Misrepresenting American Jewry

by Caroline Glick

 

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.

Last month, we learned that in addition to targeting groups that that oppose abortion and that support limited government and lower taxes, the Obama administration’s Internal Revenue Service has apparently been singling out non-leftist pro-Israel groups.

According to numerous media investigations, beginning as early as March 2009, a consortium of powerful forces including the Palestinian Authority, The New York Times, columnists in The Washington Post, administration-allied anti-Israel groups including J Street and the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the State Department lobbied the IRS to discriminate against these pro-Israel groups.

They alleged that since these groups opposed the administration’s policy of coercing Israel to vacate Judea, Samaria and northern, southern and eastern Jerusalem, they had no right to receive tax-breaks as nonprofit groups.

There is no legal basis for the claim that US groups which lawfully oppose government policy should be barred from receiving nonprofit status.

Since Israel’s presence and the presence of Jewish civilians in Judea and Samaria is completely legal, there is also no justification for vilifying those in the US or in Israel who support and work to expand that presence.

True, the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s Middle East strategy is to delegitimize the Jewish presence in these areas as a prelude to eliminating it. If nothing else, the contrast between Secretary of State John Kerry’s peripatetic efforts to restart peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel on the one hand, and his demonstrated indifference to the convulsions now engorging Egypt, not to mention the Obama administration’s generally lackadaisical attitude toward the Syrian civil war on the other hand, make that point.

Like President Barack Obama, Kerry has adopted the PLO’s position that talks between the Palestinians and Israel must be based on presumptive Palestinian sovereignty of all territories illegally captured by Egypt and Jordan in Israel’s War of Independence up to the 1949 armistice lines (falsely, and misleadingly referred to as the 1967 borders). Implicitly, the administration supports the PLO’s demand that for a Palestinian state to be formed, those areas – as well as much of Jerusalem – must first be ethnically cleansed of Jews.

The administration’s obsession with coercing Israel to make massive concessions to the PLO is based on its belief that the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the greatest source of all instability and anti-Americanism in the Arab world.

Every day, the utter folly and madness of this position is revealed. For the past two-and a- half years, it has been exposed in the chaos that has taken hold in state after state throughout the Arab world, and in the fanatical forces released by this chaos. True, Jew hatred is endemic throughout the Arab world. But as the demonstrations from Cairo to the killing fields in Aleppo have shown, this hatred has little impact on the actions of the hundreds of millions of people in the Arab world. When supporters of Egypt’s ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi yell “[Interim President] Adly Mansour is a Jew,” they are not suggesting they will put aside their differences with Egypt’s military government if Israel reaches a peace deal with the PLO.

Thirteen years ago this month, the Palestinians rejected peace and statehood at the Camp David summit. Since then, not a day has passed when they haven’t taken some action that made clear they have no intention whatsoever of ever making peace with Israel. Their identity is based on the negation of Jewish peoplehood and Jewish rights.

Just last week, this state of affairs was grotesquely reinforced when the Palestinian Authority’s television station presented two little girls reciting a poem in which they castigated Jews as “filth,” the “most evil among creations, barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs,” whom Jerusalem will “vomit” out, and who are condemned to “humiliation and hardship.”

But the folly of the US’s Middle East policy has made no difference to the foreign policy establishment, which has connived, according to media reports, to deny pro-Israel groups that reject this position their legal right to nonprofit status by siccing the IRS on them.

One of the most notable aspects of the story of alleged IRS discrimination against nonleftist pro-Israel organizations has been the silence of the mainstream American Jewish groups in the face of this apparent persecution.

What does the silence of major American Jewish groups on this issue tell us about the nature of these organizations that claim to speak for the American Jewish community? Obviously the alleged ideological discrimination toward predominantly Jewish pro-Israel organizations by the federal government is a matter that the overwhelming majority of American Jews find objectionable not to mention frightening.

And yet, the largest American Jewish groups have said nothing. They have not demanded any explanations from the IRS or the State Department. They have not demand apologies from the New York Times, J Street, the Arab American Anti-Discrimination or anyone else for maligning lawful organizations that operate well within the boundaries of law.

It’s possible that they are silent because they are afraid.

Groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have multi-million dollar budgets and they prize their access to the White House and the State Department.

Their leadership may fear that by objecting to anti-Israel discrimination, they will stop getting invited to White House Hanukka parties or that they themselves will become the targets of unjustified Federal investigations.

Perhaps it is fear. But perhaps they are silent because they share the goal of silencing voices that refuse to accept the Obama administration’s assertion that it is pro-Israel to support the establishment of a Palestinian terror state in Israel’s capital and in its historic and strategic heartland.

Perhaps they wish to muzzle Jews who refuse to accept that it is pro-Israel to be anti-Israel.

Last month two rising Israeli political stars, Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, expressed their opposition to a Palestinian state. In addition to stating his own opposition to such an entity, Danon also noted that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s support for the establishment of a Palestinian state is shared neither by the majority of the members of the Likud’s Knesset faction, nor by the majority of the ministers in his coalition government, and that the government would oppose the establishment of such a state were the issue brought to a vote.

These statements were not unprecedented. Far from it.

In January Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon noted that a Palestinian state would be an enemy of the Jewish state, saying “There are those who are trying to market [PA Chairman Mahmoud] Abbas as relatively moderate, but his goals are the same as those of Hamas. He does not believe in an agreement based on pre-1967 lines and he is refusing to come to the negotiating table.”

Rather than contend with the substance of these elected leaders’ remarks, or simply give them the respect due to duly elected representatives of the Israeli public, both the AJC and the ADL 

condemned them for speaking their minds. Even worse, they pretended their condemnations reflected the position of the Israeli government.

As the Zionist Organization of America noted, the AJC falsely claimed that Ya’alon asked Netanyahu to reprimand Danon – his deputy – for speaking the truth.

The AJC and the ADL condemned Danon and Bennett because they claimed that by speaking the truth they harmed the chances of the “two-state solution.”

But of course, that is absurd.

The reason the so-called “two-state solution” has no chance of success is because the Palestinians reject the Jewish state, not because Jews reject another Arab state. Pointing this out is not harmful. It is essential. And hiding this fact is not constructive to Arab-Israeli peace or to Middle Eastern stability.

The only party that benefits from American Jewish groups attacking duly elected Israeli leaders for stating the truth is the Obama administration. It is Washington, not Jerusalem that insistently clings to the ridiculous “two-state solution.”

It is Washington, not Jerusalem that insists a policy of reducing Israel to an indefensible, riven and weak Jewish statelet without its capital city or heartland is the magic bullet for solving everything from the global jihad to Arab illiteracy and misogyny.

By defending the administration’s unhealthy obsession with Israel, these American Jewish groups, with multi-million dollar budgets and automatic access to the media, are promoting an agenda that necessarily rejects the legitimacy of Israeli elections, and the views of the majority of Israelis. And Israelis are not the only people these groups betray by siding with the White House against facts. These positions also pit them against the majority of American Jews.

As the ZOA noted, polls of American Jews carried out by the AJC itself over the past two years show that not only do the majority of Israelis oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, the majority of American Jews oppose it as well. A Gallup poll taken over the past year showed that the majority of Americans in general also oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The silver lining in this story is that not all American Jews are taking their organizational leadership’s abuse of their values and views lying down. In addition to helping the ZOA to expand its reach, in community after community, activists, generally with no financial assistance, are forming new groups to advance the interests and values of America’s Jews that are being trounced by the major Jewish organizations.

Over the past 10 years independent activists have banded together under an assortment of names – Christians and Jews United for Israel, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, JCCWatch and countless others to do the work that the American Jewish organizational leadership refuses to do.

In New York, JCCWatch has organized protests against the Jewish Federation-funded 92nd Street Y for repeatedly providing forums for outspoken Jewhaters including Alice Walker and Roger Waters to air their poisonous views.

In San Francisco, a nurse named Masha Merkulova founded the Rimon Club in 2011. The Rimon Club organizes events to educate the Jewish community about Israel. The Rimon Club recently formed Club Z, a youth group for San Francisco area Jewish youth that provides them an informal, fun setting to connect in a meaningful and non-apologetic way with Israel and their Jewish identity.

According to senior Israeli officials, and leaked PA documents, after Obama came into office, his senior advisers told their Israeli interlocutors that they controlled the American Jewish community. Under Obama, these Israeli leaders were told, there would be no more American Jewish voices opposing the two-state solution or opposing pressure on Israel.

With J Street, they said, AIPAC would no longer defend Israel.

Maybe they were right. But what is certainly true, is that despite its audits, its alleged denials of nonprofit status, and its American Jewish mouthpieces, the Obama administration has not silenced the American Jews. From coast to coast, authentic, courageous American Jewish groups are forming and organizing. Their members understand that there are things that are more important than multi-million dollar budgets and invitations to White House parties.


Caroline Glick

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/misrepresenting-american-jewry/

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

Barry Rubin - Egypt: Out of the Frying Pan into the Frying Pan

by Barry Rubin

photo: @ismaeelalqimare

We don’t know what shape Egypt’s political direction will take. One bargaining process that’s going on is negotiations between the United States and Egypt in which Washington is the patron of the Muslim Brotherhood, Put roughly the U.S. proposal is that American aid and recognition will be given the military takeover in exchange for the release of Muslim Brotherhood and other prisoners of the army, a chance for the  Brotherhood to participate in fair elections and in a coalition government.

Is this good for Egypt? Of course not. Such a government would be inoperable and would daily increase the tensions.

It prevents the understanding by the Islamists that the are defeated and must be submissive.
It plays in the naivete that showing compromise (weakness) will bring conciliation.
Is this good for U.S. interests?

Of course not. It can only help if one believes that the Brotherhood and Salafists will be moved by American backing and reciprocate by not staging terrorist attacks.

Any way, the new regime will have twice as much Saudi and other Arab monarchy aid than the West would offer on tougher conditions, though of course that won’t be advanced military aid.

One thing is for sure: a year or two from now Egyptians will not be happy with the current regime. Why is that so certain? There are social-historical and objective reasons. Let me focus on the less controversial latter ones. Egypt is a country where too many people live on too little land without many resources. It is also trying to become an industrial society too late in history with too much competition.

Egypt’s social problems are perhaps more the result than the cause of the difficulties. And discussing these would take a lot of words many of which you’ve already heard. The economic problems will not go away no matter what happens. There are no billions of dollars in aid out there; no—if you forgive please this phrase—Allah ex machina.  If massive international support per capita couldn’t get the Palestinian Authority of 2.5 million people going how is it going to happen in a place with 35 times more people?

Then, too, is the political situation. There are now three factions which we can broadly call the military-civilian complex (the ruling class for the last half-century and its supporters); the Islamists; and the “moderates.”

The military-civilian complex are the same people who have always run the country.  They have not done a great job, with marked greed, corruption, and incompetence. If this were a movie the title could be ”Back to the Past.” It will be a more tolerable Mubarak situation, just as it would have been if that president had turned over power five years ago, as the military-civilian elite wanted him to do.

Westerners may have deluded themselves into thinking that Egyptians changed their opinion in two years but most have not. Many of those who voted for the Islamists may have decided they prefer the comforts of a relatively benign dictatorship but lots of Egyptians of Egyptians oppose the counterrevolution.

What is the saving grace? First, as Westerners continually misunderstand what might be called the power of power. People go with the winner. Whoever governs is popular until things just get beyond toleration, as happened in Iran and Syria. That process takes a long time to build up.

Second, the Muslim Brotherhood, it is hard to put this in polite Western terms, is either going to be craven or murderous. It remembers what happened in the 1950s—when the regime crushed it, sent its leaders to concentration camps, and hung some of them.  The Brotherhood may snarl but it is frightened of the army.

Still, no doubt, many of the Salafists and some Brotherhood militants will take up arms, especially in Upper Egypt (the south) and the Sinai. It will not be a civil war but as in the 1990s, it will be an insurgency. [To read about the fighting in the 1990s, see my book Islamic Fundamentalists in Egyptian Politics online or download it for free.]

In addition, the Islamists, especially the Salafists, are deeply divided and never seem to overcome personal, ideological, and organizational rivalries. The army will simply kill anyone who fights it or imprison them. In the 1990s it sometimes imprisoned the parents of insurgents until the wanted man gave himself up.

Finally, there is the “moderate opposition” which will become restive under the return of the traditional elite. There are a lot of people who are celebrating today and will be protesting tomorrow. I want to be very clear that there are millions of good people who want better lives for their families and one should sympathize with their democratic aspirations.

But the truth is that their leaders are incompetent, the quarrels among the groups will reemerge, and some of these groups are undemocratic or anti-democratic.  An Egypt led by Muhammad al-Baradei, the spokesman of the opposition and a candidate for its leadership, would not be a better place than one led by a technocratic candidate of the military. His mismanagement of the International Atomic Energy Agency and favoring Iran was obvious.

It all reminds me of an article written by a Western newspaper correspondent about the Balkans in August 1940. Nazi Germany had just given its ally, Hungary, the Romanian-ruled territory of Transylvania.  He asked an old Jewish man living there what he thought about it. “The best thing that could happen,” he said, “would be that the Romanians left and the Hungarians never arrived.”

Meanwhile, Obama’s favorite Middle East leader, Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, shows how much he favors the anti-American Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogan’s EU minister said, “One Mursi will go, a thousand Mursi’s will come in Egypt.” Erdogan has said similar things.

It is understandable that the Turkish Islamists are uncomfortable about that kind of coup since it was once done against their predecessors. But the line should be drawn for U.S. policy: those who favor Islamist radicalism whether in Afghanistan, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, or Hamas and Hizballah are enemies of the United States. Those who oppose it are at least potential allies.

Posted on PJ MEDIA


Barry Rubin

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/2013/07/egypt-out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-frying-pan/

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

Egypt after Morsi: The Defeat of Political Islam?

by Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah

• The Muslim Brotherhood's 80-year dream to take over Egypt ended in a fiasco, barely one year after one of its own was democratically elected to the office of President of Egypt. 

• The Muslim Brotherhood lost its power because it did not correctly assess the opposition, because it was eager to dominate all key positions in the state, and because it did not foresee the possible coalition between the liberals and the army. 

• The Brotherhood's loss is definitely a gain for those struggling against jihadist and Brotherhood-inspired groups in the Arab world, sending a message that political Islam can be subdued by moderate and liberal forces. 

• The situation in Egypt that brought the end of Morsi's presidency was an unwritten alliance between the army and the mass protest movement. In such an eventuality, regimes stand no chance to survive. 

• Israel allowed the Egyptian army to deploy in Sinai, in violation of the terms and agreements governing the deployment of the Egyptian army under the peace treaty, in order to combat jihadists in Sinai, allowing Egypt greater freedom of movement there in order to preserve the peace treaty.  

• Israel is interested first and foremost in maintaining the status quo relating to the peace treaty, and to contain, if not eradicate, the jihadi presence in Sinai. Having the Egyptian army at the helm today makes it easier for Israel to deal with Egypt.

Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, a special analyst for the Middle East at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, was formerly Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Deputy Head for Assessment of Israeli Military Intelligence.

Source: http://jcpa.org/article/egypt-after-morsi-the-defeat-of-political-islam/

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

The Economic Blunders Behind the Arab Revolutions

by David P. Goldman


Sometimes economies can't be fixed after decades of statist misdirection, and the people simply get up and go. Since the debt crisis of the 1980s, 10 million poor Mexicans—victims of a post-revolutionary policy that kept rural Mexicans trapped on government-owned collective farms—have migrated to the United States. Today, Egyptians and Syrians face economic problems much worse than Mexico's, but there is nowhere for them to go. Half a century of socialist mismanagement has left the two Arab states unable to meet the basic needs of their people, with economies so damaged that they may be past the point of recovery in our lifetimes.

This is the crucial background to understanding the state failure in Egypt and civil war in Syria. It may not be within America's power to reverse their free falls; the best scenario for the U.S. is to manage the chaos as best it can.

Of Egypt's 90 million people, 70% live on the land. Yet the country produces barely half of Egyptians' total caloric consumption. The poorer half of the population survives on subsidized food imports that stretch a budget deficit close to a sixth of the country's GDP, about double the ratio in Greece. With the global rise in food prices, Egypt's trade deficit careened out of control to $25 billion in 2010, up from $10 billion in 2006, well before the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.

In Syria, the government's incompetent water management—exacerbated by drought beginning in 2006—ruined millions of farmers before the May 2011 rebellion. The collapse of Syrian agriculture didn't create the country's ethnic and religious fault lines, but it did leave millions landless, many of them available and ready to fight.

Egyptians are ill-prepared for the modern world economy. Forty-five percent are illiterate. Nearly all married Egyptian women suffer genital mutilation. One-third of marriages are between cousins, a hallmark of tribal society. Only half of the 51 million Egyptians between the ages of 15 and 64 are counted in the government's measure of the labor force. If Egypt counted its people the way the U.S. does, its unemployment rate would be well over 40% instead of the official 13% rate. Nearly one-third of college-age Egyptians register for university but only half graduate, and few who do are qualified for employment in the 21st century.

That is the tragic outcome of 60 years of economic policies designed for political control rather than productivity. We have seen similar breakdowns, for example in Latin America during the 1980s, but with a critical difference. The Latin debtor countries all exported food. Egypt is a banana republic without the bananas.

The world market pulled the rug out from under Egypt's mismanaged economy when world food prices soared beginning in 2007 in response to Asian demand for feed grain. Meantime, the price of cotton—on which Mr. Mubarak had bet the store—declined. Now Egypt's food situation is critical: The country reportedly has two months' supply of imported wheat on hand when it should have more than six months' worth. For months, Egypt's poor have had little to eat except bread, in a country where 40% of adults already are physically stunted by poor diet, according to the World Food Organization. When the military forced President Mohammed Morsi out of office last week, bread was starting to get scarce.

Since 1988, Bashar Assad's regime misdirected Syria's scarce water resources toward wheat and cotton irrigation in pursuit of socialist self-sufficiency. It didn't pan out—and when drought hit seven years ago, the country began to run out of water. Illegal wells have depleted the underground water table. Three million Syrian farmers (out of a total 20 million population) were pauperized, and hundreds of thousands left their farms for tent camps on the outskirts of Syrian cities.

Assad's belated attempt to reverse course triggered the current political crisis, the economist Paul Rivlin wrote in a March 2011 report for Tel Aviv University's Moshe Dayan Center: "By 2007, 12.3 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty and the poverty rate had reached 33 percent. Since then, poverty rates have risen still further. In early 2008, fuel subsidies were abolished and, as a result, the price of diesel fuel tripled overnight. Consequently, during the year the price of basic foodstuffs rose sharply and was further exacerbated by the drought. In 2009, the global financial crisis reduced the volume of remittances coming into Syria."

The regime cut tariffs on food imports in February 2011 in a last-minute bid to mitigate the crisis, but the move misfired as the local market hoarded food in response to the government's perceived desperation, sending prices soaring just before Syria's Sunnis rebelled.

Economic crisis set the stage for political collapse in Egypt and Syria, even if it wasn't the actual spur. The two Arab states are, of course, not the only nations ruined by socialist mismanagement. But unlike Russia and Eastern Europe, they have no pool of skilled labor or natural resources to fall back on. In this context, Western concerns about the niceties of democratic procedure seem misguided.

The best outcome for Egypt in the short run is subsidies from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to tide it over. Egypt's annual financing gap is almost $20 billion, and it is flat broke. The price of such aid is continuing to sideline the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Gulf monarchies consider a threat to their legitimacy. The Gulf states have pledged $12 billion in response to Morsi's overthrow, averting a near-term economic disaster. That's probably the best among a set of bad alternatives.

Syria may not be salvageable as a political entity, and the West should consider a Yugoslavia-style partition plan to stop ethnic and religious slaughter. Even the best remedies, though, may come too late to keep the region from deteriorating into a prolonged period of chaos.


Mr. Goldman, president of Macrostrategy LLC, is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and the London Center for Policy Research.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3554/arab-revolutions-economics

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

The Wrong “Coup” Debate

by Seth Mandel


The Obama administration endured some mockery when it tried to refer to antiterror efforts as “overseas contingency operations” and terrorist attacks as “man-caused disasters.” But there have been far worse symptoms of the same affliction, such as when Susan Rice, at the time working in the Clinton administration, reportedly worried about calling the Rwandan genocide a “genocide,” reasoning that “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional midterm] election?”

Euphemism and terminology are again at the forefront of foreign-policy decision making, this time, as Max referenced yesterday, with regard to whether the U.S. should continue supplying Egypt with military and economic aid. If you support continuing the aid but don’t want to cross the U.S. law that says the Egyptian coup would automatically trigger a suspension of aid, what are your options? The first is to do what the Obama administration is doing, and not call it a coup. But some congressional Republicans have a second idea, according to Reuters:

U.S. lawmakers will begin to vote as soon as next week on legislation that could continue aid to Egypt even if the Obama administration determines that the ouster of elected President Mohamed Mursi was a military coup, lawmakers and aides said on Thursday….
Republican U.S. Representative Kay Granger, chairwoman of the House of Representatives subcommittee in charge of the aid, said her panel could consider allowing more flexibility, such as language that would allow the aid to continue if doing so were deemed to be in the U.S. national security interest.
Granger said she is not considering changing the coup language but that it was possible for Congress to change it to make it more flexible.
“There is not a waiver (provision) in the coup legislation,” Granger told Reuters in an interview. “That could be changed, however, if the Congress says we are going to allow a waiver.”

This may sound like an easy out, but there are drawbacks. Giving the president the power to waive foreign-policy laws when he doesn’t want to follow them renders the law itself extraneous: laws, like ethical principles, prove their worth when they are difficult to heed. The granting of a waiver for a specific purpose may sound limited, but it sets a precedent that will be repeated. Whether something is in the nation’s interest or constitutes a crisis is open to interpretation.

But leaving the law as-is presents its own problems, not least of which is that our officials begin to sound ridiculous by never calling anything by its name. That eventually takes its toll on policy as well, because it renders governance in Orwellian terms and habituates the practice of intentionally misleading the public. And the president is the elected commander in chief and deserves a certain amount of deference in conducting foreign policy according to his convictions.

But the Obama administration has more to worry about with perceived neutrality than whether to call this a coup. Supporters of the administration’s foreign policy have defended Obama on realist grounds that America should work with whomever comes out on top of the power struggle in Egypt rather than try to influence the outcome. When the Arab Spring first swept through Egypt, the administration waited for the dust to settle and then accepted the facts on the ground. But the military’s overthrow of Mohamed Morsi has signaled that Egypt is in the midst of something far more dangerous and unstable than a simple power struggle. It seems to have entered a cycle of unrest and popular rebellion. The dust just won’t settle.

That’s why, strategically, whether the administration calls Morsi’s overthrow a “coup” is beside the point. If Obama calls it a coup, he will appear to side with Morsi. If he doesn’t, he will appear to side with the military. Suspending the aid now will send the wrong signal, because whatever the president does will be seen as a response to the events that immediately preceded it. He needn’t be seen as for or against the military, but he ought to be clearly opposed to perpetual military rule or antidemocratic backsliding. The point, then, is not about identifying coups, but preventing them and the conditions in which they materialize.


Seth Mandel

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/07/12/the-wrong-coup-debate/

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

Mutually Assured Denial

by Dan Margalit

American sources told CNN that Israel was behind the recent strike on a Syrian missile depot near the Port of Latakia, where sophisticated Russian-made missiles were stored. If this information is true -- and there is no proof that it is, so this is a theoretical debate -- then Israel is living up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pledge that the Israel Defense Forces will not allow Syrian President Bashar Assad's weapon stockpiles to fall into Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah's hands. 

Assad, for his part, issued a threat of his own, saying that if Israel struck Syria again he would launch missiles at Israel. One good threat deserves another.

Under these precarious circumstances, the wise thing for both Netanyahu and Assad to do is to hold their ground. The IDF will not allow the missiles to be moved but will deny striking them, thus affording Assad a way to circumvent his pledge to attack Israel. This could be a win-win situation that serves both parties' interests.

Assuming -- again, for the sake of the game theory -- that sources in the Pentagon leaked the information to the U.S. media, as they did over the two previous attacks, then they obviously wish to see Israel embroiled in a military conflict with Syria, to hasten Assad's fall and spare the U.S. the need to intervene. That could lead to a myriad of complications and that is not how allies and partners should treat each other. It also constitutes, to some extent, a breach of trust. 

The diplomatic-military situation mandates a vehement denial on Israel's part even if it was behind the attack, for Israel's sake as well as for Assad's convenience. This is the classic example of a case where former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's famous saying, "It's okay to lie for the Land of Israel," comes into play. 

The violent international arena has no places for lies, only for tricks and ploys, baits, schemes and deceptions. Those are the rules of the game. Anyone who employs them, however, must do so in measure and realize that embarrassing scandals may ensue. He who falsifies a friendly nation's passports may end up losing its support. It is a matter of profits versus losses.

This does not mean the government can employ internal deception. This pattern of behavior is reminiscent of the Shin Bet's behavior in the aftermath of the 1984 Bus 300 affair. Then-deputy Shin Bet chief Reuven Hazak never claimed that the organization should not find ways to hide or circumvent the truth, only that its head, Avraham Shalom, could not direct such tactics inward and compromise the Shin Bet's ranks, since one bad apple does spoil the barrel.

The government should share the truth with a small parliamentary body, the kind that operates clandestinely as part of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, as well as with the head of the opposition. The government must also carefully consider what version it decides to share with everyone else in Israel and worldwide, and be willing to face the consequences should it be caught in an unwise lie. 

One should take a page from the book of Israel first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, who, after the disastrous events of the 1953 Qibya operation, declared in the Knesset that no IDF unit was unaccounted for during the time of the incident. It was the unfortunate truth -- save us from such truths -- and an acceptable answer.

Dan Margalit

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4971

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

Reports: Israelis Hit Russian Anti-Ship Missiles near Latakia

by Yoni Hirsch, Daniel Siryoti, David Baron and Israel Hayom Staff

CNN: U.S. officials confirm Israel was behind July 5 strike on Russian Yakhont missile cache • Israel declines to comment • If true, attack on anti-ship missiles is fourth known Israeli airstrike against Russian weapons in Syria this year.

Various foreign media outlets reported over the weekend that Israel was behind the mysterious July 5 explosions at a Syrian arms depot in the port city of Latakia, but provided conflicting details. 

CNN reported on Saturday that the Israel Air Force had targeted the Syrian weapons storage facility from the air, while The Sunday Times reported that Israel had attacked the site from the sea using the Israel Navy's Dolphin-class submarine. 

The facility, which was reportedly destroyed entirely, housed Russian-made Yakhont missiles among other weapons. According to CNN, Israel fears that these anti-ship cruise missiles would jeopardize its naval forces. If true, the strike near Latakia, first reported by CNN, was the fourth known Israeli air attack against targets in Syria this year. According to reports, all four strikes had targeted advanced weapons provided by Russia to Syria. 

Israeli officials declined to comment on the reports. U.S. officials likewise refrained from making any public comment. Israel maintains it is not involved in Syria's two-year civil war except to stop weapons transfers.

CNN cited three American officials as confirming that Israeli jets had perpetrated the July 5 attack. The Arabic-language Iranian satellite network Al-Alam, owned by the state-owned media corporation Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, quoted high-ranking Syrian officials as denying the CNN report. 

Many Syrian media outlets reported extensively on the initial attack, and many speculations were made, but no official claim of responsibility has been made.

CNN reported further that the U.S. and Israel were closely monitoring the region due to the likelihood that additional Russian weapons would be transferred from Russian warships into Syria at other points along the coast. U.S. officials believe, CNN reported, that several Russian shipments have already made their way to Syrian President Bashar Assad's army in recent weeks. 

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti paper Al-Seyassah reported over the weekend that Iraq declared that it couldn't stop the supply of weapons by air from Iran to Assad's supporters. The paper also said that Tehran has complied with a Hezbollah request and will send 2,000 additional Revolutionary Guards soldiers to help the Shiite forces in Syria. 

In Syria, meanwhile, the civil war took on a different turn as a senior commander of the Free Syrian Army was murdered by anti-Assad jihadis over the weekend, and in Aleppo clashes erupted between moderate rebels and extremists belonging to the Nusra Front. The slain commander, Kamal Hamami, was part of a group of officers who defected from the Syrian army to join the rebels when the uprising began over two years ago. This group initially sought to cooperate with Israel once Assad was removed from power. 

A Free Syrian Army spokesman reported that Hamami, also known as Abu Basir, had set up a meeting with representatives of the Nusra Front, who ambushed and murdered him. 

"Our respond to the murder of Abu Basir will be tough. We will wipe the floor with his killers," the spokesman said. "Extremist mercenaries who have infiltrated Syria are even more dangerous than Assad, and we will fight them to the death."

Meanwhile, in a particularly harsh editorial, The Washington Post criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's conduct in the face of the Syria crisis. Titled "Obama's feckless Syria policy is likely to fail," the editorial argued that the problem was not the stalled weapons deliveries but rather "an extraordinary failure of leadership by Mr. Obama." 

Obama's feebleness on the Syrian issue is confusing and worrying important American allies including Turkey and Israel, who are wondering whether they can still rely on the U.S. to serve as an influential power in the region, the editorial said.

Yoni Hirsch, Daniel Siryoti, David Baron and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10681

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Obama’s Israeli-Turkish Detente Goes Bust

by P. David Hornik

 

Last March 22, at the tail-end of President Obama’s visit to Israel, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “apologized” over the phone to Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident—in which Israeli commandos, in fighting for their lives against a club- and knife-wielding mob of Turkish Islamists, killed nine of the attackers.

The apology drew sharp criticism, mainly from Israeli and U.S. conservatives. Some blamed Netanyahu for allegedly cravenly giving in to Obama; some blamed Obama for allegedly pressuring Netanyahu into the move.

I didn’t join the critics at the time. First of all, there was Netanyahu’s wording. He told Erdogan he “apologized for operational errors that may have led to a loss of life.” In fact, it’s agreed in Israel that the commandos’ landing on the ship was poorly planned, and if done differently could have averted a violent eruption.

That doesn’t mean Israel actually had anything at all to apologize for. It didn’t; the Turkish side had instigated the aggression. But Netanyahu did not say he “apologized” for the fact that his soldiers had defended themselves, which indeed would have been deplorable. It was a nuance worth noting.

More importantly, though, I thought the “apology” might be justifiable as a realpolitik move if it led to restored Israeli-Turkish strategic cooperation. The critics pooh-poohed that possibility as well, stressing Erdogan’s nature as an anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic Islamist.

They had good foundations for saying that; but the history was a bit more complicated. Although Erdogan and his Islamist AKP had first taken office in 2003, the strategic relations had continued after that point. In 2005 Erdogan visited Israel with a large group of businessmen, held talks with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, and said Iran’s nuclear program was a threat not just to Israel but to the whole world.

True, relations started to sour before the Mavi Marmara when Erdogan—not a huge fan of Israeli self-defense against terrorists—objected to Israel’s 2008-2009 operation against Hamas in Gaza. Already in October 2009, Erdogan barred Israel from participating in an aerial exercise with Turkey, the U.S., and Italy.

By last spring, though, it seemed that common Israeli and Turkish concerns about the Syrian crisis and Iran—greased by some propitiatory words from Netanyahu—could lead to at least a low-key resumption of ties. In April it was reported that Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror was in Ankara to get Turkey’s agreement, in exchange for Israeli favors, to Israeli use of a key Turkish airbase. An Israeli military source called Turkey, before the 2010 crisis, “our biggest aircraft carrier.”

By now, though, there have been no further reports in that vein. Israeli-Turkish talks have stalled, and there has been no normalization of relations or exchange of ambassadors. It appears that, regarding Erdogan’s disposition toward Israel ca. 2013, the critics were right.

Indeed, as Walter Russell Mead notes, Erdogan and his AKP have—quite in contrast to any warming toward Israel—been heavily playing the anti-Semitism card in reacting to recent Turkish protests against Islamist rule. Erdogan attributes the protests to “dark forces” and the “interest lobby.” While these are understood as anti-Semitic code words, other elements in his party have been more explicit.

Mead quotes from an article in The Turkey Analyst:

the main pro-AKP daily newspaper Yeni Şafak claimed that it had uncovered evidence that the…protests had been orchestrated by the “Jewish lobby” in the U.S. and even published the names and photographs of a number of prominent Jewish Americans who it alleged were the leaders of the conspiracy. The Yeni Şafak article was publicly endorsed by a succession of leading members of the AKP…. On July 1, 2013, the Turkish Cihan news agency quoted Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay as publicly accusing the “Jewish Diaspora” of responsibility for the…protests….
Erdogan himself has not explicitly identified Jews as being responsible…. Yet neither has he condemned or attempted to distance himself from the claims. Indeed, he has instructed several state institutions…to launch an investigation to uncover evidence of suspicious financial trading by foreign financiers before and during the protests and to identify the foreign “dark forces” he is convinced are trying to undermine him.

Given the timing of Netanyahu’s telephone chat with Erdogan last March—at the end of Obama’s visit—it can reasonably be inferred that, whether or not Netanyahu deserves to be blamed for going along with it, the Israeli “apology” and supposed reconciliation was Obama’s idea. Has Obama learned anything from the failure of that idea?

The question is not meant to be rhetorical. Last week another Islamist party, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, was overthrown. As with Erdogan, Obama had shown considerable sympathy toward the Brotherhood. The fact that he’s now continuing military aid to the Egyptian army that overthrew them suggests Obama has realized that the Brotherhood was not such a positive force after all.

The AKP, unlike the Brotherhood, has been steadily arrogating power to itself for a decade, and it seems unlikely that the Turkish anti-AKP protests can go as far as the Egyptian anti-Brotherhood protests went. The next Turkish national elections, though, are in 2015. Can Obama start seeing the Turkish picture more clearly, as he and his administration seem (belatedly) to be reading it better in Egypt?


P. David Hornik

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/obamas-israeli-turkish-detente-goes-bust/

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Barack Obama’s Lawlessness

by Peter Wehner


Both Charles Krauthammer and Ramesh Ponnuru have spoken about the lawlessness of the Obama administration. Examples include (but are not limited to) unilaterally delaying implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, issuing health-care edicts that undermine the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, making unconstitutional “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, refusing to enforce current immigration laws related to illegal immigrants who were brought to America as children, and waving welfare work requirements.

This is all part of a pattern in which Mr. Obama enforces laws he likes and refuses to enforce (or unilaterally alters) laws he disagrees with. I suppose the temptation to act as a potentate is understandable; but it also happens to be illegal. The president, after all, has the constitutional duty to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (see Article II, Section 3 for more).

One of the reasons there isn’t a firestorm of protest against the president’s contempt for the rule of law is that that apart from a few honorable exceptions, the press doesn’t care and therefore isn’t covering this story. Let’s just say that if the same kind of violations had been committed by presidents with the last names of oh, say, Bush or Reagan, you can be sure the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Politico, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, NPR, and the major news networks would all be covering the story.

The problem here is that a dangerous precedent is being set by the president. To understand why, consider the words of Thomas More to Roper in Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons:

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man’s laws, not God’s—and if you cut them down—and you’re just the man to do it—do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?    

Barack Obama is doing his part to cut down from coast to coast the laws he doesn’t much care for. He does so because he’s a progressive who believes the ends (advancing a liberal agenda) justifies the means (lawlessness). But unfortunately in the future the winds will come–and when they do, and when Americans cannot stand upright in them, it may dawn on some folks that our contempt for the rule of law was nurtured and flowered during the Obama era.
 

Peter Wehner

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/07/12/barack-obamas-lawlessness/#more-829125

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BREAKING: Egypt freezes assets of Brotherhood leaders

by El-Sayed Gamal El-Din

Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide and other Islamist leaders have their assets frozen as part of investigations into alleged incitement of violence at protests

L-R: Abu-Ismail, Shater, Badie, Beltagi

Egyptian prosecutors have frozen the assets of senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders and other prominent Islamists as part of investigations into the incitement of violence at protests. Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, deputy leader Khairat El-Shater, Secretary General Ezzat Ibrahim and senior member Mohamed El-Beltagy were among 14 prominent Islamists targeted by the decision.

As were Freedom and Justice Party leader Saad El-Katatni and Vice President Essam El-Erian, Islamist preacher Safwat Hegazy, Islamist Wasat Party Vice President Essam Sultan, Salafist former presidential candidate Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail, and Mohamed El-Omda, a former MP closely allied to the Brotherhood in recent months.

The men are accused of inciting violence at Giza's Nahda Square in early July 2013, the Muslim Brotherhood's Moqattam headquarters in late June 2013, the Republican Guard headquarters in early July 2013, and the Ittihadiya presidential palace in December 2012.


El-Sayed Gamal El-Din

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/3/12/76463/Business/Economy/BREAKING-Egypt-freezes-assets-of-Brotherhood-leade.aspx

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