Tag: Anti-Israel

Antisemitism at the UN General Assembly

Antisemitism at the UN General Assembly

Tuesday, September 23, 2008 will go down in history as the day the UN General Assembly provided a platform for a head of state to spew unadulterated, vile antisemitism – to the applause of the assembled nations of the world. The United Nations has become the largest global purveyor of antisemitism in the world today. In the full knowledge that the President of Iran advocates the destruction of the UN member state of Israel, the UN invited him to mount the dais and gave him a megaphone.

 

September 23, 2008: The United Nations General Assembly gave President Ahmedinejad of Iran a global platform for spewing unadulterated, vile antisemitism – met by a round of applause. What a despicable and useless institution.

 

Ben Shapiro: Some Jews Ain’t So Smart

Ben Shapiro: Some Jews Ain’t So Smart

Jews, according to both anti-Semites and philo-Semites, are smart folks. Anti-Semites claim that Jews are highly intelligent — and therefore threaten the world via conspiratorial monetary and political control.

Philo-Semites point out that Jews have provided a vastly disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners, as well as various leading scientists, philosophers, writers and artists. Virtually everyone agrees, then, that Jews are intelligent. And yet for all of our intelligence (I am an Orthodox Jew), large groups of American Jews lack the most basic instinct for self-preservation; they lack the understanding to protect Jews by acting to protect Israel.

The non-religious Jewish community demonstrates particular blindness. Most non-religious Jews, who see no special value in Jewish identity, distract themselves with “social justice” policies — policies like abortion-on-demand and gay marriage — that directly contravene traditional Jewish values. Meanwhile, they ignore existential threats to Jews worldwide — threats they cannot escape with protestations that they aren’t practicing Jews, or that their Judaism only goes as far as the occasional bagel.

For many non-religious Jews, political liberalism trumps both Jewish values and Jewish existence. How else to explain the disastrous series of events last week in New York? The United Jewish Appeal Federation of New York scheduled an anti-Iran rally highlighting the blatant Jew-hatred of visiting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Federation invited both Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (R-AK). Palin accepted. So, at first, did Clinton — but when she learned that she would be appearing on the same stage as Palin, she backed out. At that point, the organizers of the rally made a terrible decision: They disinvited Palin.

Politico.com reported that the decision was made after Democrats complained that they did not want the rally turned into a partisan event. This is the height of idiocy.

In the possibility of a nuclear Iran, Jews face the gravest menace since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. They must mobilize every ally, unearth every friend, in order to create a groundswell of support for a military strike against Iran by Israel — the only true solution to Iranian nuclear ambition. And yet they turned away Sarah Palin — perhaps the future vice president of the United States, and at the moment, the most popular female politician in the United States — because they feared offending Democrats.

Only a baseline allegiance to the Democratic Party — only a deep-rooted leftist partisanship — can explain such behavior. Any rational group, seeking to draw attention to the Iranian situation, would leap at the opportunity to host Palin, who routinely draws tens of thousands of fans. More than that, any rational group would recognize that if high-ranking Democrats withdraw from anti-Iran rallies simply to avoid being seen in public with high-ranking Republicans, then perhaps Democrats aren’t the friends of Israel they purport to be.

Any rational group would be suspicious that Hillary Clinton is more concerned with Sarah Palin than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Any rational group would use their anti-Iran rally as a forum for candidates, allowing those with the most pro-Israel message to capitalize politically. Instead, the organizers disinvited Palin. In doing so, they demonstrated a political bias unworthy of a pro-Israel organization. More than that: In rejecting Palin, they demonstrated loyalty to Democrats over loyalty to Jewish causes.

That became especially clear when the text of Palin’s un-given speech was released. “We gather here today to highlight the Iranian dictator’s intentions and to call for action to thwart him,” the speech reads. “He must be stopped. The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a ‘Final Solution’ — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a ‘stinking corpse’ that is ‘on its way to annihilation.’ … Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Period. And in a single voice, we must be loud enough for the whole world to hear: Stop Iran!” This is strong stuff. And it is stuff that the rally organizers abandoned when they kowtowed to Democrats rather than recognizing that support for Israel must be a non-partisan issue. It was foolish. It was dangerous. And most of all, it was dishonorable.

This is an article by Ben Shapiro published at Townhall.com

Ben Shapiro is a regular guest on dozens of radio shows around the United States and Canada and author of Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House.

As a Jew, it is both embarrassing and inexplicable that American Jews would choose their loyalty to the Democrat Party over their concern for the safety of Jews and the State of Israel. It is especially so to me, when Jews do not recognize that we need political leaders from both parties to stand with us against the Amalekites of this generation. It is so sad that Jews are very poor at recognizing danger to our people until it is too late. This has been demonstrated over and over again in our long history.

 

The Obama Voter – Not This Jew

The Obama Voter – Not This Jew

While it is our practice to usually post an excerpt from an article and provide a link, I found this article to be so important that I am publishing the whole article. This is an article written by Joan Swirsky and published in the New Media Journal..

The Obama Voter – Not This Jew
August 2, 2008

For the most part, American Jews are politically liberal. For decades they have supported leftwing politicians who are antagonists if not outright enemies of Israel.

Why does this matter?

It matters to me because the Holocaust in which the Nazis wantonly murdered six million Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s has been the defining event of my life – the event against which I measure the political philosophies and actions of both individuals and nations.

I was a baby when that blight on human history took place, but I fully appreciate that if my twin brother and I had been born in Germany during the ghastly Nazi reign, we would have been victims of the unspeakable “experiments” of Dr. Mengele.

It matters to me because the wretched survivors of the Holocaust, against all odds – including ships of refugees that were turned back from our own shores by FDR, only to be returned to the death camps – somehow managed to arrive in their ancient homeland and create one of the most vibrant democracies in the world, whose advanced scientific institutions contribute to research and development of medicines, therapies, technology and cures for the world’s devastating horrors

It matters because Israel, the locus of Jewish prayer and survival, is but a sliver of land, not much larger than 8,000 square miles, which is comparable to New Jersey, our 5th-smallest state. This tiny country is populated by six million Jews and one-million Arabs and surrounded by 22 Arab Muslim states with a population of over 300-million – most of them dedicated to Israel’s annihilation, the rest sly participants in the charade of a “peace process.”

While Israel’s Arab minority is accorded full citizenship and education, freedom of speech, congregation, religious autonomy and even participation in Israel’s parliament, the Arab nations that surround it – including Jordan and Egypt, which are ostensibly at peace with Israel – afford Jews absolutely no rights and no protection.

Again, why does this matter? It matters to me because, for millennia, “wandering” Jews were deprived of living in their homeland and destined to travel the earth looking for safety and freedom, only to be subjected to – where to begin? – the Crusades, the Inquisition, European pogroms, and the Holocaust. Only America, from its inception a mere 232 years ago, welcomed the Jews, until the State of Israel was born in 1948, becoming the last best hope of a people whose manifest destiny was spelled out to them in the Bible.

Today, there is a worldwide renaissance of anti-Semitism, including on the campuses of our own country, in the ranting of various “religious” leaders, in the literature of some of America’s so-called intelligentsia, and, yes, even in the Congress of the United States.

Yet again, why does this matter? It matters to me because unlike the purveyors of Islamic jihad and their brothers and sisters in suicide-bombing, death-adoring ideology, I love life and don’t want to see our country succumb to the encroaching horrors of Sharia law (including “honor killings”), Sharia finance (in which money must be donated to Islamic charities, including those that promote Jihad and suicide bombing), or any of the other Islamic-dictated demands that are utterly anathema to and in egregious violation of both U.S. law and the freedoms cherished by all Americans.

It matters to me because while Obama makes the perfunctory and requisite statements of support for America and Israel, his policies – and those who formulate them – would do irreparable harm to both nations.

Let Me Count the Ways

It would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama, knowing that he is the most liberal politician in the U.S. Congress, as judged by the non-partisan National Journal and based on the cold hard facts of his far-left voting record.

It would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama, knowing that he has zero experience in foreign policy and has never managed or run anything of substance that requires executive experience – not a company, not an agency, not even a senate committee!

It would have been enough to know that Obama makes John Kerry’s acrobatic flip-flopping look like child’s play.

▪ He’ll pull the troops out of Iraq in 16 months, now he’ll “refine” that policy.

▪ He’ll filibuster the FISA bill, but he voted for it.

▪ He’ll campaign with public financing, but he rejected that option.

▪ He’ll renegotiate Nafta, but now he won’t.

▪ He’s against gun rights but supported the Supreme Court’s Heller decision for gun rights.

▪ He’ll debate Sen. John McCain anywhere, anytime, but he has refused to.

▪ Iran poses no serious threat, but oops, Iran poses a grave threat.

▪ He supports an undivided Jerusalem, but 24-hours later said he “misspoke.”

It would have been enough to appreciate Obama’s sponsorship of the “global poverty” act, which lays the groundwork for the United Nation’s draconian tax on America, and also that he fervently supports that cesspool on 2nd Avenue, which for decades has been a consistent purveyor of virulent anti-Semitic bias.

It would have been enough for me to consider Obama’s oft-repeated promises to raise taxes to unprecedented heights, open our borders further to the flood of illegal aliens, appoint his socialist cronies to the Supreme Court, reinforce his death-wish for America’s unborn babies, institutionalize socialized medicine, and support the anti-free-speech return of the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

In what Investor’s Business Daily calls Obama’s “stealth socialism,” the Democrat candidate also promises:

▪ Free college tuition.

▪ Universal” 401 ks.

▪ Free job training (even for criminals).

▪ Wage insurance (to supplement dislocated union workers’ old income levels).

▪ Free childcare and universal preschool.

▪ More subsidized public housing.

▪ A fatter earned income tax credit for “working poor.”

▪ And [again] the Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

It would have been enough for me to witness – with revulsion, I might add – Obama apologizing to a throng of Germans for America’s “mistakes.”

It would have been enough to learn that Obama’s recent, $500,000 overhaul of his 757 included the removal of the American flag and its replacement with a symbol of his own campaign.

All of this, and much more, would have been enough for me not to vote for Obama. But it is not only his florid narcissism and Marxist policies that offend me.

It is his judgment, particularly when it comes to the people he admires, associates with, looks to for mentoring, and especially listens to.

I happen not to inhabit the politically correct world of liberals who believe that a person cannot be judged by his associations. It is precisely Barack Obama’s longtime, continuing, and newfound associations that strike fear into my heart – as they should in the hearts of all Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Lie Down with Dogs, Wake Up with Fleas

But who are those associations that, as an American and especially as a Jew, I am so worried about? Obama’s 300-plus foreign policy advisors include high-ranking people who are known for their undisguised contempt of Jews, in general, and their loathing of Israel, in particular:

General Merrill “Tony” McPeak, who Sen. Obama once considered a potential V.P., was his campaign co-chairman and top military adviser. When asked by The Oregonian to name the problem preventing peace in the Middle East, McPeak said: “New York City. Miami” – code-names for Jews. Obama refused to remove him from his campaign, but he slunk out anyway.

Samantha Power, a former senior policy advisor to Obama (before she resigned for insulting Hillary Clinton) has advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel. She has written of her willingness to “alienate a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import [American Jews]…it may more crucially mean sacrificing…billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the state of Palestine.”

Robert Malley, a top foreign policy advisor to Obama, left the Obama campaign when it was revealed that he’d been conducting meetings with Hamas. Two years ago, after the terror group won a majority in the Palestinian parliament, Malley advocated international aid to their newly formed government. He stated that the election of Hamas expressed Palestinian “anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat’s imprisonment, [and] Israel’s incursions…”

Rashid Khalidi, a longtime friend of and fundraiser for Obama, is a former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. According to WorldNetDaily, at a 2003 farewell party for Mr. Khalidi, Obama sat in attendance as a young Palestinian-American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism…and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. Obama has credited Mr. Khalidi with uncovering “my own blind spots and my own biases” regarding the plight of the Palestinians. Obama funneled $75,000 in grants to the Arab American Action Network (run by Mr. Khalidi’s wife, Mona), a group that calls Israel’s independence Al-Nakba (the catastrophe).

Anthony “Tony” Lake, Obama’s top foreign policy advisor, served in the Carter (“Israel practices apartheid”) administration, notorious for its animus toward Israel. As national security advisor to President Clinton, Lake shaped the policy that treated Islamic terrorism as a law-enforcement matter, which paved the way for the first World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of our embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole, and the disaster of September 11, 2001.

Susan Rice, another of Obama’s senior foreign policy advisors, was John Kerry’s chief foreign policy adviser when he ran for President. Kerry’s idea for dealing with the Middle East was to appoint not one but two diehard enemies of Israel – James Baker and Jimmy Carter – as negotiators. Faced with a firestorm of criticism, Kerry backed down and blamed his staff, which consisted of Susan Rice.

Madeleine K. Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State, lobbied Congress for increased foreign aid to the terrorist Arafat and arranged for him to become the White House’s most frequent guest. She consistently touted negotiations, rather than confrontation, with terror regimes.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, has been one of Israel’s most consistently hostile critics and Hamas’s most ardent supporters, as well as a staunch admirer (both in writing and verbally) of Stephen Walt’s and John Mearsheimer’s virulently anti-Israel book, “The Israel Lobby,” which, among other things, contends that Jewish pressure, and not shared values, binds America and Israel together. Brzezinski’s son, Mark, is also among Obama’s foreign policy advisors.

Lee Hamilton, a former congressman who served as the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East, waxed adoringly of Arafat, calling him a “moderate” leader.

James {“F… the Jews”) Baker, Reagan’s former Chief of Staff and the first President Bush’s Secretary of State (a department whose Arabist tilt is well-known), is among the harshest detractors of Israel, has often engaged in raw anti-Semitic remarks, is known for coddling Middle East dictators (including Syria’s Assad), and has been heavily invested (through the Carlyle Group) in the Israel-hating country of Saudi Arabia. In fact, Baker’s law firm defended the Saudi Defense Minister who was sued for alleged complicity by the families of the World Trade Center victims.

Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, was one of James Baker’s “Jew Boys,” which included, among others who militated against Israel, Dennis Ross (of the Clinton administration). Kurtzer recently said: “It will be impossible to make progress on serious peace talks without putting the future of Jerusalem on the table.”

And this is the short list!

More Dogs, More Fleas

I haven’t even mentioned the terrorists William Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn, his indicted Chicago crony Tony Rezko, his first and most influential mentor, the Communist Frank Marshall Davis; or Father Michael Pfleger, the liberal Chicago priest and longtime friend of Obama, who delivered an explosive, racially charged sermon at Obama’s church, which forced the Democrat candidate to – what else? – dispense with him! You can Google these enemies of America!

Among the other people Obama has chosen to affiliate himself with are:

George Soros, the multibillionaire, self-hating Jew who has devoted a good part of his life to vilifying Israel and funding groups that work unstintingly to destroy the tiny state. With his 527 groups, he has funded people – like Obama – to shatter the bonds between Israel and America.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for over 20 years, has shrieked his Black Theology anti-American and anti-Semitic “sermons,” to which the current candidate for president had not a word of objection! Until, that is, Wright’s venom came to light and Obama had to dispense with him in the same way he dispensed with the “typical white woman” – his grandmother – who raised him. Wright, remember, is an ardent supporter of Louis Farrakhan, who called Judaism a “gutter religion” and said Jews are “bloodsuckers”.

These are only a smattering of people who, in Obama’s “judgment,” are worthy of being his mentors and political advisors.

As Ed Lasky of the American Thinker – to whom I am indebted for much of this material – has written: “One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack Obama’s career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates.” And, I would add, anti-American advocates!

I ask: Does Obama have any friends, associates, mentors or advisors who don’t hate America and Israel? If so, e-mail me. I haven’t found one yet!

Any voter – whether Democrat, Republican or Independent – should find Obama’s far-left voting record and silly-putty changes-of mind on crucial policy issues reason enough not to vote for him in November.

Certainly, every American Jew should consider his ascension to the presidency a virtual death knell for Israel.

If the corrupt ACORN group he so heartily supported in the Chicago machine – where he “made his bones” – doesn’t rig the election with the votes of millions of dead people and convicts, as they have so many times in the past. I trust the electorate will do the right thing.

The right thing, of course, would be vote against Obama, a candidate who has been infested with far more odious things than fleas, specifically the treacherous anti-American, anti-Israel advice that has clearly shaped his worldview.

Obama would make America less safe, and an unsafe America – which is the last, best hope for the survival of the Jews and Israel – would destroy the twin pillars of steadfast Judeo-Christian values. Destroying both nations is the goal of the Jihadists that Obama would sooner chat with than confront.

 

Joan Swirsky, is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. A New York-based author and journalist, she was formerly a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section. She is the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards…

My comment: Not this Jew either.

 

Obama’s Foreign Policy Team of concern to Jews

Obama’s Foreign Policy Team of concern to Jews

Barack Obama, not having foreign policy experience, is relying on his advisors for his foreign policy. The problem is that he has chosen advisors who are notoriously anti-Israel.

An article in The American Thinker by Richard Baehr and Ed Lasky points out the probable anti-Israel policy if he is elected.

Over the past month, controversy has erupted over the issue of Senator Obama’s foreign policy advisers and the impact that they might have on a future President Obama’s policies toward Israel, and on American foreign policy in the broader region. Articles in the Washington Post, Newsweek, American Thinker, New York Sun, Politico, Commentary Magazine, The New Republic, CAMERA and other publications have precipitated this controversy.

Both those who support Senator Obama and his quest for the presidency and those who have concerns often share the same goal: ensuring that our next president comes to office well-prepared for the demands of the highest office in our nation. The President is uniquely powerful in the realm of foreign policy. In these perilous times, all of us want to ensure that the man or woman who steps into the White House in January is well-prepared to deal with the foreign policy challenges that lie ahead.

The problem arises when you look at who Obama has chosen for his policy advisors.

Newsweek published a list of Senator Obama’s foreign policy advisers that included Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Malley. A few weeks later, the Washington Post on October 2, 2007 published a list of foreign policy advisers for all the major candidates, which list included the names of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, Samantha Power and Susan Rice as advisers to Senator Obama. Subsequently, Martin Peretz — an Obama supporter — wrote at the end of December that he got the “shudders” when thinking about the foreign policy influence of “Zbigniew Brzezinski… Anthony Lake, Susan Rice and Robert O. Malley”.

Some of his advisors:

Samantha Power

Senator Obama’s supporters have uniformly ignored the role and the views of Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor Samantha Power, who is very problematic regarding Israel, Iran, and for that matter, American supporters of Israel (see below). Power left her position at Harvard to work for Obama for a year after his election to the US Senate. She is now identified as a “senior foreign policy advisor.”.

In the case of Power, it was Senator Obama who made the initial contact with her after reading her book on genocide. Power is now actively working for the campaign. She cannot be casually dismissed as one of Obama’s many advisors, with no particular assigned role.

It is not at all hard to imagine her having a senior foreign policy role in an Obama administration, perhaps as US Ambassador to the United Nations, an organization she views warmly. The problem for those who favor a strong US-Israel relationship is that Power seems obsessed with Israel, and in a negative way. Much like the authors of the Baker-Hamilton report, she believes resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to solving other problems in the Middle East. And it is clear that her approach to addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be for the US to behave in a more “even handed” fashion, which of course means withdrawing US support for Israel, and instead applying more pressure on Israel for concessions.

Zbigniew Brezinski and Robert Malley are also cause for great concern with respect to Israel.

Read the whole article for more information.

 

Banned: The speech the UN refuses to hear

Banned: The speech the UN refuses to hear

While it is no surprise that the U.N. is ineffective, irrelevant and corrupt, last Friday was another demonstration of its rejection of criticism and truth. A transcript of the remarks of Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, is as follows:

Mr. President,

Six decades ago, in the aftermath of the Nazi horrors, Eleanor Roosevelt, Réné Cassin and other eminent figures gathered here, on the banks of Lake Geneva, to reaffirm the principle of human dignity. They created the Commission on Human Rights. Today, we ask: What has become of their noble dream?

In this session we see the answer. Faced with compelling reports from around the world of torture, persecution, and violence against women, what has the Council pronounced, and what has it decided?

Nothing. Its response has been silence. Its response has been indifference. Its response has been criminal.

One might say, in Harry Truman’s words, that this has become a Do-Nothing, Good-for-Nothing Council.

But that would be inaccurate. This Council has, after all, done something.

It has enacted one resolution after another condemning one single state: Israel. In eight pronouncements—and there will be three more this session—Hamas and Hezbollah have been granted impunity. The entire rest of the world—millions upon millions of victims, in 191 countries—continue to go ignored.

So yes, this Council is doing something. And the Middle East dictators who orchestrate this campaign will tell you it is a very good thing. That they seek to protect human rights, Palestinian rights.

So too, the racist murderers and rapists of Darfur women tell us they care about the rights of Palestinian women; the occupiers of Tibet care about the occupied; and the butchers of Muslims in Chechnya care about Muslims.

But do these self-proclaimed defenders truly care about Palestinian rights?

Let us consider the past few months. More than 130 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian forces. This is three times the combined total that were the pretext for calling special sessions in July and November. Yet the champions of Palestinian rights—Ahmadinejad, Assad, Khaddafi, John Dugard—they say nothing. Little 3-year-old boy Salam Balousha and his two brothers were murdered in their car by Prime Minister Haniyeh’s troops. Why has this Council chosen silence?

Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the dictators who run this Council couldn’t care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights.

They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: to distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights.

You ask: What has become of the founders’ dream? With terrible lies and moral inversion, it is being turned into a nightmare.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Good for Mr. Neuer. He spoke the truth while in the lion’s den. The reaction to his remarks from a responsible and serious organization would be to take his comments, respond to them or attempt to correct the deficiencies. Instead, this was the response from U. N. Human Rights Council President Luis Alfonso De Alba:

For the first time in this session I will not express thanks for that statement. I shall point out to the distinguished representative of the organization that just spoke, the distinguished representative of United Nations Watch, if you’d kindly listen to me. I am sorry that I’m not in a position to thank you for your statement. I should mention that I will not tolerate any similar statements in the Council. The way in which members of this Council were referred to, and indeed the way in which the council itself was referred to, all of this is inadmissible. In the memory of the persons that you referred to, founders of the Human Rights Commission, and for the good of human rights, I would urge you in any future statements to observe some minimum proper conduct and language. Otherwise, any statement you make in similar tones to those used today will be taken out of the records.

The only conclusion one can reach is that attempting to reform the United Nations is futile. It will continue to be an irrelevant and ineffective organization whose sole purpose has been subverted to criticize the State of Israel.

 

EDWARDS: Israel greatest threat to world peace

EDWARDS: Israel greatest threat to world peace

Peter Bart reports that John Edwards, a Democratic Presidential candidate, feels that Israel is the greatest short-term threat to world peace. Bart relates the following:

The aggressively photogenic John Edwards was cruising along, detailing his litany of liberal causes last week until, during question time, he invoked the “I” word — Israel. Perhaps the greatest short-term threat to world peace, Edwards remarked, was the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. As a chill descended on the gathering, the Edwards event was brought to a polite close.

More and more virulent anti-Israel rhetoric has been coming from the Democratic party lately. The Democratic Party was once the party that welcomed Jews. No longer. More and more Jews who realize that the Democratic Party is one in which Jews who support Israel are no longer welcome are switching to the Republican Party, which explains the increasing number of Republican Jews. The Republican Party, in contrast, is very supportive of Israel and welcoming to Jews.

Previous Related Posts:
The Question of Carter’s Cash
14 Carter Center Board Members Resign
Carter: an anti-semitic hypocrite
Jewish Democrats: Does the Party still represent you?
Letter from Ari Fleischer to former President Carter
A Reply to Jimmy Carter

 

The Question of Carter’s Cash

The Question of Carter’s Cash

Claudia Rosett writing in the National Review has an article about where the cash comes from that funds the Carter Foundation:

Did Jimmy Carter do it for the money? That’s the question making the rounds about Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, an anti-Israeli screed recently written by the ex-president whose Carter Center has accepted millions in Arab funding.

Even in Carter’s long history of post-presidential grandstanding, this book sets new standards of irresponsibility. Purporting to give a balanced view of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict, Carter effectively shrugs off such highly germane matters as Palestinian terrorism. The hypocrisies are boundless and include adoring praise of the deeply oppressive, religiously intolerant Saudi regime side by side with condemnations of democratic Israel. In one section, typical of the book’s entire approach, Carter includes a “Historical Chronology,” from Biblical times to 2006, in which he dwells on events surrounding his 1978 Camp David Accords but omits the Holocaust. Kenneth W. Stein, the founder of the Carter Center’s Middle East program, resigned last month to protest the book, describing it in a letter to Fox News as “replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments.” As this article goes to press, more protest resignations, this time from the Carter Center’s board of councilors, appear to be in the works.

If there is a silver lining to any of this, it is that Carter’s book has drawn much-overdue attention to some of the funding that pours into the Carter Center, whose intriguing donor list includes anti-Israeli tycoons and Middle East states. Founded in 1982 and appended to Carter’s presidential library, the center has served for almost a quarter century as the main base and fund-raising magnet for Carter’s self-proclaimed mission to save the world.

In recent weeks, a number of articles have noted that Carter’s anti-Israeli views coincide with those of some of the center’s prime financial backers, including the government of Saudi Arabia and the foundation of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, whose offer of $10 million to New York City just after Sept. 11 was rejected by then-mayor Rudy Giuliani because it came wrapped in the suggestion that America should rethink its support of Israel. Other big donors listed in the Carter Center’s annual reports include the Sultanate of Oman and the Sultan himself; the government of the United Arab Emirates; and a brother of Osama bin Laden, Bakr BinLadin, “for the Saudi BinLadin Group.” Of lesser heft, but still large, are contributions from assorted development funds of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as of OPEC, whose membership includes oil-rich Arab states, Nigeria (whose government is also a big donor to the Carter Center), and Venezuela (whose anti-American strongman Hugo Chávez benefited in a 2004 election from the highly controversial monitoring efforts of the Carter Center).

Jimmy Carter pretends to be fair and balanced in his book about the Middle East and his comments, but he fails to disclose that funding for his Foundation comes from people like the king of Saudi Arabia, BCCI scandal banker Agha Hasan Abedi, and Arafat pal Hasib Sabbagh.

Rosett concludes her article as follows:

In a recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece defending his new book (and insinuating that the debate over it is being controlled by pro-Israeli lobbyists), Carter wrote that he is merely seeking a “free and balanced discussion of the facts.” It is quite possible that even he may not know for sure whether he has molded his views to suit anti-Israeli donors; whether his center has attracted the money of such donors because they like his views; or whether, while fighting the guinea worm, he simply made the unrelated mistake of writing an appallingly biased and bad book. But having parlayed his former public office into global influence, he owes the public at least this much: Tell us, clearly and directly, enough about your supporters and their money that we can, with full information, decide for ourselves what is going on.

With Jimmy Carter’s refusal to enter into a public debate over the facts contained in his book, and the resignation of many of the Carter Center Board of Councilor Members because of their disagreement with many statements in his book, Jimmy Carter continues to bring shame on himself and his once good name.

Previous related posts:
14 Carter Board Members Resign
Carter: An anti-semitic hypocrite
Jewish Democrats: Does the Party still represent you?
Letter from Ari Fleischer to former President Carter
A Reply to Jimmy Carter
The Movement to Censure Jimmy Carter

 

CARTER: AN ANTI-SEMITIC HYPOCRITE

CARTER: AN ANTI-SEMITIC HYPOCRITE

For decades, Jimmy Carter has continually taken the side of Arab countries and opposed the position of Israel. Most of us suspected an anti-Israel and even an anti-semitic bias in the former President. Now the truth comes out. While he obviously is both anti-Israel and anti-Jewish, we now find out that his foundation has, from its inception, been financed by Arabs. Arutz Sheva, the Israel National News reports:

(IsraelNN.com) Former American President Jimmy Carter’s activist foundation received hundreds of millions of dollars from Arab countries, the Washington Times reported. The Bank of Credit and Commerce International, founded by Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi, helped the ex-President establish the Carter Center.

Abedi had said he wanted the bank to be “the best bridge to help the world of Islam, and the best way to fight the evil influence of the Zionists.”

But wait, there’s more….

The Washington Times reports:

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter’s anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business.
Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, “poorly managed” and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank’s biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter’s confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.At that time, Mr. Lance’s mismanagement of the NBG got him and the bank into trouble. Agha Hasan Abedi, the Pakistani founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), known as the bank “which would bribe God,” came to Mr. Lance’s rescue making him a $100,000-a-year consultant. Abedi then declared: “we would never talk about exploiting his relationship with the president.” Next, he introduced Mr. Lance to Saudi billionaire Gaith Pharaon, who fronted for BCCI and the Saudi royal family. In January 1978, Abedi paid off Mr. Lance’s $3.5 million debt to the NBG, and Pharaon secretly gained control over the bank.
Mr. Anderson wrote: “Of course, the Saudis remained discretely silent… kept quiet about Carter’s irregularities… [and] renegotiated the loan to Carter’s advantage.”

You can read the whole article here.

How anyone can reasonably believe the contents of his recent book in which he equates Israel with the South African apartheid, or how anyone can take this doddering old anti-semitic socialist/communist-loving hypocrite seriously is beyond me.

 

Beware Baker

Beware Baker

Jim Baker’s abysmal track record in diplomacy – in contrast to his impressive business and political track record – suggests that the implementation of his “Iraq Study Group” recommendations would benefit anti-US rogue regimes and harm pro-US moderate elements.

In 1990, the Texan Deal Maker lured Assad into the anti-Saddam Coalition, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He overlooked Assad’s leadership role in international terrorism, showered the Butcher of Hama with international legitimacy, alluded to potential US assistance to Syria, and gave Assad a free hand in Lebanon. In response to Baker’s “Pragmatism”, Assad refrained from assisting the US war on Saddam, but completed Syrian occupation of Lebanon, massacred thousands of Lebanese and violently replaced an anti-Syrian Christian Administration with a pro-Syrian puppet Administration in Beirut. The ripple effects of Baker’s “Pragmatism” still reverberate in crumbling Lebanon.

During the 1980s and until the 1990 Kuwait’s invasion by Saddam, Baker referred to the latter as a “constructive leader,” worthy of US cooperation: “The enemy of my enemy (Iran) is my friend (Iraq).” Consequently, Baker downplayed Saddam’s well-documented horrific belligerency against Iran (1980 invasion) and against Iraq’s own Shiites and Kurds, extended to him $5BN in loan guarantees and EXIM Bank credits, authorized the release of sensitive dual-use technologies to Baghdad, encouraged intelligence-sharing with Iraq, and signaled to Saddam – in April 1990 – that a potential invasion to Kuwait would be considered, by the USA, “an inter-Arab issue.”

Energized by Baker’s “Green Light”, Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, threatening to sweep Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Jordan. Taking advantage of Baker’s “Realism”, Saddam brutally suppressed a 1991 Shiite uprising (which was let down by the US Administration), and rebuilt its capabilities, which were devastated during the 1991 war. The “Realist” did not realize that – in the unpredictable, violent Mideast – “the enemy of my enemy (Iran) could be my enemy (Iraq).” The aftershocks of Baker’s non-realization are still pounding the region.

During the late 1980s and until the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Baker was preoccupied with the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He considered Arafat (before the 1993 Oslo Accord!) an essential partner to a peace process. Hence, he turned a blind eye toward Arafat’s record of (mostly inter-Arab) treachery and terrorism, pandered to the PLO, attempted to break the back of Israel’s Prime Minister Shamir, denied Shamir $10BN loan guarantees (not cash!) for the absorption of Soviet Jewry, convinced President Bush to threaten to veto (or avoid implementation of) any pro-Israeli legislation proposed on Capitol Hill, pressured Israel to freeze Jewish settlements and to roll back to the 1949 Lines, and accused Israel in obstructing the prospects of peace. Responding to Baker’s policy of appeasement, the PLO supplied Saddam with vital intelligence which facilitated the invasion of Kuwait. PLO units in Iraq participated in the invasion and plunder of Kuwait, and the PLO/PA has remained – until today – loyal to Saddam, Ben-Laden and other anti-US rogue regimes.

In 2006, Jim Baker perceives Iran (especially) and Syria – two leading terrorist states – to be a potential asset in moderating the Iraqi Street. In order to realize the Iran/Syria potential, he is willing to enhance their maneuverability. The implementation of Baker’s recommendations would accelerate Iran’s nuclearization process, which would transform Saudi Arabia and the Gulf State into Iranian hostages, would relief Assad off a growing international pressure and isolation, would threaten the survival of the regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, and would force Israel into a unilateral military action, in order to avert the existential Iranian nuclear threat.

Baker’s failures have been the result of a series of refuted assumptions: That rogue regimes prefer a tempting deal over their own ideology, that the Palestinian issue is the crux of Mideast violence and anti-US terrorism, that one can achieve peaceful-coexistence with determined rogue regimes, that the Arab-Israeli conflict evolve around Israel’s size rather than Israel’s existence, and that the US could pay with an “Israeli Currency” (of sweeping concessions) for improved ties with the Arab and Muslim world.

As evidenced by Baker’s track record, wrong assumptions produce wrong policy conclusions, which add fuel to the fire of terrorism, undermining vital US interests and eroding the national security of pro-US regimes in the Mideast.

Baker’s determination to achieve deal-at-any-price has caused him to sacrifice long-term vital concerns on the altar of short-term tenuous illusions.

However, Jim Baker is determined to learn from history by repeating – rather than avoiding – past critical strategic errors.

Will US and Israel adopt Baker’s “Pragmatism”, “Realism”, Even-Handedness and Moral Equivalence, or will the leader of the Free World and its sole soul ally in the Mideast stick to a long-term conviction-driven vision, paved by moral and strategic clarity, making a clear distinction between enemies and allies?!

As Baker has shown in his long public career, he is anti-Israel and would sacrifice Israel in a heartbeat to the Iran-backed Palestinian Hamas terrorists.

 

Root causes of Islamic terror against the U.S.

Root causes of Islamic terror against the U.S.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft have developed an intriguing theory: The core of the 13-century-old Islamic terrorism and Middle East violence is the sixty-year old Palestinian issue.

They have introduced a cost-effective tactic in combating terrorism: Rather than flex a muscle against Iran and other rogue regimes, instead of challenging the terrorist acts of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, they expect that one should suspend disbelief, shrink the Jewish State back to the 1949 Lines and establish a Palestinian State on its border. Such a contrived approach would, supposedly, mollify and appease the unprecedented wave of anti-US Islamic terrorism.

Really??

1. 9/11 was planned while Clinton’s USA and Barak’s Israel were appeasing the Palestinians and the Arabs, proposing a total Israeli withdrawal, including the re-partitioning of Jerusalem and the giveaway of the Golan Heights.

2. The October 12, 2000 Islamic terrorist attack on the USS Cole (17 sailors murdered) occurred when Israel was willing to give away the store, while the US pressured Israel to absorb and compensate Palestinian refugees.

3. The August 27, 1998 Islamic terrorist assault of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania took place (257 murdered and over 4,000 injured) while President Clinton was brutally pressuring Prime Minister Netanyahu for sweeping concessions to the Palestinians and to Syria.

4. The 1995/6 Riyadh and Khobar Towers, Dhahran Islamic terror attacks (19 murdered) were carried out while Israel implemented unprecedented concessions, in spite of Palestinian hate-education, systematic violation of all commitments made by the PA and unprecedented Palestinian terrorism.

5. The February 1993 Twin Towers bombing (6 murdered and over 1,000 injured) transpired while Israel conducted the pre-Oslo talks with the PLO, snatching the PLO from the jaws of oblivion in terrorist camps in Yemen, Iraq, Sudan and Tunisia and making unprecedented concessions.

6. The December 21, 1988 PanAm-103 (270 murdered) terrorism took place a few months following the groundbreaking initiation of direct talks between the US and the PLO, while the US attempted to initiate a direct Israel-PLO dialogue.

7. The June 1985 TWA 847 hijacking to Beirut (1 US Navy Seabee diver murdered) took place when the US was backing Iraq in Baghdad’s war against Iran, irrespective of the Palestinian issue.

8. The April/October 1983 bombings of the US Embassy and Marines and French military headquarters – by Syria and PLO-supported Islamic terrorists (300 Americans and 58 French murdered) – occurred while the US military confronted Israeli tanks in Lebanon and the US Administration blasted Israel horrifically for its war against the PLO.

Blair’s, Baker’s and Scowcroft’s contention that the Palestinian issue is the core of anti-Western Islamic terrorism and Mideast violence reflects a complete lack of understanding of the Arab mentality. It is totally inaccurate and fails to explain the real reason for anti-US Islamic terrorism.

It diverts attention and resources away from The Core Cause: a 13 century old religion that preaches hate against those who don’t follow its precepts, and whose Holy Book preaches death and advocates terrorism against non-believers. This policy of violence has characterized Muslim interaction with the West for 1300 years, including instances of violence against the United States as far back as the late 18th Century.

Any one who is familiar with world history will be familiar with the history of Islamic violence against non-believers that goes back for centuries, and whose root cause has nothing to do with a 60 year old problem of Palestinian refugees.

If that is the approach of the new advisors to President Bush on the Islamic terror issues in the Middle East, we are in for a very rude awakening. Causing Israel to make concessions against their best interest to appease Palestinian terrorists will not bring peace to the Middle East and will not cause Islamic terrorists to lay down their weapons and grow dates and raise cattle.

(Thanks to Yoram Ettinger)