling that like its fellow Arab League members, the PA has strongly supported Sudan's genocide of black Africans in Darfur.

To a degree, the willingness of African-Americans to turn a blind eye to Arab anti-black prejudice is understandable. Since the mid-1960s, oil rich Arab kingdoms led by Saudi Arabia have spent hundreds of millions of petrodollars in outreach to African-Americans. This outreach includes but is not limited to massive proselytization efforts among inner city blacks. The combination of a strong and growing African-American Muslim population and a general sense of amity towards Muslims as a result of outreach efforts contribute to a willingness on the part of African- Americans to overlook Arab anti-black racism.

Unlike African-Americans, Jewish Americans have been targeted by no serious outreach campaigns by the likes of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab world. To the contrary, as Mitchell Bard documented in his book The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East, these Arab nations have spared no effort in anti-Israel lobbying in the US. Among the Arab lobby's goals is to undermine the legitimacy of American Jewish lobbying on behalf of Israel.

Furthermore, the anti-Jewish atmosphere in the Arab world is far more comprehensive and poisonous than its anti-black prejudice. A Pew global opinion poll from 2008 showed that hatred of Jews is effectively universal in the Arab world and overwhelming in non-Arab Muslim states. In Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon, between 95 and 97 percent of respondents expressed hatred of Jews. In Indonesia, Turkey and Pakistan between two-thirds and three-quarters of respondents expressed hatred of Jews.

Jew-hatred among Muslim minorities in the West is less overwhelming. But Muslim antagonism towards Jews vastly outstrips that of the general populations of their countries. According to a Pew survey from 2006, while 7% of British citizens express unfavorable views of Jews, 47% of British Muslims admit to such views. In France, 13% of the general population admits to harboring negative feelings towards Jews and 28% of French Muslims do. Likewise in Germany, 22% of the general population acknowledges anti-Semitic views and 44% of German Muslims do.

More dangerously, the quantity of anti-Semitic attacks carried out by Muslims in the West far outstrips their percentage in the general population. According to Pew data, in 2010 Muslims comprised just 4.6% of the population of the UK but carried out 39% of the anti-Semitic attacks. Moreover, according to the Times Online, in 2006, 37% of British Muslims claimed that British Jews are legitimate targets for attacks. Only 30% of British Muslims disagreed.

WITH THE overwhelming data showing that throughout the Arab world there is strong support for organizations and regimes which advocate the genocide of world Jewry, the American Jewish community could have been expected to devote the majority of its attention and resources to exposing and combating this existential threat. Just as the American Jewish community dedicated itself in the past to causes such as the liberation of Soviet Jewry and fighting neo-Nazi groups in the US and throughout the world, it could have been expected that from the Anti-Defamation League to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, that major American Jewish groups would be using the financial and human resources at their disposal to defend against this violent, genocidal hatred.

But this has not occurred. Many leading American Jewish organizations continue to be far more involved in combating the currently relatively benign anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church and Evangelical Christians than confronting the escalating dangers of Muslim anti-Semitism.

According to a Gallup poll released last month, 80% of American Jews have favorable views of American Muslims. Seventy percent believe that they are not supportive of al-Qaida. These data indicate that American Jews are second only to American Muslims in their support for Muslim Americans. Indeed 6% more American Jews than American Muslims believe that American Muslims face prejudice due to their religion.

American Jewish championing of American Muslims is disconcerting when compared with American Jewish treatment of the philo-Semitic Evangelical Christians. Matthew Knee discussed this issue in depth in a recent article published at the Legal Insurrection website.

In a 2003 Pew survey, 42% of American Jews expressed antagonism towards Evangelical Christians. In a 2004 American National Election Study, Jews on average rated Evangelical Christians at 30 out of 100 on a "feeling thermometer," where 1 was cold and 100 was hot.

A 2005 American Jewish Committee survey found that Jews assessed that following Muslims, Evangelical Christians have the highest propensity for being anti-Semites. And yet, in the same 2004 American National Election Survey, Evangelical Christians rated Jews an average of 82 on the 1- 100 feelings scale. Evangelical Christians rated Catholics at 80.

Consistent survey data show that levels of anti- Semitism among Evangelical Christians is either the same as or slightly lower than the national average. According to a 2007 ADL survey, the US average is 15%.

There is a clear disparity between survey data on anti-Semitism among various American ethnic groups and American Jews' assessment of the prevalence of anti-Semitism among the same groups. The AJC survey found that American Jews believed that 29% of Evangelicals are largely anti- Semitic. They assessed that only 7% of Hispanics and 19% of African-Americans are anti-Semites.

As it works out, their perceptions are completely incorrect. According to the 2007 ADL survey, foreign born Hispanics, and African-Americans, harbor significantly stronger anti-Semitic views than the national average. Twenty-nine percent of foreign born Hispanics harbor very anti-Semitic views. Thirty-two percent of African-Americans harbor deeply anti-Semitic views.

Like Jews, Hispanics, African-Americans and Muslims vote disproportionately for the Democratic Party. Evangelical Christians on the other hand, are reliably Republican. A 2009 survey on US anti- Semitism conducted by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco found that Democrats are more likely to be anti-Semitic than Republicans.

The Gallup survey from last month showing American Jews' deep support for American Muslims is of particular interest because that support stands in stark contrast with survey data concerning American Jewish perception of Muslim American anti-Semitism.

THE 2005 AJC survey showed that American Jews believe that 58% of American Muslims are anti- Semitic. That is, American Jews are Muslim Americans' strongest non-Muslim defenders at the same time they are convinced that most Muslim Americans are anti-Semites.

What can explain this counterintuitive behavior? And how can we account for the apparent pattern of incorrect Jewish perceptions of anti-Semitism among Evangelical Christians on the one hand and fellow Democrats on the other hand?

As Knee argues, the disparity may very well be due to partisan loyalties. The Democratic Party has openly engaged in fear mongering and demonization of Evangelical Christians in order to maintain Jewish loyalty to the party. Knee quotes then-Democratic national chairman Howard Dean's statement that "Jews should feel comfortable in being American Jews without being constrained from practicing their faith or be compelled to convert to another religion."

As for Muslims, Knee cites a press release from the National Jewish Democratic Council from March attacking Congressman Peter King's hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims. In the press release, the council claimed that such hearings "can and will" harm religious tolerance in America. That is, the council implied that by investigating the radicalization of American Muslims - and its concomitant transformation of American Muslims into supporters of the genocidal Jew-hatred endemic among radical Muslims worldwide - Rep. King is endangering Jews.

If American Jews are most concerned with being able to maintain their loyalty to the Democratic Party, then it makes sense for them to wildly exaggerate Evangelical anti-Semitism. It is reasonable for them to underestimate African-American and Hispanic anti-Semitism, and ignore the higher rates of anti-Semitism among Democrats than among Republicans. Moreover, it makes sense for them to follow their party's lead in failing to address the dangers of global Islamic anti- Semitism.

None of this makes sense, however, if American Jews are most concerned with defending Jews - in America and worldwide - from anti-Semitic sentiments and violence.

On Wednesday evening we begin our celebration of the New Year. Rosh Hashana marks a period of soul-searching among Jews. We are called upon at this time to account for our actions and our failures to act and to improve our faithfulness to our people, to our laws and to God.

It is possible that American Jews are simply unaware of the disparities between reality and their perceptions of reality. But it is the duty of all Jews to educate ourselves about the threats that reality poses to ourselves and our people.

At the UN last week, Abbas received accolades and applause from all quarters for his anti-Semitic assault on Jewish history and the Jewish state. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's remarks were applauded by Israel-supporters in the audience in the General Assembly.

As Israel is increasingly isolated and Jews worldwide are under attack, it is my prayer for the coming year that the American Jewish community will come to terms with a difficult reality and the choices it entails, and act with the majority of their fellow Americans to defend Israel and combat anti-Semitism in the US and throughout the world.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 27, 2011 at 6:09 PM

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The action behind the camera - AMAZING VIDEO

Watch the following video of the remarkable work of a young Italian photographer named Ruben Salvadori. Ruben's project "Photojournalism Behind the Scenes won Milan's prestigious Photodreaming Contest organized by the Forma Foundation.

Here's the link to the write-up of his work.

Posted on September 26, 2011 at 4:01 PM

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The UN Choir Presents: Somebody to Hate

From the geniuses at Latma who brought you We Con the World, we proudly present the UN Choir singing "Somebody to Hate."

Trust us, this is the most authentic representation of the general dynamics of the UN you'll ever see set to music.

Enjoy, send it out to your friends, post it on your Facebook pages and blogs and have a great weekend. This week's full Tribal Update will be posted here soon.

Shabbat shalom!

UPDATE:

Here's this week's entire episode. In addition to the UN Choir we also bring you our well educated commentator for all issue of national importance.

Latma is funded through contributions to the Center for Security Policy in Washington. If you are in the United States and would like to support our efforts, you can contribute by clicking here. It takes you to the online contribution page for the Center for Security Policy through Network for Good. To earmark your donation to Latma, please write "Latma" in the box marked "designation."

If you live outside the US, we formed a non-profit organization in Israel to accept donations from outside the US called the Zionist Incubator.

Here is the information you need to make wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

First of all, here is the link to Latma's page for donating by credit card through PayPal.

Second, here is the information you need to wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

Bank Name: Israel Discount Bank Ltd.

Branch Number: 510

Branch Name: Mevasseret Zion

BIC Code: IDBLILITXXX

Account Number (IBAN 23 digits): IL94-0115-1000-0010-4351-154

Beneficiary's Name: Zionist Incubator

Beneficiary's address: POB 841 Mevasseret Zion, Israel 90805

Posted on September 23, 2011 at 9:02 AM

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NRO blog post - Israel at the UN: A sucker's game

I posted the following last night at NRO's blog The Corner:

This week's Palestinian-statehood extravaganza at the U.N. is being billed as something of a modern-day showdown at the O.K. Corral. If the Palestinians gain recognition of their state, then Israel is the big loser. And if the Palestinians fail to gain U.N. recognition of "Palestine" as a member state, then Israel is the big winner.

But the situation is more complex. By going to the U.N., the Palestinians have shown their absolute bad faith in previous negotiations with Israel, and indeed exposed the entire peace process as a lie. The peace process was based on the assumption that a Palestinians state could emerge only at the end of a comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. That is, such a state would be at peace with Israel.

By bypassing negotiations, the Palestinians seek to gain a state that will be born in a state of war with Israel.

The U.S. and European response to this initiative has been utterly shocking. The Europeans, led by French president Nicolas Sarkozy, have given their enthusiastic support to the Palestinians.

As for the U.S., by rejecting a cutoff of financial assistance and political support to the Palestinians in the face of their rejection of peace with Israel, the Obama administration has signaled to the Palestinians that there is no price to be paid for their aggressive bad faith.

In short, the EU and the U.S. are rewarding the Palestinians for abandoning the centerpiece of European and U.S. Middle East policy for the past generation -- the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

Given this situation, even if their bid for U.N. membership fails, the Palestinians will have won.

#more#From Israel's perspective, the best possible outcome of the current standoff at the U.N. is for the Palestinians to present their resolution for statehood to the Security Council and for the U.S. to immediately veto it. Such a move would provide closure to this particular round of anti-Israel aggression. But it certainly wouldn't end the danger. The Palestinians can renew their request as often as they please. And given the sympathetic -- indeed enthusiastic -- reception they have received at the U.N., there is little reason to doubt that they will do so.

The worse scenario from Israel's perspective is quickly becoming the more likely one. That scenario is that the Security Council will not bring the Palestinian-statehood resolution to an immediate vote but will instead delay voting on it for an indeterminate period. During that period, the U.S. and the EU will exert massive pressure on Israel to capitulate to whatever Palestinian preconditions for renewing negotiations are on hand.

Israel will face the prospect that if it fails to surrender to all the Palestinian demands, the U.N. will retaliate by passing the Palestinian-statehood resolution. At a minimum, Israel will find itself under a constant barrage of criticism blaming it for the Palestinian decision to abandon the peace process and ask the U.N. to grant them what they refuse to negotiate with Israel.

All of this could have been averted or at least mitigated if the Obama administration had behaved differently. If the White House had announced at an early date that it would automatically veto any resolution calling for Palestinian U.N. membership and would end all U.S. financial and political support for the Palestinian Authority if it went through with its stated aim of applying for U.N. membership as a state, the Palestinians would likely have set aside their plans. But still today President Obama has refused to take any punitive action against the PA and, according to the New York Times, forced Israel to lobby Congress not to cut off foreign aid to the PA.

On the positive side, the Palestinian decision to abandon the peace process provides Israel with justification for doing the same. If Israel's government is wise and courageous, it will end its financial and political support for the PA. It will also take steps toward applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria much as it applied Israeli law to Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the past.

Posted on September 23, 2011 at 2:05 AM

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Israel's path to victory

There is something surreal about the coverage of developments this week at the UN. The general tenor is akin to the showdown at the OK Corral. Either the Palestinians win recognition of statehood, or they don't. If they do, they win. If they don't, Israel wins.

The problem with this message is that even if the Palestinians don't receive UN membership they still win. There is no scenario in which Israel wins at the UN. The reason is simple. The UN is profoundly hostile to Israel. It has a large, permanent, automatic majority of members that always supports harming Israel.

In the present circumstances, the best case scenario for Israel is that the Palestinians bring their membership resolution before the Security Council and the US immediately vetoes it. If that happens, at least we'll have closure in this particular fight.

But even such a "victory" will have little lasting effect. There is nothing preventing the Palestinians from reinstating their membership request whenever they want. And given the sympathy their current membership bid has won them, the Palestinians have every reason to repeat the process again and again and again.

By Thursday, it appeared that the most likely outcome of their present statehood bid will not be a quick US veto in the Security Council, but rather something much worse for Israel. On Wednesday morning, talk had already begun of a long, drawn out period of deliberation at the Security Council which could last weeks or months or even longer.

The idea is that during that time, the US and the Europeans will place massive pressure on Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians in order to restart stillborn negotiations. And the specter of a Security Council endorsement of Palestinian statehood will loom over Israel's head the entire time like the Sword of Damocles.

Rather than wash its hands of this loser's game and move its policies to a diplomatic battlefield where it has a chance of actually winning, the Netanyahu government is playing out its losing hand as if what Israel does makes a difference. Even worse, the government is refusing to consider crafting a strategy for victory that it can advance outside the hostile confines of the UN.

This is not simply a failure of imagination. It is a failure of cognition. It is a failure to notice the significance of what is already happening.

Israel's friends in the US Congress have put forward two measures that pave the way for just such a strategy for victory. By failing to recognize the opportunity they represent for Israel, the government is showing a distressing lack of competence.

The government's behavior is probably due to force of habit. Since the initiation of the phony peace process with the PLO 18 years ago, at their best, Israel's governments have justified the Jewish state's control over territories it won control over in the 1967 Six Day War on the basis of our security needs. Without the Jordan Valley, Israel is vulnerable to foreign invasion from the east. Without Gush Etzion to Jerusalem's south and Gush Adumim to its north, the capital is vulnerable to attack. Without overall Israeli security control over Judea and Samaria, Israel's population centers are vulnerable to terrorist attacks. And so on and so forth.

All of these statements are accurate. But they are also defensive. While Israel has been defending its right to security, the Palestinians have been on the offensive, arguing that all the land that Israel took control over from Jordan in 1967 belongs to them by ancestral right. And so for the past 18 years, the conflict has been framed as a dispute between the Palestinians' rights and Israel's security requirements.

Like its willingness to place itself at the UN's mercy, Israel's willingness to accept this characterization of the Palestinian conflict with Israel has doomed its cause to repeated and ever-escalating failure. For if the land belongs to the Palestinians, then whether or not their control of the land endangers Israel is irrelevant.

This is the reason the US's support for Israel's right to defensible borders has been reduced from support for perpetual Israeli control over unified Jerusalem and some 50 percent of Judea and Samaria in 1993, to US support for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines - including the partition of Jerusalem - in 2011. You can define "defensive needs" down. Defining rights down is a more difficult undertaking.

The irony here is that Israel's sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria are ironclad while the Palestinians' are flimsy. As the legal heir to the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, Israel is the legal sovereign of Judea and Samaria.

Moreover, Israel's historic rights to the cradle of Jewish civilization are incontrovertible.

And yet, because Israel has not wanted to impede on the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians, for the past 18 years it has avoided mentioning its rights and instead focused solely on its security requirements. Consequently, outside of Bible-literate Christian communities, today most people are comfortable parroting the totally false Palestinian claim that Jews have no rights to Judea, Samaria or Jerusalem. They further insist that rights to these areas belong exclusively to the Palestinians who did not even exist as a distinct national community in 1967.

As for Israel's allies in the US Congress, they have responded to the PLO's UN statehood gambit with two important legislative initiatives. First Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced a bill calling for the US to end its financial support for the Palestinian Authority and drastically scale-back its financial support for the UN if the UN upgrades the PLO's membership status in any way. Ros- Lehtinen's bill shows Israel that there is powerful support for an Israeli offensive that will make the Palestinians pay a price for their diplomatic aggression.

Ros-Lehtinen's bill is constructive for two reasons. First, it makes the Palestinians pay for their adversarial behavior. This will make them think twice before again escalating their diplomatic warfare against Israel. Second, it begins an overdue process of delegitimizing the Palestinian cause, which as is now clear is inseparable from the cause of Israel's destruction.

Were Israel to follow Ros-Lehtinen's lead and cut off its transfer of tax revenues to the PA, and indeed, stop collecting taxes on the PA's behalf, it would be advancing Israel's interests in several ways.

It would remind the Palestinians that they need Israel far more than Israel needs them.

Israel would make them pay a price for their diplomatic aggression.

Israel would end its counterproductive policy of giving the openly hostile PA an automatic seal of approval regardless of its treatment of Israel.

Israel would diminish the financial resources at the PA's disposal for the advance of its war against Israel.

Finally, Israel would pave the way for the disbandment of the PA and its replacement by another authority in Judea and Samaria.

And this brings us to the second congressional initiative taken in anticipation of the PLO's UN statehood gambit. Earlier this month, Rep. Joe Walsh and 30 co-sponsors issued a resolution supporting Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria.

While annexation sounds like a radical formula, the fact is that Israel already implemented a similar move twice when it applied Israeli law to Jerusalem and to the Golan Heights. And the heavens didn't fall in either case. Indeed, the situation on the ground was stabilized.

Moreover, just as Israel remains willing to consider ceding these territories in the framework of a real peace with its neighbors, so the application of Israeli law to Judea and Samaria would not prevent these areas from being ceded to another sovereign in the framework of a peace deal.

And while not eliminating the prospects of a future peace, by applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria, Israel would reverse one of the most pernicious effects of the 18-year-old phony peace process: the continuous erosion of international recognition of Israel's sovereign rights to these areas.

With each passing round of failed negotiations, offers that Israel made but were rejected were not forgotten. Rather they formed the starting point for the next round of failed negotiations. So while then-prime minister Ehud Barak for instance claimed that his offer to cede the Temple Mount was contingent on the signing of a peace treaty, when the so-called Middle East Quartet issued its road map plan for peace, Barak's ostensibly canceled offer was the starting point of negotiations.

By applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria, Israel would change the baseline for future negotiations in a manner that enhances its bargaining position.

Perhaps most important, by applying its laws to the areas, Israel would demonstrate that it finally understands that rights need to be asserted by deeds, not just by words, if they are to be taken seriously.

On Thursday, The New York Times published a news story/analysis that essentially rewrote the history of the last two-and-a-half years. The paper ignored Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas's open admission that US President Barack Obama compelled him to radicalize his own policies towards Israel when Obama demanded that Israel abrogate Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as a precondition for negotiations.

This was a precondition the Palestinians themselves had never demanded. And by making it a US demand, Obama ended any possibility of resuming negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel.

By the Times' telling, Obama is a victim of the combined forces of an intransigent Israeli government and the pro-Israel lobby that holds sway in Congress. These nefarious forces made it impossible for Obama to bring the sort of pressure to bear on Israel that would have placated the Arab world and paved the way for a peaceful settlement. And in the absence of such presidential power, Israel and its lobbyists wrecked Obama's reputation in the Arab world.

The lesson that Israel should take from the Times' borderline anti-Semitic historical revisionism and conspiracy theories is twofold. First, Israel will never be rewarded for its concessions. The Times and its fellow anti-Israel activists don't care that since 2009 - and indeed since 1993 - Israel has made one concession after another only to be rewarded time after time with ever-escalating demands for more concessions. The Times and its fellow Israel-baiters have a story of Israeli conspiracies and bad faith to tell. And they will tell that tale regardless of objective facts and observable reality.

This brings us to the second lesson of the Times article, specifically, and the experience at the UN generally. Israel has nothing to lose and everything to gain from going on the offensive. Our friends in the US Congress have shown us a path that lays open to us to follow. And we must follow it. Since we'll be blamed no matter what we do, we have no excuse for not doing what is best for us.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 22, 2011 at 11:55 PM

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Heroism is what happens when everything is broken

Watch the amazing interview below with Dakota Meyer, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor last week for unbelievable heroism in battle in Afghanistan.

It made me cry for two reasons. First, because his heroism is so awesome. And second because this sort of thing is inevitable when governments don't want to win wars. The officers at the command center certainly were negligent. But if the US government hadn't hamstrung their warriors with rules of engagement that make it impossible to fight the officers in the rear probably wouldn't have been so insensitive to the situation on the ground that ended up requiring Meyer and his brothers to make incomprehensible sacrifices to save those that were not saved by the chain of command.

We have seen this sort of thing over and over again in all the wars democracies have fought beginning in Vietnam.

I'm reading a pretty good novel now about that war and the hideous 1960s called Altamont Augie. The book explores the question of whether people on opposite ends of the political divide can love each other. If you're looking for a good novel that to a degree brings us back to the beginning of Western Civilization's suicide attempt, this may be for you.

Anyway, watch the interview with Meyer and consider Churchill's statement after the Battle of Britain, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

The only problem with Churchill's words is that in truth the many always owe our lives to the few. This is especially the case now when the heirs of the 1960s "New Left" have so constrained our permitted discourse that our leaders are cowed into submission and refuse to do what it takes to defend our way of life.

God bless Meyer and his brothers in the US Marine Corps and the rest of the US armed forces who fight because it's the right thing to do. God bless the warriors of the Israel Defense Force who do the same. And may we live to see the day when these men and women are led by leaders worthy of their sacrifices.

Posted on September 20, 2011 at 4:39 AM

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Funding the enemy

Speaking Sunday at the UN's conference of donors to the Palestinian Authority, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon warned that while Israel supports economic assistance to the PA now, that is liable to change within the week.

As he put it, "Future assistance and cooperation could be severely and irreparably compromised if the Palestinian leadership continues on its path of essentially acting in contravention of all signed agreements which also regulate existing economic relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority."

Ayalon's position is eminently reasonable. Unfortunately, it contradicts utterly the official position of the Government of Israel.

The government's position was transmitted on Friday to the same donor conference that Ayalon was participating in. According to the government document, "Israel calls for ongoing international support for the PA budget and development projects that will contribute to the growth of a vibrant private sector, which will provide the PA an expanded base for generating internal revenue."

Israel's move was reportedly championed by the Defense Ministry and the IDF senior brass, which reportedly adamantly opposes cutting off any aid to the PA, including aid to the US-trained and financed Palestinian army in Judea and Samaria. As The Jerusalem Post reported on Sunday, senior Defense Ministry officials argue that an aid cutoff is liable to lead to the PA's collapse and PA employees - which comprise the majority of Palestinian workers - may become violent.

As one Defense Ministry senior official told the paper, "It is important that we retain financial stability, even after their unilateral moves. Stopping money transfers could lead to a financial crisis which could lead to a violent escalation."

In other words, the Defense Ministry argues that if the donor countries stop paying off the Palestinian militias - including the US-trained and funded Palestinian army - then their supposedly moderate forces will turn to the terror business to support themselves.

Aside from being strategically insane, this position bespeaks an unjustifiable unwillingness on the part of the leftist-dominated Defense Ministry to understand the basic nature of the Palestinian cause and what it requires from Israel.

Since the IDF and the Foreign Ministry and the rest of the government bureaucracy embraced the PLO as Israel's "peace partner" 18 years ago, they have been operating on the assumption that the PLO and its spinoffs - Fatah and the PA - are interested in reaching a peace deal with Israel. But this has never been the case.

For the PLO and its spinoffs, the Palestinian conflict has always been and will always be a zero sum game. The goal of the Oslo process, the goal of the PA, of the Palestinian militias, and of the UN bid is one: to strengthen the Palestinians and weaken Israel.

As far as Israel's "peace partner" is concerned, Israel can never concede enough. There is no deal that Israel can ever offer that the Palestinians will ever accept. Even if Israel offered to destroy itself and hand its ruins to the Palestinians, the Palestinians would pocket the concession and then declare war against whatever remnants remain of the defunct Jewish state in order to "liberate" the land from its Jewish "occupiers."

We know this is the case because this is what the Palestinians - led by the PLO/Fatah/PA - did in Gaza after Israel unilaterally surrendered. The last military vehicle had barely cleared the border when the Palestinians torched the synagogues Israel had left standing.

So too, after Ehud Barak essentially offered the Palestinians Israel's head on a platter when he offered them the Temple Mount, they pocketed his offer and began butchering Israelis in a bid to "liberate" the Temple Mount.

The much vaunted Palestinian security forces organized, funded and directed the terror war. And the internationally financed PA budget paid for it.

The reason that the Palestinians are turning to the UN is not because they cannot receive statehood in the framework of a peace deal with Israel. They are going to the UN because they don't want a peace deal with Israel. They want sovereignty and they want to remain at war with Israel.

For 18 years the IDF's top brass has refused to recognize the game that the PLO has been playing since the onset of the fake peace process. Informed by the leftist establishment, the IDF's senior officers vacuously argue that Israel's only option is to strengthen the PA, including its US-trained and funded army.

This appeasement mindset has paralyzed the IDF's ability to develop comprehensive strategies for victory for nearly a generation. And the IDF's leadership clings to appeasement despite the fact that the public has completely rejected it due to its consistent failure.

The basic rule of commonsense policy-making is to be good to your friends and bad to your enemies because then people will want to be your friends and they will not want to be your enemies. The appeasement mindset turns this rule on its head.

As far as the appeasers are concerned, you must be good to your enemies and bad to your friends because your enemies will stop hating you if you're nice to them. As for your friends, they are wrong to be your friends since you have yet to be worthy of friendship since you have not yet appeased your enemies.

By supporting continued foreign aid to the Palestinians in the aftermath of their UN bid the government has adopted a classic appeasement policy. It has told the Palestinians that they will pay no price for their act of aggression. Worse, Israel just told them they will be rewarded. Israel has gone on record saying it cannot manage without the Palestinian governing body that exists to destroy it.

As for Israel's friends, the government just pulled the rug out from under their feet. Cong. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is a true friend of Israel. Her bill calling for a cutoff of US aid to the PA and a massive decrease of US aid to the UN in the event the UN upgrades the Palestinians' diplomatic status is one of the most important pieces of pro-Israel legislation to be introduced in the US Congress in a generation.

By announcing it opposes an aid cutoff, Israel undermined Ros-Lehtinen's position. It betrayed its good friend.

No doubt Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman were under great pressure from the IDF and from the Obama administration to call for continued international funding of the PA. But the public didn't elect them with the expectation that they would abandon Israel's national interest and harm its friends just because they feel the heat.

The appeasers claim that Israel wins international approval by being good to its enemies. But 18 years of consistently attacking its friends and praising its foes has brought Israel to the brink of international isolation. We have empowered our foes and demoralized our friends. And now we continue to squander what little diplomatic influence we still have left in a bid to again aid the Palestinians in their continued war against us.

If the government thinks that Ayalon's statement can repair the damage it just caused the country, it should think again. The only way to fix what just happened is for the government to issue a new policy supporting the cutting off of foreign aid to the Palestinians and announcing that Israel will stop transferring tax revenues to them if their status at the UN is upgraded in any way. And Netanyahu should pick up the phone and personally apologize to Ros-Lehtinen for his government's disgraceful behavior.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 20, 2011 at 2:27 AM

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Where was Tantawi during the embassy attack?

This week on the Tribal Update, the weekly satirical newscast produced by Latma, the Hebrew-language, satirical media criticism website I run, we bring you and interview with Egyptian Field Marshal Tantawi, the head of the ruling military junta who our intrepid reporters tracked down during last weekend's mob assault on the Israeli embassy in Cairo.

We also bring you a Turkish naval captain discussing Turkey's plans to destroy Israel.

This past week the Israeli media scene was rocked by Channel 10s broadcast of an apology to Sheldon Adelson for a completely bogus "investigative report" the station ran on him in January. The apology spurred howls of protest from our media elites claiming that it meant that their right to free speech is being stifled by rich people.

We interview Channel 10s celebrity victim "Shai Tohar" to describe the crisis.

And there is much, much more.

Also - many of you have emailed me asking about our regular anchorwoman Ronit Avramov-Shapira. Well, Ronit gave birth to a healthy baby daughter on Tuesday.

Enjoy the show!

Latma is funded through contributions to the Center for Security Policy in Washington. If you are in the United States and would like to support our efforts, you can contribute by clicking here. It takes you to the online contribution page for the Center for Security Policy through Network for Good. To earmark your donation to Latma, please write "Latma" in the box marked "designation."

If you live outside the US, we formed a non-profit organization in Israel to accept donations from outside the US called the Zionist Incubator.

Here is the information you need to make wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

First of all, here is the link to Latma's page for donating by credit card through PayPal.

Second, here is the information you need to wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

Bank Name: Israel Discount Bank Ltd.

Branch Number: 510

Branch Name: Mevasseret Zion

BIC Code: IDBLILITXXX

Account Number (IBAN 23 digits): IL94-0115-1000-0010-4351-154

Beneficiary's Name: Zionist Incubator

Beneficiary's address: POB 841 Mevasseret Zion, Israel 90805

Posted on September 16, 2011 at 2:11 PM

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The Palestinian obsession

If nothing else, the Palestinians' UN statehood gambit goes a long way towards revealing the deep-seated European and US pathologies that enable and prolong the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

In a nutshell, the Palestinian Authority - or Fatah - or PLO initiative of asking the UN Security Council and the General Assembly to upgrade its status to that of a sovereign UN member state or a sovereign non-UN member state is an act of diplomatic aggression.

Eighteen years ago this week, on September 13, 1993, the PLO signed the Declaration of Principles with Israel on the White House lawn.

There, the terror group committed itself to a peace process in which all disputes between Israel and the PLO - including the issue of Palestinian statehood - would be settled in the framework of bilateral negotiations.

The PA was established on the basis of this accord. The territory, money, arms and international legitimacy it has been given was due entirely to the PLO pledge to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel through bilateral negotiations.

By abandoning negotiations with Israel two years ago, and opting instead to achieve its nationalist aims outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel, the Palestinians are destroying the diplomatic edifice on which the entire concept of a peace process is based. They are announcing that they have no intention of living at peace with Israel. Rather they intend to move ahead at Israel's expense.

In truth, there is little new in the Palestinians' behavior. They have been using the UN to weaken Israel diplomatically since the early 1970s. Moreover, even if their bid does provide them with upgraded diplomatic status, it won't change the reality on the ground, nor are the Palestinians particularly interested in changing the situation on the ground.

As the PLO ambassador in Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, made clear in an interview Wednesday with Lebanon's Daily Star, in the event that the UN recognizes some form of Palestinian statehood at the UN, the new "State of Palestine" will still expect the UN to support the so-called Palestinian "refugees."

This is true, he said, even for the "refugees" who live in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. That is, the same UN that the Palestinians seek recognition of statehood from will be expected to provide relief to Palestinian "refugees" living inside "Palestine."

As he put it, "Even Palestinian refugees living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens."

So if nothing will change on the ground, why do the US and the EU care what the Palestinians do at the UN next week with their automatic General Assembly majority?

Why have the senior peace-processors of Washington and Europe descended on Jerusalem and Ramallah, begging and pleading with the Palestinians to cancel their plans?

Why have the Americans and the Europeans been pressuring Israel to make massive concessions to the Palestinians in order to convince them to put out the diplomatic fire there have set at the UN?

Why are the White House and the State Department telling the media that the US will consider it a major diplomatic embarrassment if the Palestinians go through with their threats? Why in short, do the Americans and the Europeans care about this?

THE PALESTINIANS have certainly never given either the Americans or the Europeans a good reason to support their cause. Just this week, the PLO representative in Washington told reporters that the future state of Palestine will ban Jews and homosexuals.

And yet, the Obama administration and the EU have made the establishment of a racist, homophobic Palestinian state the greatest aim of their policies in the Middle East.

Every single Palestinian leader from the supposedly moderate Fatah party has rejected Israel's right to exist and said that they will never set aside their demand that Israel accept millions of foreign-born Arabs - the so-called Palestinian "refugees" - as citizens. They say this with the full knowledge that this demand is nothing less than a demand for Israel's destruction.

And yet, both the US and the EU, which certainly do not support the destruction of Israel, insist that it is imperative to strengthen and support the supposedly moderate Fatah party which seeks the destruction of Israel.

Every year, the US and Europe transfer collectively approximately a billion dollars in various forms of aid to the Palestinian Authority and yet, the PA has failed to develop a market economy capable of supporting the Palestinians without foreign assistance. Instead, they have developed a welfare society where most economic activity stems from foreign handouts.

Rather than feel embarrassment at their failures, PA leaders use their economic corruption to continuously threaten their patrons. If aid is cut off, they say, the PA will disintegrate and the far more popular Hamas movement will take over, and then, woe of woes, the peace process will be destroyed.

Of course, Hamas is also sustained by Western aid money. Every month, the same PA that warns of the dangers of a rising Hamas transfers tens of millions of dollars in foreign aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza to pay salaries of Hamas "government" employees.

Yet despite its mafia economy, and its exploitation of their aid funds to support a terrorist organization, the US and EU insist on maintaining the PA's status as the largest per capita foreign aid recipient in human history. And they do so even as the Eurozone is on the brink of collapse and the US is descending rapidly into a new recession.

Finally, in the interest of maintaining the peace process, aside from periodic pro forma statements, the US and the EU have turned blind eyes to the PA's routine and institutional glorification of terrorist mass murderers and Nazi-style anti-Semitic indoctrination and incitement of Palestinian society.

Given their absolute commitment to the so-called peace process, it would be reasonable to expect the US and the EU to oppose the Palestinians' decision to move their conflict with Israel from the negotiating table to the UN.

After all, in acting as they are, the Palestinians are making clear that they are abandoning the sacrosanct peace process.

Alas, this is not the case.

The Obama administration is engaging in desperate eleventh hour diplomacy to convince the Palestinians to cancel their UN plan, because it does not wish to oppose it. Most EU member states are expected to support the Palestinian bid at both the Security Council and the General Assembly.

The fact that the US and the EU are reluctant to oppose the Palestinian UN initiative, despite the fact that it destroys the foundations of the peace process, tells us two things about the Americans and the Europeans. First, their support for the Palestinians has more in common with a psychological obsession than with a rational policy decision.

The Obama administration, the EU bureaucracy and most EU member states are obsessed with the Palestinians. There is nothing the Palestinians can say or do to convince them that the Palestinian case is anything other than wholly and completely just.

There are many possible explanations for how they arrived at this obsession. But the fact is that it is an obsession. Like all obsessions, their faith in the justice of the Palestinian cause is impermeable to contrary facts or rational interests.

The flip side of this obsession is, of course, a complementary obsession with blaming Israel for everything that goes wrong. For if the Palestinians are always in the right, and they are fighting Israel, then it naturally follows that Israel is always in the wrong.

This "Blame Israel First" mindset was exposed in all its madness in a New York Times editorial on Thursday.

Despite the Palestinians' refusal to negotiate with Israel, despite Fatah's unity-government deal with Hamas, and despite their rejection of Israel's right to exist, the Times argued that Israel is to blame for the current crisis in relations.

In the paper's view, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu "has been the most intractable" party to the conflict. Netanyahu's crime? He has permitted Jews in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to exercise their property rights and build on land they own.

Of course, that is not how the Times put it. In the Times' words, Netanyahu has been "building settlements."

Intrinsic to the Times' claim, (and to the Obama administration's EU-supported demand that Israel disregard Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria), is an embrace of the Palestinians' bigoted position that Jews must be banned from the future Palestinian state.

That is, like the administration and the EU, the Times' support for the "just Palestinian cause" is so comprehensive that its editors never even question whether it is reasonable for them to be completely committed to the establishment of a racist state. It is this inability to consider the significance of their actions that removes Western support for the Palestinians from the realm of policy and into the sphere of neurosis.

The second lesson of the US and European unwillingness to oppose the Palestinians' UN statehood bid is that the Obama administration and the EU alike are obsessed with getting on the right side of inherently anti-Western international institutions.

Here, too, the reason that the position is an obsession rather than a considered policy is because no conceivable rational US or European interest is advanced by strengthening the UN and similar bodies.

Administration officials have repeatedly said that they do not wish to veto a Palestinian statehood resolution at the Security Council because they do not want to isolate the US at the UN. It is due to their aversion to isolation that the administration has worked so intensively in recent weeks to convince the Palestinians to cancel their UN plans, by pressuring Israel to give them massive concessions.

It never seems to have occurred to anyone at the White House that standing alone at the UN more often than not means standing up for US interests, and that standing with the crowd involves sacrificing US interests.

As for the EU, their automatic support of the UN is somewhat more reasonable. Although the UN majority systematically empowers states and forces that are hostile to Europe, many EU member states share the UN majority's anti-Israel and anti-American positions. So by voting with the majority, EU member states are able to act on their prejudices without having to own up to them. Moreover, many EU states have irredentist Islamic minorities. Joining the Israel-bashers at the UN is a low-cost way to appease them.

On Thursday, Netanyahu announced that he will address the UN General Assembly in New York next week and put the truth about the Palestinian cause on the table.

Perhaps someone will be moved by his words.

Perhaps not.

But whether he makes a difference or not, at least reason will have one defender at the UN next week.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 16, 2011 at 3:40 AM

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Israel Project responds to my post and I respond to the Israel Project

In response to my post yesterday reporting the Jerusalem Post/Reuters article outlining how the Israel Project and J Street have been encouraging Congress to maintain aid to the Palestinian Authority even after they abandon the pretense of wanting peace with Israel by asking the UN to recognize a Palestinian state outside the framework of a negotiated settlement, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, the Israel Project's director sent the following text to me and to the Post and asked me to publish it on my blog.

Note, I have deleted only the sections that are not related to the issue at hand -- i.e whether or not the Israel Project is advocating continuing US aid to the PA despite their actions at the UN:

"Carolyn [sic] Glick slammed us in a completely false attack on our work on her own blog.

First, we are NOT a lobby group. That is not our function as we are an educational organization. Second, while we have met with dozens of US officials and leaders in the last two weeks alone, PA funding over UDI was NOT on the list that we brought to the table. When asked about this issue we remind leaders and diplomats that the PA was told that if they moved ahead at the UNGA with a counterproductive proposal, that they could American lose funding. Actions have consequences. Israel and America can't be more Catholic than the Pope.

True, we don't yet know what the final PA actions will be at the UN and after. We all need to see what they ultimately do and gauge reactions base on that. We hope that the Palestinians will go to real talks to secure lasting peace and stop their counterproductive end run around Israel. Still, security cooperation should continue no matter what. No one wins if men in the West Bank trained to use weapons are unemployed and go looking for support from Iran and others. While there is still a ways to go, America and Israel have been real partners with PM Fayyad in making the West Bank a safer place." (My emphasis, CBG)

Okay, let me analyze Lazslo Mizrahi's argument.

The issue of lobbying is a side matter. Truth is the IRS allows 501c3s to devote a portion of their time to lobbying so it isn't particularly relevant but if she wants to say they are educating members of Congress, that's fine. And it's true.

Now to the issue at hand.

First Laszlo-Mizrahi argues that the US should pay the salaries of these Palestinian military forces because if the soldiers are out of work then they will become terrorists.

Well, now there's a recommendation for a US aid program. The US has been arming and training men who are just as happy to be terrorists and if the US stops paying them off and training and arming them, they will kill innocent people in the service of Iran. Needless to say, this is an obscene argument. If they are terrorists then they should be arrested or killed. Not trained and armed.

Second, I will just remind The Israel Project and all the other pro-Israel American Jews quoted in the Post/Reuters article of what I reported last August:

As Israel Radio's Arab Affairs commentator Yoni Ben-Menachem reported last month, the IDF is deeply concerned about the US-trained Palestinian force. Ben-Menachem recalled that since 1996, Palestinians security forces have repeatedly taken leading roles in organizing and carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel.

Hundreds of Israelis have been murdered and maimed in these attacks.

The Palestinian force being trained by the US Army represents a disturbing, qualitative upgrade in Palestinian military capabilities. OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi warned IDF ground forces about the new US-Palestinian threat in May.

As Mizrahi put it in a speech at Tze'elim training base cited by Ben-Menachem, "This is a well trained force, better equipped than its predecessors and trained by the US. The significance of this is that at the start of a new battle [with the Palestinians] the price that we will pay will be higher. A force like this one can shut down a built-up area with four snipers. This is deadly. These aren't the fighters we faced in Jenin [in 2002]. This is an infantry force that will be fighting us and we need to take this into account. They have offensive capabilities and we aren't expecting them to give up."

The IDF assesses that the US-trained force will be capable of overrunning small IDF outposts and isolated Israeli communities.

As to Salam Fayyad, the man with which American diplomats and Jewish leaders alike are wholly and completely enamored, let's just remember who this man is.

He is the man who pays Hamas salaries using donor funds every year.

He is leading the world movement to wage an economic boycott of Israeli products.

In his first stint as "Prime Minister" it was Hamas that insisted on appointing him.

He has made it a felony for Palestinians to work in Jewish communities.

The fact of the matter is that since the Bush years, the US, the Israeli Left, the US Jewish leadership and intellectually lazy and incompetent IDF commanders have lionized Fayyad as the great savior. All of them have turned a blind eye to the fact that he is in fact a terror supporting and financing enemy of Israel who uses his considerable skills to keep the flow of US and European aid dollars going and uses them to fund both hatred of Israel and the Palestinian war machine.

The notion of collaboration between Israel and the security forces is a sad joke. In every important mission the IDF knows better than to inform Fayyad's US-trained and funded army about what they are doing. The reason terror hasn't returned in force to Judea and Samaria is due completely to the IDF's continued control over the areas.

As you can see below, all the information anyone needs to understand who Fayyad is and what his US-trained and funded army is about is out there and readily available. The fact that groups like the Israel Project apparently don't know about this raises the troubling prospect that they may simply not want to know the truth.

See for instance:

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2010/11/what-the-palestinians-buy-with.php

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2009/05/israel-and-the-axis-of-eil-2.php

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2007/08/salaam-fayad-hero-of-israel.php

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2007/08/the-rise-of-the-fantasists.php

http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=35740

http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2010/12/elderofziyon-on-elder-of-palestine.html

http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=35709

Finally, I think it is worth mentioning that aside from the Zionist Organization of America, to the best of my knowledge, no major US Jewish group has publicly supported House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Cong. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's United Nationals Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act, (HR 2829). And by the way, no Democratic member of Congress has agreed to co-sponsor it.)

As I wrote here, Cong. Ros-Lehtinen's bill, which calls for ending US aid to the PA and to UN agencies that upgrade the PA's status following their UN statehood bid next week, is a crucial piece of legislation. It is critical for US national security -- by compelling the administration to apply reason and consider the US interest in funding both the UN and the PA. And it is important as well for Israel.

By the way, I address the US's abandonment of reason in its policy making towards the Palestinians and the UN in my column today which I will be posting in a few hours.

Posted on September 16, 2011 at 1:56 AM

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Israel Project lobbies for continuing aid to the Palestinians

The Israel Project was the brainchild of a lot of very wealthy Jewish philanthropists who decided rightly, that there was a pressing need for a professional operation in Washington capable of getting out the truth about Israel to a hostile media. Millions upon millions of dollars have been lavished on this project.

And what do we see from this?

According to a report in today's Jerusalem Post, the Israel Project is joining forces with J Street to lobby Congress to continue to fund the Palestinian Authority even after it has abandoned the barest illusion of peacefulness by going to the UN to ask for statehood. The Palestinians want this recognition in order to escalate their diplomatic war against Israel. And the Israel Project is telling Congress that it must maintain the flow of taxpayer dollars to this enemy of Israel.

What a colossal waste of money -by pro-Israel donors and by US taxpayers. What a fraud.

Posted on September 15, 2011 at 11:47 AM

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Mazel Tov to Cong. Bob Turner!!

Mazel Tov to New York Jews!!

Posted on September 14, 2011 at 2:42 AM

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NY subway counter-ad

As I expected, Pamela Geller is all over the anti-Israel NY subway ad campaign I discussed yesterday.

She submitted the ad above to CBS Outdoor/NY Transit to run on NY subway cars.

Go to Atlas Shrugs to help her finance this effort. In the event that the ad is rejected, she will sue and you are invited to join her.

Posted on September 13, 2011 at 4:25 AM

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Lessons from the embassy takeover

We are able to consider the lessons of the weekend's mob assault on the Israeli embassy in Cairo because the six Israeli security officers who were on the brink of being slaughtered were rescued at the last moment and spirited out of the country. If the Egyptian commandos hadn't arrived on the scene at the last moment, the situation would have been too explosive for a sober-minded assessment of the rapidly deteriorating situation with our neighbor to the south.

Any assessment of the weekend's events must begin by recounting a few key aspects of the assault. First, this was the second mob attack on the embassy in so many weeks. During the first assault, an Egyptian rioter scaled the 20-story building where the embassy is housed, tore down the Israeli flag, and threw it to the frenzied mob below which swiftly burned it. Rather than being arrested for the crime of assaulting a foreign embassy, the rioter was embraced as a hero by Egypt's military regime. The governor of Giza awarded him an apartment and a job.

Second, for six hours after the assault on the embassy began on Friday evening, Israel's leaders tried desperately to contact the leaders of the Egyptian military junta to request their intercession on behalf of the trapped security officers.

Field Marshal Muhammad Tantawi refused to speak with either Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu or Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Third, Egyptians authorities refused to intervene to save the lives of the Israeli security officers until after the Americans intervened directly on their behalf.

That is, Israel's entreaties, and Egypt's international legal obligations were insufficient to move the Egyptian authorities to act to save the embassy personnel from the mob. Only the apparent threat of direct US action against Egypt convinced them to act.

The behavior of the Egyptian mob and military junta alike served as a wake-up call for two key constituencies.

Until last weekend, both the Israeli Left and the US foreign policy establishment believed the situation in Egypt was not significantly worse than it had been under deposed president Hosni Mubarak.

Most Israelis awoke to the fact that Israel's border with Egypt is no longer a peaceful one three weeks ago. After the Egyptian-Palestinian terror cell infiltrated Israel from Sinai on August 18 and massacred eight Israelis on the highway to Eilat, most Israelis recognized that relations with Egypt had been ruptured.

But until the weekend, Israel's Left insisted there was a distinction between the lawless Sinai and the more orderly situation in Cairo. They argued that all that was needed to calm the situation in Sinai was for the military junta to assert its authority in Sinai as it does in the rest of Egypt. Hence, the Left argued that it is in Israel's interest to amend the peace treaty and allow the Egyptian military to remilitarize the Sinai.

Since the weekend, these claims have been notably absent from the discourse. After the Egyptian military allowed the mob to take over the embassy, residual leftist faith in the junta's moderation and commitment to the peace with Israel is swiftly evaporating.

As for the Americans, unlike Israel, American foreign policy hands from across the conservative-liberal divide supported the mob in Tahrir Square that called for Mubarak's overthrow. The Americans hailed Mubarak's demise as a triumph of liberal democratic forces in the Arab world. But in the aftermath of the weekend's assault on the embassy, voices from across the political spectrum in the US are calling for a reassessment of US relations with Egypt.

For his part, Obama's willingness to intervene on behalf of the besieged security guards at the embassy was probably not divorced from his assessment of the political fallout likely to ensue from the slaughter of Israeli embassy guards by the Egyptian mob.

In such an event, the American public would immediately equate Obama's support for the "democratic, revolutionary" mob against longstanding US ally Mubarak with his predecessor Jimmy Carter's support for the "democratic, revolutionary" Iranian mob against the US-allied Shah of Iran in 1979.

The fact that Obama recognizes the political significance of the developments in Egypt signals that he too may be willing to consider adopting a different policy towards Egypt in the months to come.

All of this is important.

In the absence of a reassessment of the situation in Egypt by the Israeli Left and the American policy establishment alike, the chance of anyone adopting rational policies towards the strongest Arab state would remain small.

Any rational policy must be based on an accurate assessment of the dynamics of the post- Mubarak political situation. Specifically, is the junta part of the mob or is it simply unable or unwilling to manage it?

Apparently it is a bit of both.

Like its treatment of the rioter who tore the Israeli flag from the embassy building two weeks ago, the regime's arrest in June of the dual Israeli- American citizen ` on trumped-up espionage charges is an example of the junta acting as part of the mob.

On the other hand, the regime's decision to try Mubarak and his sons in contravention of Tantawi's solemn pledge to Mubarak is an indication that Tantawi and his generals are led by the mob.

As for Grapel - and to a lesser degree Mubarak - the US's ultimate success in forcing the junta to rescue the Israelis trapped at the embassy demonstrates that the US still has significant leverage against Egypt. When it is sufficiently adamant, Washington can force the junta change its behavior.

It is not clear how much this leverage is dependent on continued US financial and military assistance to Egypt. Obviously, an assessment of its significance should guide any US consideration of reducing or cutting off that aid.

As for Israel, the mob's ability to determine the course of events in Egypt and the junta's refusal to stand up to the mob on Israel's behalf is a strong indication that the peace treaty is doomed.

After the junta stood back and allowed the mob to storm the embassy, it is impossible to believe the junta will defy the mob's demand to abrogate the treaty.

The fact that the treaty is doomed doesn't mean that Israel will immediately find itself at war with Egypt - although the prospect can no longer be ruled out. The US's continued leverage against the regime - like NATO's leverage against Turkey - may very well convince the Egyptians to maintain a ceasefire with Israel.

On the other hand, US leverage may end after November's elections. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are expected to win a parliamentary majority and the presidency.

Given the explosiveness of the situation, it is imperative that the US not repeat its rush to action from January where without considering the consequences of its actions, Washington hurriedly sided with the Tahrir Square mob against Mubarak. The US shouldn't support elections or oppose them. It shouldn't cut off aid or increase it. It shouldn't condemn the junta or embrace it.

The Americans should simply monitor the situation and prepare for all contingencies.

As for Israel, it must prepare for the possibility of war. It must increase the size of the IDF by adding a division to the Southern Command. It must train for desert warfare. It must expand the Navy.

Thankfully, all Israeli personnel were safely evacuated from Cairo. But this happy circumstance must not blind anyone to the dangers mounting in Egypt.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 13, 2011 at 4:19 AM

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Saudi involvement in 9/11

As the Saudis blame Israel for their decision to abandon the US, it is worth recalling their involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Miami Herald presents new information on the involvement of Saudi nationals (beyond the 15 out of 19 hijackers) in the attacks here.

Posted on September 13, 2011 at 4:06 AM

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Saudi Arabia's exploitation of Palestinian UN bid

The Saudis effectively ended their strategic alliance with the US in the aftermath of the US-supported overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. Since then the Saudis have strengthened their ties to China and Russia and from what I understand have refused to sign any new oil contracts with the Americans.

Now in this oped in the New York Times, the Saudis are hitching a ride on the Palestinian UN bid to justify their previous abandonment of America.

As my readers are well aware, I think that the US's abandonment of Mubarak was one of the greatest strategic errors the US has ever committed. But of course, the Saudis can't play the populist/leader of the Muslim world card by opposing the mob in Cairo. And so they never announced their breach with their US patron, which in their mind had lost all credibility as an ally when it ditched Mubarak. But the Palestinians and the war against the Jews is the great populist issue in the Muslim world. And so, aside from everything else, the PLO's UN initiative gives the authoritarian likes of the Saudis a perfect excuse for publicly acknowledging their previous abandonment of the US.

Moreover, the increasingly anti-Jewish American Left will seize on the Saudi claim as proof that the US's alliance with the Jewish state is undermining America's standing in the Arab world.

Oh dear. Things are getting uglier and uglier.

Posted on September 12, 2011 at 10:46 AM

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NY subway ads calling for ending US aid to Israel?

According to JTA (hat tip Arve in Norway) this ad is set to be posted in 18 NY subway stations in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn starting later this month. Seems to me that New Yorkers who support Israel should be able to speak to the City of New York, the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the New York Transit Authority who all have a hand in running the New York subway and have the campaign cancelled. My friend, the indefatigable Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs was able to get similar anti-Israel campaigns blocked in places like Seattle and has shown that cancelling anti-Israel propaganda campaigns is eminently doable.

Happy hunting!

Oh, and if you're wondering who is now launching a desperate 11th hour bid to keep the NY-9 Congressional seat loyal to Obama, read this New York Post editorial.

UPDATE: Here's an email I received from Morris Massel with information on how to cancel the ad campaign:

An anti-Israel group, www.twopeoplesonefuture.org, has just placed the attached ad calling for the end of aid to Israel in 18 subways stations in NYC. They claim to target Israel only because "Israel is the strong party, Israel is the Occupying Power and Israel is the only party that can actually end the Occupation and pave the way for a just peace." IT IS NOT ABOUT PEACE. IT IS ANOTHER THINLY VEILED ATTACK ON ISRAEL. For example, certain of the sponsors of this ad campaign actively support Israel boycotts and general Arab solidarity. This is not about promoting peace; it is about attacking Israel.

How can you help?

1. The ad placement is handled by CBS Outdoor. Please send an email toemmanuela.chanoine@cbsoutdoor.com to register your concern about this ad campaign.

2. Email the Mayor. http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.bd08ee7c7c1ffec87c4b36d501c789a0/index.jsp?doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fmail%2Fhtml%2Fmayor.html

3. Call the MTA at 212-878-7000 and, in response to the prompts, press 1, 3, * and then either 2 for the press office and/or 4 for corporate affairs. Leave a message. You can also email them at http://mta-nyc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/mta_nyc.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php

4. GET THE WORD OUT. Forward this email to your friends and family. If we do not act to protect Israel, no one will.

For your ease, a draft email is below:

I have just learned of the anti-Israel ad campaign that has been launched in 18 NYC subway stations by twopeoplesonefuture.org. I am contacting you to express my strong disapproval with this ad campaign. The campaign is supported by the anti-Israel lobby, whose agenda is not peace but the destruction of the State of Israel. Second, it unfairly penalizes Israel for defending itself. New York City should not allow these types of ads to be run in our Transit System.

Posted on September 12, 2011 at 2:52 AM

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The Turkish Dumbbell

From Friday's Tribal Update.

Posted on September 11, 2011 at 9:12 AM

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Erdogan the Turkish dumbbell and the sorrows of the evicted

This week the Tribal Update, the television on internet program brought to you by Latma, the Hebrew-language media satire site I run got a facelift with a new graphic design.

We present to you Erdogan, the Turkish Dumbbell. We also send our reporter Flock Builder to Migron to report on the destruction of Jewish homes at the site. Finally, we bring you a new commercial for Turkish tourism directed at the Israeli consumer.

Enjoy!

Latma is funded through contributions to the Center for Security Policy in Washington. If you are in the United States and would like to support our efforts, you can contribute by clicking here. It takes you to the online contribution page for the Center for Security Policy through Network for Good. To earmark your donation to Latma, please write "Latma" in the box marked "designation."

If you live outside the US, we formed a non-profit organization in Israel to accept donations from outside the US called the Zionist Incubator.

Here is the information you need to make wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

First of all, here is the link to Latma's page for donating by credit card through PayPal.

Second, here is the information you need to wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

Bank Name: Israel Discount Bank Ltd.

Branch Number: 510

Branch Name: Mevasseret Zion

BIC Code: IDBLILITXXX

Account Number (IBAN 23 digits): IL94-0115-1000-0010-4351-154

Beneficiary's Name: Zionist Incubator

Beneficiary's address: POB 841 Mevasseret Zion, Israel 90805

Posted on September 10, 2011 at 12:34 AM

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The war America fights

Ten years ago, in the shadow of the crater at Ground Zero, the smoldering Pentagon and a field of honor in Pennsylvania, America found itself at war.

Today, a decade on, America is still at war.

Ten years after the September 11, 2001, attacks, the time has come to assess the progress of America's war. But to assess its progress, we must first understand the war.

What war has the US been fighting since September 11?

President George W. Bush called the war the War on Terror. The War on Terror is a broad tactical campaign to prevent Islamic terrorists from targeting America.

The War on Terror has achieved some notable successes. These include Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan which denied al-Qaida free rein in Afghanistan by overthrowing the Taliban.

They also include the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his fascist regime in Iraq, which played a role - albeit far less significant than the Taliban regime and others - in supporting Islamic terrorism against the US.

Moreover, the US has successfully prevented multiple attempts by Islamic terrorists to carry out additional mass terror attacks on US territory.

This achievement, however, is at least partially a function of luck. On two occasions - the Shoe Bomber in 2001 and the Underwear Bomber in 2009 - Islamic terrorists with bombs were able to board airplanes en route to the US and attempt to detonate those bombs in mid-air. The fact that their attacks were foiled by their fellow passengers is a tribute to the passengers, not to the success of the US war effort.

The US's success in killing Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida members is another clear achievement of this war.

But 10 years on, the fact that Islamic terrorism directed against the US remains a salient threat to US national security shows that the War on Terror is far from won.

And this makes sense. Despite its significant successes, the War on Terror suffers from three inherent problems that make it impossible for the US to win.

The first problem is that the US has unevenly applied its tactic of denying terrorists free rein in territory of their choosing. In his historic speech before the Joint Houses of Congress on September 20, 2001, Bush pledged, "We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."

And yet, while the US applied this principle in Afghanistan and Iraq, it applied it only partially in Pakistan, and failed to apply it all in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. By essentially ending its application of the counterterror tactic of denying terrorists free rein of territory and punishing regimes that provide them shelter, the options left to the US in fighting its war on terror have been reduced to catch-as-catch-can killing and capturing of terrorists, and reactive actions such as arresting or detaining terrorists when they are caught on US soil.

On the positive side, these limited tactics can keep terrorists off balance if they are applied consistently and over the long term. Taken together, the tactics of targeted killing and financial strangulation comprise a strategy of long-term containment not unlike the US's strategy in the Cold War. US containment then caused the Soviet Union to exhaust itself and collapse after 45 years of superpower competition.

UNFORTUNATELY, THE US's containment strategy in its War on Terror is undermined by the second and third problems inherent to its policies.

The second problem is that since September 11, 2001, the US has steadfastly refused to admit the identity of the enemy it seeks to defeat.

US leaders have called that enemy al-Qaida, they have called it extremism or extremists, fringe elements of Islam and radicals. But of course the enemy is jihadist Islam which seeks global leadership and the destruction of Western civilization. Al-Qaida is simply an organization that fights on the enemy's side. As long as the enemy is left unaddressed, organizations like al-Qaida will continue to proliferate.

It isn't that US authorities do not acknowledge among themselves whom the enemy is. They do track Islamic leaders, and in general prosecute jihadists when they can build cases against them.

But their refusal to acknowledge the nature of the enemy has paralyzed their ability to confront and defeat threats as they arise. For instance, US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was not removed from service or investigated, despite his known support for jihad and his communication with leading jihadists. Rather, he was promoted and placed in a position where he was capable of massacring 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, Texas.

Had the US not been in denial about the identity of its enemy, Hasan's victims would likely be alive today.

So too, the US's refusal to identify its enemy has made it impossible for US officials to understand and contend with the mounting threat from Turkey. Because the US refuses to recognize radical Islam as its enemy, it fails to connect Turkey's erratic and increasingly hostile behavior to the fact that the country is ruled by an Islamist government.

In the face of the rising political instability and uncertainty in the Arab world, the US's refusal to reckon with the fact that radical Islam is the enemy fighting it bodes ill for the future. Quite simply, America is willfully blinding itself to emerging dangers. These dangers are particularly acute in Egypt where the US has completely failed to recognize the threat the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes to its core regional interests and its national security.

The last problem intrinsic to the US's War on Terror is the persistent and powerful strain of appeasement that guides so much of US policy towards the Muslim world.

This appeasement is multifaceted and pervades nearly every aspect of the US's relations with the Islamic world.

The urge to appeasement caused the US to divorce the Islamic jihad against the US from the Islamic jihad against Israel from the outset.

Appeasement has been the chief motivating factor informing the US's intense support for Palestinian statehood and its refusal to reassess this policy in the face of Palestinian terrorism, jihadism and close ties with Iran.

Appeasement provoked the US to embrace radical Islamic religious leaders and terror operatives such as Sami Arian and Abdurahman Alamoudi as credible leaders in the US Muslim community. It stood behind the decisions of both the Bush and Obama administrations to embrace US affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood as legitimate leaders of the American Muslim community and to court the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to the detriment of US ally former president Hosni Mubarak.

Appeasement stood behind the US's bid to try to entice Iran to end its nuclear weapons programs with grand bargains.

It motivated US's decision not to confront Syria on its known support for al-Qaida and Hezbollah as well as Palestinian terror groups; its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; or its involvement in facilitating the insurgency in Iraq.

It is what has compelled the US not to seek the dismantlement of Hezbollah in Lebanon and indeed to fund and arm the Hezbollah-controlled government and army of Lebanon.

The urge to appease has motivated the US's decision to take no action to stem the advance of Iran and its terror allies and proxies in al-Qaida and Hezbollah in Latin America.

WHEN A nation engages in appeasement at the same time it wages war, its appeasement efforts always undermine its war efforts. This is particularly the case, however, in long-term wars of containment such as the one the US is fighting against Islamic terrorism.

The logic guiding a containment strategy is that an enemy force will eventually collapse if kept off balance for long enough. Given that militarily the forces of Islamic jihad are weaker than the US, it is reasonable to assume that if applied consistently for long enough, a policy of containment can indeed cause the forces of global jihad to collapse.

The chronic instability of the Iranian regime and the current unrest in Syria demonstrate the structural weakness of these regimes. The dependence of terror groups such as Hezbollah, al-Qaida and Hamas on the support of governments make clear that containment could potentially defeat them as well by drying out their support structure at its roots.

The problem is that the US's moves to appease its enemies empower them to keep fighting.

Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah are far stronger militarily today than they were on September 11, 2001. Hamas controls Gaza and would likely win any Palestinian elections.

Hezbollah controls Lebanon.

Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons and is poised to become the predominant power in Iraq. Its Egyptian nemesis Hosni Mubarak is gone.

Ten years ago Iran and its terror allies and proxies could have only dreamed of having the presence on the Western Hemisphere they enjoy today.

In Europe the threat of domestic terrorism is more salient than ever because the jihadist forces and leaders on the continent have been appeased rather than combated by both the governments of Europe and the US.

The US was able to win the Cold War through its policy of containment because throughout the long conflict there was strong majority support in the US for continuing to pursue the war effort. Despite the widespread nature of Soviet efforts at political subversion, US public opinion remained firmly anti-Soviet until the Berlin Wall was finally destroyed.

The US government's moves to appease its Islamic enemies undermine the domestic consensus supporting the War on Terror. And without such domestic solidarity around the necessity of combating jihadist terrorists, there is little chance that the US will be able to continue to enact its containment strategy for long enough to facilitate victory.

Even as it has continued to prosecute the War on Terror, since it came to power in January 2009 the Obama administration has worked intensively to confuse the American people about its nature, necessity and goals. President Barack Obama dropped the name "War on Terror" for the nebulous "overseas contingency operation." He has rejected the term "terrorism," and expunged the term "jihad" from the official lexicon. In so doing, he made it impermissible for US government officials to hold coherent discussions about the war they are charged with waging. Meanwhile, the public has been invited to question whether the US has the right to fight at all.

Today the events of September 11 are still vivid enough in the American memory for America to continue the fight despite the administration's efforts to discredit the war in the national discourse and imagination. But how long will that memory be strong enough to serve as the primary legitimating force behind a war that even in its limited form is far from won?

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 8, 2011 at 4:09 PM

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American Jews and the Liberal Art of Demonization

US election season is clearly upon us as US President Barack Obama has moved into full campaign mode. Part and parcel of that mode is a new bid to woo Jewish voters and donors upset by Obama's hostility to Israel back in the Democratic Party's fold.

To undertake this task, the White House turned to its reliable defender, columnist Jeffrey Goldberg. Since 2008, when then-candidate Obama was first challenged on his anti-Israel friends, pastors and positions, Goldberg has willingly used his pen to defend Obama to the American Jewish community.

Trying to portray Obama as pro-Israel is not a simple task. From the outset of his tenure in office, Obama has distinguished himself as the most anti-Israel president ever.

Obama is the first president ever to denounce Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. He is the first president to require Israel to deny Jews property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as a precondition for peace talks with the Palestinians.

He is the first US president to adopt the position that Israel must surrender its right to defensible borders in the framework of a peace treaty. He has even made Israeli acceptance of this position a precondition for negotiations.

He is the first US president to accept Hamas as a legitimate actor in Palestinian politics. Obama's willingness to do so was exposed by his refusal to end US financial assistance to the PA in the aftermath of last spring's unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas.

He is the first US president to make US support for Israel at the UN conditional on Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

Even today, Obama has refused to state outright whether or not he will veto a Security Council resolution later this month endorsing Palestinian statehood outside the context of a peace treaty with Israel. As he leaves Israel twisting in the wind, he has sent his chief Middle East Peace Processors Dennis Ross and David Hale to Israel to threaten Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into caving to US-Palestinian demands and beg PA leader Mahmoud Abbas to accept an Israeli surrender and cancel his plans to have the UN General Assembly upgrade the PLO's mission to the UN.

GIVEN OBAMA'S record - to which can be added his fervent support for Turkish Prime Minister and virulent anti-Semite Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his courtship of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and his massive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and Egypt - it is obvious that any attempt to argue that Obama is pro-Israel cannot be based on substance, or even on tone. And so Goldberg's article, like several that preceded it, is an attempt to distort Obama's record and deflect responsibility for that record onto Netanyahu. Netanyahu, in turn, is demonized as ungrateful and uncooperative.

Goldberg's narrative began by recalling Netanyahu's extraordinary statement during his photo opportunity with Obama at the Oval Office during his visit to Washington in May. At the time, Netanyahu gave an impassioned defense of Israel's right to secure borders and explained why the 1949 armistice lines are indefensible.

Goldberg centered on then-secretary of defense Robert Gates's angry statement to his colleagues in the wake of Netanyahu's visit. Gates reportedly accused Israel of being ungrateful for all the things the US did for it.

After presenting Gates as an objective critic whose views were justified and shared by one and all, Goldberg went on to claim that the administration's justified antipathy for Netanyahu was liable to harm Israel. That is, he claimed that it would be Netanyahu's fault if Obama abandoned traditional US support for Israel.

Goldberg's article is stunning on several levels. First, his distortion of events is breathtaking. Specifically he failed to note that Netanyahu's statement at the Oval Office was precipitated by Obama's decision to blindside Netanyahu with his announcement that the US supported an Israeli withdrawal to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. Obama made the statement in a speech given while Netanyahu was en route to Washington.

Then there is his portrayal of Gates as an objective observer. Goldberg failed to mention that Gates's record has been consistently anti-Israel. In his Senate approval hearings during the Bush administration, Gates became the first senior US official to state publicly that Israel had a nuclear arsenal.

Gates was a member of the 2006 Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group that recommended the US pressure Israel to surrender Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights in order to appease the Arab world and pave the way for a US withdrawal from Iraq.

Gates did everything he could at the Pentagon to deny Israel the ability to attack Iran's nuclear installations. He was also a fervent advocate of massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia that upset the military balance in the Middle East.

The Obama administration bases its claims that it is pro-Israel on the fact that it has continued and expanded some of the joint US-Israel missile defense projects that were initiated by the Bush administration. Goldberg sympathetically recorded the argument.

But the truth is less sanguine. While jointly developing defensive systems, the administration has placed unprecedented restrictions on the export of offensive military platforms and technologies to Israel. Under Gates, Pentagon constraints on Israeli technology additions to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighters nearly forced Israel to cancel its plans to purchase the aircraft.

IT IS an open question whether American Jews will be willing to buy the bill of goods the administration is trying to sell them through their media proxies in next year's presidential elections. But if next week's special elections for New York's Ninth Congressional District are any indication, the answer is apparently that an unprecedented number of American Jews are unwilling to ignore reality and support the most anti-Israel president ever.

The New York race is attracting great attention because it is serving as a referendum on Obama's policies toward Israel. The district, representing portions of Queens and Brooklyn, is heavily Jewish and has been reliably Democratic. And yet, a week before the elections, Republican candidate Bob Turner is tied in the polls with Democratic candidate David Weprin, and the main issue in the race is Obama's policies on Israel.

To sidestep criticism of the president's record, Weprin is seeking to distance himself from Obama. He refuses to say if he will support Obama's reelection bid. And he is as critical of Obama's record on Israel as his Republican opponent is.

But Turner's argument - that as a Democrat, Weprin will be forced to support his party and so support Obama - is gaining traction with voters. According to a McLaughlin poll of the district released on September 1, Turner's bid is gaining steam, and Weprin's is running out of steam, with Turner's favorability rates on the rise and Weprin's declining.

Deflecting substantive criticism by seeking to demonize one's opponents is a standard leftist play. Obama and his political supporters engage in it routinely in their demonization of their political opponents as "terrorists" and "extremists." And now, with the American Jewish vote in play for the first time since 1936, they are doing it to Netanyahu.

It is encouraging to see that at least in New York's Ninth Congressional District, American Jews are refusing to be taken in.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 7, 2011 at 2:11 AM

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Ankara's chosen scapegoat

Monday morning Turkey took its anti-Israel campaign to a new level. Beyond downgrading diplomatic relations with Israel; beyond suspending military agreements; beyond threatening naval war; beyond threatening to foment an irredentist insurrection of Israeli Arabs; the Turks decided to terrorize Israeli tourists landing in Istanbul airport.

Forty Israeli passengers, mainly businessmen who had landed in Istanbul on a Turkish Airlines flight from Tel Aviv, were separated from the rest of the flight passengers. Their passports were confiscated.

They were placed in interrogation rooms and stripped down to their underwear. Their carry-on bags were checked. And then they were lined up against a wall, forbidden to sit down or use the washroom.

Passengers who contacted the Foreign Ministry said they felt frightened and intimidated.

The ordeal went on for 90 minutes, until Turkish authorities returned their Israeli passports and permitted them to pick up their suitcases and exit the airport.

What were the Turks trying to accomplish by terrifying the Israeli tourists? They didn't need to threaten trade ties. Their Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu already took care of that over the weekend.

The victimized Israelis said the Turkish airport authorities wouldn't even answer their questions. Any time we asked them a question, the tourists said, the Turks ignored us.

It was as if they weren't even there.

And that's the thing of it. The Turks didn't harass the Israeli tourists in order to send a message to Israel. They have nothing more to say to us. We are non-entities to them. We're only good for attacking.

No, Israel wasn't the target audience the Turks were playing to on Monday. Their target audience was the Islamic world generally and the Arab world specifically. Turkey's influence in these arenas skyrocketed in January 2009 after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused President Shimon Peres and Israel of mass murder as the leaders shared a stage at the Davos Conference.

Similarly Erdogan's domestic and pan-Islamic support levels increased steeply in the aftermath of the Turkish-supported pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in 2010. After nine Turkish government-supported IHH terrorists were killed aboard the Mavi Marmara when they tried to murder IDF naval commandos who had lawfully boarded the ship, the Arabs hailed Erdogan as a hero for bravely attacking Israel.

Given how well scapegoating Israel has served him, Erdogan clearly believes it is a no-risk strategy for raising his star from Cairo to Algiers.

Leftist Israeli commentators refuse to accept what is happening. Writing in Haaretz on Sunday, Shlomo Avineri recommended that Israel compensate the nine IHH members whom IDF commandos killed in self-defense on the Mavi Marmara. Avineri argued that by refusing to do so, Israel was playing into the hands of hardliners. True, "it won't be easy, but we need to grit our teeth and do the right thing," he wrote.

Others have argued that Israel may be able to rebuild its strategic relations with Turkey by selling Ankara more drones with which to kill Iraqi and Turkish Kurds. The Turkish military claimed it killed 100 Kurdish fighters in its attacks last month in Iraq and along the Turkish-Iraqi border. Israeli UAVs reportedly played a key role in the bombing. But Turkey needs more. If we sell them more, the argument goes, maybe they will see how useful we are and stop attacking us.

Aside from being morally reprehensible, these arguments fail to recognize the basic reality that Turkey has no interest whatsoever in rebuilding its ties with Israel. The once-important strategic alliance is over and gone, and Israel cannot do anything about it. All Turkey sees us as today is a scapegoat.

It has been argued by commentators on the Right that Turkey's abandonment of Israel is part and parcel of its abandonment of the US. But this is a mischaracterization of Turkey's policy toward the US.

Since 2003, Turkey has undertaken a series of actions that have harmed US strategic interests. The first, of course, was Erdogan's decision on the eve of the Iraq War to deny the US military the right to invade northern Iraq from Turkey.

The latest action was arguably Turkey's joint air exercises with the Chinese Air Force last September.

Chinese jets en route to Turkey refueled in Iran. The exercise was a clear signal that NATO member Turkey intends to exploit its alliance with the US to build ties with the US's chief geostrategic competitor.

Yet at the same time that Turkey has harmed the US, it has also taken steps to assist it. Most recently, last week, Erdogan belatedly agreed to station the high-powered US X-Band radar on its territory as part of a missile defense system to protect NATO allies against the threat of Iranian long-range missiles.

Turkey's mixed policies toward the US reveal that unlike its position on Israel, Turkey believes that it has an interest in maintaining its alliance with the US. Its hostile behavior is more a function of perceived US weakness than anything else. That is, Turkey is willing to risk angering the US by undercutting it because it does not fear US retribution.

Turkey's aggressive behavior might end if the US made Turkey pay a price for it.

To its credit, the Netanyahu government has not accepted the advice of the Left and has refused to apologize to Turkey or pay compensation to the families of those killed aboard the Marmara. Moreover, the government has wisely used Turkey's behavior as a means of building strong bilateral ties with other victims of Turkish aggression. Over the past two years, Israel has strongly upgraded is strategic ties with Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania. Israel should add to these accomplishments by strengthening its ties to Armenia and to the Kurds of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

With newspapers running groundless stories about prospects for reconstituting relations with Turkey, we need to recognize that what we are experiencing now is the beginning, not the end, of Turkey's slide into the enemy camp. Erdogan is openly taking steps to transform Turkey into an Islamic state along the lines of Iran. And the further he goes down his chosen path, the more harshly and aggressively he will lash out at Israel.

Given that scapegoating Israel is not a momentary lapse of reason on Turkey's part but a central aspect of a long-term regional strategy, it is clear that Israel needs to meet Turkish aggression with more than momentary courage in the face of intimidation and threats. Israel needs to build on its already successful policy of forming a ring of alliances around Turkey and develop a long-term military and diplomatic strategy for containing and weakening it.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 5, 2011 at 3:24 PM

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Obama's Libyan adventure and a jihadist's dream

This week on the Tribal Update, the weekly television-on-Internet show produced by Latma, the Hebrew-language satirical media criticism website I run, we interview President Obama's Reality Perception Advisor John Zelokoreli (John Thisisn'thappeningtome) about the US's great victory in Libya. We also bring you our favorite suicide bomber dispatcher Awad on the psychiatrist's couch after having a bad dream.

Our regular male anchor Elhanan is in reserve duty this week, and our regular female anchor Ronit is anxiously awaiting the birth of her child. They are ably replaced this week by Yaniv our director and Miri.

Enjoy the program and be sure to post and distribute far and wide.

Latma is funded through contributions to the Center for Security Policy in Washington. If you are in the United States and would like to support our efforts, you can contribute by clicking here. It takes you to the online contribution page for the Center for Security Policy through Network for Good. To earmark your donation to Latma, please write "Latma" in the box marked "designation."

If you live outside the US, we formed a non-profit organization in Israel to accept donations from outside the US called the Zionist Incubator.

Here is the information you need to make wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

First of all, here is the link to Latma's page for donating by credit card through PayPal.

Second, here is the information you need to wire contributions to the Zionist Incubator for Latma.

Bank Name: Israel Discount Bank Ltd.

Branch Number: 510

Branch Name: Mevasseret Zion

BIC Code: IDBLILITXXX

Account Number (IBAN 23 digits): IL94-0115-1000-0010-4351-154

Beneficiary's Name: Zionist Incubator

Beneficiary's address: POB 841 Mevasseret Zion, Israel 90805

Posted on September 2, 2011 at 2:32 AM

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Cliche-based foreign policy

US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, kicked up a political storm this week. On Tuesday, Ros-Lehtinen introduced the United Nations Transparency, Accountability and Reform Act. If passed into law it would place stringent restrictions on US funding of the UN's budget.

The US currently funds 22 percent of the UN's general budget. That budget is passed by the General Assembly with no oversight by the US. America's 22% share of the budget is nonvoluntary, meaning the US may exert no influence over how its taxpayers' funds are spent.

If Ros-Lehtinen's act is passed into law, the UN will have two years to enact budgetary reforms that would render a minimum of 80% of its budget financing voluntary. If the UN does not make the required reforms, the US government will be enjoined to withhold 50% of its nonvoluntary UN budget allocations.

Beyond this overarching demand for UN budgetary reform, the act contains several specific actions that are directed against UN institutions that advance anti-American and anti-Israel agendas.

Ros-Lehtinen's act would defund the UN Human Rights Committee until such time as it repeals its permanent anti-Israel resolution, and prohibits countries that support terror and are under UN Security Council sanctions from serving as its members. It would also prohibit the US from serving as a member of the UNHRC until such reforms are enacted.

Ros-Lehtinen's bill defunds all UN activities related to the libelous Goldstone Report, and the anti-Semitic Durban process. It vastly curtails and conditions US funding of UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency permeated by members of terrorist organizations. UNRWA's facilities are routinely used to plan, execute and incite terrorism against Israel and to indoctrinate Palestinians to seek Israel's destruction.

The bill pays special attention to the Palestinian Authority's plan to have the UN Security Council and General Assembly vote in favor of Palestinian statehood later this month. The bill would cut off US funding to any UN agency or organization that upgrades the Palestinian mission to the UN in any way in the aftermath of a General Assembly vote in favor of such an upgrade in representation.

Ros-Lehtinen's bill, which has 57 co-sponsors, provides detailed explanations for how the targeted UN agencies and activities harm US interests. It notes that the US's membership since 2009 in the UN Human Rights Council has had no impact whatsoever on the UNHRC's anti-Israel and anti-American agenda. The US has been unable to temper in any way the UNHRC's actions and resolutions, including its decisions to form the Goldstone Commission and to endorse the findings of the Goldstone Report, and its continued support and organization of the anti-Semitic Durban conferences in which Israel is attacked and libeled as an illegitimate, racist state.

The bill notes that despite US efforts to extend oversight over UNRWA's hiring process, UNRWA continues to hire members of terrorist organizations. The bill provides a long list of UNRWA employees who have perpetrated terrorist attacks.

Ignoring its fact-based assessment of UN failings, the Obama administration has rejected the Ros-Lehtinen bill out of hand. Speaking to Politico, an administration source panned the bill, claiming, "This draft legislation is dated, tired and frankly unresponsive to the positive role being played by the UN."

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland attacked the bill, saying it would "seriously undermine our international standing and dangerously weaken the UN as an instrument to advance US national security goals."

Since taking office, Barack Obama has taken concerted steps to place cooperation with the UN at the top of his foreign policy agenda. Through word and deed, Obama has shown that he believes that the US should minimize the extent to which it operates independently of the UN on the global stage.

Obama and his advisers give four arguments to support their view that the UN should effectively replace the US as the global leader. First, they say that the US cannot operate unilaterally on the global stage.

Second, they insinuate that operations undertaken outside the UN umbrella are somehow illegitimate.

To support this contention, they intimate that the reason the US was bogged down in Iraq following its 2003 invasion was because it did not receive specific Security Council permission to invade. In contrast, they point to the current Security Council-sanctioned military operation in Libya and the 1991 Security Council-sanctioned Persian Gulf War as success stories. And they attribute those missions' successes to their conduct under the UN aegis.

The third argument, which comes across clearly in Nuland's statement, is that to have credibility in global affairs, the US must not throw its weight around at the UN. If it objects too strenuously to the way things are done, or makes its support for the UN conditional on UN actions, then all the other UN members will be offended and refuse to cooperate with the US.

The final argument they make is reflected in the statement the unnamed administration source gave to Politico. Quite simply, in their view, trying to hold the UN accountable for its actions is old fashioned. In today's world, accountability is out. And anyone who doesn't understand that is simply out of touch, "dated, tired."

All of these arguments are false. In the first instance, it is simply untrue that the US is incapable of operating unilaterally. Aside from Saudi Arabia in 1991 and Kuwait in 2003, the US did not need its partners in Iraq. Of all the non-American participants in the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, only Britain made an impact on fighting. And frankly, the US would have secured Saudi, Kuwaiti and British cooperation without ever involving the UN.

Indeed, under both Democrat and Republican administrations, the US has frequently acted successfully outside the UN framework. In 1998 the Clinton administration could not get UN Security Council agreement to fight in Kosovo, and so it ignored the UN and fought alongside its NATO allies.

The US had 21 allied militaries fighting alongside its forces in Iraq, despite the fact that the operation was conducted outside the UN Security Council umbrella.

The US-initiated Proliferation Security Initiative founded in 2003 is arguably the US's most successful multilateral effort to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Operating completely outside the UN framework, the PSI has 98 members.

As for the two major US military operations that have been carried out in recent memory by force of UN Security Council resolutions, the jury is still out on both. Due to the Security Council's restrictions on the mission of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the US permitted Saddam Hussein to remain in power after removing his invasion forces from Kuwait.

In the 12 years between that war and the 2003 Iraq war, Saddam killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who - at US urging - tried to overthrow him. He exploited the Security Council sanctions to starve his people for propaganda purposes while he and his cronies enriched themselves through corrupt UN oil-for-food contracts.

Had Saddam been overthrown in 1991, his replacement by a pro-Western successor regime could have been enacted more smoothly and at far smaller cost to the US and the Iraqi people.

As for Libya, reports from Tripoli indicate that critics of the UN mission were correct. In overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi, the US has apparently enabled a situation in which any successor regime will likely be dominated by al-Qaida-aligned political and military forces allied with Iran.

The claim that the US will lose influence in international affairs if it is perceived as bossy by its fellow UN nation states is similarly groundless. The hard truth is that no one goes along with the UN simply because it is the UN. States are reasonably and consistently opportunistic in their cooperation with the UN. They support the UN when it supports their interests and they ignore the UN when it opposes their interests.

States do not oppose the US at the UN because they consider it bossy. They oppose the US at the UN because they believe it serves their national interests to oppose the US and its interests. It is due to clashing interests, not the comportment of US representatives, that the Obama administration has failed to exert any influence over the UNHRC's agenda despite its commitment to "engagement."

Clashing national interests are the reason the Obama administration has failed to secure Security Council support for anything approaching effective measures against Iran's nuclear weapons program.

The final administration argument - that it is déclassé to demand that the UN stop advancing the causes of America's enemies - is not simply peevish and insulting. It is indicative of the culture that motivates the administration to cling to its UN-centered agenda despite its obvious and repeated failure.

As the easy refutation of all the administration's arguments makes clear, the agenda is not a product of rational thought. It is the product of the groupthink that is endemic at the universities from whence Obama and his advisers have emerged. This groupthink is directed by unquestioned clichés that are passed off as sophisticated reasoning. These include such pearls of wisdom as "global governance," "Twitter revolution," "multilateralism" and "interdependence."

These clichés have become articles of faith that are impermeable to fact and reality. As a consequence, those who adhere to them will never acknowledge their failure to deliver on their utopian promises. Instead they attack anyone who points out their failure as "dated," and as "tired" old fogies who are too unsophisticated to understand the world.

We see this attitude at work in all aspects of Obama's foreign policy. For instance, Obama came into office with the view that the reason all efforts to date to successfully complete a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians failed because the Palestinians didn't trust the US to "deliver" Israel. To remedy this perceived problem, Obama has consistently sought to "put daylight" between the US and Israel. This policy has failed abysmally, as the PA's current UN statehood bid shows. And yet the administration continues to cling to it, because acknowledging its failure would involve renouncing a cliché.

So, too, the administration's policy of engaging Iran has brought the mullocracy to the brink of a nuclear arsenal, empowered it to violently repress pro-American democracy protesters, expand its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, take over Lebanon, and make inroads in Egypt, Libya and beyond. And yet, despite all of this, the administration refuses to admit its policy is wrong and adopt a more effective one, because doing so would involve acknowledging that "engagement" is not the panacea it was cracked up to be.

Ros-Lehtinen's bill is expected to be blocked in the Democrat-controlled Senate before Obama has the opportunity to veto it. This is a pity not simply because the bill would advance US interests and the cause of freedom. It is a pity because it shows that the foreign policy debate in the US is now a fight between those who trust facts and those who trust clichés.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Posted on September 2, 2011 at 2:11 AM

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