Tag Archives: Israel

5 Ways The Obama Camp Has Shown Its Hatred Towards Bibi

During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a Joint Session of Congress, he stated that he would always be grateful for President Obama’s support for Israel.  Additionally, President Obama continues to describe the bond between Israel and the U.S. as unbreakable.  Despite both leaders attempts to reassure people of the close relationship between the U.S. and Israel, the Obama administrations animus towards Netanyahu is unprecedented in the history of the U.S./Israel relationship.

  1. Obama badmouths him to other world leaders.  During the 2011 G20 summit in Cannes, it was reported that former French President Nicolas Sarkozy described Netanyahu as a “liar” that he cannot stand.  The Presidents response was less than presidential, responding to Sarkozy by saying: “You’re fed up with him?  I have to deal with him every day.”
  2. Obama’s staff feels comfortable berating him.  It has been reported that officials in the Obama administration use a lot of terms to described Netanyahu. This list includes recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and “Aspergery.”  Last year, a senior Obama official even went so far as to describe Netanyahu a “chickens**t.”
  3. Obama threw a hissy fit when Netanyahu spoke in front of Congress.  After House Speaker John Boehner decided to move around the White House to invite Netanyahu to speak to Congress, the President declined to meet with Netanyahu during his visit. The President also chose to skip Netanyahu’s speech altogether.  This led to a double-digit number of Democrats boycotting the speech.
  4. Obama officials chose not to meet with Netanyahu, but did meet with his opposition.  The President’s excuse for not meeting with Netanyahu was that he did not want to be seen as interfering in the Israeli election process.  However, this didn’t stop Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry from meeting informally with Netanyahu’s opposition, Isaac Herzog in Munich a few weeks prior to his speech.
  5. Obama campaigners are actively working to manipulate Israeli elections.  Following Netanyahu’s address to Congress, a group of Obama campaign veterans arrived in Israel to lead the campaign against Netanyahu.  Obama’s 2012 field director Jeremy Bird is now leading a group, called OneVoice, a U.S. taxpayer funded 501(c)(3), engaging in political activity in Israel.  OneVoice is funding V-2015’s “Just Not Bibi” campaign.

These are only a few of the many assaults on Netanyahu by the Obama machine and the contempt goes beyond the Prime Minister.  The Obama administrations current Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power has shown herself to be hostile to Israel in the past.  She has regarded Israel as a human rights abuser and called for the US to shift Israeli military aid to Ramallah and to deploy forces to protect Palestinian.  Secretary Kerry has described Israel as a country on the road to becoming an “Apartheid state.”  There have even been reports that the Obama administration threatened to shoot down Israeli planes.

Additionally, there is a growing hostility towards Israel in the Democratic Party.  During the 2012 Democratic National Convention, party officials had difficulty hearing each other through all of the Boo’s as they voted to reinsert “Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital into the Party platform.

Following a dramatic come from behind turn in the morning hours on Wednesday, the Likud party emerged as the clear winner with 30 seats in the Knesset.  This will mean Netanyahu will return to the post of Prime Minister.

Netanyahu coming back in power will be a blow to the Obama team, especially because the administration has no interest in dealing with any type of opposition to their negotiations with Iran.  Even though the President talks about the unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel, we are likely to see more confrontations, nasty remarks, and blatant anti-Israel sentiments coming out of this administration and the Democratic Party.

The post-election hostility has already started.  Following Netanyahu declaring victory, Obama’s former strategist and political adviser David Axelrod decided to tweet his contempt for the election results and Netanyahu.

Axelrod’s distasteful tweet towards the Prime Minister is just a glimmer of the things to come in the U.S./Israel relationship, as the Obama administration and Democratic Party as a whole starts to divorce themselves from support for Israel.

Israel’s Former Mossad Chief Is Playing Politics with Iran’s Nuclear Program

Some critics of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are trying to discredit his speech last week to a joint session of Congress with a new talking point: former Mossad director Meir Dagan’s recent claim that Netanyahu knowingly misled Congress. They are unlikely to get very far with this argument, however, since Netanyahu’s statements track closely with assessments by many U.S. experts. Moreover, based on similar statements by Dagan over the last few years, I believe his criticism of Netanyahu’s speech is a case of a former government official politicizing national security and is not reflective of the views of Israeli intelligence.

During an interview broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 on Friday, Dagan said Netanyahu’s contention that Iran could build a nuclear bomb in less than a year was “bulls***.” He also disputed Netanyahu’s assertion that Iran’s missile program could allow it to deliver a nuclear warhead to “every part of the United States.” Dagan countered that Iran’s missiles “cannot reach the U.S.,” adding that Netanyahu knows this. He also made similar statements and questioned the prime minister’s leadership at a huge anti-Netanyahu rally held yesterday in Tel Aviv.

Dagan has been saying things like this since 2011, apparently because of his opposition to an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and his political differences with Netanyahu. In June of that year, he said an Israeli attack on Iran was “a stupid idea” and that Iran was years away from a nuclear bomb. In April 2012, Dagan told 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl that he viewed the Iranian regime as “rational” and that he believed it would back down from its nuclear-weapons ambition if faced with choosing between the program and its own survival.

Mossad analysts and Dagan sang an entirely different tune during briefings to a congressional delegation to Israel in October 2010 (in which I participated). At the time, they told us the threat from the Iranian nuclear program was very dire and that Iran had enough enriched uranium to produce several nuclear bombs within a few months. This was a conclusion many American experts had also reached and one that tracked with my understanding of Iran’s nuclear program as a staff member with the House Intelligence Committee. Dagan led the briefing and was in full agreement with his analysts. He said nothing about Iran being several years away from a nuclear bomb or the Iranian mullahs being rational actors.

Dagan began to speak out against Netanyahu’s approach to the Iranian nuclear program in the spring of 2011, a few months after he retired. Some said at the time that he made these statements to advance his political career. Others believed he was intent on stopping an Israeli airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

In his recent remarks on this issue, Dagan again focused on stopping an Israeli attack, which he said is “the last thing we need.” He also said an Israeli airstrike would not set back the Iranian nuclear program “for very long.”

While Dagan may harbor serious reservations about the wisdom of Israel’s attacking Iran, his criticism of Netanyahu’s statements about the Iranian nuclear program don’t hold up. The prime minister’s assessment of the Iranian threat is one shared by many U.S. think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Heritage Foundation, the Institute for Science and International Security, and the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. Netanyahu’s speech was also consistent with the views of a growing bipartisan majority in Congress.

Dagan’s criticism of Netanyahu’s speech to Congress proves that former Israeli government officials sometimes play politics with national security just as their American counterparts do. While this won’t stop Obama officials from citing Dagan to discredit Netanyahu, it will hopefully lead some in the news media to mention Dagan’s track record of politicizing the issue when reporting on this story.

Congress Must Have a Role in Iran Negotiations

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the U.S. Congress yesterday warned of the danger that the current nuclear deal being discussed between Iran and the P5+1 countries poses to the entire world. He told Congress that the negotiations by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China, plus Germany) are fundamentally flawed.

In addition to the fact that Tehran cannot be trusted and has participated in illicit behavior, the Israeli Prime Minister addressed two problems with the current deal being negotiated: it allows Iran to maintain an industrial capability to enrich uranium and removes all restrictions from its nuclear program after about ten years, legitimizing the program in the international community.

Netanyahu asserted that talks should not continue on the current path and implicitly called on Congress to act. The Obama Administration, which has dictated the terms being put forward by the P5+1, has insisted that Congress not intervene in the talks and let John Kerry and the other negotiators give diplomacy a chance.

The most concrete way that Congress could affect the deal is by passing legislation to impose sanctions on Iran if the talks fail. A bill under discussion that is co-authored by Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), which has received bipartisan, potentially veto-proof support, does exactly this.

Republicans are generally supportive of more sanctions, arguing increased pressure is the best way to produce a good deal, and it is assumed that most, if not all, 54 GOP senators would vote for the bill. Since Obama has stated that he would veto any sanctions bill against Iran, several Democrats would need to also support this measure to obtain the 67 votes necessary to override a presidential veto.

Senator Kirk has stated that he has 17 Democrats on board and thinks getting a veto-proof majority is possible. The Republican majority wants to bring this bill to the floor, but Senator Menendez, who wants tougher measures on Tehran and is supportive of Israel, along with nine other Democrats, pledged to withhold support for the legislation until after the March 24th deadline for a rough framework deal to avoid an inner-party clash with Obama.

Beyond the Kirk-Menendez bill, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) has proposed legislation seeking congressional approval for any potential deal with Iran negotiated by the administration. Furthermore, a letter to Obama signed by House Foreign Affairs Chairman Edward Royce and Ranking Member Eliot Engel currently circulating Capitol Hill states that “permanent sanctions relief from congressionally-mandated sanctions would require new legislation.” The letter goes on to say that Congress must review a deal and be convinced that it will not allow Iran an avenue to a nuclear weapon.

Congress is a coequal branch of government and should have a say in the most important and consequential issue of today. The legislature needs to remind the administration as well as themselves of this notion, particularly because many of the sanctions were legal creations of Congress and can only be removed by them.

There is no room for error with the prospect of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, which is currently the greatest threat to global security. Congress can and should assert its authority over any deal with Iran, especially if the one being negotiated by the administration is flawed. Beyond the security risks, sacrificing the spirit of America’s system of government with three equal branches controlled by checks and balances can only further damage the United States.

Far-Left J Street Running False Ads Against Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress

J Street, which claims it is “the political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” but is actually a far-left, intolerant lobbying group funded by George Soros, currently is running misleading television and newspaper ads against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to the U.S. Congress.

J Street objects to the timing of Netanyahu’s speech and contends it speaks for American Jews and friends of Israel, not Netanyahu.  Both claims are absolutely false.

Netanyahu’s speech could not be better timed since it will occur just as the United States and other world powers are trying to finalize a “framework” agreement with Iran on its nuclear program by the end of March.  Since the Obama administration has ignored strong opposition to the nuclear talks by a majority of the U.S. Congress and the Israeli government, Netanyahu’s decision to accept  an invitation to speak to Congress on this issue was highly appropriate.

J Street is so extreme that it clearly does not speak for most American Jews and friends of Israel.  This is why the Anti-Defamation League has called J Street’s campaign against Netanyahu’s speech to Congress “inflammatory and repugnant.”  J Street also has been criticized for a phony poll indicating most American Jews support President Obama’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran and that Netanyahu’s policies are harming U.S.-Israel relations.

On the other hand, J Street is completely in line with the anti-Israel policies of the Obama administration.  It is worth noting that although AIPAC leaders last year had to urge its members to be respectful of President Obama when he spoke to its annual convention, a former AIPAC official recently wrote in the Jerusalem Post that “J Street is President Obama’s political home.”

J Street’s far-left extremism and hypocrisy have been decried by Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard lawyer and Democrat.  Dershowitz wrote in a Haaretz article last March that while J Street is demanding that pro-Israel organizations be open to speakers who favor opposing views, including those who oppose Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, it will not allow speakers like Dershowitz, who oppose J Street’s policies on Iran and other security matters, to speak to its conferences.  According to Dershowitz, J Street does invite speakers who oppose Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a Boston-based group run by the well-known anti-slavery activist Charles Jacobs, has produced an excellent documentary on the truth about J Street.  For more information about this film, click HERE.

The Center for Security Policy has a special interest in J Street because its board of directors is headed by Morton Halperin, a former head of the ACLU who President Bill Clinton unsuccessfully tried to install as a Defense Department Under Secretary in 1993.  The Center for Security Policy played a key role in defeating Halperin’s nomination because of his far-left views and ties to CIA turncoat Phillip Agee.  (To learn more, click HERE and HERE.)

So when you see J Street’s next ad blasting Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, consider the source.

Netanyahu’s True Electoral Rival

Officially, the election on March 17 is among Israelis. Depending on how we vote, either Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will remain in office and form the next government led by his Likud party, or Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni will form a government.

But unofficially, a far greater electoral drama is unfolding. The choice is not between Netanyahu and Herzog/Livni. It is between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama.

As the White House sees it, if Herzog/Livni form the next government, then Jerusalem will dance to Obama’s tune. If Netanyahu is reelected, then the entire edifice of Obama’s Middle East policy may topple and fall.

Secretary of State John Kerry made clear the administration’s desire to topple Netanyahu last spring during his remarks before the Trilateral Commission. It was during that memorable speech that Kerry libeled Israel, claiming that we would automatically and naturally become an apartheid state if we didn’t give Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to the PLO, Jew free, as quickly as possible.

Despite Israel’s venality, Kerry held out hope. In his words, “if there is a change of government [in Israel], or a change of heart, something will happen.”

Shortly after Kerry gave his Israel apartheid speech, his Middle East mediator Martin Indyk attacked Israel and the character of the Israeli people in an astounding interview to Yediot Aharonot.

Among other things, Indyk hinted that to force Israel to make concessions demanded by the PLO, the Palestinians may need to launch another terror war.

Indyk also threatened that the Palestinians will get their state whether Israel agrees to their terms of not. In his words, “They will get their state in the end – whether through violence or by turning to international organizations.”

Indyk made his statements as an unnamed US official. When his identity was exposed, he was forced to resign his position.

Following his departure from government service he returned to his previous position as vice president of the Brookings Institution and the director of its foreign policy program. Last September, The New York Times reported that the Brookings Institute received a $14.8 million, four-year donation from Qatar, the chief financier of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

This week, Indyk was back in Israel to speak at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies. There he provided us with a picture of what we can expect from the Obama administration in its remaining two years in office if Netanyahu forms the next government.

On the Palestinian front, Indyk warned that Israel shouldn’t be worried about the Palestinians getting an anti-Israel resolution passed in the UN Security Council. Rather, it can expect that the US will join with the other permanent members of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution “against Israel’s will” that will “lay out the principle of a two-state solution.”

As Indyk intimated, Israel can avoid this fate if it elects a Herzog/Livni government. Such a government, he indicated, will preemptively give in to all of the Palestinians demands and so avoid a confrontation with the US and its colleagues at the Security Council.

Indyk explained, “If there is a government in Israel after these elections that decides to pursue a two-state solution, then there is a way forward. It begins with coordinating an initiative with the United States. And then, together with the US, looking to Egypt and Jordan and the resurrection of the Arab Peace Initiative.”

As for Iran, Indyk shrugged at Israel’s concerns over the agreement that Obama is now seeking to conclude with the Iranian regime regarding its nuclear weapons program. That agreement will leave Iran as a threshold nuclear state. Indyk suggested that the US could assuage Israel’s concerns by signing a bilateral treaty with Israel that would commit the US to do something if Iran passes some nuclear threshold.

There are only three problems with such a deal.

First, as former ambassador to the US Itamar Rabinovich noted, such a treaty would likely render Israel unable to take independent action against Iranian nuclear sites.

Second, the US has a perfect track record of missing every major nuclear advance by every country. US intelligence agencies were taken by surprise when India, Pakistan and North Korea joined the nuclear club. They have always underestimated Iranian nuclear activities and were taken by surprise, repeatedly, by Syria’s nuclear proliferation activities. In other words, it would be insane for Israel to trust that the US would act in a timely manner to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold.

Third of course is the demonstrated lack of US will – particularly under the Obama administration – to take any action that could prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. So Israel has no reason whatsoever to believe that the US would honor its commitment.

But then, since the Obama administration believes that Herzog and Livni will be compliant with its policies, the White House may expect the two will agree to forgo Israel’s right to self-defense and place Israel’s national security in relation to Iran in Obama’s hands.

And this brings us to the real contest unfolding in the lead-up to March 17.

When Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner announced last month that he had invited Netanyahu to address the joint houses of Congress on the threat emanating from Iran’s nuclear program and from radical Islam, he unintentionally transformed the Israeli elections from a local affair to a contest between Obama and Netanyahu.

Obama’s response to Netanyahu’s speech has been astounding. His ad hominem attacks against Netanyahu, his open moves to coerce Democratic lawmakers to boycott Netanyahu’s speech, and the administration’s aggressive attempts to damage Israel’s reputation in the US have been without precedent. More than anything, they expose a deep-seated fear that Netanyahu will be successful in exposing the grave danger that Obama’s policies toward Iran and toward the Islamic world in general pose to the global security.

Those fears are reasonable for two reasons.

First due to a significant degree to the administration’s unhinged response to the news of Netanyahu’s speech, Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu sparked a long-belated public debate in the US regarding Obama’s strategy of appeasing the Iranian regime. Generally consistent Obama supporters like The Washington Post editorial board have published stinging indictments of this policy in recent weeks.

These analyses have noted for the first time that in pursuing Iran, Obama is alienating and weakening America’s allies, enabling Iran to expand its nuclear program, and empowering Iran regionally as the US does nothing to prevent Iran’s takeover of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

Second, it is possible that in his remarks about Iran and radical Islam, Netanyahu will manage to discredit Obama’s approach to both issues. This is possible because Obama’s approach is difficult to understand.

Last week, following the decapitation of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians by Islamic State, the Obama administration stood alone in its refusal to note that the victims were murdered because they were Christians. When Egypt retaliated for the massacre with air strikes against Islamic State training camps and other facilities in Libya, the Obama administration refused to support it ally. Instead it criticized Egypt for acting on its own and called for a political solution in Libya, which is now governed by two rival governments and has become a breeding ground for Islamic State terrorists who transit Libya to Sinai.

Following Islamic State’s massacre of the Christians, the group’s leaders threatened to invade neighboring Italy. Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi promised a strong response, and then called on the UN Security Council to do something. The Obama administration responded with coolness to a similar Egyptian call last week.

Hamas (which is supposedly much more moderate than Islamic State despite its intense cooperation with Libya-trained Islamic State forces in Sinai) warned Italy not to attack Islamic State in Libya, lest it be viewed in the words of Salah Bardawil as beginning “a new crusade against Arab and Muslim countries.”

While all of this has been going on, Obama presided over his much-touted international conference on Confronting Violent Extremism. Reportedly attended by representatives from 60 countries, and featuring many leaders of Muslim Brotherhood- linked groups like the Council on American- Islamic Relations, Obama’s conference’s apparent goal was to deemphasize and deny the link between terrorism and radical Islam.

In his remarks on Wednesday, Obama gave a lengthy defense of his refusal to acknowledge the link between Islam and Islamic State, al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorist groups. He insisted that these groups “have perverted Islam.”

Obama indirectly argued that the West is to blame for their behavior because of its supposed historical mistreatment of Muslims. In his words, the “reality… is that there’s a strain of thought that doesn’t embrace ISIL’s tactics, doesn’t embrace violence, but does buy into the notion that the Muslim world has suffered historic grievances, sometimes that’s accurate.”

Obama’s insistence that Islamic State and its ilk attack because of perceived Western misbehavior is completely at odds with observed reality. As The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood demonstrated this week in his in-depth report on Islamic State’s ideology and goals, Islam is central to the group. Islamic State is an apocalyptic movement rooted entirely in Islam.

Most of the coverage of Netanyahu’s scheduled speech before Congress has centered on his opposition to the deal Obama seeks to conclude with Iran. But it may be that the second half of his speech – which will be devoted to the threat posed by radical Islam – will be no less devastating to Obama. Obama’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the fact that the greatest looming threats to global security today, including US national security, stem from radical Islam indicates that he is unable to contend with any evidence that jihadist Islam constitutes a unique threat unlike the threat posed by Western chauvinism and racism.

It is hard to understand either Israel’s election or Obama’s hysterical response to Netanyahu’s scheduled speech without recognizing that Obama clearly feels threatened by the message he will deliver. Surrounded by sycophantic aides and advisers, and until recently insulated from criticism by a supportive media, while free to ignore Congress due to his veto power, Obama has never had to seriously explain his policies regarding Iran and Islamic terrorists more generally. He has never endured a direct challenge to those policies.

Today Obama believes that he is in a to-the-death struggle with Netanyahu. If Netanyahu’s speech is a success, Obama’s foreign policy will be indefensible. If Obama is able to delegitimize Netanyahu ahead of his arrival, and bring about his electoral defeat, then with a compliant Israeli government, he will face no obstacles to his plan to appease Iran and blame Islamic terrorism on the West for the remainder of his tenure in office.

Hezbollah Retaliates against Israel for death of Jihad Mugniyeh

Israel’s military reports that two soldiers have been killed and another seven were wounded in a Hezbollah ambush on a military convoy near Mount Dov and Shebaa Farms Wednesday. Hezbollah fighters attacked the convoy with shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets. Additionally, Israeli army units stationed in Israeli communities were struck by artillery near Mount Hermon. These event comes in the wake of threats from Hezbollah and its Iranian patron, over retaliation for an Israeli airstrike last week which killed six Hezbollah members, and an Iranian IRGC general. Hezbollah has already claimed as much in an official statement, claiming the attack was launched by a group calling themselves “the heroic martyrs of Quneitra.” One of the anti-tank rounds fire, appears to have been labeled “Jihad Mugniyeh” after the Hezbollah leader killed in the attack. Mugniyeh was the son of the late terrorist mastermind Imad Mugniyeh, who was killed in Damascus by a car bomb in 2008, widely believed to have been conducted by Israeli Mossad.

Israeli forces responded to the Hezbollah attack by firing  on Hezbollah artillery installations in southern Lebanon. Both Hezbollah and Israel are reportedly reluctant to escalate the conflict further, with Israeli officials cautious about the attacks drawing Israel into the Syrian war, and Hezbollah officials telling a Kuwaiti paper that they did not intend to retaliate against Israel from within Lebanese territory. Since Hezbollah’s increased involvement within Syria, Hezbollah has been at pains to present itself as a throughly Lebanese rather than as merely an Iranian proxy in order to maintain its grip within Lebanon.

Cuba, a convenient diversion for Iran

President Obama’s decision to normalize relations with the totalitarian Castro regime, with their human rights atrocities directed against their own citizens, has rightly outraged our loyal Cuban-American community. This appeasement, with apologies by Mr. Obama to the godless communist regime during our traditional holiday season, is a betrayal of America’s principles of freedom and democracy. Of course, with his radical background, it apparently was easy for the president to forgo a demand for any of the long-standing concessions that the Castro regime has refused to make to even qualify for normalization of relations.

Some have said Mr. Obama should have learned from America’s dealings with other totalitarian communist regimes that engagement does not translate into freedom and democracy for their citizens. However, that may not have been the objective of this enterprise. The announcement of normalization with Cuba with its media information overload and manipulation of the facts — aided and abetted by the mainstream media — has diverted America’s attention from a host of the administration’s domestic scandals: the Benghazi tragedy, our failed policy on combating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and our unwillingness to take effective action to combat Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. Most important, it has diverted America’s attention from its most critical Middle East objective of preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability.

What most Americans don’t understand is that Iran became a threshold nuclear state several years ago when it built enough centrifuges and then produced enough reactor-grade uranium to make several nuclear weapons. The 2013 announcement of an interim agreement between Iran and the United States, plus five other world powers (P5 plus 1), is supposed to prevent Iran from becoming a threshold nuclear state. It is a sham. As pointed out by Andrew Bostom in his book “Iran’s Final Solution for Israel,” this Geneva agreement is viewed by Iran, according to Iranian analyst Mohammed Sadeq al-Hosseini, in the same context as the seventh-century Treaty of Hudaybryya. That treaty was an agreement between Muhammad and the pagan Qaraysh tribe of Mecca, but Muhammad broke the treaty as soon as his forces were strong enough to achieve military victory.

Furthermore, when you factor in the principle of “taqiyya” (lying), permitted under Shariah law to achieve one’s ultimate objective, it should be a clear signal to our negotiators where Iran is heading. Nuclear analyst Jonathan Spyer summarized the one-sided outcome of the interim agreement as a diplomatic ‘bonanza” for Iran. He stated that core elements of the Iranian drive to achieve nuclear weapons capability remain entirely intact. This is borne out by Fred Fleitz, of the Center for Security Policy, who points out that there are critical deficiencies in the Geneva P5 plus 1 interim agreement. Obama administration officials have misled the American public to make them believe the negotiations, even with the latest extensions, are achieving our objectives. This is far from reality.

For example, the enrichment centers at Fordo and Natanz will not be closed and will continue to operate. None of the 19,500 centrifuges will be dismantled. Centrifuges capable of uranium enrichment beyond 5 percent were, by compromise, to be “disconnected” (easily reversed). However, this arrangement permits 10,000 centrifuges to continue to enrich to 20 percent purity, approaching weapons grade.

The agreement also does not address the military production center at Parchin, which is Iran’s experimental, high-explosive facility. Tehran has refused repeatedly to permit International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to this key testing site.

Additionally, the heavy-water plutonium reactor at Arak is required only to “suspend,” not cease activity. Iran has stated that it intends to continue construction and activity. Finally, the interim agreement does not address Iran’s intercontinental-missile delivery systems.

Based on these facts, Iran is on track to achieve a nuclear weapon capability. President Hassan Rouhani told the Financial Times that dismantling nuclear facilities was a “red line” that Iran would not cross. As the world’s recognized leader in state-sponsored terrorism costing thousands of American lives, a nuclear-capable Iran should be clearly unacceptable. We should never forget Iran’s material and training support to the Sept. 11 hijackers, without which that attack could not have been conducted, nor its takeover of the U.S. Embassy, nor the bombing of U.S. Marine barracks and a host of other “acts of war.” However, every administration, be it Democrat or Republican, when challenged by Iran, has found an excuse not to act.

Over the years, we have had more than sufficient justification to retaliate against Iran. Clearly, to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capability, its key nuclear infrastructure must be destroyed. With the Obama administration’s appeasement approach to Iran, there is no chance that this administration will conduct a military strike.

Therefore, such a strike that must be conducted is left to our closest Middle East ally, Israel. With Iran’s repeated declarations of intent to eliminate Israel, it is absolutely essential that Israel conduct the attack to ensure its survival. While it will be difficult, Israel has the capability to do serious damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and delay its nuclear weapons capability for about two years. Hopefully, by 2017, the United States will have an administration with the political will and common sense to finish the job.

The BBC: Ignoring Jihadism Against Israel

A recent study by the BBC World Service and the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London revealed that, in the month of November, over 5,000 people died at the hands of jihadi violence worldwide.

The comprehensive study includes several graphs and an interactive map to highlight 664 jihadist attacks across 14 countries.  Unsurprisingly, the country with the highest death toll was Iraq, where Islamic State terrorists inflicted 1,770 deaths.  The study tries proving itself as an exhaustive study, by including countries with lower death tolls such as Niger, which suffered only one death.

However, the BBC has noticeably decided to exclude Israel from the list of countries that has suffered at the hands of Jihadi violence.

The Center for Security Policy has pointed to at least seven Israeli civilians, murdered by jihadists during the month of November.  This includes an attack at a Jerusalem train station, where a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas ran people over with a van, resulting in the death of two people. Later, Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Hit-and-run car attacks are a new strategy used by Palestinian jihadists to kill Israel’s civilians. Palestinian leaders have praised car attacks as “martyr operations” and Palestinian news agencies post cartoons celebrating these attacks.

So, was the exclusion of Israel simply an oversight?  A close examination of the research methodology shows that the BBC’s exclusion of Israel was not an error.

The methodology used by the ICSR to collect the raw data relied on both third party organizations and searches of the news for violent incidents in war zones and areas neighboring those regions.  The ICSR set up news alerts and searched the BBC Monitoring system for “terrorist,” “insurgent,” and “jihadist” incidents “wherever they may have happened.”  (Emphasis added)

The fact that attacks against Israelis by members of internationally recognized Jihadist terrorists group like Hamas were not caught by the BBC’s filters means that the BBC was either actively ignoring these attacks or working hard to report attacks against Israeli civilians as something other than Jihadism.

The BBC has a history of inaccurate and obfuscated reporting on Israel. In October, the BBC presented the story of the hit-and-run terror attack perpetrated by a Hamas linked terrorist, which killed three month-old Chaya Zissel Braun, as nothing more than a traffic accident.  The BBC repeated this same mistake, when they described the November car attack perpetrated by Hamas as a traffic accident.

While it is commendable for the BBC to highlight the deadly nature of Jihad, their willingness to discount Israeli lives only serves to highlight their consistent anti-Israel bias.

The BBC is the world’s largest broadcast news organization. Publically funded by British residents, the BBC operates under the terms of a Royal Charter and Agreement. The agreement specifies that the BBC should “ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality.”

As an entity funded by the British under the guise of being a public service, it is important that the British demand that the BBC adheres to its legal obligation to produce accurate and impartial reporting. Otherwise, their comprehensive graph is just another in a long line in the BBC’s subtle obfuscations against Israel’s victims.