Volume 223, May 24, 2011
The Committee for Truth and Justice
Seeking Justice Through Truth
May 20, 2011, 7:21 AM
Comments (75)
 
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Obama's abandonment of America


I was out sick yesterday so I was unable to write today's column for the Jerusalem Post. I did manage to watch President Obama's speech on the Middle East yesterday evening. And I didn't want to wait until next week to discuss it. After all, who knows what he'll do by Tuesday? 

Before we get into what the speech means for Israel, it is important to consider what it means for America.

Quite simply, Obama's speech represents the effective renunciation of the US's right to have and to pursue national interests. Consequently, his speech imperils the real interests that the US has in the region - first and foremost, the US's interest in securing its national security.
Obama's renunciation of the US national interests unfolded as follows:

First, Obama mentioned a number of core US interests in the region. In his view these are: "Countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce, and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel's security and pursuing Arab-Israeli peace."

Then he said, "Yet we must acknowledge that a strategy based solely upon the narrow pursuit of these interests will not fill an empty stomach or allow someone to speak their mind." 

While this is true enough, Obama went on to say that the Arabs have good reason to hate the US and that it is up to the US to put its national interests aside in the interest of making them like America. As he put it, "a failure to change our approach threatens a deepening spiral of division between the United States and Muslim communities."

And you know what that means. If the US doesn't end the "spiral of division," (sounds sort of like "spiral of violence" doesn't it?), then the Muslims will come after America. So the US better straighten up and fly right.

And how does it do that? Well, by courting the Muslim Brotherhood which spawned Al Qaeda, Hamas, Jamma Islamiya and a number of other terror groups and is allies with Hezbollah. 

How do we know this is Obama's plan? Because right after he said that the US needs to end the "spiral of division," he recalled his speech in Egypt in June 2009 when he spoke at the Brotherhood controlled Al Azhar University and made sure that Brotherhood members were in the audience in a direct diplomatic assault on US ally Hosni Mubarak.

And of course, intimations of Obama's plan to woo and appease the jihadists appear throughout the speech. For instance:

"There will be times when our short term interests do not align perfectly with our long term vision of the region."

So US short term interests, like for instance preventing terrorist attacks against itself or its interests, will have to be sacrificed for the greater good of bringing the Muslim Brotherhood to power in democratic elections.

And he also said that the US will "support the governments that will be elected later this year" in Egypt and Tunisia. But why would the US support governments controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood? They are poised to control the elected government in Egypt and are the ticket to beat in Tunisia as well. 

Then there is the way Obama abandoned US allies Yemen and Bahrain in order to show the US's lack of hypocrisy. As he presented it, the US will not demand from its enemies Syria and Iran that which it doesn't demand from its friends. 

While this sounds fair, it is anything but fair. The fact is that if you don't distinguish between your allies and your enemies then you betray your allies and side with your enemies. Bahrain and Yemen need US support to survive. Iran and Syria do not. So when he removes US support from the former, his action redounds to the direct benefit of the latter. 

I hope the US Navy's 5th Fleet has found alternate digs because Obama just opened the door for Iran to take over Bahrain. He also invited al Qaeda - which he falsely claimed is a spent force - to take over Yemen.

Beyond his abandonment of Bahrain and Yemen, in claiming that the US mustn't distinguish between its allies and its foes, Obama made clear that he has renounced the US's right to have and pursue national interests. If you can't favor your allies against your enemies then you cannot defend your national interests. And if you cannot defend your national interests then you renounce your right to have them.

As for Iran, in his speech, Obama effectively abandoned the pursuit of the US's core interest of preventing nuclear proliferation. All he had to say about Iran's openly genocidal nuclear program is, "Our opposition to Iran's intolerance - as well as its illicit nuclear program, and its sponsorship of terror - is well known."

Well so is my opposition to all of that, and so is yours. But unlike us, Obama is supposed to do something about it. And by putting the gravest threat the US presently faces from the Middle East in the passive voice, he made clear that actually, the US isn't going to do anything about it. 

In short, every American who is concerned about the security of the United States should be livid. The US President just abandoned his responsibility to defend the country and its interests in the interest of coddling the US's worst enemies.

AS FOR ISRAEL, in a way, Obama did Israel a favor by giving this speech. By abandoning even a semblance of friendliness, he has told us that we have nothing whatsoever to gain by trying to make him like us. Obama didn't even say that he would oppose the Palestinians' plan to get the UN Security Council to pass a resolution in support for Palestinian independence. All he said was that it is a dumb idea. 

Obama sided with Hamas against Israel by acting as though its partnership with Fatah is just a little problem that has to be sorted out to reassure the paranoid Jews. Or as he put it, "the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel."

Hamas is a jihadist movement dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish people, and the establishment of a global caliphate. It's in their charter. And all Obama said of the movement that has now taken over the Palestinian Authority was, "Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection."

Irrelevant and untrue.  

It is irrelevant because obviously the Palestinians don't want peace. That's why they just formed a government dedicated to Israel's destruction. 

As for being untrue, Obama's speech makes clear that they have no reason to fear a loss of prosperity. After all, by failing to mention that US law bars the US government from funding an entity which includes Hamas, he made clear that the US will continue to bankroll the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Authority. So too, the EU will continue to join the US in giving them billions for bombs and patronage jobs. The Palestinians have nothing to worry about. They will continue to be rewarded regardless of what they do.

Then of course there are all the hostile, hateful details of the speech: 
He said Israel has to concede its right to defensible borders as a precondition for negotiations; 
He didn't say he opposes the Palestinian demand for open immigration of millions of foreign Arabs into Israel; 
He again ignored Bush's 2004 letter to Sharon opposing a return to the 1949 armistice lines, supporting the large settlements, defensible borders and opposing mass Arab immigration into Israel; 
He said he was leaving Jerusalem out but actually brought it in by calling for an Israeli retreat to the 1949 lines; 
He called for Israel to be cut in two when he called for the Palestinians state to be contiguous; 
He called for Israel to withdraw from the Jordan Valley - without which it is powerless against invasion - by saying that the Palestinian State will have an international border with Jordan.

Conceptually and substantively, Obama abandoned the US alliance with Israel. The rest of his words - security arrangements, demilitarized Palestinian state and the rest of it - were nothing more than filler to please empty-headed liberal Jews in America so they can feel comfortable signing checks for him again.
 
Indeed, even his seemingly pro-Israel call for security arrangements in a final peace deal involved sticking it to Israel. Obama said, "The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state."

What does that mean "with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility?"

It means we have to assume everything will be terrific.

All of this means is that if Prime Minister Netanyahu was planning to be nice to Obama, and pretend that everything is terrific with the administration, he should just forget about it. He needn't attack Obama. Let the Republicans do that.

But both in his speech to AIPAC and his address to Congress, he should very forthrightly tell the truth about the nature of the populist movements in the Middle East, the danger of a nuclear Iran, the Palestinians' commitment to Israel's destruction; the lie of the so-called peace process; the importance of standing by allies; and the critical importance of a strong Israel to US national security. 

He has nothing to gain and everything to lose by playing by the rules that Obama is trying to set for him.



Posted on May 20, 2011 at 7:21 AM

© 2011 Caroline Glick

The legal borders of Israel under international law




 

Obama explains — and makes it worse

By Alan M. Dershowitz

The American president 's statement at a UK press conference reveals the underlying flaw in Obama's thinking about the conflict. Giving the Palestinians more than they asked for has made it impossible for the Palestinians to compromise










http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In his press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron in London on Wednesday, US President Barack Obama explained his thinking as to why he insisted that the first step in seeking a peaceful two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians must be an agreement by Israel to accept the 1967 borders with mutually agreed-upon land swaps.

Here is what the president said: "It is going to require wrenching compromise from both sides. In the last decade, when negotiators have talked about how to achieve that outcome, there have been typically four issues that have been raised. One is the issue of what would the territorial boundaries of a new Palestinian state look like. Number two: how could Israel feel confident that its security needs would be met? Number three: how would the issue of Palestinian refugees be resolved; and number four, the issue of Jerusalem. The last two questions are extraordinarily emotional. They go deep into how the Palestinians and the Jewish people think about their own identities. Ultimately they are going to be resolved by the two parties. I believe that those two issues can be resolved if there is the prospect and the promise that we can actually get to a Palestinian state and a secure Jewish state of Israel."

This recent statement clearly reveals the underlying flaw in Obama's thinking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no way that Israel can agree to borders without the Palestinians also agreeing to give up any claim to a "right of return." As Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad Salaam once told me: each side has a major card to play and a major compromise to make; for Israel, that card is the West Bank, and the compromise is returning to the 1967 lines with agreed-upon adjustments and land swaps; for the Palestinians, that card is "the right of return," and the compromise is an agreement that the Palestinian refugees will be settled in Palestine and not in Israel; in other words, that there will be no right to "return" to Israel.







President Obama's formulation requires Israel to give up its card and to make a "wrenching compromise" by dismantling most of the West Bank settlements and ending its occupation of the West Bank. But it does not require the Palestinians to give up their card and to compromise on the right of return. That "extraordinarily emotional" issue is to be left to further negotiations only after the borders have been agreed to.

This temporal ordering — requiring Israel to give up the "territorial" card before the Palestinians even have to negotiate about the "return" card — is a non-starter for Israel and it is more than the Palestinians have privately asked for. Once again, President Obama, by giving the Palestinians more than they asked for, has made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Palestinians to compromise. Earlier in his administration, Obama insisted that Israel freeze all settlement building, despite the fact that the Palestinians had not demanded such action as a precondition to negotiating. He forced the Palestinians to impose that as a precondition, because no Palestinian leader could be seen as less pro-Palestinian than the American President. Now he's done it again, by not demanding that the Palestinians give up their right of return as a quid for Israel's quo of returning to the 1967 borders with agreed-upon land swaps.

So it's not so much what President Obama said; it's what he didn't say. It would have been so easy for the President to have made the following statement:


"I am asking each side to make a wrenching compromise that will be extraordinarily emotional and difficult. For Israel, this compromise must take the form of abandonment of its historic and Biblical claims to what it calls Judea and Samaria. This territorial compromise will require secure boundaries somewhat different than the 1967 lines that led to war. Resolution 242 of the Security Council recognized the need for changes in the 1967 lines that will assure Israel's security. Since 1967, demographic changes have occurred that will also require agreed-upon land swaps between Israel and the new Palestinian state. This territorial compromise will be difficult for Israel, but in the end it will be worthwhile, because it will assure that Israel will remain both a Jewish and a fully democratic state in which every resident is equal under the law.

"For the Palestinians, this compromise must take the form of a recognition that for Israel to continue to be the democratic state of the Jewish people, the Palestinian refugees and their descendants will have to be settled in Palestine. In other words, they will have a right to return, but to Palestine and not to Israel. This will be good both for Palestine and for Israel. For Palestine, it will assure that the new state will have the benefit of a large and productive influx of Palestinians from around the world. This Palestinian diaspora should want to help build an economically and politically viable Palestinian state. The Palestinian leadership must recognize, as I believe they do, that there will be no "right of return" of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel. Compensation can be negotiated both for those Palestinians who left Israel as a result of the 1948 wars and for those Jews who left Arab countries during and after that same period."


It's not too late for President Obama to "explain" that that is what he really meant when he declared that Israel must remain a Jewish state and that any Palestinian government that expects compromises from Israel must recognize that reality. Central to Israel's continued existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people is the Palestinian recognition that there can be no so-called "right of return" to Israel, and that the Palestinian leadership and people must acknowledge that Israel will continue to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people within secure and recognized boundaries. Unless President Obama sends that clear message, not only to the Israelis but to the Palestinians as well, he will not move the peace process forward. He will move it backward.

Which one would you want as YOUR leader?

          A                                   B

A: Mission commander Benyamin Natanyahu prior to successful 1972 raid into Uganda to rescue captives from airliner highjacking. He was wounded during the raid.

B: Really cool university student and all around Marxist dilettante Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Obama) explaining to one of his 2 friends while in college how Israel's raid into Uganda was a clear violation of international law.  While he gestured to make a point, he burned himself with the joint almost always found in his hand.")

Video of Rock Star Gene Simmons: Obama Doesn’t Have a Clue

Netanyahu Shines in Speech to Congress

Posted By Robert Spencer On May 25, 2011 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 28 Comments

The most riveting moment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s much-applauded address to Congress on Tuesday was his declaration that “the hinge of history may soon turn, for the greatest danger of all could soon be upon us: a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.” He was speaking of Iran, but then he broadened his scope, adding: “Militant Islam threatens the world. It threatens Islam.”

“It threatens Islam” — i.e., the real Islam is a Religion of Peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. This unreality is disappointing to see, and will not bode well for Israel insofar as it continues to translate into policy. Nonetheless, even to acknowledge that the threat has any Islamic character at all is a huge advance over Obama, George W. Bush, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, et al.

For it was not until four years after 9/11, in October 2005, that Bush pointed out that the terrorists’ attacks “serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil, but not insane. Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism.” He had never used such terminology before that, generally limiting himself to calling the enemy “terrorists” and “evildoers” — names so general that they can apply to multitudes besides those who are actually warring against the United States today — and hardly ever used it after that.

Obama has been even less realistic. He has again and again reached out to the Islamic world, assuring Muslim countries of his respect for Islam. Again and again he has been rudely rebuffed, but that has not stopped him from making the attempt again and again. After the death of Osama bin Laden, he claimed that Osama was “not a Muslim leader, but a mass murderer of Muslims.” Then he made sure to give this mass murderer of Muslims a solemn Islamic funeral.

John O. Brennan, Obama’s top counterterrorism advisor, summed up the Obama administration’s warmly positive stance toward Islam in an August 2009 address: “Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against `jihadists.’ Describing terrorists in this way–using a legitimate term, `jihad,’ meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal–risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the United States is somehow at war with Islam itself. And this is why President Obama has confronted this perception directly and forcefully in his speeches to Muslim audiences, declaring that America is not and never will be at war with Islam.”

That may be so, but Netanyahu’s statement is true as well – at least the first part of it: “Militant Islam threatens the world.” America is not and never will be at war with Islam, but a significant element of Islam is at war with America, Israel, and the rest of the free world – and Netanyahu is much more realistic about that fact than any other Western leader.

Nor is that the extent of his realism. In his address to Congress, he spoke other truths that Barack Obama apparently would prefer to ignore, including a stout defense of his country: “In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America’s unwavering ally….My friends, you don’t have to — you don’t need to do nation-building in Israel. We’re already built. You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got it. And you don’t need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves.”He even contrasted Israeli freedom to the repression of Sharia regimes: “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. Now, I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of 1 percent are truly free, and they’re all citizens of Israel.”

Refreshing also was Netanyahu’s rejection of the Palestinian propaganda line, which Obama and so many other Western leaders have echoed, that Israel’s presence in the West Bank constitutes an illegal “occupation”: “And you have to understand this,” he told Congress: “In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We’re not the British in India. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one god, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw his vision of eternal peace. No distortion of history — and boy am I reading a lot of distortions of history lately, old and new — no distortion of history could deny the 4,000-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land.”

And he spoke the truth that Obama mentioned only in passing in his speech last week calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state: “our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state; it’s always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about….In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli prime ministers to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six Day War. They were simply unwilling to end the conflict. And I regret to say this: They continue to educate their children to hate. They continue to name public squares after terrorists. And worst of all, they continue to perpetuate the fantasy that Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees. My friends, this must come to an end.”

Confronting directly the common mainstream media spin, emanating from Palestinian propaganda, that Israel is the aggressor and the Palestinians are the victims, he challenged Mahmoud Abbas to reverse his recent accord with Hamas and pursue a genuine path to peace. Echoing Reagan, Netanyahu declared: “So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate. Make peace with the Jewish State. And if you do, I promise you this: Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations; it will be the first to do so.”

It is a challenge that will not be accepted, but in the very act of making it, Netanyahu showed which side is the real force for peace, and which side is – in accord with the jihad doctrine – continuing to pursue murder and bloodshed.

He also showed who among his audience (both in Congress and in the Western world in general) were blinkered panderers and appeasers falling prey to jihadist propaganda, and who was the statesman.

 

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/05/25/netanyahu-shines-in-speech-to-congress/