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August 31, 2012, 2:36 AM

Migron and the threat to Israeli democracy

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By Tuesday, 50 Israeli families will have been tossed out of their homes in their village of Migron, which is set for destruction. 

They will not be dispossessed because they unlawfully squatted on someone else's property.

The residents of Migron will be tossed from their homes - on the order of the Supreme Court - because Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein and his associates believe they are above the law. And due to this opinion, Weinstein and his associates refuse to recognize the sovereign authority of Israel's government or to act in accordance with its lawful decisions.

The media have alternatively presented the story of Migron's imminent destruction as a story about a power struggle between so-called settlers and the IDF, whose forces will be called upon to eject them from their homes; or as a struggle between the Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu; or as a struggle between the radical leftists from Peace Now and its fellow foreign government-financed NGOs, and the residents of Judea and Samaria.

These portrayals are reasonable on the narrow level of day to day developments in the story of Migron's struggle. But on a more fundamental level, the story of Migron and its pending destruction is the story of the power struggle between Israel's unelected, radical legal fraternity represented by the attorney-general, the State Prosecution he directs and the Supreme Court on the one hand, and Israel's elected governments - from the Right and from the Left - on the other.

Migron is the latest casualty of this struggle. The legal fraternity's bid to wrest sovereign power of governance from Israel's elected leadership threatens our democracy. In its continuous assault on governing authority, the legal fraternity renders it difficult if not, as a practical matter, impossible, for the government - any government - to govern.

It is important at the outset to recognize that there is a world of difference between the rule of law and the rule of lawyers. The fate of Migron, which was sealed on Wednesday with the decision of the Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, to remove all 50 families from their homes, is a legal atrocity.

Migron was founded in 1999 on 60 plots of land. In 2006, the EU-funded Peace Now petitioned the High Court claiming to represent Arab owners of five out of the 60 plots of land. Peace Now asked the court to require the state to explain why it hadn't destroyed the town, which the group claimed was built on stolen land. Migron's residents dispute this claim.

In responding to this petition, the State Attorney's Office could have asked the court to allow the issue of ownership to be adjudicated by a lower court. Instead, the State Prosecution accepted as fact Peace Now's unproven claim of private ownership of the land. And, after numerous delays, in 2011 the court ruled that the village must be destroyed.

Following its victory in the Supreme Court, Peace Now sued the state for damages for the alleged Arab landlords, claiming that the presence of the community prevented the land's owners from harvesting nonexistent olive trees. Peace Now abruptly canceled its lawsuit when the court asked for proof of ownership.

For their part, Migron's residents went through Jordanian land records and were able to find owners for only seven of the registered plots. And they managed to buy - at exorbitant cost - three of those plots. Recognizing that its claim that Migron was illegally built on private lands could no longer be justified, Peace Now changed its strategy. In the latest Supreme Court hearings, brought by Migron's residents, Peace Now claimed that the reason all the Israelis need to be ejected from their homes, and all the homes need to be destroyed, is that the village was built without proper permits.

Ahead of the court hearing last month, the government's Ministerial Committee on Settlement convened to determine the government's position on the new Migron petition. Led by Netanyahu, the ministers decided that the government's position was to ask for a continuance in order to enable the lower courts to adjudicate the claims of ownership of the land.

Rather than follow the law and represent that position to the court, Weinstein instructed attorney Osnat Mandel from the State Prosecution to inform the court he did not accept the government's decision, and ask for a continuance in order to give him time to force the government to change its position.

Addressing the court, Mandel said, "The attorney- general believes that the ministerial committee's position will raise legal difficulties. And since we're requesting a continuance for undertaking the evacuation anyway [for unrelated reasons], he requests [time] to hold meetings with the elected leadership."

On the face of it, Weinstein's defiance of a legally binding government decision was unlawful. Certainly it would appear to be grounds for his immediate firing. But while shocking, Weinstein's rank insubordination was not unique.

As relates to Israel's legal rights in Judea and Samaria, Weinstein is guided not by the law but by the ideology of the far Left. This ideology received formal expression in a 2005 report on unauthorized Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria authored by former assistant state attorney Talia Sasson. The Sasson Report represented a wholesale renunciation of all Israeli claims to legal rights over Judea and Samaria. It was unhinged from both Israeli and international law. 

And it was embraced by the legal fraternity. 

After Sasson finished her report, she joined the post-Zionist Meretz Party. In 2009 she ran unsuccessfully for Knesset.

In an attempt to mitigate the damage Sasson's report caused to Israel's legal position in Judea and Samaria, in February Netanyahu commissioned retired Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy to lead a task force of distinguished jurists and present the government with a report setting out Israel's legal rights to Judea and Samaria. Netanyahu asked Levy to also offer recommendations for implementing those rights in relation to the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Weinstein didn't even wait for the Levy Commission to begin its work before he sent Netanyahu a letter informing him that the commission's report would have no impact on his handling of issues related to Israel's rights to the areas. And as his decision to ignore the legally constituted ministerial committee's position on Migron made clear, Weinstein continues to behave as though he and his colleagues sit above Israel's democratically elected representatives.

Many on the Right are urging Netanyahu to adopt the findings of the Levy Commission as official government policy. While such a move certainly can't hurt, it is hard to see what difference it would make in practice. Weinstein has already pledged to defy the government. So even if the report is adopted, the government's lawyers will refuse to defend its positions.

Weinstein is only able to behave as he does because he operates in an environment where the Supreme Court has usurped the power of Israel's elected governments to determine state policy.

At the same time that then-Supreme Court president Aharon Barak declared that "everything is justiciable," the court gutted the requirement for legal standing. It has worked hand in glove with radical groups like Peace Now to dictate government policy. Through this collaboration, the court - not the government - determines Israel's policies on everything from Israel's legal position in Judea and Samaria to environmental issues, to the nature of Israel's penal system, to homosexual unions, to education policy, to permissible military tactics in wartime.

In this environment of judicial tyranny, Weinstein can freely undercut governmental authority, because he knows that so long as his breach of trust pushes government policy to the Left, the Supreme Court will support his unlawful actions.

Aside from Migron, the most striking example of the legal fraternity's recent collaboration to undercut governmental authority was its torpedoing of the government's February 2011 appointment of Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant to serve as the IDF chief of staff. At the time, the court agreed to hear a petition submitted by the Green Movement demanding the cancellation of Galant's appointment. 

The Green Movement claimed Galant was unfit to lead the military because in the past he had committed an administrative infraction by wrongfully using state land adjacent to his homestead on Moshav Amikam. The Green Movement had no direct interest in Galant's administrative infraction and therefore, if the Supreme Court followed even the lowest standards for standing, it should never have received a hearing.

Even with the forbearance of the court, the Green Movement's ability to win the case was dubious at best. The Senior Appointments Committee had already vetted Galant's candidacy, and approved it despite his misuse of state lands. But Weinstein had other plans.

Claiming he had "ethical difficulties" defending Galant's lawful appointment, Weinstein refused to defend the government before the Supreme Court. Consequently, Weinstein compelled the government to force Galant to resign his commission and appoint someone else to serve as the IDF's top commander.

Netanyahu has come under sharp criticism, particularly from his voters, for his refusal to stand up to Weinstein and his band of legal despots. And this makes sense. Netanyahu should have stood up to Weinstein in defense of Galant. And he should have denounced Weinstein last month for his unlawful defiance of the government on Migron. He should also stand up to Weinstein on the Levy Commission report, and just as a matter of policy, adopt its findings as the formal position of Israel's government.

But even if he does these things, all they would serve to do is temporarily mitigate the frustration of his voters. They wouldn't change the basic calculus of power. The fact is that today Netanyahu lacks the means to curb the legal fraternity's abuse of power.

The media staunchly defend every move the legal fraternity takes to usurp the powers of the government and the Knesset. Indeed, the media represents the legal brotherhood's unlawful moves as supreme acts of selflessness on behalf of Israeli democracy and the rule of law.

Every potentially powerful critic of their behavior has found himself the subject of protracted criminal probes. This includes Netanyahu during his first term, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman for the past decade, former justice ministers Tzachi Hanegbi and Haim Ramon, and Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman during his first tenure in office.

The dispossessed residents of Migron are just the latest casualties of the legal fraternity's campaign to force its radical agenda on an unwilling electorate. If we wish to save Israel's democratic system, the people of this country must stand up and demand that our representatives protect our right to be governed by those whom we elect and not by self-appointed clerks.

The only suitable response to Migron is a legislative overhaul of Israel's legal system.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on August 31, 2012 at 2:36 AM

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August 24, 2012, 9:27 AM

Israel faces the cynical world

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This week a German doctor in Bavaria filed a criminal complaint against Rabbi David Goldberg.

Rabbi Goldberg's "crime"? He performs ritual circumcisions on Jewish male infants in accordance with Jewish law.

The doctor's complaint came shortly after a ruling by a court in Cologne outlawing the practice of male circumcision.

The Austrians and the Swiss also took the ruling to heart and have banned infant male circumcision in several hospitals in Switzerland as well as in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg. Denmark and Scandinavian governments are also considering limiting the practice of circumcision which has constituted one of the foundational rituals of Judaism for four thousand years.

Meanwhile, in Norway Dr. Anne Lindboe has come up with the perfect way out of the artificial crisis. Lindboe serves a Norway's ombudsman for children's rights. And she proposes that we Jews just change our religion to satisfy anti-Jewish sensitivities. She suggests we replace circumcision with "a symbolic, nonsurgical ritual."

It's worth mentioning that circumcision isn't the only Jewish ritual these enlightened Europeans find objectionable. Sweden, Norway and Switzerland have already banned kosher slaughter.

Attacking circumcision isn't just a European fetish. The urge to curb Jewish religious freedom has reached the US as well. Last year San Francisco's Jewish Community Relations Council had to sue the city to strike a measure from last November's ballot that would have banned circumcision if passed. The measure's sponsor gathered the requisite 12,000 signatures to enter the proposition on the ballot. Circumcising males under the age of 18 would have been classified as a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison. Sponsors of the measure distributed anti-Semitic materials depicting rabbis performing circumcisions as villains.

The people involved in banning or attempting to ban circumcision are not on the political fringe of their societies. They are part of a leftist establishment. They are doctors and lawyers, judges and politicians. This doesn't mean that all their fellow leftists are anti-Semites. But it does mean the political Left in the Western world feels comfortable keeping company with anti-Semites.

This state of affairs is even more striking in international affairs than in domestic politics. On the international level the Left's readiness to rub elbows with anti-Semites has reached critical levels.

While the Europeans have long been happy to cater to the anti-Semitic whims of the Islamic world, the escalation of the West's willingness to accept anti-Semitism as a governing axiom in international affairs is nowhere more apparent than in the Obama administration's foreign policy.

And the American Left's willingness - particularly the American Jewish Left's willingness - to cover up the administration's collusion with anti- Semitic regimes at Israel's expense is higher today than ever before.

A clear-cut example of both the Obama administration's willingness to adhere to anti- Semitic policies of anti-Semitic governments and the Left's willingness to defend this bigoted behavior is the Obama administration's decision not to invite Israel to participate in its new Global Counterterrorism Forum.

The GCTF was founded with the stated aim of fostering international cooperation in fighting terrorism. But for the Obama administration, it was more important to make Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, who supports the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, feel comfortable, than it was to invite Israel to participate.

Not only did the US exclude Israel, at the GCTF's meeting last month in Spain, Maria Otero, the State Department's under secretary for civilian security, democracy and human rights, seemed to embrace the Muslim world's obscene claim that Israelis are not victims of terrorism because terrorism against Israel isn't terrorism.

In her speech, titled "Victims of Terrorism," Otero spoke of terror victims in Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, India and the US. But she made no mention of Israeli terror victims.

Rather than criticize the administration for its decision to appease bigots at the expense of their victim, American Jewish leftists have defended the administration. Writing in The Atlantic, Zvika Kreiger, senior vice president of the far-left S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, wrote that allowing the Jewish state entry to the GCTF parley would have "undermined the whole endeavor."

Kreiger sympathetically quoted a State Department official who explained that actually, by ostracizing Israel the administration was helping Israel.

The source "reasoned the progress made by the organization would ultimately better serve Israel's interests (not to mention those of the United States) than would the symbolic benefits of including it in a group that likely wouldn't accomplish anything. [Moreover]... once the organization was up and running, and its agenda was established, they could find ways to include Israel that would not be disruptive."

So despite the fact that Israel is a major target of terrorism, and despite the fact that many of the states the US invited to its forum condone terrorism against Israel and support terrorist groups that murder Israeli Jews, Israel is better off being excluded, because the anti-Jewish governments invited by the Obama administration will somehow totally change their perspective on anti-Jewish terrorism as long as they don't have to suffer the irritation of sitting in the same room as real-live representatives of the Jewish state.

THE CYNICISM of the State Department official's statement to Kreiger is only outpaced by Kreiger's stubborn refusal to acknowledge that cynicism.

Kreiger's behavior makes sense. If he acknowledges the bigoted nature of the Obama administration's policies he will have to stop defending them.

To a degree, Kreiger's willingness to defend and justify the Obama administration's anti-Israel behavior parallels the behavior of Israelis who argue against Israel unilaterally striking Iran's nuclear facilities in order to delay the Iranian regime's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Since 2003, when Iran's nuclear weapons program was first revealed to the world community, Iran's leaders have succeeded in convincing world leaders that Israel is No. 1 on their target list. And so, the international debate about what a nuclear-armed Iran will mean for the world has always followed the Iranians' lead and centered on the dangers it would pose to Israel.

Israel's leaders from then-prime minister Ariel Sharon down to the last governmental spokesman have maintained that Iran's nuclear program threatens the entire Free World. Sharon - like his leftist disciples today - claimed that given the threat Iran's nuclear program constitutes for global security, Israel has no reason to lead the global fight to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program. Indeed, Israeli leadership of the campaign against Iran's nuclear program would cause some countries to do nothing because they hate Israel even more than they fear Iran.

Like his followers today, Sharon insisted that the US, as the leader of the Free World, is responsible for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And they are right. Iran's nuclear program does threaten global security and Iran's nuclear program does threaten the US specifically. Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei just ordered his troops to carry out terror attacks against the US in retaliation for US moves to overthrow Iran's Syrian puppet Bashar Assad. Iran was the principle sponsor of the insurgency in Iraq and remains the principle supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

It's not that Israel's leaders belittle the threat Iran's nuclear weapons program constitutes for Israel. Across the spectrum on the Iran debate in Israel - from former Mossad director Meir Dagan and President Shimon Peres on the Left to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the Right - everyone agrees that in light of the Iranian regime's religious fanaticism and its millenarian belief that Armageddon will hearken the coming of the Shi'ite messiah, Iran cannot be trusted not to use nuclear weapons against Israel.

Everyone admits that given Iran's open sponsorship of terrorism, it is a certainty that terror groups would use the Iranian nuclear umbrella to massively expand their terrorist war against Israel.

Just as Dagan, Peres and their associates share Netanyahu's assessment of the threat Iran's nuclear program poses for Israel, Netanyahu agrees with their assessment that Israel's options for contending militarily with Iran's nuclear program are limited and imperfect. No one argues that Israel has a magic bullet to destroy Iran's nuclear project.

Netanyahu and Barak have repeatedly warned that Israel has no perfect strike option. They have also warned that a response from Iran and its proxies in Syria and Lebanon to an Israeli strike will likely be harsh and deadly. All they say is that it is better than the alternative of Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The doves agree with Netanyahu that a limited Israeli strike is better than the alternative of a nuclear-armed Iran. They differ with Netanyahu on only one issue: their assessment of the US's willingness to use military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Voicing the doves' assessment of the Obama administration and Europe, this week former commander of Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. (res.) Aharon Zeevi Farkash told NBC news, "I think Western leaders realize a nuclear Iran is the No. 1 challenge facing the world."

Unfortunately, Farkash is wrong. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, made this point earlier this week in an interview from Afghanistan. There Dempsey said frankly, "Israel sees the Iranian threat more seriously than the US sees it, because a nuclear Iran poses a threat to Israel's very existence."

In other words, Dempsey told us that Iran's cynical packaging of its nuclear program as an anti-Israel initiative has worked. The Americans - and the Europeans - believe that Iran's nuclear program is Israel's problem to deal with. The Israelis are right that as the leader of the Free World it is the US's responsibility to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But as Dempsey's statement shows, the US is not interested in fulfilling its responsibility.

Like the Europeans, the Americans will only act when Iran forces them to do so. And that means they will do nothing to prevent Iran from developing the bomb. They will only move when Tehran has already crossed Israel off the top of its target list.

Israeli opponents of an Israeli strike against Iran don't want to believe that Americans are capable of such cynicism. They would like to believe that the only government capable of behaving cynically is their own. They want to believe that the US - with its vastly superior military capabilities to destroy Iran's nuclear program - will do the right thing and not leave it to Israel - with its limited means - to take care of the problem for a cynical world.

But just as Kreiger's defense of the Obama administration's courtship of anti-Semites at Israel's expense crosses the line separating naivete from willful, bigotry-enabling blindness, so Peres, Dagan and their colleagues cross the line. And it is not mere bigotry they are enabling.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on August 24, 2012 at 9:27 AM

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August 23, 2012, 3:56 PM

Olivia Glick, 1996-2012, R.I.P.

Good bye to my friend, my companion, my protector, my shadow, my gal. Good bye my Olivia. 

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Posted on August 23, 2012 at 3:56 PM

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August 17, 2012, 10:09 AM

Who lost Egypt?

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In 1949, the Communist takeover of China rattled the US foreign policy establishment to its core. China's fall to Communism was correctly perceived as a massive strategic defeat for the US. The triumphant Mao Zedong placed China firmly in the Soviet camp and implemented foreign policies antithetical to US interests.

For the American foreign policy establishment, China's fall forced a reconsideration of basic axioms of US foreign policy. Until China went Red, the view resonant among foreign policy specialists was that it was possible for the US to peacefully coexist and even be strategic allies with Communists.

With Mao's embrace of Stalin this position was discredited. The US's subsequent recognition that it was impossible for America to reach an accommodation with Communists served as the intellectual architecture of many of the strategies the US adopted for fighting the Cold War in the years that followed.

Today the main aspect of America's response to China's Communist revolution that is remembered is the vindictive political hunt for scapegoats. Foreign Service officers and journalists who had advised the US government to support Mao and the Communists against Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalists were attacked as traitors.

But while the "Red Scare" is what is most remembered about that period, the most significant consequence of the rise of Communist China was the impact it had on the US's understanding of the nature of Communist forces. Even Theodore White, perhaps the most prominent journalist who championed Mao and the Communists, later acknowledged that he had been duped by their propaganda machine into believing that Mao and his comrades were interested in an alliance with the US.

As Joyce Hoffmann exposed in her book Theodore White and Journalism as Illusion, White acknowledged that his wartime report from Mao's headquarters in Yenan praising the Communists as willing allies of the US who sought friendship, "not as a beggar seeks charity, but seeks aid in furthering a joint cause," was completely false.

As he wrote, the report was "winged with hope and passion that were entirely unreal."

What he had been shown in Yenan, Hoffmann quotes White as having written, was "the showcase of democratic art pieces they (the Communists) staged for us American correspondents [and] was literally, only showcase stuff."

Contrast the US's acceptance of failure in China in 1949, and its willingness to learn the lessons of its loss of China, with the US's denial of its failure and loss of Egypt today.

On Sunday, new President Mohamed Morsy completed Egypt's transformation into an Islamist state. In the space of one week, Morsy sacked the commanders of the Egyptian military and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists, and fired all the editors of the state-owned media and replaced them with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists.

He also implemented a policy of intimidation, censorship and closure of independently owned media organizations that dare to publish criticism of him.

Morsy revoked the military's constitutional role in setting the foreign and military policies of Egypt. But he maintained the junta's court-backed decision to disband the parliament. In so doing, Morsy gave himself full control over the writing of Egypt's new constitution.

As former ambassador to Egypt Zvi Mazel wrote Tuesday in The Jerusalem Post, Morsy's moves mean that he "now holds dictatorial powers surpassing by far those of erstwhile president Hosni Mubarak."

In other words, Morsy's actions have transformed Egypt from a military dictatorship into an Islamist dictatorship.

The impact on Egypt's foreign policy of Morsy's seizure of power is already becoming clear. On Monday, Al-Masri al-Youm quoted Mohamed Gadallah, Morsy's legal adviser, saying that Morsy is considering revising the peace accord with Israel. Gadallah explained that Morsy intends to "ensure Egypt's full sovereignty and control over every inch of Sinai."

In other words, Morsy intends to remilitarize Sinai and so render the Egyptian military a clear and present threat to Israel's security. Indeed, according to Haaretz, Egypt has already breached the peace accord and deployed forces and heavy weaponry to Sinai without Israeli permission.

The rapidity of Morsy's moves has surprised most observers. But more surprising than his moves is the US response to his moves.

Obama administrations officials have behaved as though nothing has happened, or even as though Morsy's moves are positive developments.

For instance, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, one administration official dismissed the significance of Morsy's purge of the military brass, saying, "What I think this is, frankly, is Morsy looking for a generational change in military leadership."

The Journal reported that Egypt's new defense minister, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sissi, is known as a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer. But the Obama administration quickly dismissed the reports as mere rumors with no significance. Sissi, administration sources told the Journal, ate dinner with US President Barack Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan during Brennan's visit to Cairo last October. Aside from that, they say, people are always claiming that Morsy's appointments have ties to Morsy's Muslim Brotherhood.

A slightly less rose-colored assessment came from Steven Cook in Foreign Affairs. According to Cook, at worst, Morsy's move was probably nothing more than a present-day reenactment of Gamal Abel Nasser's decision to move Egypt away from the West and into the Soviet camp in 1954.

Most likely, Cook argued, Morsy was simply doing what Sadat did when in 1971 he fired other generals with whom he had been forced to share power when he first succeeded Nasser in 1969.

Certainly the Nasser and Sadat analogies are pertinent. But while properly citing them, Cook failed to explain what those analogies tell us about the significance of Morsy's actions. He drew the dots but failed to see the shape they make.

Morsy's Islamism, like Mao's Communism, is inherently hostile to the US and its allies and interests in the Middle East. Consequently, Morsy's strategic repositioning of Egypt as an Islamist country means that Egypt - which has served as the anchor of the US alliance system in the Arab world for 30 years - is setting aside its alliance with the US and looking toward reassuming the role of regional bully.

Egypt is on the fast track to reinstating its war against Israel and threatening international shipping in the Suez Canal. And as an Islamist state, Egypt will certainly seek to export its Islamic revolution to other countries. No doubt fear of this prospect is what prompted Saudi Arabia to begin showering Egypt with billions of dollars in aid.

It should be recalled that the Saudis so feared the rise of a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled Egypt that in February 2011, when US President Barack Obama was publicly ordering then-president Hosni Mubarak to abdicate power immediately, Saudi leaders were beseeching him to defy Obama. They promised Mubarak unlimited financial support for Egypt if he agreed to cling to power.

The US's astounding sanguinity in the face of Morsy's completion of the Islamization of Egypt is an illustration of everything that is wrong and dangerous about US Middle East policy today.

Take US policy toward Syria.

Syria is in possession of one of the largest arsenals of chemical and biological weapons in the world. The barbarism with which the regime is murdering its opponents is a daily reminder - indeed a flashing neon warning sign - that Syria's nonconventional arsenal constitutes a clear and present danger to international security. And yet, the Obama administration insists on viewing Syrian President Bashar Assad's murderous behavior as if it were a garden variety human rights crisis.

During her visit with Turkey's Islamist Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu last Saturday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't even mention the issue of Syria's chemical and biological weapons. Instead she continued to back Turkey's sponsorship of the Islamist-dominated opposition and said that the US would be working with Turkey to put together new ways to help the Islamist opposition overthrow Assad's regime.

Among other things, she did not rule out the imposition of a no-fly zone over Syria.

The party most likely to be harmed from such a move would be Israel, which would lose its ability to bomb Syrian weapons of mass destruction sites from the air.

Then of course, there is Iran and its openly genocidal nuclear weapons program. This week The New York Times reported a new twist in the Obama administration's strategy for managing this threat. It is trying to convince the Persian Gulf states to accept advanced missile defense systems from the US.

This new policy makes clear that the Obama administration has no intention of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Its actions on the ground are aimed instead at accomplishing two goals: convincing Iran's Arab neighbors to accept Iran as a nuclear power and preventing Israel from acting militarily to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The missile shields are aspects of a policy of containment, not prevention. And the US's attempts to sabotage Israel's ability to strike Iran's nuclear sites through leaks, political pressure and efforts to weaken the Netanyahu government make clear that as far as the US is concerned, Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is not the problem.

The prospect of Israel preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is the problem.

Several American commentators argue that the Obama administration's policies are the rational consequence of the divergence of US and Israeli assessments of the threats posed by regional developments. For instance, writing in the Tablet online magazine this week, Lee Smith argued that the US does not view the developments in Egypt, Iran and Syria as threatening US interests. From Washington's perspective, the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran is more threatening than a nuclear-armed Iran, because an Israeli strike would immediately destabilize the region.

The problem with this assessment is that it is nonsense. It is true that Israel is first on Iran's target list, and that Egypt is placing Israel, not the US in its crosshairs. So, too, Syria and its rogue allies will use their chemical weapons against Israel first.

But that doesn't mean the US will be safe. The likely beneficiaries of Syrian chemical weapons - Sunni and Shi'ite terrorist organizations - have attacked the US in the past. Iran has a history of attacking US shipping without a nuclear umbrella. Surely it would be more aggressive in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz after defying Washington in illegally developing a nuclear arsenal. The US is far more vulnerable to interruptions in the shipping lanes in the Suez Canal than Israel is.

The reason Israel and the US are allies is that Israel is the US's first line of defense in the region.

If regional events weren't moving so quickly, the question of who lost Egypt would probably have had its moment in the spotlight in Washington.

But as is clear from the US's denial of the significance of Morsy's rapid completion of Egypt's Islamic transformation; its blindness to the dangers of Syrian chemical and biological weapons; and its complacency toward Iran's nuclear weapons program, by the time the US foreign policy establishment realizes it lost Egypt, the question it will be asking is not who lost Egypt. It will be asking who lost the Middle East.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on August 17, 2012 at 10:09 AM

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August 16, 2012, 10:50 PM

Israel's most honored president

Just in time for President Shimon Peres to revert to type and seek to undermine the government's ability to attack Iran's nuclear installations, the Tribal Update, the satirical newscast brought to you each week by Latma, the Hebrew-language, satirical media satire website I run, brings you Israel's Most Honored President.
We also feature a discussion into the real cost of bombing Iran, and much, MUCH more!

Enjoy the show!



In honor of the approaching end of summer vacation, my team is going on vacation all together until the beginning of September so we will be offline for the next two weeks. I will do my best during this time to bring you some of our greatest hits over the past three years and four months of continuous broadcasts.

Latma is supported by donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project which I direct. If you would like to contribute to our work, which is funded entirely by viewer contributions, please go to this link.

Thanks so much for your support!

Posted on August 16, 2012 at 10:50 PM

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The Leaker in Chief

Last month, provoked by the Obama White House's penchant for routinely using top secret information to advance its political fortunes on the backs of US allies, agents and armed forces, Latma produced an English-language song we called Tell on Me, to the tune of the immortal words of Ben E. King's masterpiece Stand By Me.
If you missed it then, here it is again.



I mention our work because this week a courageous group of former US Special Operations fighters posted a video where they spell out precisely how Obama's leaks imperil US national security. It's already going viral. When I watched it last night it had 57,000 views. Now it's got nearly 250,000. 

Here it is if you haven't seen it.


It would be terrific if by the elections more than 10 million people saw both videos. Please help Latma and these courageous American warriors get the message out.

Latma is supported by donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project which I direct. If you would like to contribute to our work, which is funded entirely by viewer contributions, please go to this link.

Thanks so much for your support!

Posted on August 16, 2012 at 3:56 PM

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August 13, 2012, 11:00 PM

Yale stalls for time on the admitted plagiarist in charge of its education policy

In a statement to the Yale Daily News, Yale President Richard Levin said he is "in the process of convening a meeting of the Yale Corporation Committee on Trusteeship to discuss the process of reviewing the matter, which we take very seriously."

"The matter" Levin was referring to was Yale Trustee Fareed Zakaria's confessed plagiarism. As I mentioned yesterday, Zakaria was suspended - albeit briefly -- from CNN and Time for plagiarizing an article on gun control. 

Levin's statement is amazing because in one sentence he managed to draw out the process of having to accept and contend with the fact that the head of the Yale Corporation's Committee on Educational Policy is a plagiarist as much as he possibly can. He is "in the process" of "convening" the fellows in charge "to discuss" not how quickly they can can this cheater, but "the process" again, not of firing Zakaria, but of "reviewing" the open and shut case of his cosmic unsuitability to be in charge of Yale's education policy. But not to worry, because he and his colleagues "take very seriously," the fact that Zakaria has no credibility as a scholar.

Nice work if you can get it, determining education policy for Yale. I thought that was supposed to be a good school. Guess I heard wrong. 




Posted on August 13, 2012 at 11:00 PM

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Politico, Rosner and the fabulous world of Israeli "experts"

obama_first_jewish_president.jpg

Politico has an incredibly disingenuous article up about how Israeli national security "experts" give Obama a higher score on Israel than Romney.

The article is based on a blog post by Shmuel Rosner. Rosner has picked a panel of "experts" whom he apparently asks about various issues from time to time. He gives their answers a score and based on that score he tabulates his results.

Of course, it's not really true that Israeli "experts" score Obama higher than Romney on Israel. Rosner makes up questions, and he picks the "experts" he wants to answer those questions. In this way, he ensures the "score" comes out any way he wants. 

Surprise, surprise, the closer we get to the us presidential election, the closer Rosner comes to endorsing Obama for reelection while masking his personal opinion as "expert" opinion.

The questions in Rosner's "survey" are all over the map, and tell us nothing useful. 
For instance, Questions like "Romney ‎was practically endorsed by PM Netanyahu - agree or disagree" and "Romney's visit will help him win over Jewish voters - agree or disagree" tell you absolutely nothing about the candidates and whether their policies are good or bad for Israel. All they tell us about is Rosner's personal concerns.

If that wasn't bad enough, most of Rosner's "experts" are leftists. None are on the right -- the ideological space occupied by the majority of Israelis.

What we have here is not an impartial survey. What we have is Rosner creating and stacking the deck to make up fake pro-Obama numbers.

Aside from that, let's think for a second about the nature of the "expertise" of Israeli leftists who always are overrepresented in the rarified world of Israeli "expert" opinion.

Rosner's fake survey is not objectionable merely because it fails to include anyone who occupies the intellectual space in which the majority of Israelis reside. The Left which most of Rosner's "experts" call home is manned by people whose policies have pushed Israel off one strategic cliff after another for the past 20 years. Every single policy endorsed by leftist "experts" over the past generation has failed completely. To refer to these serial bunglers as national security experts is an insult to the intelligence.

But then, again, nothing to be surprised about here. This is what the Left always does. In Israel and abroad, this is how the Left invents perceptions based on thin air. They get together a group of people who represent no one, call them experts, ask their opinion -- in this case on nothing in particular -- and reach a definitive conclusion about something largely unrelated and then crown this stellar achievement with banner headlines. Brilliant. 

Posted on August 13, 2012 at 4:21 PM

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August 12, 2012, 1:20 PM

The IDF's Egyptian fiasco

So Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt Mohamed Morsy just sacked the leaders of the military junta General Hussein Tantawi and the Egyptian Army's' Chief of Staff General Sami Enan.

Morsy has also cancelled the constitutional protections that the Egyptian military has enjoyed and overturned their edicts circumscribing his control over foreign and military policy.
That is, as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has declared, today Morsy completed the Egyptian revolution. Egypt is now an Islamic state. Its leaders drink from the same well as al Qaida, Hamas and all the rest. Egypt, with its US armed military has reemerged after 30 years as the greatest military threat that Israel has ever faced.

According the the Israel media, the IDF was surprised by Morsy's move. Clearly our esteemed generals believed reassurances they received from their Egyptian military counterparts that Israel had no reason to be concerned with the election of Hamas's big brother to Egypt's presidency.

This reminds me of what former chief of the IDF's General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said at the Jerusalem Post's conference in New York on April 29. In his remarks Ashkenazi said that no one in the IDF foresaw Mubarak's overthrow during the anti-regime protests in Tahrir Square. I began my remarks by mentioning that I had foreseen his overthrow and replacement by the Muslim Brotherhood already back in 2004. And like me, everyone paying attention to the internal make-up of Egyptian society -- rather than to the empty promises of generals with no popular support -- recognized that Israel's peace with Egypt was not long for this world. 
Here's the part of the conference where he and I speak.

His remarks start at 23 minutes. Mine start at 41 minutes.


I am not saying this to rub Ashkenazi's nose in his massive errors. I mention it because the same general staff that failed to foresee what was going to happen in Egypt, and fails to this day to understand the strategic implications of the Muslim Brotherhood takeover for the IDF, is the IDF that insists today that Israel can trust Obama to take care of Iran for us.

Sadly, perhaps even devastatingly, it is not possible for Netanyahu and Barak to pull a Morsy and fire the General Staff en masse. All of these leftist strategic failures enjoy the unstinting support of the leftist media. But still, their failure to understand Egypt speaks all the more strongly for the full justification and necessity of Barak and Netanyahu's current media campaign to force the IDF to fall in line on attacking Iran.


Posted on August 12, 2012 at 1:20 PM

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Head of Yale's Education Policy Committee -- confessed plagiarist

Fareed Zakaria - plagiarist.jpg

Another one for the annals of higher education.

Fareed Zakaria, TIME and CNN's media star and Obama foreign policy advisor and media flack has been caught plagiarizing. See here.

Both media outlets have suspended him. 

Interestingly silent in this scandal is Zakaria's other major professional home: Yale University. You see, in addition to his well known media and political associations, Zakaria also serves as the chairman of Yale University's Educational Policy Committee. He also serves on the Yale Corporation's Investments Committee.The Yale Corporation has had no response whatsoever to Zakaria's transgression. 

While plagiarism is a horrible thing in the media, it is about the biggest academic crime known to man. And yet, again, Yale has taken no action against the plagiarist who heads its education policy committee. 

Nice university they've got there.



Posted on August 12, 2012 at 11:50 AM

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August 10, 2012, 1:18 PM

BSN News Network presents UNESCO and Palestinian heritage

This week on the Tribal Update, the satirical newscast produced every week by Latma, the Hebrew-language media satire site that I lead we present BSN's latest expose on Palestinian heritage sites. We also discuss the roots of the rifts between the leaders of Israel's social justice protests. Aside from that we consider the causes of the failure of the global jihad movement to conquer the USA.

Enjoy the show.


Latma is supported by donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project which I direct. If you would like to contribute to our work, which is funded entirely by viewer contributions, please go to this link.

Thanks so much for your support!

Posted on August 10, 2012 at 1:18 PM

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Israel on the eve of the US presidential elections

I am on vacation this week so no article. But last week I gave a lecture in Los Angeles for the Children of Holocaust Survivors. It was a terrific event. Here's the video of the lecture.

 

I promise I'll be back next week!
In the meantime, have a great weekend.

Posted on August 10, 2012 at 1:11 PM

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August 2, 2012, 11:45 PM

The Tribal Update's Triumphant Return

Ladies and Gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to announce the return of The Tribal Update, the weekly satirical newscast produced by Latma, the Israeli satirical media criticism site I run. Over the past several weeks of "break" my team has developed new characters and materials some of which we have integrated into this week's show and some of which will begin to be seen in the weeks to come. 

It's great to be back. I hope you enjoy the show.


As I announced last week, I have begun an exciting association with the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles. I came on board this week as the Director of the Center's Israeli Security Project. As a consequence of the move, donations to Latma will now be raised through the DHFC which is a 501C-3 non-profit organization. 

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

Posted on August 2, 2012 at 11:45 PM

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Kyl-Jackson Lecture - Washington, DC July 24, 2012

A couple of weeks ago I was privileged to present the Kyl-Jackson lecture on Capitol Hll. The event was co-sponsored by the Center for Security Policy and the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The event was held under the auspices of Senator John Kyl and the Henry Jackson Institute.
Here's Senator Kyl's introductory remarks.



And here's my lecture.

Posted on August 2, 2012 at 10:51 PM

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Israel -- Obama's wedge issue

Romney in Israel.jpg
Less than 100 days before the US presidential elections, the Obama administration is openly denying Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem. Can this be a vote-getter? 

Last week, the Emergency Committee for Israel released an ad titled, "O, Jerusalem." The commercial showed administration officials squirming when asked to name the capital of Israel, and highlighted the recent refusals of White House and State Department spokespeople to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel's capital city. The underlying message of the ad was that the administration's policy is out of step with the views of the majority of Americans.

Barack Obama's position is certainly a political outlier. The 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, passed nearly unanimously by both houses of Congress, explicitly stated that it is the policy of the United States that Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel. The law granted the president a right to postpone the transfer of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on national security grounds. But the law's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital was unconditional.

During his visit to Israel earlier this week, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney highlighted the fact that he holds the consensus view of the American public on Jerusalem.

In his speech in Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon, Romney said simply, "It is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel."

The Palestinians were predictably enraged.

Also predictably, the Palestinians chastised Romney for another statement he made that was equally rooted in America's bipartisan consensus.

Romney noted that other things being equal, cultures that uphold and protect political and economic freedoms are more prosperous than cultures that don't.

In a breakfast meeting with American supporters in Jerusalem on Monday, Romney noted that Israel's per capita income is significantly higher than the per capital income of Palestinians in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority, just as per capita income in the US is higher than per capita income in Mexico, and per capita income in Chile is higher than per capita income in Ecuador.

It is hard to think of a milder criticism of Palestinian society than Romney's comparison of the Palestinian economy to the economies of Mexico and Ecuador. Romney could easily have gone much further without ever leaving the confines of received wisdom. For instance, he could have mentioned - as Obama did in his speech in Cairo in June 2009 - that Muslim societies under-invest in education relative to non-Muslim societies.

Or he could have highlighted - as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton often did during her tenure in the US Senate - that official Palestinian institutions indoctrinate Palestinian children in a culture of death, teach them to hate Jews and aspire to become suicide bombers in a jihad aimed at Israel's physical eradication.

It was predictable that the Palestinians would condemn Romney for his run of the mill support for Israel and his milquetoast criticism of the Palestinians, because they reject every criticism of their behavior and take umbrage at every step anyone takes that suggests acceptance of the Jewish state or recognition of Jewish history.

This behavior is common to all groups in Palestinian society, from Hamas to Fatah to the so-called liberal reformers. In line with this, while Hamas condemned visits to Auschwitz as helping "Israel to spread the lie of the Holocaust... and garner international sympathy... at the expense of the Palestinians," the supposedly moderate, liberal Palestinian for Dignity organization condemned the EU for upgrading its trade ties with Israel.

The EU is the largest financial backer of the PA. Its policies towards Israel are in complete alignment with what the purportedly moderate Palestinians claim they want in a peace deal with Israel, including the partition of Jerusalem, and the expulsion of 600,000 Jews from Judea and Samaria and the neighborhoods built outside of the 1949 armistice lines in Jerusalem. And yet, as Shoshana Bryen from the Jewish Policy Center reported, for simply upgrading EU trade ties with Israel, Palestinian for Dignity announced its members "will organize to protest the latest manifestation of EU complicity and to challenge its presence and operations in Palestine."

Given the routine nature of Palestinian hysteria at Romney, and the bipartisan consensus upon which Romney's remarks were based, there was no reason either his remarks or the Palestinians' response to his remarks would spark any controversy in the US. Indeed, given the fact that both US law and the majority of Americans respect Israel's determination that Jerusalem is its capital city, it could have been taken for granted that Obama would keep his head down and hope to avoid further discussion of the issue.

Certainly, given that he had made statements similar to - indeed stronger than - Romney's statements about cultural causes for economic prosperity, it could have been assumed that Obama and his surrogates would have disregarded PA spokesman Saeb Erekat's ridiculous characterization of Romney's statement as "racist."

Given that it is election season, and then-candidate Obama's stated support for Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2008, the Obama administration could reasonably have made its own endorsement of Jerusalem as Israel's capital city.

But amazingly, the Obama administration has taken the opposite tack. Obama and his media surrogates seized on the Palestinians' criticism of Romney as proof that by embracing the American consensus on Israel, Romney had committed an unforgivable diplomatic faux pas.

First there was the White House's statement Monday on Jerusalem. Rather than keeping quiet, Obama doubled down. In a press briefing, White House deputy spokesman Josh Earnest not only refused to acknowledge that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. He drew attention to the difference between Romney's position and the administration's and denied that Israel has a capital.

In Earnest's words, "Our view is that [Romney's position that Jerusalem is Israel's capital] is a different position than this administration holds. It's the view of this administration that the capital should be determined in final-status negotiations between parties."

At the same time, Obama's media surrogates have focused their wrath on Romney's statement about the cultural sources of economic prosperity.

Foreign Policy's David Rothkopf condemned Romney's statement as racist.

The New York Times' Thomas Friedman accused Romney of "not knowing what he was talking about."

Both Rothkopf and Friedman - and a chorus of their colleagues on the even more hysterical Left - laced their broadsides against Romney with frontal assaults against top Republican donor Sheldon Adelson and other Jewish American supporters of Romney. These denunciations were - at a minimum - infused with anti-Semitic innuendo.

Rothkopf wrote that in embracing Israel, "at a fund-raiser to pander to big donors - including Sheldon Adelson," Romney displayed "a willingness to sacrifice US interests in exchange for political cash."

Friedman's entire column was a screed against pro-Israel American Jews who contribute to the campaigns of candidates that support Israel. He argued that in pursuit of these American Jewish dollars, Republican politicians have abandoned America's national interest. In other words, Friedman alleged that American Jewish money is causing Republicans to betray their country.

Friedman wrote, "the main Israel lobby, AIPAC, has made itself the feared arbiter of which lawmakers are 'pro' and which are 'anti-Israel,' and therefore who should get donations and who should not."

On their face, Obama's repeated assaults on Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, and his surrogates' attacks on pro-Israel politicians, make no sense. For the past two years, Democratic leaders have insisted that support for Israel is bipartisan.

Last year, Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz demanded that her Republican colleagues avoid making Israel a "wedge issue," that would distinguish Democrats from Republicans.

But again, Romney's statements in Jerusalem did nothing of the sort. They were the embodiment of the bipartisan consensus. It is Obama who is distinguishing between the parties' positions on Israel.

Obama is making his hostility to Israel a wedge issue.

As Republicans repeat traditional positions, the Democrats are rendering conventional statements of amity with the Jewish state controversial. It is the Obama White House and its surrogates who are attacking those who recognize Israel's capital as diplomatic flamethrowers. It is the Democrats who are demonizing American supporters of Israel as disloyal.

Obama's assault on Romney is an extension and amplification of his Jewish proxy J Street's campaign against Congressmen Allen West of Florida and Joe Walsh of Illinois. Last month, J Street released ads attacking West and Walsh for being even more pro-Israel than most of their pro-Israel congressional colleagues. After Romney returned from Israel, J Street released a new ad attacking Romney for being nearly as pro-Israel as West and Walsh.

What has changed? Why are Obama and his surrogates now highlighting Obama's hostility? Why are they making opposition to Israel a partisan issue and attacking Republicans for being pro-Israel? 

Much of the answer was provided by by J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami last week. In an interview with The New York Times, Ben-Ami explained, "Every single number indicates that there is simply no such thing as a Jewish problem for the president. The people who only vote on Israel didn't vote for Obama last time and know who they are voting for already."

In other words, Obama has given up on the pro- Israel vote. He's going for the anti-Israel vote and the indifferent-to-Israel vote. True, Obama outrageously markets his anti-Israel platform as pro- Israel. For instance, J Street attack ads on pro-Israel Congressmen West and Walsh present them preposterously as "anti-Israel."

So, too, Friedman and Rothkopf write that by supporting Israel, Romney is harming Israel, because it is Israel's vital interest to be diplomatically coerced into surrendering to its Palestinian enemies.

Although this seems merely ridiculous, it is actually insidious. These arguments are implicit messages to three groups. For out-and-out anti-Semites, they reinforce the paranoid belief that Jews and Israel are so powerful that even the president is afraid to openly say what he thinks about us.

For socially conscious Israel-haters, the messaging enables them to continue bashing Israel without fear that they will be accused of being anti-Semites.

And for American Jews who are indifferent to Israel, the messages give them cover to vote for Obama without having to admit that they couldn't care less about Israel.

Obama's reelection campaign strategy has mystified many observers. Why, they wonder, is he playing to his base instead of moving to the Center? Like his attacks on free enterprise and Catholics, his attacks on Israel seem to indicate that he doesn't care about getting reelected.

But this is not the case. Evidently, Obama's campaign strategy is to conduct multiple micro-campaigns rather than one national campaign. Apparently his data indicate that he will win or lose the election depending on how a few key districts in swing states vote. Based on these data, his campaign strategists have plainly concluded that some of these decisive districts are populated by anti- Semites, Israel-haters and indifferent Jews for whom his absurdly marketed anti-Israel positions resonate.

Aside from that, these positions clearly resonate with him. Consequently, they will certainly form the basis for his policy towards Israel if he wins a second term in office.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Posted on August 2, 2012 at 10:25 PM

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