Twilight of American Jewry

Republished from jpost.com

It is hard to know how Israel will be affected by the dramatic enfeeblement of the American Jewish community that we are now witnessing.

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2016 Policy Conference. (photo credit:SAUL LOEB / AFP)

This week marked the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on America. Most of us didn’t realize it at the time, but those attacks also marked the beginning of the end of the golden age of American Jewry – on both sides of the ideological divide.

Most American Jews make their home on the political Left, and together with black Americans they comprise the most loyal Democratic voting bloc. American Jews have clung to the Democratic Party despite the fact that over the past decade and a half, their position in the party has become increasingly precarious.

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After the September 11 attacks, the American anti-war movement rose as a force in the party. The movement was quick to conflate its anti-Americanism with hostility for Israel. Jewish anti-war activists were forced to choose between Zionism and pacifism.

And the situation has only grown worse over time.

As Gary Gambill of the Middle East Forum wrote this week in The National Interest, since the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel was founded in 2005, its members have gone from one leftist group to another and demanded that their members embrace the cause of Israel’s destruction.

Group after group – from the feminists, to the gay rights activists, to Occupy Wall Street, to Black Lives Matter – bowed to the BDS demand. Members who refused to condemn Israel and join the call for its destruction have been booted out.

As Prof. Alan Dershowitz wrote last month, this state of affairs has brought about a situation where progressive American Jews who support Israel – that is, the majority of American Jews – are increasingly finding themselves isolated, rejected by their fellow leftists.

In his words, “Over the past several years, progressive Jews and supporters of Israel have had to come to terms with the reality that those who do not reject Israel and accept the... BDS movement’s unique brand of bigotry are no longer welcome in some progressive circles. And while both the Democratic and Republican parties have embraced the importance of the US alliance with Israel, that dynamic is under threat more so than at any point in my lifetime.”

The radicalization of the American Left has caused a radicalization of the Democratic Party. This was made clear throughout this year’s Democratic primary season and during the party’s national convention. Today, the anti-Israel Left makes up not just the Democratic grassroots but also the major donors to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The significance of this development for American Jews cannot be overstated. Even if Clinton herself doesn’t share the positions of the Bernie Sanders wing of her party, she cannot govern in defiance of its will.

And if she is elected in November, she won’t.

On the Republican side of the aisle, the situation is very different.

But it is also bad.

It isn’t that anti-Semites have taken over the party of Lincoln. To be sure, white supremacists like David Duke have made clear that they are happy to support Donald Trump. But unlike Clinton and the progressives, Trump never sought nor accepted their support. Moreover, in sharp contrast to the situation on the Democrat side of the aisle, Republican support for Israel is all but unanimous.

All of the Republican primary candidates were pro-Israel to varying degrees. The GOP platform passed at the convention is the most pro-Israel document in its history.

The problem on the Republican side of the aisle then is not that the party has turned against the Jews. The problem is that a large contingent of prominent Jewish Republicans has decided to commit political suicide.

Back in the mid-1970s, disgusted by the radicalization of the Democratic Party, particularly in connection with its prosecution of the Cold War, a significant group of predominantly Jewish intellectuals led by the likes of Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz came to the conclusion that they could no longer maintain their loyalty to the Democratic Party – which had been their political home for decades. With the rise of Ronald Reagan on the Republican side of the aisle, these prominent Jews broke with the Democrats, called themselves neoconservatives, and cast their lot with the GOP.

Some members of this group received influential appointments in the Reagan administration. Others used their intellectual skills and their media outlets to set out the intellectual basis for much of Reagan’s foreign and economic policies.

These Jewish Republicans enjoyed a far less congenial relationship with Reagan’s successor George H.W. Bush. But all the same, by and large they remained loyal Republicans. For their efforts they were appointed to significant positions in the George W. Bush administration.

After the September 11 attacks, prominent Jewish Republicans like Bush’s deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz rose to national fame as they were widely credited – and often credited themselves – with shaping Bush’s counter-terrorism policies, including his decision to overthrow the Iraqi government and to make democratizing the Islamic world the goal of his counter-terrorism strategies worldwide.

Their star rose as quickly as it fell. As the public soured on Bush’s war policies, the first to be blamed for his failures were the Jewish Republicans who had been so outspoken about their roles in shaping his policies.

Some of the criticism was substantive and deserved. Much of it was bigoted.

The Republican establishment, for its part, remained staunchly loyal to Bush’s policies. Both John McCain and Mitt Romney supported them to varying degrees during their presidential bids.

That support was not shared by Republican voters, however. Over Obama’s eight years in office, the Republican base and as well as lawmakers became increasing hostile to the democratic interventionism championed by the Bush administration and disaffected with the war in Iraq.

Seemingly unaware of the shift, the same Jewish Republican policy-makers and writers most identified in the public mind with Bush’s failures went into the 2016 race assuming that as was the case in 2008 and 2012, the party would choose a candidate that largely supported their views.

Two prominent Republican candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Jeb Bush, met that expectation.

But contrary to their expectations, Rubio and Bush were flops. The voters rejected them. The two candidates that secured significant support – Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, were outspoken opponents of Bush’s policies.

Rather than repeat their practice from 1992 and accept the will of their fellow Republicans, this year the most prominent members of the Jewish Republican elite have opted to attack Trump and his voters.

That is, they have decided to commit political suicide.

Wolfowitz, along with Bush’s second term Treasury secretary Hank Paulson and several prominent lower level Jewish Republican policy-makers, announced they are voting for Clinton. Most members of the Jewish Republican elite have sufficed with refusing to endorse Trump. Some have become his most outspoken and vituperative critics.

Objectively, their behavior is irrational. With the radical takeover of the Democratic Party, these Republican rebels cannot hope to receive influential roles in a Clinton administration even if she throws some table scraps in their direction. And by attacking Trump and his voters, they are dooming themselves to political homelessness for at least a generation.

The prominence of Jewish Republicans in the Never Trump camp is liable to impact more than their personal career prospects. It is liable to adversely affect Republican attitudes toward Jews as Jews. And to their disgrace, the Jewish Republicans at the heart of the Never Trump camp are playing right into this unhealthy dynamic.

This week the Intelligence Squared debating society held a public debate in New York. The debate was posted on Real Clear Politics website.

Two sides debated the proposition that the American elites are to blame for Trump’s rise. Arguing in favor of the proposition were two Christian journalists – Tim Carney and Ben Domenech.

Arguing against it were two Jewish journalists – Bret Stephens (a former Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief) and Jennifer Rubin.

Both Rubin and Stephens voiced their support for Clinton’s controversial assertion that half of Trump’s supporters are deplorable, unworthy of attention, un-American and irredeemable.

For their part, Domenech and Carney argued that Stephens and Rubin were ignoring the social and economic dislocation of the lower middle class. They argued that the suffering of members of this group has caused millions of Americans to feel betrayed by their political elites and turn to Trump to put a stop to a political game they believe is rigged against them.

Two-thirds of the way through the event, Carney brought up religion.

Carney allowed that many of Trump’s supporters are indeed bigoted. However, he said that “as a Christian,” he couldn’t accept that they are irredeemable because Christianity teaches that all men can be saved.

Rather than grant his point or simply ignore it, Rubin chose to respond in the name of Judaism. In so doing, she turned the debate into a contest between Christianity and Judaism.

Incorrectly arguing that Judaism does not believe in repentance as a road to redemption, Rubin pointed to herself and Stephens and said sardonically, “We Jews just believe in good and evil. We don’t believe that everyone is redeemable.”

The Christians won the debate in a knockout.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the Jewish Republicans’ behavior is that while attacking the anti-Semites at the margins of the Republican Party, they ignore the anti-Semites at the heart of the Democratic Party.

While Trump has disavowed the support of the GOP’s Jew-hating wing, some of Clinton’s closest advisers harbor virulent anti-Semitic beliefs.

Take Sidney Blumenthal for instance. Blumenthal has been a close adviser to the Clintons for decades. We learned from Clinton’s emails made public earlier this year by Judicial Watch that Blumenthal was one of Clinton’s most intimate advisers throughout her tenure as secretary of state.

Blumenthal’s son Max is a raving anti-Semite. He calls for the destruction of Israel. He compares Israel to Nazi Germany and IDF soldiers to the Nazi SS.

Blumenthal Sr. is a proud father. He regularly shared his son’s ravings with Clinton, and she shared his delight. In eight separate emails over the course of her tenure in office, Clinton enthusiastically praised his Jew-hating propaganda.

In one message email, Clinton wrote, “Your Max is a mitzva.”

On the one hand then, we have the Jewish Democrats who are faced with a party that is increasingly controlled by anti-Semitic forces. And on the other hand we are in the midst of the collective political suicide of the Jewish Republican establishment.

It is hard to know how Israel will be affected by the dramatic enfeeblement of the American Jewish community that we are now witnessing. The fact remains that the vast majority of American support for Israel comes from the evangelical Christian community.

What is clear enough though is that the political waning of the Jewish community across the political spectrum means that the golden era of American Jewry is not only over. It is gone.

www.CarolineGlick.com

Speech by Caroline Glick

http://bcove.me/luxlrowr

Bill Hemmer report from G20 Turkey.

Bill Hemmer from FOX is a pretty cool and collected kind of guy. But Obama's characterization of the ISIS massacre in Paris as a "setback," made him lose his self-control.
Good for him. When you can't get mad at infuriating things, there's something wrong with you.
Reblogged from   http://www.mediaite.com/…/usually-dispassionate-fox-news-a…/

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  Usually Dispassionate Fox News Anchor Bill Hemmer Goes Off on Obama Terror Speech
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  Usually Dispassionate Fox News Anchor Bill Hemmer Goes Off on Obama Terror Speech
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  Usually Dispassionate Fox News Anchor Bill Hemmer Goes Off on Obama Terror Speech
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  See more at MEDIAITE.COM

Our World: France’s war against the Jews

Through its actions, France has shown that it isn’t even vaguely interested in promoting freedom and peace.

People covered in mock blood near a Palestinian flag and a placard which reads, "Gaza - My Love on Seine" stage their death on a artificial sand beach at "Paris Plages" to protest the "Tel Aviv on Seine" event, in Paris. (photo credit:REUTERS) 

France’s plan to use its position at the UN Security Council to bring about the deployment of international monitors to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has been condemned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers as biased, unhelpful and detached from reality.

Certainly it is all those things. But France’s decision to use its diplomatic position to advance a plan which if implemented would end Israeli sovereignty over Judaism’s holiest site is first and foremost a French act of aggression against the Jewish state.

Contrary to what the French government would have us believe, France’s Temple Mount gambit is not an effort to quell the violence. French protestations of concern over the loss of life in the current tempest of Palestinian terrorism ring hollow.

France doesn’t really oppose Palestinian terrorism.

To the contrary, it facilitates it.

Every year, the French government pays millions of euros, dollars and shekels to Palestinian NGOs whose stated goal is to destroy Israel. Through its NGO agents, France finances the radicalization of Palestinian society. This French-financed radicalization makes Palestinian terrorism inevitable.

Much of the current rhetoric used by the Palestinians to reject Israel’s legitimacy and justify violence against Jews is found in strategic documents that France paid Palestinian NGOs to write.

According to NGO Monitor, between 2010 and 2013, France gave $6.5 million to a consortium of Palestinian NGOs called the NGO Development Center. It paid for the NDC to put together a strategic plan to advance its members’ goals. That French-initiated and financed document includes a list of activities not aimed at promoting peace, enhancing the daily lives of Palestinians, or expanding economic growth.

Rather, the French-financed strategic planning document provides a list of activities that the NGOs will undertake to delegitimize and criminalize Israel and ensure that Palestinians hate the Jewish state and view it as the cause of all their suffering.

The paper called for “Establish[ing] monitoring databases by relevant NGOs on sectoral issues and themes (expansion of colonies, [i.e. Israeli neighborhoods and towns beyond the 1949 armistice lines,] construction of Separation and Annexation Wall, Gaza siege, Jerusalem, house demolitions and evictions, water resources, environment, political prisoners, etc.)”; “Implement[ing] and disseminat[ing] in depth thematic studies about Israeli violations of human rights in the occupied territories”; “Development of a unified NGO strategy for international advocacy.”

A 2008 NDC document required all member groups to ban all “normalization activities with the occupier, [both] at the political-security [and] the cultural [and] developmental levels.”

The document went on to call for Israel to be destroyed. No action on the part of any Palestinian entity can be carried out it said, “if it undermines the inalienable Palestinian rights of establishing statehood and the return of refugees to their original homes,” that is, the immigration of millions of foreign-born Arabs to the ruins of Israel.

The “international advocacy” referred to in the document includes lobbying foreign governments and societies to wage economic war against Israel. To this end, for instance, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the French government, uses racist language to demonize Jews and Israel by among other things assaulting the so-called “Judaization of Jerusalem” and attacking Palestinians who work with Israeli companies.

In 2011, PARC sabotaged a trade delegation in France comprised of Israeli and Gazan farmers organized by Agrexco, Israel’s main exporter of agricultural products. Rather than welcome Israel’s actions on behalf of Gaza farmers, PAR C organized a boycott of the delegation – causing direct harm to Gazan farmers.

In its press release following its action, the beneficiary of French government financing wrote, “PARC salutes all activists and international supporters for the BDS campaign and especially our French friends and partners who were able to frustrate the Agrexco attempt to conduct a joint press conference with a few exploited Palestinian producers.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are not the actions that peaceful groups interested in a non-violent, peaceful resolution of the Palestinian conflict with Israel undertake. By paying these groups to carry out these sorts of activities, the French government has made clear that far from seeking to advance the cause of peace, its actual goal is to block all prospects of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

These sorts of actions are the norm, rather than the exception in France’s treatment of Israel. And France makes no bones about its hostility toward the Jewish state.

On December 2, 2014, barely a week after two jihadists from Jerusalem butchered like sheep four rabbis in prayer at a synagogue in the city and murdered a policeman who tried to rescue them, the French parliament recognized the non-existent “State of Palestine.”

That Islamic State-styled massacre was part of a larger Islamic terrorism offensive against Jews in Jerusalem that was incited by the leaders of “Palestine.”

Just as it does today, last fall the Palestinian Authority, led by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, spread the lie that Israel was planning to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount and called on the Palestinians to attack Jews.

The French government’s policies on the ground in Israel and the PA are a natural complement to its anti-Jewish policies at home.

Whereas France seek to reward Islamic terrorists on the international stage by helping them to weaken the Jewish state, back home the French government is willing to place its own Jewish community at risk in order to pretend that Islamic terrorism doesn’t exist.

Since Jews are among the top targets for French jihadists, the French government’s policy of refusing to acknowledge or combat Islamic extremism and violence in France is an anti-Jewish policy.

Last January, in the wake of the jihadist massacre at the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in Paris, which had followed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine, French President Francois Hollande refused to acknowledge that the murderous violence was rooted in Islam. To the contrary, Hollande perversely insisted, “These terrorists and fanatics have nothing to do with the Islamic religion.”

In a further act of hostility toward the grieving Jewish community, two days after the massacres Hollande told Netanyahu to stay away from Paris and not participate in his solidarity march with the victims of the attacks.

When Netanyahu insisted on participating in the march anyway, Hollande invited Mahmoud Abbas to participate as well, despite his direct sponsorship of anti-Jewish terrorism.

French authorities tried to push Netanyahu to the second row of marchers to prevent anyone from seeing him. Ahead of the march, they left him exposed, in an unsafe area, where his life was in danger every second, as he waited for a bus to pick him up and take him to the event.

In the evening after the march, Hollande refused to appear with Netanyahu at the memorial ceremony for the victims of the Hyper Cacher massacre. In a tangible snub, Hollande left the synagogue where it was being held before Netanyahu arrived.

In the nine months since the attacks, rather than go after the Islamic communities of France that infect their members with Nazi-like Jew hatred marinated in Koranic dispensations for murder, French authorities have forced French Jewry to live under lock and key. Jewish communal institutions are required to shoulder astronomical security costs as their buildings have come to look more like military garrisons than elementary schools and synagogues.

As a French professor writing under the pen name Alain El-Mouchain explained this month in Mosaic Magazine, the French government’s “refusal to identify either the culprits [of anti-Semitic violence] or their [Jewish] victims by their proper names... has perversely combined with the swift posting of police and military guards at Jewish institutions to make Jews feel that at best they have become ‘protected citizens’ in their own country, reinforcing the idea that they are no longer at home in France but are rather a new kind of dhimmi [a minority group that lives at the pleasure of the ruling Muslims].”

In rejecting France’s bid to destroy Israel’s sovereignty over the Temple Mount, Netanyahu and his ministers have all noted that such a position will do nothing to protect the Temple Mount or guarantee freedom of religion. Only Israeli control of the holy site, Netanyahu explained, protects members of all faiths.

Again, while their statements are correct, they miss the point. It isn’t that France is doing nothing to ensure freedom of religion. Through its actions, France has shown that it isn’t even vaguely interested in promoting freedom and peace. The policy of the French government, revealed yet again by its bid to end Israeli control of the Temple Mount, is to delegitimize Israel and curry the favor of jihadists at the expense of the Jews of Israel and of France alike.

Column one: Israel’s risk aversion problem

 

by Caroline Glick

 Reblogged from jpost.com

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the government at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow. (photo credit:REUTERS)

On Wednesday the Obama administration was caught off guard by Russia’s rapid rise in Syria. As the Russians began bombing a US-supported militia along the Damascus-Homs highway, Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, at the UN. Just hours before their meeting Kerry was insisting that Russia’s presence in Syria would likely be a positive development.

Reacting to the administration’s humiliation, Republican Sen. John McCain said, “This administration has confused our friends, encouraged our enemies, mistaken an excess of caution for prudence and replaced the risks of action with the perils of inaction.”

McCain added that Russian President Vladimir Putin had stepped “into the wreckage of this administration’s Middle East policy.”

While directed at the administration, McCain’s general point is universally applicable. Today is no time for an overabundance of caution.

The system of centralized regimes that held sway in the Arab world since the breakup of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago has unraveled. The shape of the new order has yet to be determined.

The war in Syria and the chaos and instability engulfing the region are part and parcel of the birth pangs of a new regional governing architecture now taking form. Actions taken by regional and global actors today will likely will influence power relations for generations.

Putin understands the opportunity of the moment.

He views the decomposition of Syria as an opportunity to rebuild Russia’s power and influence in the Middle East – at America’s expense.

Russia isn’t the only strategic player seeking to exploit the war in Syria and the regional chaos. Turkey and Iran are also working assiduously to take advantage of the current absence of order to advance their long term interests.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is exploiting the rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq to fight the Kurds in both countries. Erdogan’s goal is twofold: to prevent the establishment of an independent Kurdistan and to disenfranchise the Kurds in Turkey.

As for Iran, Syria is Iran’s bulwark against Sunni power in the Arab world and the logistical base for Tehran’s Shi’ite foreign legion Hezbollah. Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei is willing to fight to the bitter end to hold as much of Syrian territory as possible.

Broadly speaking, Iran views the breakup of the Arab state system as both a threat and an opportunity.

The chaos threatens Iran, because it has radicalized the Sunni world. If Sunni forces unite, their numeric advantage against Shi’ite Iran will imperil it.

The power of Sunni numbers is the reason Bashar Assad now controls a mere sixth of Syrian territory. To prevent his fate from befalling them, the Iranians seek to destabilize neighboring regimes and where possible install proxy governments in their stead.

Iran’s cultivation of alliances and proxy relationships with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida, and its phony war against Islamic State all point to an overarching goal of keeping Sunni forces separated and dependent on Tehran.

The Iranian regime also fears the prospect of being overthrown by its domestic opponents. To counter this threat the regime engages in large-scale and ever escalating repression of its perceived foes.

Iran’s nuclear program also plays a key role in the regime’s survival strategy. As Khamenei and his underlings see things, nuclear weapons protect the regime in three ways. They deter Iran’s external foes. They increase domestic support for the regime by enriching Iran which, no longer under international sanctions, sees its diplomatic and economic prestige massively enhanced due to its nuclear program.

Finally, there is Iran’s war with Israel and the US. A nuclear-armed Iran is a direct threat to both countries.

And this, too, is a boon for the mullacracy. From the regime’s perspective, fighting Israel and the US serves to neutralize the Sunni threat to the regime. The more Iran is seen as fighting Israel and the US the more legitimate it appears to Sunni jihadists.

This then brings us to the Americans. Like the Russians, the Turks and the Iranians, President Barack Obama and his associates are strategic players. Unlike those powers however, the administration is moved not by raw power calculations but by ideological dictates.

Obama and his advisers are convinced that the instability and radicalization of states and actors throughout the region is the consequence of the actions of past US administrations and those of America’s regional allies – first and foremost, Israel and Egypt. The basis for this conviction is the administration’s post-colonial ideological underpinnings.

Because his strategy is based on ideological beliefs rather than power calculations rooted in reality, Obama’s position cannot be swayed by evidence, even when evidence shows that his administration’s policies endanger US national security.

This brings us to Israel.

Israel has limited power to influence regional events.

It cannot change its neighbors’ values or cultures. Israel can however limit its neighbors’ ability to harm it and expand its ability to deter would be aggressors by among other things, using its power judiciously to influence now forming power balances between various regional and world actors.

Israel has followed this model in Syria with notable success.

At an early stage of the war our leaders recognized that aside from the Kurds, who have no shared border with us, there are no viable actors in Syria that are not dangerous to Israel. As a result, Israel has no interest in the victory of one group against others.

The only actor in Syria that Israel has felt it necessary to actively rein in is Hezbollah. So it has acted repeatedly to prevent Hezbollah from using its operational presence in Syria as a means for augmenting its offensive capabilities in Lebanon.

The problem with this strategy is that it has ignored the fact that from Hezbollah’s perspective, there is no operational difference between Lebanon and Syria.

The war in Syria spread to Lebanon years ago.

Now, with Iranian and Russian assistance, Hezbollah is beginning to develop the industrial capacity to bypass Israel and independently produce advanced weapons inside Lebanon. This rapid industrialization of Hezbollah’s military capabilities requires Israel to end its respect for the all-but-destroyed international border and take direct action against Hezbollah’s capabilities in Lebanon.

This brings us to Hezbollah’s boss, Iran. For the past several years, the same caution that has led Israel to grant de facto immunity to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon has led to Israel’s passivity and deference to the Obama administration in relation to Iran’s nuclear program.

With regard to Iran’s nuclear installations, the strategy of passivity has largely been forced onto an unwilling political leadership by Israel’s military leaders.

For the past several years, the IDF’s General Staff has refused to support the government’s position on Iran’s nuclear program.

Our military leaders have justified their insubordination by arguing that if Israel takes independent action against Iran’s nuclear program it will undermine its bilateral relations with the US, which they consider more important than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Although under the best of circumstances, the IDF’s position would be unacceptable from the perspective of democratic norms of governance, since the ideologically driven Obama administration took power seven years ago, the military’s position has imperiled the country.

So long as Obama – or the ideology that informs his actions – remains in power in Washington, US security guarantees towards Israel will have no credibility.

The IDF’s assessment that ties to the US are more important than preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power will remain incorrect, and dangerously so.

Today is Israel’s opportunity to shape the future of the Middle East by not only preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power, but by preventing a regional nuclear arms race.

The closer Iran comes to emerging as a nuclear power, the more Sunni regimes, including Islamic State, will seek their own nuclear capabilities. It goes without saying that the more regional actors have nuclear weapons, the more dangerous the region becomes for Israel, and indeed for the world as a whole.

For many Israelis, the story of the week wasn’t Russia’s air strikes against US-allied forces in Syria. It was PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the UN General Assembly.

Leftists expressed horror in the face of Abbas’s threat to end the PLO’s adherence to the agreements it signed with Israel in the 1990s (and has stood in material breach of ever since). The government insisted, for its part that the reason the peace process has not brought peace is because Abbas and his PLO refuse to negotiate with Israel.

Unfortunately, both sides’ responses to Abbas’s speech indicate that Israel has lost all semblance of strategic purpose in regard to the Palestinians.

Fifteen years ago this week, on September 28, 2000, the Palestinians opened their terrorist war against Israel. Ever since it has been clear that no Palestinian faction is interested in living at peace with Israel.

Despite this, for the past 15 years, Israel has refused to reconsider its strategic allegiance to the false notion that it has the ability to influence the hearts and minds of the Palestinians and bend them in the direction of peace.

This delusional thinking is what caused the IDF’s General Staff to convene immediately after Operation Protective Edge ended and try to figure out how to rebuild Gaza.

Ever since the cease-fire came into force, Hamas has diverted all the assistance it has received from Israel and the international community not to rebuild Gaza, but to rebuild its military capacity to harm Israel. And yet, from the IDF’s perspective, ever since the war ended our most urgent task has been to save Hamas and the Palestinians alike from reckoning with the price of their aggression.

Likewise, Israel continues to insist that we have a strategic interest in peace with the PLO. Even if this is true in theory, chances are greater that unicorns will fall from the sky and prance through Jerusalem’s Old City than that the PLO will agree to make peace with Israel.

Our continued defense of the PLO as a legitimate actor harms our ability to secure other strategic interests that are achievable and can improve Israel’s regional position. These interests include securing transportation arteries in Judea and Samaria and strengthening Israel's military and political control over the areas. These interests have only grown more acute in recent years with the rise of jihadist forces throughout the region and among the Palestinians themselves.

This brings us back to McCain and his strategic wisdom.

Israel must not allow the risks of action to lure us into strategic paralysis that imperils our future.

The more Israel allows other actors to determine the nature of the emerging regional order, the less secure Israel will be. The more willing we are to take calculated risks today the greater our ability will be to influence the future architecture of regional power relations and so minimize threats to our survival in the decades to come.

www.CarolineGlick.com

Column one:American Jewry’s fateful hour

Photo by: REUTERS / JONATHAN ERNST By CAROLINE B. GLICK 08/13/2015   If the communal leadership and its members fail to fight, American Jews will find themselves communally disenfranchised.

American Jewry is being tested today as never before. The future of the community is tied up in the results of the test. If the Jews of America are able to mount a successful, forceful and sustained opposition to President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which allows the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism to become a nuclear-armed state and provides it with $150 billion up front, then the community will survive politically to fight another day. If the communal leadership and its members fail to fight, American Jews will find themselves communally disenfranchised. On the face of it, there is no reason this fight should have been anything more than a hopeless – but relatively insignificant – ordeal. Given that all Obama needs to do to secure the implementation of his nuclear pact with the mullahs is secure the support of a one-third minority in one house of Congress, he might have been expected to go easy on his opponents since they have so little chance of defeating him. Instead, Obama has decided to demolish them. He has presented them with two options – capitulate or be destroyed. Consider Hillary Clinton’s behavior. On Tuesday the Democratic presidential front-runner and former secretary of state ratcheted up her statements of support for Obama’s nuclear pact with the ayatollahs. Speaking to supporters in New Hampshire, Clinton said, “I’m hoping that the agreement is finally approved and I’m telling you if it’s not, all bets are off.” On its face, Clinton’s mounting support for the deal makes little sense. True, her principal rival for the Democratic nomination, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, announced his support. But this deal will probably not be an issue by the time Democrats begin voting in their primaries. On the other hand, the deal is not popular among either the general public or key Democratic donors. According to a poll taken this week by Monmouth University, only 27 percent of the general population and only 43 percent of Democrats want Congress to support the deal. Then there is the funding issue. Clinton hopes to raise $2.5 billion to fund her campaign. Her chance of securing that support – particularly from Jewish Democrats – is harmed, not helped by openly supporting the deal. So why is she speaking out in favor of it? The same day Clinton escalated her support for the deal, the FBI seized Clinton’s private email server and her thumb drive amid reports that the inspector-general of the US intelligence community concluded that there were top secret communications on her email server. Simply storing top secret communications, let alone disseminating them, is a felony offense. Clinton submitted more than 32,000 emails from her server to the State Department. A random sample of 40 emails showed up four classified documents, two of which were top secret. If the same ratios hold for the rest of the emails she submitted, then she may have illegally held some 3,200 classified documents, 1,600 of which were top secret. While Clinton is presenting the investigation as a simple security issue, she may very well find herself quickly under criminal investigation. At that point, her dwindling White House prospects will be the least of her worries. But there is one person who can protect her. If Obama wishes to close or expand a criminal probe of Clinton’s suspected criminal activities, he can. As Roger Simon from Pjmedia.com wrote this week, “Hillary Clinton is in such deep legal trouble over her emails that she needs the backing of Obama to survive. He controls the attorney-general’s office and therefore he controls Hillary (and her freedom) as long as he is president.” The prejudicial indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez – the most outspoken critic of Obama’s deal with the ayatollahs in the Democratic Party – on dubious corruption charges in April shows that Obama isn’t above using his control over the Justice Department to persecute political opponents. Then there is Obama’s treatment of Sen. Charles Schumer. Last Thursday night, the senior senator from New York and the next in line to lead the Democratic minority in the Senate informed Obama that he will oppose his nuclear deal. Schumer asked Obama to keep Schumer’s position to himself in order to enable Schumer to announce it on Friday morning. Rather than respect Schumer’s wishes, the White House set its leftist attack dogs on Schumer. By the time Schumer announced his plan to oppose the deal he had been called a traitor, a warmonger and an Israeli agent by leftist activist groups who pledged to withhold campaign contributions. Schumer was compared to former Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman. Lieberman was forced to face a primary challenge in his 2006 reelection bid. His opponent, Ned Lamont, was generously supported by leftist activists led by George Soros. Lamont’s campaign was laced with anti-Semitic overtones, and Lieberman lost. He was forced to run in the general election as an Independent and won by virtue of the support he received from Republican voters and donors. White House press secretary Josh Earnest threatened that Schumer could expect to be challenged in his bid to replace outgoing Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid when Reid retires next year. Responding to the onslaught against him, while maintaining his opposition to the deal, Schumer reportedly told his Democratic Senate colleagues that while he was opposing the deal, he would not lobby then to join him in opposition. The White House led- and instigated-assault on Schumer is interesting because of what it tells us about how Obama is using anti-Semitism. In all likelihood, Schumer would have demurred from lobbying his Senate colleagues from joining him in opposing the deal even if Obama hadn’t fomented an openly bigoted campaign to discredit him as a Jew. The mere threat of denying him his long-sought goal of heading the Democratic Senate faction, not to mention the possibility of mounting a primary challenge against him, probably would have sufficed to convince him not to take any further steps to oppose the deal. So what purpose is served by calling a senior Democratic senator with a perfect leftist record on domestic issues a traitor, a warmonger and an agent of Israel? In all likelihood, the decision to attack Schumer as a disloyal Jew does not owe to some uncontrollable anti-Semitic passion on Obama’s part. Even if Obama is in fact an anti-Jewish bigot, he is more than capable of concealing his prejudice. After all, as we learned over the weekend from Iranian media reports translated by MEMRI, Obama told the Iranians four years ago that they could have the bomb. According to MEMRI’s findings, Iranian negotiators said that Obama sent then-Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairman John Kerry to Oman in 2011, while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was still Iran’s president, to begin nuclear negotiations. During the course of those early contacts, Obama agreed that Iran could continue enriching uranium in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a host of binding UN Security Council resolutions. He also agreed that Iran would not be required in the framework of a nuclear deal to reveal all of the possible military dimensions of its past nuclear work. In other words, he told the Iranians that he would not stand in their way to the bomb. Obama managed to hide his concessions from the American people. He orchestrated a spectacle of “serious” negotiations with the P5+1 and Iran, where he pretended that the concessions he had made four years earlier were made at the very last moment of the nuclear talks in Vienna. Given his obvious skill, it is clear that he would only play the anti-Semitism card if he believed he had something to gain from it. So what is he planning to do that anti-Semitism can help him to accomplish? Over the past month, Obama has demonized and criminalized opponents of his nuclear deal. Last week at American University Obama said that his Republican opponents are the moral equivalent of “Death to America”-chanting jihadists. Obama presented deal opponents in general as warmongers who would force the US into an unnecessary war that his deal would otherwise prevent. And, since he said that among all the nations of the world, only Israel opposes the deal, it easily follows that the Jews who oppose the deal are traitors who care more about Israel than America. And then this week his troops let it be known that Schumer is a warmonger and a traitor. And a Jew. In his meeting with American Jewish leaders last Tuesday, Obama said that if the community dares to criticize him personally, it will weaken the American Jewish community and as a result, the strength of the US-Israel relationship. If Jews – like Republicans – are warmongering traitors, obviously they should be made to pay a price. By singling out and demonizing Jewish American opponents of the deal as corrupt, treacherous warmongers, Obama is setting the conditions for treating them as disloyal citizens can expected to be treated. In other words, at best, Jewish opponents can expect to find themselves treated like other Obama opponents – such as Tea Party groups that were hounded and harassed by the IRS and other governmental organs. AIPAC can expect to be subjected to humiliating, public and prejudicial probes. Jewish institutions and groups can expect to be picketed, vandalized and sued. Jewish activist can expect to be audited by the IRS. In that meeting with American Jewish leaders, Obama seemed to present them with a choice. He reportedly told AIPAC’s representatives, “If you guys would back down [from their opposition to the deal], I would back down from some of the things I’m doing.” Actually, he gave them no real options. Obama effectively told the leaders of the American Jewish community that as far as he is concerned, Jews have no right to advance their collective concerns as Jews. If they do, he will attack them. If they give up that right under duress, then he will leave them alone. So remain free and be hounded, or give up your rights and be left alone. Some commentators have characterized the fight over the deal as a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party. This may be the case. But first and foremost, it is a fight over whether or not Jews in America have the same rights as all other Americans. To be sure, Israel will be harmed greatly if Congress fails to vote down this deal. But Israel has other means of defending itself. If this deal goes through, the greatest loser will be American Jewry.

Caroline Glick: The Iran Deal - Implications for International Security

American Jewry´s moment of decision

Reblogged from carolineglick.com

 

Friday, April 17th, 2015 

This week in two meetings with prominent American Jews, President Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet. Either the Jews of America will rise to the challenge or they will allow Obama to marginalize them. 

It is their choice, and now is the time for them to decide.

In the first meeting, Obama met with centrist Jewish leaders from major Jewish organizations like the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC. Major donors to these groups, like to almost every other major Jewish organization in America, are largely Democrats.

According to The Washington Post, the purpose of the meeting was “to defuse antagonism toward [Obama] and to convince [Jewish leaders] that he shares their concerns about the safety of Israel and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.”

That is, the main goal of the meeting was to silence Jewish criticism of Obama’s deal with Iran.

So far, Obama seems to have accomplished that goal.

Although, according to a source who spoke to The Algemeiner, the atmosphere at the meeting was “ungiving, very stern and tense.” Since the meeting took place, none of the leaders who participated has openly criticized Obama’s policies regarding Iran. Their silence comes despite the fact that, according to the participants who spoke with The Algemeiner, Obama did not allay the concerns they expressed regarding the dangers his nuclear deal with Iran constitute for Israel.

The second meeting of the day was a far friendlier affair. According to The Algemeiner, participants included supporters of the anti-Israel organization J Street, including Alexandra Stanton, Lou Susman, and Victor Kovner. Other outspoken leftist Jews, including Haim Saban and former AIPAC presidents Amy Friedkin and Howard Friedman, also attended.

As The Algemeiner reported, participants in this meeting were much less concerned about Obama’s deal with Iran. At least one participant, described as more “centrist” than other participants gushed at the president, saying, “You are doing the right thing [with Iran]. We are behind you 100 percent.”

Participants in the second meeting also were excited at the prospect of Obama making good on his threat to act against Israel at the UN Security Council. Indeed, they lobbied him to abandon Israel at the international forum. A participant told The Algemeiner that one of his colleagues told Obama, “If you decide to go against Israel at the UN, let us know first and we’ll do the legwork for you, in the [Jewish] community…so you’re not going to come in cold.”

The purpose then of Obama’s second meeting with American Jews was not to silence dissent, but to mobilize his supporters to weaken community opposition to his hostile policies toward Israel, both in regard to Iran and in regard to the Palestinians.

And here, too, the meeting was largely successful.

An indication of the success of Obama’s efforts to rally his Jewish supporters in favor of his anti-Israel policies came on Wednesday, when the Jewish arm of the Democratic Party, the National Jewish Democratic Council, issued a stunning press release. In it, the NJDC condemned Sen. Marco Rubio for supporting Israel. On Monday, Rubio announced that he is running for president.

Rubio’s pro-Israel crime involved his plan get the Senate to condition approval of Obama’s nuclear deal with the ayatollahs on Iran’s recognizing Israel’s right to exist. According to the NJDC, Rubio’s plan, “has no purpose other than to politicize the US-Israel relationship at a time when the Jewish state needs our steadfast support. It is shameful that Sen. Rubio would further politicize this issue to advance his own political goals.”

If the NJDC is truly steadfast in its support for Israel, it is hard to understand what its members are so upset about.

As far as Israelis are concerned, Rubio’s plan is aligned with the widest political consensus imaginable.

The Israeli Left, led by Labor Party leader Yitzhak Herzog, supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that sanctions against Iran should be dropped only after Iran recognizes Israel’s right to exist.

As to America, it is hard to understand how anyone in the American mainstream could oppose conditioning Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons on its abandonment of its aim to destroy Israel.

Obama himself has always insisted that protecting Israel’s security is a paramount goal of his presidency.

Both in his meetings with Jewish leaders and in his interview earlier this month with The New York Times’s Tom Friedman, Obama claims to have been deeply hurt by accusations that he doesn’t care about Israel’s security and said that he would consider it a personal failure if Israel were weaker when he leaves office.

Yet, by refusing to condition a nuclear deal that as Obama himself acknowledges will reduce Iran’s breakout time for military nuclear capabilities to zero on Iran’s eschewal of the goal of Israel’s destruction, the NJDC, like Obama himself, is not protecting Israel or supporting it. Like Obama, the NJDC is indirectly legitimizing Iran’s goal of destroying Israel.

By attacking Rubio for promoting a position that is intuitively reasonable, and in line with a very low common-denominator of support for Israel, the NJDC revealed that, from its perspective, the only way for Republicans not to “politicize” support for Israel is by joining Democrats in opposing Israel.

A new poll released this week by Bloomberg reinforces the growing sense that Israel has become a partisan issue. Today more and more Democrats view support for Israel as a Republican position. Whereas two thirds of Republicans support Israel even if its positions are at odds with those of the administration, three quarters of Democrats support the administration against Israel. Polls in recent years indicate that Republican support for Israel is nearly unanimous, while less than half of Democrats support the Jewish state.

It appears that Obama’s charm offensive among American Jews over the past two weeks on the one hand, and the NJDC’s statement that empties the term “pro-Israel” of all meaning on the other, are aimed at removing the issue of Israel from the political debate at least until Obama achieves his goal of signing a nuclear deal with Iran by June 30.

This makes sense, because as Obama apparently sees things, there are two forces that can scuttle his deal, and they are intimately linked – major Jewish donors, and Hillary Clinton.

On Wednesday the White House reversed its previous position and announced that it would support a Senate bill to require Obama to bring his deal with Iran before the Senate for approval.

Obama’s reversal was not a major concession.

The Senate bill ignored the constitutional provision requiring two thirds of senators to approve international treaties. Under the current Senate bill, two thirds of senators will have to oppose Obama’s radical deal with Iran in order to scuttle it.

All that Obama now requires to secure his deal is to maintain the support of 34 Democratic senators.

And the only one who can endanger that support is Clinton.

As the NJDC showed, Obama has successfully brought about a situation where, for Democrats, supporting Israel means opposing Obama and supporting Republicans. If substantive arguments haven’t sufficed to convince them to fall in line, the Justice Department’s highly questionable decision to indict Sen. Robert Menendez – Obama’s most outspoken Democratic foreign policy critic – on shaky corruption charges just as his confrontation with the Senate over his Iran policy was coming to a head, no doubt has forced at least some Democrats to toe his line.

By mobilizing his Jewish supporters to silence opposition to his policies among American Jews, while making it difficult for more mainstream Jewish leaders to openly criticize him, Obama hopes to neutralize the issue of his hostility toward Israel among Jewish Democrats.

To date, Hillary, who was herself a full partner in Obama’s moves to marginalize Israel supporters during her stint as secretary of state, has said as little as possible about his foreign policy. As a result, she has given no reason for Democratic senators to consider parting ways with the president on Iran.


So far, Clinton’s only move to put distance between herself and her anti-Israel former boss was to allow Malcolm Hoenlein from the Conference of Presidents to issue a statement late last month in his name claiming that Clinton told him that she thinks the US and Israel should bury the hatchet. Clinton, for her part, neither confirmed nor denied Hoenlein’s statement.

Almost simultaneous with Clinton’s announcement Sunday that she is running for president, came a statement from her campaign that she seeks to raise the whopping sum of $2.5 billion in order to secure her election.

There is no way that Clinton can hope to raise that sum without securing the support of major Jewish donors. While some major Jewish donors do not care about whether or not the US supports Israel, as an unnamed Jewish Clinton supporter told JTA this week, Clinton will also need to win the support of donors who do support Israel.

In the source’s words, “Some of the most prominent Jewish Democratic donors are very concerned about the relationship the president has had with Netanyahu and the Iran deal.”

If these Jewish donors band together and condition their support for Clinton on her issuing a clear statement opposing Obama’s deal with Iran and opposing any plan to abandon US support for Israel at the UN Security Council, they will accomplish three vital things.

First, they will loosen Obama’s control over otherwise pro-Israel Democratic senators and other pro-Israel groups in the Democratic Party, including the NJDC. In so doing they will reopen the possibility that Congress will scuttle Obama’s deal with the mullahs.

Second, they will take a major step toward rebuilding Democratic support for Israel that Obama has worked so hard to diminish.

Finally, they will reestablish their political significance in American politics. By supporting Obama, even as he has abandoned the US alliance with Israel, Jewish Democrats have lost their political leverage and power. That power is contingent upon their refusal to abandon Israel.

During the next two months, Obama will be focused on closing his deal with Iran, and Clinton will be avidly seeking to lock up the Democratic nomination for president by building an impregnable fortress of campaign funds. If the American Jewish community uses this critical period to leverage Clinton’s financial requirements to convince her to oppose Obama’s deal that paves the way for a nuclear armed Iran, then they will reassert their relevance in American politics and they will restore support for Israel to its pre-Obama position as a bipartisan position.

If they fail to do so, then Obama’s bid to transform Israel into a partisan issue will succeed. If a Republican wins the White House in 2016, he will face an anti-Israel Democratic opposition. And if Clinton wins the White House, she will have no reason to support Israel.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.