Tag Archives: Israel

The Myth of a Hamas “Technocrat”

Recently, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new unity government that incorporates ministers appointed by Hamas.  By law, U.S. aid is to be cut off from any Palestinian government where Hamas holds “undue influence” unless Hamas complies with strict guidelines.  One of these is the public acknowledgement of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state – Something Hamas still has not done.

However, the State Department announced that the Obama administration is willing to work with this new Palestinian unity government, citing that the new government is composed of “technocrats” with no explicit Hamas affiliations and many having served in the prior government.  Additionally, the administration stated that they plan to continue U.S. financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

By continuing to fund the Palestinian Authority, the Obama administration is skirting U.S. laws and financing terrorists by giving these ministers the title of “technocrats”.  But what is a Technocrat?

The modern concept of a technocrat grew from works of science fiction first developed in the 1920’s.  The concept grew throughout the 1930’s through science fiction publications and later becoming a full fledge movement.  The term has recently grown very popular in Europe, specifically in Greece and Italy.

A technocrat is an expert who exercises managerial authority in the fields of their respective ministries.  In a technocracy, power is placed in the hands of scientist, engineers and other experts in the field in which the hold power.  In essence, it is a highly educated bureaucracy.  The theory is premised on the idea that a Ministry of Health would be run by doctors, teachers would run a Ministry of Education and so forth.

There are multiple flaws with the concept of a technocracy.  I doubt anyone would argue in favor of having incompetent people running our government and economy.  However, a big flaw specific to the concept of a Hamas technocrat is that one can be an expert at a particular discipline and still be a terrorist.  These are not mutually exclusive ideas.

Not all terrorists are uneducated simpletons.  For example, Humam al-Balawi, who perpetrated a suicide attack on the Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan in 2009, was a medical doctor.  Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s deputy and al-Qaeda’s chief strategist is a trained surgeon.  In fact, all of Hamas’s leaders are university graduates and several have advanced degrees.

Hamas is an openly anti-Semitic terrorist organization that calls for the complete destruction of Israel and has claimed responsibility for the deaths of countless innocent Israelis via rocket attacks, shootings and the cowardly act of suicide bombing.

Hamas provides social services including the funding of hospitals, schools and the building of roads.  Experts run these social services, yet the Hospitals run by Hamas serve as terrorist command posts; the schools under Hamas control are used to indoctrinate Palestinian children with the hatred of Jews and the roads are named after individuals who have killed innocent Israeli men, women, and children.

Additionally, the argument that these are the same individuals from the old government does not hold water.  Either it is a new government incorporating Hamas or it is the same old government, slightly rearranged.  It cannot be both.  Announcing a new government featuring the same old people would be a pointless venture for a Palestinian Authority interested in peace.  Just because these ministers do not have Hamas written down as their political party on their voter registration cards does not eliminate their obvious affiliation with the terrorist group.  Hamas has clearly exercised their influence by identified and appointed these representatives.

Lawmakers are rightfully pushing to classify the newly formed unity government as a foreign terrorist organization, and call for the government to cut off aid to the Palestinians.  Necessary undertakings until the Palestinians stop associating with terrorist, violence, and can show their willingness to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

The Obama administration has decided to skirt U.S. law and provide financial support to a terrorist entity by describing them as experts via science-fiction terminology.  One can only hope that the Obama administration will stop watching the sci-fi channel and realize that calling terrorists by another name does not make them any less dangerous.

Letting Go of Abbas

What makes PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas tick?

In 2008, when Abbas rejected then prime minister Ehud Olmert’s expansive offer of Palestinian statehood, he did so for the same reason that Yasser Arafat rejected then prime minister Ehud Barak’s expansive offer of Palestinian statehood at Camp David in 2000.

In both cases, the PLO chiefs believed that if they waited, they could get everything they demanded from Israel – and more – without giving anything away.

As Abbas and Arafat both saw it, eventually either the Israeli Left would successfully erode Israel’s national will to exist, or the Europeans and the US would join forces to coerce Israel into giving up the store. Or both. So there was no reason for the PLO to give up anything.

To get everything in exchange for nothing all they had to do was continuously escalate the PLO’s political warfare against the legitimacy against Israel internationally, and escalate its subversion of Israeli society through political intrigue and terrorism.

Back then, Abbas and Arafat looked forward to the day when they could frame Israel’s unconditional surrender and nail it to their wall.

But things have changed.

The rise of the revolutionary forces in the Islamic world since December 2010 has transformed the political landscape.

The Syrian civil war, the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the resurgence of al-Qaida franchises, the US’s abandonment of its traditional Arab allies in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and President Barack Obama’s aspiration to reach a meeting of the minds with the Iranian regime have completely upended the political calculus of all regional actors, including the PLO and Abbas.

As Palestinian affairs expert Reuven Berko wrote in an article published by the Investigative Project on Terrorism last week, if in the past Abbas wouldn’t make a deal with Israel because he could get more by saying no, today Abbas cannot make a deal with Israel.

Any deal he concludes will lead to his overthrow.

Noting that Abbas was recently threatened by al-Qaida chief Ayman Zawahiri who called him, “a traitor who is selling Palestine,” Berko explained, “The threats, veiled or not, by radical Islamists…

and a quick look at Arab-Muslim world, especially Syria, have made it clear to the Palestinians what the future has in store for them, and it now appears that in the meantime, they prefer the status quo to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.”

As Berko sees it, Abbas’s primary problem is the residents of the UN refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and beyond. Israel’s unwillingness to accept a so-called “right of return,” which would enable millions of foreign Arabs residing in terrorist-controlled UN-run refugee camps to immigrate to a postpeace agreement Israel means that in an era of peace, they will move to the newly created state of Palestine.

Berko rightly notes that these immigrants will not regard Abbas as their savior. To the contrary.

“The Palestinian leadership knows that if their demand for Palestinian control of the Jordan Valley crossings were accepted, the operative result would be floods of people seeking entrance into ‘liberated Palestine.’ They know that among them would be operatives of all the Palestinian terrorist organizations, to say nothing of the armed jihadists currently active in the Arab-Muslim world, especially in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, who would stream in ‘to liberate all Palestine.’ “The new Palestinian state would have no grounds to refuse entrance to the ‘jihad heroes,’ or to close its borders to all those attracted by the prosperity in Judea and Samaria, or to those who hoped to enter Israel or to those who intended use ‘Palestine’ as a convenient base from which to attack Israel.”

The new immigrants would overwhelm Abbas and his comrades, making the Hamas ouster of Fatah forces from Gaza in 2007 look like a walk in the park.

Berko limited his discussion to a scenario in which these foreign Arabs are confined to “Palestine.” But if Israel were to agree to his demand that they move into its sovereign territory, Abbas’s future would be no different. If Israel were to publicly renounce its right to exist, cancel the Declaration of Independence and adopt the PLO Charter as its new constitution, Abbas would be no better off than if he conceded Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, compromised on the so-called “right of return,” and accepted the settlements.

In both cases, he would end up like Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

It is because he knows this that he will do anything to prevent a peace deal with Israel.

Some Israelis are pleased with Abbas’s stand. As they see it, his position enables Israel and the Palestinians to operate under the status quo more or less unchallenged for the foreseeable future.

There are two problems with this view. First, neither the Americans nor the Israeli Left are willing to let the peace process go. US Secretary of State John Kerry’s decision to devote two hours to yet another meeting with Abbas last week, despite Abbas’s unity deal with Hamas and Islamic Jihad shows that Kerry is constitutionally incapable of disengaging.

Likewise, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni’s wildcat diplomacy, which involved an unauthorized meeting with Abbas in London last week, demonstrates that like the Americans, Israel’s Left cannot relent. Livni and her comrades have no issue other than the Palestinian one.

Their political survival is tied to the peace process.

The second problem is Abbas. Whereas he needs to prevent a settlement to keep the jihadists at bay, he needs to escalate the conflict to keep the local Palestinians at bay and maintain the support of the Europeans and the American Left.

Only by scapegoating and criminalizing Israel worldwide can Abbas maintain his relevance to the international Left. And only by enabling and glorifying terrorism and actively inciting for the destruction of Israel can Abbas maintain what is left of his credibility among the Palestinians – five and a half years after his term of office legally ended.

The two-state model is his life preserver.

The policy paradigm is based entirely on the false claim that the cause of all the region’s ills is the absence of a Palestinian state. That state, it is believed, would exist save for Israel’s land greed.

Those who uphold Abbas and the status quo ignore the consequences of Abbas’s own imperatives. In the international arena, preserving the status quo requires Israel to maintain its allegiance to the two-state paradigm’s inherent and malicious slander of the Jewish state. This allegiance in turn makes it impossible for Israel to defend itself effectively against the Palestinian-led campaign to deny its right to exist.

In its internal affairs, maintaining faith in the two-state model and in Abbas as a legitimate and moderate Palestinian leader makes it almost impossible for Israel to take effective measures to defend against the Palestinian terror infrastructure. That infrastructure relies on the Palestinian security forces, which Abbas, our purported peace partner, controls. Israel cannot discredit its “peace partner,” without disowning the phony peace process and rejecting the two-state paradigm. Consequently, it cannot to take the necessary measures – like demanding that the US military stop training the Palestinian security forces – to effectively protect its citizens.

The time has come for Israel to show Abbas the door. It would be best if we can do it quietly – offering him the opportunity to relocate to somewhere warm and retain all the loot he and his cronies have siphoned off for their personal use.

Once Abbas is gone, Israel will have to choose between applying its laws to parts of Judea and Samaria and offering the Palestinians outside those areas a limited form of autonomy, or applying its laws to the entire region, conferring permanent residency status on the Palestinians and offering them the right to apply for Israeli citizenship.

Alarmists argue that without Abbas, Israel will go broke having to finance the Palestinian budget. But this is ridiculous.

Once you subtract the hundreds of millions of dollars that go missing every year, and you take into account that Israel managed to govern the areas for 24 years, you realize that this is just one more empty threat – like the demographic threat – made by people who have no political existence without the façade of a peace process.

Abbas is not an asset. He is a liability. It is time to move past him.

Rand Paul’s Support for Israel

Republican Senator Rand Paul is an isolationist. This ought to make him a natural ally for appeasers like Steve Walt and John Mearshimer and the whole blame Israel first crowd.

And indeed, he has taken positions, like opposing additional sanctions on Iran that placed him in their camp.

But Paul is a mixed bag.

Last week, following the PLO’s unity deal with terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Paul introduced the Stand With Israel Act. If it had passed into law, Paul’s act would have required the US to cut off all funding to the Palestinian Authority, including its security forces. The only way the administration could have wiggled out of the aid cutoff would have been by certifying that the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had effectively stopped being the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Paul’s conditions for maintaining aid would have required the President to certify to Congress that the PA – run jointly by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PLO –formally and publicly recognized Israel as a Jewish state; renounced terrorism; purged all individuals with terrorist ties from its security services; terminated all anti-American and anti-Israel incitement, publicly pledged not to engage in war with Israel; and honored previous agreements signed between the PLO and Israel.

Paul’s bill was good for America. Maintaining financial support for the Palestinian Authority in the aftermath of the PLO’s unity-with-terrorists deal constitutes a breach of US anti-terror law.

Financing the PA also harms US national security. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are financed by Iran. So by funding the PLO’s PA, which just united its forces with theirs, the US is subsidizing Iran’s terror network.

Ending US financing of the PA would certainly be good for Israel. Indeed, just by sponsoring the bill Paul has helped Israel in two critical ways. He offered Israel friendship, and he began a process of changing the mendacious narrative about the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel to one based on the truth.

By extending his hand to Israel, Paul gave Israel an opening to build relationships with political forces with which it has not traditionally had close ties. Because most of Israel’s supporters in Washington support an interventionist US foreign policy, isolationists like Paul have generally either stood on the sidelines of the debate, or in light of their desire to beat a quick retreat from the region, they have been willing, even happy to support the Arabs against Israel and blame Israel’s supporters for getting the US involved in the Middle East.

The hard truth is that while American isolationism is bad for the US, it isn’t necessarily bad for Israel. To date, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, there has been a direct correlation between the level of US involvement in Israel’s affairs and US hostility towards Israel.

Paul’s pro-Israel detractors note that he also supports cutting off US military aid to Israel. But that doesn’t necessarily make him anti-Israel.

Despite the protestations of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups, it is far from clear that Israel would be worse off if it stopped receiving US aid. Indeed, it is likely that Israel’s economy and military strength would both be enhanced by the strategic independence that an aid cut-off would bring about.

Yes, Paul is a complicated character. But that doesn’t make him Israel’s enemy. His bill was an act of friendship. And Israel can use more friends in Washington who actually do things that help it rather than suffice with declaring their support for Israel while standing by as its reputation is trashed.

And that’s the thing of it. The Obama administration can’t stop trash talking Israel. And more than ever before, Israel needs allies who are willing to take real action to defend it.

Israel received yet another reminder of this basic fact last Friday when Yedioth Aharonoth’s senior writer Nahum Barnea published an interview with unnamed “senior American officials” involved in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Those “officials,” it quickly became apparent, turned out to be the one and only Martin Indyk, Secretary of State John Kerry’s senior mediator.

In that interview, Indyk showed that among members of the Obama administration, Israel is friendless. Indyk’s interview, like serial anti-Israel statements made by Kerry, (most recently his anti-Semitic “Israel apartheid” remarks to the Trilateral Commission), and by President Barack Obama himself, was notable for its utter hostility to Israel and its Jewish leaders.

Not only did Indyk blame Israel for the failure of Kerry’s “peace process.” Like Obama and Kerry, Indyk insisted that Israel’s failure to bow to every PLO demand has opened it to the prospect of a renewed Palestinian terror war against it, to international isolation and to European trade embargoes.

Like Kerry, Indyk casually employed anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish cleverness and greed.

From the perspective of continued US aid to the PA, by far the most important part of Indyk’s remarks, like those that Kerry made to the Trilateral Commission, was his claim that the Palestinians will likely respond to the failure of Kerry’s peacemaking by initiating another terror war against Israel.

Indyk’s assertion – or was it a threat? – was notable because the US government is training and financing the Palestinian forces that would be directing the terror war.

Since 2007, the US has spent billions of dollars financing and training Palestinian security services and transforming them into a professional military. Trained using US doctrine, they are the strongest military force the Palestinians have ever fielded against Israel.

These forces – commanded by Abbas – share his supportive view of the terrorist mass murder of Jews. They share his position that Israel has no right to exist, that Jews have no history and are not a nation.

Since 1996, every Palestinian terror campaign has been directed by these security services. And as US Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who served as the first commander of the US training mission has stated publicly, these US trained forces can be expected to turn their guns at Israel.

While the PLO was competing with Hamas for leadership, Abbas deployed these US trained forces against Hamas. Now that the PLO and Hamas are unified, these operations will necessarily end.

Moreover, these US trained forces are already involved in terrorism. Over the past six months, IDF commanders have repeatedly pointed fingers at PA security forces claiming that the steep rise in terrorist attacks against Israelis in Judea and Samaria is being organized and directed by them.

This is brings us to the second reason why Paul’s initiative is so important. While it is important for Israel to find new friends in Washington, it is even more important for it to change the narrative about the Palestinians and their conflict with Israel.

The false narrative, which claims that the PLO is moderate and that Mahmoud Abbas is a statesman and a man of peace, has made Israel’s old friends in Washington unable to understand reality. So unlike Paul, these friends are incapable of taking actions that actually advance Israel’s interests and strengthen its alliance with the US.

The false narrative of PLO moderation has monopolized the discourse on the Palestinians to the point where adherence to the two-state policy has more in common with a religious faith than a policy preference.

Indyk’s hysterical assault on Israel is textbook behavior of a believer lashing out at a person who exposes the utter falsity of his faith.

The believer cannot disown his phony messiah. So his only option is to present the party that unmasked the lie as the devil.

Hence, Indyk’s vulgar assault on Israelis.

But while Indyk’s faith is fanatical, many others share it in more moderate, but still devastating forms. And they too lash out at anyone who exposes their irrationality.

Case in point is the pro-Israel community’s opposition to Paul’s bill.

The day after Paul introduced his bill, AIPAC came out against it. AIPAC opposed the bill, according to the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin, (who herself violently opposed it), because its leadership believes that the PA security forces play a key role in fighting Hamas.

So a week after the Israeli government formally ended negotiations because the PA supports terror, AIPAC opposed ending US aid to the PA because, AIPAC claimed, it fights terror.

For her part, Rubin railed against Paul’s initiative claiming that it was “a phony pro-Israel bill.”

Paul submitted his bill for unanimous consent in order to fast track it to a vote and into law. AIPAC convinced some senators to vote against Paul’s bill, and so killed it.

In an interview with Newsmax’s Steve Maltzberg after the vote, Paul attacked AIPAC saying, “I think the American people, if they knew that [AIPAC opposed his bill], would be very, very upset and think, you know what, those people are no longer lobbying in favor of America and Israel if they’re not willing to put restrictions on aid to Palestine.”

In other words, Paul was saying, it is time to move on, and those who insist on acting as though nothing has changed since 1994 are not behaving as one would expect Israel’s friends to behave.

And he is right.

Paul may be a cynical opportunist. But that’s better than a messianic that prefers to believe that Israel is the devil than accept that the Peace Fairy doesn’t exist.

And yes, his refreshing embrace of the truth as the basis for US policymaking makes him a better friend to Israel today than AIPAC that refuses to accept the truth, (and like him, failed to support additional sanctions against Iran).

Rand Paul told Fox News after his bill failed to pass that he will not abandon the fight against US aid to the PA. We must hope that he is true to his word.

John Kerry’s Jewish best friends

Anti-Semitism is not a simple bigotry. It is a complex neurosis. It involves assigning malign intent to Jews where none exists on the one hand, and rejecting reason as a basis for understanding the world and operating within it on the other hand.

John Kerry’s recent use of the term “Apartheid” in reference to Israel’s future was an anti-Semitic act.

In remarks before the Trilateral Commission a few days after PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas signed a unity deal with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups, Kerry said that if Israel doesn’t cut a deal with the Palestinians soon, it will either cease to be a Jewish state or it will become “an apartheid state.”

Leave aside the fact that Kerry’s scenarios are based on phony demographic data. As I demonstrate in my book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, Israel will maintain a strong and growing Jewish majority in a “unitary state” that includes the territory within the 1949 armistice lines and Judea and Samaria. But even if Kerry’s fictional data were correct, the only “Apartheid state” that has any chance of emerging is the Palestinian state that Kerry claims Israel’s survival depends on. The Palestinians demand that the territory that would comprise their state must be ethnically cleansed of all Jewish presence before they will agree to accept sovereign responsibility for it.

In other words, the future leaders of that state – from the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad alike — are so imbued with genocidal Jew hatred that they insist that all 650,000 Jews living in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria must be forcibly ejected from their homes. These Jewish towns, cities and neighborhoods must all be emptied before the Palestinians whose cause Kerry so wildly champions will even agree to set up their Apartheid state.[su_pullquote]Since his tenure as US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration, Indyk has played fast and dirty in Israeli politics, actively recruiting Israelis to influence Israeli public opinion to favor the Left while castigating non-leftist politicians and regular Israeli citizens as evil, stupid and destructive.[/su_pullquote] According to the 1998 Rome Statute, Apartheid is a crime of intent, not of outcome. It is the malign intent of the Palestinians –across their political and ideological spectrum — to found a state predicated on anti-Jewish bigotry and ethnic cleansing. In stark contrast, no potential Israeli leader or faction has any intention of basing national policies on racial subjugation in any form.

By ignoring the fact that every Palestinian leader views Jews as a contaminant that must be blotted out from the territory the Palestinians seek to control, (before they will even agree to accept sovereign responsibility for it), while attributing to Jews malicious intent towards the Palestinians that no Israeli Jewish politician with a chance of leading the country harbors, Kerry is adopting a full-throated and comprehensive anti-Semitic position.

It is both untethered from reason and libelous of Jews.

Speaking to the Daily Beast about Kerry’s remarks on Sunday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was quick to use the “some of his best friends are Jewish,” defense.

In her words, “Secretary Kerry, like Justice Minister [Tzipi] Livni, and previous Israeli Prime Ministers [Ehud] Olmert and [Ehud] Barak, was reiterating why there’s no such thing as a one-state solution if you believe, as he does, in the principle of a Jewish state. He was talking about the kind of future Israel wants.”

So in order to justify his own anti-Semitism – and sell it to the American Jewish community – Kerry is engaging in vulgar partisan interference in the internal politics of another country. Indeed, Kerry went so far as to hint that if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is forced from power, and Kerry’s Jewish best friends replace him, then things will be wonderful.  In his words, if “there is a change of government or a change of heart, something will happen.” By inserting himself directly into the Israeli political arena, Kerry is working from his mediator Martin Indyk’s playbook.

Since his tenure as US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration, Indyk has played fast and dirty in Israeli politics, actively recruiting Israelis to influence Israeli public opinion to favor the Left while castigating non-leftist politicians and regular Israeli citizens as evil, stupid and destructive.

Livni, Olmert, Barak and others probably don’t share Kerry’s anti-Semitic sensitivities. Although their behavior enables foreigners like Kerry to embrace anti-Semitic positions, their actions are most likely informed by their egotistical obsessions with power. Livni, Olmert and Barak demonize their political opponents because the facts do not support their policies. The only card they have to play is the politics of personal destruction. And so they use it over and over again.

This worked in the past. That is why Olmert and Barak were able to form coalition governments. But the cumulative effects of the Palestinian terror war that began after Israel offered the PLO statehood at Camp David in 2000, the failure of the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, and the 2006 war with Lebanon have brought about a situation where the Israeli public is no longer willing to buy what the Left is selling.

Realizing this, Barak, Livni and others have based their claim to political power on their favored status in the US. In Netanyahu’s previous government, Barak parlayed the support he received from the Obama administration into his senior position as Defense Minister. Today, Livni’s position as Justice Minister and chief negotiator with the PLO owes entirely to the support she receives from the Obama administration.

Neither Barak nor Livni ever lost sight of the cause for their political elevation, despite their electoral defeats.
Like Barak in Netanyahu’s previous government, today Livni provides Kerry and Indyk with “Israeli” cover for their anti-Israeli policies. And working with Kerry and Indyk, she is able to force herself and her popularly rejected policies on the elected government.

Livni – again, like Barak in Netanyahu’s previous government – has been able to hold her senior government position and exert influence over government policy by claiming that only her presence in the government is keeping the US at bay. According to this line of thinking, without her partnership, the Obama administration will turn on Israel.

Now that Kerry has given a full throated endorsement of anti-Semitic demagoguery, Livni’s leverage is vastly diminished. Since Kerry’s anti-Semitic statements show that Livni has failed to shield Israel from the Obama administration’s hostility, the rationale for her continued inclusion in the government has disappeared.

The same goes for the Obama administration’s favorite American Jewish group J Street. Since its formation in the lead up to the 2008 Presidential elections, J Street has served as the Obama administration’s chief supporter in the US Jewish community. J Street uses rhetorical devices that were relevant to the political realities of the 1990s to claim that it is both “pro-peace and pro-Israel.” Twenty years into the failed peace process, for Israeli ears at least, these slogans ring hollow.

But the real problem with J Street’s claim isn’t that its rhetoric is irrelevant. The real problem is that its rhetoric is deceptive.

J Street’s record has nothing to do with either supporting Israel or peace. Rather it has a record of continuous anti-Israel agitation. J Street has continuously provided American Jewish cover for the administration’s anti-Israel actions by calling for it to take even more extreme actions. These have included calling for the administration to support an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council, and opposing sanctions against Iran for its illicit nuclear weapons program. J Street has embraced the PLO’s newest unity pact with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And now it is defending Kerry for engaging in rank anti-Semitism with his “Apartheid” remarks.

J Street’s political action committee campaigns to defeat pro-Israel members of Congress. And its campus operation brings speakers to US university campuses that slander Israel and the IDF and call for the divestment of university campuses from businesses owned by Israelis.

On Wednesday, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is set to vote on J Street’s application to join the umbrella group as a “pro-peace, pro-Israel” organization.

Kerry’s “Apartheid” remarks are a watershed event. They represent the first time a sitting US Secretary of State has publically endorsed an anti-Semitic caricature of Jews and the Jewish state.

The best response that both the Israeli government and the Jewish community can give to Kerry’s act of unprecedented hostility and bigotry is to reject his Jewish enablers. Livni should be shown the door. And the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations should reject J Street’s bid for membership.

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[su_quote cite=”Caroline Glick”]Since his tenure as US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration, Indyk has played fast and dirty in Israeli politics, actively recruiting Israelis to influence Israeli public opinion to favor the Left while castigating non-leftist politicians and regular Israeli citizens as evil, stupid and destructive.[/su_quote]

Good Riddance to John Kerry’s Middle East Peace Talks

The U.S.-mediated peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians ended today after Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and Palestinian president, announced an alliance last week with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Hamas is the Palestinian group which controls Gaza and has been designated a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States, and the European Union. Islamic Jihad is a terrorist organization backed by Iran.

Israel’s decision to end the talks was long overdue. Like several prior U.S. administrations, the Obama administration has tried to bring about a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. However, the peace process begun by Secretary of State John Kerry last year differs from past U.S. efforts due to an inexplicable anti-Israel bias.

The latest example of this was Kerry’s statement on Friday that Israel could become an apartheid nation if it did not reach a peace deal to create a separate Palestinian state.

On Fox News yesterday, Charles Krauthammer called Secretary of State John Kerry’s comment “pernicious, extremely harmful,” and a “resigning-type statement.”

This is not the first time Obama officials have made such statements. Just as troubling have been statements by President Obama and Secretary Kerry that boycotts of Israel by some Western groups and universities could increase if Israeli officials did not make compromises to prevent the peace process from collapsing. Israeli officials were rightly outraged over these comments and regarded them as threats. While Kerry later backtracked, these statements had the effect of convincing the Palestinian leadership to believe it had the advantage in the U.S.-mediated talks.

Obama officials have also dismissed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinian leadership recognize Israel as a Jewish state even though the late Yasser Arafat acknowledged this several times. For example, on March 10, Jen Psaki, an Obama insider who is the State Department’s lead spokeswoman, said there was no need for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state as part of a final peace agreement.

Center for Security Policy Adjunct Fellow Caroline Glick wrote in the Jerusalem Post on April 24 that the lopsided U.S. approach to the peace process emboldened Palestinian President Abbas to strike a unity deal with Hamas and Islamic Jihad – both of which she refers to as terrorist war criminals – “because he is utterly convinced that neither the U.S. nor the European Union will hold him accountable for his actions. He is completely certain that neither the Americans nor the Europeans are serious about their professed commitments to upholding international law.”

Simply put, Abbas believes he can ally with terrorist groups that refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist without suffering any consequences from the West. Glick agrees, noting that State Department spokeswoman Psaki tried to downplay this development by stating at a press conference last week, “I think the ball, at this point, is in the Palestinians’ court to answer questions to whether this reconciliation meets the US’s long-standing principles.”

Abbas’ decision to ally with Hamas and Islamic Jihad when peace talks were on the brink of collapse required a strong and principled condemnation from the United States, not this remark which Glick astutely described as idiotic.

More idiotic was Secretary Kerry’s anti-Israel apartheid remark in the wake of Abbas’ decision.

Negotiating a diplomatic settlement between Israel and the Palestinians is a difficult task that the best U.S. diplomats would find hard to achieve due to the increasing influence of radical Islam in the region, the weak Palestinian leadership, its refusal to negotiate in good faith and deep suspicion of a peace process with the Palestinians by many Israelis.

A future peace agreement will require Israel to make painful compromises. To make such compromises Israel will need to trust Palestinian leaders and the mediator. At this time, Israel cannot trust either party.

Like its incompetent foreign policy concerning Syria, Egypt, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and other countries and regions, the Obama administration has bungled the Middle East peace talks with stunningly naïve policies that have undermined America’s credibility and benefited our adversaries. The Fatah-Hamas-Islamic Jihad unity agreement will put an end to the farce that was the Kerry peace talks and force the Obama administration to face up to the reality that getting a peace agreement will require strong pressure on Palestinian officials, carrying out consequences for their actions, and working with Israel as our close ally instead of publicly rebuking it as the primary obstacle to a settlement.

The new Palestinian government

Recently, Israel decided to suspend peace talks after the announcement from the Palestinians that the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and Hamas were forming a unity government.

President Obama was quick to spread the blame to both Palestinians and Israeli’s:

“What we haven’t seen is, frankly, the kind of political will to actually make tough decisions, and that’s been true on both sides.”

However, this is not an issue where both sides are culpable for the breakdown in communication. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Period. They have targeted and killed countless innocent Israeli civilians while calling for the complete destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.

This move rightfully removes the PLO as a group the Israeli government should be negotiating with for peace. The action of teaming up with the openly anti-Semitic, terrorist organization Hamas is, to say the least, a direct slap in the face to the idea that there can be peace in the Middle East.

The President needs to stop placing equal blame on both sides and realize that unless this new hybrid government stops killing innocent civilian and preaching hatred of Jews then the Palestinians are neither ready nor deserving of their own state.

Rep. Roskam: US-Israel Relationship Is Good For Both Sides

When it comes to bolstering a strong US-Israel relationship, Obama’s actions aren’t holding up to his promises, observed Congressman Peter Roskam, House Republican Chief Deputy Whip, on Tuesday’s Secure Freedom Radio.

Roskam strongly criticized the Obama Administration for pressuring Israel to make deals with the Iranians and Palestinians, and making US support contingent on those agreements.

Consequently, Roskam said, the Palestinian leadership has “figured out ‘wait and do nothing.’ The US government will pressure Israel, pressure Israel, and pressure Israel some more.”

Congressman Roskam also spoke harshly of the idea that diplomacy can replace a strong Israeli defense in the Middle East.

“It’s a view of the world that is based on President Obama’s personality, where he basically thinks that he can charm people into doing the right thing. And as anybody knows who looks at these things, charm doesn’t do it. You need a strong deterrent, and here is where the Israelis, in cooperation with the United States, have been successful in David’s Sling, Iron Dome, Arrow.”

At its core, the Congressman emphasized, the US-Israel relationship is a mutually beneficial partnership, and should be treated as such.

“There are so many times that the general discussion around that relationship is ‘how great is the US for Israel.’ But I think we also need to recognize that Israel is great for the United States, too.”

Obama Switches Sides

It’s long been clear that, under the Obama administration, America has switched sides in the War for the Free World.

Today, we are arming al Qaeda in Syria, underwriting Iran and embracing the Muslim Brotherhood – a subversive jihadist group sworn to our destruction.

A particularly alarming manifestation of this crazy policy reversal was a recent announcement: From now on, asylum-seekers who have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism can get refuge in the United States.

Meanwhile, Team Obama has reportedly been denying visas to Israelis engaged in fighting our mutual terrorist enemies and protecting one of our most important allies.

The take-away is unmistakable: It’s much better to be a mortal enemy of this country than its friend.

Whose side is President Obama on?

Holocaust 2.0

Israel’s top military intelligence officer put friends of the Jewish State, as well as Israelis, on notice this week: Preparations are far advanced for what some hope will be a second Holocaust.

Major General Aviv Korchavi warned that Israel is now “surrounded 360 degrees with active enemies.” Especially alarming are the estimated 170,000 rockets and missiles in the hands of Israel’s enemies. The general says every city in Israel is at risk from such weapons.

Then there’s the Syrian incubator for jihadists, incessant cyber-attacks and the now-unchecked nuclear threat emerging from Iran.

Under these circumstances, it’s simply outrageous that Team Obama is trying to force Israel to become still more vulnerable by surrendering territory vital to our ally’s survival.

We must stand with Israel, not encourage its destruction.

Repudiate Kerry

Ten years ago, Americans took a hard look at John Kerry and decided that they didn’t want him in charge.  Thanks to his former Swift Boat comrades, we were spared the results of entrusting the country’s security to someone with Kerry’s arrogance, bad judgment and vaulting ambition.

Unfortunately, as our Secretary of State, John Kerry is strutting the world stage, cutting defective deals with tyrants, emboldening our enemies and undermining our friends. Notably, he’s insisting that Israel make dangerous concessions to those sworn to destroy the Jewish State – and, in due course, us.

A phony “framework” deal with Iran is coming unraveled even as Secretary Kerry says he’s closing in on a new one between Israel and the Palestinians. He must be repudiated again, as he was a decade ago.