ObamaCare Victims and Israel

by Caroline Glick

 
Originally published by the Jerusalem Post.

On the domestic front, despite Obama’s repeated promises that ObamaCare would not threaten anyone’s existing health insurance policies, over the past two weeks, millions of Americans have received notices from their health insurance companies that their policies have been canceled because they don’t abide by ObamaCare’s requirements.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board explained that Obama’s repetition of this lie was not an oversight. It was a deliberate means of lulling into complacency these Americans who opted to buy their insurance themselves on the open market, in order to stick them with the burden of underwriting ObamaCare.

In the editorialist’s words, “The [healthcare] exchanges need these customers [whose private policies are being canceled] to finance ObamaCare’s balance sheet and stabilize its risk pools. On the exchanges, individuals earning more than $46,000 or a family of four above $94,000 don’t qualify for subsidies and must buy overpriced insurance. If these middle-class ObamaCare losers can be forced into the exchanges, they become financiers of the new pay-as-you-go entitlement.”

Sure there is an outcry now about Obama’s dishonesty and the way he has used lying to take away from an unwilling public a right it would never have knowingly surrendered, but it is too late. There is no chance of revoking the law until at 2017, when Obama leaves office.

And by then, everyone will have been forced to accept what they consider unacceptable or be fined and lose all health coverage.

Obama’s mendacity is not limited to domestic policy. It operates in foreign affairs as well. Several commentators this week recalled Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez’s angry response to the Obama administration’s attempt to block Senate passage of sanctions against Iran in December 2011. Expressing disgust at the administration’s bad faith to the Senate, Menendez noted that before the White House tried to defeat the legislation, it first forced senators to water it down, making them believe that the White House would support a weaker bill. In the end, despite the White House’s opposition, the Senate and House passed the watered-down sanctions bills with veto-proof majorities. Obama reluctantly signed the bill into law and then bragged about having passed “crippling sanctions” on Iran.

As was the case with ObamaCare, the White House knows that most Americans won’t support its policy of doing nothing to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. So the White House never says that this is its policy. Obama and his advisers insist that preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power is a central goal of the administration. But their actions move US policy in the opposite direction. And if they get caught on the lies after Iran gets the bomb, well, Obama won’t be facing reelection, so he will pay no price for his duplicity.

The mendacity at the heart of Obama’s political playbook is something that Israel needs to understand if it to survive his presidency without major damage to its strategic viability. The events of the past week make clear that the stakes in understanding and exposing his game couldn’t be higher.

Three major developments occurred this week.

On Sunday, PLO officials leaked to the media a position paper that Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat presented to Justice Minister Tzipi Livni outlining the PLO’s position on a final peace settlement. In a nutshell, the paper requires Israel to destroy itself demographically, democratically, militarily, legally and politically and that it relinquish its water supply. Six months after it does all these things, the Palestinians will agree to sign a peace treaty with it.

The Palestinian document claims not only all of Judea and Samaria, (except for 1.9 percent of the territory that Israel can keep in exchange for money and more land within sovereign Israel), and eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem. It demands the northern Negev, the Hula Valley, Latrun and the Elah Valley. And it demands them all free of all Jewish presence.

They demand that Israel relinquish its rights under international law to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem by agreeing that they are “occupied.”

They demand full control over the airspace over Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem, and over the waters off the Gaza coast. They demand an end of air force overflights of those areas.

They demand control over all the underground aquifers, and over the electromagnetic spectrum.

Moreover, the Palestinians are demanding that Israel allow 5 million foreign-born Arabs the right to freely immigrate to its remaining territory.

They refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist and claim they have sovereign rights over all of Israel.

The Palestinian document reveals that there is no chance whatsoever that the current negotiations will lead to peace. PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies don’t want peace. They want to destroy Israel.

And yet, to demonstrate Israel’s good faith with the cause of peace, and genuine devotion to the goal of appeasing Abbas, on Sunday the cabinet approved the release of another 26 Palestinian murderers from its jails. On Tuesday night, Abbas threw them a party in Ramallah and pledged that he would force Israel to release all Palestinian terrorists from its prisons.

Then there is Iran. Just as it did in 2011, before the US Senate and House passed veto-proof sanctions bills, the administration is aggressively fighting to block lawmakers from passing new sanctions against Iran. To this end, Obama’s national security advisers summoned American Jewish leaders to the White House to demand that they stop speaking in favor of intensified sanctions.

Also this week, US Secretary of State John Kerry took a swipe at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for daring to question the administration’s total commitment to negotiating with Iran. Kerry indignantly insisted, “We will not succumb to fear tactics” against holding talks with Iran.

The same day that Kerry decried Israel for supposedly sowing fear unnecessarily about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Olli Heinonen, the former deputy head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that the Iranians may have already passed the breakout phase and have the capacity to build an atomic weapons within two weeks.

But in accordance with the Obama administration’s wishes, Democrats in the Senate are now suggesting a four-month pause in sanctions deliberations to give Obama a chance to reach a deal.

Rather than post the Palestinians’ position paper on his Facebook page and instruct Israeli diplomats worldwide to publicize it as proof of the Palestinians’ continued commitment to Israel’s destruction and bad faith at the negotiating table, Netanyahu remained mum on its leaked contents. Netanyahu didn’t use the paper or Abbas’s open support for recent terror attacks, and leadership of the global movement, to destroy Israel’s economy through trade wars and commercial boycotts, as ample justification for keeping the Palestinian murderers in prison.

Instead, he and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon insisted that they had to be released. Israel’s “strategic interests” would be adversely affected, they said, if the government kept them behind bars.

Since Obama first entered the White House, Netanyahu and his colleagues have used the term “strategic interests” as a euphemism for American pressure. By using the term in the context of the freeing of murderers, Netanyahu and Ya’alon made clear that the US has blackmailed Israel into keeping up concessions to the PLO despite the fact that the concessions demoralize the country, destabilize the government, embolden terrorists determined to murder still more Jews, and encourage Abbas to escalate his support for terrorism and his diplomatic war against Israel.

The question is, what are Obama and his colleagues threatening to do to us? What is the “or else” that follows the American demand for Israel to capitulate to Palestinian demands? The media claim that Netanyahu continues with the phony peace talks because he doesn’t want to be blamed when they fail in April. But even if Netanyahu were to break with his party and form a new government with Livni and the Labor Party, the Arabs and Meretz, and offered Abbas Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and some symbolic right of immigration for a few foreign Arabs to the rump Jewish state, Abbas would reject his offer, just as he rejected Ehud Olmert’s offer and just as Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s offer.

And just as Obama has blamed Israel for Palestinian intransigence and radicalism for the past five-and-a-half years, so he will blame Israel for the failure of the current talks. So as unpleasant as it will be to be blamed, the best thing Israel can do is expose Palestinian bad faith to minimize the price it will pay when it is blamed.

The thing is, Netanyahu must know that Obama will blame Israel no matter what the Palestinians say or do. So perhaps the “strategic interests” he is threatening are more strategic than simply blaming Israel for scuttling phony peace talks. Maybe Obama is telling Netanyahu that if he fails to keep faith with the fake talks, Obama will tip Iran off to an impending Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities.

Here, too, Obama has a track record. According to former national security adviser Giora Eiland, Netanyahu was poised to attack Iran’s nuclear installations in the fall of 2012, but Obama pressured him into standing down. It is hard to believe that Obama’s was a soft sell.

Then there is the issue of military sales. Government officials have whispered periodically that Obama is threatening to curtail weapons sales to Israel. Such a move could quickly paralyze the air force.

There is an argument to be made for keeping silent on the nature of Obama’s blackmail.

Exposing it would also expose the growing fissure between the US and Israel, and much of Israel’s deterrent posture is based on a widespread assessment that Israel’s strategic alliance with the US is unbreakable. But then again, Obama’s weakening of the US alliance with Israel – and with Saudi Arabia and Egypt – is well-known. The damage has already been done.

Given this, the argument for exposing the nature of Obama’s threats becomes more compelling by the day. Congress still plays a supervisory role in foreign policy. And the American public supports Israel deeply. There is a strong probability that if the nature of Obama’s threats is revealed, he will be forced to rescind them before Israel becomes the foreign corollary to the Americans whose health insurance Obama canceled.


Caroline Glick

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/obamacare-victims-and-israel/

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

Hamas and the “Peace Process”

by Shoshana Bryen

 

The Palestinians have thrown a monkey wrench in the works again –  as they have a pattern of doing every time the “peace process” is supposed to be close to “solving” the problem.

Despite the secrecy surrounding the current U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry-sponsored talks, a Palestinian leak Sunday put positions on the table: a 1.9% land swap; no Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley and no Israeli presence at all in East Jerusalem; control over water sources and resources; control of the Dead Sea and border crossings; the right to sign agreements with other states (Iran?); release of all Palestinian prisoners; and the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to choose to live in Israel or the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinians know that all of these will be unacceptable to Israel. The process on the Palestinian side appears to be a fraud, designed to produce failure because the Palestinian Authority (PA) cannot afford a success with Israel in the absence of an agreement with Hamas.  The PA fears exposing the fact that it does not have functional control of the Gaza Strip and 1.66 million people it claims to represent. And not only does it NOT represent them, the government of Gaza – Hamas – explicitly rejects rule by the PA.

The minimal Palestinian position has always included the assumption that “Palestine” would consist of ALL the territories acquired by Israel in 1967; the West Bank AND Gaza Strip (the 1.9% swap would not change that). But while the UN may treat the Palestinian Authority and Abu Mazen as the political representative of Gaza (as the General Assembly did when it voted to treat “Palestine” as a State), it is not. Furthermore, the term of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas expired several years ago; as there have been no new elections, he does not have any legal authority to negotiate or make decisions on behalf of the the Palestinian Authority in the first place.  Further, as the loser in the brutal and bloody civil war of 2007, Abbas’s Fatah is non grata in Gaza, and Hamas officials have insisted they would not be bound by any agreement reached with Israel.

The question is how to deal with that.

Any actual “peace agreement” would expose Abbas as the naked Emperor in Gaza. Perhaps Fatah plans simply to ignore its geographic and political limitations. Perhaps Abbas assumes Israel will continue to defend itself from Hamas, and thus “Palestine” can complain about Israeli military activity without having to exercise sovereign control of its borders.  Perhaps it is banking on the talks failing; perhaps it is ensuring that the talks fail. At worst, the U.S. would be unhappy but not surprised; at best, Israel would be blamed.

The United States, for its part, has evidently been choosing to ignore open warfare by Hamas against Israel, and insisting instead that the “solution” to the Palestinian problem will be found between Ramallah and Jerusalem (or Tel Aviv, as the administration insists).  This view, if nothing else, explains a senior American official claiming to be “shocked” by the latest discovery of Hamas tunnels burrowed into Israel.

Why would the United States be shocked by the discovery of a mile-long tunnel 60 feet underground, running 1,500 feet into Israel, and complete with lights and a trolley track?  Did the U.S not think Hamas would find a military use for the concrete building slabs Israel was harangued into providing for “civilian” housing in Gaza by Western “humanitarian” organizations? Does the U.S. believe that Hamas only built tunnels to import cigarettes and cooking oil to offset the Israel-Egypt blockade? Surely the State Department knows that even at the height of the Hamas rocket war, Israel did not permit hunger in Gaza, and that the blockade by Israel off the coast of Gaza existed to protect itself against arms smuggling. The American government could not have thought Hamas had given up trying to capture the next Gilad Shalit for murder or mayhem; Hamas publicly announced its intention to kidnap more Israeli soldiers, and the number of attempts rose in 2013.  The ransom Israel paid for Shalit only made the next IDF soldier an even more tempting target.

Ignoring the war is foolish: it continues apace. In the past two weeks, aside from the tunnels (plural, a second explosives-laden tunnel was found less than a week after the first):

• The IDF found a powerful bomb planted near the fence separating Gaza from southern Israel.

• The latest Hamas cartoon on al Aqsa TV lauds the Izz Adin Al-Qasam Brigades. The hero tells worshipful children, “Thousands of young fighters are prepared to be martyred for the sake of Allah, until this land is liberated. The Al-Qassam army is well-organized, new young recruits join and weapons are developed… Al-Qassam is a powerful tenacious rival, whose men are heroes, educated in the mosques and possessing the spirit of Jihad… The courageous Al-Qassam Brigades are the knights defending the homeland.”

• The IDF announced that Fatah uncovered a Hamas drone factory on the West Bank, intending to launch weaponized drones into Israel.

• Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted one of two rockets launched from Gaza at Ashkelon (the other fell into the sea).

To believe Hamas attacks, and preparation for attacks, on Israel can be curtailed by the political process misunderstands the nature of the so-called “Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

As an ideological matter, both Fatah and Hamas seek to reverse what they believe was an historic mistake by the United Nations in 1947 when it accepted Israel into the family of independent nations. Both continue to seek ways to hurt, harass, diminish, and delegitimize Israel, and both teach their children that the conflict will never end with a Jewish State of Israel living peacefully in the Middle East. Both Fatah and Hamas remain committed to “armed resistance,” although Abu Mazen uses diplomacy as well, promising to use the Palestinians’ new UN status to push for punitive measures against Israel.

As a practical matter, both sides of the bifurcated Palestinian government have sought to cultivate dependency and remove opportunities for legitimate Palestinian economic advancement. [Everything that follows in this paragraph and the next are the explanation: there was economic activity, then the intifada.] There was a time Gaza was open to Israel, and Palestinians crossed the border regularly to work.  There was an airport and a fully functional port. In mid-2000, 136,000 Palestinians were working inside Israel – 40% of all employed Palestinians. Another 5,000 worked in the joint Israeli/Arab run Erez Industrial Zone in the Gaza Strip. Thousands more worked in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in Israeli-owned businesses.

Yasser Arafat’s so-called “second intifada,” beginning in late 2000, killed more than 1,000 Israelis, and changed Israel’s focus from economic advancement and integration with the Palestinians into “security first.” The Erez Industrial Zone was closed after Israelis were murdered there, and the Disengagement of 2005 ended Israel’s employment of Gaza Palestinians and any residual Israeli influence. The civil war in 2007 ended any residual Fatah influence, while Hamas continues to make political inroads in the West Bank (how did that drone factory get there?).

The Gaza Strip can neither be incorporated into the “peace process” nor ignored. The culture of violence and hatred engendered by Hamas married to political success if Fatah achieves Palestinian independence would be dangerous for Israel.  The Hamas-Fatah rift that a Fatah-Israel deal would expose would be more dangerous for Fatah.  Watch for more wrenches in the works.


Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center in Washington, DC.

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/shoshana-bryen/hamas-and-the-peace-process/

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

Under Obama, US no Longer on Top

by Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi

If any more proof were needed that the era of American dominance in today's international arena is mired in a process of accelerated decline, Forbes magazine's 2013 ranking of the world's most influential people is simply further affirmation. The only surprising part of the ranking was not that U.S. President Barack Obama was ousted from the top spot by Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that the American president finished in second place ahead of considerably more impressive figures as far as their proven achievements are concerned (such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel) or the inspiring nature of their visions (Pope Francis, for example).

Indeed, after nearly five years since Obama entered the White House it is abundantly clear that the American superpower has traveled back in time to the late 1970s, to the time of former President Jimmy Carter. It is not merely that the Carter administration projected obvious weakness in confronting the diplomatic and strategic challenges it faced (including coming to terms with the imprisonment of 53 American diplomats inside the U.S. embassy in Tehran without a response), but that its foreign policy is rife with internal contradictions and lacks a minimum degree of consistency. Despite the potential offered by the current global and regional circumstances, Obama continues to offer up the same muddled policy outline as Carter, and continues treading down the path set forth by the peanut farmer from Georgia after landing in the Oval Office on January 20, 1977.

Thus, for example, in the same manner that for three whole years (until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979) Carter championed a foreign policy of appeasement vis-à-vis the Russians, the Obama administration has formulated its policies vis-à-vis "rogue states" (like Iran and Syria). It is a policy based on a litany of unequivocally liberal axioms, which at their core -- and which is entirely becoming of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate -- negate the military option as a legitimate element in the strategic tool box of the American superpower. 

In 1980 it was Carter who, after endless hesitation, ordered a modest rescue operation to save the hostages in Tehran (which failed miserably). Recently, it was Obama who recoiled from even ordering a minimal missile strike directly targeting the Assad regime's military forces and installations. This, despite his firm promises to do so if Damascus were to cross the red line of using chemical weapons. It is true that the campaign in Afghanistan is not yet over, but the target date determined by the administration to end its involvement there is firm and valid. In the Libyan arena, meanwhile, where the U.S. has also been active, the Obama administration took pains to keep a low profile and was essentially dragged into action by its NATO partners, Great Britain and France.

The same things can be said for the administration's conduct in the Iranian sphere, where the over-enthusiasm being exhibited by "all of Obama's people" to reach a deal with Iranian President Hasan Rouhani is weakening their bargaining position even before negotiations reach their critical stage. 

A similar picture of weakness, bordering on clumsiness, is discernible on the domestic front. After investing most of its energy and presidential resources in the crown jewel -- the health care reform act -- the White House is now struggling to actually implement it following its formal approval, resulting in continued organizational chaos that could jeopardize Obama's entire vision. This is comparable to the failed administrative work, lacking a minimal modicum of sensitivity, surrounding the Edward Snowden affair through all its twists and turns. In this regard as well, Obama exhibited weakness, detachment and aloofness, and avoided what the situation required of him by not delving into the National Security Agency's "black box." 

Amid this backdrop, it is not surprising that Putin, who enjoys a wider range of maneuverability on the domestic front, passed Obama to take the top spot on the Forbes list. The days ahead will let us know if America's process of decline and its willing renunciation of its status as the world's No. 1 hegemony, while retreating into its own world, will also continue into 2014 and gain expression in Forbes' next ranking.

Prof. Abraham Ben-Zvi

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6187

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

Iraq’s Violence: What Can Be Done?

by Max Boot


Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq is in the United States this week for high-level meetings, including a sit down today with President Obama. It seems like an awfully long time ago that Obama proclaimed the Iraq War a “success” and claimed “we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” 

That speech–Obama’s own “Mission Accomplished” moment–occurred on December 14, 2011 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Nearly two years later Iraq is unraveling. Violence has returned to 2008 levels, with an average of 68 car bombings a month. No exact figures exist, but it’s estimated that 7,000 people have been killed in terrorist attacks this year, and Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of Central Command, is warning “it could easily get worse,” with a “continued downward spiral that takes you to a civil war.” 

Even the White House concedes that al-Qaeda in Iraq has staged a dismaying comeback, spreading its tentacles into Syria and emerging as “a ‘transnational threat network’ that could possibly reach from the Mideast to the United States.” There is, in fact, a very real danger that the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, as al-Qaeda in Iraq has now restyled itself, can consolidate a fundamentalist emirate stretching from western Iraq to northern Syria which will become what Afghanistan was prior to 2001: a magnet and breeding ground for jihadist terrorists.

To be sure, not all is awful in Iraq today. One of the few bright spots is surging oil production, which has increased 50 percent since 2005. Iraqi Kurdistan, almost a separate country by now, is also flourishing. But the overall situation is grim, and Maliki has no one but himself to blame. If he had pursued more inclusive policies, he could have kept the Sunnis who had turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2007-2008 in large numbers from reverting to the way of the gun. Instead Maliki has allowed his paranoia to run rampant by targeting senior Sunni figures for arrest and prosecution. 

Feeling cornered, the Sunnis have fought back the only way they know how—with car bombs targeted against Shiites. This is the deadly strategy perfected by al-Qaeda in Iraq from 2003 to 2007, and it is risking a repeat of what happened in those dark days when Shiite death squads retaliated by torturing and killing innocent Sunnis.

Problem is, while it’s easy to see the toxic trend, it’s hard to reverse it. The administration, never particularly interested in Iraq in the first place, lost most of its leverage when it pulled U.S. troops out at the end of 2011. Maliki is now hoping to buy high-end American hardware including F-16 fighters and attack helicopters, and that gives us a bit of leverage–but only a bit. Iraq is rich enough to buy from Russia or China or, for that matter, France if the U.S. decides not to sell it weaponry. 

There are, however, certain capabilities that the U.S. has that no other nation can match, and it is those that should be used to try to affect Iraqi behavior. As the Edward Snowden revelations have made plain, the U.S. has unrivaled intelligence capabilities, especially in the sphere of electronic snooping, which could be shared with the Iraqis. So, too, we have drones and Special Operations Forces that once helped to unravel al-Qaeda in Iraq’s networks. If sent back into Iraq, they could probably do it again.

Obama should offer Maliki the use of these forces and capabilities, but only on certain conditions: namely that Maliki start accommodating and stop persecuting the Sunnis. Specifically, he should re-start the Sons of Iraq program, which between 2007 and 2008 enrolled some 100,000 Sunni men to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq. This pro-government militia was critical to the success of “the surge” in Iraq, and it could help to catalyze a new, smaller surge—one that would not involve any conventional American ground troops but that would send more Special Operations and intelligence personnel to work with their Iraqi counterparts. 

Re-establishing relationships which once existed between the U.S. and Iraqi military could pay further dividends by giving the U.S. side greater “situational awareness” of events in Iraq. This would allow American personnel to help their Iraqi partners in the security forces to resist Maliki’s attempts to misuse them for political purposes. 

It would also give the U.S. greater insight into Iranian machinations in Iraq: Iran has been gaining power ever since the departure of U.S. troops. Not having the U.S. support to fall back on, Maliki has turned to the Iranians for advice and support in fighting back against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Unfortunately, the Iranians are Shiite hardliners whose involvement only further radicalizes the Sunnis and makes the situation more toxic.

Greater U.S. involvement in Iraq is necessary to counter the Iranians, but it is unlikely to happen because it conflicts with Obama’s desire to pull out of the Middle East at all costs. The cocksure president is also unlikely to take any action which suggests that his 2011 troop pullout was a mistake—which it was. That, unfortunately, increases the likelihood that Iraq will continue to drown in a sea of blood.


Max Boot

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/01/iraqs-violence-what-can-be-done/

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

Is the US Spilling its Allies' Secrets?

by Elliott Abrams

The news of the last few weeks has been filled with complaints that the United States is electronically spying not only on enemies but on allies as well. As I wrote in a previous blog post, if we have in fact targeted the cell phones of leaders of friends and allies, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, we should stop. Yes, the world is a dangerous place and gentlemen do read each others' mail, but deliberately targeting the leader of an ally such as Germany is wrong and stupid. And especially so given the risk these days that such conduct will leak and damage important allied relationships.

Spying this way on allies is bad enough. Revealing their secrets to the press is even worse. Yet we have a pattern of doing this when it comes to Israel, and the most recent example came on October 31.

Earlier this past week a Syrian military base in Latakia was hit, and apparently an important quantity of missiles meant for delivery to Hezbollah were destroyed. There was speculation about the attack, including suggestions that Israel rather than Syrian rebels conducted it. But Israel remained mum, as it always does. It believes that its security is greatly enhanced by such silence, in part because bragging about these attacks might well humiliate Hezbollah or Syrian President Bashar Assad and push them into some kind of retaliation. It is for this reason that Israel sought absolute American and Israeli official silence after its attack on the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. Indeed Israel still to this day, six years later, does not officially acknowledge that it conducted that attack. The United States remained silent about that attack until the danger of retaliation was thought to be gone.

But once again this week American officials told the press that Israel was responsible for an attack on Syria as soon as it occurred.

Here is the CNN story: "Israeli warplanes struck a military base near the Syrian port city of Latakia this week, an Obama administration official told CNN on Thursday. An explosion at a missile storage site in the area was reported in the Middle Eastern press, but an attack has not been confirmed by the Israeli government. The target, according to the Obama administration official, was missiles and related equipment the Israelis felt might be transferred to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. The official declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information."

U.S. officials did this as recently as July, as a New York Times storyreported: "Israel carried out an air attack in Syria this month that targeted advanced antiship cruise missiles sold to the Syria government by Russia, American officials said Saturday. The officials, who declined to be identified because they were discussing intelligence reports, said the attack occurred July 5 near Latakia, Syria's principal port city."

And we did it in May: "A series of powerful explosions rocked the outskirts of Damascus early Sunday morning, which Syrian state television said was the result of Israeli missile attacks on a Syrian military installation. If true, it would be the second Israeli airstrike in Syria in two days and the third this year. ... An American official, who asked not to be identified because he was discussing intelligence reports, said the targeted shipment consisted of Iranian-made Fateh-110s."

There is a pernicious pattern here, and other examples could be cited. Add this to the National Security Agency revelations, and the United States seems to be aggressive in stealing the secrets of some close allies and aggressive in ignoring the interests of allies by conveying intelligence information to the press. The continuing leaks about what Israel has been doing are dangerous and damaging. Israel is acting where we are not, enforcing red lines when we have failed to do so, and assuming risks we have refused to take. We act as a poor ally if we repeatedly and indeed recklessly increase the risk to Israel by treating sensitive information as fodder for the press.

From "Pressure Points" by Elliott Abrams. 

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Source:

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They Knew! Obama Aides Debated 'you can Keep your Plan' Lie

by Thomas Lifson

In a bombshell report, the Wall Street Journal has gotten Obama advisers -- some on the record, others anonymous -- talking about the internal debate over the president's false guarantee that Americans could keep their insurance plan if they liked it, under Obamacare. In the end, politics trumped the truth.

...behind the scenes, White House officials discussed whether that was a promise they could keep.
When the question arose, Mr. Obama's advisers decided that the assertion was fair, interviews with more than a dozen people involved in crafting and explaining the president's health-care plan show.
But at times, there was second-guessing. At one point, aides discussed whether Mr. Obama might use more in-depth discussions, such as media interviews, to explain the nuances of the succinct line in his stump speeches, a former aide said. Officials worried, though, that delving into details such as the small number of people who might lose insurance could be confusing and would clutter the president's message.

The famous wisecrack, "Don't confuse me with the facts!" comes to mind.

One official who remains anonymous:

"You try to talk about health care in broad, intelligible points that cut through, and you inevitably lose some accuracy when you do that," the former official said.
The former official added that in the midst of a hard-fought political debate "if you like your plan, you can probably keep it" isn't a salable point.

In the end, politics dominated accuracy:

One former senior administration official said that as the law was being crafted by the White House and lawmakers, some White House policy advisers objected to the breadth of Mr. Obama's "keep your plan" promise. They were overruled by political aides, the former official said. The White House said it was unaware of the objections.

A couple of formers -- aides who no longer work for the president -- actually went on the record:

Jon Favreau, who served as Mr. Obama's top speech writer, said that as they tried to promote the overhaul plan and explain it to the public, the aim was to make it as simple as possible "while still being true."
"Simplification and ease of explanation were a premium, and that was true throughout the process," he said.
Richard Kirsch, the former national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, which pushed for the 2010 health law, said the words were reassuring-and true-for the vast majority of the people, and so his group never raised concerns about that claim. Adding an asterisk to note that people who had "shoddy insurance" might need to change plans was not practical, he said.
"The actual, accurate statement is if you have good insurance, and you like it, you can keep it," said Mr. Kirsch, now a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal policy organization.

"Not practical" seems to mean poltiically deadly here. 

Throughout the discussion as reported by the Journal, aides relied on the notion that the only people who would potentially lose their health plans were those who bought them as individuals - about 15 million in number. (Note, this is half the number of claimed uninsured who were potentially to benefit. That number initially given was 30 million.) But of course, there were internal reports that 93 million Americans could lose their health insurance plans, as reported by Avik Roy in Forbes.


Now we know that for political reasons, the president's advisers told him to go out and lie. The excuses they offer for the lie are those of a con man. They sound like a bunch of used car salesmen who neglected to mention that the vehicle was involved in a serious accident and has an oil leak, because that would confuse the buyer dazzled by the chrome on the grille.


They knew that if the president told the truth, there would be Democrat senators and representatives who would vote against it. Those members of Congress who voted for Obamacare and now face the wrath of voters in 2014 have a stark choice to make. Either they turn on the president for lying to them, or they support the president. If they turn on him, they will retaliation, no doubt. Turning on the president could include supporting legislation to modify or repeal the ACA legislation.


Then there is the i-word. Is lying to the American public about a president's signature transformative legislation a high crime and misdemeanor? 

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/11/they_knew_obama_aides_debated_you_can_keep_your_plan_lie.html

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

Obama and a Jewish Legend

by Eileen F. Toplansky

When Noah was told to bring two of everything into the ark before the great Flood, each animal brought a mate in order to begin a new family when the Earth would be dry again.  Thus, truth came in with peace, and love came in with good deeds. 


Evil sought a partner and finally found her so that eventually the lie was married to wickedness.  In fact, wickedness made a bargain that he would be the lie's partner as long as he would forever get everything she gained by lying.  And so it happened that evil and dishonesty remained in the world so that everything gained by lying has helped wickedness grow healthy and strong.  And their partnership has continued to this day (Francine Prose, Stories From Our Living Past).


How apt a story in the day and age of Obama, liar-in-chief, and his minions, who shamelessly lie in front of the television cameras.


Falsehood is not the opposite of truth -- it is actually its absence.  The Torah prohibits lying by saying, "Go far away from falsehood."  It is much stronger than merely stating "do not lie."  Evil can never be satiated or appeased.  The language of obfuscation and collusion make it very easy for the evildoers to attack the unsuspecting.  But if enough decent people see through the litany of lies being foisted upon them by this president and his administration, we can protect ourselves.  If we "do not go far away from falsehood," we only sow the seeds of our own destruction.


In the book entitled The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene, the author points out a number of laws that power-seeking individuals have used over the centuries.  Thus, concealing his intentions, Obama has deliberately kept people "off-balance."  By "enveloping" far too many Americans in enough smoke and mirrors, Obama hopes that the people will not realize his "true objectives."  Thus the "truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant."


Thus, ObamaCare has never been and will never be about affordable and comprehensive health care.  In fact, it aims to erode the American economy, weaken the American people, destroy a fine health care system, and ultimately, register people to be Democrats.  It is a bald and bold attempt to reshape the power structure in this country.  And how do we now know this?  Because Obama has been found out.  The lie has been exposed.  Avik Roy of Heritage has discovered that in 2010, Obama knew that "93 million Americans [would] be unable to keep their health plans under Obamacare.  Yet, Obama breathlessly and dramatically reiterated that "if you like your health care plan, you could keep it." 


Every day Americans are being pummeled with distressing news about their job situations, their health care choices, and even whether they should divorce to avoid the ObamaCare marriage tax.  Instead of the truth, the public has been exposed to a plethora of empty speeches and pseudo-apologies.  Thus, "selective honesty and generosity is [meant] to disarm the victim."  How appropriate, as one considers the "nine lies of Lois Lerner" cited in May 2013.


But so much more has occurred since then.  In September 2013, Americans learned that it wasn't some low-level IRS workers who concocted the IRS snooping scheme on Tea Party groups.  With her supercilious pose, nose high up in the air, learned no doubt from Obama, Lerner's own "e-mails released by the House committee investigating IRS-gate reveal that Lois Lerner and the other Obama Administration figures were flat out lying when they claimed conservative groups weren't specifically targeted by the IRS."


Charles Krauthammer has stated that the recent revelations about ObamaCare "lay bare three pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism, and (c) subterfuge."


And thus, Obama continues to "keep others in suspended terror."  Will Americans be able to seek top-flight medical care?  Will they be able to pay for their care?  How can they possibly afford these increases in premiums and deductibles?  Obama's oscillating actions have, up to now, made for abstract ideas.  But now that the details are finally coming out, will Americans rebel at the voting booth?  Will they call for Obama's impeachment?  Will they demand that Lois Lerner and company be punished for their misdeeds?  Will they bombard Congress and tell them to do their jobs or be prepared to be voted out?


The wickedness grows.  Thus, Obama is lavish with the taxpayers' money as he keeps "it circulating [for waivers] as this alleged generosity is a sign and a magnet for power" and a hedge against critics.


And when genuine concerns about Barack Obama's seeming affiliation with jihadists are aired by a few courageous congressional representatives, they are dismissed.  When evidence is presented that the Muslim Brotherhood sees Barack Hussein Obama as a friend, it, too, comes under the rubric of being racist.


Then how is it that El Watan, "one of Egypt's most widely circulated and read newspapers, has published a report discussing the Muslim Brotherhood's influence over the United States[,]" all strengthened by Obama's pro-Brotherhood policies?  This is an astonishing admission.  And yet, many have been warning about this president's affiliation and apparent allegiance to groups who call for the outright destruction of America.


How many times does a person need to read about Obama's tendencies before they are believed?  How many atrocities did the world need to view before they understood the evil of Nazi Germany?  How many times did decent folk have to wonder about the absurd agricultural policies of Mao Zedong that resulted in death for millions of Chinese people?  How many lies have to occur before we call this president a pathological liar?


But, of course, a destructive president must "keep his hands clean" and appear to be the "paragon of civility and efficiency" by maintaining a "spotless appearance" as he uses others as scapegoats."  But when things get tough, he will not be afraid to use thuggery and intimidation.


Thus, it is that this president of the United States never knows about the scandals in his administration until the very last minute.  Capitalists, auto companies, lower-level IRS workers, union workers, former presidents, Tea Party members, and now insurance companies are all eventually scolded and demeaned.  Only Obama is pure.


And as commander in chief of these United States, Obama is one frightening figure.  Besides his obvious disdain for the military, purging of the military should have everyone's antenna on high alert.  Obama despises this country and will brook no interference with his power.


Noah was quite unhappy that the lie was able to pair with evil and be allowed onto the ark.  But he could do nothing except to hope that the other pairs would not allow the darkness to befall them again -- perhaps not in an actual flood, but in the despair that comes when people know that they are being drowned in deceit and corruption. 



Eileen F. Toplansky can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/11/obama_and_a_jewish_legend.html

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

Fading into Obscurity

by Dilan Raphiann

BACKGAMMON blog: A board game played in smoky cafes from Beirut to Baghdad. Backgammon’s earliest ancestor is five thousand years old and was unearthed in southern Iraq. ‘Backgammon’ covers the state of play in the countries spanning the Fertile Crescent: Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq.

 

Civilians gather at the site of a bomb attack in the village of Mwafaqiya, in Nineveh province, on October 17, 2013. The attack targeted members of Iraq’s predominantly Shi’ite Shabak minority in the village of Mwafaqiya in Nineveh province. (REUTERS/Stringer)

Living on the Nineveh plains among the Chaldeans, Yezidis, Armenians and Turkmen—to name a few of northern Iraq’s ethnic and religious groups—resides a lesser-known minority group that has called Mosul home for more than five centuries.

The Shabak are an obscure, heterodox community, which, like many other minority groups in Iraq, have long been the target of sectarian violence. However, unlike their compatriots, the Kurds and Christians, the Shabak have attracted very little media coverage in spite of the level of violence seen in attacks against the community. In July 2007, a Shabak MP claimed that Sunni militants had killed approximately 1,000 people from his community and displaced a further 4,000 from the Mosul area since 2003. More recently, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ordered members of the minority group to leave Mosul or be killed. ISIS has since killed at least three Shabaks and attacked several of their towns and villages. The latest incident was just over a week ago, when a suicide bomber driving a truck laden with explosives targeted a predominantly Shabak area east of Mosul, killing at least 15 people and injuring many more. Last month, another suicide bomber targeted a Shabak funeral killing 26 people and injuring 46.

The UN envoy to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, condemned the attack on the Shabak community and called for an end to the violence. “The United Nations pays particular attention to the protection of minority communities who continue suffering from heinous attacks [and] economic and social barriers. . . . The recent rise in violence in Nineveh province calls for urgent action and strengthened security cooperation,” he said in a statement.

However, voices calling for the protection of the Shabaks are still few and far between, and little is being done to tackle the violence. The lack of attention paid to their plight may, in part, stem from how little is known about the Shabaks—even by the community itself.

It remains unclear precisely when the Shabak emerged as a distinct ethnic group. On the question of their identity, there appear to be two main schools of thought within the community. One claims that the Shabak are actually Kurds and that their language is a Kurdish dialect. The other claims the Shabak are a distinct ethnic group in their own right. There are further conflicting narratives on their ancestry, including assertions of Turkmen roots and claims that they are the descendants of Persian migrants, further adding to the confusion surrounding their identity.

In his report on minorities in Iraq, Sa’ad Salloum, an Iraqi academic, describes the Shabak identity as a struggle:

There is a struggle between a minor identity [Shabak] and a senior identity [Arabic or Kurdish]. It is very difficult today to talk about your independent Shabak identity; you will be immediately faced with presumptions saying that the Shabaks are of Arabic or Kurdish origin. Such denial and assimilation of the Shabaks into a larger identity puts a Shabak before two options: to be isolated from his environment, or to adopt one of the bigger identities in order to be accepted by others and gain psychological and social stability.

As far as religion is concerned, the Shabak are predominantly Shi’ite Muslims, with a certain affinity to the Yazidis and influenced somewhat by Sufism and Christianity. Add this to their ambivalent background and their presence in the historically Sunni city of Mosul, and it is easy to see how they have become so vulnerable.

With no census statistics, it is difficult to ascertain a clear figure for the population of Shabak, but estimates range from 30,000 to 250,000. Of these numbers, community members say that many have left Mosul and returned to villages in the disputed territories, which are claimed both by Iraq’s central government and the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. In the last few weeks alone, it is reported that 1,200 families have left Mosul.

The security situation for religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq today is said to be the worst in the history of the country. Some of the minorities have almost disappeared, and the populations of others are decreasing significantly. The Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration estimates that approximately half of the minority communities have left the country. UNHCR estimates that 30 percent of Iraqi refugees seeking sanctuary outside of the country are from minority groups. Unbeknown to many, the Shabak community and their dwindling numbers are undoubtedly contributing to these statistics.

This article was originally published in The Majalla.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine or Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.

Dilan Raphiann is a freelance journalist and Middle East analyst specializing in Iran and Iraq. Graduating with a degree in Journalism from City University, she also has a master's degree in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King's College London.

Source: http://www.aawsat.net/2013/10/article55320912

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Don’t Blame Maliki for Iraq Violence

by Michael Rubin


Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will meet President Obama today, as Max Boot notes. His visit comes against the backdrop of a sharp escalation in violence, with terrorists killing almost 1,000 people a month. While Max notes the relative success of Iraqi Kurdistan (and he could have also mentioned much of southern Iraq as well), he places much of the blame for the current violence on Maliki himself:

…The overall situation is grim, and Maliki has no one but himself to blame. If he had pursued more inclusive policies, he could have kept the Sunnis who had turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2007-2008 in large numbers from reverting to the way of the gun. Instead Maliki has allowed his paranoia to run rampant by targeting senior Sunni figures for arrest and prosecution. 

Frankly, Max is not alone. The Washington Post published a masthead editorial yesterday calling on the United States “to hold Maliki accountable.” Certainly, there’s enough blame to pass around, but it would be wrong to place too much blame on Maliki.

First of all, when a terrorist detonates a car bomb in a crowded market, the fault lies with the terrorist. Period. There are many places in the world where political grievances exist; none excuses terrorism.
There are two schools of thought with regard to terrorism. The first sees terrorism’s roots in grievance, and the second in ideology. Those who subscribe to the grievance-based approach believe if a grievance is addressed, the cause for terrorism goes away. I’d argue far more of the Iraq-based insurgents root their terrorism more in an absolutist ideology. To accept the grievance-based philosophy is a bit dangerous as well, not only because it legitimizes some terrorism but also because terrorists and other rogues know the susceptibility of Western diplomats to declarations of real or contrived grievance, and it simply encourages some elements of society to stake out ever more extreme positions.

When it comes to Iraq, Maliki is between a rock and a hard place. The surge was wise military strategy, but it was at times politically short-sighted, especially as some elements concluded that the shortest path to empowerment was the appeasement that followed violence rather than the ballot box. Indeed, the most extreme sectarian parties fared poorly in the most recent provincial polls; they were beat out by more moderate parties.

It is also dangerous to suggest that Iraqi security forces should not have sought to arrest Tariq al-Hashemi and Rafi Issawi if valid evidence against the two prominent Sunni politicians existed and, indeed, ample evidence exists. Being a Sunni politician should never lead to a free pass for terrorism. That Issawi is already paying blood money to those who his guards murdered suggests there may be something to the charges. Maliki should certainly target those leading Shiite death squads with the same fervor. While I would like to see Muqtada al-Sadr behind bars one day—and believe one of the Bush administration’s greatest mistakes in Iraq was not authorizing the shot when Muqtada al-Sadr was in the crosshairs—Maliki has dispatched his forces to take on Shiite militias in Basra and elsewhere.

Maliki may have flaws—though I cannot think of a single Iraqi politician (or American politician for that matter) that does not. But he has guided Iraq well through some turbulent times against the backdrop of a cabinet that as often answers more to political bosses outside the government rather than to the prime minister. Despite frequent accusations to the contrary, he does not cultivate a personality cult. Other Iraqi politicians do, however, most notably Muqtada al-Sadr and some Kurdish regional leaders. He is hardly authoritarian as his opponents too often seek to paint him because Iraqi political rhetoric still tends toward exaggeration. That said, Maliki should be held accountable, but that accountability should come first and foremost from the Iraqi people in the 2014 elections and not by an American administration which has largely abandoned Iraq hastily passing judgment. A major flaw of U.S. policy toward both Iraq and Afghanistan has been prioritizing personality over system. It is time to respect the system.

The United States should seek close ties with Baghdad. Not only would that enable Baghdad to better resist Iranian pressure, but it would also enable American businesses to take advantage of the growing Iraqi market. Long-term defense cooperation—for example, with regard to provision of the F-16 fighters Iraq seeks—would also help Iraq protect itself in a hostile neighborhood and would create a framework for decades of exchanges and interaction. It would make it harder for the Iranian government to try to run roughshod over Iraqi sensitivities. Such decisions should be based on American interests and Iraqi needs, not frustration with the outcome of the 2010 Iraqi elections or misdirected personal animus toward Maliki himself.


Michael Rubin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/01/dont-blame-maliki-for-iraq-violence/

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South African Ministers do not Visit Israel

by Israel Hayom

International relations minister says fellow ministers don't visit Israel as expression of solidarity with Palestinians • MK Avigdor Lieberman calls comments "a combination of hypocrisy and classic anti-Semitism," says a pogrom is only a matter of time.

South African International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane: "The last time I saw a map of Palestine, I couldn't go to sleep" | Photo credit: Reuters

Relations between Jerusalem and Pretoria appear to be on a further downswing after South African International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said over the weekend that her fellow cabinet members refrain from visiting Israel as an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians.

"Our Palestinian friends have never asked us to disengage with Israel. They had asked us in formal meetings to not engage with the regime," Nkoana-Mashabane was quoted by The Times of South Africa as saying.

She added that her country intends to limit its interaction with Israel. 

"We have agreed to slow down and curtail senior leadership contact with that regime until things begin to look better," she said.

"The struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle," she said. "The last time I saw a map of Palestine, I couldn't go to sleep. It is just dots, smaller than those of the homelands ['Bantustans, or territories set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa], and that broke my heart."

Nkoana-Mashabane's comments came in response to Israel's announcement last week that it intends to build thousands of housing units beyond the Green Line, but in actuality the ruling South African National Congress party has wide-ranging ties with the Palestine Liberation Organization, formed during the apartheid period, and the country in general is considered to be pro-Palestinian.

MK Avigdor Lieberman (Likud-Beytenu) called Nkoana-Mashabane's comments "a combination of hypocrisy and classic anti-Semitism."

"This is the same government," said Lieberman, "that only a year ago its policemen indiscriminately shot and killed 34 platinum miners because they 'dared' to strike and that afterwards even wanted to try the surviving miners in court by invoking a law from the apartheid period. This is the same government that does not deal and is not concerned with what is going on with its neighbors, not with the murder of journalists in Mali and not with the terrorist attacks in Kenya; it is mainly concerned with matters thousands of kilometers away with the Palestinians.

"The South African government creates an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic atmosphere, which means that a pogrom against the Jews in that country is only a matter of time. I call on all the Jews still living there to move to Israel as soon as possible and without delay, before it is too late."

Meanwhile, South Africa recently saw the launch of a campaign to free 5,000 Palestinian "political prisoners" from Israeli jails, including Marwan Barghouti, the former head of the Tanzim terrorist organization serving five life sentences. The campaign was launched on Robben Island, where former South African President Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for decades. 

A diplomatic source in Jerusalem said that the relations between the two countries were already negligible "and there was nothing much to minimize."

"There are no official visits, no consultations," the source said. "There are only formal relations, a small amount of commercial exchange in the private sector, without government interference."

The diplomatic source called Nkoana-Mashabane's comments "an emotional expression that reflects the perception of the person who made them and of the members of her government, as well as their lack of willingness to develop relations or respond to requests to build ties. This is part of the routinely negative treatment we receive from South Africa."

Israel Hayom

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=13035

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