"The True Believers"

JayinPhiladelphia

Just a quick piece to note a great discussion between Sam Harris and Graeme Wood, author of "What ISIS Really Wants," which appears online and in the current issue of The Atlantic.

Harris brings up a great comparison regarding the tendency of many to search for explanations other than the obvious one, even when the subject(s) of inquiry state very plainly and clearly what their motivations and beliefs are.

I just want to point out that this effort to get at root causes only ever runs in one direction. No one doubts the political and economic justifications that people give for their behavior. When someone says, “Listen, I murdered my rich neighbor because I knew he kept a pile of money in a safe. I wanted that money, and I didn’t want to leave a witness,” nobody looks for an ulterior explanation for that behavior. But when someone says, “I think infidels and apostates deserve to burn in hell, and I know for a fact that I’ll go to paradise if I die while waging jihad against them,” many academics refuse to accept this rationale at face value and begin looking for the political or economic reasons that they imagine lie beneath it.

Sometimes you just have to accept that people believe what they tell us they believe.  And as Wood notes, you don't even have to go far to find it.  Mike has been writing plenty on this himself, without having to tag along on a Jihadi jalopy bouncing through the desert to join forces with the group in, say, Raqqa or Tikrit.

Wood notes -

I’ve had people come to me after the piece appeared and ask me how I got this information, as if the information were difficult to find. It was kind of them to assume that I had to work very hard to get it. But as anyone who watches the Islamic State closely knows, it manufactures propaganda at an industrial pace, and its members are eager to explain themselves. They publish fatwas in Arabic and many other languages represented among the foreign fighters. And they take great pains to describe why they do what they do.

If this tendency was limited to bloggers and talking heads, it would be one thing.  But it extends to some pretty disturbing places.  Play it, Sam (emphases added) -

From the moment the Islamic State emerged, it felt almost as if I had invented it as some kind of thought experiment to prove that everything I wrote in The End of Faith was true. These people are a crystalline example of the problem I described in that book—as is the response of liberal apologists who have been saying that their behavior has nothing to do with Islam. Rather, we’re told that burning people alive in cages, crucifying children, and butchering journalists and aid workers is an ordinary human response to political and economic instability. Even representatives of our own State Department assert this. I can’t imagine how comically out of touch with reality we appear from the side of the jihadis. [...]

You begin your essay by summarizing the confusion that many people experience on this topic, and you cite comments by Major General Michael Nagata, the Special Operations Commander for the US in the Middle East. He is on record as admitting, I believe in a closed-door session, that he didn’t understand the appeal of the Islamic State. Specifically, he said “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.”  

I remember reading that in the New York Times and getting furious. I take your point in the article that jihadism is not monolithic, and there are both religious and political differences among many of these groups. But if there is anything in this world that is not a secret—if there is any intellectual or moral problem that just solves itself—it is this question of what is appealing about joining a group like the Islamic State for a person who actually believes in the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. It’s about as psychologically mysterious as my daughter’s wanting to go to the ice cream store. I can’t say that I’ve defeated the idea, but I absolutely understand it.

It’s one thing for the president to deny the link between religious belief and jihadism in public -- that’s a propaganda campaign that seems doomed to fail -- but it’s another to learn that our military leaders are expressing confusion about this behind closed doors. I find that terrifying.

 Definitely give the whole discussion a read if you have the chance.

The Daily Kos Reaction to THE SPEECH (Part Deux)

Michael L.

I was going to move on, but this is too much fun to let pass so easily.

I think that I want to start, this morning, with the piece written by fladem entited, Bibi: I am over Israel.

Basically the piece, such as it is, can be summed up by these words:

"Israel wants my son to fight in their war.   Fuck them."

My, my.  Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have irked some people, just a tad.

I find it interesting that while no country has ever sent "flesh and blood to fight by its side," as Bob Dylan memorably put it in "Neighborhood Bully," there are many millions of people who seem to think that Israel is responsible for dragging other countries, such as the United States, into war.




It's one of those things that reveals the racist nature of many in the West when they pontificate about the Jewish State of Israel.

The Left, for the most part, is responding to Netanyahu's speech as if it was a call to war.

It wasn't.

He even addressed that issue preemptively in the speech, itself.  Netanyahu said:

Now we are being told that the only alternative to this bad deal is war.  That's just not true.  The alternative to this bad deal is a much better deal.

The reason that so many "Kossacks," such as the genius above, think that Netanyahu called for war when he precisely did no such thing, is because that is what they want to believe.  When most of these people think about Israel or Netanyahu, they are not thinking about the actual country, nor the actual man.  Instead they are addressing the malicious fantasy that they have created within their own minds grounded in hostile anti-Israel / anti-Jewish propaganda.

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man

His enemies say he's on their land

They got him outnumbered about a million to one

He got no place to escape to, no place to run

He's the neighborhood bully.

All Netanyahu wants - and he was exceedingly clear on this - is that Iran reform itself before it be allowed into the nuclear club.  That's it.  That's all.  Sanctions should not be lifted unless, or until, Iran ceases aggressions against its neighbors, ceases supporting terrorism abroad and ceases calling for the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.

Is that honestly too much to ask?  And this makes Netanyahu a "warmonger"?  I don't think so.  They are not addressing anything that he actually said.  All they are doing is spewing hatred toward Israel, toward Netanyahu, and thus, inevitably, toward Jews, in general... which eventually contributes to the kinds of joyous little moments that we've been seeing recently in Europe to cries of "Alahu Akbar" and the rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire.

Let's take a gander, shall we?

If you do a keyword search you will see that the word "war" comes up, presently, 105 times in a diary with a respectable 150 comments.

Most of those comments suggest that either Israel or Benjamin Netanyahu want war - apparently for no reason whatsoever - whereas they, being good people, want peace.  Israel and Netanyahu represent bad people who wish to visit suffering on others, while they represent the good people who would not hurt a fly.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace

They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease

Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep

They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep

He's the neighborhood bully.

Karl Rover suggests that the United States has "no common cause with the war-crazed prime minister and his toadies."

txdoubledd helpfully reminds us that Netanyahu is a "liar" and that "Israel needs us we do not need them."  What a deeply compassionate and progressive point of view.  By the way, they keep calling Netanyahu a liar and, yet, almost never actually tell us just what it is that he is lying about.

If Netanyahu is a liar then just what, exactly, is the lie?

Heart of the Rockies progressively notes that Netanyahu needs "a big slap in the face, metaphorically speaking. Leave the war mongers their on their own."

Whereas nosleep4u is content to call Netanyahu a "warmonger" merely once, Waryliberal trots out the warmonger charge four times in a single comment.

Good for her!  That's telling him what's what.

Meanwhile jayden thinks that Netanyahu is a "war-mongering liar" and the moderate noofsh merely thinks that he has a "warmongering policy."

And, as always, not everyone over there is entirely clueless on this subject:

I can't wait (0+ / 0-)

to make friends with a country that give the death penalty to the gays.  I mean, we're not friends with enough countries like that already.  That liberals are calling for it is completely nauseating.

by leftynyc on Wed Mar 04, 2015 at 05:03:22 AM PST

Nauseating it is, indeed... as I can attest to on pretty much a daily basis.

Now, jasan, is mighty pissed-off.  All that asking-for-a-better-deal-stuff really got his gander, which is why he decided to go the "fucking war criminal" route.  He writes, "Ask them exactly what boots on the fucking ground means to them and if they are willing to do Israel's bidding.   Lets just see how many will take up the cause with their own kids and kin tossed into the cannon fodder."

If you change the word "Israel's" to the word "Jews'" - and if you put your ear to the ground and listen with the right kind of ears - you can practically hear the echos from eighty years ago in Germany.

A number of people, including bruddaone, want the US to abandon Israel entirely. "Yea, fuck Israel...but most importantly stop the aid to Israel, and let them truly go it alone...."

Meanwhile cybrestrike drags out the apartheid slander.

The brooklynbadboy thinks that the neocons - those wraith-like demons from the recent past - are preparing a major comeback.  Just why he thinks this is rather hard to say, but there it is, pixelated in black and white.

However, raptavio, reasonable as ever, says that he will continue to support Israel, but on condition that Israelis reject Netanyahu at the polls.

Anyway, this little exercise is losing its charm, but I think that it exposes something deep within the progressive-left psyche in regards Israel, Israelis, Netanyahu, and the Jews.

So many of these comments are just soo over-the-top that there is nothing within The Speech, itself, to explain it.

The last thing that the speech was, was a call to war.  Netanyahu is not seeking for the United States to institute a draft or wage war against Iran, for chrissake.  Netanyahu is trying to do whatever he can do to see to it that Iran, as it is currently constituted - as an Islamist state - never gets the bomb.

What he suggests is that there should be no sunset clause on sanctions until Iran ceases its imperial projects in places like Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and even Iraq.

The deal as it stands, if the terms that we know of are accurate, is a betrayal of Obama's promise to make sure that Iran does not gain a nuclear bomb.  

I am sorry if this is inconvenient for Obama supporters or Israel Haters, but Benjamin Netanyahu has responsibilities that transcend currying favor with misty-eyed western progressives who will despise the man no matter what he does or does not do, if for no other reason but that he is the leader of Likud.

It was a good speech, powerfully delivered, with exceedingly important points that needed to be made.

The sheer unbridled rage that it elicited from the base of the Democratic party is a disgrace and tells us much more about them than it does about either Israel or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu may be no Churchill, but I bet Churchill would have approved of the speech.

What has he done to wear so many scars ?

Does he change the course of rivers ? Does he pollute the moon and stars ?

Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill

Running out the clock, time standing still

Neighborhood bully.

It should also be understood, of course, that Netanyahu is no pacifist, either.

If the current US government is content with an Iranian nuclear bomb sometime in the not too distant future - sometime not long after United States President Barack Obama leaves office - then it might be that Israel will have to do the West's dirty work for it, even while enduring their self-righteous condemnations.

This, by the way, received one of the bigger standing ovations of the morning:

I can guarantee you this, the days when the Jewish people remain passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those... days... are... over.

Indeed, they are. 

The Daily Kos Reaction to THE SPEECH (Updated)

Michael L.

Daily Kos is merely one progressive venue among others, but it is more or less representative of the Left in the United States, so how they responded to Netanyahu tells us something about how the Left feels about Israel and, inevitably, about the Jewish people.

First, I want to point out that not everyone was entirely negative, only about 98 percent, or thereabouts.

If we start with Meteor Blades's misleadingly titled, Leader of only nuclear-armed nation in Middle East says bad nuclear deal with Iran will lead to war, we get this rare gem of truthfulness:

As the Prime Minister of Israel and having the (1+ / 0-)

prime responsibility for the security of his people, Netanyahu made a simple, forthright statement in his speech before Congress. His point was that the negotiations under way between Iran and the 5+1 do not point to a nuclear-free Iran. The current negotiations - now going on for over 20 months - have too much slippage that allows Iran to continue its nuclear program. Does Netanyahu have the right to take this position? Of course he does, it is nothing less than his sacred obligation to his people. Most of what is said in contradiction is political toxicity and obscures the point of halting Iran's march toward nuclear weapons.

by Nospinicus on Tue Mar 03, 2015 at 10:37:28 AM PST

That's the point.  All the high-pitched hysteria concerning Netanyahu "obscures the point of halting Iran's march toward nuclear weapons."

(Nowhere, by the way, did Netanyahu say that The Bad Deal will automatically lead to war.  If I missed that, I hope someone will point it out, because, from what I can tell, Timothy Lange, aka "Meteor Blades," an employee of Markos Moulitsas, is misleading his readership.)

In any case, for every Nospinicus we get ten of these:

"bloodthirsty neocon liar" is in the very first comment under Blade's "diary" by dallasdoc, despite the fact that there was nothing the least bit "bloodthirsty" about the speech.  Nothing that he said, from what I can tell, was a lie.  And, what's a "neocon" again?  I haven't heard much of that kind of talk since Wolfowitz left the White House.

TomP says, "He wants war. He would prefer Americans die (71+ / 0-)

to protect his dreams of Greater Israel."

With 71 uprates, no less.  What "greater Israel" has to do with the speech is simply beyond comprehension.  By the way, when they use terms like "greater Israel" they are trying to suggest that Israel is far too large and that what Israeli fascists want is to expand the Israeli empire into some sort-of behemoth.  It's pure stupidity on its face.

JoanMar, in classic anti-Semitic style, insists that the United States is nothing but a colony of Israel.

looseleaf called Netanyahu a "warmonger," despite the fact that he mongered no wars in this speech.  And susan in sc claims to be tired of the "warmongering" despite the fact that there was none.  Liberty Equality Fraternity and Trees says that Netanyahu has a "warmongering nature."  

MarioDemocrat repeats the false "warmonger" charge.  LiberalCanuck calls Netanyahu a "warmongering liar," although, so far, it remains a mystery just what Netanyahu is said to be lying about.  And Inland, filled with righteous indignation, thinks that Netanyahu called for war, when he did not.

kharma, in apparent agreement with JoanMar, spits "GOP policy: Israel First," despite the fact that virtually every Democrat attended, as well.

Loge, in order to express sort-of generalized hatred, calls Netanyahu a "petty crook."

MKDAWUSS, apparently not having listened to the speech, wonders aloud if the invasion of Iran has started, yet.

We Shall Overcome calls Netanyahu a "rapist" who is "blaming the victim.

polecat suggests that Netanyahu is a "douchebag, Cheney-wannabe."

Stuart Heady thoughtfully suggests that Netanyahu is "dangerously nuts."

And willard landreth, meanwhile, hopes that Arabs will continue to seek to murder Jews or, as he puts it, he hopes that "the Palestinians will continue their good fight."


UPDATE:


Meteor Blades thinks that Israel is opposed to any deal and, therefore, apparently, thinks that the Jewish minority in the Middle East likes never-ending war upon themselves.

rwgate thinks that "Israel wants the US to fight it's wars" and "to die in it's place."   Gee, that's essentially what the Nazis thought about Jews, what a coincidence.

Aluminati thinks that Netanyahu wants to expel all Muslims from Israel.

mjd in florida is "sick and tired of watching Netanyahu commit genocide against his next door neighbors."

frostbite says that "Bibi is a liar and a warmonger with nukes"

The Dead Man thinks that "Bibi is throwing a war party in our Congressional Building."

denig thinks that "Bibi wants the destruction of Iran."

Texas Twister thinks that Netanyahu is a "major war criminal" apparently because Hamas has every right to bomb the Holy Crap out of southern Israel.

 sg13565 claims that "Netanyahu is a right wing war monger"

DiesIrae sticks his or her tongue out of her mouth and calls Netanyahu a "jerk." 

cryonaut will probably be screamed at as an anti-Semite for mocking these people.  He is apparently among the two percent:

fucking jews can never get along with anyone. If only there was something that can be done about them.

This was probably mockery and snark.

Obscenely anti-semitic comment. n/t (4+ / 0-)

Don't tell me what you believe, show me what you do and I will tell you what you believe.

by Meteor Blades on Tue Mar 03, 2015 at 12:09:27 PM PST 

Is Blades this stupid or is he being disingenuous?  I assumed that he was misguided, but sincere.

This leads me to wonder if he is not actually malicious.  I could be wrong, but I very much doubt that cryonaut was sincere.  I feel reasonably certain he was mocking them, because the entire thread ultimately comes down to:

fucking jews can never get along with anyone.

Aware63 calls the Prime Minister of Israel, in an exceedingly liberal manner, a "Bloodthirsty War-Pig."

ginnyv, cleverly trotting out her yiddish, calls Netanyahu a "schmuck."

Fishtroller01 actually threatens that "If Israel doesn't take him out of the driver's seat they will only have themselves to blame for what comes to them internationally.  And I hope the US government has the wisdom to stay out of whatever that penalty will be..."

In other words, Fishtroller01 thinks that the Jews richly deserve whatever beating the Arabs deliver.

.

It should be noted that left-leaning hatred toward Benjamin Netanyahu has virtually nothing whatsoever to do with what he actually said, which is that Iran should be held to non-aggressive standards before it should be allowed to join the nuclear club.

23 Standing Ovations

Michael L.

As I begin to write this, I am listening to Netanyahu's much ballyhooed speech before a joint session of Congress and my thoughts on the speech will be offered without the benefit of having read anyone else's take on the matter after the speech was given.

So far, I have to say, I am impressed.  He's a better orator than I realized.  I am, of course, a tad biased on this matter because I want Netanyahu to do well and it seems to me that, from what I heard of the speech so far, he is doing exceedingly well.  To my ear he sounds straightforward, substantive, and sincere.

He also has, by my count, no less than 15 standing ovations, maybe three-quarters the way through, and some terrific stand-alone lines, such as:

"When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy... is your enemy."

And:

"If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country."

And:

"Now we are being told that the only alternative to this bad deal is war.  That's just not true.  The alternative to this bad deal is a much better deal."

What would this better deal consist of?

The main thing is that sanctions would remain in place until Iran meets three criteria:

1) Cease aggressions against its neighbors - (Received standing ovation.)

2) Stop supporting terrorism around the world - (Received standing ovation.)

3) Stop threatening to annihilate Israel - (Received a long standing ovation.)

One of Netanyahu's major themes - in this most important speech of his career - is that The Bad Deal will inevitably lead to a nuclear armed Iran and if the details of the deal that we know thus far are accurate then Netanyahu is correct.  At the very least, all sanctions are to be lifted within ten, or so, years, under the sunset clause, leaving Iran a perfectly legal path to its own nuclear arsenal.

Ten years is an eye blink in the history of a nation and is simply insufficient if the goal is to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear bomb... or twenty... or two hundred.

Now that I have finished listening to the speech in its entirety I want to note a few things.

At one point, referring to Obama's efforts, Netanyahu said, "This is a bad deal, a very bad deal.  We're better off without it."  And he received a standing ovation.  Now, it is impossible for me to tell just who was standing and who wasn't standing, but a majority were.

Does this not mean that every congressperson who applauded that line is taking Netanyahu's side on this issue, over that of the President of the United States?

To Netanyahu's credit, he was also straightforward and honest enough to insist upon the fact that the greatest threat to the world today is the potential marriage of political Islam with nuclear technology.

In this, again, the man is correct.

Ultimately, all Netanyahu is saying is that a better deal will prevent Iran from going nuclear unless, or until, the regime changes its behavior in the manner recommended above.

That seem commonsensical to me.

I am sure that there is plenty more to be said - and I can only imagine the venom being spit at places like Daily Kos, the Huffington Post, and the Guardian.  But I still have yet to read a word of anyone else's analysis.

I want to conclude, for the moment, by noting that toward the end of the speech Netanyahu said, "I can guarantee you this. The days when the Jewish people remain passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those... days... are... over.

The clear message was that Israel maintains the right and the ability to go it alone if need be.

Let's hope that it does not come to that.

One of Obama's Jews Has a Few Questions

Michael L. 

Jeffrey Goldberg writes for the The Atlantic and is one of the premier journalists in the United States today.

A big part of the reason for his success, aside from the fact that he is a terrific writer, is that he has accrued access to the Obama White House much more so than most of his colleagues.

When the Obama administration wants to loft an idea concerning Israel into the public domain they often rely on Goldberg to knock it out there.  He has been a reliable friend of the Obama administration and, along with people such as Thomas Friedman, has provided an invaluable service by generally covering Obama's flank with the President's Jewish constituency.

Nonetheless, tomorrow morning Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is going to speak to the world from Washington, D.C. concerning the Iranian Bad Deal and Goldberg has a few questions.

He writes:

The deal that seems to be taking shape right now does not fill me—or many others who support a diplomatic solution to this crisis—with confidence. Reports suggest that the prospective agreement will legitimate Iran’s right to enrich uranium (a “right” that doesn’t actually exist in international law); it will allow Iran to maintain many thousands of operating centrifuges; and it will lapse after 10 or 15 years, at which point Iran would theoretically be free to go nuclear. (The matter of the sunset clause worries me, but I’m more worried that the Iranians will find a way to cheat their way out of the agreement even before the sun is scheduled to set.) - Editor's emphasis.

I am not exactly filled with confidence, either. Leaving Iran as a nuclear-weaponized threshold state is not what Obama promised the American people.  What he said, quite specifically, was that it was US policy to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Goldberg, himself, wrote about this in an October 2, 2012, column entitled, Obama's Crystal-Clear Promise to Stop Iran From Getting a Nuclear Weapon.

Reuters is reporting that President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu are both satisfied with their non-encounter at the United Nations last week. Both men "left the U.N. meeting with more than they arrived with: Obama with an assurance that Israel would not attack Iran's nuclear sites before the November 6 U.S. presidential election, and Netanyahu with a commitment from Obama to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from producing an atomic bomb."

Obama has changed the policy without alerting the American public.  Apparently now the policy is to try to manage and finesse Iran's nuclear weaponry development and to merely hold it off for a few years.  From now until then Obama will be able to say that he has lived up to his word.

This, needless to say, puts the United States, Israel, and the rest of the world in a position of weakness in which all we can really do is hope for the best.  It certainly puts Iran in a position wherein if it wanted to step up its rise as a Middle Eastern hegemon, it could demonstrate nuclear weapons capabilities in short order.

The fact of the matter is that Iran does not need nuclear enrichment facilities - particularly given its resources in oil - if its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes.  If that were the case it could purchase enriched uranium elsewhere, as do most other countries.

This is a very dangerous moment for Obama and for the world. He has made many promises, and if he fails to keep them—if he inadvertently (or, God forbid, advertently) sets Iran on the path to the nuclear threshold, he will be forever remembered as the president who sparked a nuclear-arms race in the world’s most volatile region, and for breaking a decades-old promise to Israel that the United States would defend its existence and viability as the nation-state of the Jewish people. 

From what I read in the newspapers, Obama is advertantly setting Iran onto a path to the nuclear bomb threshold.  What they tell us is that it is supposed to be a 1-year threshold.  That is, Iran agrees to remain one year away from break-out capacity and we are, thus, supposed to trust the ayatollahs.

That is putting an awful lot of faith into an Islamist government that has been an enemy of the United States since 1979.  This is particularly true given Iran's emergence as a contemporary imperial power in the Middle East during the Obama presidency.

In fact, from a strictly logical point of view, it is completely... nuts.

I do not want to see the United States or Israel go to war and I do not know that a ground campaign is our only option beyond near capitulation, which is what Obama's Bad Deal is.

One of Netanyahu’s most strident critics, Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, said recently, “A nuclear Iran is a reality that Israel won't be able to come to terms with.”

He went on to say, “Two issues in particular concern me with respect to the talks between the world powers and Iran: What happens if and when the Iranians violate the agreement, and what happens when the period of the agreement comes to an end and they decide to pursue nuclear weapons?”

In the coming weeks, President Obama must provide compelling answers to these questions.

This, my friends, is a very big moment and we are going to have to wait until we see final terms in order to make final judgments.

But, if the deal contains a one year break-out, and if there are secret facilities in Iran, that means Iran can go nuclear at practically a moment's notice.

Ultimately, you can only have faith in the Bad Deal, as we understand it today, if you do not honestly care if Iran gets a Jihad Bomb.

Obama Insults AIPAC, American Jews

Michael L.

While the Obama administration seeks to delegitimize Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, directly before his upcoming speech to Congress this Tuesday - and just prior to his re-election bid - it also allowed rumors to swirl that it would boycott the AIPAC conference scheduled for this week.

Given that AIPAC is the single most important pro-Israel organization in the United States, to not send a high ranking official to the conference would be considered an insult to American Jewry, as well.

The much ballyhooed Obama boycott of AIPAC has turned out to be false, however.

The Obama administration is not boycotting AIPAC.

Obama intends to send national security adviser, Susan Rice and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, both of whom are high level Obama administration officials.   Rice, however, claims that Netanyahu, in the speech that he has yet to give, is "destructive of the fabric of the relationship" between the United States and its foremost Middle Eastern ally.  Power, on the other hand, has pondered aloud about the circumstances in which the US might be compelled to fight Israeli Jews on behalf of the Palestinian-Arabs.

In a piece for the Jerusalem Post, Michael Freund asks, Is Obama stirring up anti-Semitism?

This is a sure sign that not only does the Obama administration lack message discipline, but can barely conceal its unmitigated hostility toward the Jewish state and the man who leads it. Indeed, to decry a speech by a close US ally to the elected representatives of the American people as “destructive” is not only offensive, but it crosses the lines of diplomatic decency. It is the kind of remark that Israel’s enemies will be more than happy to exploit in an effort to paint the Jewish state, and Jews themselves, as undermining America.

I would argue that, in fact, Barack Obama is stirring up anti-Semitism and has been for years.

It is not that Barack Obama is himself, necessarily, anti-Semitic, but that his disdain for the Jewish State of Israel tends to justify the hatred of those who are.  By continually making unreasonable demands upon the Jews of the Middle East - such as that they not be allowed to build housing for themselves and their children in Judea and Samaria, the traditional homeland of the Jewish people, even within existing townships and villages - he helps create an atmosphere wherein anti-Semitism thrives and Jews around the world are put on the defensive.

To invite Susan Rice to AIPAC is a kick in the head to all of us who care about the well-being of Israel.  Obama is mocking AIPAC, if not American Jews, more generally, because now that he has won his second term there is little that we can do about it.

During the previous two presidential elections, American Jewry got down on its hands and knees and gave Barack Obama a big, wet smooch on the tush.  In response, Obama has turned around and, with a smile, kicked us directly in the teeth... but he has been doing that, more or less continually, in a variety of ways for many years now.

However counterproductive and false Susan Rice's views of Benjamin Netanyahu might be, she never discussed on camera the circumstances necessary for conquering Israel, as Samantha Power did.

The conversation took place entirely as a hypothetical in which she was asked, in the event that either side undertook genocide against the other, what should be the US response?

Needless to say, she automatically - and insultingly - assumed that the Jews would commit genocide against Arabs.

This is the exact question:

Let me give you a thought experiment, here, without asking you to address the Israel-Palestine problem.  Let's say that you were an adviser to the President of the United States, how would, in response to current events, would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation least one party or another be looking like they might, uh, be moving toward genocide?

Under such circumstances, she said, the US would need to "put something on the line," i.e., be willing to make hard sacrifices.

And what might putting "something" on the line mean?

Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of (giggles) tremendous political and financial import.

Power muses that the US would need "a mammoth protection force" in Israel.  It would have to be a "meaningful military presence" because "you have to put something on the line."




Obama chose Rice and Power precisely to send a message to American Jewry.

Were that not the case he would have chosen individuals who do not stir up hatred for Netanyahu and Israel, nor those who ponder aloud the circumstances under which the United States would have to militarily crush Jewish opposition in the Middle East.

He didn't.  Instead he chose Rice and Power... Power and Rice.

Clearly Obama was aware of the feelings of these close advisers before he chose them to represent his administration at the current AIPAC conference.  Given the manufactured hostility from Obama toward Netanyahu and, by extension, Israel, his appointment of Rice and Power to represent his administration at AIPAC 2015 could not have been accidental.

Obama is driving a wedge between American Jews and the Democratic party, while trying to drive a wedge between American Jews and the State of Israel.

The only question is, why?