Why did Aipac keep its mouth shut?

This is what i wrote about here a few days. Aipac lost big . Im going Sunday to the conference but sure wondering

How AIPAC Is Losing
Chuck Hagel will be secretary of Defense, and Iran will go nuclear. So much for an all-powerful Israel Lobby.
By Lee Smith|February 27, 2013 12:00 AM


This weekend, more than 10,000 pro-Israel activists, Jews and non-Jews alike, will gather at the Washington convention center for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference [1]. These friends and supporters of the U.S.-Israel bilateral relationship will hear from members of Congress and the executive branch who will all testify to the singular influence that AIPAC, as the pillar of the pro-Israel community, wields in the capital of the free world.
But just how powerful is AIPAC if a man who refers to it as the “Jewish lobby” and has defiantly claimed that he is not an “Israeli senator” is slated to be our next secretary of Defense? And, most significantly, how much influence does the lobbying organization actually exercise if it can’t carry the day on the single issue that’s been at the very top of its agenda for over a decade: stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
Despite an operating budget [2] of more than $60 million, on the most crucial issue facing Israel’s security, AIPAC has lost the policy debate. The winners include those who believe you can’t stop a nation from getting the bomb if it’s determined to do so, those who think the Iranians have a right to nuclear weapons, and those who argue the Iranians can be contained—among them, our new Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
***
For the past two months, those invested in the Israel-U.S. relationship have been fixated on whether or not Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel would fundamentally alter U.S. policy toward Israel. In addition to his revealing statements about Jews, the former senator from Nebraska voted against sanctioning Iran and against designating the Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization.
Yet AIPAC has remained totally mum. The group says [3] it focuses its energies on matters of policy rather than personnel. If it campaigned against Hagel, where would it stop? The organization would potentially have to take a position on every Cabinet nominee. Meantime, in the absence of AIPAC, other pro-Israel organizations have come out publicly against Hagel, like the Emergency Committee for Israel. For taking the lead on this issue [4], they have been labeled partisans, while AIPAC has preserved its bipartisan status.
But it’s not clear how much that label matters when a very influential segment of the Democratic party has made it plain that supporting Israel isn’t a top priority. I’m not just referring to the delegates who booed pro-Israel changes to the party platform on the floor of the convention in San Antonio last summer. I’m talking about the White House.
Pro-Israel Obama supporters on the Hill and in the press keep trying to make the case that in spite of how it might look on the surface, the administration cares deeply about the U.S.-Israel relationship. They point to the success [5] of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense batteries as evidence that the security and military cooperation between the United States and Israel has reached unprecedented highs under Obama’s stewardship. But politics is mostly about how things look. And if the administration really cared that much about Israel, it wouldn’t nominate a secretary of defense who referred to defenders of the U.S.-Israel relationship as “the Jewish lobby.”
***
The paradox is that by giving personnel a pass, AIPAC has lost the policy debate. Policy is made by people who believe in certain ideas, principles, and even fantasies. What Hagel seems to have learned from his tours of combat in Vietnam is that it is a fantasy to imagine that you can bomb a country into submitting to the will of the United States. Presumably, this is why he also opposed the war in Iraq. The problem is that deconstructing such a fantasy does not necessarily leave you with reality. In Hagel’s case it has left him only with an equally dangerous fantasy: that instead of waging war, it is possible to reach an accommodation, if not an amicable understanding, with nations that have clearly identified themselves as adversaries.
This fantasy is shared by much of the U.S. policymaking elite, including Obama. Indeed, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution every White House has sought comity with the Iranians. The fact that all, including Obama, have failed, is proof that the endeavor is not possible. From this perspective, it is also clear that Western sanctions against Iran and the secret war conducted against Iranian scientists and installations are intended less to destroy the nuclear program than to prolong the fantasy that at some point the Iranians will come to their senses and abandon their search for a bomb. It is noteworthy that the majority of the American electorate does not share this fantasy, with a Pew poll last year showing that 58 percent support [6] U.S. military action against the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
But AIPAC—and this 58 percent majority—lost the debate to a host of adversaries. Some on the winning side argued for engagement. Among these were the stars of the policy pantheon, like former Secretary of State Jim Baker [7], and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who argued [7] that a combination of incentives and pressures might get the Iranians to the table.
And if Iran didn’t want to negotiate, some claimed that wasn’t such a big deal anyway. As Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has said [8], it’s no problem containing Iran. Journalists like Fareed Zakaria agreed [9]. Some went even further, arguing [10] that Iran was in fact a natural American ally. More extreme yet in their efforts were the single-minded obsessives, the creeps, like Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, and Trita Parsi, who argued [11] that in fact the problem was not with Iran but with the United States.
If, as Hagel has said, the Jewish lobby truly intimidated “a lot of people up here,” you’d expect to see Washington all humming the same tune on Iran. Instead, it’s the Iranians calling the shots. “You must raise the level of your tolerance,” the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization recently told the West. “Try to find ways for cooperation with a country that is moving towards technological progress.”
The Iranian negotiating team meeting [12] with its Western counterparts in Kazakhstan this week has earned the right to its smugness. The Iranians are installing equipment that will allow it to accelerate the production of nuclear fuel. And then there was North Korea’s nuclear test two weeks ago. At the very least, it signaled to the Iranians that in the end, despite all of the tough talk coming from the White House, the Americans are not going to stop the Iranians from acquiring the bomb.
Tehran has the upper hand in negotiations because it recognizes that all the White House wants is some sort of deal it can sell as a victory. And the all-powerful pro-Israel lobby has no choice but to swallow it and smile.

UN vs Israel

U.N. Bias against Israel

U.N. institutional structures consistently are used to isolate and vilify Israel.

• Israel is the only country in the world that is not eligible to sit on the Security Council, the principal policymaking body of the U.N. This situation violates the principle of the "sovereign equality of all member states" of the U.N. under Article 2 of the U.N. Charter. 
• Seven of the 140 items submitted for a vote in the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) in 2002 were anti-Israel. Last year, the UNGA adopted 19 anti-Israel resolutions. 
• Israel is the object of more investigative committees, special representatives and rapporteurs than any other state in the U.N. system. For example, a special representative of the Director-General of UNESCO visited Israel 51 times during 27 years of activity. The Director-General of the International Labour Organization has sent a "Special Mission" to Israel and the territories every year for the past 17 years. 
• The "Special Committees" and "Palestinian Units" of the U.N. spend more than $3 million a year, essentially to spread anti-Israel propaganda. These bodies—the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the Division on Palestinian Rights and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs—are the focus of the worst anti-Israel activity under the aegis of the U.N. They organize, inter alia, the annual "Palestine Day" events at the U.N., as well as symposia and other events. 
• The U.N. has repeatedly held "Emergency Special Sessions" focusing solely on Israel. Originally conceived in 1950 for emergencies like the Korean War, Emergency Special Sessions over the past 15 years have only focused on Israel. No Emergency Special Sessions were convened to examine the genocide in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia or other major world conflicts. 
• The U.N. routinely attempts to circumvent the founding principle of direct negotiations. The UNGA passes annual resolutions that undermine the principles of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, based on direct negotiations between the two parties. By proposing specific solutions to issues such as Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and settlements, the U.N. pre-judges the outcome of negotiations. Ironically, it was the U.N. Security Council that proposed bilateral negotiations through Resolution 242 (1967) and 338 (1973).

The U.N. has failed to investigate Palestinian actions supporting terrorism.

• The U.N. has never initiated any inquiry into Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian Authority's role in aiding and abetting terrorists, or passed one resolution condemning any terrorist organization operating against Israel. 
• One glaring example of the U.N.'s biased policy against Israel is the concealment and vehement denial of the existence of a videotape of Hezbollah's abduction of three Israeli soldiers made by U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon. For 11 months, the U.N. lied to the world and denied the existence of any evidence related to the abduction. When the cover-up was exposed, revealing the existence of the videotape, the U.N. eventually showed Israel a heavily edited videotape with the faces of the terrorists blurred. When asked the reason behind this, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan stated it was due to the U.N.'s standing as a neutral organization.

The U.N. has tolerated and fostered anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda.

• The U.N. has condemned virtually every conceivable form of racism. It has established programs to combat racism and its multiple facets — including xenophobia — but has consistently refused to condemn anti-Semitism. It only was on November 24, 1998, more than 50 years after the U.N.'s founding, that the word anti-Semitism was first mentioned in a U.N. resolution (GA Res. A/53/623).
• "The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity." —Saudi Arabian delegate Marouf al-Dawalibi before the 1984 U.N. Human Rights Commission conference on religious tolerance. A similar remark was made by Farouk al?Chareh, the Syrian Ambassador to the U.N., at a 1991 meeting, who insisted Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzos, a charge recently recycled in a Saudi government sponsored newspaper. 
• On March 11, 1997, the Palestinian representative to the U.N. Human Rights Commission falsely charged Israel with injecting 300 Palestinian children with the HIV virus.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission promotes anti-Israel, anti-Semitic resolutions.

• The Commission on Human Rights routinely adopts totally disproportionate resolutions concerning Israel. Of all condemnations of this agency, 26 percent refer to Israel alone, while rogue states such as Syria and Libya are never criticized.
• Last summer's conference on Human Rights in Durban, South Africa, was devoted almost entirely to condemning Israel. The conference was boycotted by the United States and Britain. 
• The United States was kicked off the U.N. Commission for Human Rights in May 2001, despite being one of the most outspoken advocates for human rights and a founding member of the Commission. It was replaced by Sierra Leone and the Sudan, both of which have records of abuses of human rights, including slavery and the forced use of children as soldiers. The United States recently regained its seat after a yearlong absence.

Source: AIPAC

Being Jewish Ed Koch

Ed Koch’s Tombstone

My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

With the words he chose to be inscribed on his tombstone, Ed Koch, the iconic New York Mayor who passed away last Friday, made it very clear how he wanted most to be remembered.

And they reminded me of a family disagreement in which I had to acknowledge that I was wrong and my daughter was right.

It was a number of years ago when my daughter Tamar was making plans to apply to law school. Having gotten a perfect score on her LSAT exam, the highest mark in the country, she wasn’t nervous about getting accepted at one of the top universities. But she knew that an important element that would be considered by the very best schools was the essay she had to submit explaining why she had chosen law as a career and defining herself as a person.

When she told me she had finished writing it, I asked if I might see it. As I began to read it I found myself filled with apprehension. Her opening words were “I am an Orthodox Jew.” She continued by linking the Jewish love for law with its divine origin at Sinai. She explained that her love for Torah made her seek a way to seek the betterment of the world through a commitment to legal redress for the innocent and lawful punishment for the criminal.

Her presentation was masterful, yet I was afraid. Afraid because I was part of a generation that still bore the emotional scars of centuries of anti-Semitism. Afraid because I had lived through the years of the Holocaust and been forced to leave the land of my birth when a Nazi takeover threatened. Afraid because even though I now live in “the land of the free” I still didn’t feel free enough to believe that my daughter could openly identify herself as an Orthodox Jew without subjecting herself to prejudiced repercussions.

“I don’t think you should send the essay in the way it is,” I advised my daughter. Tamar thought about what I said. Respectfully she concluded she had to be true to herself. She decided that if by identifying herself through her faith she was closing the door to professional advancement, she would rather not enter those portals. “And who knows,” she added, “perhaps the fact that I take pride in my heritage will be viewed as a positive.”

Yes, my daughter did get accepted to every one of the top law schools in the country. Now fast forward a decade to learn the real end of the story. I was teaching a class at Yeshiva University when a young man knocked on the door. I immediately recognized him as a former student. Out of breath, he told me he rushed up from Columbia University Law School because he had to share the story of what had just happened in one of his classes.

The conversation had turned into a discussion about the required essays. Someone asked the professor, “Now that we’re in the school, can you tell us what exactly you were looking for in those essays?” The professor responded that he couldn’t really put it into words but he could only give a general guideline by referencing what he felt was the best essay they had ever received. He recalled that it was written by some girl with a strange last name that’s difficult to pronounce – “something like Blech.”

“If this is your daughter,” my former student said, “I knew you’d love to hear the story.”

I assured him that indeed it was my daughter, and that I was so grateful to him for sharing it with me. I also confessed how I almost messed it up by suggesting to my daughter that it was too dangerous to be submitted as written!

If taking pride in one’s identity proved to be helpful rather than hindrance to Tamar, it is certainly instructive to learn how much this trait meant to the former Mayor of New York city.

As the eulogies are offered and the tributes pour in with a lengthy list of Ed Koch’s accomplishments, there are so many things the mayor could have been proud of. Yet what Koch chose to stand in perpetuity as a summary of his life’s meaning were the last words of Daniel Pearl before he was brutally murdered by Pakistani terrorists: My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish

Two years before his death, in his personal blog in the Huffington Post, What’s On My Tombstone And Why, Koch told his readers that this was what he had prepared to be inscribed as his epitaph. So strongly did he feel about the importance of this recognition for every Jew that he added, “I believe those words should be part of the annual services on the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur, and should be repeated by the congregants”.

Beneath this powerful expression of identity, Koch commissioned the inscription of the Shema in Hebrew and English followed by these words: "He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the City of New York and he fiercely defended its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II."

Koch did not hesitate to define himself in this sequence – a proud Jew, a loving New Yorker and a patriotic American.

In accord with his wishes, the words by his grave express with pride the last words of Daniel Pearl.

Is it merely coincidence then that Ed Koch died on the first day of February, the very day on which Daniel Pearl was murdered exactly 11 years ago?

Parasha Ki Tisa

Hamen/Hagel

This is not Purim Torah. What is the difference between what Haman and Hagel said?
Both vicious anti semites. ObamaBiden want Hagel/Haman to run our Dept Defense.
Esther chap 3
5 Haman saw that Mordechai would not kneel and bow to him, and he grew angry.
6 He was disdainful of killing only Mordechai, once they told him Mordechai's nationality, so he resolved to destroy all the Jews, Mordechai's nation, throughout Achashvairosh's entire empire.
7 In the first month, Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Achashvairosh's reign, Haman drew a pur, a lottery, which chose a day in the twelfth month, Adar.
8.Haman said to King Achashvairosh, "There is a nation scattered and separated among the nations throughout your empire. Their laws are different than everyone else's, they do not obey the king's laws, and it does not pay for the king to tolerate their existence.
FEBRUARY 22, 2013 12:00 A.M.
Hagel’s Anti-Semitism 
Beneath his anti-Israelism is a broader anti-Jewish bias, ofte

Chuck Hagel

Comments 22 
Deroy Murdock 
‘Let the Jews pay for it.”

Are these words anti-Semitic?

The U.S. Senate should consider this and many other disturbing statements by Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary. Nebraska’s former Republican senator has said and done truly troubling things regarding Jews and Israel.

Hagel tried to close USO’s Haifa retreat when he ran the United Service Organizations from 1987 to 1990. The facility was highly popular among U.S. sailors, 45,000 of whom visited the Israeli port in 1990, the Associated Press reports

“Chuck Hagel said the Haifa port is costing the U.S. too much [and] that if the Jews wanted one, the Jews should do the fundraising,” an unnamed supporter of the outpost told the Washington Free Beacon.
“He said to me, ‘Let the Jews pay for it.’” recalled Marsha Halteman, of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which backed USO Haifa. “I told him at the time that I found his comments to be anti-Semitic,” Halteman said. “He was playing into that dual loyalty thing.”

Hagel alone among U.S. senators abandoned Russia’s Jews. As David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, told the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin: “The first AJC encounter with Senator Hagel I recall was when we sought his support, in 1999, for a Senate letter to then–Russian president Boris Yeltsin urging action against rising anti-Semitism. We were unsuccessful. On June 20, 1999, we published the letter as a full-page ad in The New York Times with 99 Senate signatories. Only Senator Hagel’s name was absent.”

Hagel was one of only four senators who refused to sign a Senate letter supporting Israel during Yasser Arafat’s terrorist Intifada in 2000.

“The State Department has become adjunct to the Israeli foreign minister’s office,” Hagel reportedly remarked in a speech at Rutgers University in March 2007.

“Like many other data points emerging since Hagel’s nomination,” John Podhoretz observed in February 15’s New York Post, “this one emits a faint but distinct odor of a classic anti-Semitic stereotype — Jews as secret marionetteers, pulling the strings of unsuspecting Gentiles.

“The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here” on Capitol Hill, Hagel told Aaron David Miller in 2008.

That year, Hagel praised Miller’s book about the Middle East.

“If you want to read something that is very, very enlightening, this guy he’s getting tremendous reviews on it,” Hagel said. “He’s Jewish. He worked in the State Department, worked for Baker, worked for Albright, I think he’s worked for four secretaries of state, different Democrats, Republicans.”

“‘He’s Jewish,’” wrote Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard. “Isn’t there something creepy and disquieting about that interjection? . . . Why does Hagel call attention to the religion of the American diplomat whose book he’s praising? . . . Wouldn’t it be good to have a secretary of defense whose first thought isn’t the religious affiliation of Americans who participate in foreign policy debates?”

“I’m a United States senator,” Hagel declared in 2008. “I’m not an Israeli senator.”

“We believe that when Senator Hagel said that he was not an ‘Israeli Senator,’ that he was a U.S. Senator, he strongly implied that some of his colleagues have a greater loyalty to Israel than to the United States,” stated Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named after the late and legendary Nazi hunter. “That crosses the line.”

• Prominent Jewish Nebraskans have felt Hagel’s cold shoulder.

“During his last year in office, we knew he was not going to run again, he never returned any of our calls,” Jewish activist Gary Javitch told the Algemeiner website on December 21. “I have always gotten callbacks, even as a turn-down.”

“He was not the most responsive politician in Nebraska to me personally at the Jewish Press and to the Jewish community as a whole,” said Carol Katzman, the former editor of the Omaha Jewish Press. Nebraska’s representatives otherwise “were all very responsive,” she said. “It didn’t really matter what their party affiliation was, if we were soliciting them for an interview or a greeting ad for Rosh Hashanah or Passover.” However, “Hagel’s office never even responded. . . . We would make repeated calls” that went unanswered, she added. “It was pretty obvious that he and his staff were dismissive.” Katzman concluded: “Hagel was the only one we have had in Nebraska who basically showed the Jewish community that he didn’t give a damn about the Jewish community or any of our concerns.”

Are Hagel’s words anti-Semitic? Call your senators at 202-224-3121 and tell them what you think.

— Deroy Murdock is a Fox News contributor, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford Universit

Aliyah racism for converts?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peruvian converts denied permission to immigrate to Israel 

Jewish Agency and Conservative movement leaders decry the Ministry of Interior's continuing refusal to allow 'the Jews of the Amazon' to join relatives in Israel.

By Judy Maltz | Feb.19, 2013 | 4:31 PM

 

Several hundred mixed-race Peruvian converts, also known as the “Jews of the Amazon,” are not being granted permission to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, despite meeting all the requirements for eligibility, Jewish Agency and Conservative Movement leaders charge.

Jack Corcos, director of the Jewish Agency unit that approves eligibility for immigration, told a gathering in Jerusalem today that he did not understand the Ministry of Interior’s ongoing refusal to approve the requests by the converts to move to Israel. “There is no reason they should be waiting any longer,” he said during a session held by the Jewish Agency Board of Governors. “The whole story is very odd.”

 

Asked why the Ministry of Interior was holding up approval of these immigration requests, spokeswoman Sabine Haddad responded: “A discussion on the issue was held last week with the Jewish Agency and relevant parties from the Population and Immigration Authority. The issue awaits a decision of the senior echelon.”

 

The group of 284 Peruvians, who come from Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian rainforest, were converted to Judaism by a Conservative rabbinical court in August 2011 after they had engaged in Jewish studies for five years. They are the descendants of Moroccan Jews who arrived in the Amazon in the 19^th century seeking employment in the rubber industry, and who married and had children with local women.

 

If the Ministry of Interior ultimately decides to reject their citizenship applications, senior officials in the Jewish organizational world warn it could seriously undermine relations between the government of Israel and the world Conservative Movement.  “I can tell you that the Conservative movement leadership will not take this in stride,” said one such official. “As far as they see it, it’s an act of contempt – a total disregard for the validity of their conversions.”

 

Yizhar Hess, the director of the Conservative movement in Israel, who participated in this morning’s session, told Haaretz: “Hundreds of Jews are waiting today in Peru to immigrate to Israel, and their only sin is that they are Conservative.”

 

Most, though not all, of the Peruvian converts have declared their intention to move to Israel. The plan was for them to come gradually in several separate groups.

Hundreds of members of the Iquitos community have already immigrated to Israel in two separate waves -- one in 2001 and the other in 2005. Unlike the current group, many of whose members are their relatives, they encountered no problems whatsoever in the process. Most of them live today in the city of Ramle, which is prepared to absorb the remaining members of the community. The Ministry of Interior spokeswoman did not respond to a question about why the applications of the current group were being held up, while those of the previous groups were approved promptly.

 

Under current immigration procedures, individuals who are not born Jewish are expected to spend nine months as active members of their local Jewish communities after they have completed the conversion process – regardless of what type of conversion they have undergone -- before moving to Israel. During this time, their applications are reviewed by the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Interior, which does not have its own emissaries abroad, typically relies on recommendations from the Jewish Agency about the validity of conversions performed abroad.

 

The Jewish Agency last year notified the Ministry of Interior that it had determined the conversions performed on this group of 284 Peruvians fulfilled all the necessary criteria to make them eligible for immigrating to Israel under the Law of Return.

Based on this recommendation, they should have been able to immigrate to Israel in May 2012.

 

But, as Corcos reported to the Jewish Agency gathering this morning, Interior Ministry officials suddenly informed him that bringing this large a group to Israel required a special cabinet decision. When Jewish Agency officials consulted with their legal advisers, they were told that a cabinet decision is only required when the group members have not yet been converted, but rather, plan to convert in Israel, as in the case of the Falashmura from Ethiopia.

Haddad did not respond to a question about why Ministry of Interior officials insist that a cabinet decision is required for the Peruvian group to come to Israel, when Jewish Agency legal advisers have determined otherwise.

 

Rabbi Andrew Sacks, director of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly in Israel, was invited by Jewish Agency officials to participate in last week’s meeting with Ministry of Interior representatives because of his connections to the rabbis who performed the conversions in Peru. But as he sat down, he was asked by the Interior Ministry officials to leave the room, prompting an angry response from the Jewish Agency officials present. As Sacks stormed out of the room, he charged that the case of the Peruvians was “another example of racism in the Interior Ministry.”

 

Following the meeting, Sacks told Haaretz that based on his experience with converts, “when they are people of color, they are guaranteed to run into a roadblock and obfuscation in their attempts to make aliyah.” The ministry spokeswoman also declined to respond to this accusation. 

The Whipping Boy Jews and the slave trade

This week is Shabbat zachor

Tetazaveh #1

The Ner tamid Internal light

Hagel it gets worse

New Hagel horrors

What will Chuck Schumer do?

• By JOHN PODHORETZ
• Last Updated: 11:28 PM, February 14, 2013
• Posted: 10:39 PM, February 14, 2013

John Podhoretz

Yesterday’s Senate stunner — a filibuster blocking President Obama’s nominee to head the Defense Department — isn’t the final act in this drama. At least two Republicans say they’ll let Chuck Hagel’s nomination go through later in the month — provided no new shoes drop.

But that’s not such a good bet.

The case against Hagel is coming together like a pointillist painting, with data points like tiny dots that join to form a distressing overall portrait of a disreputable whole.

The latest dot is a talk he gave at Rutgers University in March 2007, uncovered by Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon. A friendly blogger covered the talk the next day, noting — with approval — that Hagel had said the State Department was under the control of Israel.

REUTERS

Embarassed yet? Schumer, here at a Senate hearing Tuesday, must reckon with new reports of dumb anti-Israel remarks from Chuck Hagel.

“The State Department,” the blogger quoted Hagel as saying, “has become adjunct to the Israeli Foreign Minister’s office.”

This should be disturbing for two reasons. First, like many other data points emerging since Hagel’s nomination, this one emits a faint but distinct odor of a classic anti-Semitic stereotype — Jews as secret marionetteers, pulling the strings of unsuspecting Gentiles.

Second, it should trouble everyone who must vote to confirm Hagel — because the remark is spectacularly stupid.

The notion that the State Department, of all places, might be a servant of Israel is among the most bizarre and ludicrous statements any notable American politician has ever uttered. Historically, as anyone who knows anything knows, State has been unfriendly toward Israel.

There are many reasons for this bias, so I’ll go with the least offensive: Our diplomatic corps must deal with 22 Arab nations and one Jewish state that angers its 22 neighbors. So it’s not much of a surprise that State would have an institutional bias in favor of the region’s supermajority.

In the George W. Bush administration, which was unquestionably the friendliest to Israel in history, it was the State Department’s leaders who expressed the greatest degree of skepticism about Israel’s intentions and the need to rein in Israel’s responses to the terror war launched against it by Yasser Arafat in late 2000.

At the time Hagel made his gobsmacking remark about State and Israel, Condoleezza Rice had taken charge at State. She’d first served as Bush’s national security adviser — but the move to Foggy Bottom actually led her to adopt her new institution’s bias against Israel — as her former White House deputy, Elliott Abrams (my brother-in-law), details in his remarkable new account of those years, “Tested By Zion.”

The news of Hagel’s 2007 remark is also a direct challenge to the New Yorker who, more than anyone, made it appear that Hagel’s journey to the Pentagon was a sure thing.

I’m referring to Sen. Chuck Schumer, whose endorsement of Hagel after a 90-minute meeting seemed to take the wind out of the sails of those who thought the nominee’s various offhand comments over the decades about Jews and Israel and the United States might disqualify him.

What will Schumer do now?

In February 2010, at a New York event sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, I heard Schumer give a rather extraordinary speech. In Hebrew, he told the crowd, his name would be “shomer,” or “guardian.”

A shomer, he noted, was a watchman guarding the gates of ancient Jerusalem and the Temple. And that was his mission: defending the Jewish people and Israel from those who’d attack it or wish it ill.

It’s a few weeks since Schumer gave Hagel the thumbs-up. Give him the benefit of the doubt; maybe Hagel told him the things he wanted to hear. Schumer supports the president, who wants Hagel; the president should have the Pentagon nominee he wants. (That is a view, by the way, with which I agree almost all the time.)

But Schumer’s support came before this poisonous pearl (and others) surfaced. And before Hagel’s disastrous confirmation hearing, when it appeared the trouble with his nomination wasn’t only some problematic views, but also his intellectual fitness for this crucial job.

That was then, this is now.

Schumer’s job, as we know, is to serve the Constitution and the people of New York. A man who could say something as stupid as Hagel did about Israel controlling the State Department is not fit to be defense secretary.

Schumer’s personal mission, or so he told 2,000 people at the Marriott Marquis in February 2010, is to serve as a guardian of the Jewish people. Mind you, this is Schumer’s claim about himself; I’m not imposing it upon him. Assuming he wasn’t just, oh, blowing smoke for campaign contributions, one must ask: How does such a guardian vote for a man who traffics in anti-Semitic cliches?

Nu, Shomer?

jpodhoretz@gmail.com

How Hollywood attacks Israel -2 "Israel" docs up for Oscars

How Hollywood attacks Israel -2 "Israel" docs up for Oscars
The dishonesty of ‘The Gatekeepers' By ROZ ROTHSTEIN, ROBERTA SEID02/13/2013 22:03

  The film sends a 'simplistic political message,' implying that Israel's occupation of the West Bank stands between terrorism and peace.
Yaakov Perry Photo: Reuters Dror Moreh’s documentary, The Gatekeepers, could have been a profound film.

Instead, Moreh uses his interviews with six former directors of Israel’s top security services to send a simplistic and deeply partisan political message: If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, terrorism will subside and peace will break out.

To promote this message, the documentary engages in intellectual dishonesty and omits critical context. While most Israelis know the wider context, the average viewer probably does not, and therefore is vulnerable to the filmmaker’s biased version of the facts.

Though the film tries to portray Israel’s antiterrorism policies as counterproductive and cruel, the interviews inadvertently tell a different story. The six directors are well-spoken, deeply thoughtful, and genuinely self-critical.

They exude gravitas as they describe wrestling with the moral quandaries they regularly faced.

They are not cruel men. They sincerely grappled with how to protect Israelis and Palestinian civilians alike. Their descriptions of the Shin Bet’s legal and ethical constraints are a testament to Israel’s high moral standards. Their comfort in speaking freely is a testament to Israel’s robust democracy.

However, the film repeatedly ignores history and context. It blames Israel for the Palestinian hostility and violence that occurred after 1967, when Israel began administering the West Bank.

The viewer never learns from the film that terrorism against Jews and Israelis was not a result of Israel’s administration but rather has been a regular feature of life since pre-state days.

Palestinian Arabs murdered over 1,000 Jews between 1920 and 1967, and they ethnically cleansed all Jewish communities from the areas they captured during the 1948 war, including the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem. The pattern of terrorism simply continued after Israel’s victory in its 1967 defensive war. Yasser Arafat organized 61 Fatah military operations from the West Bank in the few months after the war, and 162 Israelis were killed by terrorists between 1968 and 1970.

Visually and verbally, the film portrays Israel as a heartless occupier. Audiences get no information about how harsh life was for Palestinians under Egyptian and Jordanian rule between 1948 and 1967, with rampant childhood diseases, economic stagnation and restricted civil and political rights. In addition, the documentary completely overlooks the big picture of positive Israeli-Palestinian relations after 1967.

Even as Israel sought to stop terrorists, it also instituted Palestinian municipal self-government and administration, introduced freedom of speech and association, and vastly modernized the Palestinian economy as well as Palestinian health, welfare and education, turning the West Bank and Gaza into the world’s fourth fastestgrowing economy in the 1970s and 1980s.

In line with his political agenda, Moreh tries to paint all religious Israelis, settlers and rightof- center parties as extremist and intransigent.

The film insinuates that just as many Palestinians are terrorists and incite hatred, so do many Jews. For proof, Moreh magnifies selected incidents, particularly the case of Jewish settlers from Hebron who formed the “Jewish Underground” in 1980.

The film would have audiences believe the Jewish Underground, which wounded two Palestinian mayors, murdered three Palestinians, and plotted to blow up four Palestinian buses and the Dome of the Rock, is fairly representative of most settlers. It is not. Save for the handful of members of the Jewish Underground, Israel does not have Jewish terrorist organizations.

While extremists exist in Israel as in any society, the overwhelming majority of settlers, both religious and secular, are law-abiding citizens.

The country as a whole condemns and marginalizes such extremism. The Shin Bet arrested the Jewish Underground leaders in 1984, and the Israeli government and the vast majority of Israelis, including other settlers, denounced the group, though some Israeli leaders at the time continued to express concerns about the lack of government protection for Hebron’s Jews.

Similarly, because the sentences meted out to the Jewish Underground’s leaders were commuted, the film implies that the Israeli government has been “soft” on Jewish extremists and uses double standards, treating Palestinian terrorists far more leniently than Jewish terrorists.

But these members were freed only after serving almost seven years, not because Israel was “soft” on Jewish terrorists but because Israel had released the very Palestinian prisoners who had perpetrated the attacks that drove the Jewish Underground to organize.

SUCH OMISSIONS of fact and context continue throughout the film. Moreh makes the Shin Bet’s actions seem immoral or counterproductive by minimizing the context of terrorism.

Moreh glosses over the impact of the second intifada (2000-2005), yet the horrors of its terrorism and the fanatical hatred that motivated suicide bombers decimated Israel’s peace camp, a critical fact that the film simply overlooks. The audience does not learn that almost 1,100 Israelis were murdered and thousands more maimed by terrorists during the second intifada.

More disappointingly, the film never alludes to the daunting challenge these Shin Bet directors faced. Israel is fighting terrorists who routinely hide among Palestinian civilians precisely to shield themselves from IDF attacks because they know the IDF tries to avoid harming innocent bystanders. Pressed by the interviewer to admit that the Shin Bet’s actions were immoral during his tenure (1981-1986), Avraham Shalom finally snaps back: “This isn’t about morality.... When the terrorists become moral, we’ll be moral.”

Nor does the film depict the nature of the enemy Israel faces. Hamas’ genocidal ideology never comes up in the interviews. Yet the goals of Hamas, clearly expressed in its charter and its leaders’ statements, call for the murder of Jews and the “obliteration” of Israel, and are suffused with anti-Semitism. The film ignores the relentless incitement to hate and kill Jews that pervades Palestinian society officially and unofficially.

The film never explores the significance of what one Shin Bet director heard from a PLO terrorist he interrogated: terrorists consider it a victory when they make Jews suffer.

More disturbingly, the viewer never learns that Israel has repeatedly tried to do precisely what Moreh advocates. The film never mentions Israel’s offers to trade land for peace in 1967, 1979, 2000 and 2008, or that Palestinian leaders systematically rejected these offers.

Moreh wants audiences to share his wishful thinking, that Israel can end the conflict simply by withdrawing from the West Bank. But recent history, omitted from the film, contradicts this expectation. Israel pulled out of its security zone in Lebanon in 2000 and removed every settlement and over 8,000 Israelis from Gaza in 2005. The results were escalating threats and terrorism from Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon and from Iranian client Hamas in Gaza, which fired over 13,000 rockets and mortars into Israel’s southern communities between 2005 and 2012.

The documentary should be credited for revealing how much Israelis have retained their humanity and their hopes for peaceful coexistence, as exemplified by the Shin Bet directors.

This is a tribute to the Israeli spirit and to Israel’s enduring search for peace, but it also underscores Israel’s tragic dilemma: Israelis want peace, but they cannot find partners for peace unless, like Moreh, they turn a blind eye to the ongoing hostility and threats against them.

Moreh’s effort to blame Israel and the Shin Bet’s actions for the ongoing hostility to the Jewish state is like blaming the victim who is defending himself instead of blaming the perpetrator.

The Gatekeepers‘ material could have produced a profound film if it had not been sacrificed for a political message and if the film had been more intellectually honest and included the historical pattern of genocidal ideology, the ongoing violence, and the existential strategic challenges that Israel faces every day. It is these hard realities and that make the Shin Bet’s work so crucial and so heroic.

Roz Rothstein is the CEO and co-founder of Stand- WithUs. Roberta Seid, PhD, is the research and education director of StandWithUs.

__________________________________________


 Five Broken Cameras
Fairy tales won’t bring peace: A tale of ‘Five Broken Cameras’



By Roz Rothstein and Yael Mazar
The Jewish Journal
February 12, 2013

Five Broken Cameras (2011), a documentary currently up for a 2013 Oscar and co-directed by the film’s narrator and videographer, Palestinian Emad Burnat, and Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi, attempts to erase the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The film unfolds as a Palestinian fairy tale, narrated in a soothing, storytelling voice:

Once upon a time, a poor Palestinian farmer lived in a West Bank village called Bil’in. He had four sons, a doting wife, and many friends.  A few of the men worked, while the women spent their days cooking, cleaning, raising children and otherwise being invisible. The men smoked, danced, watched soccer games and occasionally picked olives. Life seemed perfect.  One day, big bad Israelis erected a “barrier” through Bil’in, seemingly for the sole purpose of irritating the villagers. For the next five years, chronicled through the life of the farmer’s youngest son, the farmer and his friends nonviolently protested this fence. Some got hurt and some even died because of Israeli soldiers’ unprovoked and excessive use of force. Then, because of the villagers of Bil’in, the fence came down. Moral of the fairy tale: Israelis are bad; Palestinians are good; the farmer’s son is very cute and has tragically suffered his loss of innocence because of Israel. An intelligent viewer walks away feeling highly manipulated without knowing why.

The film portrays reality through a broken lens. Its manipulative narration and visual editing craft a seemingly simple story of Palestinian nonviolent resistance to Israel’s security fence, but its covert intent is to denigrate Israel. The film is part of an aggressive industry whose sole aim is to delegitimize and blame only Israel with predictable key techniques, all of which the film utilizes.
First, the film provides absolutely no context. Why is there a security fence? Emad alludes to a “barrier” being erected to “secure and separate the settlers.” Wrong. Israel temporarily built a security fence in response to the second intifada (2000-2005). The fence literally prevents Palestinian terrorists from walking from their villages, like Bil’in, into Israeli cities, like nearby Modi’in, and blowing themselves up. While it must be frustrating for a Palestinian farmer to walk through a gate to get to his field (as seen in the movie), it is surely more inconvenient for an Israeli girl to lose her parents and three siblings to a suicide bomber (as happened during the Jerusalem Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing on August 9, 2001). It seems that the fence is so troublesome that it has erased all of Emad’s memory as to why it is there in the first place.
Second, the film ignores Palestinian terrorism against Israel. It is as if terrorism simply does not exist. An hour into the film, Emad mentions that “Israel is beginning its massive attack on Gaza” and shows images of infuriated villagers. He does not say why Israel is in Gaza. In fact, Israel began its operation to stop the over 7,000 rockets that had been fired from Gaza into southern Israel and to stop weapons smuggling into Gaza by internationally recognized terrorists. On March 1, 2008, alone, 56 rockets struck Israel from Gaza. Several landed on Ahskelon’s Barzilai Hospital, which at the time was treating, in addition to Israeli citizens, premature Palestinian babies in its neonatal unit. Not surprisingly, Emad forgot to mention this.
Third, the film paints Palestinians as the sole victims and Israel as the sole aggressor. There are no discussions of morality, only Emad’s views of good and evil. To show this, all Palestinian demonstrations in the film are peaceful (boys marching and banging with toy instruments, men singing songs and waving flags), and all Israeli soldiers are heavily armored, trigger-happy men with guns. For another picture that shows the manipulative use of "nonviolent demonstrations," see www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDohNq9BORo.   Or, read the Feb. 2010 Haaretz article that discusses the 110 Israeli security personnel who had been injured in Bil'in protests, including one soldier who lost an eye.  Or watch a scene in the film in which Emad’s son  asks, “Daddy, why don’t you kill the soldiers with a knife?” Emad responds, “Because they’d shoot me.” No, Daddy, that is the wrong answer. Son, the answer is because it is morally wrong to kill. Sadly, the distortion of values and lack of clear morality pervades the film.
Fourth, the film downplays the harsh realities of life under Palestinian Authority (PA) rule. That definitely would not paint a pretty picture for this fairy tale, so it had to be left out. When Emad is injured in a tractor accident, he states without any elaboration that he probably would have died had he been treated in a Palestinian hospital instead of an Israeli hospital. He is right. But this should not be the case. There is no excuse for poor Palestinian health care. The Palestinians are one of the largest recipients of international assistance per capita in the world. Donors gave roughly $30 billion in international aid to Palestinians between 1993 and 2012. Where has that money gone? According to U.S. Congressional testimony in 2012, current PA President Mahmoud Abbas has deposited almost $13 million in U.S. taxpayer dollars into a secret bank account, just as Yassir Arafat did when he was president of the PLO. According to former U.S. national security advisor Elliot Abrams, Arab leaders are reluctant to give aid to the PA because PA "officials will just steal it.” Or it will be used to fund terrorism.  It truly is appalling that Emad can neither rely on a Palestinian hospital to save his life nor on his elected Palestinian Authority government to cover his health costs.
This film is not about the fence.  It is actually part of an ongoing effort to deny Israel's right to defend its citizens with non-violent security measures  like the fence.   The film also underscores the difficulty Israel has in finding a true partner for peace. If Israel cannot find peace seekers among those who profess to be the ordinary people of Palestine, like Emad, then who will meet Israel at a negotiating table already forsaken by Palestinian terrorists ruling Gaza and the self-proclaimed “moderates” ruling the West Bank?
The reality is that Israelis and Palestinians are caught up in a tragic conflict. Both sides, Palestinians and Israelis, suffer as a consequence. The more tragic reality is that fairy tales like Five Broken Cameras do nothing to advance mutual understanding, recognition, or peaceful coexistence.
Roz Rothstein is the CEO and co-founder of StandWithUs and Yael Mazar is a research analyst for StandWithUs.

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Fracking will change oil world for Israel and world

Fracking means a new Middle East

Fracking to upend oil game

By ARTHUR HERMAN

Last Updated: 11:19 PM, January 27, 2013

Imagine a future meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, where the agenda is set not by Iran or Saudi Arabia, but by the United States. Oh, and the meeting takes place in Tel Aviv — because the other big power in OPEC is Israel.

That’s where the world is headed, thanks to the miraculous new technology known as fracking.
Hydraulic fracking uses water, sand and trace chemicals under high pressure to crack open deep deposits of shale oil and natural gas. Here in the United States it’s pushed domestic output of both to the point that, according to the International Energy Agency, we’ll be the world’s largest oil producer by 2020.

But fracking is also about to turn the Middle East upside down: Israel is poised to become the region’s new energy Mecca. Indeed, the Land of David just might be the energy-richest spot on earth.
How rich? By one estimate, Israel’s total oil-shale reserves come to 250 billion barrels. Mind you, Saudi Arabia’s total oil reserves are 260 billion.

A single shale oil field in the Elah Valley near Jerusalem, for example, is estimated to hold some 500 million barrels — enough to satisfy Israel’s energy needs for five years.

Israeli fracking production is still tiny, and costs are still higher than drilling in the Saudis’ Ghawar field or Kuwait. But as fracking technology continues to advance, and Israel opens up both its shale oil reserves and some 16 trillion cubic feet of offshore natural-gas deposits, the Jewish state could soon move far beyond energy independence and become a major oil and gas exporter.

In a world where oil and gas demand is expected to rise 35 percent in the next quarter century, the implications could be staggering.

It’s bound to have a decisive impact on Israel’s relations with oil-starved Western Europe. It already has impressed Russia, whose Vladimir Putin has brought his country’s energy giant Gazprom into partnership with Israel to open up those offshore reserves.

It could even change Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors.

Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan are relatively oil-poor compared to Arabs in the Gulf. An Israel that can meet their energy needs could enjoy a whole new regional clout. (In fact, two top Muslim powers, Egypt and Turkey, have their own frackable oil and gas deposits — and may want Israel’s help to exploit them.)

Governments and political parties that used to plot Israel’s destruction could end up currying Tel Aviv’s favor the way the United States and Europe curried OPEC’s favor in the 1970s and ’80s.

That includes the Palestinians. Fracking could open the way for Israelis and Palestinians to find a mutual stake in a booming energy sector — a stake on which a lasting peace could be founded.

Of course, nothing comes easy. Lebanon (under the influence of the terror group Hezbollah) is disputing Israel’s access to those enormous offshore gas deposits. Meanwhile, left-wing groups like the Green Zionist Alliance and Jews Against Hydrofracking denounce fracking a threat to the environment and “not aligned with our Jewish values.”
But their efforts to shut down fracking in the oil-rich Elah Valley and elsewhere got no help from Tuesday’s election in Israel — where the new No. 2 party rose in part from its push for more good jobs, exactly what fracking will bring.

The fact is, the anti-frackers are running against the tide of technology, not to mention history. According to the Bible, the Elah Valley was where the Israelites camped when David slew Goliath. Now that valley is about to give David a new weapon against his enemies — one that could fuel hopes for a whole new direction for the Middle East.

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Obama wanted Mubarack out. Consequences 

Report: Hamas militiamen helped prop up Morsi
Posted: 09 Feb 2013 09:17 AM PST
(Paul Mirengoff)
According to Khaled Abu Toameh at the Gatestone Institute website, there are reports that Hamas dispatched as many as 7,000 militiamen from Gaza to protect the regime of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who faces a popular uprising. The reports quoted unidentified Egyptian security officials as saying that the Hamas militiamen had been spotted in the Egyptian border town of Rafah before they headed toward Cairo to shore up the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Morsi, which Hamas may have feared was in danger of collapse. The officials claimed that the Hamas militiamen had been deployed in a number of sensitive locations in the Egyptian capital, including the Al-Ittihadiyeh Presidential Palace.
These reports find support in documents published this week by a Gulf newspaper, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, that purport to show that Hamas, with the financial backing of Qatar, had plans to send hundreds of militiamen to Egypt to help Morsi’s regime. One of the classified documents, signed by Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin al-Kassam, talks about the need to send “warriors to help our brothers in Egypt who are facing attempts by the former regime [of Hosni Mubarak] to return to power.”
Hamas would, of course, have every reason to supply Morsi with shock troops, and not just because of their ideological afinity. As Toameh reminds us:
The downfall of the Mubarak regime has been a great blessing for Hamas, which has since emerged as a major player in the Palestinian and regional arena. Thanks to Morsi, an Egyptian prime minister visited the Gaza Strip for the first time ever last November to express solidarity with Hamas during Israel’s “Pillar of Defense” military operation. Such a visit would have been unthinkable under Mubarak, who did everything he could to weaken Hamas and stop it from meddling in the internal affairs of Egypt.
But now Hamas knows that it can always rely on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to stay in power and increase Hamas’s influence. In return, Morsi apparently expects Hamas to reward him by sending its men to defend his palace.
Jonathan Tobin concludes:
The Hamas connection should send a chill down the spines of anyone who still held onto hope that the Arab Spring would produce more, rather than less, freedom for Egypt. But it should also remind Americans that they are still sending more than $1 billion a year in U.S. aid and selling F-16 aircraft to Morsi’s Egypt. Members of Congress who continue to back this foolish policy need to ask themselves whether it makes sense to funnel taxpayer dollars to Egypt in the hope of supporting regional stability if what they are really doing is bolstering a government that depends on Hamas terrorists to stay in power.
And while they are at it, members of the Senate should insist that Chuck Hagel, as a condition of a vote on his confirmation, produce the information that will tell us whether he received money from “Friends of Hamas” or like-minded outfits.