Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)
Showing posts with label Barack Obama and Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama and Middle East. Show all posts

Monday, 5 September 2016

"We Have a President Who Refuses to Identify the Enemy ... We Have to Take Back America" (video)

Notes strategic analyst Professor Efraim Inbar inter alia in a new briefing paper regarding the persistence of Islamic terror:
'The collapse of the Arab state system and the rise of political Islam have destabilized the Middle East and entrenched the region as the major source of global terror. Even the more stable states, such as Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, display strong Islamic tendencies and support radical groups that engage in terrorism. Not much can be done to change this situation. Accepting this unpleasant reality will entail a sea change in Western strategic outlook.
Several major developments in the Middle East will keep the region a wellspring of Islamic terror and a source of inspiration for Islamist radicals for the foreseeable future. Attempts to perpetrate acts of terror against the “enemies of Islam” should be expected to continue....
A critical historic trend in the Middle East that is feeding the terror phenomenon is the rise of political Islam. Islamic identity is deeply entrenched in the region, making the population susceptible to Islamist messages couched in traditional content. The Islamists have also capitalized on the Arab states’ inability to deliver decent services to their citizens by establishing educational networks as well as health and social services. 
This has been a winning strategy for them, in that it has allowed them to capture popular support. When free elections are allowed in the Arab world, Islamist parties do very well. However, most Islamists are anti-modern and anti-Western. Radical Islamist circles advocate violence and terror in the interest of installing “true Islam,” first in Muslim lands and eventually everywhere else. Islamists despise “the decadent West” and believe it will inevitably fall under Muslim rule....'
Read more here


All the more reason, then, to heed the words of such speakers at last month's "Can Islam Co-Exist With Western Civilization?" conference in Los Angeles (sponsored by the American Freedom Alliance) as the witty and wise Admiral James ("Ace") Lyons USN (retd.).
"It's un-American, anti-Western. but pro-Islam, pro-Iranian, and  pro-Muslim Brotherhood ... whose creed is to destroy us from within, with our own miserable hands,and replace our Constitution with draconian Sharia law," he declares bluntly.
Erdogan said it best ... "Islam is Islam.  There are no modifiers. Democracy is the train we ride to our ultimate objective, which is to make Islam dominant throughout the world" .
 He couldn't have said it any plainer ... Islam is a totalitarian ideology bent on world domination masquerading as a religion.... We have a national security crisis ... The greatest threat to our national security resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue... We have a president who refuses to identify the enemy ...
 In November ... you got a pathological liar ... and you want to turn the security of this great country over to her?  We must take back America.  This is a watershed."
 He also compellingly slams Obama's infamous "Iran Deal":


Also speaking at the conference, and discussing the Iran threat, was America's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton:

Thursday, 14 January 2016

David Singer: "Obama Got it Wrong from the Start & Nothing was Going to Save Him from Failure in the End"

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.  It's entitled "Palestine – Obama's Ignorance Becomes His Nemesis".

Writes David Singer:

President Obama enters his final year as President having given up on trying to resolve the Jewish-Arab conflict – following in the footsteps of so many other American Presidents whose similarly-shared lofty and noble aspirations ended in abject failure.

In Obama's case his inability to fully comprehend Jewish history and the connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel was the catalyst for his inevitable failure – as tellingly illustrated in his landmark speech in Cairo on 4 June 2009:
"Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews – is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve."
Israel's current Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dore Gold, has now revealed how Israel's then leadership viewed Obama's above remarks in this frank exchange published in Frontline on 6 January:
"When the president goes to Cairo for the speech, and you heard him speak, what did you think?
Well, everybody that was in my entourage focused on the whole notion that the state of Israel rose as a response to the Holocaust. That was something that was unacceptable.
Why?
Because Israel has an eternity to it that goes far back before the 20th century, the 19th century, and even earlier. All we have to do is know that there was a Jewish majority in Jerusalem already at the time of the American Civil War. All we have to know is that we had a civilization here that was destroyed by the Romans. You can now find the catapult, the Ballista, used to fight the Jewish resistance at the time of the 1st century, 70 A.D. Our history is all over this city and all over the country. Therefore, an explanation that sees us as a bunch of Europeans who are looking for a refuge from the Nazis is a partial and not terribly accurate understanding of the soul of this country.
Does it surprise you that the president of the United States would make that error?'It surprised me that they have a speechwriter who would be allowed to write that kind of document, because I think Sen. Obama was presented with the four dimensions of Israel, but someone decided to take this partial approach in a presidential speech, and it didn’t earn him confidence with the people of Israel. …"
Blaming Obama's ignorance on a speechwriter is being very charitable to President Obama and his administration including the State Department and his equally failed Secretary of State, John Kerry, who all must accept collective responsibility for Obama 's further statement:
"The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop."
Questioning the legitimacy of the right of the Jewish People to live anywhere in their ancient biblical and historical homeland – sanctioned by both the League of Nations and United Nations – was catastrophic.

Question the political wisdom – but not its legitimacy.

Obama got it wrong from the start and nothing was going to save him from failure in the end.

[Photo credit:  americansstandwithisrael.blogspot.com]

Friday, 29 May 2015

David Singer: Netanyahu Goes For Gold In Shoot-Off With Obama

Here is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's appointment of former United Nations ambassador Dore Gold [pictured] to head up Israel's Foreign Ministry ensures that Israel will be confronting President Obama as he continues attempting to deviate from the commitments made to Israel by his predecessor President Bush in a letter dated 14 April 2004 to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (Bush Commitments).


The Bush Commitments acknowledged the risks involved in Israel unilaterally disengaging from Gaza and evacuating the 8000 Jews who had established twenty-one settlements there over the preceding 35 years whilst additionally agreeing to remove another four settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).


President Bush assured Israel of the following:

1. the United States remained committed to President Bush's vision and to its implementation as described in the Roadmap.
2. The United States would do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan.
3. Palestinians would have to undertake a comprehensive and fundamental political reform that included a strong parliamentary democracy and an empowered prime minister.
4. The United States reiterated its steadfast commitment to Israel's security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel's capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats.
5. The United States was strongly committed to Israel's security and well-being as a Jewish state.
6. It seemed clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement would need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.
7. As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.
8. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it would be unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations would be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It was realistic to expect that any final status agreement would only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.

President Obama has attempted to subvert the Bush Commitments by proposing Israel withdraw from part of the West Bank and cede part of its own sovereign territory to the Palestine Liberation Organisation in exchange for the area of the West Bank to be retained by Israel – as announced by President Obama in May 2011:

"... the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps - so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states."

President Obama seems to have given up on the strong parliamentary democracy demanded by President Bush being established in the West Bank and Gaza - having failed to back up a recent
call by another former American President - Jimmy Carter - for such elections to be held in the West Bank and Gaza - which would be the first held there since 2005.


Until such a democracy is established America should not expect any negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation to lead to anywhere but the dustbin of history.


Dore Gold well appreciates the significance of these Bush Commitments and the obligation of Obama to remain bound by them - stating in debriefing.org on 9 June 2009 -

"For example, it still needs to be clarified whether the Obama administration feels bound by the April 14, 2004, Bush letter to Sharon on defensible borders and settlement blocs, which was subsequently ratified by large bipartisan majorities in both the U.S. Senate (95:3) and the House of Representatives (407:9) on June 23-24, 2004. Disturbingly, on June 1, 2009, the State Department spokesman, Robert Wood, refused to answer repeated questions about whether the Obama administration viewed itself as legally bound by the Bush letter. It would be better to obtain earlier clarification of that point, rather than having both countries expend their energies over an issue that may not be the real underlying source of their dispute."

Writing in Jewish Current Issues on 3 June 2009 Rick Richman noted that the State Department had refused to confirm the Bush Commitments on twenty-one occasions during the previous week.


Richman then asserted:

"Since Israel met its obligations under the disengagement deal, the U.S. can no more rescind its agreement and commitment than it can restore the lost world of Gush Katif, or the lost security of southern Israel, or the lives that thousands of rockets traumatized, or the property that was destroyed.

Israel ended up having to fight a war in Gaza because of the disengagement. The least the United States can do is meet its own obligations."

Michael Oren – former Israeli Ambassador in Washington and now a newly elected member of Israel's governing coalition – called for the resuscitation of these Bush Commitments during his election campaign in January.


The Obama administration needs to clear the air and remove any doubts or concerns that it is trying to surreptitiously vary the Bush Commitments.


Let the shoot-off with the reluctant and recalcitrant Obama administration begin.

Wednesday, 15 April 2015

"The Obama Doctrine": Daniel Pipes Explains


Interviewed by Ezra Levant regarding Obama's foreign policy, Daniel Pipes covers Israel, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, Iran, Saudi Arabia and a great deal more.

Hat tip: Vlad Tepes blog