The Arab Lobby

by The Washington Project

An "Israel lobby" in the United States has been the subject of at least eight books in recent years with the 2007 Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy[1] by Harvard's Stephen Walt and the University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer perhaps best known. Reminiscent in part of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other examples of anti-Semitism, these books argue that Western, and especially U.S., foreign policy is at the mercy of this small but super-powerful lobby. While some, like Abraham Foxman and Alan Dershowitz, have attacked these works by exposing manipulated facts (and in some cases outright lies), Bard, executive director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, offers another, and perhaps more effective, approach.

Bard turns the tables on the conspiracy theorists and compellingly dissects the arguably more powerful Arab lobby. He demonstrates convincingly that an Arab lobby exists and is comprised of two main clusters. Members of the first group are agents of the oil exporting states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), especially Saudi Arabia. They have powerful allies in the United States in the form of multinational oil companies and exporters of defense industrial goods, alongside Arabists within the State Department.

The second group is composed of ethnic lobbies of Arab and Muslim-Americans, in alliance with non-evangelical Christian groups and the campus-based academic left. The first group is interested mainly in energy policy and the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf region, and, in the case of the GCC, the export of Salafist versions of Islam; the second group is focused mainly on the Palestinian question.

In contradistinction to pro-Israel groups, the Arab lobby does not exist primarily to foster close relations between the United States and the Arab world. More of its energy is expended on vilifying and opposing Israel and striving to weaken the alliance between Jerusalem and Washington. While the Arab lobby has lots of money, it garners little support from the American people.

Despite repeated exertions, Americans of Arab origin have not rushed to join in a crusade against Israel. More than half of all Arab Americans come from Lebanese and Syrian Christian backgrounds, and many remember the damage done to their coreligionists by extremist Arab nationalist and Muslim groups in their home countries. While the major successes of the Arab lobby have not, up until now, been on the Palestinian question, it has not been completely ineffective. In areas such as energy policy, arms exports, and the spread of Islam, there have been notable successes.

Bard presents data never before assembled on all the elements of the Arab lobby. He leaves no doubt that, measured by level of effort, if not results, the Arab lobby is equal, or superior to, anything done by the friends of Israel.

[1] Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

The Washington Project

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3236/the-arab-lobby

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Arkansas Primed to Deliver Nasty Surprise to Obama in Primary

by Rick Moran

Oh how delicious this would be; Barack Obama losing the Arkansas primary?

It's a long shot, as Allahpundit notes. But the dissatisfaction is real - as is a growing "anyone but Obama" sentiment that is boosting a truly unknown candidate, John Wolfe, into contention. Arkansas features an "open primary" which means that Republicans can cross over and deliver a nasty little surprise for Obama on primary day, May 22.

Also in the mix is Obama's recent conversion on gay marriage that is not sitting well with the moderate, socially conservative Democrats in Arkansas.

NRO:

In West Virginia, federal inmate Keith Judd recently swiped 42 percent of Democratic votes from the president, indicating the level of dissatisfaction among the rank and file. And according to a Talk Business-Hendrix College poll conducted on May 10, Obama leads John Wolfe, a virtually unknown candidate, in Arkansas's 4th congressional district by only 7 points, 45-38.

Three weeks earlier, the Talk Business-Hendrix College poll showed the president leading by 65-24 in the slightly less conservative 1st district, but that was before Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage.

Wolfe, an attorney from Tennessee, tells NRO the new poll numbers indicate Democrats' discontent with their standard-bearer. "He doesn't understand them," he says. "I think it's more manifest in the health-care area. I think they would like something different." For his part, Wolfe promises to repeal Obamacare.

As The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol has noted, Wolfe isn't a political novice. He was the Democratic candidate in Tennessee's 3rd congressional district three times. And he owes the state $10,000 for failing to file campaign documents in his 2007 run for the state senate.

The main problem with Obama's presidency, Wolfe argues, is that the chief executive has merely "ratified institutional failures." The corrupt government in Afghanistan? "He expanded our commitment to it." Our expensive health-care system? "He made a deal to protect Big Pharma." The irresponsible lending on Wall Street? "He perpetuated 'too big to fail.'"

And the reason for Obama's failure to change Washington stems from his personnel: He surrounds himself with bankers, such as former chief of staff Bill Daley (JP Morgan) and current head staffer Jack Lew (Citibank).

Defeat is not likely, but an embarrassment like West Virginia is possible. And if enough Republicans turn out, who knows?

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/05/arkansas_primed_to_deliver_nasty_surprise_to_obama_in_primary.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Losing Egypt, Losing the Mid-East

by Michael Widlanski

While the world debates the threat of Iranian weapons and their long-term effects on Israel and the Persian Gulf area, events may soon reach a critical mass in the most central and important Arab country, Egypt, in ways that endanger not only Egyptian-Israeli ties, but also the entire fabric of stability in the oil-rich Mid-East.

Iran, though large and important, makes for both the geographical and religious fringe of the Mid-East. Egypt, meanwhile, lies at the heart of the Mid-East and symbolizes the region's dominant Sunni Arab community.

Recently, Israel warned all its citizens vacationing in the Sinai Desert to evacuate the area immediately because of an influx of armed Libyan extremists bent on killing Israelis.

"The whole area is becoming a kind of 'Wild West' with all kinds of groups," declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a radio interview.

A few days earlier, Israel's Shin Bet security agency confirmed that two of the rockets used in recent attacks on the Israeli resort city of Eilat came from the weapons depots of Libya, smuggled across the border into Egypt. But there are other troubling signs.

Egyptian officials recently said they were unilaterally changing or annulling the treaty under which Egypt sells natural gas to Israel. Ex-Foreign Minister Amr Moussa applauded the gas cut-off. Moussa is a leading candidate to win the coming election, and he projects a variant of the Pan-Arab views of the late and not lamented Gamal Abdul-Nasser, who tried to destroy Israel and leaned hard against U.S. interests in the area. This is an area of agreement between the largely secular Moussa and some of the leading Islamist candidates.

Some Egyptian officials deny abrogating signed agreements with Israel, saying they merely want a better price for Egyptian gas, but this appears to be the first time the Egyptian officials have shown that they are acting parallel to terrorists who have blown up the pipeline to Israel and Jordan fourteen times in the last year.

Egypt's military regime, these events show, may be losing control as presidential elections near next month, and the military has banned several leading presidential election candidates, especially angering the Islamic parties. The generals may need a way to placate them, and Israel (and the ties with it) are a convenient scapegoat.

There is also trouble on Egypt's western border. Obama's idea of "leading from behind" in Libya was slow and ineffective, allowing Libyan weapons to proliferate.

Israeli officials say al-Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Libyan terrorists are all operating in the Sinai Desert on Israel's southern border, some of them having developed strong working relationships with members of the eleven Bedouin tribes in Sinai who specialize in smuggling drugs, weapons, and even enslaved women.

This is a recipe for disaster. A failed state in Afghanistan led to an al-Qaeda base there, but a similar situation in Egypt, the most important and populous Arab country, would be far worse. It might be even more strategically disastrous than the fall of Iran to the ayatollahs when Jimmy Carter was president.

The Arabs have a saying: Alf sanna istibdaad, wa la-sanna fawda. "Better a thousand years of authoritarianism and not one year of anarchy." What we now see in Egypt is the result of one year of anarchy, helped by President Barack Obama.

Obama made a dramatic speech in Cairo in 2009 in which he courted the Muslim Brotherhood, thus undermining Egypt's Husni Mubarak. Mubarak might have been a less-than-perfect ally, but he was far better than the Brotherhood that Obama and his aides mistakenly consider "moderates." He who asks terrorists to dinner should expect terror and anarchy for dessert.

Obama's anti-Mubarak stance was not a new position. After 9-11, he spoke to a Chicago newspaper about the need for the U.S. not to fight in Iraq, but instead to fight against government corruption in the Middle East, citing Egypt as an example. He strongly suggested that corruption in Egypt fed poverty and helped cause 9-11.

But Obama was wrong. Corruption is not the main cause of Egyptian poverty, and poverty was not the main cause of 9-11 or terror anywhere. Fighting corruption is fine, everywhere from the Mid-East to the Mid-West -- and even in Chicago. But corruption is not the driver of terror, and fighting it does not require casting off a nearly irreplaceable ally.

Mubarak, for all his faults, worked like President Anwar Sadat to lead Egypt to Infitaah -- opening Egypt to the West, much like Mikhail Gorbachev did with glasnost. Sadat and Mubarak felt that a Western orbit could put a bit more money in the average person's pocket. Egypt pulled away from Russian political/economic models. Tourism and foreign investment grew.

Both Mubarak and Sadat did not make miracles overnight, but their move toward the West and peace with Israel showed slow but steady gains for average Egyptians.

Yet Egypt is a place where a million babies are born every nine months, where 97% of the people live on two percent of the land, a thin strip on the Nile. For Egyptians, it often feels like Egypt is running up a down escalator, fighting just to stay in the same spot. Now even that is gone, as tourism and foreign currency reserves have both plummeted.

Years from now we may not recall Obama's well-parsed words in Cairo, but we will definitely be seeing the way they helped destroy the Sadat-Mubarak heritage of peace and stability in the region.

Mubarak should have left on his own, and he should not have tried to pass power to his son, Gamal. But Obama, Hillary Clinton, and then-CIA boss Leon Panetta all pushed Mubarak out the door too quickly. They were patient with rulers of Syria or Iran, who did far worse to their people than Mubarak did to his, while also trying to harm the U.S. and its allies.

Elsewhere in the Mid-East, Obama's hasty comments and impatient policy have hurt U.S. interests in Iraq and Afghanistan, by forcing U.S. soldiers to punch a public clock timed to Obama's campaign schedule rather than to the situation on the ground. This allowed a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan and Iranian intervention in Iraq.

What Iraqi or Afghani wants to ally himself with a U.S. sheriff about to leave town? Obama brags about keeping his withdrawal timetable, but in the Mid-East, Obama's version of "hope and change" has become "hype and chaos."

The last time a U.S. president's anti-corruption and pro-human rights crusade failed so miserably was when Jimmy Carter and his advisers thought Ayatollah Khomeini was a better bargain than the shah of Iran. We are still paying for that error. Jimmy Carter's U.N. ambassador even spoke of Khomeini as "some kind of saint," while Obama and his aides believe that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey's Islamist leadership are the face of moderate Arab democracy.

One can only guess how long we will pay for Obama's many errors.

Dr. Michael Widlanski, an expert on Arab politics and communications, is the author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, just published by Threshold/Simon and Schuster. He is a former reporter, correspondent, and editor respectively at The New York Times, Cox Newspapers, and The Jerusalem Post, and he served as a strategic affairs adviser in Israel's Ministry of Public Security and as an adviser to Israeli negotiating teams in 1991-92 at the Madrid Summit and thereafter.

Michael Widlanski

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/losing_egypt_losing_the_mid-east.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama's Moral Compass

by Eileen F. Toplansky

On July 2, 2011, Rep. Trent Franks, a member of the House Committee on Armed Services, denounced the Obama administration's policy of "limited contacts" with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Franks emphatically stated that "the [Obama] administration is fooling themselves as well as placing the United States and Israel in severe danger if they fail to recognize the fallout that would stem from the Muslim Brotherhood gaining significant and newfound influence in Egyptian policies following the September elections."

Completely ignoring this grave security risk, Obama enlarged the "limited contact" to a full public endorsement of a group whose codified aim is to murder Jews, exterminate Israel, and infiltrate the West and destroy it from within. According to Discover the Networks, Muslim Brotherhood operative Mohamed Akram espoused the "common goal of dismantling American institutions and turning the U.S. into a Muslim nation."

In fact, Akram was "well aware that in the U.S., it would be extremely difficult to promote Islam by means of terror attacks. Thus the 'grand jihad' that he and his Brotherhood comrades envisioned was not a violent one involving bombings and shootings, but rather a stealth (or 'soft') jihad aiming to impose Islamic law (Sharia) over every region of the earth by incremental, non-confrontational means, such as working to 'expand the observant Muslim base'; to 'unif[y] and direc[t] Muslims' efforts'; and to 'present Islam as a civilization alternative.' At its heart, Akram's document details a plan to conquer and Islamize the United States - not as an ultimate objective, but merely as a stepping stone toward the larger goal of one day creating 'the global Islamic state.'"

Hence, "[t]he ultimate objective [is] not only an enlarged Muslim presence, but also implementation of the Brotherhood objectives of transforming pluralistic societies, particularly America, into Islamic states, and sweeping away Western notions of legal equality, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech."

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, explains that "Egypt's parliament, which is dominated by two pro-Sharia Islamic supremacist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists, voted unanimously [in early March 2012] to expel Israel's ambassador to Egypt, and signaled that the Camp David Accords would soon be a thing of the past: Egypt, the parliamentarians declared, would 'never' be Israel's ally. In fact, Israel was Egypt's 'number one enemy.' And how did Barack Obama respond to this egregious trampling upon the agreement that has kept an uneasy peace between Israel and Egypt for thirty years? By announcing a resumption of military aid to Egypt."

So a group that publicly espouses destruction of American Judeo-Christian values and freedoms receives an open invitation to the White House. Furthermore, Obama bypasses congressional approval and gives $1.5 billion dollars to the Muslim Brotherhood. Washington Post journalist William Wan notes that Obama has turned a blind eye to the daily dismantling of any democratic parameters in Egypt despite American congressional restrictions and objections from human rights and democracy advocates about the ascendancy of the Muslim Brotherhood.

A recent movie available here entitled Daylight: The Story of Obama and Israel highlights the mercurial nature of Obama's track record toward Israel and the Jews. It is particularly important to view in light of the recent news that American Jewry continues to be openly supportive of Obama.

So where is this president who is so concerned with "women's rights" when the Muslim Brotherhood continues "to oppress women, secularists and minority Copts under Islamic Shariah law?" Mere utterances of holiday goodwill do not cover up his indifference to women and minority religious groups who are truly oppressed. We now see the real intent of the so-called Arab Spring that Obama touted so enthusiastically.

Let's continue to examine the facts.

President Barack Obama appointed Hannah Rosenthal as the State Department's new special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. She visited the Swedish city of Malmo in April 2012 because Muslim attacks on Jews have become so common in this Swedish city that the Simon Wiesenthal Center has advised Jews to avoid traveling to the country altogether. But as one learns, Hannah Rosenthal holds the "insidious belief that Jews are to blame for antisemitism because of their support for Israel."

In fact, Ms. Rosenthal rebuked Israeli Ambassador Michel Oren for describing the activist J-Group as "dangerous" to Israeli security. J Street is funded by George Soros, an anti-Israel secular Jewish billionaire who blames Jews for anti-Semitism. Rosenthal was a former director of J Street. In 2010, Daniel Pipes wrote that "the Arab-Israeli debate in the United States has changed to the point that 'Jews' no longer adequately define the actively pro-Israel camp. As Jewish defamers of Israel grow more prominent and organize themselves (think J Street), so do ardently pro-Israel non-Jews (think Christians United for Israel)." What an irony!

Furthermore, Rosenthal has served with the group Americans for Peace Now, which is part of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, a movement that seeks to delegitimize Israel through any means possible.

In August 2011, President Obama created an Atrocities Prevention Board. He appointed Samantha Power, special assistant to the president and senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights and author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. When asked what she would recommend with respect to the Palestine-Israel situation if one party appeared to be moving toward genocide, Ms. Power responded by stating that America might have to alienate "a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial support" (i.e., American Jews) in order to invest "in the state of Palestine." The pernicious canard about Jews and wealth is insulting and hearkens back to the age-old Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Moreover, Ms. Power totally ignores the continuing legacy of non-compliance by the Palestinian leadership and the never-ending destruction rained on Israel by Islamic terrorists -- but she hints at "a meaningful [American] military presence" into Israel!

And whatever happened to the $20.3 million of U.S. taxpayer money for the "urgent refugee and migration needs ... related to humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza" that Obama gave in 2009? Gaza is now under Hamas control. This is now Palestine. How can these residents be considered refugees? Furthermore, have they stopped the heinous anti-Semitic and anti-American education of young Palestinian children? In the May 9, 2012 newsletter of the Palestinian Media Watch, one learns the following:

"A children's program teaching arts and crafts on official Palestinian Authority TV instructed children how to make models of 'Palestine.' The shape of the map of 'Palestine,' which was cut out of paper, included all of Israel. Adding a political message, PA TV taught the children to cover the entire model with the colors of the Palestinian flag, symbolizing Palestinian sovereignty over the whole area."

Additionally, the Palestinian leaders that Israel is supposed to negotiate with have once again honored terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. Thus, the Palestinian Authority "practice of honoring Dalal Mughrabi and presenting her as a role model for youth continues. In 1978, a group of terrorists led by Dalal Mughrabi sailed from Lebanon to Israel to carry out a terror attack. They hijacked a bus and killed 37 Israeli civilians."

Moreover, Palestinian children are told they are "created to be fertilizer for [the] land of Palestine, to saturate [the] land with their blood."

I haven't heard President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton make any commentary concerning the annihilation of a country and the teaching of hatred within the Palestinian community. Why no anti-bullying censure from Obama -- especially since this genocidal impulse is being supported with American taxpayer money?

The corruption of the "security" forces of the Palestinian Authority permitted Hamas to continue their terror in the West Bank. Journalists who wish to expose the story are told they put their lives at risk should they pursue the facts. Yet the American money spigot never dries up as the lawlessness continues.

Moreover, Obama quite deliberately undermined Israel's negotiating position when he demanded that Israel withdraw to 1967 borders when negotiating with the Palestinians. This means that "the starting point of negotiations," according to Obama, "would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter" are up for grabs and that "in order to retain them, Israel has to surrender parts of itself." Moral travesty comes to mind with such a suggestion.

Not shy about inserting himself into an issue before all the facts are known, Obama has been strangely mute about the anti-Semitism rampant in the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Instead, Obama states that the OWS is "expressing the frustration that American people feel."

I guess this was not a "teachable moment" to distinguish anti-Semitic rant from righteous indignation.

As the nuclear clock keeps ticking down in Iran, a most revealing comment was made by an administration official who told the Washington Post that Obama's administration "is trying to make the [Israeli] decision to attack [Iran] as hard as possible for Israel." As Charles Krauthammer has noted, this is "revealing and shocking. The world's greatest exporter of terror (according to the State Department), the systematic killer of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, the self-declared enemy that invented 'Death to America Day' is approaching nuclear capability -- and the focus of U.S. policy is to prevent a democratic ally threatened with annihilation from preempting the threat?"

Can it be said, as Aaron Goldstein of the American Spectator has written, that "[t]he Obama administration's unbridled hostility towards our only true friend in the Middle East is an act of moral cowardice"?

Would Obama in his fatuous bid to gay marriage have the courage to remember gay Dutch sociologist and writer Pim Fortuyn, who was gunned down in the Netherlands on May 6, 2002 because he "saw [that] the precipitous rise of Islam in the West, and especially in his own nation, was a catastrophic development, and he was determined to do everything he could to preserve the liberty and equality that he cherished before it was too late"? Let it not be forgotten that under sharia law, being gay is punishable by stoning. Haven't heard Obama rail against that.

Even as reports continue to surface about jihadists infiltrating the American border, Obama pushes on with lawsuits against Arizona and other states who wish to follow federal immigration law. Obama's pandering to the Hispanic community in order to amass more political clout translates into less security for all Americans and a furtherance of the jihadist ideology. If there is another credible reason for his actions, I have yet to hear it. Claims of racism are mere distractions, since Mexicans and Americans are being murdered because of the porous border between the two countries. At some point in time, we must wrestle with the implications of the idea that "if there is a question, then there is no question"¹. At some point in time, we must conclude that a man is truly known by the company he keeps and the people he appoints who carry out his plans.

Eileen F. Toplansky can be reached at middlemarch@18gmail.com.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/obamas_moral_compass.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Caroline Glick: Let’s Embrace our Friends

by Caroline Glick

In recent years, poll after poll has shown that majority of Israelis do not believe that two-state paradigm will bring peace.

Two weeks ago, US Congressman Joe Walsh published an op-ed in the The Washington Times in which he called for the US and Israel to abandon the two-state solution.

After running through the record of Palestinian duplicity, failed governance, terrorism and bad faith, he called for Israel to apply its sovereignty to Judea and Samaria. In his words, Israel should “adopt the only solution that will bring true peace to the Middle East: a single Israeli state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is the only country in the region dedicated to peace and the only power capable of stable, just and democratic government in the region.”

The evidence that the two-state paradigm has failed is overwhelming. The Palestinians’ decision to reject statehood at Camp David in 2000 and launch a terror war against Israel made clear that they had not abandoned their refusal from 1947 to accept partition of the Land of Israel with the Jews.

So, too, the Palestinians’ election of Hamas in the 2006 elections, and their missile war against Israel from Gaza in the aftermath of Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, all made clear that they are not interested in a Palestinian state. Rather, their chief desire is Israel’s annihilation.

Consequentially, there is no chance whatsoever that the two state paradigm can work.

Indeed, the fact that there is no Palestinian leader willing to recognize Israel’s right to exist makes clear that if a Palestinian state is established in Judea and Samaria – in addition to the de facto Palestinian state in Gaza – that state will be in state of war with Israel. All territory under its control will be used to attack the rump Jewish state.

Given the abject failure of the two-state paradigm, it is abundantly clear that for all the complications that may be associated with the application of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, it is a better option for Israel than Israeli surrender of the areas.

Walsh’s op-ed is not his first statement of support for Israeli annexation. Last September, ahead of the UN general assembly, Walsh authored Congressional Resolution 394 supporting Israel’s right to annex Judea and Samaria in the event that the Palestinians asked the UN to recognize a Palestinian state outside the framework of a peace treaty with Israel. Forty-four other congressmen co-sponsored the resolution.

And this makes sense.

The Palestinians’ decision to turn the issue of Palestinian statehood over to the UN constituted a substantive breach of the treaties the PLO signed with Israel. Those agreements stipulated that both sides agreed that their conflict would be solved through negotiations and not through unilateral actions. By ending negotiations with Israel and turning the issue of statehood over to the UN, the Palestinians canceled their treaties with Israel. Consequently, Israel is no longer bound by those accords and is free to take its own unilateral actions, including applying its laws to Judea and Samaria as it did in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the past.

FOR HIS unstinting support for Israel, Walsh has been subject to an unbridled assault by leftist American Jews. Ron Kampeas from JTA, for instance, attacked Walsh, accusing him of being no different than Israel’s enemies who seek to destroy Israel by ending its ability to define itself as a Jewish state through what they refer to as the “one-state solution.”

Kampeas blasted Walsh for suggesting that Palestinians unwilling to live under Israeli rule could move to Jordan which, with its 75-percent Palestinian majority, is effectively the Palestinian state. To back up his condemnation, Kampeas quoted Robert Wright’s excoriation of Walsh in The Atlantic.

There Wright wrote, “Offhand, I don’t recall a member of Congress in my lifetime saying anything so grotesquely at odds with American ideals about ethnic relations and for that matter basic human rights.”

For its part, the Jewish-run anti-Israel lobby J Street is mobilizing its supporters to bring about Walsh’s defeat in the November elections by soliciting contributions to his Democratic challenger. J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote that “Walsh’s prescription amounts to a call for an end to Israel as the democratic home of the Jewish people.”

It is hard to know where to begin a discussion of this assault in which Jewish Americans attacked one of Israel’s strongest supporters simply because he had the temerity to recognize reality and call for the US to support an Israeli victory against our enemies who seek our destruction.

First, it is important to consider the claim that Walsh went against the grain of American ideals by suggesting, “Those Palestinians who wish to may leave their Fatah- and Hamas-created slums and move to the original Palestinian state: Jordan. The British Mandate for Palestine created Jordan as the country for the Palestinians. That is the only justification for its creation. Even now, 75% of its population is of Palestinian descent.”

The fact of the matter is that the two-state paradigm rests on the assumption that the Palestinian state will be ethnically cleansed of Jews before it is established. Whereas Walsh somehow stands in opposition to American ideals for suggesting that the Palestinians may voluntarily immigrate to Jordan, Kampeas, Ben- Ami and their cohorts have no problem with the concept of a Jew-free Palestine and the forcible expulsion of up to 675,000 Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem simply because they are Jewish.

Aside from their pernicious hypocrisy and moral blindness, what stands out in their assaults on Walsh is that they cannot tell the difference between Israel’s enemies that seek its destruction through the so-called one-state solution, and Israel’s friends, who want it to defeat its enemies and live with security and peace. For the likes of Kampeas and Ben-Ami, there is no difference between Walsh and Israel’s worst enemies.

PART OF this problem is their apparent unquestioning acceptance of the myth of a demographic time bomb. They seem not to have noticed that the Palestinian claim that by 2015 there will be an Arab majority west of the Jordan River is a complete fabrication.

The truth is that if Israel applied its laws to Judea and Samaria tomorrow and all the Palestinians in those areas received Israeli citizenship, Israel would still retain a two-thirds Jewish majority. Moreover, all the demographic trends for Israel, including increasing birthrates and positive immigration rates, are positive. And all the demographic trends for the Palestinians, including decreasing birthrates and negative immigration rates, are negative. According to Israeli demographic researcher Yoram Ettinger, by 2030, Jewish will likely comprise 80% of the population of Israel, Judea and Samaria.

So Ben-Ami’s argument that Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria means the end of Israeli democracy is simply incorrect.

But aside from their hypocrisy and refusal to accept simple arithmetic realities, what stands out most clearly in these leftist American Jews' assault on Walsh is how they have become addicted to the fable of the two-state solution. Their addiction to this fable – that argues that after a century of Palestinian devotion to the annihilation of Israel, the Palestinians are suddenly willing to meet Israel halfway – is what propels these Jewish activists to attack anyone who points out reality. It is what drives them to brand as a foe anyone with the temerity to suggest a better way forward.

The beauty of the two-state fable is that it puts the onus to make peace on Israel’s shoulders.

If it is true that the Palestinians want to make peace, then Israel must make peace. And if all the Palestinians require to make peace is for Israel to quit Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, then that is what Israel must do, together with the 675,000 Jews who live there.

The real tragedy is of course not that the likes of Kampeas and Ben-Ami maintain faith with the fairy tale of Palestinian willingness to live at peace with Israel. The real tragedy is that this myth has been the official policy of the government of Israel for the past 19 years. Since then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin launched the peace process with Yasser Arafat in September 1993, to greater or lesser degrees, every Israeli government has kept faith with the two-state solution lie.

It hasn’t mattered that the Palestinians rejected statehood and peace not once, but twice. It hasn’t mattered that the Palestinians received Gaza lock, stock and barrel with no strings attached and used the territory to launch an illegal missile war against Israeli civilians. The fact that both Arafat and his supposedly moderate successor Mahmoud Abbas rejected partition and maintained their devotion to Israel’s destruction did not stop Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from bowing to US pressure and embracing this fool’s game.

People like Kampeas are the first to bemoan Israel’s sorry state in the realm of public diplomacy. They decry Israel’s hasbara efforts as pathetic and failed. But what they fail to acknowledge is that it is the two-state trap that makes the construction and execution of an effective public diplomacy strategy impossible.

To maintain faith with this failed policy, Israel’s leaders and representatives are not merely required to ignore the history of the past 90 years of Palestinian rejection and aggression.
They are required to ignore current events.

They are forced to ignore not just what happened in 1947, but what happened at 7 o’clock in the morning.

And this brings us back to Rep. Walsh. There may be things to criticize about Walsh’s policy argument. For instance, he calls for the conferral of “limited voting power” on the Palestinians under Israeli sovereignty. In truth, there is no reason for them to receive anything but full voting rights.

But you have to be blind to reality to view him as anything other than a friend of Israel.

Happily, not everyone in Israel remains paralyzed. Members of Knesset have launched repeated attempts in recent months to debate legislation calling for Israel to apply its sovereignty over all or parts of Judea and Samaria. Next Wednesday, MK Miri Regev is holding a conference to launch a new Knesset caucus calling for the adoption of this policy.

IN RECENT years, poll after poll has shown that the majority of Israelis do not believe that the two-state paradigm will bring peace or that if a Palestinian state is formed, it will live at peace with Israel.

And yet, because of the choke-hold that Kampeas and Ben-Ami’s Israeli counterparts have held over the national discourse, the Israeli people have been given no other option to consider. Rather, we have been told over and over again that giving our enemies a veto over our rights, land and security is the only alternative.

Walsh and the 44 congressmen who co-sponsored his resolution are Israel’s friends. We should take heart in their willingness to buck consensus and support us. And we should give careful and responsible consideration to their reasonable and supportive policy recommendations.

Caroline Glick caroline@carolineglick.com

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=270472

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Islamists Threaten Insurgency Should Secularists Win Egypt Election

by Michael Rubin

Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while still mayor of Istanbul, famously quipped, “Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.” Alas, as Martin Kramer has so often warned, it appears that Egypt Islamists are taking the same tact. On May 19, Islamic Jihad Organization member Shaykh Usamah Qasim took to the pages of Al-Misri al-Yawm to warn that Islamists would not tolerate a victory by any of the non-Islamist candidates. According to a translation provided by the Open Source Center:

…The victory of former prime minister Ahmad Shafiq or former Arab League chief Amr Musa in the coming presidential elections would lead some Islamic and non-Islamic groups to respond with “armed action.” “Thus, the fate of any of them who reaches the presidency will be like that of former President Anwar al-Sadat, who was assassinated,” Qasim said.

One-in-three Middle Eastern Arabs live in Egypt. Unfortunately, it looks like the Nile may once again flow with blood.

Michael Rubin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/05/20/islamists-threaten-insurgency-if-secularists-win-egypt-election/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama Abandons the “Good War”

by Jonathan S. Tobin

Throughout President Bush’s second term, the chief foreign policy mantra of the Democratic Party was to claim the United States was wrong not to concentrate its energy on winning the war in Afghanistan. That was the “good war” as opposed to the war supposedly entered on the basis of lies and which couldn’t be won. The surge President Bush ordered in 2007 undermined the talking point about Iraq being unwinnable, but the idea that Afghanistan was being shorted was heard a great deal in 2008 as Barack Obama was elected president. Once in the White House, the new president was forced to come to a decision about what to do in Afghanistan, and by the summer, he made good on his promise to fight the good war there. But along with his pledge to start a surge that could defeat the Taliban was a provision that critics at the time warned could undo all the good that could come of the new plan.

With the president set to announce at the G8 meetings in Chicago the complete end of American combat operations in 2013 whether or not Afghan forces are prepared to step into the breach, a front-page feature in today’s New York Times provides a helpful explanation of the decision. The piece, adapted from a new book by Times reporter David E. Sanger, makes it clear the administration never had fully backed the surge. Indeed, despite his “good war” rhetoric, Obama clearly never believed in the mission there to rid the country of the Taliban and was looking to back out of his commitment from the moment he made it. Having failed to go “all in” for the surge by not providing as many troops in the beginning as the military asked, the president then did not give the generals the opportunity to persuade him to slow down a planned withdrawal that only served to signal the enemy all they had to do was to hold on until the Americans left.

As Sanger writes:

By early 2011, Mr. Obama had seen enough. He told his staff to arrange a speedy, orderly exit from Afghanistan. This time there would be no announced national security meetings, no debates with the generals. Even Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were left out until the final six weeks.

The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban. He said he “believed that we had a more limited set of objectives that could be accomplished by bringing the military out at a faster clip,” an aide reported.

Given the difficulties in fighting in Afghanistan for more than a decade and the enormous shortcomings of our local allies, especially President Hamid Karzai, fatigue with the war is understandable. But in light of the revelations about the president’s decision-making process, it is now apparent that the administration lacked the one thing any country needs in war: a commitment to victory. Without it, the Afghan surge was just a blip on the radar screen and, unlike the Iraqi insurgents who knew President Bush meant business during the U.S. surge in that war, the Taliban were right to discount the possibility that President Obama was just as tough-minded. Even at the outset of the new surge it’s clear now the president saw it as merely a bloody prelude to a withdrawal with, as Sanger notes, no provision for what would happen if the Taliban start their own surge after the Americans leave.

The administration gives itself credit for having rethought strategy and concentrated instead on the real “good war” — fighting al-Qaeda in Pakistan. But if, as Sanger reports, the administration had concluded that there had never been a coherent U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, the same is certainly true of American objectives in Pakistan. In truth, the U.S. has no strategy in Pakistan other than to keep attacking terrorists in the tribal areas with drones, a tactic that is deadly but has no chance of ridding the area of trouble or maintaining Pakistan as an ally in the war against the Islamists. The only thing that recommends this plan is that it requires few American troops and allows the president to adopt the “lead from behind” posture with which he is so comfortable.

President Obama’s 2009 decision to stay the course in Afghanistan and use a surge to fight the Taliban was the sort of responsible action that gave the lie to his detractors’ assertion that he had little understanding of the strategic imperatives of fighting the country’s Islamist foes. But, as we now know, the applause he earned then was largely undeserved. His only real goal was to bug out of Afghanistan but to do so without having lost the country before he ran for re-election in 2012.

The result is a plan that is a disaster in the making which will create a mess that will be all too apparent in the years to come. That’s something he’s willing to live with if he is re-elected. Whether it is one that can be reversed by his successor, either in 2013 or 2017, remains to be seen.

Jonathan S. Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/05/20/obama-abandons-the-good-war-afghanistan-surge-withdrawal/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Bring on Iran, Says US Admiral

by AP

The top U.S. Navy official in the Gulf said Sunday he takes Iran’s military capabilities seriously but insists his forces are prepared to confront any Iranian aggression in the region.

Vice Adm. Mike I. Fox wants YOU for his ultra-modern Persian Gulf fleet. (photo credit: AP/Hassan Ammar)

Vice Adm. Mark Fox, commander of the 5th Fleet, told reporters at the naval force’s Bahrain headquarters that the Navy has “built a wide range of potential options to give the president” and is “ready today” to confront any hostile action by Tehran.

He did not outline specifically how the Navy might answer an Iranian strike or an effort to shut the entrance to the Persian Gulf, though any response would likely involve the two U.S. aircraft carriers and other warships cruising the waters off Iran.

“We’ve developed very precise and lethal weapons that are very effective, and we’re prepared,” Fox said. “We’re just ready for any contingency.”

Faced with tightening Western sanctions, Iranian officials have stepped up threats to close the Strait of Hormuz if the country’s oil exports are blocked. A fifth of the world’s oil supply passes through the narrow waterway, which is only about 30 miles (50 kilometers) across at its narrowest point.

Iran and Oman share control of the waterway, but it is considered an international strait, meaning free transit passage is guaranteed under international law.

Iran’s army chief, Gen. Ataollah Salehi, early last month warned an American warship not to return to the Gulf shortly after the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis and another vessel left. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, entered the Gulf without incident on Jan. 22.

Fox acknowledged that Iran’s military is “capable of striking a blow” against American forces in the Gulf, particularly using unconventional means such as small attack boats or mines laid along shipping lanes.

“We’re not bulletproof. There are people that can take a swipe at us,” Fox said.

But he added that he has reminded officers under his command that they “have a right and an obligation of self defense” if attacked.

The admiral’s comments echo those of other Western officials, who say they will respond swiftly to any Iranian attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” last month that Iranian forces could block shipping through the strait “for a period of time,” but added, “We can defeat that.”

In his briefing in the Bahraini capital Manama, Fox voiced support for the tiny island nation that has hosted U.S. Navy vessels for decades.

“They are a long-term partner and a very important piece of our ability to do our mission,” he said of the country.

Bahrain has been rocked by protests led by the country’s majority Shiites against the country’s Sunni monarchy that erupted in force a year ago. Street battles between security forces and protesters still flare up almost daily in the predominantly Shiite villages around the capital.

Fox’s command encompasses the bulk of the Middle East, including the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and a large swath of the Indian Ocean along the east African coast. There are about 25,000 sailors under his command.

AP

Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com/bring-on-iran-says-us-admiral/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Nine-Member Ramallah Cell Made Three Attempts to Kidnap Israelis in West Bank

by Gabe Fisher

Indictments served against PFLP-linked terror group that was busted in March after trying to grab mother and infant, among others

The Shin Bet internal security agency, IDF and police captured a terrorist cell from the Ramallah area that tried on at least three occasions in March to abduct Israeli citizens in the West Bank, the Shin Bet revealed on Sunday.

The terror group, associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), planned to negotiate for the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails in exchange for the kidnapped citizens.

According to an indictment served against nine of those allegedly involved, the cell attempted to kidnap Israeli hitchhikers and motorists in the West Bank. Members of the cell hired vehicles and on at least three attempts were close to carrying out an abduction.

The indictment states that on the afternoon of March 11, cell members blocked a vehicle traveling to Kiryat Sefer, but the driver managed to escape. The next day, a driver on the road to Ma’aleh Levona found her car surrounded by a group of men who tried to break the windows, but she also was able to escape.

Their last attempt was on March 15, when a driver and her infant daughter were stopped near Beit El. This attempt was also unsuccessful.

The various kidnapping attempts, cell members reportedly told investigators, were foiled because the Israeli citizens involved acted effectively to prevent them.

The men were caught in possession of an electroshock weapon, mace, clubs and a fake gun. The Palestinians allegedly planned to hide their victims in nearby caves or an empty apartment.

Last October Israel released some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, a soldier who was abducted by Hamas and held in captivity in Gaza for more than five years.

Gabe Fisher

Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com/ramallah-cell-plotted-to-kidnap-israelis/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israeli Group Wins Terror Suit Against Syria, Iran

by Associated Press

An Israeli advocacy group says it has won a $323 million judgment in a U.S. court against Iran and Syria for supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group that killed an American teenager and ten others in a 2006 bombing.

Washington, D.C., judge Royce Lamberth ruled, "When a state chooses to uses terror as a policy tool - as Iran and Syria continue to do - that state forfeits its sovereign immunity and deserves unadorned condemnation."

Floridian Daniel Wultz, 16, was among 11 killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber set off his explosives at a Tel Aviv restaurant six years ago.

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center said Tuesday that the group had won courtroom victories against Iran but never before against Syria.

Associated Press

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/15/israeli-group-wins-terror-suit-against-syria-iran/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.