Friday, July 31, 2009

Obama's Anti-Zionist Jew II


Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has denied calling White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and senior Obama advisor David Axelrod “self-hating Jews."

Whether or not the Prime Minister used the term, increasing criticism by American Jews of Obama signals a split in the American Jewish community.

The trigger for the growing crisis between Israel and the U.S., and among American Jews, is the issue of “settlements” (which Obama labeled as “illegitimate” in his speech in Cairo nearly two months ago) in which he included Jewish communities in eastern Jerusalem.

Obama revealed that Rahm Emanuel, whose father was an Israeli and part of the underground resistance movement under the British Mandate, tells him everything he needs to know about Israel.

Emanuel has pushed Obama into a head-on collision with the Netanyahu government out of a strategy to demonstrate that the pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) no longer speaks for American Jewry.

Obama's game is to try and defeat the Israel lobby from within, since he could not defeat the lobby from outside it.

But that strategy has backfired, turning into a wall of opposition, both in Israel, where Obama’s popularity rating is near-zero, in the U.S. where Emanuel has simply ignored opposing views of major Jewish organizations, and even in the liberal anti-Israeli American press.

The liberal "Washington Post" has criticized Obama on his policy towards Israel, and an editorial on Thursday went even further. Under the title “Tough on Israel - Why: President Obama's battle against Jewish settlements could prove self-defeating,” the newspaper’s editors wrote:

One of the more striking results of the Obama administration's first six months is that only one country has worse relations with the United States than it did in January: Israel. The new administration has pushed a reset button with Russia and sent new ambassadors to Syria and Venezuela; it has offered olive branches to Cuba and Burma. But for nearly three months it has been locked in a public confrontation with Israel over Jewish housing construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

The newspaper criticized Obama for his “absolutist demand” for a freeze on all building for Jews in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem and observed that Palestinian and Arab leaders hardened their positions, while the Israeli public opinion has rallied behind Netanyahu (quite the opposite result that Obama and Emanuel had hoped for).

The turning point against Obama may have been the meeting in the White House earlier this month with American Jewish leaders. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations requested a discussion with Obama, but Emanuel decided who would attend.

He used the opportunity to attempt to create an impression of solid support for Obama and show off the relative new "J Street" lobby. Unlike AIPAC, it is active politically and endorsed and campaigned for Congressional candidates who fit their agenda, which includes Israel’s surrendering all of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem that were restored to the Jewish State in the 1967 Six-Day War.

At the same time, he excluded National Council of Young Israel (NCYI) and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), both of which support a Jewish presence in all of Israel.

The latest confrontation on a new project for Jews in eastern Jerusalem prompted Alan Solow, chairman of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, to state this week, "Hundreds of Arab families have moved into Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the same right should be accorded to Jewish residents to live wherever they choose in Jerusalem. No government of Israel has or can pursue a discriminatory policy that would prevent the legitimate presence of Jews in any area of the capital."

In response, five leftist groups, including Americans for Peace Now and J Street, criticized supporters of Jews’ rights to build in the area.

While Emanuel is trying to strengthen his position, he faces another challenge on the Obama administration’s health plan. Emanuel’s brother Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel is Obama’s “health czar,” and the plan is being widely panned in American media, leaving the White House Chief of Staff with two potential failures in the making.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Hands off Jerusalem!

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu issued a sharp response Sunday to Obama's pressure to stop Jews from building in parts of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinian Authority. Israel's sovereignty in Jerusalem is “not up for debate,” Netanyahu said, and Jews are permitted to build in any part of the capital city, as are Arabs.

Netanyahu implied that the U.S. request was racist, saying before the weekly Cabinet meeting, “Imagine what would happen if Jews were forbidden to live or to buy apartments in certain parts of London, New York, Paris or Rome. There would be an international outcry."

"All the more, we cannot to a decree like this regarding Jerusalem,” he said.

Obama's pressure on Israel is growing and the U.S. State Department summoned Israeli envoy Michael Oren and demanded the halt of construction of Jewish homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, near the ancient grave of Shimon HaTzaddik (Simon the Just). The property on which the homes are to be built has been owned by Jewish philanthropist Dr. Irving Moskowitz for more than 20 years.

Oren told U.S. officials that Israel would not agree to stop building in the area.

Israel annexed Sheikh Jarrah and other Jerusalem neighborhoods following the Six Day War, in which the city was reunified after 19 years of Jordanian rule in the eastern half of the city. While Israel has maintained sovereignty in the capital city for more than 40 years, the Palestinian Authority continues to demand all areas controlled by Jordan in the 1950s.

Seven Jewish families and an all-day Torah-study program, known as a Kollel, are trying to renew the old Jewish neighborhood of Shimon HaTzaddik (Simon The Just).

The area, where Simon the Just and elders of the Sanhedrin were buried over 2,000 years ago, was a thriving Jewish community from 1895 until 1948, when it was evacuated by the British army during the Arab riots preceding the War of Independence.

In the mean time, former PM, Ehud Olmert is joining the debate. "Obama is making a big mistake by insisting that Israel freeze all building for Jews in Judea and Samaria, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote Friday in the Washington Post.

In his opinion article, which in effect was an open letter to the president, Olmert reminded the American government that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and that its friendship with the United States is one of the country’s “greatest strategic asserts.”

The former Prime Minister wrote that the Annapolis, Maryland Middle East conference in the Middle East in November, 2007 was based on previous agreements with the Bush administration that Jewish population centers in Judea and Samaria would remain part of the State of Israel in any agreement establishing a Palestinian Authority state.

Olmert wrote. "Let me be clear: Without those understandings, the Annapolis process would not have taken on any form. Therefore, the focus on settlement construction now is not useful.”

Olmert noted that a total building freeze is “impossible to completely enforce” and would not help security.

Referring to his own offers for a new PA state, he declared that the U.S. should investigate “why the Palestinian leadership did not accept the far-reaching and unprecedented proposal I offered them. My proposal included a solution to all outstanding issues: territorial compromise, security arrangements, Jerusalem and refugees. It would be worth exploring the reasons that the Palestinians rejected my offer and preferred, instead, to drag their feet, avoiding real decisions.”

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Obama's Duplicity: With Iran a Mouse, With Honduras a Lion




















The "Wimp in Chief", Obama, squirmed and weaseled his words with the Iranian Mullahs and their puppet-tyrant, Ahmadinejad. He did not publicly lend support to all those Iranians taking to the streets, risking life and limb for more liberty, supposedly, not wanting to be seen as “meddling in Iran’s internal affairs”. If there is anyone on this planet that is not familiar with the Iranian regime, we’re talking about a tyrannical theocracy, known throughout the world as beneath -contempt oppressors of every human right under the sun. He did use the words, "appalled" and "outraged" once pictures went round the world of Iranians demonstrators beaten and killed in the streets of Tehran.

This week, the Honduran socialist president, seeking to gut his country's constitution in a shameless power-grab, reminiscent of his friend, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela was rightly deposed by the country’s military.
Obama's response to the Honduran military removing a dictator-wannabe from office (at the behest of the country’s Supreme Court and the Honduran Congress), and escorting him to the border, was sure and fast. He declared the military action an "illegal coup", in tone with the region's socialist gang: the Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega.

The OAS has given its full backing to the exiled socialist, especially not now, when has paved the way for Castro's readmission into the organization.

Internally, Obama has the backing of the Communist Party USA which is in full agreement with him and even has some of the same demands of the Honduran people:
•Demands that president Zelaya and other members of his government be returned to power immediately, and that the troops return to their barracks.
•Refusing diplomatic recognition and any military aid to Honduras until President Zelaya is restored to power.
•Calls upon unions and other people's organizations in the United States to actively support “our brothers and sisters in Honduras in resisting this brutal military coup d'etat”.

On this background, it should be reminded of the Iran-Venezuela Axis.

Chavez is a vocal supporter of Iran's nuclear program, which is under United Nations sanctions because of fear among the U.S. and its allies that it may be used to build atomic weapons.
Iran and Venezuela are to sign some 20 agreements in various fields during Chavez's visit to Iran, according to the official news agency IRNA. Chavez's visit to the Islamic republic is the third since Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005, Iran's local media reported.

Chavez, the socialist, and Ahmadinejad, the Islamo-Fascist, have become quite friendly. Chavez has threatened military action against the Hondurans to restore his pal, Zelaya, to power. Ahmadinejad has called for Israel’s destructions on numerous occasions.

An unholy alliance is being formed by two disparate forces – Islamo-Fascism and Socialism -- united on a tyrannical bent against freedom, against democracy and human rights, against America. Despite their theoretical differences, these regimes share one glaring, common belief: America is responsible for all the suffering and injustice throughout the world. This overriding disgust with America holds together these disparate, radical regimes.

Whose side does Obama take?