A Must Read: You Cannot Support Israel’s Existence (and Ours) and Vote Democratic This Election - Clarice Feldman

by Clarice Feldman

The administration’s foreign and domestic policies render ourselves and our allies increasingly powerless to combat Islamic terrorism, and neither of the Democratic candidates is likely to alter that.

The Iowa Democratic caucus which I’ve already described as akin to the Marxist Zimbabwe Farmers-workers confabs is over, and it appears -- as Mark Steyn ably notes -- “almost certain” that Hillary Clinton did not win it. 

If Iowa were one of those banana republics in which the president-for-life has been prevailed upon to hold an election and Jimmy Carter and a bunch of UN observers had flown in to certify it, none of the above would pass muster. But in the Democrat Party it does:
[snip]
 In effect, Hillary and Bernie fought Iowa to a draw. But a miss is a good as a mile and, as I said on Tuesday, Sanders needed the headline "BERNIE WINS!” and all Mrs. Clinton had to do was figure out a way to deny him that. The squalid and repulsive rules of her caucus helped her do that. [/quote]

The kerfuffles over the caucus served as cover for the fact that the administration’s foreign and domestic policies render ourselves and our allies increasingly powerless to combat Islamic terrorism, and neither of the Democratic candidates is likely to alter that or the president’s patent anti-Israel approach in any substantial measure.
The evidence of the administration’s tilt and recklessness grows.

The most shocking evidence comes from Philip Haney writing for the Hill. Haney, a longtime Department of Homeland Security employee charged that he and others working there were ordered in November 2009 to destroy raw material intelligence needed to keep us safe.      

Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”  Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.
A few weeks later, in my office at the Port of Atlanta, the television hummed with the inevitable Congressional hearings that follow any terrorist attack. While members of Congress grilled Obama administration officials, demanding why their subordinates were still failing to understand the intelligence they had gathered, I was being forced to delete and scrub the records. And I was well aware that, as a result, it was going to be vastly more difficult to “connect the dots” in the future -- especially before an attack occurs.
As the number of successful and attempted Islamic terrorist attacks on America increased, the type of information that the Obama administration ordered removed from travel and national security databases was the kind of information that, if properly assessed, could have prevented subsequent domestic Islamist attacks like the ones committed by Faisal Shahzad (May 2010), Detroit “honor killing” perpetrator Rahim A. Alfetlawi (2011); Amine El Khalifi, who plotted to blow up the U.S. Capitol (2012); Dzhokhar or Tamerlan Tsarnaev who conducted the Boston Marathon bombing (2013); Oklahoma beheading suspect Alton Nolen (2014); or Muhammed Yusuf Abdulazeez, who opened fire on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee (2015).  
It is very plausible that one or more of the subsequent terror attacks on the homeland could have been prevented if more subject matter experts in the Department of Homeland Security had been allowed to do our jobs back in late 2009. It is demoralizing -- and infuriating -- that today, those elusive dots are even harder to find, and harder to connect, than they were during the winter of 2009.

Haney’s revelation came just days after the president visited a terrorism-linked mosque contrary to the FBI’s suggestion that he not do so. Powerline details the mosque’s history, which the Washington Post airbrushed out of the picture:

Post readers are never informed that things at the mosque aren’t quite that simple.
As Scott has pointed out, just a few years ago the FBI was monitoring this mosque as a breeding ground for terrorists, after arresting a member for plotting to blow up a federal building. Agents secretly recorded a number of conversations with a 25-year-old Muslim convert -- Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain -- and other Muslims who worshiped there. According to the criminal complaint, Martinez said he knew “brothers” who could supply him weapons and propane tanks.
Does Martinez’s militancy represent the mosque’s official outlook? Not necessarily. However, the Islamic Society of Baltimore is affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America, which federal prosecutors in 2007 named a radical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front and an unindicted terrorist co-conspirator in a scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas suicide bombers.
Moreover, according to Investor’s Business Daily, the mosque was led for 15 years by a radical cleric -- Imam Mohamad Adam el-Sheikh -- who once represented a federally designated al-Qaida front group. El-Sheikh also has argued for the legitimacy of suicide bombings. And ISB board member and vice president Muhammad Jameel has blamed American foreign policy -- namely, U.S. support for Israel -- for terrorism and the rise of Osama bin Laden.
I appreciate the sentiment that made President Obama want to visit a mosque. But by failing properly to vet the venue, and indeed reportedly letting the Council on American-Islamic Relations choose the site even though the FBI has banned this outfit from outreach because of known ties to the Hamas terrorist group, it’s questionable that Obama did the cause of interfaith understanding any good.

Among other things during his visit Obama preposterously thanked Muslims and suggested “Islam has always been part of America”. Covering this event, Robert Spencer could hardly contain himself: 

When Barack Obama visited the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of Baltimore on Wednesday, he said: “The first thing I want to say is two words that Muslim Americans don’t hear often enough: Thank you.”
While Obama has been President, Muslims have murdered non-Muslims, avowedly in the cause of Islam, at Fort Hood, Boston, Chattanooga, and San Bernardino, and attempted to do so in many, many other places. Imagine if armed Baptists screaming “Jesus is Lord” had committed murder, and explained that they were doing so in order to advance Christianity, in four American cities, and had attempted to do so in many others. Imagine that those killers were supporters of a global Christian movement that had repeatedly called for attacks on U.S. civilians and declared its determination to destroy the United States.
Imagine how incongruous it would be in that case for the President of the United States to visit a church and say: “The first thing I want to say is two words that Christian Americans don’t hear often enough: Thank you.” And imagine how unlikely it would be that Barack Obama would ever have done that.
But his visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore was the apotheosis of the Muslim victimhood myth, as he signaled yet again to the world (and worldwide jihadis) that in the U.S., Muslims are victims, victims of unwarranted concern over jihad terror, and thus that concern is likely to lessen even more, as Obama dismantles still more of our counter-terror apparatus.
“We’ve seen children bullied, we’ve seen mosques vandalized,” Obama claimed. “It’s not who we are.
[snip]
In reality, Muslims are not victimized in American society: FBI hate crime statistics show that the hysteria over “Islamophobia” is unfounded, but that matters not at all to Barack Obama. At the mosque, he said: “If we’re serious about freedom of religion -- and I’m talking to my fellow Christians who are the majority in this country -- we have to understand that an attack on one faith is an attack on all faiths.”
Once again Obama felt free to scold and admonish Christians, but said nothing about Muslims in the U.S. needing to clean house and work for real reform that would mitigate jihad terror. And his premise was false: there is no attempt to restrict Muslims’ freedom of religion.
[snip]
 He is, of course, against studying the beliefs of the enemy. Yet he said proudly: “Jefferson and John Adams had their own copies of the Qur’an,” without bothering to mention that they had them in order to understand the ideology of the enemy the new nation faced in the Barbary Pirates. They held, of course, the same ideology he ignores and denies today, the one he ordered all traces of removed from counterterror training.
“Islam,” Obama declared, “has always been part of America.” Really? There were Muslims at Jamestown? In the Massachusetts Bay Colony? At Roanoke? Obama’s statement is so wildly ridiculous that it doesn’t just invite parody; it pleads for it. 

Caroline Glick sees in this visit a pattern for Obama’s last year in office

Obama’s apologetics for radical Islamists is the flipside of his hostility for Israel. This too is escalating and will continue to rise through the end of his tenure in office.
The US Customs authority’s announcement last week that it will begin enforcing a 20-year old decision to require goods imported from Judea and Samaria to be labeled “Made in the West Bank,” rather than “Made in Israel,” signals Obama’s intentions. So, too, it is abundantly clear that France’s plan to use the UN Security Council to dictate Israel’s borders was coordinated in advance with the Obama administration.

Glick describes the fever pitch of Obama’s anti-Israel moves as motivated by a fear that none of the present presidential contenders are as viscerally anti-Israel as he is. As I explain below, I think the difference between his view and Sanders’ and Clintons’ is far smaller than she suggests. Though I agree with her assessment of the Republican contenders and voters:

On the Republican side, the situation is entirely different. All of the Republican presidential candidates are pro-Israel. To be sure, some are more pro-Israel than others. Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, is more supportive than his competitors. But all of the Republicans candidates are significantly more supportive of Israel than the Democratic candidates. So it is simply an objective fact that Israel will be better off if a Republican is elected in November no matter who he is and no matter who the Democratic candidate is.
[snip]
Today, Republicans are near unanimous in their support for Israel. According to a Gallup poll from February 2015, 83% of Republicans support Israel.
Only 48% of Democrats do. From 2014 to 2015, Democratic support for Israel plunged 10 points.
[snip]
Forty-five percent of Democrats said they would be more likely to vote for a politician who is critical of Israel and 75% of Republicans said they would be less likely to vote for an anti-Israel candidate.
These data tell us two important things. Today Democratic candidates will gain nothing and may lose significant support if they support Israel.
In contrast, a Republican who opposes Israel will have a hard time getting elected, much less winning a primary.

In brief, Sanders and Hillary Clinton are really unlikely to depart from the anti-Israel bent of their party as it now exists or substantially to modify the crippling of our intelligence agencies and military vis-à-vis the Middle East. As evidence I note the following: Those emails of Hillary’s which have been made public reveal a virtual torrent of anti-Israel advice from those so close to her that they communicated on her personal account and often -- including Sidney Blumenthal, former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, “docs in socks” Sandy Berger. Then there’s her exceedingly close tie to her aide Huma Abedin, another person closely tied to the loathsome and dangerous Moslem Brotherhood.

[S]ince Secretary Clinton’s tenure began, with Huma Abedin serving as a top adviser, the United States has aligned itself with the Muslim Brotherhood in myriad ways. To name just a few (the list is by no means exhaustive): Our government reversed the policy against formal contacts with the Brotherhood; funded Hamas; continued funding Egypt even after the Brotherhood won the elections; dropped an investigation of Brotherhood organizations in the U.S. that were previously identified as co-conspirators in the case of the Holy Land Foundation financing Hamas; hosted Brotherhood delegations in the United States; issued a visa to a member of the Islamic Group (a designated terrorist organization) and hosted him in Washington because he is part of the Brotherhood’s parliamentary coalition in Egypt; announced that Israel should go back to its indefensible 1967 borders; excluded Israel, the world’s leading target of terrorism, from a counterterrorism forum in which the State Department sought to “partner” with Islamist governments that do not regard attacks on Israel as terrorism; and pressured Egypt’s pro-American military government to surrender power to the anti-American Muslim Brotherhood parliament and president just elected by Egypt’s predominantly anti-American population. 

As for Bernie, it turns out there’s a reason he has been vague about just which kibbutz he lived on as a young man before his more obvious anti-Israeli bent (he wanted to deny Israel weapons before the Yom Kippur War, for example) was patent. It was a Stalinist kibbutz that took its cues about Zionism from Moscow, whose ultimate aim was the end of Israel:

“Bernie Sanders wasn't there because he liked Israel. Hashomer Hatzair did not like Israel. It ultimately wanted to destroy it. He was there because he was far left. Perhaps even further left than he has admitted.”

Pat Condell has well described the racist attitudes of the political left which permits them to hold Palestinians and Arabs to a lower standard of conduct than they hold Israel or the West and the fear of truth tellers that they’ll be labeled racist for not playing along with this odious tactic to suppress free speech. Caroline Glick argues this point well in her video argument respecting the uproar about what I call “Jews buying land in the ‘hood”. And this Moslem woman, relying on survey evidence establishes that Islam does have a substantial problem -- a cancer of extremism which will not be eradicated by pretending it does not exist, as Obama, Hillary, and Sanders do. 

I see no sign that either of the Democratic candidates or their party departs from this racist, pro-Moslem nonsense, and every indication that a vote for them will simply continue the Obama path toward more chaos and terrorist violence in the Middle East and here.

Clarice Feldman

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/you_cannot_support_israels_existence_and_ours_and_vote_democratic_this_election.html

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