Israel Commentary

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4189

Federations confirm what many of us have known for a long time and governed our contributions accordingly – Israel is way down the list of Federation priorities.

The Jewish Press, July 27, 2012
 
US Jewish Federations to drop ‘Zionism’ from their Global Plans
 
By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus
 
In what has been described as “a closeted and cowardly move,” the Jewish Federations of North America last week rejected the inclusion of the term “Zionism” in a major system-wide planning document.
 
The JFNA’s Global Planning Table is the mechanism by which JFNA and Federation leadership come together to determine the allocation of dollars for new Federation initiatives outside of the United States. The Report issued by this collaborative is considered a building block of the allocations decision making process, and it was the call to include Zionism in the recent report that was rejected. The Global Planning Table page of the JFNA website does not include either the term Zionism or Israel.
 
Richard Wexler, former chair of the Chicago Federation and national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal in the late ’90′s, revealed yesterday, July 26, that JFNA’s leaders have rejected the inclusion of the term “Zionism” in their Global Planning Table Work Group Report  because the term “is too controversial.” (the ultimate cop-out term used when one does not agree with a position – exactly like the Olympic committee’s cop-out decision to not have a moment of silence commemorating the terrorist killing of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes)
 
In 2008 Wexler stepped down from his position as chairman of the United Israel Appeal, a subsidiary of what later became the JFNA. He also was one of the architects of the merger of United Jewish Communities, the umbrella group for the local Federations. Even while in a leadership position, however,  Wexler was critical of the management culture, writing in his blog “UJ Thee and Me” that “criticism is not merely ignored, it is not tolerated.”
 
Some fear the JFNA move will be seen as a watered-down acceptance of the notion that Zionism is to blame for the problems in the Middle East, or at the very least an effort to hold at arms length the idea that Jews are entitled to a national homeland.
 
“I am beyond disappointed and upset,” Wexler told The Jewish Press, about the decision to hide from the idea of Zionism. He said, “that is at the heart of all we do.” Members of the GPT work group who were present at the meeting and frustrated by the outcome told Wexler about the decision.
 
One of those most closely involved in this decision making effort was Joanne Moore, senior vice president for JFNA’s Global Planning Department.  Moore oversees the Global Planning Table, JFNA’s research department and the General Assembly. Prior to joining JFNA, Moore, a former U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, spent more than a dozen years working on USAID-funded public health projects in Africa, Haiti and Asia.  She also was a consultant to the Institute of Reproductive Health. In addition, Moore had been a lay leader in various capacities for JFNA. Moore did not respond to a request for comment.
 
The rejection of Zionism by JFNA leaders was described by Wexler in his blogpost and in comments to The Jewish Press, as a continuing trend by Federations to distance themselves from Israel. Several years ago, Federations changed the name of their non-domestic efforts, which had been called their Israel and Overseas Department, to the Global Operations Department.  In response to push-back from local leaders, the name was changed once again to Global Operations: Israel and Overseas. Further evidence of this trend, according to Wexler, is a drift from the close connections the JFNA had with its actual overseas partners, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
 
Acknowledging that there might be better, more efficient ways for the Federations to encourage North American Jewry with Israel than through the Joint or JAFI, he was adamant that this latest decision — the excision of the term Zionism from their planning documents — was morally disastrous. “What we cannot permit is an implicit denial of the centrality of Israel in our lives and a denial [of] the absolute responsibility we as Diaspora Jewish leaders have to engage more Jews here with Israel.”
 
Although repeated efforts to reach JFNA leaders were unsuccessful, it is possible that the decision may be reversed before the report is finalized.  Richard Wexler, for one, hopes this is what attention to this decision may bring.  Otherwise it is simply a “terrible commentary on what Federations are today.”
 
About the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the president of Z STREET, a pro-Israel organization, (as opposed to the notoriously anti-Israel lobbying group, J STREET, ardently supported by Democratic Party National Chairman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz) and chair of the executive committee of the National Conference on Jewish Affairs.

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4182

Juval Aviv was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie ‘ Munich ‘ was based. He was Golda Meir’s bodyguard. She appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.

In a lecture in New York City a few weeks ago, Aviv shared information that EVERY American needs to know – but that our government has not yet shared with us.

Aviv predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O’Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time, O’Reilly laughed and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted Aviv back on the show. But, unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.

Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East ) to the Bush Administration about 9/11 a month before it occurred. His report specifically said that they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments. Congress has since hired him as a security consultant.

Now for Aviv’s future predictions:

He predicts the next terrorist attack on the US will occur within the next few months. Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try hijacking a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke–that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.

Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate… (i.e., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) and that it will also include shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as rural America this time (Wyoming, Montana, etc.).

The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like a big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas.

Aviv says terrorists won’t need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.

Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our US Government does not want to ‘alarm American citizens’ with the facts.. The world is quickly going to become ‘a different place’, and issues like ‘global warming’ and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.

On an encouraging note, Aviv says that Americans don’t have to be concerned about being nuked. He says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It’s cheap, it’s easy, it’s effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to ‘meet their destiny’. (And be greeted by the 70 guaranteed virgins)

Aviv also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad. But, will be, instead, ‘home-grown’- that means having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the US He says to look for ‘students’ who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East. These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won’t know/understand a thing about them.

(Thanks to successfully indoctrinated “political correctness”, the deliberate misnomer, “War on Terrorism”, our own useful idiots, our pathologically ignorant, misguided media, Obama’s Muslim appointees in the White House and his Czars controlling the very essence of the US government.) jsk

Aviv says that, as a people, Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terrorist threats we will, inevitably, face. America still has only a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks, and Aviv says it is critical that we change that fact SOON. (And, who knows how many of these are actually Muslim and Arab dual agents)

So, what can America do to protect itself? From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the US needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for its intelligence. We need to, instead, follow Israel’s, Ireland’s and England’s hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to trust ‘aware’ citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our US Government continues to treat us, its citizens, ‘like babies’. Our government thinks we ‘can’t handle the truth’ and are concerned that we’ll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism.

Aviv says this is a deadly mistake.

Aviv recently created/executed a security test for our Congress, by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago, someone tried to steal the briefcase!

In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well ‘trained’ that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, ‘Unattended Bag!’ The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves. But, unfortunately, America hasn’t been ‘hurt enough’ yet by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it’s their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.

Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were ‘lost’ without parents being able to pick them up, and about our schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there.. (In New York City, this was days, in some cases!)

He stresses the importance of having a plan that’s agreed upon within your family, to respond to in the event of a terrorist emergency. He urges parents to contact their children’s schools and demand that the schools, too, develop plans of actions, as they do in Israel. Does your family know what to do if you can’t contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.

Aviv says that the US Government has in force a plan that, in the event of another terrorist attack, will immediately cut-off EVERYONE’s ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated.How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak? You need to have a plan.

If you believe what you have just read, then you must feel compelled to send it to every concerned parent or guardian, grandparents, uncles, aunts, whatever and whomever. Nothing will happen if you choose not to do so, but in the event it does happen, this particular email will haunt you… “I should have sent this to…”, but I didn’t believe it and just deleted it as so much trash.

Gray lady rivals Obama for truth-distorting agenda

By Col. Ken Allard
The Washington Times
July 23, 2012

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4165

Nasty old colonels normally appear before Congress only to answer for past misdeeds. But I testified last week on Stuxnet and the White House leaks because of personal experience with something people in Washington often prefer to forget: The New York Times spies, lies and routinely distorts the truth.

A former Army special agent with Cold War counter-espionage experience, I quickly recognized the covert techniques employed by New York Times journalists like David Sanger to penetrate an Obama White House pathetically eager to please its media allies. As I told the House Judiciary Committee last week, it was as if a team of KGB moles had burrowed into the West Wing, except that the newspaper was better organized and far more profitable.

Yet even the most ambitious KGB agent could scarcely imagine Mr. Sanger’s most breathtaking revelation. Stuxnet was only part of a sophisticated campaign of industrial sabotage by the United States against Iranian nuclear facilities. Got that? Sabotage is an act of war, just like a blockade or a blitzkrieg, inviting cyber-retaliation against America’s notoriously delicate electronic infrastructure.

So forget about the Valerie Plame affair or even Bob Woodward’s repetitive defiance of every government classification: Mr. Sanger compromised the most vital of all American secrets, among other things, to enhance book sales and profits. Artfully coordinating front-page stories, fawning reviews and agenda-driven media buzz, the New York Times acted as a fellow traveler and conspirator.

But the second reason for my testimony was to remind Congress that we have seen this kind of thing before. In 2008, the newspaper published a Pulitzer Prize-winning expose about the military analysts you used to see on TV. In a 7,500-word article, the paper charged that those 70 analysts, all veterans and some with distinguished war records, had been seduced by privileged access and closed-door Pentagon briefings. There were even hints of kickbacks from defense contractors, that these privileged insiders had sold their souls or been hijacked into being apologists for the Rumsfeld Pentagon.

Great story had it been true. The problem was, I was one of those military analysts and had written a book, “Warheads,” about the Pentagon briefing program and my decade with NBC News. I had even given hours of interviews about its insights to David Barstow, a New York Times reporter. But when his story appeared, it never once hinted at the existence of “Warheads.” Was this simple plagiarism or simply a masterpiece of distortion?

I raised those questions repeatedly during four separate federal investigations kicked off by the article, angrily demanded by House Democrats as well as Sen. Carl Levin, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and then-Sen. Barack Obama. It took almost four years, at least $2.3 million taxpayer dollars and three government agencies: the Government Accountability Office, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Defense inspector general (IG). None found any violation of law, regulation or even policy. One IG investigator quietly told me, “Colonel, we also read your book.”

If this sounds familiar to readers of The Washington Times, it is because this newspaper focused on the larger story — the progressive discrediting of the New York Times expose — in a series of articles by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough. Mr. Scarborough even exposed, the supposedly highly moral, beyond reproach, Senator Levin’s scandalous efforts last fall to influence the final report of the Pentagon IG, the political equivalent of jury-tampering. Historians may eventually agree that this was the most disgraceful episode in military-media relations since Vietnam. But the Wall Street Journal put it more simply: “The [real] liars weren’t at the Pentagon.”

Although the trip to Capitol Hill was at my own expense and not the taxpayers, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to confront Congress with one simple fact: Whether exposing vital national secrets or subjecting distinguished veterans to potential indictments, the only constant is the agenda of the New York Times.

House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith and Ranking Minority Member John Conyers Jr. have already taken the first steps toward issuing subpoenas, a significant step toward restoring bipartisan consensus and curbing media excesses. Equally important is updating the 1917 Espionage Act to deal with a dysfunctional classification system and information-age realities like open-source intelligence. Though insufficient, Congress should apologize to the “warheads” for the damages done in its name to our honor and reputation.

I also have a persistent fantasy of the government billing the New York Times for the costs of those investigations but would be satisfied if their Pulitzer Prize was simply rescinded.

Col. Ken Allard, retired from the Army, is a former NBC News military analyst and author on national security issues.

The Muslim Brotherhood in America – See two videos by Frank Gaffney below 

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4143

A Course in 10 Parts, Please go to YouTube and see all 10 mind-boggling episodes, especially before you make the disastrous choice of voting for the wrong candidate.
 
In 2008, Barack Obama began “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” He has certainly done so with respect to policies favored by Islamists. This part is a two-hour deep drill-down into the disastrous policies of the Obama White House, its State Department, Defense Department, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and more.

The conduct of seven key federal agencies suggests the considerable success of the Muslim Brotherhood in destroying us from within by our own hands – starting with the policies and directives emanating from the Oval Office and elsewhere in the White House complex.

Examples of such evidence include:

White House:  Promulgating a self-defeating “National Strategy for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States” that effectively guarantees Muslim Brotherhood fronts a say, if not a veto, on policy and its implementation

Director of National Intelligence:  Characterizing the Muslim Brotherhood as a “largely secular group” that has “eschewed violence” and has “no overarching agenda, at least internationally”

State Department:  Granting unconditional and in one lump-sum payment $1.5 billion to the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled government in Egypt

Justice Department:  Purging FBI and other training materials about “countering violent extremism” that Muslim Brothers and their leftist allies deem “offensive”

Defense Department:  Pursuing a Counter-Insurgency (COIN) Strategy whose central premise and rules of engagement have, in practice, translated into submission to shariah and the enemies information dominance
Homeland Security:  Allowing deep penetration by Muslim Brotherhood operatives to translate into lexicons, strategies and guidelines that are seriously defective and doomed to fail

NASA: Implementing presidential guidance that established the Administrator’s “foremost” priority as “making Muslim nations feel good about their historic contribution to science…and math and engineering.”
 
Video below is the introduction from the Frank Gaffney series on YouTube.

The second video below calls out Hillary’s right hand lady, Huma Abedin, defended so lustily and erroneously by Senator McCain, plus a litany of other Muslim Brotherhood devotees in the Obama White House. You may have to copy and paste this url to your search engine. Great attempts are being made to eliminate it from viewing on YouTube.

Jerome S. Kaufman

July 19, 2012

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4133

The Times of Israel
July 22, 2012

The one-stop news site covering Israel, the region and the Jewish people worldwide

Mehdi Ghezali (screen capture, Channel 10)

Bulgarian media on Thursday named the suicide bomber who blew up a bus full of Israeli tourists, killing five Israelis and a local bus driver, in the Black Sea resort of Burgas on Wednesday as 36-year-old Mehdi Ghezali.
Ghezali reportedly arrived in Bulgaria five weeks before the bombing and arrived at the airport via taxi, Channel 2 reported.

He was also reportedly given the bomb by someone else, but no further details were provided. There was no independent confirmation of the veracity of the information. The reports surfaced soon after Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had publicly accused Hezbollah, directed by Iran, of responsibility for the bombing. The Prime Minister’s Office made no comment on the reports.

The Bulgarian reports, rapidly picked up by Hebrew media, posited various versions of how the bomber had detonated the bomb, including the suggestion that the bomber had not intended to die in the blast, but may have wanted to place the bomb on the bus and flee.

Ghezali has a Wikipedia page, which describes him as a Swedish citizen, with Algerian and Finnish origins. He had been held at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detainment camp on Cuba from 2002 to 2004, having previously studied at a Muslim religious school and mosque in Britain, and traveled to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, it says. He was taken into custody on suspicion of being an al-Qaeda agent, having been arrested along with a number of other al-Qaeda operatives.

Following a lobbying effort by Swedish prime minister Göran Persson, Guantanamo authorities recommended Ghezali be transferred to another country for continued detainment, and he was handed over to Swedish authorities in 2004. The Swedish government did not press charges.

A 2005 Swedish documentary about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp starred Ghezali, who detailed his experience in American custody. He was also reportedly among 12 foreigners captured trying to cross into Afghanistan in 2009.

Earlier on Thursday the Bulgarian police released a brief video clip that claimed to show the suicide bomber, responsible for Wednesday’s terror attack on a tour bus full of Israeli citizens, walking around shortly before the blast at Burgas International Airport.

The Bulgarian news agency Sofia reported that the bomber was carrying an American passport and Michigan driver’s license, both believed to be forgeries. Sofia also reported that the Bulgarian Interior Ministry managed to recover the fingerprints of the bomber, which they submitted to the FBI in the United States and the international police organization Interpol. The FBI and CIA joined Israeli and Bulgarian officials in investigating the attack.

Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov told Sofia that DNA tests were being run to determine the identity of the Caucasian man, who the minister described as casually dressed with nothing suspicious about his appearance to set him apart from the crowd of people at the airport. (I guess everyone carries huge back packs, nowadays?)
The ministry did not indicate how the police came to the conclusion that the man was the suicide bomber.

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4109

July 19, 2012
 
U.S. Caves to Turkey’s Demand
 
Zionist Org. of America (ZOA) Critical of Israel’s Exclusion from Counter-Terrorism Conferences in Madrid & Istanbul – Fits Obama Admin. Pattern of Excluding Israel

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has been critical of the Obama Administration’s recent excluding of Israel from two counter-terrorism conferences held with a large number of long-standing U.S. allies, first in Istanbul, Turkey, in June and again in Madrid, Spain last week. This fits a pattern of excluding or leaving out Israel that has characterized the Obama Administration. 
 
The ZOA views this exclusion of Israel as grotesque and tragically ironic in view of reports yesterday that terrorists bombed a bus carrying Israeli tourists at Bargas Airport Bulgaria, killing seven, and wounding over 30, according to reports. (The attack came on the 18th anniversary of the Iran-sponsored terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994, in which 87 people were killed and over 100 maimed and injured).
 
Reports indicate that Israel’s exclusion by the Obama Administration from the State Department’s Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) came about at the behest of Turkey’s Islamist, vociferously anti-Israel Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to an Israeli report, “Israel tried hard to obtain an invitation to the meeting, and its exclusion, despite the tight US-Israeli intelligence ties, has greatly disappointed officials in Jerusalem” (Ran Dagoni, ‘US excludes Israel from anti-terror forum because of Turkey,’ Globes, June 10, 2012).
 
Established in September 2011, the GCTF’s aim, according to its website, is to help countries at the forefront in the fight against terrorism to share their “experiences, expertise, strategies” and to reduce the vulnerability of people everywhere to terrorism by effectively preventing, combating, and prosecuting terrorist acts and countering incitement and recruitment to terrorism. 
 
The GCTF has 30 members, of which 10 are Muslim countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Of these four, only Algeria lacks at present an Islamist government. Saudi Arabia has spread its pernicious Wahhabi jihadist ideology which has inspired numerous Islamist terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda. 
 
At the Istanbul conference, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “Terrorists now hold territory in Mali, Somalia, and Yemen. They are carrying out frequent and destabilizing attacks in Nigeria and the Maghreb. Here in Turkey, the PKK continues its long campaign of terror and violence, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives” (‘Opening Remarks at the Global Counterterrorism Forum,’ June 7, 2012). Secretary Clinton said nothing in her speech about the thousands of Israeli lives lost to Arab terrorism over the years.
 
In Madrid this week, Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, Maria Otero spoke of the meeting as being a “high-level conference on the victims of terrorism,” but, like Secretary Clinton the previous month, also made no reference to Israel among the countries named that had suffered terrorist attacks (‘Victims of Terrorism,’ July 9, 2012).
 
Dr. Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, has said, “Israel has been one of the key counterterrorism allies of the United States for 30 years … Its absence from an American-sponsored counter-terror conference raises questions that need to be answered” (‘Obama’s Exclusion of Israel at Counter-Terror Conference Rates Concern,’ Algemeiner Journal, July 15, 2012).

Can anyone name an achievement to justify the adulation of our secretary of state?

By BRET STEPHENS
The Wall Street Journal

July 17, 2012

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4074

Suddenly we’re supposed to believe that Hillary Clinton is a great secretary of state.

Eric Schmidt of Google calls her “the most significant secretary of state since Dean Acheson.” A profile in the New York Times runs under the headline “Hillary Clinton’s Last Tour as a Rock-Star Diplomat.” Another profile in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine is titled, wishfully, “Head of State.” The two articles are so similar in theme, tone, choice of anecdote and the absence of even token criticism that you’re almost tempted to suspect one was cribbed from the other. (Or put out by the Bubba/Hillary PR machine)

The Hillary boomlet isn’t a mystery. She never lost her political constituency. In the cabinet she looks good next to Janet Napolitano and bright next to Joe Biden. She looks even better next to her boss. Democrats belong to the party of hope, and Barack Obama is hope’s keenest disappointment.

So Mrs. Clinton is back, resisting appeals for her to run in 2016 the way Caesar rejects the thrice-offered crown. No doubt she would have made a better president than Mr. Obama. But is that saying much? No doubt she’s been a hard-working and well-briefed secretary. But that isn’t saying much, either.

What achievements justify the adulation of our secretary of state?

What would make Mrs. Clinton a great secretary of state is if she had engineered a major diplomatic breakthrough, as Henry Kissinger did. But she hasn’t. Or if she dominated the administration’s foreign policy, the way Jim Baker did. But she doesn’t. Or if she had marshaled a great alliance (Acheson), or authored a great doctrine (Adams) or a great plan (Marshall), or paved the way to a great victory (Shultz). But she falls palpably short on all those counts, too.

Maybe it’s enough to say Mrs. Clinton is a good secretary of state. But she isn’t that, either.

Mrs. Clinton is often praised for her loyalty to her boss, even when she loses the policy argument — as she did over maintaining a troop presence in Iraq.

Loyalty can be a virtue, but it is a secondary virtue when it conflicts with principle, and a vice when it’s only a function of ambition. Cyrus Vance resigned as Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state when the president, facing a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy, authorized a disastrous rescue operation in Iran. Would that make Vance a lesser public servant than Mrs. Clinton?

Mrs. Clinton is also given high marks for her pragmatism. But pragmatism can only be judged according to the result. Is the reset with Russia improving Moscow’s behavior vis-à-vis Syria? Has a “pragmatic” approach to China moderated its behavior in the South China Sea? Is the administration’s willingness to intervene on humanitarian grounds in Libya but not Syria a function of pragmatism or election-year opportunism?

What about the rest of the record? It would be nice to give Mrs. Clinton full marks for the Libya intervention, except she was an early skeptic of that intervention. It would be nice to give her marks for championing the Syrian opposition, except she has failed to persuade Russia, China or Mr. Obama to move even an inch against Bashar al-Assad. It would be nice to give her marks for helping midwife a positive transition in Egypt. But having fecklessly described Hosni Mubarak as a “friend of my family” in 2009, it’s no wonder Egyptians take a dim view of the Obama administration.

Then there’s Iran. In the administration’s fairy tale/post-facto rationalization, the U.S. was getting nowhere internationally with Iran under George Bush. Then Mr. Obama cunningly offered to extend his hand to the mullahs, knowing that if they rejected it the U.S. would be in a better position to act internationally.

Nearly everything about that account is false. The Bush administration was able to win three U.N. Security Council votes sanctioning Iran, against only one for this administration. The “crippling” sanctions Mr. Obama now likes to brag about were signed against his wishes under political duress late last year. Since then, the administration has spent most of its time writing waivers for other countries. Even now, negotiations with Tehran continue: They serve the purposes of a president who wants to get past November without a crisis. They also serve the mullahs’ purposes to gain time.

Now Iran is that much closer to a bomb and the possibility of a regional war is that much greater. The only real pressure the administration has exerted thus far has been on Israel, whose prime minister is the one foreign leader Mrs. Clinton has bawled out. (Has had the chutzpa to ball out because she knows the Jews in NY will vote for her no matter what her actions against Israel) She should try doing likewise with Vladimir Putin.

Ultimately, Mrs. Clinton cannot be held accountable for the failures of a president she understood (earlier and better than most) as a lightweight. But the choice to serve him was hers, and the administration’s foreign policy record is hers, too. It’s a record that looks good only because it is set against the backdrop that is the Obama presidency in its totality.

Comments We are joining the Israeli people in Mourning for the Lost of Precious lives in the terror attack in Bulgaria. We Love to Pray for Israel. Again,Condolence to God’s Chosen People.
Velasco Legasi

An excellent article by Bret Stephens, I wish New York Jews would read it. On the other hand they would not accept it, “nobody is as blind as those who do not want to see”.
As a Jew and a Holocaust survivor, I do not ever vote for an anti-Semite, I do not believe cutting my own throat. By the way, anti -Israel sentiment is modern anti-Semitism.
I will never forget the picture of Hillary kissing Suha, Arafat’s wife, after a hostile and nasty speech she made against Israel.

Hillary is an anti-Semite which she proved again after the recent trip to Israel. She doesn’t need the Jews anymore, they will vote for her anyhow,
but the Arabs have the money and paid for Bill’s library. and other benefits.
How is it that that this anti-Semites marry of their daughters to rich Jews, Hillary, like Cuomo Sr. whose daughters are both married to rich and famous Jews, but he blamed Israel for all the problems with the so called “Palestinians”.
Is it all about money????? And yet Jews are always blamed to be greedy. I DEEPLY RESENT THAT. Non Jews do a much better in the greed department and yet they always appear as lilly white.
It is clear Hillary did not accomplish anything, both North Korea and Iran are shooting rockets and working on the atomic bomb and provoking all nations and making WWIII a reality.

Bravo Hillary!

Eva Deutsch, Holocaust survivor

The godfather of global warming lowers the boom on climate change hysteria

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4028

BY LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
TORONTO SUN
JUNE 23, 2012

James Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist.

Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change. The implications were extraordinary.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory. Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.

His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations. Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.

Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which for years worshipped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this century.

Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect. He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances.

Among his observations to the Guardian:

(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.

As Lovelock observes, “Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it … Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.” (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)

(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.
“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”

(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.
As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”

(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.” 

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4038

By 
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought”

Israel Hayom (most read daily Israel newspaper)
July 13, 2012


Republican Presidential candidate Romney’s July 2012 visit to Israel will underscore Romney’s appreciation of Israel’s enhanced strategic importance.  Israel’s unique contribution to the US national security is highlighted against the background of the increasingly violent, fragmented, unpredictable and unreliable, seismic “Arab Street;” the intensifying threats of radical Islam, Islamic terrorism and a nuclear Iran to US economic and national security interests; the withdrawal of the US from Iraq and Afghanistan; the upgraded profile of Russia and China in the Middle East; and the cuts in the US defense budget.

In addition, Governor Romney’s visit to Israel will reaffirm the critical role played by the Jewish vote in the November presidential and congressional elections. While the majority of US Jewry resides in New York (1.6 million) and California (1.2 million) – two solid Democratic states – the smaller Jewish communities – in the “toss up” states – could play a decisive role in determining the next President of the USA.  Moreover, while the Jewish population of New York (especially) and California is gradually decreasing, the Jewish population in some of the “swing states” is increasing.

The outcome of the 2000 presidential election was determined by less than 1,000 Jewish voters in Florida.  The outcome of the 2012 presidential election could be determined by the Jewish vote in three of the top seven electoral states, which are also “battleground states”: Florida (29 electors; Jewish population 650,000), Pennsylvania (20 electors; 300,000) and Ohio (18 electors; 150,000). 

Other “battleground states” with a critical mass of Jewish constituents are Virginia (13 electors; 100,000), Arizona (11 electors; 100,000), Colorado (9 electors; 100,000), Missouri (10 electors; 60,000), Nevada (6 electors; 80,000), North Carolina (15 electors; 30,000), Wisconsin (10 electors; 30,000) and possibly Michigan (16 electors; 85,000), Minnesota (10 electors; 50,000) and Indiana (11 electors; 20,000).

Since the seventeenth century, when the early Jewish migrants reached New Amsterdam (1621), Massachusetts (1649), Rhode Island (1658) and South Carolina (1695), US Jewry has been more interested in domestic and global politics than most Americans.  Therefore, Jews play a disproportionate role in national politics, demonstrating a higher turnout on election date than any other ethnic group. Thus, two percent of the population amounts to a four percent share of the presidential electorate.  Moreover, Jewish campaign contributions feature prominently, especially, in the most critical early stages of House and Senate races.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is no monolithic Jewish voting bloc. The Democrats have a lock on older straight-ticket Jewish constituents due to historical circumstances: Democratic Party openness to Jews since FDR’s grand New Deal coalition; Jewish concentration in the larger Democratic-dominated urban centers; Jewish association with labor unions; and Jewish identification with social causes and the underdog. 

However, younger Jews increasingly join the ranks of independent voters, who vote on the merit of the candidate, rather than the party. They are less-driven by the still-dominant social Jewish agenda: human services, abortion, Supreme Court appointments, illegal migration, state-church, school prayer, gay rights and affirmative action.  This trend is bolstered by demography, which features higher fertility rates among modern-orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews, who are conservatively-inclined.

Furthermore, as the number of Independent Jewish voters grows, so grows the critical mass of Jewish constituents – which could tilt the election in “bellwether states” – who are swayable when it comes to crucial Israeli and Jewish issues. For example, Republican President Eisenhower won 36% (1952) and 40% (1956) of the Jewish vote on the coattails of his role in crushing Nazi Germany and liberating Jews from the concentration camps.  Republican President Reagan received 39% of the Jewish vote in 1980, benefitting from his close ties with the Jewish community and from President Carter’s negative record on Israel. Republican President Bush #41 profited from Reagan’s pro-Israel reputation, and therefore received 35% of the Jewish vote in 1988. However, it plunged to 11% in 1992 due to the Bush-Baker scornful attitude toward Israel and the Jewish community.

Presidential candidate Romney attempts to leverage the new trend among Jewish voters. Will he follow in the footsteps of Eisenhower and Reagan, thus making a difference in some of the “battleground states?”

I Stephens: Anyone But Condi

II Mort Klein’s commentary on a speech given by C. Rice, October 20, 2006

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=4041

(Brett Stephens is one of the brightest, most astute and most dedicated American political commentators in today’s media. I rate him with Chas. Krauthammer. Besides, to my own mind, Condi Rice has about the same emotional and political understanding of the importance of Israel to the well-being of the US, as does Ron Paul.) jsk

A tempting but unwise choice for Romney’s vice president.
 
By BRET STEPHENS
 
Did you loathe and detest the Bush administration? If so, you’d probably say its ideas were horrible and their execution worse. Did you not loathe and detest the Bush administration? In that case, you might say its ideas were pretty good—only the execution often left something to be desired.

Now the person who did much of the executing tops a list of names to be Mitt Romney’s running mate. A mid-April CNN poll finds that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has unmatched name recognition and a favorable rating of 80% among GOP voters. She’s also the person Republicans would most like to see on the ticket, with 26% to runner-up Rick Santorum’s 21%. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio tie for third place at 14%.

(Really hard to believe those numbers. Who took the poll – Arab propagandist James Zogby’s little brother John Zogby – now at the very bottom of the political pollster recommended list?) jsk

The political appeal of Romney-Rice is obvious. Here are two seasoned and reassuring presences who seem to complement each other in all the right ways. He’s the business whiz; she’s the foreign-policy wonk. His government experience is in the statehouse; hers in Washington and foreign capitals. He’s the un-Obama; she’s the un-Palin. He’s the world’s whitest white man; she isn’t. That could even count for something if President Obama decides to dump Joe Biden for Hillary Clinton.

There’s only one problem. Ms. Rice was a bad national security adviser and a bad secretary of state. She was on the wrong side of some of the administration’s biggest internal policy fights. She had a tendency to flip-flop when it came to the president’s core priorities and her political misjudgment more than once cost Mr. Bush dearly. She was a muddler of differences at the national security council. Her tenure at State was notable mainly for the degree to which the bureaucracy ran her, not the other way around.

Take the surge. In her memoir “No Higher Honor,” Ms. Rice recalls some of the events leading up to Mr. Bush’s best and bravest decision. She starts by noting that, in early 2006, she had endorsed the idea of creating the blue-ribbon bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which wound up calling for a diplomatic, but not military, surge. She then adds that “it was a bitter pill to swallow that many commentators subsequently depicted the commission as a gathering of wise men from the administration of George H.W. Bush, who would teach his prodigal son a thing or two about realism and competence in foreign policy.”

Well, yes, that’s how it was seen, and one wonders why Ms. Rice couldn’t have seen it coming. Nor does Ms. Rice cover herself in glory by describing her ambivalence about every option on the table in the run-up to the surge—the surge itself; a mini-surge; some form of retreat; or her own preferred option to have Iraqis “kill one another for a while before they get the point.” At length she admits to being scolded by the president:
“‘So what’s your plan, Condi? We’ll just let them kill each other, and we’ll stand by and try to pick up the pieces?’” Ms. Rice recalls bridling at having her feelings hurt.

It’s true that the surge was a hard call, or at least it seemed so at the time. Harder to forgive was Ms. Rice’s performance on North Korea. In October 2006, Kim Jong Il tested one of his nuclear bombs. Ms. Rice’s response to this flagrant challenge to the Bush Doctrine was to reward Pyongyang with an engagement policy that would ultimately lead to the lifting of key sanctions—in exchange for exactly nothing.

“Two and a half months [after the nuclear test],” recalls Dick Cheney in his memoir, “with Secretary Rice’s approval, Assistant Secretary [Chris] Hill and the American delegation held a bilateral meeting with the North Korean delegation in Berlin. On the evening of January 16, 2007, the Americans provided a lavish meal, supplied large amounts of liquor and proposed friendly toasts. . . . The North Koreans had crossed one of the brightest of bright lines—they had tested a nuclear weapon—and we were hosting them at a banquet.”

Ms. Rice’s North Korean misadventures are worth pondering for what they say about her instincts and judgment: her readiness to put hope before experience, reward bad behavior with concessions, allow her subordinates to flout the explicit instructions of the president and—if Mr. Cheney’s account is to be believed—more or less baldly lie to the president about the terms of the supposed deal the U.S. and the North had struck. The shame is that Mr. Bush blessed all this when he ought to have reprimanded Ms. Rice, if not fired her outright.

What about the rest of Ms. Rice’s tenure? By her own admission, she flubbed the handling of the notorious 16 words on Iraq’s WMD, giving life to the narrative that Mr. Bush lied about the intelligence. She hired Flynt Leverett for a top job at NSC; he’s since gone on to become the Beltway’s go-to apologist for Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She arranged a premature ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon that allowed Hezbollah to declare victory. She opposed a U.S. attack on the nuclear reactor North Korea had built in Syria, leaving Israel to do the job.

It’s probably a testament to Ms. Rice’s inspiring story and winning persona that this blemished record has largely gone down the memory hole. The temptation for Mr. Romney to ask her to join the ticket must be great.

Still it must be said: If the presumptive Republican nominee is going to choose his running mate with an eye toward governing the country and not just winning the election, he can do better than Ms. Rice. Choosing her would simply be evidence that he doesn’t have much faith in his own November chances.

II US Secretary of State C. Rice Shocking Speech

Redacted from Mort Klein’s commentary
October 20, 2006

I’ve heard and read many speeches on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Those made by well-known, hostile critics of Israel always caused me great pain by their use of hyperbole, absurd analogy and falsehoods. But I was not prepared for a speech by an American secretary of state with those very attributes, such as the keynote address delivered last week by Condoleezza Rice to the gala dinner of the American Task Force on Palestine in Washington.

Secretary Rice stated that “there could be no greater legacy for America than to help to bring into being a Palestinian state.” Really? What type of legacy would it be to reward the Palestinians, who are among the most pro-terrorist societies in the world, with statehood?

Despite Rice’s claims about “moderate Palestinians,” their own polls show that Palestinians consistently approve of suicide bombings and terrorism (57% and 61% in two September polls), rocket attacks on Israel (63% in September) and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers (75% in September). An August 2006 poll showed that 97% of Palestinians supported Hezbollah’s actions. Successive Palestinian polls over recent years always show high levels of support for the so-called “right of return.”

Rice also drew an analogy between Palestinian dreams for statehood and the American struggle for independence. This not only implies an odious comparison of Yasser Arafat and Hamas leaders to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; it also ignores the Palestinians’ promotion of Israel’s destruction and their hatred and murder of Jews.

The Palestinians’ real goals are made clear by the incitement in the speeches of their leaders and in the media, mosques, schools and youth camps under the control of the Palestinian Authority. P.A. maps, atlases and textbooks display no country called Israel. They name streets, schools and sports teams after suicide bombers. America’s founding fathers didn’t want to destroy England and its civilians; they simply wanted independence.

Under current circumstances, a Palestinian state would simply be another terrorist state. Especially now, with the rise to power of Hamas, it is simply wrong to even discuss the possibility of a Palestinian state. Statehood would give Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups greater power and opportunity to promote their terrorist agenda; it would not moderate them….

Throughout this speech, Rice repeatedly pledged her support for P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas, calling him a “moderate leader.” But is he a moderate leader? He co-founded the terrorist group Fatah with Yasser Arafat and was his deputy for 40 years. He funded the Munich massacre. He wrote a Ph.D. thesis and a book denying the Holocaust. As president of the P.A., Abbas said “it is our duty to implement the principles of Yasser Arafat.” He refers to terrorists as “heroes fighting for freedom.” He rebuffed President Bush’s call at the 2005 Aqaba summit to accept Israel publicly as a Jewish state …

But Secretary Rice ignored all of this and delivered the most pro-Palestinian speech in memory by a senior U.S. administration official. This speech is surely at odds with an administration that claims to be “the best friend Israel ever had.” If the president does not subscribe to the themes in her speech, he should publicly distance himself from it immediately.

Morton A. Klein is national president of the Zionist Organization of America.

(Why does Israel insist on creating its own awful demographic problem and hurrying, Hashem forbid, its demise as a Jewish State?) jsk

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3978

The Cush Connection

(Cush – In the Bible, the oldest son of Ham, who is presented as the progenitor of the Black people.

1. An ancient region of northeast Africa where the biblical descendants of Cush settled. It is often identified with Ethiopia.
2. An ancient kingdom of Nubia in northern Sudan. It flourished from the 11th century b.c. to the 4th century a.d., when its capital fell to the Ethiopians.) jsk

Redacted from article By Jonathan Neumann
July 9, 2012

Jewish Ideas Daily
 
One year ago today, after decades of war with the hegemonic rulers of Khartoum, South Sudan declared independence. An elated Israel officially recognized the new state the next day. In the year since, many optimistic hopes for the Middle East and North Africa have been dashed; but in the case of South Sudan, Israel’s optimism was justified. Three areas in particular continue to hold promise: bilateral relations, migration, and geopolitics.

The new country of South Sudan has taken its place squarely with the Jewish state and attacked the Arab-led conspiracy against Israel in international organizations. Israel’s interest in Africa is long-standing. Theodor Herzl himself aspired, upon fulfillment of his vision for the Jews, to assist the Africans in their ‘‘redemption.’’

As foreign minister in the 1950s and 1960s, Golda Meir championed the Jewish state’s role in the development of the continent’s newly decolonized states: “Like them, we had shaken off foreign rule; like them, we had to learn for ourselves how to reclaim the land, how to increase the yields of our crops, how to irrigate, how to raise poultry, how to live together, and how to defend ourselves.”

Israel provided Africa with military aid; it even trained Mobutu Sese Seko, the Congolese general who became that country’s president.

 Whether motivated by Jewish beliefs, socialist principles, or geopolitical ambitions, Israel nonetheless failed to secure from these states the diplomatic support in world bodies that it craved—even when it provided unconditional aid.

Africans, in part persuaded by Arab portrayals of Israel as a colonizer and in part simply under pressure from the Arab League, cut ties with the Jewish state after the Yom Kippur War. But once the Middle East peace process began to take shape in the 1980’s, and then as the Soviet Union collapsed, Israel’s ties with African states warmed again.



The establishment of South Sudan, though, offers particular opportunities for Israel. To begin with, Israel boasts a history of support for South Sudanese secession: throughout the 1960s, Israel was the primary source of moral, diplomatic, and military aid to the rebels. No surprise then, that as Juba celebrated independence as South Sudan’s new capital city, Israeli flags were ubiquitous.

One of the city’s neighborhoods is called Jerusalem, and there is a Shalom Hotel near the airport.

No surprise then, either, that Israel was among the first foreign destinations on South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s itinerary, or that Kiir intends to locate the South Sudanese embassy in Jerusalem.

While there this past December, he announced that ‘‘Israel has always supported the South Sudanese people. Without you, we would not have arisen. You struggled alongside us in order to allow the establishment of South Sudan.’’ 

Israel’s role in the South Sudanese memory may have also served to attract the many migrants who made the perilous journey through Egypt over the last few years as the civil war in Sudan reached a climax.

Now, upwards of several thousand South Sudanese are thought to be living in Israel (most of the rest of Israel’s estimated fifty thousand African migrants are Sudanese and Eritrean). But, in what could provide a model of how the process of asylum should work—migrants flee war-ravaged country, war ends, migrants return—the South Sudanese government has cooperated with Israel in an effort to bring those migrants home. (Good luck!) 

Many are hoping that their return will cement a relationship which could prove highly beneficial to Israel.

Israel can provide South Sudan with the same economic assistance it has always sought to provide African states, but South Sudan might be more willing to reciprocate, and is in a position to do so. The state has access to large oil reserves and other natural resources, and, crucially, its position upriver from Egypt and Sudan along the Nile gives it helpful leverage against those countries.



With that in mind, South Sudan fits nicely into Israel’s emerging “periphery strategy,” whereby the Jewish state seeks to cultivate friendships with those states bordering the hostile Arab world. Netanyahu’s periphery strategy is complex, incorporating more countries and more common concerns. In addition to South Sudan, with its natural resources and strategic importance, another prospective partner is seen in Cyprus. Earlier this year, Netanyahu became the first Israeli leader to visit the island, and Cyprus is considering an Israeli request to position aircraft there. The two countries have been brought together by mutual concern over Turkey’s recent belligerence, but they are also cooperating in the exploitation of immeasurably valuable natural gas reserves recently discovered offshore. 



Those two concerns are also motivating the Israeli turn to Greece. Greece, given its close relationship with Cyprus, is naturally interested in the energy reserves, but it has also completed a mutual defense agreement with Israel, conducted joint military operations with Israel, and thwarted the Freedom Flotilla II, an attempted 2011 repeat of the 2010 maritime convoy which sought to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.



Energy interests and concern over Turkey have also pushed Israel and Balkan states Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia closer, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Israel should be seen in part in the same light. A recent report suggested that Israel might have looked to Azerbaijan to stage an attack on Iran. Although the claim was likely nonsense, it underscored the geographical and policy range of Israel’s successful periphery drive, which stretches from Europe through Africa and Asia to India.



All this being said, South Sudan is hardly in a position of strength. Homelessness, food shortages, and disease are rampant; internal violence and external conflict continue; mortality and illiteracy rates are among the highest in the world; corruption is endemic; and human rights abuses are frequent. In short, the one-year-old country is well on its way to becoming a failed state.



But independence is nevertheless sweet, and, as President Kiir said in Israel:

“I am very moved to come to Israel and to walk on the soil of the Promised Land. As a nation that rose from dust, and as the few who fought the many, you have established a flourishing country that offers a future and economic prosperity to its children, I have come to see your success.”

One can only hope, for its own sake as well as Israel’s, that South Sudan might learn the secrets of this success.

Decision Time

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3951

Redacted from an article by Moshe Feiglin

The Jewish Press, June 27, 2012

It is impossible not to notice the similarity between the Ulpana situation, (where the homes of 30 Jewish families outlying the community of Beit El were forcibly abandoned in an attempt, by PM Netanyahu, to appease Barack Obama and the disoriented “Peace Now” movement) and the Sharon-led Expulsion from Gush Katif (The former Israeli community in Gaza.)

In both cases a prime minister elected by the Right, whose ideology certainly does not endorse destruction in Israel’s heartland, veers sharply left and compels his ministers and coalition to support a Peace Now move – a move completely against the Prime Minister’s supposed agenda.

In the 1967 Six-Day War, we were forced into responding to the planned destruction of Israel by the Arab nations around us. In the process of our miraculous victory, we liberated Israel’s heartland and Jerusalem. Israeli governments in a state of delusion have since spent the last 55 years insisting on rejecting this Hashem-given gift of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Instead, we have created a time bomb, which has rolled on from generation to generation. We cannot expect the current Likud leaders to demonstrate more fortitude and determination than the leaders at the peak of Israel’s legitimacy immediately after the amazing 1967 victory.

Since 1967, whenever an Israeli leader (whoever he may be) is faced with a strategic decision that entails choosing between maintaining the status quo (so-called “peace process”) or annexing Judea and Samaria, the outcome is a given. He will yield to the demands of Israel’s obvious enemies.

In truth, we cannot maintain civilian life on a legal foundation of military occupation forever. Peace Now is doing us a great favor by forcing us to decide, once and for all, whether the Land of Israel belongs to us.

When Israel was established in 1948, the Temporary State Council passed the Legal Jurisdiction and Authority Act. According to this act, Israeli law applies to all the territory in our hands. In the Israel’s defensive War of Independence, Israel conquered quite a bit of territory beyond what the UN (who, in fact, had no legitimate right to make any decisions undermining those made 35 years previously by the League of Nations and by a divine power thousands of years before that) had designated for the fledgling state in the trumped up Partition Plan.

At the end of the 1967 Six Day War, Israel applied its law until the very last centimeter, extending its sovereignty over all the territory in its hands. All of those places became part and parcel of the State of Israel – Nahariya, Eilat, Nazareth, Beersheba, and much more. After the liberation of Judea and Samaria in 1967, Israel did not need to pass a new law. All that was necessary was to repeat what it had done in 1948.

Nobody forced General Moshe Dayan to block the Arab refugees trying to escape from Israel, (at the behest of their Arab leaders), at the Jordan River, and to send them back to Shechem and Qalqilyah with bouquets of flowers. And, nobody forced him to give the Arab Wakf (Arab religious authority) the keys to the Temple Mount. The Arab Wakf, in fact, expected the Jews to destroy the Muslim Temple that had been deliberately built over the original world renown King’s Solomon’s Temple so as to obscure the biblical history of the Jews and wipe out the evidence of 2000 years previous ownership. Instead, the secular Dayan, with no real emotional comprehension of the momentous triumph, did quite the opposite.)

But, why should we denigrate Dayan? The consciousness of the entire Israeli leadership – including the religious leadership – was not prepared to deal with the identity challenge that suddenly burst into its reality – the land of our forefathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) that fell into its lap.

The chance for peace with the Arabs vanished as soon as they realized that they really hadn’t lost the war at all and that Israel saw the territory that it had conquered as nothing more than a bargaining chip. Three months after the war, the Khartoum Council gathered and the Arab countries announced three decisions: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.

Israel could not swallow the territories it had liberated, but it also couldn’t purge itself of them. On one hand, there was no one to give them to because nobody was willing to take them. On the other hand, the Zionist spirit that still coursed through the veins of the secular, socialistic Labor Party preferred to apply the 1948 rules to 1967 and deal itself with Israel’s biblical claim.

The orphans of Gush Etzion (Where all Jews in sight were slaughtered by invading Arabs) and the Jewish community of Hebron (likewise) wanted to return home. Their demands were very much a part of the Israeli discourse.

This is the basic outline that explains how the settlements in Judea and Samaria were created. For all practical purposes, Israel, in the usual fit of misplaced Jewish guilt, declared to the world that this is not our land but rather it is occupied territory. It explained settlements as security needs. That type of legal foundation can hold up for 3-4 years – not 40.

The best PR professionals in the world cannot explain the justice of our settlements in Judea and Samaria when our conduct shows that we see ourselves as foreign conquerors settling our citizens in a land that many secular Israelis do not understand as ours. Whoever fantasizes about an Israeli retreat from Judea and Samaria, with or without a partner, already has the precedent of the Expulsion from Gush Katif. In the meantime Israelis are predictably suffering the subsequent missiles raining upon Beersheba and Ashkelon, as the relentless Arab goal to completely destroy Israel moves forward and naive Israelis look to give away still more vital territory.

It seems, however, that we will not be able to change the Creator’s decision, since the miraculous Six-Day War, that this land will remain ours – in spite of ourselves. Sooner or later, we will have to apply the Legal Jurisdiction and Authority Act to Judea and Samaria and incorporate this biblical dedication once more.

To accomplish this, we will need leadership with a consciousness that does not fear the historical identity challenges posed by biblical treasures like the Temple Mount, the Cave of Machpelah and the Tomb of Rachel. And, leadership like that will arise. It is only a matter of time.

Moshe Feiglin is the founder in Israel of Manhigut Yehudit, 
The Jewish Leadership Movement.

Jerome S. Kaufman

The Putin Visit in Retrospect

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3968

by Isi Leibler

July 5, 2012

The recent visit to Israel by Russian President Putin represents yet another example of the extraordinary and unpredictable events continuously impacting on Israel and the Jewish people. Putin’s presence in the Jewish state revived memories of my involvement in the Soviet Jewry struggle, which was the central focus of my public life for many years.

Recruited as a young man by Shaul Avigur, the Israeli Prime Minister’s coordinator of the Soviet Jewry campaign, I was engaged in activities ranging from persuading the Australian government to become the first country in the world to raise the plight of Soviet Jewry at the UN to writing a book based on Soviet sources exposing state-sponsored anti-Semitism which led to divisions amongst Western communists. The climax of my involvement was during 1978 to 1980 – when my company was designated to handle travel arrangements for the Australian team at the Moscow Olympics, thus obliging the Soviets to provide me with entry visas – until then denied.

Thanks to the personal interventions of the Australian Prime Minister, in between official Soviet meetings, I was ferried in embassy cars to the homes of the key Jewish dissidents and refuseniks and engaged them in regular intensive discussions. This terminated abruptly when Australia joined the Olympic boycott. I was arrested and charged with espionage for liaising with refuseniks who allegedly “had access to state security secrets”. I was ultimately expelled and threatened with imprisonment should I ever set foot again on Soviet soil.

Yet in 1987, seven years later, I was invited by the KGB-controlled Moscow Arkhipova Synagogue, to be their guest over Rosh Hashanah and permitted to give Zionist addresses in my faltering Yiddish from the pulpit. This subsequently led to the establishment of the first Jewish cultural center since the revolution named after Solomon Mykhoels, the renowned Yiddish poet murdered by Stalin in 1948, and the first Hebrew song festivals in municipal theaters in both Moscow and Leningrad. The sight of theaters, packed with of Jews of all ages, tears streaming down their eyes as they heard Yaffa Yarkoni and Dudu Fisher singing Israeli songs remains permanently seared into my memory.

Fast-forward to June 2012 – Jerusalem streets festooned with Russian flags. US President Barack Obama who went to Cairo shortly after his election has yet to visit Israel. Yet Russian President Putin, who had already visited Israel in 2005, again included Israel in his first overseas trip immediately following his election. He was accompanied by a huge contingent including Russian businessmen, Jewish oligarchs and Chabad Chief Rabbi Berl Lazar.

Putin was the keynote speaker at the inauguration of an exhibition in Netanya commemorating the role of the Red Army in the victory against Nazism. He spoke warmly about Israel, expressing pride that the Jewish state contained the largest diaspora of former Soviet citizens.

Just a block away from my home, Putin was feted at the residence of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu which was followed by a banquet with President Peres. He also met a number of former Soviet citizens who are currently Israeli government ministers, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermann and Yuli Edelstein, one of the younger refuseniks I befriended during my Moscow visits.

Putin seemed nonplussed even when it was clear that he was outraging his Arab allies. There was talk of increased Russian purchase of defense equipment from Israel – a contrast to the far left calls for boycotts against Israel. He visited the Kotel (Western Wall) wearing a yarmulke accompanied by Rabbi Lazar – an act which would make his former Bolshevik predecessors turn in their graves. This also infuriated radical Muslim groups, especially the extremist Israeli Islamic Movement whose spokesman stated that the “Russian bear, which licks the blood of our relatives in Syria” had adopted an approach “that sucked up to the Israeli Establishment at any cost”.

When my mind flashes back to the Soviet Jewry protest movement and in particular, to my visits to Moscow, the Putin visit seems utterly surrealistic. I recall conversations in Moscow with refuseniks like Vladimir Slepak, the late Professor Alexander Lerner, Yosef Begun, Pavel Abramovich, Vladimir Prestin and many others, Never in our wildest dreams could we have visualized that one day, we would all be living together in Israel and witnessing the visit of a former senior KGB officer who had become the president of Russia.

However, this should not lead us to conclude that the autocratic President Putin has become a devoted ally of Israel and the Jewish people. We must remind ourselves that despite warm words, he heads a country which has ties and provides weapons to some of our greatest enemies including Iran and Syria. He also tends to support the Palestinian position, both as a member of the Quartet and at the UN and reiterated this to PA Chairman Abbas in Bethlehem.

Indeed many doubt whether, if Israel’s survival represented an obstacle to Russia’s short term strategic or national interests, he would lift a finger on our behalf. But it is equally clear, that in contrast to all the Kremlin’s leaders from Stalin until Gorbachev, Putin is certainly not a committed anti-Semite. Despite the endemic anti-Semitism prevailing in Russia and a very hostile Russian Orthodox Church, many of whose prelates still retain a medieval concept portraying the Jews as Christ killers, Putin seems entirely indifferent to Jews. That sharply differentiates him from his communist predecessors who hated us passionately and actively encouraged our enemies to strive towards our destruction.

Indeed, it would seem that Putin probably has genuine affection for a country which includes so many of his former citizens. No doubt without admitting it, he probably also recognizes that like Israel, Russia faces threats from Islamic fundamentalists and has strained relations with Turkey. His visit to Israel unquestionably sends clear signals. Even recognizing major divergence of policies in relation to Iran and Syria, and that Putin’s tensions with the United States and interests in the Arab world preclude us from considering him a partner, it sends a message to the Arabs that Russia is not an enthusiastic ally in their efforts to undermine the Jewish state.

Mindful of the fact that not so long ago a few hundred Soviet Jews backed by Western Jews played a major role in bringing about the downfall of the Evil Empire, our current relationship with Russia is a most extraordinary positive development in the ever-changing panorama of Jewish civilization.

Russia is a far cry from a Western democracy, but it is also not comparable to the former Soviet totalitarian regime and less authoritarian than the Chinese communist model. Like any nation state – particularly one under siege – we are obliged to indulge in some forms of realpolitik to protect our national interests. We should therefore welcome the easing of tensions and establishment of diplomatic ties and seek to strengthen the relationship with Russia – as long as we do so with our eyes wide open.

The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com.

This column was originally published in the Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom

REMEMBER: WE ARE NOT FRENCH

July 4, 2012

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3962

It has become fashionable to equate the French and American revolutions, but they share absolutely nothing beyond the word “revolution.” The American Revolution was a movement based on ideas, painstakingly argued by serious men in the process of creating what would become the freest, most prosperous nation in world history.

The French Revolution was a revolt of the mob. It was the primogenitor of the horrors of the Bolshevik revolution, Hitler’s Nazi Party, Mao’s cultural revolution, Pol Pot’s slaughter, and America’s periodic mob uprisings from Shays’ rebellion to today’s dirty waifs in the “Occupy Wallstreet” crowd.

The French Revolution is the godless antithesis to the founding of America. One rather important difference is that Americans did win freedom and greater individual rights with their revolution, creating a republic. France’s revolution consisted of pointless, bestial savagery, followed by another monarchy, followed by Napoleon’s dictatorship and then finally something resembling an actual republic 80 years later.

Both revolutions are said to have come from the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers, the French Revolution informed by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the American Revolution influenced by the writings of John Locke. This is like saying presidents Reagan and Obama both drew on the ideas of Twentieth Century economists — Reagan on the writings of Milton Friedman and Obama on the writings of Paul Krugman.

Locke was concerned with private property rights. His idea was that the government should allow men to protect their property in courts of law, in lieu of each man being his own judge and police force. Rousseau saw the government as the vessel to implement the “general will” and to create more moral men. Through the unchecked power of the state, the government would “force men to be free.”

As historian Roger Hancock summarized the theories of the French revolutionaries, they had no respect for humanity “except that which they proposed to create. In order to liberate mankind from tradition, the revolutionaries were ready to make him altogether the creature of a new society, to reconstruct his very humanity to meet the demands of the general will.”

Contrary to the purblind assertions of liberals, who dearly wish our founding fathers were more like the godless French peasants, skipping around with human heads on pikes, our founding fathers were God-fearing descendants of Puritans and other colonial Christians.

As Stephen Waldman writes in his definitive book on the subject, “Founding Faith,” the American Revolution was “powerfully shaped by the Great Awakening,” an Evangelical revival in the colonies in the early 1700’s, led by the famous Puritan theologian, Jonathan Edwards, among others. Aaron Burr, the third vice president of the United States was Edwards’ grandson.

There are books of Christian sermons encouraging the American Revolution. Indeed, it was the very irreligiousness of the French Revolution that would later appall sensible Americans and British alike, even before the bloodletting began.

Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, the date our written demand for independence from Britain based on “Nature’s God” was released to the world. The French celebrate Bastille Day, a day when a thousand armed Parisians stormed the Bastille, savagely murdered a half dozen guards, defaced their corpses, stuck heads on pikes — all in order to seize arms and gunpowder for more such tumults. It would be as if this country had a national holiday to celebrate the L.A. riots.

Among the most famous quotes from the American Revolution is Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Among the most famous slogans of the French Revolution is that of Jacobin Club “Fraternity or death,” recast by Nicolas-Sébastien de Chamfort a satirist of the revolution, “Be my brother or I’ll kill you.”

Our revolutionary symbol is the Liberty Bell, first rung to herald the opening of the new Continental Congress in the wake of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and rung again to summon the citizens of Philadelphia to a public reading of the just-adopted Declaration of Independence. The symbol of the French Revolution is the “national razor” – the guillotine.

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, all died of natural causes in old age, with the exception of Button Gwinnett of Georgia, who was shot in a duel unrelated to the revolution. Of all our founding fathers, only one other died of unnatural causes: Alexander Hamilton. He died in a duel with Aaron Burr because as a Christian, Hamilton deemed it a greater sin to kill another man than to be killed. Before the duel, in writing, Hamilton vowed not to shoot Burr.

President after president of the new American republic died peacefully at home for 75 years, right up until Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. Meanwhile, the leaders of the French Revolution all died violently, guillotine by guillotine.

The fourth of July also marks the death of two of our greatest founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who died on the same day, exactly fifty years after the Declaration of Independence was signed. We made it for nearly another 200 years, before the Democrats decided to jettison freedom and make us French.

This column is adapted from “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.”

http://israel-commentary.org/?p=3904

(Wake up Netanyahu! You had an icon of a mentor to follow and instead elected to align with Shimon Peres, who has spent over 50 years attempting to destroy Israel as an independent sovereign nation.) jsk

I Yitzhak Shamir, Editorial of The New York Sun | June 30, 2012

II Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Legacy by Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

I It is with great sadness that the Sun has received the news of the death of Israel’s seventh prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. He deserved a great deal more regard than he was accorded in the bien pensant precincts in America and Europe, where he was set down as an extremist and a stubborn … what? simpleton? Yet a decade after he left power it can be said that his policies, had they been pursued, would have put us in a better place than we are in today. His career, his character will repay careful study in a time when friends of both Israel and America are being serenaded by the sirens of appeasement.

Your editor first met Shamir in the early 1980s, when he was foreign minister of the Jewish state on a visit to New York. The minister received the young newspaperman and another editor of the Wall Street Journal for breakfast in his suite at the Hotel Regency. When he was asked about the issue of the day — external gas tanks for planes Saudia Arabia wanted — he replied with the word “oil.” All he said was: “Oiiiiiiil, Oiiiiiiiil.” Several years later, the young editor met with him again, this time in Brussels, when Shamir was on another mission as foreign minister, and asked him what he was doing in the capital of Europe. “Oranges,” he replied. “Orrrranges.”

Those exchanges are recounted in the Wall Street Journal in a review of Shamir’s memoir, “Summing Up.” They give a sense of one of his qualities, which is that he often seemed impatient or bored with the workaday details of modern diplomacy. This may have contributed to his perception as a simple man. Instead it no doubt reflected his higher priorities, based on a clear-eyed view of what mattered most in the long struggle of the redemption of the Jews in their own state in the land of Israel. What an extraordinary role he played in it, from his days in the underground organization known as Lehi through the search for peace that brought him in 1991 to Madrid, which might be called the last realistic parley.

Shamir was in the leadership of Lehi when, in 1944, its agents assassinated Lord Moyne, the highest British official in the Middle East, responsible for, among other things, Britain’s default in the affair of the Struma, the refugee vessel sunk by the Russians after the Turks and British couldn’t find way to get its 768 mostly Jewish passengers to Palestine. The killing shocked the world, including one of Zionism’s greatest friends, Winston Churchill. “If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of an assassin’s pistol, and the labors for its future produce a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany,” Churchill rumbled, “then many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past.”

Yet Shamir never had any apologies for any aspect of his years in the underground, and when, with the formation of the state in 1948, Lehi’s leaders were given amnesty, Shamir began a long and distinguished career above ground. He was the second longest-serving premier, after Ben Gurion. It was under his leadership that Israel attended the Madrid meeting. The parley was established without crossing Shamir’s redlines; the Palestine Liberation Organization did not have a seat, nor did the Madrid talks include Arabs from Jerusalem. It was a more hard-headed, more principled process than the one for which it was abandoned, namely Oslo.

One of our favorite facts is that history doesn’t disclose her alternatives, and the world will never know what would have happened had America and the other parties been held to the standards Shamir insisted on at Madrid. No doubt there are many who will scorn at very thought. But here we are a generation after Oslo, and the Iranians are building an a-bomb, the Arafat who was embraced at Oslo is gone without achievement, the Eyptians have just elected a president who will make it a priority to seek the release of the sheik who masterminded the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the Syrians are engulfed in a civil war, the Lebanese are victims of Iranian-based terror and tyranny, and the Europeans are more hostile to Israel than ever. So the world will miss this practical idealist who knew where he stood and wouldn’t budge.

II Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Legacy

By Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger
“Israel Hayom”, Israeli Daily Newspaper, July 1, 2012

In 1992, the Republican Whip, Senator Alan Simpson from Wyoming, who was critical of Prime Minister Shamir’s policies, told me: “How can I like Prime Minister Shamir when he resembles a non-peaceful roaring tiger? However, how can I but respect a roaring tiger?!”

Former Secretary of State Jim Baker, who was one of the crudest detractors of Shamir’s policies, respected Shamir’s ironclad commitment to deeply-rooted ideology. Therefore, he considered Shamir a trustworthy – although non-subservient – ally of the USA. Shamir was consistently guided by principles, values and history-steered vision/ideology; he was not herded – zigzagging – by pollsters and public opinion consultants.

The late Prime Minister Shamir was a role model of Jewish patriotism, optimism, principle-driven and security-based statesmanship, history-motivated tenacity, reliability, modesty, independence and endurance in face of brutal pressure.

In 1991, at the height of the bitter conflict between Prime Minster Shamir and Republican President Bush, then Republican House Whip, Newt Gingrich, asserted: “How can you expect communications between Bush, who was given the presidency, as well as the CIA and the UN ambassadorship, on a golden platter, and Shamir who has demonstrated willingness to sacrifice his life on the altar of ideology?!”

Following the 1990 meeting between Shamir and Senate Majority and Minority Leaders, George Mitchell and Bob Dole, the latter told Shamir: “The Majority Leader and I respect you – although we disagree with your policies – because you are tough!”

The short Shamir was a giant of a Prime Minister – a geo political gamer changer – in the areas of Aliya (Jewish immigration), economy, US-Israel strategic cooperation and defiance of pressure.

While the Jackson-Vanik Amendment opened the doors of the USSR for emigration, Shamir’s Aliya policy was chiefly responsible for the arrival in Israel of over one million Olim (Jewish immigrants) from the USSR. Shamir believed that aggressive, tenacious, pro-active Aliya policy – generating Aliya – was the prerequisite for massive Aliya waves from the USSR, Ethiopia and other countries. During the 1990s, he projected a future Aliya wave from France, resulting from anti-Semitism and Islamic migration.

Former US Assistant Secretary of State, Dick Schifter, appreciated Shamir’s intense lobbying of Secretaries of State, Schultz and Baker, to stop issuing refugee certificates to Soviet Jews, thus directing them to relocate to Israel. In addition, Shamir initiated a request from the US Senate to pass a resolution – signed by all 100 Senators – expecting Moscow to direct Jewish emigrants to fly only directly to Israel and not to Rome or Vienna. Shamir’s initiatives transformed an 80% dropout rate (until 1990) to an almost 100% arrival rate, by Soviet Jews, to Israel.

Shamir orchestrated the absorption of over one million Soviet Jews and 60,000 Ethiopian Jews, by less than five million Israelis – an unprecedented human accomplishment. He considered Aliya to be the raison d’etre of the Jewish State, its moral compass, its top priority and its turbo growth engine. He was aware that Aliyah determined Israel’s posture of deterrence and the Jewish-Arab demographic balance between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

Shamir laid down the foundations for the resurgence of Israel’s economy from a potential meltdown to one of the most fiscally-responsible economies in the world. His composure in face of lethal pressures, marathon-like (and not sprint-like) style of leadership, strategic thinking and willingness to lead through delegation of authority to experts – such as Jacob Frenkel, who was appointed by Shamir to be the Governor of the Bank of Israel – paved the road to the stabilization of Israel’s Shekel, the dramatic restraint of inflation, interest and unemployment rates and the drastic reduction of budget deficit.

Former Secretary of State George Schultz was a systematic critic of Shamir’s policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict, but rarely fails to express his utmost respect for Shamir’s integrity and perseverance. Most of Shamir’s sustained critics in Washington indicate that “we miss him now more than anytime before.”

In 1988, Texas Congressman Ted Poe, then a Federal Judge and currently a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, defined Shamir as “the sturdiest statesman in the Middle East.”

Shamir’s defiance of the US, when it came to Jewish roots in the Land of Israel and Israel’s fundamental security requirements, eroded his popularity, but enhanced respect towards him. In 1991, he preconditioned participation in the Madrid Conference upon a US commitment to avoid any reference to Land-for-Peace, to prohibit PLO participation and to inform Syria that no retreat on the Golan Heights was forthcoming. His image as a strategic partner was upgraded by his dismissal of international guarantees of Israel’s security and propositions to station foreign troops on Israel’s borders. On a rainy day, the US is not looking for a “punching bag,” but for a reliable, capable, democratic, unconditional ally, which is willing to defy even the US.

Shamir’s seven years at the helm were characterized by unprecedented expansion of US-Israel strategic cooperation – despite severe disagreements over the Palestinian issue – from the April 1988 Memorandum of Understanding through the 1990-1991 enhancement of joint exercises, intelligence and counter-terrorism cooperation, prepositioning of US military hardware in Israel, defense industrial cooperation, the upgrading of the port of Haifa for the Sixth Fleet, etc.

Contemporary challenges, domestically, internationally, commercially and militarily, behoove Israeli and American leaders to follow in the footsteps of Prime Minister Shamir’s legacy.