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Posts Tagged ‘Caroline Glick’

Ahmadinejad’s Victory Lap

by Mojambo ( 183 Comments › )
Filed under Ahmadinejad, Iran, Israel, Lebanon at October 9th, 2010 - 8:00 pm

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The Little Hitler is taking his victory lap in Lebanon because that nation is now an Iranian colony in all but name. The poisoned dwarf senses (correctly) that Obama has the backbone of a jelly fish, is cowardly, confused and stunned (by the failure of his  “reaching out” policy) and will never fire a shot in anger in defense of the United States or its friends – (outside of predator drone strikes against the Taliban).

by Caroline Glick

By Iranian and Hizbullah accounts, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Lebanon next week will be a splendid affair.

The man who stole his office and then killed his countrymen to protect his crime will be greeted as a conquering hero. Billboards bidding him welcome and Iranian flags will line the roads from the Beirut airport down to the border with Israel.

Ahmadinejad’s visit to southern Lebanon will be the highlight of his two-day visit. In preparation for his arrival, in the border town of Maroun a-Ras, Hizbullah has built a replica of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem festooned with an Iranian flag. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to stand outside the structure and throw stones at IDF forces patrolling what he has reportedly referred to as “Iran’s border with Israel.”

Many Israelis are rattled by Ahmadinejad’s trip to our neck of the woods. It is unsettling that the man who personifies the Islamist goal of eradicating the Jewish people will be standing at our doorstep, provoking us.

Before we lose our composure, it is far from clear that Israel is Ahmadinejad’s primary audience.

By throwing stones at Israel, Ahmadinejad will not be telling us anything we don’t already know about his sentiments towards the Jews and our state. He won’t be signaling anything we don’t already know about his proxy force Hizbullah’s capacity to make war on us.

So what new message is Ahmadinejad bringing with him? Who is he communicating with? AHMADINEJAD’S VISIT must be seen within the regional context. Specifically, it must be seen against the backdrop of Lebanese politics. It must also be seen in the context of waning US power and influence in the region. Finally, it should be evaluated in terms of Iranian domestic affairs and Ahmadinejad’s ongoing struggle with his people who reject his leadership. While Iran’s ill-intentions towards Israel remain static, all of the other developments in the region are dynamic.

Read the rest here: Ahmadinejad’s target audience


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Diplomatic Kabuki

by Mojambo ( 80 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Elections 2010, Hamas, Israel, Palestinians at September 22nd, 2010 - 8:30 am

I think that what Israel needs to do with these phony peace talks is essentially to play “rope-a-dope”. Let the Palestinians punch themselves out with their arrogant demands, inflexibility, and threats to go home. Nothing positive at all can be gained from these talks and Miss Glick is correct – Obama is far weaker now then he was several months ago and the coming November disaster for him  will only make things worse. This is no time to try to appease him as he is in his heat of hearts a committed anti-Zionist.

by Caroline Glick

The current flurry of diplomatic activity is deeply disturbing. It isn’t simply that the Obama administration has strong-armed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into participating in diplomatic theater with the PLO whose successful completion will leave Israel weaker and less defensible. It isn’t merely that the newest “peace process” diverts our leadership’s attention away from Iran and its nuclear weapons program.

The most disturbing aspect of the latest round of the diplomatic kabuki is that Israel’s leaders and Israel’s staunch friends in the US are enthusiastically participating in this dangerous project.

True, Netanyahu is in an unenviable position, situated as he is between US President Barack Obama’s rock and hard place. Instead of standing up to this hostile American leader, Netanyahu is desperately seeking a magical concession to get Obama off his back.

Netanyahu’s preference for appeasement is both ironic and destructive. It is ironic because he has turned to appeasement at the very moment that the notion it is possible to appease Obama has self-destructed.

Ten months ago Netanyahu found what he hoped was a magic concession. Capitulating to Obama, the Jewish state’s leader prohibited all Jewish building in Judea and Samaria for a period of 10 months. This unprecedented move to discriminate against Jews was supposed to get Obama off Netanyahu’s back. It didn’t.

[…]

Many observers have pointed out that PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas is unlikely to make a deal. And this is probably true. With Hamas in charge in Gaza and widely supported in Judea and Samaria, Abbas will probably not risk signing a peace deal with Israel that will likely serve as his death warrant. But the same observers who bemoan the poor chances for a treaty ignore the fact that the alternative – that Abbas signs a peace deal with Israel – would be a disaster for Israel. Any deal Israel signs with the PLO will make the country weaker. We know this because we have already signed deals with the PLO. And all of those deals made Israel weaker.

All the agreements between Israel and the PLO have been predicated on Israeli territorial surrenders and Palestinian promises of moderation.

Israel has implemented its commitments and surrendered land to the PLO. The PLO has never abided by its commitment to moderate its behavior. To the contrary, the PLO’s response to every agreement has been to escalate its political and terror war against Israel.

The Palestinian terror war that began in September 2000 was the direct result of the Oslo “peace” agreement of September 1993 that created the framework for Israeli land surrenders to the PLO, and the framework agreement’s followon agreements. The terror attacks that have killed and wounded thousands of Israelis would never have happened – indeed they would have been inconceivable – had Israel not withdrawn from Gaza, Judea and Samaria in accordance with peace deals it signed with the PLO. The track record of the past 17 years demonstrates that withdrawals are dangerous. But still the “peace deal” now on offer is predicated on withdrawals.

[…]

ENGAGING IN the phony “peace process” isn’t only bad because there is little prospect for reaching a deal or because any potential deal would be a disaster for Israel. There are three additional reasons the government’s decision to engage in this diplomatic psychodrama is terrible for Israel.

[…]

There is another aspect of the current diplomatic season that is upsetting. This aspect involves the negotiations’ deleterious role in shaping Israel’s position and options in the US.

When Netanyahu announced he was caving in to White House pressure and barring Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria last November, his defenders argued it was necessary given Obama’s relative political strength at the time.

But a lot has changed in the past 10 months.

Today Obama is deeply unpopular. The Democrats are likely to lose their control of the House of Representatives, and at a minimum, their hold on the Senate will be diminished.

Today Israel has nothing to gain and much to lose by bowing and scraping before Obama.

True, Obama’s positions on issues relating to Israel are not likely to substantively change after November 2. But Obama’s ability to implement his policies will be seriously constrained. Indeed, the anticipated Republican resurgence has already incapacitated him.

Read the rest here: The perils of diplomatic theater

A cautionary tale of murder, betrayal, and surrender

by Mojambo ( 194 Comments › )
Filed under Ahmadinejad, Hezballah, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Syria at September 17th, 2010 - 8:30 am

Rafik Hariri, a a former Lebanese prime minister was assassinated by the Syrians. There is little doubt about that. However his son, Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri,  recognizing who the masters of Lebanon really are (Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah), has been forced to deny who the real murderers are.  The weakness of the United States, various feckless Israeli Prime Ministers (notably Ehud Barak and the execrable Ehud Olmert), and the West has lead the way to the almost total takeover of Lebanon by the forces of darkness.

by Caroline Glick

Lebanon is a sad and desperate place. And its disastrous fate is personified today by its prime minister.

All who claim to love freedom, democracy, human rights and dignity should take note of Sa’ad Hariri’s fate. They should recognize that his predicament is a testament to their failure to stand up for the ideals they say they champion.

All those who say they seek a Middle East that is friendly to the West should see Hariri’s plight as a cautionary tale. Policy-makers in Washington, Paris, Jerusalem and beyond who envision the 21st century Middle East as a place where the US and its allies are able to project their power to defend their interests should study Hariri’s story.

All those who insist peace is possible and even incipient need to cast a long, lingering glance in his direction.

His story exposes all of their paradigms of peace and appeasement and compromise as nothing more than the hollow, callow, arrogant and irrelevant protestations of a transnational ruling class wholly detached from the reality of the world it would lead.

ON MONDAY, Yediot Aharonot reported that Iranian and Syrian intelligence agencies are applying massive pressure on Hariri to openly join the Iranian axis.

[…]

Everyone knew the March 14 movement had no chance of militarily defeating either Syria or its Hizbullah ally. But the US and France both lined up behind the young Hariri and his followers. The unlikely alliance of the Bush administration and the Chirac government just two years after Franco-American ties were seemingly irreparably frayed in the lead up to the US-led invasion of Iraq was enough to intimidate Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

[…]

IRAN SAW what happened in Lebanon and decided to take a gamble. In the face of Franco-American unity, it gambled that they were bluffing. That they would not stand by the Lebanese if their will was challenged.

Iran prepared well for its challenge. At home, dictator Ali Khamenei lined up his ducks. He promoted Teheran’s fanatical mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency. With his man in power, Khamenei and his regime ratcheted up their challenge to the US in Iraq.

[…]

Read it all here: Sa’ad Hariri’s cautionary tale



Addendum by m:

This is enough to make make me pop a vein.

Found at REDWHITEBLUENEWS:

Wednesday in Geneva during the current session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Obama administration became a willing participant in the U.N.’s imposition of an apartheid-style ban on representatives of the state of Israel. Despite the promises made by the administration that by joining the Council the United States would not become part of the problem, U.S. Ambassador to the Council Eileen Donahoe chose to attend and fully participate in a meeting that deliberately excluded anyone representing the Jewish state.

Joining the Human Rights Council was one of President Obama’s first foreign policy decisions. He knew then – what is still true today – that the Council has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning the state of Israel than all other 191 U.N. members combined. He knew that the permanent formal agenda of the Council includes one item to condemn Israel and one for the rest of the world.

But rather than refusing to lend legitimacy to a body with a deeply entrenched bias, the president chose to join and direct U.S. taxpayer dollars its way, claiming that he would be the Council’s great reformer.

On Monday, writing in The New York Times, Ambassador Donahoe repeated the claim that U.S. engagement filled “a vacuum of leadership” and alleged that “the council is engaged in a serious self-reflection exercise for the purpose of improving its work
and functioning with respect to its core mandate of protecting human rights.”

On the very same day as Donahoe’s op-ed appeared, the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) put the president in his place on any notion of reform. The OIC holds the balance of power at the Council, because the Council majority is composed of members from the African and Asian regional groups, and OIC countries form the majority in both the African and Asian groups.

Speaking Monday on behalf of the OIC, Pakistan declared: “the OIC…has always stressed that this is…not a ‘reform’ exercise. It is our considered view that this intergovernmental process…should not reopen the lnstitution-building package [the June 2007 agreement which governs Council operations and adopted the agenda singling out Israel]…The Council is mandated to [do] nothing more but to fine-tune where required.”

The Obama administration’s push to characterize its involvement with the Council as a success is a serious misstatement of the facts on many levels.

READ IT ALL (please ~:): At the U.N. Obama Promotes Human Wrongs Against Israel Instead of Human Rights

(h/t to NoThreat2U)

A wish for 5771

by Mojambo ( 204 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama at September 11th, 2010 - 7:30 pm

The first post-American presidency rejects the American creed of  exceptionalism, our basic goodness, and the brilliance of our capitalist system. Instead of a us being a unique nations, we are now (according to Obama) no different than any of the 197 members of the United Nations.

by Caroline Glick

On August 28, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck confounded his colleagues in the media when he brought hundreds of thousands of Americans to the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC for a rally he called “Restoring Honor.”

While former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker, the rally was decidedly apolitical. The speakers said nothing controversial.

The crowd was enthusiastic but not rowdy.

US President Barack Obama was never even mentioned by name. In the event, the massive crowd gathered, prayed, celebrated American military heroes, listened to patriotic speeches and songs. Then the participants picked up their garbage and went home.

So what was it all about? Why do many people see it as a watershed event? Although Beck called the rally “Restoring Honor,” it wasn’t really about restoring honor. It was about restoring something even more important. It was about restoring the American creed.

That creed is so ingrained that it has served as the subtext of every major political and civic speech by every American political and civic leader since the 18th century.

The American creed has two main components.

First, its core belief is that America is an exceptional country and that the American people are an exceptional nation. Second, it asserts that as Abraham Lincoln first said outright, America is the last, best hope for mankind.

The reason Beck’s rally was a watershed event is that in the Age of Obama, millions of Americans for the first time feel the need to reclaim what they believe is their birthright as Americans.

Because what distinguishes Obama from his predecessors is that he is the first American president who clearly rejects the American creed.

[…]

Lincoln once called Americans “God’s almost chosen people.” In saying that, he linked American history to the history of the Jews. Whereas the Jews singled ourselves out as the chosen people by agreeing to accept God’s law, in Lincoln’s view, Americans accepted the burdens and the gifts of a unique national path and mission in accepting the American creed.

THE AMERICAN creed has been cultivated, preserved and defended for some 350 years. The Jewish creed America’s founders turned to for inspiration has been cultivated, preserved and defended for 3,500 years.

The Jewish creed is predicated on the dual destiny of the Jews: to be both a nation that dwells alone and a light to the nations.

God bestowed the Jews with three tools to achieve these twin, and seemingly contradictory missions. He gave us the Law of Israel. He gave us the Nation of Israel. And he gave us the Land of Israel.

[…]

As for Judaism, it is flourishing in Israel today as it never has at any time in the past 2,000 years. The Jewish people emerged from the brink of annihilation 65 years ago to build a Jewish state whose population is more learned in Jewish law than any Jewish community has ever been. More Jews study in institutions of Jewish learning in Israel than have studied at any time in our history. And even non-observant Jews live Jewish lives in Israel to a degree their families could never have enjoyed or imagine just four generations ago.

ISRAEL’S EXTRAORDINARY success is marred by but one failure. Since Theodore Herzl’s untimely death in 1904, Israel has lacked a leader who recognized the importance of espousing the Jewish creed both to the world and to the Jewish people. That is, since Herzl, Israel has lacked leaders who have understood the first principle of statecraft. For a nation to flourish and succeed over time, its leaders must assert its creed with utter confidence both to their own people and to the world at large. They must assert their nation’s creed with complete confidence even to leaders who reject it. And they must never give anyone else the right to deny their people their identity.

[…]

It is my prayer for the coming year that our leaders take a measure of strength from our people and our creed. I pray that they recognize that it is both their sacred duty and their great privilege to confidently represent and defend our exceptionalism and our destiny as the nation of Israel.

Read the rest here: A prayer for 5771

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****sep 11 ‘where were you when it happened’ thread is saturday 11 sep, we would like to collect and share some memories…write your story for everyone and post it up for history****

please return to your regularly scheduled thread.