The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has urged Israel and the United States to reconsider the appropriateness and wisdom of continued negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) in light of their renewed incitement and promotion of violence against Israel and Jews in recent days. It should also outlaw violent Islamic organizations in Israel.It has also strongly commended and supported the positions taken by Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom and National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau, who have urged the government to outlaw the Israel’s Islamic Movement Northern Branch and indict and prosecute its senior figures, including Sheikh Raed Salah, for inciting violence in Jerusalem and to cease paying their salaries and supporting their institutions with taxpayer money.
Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom and National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau called for the Islamic Movement Northern Branch to be outlawed for inciting the violence. While Shalom praised the police force for doing its job, he stressed that “it’s time for the state prosecution to start acting.” Landau called for the indictment of those Muslim leaders who were calling for violence and confrontation in the capital, and encouraging hateful anti-Israeli sentiments, among them “Sheikh Raed Salah and his ilk … Israel must stop paying the salaries of imams and heads of mosques who engage in incitement against the state of Israel” (‘We’ll pay any price to defend Al Aksa,’ Jerusalem Post, October 6, 2009).
Shalom has written to Cabinet Secretary Tzvi Hauser, asking that the banning of the Islamic Movement Northern Branch be included in next Cabinet meeting agenda. The Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, founded in 1996, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and has as its motto, “Allah is our goal, the prophet [Muhammed] is our leader, the Koran is our law, Jihad [religious war] is our way – and death in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” Shalon said, “It’s time we remind everyone that we are the sovereign in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount … The Prosecution and the police must stop the Palestinian take-over of Jerusalem, and must act with full force against the Islamic Movement’s wild incitement. There are times when the gloves must be taken off… The Islamic Movement must be outlawed – immediately. The movement’s leaders must be arrested and placed behind bars for many years.”
Landau, a former Public Security Minister, says that this week’s Arab riots in Jerusalem “demand that we implement a simple and clear policy against the Islamic Movement. In Ariel Sharon’s first government, Raed Salah was tried and sat in prison… If we show weakness towards him and towards other Arab imams who incite to violence, this will bring upon us even worse riots in the future” (Hillel Fendel, ‘Ministers: “Outlaw Islamic Movement!”’ Israel National News, October 7, 2009).
Riots in recent days have taken place in Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem as Muslim leaders and the PA called to “protect Al-Aqsa [Mosque]” and “prevent the Judaization of Jerusalem” – calls used in the past to rouse Palestinian Muslims to violence against Jews. (Sheikh Salah is also on record having once urged President George W. Bush to convert to Islam, as a way of solving American problems with the Muslim world).
PA president Mahmoud Abbas said that while Israel and “world Zionism” act every day to “Judaize” the city, Arab efforts to make the city Arab are “paltry … The Palestinians are working and are getting killed …The second intifada erupted because of [former Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon’s visit to [the Temple Mount] and the [alleged] desecration of the mosque, and it lasted seven [eight] years. This time, therefore, the matter of Jerusalem requires a much greater effort, something much more practical. It’s not enough to talk about Jerusalem in books, nor to give sermons in mosques; there is a need to work for her” (Hillel Fendel, ‘Jewish purchases in Jerusalem fuel PA fears,’ Israel National News, October 6, 2009).
The PA also issued a call by the so-called “moderate” PA prime minister Salam Fayyad, who said that “The world must force Israel to halt her efforts to take control of Jerusalem and Judaize it.” Fayyad also accused “extremist settlers” of planning to break into the Al-Aqsa compound. At least one police officer was wounded by rock-throwing Arab youth over the course of the day, and a soldier was stabbed in the neck by a PA Arab teen during the routine inspection of a bus (Maayan Miskin, ‘As Israel Seeks to Quell Riots, PA Tells Muslims to Fight,’ Israel National News, October 5, 2009).
Several rioters have been arrested for allegedly attacking police officers and Jewish civilians with stones. Police revealed Monday that wheelbarrows filled with heavy stones of the type used recently by Muslim Temple Mount rioters were found hidden on the Temple Mount the day before. The discovery indicates that the “spontaneous” Temple Mount riots were planned in advance.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Israel and the U.S. should reconsider continued negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas and the PA in light of the public and blatant PA role in promoting physical violence against Israel and Jews in Jerusalem. Obviously, genuine peace partners do not actively and publicly urge violence against the party with whom they are supposedly interested in concluding peace. Every Israeli-Palestinian signed agreement since 1993 makes clear that disputes must be resolved through negotiations, not violence.
“There are some ground rules for negotiations: One, agreements must be honored –something the PA has never done in 16 years with regard to its basic, repeated solemn commitments to arrest terrorists and end the incitement to hatred and murder in the PA controlled media, mosques schools and youth camps that feed terror. Two, you cannot launch violence against your peace partner.
“It is of course nothing new – or should be nothing new – that the PA foments violence against Israel. The entire 2000 terror wave was launched by Arafat and the PA, not by Hamas or other groups. The only extraordinary thing is that, without there having been any change in the PA or Fatah, without their having fulfilled their dishonored commitments, Israel has returned to negotiating with them.
“Israel should expose the PA’s role in the violence as well as deal firmly and resolutely with it own Islamist elements that have incited it. Israel must demand a public repudiation and retraction of this public call to violence against Israel. In this context, we strongly commend and support the proposed actions of Israeli government ministers Uzi Landau and Silvan Shalom including the outlawing of the Islamic Movement and the ending of state salaries and other payments to their personnel and institutions.”
Saturday, October 17, 2009
US: Security Council might not debate Goldstone Report
American officials say Washington will likely exercise its veto power if report accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza is brought to a Security Council vote. Goldstone criticizes UN Council resolution for targeting only Israel and failing to include Hamas
Yitzhak Benhorin
YNET News
WASHINGTON - The endorsement of the Goldstone Report by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) does not necessarily mean that it will be reviewed by the Security Council, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Friday. Earlier, the UNHRC voted to refer the report to the Security Council, possibly setting up international prosecution of Israelis and Palestinians accused of war crimes.
The report accused both Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas of committing war crimes in Gaza in their December-January conflict.
Kelly told reporters in Washington that the resolution had "an unbalanced focus and we're concerned that it will exacerbate polarization and divisiveness."
US diplomat Douglas M. Griffiths told the council that Washington was disappointed with the outcome, in which the report was endorsed by a vote of 25-6. The United States and five European countries — Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine - opposed the resolution, while 11 mostly European and African countries abstained. Britain, France and three other members of the 47-nation body declined to vote.
Russia and China, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, were among those voting yes.
"We're focused on moving forward in the peace process and we feel that this is a distraction from that," Griffiths told The Associated Press.
American officials said the resolution will hinder efforts by the Obama Administration to jumpstart the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The US, and apparently Britain and France was well, will look to prevent a Security Council debate on the Goldstone Report.
'Draft resolution saddens me'
The 575-page document concluded that Israel used disproportionate force, deliberately targeted civilians, used Palestinians as human shields and destroyed civilian infrastructure during its incursion into the Gaza Strip to root out Palestinian rocket squads.
It also accused Palestinian armed groups including Hamas, which controls Gaza, of deliberately targeting civilians and trying to spread terror through years of rocket attacks on southern Israel.
The report recommends that the 15-member Security Council require both sides in the conflict to show within six months that they are carrying out independent and impartial investigations into alleged abuses.
If they are not, the matter should be referred to prosecutors at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, the report says.
Officials in Washington estimated that the US will exercise its veto power if the Goldstone Report is brought to a Security Council vote.
The French Foreign Ministry issued a statement Friday saying the UNHRC resolution was "regrettable" and "premature." France's representatives at the council left the meeting shortly before voting began.
Meanwhile, Richard Goldstone himself, who was in Bern for a conference Thursday, also criticized the UN Council resolution for targeting only Israel and failing to include Hamas.
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The UN resolution is peppered with references to "recent Israeli violations of human rights in occupied east Jerusalem" but failed to make any direct mention to Hamas.
"This draft resolution saddens me as it includes only allegations against Israel. There is not a single phrase condemning Hamas as we have done in the report. I hope that the council can modify the text," said Goldstone in remarks published in Swiss newspaper Le Temps ahead of the vote.
AP, AFP contributed to the report
Friday, October 16, 2009
IDF Prof.: Extreme Left Wants African Workers to Destroy Israel
Gil Ronen IDF Prof: Immigrants Pose Danger
African illegal immigrants are a strategic problem of the first degree, according to Professor Arnon Sofer, an expert on demographics and the head of the the IDF's National Security College. The campaign for taking in the African immigrants was mounted by extreme leftists, Sofer told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew service Friday. They want us to absorb 1,200 sweet children, but where is the red line? 250,000 children of foreign workers? Two million?” The extreme leftists, said Sofer, want to destroy the Zionist state. “They do not want a Jewish state but a state 'of human beings.' They do not understand that this is not the reason why we are here and that if their vision becomes a reality the Jews will become a minority that will be slaughtered by the majority.”
"Those who call them Darfur refugees are wrong and they mislead others: these are not refugees but immigrants,” he explained. “We must say the truth: the illegal work immigrants who come from Africa are a great danger for us. Europe has sealed its gates before them. The dastardly Europeans fenced them in under a guise of liberality and enclosed them within walls... they created concentration camps in Europe... and they preach morality to us. In Spain they have labor camp and they kick hundreds of thousands out of Spain.”
'Let's just move to Los Angeles'
The African illegal immigrant population joins other existing demographic threats, Sofer explained. The Arabs who entered Israel [after the Oslo accord – ed number 250,000, he said. In addition there are 250,000 foreign laborers and tens of thousands of African immigrants and so we could reach almost a million non-Jews who flood the country illegally and this is a huge strategic problem because if this trend continues this country will not be able to safeguard its status as a Jewish state.
"If we do not want a Jewish state we can close up shop and go to Boston, New York or Los Angeles.”
Sofer warned that some of the African immigrants are Muslims and they could include terrorists. In addition, he said, many are sick with tuberculosis or AIDS.
Spanish PM calls for Israeli settlement freeze
In Ramallah, Zapatero says end to Jewish construction in West Bank needed 'so we can continue the political negotiations.' Abbas: I hope Spain will back peace process when it holds EU's rotating presidency
AFP
YNET News
Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero called for an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank and a relaunch of the Middle East peace process, during a visit on Thursday."The complete halt and freeze of settlements is a fundamental issue. We need to see that happen despite the difficult conditions so we can continue the political negotiations," he reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
"I hope for an end to the gridlock and the difficulties in the efforts exerted by (US) President Barack Obama's administration," he added, speaking through an official Arabic translator.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said at the same press conference that he hoped Spain would actively support the peace process when it holds the European Union's rotating presidency in the first half of 2010.
"We discussed many current issues, including the peace process, and we (Palestinians) confirm that we are prepared to continue this process when there is a complete freeze of settlements," Abbas said.
'Great appreciation for Obama'
Washington has been struggling for months to get Israel and the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table after peace talks were suspended during Israel's war on the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza at the turn of the year.
The Palestinians have said they will not negotiate with Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unless he halts all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Israel has agreed to certain reductions in settlement growth but has refused Washington's calls for a complete freeze.
Zapatero met earlier in the day with Israeli President Shimon Peres, who said Israelis were prepared to relaunch negotiations.
"In Israel there is great appreciation for President Obama and we believe that his goals and his intentions are good, correct and just," Peres said.
The presence of nearly half a million Israelis in dozens of settlements across the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, has long been one of the thorniest issues in the decades-old Middle East conflict.
Comment: Spain attempting to curry favor with Obama. Settlers are Israeli citizens living in villages and towns in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria-until this lexicon shifts to the truth, Israel will have the lies used as a weapon.
AFP
YNET News
Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero called for an Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank and a relaunch of the Middle East peace process, during a visit on Thursday."The complete halt and freeze of settlements is a fundamental issue. We need to see that happen despite the difficult conditions so we can continue the political negotiations," he reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
"I hope for an end to the gridlock and the difficulties in the efforts exerted by (US) President Barack Obama's administration," he added, speaking through an official Arabic translator.
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said at the same press conference that he hoped Spain would actively support the peace process when it holds the European Union's rotating presidency in the first half of 2010.
"We discussed many current issues, including the peace process, and we (Palestinians) confirm that we are prepared to continue this process when there is a complete freeze of settlements," Abbas said.
'Great appreciation for Obama'
Washington has been struggling for months to get Israel and the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table after peace talks were suspended during Israel's war on the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza at the turn of the year.
The Palestinians have said they will not negotiate with Israel's right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unless he halts all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Israel has agreed to certain reductions in settlement growth but has refused Washington's calls for a complete freeze.
Zapatero met earlier in the day with Israeli President Shimon Peres, who said Israelis were prepared to relaunch negotiations.
"In Israel there is great appreciation for President Obama and we believe that his goals and his intentions are good, correct and just," Peres said.
The presence of nearly half a million Israelis in dozens of settlements across the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, has long been one of the thorniest issues in the decades-old Middle East conflict.
Comment: Spain attempting to curry favor with Obama. Settlers are Israeli citizens living in villages and towns in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria-until this lexicon shifts to the truth, Israel will have the lies used as a weapon.
Guilty without a trial
Moshe Dann analyzes Goldstone Report’s findings and how Israel was set up
Moshe Dann
YNET News
Agree with it or not, the Goldstone Report has set new parameters for future conflicts between Israel and Arab terror organizations and armies. And, as long as those parameters are used, Israel will be condemned. But neither Goldstone nor the UNHRC established them; that was done by the International Committee of the Red Cross.Based on what the ICRC calls International Humanitarian Law, the assumption of Goldstone's Report is that a clear differentiation was not made between civilian and military targets; even when the civilian population is sympathetic to and involved with the enemy and is used, willingly or not, as shields, the IDF has no right to attack.
According to the ICRC, Article 51 of the UN Charter does not allow Israel to act in self-defense against terrorists because "they are not a state but organized individuals among the population it occupies." Terrorists, according to this interpretation, may be "criminals – (but) not military targets," unless they are directly engaged in carrying out a terrorist act at the time; if not, they should be arrested and are entitled to due process in courts of law.
Such a position is obviously absurd in reality. In the context of modern urban warfare, terrorists deliberately imbed themselves within civilian populations in order to take advantage of humanitarian concerns.
Following these restrictions would endanger the lives of soldiers in favor of protecting the "rights" of terrorists. Yet the ICRC has determined the law and the UN uses this to condemn Israel, regardless of what caused the conflict, or the danger posed by terrorists.
This bias is explicit in the latest ICRC/Red Crescent Magazine (January, 2009) which contains an article entitled "Gaza, civilians in the firing line." Highlighting the suffering of Gaza residents, with graphic pictures, the article does not mention the cause of the conflict - years of rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. It suggests that Israel deliberately targeted civilians and civilian targets.
Using statistics supplied by Hamas, the article notes, "1,380 people have been killed and 5,640 wounded... a particularly high proportion of the victims were women and children."
As in the Goldstone Report, no attempt was made to determine how many of the casualties were terrorists, or how many were killed or injured by Hamas; nor, in citing the destruction of thousands of homes and other buildings, how many were blown up by booby-traps, or were used by Hamas as military positions.
Rules only applicable to Israel
The ICRC also charged that "there was a lack of respect for (Red Crescent) medical teams." ("One volunteer was killed and six medical workers were injured.") There was no explanation of the circumstances, their identities, or efforts by IDF medical teams to help those in need. Nor is any proof offered for these charges.
To appreciate the impact of the ICRC's position and involvement in the conflict between Israel and Arab "Palestinians," one must understand that the ICRC is not just another NGO; it is the official "guardian" of the Geneva Convention. That means, for many, their word is law. Perceived as impartial, neutral and authoritative, their decisions are cited in international courts.
Following ICRC's rulings and interpretations, the UNHRC mandate, and using Hamas' propaganda, Goldstone concluded that Israel was guilty of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." That, however, was already decided in Geneva.
The IDF's use of overwhelming firepower against Hamas was justified militarily, to save soldiers' lives and to eliminate terrorists; but, even with extensive aerial documentation, there is no way of proving that the destruction of what appear to be civilian targets was necessary, thus creating a moral and humanitarian dilemma.
Moreover, these rules seem applicable only to Israel. There is little or no appreciation of Arab "Palestinian" terrorism as the context. Nor has the UN applied these rules to other conflicts, for example, in Sri Lanka, to protect the Tamils, the allied bombing of civilian targets in Belgrade, or anti-terrorist actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in which civilians are killed.
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Israel, and Jews are held to a different standard, and that message needs to be exposed as bigotry. The IDF is the most moral army in the world; Israel is fighting for its life; we have no choice. But these valid assertions don't stand up to criticism like that in Goldstone's Report because the conflict isn't about who is right, but by who is fighting whom.
Arab terrorists will always be portrayed as victims, "freedom fighters," "militants," and "activists." The challenge for Israel is to present the conflict in such a way that Arabs are on the defensive. That can't be done, however, as long as the ICRC sets the rules, finding Israel guilty before anything happens.
As long as Israel accepts the ICRC as the final arbiter, it will lose the PR battle. Goldstone's Report is an example of this inevitability.
The author, a former assistant professor of History, is a writer and journalist
Moshe Dann
YNET News
Agree with it or not, the Goldstone Report has set new parameters for future conflicts between Israel and Arab terror organizations and armies. And, as long as those parameters are used, Israel will be condemned. But neither Goldstone nor the UNHRC established them; that was done by the International Committee of the Red Cross.Based on what the ICRC calls International Humanitarian Law, the assumption of Goldstone's Report is that a clear differentiation was not made between civilian and military targets; even when the civilian population is sympathetic to and involved with the enemy and is used, willingly or not, as shields, the IDF has no right to attack.
According to the ICRC, Article 51 of the UN Charter does not allow Israel to act in self-defense against terrorists because "they are not a state but organized individuals among the population it occupies." Terrorists, according to this interpretation, may be "criminals – (but) not military targets," unless they are directly engaged in carrying out a terrorist act at the time; if not, they should be arrested and are entitled to due process in courts of law.
Such a position is obviously absurd in reality. In the context of modern urban warfare, terrorists deliberately imbed themselves within civilian populations in order to take advantage of humanitarian concerns.
Following these restrictions would endanger the lives of soldiers in favor of protecting the "rights" of terrorists. Yet the ICRC has determined the law and the UN uses this to condemn Israel, regardless of what caused the conflict, or the danger posed by terrorists.
This bias is explicit in the latest ICRC/Red Crescent Magazine (January, 2009) which contains an article entitled "Gaza, civilians in the firing line." Highlighting the suffering of Gaza residents, with graphic pictures, the article does not mention the cause of the conflict - years of rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. It suggests that Israel deliberately targeted civilians and civilian targets.
Using statistics supplied by Hamas, the article notes, "1,380 people have been killed and 5,640 wounded... a particularly high proportion of the victims were women and children."
As in the Goldstone Report, no attempt was made to determine how many of the casualties were terrorists, or how many were killed or injured by Hamas; nor, in citing the destruction of thousands of homes and other buildings, how many were blown up by booby-traps, or were used by Hamas as military positions.
Rules only applicable to Israel
The ICRC also charged that "there was a lack of respect for (Red Crescent) medical teams." ("One volunteer was killed and six medical workers were injured.") There was no explanation of the circumstances, their identities, or efforts by IDF medical teams to help those in need. Nor is any proof offered for these charges.
To appreciate the impact of the ICRC's position and involvement in the conflict between Israel and Arab "Palestinians," one must understand that the ICRC is not just another NGO; it is the official "guardian" of the Geneva Convention. That means, for many, their word is law. Perceived as impartial, neutral and authoritative, their decisions are cited in international courts.
Following ICRC's rulings and interpretations, the UNHRC mandate, and using Hamas' propaganda, Goldstone concluded that Israel was guilty of "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." That, however, was already decided in Geneva.
The IDF's use of overwhelming firepower against Hamas was justified militarily, to save soldiers' lives and to eliminate terrorists; but, even with extensive aerial documentation, there is no way of proving that the destruction of what appear to be civilian targets was necessary, thus creating a moral and humanitarian dilemma.
Moreover, these rules seem applicable only to Israel. There is little or no appreciation of Arab "Palestinian" terrorism as the context. Nor has the UN applied these rules to other conflicts, for example, in Sri Lanka, to protect the Tamils, the allied bombing of civilian targets in Belgrade, or anti-terrorist actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan in which civilians are killed.
Advertisement
Israel, and Jews are held to a different standard, and that message needs to be exposed as bigotry. The IDF is the most moral army in the world; Israel is fighting for its life; we have no choice. But these valid assertions don't stand up to criticism like that in Goldstone's Report because the conflict isn't about who is right, but by who is fighting whom.
Arab terrorists will always be portrayed as victims, "freedom fighters," "militants," and "activists." The challenge for Israel is to present the conflict in such a way that Arabs are on the defensive. That can't be done, however, as long as the ICRC sets the rules, finding Israel guilty before anything happens.
As long as Israel accepts the ICRC as the final arbiter, it will lose the PR battle. Goldstone's Report is an example of this inevitability.
The author, a former assistant professor of History, is a writer and journalist
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Katif Evictees Say New Gov't Treats them Better
Gil Ronen
A7 News
Representatives of some 1500 families that were evicted from Gush Katif said Wednesday that the State's attitude toward them has improved since the new government took office earlier this year. Doron Ben Shlomi, head of the Council for Gush Katif Evictees, said that “there is a meaningful change in attitude” between the Olmert government and the present government under Netanyahu. “Now there are frequent meetings with Gush Katif representatives and we should be thankful for this. Still, there are some problems that must be addressed. One is the fact that this mission has yet to be defined as an urgent national priority.”
MK Uri Ariel (National Union) said that the change in the leadership of the Sela Administration [which was created to assist the evictee was a good one and that “there is a feeling... of a change.”
Finalizing agreements?
The representatives appeared before the Knesset's Finance Committee, which is following the State's treatment of the Gush Katif evictees. The committee's chairman, MK Ofir Akunis, called upon the authorities taking care of the evictees, including the Director of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), to involve the evictees more in the process of aiding them.
"I am pleased with the change for the better that is felt on the ground as well, and also with the establishment of a forum of directors after I requested this from the Director of the Prime Minister's Office,” said Akunis, “but there is still a lot of work ahead of us. In the next discussion we will talk about the matter of employment and together with the Children's Rights Committee, about the treatment of the evicted children and youths.”
PMO Director Eyal Gabbai, said that “from the moment that the government was sworn in, we have been dealing with the matter intensively. We have dedicated much time to understanding the picture and to frequent meetings with the evacuees' representatives...We appointed a new head of the [Se administration, Bentzi Lieberman, and we added a year to the administration's span of activity. We have approved a series of decisions in the government and the relocation agreements have been brought to finalization. I feel a true and sincere will on behalf of the evacuees to reach a settlement.”
The committee plans to conduct a tour of the communities in which the evictees are presently housed.
How the Palestinian Authority is Killing Even the Charade of a Peace Process
RubinReports
Barry Rubin
Let’s take a careful look at this AP dispatch on an October 12 Fatah internal memorandum. The official Fatah document charges the Obama Administration with disappointing the Palestinians and being mainly responsive—like presumably all previous presidents—to the pro-Israel lobby.
It states:
"All hopes placed in the new U.S. administration and President Obama have evaporated. Obama couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led to a retreat from his previous positions on halting settlement construction and defining an agenda for the negotiations and peace."
Now if the Palestinian Authority and Fatah aren’t happy with Obama they are going to have a very difficult time ever finding a U.S. government they like.
And even given this attitude, their “job” is to court the U.S. government, give it incentives to help them, show they are compromising in order to win its favor, and prove they can deliver benefits for American interest. But they have no concept of such a strategy.
Instead, they basically demand what they want and view anyone who doesn’t give it to them—without their doing anything to earn it—as an enemy.
Note carefully this passage in the AP dispatch about the memorandum:
“Obama raised Palestinian hopes further with his repeated calls for Israel to halt all construction in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem--areas the Palestinians claim for a future state.”
What the mass media won’t tell you is that Obama himself introduced this divisive idea of a freeze—which the Palestinians had never made a precondition for talks—thus leading the Palestinians to raise their demands and, consequently, wrecking even talks being held, much less them achieving any progress.
And here, indirectly, is the proof:
“The last round of Israel-Palestinian negotiations broke down late last year with no apparent breakthroughs on the main issues dividing the two sides: final borders, the status of Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinians who lost homes and other property in Israel after it achieved statehood in 1948.”
No mention of construction freeze here, right? Just borders, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian demand (a rather strange one for real nationalists but not for those who put the priority on destroying Israel) that Palestinians go to live in Israel rather than Palestine.
Two other points are worth noting. First, the Western media virtually never mention Israeli demands when discussing the peace process. Nothing about security guarantees, that any peace agreement ends the conflict forever (which is a rather normal thing to request), plus demilitarization and the barring of any foreign forces from entering the state. Only Palestinian demands are ever brought up.
(To be fair, one could imply that Israel wants border modifications, east Jerusalem, and Palestinians going to live in Palestine, but in other articles these are mentioned far less than Palestinian demands.)
Second, the AP articles states:
“The Palestinians want talks to resume from the point they broke down last year under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert. Netanyahu says he is not bound by any concessions Olmert may have made.”
This is a common misstatement, rationalizing a ridiculously sleazy bargaining technique. Imagine you are in negotiation with someone over the sale of a house. You offer him a higher price if he makes certain concessions like helping on financing, including the furnishings, etc. He says: “No, I won’t give you any of those things. Now remember where we left off? You offered me a higher price in exchange for nothing.”
If the Palestinians had accepted Olmert’s offer and made their own concessions to get more, Netanyahu would view himself as bound by any concessions Olmert made. But since the Palestinians rejected Olmert’s proposal and refused to give the concessions he asked of them, no Israeli government is bound. As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once said in an identical situation: Nothing is decided until everything is decided.
And finally here’s my favorite line about the memorandum:
“The document, dated October 12, was issued by Fatah's Office of Mobilization and Organization. The office is headed by the party's No. 2, Mohammed Ghneim.”
Do an Internet search—allowing for variations for the transliteration of this name, example, Muhammad Ghaneim—and you will find that I’m just about the only one who has written about this gentleman and his role as the number-two man in Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, and the PLO. Everyone else has ignored it.
I wrote that Ghaneim is a hardliner who rejected the 1993 Oslo agreement and would pull the Palestinian leadership in a more radical direction, making peace even more impossible and increasing the movement’s anti-Americanism.
This is precisely what’s happening.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan)
Barry Rubin
Let’s take a careful look at this AP dispatch on an October 12 Fatah internal memorandum. The official Fatah document charges the Obama Administration with disappointing the Palestinians and being mainly responsive—like presumably all previous presidents—to the pro-Israel lobby.
It states:
"All hopes placed in the new U.S. administration and President Obama have evaporated. Obama couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led to a retreat from his previous positions on halting settlement construction and defining an agenda for the negotiations and peace."
Now if the Palestinian Authority and Fatah aren’t happy with Obama they are going to have a very difficult time ever finding a U.S. government they like.
And even given this attitude, their “job” is to court the U.S. government, give it incentives to help them, show they are compromising in order to win its favor, and prove they can deliver benefits for American interest. But they have no concept of such a strategy.
Instead, they basically demand what they want and view anyone who doesn’t give it to them—without their doing anything to earn it—as an enemy.
Note carefully this passage in the AP dispatch about the memorandum:
“Obama raised Palestinian hopes further with his repeated calls for Israel to halt all construction in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem--areas the Palestinians claim for a future state.”
What the mass media won’t tell you is that Obama himself introduced this divisive idea of a freeze—which the Palestinians had never made a precondition for talks—thus leading the Palestinians to raise their demands and, consequently, wrecking even talks being held, much less them achieving any progress.
And here, indirectly, is the proof:
“The last round of Israel-Palestinian negotiations broke down late last year with no apparent breakthroughs on the main issues dividing the two sides: final borders, the status of Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinians who lost homes and other property in Israel after it achieved statehood in 1948.”
No mention of construction freeze here, right? Just borders, Jerusalem, and the Palestinian demand (a rather strange one for real nationalists but not for those who put the priority on destroying Israel) that Palestinians go to live in Israel rather than Palestine.
Two other points are worth noting. First, the Western media virtually never mention Israeli demands when discussing the peace process. Nothing about security guarantees, that any peace agreement ends the conflict forever (which is a rather normal thing to request), plus demilitarization and the barring of any foreign forces from entering the state. Only Palestinian demands are ever brought up.
(To be fair, one could imply that Israel wants border modifications, east Jerusalem, and Palestinians going to live in Palestine, but in other articles these are mentioned far less than Palestinian demands.)
Second, the AP articles states:
“The Palestinians want talks to resume from the point they broke down last year under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert. Netanyahu says he is not bound by any concessions Olmert may have made.”
This is a common misstatement, rationalizing a ridiculously sleazy bargaining technique. Imagine you are in negotiation with someone over the sale of a house. You offer him a higher price if he makes certain concessions like helping on financing, including the furnishings, etc. He says: “No, I won’t give you any of those things. Now remember where we left off? You offered me a higher price in exchange for nothing.”
If the Palestinians had accepted Olmert’s offer and made their own concessions to get more, Netanyahu would view himself as bound by any concessions Olmert made. But since the Palestinians rejected Olmert’s proposal and refused to give the concessions he asked of them, no Israeli government is bound. As Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once said in an identical situation: Nothing is decided until everything is decided.
And finally here’s my favorite line about the memorandum:
“The document, dated October 12, was issued by Fatah's Office of Mobilization and Organization. The office is headed by the party's No. 2, Mohammed Ghneim.”
Do an Internet search—allowing for variations for the transliteration of this name, example, Muhammad Ghaneim—and you will find that I’m just about the only one who has written about this gentleman and his role as the number-two man in Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, and the PLO. Everyone else has ignored it.
I wrote that Ghaneim is a hardliner who rejected the 1993 Oslo agreement and would pull the Palestinian leadership in a more radical direction, making peace even more impossible and increasing the movement’s anti-Americanism.
This is precisely what’s happening.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan)
Peace vs. the ‘peace process’
Jeff Jacoby
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
"Whom the gods would destroy," the late Irving Kristol once observed, "they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict." Maybe "destroy" was putting it a bit strongly, but there is no denying that American presidents seem irresistibly drawn to the belief that they can succeed where others have failed and conjure a lasting peace between Israel and its Arab enemies. This diplomacy has gone by various names — Oslo, the Roadmap, Camp David, and so on — but time and again it has led not to the end of the conflict but to its intensification.
In his memoirs, former President Bill Clinton describes Yasser Arafat's refusal to accept the extraordinarily generous terms for a permanent settlement offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000. That refusal led to a Palestinian terror war, the bloody Second Intifada, and when Arafat called Clinton in January 2001 to tell him what a great man he was, Clinton was bitter. "I am not a great man," he told Arafat. "I am a failure, and you have made me one."
Of course, if Clinton was a failure so were the two George Bushes. Each made it his goal to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, each convened a grand international conference for that purpose (Bush 41 in Madrid, Bush 43 in Annapolis), and each left the situation worse than he had found it.
In his first nine months as president, Barack Obama has shown every sign of succumbing to the same temptation. Two days after moving in to the White House, he named George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, his special envoy to the region. He pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into endorsing a "two-state solution." He declared that "the moment is now for us to act" to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Unlike his recent predecessors, Obama has gone out of his way to signal a distinct coolness toward Israel and its interests. At a White House meeting with the leaders of American Jewish organizations in July, he suggested that because there had been "no daylight" between Israel and the United States when George W. Bush was president, there had been "no progress" toward peace.
In fact, there had often been "daylight" between Washington and Jerusalem during the Bush years. There had been plenty of movement too, from the adoption of the Roadmap to the Israeli "disengagement" from Gaza to the final-status negotiations that followed the Annapolis conference.
Still: Obama was right when he said there had been no progress toward Arab-Israeli peace under Bush. Nor had there been any under Clinton. Nor, as things stand now, will there be any under Obama.
Why? Because the "peace process" to which all of them, their sharp differences notwithstanding, have been so committed is not a formula for ending the decades-long war in the Holy Land, but for prolonging it.
In an important article in the current Middle East Quarterly, Daniel Pipes reviews the terrible failure of the 1993 Oslo accords, and homes in on the root fallacy of the diplomatic approach it embodied: the belief that the Arab-Israeli war can "be concluded through goodwill, conciliation, mediation, flexibility, restraint, generosity, and compromise, topped off with signatures on official documents." For 16 years, Israeli governments, prodded by Washington, have sought to quench Palestinian hostility with concessions and gestures of goodwill. Yet peace today is more elusive than ever.
"Wars end not through goodwill but through victory," Pipes writes, defining victory as one side compelling the other to give up its war goals. Since 1948, the Arabs' goal has been the elimination of Israel; the Israelis', to win their neighbors' acceptance of a Jewish state in the Middle East. "If the conflict is to end, one side must lose and one side win," argues Pipes. "Either there will be no more Zionist state or it will be accepted by its neighbors."
Diplomacy cannot settle the Arab-Israeli conflict until the Palestinians abandon their anti-Israel rejectionism. US policy should be focused, therefore, on getting them to abandon it. The Palestinians must be put "on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel. Until then — no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons."
So long as American and Israeli leaders remain committed to a fruitless Arab-Israeli "peace process," Arab-Israeli peace will remain unachievable. Let the newest Nobel peace laureate grasp and act upon that insight, and he may do more to genuinely hasten the conflict's end than any of his well-meaning predecessors.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
"Whom the gods would destroy," the late Irving Kristol once observed, "they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict." Maybe "destroy" was putting it a bit strongly, but there is no denying that American presidents seem irresistibly drawn to the belief that they can succeed where others have failed and conjure a lasting peace between Israel and its Arab enemies. This diplomacy has gone by various names — Oslo, the Roadmap, Camp David, and so on — but time and again it has led not to the end of the conflict but to its intensification.
In his memoirs, former President Bill Clinton describes Yasser Arafat's refusal to accept the extraordinarily generous terms for a permanent settlement offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000. That refusal led to a Palestinian terror war, the bloody Second Intifada, and when Arafat called Clinton in January 2001 to tell him what a great man he was, Clinton was bitter. "I am not a great man," he told Arafat. "I am a failure, and you have made me one."
Of course, if Clinton was a failure so were the two George Bushes. Each made it his goal to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, each convened a grand international conference for that purpose (Bush 41 in Madrid, Bush 43 in Annapolis), and each left the situation worse than he had found it.
In his first nine months as president, Barack Obama has shown every sign of succumbing to the same temptation. Two days after moving in to the White House, he named George Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, his special envoy to the region. He pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into endorsing a "two-state solution." He declared that "the moment is now for us to act" to achieve peace in the Middle East.
Unlike his recent predecessors, Obama has gone out of his way to signal a distinct coolness toward Israel and its interests. At a White House meeting with the leaders of American Jewish organizations in July, he suggested that because there had been "no daylight" between Israel and the United States when George W. Bush was president, there had been "no progress" toward peace.
In fact, there had often been "daylight" between Washington and Jerusalem during the Bush years. There had been plenty of movement too, from the adoption of the Roadmap to the Israeli "disengagement" from Gaza to the final-status negotiations that followed the Annapolis conference.
Still: Obama was right when he said there had been no progress toward Arab-Israeli peace under Bush. Nor had there been any under Clinton. Nor, as things stand now, will there be any under Obama.
Why? Because the "peace process" to which all of them, their sharp differences notwithstanding, have been so committed is not a formula for ending the decades-long war in the Holy Land, but for prolonging it.
In an important article in the current Middle East Quarterly, Daniel Pipes reviews the terrible failure of the 1993 Oslo accords, and homes in on the root fallacy of the diplomatic approach it embodied: the belief that the Arab-Israeli war can "be concluded through goodwill, conciliation, mediation, flexibility, restraint, generosity, and compromise, topped off with signatures on official documents." For 16 years, Israeli governments, prodded by Washington, have sought to quench Palestinian hostility with concessions and gestures of goodwill. Yet peace today is more elusive than ever.
"Wars end not through goodwill but through victory," Pipes writes, defining victory as one side compelling the other to give up its war goals. Since 1948, the Arabs' goal has been the elimination of Israel; the Israelis', to win their neighbors' acceptance of a Jewish state in the Middle East. "If the conflict is to end, one side must lose and one side win," argues Pipes. "Either there will be no more Zionist state or it will be accepted by its neighbors."
Diplomacy cannot settle the Arab-Israeli conflict until the Palestinians abandon their anti-Israel rejectionism. US policy should be focused, therefore, on getting them to abandon it. The Palestinians must be put "on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel. Until then — no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons."
So long as American and Israeli leaders remain committed to a fruitless Arab-Israeli "peace process," Arab-Israeli peace will remain unachievable. Let the newest Nobel peace laureate grasp and act upon that insight, and he may do more to genuinely hasten the conflict's end than any of his well-meaning predecessors.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
"The Way to Victory"
Arlene Kushner
Daniel Pipes has written an article -- "Peace Process or War Process?" -- in the fall issue of Middle East Quarterly that is brilliant in its conceptual understanding of what is going on with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It doesn't matter what Obama does to advance "peace" here, says Pipes, it doesn't matter how his approach differs from that of the two Bushes or Clinton -- he is doomed to failure. For, in spite of the differences in the policies of the aforementioned presidents, there is an essential way in which all of their approaches share a common vision: That the conflict might be solved via goodwill. War would be "finessed" as steps were taken towards peace.
~~~~~~~~~~
This, says Pipes, has been the predominant Israeli attitude since the disaster of Oslo in 1993:
"...the ultimate mistake lay in Yitzhak Rabin's misunderstanding of how war ends, as revealed by his catch-phrase, 'One does not make peace with one's friends. One makes peace with one's enemy.' The Israeli prime minister expected war to be concluded through goodwill, conciliation, mediation, flexibility, restraint, generosity, and compromise, topped off with signatures on official documents. In this spirit, his government and those of his three successors — Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak — initiated an array of concessions, hoping and expecting the Palestinians to reciprocate.
They did not. In fact, Israeli concessions inflamed Palestinian hostility. Palestinians interpreted Israeli efforts to 'make peace' as signals of demoralization and weakness. 'Painful concessions' reduced the Palestinian awe of Israel, made the Jewish state appear vulnerable, and incited irredentist dreams of annihilation. Each Oslo-negotiated gesture by Israel further exhilarated, radicalized, and mobilized the Palestinian body politic to war. The quiet hope of 1993 to eliminate Israel gained traction, becoming a deafening demand by 2000. Venomous speech and violent actions soared. Polls and votes in recent years suggest that a mere 20 percent of Palestinians accept the existence of a Jewish state.
"Rabin's mistake was simple and profound: One cannot 'make peace with one's enemy,' as he imagined. Rather, one makes peace with one's former enemy. Peace nearly always requires one side in a conflict to be defeated and thus give up its goals.
"Wars end not through good will but victory." (Emphasis added)
"...Since 1993, in brief, the Arabs have sought victory while Israelis sought compromise.
"...But who does not win, loses. To survive, Israelis eventually must return to their pre-1993 policy of establishing that Israel is strong, tough, and permanent. That is achieved through deterrence — the tedious task of convincing Palestinians and others that the Jewish state will endure and that dreams of elimination must fail." (Emphasis added)
~~~~~~~~~~
Says Pipes, "This process may be seen through a simple prism. Any development that encourages Palestinians to think they can eliminate Israel is negative, any that encourages them to give up that goal is positive.
"The Palestinians' defeat will be recognizable when, over a protracted period and with complete consistency, they prove that they have accepted Israel. This does not mean loving Zion, but it does mean permanently accepting it — overhauling the educational system to take out the demonization of Jews and Israel, telling the truth about Jewish ties to Jerusalem, and accepting normal commercial, cultural, and human relations with Israelis."
~~~~~~~~~~
America has a role to play here, Pipes tells us.
"...Americans face a stark choice: Endorse the Palestinian goal of eliminating Israel or endorse Israel's goal of winning its neighbors' acceptance.
"To state the choice makes clear that there is no choice — the first is barbaric, the second civilized. No decent person can endorse the Palestinians' genocidal goal of eliminating their neighbor...the U.S. government must stand with Israel in its drive to win acceptance.
"Not only is this an obvious moral choice, but Israel's win, ironically, would be the best thing that ever happened to the Palestinians. Compelling them finally to give up on their irredentist dream would liberate them to focus on their own polity, economy, society, and culture. Palestinians need to experience the crucible of defeat to become a normal people — one whose parents stop celebrating their children becoming suicide terrorists, whose obsession with Zionist rejectionism collapses. There is no shortcut.
"This analysis implies a radically different approach for the U.S. government from the current one. On the negative side, it puts Palestinians on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel. Until then — no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons.
"On the positive side, the U. S. administration should work with Israel, the Arab states, and others to induce the Palestinians to accept Israel's existence by convincing them that they have lost. This means impressing on the Israeli government the need not just to defend itself but to take steps to demonstrate to Palestinians the hopelessness of their cause. That requires not episodic shows of force...but a sustained and systematic effort to deflate a bellicose mentality."
http://www.danielpipes.org:80/7653/peace-process-or-war-process
~~~~~~~~~~
The bellicose, non-compromising, nature of the PA is evident once again. This time it's a memo put out by Fatah, which was obtained by the Associated Press. It says:
"All hopes placed in the new US administration and President Obama have evaporated, [as Obama] couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led to a retreat from his previous positions on halting settlement construction and defining an agenda for the negotiations and peace."
Of course, Obama set himself up for this, with the demands he originally made, leading the PA to think he was going to deliver Israel on a silver platter. This runs completely contrary to what Pipes recommends. Palestinian hopes that Israel can be defeated have only been strengthened via Obama's posturing.
Abbas stated, once again, that he would not sit at the negotiating table with Israel until all settlement building had been frozen, including in the occupied territory of Jerusalem.
~~~~~~~~~~
Words matter a great deal and often not enough attention is paid to them. There is, instead, interpretation based on wishful thinking -- or a desire to look the other way.
It had made the news that the US State Department says that any unity government forged by the Palestinians must be based on Quartet principles:
"Commitment to non-violence, recognition of Israel, acceptance of previous agreements and obligations."
I acknowledge readily enough that there is no way that Hamas will even pretend to commit to non-violence. (Fatah pretends.) As to previous agreements, Hamas has spoken about "respecting" them, which is diplomatic word play -- and I don't know if the U.S. would accept that.
But what leaped out at me is "recognition of Israel." There have been Hamas leaders who have said, "Recognize Israel? Of course. It's here. We acknowledge that it's here."
What's missing from this formulation is the need to recognize Israel's RIGHT to exist as a Jewish state. That, my friends, is something else all together.
~~~~~~~~~~
Will there be reconciliation? That depends on the day of the week, and the hour of the day.
Today in Ramallah Fatah signed the Egyptian generated agreement for reconciliation. According to the Palestinian Ma'an News Service, Hamas is in favor but has not said so publicly yet. Egypt is requesting a final answer by tomorrow.
~~~~~~~~~~
The very ugly saga of the Goldstone Report continues...
Today the Security Council will be meeting in special session, at the request of Libya, to debate the issue. Israel has been hard at work in diplomatic circles, communicating to Western nations the need to take a stand here, lest sanction be given to terrorism.
This session is not, however, expected to end with a recommendation that the report be sent to the International Criminal Court. Founded in 2002, the Court prosecutes individuals charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, and the like.
~~~~~~~~~~
Tomorrow, however, the UN Human Rights Council will meet in special session, at the behest of the PA (which has observer status in the UN).
I stop right here for a moment, however, because I accessed the UN announcement about this and found that it says that the request was made by "Palestine." Whoa! There IS no Palestine. And yet, as I've been learning in discussions with a lawyer here, the UN is perilously close to acting as if the PA indeed is a state.
(Should we be surprised, then, that UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon praised Abbas's involvement in pushing this issue forward?)
~~~~~~~~~~
At any rate, the request was co-sponsored by the following members of the Council: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.
Discussions in this forum are expected to last for more than a day, and there is speculation that it may send the report to the General Assembly which might send it to the Security Council (GA actions not being binding), which might yet send it to the International Court of Justice, which is the judicial arm of the UN and adjudicates in issues between states.
It is not clear to me, and I have not yet been able to learn enough about the presumed process (such as it may be) to gain understanding as to why two different courts are being discussed and what would determine in which direction the report might be sent. In his recent statement on the matter, Netanyahu referred to the Criminal Court, when he said it was ludicrous and he would not permit trial of any Israelis within that court.
None of it will do us any good. But I point out that as the Court of Justice adjudicates between states, there is a legal problem, as Gaza is not a state and is controlled by a terror organization. But the UN is not likely to let this stand in its way.
I also mention here the fact that process seems to requires the report to come into the hands of the GA first, but that the real action would be in the SC.
~~~~~~~~~~
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Daniel Pipes has written an article -- "Peace Process or War Process?" -- in the fall issue of Middle East Quarterly that is brilliant in its conceptual understanding of what is going on with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It doesn't matter what Obama does to advance "peace" here, says Pipes, it doesn't matter how his approach differs from that of the two Bushes or Clinton -- he is doomed to failure. For, in spite of the differences in the policies of the aforementioned presidents, there is an essential way in which all of their approaches share a common vision: That the conflict might be solved via goodwill. War would be "finessed" as steps were taken towards peace.
~~~~~~~~~~
This, says Pipes, has been the predominant Israeli attitude since the disaster of Oslo in 1993:
"...the ultimate mistake lay in Yitzhak Rabin's misunderstanding of how war ends, as revealed by his catch-phrase, 'One does not make peace with one's friends. One makes peace with one's enemy.' The Israeli prime minister expected war to be concluded through goodwill, conciliation, mediation, flexibility, restraint, generosity, and compromise, topped off with signatures on official documents. In this spirit, his government and those of his three successors — Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak — initiated an array of concessions, hoping and expecting the Palestinians to reciprocate.
They did not. In fact, Israeli concessions inflamed Palestinian hostility. Palestinians interpreted Israeli efforts to 'make peace' as signals of demoralization and weakness. 'Painful concessions' reduced the Palestinian awe of Israel, made the Jewish state appear vulnerable, and incited irredentist dreams of annihilation. Each Oslo-negotiated gesture by Israel further exhilarated, radicalized, and mobilized the Palestinian body politic to war. The quiet hope of 1993 to eliminate Israel gained traction, becoming a deafening demand by 2000. Venomous speech and violent actions soared. Polls and votes in recent years suggest that a mere 20 percent of Palestinians accept the existence of a Jewish state.
"Rabin's mistake was simple and profound: One cannot 'make peace with one's enemy,' as he imagined. Rather, one makes peace with one's former enemy. Peace nearly always requires one side in a conflict to be defeated and thus give up its goals.
"Wars end not through good will but victory." (Emphasis added)
"...Since 1993, in brief, the Arabs have sought victory while Israelis sought compromise.
"...But who does not win, loses. To survive, Israelis eventually must return to their pre-1993 policy of establishing that Israel is strong, tough, and permanent. That is achieved through deterrence — the tedious task of convincing Palestinians and others that the Jewish state will endure and that dreams of elimination must fail." (Emphasis added)
~~~~~~~~~~
Says Pipes, "This process may be seen through a simple prism. Any development that encourages Palestinians to think they can eliminate Israel is negative, any that encourages them to give up that goal is positive.
"The Palestinians' defeat will be recognizable when, over a protracted period and with complete consistency, they prove that they have accepted Israel. This does not mean loving Zion, but it does mean permanently accepting it — overhauling the educational system to take out the demonization of Jews and Israel, telling the truth about Jewish ties to Jerusalem, and accepting normal commercial, cultural, and human relations with Israelis."
~~~~~~~~~~
America has a role to play here, Pipes tells us.
"...Americans face a stark choice: Endorse the Palestinian goal of eliminating Israel or endorse Israel's goal of winning its neighbors' acceptance.
"To state the choice makes clear that there is no choice — the first is barbaric, the second civilized. No decent person can endorse the Palestinians' genocidal goal of eliminating their neighbor...the U.S. government must stand with Israel in its drive to win acceptance.
"Not only is this an obvious moral choice, but Israel's win, ironically, would be the best thing that ever happened to the Palestinians. Compelling them finally to give up on their irredentist dream would liberate them to focus on their own polity, economy, society, and culture. Palestinians need to experience the crucible of defeat to become a normal people — one whose parents stop celebrating their children becoming suicide terrorists, whose obsession with Zionist rejectionism collapses. There is no shortcut.
"This analysis implies a radically different approach for the U.S. government from the current one. On the negative side, it puts Palestinians on notice that benefits will flow to them only after they prove their acceptance of Israel. Until then — no diplomacy, no discussion of final status, no recognition as a state, and certainly no financial aid or weapons.
"On the positive side, the U. S. administration should work with Israel, the Arab states, and others to induce the Palestinians to accept Israel's existence by convincing them that they have lost. This means impressing on the Israeli government the need not just to defend itself but to take steps to demonstrate to Palestinians the hopelessness of their cause. That requires not episodic shows of force...but a sustained and systematic effort to deflate a bellicose mentality."
http://www.danielpipes.org:80/7653/peace-process-or-war-process
~~~~~~~~~~
The bellicose, non-compromising, nature of the PA is evident once again. This time it's a memo put out by Fatah, which was obtained by the Associated Press. It says:
"All hopes placed in the new US administration and President Obama have evaporated, [as Obama] couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led to a retreat from his previous positions on halting settlement construction and defining an agenda for the negotiations and peace."
Of course, Obama set himself up for this, with the demands he originally made, leading the PA to think he was going to deliver Israel on a silver platter. This runs completely contrary to what Pipes recommends. Palestinian hopes that Israel can be defeated have only been strengthened via Obama's posturing.
Abbas stated, once again, that he would not sit at the negotiating table with Israel until all settlement building had been frozen, including in the occupied territory of Jerusalem.
~~~~~~~~~~
Words matter a great deal and often not enough attention is paid to them. There is, instead, interpretation based on wishful thinking -- or a desire to look the other way.
It had made the news that the US State Department says that any unity government forged by the Palestinians must be based on Quartet principles:
"Commitment to non-violence, recognition of Israel, acceptance of previous agreements and obligations."
I acknowledge readily enough that there is no way that Hamas will even pretend to commit to non-violence. (Fatah pretends.) As to previous agreements, Hamas has spoken about "respecting" them, which is diplomatic word play -- and I don't know if the U.S. would accept that.
But what leaped out at me is "recognition of Israel." There have been Hamas leaders who have said, "Recognize Israel? Of course. It's here. We acknowledge that it's here."
What's missing from this formulation is the need to recognize Israel's RIGHT to exist as a Jewish state. That, my friends, is something else all together.
~~~~~~~~~~
Will there be reconciliation? That depends on the day of the week, and the hour of the day.
Today in Ramallah Fatah signed the Egyptian generated agreement for reconciliation. According to the Palestinian Ma'an News Service, Hamas is in favor but has not said so publicly yet. Egypt is requesting a final answer by tomorrow.
~~~~~~~~~~
The very ugly saga of the Goldstone Report continues...
Today the Security Council will be meeting in special session, at the request of Libya, to debate the issue. Israel has been hard at work in diplomatic circles, communicating to Western nations the need to take a stand here, lest sanction be given to terrorism.
This session is not, however, expected to end with a recommendation that the report be sent to the International Criminal Court. Founded in 2002, the Court prosecutes individuals charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, and the like.
~~~~~~~~~~
Tomorrow, however, the UN Human Rights Council will meet in special session, at the behest of the PA (which has observer status in the UN).
I stop right here for a moment, however, because I accessed the UN announcement about this and found that it says that the request was made by "Palestine." Whoa! There IS no Palestine. And yet, as I've been learning in discussions with a lawyer here, the UN is perilously close to acting as if the PA indeed is a state.
(Should we be surprised, then, that UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon praised Abbas's involvement in pushing this issue forward?)
~~~~~~~~~~
At any rate, the request was co-sponsored by the following members of the Council: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.
Discussions in this forum are expected to last for more than a day, and there is speculation that it may send the report to the General Assembly which might send it to the Security Council (GA actions not being binding), which might yet send it to the International Court of Justice, which is the judicial arm of the UN and adjudicates in issues between states.
It is not clear to me, and I have not yet been able to learn enough about the presumed process (such as it may be) to gain understanding as to why two different courts are being discussed and what would determine in which direction the report might be sent. In his recent statement on the matter, Netanyahu referred to the Criminal Court, when he said it was ludicrous and he would not permit trial of any Israelis within that court.
None of it will do us any good. But I point out that as the Court of Justice adjudicates between states, there is a legal problem, as Gaza is not a state and is controlled by a terror organization. But the UN is not likely to let this stand in its way.
I also mention here the fact that process seems to requires the report to come into the hands of the GA first, but that the real action would be in the SC.
~~~~~~~~~~
see my website www.ArlenefromIsrael.info
Civil Rights Group: Why No Response to Distancing Orders?
Hillel Fendel
A7 News
Three residents of Samaria have been distanced from their homes for six months, with no official justification. Reaction: silence. The three are Akiva HaCohen, 25, Ariel Groner, 24 and Eliav Eliyahu, 19, all residents of the Samaria (Shomron) town of Yitzhar. The last-named was married last year, while the other two each have four children -- Groner has a 10-day old baby son, and HaCohen’s wife is in her ninth month of pregnancy.
Shmuel Medad, head of the Honenu Civil Rights Organization, has condemned the lack of a response even from the pro-Land of Israel sector, and says that the silence in the face of these “unconscionable” orders cannot be justified.
Medad is astonished at the orders: “To throw someone out of his home with no explanation whatsoever? Not to advance any reason or evidence? In the past, such a thing was never done against Jews in the Land of Israel, but only against terrorists. Now, however, this phenomenon is becoming commonplace – and yet everyone stands by silently.”
The orders banning the three residents from all of Judea and Samaria are special “administrative detention” orders that the army can issue to any resident of the region at any time. No evidence or justification for the orders need be provided.
The orders allow three days for an appeal. If the recipient of such an order does not leave his home within one week, he faces imprisonment.
"It's not connected to any olive harvest or the like," said Daniella Weiss, a veteran Land of Israel Faithful Movement leader, denying allegations that the three are suspected of fomenting violence against Arab olive growers. "It has to do with the eviction of outposts and to [Defense Minister E Barak who wants to destroy them."
Medad agrees: “How can you distance Jews for six months because of an olive harvest, when the entire harvest doesn’t take more than three months? It’s clear that it signals they [the authoritie are planning another expulsion or eviction, as they have done in the past.”
“It is very grave that our public barely reacts when three of our members are punished in this way, without evidence and without explanation. We must rise up against this phenomenon. Our silence is a very big weakness on our part, and it is very grave.”
Medad said that Likud MK Ze’ev Elkin, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s subcommittee on Judea and Samaria, has been consulted on the matter, “and he very much wants to help. We will meet with him this afternoon.”
The Honenu organization provides aid for the "indirect victims" of the continued Arab terrorist war and struggle against Israel - those who have become entangled in an expensive and torturous web of legal difficulties after having been forced to respond in real-time to genuine threats on their own or on others' lives, or for standing up for Jewish rights to the Land of Israel.
Encountering Peace: The 'lose-lose' approach to peace
Gershon Baskin , THE JERUSALEM POST
So Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Barack Obama has a debt to make good on. He has stated that his focus will be Middle East peace. At the same time, his special envoy, George Mitchell, has stated that efforts for peace will continue, but at a "ramped-down level." Is it actually possible to ramp down the process? What exactly does that mean? What exactly has been achieved in the last nine months? The Middle East has been likened to a car with only two gears - forward and reverse. There is no status quo and there is no standing in place. If we are not moving forward, we are moving backward. The events of the last few weeks have clearly demonstrated that the forces of those who would like the car to go into reverse are quite powerful. While it seems evident that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians desire or have energy for another round of violence, the slope of the decline is extreme and very slippery.
Events, particularly those surrounding Jerusalem, have their own internal energy that, as we have seen in the past, can easily get out of control. In this region, we should make sure not to let the genie out of the bottle - and Jerusalem is the ultimate genie. Both the Israeli and Palestinian governments should be extremely cautious in their handling of Jerusalem. The second intifada was launched because of a misinterpretation of the direction of Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount close to a decade ago. Sharon's target was then-prime minister Ehud Barak, not the Palestinians.
THE PALESTINIANS today do not understand that Israel is not planning to destroy al-Aksa Mosque or to take over the Temple Mount, despite the desire to do so by some right-wing and religious fanatics.
Because of the sensitivity of the situation in Jerusalem, Israel should unilaterally freeze its excavations in the area of the mosques for a limited time. The Israel Antiquities Authority should invite Palestinian experts, religious leaders and PA officials to see the excavations area firsthand. Israel should also invite PA President Mahmoud Abbas to Jerusalem, to pray in al-Aksa Mosque, to see the Western Wall and the excavations around the mount.
Abbas should then declare his recognition of the fact that the Temple Mount was the location of the Holy Temple (which is even mentioned in the Koran). Abbas need not worry that his recognition would grant Israel and the Jewish people the green light to rebuild the Temple in place of the mosques. There is no such intention, there are no such plans and the Chief Rabbinate has once again stated that Jews should not go onto the Temple Mount as a matter of Halacha.
According to Jewish law, the Temple will be rebuilt only when the messiah comes, so Abbas should be able to rest assured that until the messiah arrives, the Temple Mount will remain under Muslim control - and when the messiah finally does show up, he will be wise enough to deal with the future of the mount.
The Palestinians should understand that when Yasser Arafat foolishly denied the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, he did great damage to the peace process. Recognizing this fact would facilitate greater understanding.
Assuming that we will not fall into the abyss of another round of violence, Obama's efforts to renew negotiations will continue. Officials will continue to seek the formula for getting back to the negotiating table.
What is the point of all this? We have all been there and done it before.
The American President might be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize just because of his patience with the scrabbling locals. Israeli-Palestinian peace is an Israeli and a Palestinian interest, first and foremost. The parameters of peace are quite well known. Most Israelis and Palestinians would be willing to accept those parameters on the condition that, unlike in the past, when the formula was based on "land for peace,"the more realistic demand now be "land for long-term security assurances" that must be backed by the international community - and security for all.
MY FRIEND and former Mossad agent, and later senior adviser to then-prime minister Ehud Barak, Pini Median, has devised a new slogan that I think may be quite correct. Let's talk about a "lose-lose" arrangement with the Palestinians, not the "win-win" strategy advanced by Shimon Peres and others. Both sides must feel the pain of the settlement. Both sides must know that the other side accepts the deal reluctantly. In accordance with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's own words (and what could be described as a national ethos) we will not be anyone's frier (sucker). If Israelis thought the Palestinians were getting a good deal, they would automatically think Israel was getting the short end of the stick. And vice versa.
No peace arrangement will be acceptable if one side perceives that the other is coming out the winner. In order to save the honor of both sides, they must both feel the pressure, and they must both be persuaded to accept a deal they both perceive as being lose-lose.
The "win-win" psychology of peacemaking might be appropriate in Europe. We in the Middle East, it seems, will only be really satisfied when we can feel that the other side was forced to accept less than what it demanded.
Netanyahu and Abbas are incapable of reaching this kind of agreement, and perhaps any agreement. Obama and the Quartet must now cease the efforts to bring the sides to the table. They should, instead, spend the next six months drafting the plan and the means for providing long-term security assurances for the State of Israel and for the State of Palestine.
The plan should be as detailed as possible, including all of the main permanent-status issues. Once it is complete and the Quartet has received the international community's commitment for the plan's implementation, including the deployment of troops to the West Bank and Gaza and an international presence in Jerusalem's Old City, the Quartet should only then bring the parties to the table.
The means for implementation will have to be in agreement with the international community, and the issues on the table must not be how to start negotiations, but how to finalize the agreement that reflects the will and the consensus of the international community.
Both sides will recognize that the parameters presented to them reflect the best deal possible.
Both sides will have to make significant concessions on substantive issues.
Both sides will be able to accept, because they'll understand that the other side lost more than they did.
The writer is the co-CEO of IPCRI - Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (www.ipcri.org).
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1255204781432&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
So Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Barack Obama has a debt to make good on. He has stated that his focus will be Middle East peace. At the same time, his special envoy, George Mitchell, has stated that efforts for peace will continue, but at a "ramped-down level." Is it actually possible to ramp down the process? What exactly does that mean? What exactly has been achieved in the last nine months? The Middle East has been likened to a car with only two gears - forward and reverse. There is no status quo and there is no standing in place. If we are not moving forward, we are moving backward. The events of the last few weeks have clearly demonstrated that the forces of those who would like the car to go into reverse are quite powerful. While it seems evident that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians desire or have energy for another round of violence, the slope of the decline is extreme and very slippery.
Events, particularly those surrounding Jerusalem, have their own internal energy that, as we have seen in the past, can easily get out of control. In this region, we should make sure not to let the genie out of the bottle - and Jerusalem is the ultimate genie. Both the Israeli and Palestinian governments should be extremely cautious in their handling of Jerusalem. The second intifada was launched because of a misinterpretation of the direction of Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount close to a decade ago. Sharon's target was then-prime minister Ehud Barak, not the Palestinians.
THE PALESTINIANS today do not understand that Israel is not planning to destroy al-Aksa Mosque or to take over the Temple Mount, despite the desire to do so by some right-wing and religious fanatics.
Because of the sensitivity of the situation in Jerusalem, Israel should unilaterally freeze its excavations in the area of the mosques for a limited time. The Israel Antiquities Authority should invite Palestinian experts, religious leaders and PA officials to see the excavations area firsthand. Israel should also invite PA President Mahmoud Abbas to Jerusalem, to pray in al-Aksa Mosque, to see the Western Wall and the excavations around the mount.
Abbas should then declare his recognition of the fact that the Temple Mount was the location of the Holy Temple (which is even mentioned in the Koran). Abbas need not worry that his recognition would grant Israel and the Jewish people the green light to rebuild the Temple in place of the mosques. There is no such intention, there are no such plans and the Chief Rabbinate has once again stated that Jews should not go onto the Temple Mount as a matter of Halacha.
According to Jewish law, the Temple will be rebuilt only when the messiah comes, so Abbas should be able to rest assured that until the messiah arrives, the Temple Mount will remain under Muslim control - and when the messiah finally does show up, he will be wise enough to deal with the future of the mount.
The Palestinians should understand that when Yasser Arafat foolishly denied the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Holy Temple, he did great damage to the peace process. Recognizing this fact would facilitate greater understanding.
Assuming that we will not fall into the abyss of another round of violence, Obama's efforts to renew negotiations will continue. Officials will continue to seek the formula for getting back to the negotiating table.
What is the point of all this? We have all been there and done it before.
The American President might be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize just because of his patience with the scrabbling locals. Israeli-Palestinian peace is an Israeli and a Palestinian interest, first and foremost. The parameters of peace are quite well known. Most Israelis and Palestinians would be willing to accept those parameters on the condition that, unlike in the past, when the formula was based on "land for peace,"the more realistic demand now be "land for long-term security assurances" that must be backed by the international community - and security for all.
MY FRIEND and former Mossad agent, and later senior adviser to then-prime minister Ehud Barak, Pini Median, has devised a new slogan that I think may be quite correct. Let's talk about a "lose-lose" arrangement with the Palestinians, not the "win-win" strategy advanced by Shimon Peres and others. Both sides must feel the pain of the settlement. Both sides must know that the other side accepts the deal reluctantly. In accordance with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's own words (and what could be described as a national ethos) we will not be anyone's frier (sucker). If Israelis thought the Palestinians were getting a good deal, they would automatically think Israel was getting the short end of the stick. And vice versa.
No peace arrangement will be acceptable if one side perceives that the other is coming out the winner. In order to save the honor of both sides, they must both feel the pressure, and they must both be persuaded to accept a deal they both perceive as being lose-lose.
The "win-win" psychology of peacemaking might be appropriate in Europe. We in the Middle East, it seems, will only be really satisfied when we can feel that the other side was forced to accept less than what it demanded.
Netanyahu and Abbas are incapable of reaching this kind of agreement, and perhaps any agreement. Obama and the Quartet must now cease the efforts to bring the sides to the table. They should, instead, spend the next six months drafting the plan and the means for providing long-term security assurances for the State of Israel and for the State of Palestine.
The plan should be as detailed as possible, including all of the main permanent-status issues. Once it is complete and the Quartet has received the international community's commitment for the plan's implementation, including the deployment of troops to the West Bank and Gaza and an international presence in Jerusalem's Old City, the Quartet should only then bring the parties to the table.
The means for implementation will have to be in agreement with the international community, and the issues on the table must not be how to start negotiations, but how to finalize the agreement that reflects the will and the consensus of the international community.
Both sides will recognize that the parameters presented to them reflect the best deal possible.
Both sides will have to make significant concessions on substantive issues.
Both sides will be able to accept, because they'll understand that the other side lost more than they did.
The writer is the co-CEO of IPCRI - Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information (www.ipcri.org).
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1255204781432&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Middle East: Things Look Catastrophic but It Will Work Out, Why I'm Optimistic
RubinReports
Barry Rubin
Every day dreadful things happen in the Middle East and in the echoes of that region—diplomacy, news coverage—in the West. Yet things are by no means as bad as they seem. Precisely because a lot of what happens simply doesn’t reflect reality, ultimately the material effect is minimized. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," warned Edmund Burke. But even when those who should be the defenders of liberty spend their time coddling and apologizing to evil, that still doesn’t mean it’s home free.
Let’s examine two aspects of the situation: Israel-Palestinian (and Arab-Israeli) along with the effort of Islamists to seize power in Muslim majority countries. By the way, it is the second—not the first—of those two topics is by far the most important in the Middle East, arguably the most important issue for our entire era. Then we'll say a few words about President Barack Obama's learning opportunity.
Israel-Palestinian
Despite all the sound and fury—note this well—absolutely nothing has changed on this issue since the end of the Gaza war in January. The Palestinian side is intransigent and has no interest in serious negotiations, therefore these go nowhere. Hamas has been intimidated into virtually stopping its attacks on Israel. (Note to Western leaders: force still works at achieving reasonable goals.) Israel’s morale and national unity is relatively high; the economy continues to do well, especially in light of the international recession.
A potential crisis in U.S.-Israel relations has been brilliantly defused by the Israeli government. The Obama Administration has still not taken—despite a lot of questionable verbiage—any material step against Israel. The West wants to pretend it is negotiating peace but won’t devote much real effort to doing so.
Therefore, all this talk of freezing construction, final status negotiations, Western pressure, Palestinian threats, and so on has amounted to absolutely nothing in practice.
What is the long-term prospect? On one hand, there will be decades more—an entire generation at least—without formal peace. Yet that doesn’t mean war either but rather a status quo punctuated by sporadic low- to medium-level violence. The biggest danger, a Hamas takeover of the West Bank, has been pushed back. Israel’s defensive capacity grows steadily stronger. Life will go on.
Again, please note that there is possibly no issue in the world which generates as much media coverage, academic publication and debate, peace plans and conferences, and Western officials’ speeches as the Israel-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflict. And yet nothing really changes. Keep that in mind every day.
Islamists Seizing Power
Islamist governments now rule in Iran, the Gaza Strip, and to some extent in Sudan. In every other country (including Israel) of the region (including Central Asia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), radical Islamists pose the main real opposition to the status quo. They make propaganda, sometimes run in election, and carry out violence. With every ounce of energy and a great deal of innovation, they are trying to seize state power.
Will they succeed and if so where? Are they really the wave of the future?
While the Islamists have a lot going for them, they also face many problems. First, don’t underestimate the incumbent regimes. Arab nationalism still appeals to a majority of Arabic-speakers. The rulers have lots of resources at their command, including money and repressive power. The Islamists are not poised to take power in any country, while basically they have not—despite the spilling of so much blood--taken over any state since the Iranian revolution 30 years ago.
The Islamists are often divided. While they have definitely picked up ground, they are still saying and doing many things which most Muslims deem to contradict their normative, traditional Islam.
And the Islamists also make a lot of mistakes.
Within their own countries, confessional differences among Muslims often matter a great deal. In Lebanon, for example, Shia Islamists led by Hizballah have unnecessarily antagonized Sunni Muslims, while in Iraq the revolutionary Sunni Islamists are rejected by the majority Shia Muslim Arabs and ethnic Kurds. In North Africa, the large ethnic Berber minority opposes Islamism.
At home and internationally, the intransigence of radical regimes (Iran, Syria, and Hamas) and movements alienates potential allies. By making such huge demands and refusing to make small concessions to make big gains they throw away opportunities and virtually force the West to confront them despite the preference of many Western leaders for appeasement. Similarly, the constant aggression and insults pushes Western public opinion to reject concessions or surrenders.
Nor can the Middle Eastern dictatorships, whether Islamist or nationalist, defeat the West or Israel. Their treatment of women (there are variations) as second-class citizens deprives them of half their potential talent. They lose out on the advantages which democracy brings to development. The centralization used to preserve the dictators’ power inhibits prosperity. In the longer-term, the oil-producing countries will run out of petroleum and the rest of the world might even develop alternative and more efficient energy use.
“Commerce,” wrote Winston Churchill of the Sudan in 1898, doubting that country would ever be a success, “is a plant of slow growth even in the most generous soils. And it never grows more slowly than when the unwise husbandman has tried to fertilize with corpses.”
Then, too, there is the endless bickering and conflicts that sap their strength. Where Westerners see such unified categories as “Arab” or “Muslim” there are really many different communities, sects, ideologies, and factions competing for power. These include such deep-seated conflicts as Persian versus Arab, Sunni versus Shia, and the rival ambitions of the various dictators and states.
U.S. Policy
Something very big--but totally predictable--is starting to happen: the Palestinians and no doubt soon a lot of the Arab world is turning against Obama. He will find shortly that unless he gives everything and asks nothing they will soon be calling him another Bush.
Their grievances are: He hasn't (or hasn't gone far enough) in dumping Israel; he didn't threaten or punish Israel for not doing a complete freeze of construction on settlements, he forced Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to appear with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN photo opportunity he set up, he pressed the Palestinian Authority not to take the lead on pushing Goldstone.
The fact that Obama is perceived as weak doesn't help him any.
Cairo speech, UN speech, distancing from Israel, engaging radicals? All these things will get him nowhere. Help him on Iran? Well they weren't going to do that any way. The hostility is partly due, of course, to the interests of the Arab rulers, partly to the radicalism of the opinionmakers there; partly to the Islamists who always outbid their incumbent rivals and need anti-Americanism as one of their main tools to stir passions.
This is how the Middle East works. It is totally predictable. But in most of the mass media, academia, and in Western governments (especially the Obama Administration) they have absolutely no idea. They basically accept the concept that if you are nice enough, give enough, and bash Israel enough, the Arabic-speaking political forces--and maybe even Iran--will love you and be nice to you, or at least leave you alone.
When this proves wrong, as it does periodically (1990-1991, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; 2000, failure of Camp David followed by September 11) there is a period of comprehension when policies get better. Might this be a stage coming next year?
All the silly articles in Western newspapers, wrong-headed speeches by Western leaders, threats of mass murder by Islamist clerics, and all the other things that could be added to this list changes the material realities of the Middle East. Or, to use a supposed Arab saying, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Barry Rubin
Every day dreadful things happen in the Middle East and in the echoes of that region—diplomacy, news coverage—in the West. Yet things are by no means as bad as they seem. Precisely because a lot of what happens simply doesn’t reflect reality, ultimately the material effect is minimized. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," warned Edmund Burke. But even when those who should be the defenders of liberty spend their time coddling and apologizing to evil, that still doesn’t mean it’s home free.
Let’s examine two aspects of the situation: Israel-Palestinian (and Arab-Israeli) along with the effort of Islamists to seize power in Muslim majority countries. By the way, it is the second—not the first—of those two topics is by far the most important in the Middle East, arguably the most important issue for our entire era. Then we'll say a few words about President Barack Obama's learning opportunity.
Israel-Palestinian
Despite all the sound and fury—note this well—absolutely nothing has changed on this issue since the end of the Gaza war in January. The Palestinian side is intransigent and has no interest in serious negotiations, therefore these go nowhere. Hamas has been intimidated into virtually stopping its attacks on Israel. (Note to Western leaders: force still works at achieving reasonable goals.) Israel’s morale and national unity is relatively high; the economy continues to do well, especially in light of the international recession.
A potential crisis in U.S.-Israel relations has been brilliantly defused by the Israeli government. The Obama Administration has still not taken—despite a lot of questionable verbiage—any material step against Israel. The West wants to pretend it is negotiating peace but won’t devote much real effort to doing so.
Therefore, all this talk of freezing construction, final status negotiations, Western pressure, Palestinian threats, and so on has amounted to absolutely nothing in practice.
What is the long-term prospect? On one hand, there will be decades more—an entire generation at least—without formal peace. Yet that doesn’t mean war either but rather a status quo punctuated by sporadic low- to medium-level violence. The biggest danger, a Hamas takeover of the West Bank, has been pushed back. Israel’s defensive capacity grows steadily stronger. Life will go on.
Again, please note that there is possibly no issue in the world which generates as much media coverage, academic publication and debate, peace plans and conferences, and Western officials’ speeches as the Israel-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflict. And yet nothing really changes. Keep that in mind every day.
Islamists Seizing Power
Islamist governments now rule in Iran, the Gaza Strip, and to some extent in Sudan. In every other country (including Israel) of the region (including Central Asia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan), radical Islamists pose the main real opposition to the status quo. They make propaganda, sometimes run in election, and carry out violence. With every ounce of energy and a great deal of innovation, they are trying to seize state power.
Will they succeed and if so where? Are they really the wave of the future?
While the Islamists have a lot going for them, they also face many problems. First, don’t underestimate the incumbent regimes. Arab nationalism still appeals to a majority of Arabic-speakers. The rulers have lots of resources at their command, including money and repressive power. The Islamists are not poised to take power in any country, while basically they have not—despite the spilling of so much blood--taken over any state since the Iranian revolution 30 years ago.
The Islamists are often divided. While they have definitely picked up ground, they are still saying and doing many things which most Muslims deem to contradict their normative, traditional Islam.
And the Islamists also make a lot of mistakes.
Within their own countries, confessional differences among Muslims often matter a great deal. In Lebanon, for example, Shia Islamists led by Hizballah have unnecessarily antagonized Sunni Muslims, while in Iraq the revolutionary Sunni Islamists are rejected by the majority Shia Muslim Arabs and ethnic Kurds. In North Africa, the large ethnic Berber minority opposes Islamism.
At home and internationally, the intransigence of radical regimes (Iran, Syria, and Hamas) and movements alienates potential allies. By making such huge demands and refusing to make small concessions to make big gains they throw away opportunities and virtually force the West to confront them despite the preference of many Western leaders for appeasement. Similarly, the constant aggression and insults pushes Western public opinion to reject concessions or surrenders.
Nor can the Middle Eastern dictatorships, whether Islamist or nationalist, defeat the West or Israel. Their treatment of women (there are variations) as second-class citizens deprives them of half their potential talent. They lose out on the advantages which democracy brings to development. The centralization used to preserve the dictators’ power inhibits prosperity. In the longer-term, the oil-producing countries will run out of petroleum and the rest of the world might even develop alternative and more efficient energy use.
“Commerce,” wrote Winston Churchill of the Sudan in 1898, doubting that country would ever be a success, “is a plant of slow growth even in the most generous soils. And it never grows more slowly than when the unwise husbandman has tried to fertilize with corpses.”
Then, too, there is the endless bickering and conflicts that sap their strength. Where Westerners see such unified categories as “Arab” or “Muslim” there are really many different communities, sects, ideologies, and factions competing for power. These include such deep-seated conflicts as Persian versus Arab, Sunni versus Shia, and the rival ambitions of the various dictators and states.
U.S. Policy
Something very big--but totally predictable--is starting to happen: the Palestinians and no doubt soon a lot of the Arab world is turning against Obama. He will find shortly that unless he gives everything and asks nothing they will soon be calling him another Bush.
Their grievances are: He hasn't (or hasn't gone far enough) in dumping Israel; he didn't threaten or punish Israel for not doing a complete freeze of construction on settlements, he forced Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to appear with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN photo opportunity he set up, he pressed the Palestinian Authority not to take the lead on pushing Goldstone.
The fact that Obama is perceived as weak doesn't help him any.
Cairo speech, UN speech, distancing from Israel, engaging radicals? All these things will get him nowhere. Help him on Iran? Well they weren't going to do that any way. The hostility is partly due, of course, to the interests of the Arab rulers, partly to the radicalism of the opinionmakers there; partly to the Islamists who always outbid their incumbent rivals and need anti-Americanism as one of their main tools to stir passions.
This is how the Middle East works. It is totally predictable. But in most of the mass media, academia, and in Western governments (especially the Obama Administration) they have absolutely no idea. They basically accept the concept that if you are nice enough, give enough, and bash Israel enough, the Arabic-speaking political forces--and maybe even Iran--will love you and be nice to you, or at least leave you alone.
When this proves wrong, as it does periodically (1990-1991, Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; 2000, failure of Camp David followed by September 11) there is a period of comprehension when policies get better. Might this be a stage coming next year?
All the silly articles in Western newspapers, wrong-headed speeches by Western leaders, threats of mass murder by Islamist clerics, and all the other things that could be added to this list changes the material realities of the Middle East. Or, to use a supposed Arab saying, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Ship of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors
Mac Fuller
The following thumbnails describe a very small sampling of the locust horde of Leftist bureaucrats President Barack Hussein Obama has deliberately chosen to help him grasp the helm of America's ship of state, strip it from the American people, and steer it hard to port.
The Obama Administration is plainly subverting democracy in America, wildly careening our previous 230-year history of democracy so dangerously Leftward that after a mere nine months we are in terrible danger of sinking. In these thumbnails, three dominant themes of the Obama Administration emerge - fanatically uncompromising anti-capitalism, dangerous and blatant anti-Semitism, and the societal inculcation of dogmatic Leftist, Socialist "faith" through indoctrination of American school children beginning with the earliest ages - a practice instituted by Lenin in Communist Russia and now pounding its way into the American academic mainstream through the prolific efforts and influence of self-proclaimed Communist, Obama friend, and likely "autobiography" ghost writer, William Ayers, as well as Obama appointees like Charles Freeman and Kevin Jennings.
Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.
____________________________________________________________
A sampling of President Barack Hussein Obama's morally bankrupt White House "Brain Trust"
1. Valerie Jarrett
2. Patrick Gaspard
3. Eric Holder
4. Cecelia Muñoz
5. Samantha Power(s)
6. Charles Freeman
7. Scott Gration
8. Rahm Emmanuel
9. Ezekiel Emmanuel
10. Cass Sunstein
11. Van Jones
12. Carol Browner
13. John Holdren
14. Kevin Jennings
15. Chai Feldblum
16. William Ayers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Valerie Jarrett -- Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. Ms. Jarrett, a product of two decades in rough-and-tumble "Chicago way" politics, and a 17-year friend of the Obama's, is described as "the other side of Barack Obama's brain." Born in Iran, Jarrett, who speaks Persian, moved to the United States as a child. A product of an elite, private, New England boarding school, she is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.
Jarrett served in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (who, prior to his election, failed to file income tax returns for 19 years and during it maintained dubious Socialist ties) as well as in the scandal-ridden, current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Her step-father, Vernon Jarrett was associated with Frank Marshall Davis, the youthful Barack Obama's mentor from age 10 until college - a Chicago Communist Party (USA) member who moved to Hawaii from Chicago. Frank Marshal Davis is now immortalized in President Barack Hussein Obama's "autobiography" as "Uncle Frank" -- conveniently with no mention of his last name nor who he was.
According to the Washington Post, Ms. Jarrett was for many years both Michelle and Barack Obama's "tutor." Virtually every mainstream media outlet has not only done an over-the-top puff piece on Valerie Jarrett (as they repeatedly have with Mr. Obama and his wife), but all agree that neither the President not Mrs. Obama makes a move without first consulting Ms. Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett was personally responsible for bringing self-described Communist Van Jones into the White House as President Obama's environmental "Green Czar." [1]
2. Patrick Gaspard -- White House Political Director (this is the position Karl Rove held in the Bush Administration). Prior to coming on board as President Obama's right-hand man, Mr. Gaspard was a registered federal lobbyist for the SEIU - the union members (thugs?) called-in by the Administration to run interference (sometimes violent) between Democrat members of Congress who support ObamaCare and their own constituents. Prior to that, Gaspard worked for ACORN - the community organizing front which Barack Obama worked for as a trainer, represented as a lawyer, helped as a politician, and funneled money to as a presidential candidate.
The President Obama is as much a product of ACORN as it is of him. He worked closely with the "community organizing" group for many years, represented them in court, and was a member of the board of Chicago's Woods Fund at the time it funneled $200,000 to an ACORN affiliate. Mr. Obama praised the organization extravagantly both during and after his election, and his campaign "donated" over $800,000 to an offshoot group controlled by ACORN (Citizens Services, Inc.) - to "get out the vote."
Gaspard worked directly for now-ACORN chief Bertha Lewis as her political director for the main ACORN office which is located in New York. ACORN is mired in long-standing as well as new and growing allegations of fraud, voter-registration fraud, corruption, and massive embezzlement of funds - ACORN operative organizations have received tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.
ACORN pledged $35,000,000 for voter registration drives in the 2008 election cycle.
In 2004, Patrick Gaspard served as National Field Director for America Coming Together (ACT), a group which was later fined $775,000 in civil penalties by the federal government. ACT hired felons - some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary - to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in Missouri and at least two other swing states, and also employed felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio. [2]
3. Eric Holder -- Attorney General of the United States. A handpicked Obama/Jarrett selection, who earlier this year referred to the United States as "a nation of cowards" on race relations, Mr. Holder is a shiningly despicable example of everything wrong when politics and personal ambition dictate the parameters of American justice.
Prior to grasping the brass ring of the department where he'd toiled during the Clinton Administration, Mr. Holder was responsible for these widely-reported miscarriages of justice: (1) He streamlined the Clinton Administration's pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich by steering Rich's representatives to a former White House counsel, then helped lobby the President to pardon Rich ("an unrepentant fugitive wanted on extensive fraud, racketeering, and trading-with-the-enemy charges"). Holder did so for personal gain, later admitting he hoped this would help him become Attorney General in a Gore administration. Mr. Holder concealed the pardon negotiations from other prosecuting and investigative agencies to prevent their opposition. Mr. Rich's wife was a generous donor to both President Clinton's library as well as his legal-defense fund.
(2) "In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons - of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse - were issued in the months after al-Qaeda's 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.... The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife's impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York's substantial Puerto Rican vote."
(3) Holder was also instrumental in the "stealth pardons" of two Weather Underground terrorists, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans (both closely associated with President Obama's terrorist friends, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn). Rosenberg and Evans had been serving decades-long sentences for bombings targeting American government facilities. Again Holder helped circumvent the pardon process and evade objections from prosecutors regarding the terrorists' jail terms.
Just this summer, now-Attorney General Holder dismissed prosecution of an obvious case (it was filmed) of voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panthers, while also instigating prosecutorial investigations into CIA interrogation techniques of terrorist combatants. Attorney General Holder is a strong advocate for the release of the Islamofascist enemy combatants currently held at Guantanamo Bay. [3]
4. Cecelia Muñoz -- White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Prior to being summoned to the White House by President Obama, Ms. Muñoz was Senior Vice President of The National Council of La Raza. La Raza (literally, "The Race") is the largest Hispanic lobbying organization in America, and is committed not merely to a socialist agenda, but, essentially, the return of California, if not larger portions of the American West, to Hispanics. It lobbies heavily for completely open borders with Mexico, as well as amnesty for all illegal aliens. In order to carry out this agenda, the U.S. federal government awarded over $15.2 million in grants to the organization in 2005 alone.
La Raza is intimately involved with the "the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West." Aztlan's goal is the formation of a Chicano state. The closing two sentences of Atzlan's motto are: La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada": "For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing." Which ought to be as chilling as the idea of the U.S. government funding these people.
President Obama's recent appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has also long been deeply involved with La Raza - a fact which all Democrat Senators ignored during her confirmation hearing.
5. Samantha Power -- Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council. Ms. Power, a professor of public policy at Harvard [who is married to President Obama's Leftist fringe academic Cass Sunstein, the Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs] was only seemingly thrown under the Obama campaign bus for referring to Hillary Clinton as "a monster" during the 2008 Democrat primary. In 2009 President Obama, tapped her to occupy her senior White House foreign policy position.
Ms. Power, a "fierce critic of Israel,... was indisputably Barack Obama's closest foreign policy adviser during the campaign. They go back years." Ms. Power is a notorious acolyte of appeasement-challenged, Neville-Chamberlain-clone Zbigniew Brzezinski (former President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser) who recently stated that the U.S. should shoot down any Israeli planes which, out of self-preservation, might fly through Iraqi air space to destroy Iran's developing nuclear facilities. Ms. Power agrees with the Charles-Freeman-published Walt-Mearsheimer-essay school of thought that America is run and being destroyed by a cabal of Jews. Power promotes the policies of disgraced anti-Semitic, Israeliphobic, pro-PLO, pro-Syria, Obama adviser Robert Malley who advocated not merely talking with Hamas, but funding the terrorist organization because he feels their policies and governance mirror that of Israel. The Obama Administration cut visible ties with Malley shortly after the election.
Power, who stridently criticized the invasion and "occupation" of Iraq, repeatedly calling for the removal of American forces from that nation, curiously advocates that America send armed military forces, "a mammoth protection force" and an "external intervention", to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. While giving the PLO, Fatah, Hamas and other obviously terrorist Arab state organizations a pass, Ms. Power views Israel, the only democratic and non-totalitarian, nation in the Middle East, as guilty of war crimes. She favors slashing, if not eliminating, United States aid to Israel - which is surrounded by several hundred million Muslims who daily pray for its total annihilation - and, apparently, giving the money to the Palestinians instead.
Ms. Power, and virtually all of her truth-through-force ilk ignore the fact that on the day Israel gained independence it was immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab neighbors who erroneously believed they could destroy the nascent country in a matter of hours. "Palestinians" (there is no such country, nor has there been since Biblical times) who now form the "Palestinian problem" were not forced to leave Israel but instead chose to do so because Israel became a Jewish state. Hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Arabs remained and now form a large core group of Israeli citizenry. The approximately 750,000 "Palestinians" who left, now number approximately 4,000,000. They constitute a "problem" because of all the Arab countries only Jordan has allowed them to become a part of its society. The other Arab countries bordering Israel keep the "Palestinians" in enormous desert internment camps. And they have done so to their Arab brethren for 60 years. Ms. Power and her comrades exquisitely fail to note that Jews were forced to leave Arab countries and relocate to the newly-formed Israeli state.
Like her pro-Arab "realist" co-religionists Charles Freeman, Robert Malley, Zbigniew Brzezinsk, billionaire George Soros (an influential Obama supporter), and others of their stripe, Powers opposes the "Israel lobby." She, as they, adamantly rejects the participation of American supporters of Israel, including Christians, in foreign policy discussions of the Middle East.
For all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's public visibility, it may not be much of a conjecture that her job has been outsourced to the alpha female who once referred to Mrs. Clinton as a "monster." [5]
6. Charles Freeman -- Nominated, but not confirmed, as Chairman of the (United States) National Intelligence Council - which is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates for the president and his advisors. Mr. Freeman has a distinguished résumé of long service in both the State and Defense Departments, however, his "distinctive political views and affiliations" include: troubling financial ties to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia who funds the Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council) which Mr. Freeman heads; organizational support for professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's lengthy, controversial, and essentially anti-Jewish essay, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"; his stated viewpoint that "the primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation"; praise for the terrorist organization, Hamas, as the only "democratically-elected" government in the Middle East; and, bizarrely, unabashedly siding with the Chinese government over the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 - Mr. Freeman criticized the Chinese government for being "overly cautious."
Once Leftist liberal, New York Senator Chuck Schumer spoke against Freeman's nomination, the gentleman withdrew - but not without "blaming his own disgrace on a Jewish conspiracy."
During his Congressional investigation, Mr. Freeman was charged with "[p]romoting public schools textbooks which the independent Textbook League describe ‘a vehicle for disseminating disinformation, including a multitude of false, distorted or utterly absurd claims that are presented as historical facts. ...[with] three principal purposes: inducing teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs; inducing teachers to embrace political views that are favored by the...Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council)...; and impelling teachers to disseminate those religious beliefs and political views in schools." [6]
7. Scott Gration -- President Obama's Special Envoy to the Sudan. His diplomatic policy is, quite literally the following:
"We've got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration who was appointed in March, "Kids, countries -- they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement."
As even that bastion of liberal blather the Washington Post noted, "U.S. diplomacy has remained mostly in the hands of Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, who is pushing toward normalized relations with the only country in the world led by a president indicted on war-crimes charges."
While President Obama's handpicked "Special Envoy" was tempting genocidal Muslim radicals with "cookies" and "gold stars," marauding bands of guerrillas in the Sudan crucified seven Christians. [7]
8. Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel -- White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Emanuel is the notorious hardball political player from Chicago's North Side which he represented in Congress prior to his current incarnation as President Obama's political henchman and myrmidon. The ironically named Mr. Emanuel ("God with us") is "relentlessly partisan," thereby quite succinctly putting the lie to Mr. Obama's campaign claim to "post-partisanship."
Nicknamed "Rhambo," President Obama's Chief of Staff - the highest ranking office of the Executive Branch of the President of the United States - is well-know for the following accomplishments:
(1) a casual conversation style addictively laced with the most outrageous profanities and gutter language at any and all times;
(2) sending a 2½ foot-long dead and decomposing fish to lobbyist Allen Secrest with whom he was angry;
(3) threatening then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair just prior to a joint appearance with then-President Bill Clinton: "This is important. Don't f--- it up.";
(4) at dinner the night after Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, "Rhambo" ranted about a long list of people who were the subject of his ire. As he shouted each "enemy's" name, Mr. Emanuel punctuated his rage by forcefully stabbing the dinner table and screaming, "Dead!"
Outside of murdering a Congressional page, it is relatively difficult to improve upon these glowing characteristics of mental stability and leadership. [8]
Rahm Emanuel is Ezekiel Emanuel, "Dr. Death's," brother.
9. Ezekiel Emanuel -- President Obama's Special Advisor for Health Policy to the Office of Management and Budget. Nicknamed in the press "Dr. Death" after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey pointed out Dr. Emanuel's "healthcare" role assisting the White House in the preparation and administration of federal budget recommendations for guiding healthcare and healthcare initiatives, Dr. Emanuel (again, application of the absurdly ironic name, "God with us") is a "bioethicist." He is also hailed as President Obama's "Rationer-in-Chief." Generally, Emanuel's idea of healthcare rationing is to greatly restrict many treatments, medicines, and procedures to anyone over 40 and more particularly to anyone over 65. Dr. Emanuel feels similarly about the newly born until they have attained several years of age at which time he begins to view them in Malthusian terms of potential communitarian utility.
As Lt. Governor McCaughey noted, "In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs." This is the man who was personally tapped to guide ObamaCare health initiatives - not only by President Obama and his Chief of Staff... but also by "the other side of Barack's brain," Valerie Jarrett.
Mr. Emanuel is yet another in a tedious yet frighteningly long line of unqueried, unquestioned, and unvetted Obama advisors and "czars" about whom nothing can be known until pulled from beneath labyrinths of liberal camouflage by interested citizens, conservative Internet bloggers, and the staffs of conservative talk shows. Mainstream media long ago forfeited its credibility as well as its societal role as the fourth estate.
Dr. Emanuel is a member of the President's Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (curiously enough authorized under the dazzling rushed-through and unread by a single Congressman, American Recovery and Investment Act... "the Stimulus Bill") which, if allowed, will make decisions about the validity, "relative strengths and weakness of various medical interventions" as well as give clinicians...information to make decisions that will improve the performance of the U.S. health care system. Not improve medical care much less your medical care, but the "system." It's called "rationing," and it will very likely result in unnecessary and preventable early deaths. On a very large scale.
One final point. Due to the ambiguity of the relevant language in the Stimulus Bill as well as in the various ObamaCare "reform" proposals, there will not only be great latitude for interpretation of various laws' meaning, but these interpretations will require being instituted, oversight, and, of course, regulation. The necessity of regulation allows President Obama's Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein carte blanche to regulate whatever he likes.
Mr. Emanuel is the brother of White House Chief of Staff, and former North Side Chicago Congressman (5th District of Illinois) Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel. [9]
10. Cass Sunstein -- Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs. He is a Harvard Law School professor and newly-minted husband of President Obama's Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council, the Israel-phobic Samantha Power (one of several husband-wife teams in the Obama White House). Mr. Sunstein's belief structure could understandably be called "Leftist kook" or "fringe" if not downright lunatic. Herewith:
In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein called for banning all hunting in the United States. All. Everywhere.
He actually put in writing, in his 2004 book, Animals that, "Animals should be permitted to bring [law] suit, with human beings as their representatives...."
"[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments, and in agriculture."
Mr. Sunstein, who openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism, wrote, "The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics)..."
"[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms."
Were Mr. Sunstein to succeed as President Obama's head regulator of all things American, what might happen to those millions of hunting rifles and shotguns he doesn't want gathering dust in your cabinet?
Mr. Sunstein is a reputed "1st Amendment scholar." Having attended law school myself and actually practiced law for a quarter century rather than retreat to the head-swelling-brain-shrinking environs of academia, I can assure you that if he is, America is in very deep trouble. President Obama has made clear his White House Masterregulator is intended to regulate virtually every aspect of American's lives - including the environment, healthcare, finance, and the economy - regardless of your feelings about such matters much less your freedom and liberty. Sunstein has argued in his prolific literary works (one bookstore tour de force was a whopping 84 pages) that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing. He went on to assert: [10]
A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government... Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name.
As WorldNetDaily noted:
"It's hard to imagine President Obama nominating a more dangerous candidate for regulatory czar than Cass Sunstein....Not only is Sunstein an animal-rights radical, but he also seems to have a serious problem with our First Amendment rights. Sunstein has advocated everything from regulating the content of personal e-mail communications, to forcing nonprofit groups to publish information on their websites that is counter to their beliefs and mission.... If it were up to Obama and Sunstein, everything we read online - right down to our personal e-mail communications - would have to be inspected and approved by the federal government."
11. Van Jones -- President Obama's former White House Environmental Adviser ("Green Jobs Czar"). Mr. Jones remains a self-defined Communist community organizer from the San Francisco Bay area (Oakland, California). He is also an Whites-hating racist with a criminal arrest record, as well as a "9/11 Truther" true believer. The 9/11 Truther organizations proselytize that former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard Cheney either planned or knew about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks conducted by 19 Islamofascist members of Al-Qaeda who, aside from slamming a passenger jetliner into the Pentagon, did the same in New York City totally destroying the Twin Towers and killing almost 3,000 Americans.
When Mr. Jones, an ardent racist and Communist, was hired into the White House by "the other half of Barack's brain," Ms. Valerie Jarrett, she expressed overflowing praise in the press and in video-taped interviews for Mr. Jones and his work, noting that "we have been watching him for a long time. [11]
12. Carol M. Browner -- Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. Ms. Browner is a Socialist sycophant of Al Gore's conclusion that the earth is going to evaporate tomorrow. A former EPA director, Ms. Browner is married to Leftist lobbyist Thomas Downey and remains an ardent Socialist activist. She is one of 14 leaders of Socialist International's, "Commission for a Sustainable World Society," which calls for "global governance."
As Van Jones was an admitted Communist, Ms. Browner is an admitted and very active Socialist. What more really need be said about her with reference to President Obama who has been fully informed of her moral relativity and anti-Americanism for years since she has hardly kept it secret from either her associates, the public, nor the press. [12]
13. John Holdren -- Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Other than Mr. Holdren's well known and oft repeated morally relativistic denial of American exceptionalism, one and only one thing need to be said here about President Obama's "Science" Czar - he is Barack Obama's twin on the matter of abortion and has advocated compulsory abortion. Here it is again: President Obama searched for, reached out, and chose as his chief "science advisor" a plasma physicist who advocates compulsory abortion.
As John Griffing wrote of Holdren in "Enough is Enough," for American Thinker:
...for a true outrage, consider new Czar of Science, John P. Holdren, who, in a stunning display of unabashed evil, has actively advocated "compulsory abortion":
There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.
If that doesn't send a chill down your spine, consider his words, "All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons." Let that sink in: an American official supports forced abortion and the death of "grown persons." We know what that looks like. It has been official policy for years in Communist China.
President Obama quite literally has the single worst record of any elected official on the question of abortion. While in the Illinois legislature he single-handedly prevented that state's Born Alive Infant Protection Act from leaving his committee much less being made into law. As a result, for three more years until legislator Obama became U. S. Senator Obama, Illinois hospitals and doctors were permitted to allow otherwise healthy infants who survived an abortion to receive no medical attention whatsoever until they died. They were simply, and quite literally, "shelved." The evidence of Mr. Obama's actions and callous disregard for the lives of infants is overwhelming. [13]
14. Kevin Jennings -- President Obama's Safe Schools Czar. Jennings is a former schoolteacher who has very successfully advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, unashamedly and vituperatively expressed his utter contempt for religion, and detailed an incident in which he did not report to authorities his knowledge that an underage student told him he was having sex with older men - Jennings instead counseled the boy to "use a condom. " In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, [Jennings] founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education...."
In the past, Mr. Jennings has praised Harry Hay, the frequent and vocal defender of NAMBLA - the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.
His organization, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has successfully prodded some schools into making October the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Month, as well as established November 28th as "Transgender Day of Remembrance."
None of this belongs in any school anywhere, any time, and the fact that the Obama Administration chooses to support such people with such goals and then put them in positions of great authority and power should make even the most dyed-in-the-wool middle-class liberal Democrats cringe at the depth of either their negligence, uncaring, or stupidity regarding the real Barack Hussein Obama.
And I bet all the teachers in America didn't know this - according to Mr. Jennings (at a New York University "Education Policy Breakfast):
"... you cannot be an effective teacher if you are not aware of how [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] biases can influence how you interact with your students. Pure and simple."
To which Mr. Jennings added,
"It should be impossible to graduate from NYU or any other school of education without coursework - required coursework - that address issues of [LGBT] bias in the classroom and how it might influence your teaching. [It] should be a graduation requirement."
In 1999, Mr. Jennings wrote the foreward for an elementary education instruction book, Queering Elementary Education, the description of which states that it examines "five broadly-defined areas in elementary education: foundational issues; social and sexual development; curriculum; the family; and gay/lesbian educators and their allies. It seeks to provide scholarly insights, pedagogical strategies, and curricular resources for use in schools. At the core of the book is the belief that public school educators have the responsibility to affirm sexual diversity..." In elementary school?
It is Jennings himself, Obama's "Safe-School Czar," who coined the term "safe school" as a euphemism for "pro-homosexual" school. Children's physical safety had nothing and has even less to do now with Mr. Jennings educational background, "expertise," or agenda. "Jennings was obviously chosen for this job because of the safe schools aspect... defining 'safe schools' narrowly in terms of 'safe for homosexuality'," says Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.
"Safe school" is hardly the only word commandeered by Jennings and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to support propagandizing his model "safe school" into mainstream elementary education. Others include, and parents should be alert to "seemingly innocuous terms as ‘safe school,' ‘anti-bullying,' ‘safe space,' ‘hate-free, ‘tolerance,' ‘respect differences,' ‘be an ally,' ‘no name calling day,' ‘be who you are,' ‘free to be fully me,' ‘day of silence,' and so forth. If these terms are present [in school instructional materials], they are [probably] defined by Jennings, not Webster, and the accompanying curricular material will probably be objectionable. Jennings' jargon and the mythical bullying epidemic even showed-up in the recent Presidential address to school children."
The Obama Administration was certainly aware of these facts long before the President and Ms. Jarrett selected Mr. Jennings, just as they selected Van Jones, and all the other members of the Obama Administration discussed here.
This is the type of colossal lack of judgment the President of The United States has not merely chosen to surround himself with, but in fact personally displays every day.
Feeling any "safer" about your kids? [14]
15. Chai Feldblum - Obama nominee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who signed a manifest seeking, inter alia, to legalize polygamy ("to protect households in which there is more than one conjugal partner"). See, online petition entitled Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships. Feldblum is an outspoken homosexual rights activist and Georgetown University law professor. She is "co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she described at [a] UCLA symposium as a homosexual rights group that aimed to change ‘the American workplace and revolutionize social mores. This is a war that needs to be fought,'' Feldblum asserted, "'and it's not a war overseas where we are killing people in the name of liberating them." [15]
16. William Ayers -- Obama friend, neighbor, fellow board member, "respected" national educator, virulently anti-American, and dramatically unrepentant radical terrorist bomber. Mr. Ayers famously stated:
"I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c' Communist...Maybe I'm the last Communist who is willing to admit it.... The ethics of Communism still appeal to me."
Perhaps Mr. Ayers most notable statement was made to the New York Times in a story released on September 11, 2001:
"I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,"
It has gradually come to light that Mr. Ayers, far from the casual acquaintance President Obama made him out to be during the 2008 election, is quite likely the real author of Mr. Obama's "autobiography," Dreams of My Father. [16]
Mr. Ayers approach to education is as authoritarian as is his approach to society as a whole - otherwise he would not have planted terrorist bombs in an effort to compel his personal beliefs upon the rest of society. As Sol Stern of City Journal wrote:
Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.
....
Ayers's politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America's future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students. [17]
The Ayers-Obama Socialist-conversion mission carried out with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's $100,000,000 was a total failure, producing zero results in student learning, but succeeded in massive transfers of wealth to Leftist, Socialist, and even the Communist causes of long-time Ayers ally, Mike Klonsky, a former S.D. S. leader, college professor and Director of the Small Schools Workshop. However, neither Mr. Ayers nor President Obama have given up on their radical Leftist agenda. [18]
Ayers is married to unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bernadine Dohrn who was once jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members' robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed. Like her husband, she remains involved and influential in school programs.
For Mr. Ayers, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Chu, and President Obama's Secretary of Education, yet another Chicagoan, Arne Duncan - and far too many others in the Obama Administration - education is solely about pursuing then mandating the radicalization of children through indoctrination in Leftist policies, "social justice" curricula, and Socialism itself in public schools.
____________________________________________________________
The Obama Administration is currently making thousands of federal bureaucratic appointments.
Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.
[1] "Valerie Jarrett's Show," American Spectator, Sept. 8, 2009, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/08/valerie-jarretts-show; "Valerie Jarrett: The Other Side of Barack's Brain," Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/12/valerie-jarrett-the-other_n_118521.html; "Harold Washington," Wikipedia, accessed Oct. 8, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Washington; "The Jarrett Connection. Proof That Obama's Hawaii and Chicago Communist Networks Were Linked?" RomanticPoet's Weblog, accessed Oct. 8, 2009, http://romanticpoet.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-jarrett-connection-proof-that-obamas-hawaii-and-chicago-communist-networks-were-linked/; "Obama's Communist Mentor," Accuracy in Media, Feb. 18, 2008, http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/; "Obama Confirms Relationship with Red Mentor," Accuracy in Media, Aug. 15, 2008, http://www.aim.org/press-release/obama-confirms-relationship-with-red-mentor/; "Dreams from Frank Marshall David," American Thinker, Oct. 30, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/dreams_from_frank_marshall_dav.html; "Obama Mentor Identified as a Communist," WorldNetDaily, Feb. 19, 2008, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56859; "High-Powered and Low-Key," Washington Post, March 15, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/14/AR2009031402020.html?wprss=rss_politics?xid=rss-page&sid=ST2009031502626.
[2] "ACORN's Man in the White House," American Spectator, Sept. 28, 2009, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/28/acorns-man-in-the-white-house; "A Review of ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis' Rolodex Suggests Strong White House Ties," RedState, Sept. 22, 2009, http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/09/22/redstate-exclusive-a-review-of-acorn-ceo-bertha-lewiss-rolodex-suggests-strong-white-house-ties/; "ACORN Gives GOP a New Line of Attack, Politico, Oct. 8, 2008, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14492.html; "Obama and ACORN: Community Organizers, Phony Voters, and Your Tax Dollars," Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394051071230749.html?mod=djemEditorialPage; "Obama to Amend Report on $800,000 in Spending," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Aug. 22, 2008, http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_584284.html; "Obama: The Oak Grown from ACORN," City Journal, Oct. 16, 2008, http://www.city-journal.org/2008/bc1016df.html; FEC To Collect $775,000 Civil Penalty From America Coming Together, Federal Election Commission, Aug. 29, 2007, http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20070829act.shtml; "Obama's White House ACORN Operative Fined $775,000 For Election Violations- Used Rapists & Burglars in Door-to-Door Registration Drives," Gateway Pundit, Oct. 4, 2009, http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/10/breaking-obamas-white-house-acorn.html.
[3] "Confirming Fears," National Review," Nov. 19, 2008, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmM1OGM4OGRiNTI5NTIzOTFkMDAwMTJiNG; "Holder's Black Panther Stonewall," Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574361071968458430.html; "Prosecutor to Probe CIA Interrogations," Washington Post, Aug. 25, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082401743.html; "Eric Holder's Hidden Agenda: The Investigation Isn't About Torture, It's About Transnationalism," National Review, Aug. 28, 2009, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGMyYTQ1ZTM5YTQ5NjJjNzJmNGUxZDIyOTFjYzIyM2Y=.
[4] "Obama Appoints White House Speechwriting and Intergovernmental Affairs Heads," Washington Post, Nov. 26, 2008, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/11/26/obama_appoints_white_house_spe.html; "Exclusive: The Truth About ‘La Raza," Human Events, Apr. 7, 2006, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=13863; "La Raza President Wants Health Care Reform for ‘Everyone,' Including Illegal Aliens," CNS News, Oct. 2, 2009, http://cnsnews.com/news/article/54911; "Gamaliel at the White House," The Gamaliel International Newsletter, June 15, 2009, http://www.gamaliel.org/organizing/06.15.09ORGANIZING/061509Organizing.htm.
[5] "Look Who's Going to be Looking Over Hillary's Shoulder," American Thinker, Jan. 29, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/look_whos_going_to_be_looking.html; "Samantha Power and Obama's Foreign Policy Team," American Thinker, Feb. 19, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/02/samantha_power_and_obamas_fore_1.html; "Zbig Brzezinski: Shoot Down Israeli Planes if They Attack Iran," Arutz Sheva [Israeli National News], Sept. 21, 2009, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/133515; "Will Samantha Power Have a Role in Giving Aid to Hamas," American Thinker, Feb. 24, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/will_samantha_power_have_a_rol.html. Also see: "Obama and Israel," American Thinker," Jan. 28, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obama_and_israel.html; and "Barack Obama's Middle East Expert," American Thinker, Jan. 23, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obamas_middle_east_expe.html.
[6] "Obama's Intelligence Choice: The President picks a China apologist and Israel basher to write his intelligence summaries," Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123552619980465801.html?mod=djemEditorialPage; "Congressmen Question Saudi Lobbyist for Head of Intelligence Council," American Thinker, Mar. 1, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/congressmen_question_saudi_lob.html; "Chas Freeman Pulls Out," Politico," Mar. 10, 2009, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19856.html.
[7] "U.S. Envoy's Outreach to Sudan is Criticized as Naïve," Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092802336.html; "Obama Foreign Policy Goes from Carrots to Cookies," The Weekly Standard, Sept. 28, 2009, http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/09/obama_foreign_policy_goes_from_carrots_to_cookies.asp; "Christians Are Crucified in Guerrilla Raids, The Catholic Herald, Sept. 25, 2009, http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000648.shtml.
[8] "The Five Most Infamous Rahm Emmanuel Moments," Foreign Policy, Nov. 6, 2008, http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2008/11/06/the_five_most_infamous_rahm_emanuel_moments; "Ten Facts You Need to Know About Rahm Emmanuel," Washington Post, Nov. 6, 2008, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/eye-on-2008/top-10-facts-you-need-to-know.html.
[9] "Obama's Healthcare Rationer-in-Chief," Wall Street Journal, Aug. 27, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374463280098676.html; Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research Membership, accessed Oct. 8, 2009, http://www.hhs.gov/recovery/programs/os/cerbios.html; "Death Panel is Not in the Bill ... It Already Exists," American Thinker, Aug. 15, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/death_panel_is_not_in_the_bill.html.
[10] "Cass Sunstein," Wikipedia, accessed Oct. 6, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein; "U.S. Regulatory Czar Nominee Wants Net 'Fairness Doctrine'," WorldNetDaily, April 27, 2009, http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=96301; "Enough is Enough," American Thinker, July 16, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/enough_is_enough.html; "Cass Sunstein's Despicable Ideas On Regulating the Internet," American Thinker, July 12, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/07/cass_sunsteins_despicable_idea.html; "Czar Seeks ‘Chilling Effect' On Internet," American Thinker, Oct. 6, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/czar_seeks_chilling_effect_on.html; "Obama's Regulatory Czar Defends Communism and Says America Too Racist for Socialism," Gateway Pundit, Oct. 8, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/czar_seeks_chilling_effect_on.html ;
[11] "Valerie Jarrett's Show," American Spectator, Sept. 8, 2009, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/08/valerie-jarretts-show; "Loudon: Why Was Obama's "Brain" Valerie Jarrett So Happy to Hire Communist Van Jones? Was it Fate?," RBO (therealbarackobama), Sept. 9, 2009, http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/loudon-why-was-obamas-brain-valerie-jarrett-so-happy-to-hire-communist-van-jones-was-it-fate/; "Van Jones: Truther Nut," American Thinker, Sept. 4, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/van_jones_truther_nut.html; "Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Barack Obama & Do-It-Yourself Vetting," Michelle Malkin, Sept. 3, 2009, http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/03/van-jones-valerie-jarrett-barack-obama-do-it-yourself-vetting/; "Environmental Justice: The Van Jones Backstory," Weekly Standard," Sept. 29, 2009, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/942msdft.asp?pg=1 .
[12] "Carol Browner a Socialist?," American Spectator, Jan. 12, 2009, http://spectator.org/blog/2009/01/12/carol-browner-a-socialist; "Obama Climate Czar has Socialist Ties," Washington Times, Jan. 12, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/12/obama-climate-czar-has-socialist-ties/.
[13] "Enough is Enough," American Thinker, July 16, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/enough_is_enough.html; "When Will We Admit the Truth About Barack Obama," American Thinker, Apr. 24, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/when_will_we_admit_the_truth_a.html; "Obama's Abortion Extremism," Real Clear Politics, Apr. 2, 2008, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/caseys_endorsement_lacks_fathe.html.; "Why Jesus Would Not Vote for Barack Obama," WorldNetDaily, July 19, 2006, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51121.
[14] "Obama's Safe Schools Czar Hid Pedophilia," Gateway Pundit, Sept. 24, 2009, http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamas-safe-schools-czar-kevin-jennings.html; "Obama's ‘Safe Schools Czar' Praised NAMBLA Founder, Too," Gateway Pundit, October 2, 2009, http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/10/obamas-safe-schools-czar-praised-nambla.html; "Obama Appointee Lauded NAMBLA Figure," Washington Examiner, October 1, 2009, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-appointee-lauded-NAMBLA-figure-63115112.html (The Examiner's story was updated to reflect that Harry Hay was not an employee of NAMBLA, but rather a well-known booster); "VIDEO - Kevin Jennings: Every aspiring teacher should be required to take an LGBT course," Washington Times, Oct. 7, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/oct/07/video-kevin-jennings-every-teacher-should-be-requi/; "Kevin Jennings Twisted Terminology," American Thinker, Oct. 8, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/kevin_jennings_twisted_termino_1.html; "The Long March of Kevin Jennings," American Thinker, Oct. 6, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/the_long_march_of_kevin_jennings.html; "Critics Assail Obama's 'Safe Schools' Czar, Say He's Wrong Man for the Job," Fox News, Sept. 23, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/23/critics-assail-obamas-safe-schools-czar-say-hes-wrong-man-job/; "Obama's Connection to GLSEN," Perspectives, Oct. 24, 2008, http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=297506.
[15] "'Gay' Sex Morally Good, Says Obama Pick," WorldNetDaily, Oct. 5, 2009, http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112003; " Obama Nominee Praised Polygamy," WorldNetDaily, Oct. 6, 2009, http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112002; "EEOC Nominee Signed ‘Manifesto' That Praised Polygamy," Catholic News Agency, October 1, 2009, http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=34534.
[16] "On Bill Ayers and Small ‘c' Communists," American Thinker, Oct. 15, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/on_bill_ayers_and_small_c_comm.html; "Andersen Book Blows Ayers' Cover on Dreams," American Thinker, Sept. 23, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/andersen_book_blows_ayers_cove.html; "Who Wrote Dreams of My Father?," American Thinker, Oct. 9, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html; "Evidence Mounts: Ayers Co-Wrote Dreams of My Father," http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/evidence_mounts_ayers_cowrote.html.
[17] "Obama's Real Bill Ayers Problem," City Journal, Apr. 23, 2008, http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0423ss.html; "The Ed School's Latest - and worst - Humbug," City Journal, Summer 2006, http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_ed_school.html;
In this lengthy article, Mr. Stern details how William Ayers "social justice" and "urban education" curricula not only undermine American education but prove to be a "cruel hoax" on disadvantaged inner city youth who don't happen to live in the Ayers-Obama wealthy, ultra-liberal neighborhoods.
[18] "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: Success, Failures and Lessons for the Future - Final Technical Report of the Chicago Annenberg Research Project," August, 2003, by Mark A. Smylie, Stacy A. Wenzel, et. al., 138 pages.
Found at: http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/p62.pdf; "That ‘Guy Who Lives in My Neighborhood': Behind the Ayers-Obama Relationship," Law Professor Steven Diamond's blog, June 18 and updated June 23, 2008, http://globallabor.blogspot.com/2008/06/that-guy-who-lives-in-my-neighborhood.html; "Another Communist in Obama's Orb: Meet Michael Klonsky, Obama's ‘social justice' education expert," National Review, Oct. 22, 2008, , http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTQzMDIxZjlmMTM5N2ZhNzlmY2IyZDYxMWQ5NjQ2NDM=; "Obama's Lost Annenberg Years Coming to Light," American Thinker, Aug. 21, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/obamas_lost_annenberg_years_co.html; "Obama Dollars," American Thinker, Sept. 23, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/obama_dollars.html. Also see: "Ayers-Dorhn-Obama Tie Shouldn't Be Dismissed," Pajamas Media, Oct. 6, 2008, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ayers-dohrn-obama-tie-shouldnt-be-dismissed/.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/ship_of_fools_obamas_intimates.html at October 12, 2009 - 02:31:34 PM EDT
The following thumbnails describe a very small sampling of the locust horde of Leftist bureaucrats President Barack Hussein Obama has deliberately chosen to help him grasp the helm of America's ship of state, strip it from the American people, and steer it hard to port.
The Obama Administration is plainly subverting democracy in America, wildly careening our previous 230-year history of democracy so dangerously Leftward that after a mere nine months we are in terrible danger of sinking. In these thumbnails, three dominant themes of the Obama Administration emerge - fanatically uncompromising anti-capitalism, dangerous and blatant anti-Semitism, and the societal inculcation of dogmatic Leftist, Socialist "faith" through indoctrination of American school children beginning with the earliest ages - a practice instituted by Lenin in Communist Russia and now pounding its way into the American academic mainstream through the prolific efforts and influence of self-proclaimed Communist, Obama friend, and likely "autobiography" ghost writer, William Ayers, as well as Obama appointees like Charles Freeman and Kevin Jennings.
Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.
____________________________________________________________
A sampling of President Barack Hussein Obama's morally bankrupt White House "Brain Trust"
1. Valerie Jarrett
2. Patrick Gaspard
3. Eric Holder
4. Cecelia Muñoz
5. Samantha Power(s)
6. Charles Freeman
7. Scott Gration
8. Rahm Emmanuel
9. Ezekiel Emmanuel
10. Cass Sunstein
11. Van Jones
12. Carol Browner
13. John Holdren
14. Kevin Jennings
15. Chai Feldblum
16. William Ayers
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Valerie Jarrett -- Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. Ms. Jarrett, a product of two decades in rough-and-tumble "Chicago way" politics, and a 17-year friend of the Obama's, is described as "the other side of Barack Obama's brain." Born in Iran, Jarrett, who speaks Persian, moved to the United States as a child. A product of an elite, private, New England boarding school, she is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.
Jarrett served in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (who, prior to his election, failed to file income tax returns for 19 years and during it maintained dubious Socialist ties) as well as in the scandal-ridden, current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Her step-father, Vernon Jarrett was associated with Frank Marshall Davis, the youthful Barack Obama's mentor from age 10 until college - a Chicago Communist Party (USA) member who moved to Hawaii from Chicago. Frank Marshal Davis is now immortalized in President Barack Hussein Obama's "autobiography" as "Uncle Frank" -- conveniently with no mention of his last name nor who he was.
According to the Washington Post, Ms. Jarrett was for many years both Michelle and Barack Obama's "tutor." Virtually every mainstream media outlet has not only done an over-the-top puff piece on Valerie Jarrett (as they repeatedly have with Mr. Obama and his wife), but all agree that neither the President not Mrs. Obama makes a move without first consulting Ms. Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett was personally responsible for bringing self-described Communist Van Jones into the White House as President Obama's environmental "Green Czar." [1]
2. Patrick Gaspard -- White House Political Director (this is the position Karl Rove held in the Bush Administration). Prior to coming on board as President Obama's right-hand man, Mr. Gaspard was a registered federal lobbyist for the SEIU - the union members (thugs?) called-in by the Administration to run interference (sometimes violent) between Democrat members of Congress who support ObamaCare and their own constituents. Prior to that, Gaspard worked for ACORN - the community organizing front which Barack Obama worked for as a trainer, represented as a lawyer, helped as a politician, and funneled money to as a presidential candidate.
The President Obama is as much a product of ACORN as it is of him. He worked closely with the "community organizing" group for many years, represented them in court, and was a member of the board of Chicago's Woods Fund at the time it funneled $200,000 to an ACORN affiliate. Mr. Obama praised the organization extravagantly both during and after his election, and his campaign "donated" over $800,000 to an offshoot group controlled by ACORN (Citizens Services, Inc.) - to "get out the vote."
Gaspard worked directly for now-ACORN chief Bertha Lewis as her political director for the main ACORN office which is located in New York. ACORN is mired in long-standing as well as new and growing allegations of fraud, voter-registration fraud, corruption, and massive embezzlement of funds - ACORN operative organizations have received tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.
ACORN pledged $35,000,000 for voter registration drives in the 2008 election cycle.
In 2004, Patrick Gaspard served as National Field Director for America Coming Together (ACT), a group which was later fined $775,000 in civil penalties by the federal government. ACT hired felons - some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary - to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in Missouri and at least two other swing states, and also employed felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio. [2]
3. Eric Holder -- Attorney General of the United States. A handpicked Obama/Jarrett selection, who earlier this year referred to the United States as "a nation of cowards" on race relations, Mr. Holder is a shiningly despicable example of everything wrong when politics and personal ambition dictate the parameters of American justice.
Prior to grasping the brass ring of the department where he'd toiled during the Clinton Administration, Mr. Holder was responsible for these widely-reported miscarriages of justice: (1) He streamlined the Clinton Administration's pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich by steering Rich's representatives to a former White House counsel, then helped lobby the President to pardon Rich ("an unrepentant fugitive wanted on extensive fraud, racketeering, and trading-with-the-enemy charges"). Holder did so for personal gain, later admitting he hoped this would help him become Attorney General in a Gore administration. Mr. Holder concealed the pardon negotiations from other prosecuting and investigative agencies to prevent their opposition. Mr. Rich's wife was a generous donor to both President Clinton's library as well as his legal-defense fund.
(2) "In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons - of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse - were issued in the months after al-Qaeda's 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.... The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife's impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York's substantial Puerto Rican vote."
(3) Holder was also instrumental in the "stealth pardons" of two Weather Underground terrorists, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans (both closely associated with President Obama's terrorist friends, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn). Rosenberg and Evans had been serving decades-long sentences for bombings targeting American government facilities. Again Holder helped circumvent the pardon process and evade objections from prosecutors regarding the terrorists' jail terms.
Just this summer, now-Attorney General Holder dismissed prosecution of an obvious case (it was filmed) of voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panthers, while also instigating prosecutorial investigations into CIA interrogation techniques of terrorist combatants. Attorney General Holder is a strong advocate for the release of the Islamofascist enemy combatants currently held at Guantanamo Bay. [3]
4. Cecelia Muñoz -- White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Prior to being summoned to the White House by President Obama, Ms. Muñoz was Senior Vice President of The National Council of La Raza. La Raza (literally, "The Race") is the largest Hispanic lobbying organization in America, and is committed not merely to a socialist agenda, but, essentially, the return of California, if not larger portions of the American West, to Hispanics. It lobbies heavily for completely open borders with Mexico, as well as amnesty for all illegal aliens. In order to carry out this agenda, the U.S. federal government awarded over $15.2 million in grants to the organization in 2005 alone.
La Raza is intimately involved with the "the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West." Aztlan's goal is the formation of a Chicano state. The closing two sentences of Atzlan's motto are: La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada": "For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing." Which ought to be as chilling as the idea of the U.S. government funding these people.
President Obama's recent appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has also long been deeply involved with La Raza - a fact which all Democrat Senators ignored during her confirmation hearing.
5. Samantha Power -- Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council. Ms. Power, a professor of public policy at Harvard [who is married to President Obama's Leftist fringe academic Cass Sunstein, the Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs] was only seemingly thrown under the Obama campaign bus for referring to Hillary Clinton as "a monster" during the 2008 Democrat primary. In 2009 President Obama, tapped her to occupy her senior White House foreign policy position.
Ms. Power, a "fierce critic of Israel,... was indisputably Barack Obama's closest foreign policy adviser during the campaign. They go back years." Ms. Power is a notorious acolyte of appeasement-challenged, Neville-Chamberlain-clone Zbigniew Brzezinski (former President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser) who recently stated that the U.S. should shoot down any Israeli planes which, out of self-preservation, might fly through Iraqi air space to destroy Iran's developing nuclear facilities. Ms. Power agrees with the Charles-Freeman-published Walt-Mearsheimer-essay school of thought that America is run and being destroyed by a cabal of Jews. Power promotes the policies of disgraced anti-Semitic, Israeliphobic, pro-PLO, pro-Syria, Obama adviser Robert Malley who advocated not merely talking with Hamas, but funding the terrorist organization because he feels their policies and governance mirror that of Israel. The Obama Administration cut visible ties with Malley shortly after the election.
Power, who stridently criticized the invasion and "occupation" of Iraq, repeatedly calling for the removal of American forces from that nation, curiously advocates that America send armed military forces, "a mammoth protection force" and an "external intervention", to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. While giving the PLO, Fatah, Hamas and other obviously terrorist Arab state organizations a pass, Ms. Power views Israel, the only democratic and non-totalitarian, nation in the Middle East, as guilty of war crimes. She favors slashing, if not eliminating, United States aid to Israel - which is surrounded by several hundred million Muslims who daily pray for its total annihilation - and, apparently, giving the money to the Palestinians instead.
Ms. Power, and virtually all of her truth-through-force ilk ignore the fact that on the day Israel gained independence it was immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab neighbors who erroneously believed they could destroy the nascent country in a matter of hours. "Palestinians" (there is no such country, nor has there been since Biblical times) who now form the "Palestinian problem" were not forced to leave Israel but instead chose to do so because Israel became a Jewish state. Hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Arabs remained and now form a large core group of Israeli citizenry. The approximately 750,000 "Palestinians" who left, now number approximately 4,000,000. They constitute a "problem" because of all the Arab countries only Jordan has allowed them to become a part of its society. The other Arab countries bordering Israel keep the "Palestinians" in enormous desert internment camps. And they have done so to their Arab brethren for 60 years. Ms. Power and her comrades exquisitely fail to note that Jews were forced to leave Arab countries and relocate to the newly-formed Israeli state.
Like her pro-Arab "realist" co-religionists Charles Freeman, Robert Malley, Zbigniew Brzezinsk, billionaire George Soros (an influential Obama supporter), and others of their stripe, Powers opposes the "Israel lobby." She, as they, adamantly rejects the participation of American supporters of Israel, including Christians, in foreign policy discussions of the Middle East.
For all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's public visibility, it may not be much of a conjecture that her job has been outsourced to the alpha female who once referred to Mrs. Clinton as a "monster." [5]
6. Charles Freeman -- Nominated, but not confirmed, as Chairman of the (United States) National Intelligence Council - which is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates for the president and his advisors. Mr. Freeman has a distinguished résumé of long service in both the State and Defense Departments, however, his "distinctive political views and affiliations" include: troubling financial ties to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia who funds the Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council) which Mr. Freeman heads; organizational support for professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's lengthy, controversial, and essentially anti-Jewish essay, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"; his stated viewpoint that "the primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation"; praise for the terrorist organization, Hamas, as the only "democratically-elected" government in the Middle East; and, bizarrely, unabashedly siding with the Chinese government over the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 - Mr. Freeman criticized the Chinese government for being "overly cautious."
Once Leftist liberal, New York Senator Chuck Schumer spoke against Freeman's nomination, the gentleman withdrew - but not without "blaming his own disgrace on a Jewish conspiracy."
During his Congressional investigation, Mr. Freeman was charged with "[p]romoting public schools textbooks which the independent Textbook League describe ‘a vehicle for disseminating disinformation, including a multitude of false, distorted or utterly absurd claims that are presented as historical facts. ...[with] three principal purposes: inducing teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs; inducing teachers to embrace political views that are favored by the...Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council)...; and impelling teachers to disseminate those religious beliefs and political views in schools." [6]
7. Scott Gration -- President Obama's Special Envoy to the Sudan. His diplomatic policy is, quite literally the following:
"We've got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration who was appointed in March, "Kids, countries -- they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement."
As even that bastion of liberal blather the Washington Post noted, "U.S. diplomacy has remained mostly in the hands of Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, who is pushing toward normalized relations with the only country in the world led by a president indicted on war-crimes charges."
While President Obama's handpicked "Special Envoy" was tempting genocidal Muslim radicals with "cookies" and "gold stars," marauding bands of guerrillas in the Sudan crucified seven Christians. [7]
8. Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel -- White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Emanuel is the notorious hardball political player from Chicago's North Side which he represented in Congress prior to his current incarnation as President Obama's political henchman and myrmidon. The ironically named Mr. Emanuel ("God with us") is "relentlessly partisan," thereby quite succinctly putting the lie to Mr. Obama's campaign claim to "post-partisanship."
Nicknamed "Rhambo," President Obama's Chief of Staff - the highest ranking office of the Executive Branch of the President of the United States - is well-know for the following accomplishments:
(1) a casual conversation style addictively laced with the most outrageous profanities and gutter language at any and all times;
(2) sending a 2½ foot-long dead and decomposing fish to lobbyist Allen Secrest with whom he was angry;
(3) threatening then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair just prior to a joint appearance with then-President Bill Clinton: "This is important. Don't f--- it up.";
(4) at dinner the night after Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, "Rhambo" ranted about a long list of people who were the subject of his ire. As he shouted each "enemy's" name, Mr. Emanuel punctuated his rage by forcefully stabbing the dinner table and screaming, "Dead!"
Outside of murdering a Congressional page, it is relatively difficult to improve upon these glowing characteristics of mental stability and leadership. [8]
Rahm Emanuel is Ezekiel Emanuel, "Dr. Death's," brother.
9. Ezekiel Emanuel -- President Obama's Special Advisor for Health Policy to the Office of Management and Budget. Nicknamed in the press "Dr. Death" after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey pointed out Dr. Emanuel's "healthcare" role assisting the White House in the preparation and administration of federal budget recommendations for guiding healthcare and healthcare initiatives, Dr. Emanuel (again, application of the absurdly ironic name, "God with us") is a "bioethicist." He is also hailed as President Obama's "Rationer-in-Chief." Generally, Emanuel's idea of healthcare rationing is to greatly restrict many treatments, medicines, and procedures to anyone over 40 and more particularly to anyone over 65. Dr. Emanuel feels similarly about the newly born until they have attained several years of age at which time he begins to view them in Malthusian terms of potential communitarian utility.
As Lt. Governor McCaughey noted, "In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs." This is the man who was personally tapped to guide ObamaCare health initiatives - not only by President Obama and his Chief of Staff... but also by "the other side of Barack's brain," Valerie Jarrett.
Mr. Emanuel is yet another in a tedious yet frighteningly long line of unqueried, unquestioned, and unvetted Obama advisors and "czars" about whom nothing can be known until pulled from beneath labyrinths of liberal camouflage by interested citizens, conservative Internet bloggers, and the staffs of conservative talk shows. Mainstream media long ago forfeited its credibility as well as its societal role as the fourth estate.
Dr. Emanuel is a member of the President's Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (curiously enough authorized under the dazzling rushed-through and unread by a single Congressman, American Recovery and Investment Act... "the Stimulus Bill") which, if allowed, will make decisions about the validity, "relative strengths and weakness of various medical interventions" as well as give clinicians...information to make decisions that will improve the performance of the U.S. health care system. Not improve medical care much less your medical care, but the "system." It's called "rationing," and it will very likely result in unnecessary and preventable early deaths. On a very large scale.
One final point. Due to the ambiguity of the relevant language in the Stimulus Bill as well as in the various ObamaCare "reform" proposals, there will not only be great latitude for interpretation of various laws' meaning, but these interpretations will require being instituted, oversight, and, of course, regulation. The necessity of regulation allows President Obama's Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein carte blanche to regulate whatever he likes.
Mr. Emanuel is the brother of White House Chief of Staff, and former North Side Chicago Congressman (5th District of Illinois) Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel. [9]
10. Cass Sunstein -- Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs. He is a Harvard Law School professor and newly-minted husband of President Obama's Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council, the Israel-phobic Samantha Power (one of several husband-wife teams in the Obama White House). Mr. Sunstein's belief structure could understandably be called "Leftist kook" or "fringe" if not downright lunatic. Herewith:
In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein called for banning all hunting in the United States. All. Everywhere.
He actually put in writing, in his 2004 book, Animals that, "Animals should be permitted to bring [law] suit, with human beings as their representatives...."
"[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments, and in agriculture."
Mr. Sunstein, who openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism, wrote, "The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics)..."
"[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms."
Were Mr. Sunstein to succeed as President Obama's head regulator of all things American, what might happen to those millions of hunting rifles and shotguns he doesn't want gathering dust in your cabinet?
Mr. Sunstein is a reputed "1st Amendment scholar." Having attended law school myself and actually practiced law for a quarter century rather than retreat to the head-swelling-brain-shrinking environs of academia, I can assure you that if he is, America is in very deep trouble. President Obama has made clear his White House Masterregulator is intended to regulate virtually every aspect of American's lives - including the environment, healthcare, finance, and the economy - regardless of your feelings about such matters much less your freedom and liberty. Sunstein has argued in his prolific literary works (one bookstore tour de force was a whopping 84 pages) that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing. He went on to assert: [10]
A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government... Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name.
As WorldNetDaily noted:
"It's hard to imagine President Obama nominating a more dangerous candidate for regulatory czar than Cass Sunstein....Not only is Sunstein an animal-rights radical, but he also seems to have a serious problem with our First Amendment rights. Sunstein has advocated everything from regulating the content of personal e-mail communications, to forcing nonprofit groups to publish information on their websites that is counter to their beliefs and mission.... If it were up to Obama and Sunstein, everything we read online - right down to our personal e-mail communications - would have to be inspected and approved by the federal government."
11. Van Jones -- President Obama's former White House Environmental Adviser ("Green Jobs Czar"). Mr. Jones remains a self-defined Communist community organizer from the San Francisco Bay area (Oakland, California). He is also an Whites-hating racist with a criminal arrest record, as well as a "9/11 Truther" true believer. The 9/11 Truther organizations proselytize that former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard Cheney either planned or knew about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks conducted by 19 Islamofascist members of Al-Qaeda who, aside from slamming a passenger jetliner into the Pentagon, did the same in New York City totally destroying the Twin Towers and killing almost 3,000 Americans.
When Mr. Jones, an ardent racist and Communist, was hired into the White House by "the other half of Barack's brain," Ms. Valerie Jarrett, she expressed overflowing praise in the press and in video-taped interviews for Mr. Jones and his work, noting that "we have been watching him for a long time. [11]
12. Carol M. Browner -- Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. Ms. Browner is a Socialist sycophant of Al Gore's conclusion that the earth is going to evaporate tomorrow. A former EPA director, Ms. Browner is married to Leftist lobbyist Thomas Downey and remains an ardent Socialist activist. She is one of 14 leaders of Socialist International's, "Commission for a Sustainable World Society," which calls for "global governance."
As Van Jones was an admitted Communist, Ms. Browner is an admitted and very active Socialist. What more really need be said about her with reference to President Obama who has been fully informed of her moral relativity and anti-Americanism for years since she has hardly kept it secret from either her associates, the public, nor the press. [12]
13. John Holdren -- Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Other than Mr. Holdren's well known and oft repeated morally relativistic denial of American exceptionalism, one and only one thing need to be said here about President Obama's "Science" Czar - he is Barack Obama's twin on the matter of abortion and has advocated compulsory abortion. Here it is again: President Obama searched for, reached out, and chose as his chief "science advisor" a plasma physicist who advocates compulsory abortion.
As John Griffing wrote of Holdren in "Enough is Enough," for American Thinker:
...for a true outrage, consider new Czar of Science, John P. Holdren, who, in a stunning display of unabashed evil, has actively advocated "compulsory abortion":
There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.
If that doesn't send a chill down your spine, consider his words, "All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons." Let that sink in: an American official supports forced abortion and the death of "grown persons." We know what that looks like. It has been official policy for years in Communist China.
President Obama quite literally has the single worst record of any elected official on the question of abortion. While in the Illinois legislature he single-handedly prevented that state's Born Alive Infant Protection Act from leaving his committee much less being made into law. As a result, for three more years until legislator Obama became U. S. Senator Obama, Illinois hospitals and doctors were permitted to allow otherwise healthy infants who survived an abortion to receive no medical attention whatsoever until they died. They were simply, and quite literally, "shelved." The evidence of Mr. Obama's actions and callous disregard for the lives of infants is overwhelming. [13]
14. Kevin Jennings -- President Obama's Safe Schools Czar. Jennings is a former schoolteacher who has very successfully advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, unashamedly and vituperatively expressed his utter contempt for religion, and detailed an incident in which he did not report to authorities his knowledge that an underage student told him he was having sex with older men - Jennings instead counseled the boy to "use a condom. " In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, [Jennings] founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education...."
In the past, Mr. Jennings has praised Harry Hay, the frequent and vocal defender of NAMBLA - the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.
His organization, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has successfully prodded some schools into making October the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Month, as well as established November 28th as "Transgender Day of Remembrance."
None of this belongs in any school anywhere, any time, and the fact that the Obama Administration chooses to support such people with such goals and then put them in positions of great authority and power should make even the most dyed-in-the-wool middle-class liberal Democrats cringe at the depth of either their negligence, uncaring, or stupidity regarding the real Barack Hussein Obama.
And I bet all the teachers in America didn't know this - according to Mr. Jennings (at a New York University "Education Policy Breakfast):
"... you cannot be an effective teacher if you are not aware of how [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] biases can influence how you interact with your students. Pure and simple."
To which Mr. Jennings added,
"It should be impossible to graduate from NYU or any other school of education without coursework - required coursework - that address issues of [LGBT] bias in the classroom and how it might influence your teaching. [It] should be a graduation requirement."
In 1999, Mr. Jennings wrote the foreward for an elementary education instruction book, Queering Elementary Education, the description of which states that it examines "five broadly-defined areas in elementary education: foundational issues; social and sexual development; curriculum; the family; and gay/lesbian educators and their allies. It seeks to provide scholarly insights, pedagogical strategies, and curricular resources for use in schools. At the core of the book is the belief that public school educators have the responsibility to affirm sexual diversity..." In elementary school?
It is Jennings himself, Obama's "Safe-School Czar," who coined the term "safe school" as a euphemism for "pro-homosexual" school. Children's physical safety had nothing and has even less to do now with Mr. Jennings educational background, "expertise," or agenda. "Jennings was obviously chosen for this job because of the safe schools aspect... defining 'safe schools' narrowly in terms of 'safe for homosexuality'," says Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.
"Safe school" is hardly the only word commandeered by Jennings and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to support propagandizing his model "safe school" into mainstream elementary education. Others include, and parents should be alert to "seemingly innocuous terms as ‘safe school,' ‘anti-bullying,' ‘safe space,' ‘hate-free, ‘tolerance,' ‘respect differences,' ‘be an ally,' ‘no name calling day,' ‘be who you are,' ‘free to be fully me,' ‘day of silence,' and so forth. If these terms are present [in school instructional materials], they are [probably] defined by Jennings, not Webster, and the accompanying curricular material will probably be objectionable. Jennings' jargon and the mythical bullying epidemic even showed-up in the recent Presidential address to school children."
The Obama Administration was certainly aware of these facts long before the President and Ms. Jarrett selected Mr. Jennings, just as they selected Van Jones, and all the other members of the Obama Administration discussed here.
This is the type of colossal lack of judgment the President of The United States has not merely chosen to surround himself with, but in fact personally displays every day.
Feeling any "safer" about your kids? [14]
15. Chai Feldblum - Obama nominee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who signed a manifest seeking, inter alia, to legalize polygamy ("to protect households in which there is more than one conjugal partner"). See, online petition entitled Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships. Feldblum is an outspoken homosexual rights activist and Georgetown University law professor. She is "co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she described at [a] UCLA symposium as a homosexual rights group that aimed to change ‘the American workplace and revolutionize social mores. This is a war that needs to be fought,'' Feldblum asserted, "'and it's not a war overseas where we are killing people in the name of liberating them." [15]
16. William Ayers -- Obama friend, neighbor, fellow board member, "respected" national educator, virulently anti-American, and dramatically unrepentant radical terrorist bomber. Mr. Ayers famously stated:
"I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c' Communist...Maybe I'm the last Communist who is willing to admit it.... The ethics of Communism still appeal to me."
Perhaps Mr. Ayers most notable statement was made to the New York Times in a story released on September 11, 2001:
"I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,"
It has gradually come to light that Mr. Ayers, far from the casual acquaintance President Obama made him out to be during the 2008 election, is quite likely the real author of Mr. Obama's "autobiography," Dreams of My Father. [16]
Mr. Ayers approach to education is as authoritarian as is his approach to society as a whole - otherwise he would not have planted terrorist bombs in an effort to compel his personal beliefs upon the rest of society. As Sol Stern of City Journal wrote:
Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.
....
Ayers's politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America's future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students. [17]
The Ayers-Obama Socialist-conversion mission carried out with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's $100,000,000 was a total failure, producing zero results in student learning, but succeeded in massive transfers of wealth to Leftist, Socialist, and even the Communist causes of long-time Ayers ally, Mike Klonsky, a former S.D. S. leader, college professor and Director of the Small Schools Workshop. However, neither Mr. Ayers nor President Obama have given up on their radical Leftist agenda. [18]
Ayers is married to unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bernadine Dohrn who was once jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members' robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed. Like her husband, she remains involved and influential in school programs.
For Mr. Ayers, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Chu, and President Obama's Secretary of Education, yet another Chicagoan, Arne Duncan - and far too many others in the Obama Administration - education is solely about pursuing then mandating the radicalization of children through indoctrination in Leftist policies, "social justice" curricula, and Socialism itself in public schools.
____________________________________________________________
The Obama Administration is currently making thousands of federal bureaucratic appointments.
Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.
[1] "Valerie Jarrett's Show," American Spectator, Sept. 8, 2009, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/08/valerie-jarretts-show; "Valerie Jarrett: The Other Side of Barack's Brain," Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/12/valerie-jarrett-the-other_n_118521.html; "Harold Washington," Wikipedia, accessed Oct. 8, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Washington; "The Jarrett Connection. Proof That Obama's Hawaii and Chicago Communist Networks Were Linked?" RomanticPoet's Weblog, accessed Oct. 8, 2009, http://romanticpoet.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-jarrett-connection-proof-that-obamas-hawaii-and-chicago-communist-networks-were-linked/; "Obama's Communist Mentor," Accuracy in Media, Feb. 18, 2008, http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/; "Obama Confirms Relationship with Red Mentor," Accuracy in Media, Aug. 15, 2008, http://www.aim.org/press-release/obama-confirms-relationship-with-red-mentor/; "Dreams from Frank Marshall David," American Thinker, Oct. 30, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/dreams_from_frank_marshall_dav.html; "Obama Mentor Identified as a Communist," WorldNetDaily, Feb. 19, 2008, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56859; "High-Powered and Low-Key," Washington Post, March 15, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/14/AR2009031402020.html?wprss=rss_politics?xid=rss-page&sid=ST2009031502626.
[2] "ACORN's Man in the White House," American Spectator, Sept. 28, 2009, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/28/acorns-man-in-the-white-house; "A Review of ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis' Rolodex Suggests Strong White House Ties," RedState, Sept. 22, 2009, http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/09/22/redstate-exclusive-a-review-of-acorn-ceo-bertha-lewiss-rolodex-suggests-strong-white-house-ties/; "ACORN Gives GOP a New Line of Attack, Politico, Oct. 8, 2008, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14492.html; "Obama and ACORN: Community Organizers, Phony Voters, and Your Tax Dollars," Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394051071230749.html?mod=djemEditorialPage; "Obama to Amend Report on $800,000 in Spending," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Aug. 22, 2008, http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/election/s_584284.html; "Obama: The Oak Grown from ACORN," City Journal, Oct. 16, 2008, http://www.city-journal.org/2008/bc1016df.html; FEC To Collect $775,000 Civil Penalty From America Coming Together, Federal Election Commission, Aug. 29, 2007, http://www.fec.gov/press/press2007/20070829act.shtml; "Obama's White House ACORN Operative Fined $775,000 For Election Violations- Used Rapists & Burglars in Door-to-Door Registration Drives," Gateway Pundit, Oct. 4, 2009, http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/10/breaking-obamas-white-house-acorn.html.
[3] "Confirming Fears," National Review," Nov. 19, 2008, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YmM1OGM4OGRiNTI5NTIzOTFkMDAwMTJiNG; "Holder's Black Panther Stonewall," Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203550604574361071968458430.html; "Prosecutor to Probe CIA Interrogations," Washington Post, Aug. 25, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082401743.html; "Eric Holder's Hidden Agenda: The Investigation Isn't About Torture, It's About Transnationalism," National Review, Aug. 28, 2009, http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGMyYTQ1ZTM5YTQ5NjJjNzJmNGUxZDIyOTFjYzIyM2Y=.
[4] "Obama Appoints White House Speechwriting and Intergovernmental Affairs Heads," Washington Post, Nov. 26, 2008, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/11/26/obama_appoints_white_house_spe.html; "Exclusive: The Truth About ‘La Raza," Human Events, Apr. 7, 2006, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=13863; "La Raza President Wants Health Care Reform for ‘Everyone,' Including Illegal Aliens," CNS News, Oct. 2, 2009, http://cnsnews.com/news/article/54911; "Gamaliel at the White House," The Gamaliel International Newsletter, June 15, 2009, http://www.gamaliel.org/organizing/06.15.09ORGANIZING/061509Organizing.htm.
[5] "Look Who's Going to be Looking Over Hillary's Shoulder," American Thinker, Jan. 29, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/01/look_whos_going_to_be_looking.html; "Samantha Power and Obama's Foreign Policy Team," American Thinker, Feb. 19, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/02/samantha_power_and_obamas_fore_1.html; "Zbig Brzezinski: Shoot Down Israeli Planes if They Attack Iran," Arutz Sheva [Israeli National News], Sept. 21, 2009, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/133515; "Will Samantha Power Have a Role in Giving Aid to Hamas," American Thinker, Feb. 24, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/02/will_samantha_power_have_a_rol.html. Also see: "Obama and Israel," American Thinker," Jan. 28, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obama_and_israel.html; and "Barack Obama's Middle East Expert," American Thinker, Jan. 23, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/barack_obamas_middle_east_expe.html.
[6] "Obama's Intelligence Choice: The President picks a China apologist and Israel basher to write his intelligence summaries," Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123552619980465801.html?mod=djemEditorialPage; "Congressmen Question Saudi Lobbyist for Head of Intelligence Council," American Thinker, Mar. 1, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/congressmen_question_saudi_lob.html; "Chas Freeman Pulls Out," Politico," Mar. 10, 2009, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19856.html.
[7] "U.S. Envoy's Outreach to Sudan is Criticized as Naïve," Washington Post, Sept. 29, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/28/AR2009092802336.html; "Obama Foreign Policy Goes from Carrots to Cookies," The Weekly Standard, Sept. 28, 2009, http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/09/obama_foreign_policy_goes_from_carrots_to_cookies.asp; "Christians Are Crucified in Guerrilla Raids, The Catholic Herald, Sept. 25, 2009, http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000648.shtml.
[8] "The Five Most Infamous Rahm Emmanuel Moments," Foreign Policy, Nov. 6, 2008, http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2008/11/06/the_five_most_infamous_rahm_emanuel_moments; "Ten Facts You Need to Know About Rahm Emmanuel," Washington Post, Nov. 6, 2008, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/eye-on-2008/top-10-facts-you-need-to-know.html.
[9] "Obama's Healthcare Rationer-in-Chief," Wall Street Journal, Aug. 27, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374463280098676.html; Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research Membership, accessed Oct. 8, 2009, http://www.hhs.gov/recovery/programs/os/cerbios.html; "Death Panel is Not in the Bill ... It Already Exists," American Thinker, Aug. 15, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/death_panel_is_not_in_the_bill.html.
[10] "Cass Sunstein," Wikipedia, accessed Oct. 6, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cass_Sunstein; "U.S. Regulatory Czar Nominee Wants Net 'Fairness Doctrine'," WorldNetDaily, April 27, 2009, http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=96301; "Enough is Enough," American Thinker, July 16, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/enough_is_enough.html; "Cass Sunstein's Despicable Ideas On Regulating the Internet," American Thinker, July 12, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/07/cass_sunsteins_despicable_idea.html; "Czar Seeks ‘Chilling Effect' On Internet," American Thinker, Oct. 6, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/czar_seeks_chilling_effect_on.html; "Obama's Regulatory Czar Defends Communism and Says America Too Racist for Socialism," Gateway Pundit, Oct. 8, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/czar_seeks_chilling_effect_on.html ;
[11] "Valerie Jarrett's Show," American Spectator, Sept. 8, 2009, http://spectator.org/archives/2009/09/08/valerie-jarretts-show; "Loudon: Why Was Obama's "Brain" Valerie Jarrett So Happy to Hire Communist Van Jones? Was it Fate?," RBO (therealbarackobama), Sept. 9, 2009, http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/loudon-why-was-obamas-brain-valerie-jarrett-so-happy-to-hire-communist-van-jones-was-it-fate/; "Van Jones: Truther Nut," American Thinker, Sept. 4, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/van_jones_truther_nut.html; "Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett, Barack Obama & Do-It-Yourself Vetting," Michelle Malkin, Sept. 3, 2009, http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/03/van-jones-valerie-jarrett-barack-obama-do-it-yourself-vetting/; "Environmental Justice: The Van Jones Backstory," Weekly Standard," Sept. 29, 2009, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/942msdft.asp?pg=1 .
[12] "Carol Browner a Socialist?," American Spectator, Jan. 12, 2009, http://spectator.org/blog/2009/01/12/carol-browner-a-socialist; "Obama Climate Czar has Socialist Ties," Washington Times, Jan. 12, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/12/obama-climate-czar-has-socialist-ties/.
[13] "Enough is Enough," American Thinker, July 16, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/enough_is_enough.html; "When Will We Admit the Truth About Barack Obama," American Thinker, Apr. 24, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/when_will_we_admit_the_truth_a.html; "Obama's Abortion Extremism," Real Clear Politics, Apr. 2, 2008, http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/caseys_endorsement_lacks_fathe.html.; "Why Jesus Would Not Vote for Barack Obama," WorldNetDaily, July 19, 2006, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51121.
[14] "Obama's Safe Schools Czar Hid Pedophilia," Gateway Pundit, Sept. 24, 2009, http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/09/obamas-safe-schools-czar-kevin-jennings.html; "Obama's ‘Safe Schools Czar' Praised NAMBLA Founder, Too," Gateway Pundit, October 2, 2009, http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/10/obamas-safe-schools-czar-praised-nambla.html; "Obama Appointee Lauded NAMBLA Figure," Washington Examiner, October 1, 2009, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obama-appointee-lauded-NAMBLA-figure-63115112.html (The Examiner's story was updated to reflect that Harry Hay was not an employee of NAMBLA, but rather a well-known booster); "VIDEO - Kevin Jennings: Every aspiring teacher should be required to take an LGBT course," Washington Times, Oct. 7, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/watercooler/2009/oct/07/video-kevin-jennings-every-teacher-should-be-requi/; "Kevin Jennings Twisted Terminology," American Thinker, Oct. 8, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/kevin_jennings_twisted_termino_1.html; "The Long March of Kevin Jennings," American Thinker, Oct. 6, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/the_long_march_of_kevin_jennings.html; "Critics Assail Obama's 'Safe Schools' Czar, Say He's Wrong Man for the Job," Fox News, Sept. 23, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/23/critics-assail-obamas-safe-schools-czar-say-hes-wrong-man-job/; "Obama's Connection to GLSEN," Perspectives, Oct. 24, 2008, http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=297506.
[15] "'Gay' Sex Morally Good, Says Obama Pick," WorldNetDaily, Oct. 5, 2009, http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112003; " Obama Nominee Praised Polygamy," WorldNetDaily, Oct. 6, 2009, http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112002; "EEOC Nominee Signed ‘Manifesto' That Praised Polygamy," Catholic News Agency, October 1, 2009, http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=34534.
[16] "On Bill Ayers and Small ‘c' Communists," American Thinker, Oct. 15, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/on_bill_ayers_and_small_c_comm.html; "Andersen Book Blows Ayers' Cover on Dreams," American Thinker, Sept. 23, 2009, http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/andersen_book_blows_ayers_cove.html; "Who Wrote Dreams of My Father?," American Thinker, Oct. 9, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html; "Evidence Mounts: Ayers Co-Wrote Dreams of My Father," http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/evidence_mounts_ayers_cowrote.html.
[17] "Obama's Real Bill Ayers Problem," City Journal, Apr. 23, 2008, http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0423ss.html; "The Ed School's Latest - and worst - Humbug," City Journal, Summer 2006, http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_ed_school.html;
In this lengthy article, Mr. Stern details how William Ayers "social justice" and "urban education" curricula not only undermine American education but prove to be a "cruel hoax" on disadvantaged inner city youth who don't happen to live in the Ayers-Obama wealthy, ultra-liberal neighborhoods.
[18] "The Chicago Annenberg Challenge: Success, Failures and Lessons for the Future - Final Technical Report of the Chicago Annenberg Research Project," August, 2003, by Mark A. Smylie, Stacy A. Wenzel, et. al., 138 pages.
Found at: http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/p62.pdf; "That ‘Guy Who Lives in My Neighborhood': Behind the Ayers-Obama Relationship," Law Professor Steven Diamond's blog, June 18 and updated June 23, 2008, http://globallabor.blogspot.com/2008/06/that-guy-who-lives-in-my-neighborhood.html; "Another Communist in Obama's Orb: Meet Michael Klonsky, Obama's ‘social justice' education expert," National Review, Oct. 22, 2008, , http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTQzMDIxZjlmMTM5N2ZhNzlmY2IyZDYxMWQ5NjQ2NDM=; "Obama's Lost Annenberg Years Coming to Light," American Thinker, Aug. 21, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/obamas_lost_annenberg_years_co.html; "Obama Dollars," American Thinker, Sept. 23, 2008, http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/obama_dollars.html. Also see: "Ayers-Dorhn-Obama Tie Shouldn't Be Dismissed," Pajamas Media, Oct. 6, 2008, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ayers-dohrn-obama-tie-shouldnt-be-dismissed/.
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