Thursday, August 21, 2014

Bret Stephens Demystifies Obama and our Foreign Policy Meltdown

This is the most important article I and a number of my friends have read assessing the position of the US in our world. It is long but it is worth reading every word. Do yourself a favor and find a quiet place to read it. 

"Then again, every president confronts his share of apparently intractable dilemmas. The test of a successful presidency is whether it can avoid being trapped and defined by them. Did Obama inherit anything worse than what Franklin Roosevelt got from Herbert Hoover (the Great Depression) or Richard Nixon from Lyndon Johnson (the war in Vietnam and the social meltdown of the late ’60s) or Ronald Reagan from Jimmy Carter (stagflation, the ayatollahs, the Soviet Union on the march)?

Then again, the next American president might not have options of the sort that Obama enjoyed when he took office in 2009. By 2017, the U.S. military will be an increasingly hollow force, with the Army as small as it was in 1940, before conscription; a Navy the size it was in 1917, before our entry into World War I; an Air Force flying the oldest—and smallest—fleet of planes in its history; and a nuclear arsenal no larger than it was during the Truman administration."

I first want to bring down the intro by my insightful friend, Roger Gerber:

A prior note cited Mark Durie's reference to the West's "theological illiteracy" of Islam; and our outgoing Defense Intelligence Chief, General Flynn, recently warned - referring to the Islamists - that ""These are people who have a very deeply rooted belief system that is just difficult for Americans to comprehend".  Unfortunately, in the wake of the barbaric beheading by the "Islamic State" of American reporter Jim Foley, the remarks of our national leaders evidenced precisely the lack of comprehension to which Durie referred and of which Gen. Flynn warned.   Pres. Obama, in expressing his outrage at the beheading, stated: "ISIL speaks for no religion.  Their victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, and no faith teaches people to massacre innocents.”    This is truly risible since, in the words of Robert Spencer, "Islamic law mandates death for heretics and apostates, and that is what the Islamic State jihadis consider their Muslim victims to be."  Our Secretary of State averred that "ISIL is...an ugly insult to the peaceful religion they violate every day with their barbarity."  Again, we are fed the anodyne bromide that Islam is a "peaceful religion" as though its traditional mainstream doctrine did not mandate a choice of conversion or death to those who do not fall within the rubric of "people of the book"; the latter are granted the "privilege" of avoiding death by submission through payment of Jizya and adhering to the numerous Muslim dictates applicable to dhimmis.  The following article addresses the Middle East indirectly; it is focused primarily on foreign policy generally and it is distributed to the Middle East list because it does contextualize U.S. Mideast policy and address the role of the United States in confronting the major issues affecting the Mideast.

 

The Meltdown

By Bret Stephens - August 19, 2014

In July, after Germany trounced Brazil 7–1 in the semifinal match of the World Cup—including a first-half stretch in which the Brazilian soccer squad gave up an astonishing five goals in 19 minutes—a sports commentator wrote: “This was not a team losing. It was a dream dying.” These words could equally describe what has become of Barack Obama’s foreign policy since his second inauguration. The president, according to the infatuated view of his political aides and media flatterers, was supposed to be playing o jogo bonito, the beautiful game—ending wars, pressing resets, pursuing pivots, and restoring America’s good name abroad.
Instead, he crumbled.

As I write, the foreign policy of the United States is in a state of unprecedented disarray. In some cases, failed policy has given way to an absence of policy. So it is in Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and, at least until recently, Ukraine. In other cases the president has doubled down on failed policy—extending nuclear negotiations with Iran; announcing the full withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Sometimes the administration has been the victim of events, such as Edward Snowden’s espionage, it made worse through bureaucratic fumbling and feckless administrative fixes. At other times the wounds have been self-inflicted: the espionage scandal in Germany (when it was learned that the United States had continued to spy on our ally despite prior revelations of the NSA’s eavesdropping on Chancellor Angela Merkel); the repeated declaration that “core al-Qaeda” was “on a path to defeat”; the prisoner swap with the Taliban that obtained Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl’s release.

Often the damage has been vivid, as in the collapse of the Israel–Palestinian talks in April followed by the war in Gaza. More frequently it can be heard in the whispered remarks of our allies. “The Polish-American alliance is worthless, even harmful, as it gives Poland a false sense of security,” Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister and once one of its most reliably pro-American politicians, was overheard saying in June. “It’s bullshit.”

This is far from an exhaustive list. But it’s one that, at last, people have begun to notice. Foreign policy, considered a political strength of the president in his first term, has become a liability. In June, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that Americans disapproved of his handling of foreign affairs by a 57-to-37 percent ratio. Overseas, dismay with Obama mounts. Among Germans, who greeted the future president as a near-messiah when he spoke in Berlin in the summer of 2008, his approval rating fell to 43 percent in late 2013, from 88 percent in 2010. In Egypt, another country the president went out of his way to woo, he has accomplished the unlikely feat of making himself more unpopular than George W. Bush. In Israel, political leaders and commentators from across the political spectrum are united in their disdain for the administration. “The Obama administration proved once again that it is the best friend of its enemies, and the biggest enemy of its friends,” the center-left Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit noted in late July. It’s an observation being echoed by policymakers from Tokyo to Taipei to Tallinn.
But perhaps the most telling indicator is the collapsing confidence in the president among the Democratic-leaning foreign-policy elite in the United States. “Under Obama, the United States has suffered some real reputational damage,” admitted Washington Post columnist David Ignatius in May, adding: “I say this as someone who sympathizes with many of Obama’s foreign-policy goals.” Hillary Clinton, the president’s once loyal secretary of state, offered in early August that “great nations need organizing principles, and ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, warned in July that “we are losing control of our ability at the highest levels of dealing with challenges that, increasingly, many of us recognize as fundamental to our well-being.” The United States, he added, was “increasingly devoid of strategic will and a sense of direction.”

And there was this: “What kind of figure will Obama cut at Omaha?” Roger Cohen, the reliably liberal New York Times columnist, wondered on the eve of the 70th D-Day commemoration at Omaha Beach in June. “I wish I could say he will cut a convincing figure.” But, he continued:
Obama at bloody Omaha, in the sixth year of his presidency, falls short at a time when his aides have been defining the cornerstone of his foreign policy as: “Don’t do stupid stuff.”… He falls short at a time when Syria bleeds more than three years into the uprising… Obama falls short at a time when Vladimir Putin, emboldened by that Syrian retreat and the perception of American weakness, has annexed Crimea… Obama falls short as Putin’s Russian surrogates in eastern Ukraine wreak havoc… He falls short, also, when the Egyptian dreams of liberty and pluralism that arose in Tahrir square have given way to the landslide victory of a former general in an “election” only a little less grotesque than Assad’s in Syria.
Are we all neoconservatives again? Not quite—or at least not yet. Even as the evidence of the failure of Obama’s foreign policy abounds, the causes of that failure remain in dispute. Has the world simply become an impossibly complex place, beyond the reach of any American president to shape or master? Is the problem the president himself, a man who seems to have lost interest in the responsibilities (though not yet the perquisites) of his office? Or are we witnessing the consequences of foreign-policy progressivism, the worldview Obama brought with him to the White House and that he has, for the most part, consistently and even conscientiously championed? Not surprisingly, many of the president’s supporters are attracted to the first explanation.

In this reading, the U.S. no longer enjoys its previous geopolitical advantages over militarily dependent and diplomatically pliant allies, or against inherently weaker and relatively predictable adversaries. On the contrary, our economic supremacy is fading and we may be in long-term decline. Our adversaries are increasingly able to confront us asymmetrically, imposing high costs on us without incurring significant costs for themselves. Limited budgetary resources require us to make “hard choices” about the balance between international and domestic priorities. What’s more, the sour experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan—another bad Bush legacy—limit Obama’s options, because Americans have made it plain that they are in no mood to intervene in places such as Syria or over conflicts such as the one in Ukraine. As the president told an interviewer in 2013,“I am more mindful probably than most of not only our incredible strengths and capabilities but also our limitations.”

It would be wrong to dismiss this argument out of hand. Can Obama fairly be blamed for the quarter-century of misgovernance in Kiev that created conditions in which Russian separatists in Crimea and Donetsk would flourish? Was there anything he could realistically have done to prevent Hosni Mubarak’s ouster, or to steer Egyptian politics in the tumultuous years that followed? Is it his fault that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pursued vendettas against Iraq’s Sunni leaders, creating the political conditions for al-Qaeda’s resurgence, or that Hamid Karzai has proved to be such a disappointing leader for Afghanistan? If the price of better relations with Pakistan was ending the program of drone strikes, was that a price worth paying?
Then again, every president confronts his share of apparently intractable dilemmas. The test of a successful presidency is whether it can avoid being trapped and defined by them. Did Obama inherit anything worse than what Franklin Roosevelt got from Herbert Hoover (the Great Depression) or Richard Nixon from Lyndon Johnson (the war in Vietnam and the social meltdown of the late ’60s) or Ronald Reagan from Jimmy Carter (stagflation, the ayatollahs, the Soviet Union on the march)?

If anything, the international situation Obama faced when he assumed the presidency was, in many respects, relatively auspicious. Despite the financial crisis and the recession that followed, never since John F. Kennedy has an American president assumed high office with so much global goodwill. The war in Iraq, which had done so much to bedevil Bush’s presidency, had been won thanks to a military strategy Obama had, as a senator, flatly opposed. For the war in Afghanistan, there was broad bipartisan support for large troop increases. Not even six months into his presidency, Obama was handed a potential strategic game changer when a stolen election in Iran led to a massive popular uprising that, had it succeeded, could have simultaneously ended the Islamic Republic and resolved the nuclear crisis. He was handed another would-be game changer in early 2011, when the initially peaceful uprising in Syria offered an opportunity, at relatively little cost to the U.S., to depose an anti-American dictator and sever the main link between Iran and its terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Gaza.
Incredibly, Obama squandered every single one of these opportunities. An early and telling turning point came in 2009, when, as part of the Russian reset, the administration abruptly cancelled plans—laboriously negotiated by the Bush administration, and agreed to at considerable political risk by governments in Warsaw and Prague—to deploy ballistic-missile defenses to Poland and the Czech Republic. “We heard through the media,” was how Witold Waszczykowski, the deputy head of Poland’s national-security team, described the administration’s consultation process. Adding unwitting insult to gratuitous injury, the announcement came on the 70th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet pact, a stark reminder that Poland could never entrust its security to the guarantees of great powers.

And this was just the beginning. Relations would soon sour with France, as then-President Nicolas Sarkozy openly mocked Obama’s fantasies of nuclear disarmament. “Est-il faible?”—“Is he weak?”—the French president was reported to have wondered aloud after witnessing Obama’s performance at his first G20 summit in April 2009. Then relations would sour with Germany: A biography of Angela Merkel by Stefan Kornelius quotes her as telling then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that she found Obama “so peculiar, so unapproachable, so lacking in warmth.” Next was Saudi Arabia: U.S. policy toward Syria, the Kingdom’s Prince Turki al-Faisal would tell an audience in London, “would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious, and designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down, but also to help Assad butcher his people.” Canada—Canada!—would be disappointed. “We can’t continue in this state of limbo,” complained foreign minister John Baird about the administration’s endless delays and prevarications over approving the Keystone XL pipeline.

And there was Israel: “We thought it would be the United States that would lead the campaign against Iran,” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon noted in March in a speech at Tel Aviv University. Instead, Obama was “showing weakness,” he added. “Therefore, on this matter, we have to behave as though we have nobody to look out for us but ourselves.”

This was quite a list of falling-outs. Still, most such differences can usually be finessed or patched up with a bit of diplomacy. Not so Obama’s failures when it came to consolidating America’s hard-won gains in Iraq, or advocating America’s democratic values in Iran, or pursuing his own oft-stated goal in Afghanistan—“the war that has to be won,” as he was fond of saying when he was running for the presidency in 2008. As for Syria, perhaps the most devastating assessment was offered by Robert Ford, who had been Obama’s man in Damascus in the days when Bashar al-Assad was dining with John Kerry and being touted by Hillary Clinton as a “reformer.”
“I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend the American policy,” Ford told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in June, explaining his decision to resign from government. “There really is nothing we can point to that’s been very successful in our policy except the removal of about 93 percent of some of Assad’s chemical materials. But now he’s using chlorine gas against his opponents.”

None of these fiascos— for brevity’s sake, I’m deliberately setting to one side the illusory pivot to Asia, the misbegotten Russian Reset, the mishandled Palestinian–Israeli talks, the stillborn Geneva conferences on Syria, the catastrophic interim agreement with Iran, the de facto death of the U.S. free-trade agenda, the overhyped opening to Burma, the orphaned victory in Libya, the poisoned relationship with Egypt, and the disastrous cuts to the Defense budget—can be explained away as a matter of tough geopolitical luck. Where, then, does the source of failure lie?

For those disposed to be ideologically sympathetic to the administration, it comes down to the personality of the president. He is, they say, too distant, not enough of a schmoozer, doesn’t forge the close personal relationships of the kind that Bush had with Tony Blair, or Clinton with Helmut Kohl, or Reagan with Margaret Thatcher. Also, he’s too professorial, too rational, too prudent: He thinks that foreign-policy success is a matter of hitting “singles and doubles,” as he put it on a recent visit to Asia, when what Americans want is for the president to hit home runs (or at least point toward the lights).
Alternatively, perhaps he’s too political: “The president had a truly disturbing habit of funneling major foreign-policy decisions through a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisers whose turf was strictly politics,” recalled Vali Nasr, the academic who served as a State Department aide early in Obama’s first term. “Their primary concern was how any action in Afghanistan or the Middle East would play out on the nightly news.”

Another theory: The president is simply disconnected from events, indifferent to the details of governance, incompetent in the execution of policy. Last fall, following the disastrous rollout of the ObamaCare website, it emerged that the president had not had a single private meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for more than three years—an indicator, given that this was his highest political priority, of the quality of attention he was giving lesser issues. It also turned out that the president had gone for nearly five years without knowing that the National Security Agency was bugging the phones of foreign leaders. In a revealing portrait from October 2013 in the New York Times, the president was described as “impatient and disengaged” during White House debates about Syria, “sometimes scrolling through messages on his BlackBerry or slouching and chewing gum.” The president is also known to have complained to aides about what he called “decision fatigue,” demanding memos where he can check “agree,” “disagree,” or “let’s discuss.”
The most devastating testimony of all came from Obama himself. Prepping for an interview on 60 Minutes after a late-night dinner in Italy, Politico reported, the president complained about his hard lot: “Just last night I was talking about life and art, big interesting things, and now we’re back to the minuscule things on politics”—those “minuscule things” being the crisis in Ukraine and his own health-care plan. Then there was this detail, about a presidential excursion in March as the crisis in Crimea was unfolding:
At a leisurely dinner with friends on that Saturday night, Obama expressed no regrets about the mini-vacation at the lush Ocean Reef Club resort or the publicity surrounding the trip, which reportedly required planes, five helicopters, more than 50 Secret Service agents and airspace restrictions over South Florida. After a difficult few weeks dealing with an international crisis, he relished the break, which included two rounds of golf.
Even allowing that presidents can get work done on the fairway and make executive decisions between fundraising events (Obama did 321 of them in his first term, according to the Washington Post, as compared with 173 for George W. Bush’s first four years and 80 for Reagan’s), there is still the reality that the American presidency remains a full-time job that requires something more than glancing attention. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany’s former defense minister, described Obama as “probably the most detached President [in] decades.” William Galston, my (liberal) fellow columnist at the Wall Street Journal and a former aide to Bill Clinton, has noted that “this president doesn’t seem to be as curious about the processes of government—whether the legislative process or the implementation process or the administrative or bureaucratic process.”

Even the ordinarily sympathetic Washington press corps has cottoned to the truth about Obama’s style of management. “Former Obama administration officials,” the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson reported last year, “said the president’s inattention to detail has been a frequent source of frustration, leading in some cases to reversals of diplomatic initiatives and other efforts that had been underway for months.”
Should any of this have come as a surprise? Probably not: With Obama, there was always more than a whiff of the overconfident dilettante, so sure of his powers that he could remain supremely comfortable with his own ignorance. His express-elevator ascent from Illinois state senator to U.S. president in the space of just four years didn’t allow much time for maturation or reflection, either. Obama really is, as Bill Clinton is supposed to have said of him, “an amateur.” When it comes to the execution of policy, it shows.

And yet this view also sells Obama short. It should be obvious, but bears repeating, that it is no mean feat to be elected, and reelected, president, whatever other advantages Obama might have enjoyed in his races. In interviews and press conferences, Obama is often verbose and generally self-serving, but he’s also, for the most part, conversant with the issues. He may not be the second coming of Lincoln that groupies like historians Michael Beschloss (who called Obama “probably the smartest guy ever to become president”) or Robert Dallek (who said Obama’s “political mastery is on par with FDR and LBJ”) made him out to be. But neither is he a Sarah Palin, mouthing artless banalities about this great nation of ours, or a Rick Perry, trying, like Otto from A Fish Called Wanda, to remember the middle part. The myth of Obama’s brilliance paradoxically obscures the fact that he’s no fool. The point is especially important to note because the failure of Obama’s foreign policy is not, ultimately, a reflection of his character or IQ. It is the consequence of an ideology.

That ideology is what now goes by the name of progressivism, which has effectively been the dominant (if often disavowed) view of the Democratic Party since George McGovern ran on a “Come Home, America” platform in 1972—and got 37.5 percent of the popular vote. Progressivism believes that the United States must lead internationally by example (especially when it comes to nuclear-arms control); that the U.S. is as much the sinner as it is the sinned against when it comes to our adversaries (remember Mosaddegh?); and that the American interest is best served when it is merged with, or subsumed by, the global interest (ideally in the form of a UN resolution).
“The truth of the matter is that it’s a big world out there, and that as indispensable as we are to try to lead it, there’s still going to be tragedies out there, and there are going to be conflicts, and our job is to make sure to project what’s right, what’s just, and, you know, that we’re building coalitions of like-minded countries and partners in order to advance not only our core security interests, but also the interests of the world as a whole.” Thus did Obama describe his global outlook in an August 2014 press conference.

Above all, progressivism believes that the United States is a country that, in nearly every respect, treads too heavily on the Earth: environmentally, ideologically, militarily, and geopolitically. The goal, therefore, is to reduce America’s footprint; to “retrench,” as the administration would like to think of it, or to retreat, as it might more accurately be called.

To what end? “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” Obama said on the eve of his election in 2008. If Obama-Care is anything to go by, that fundamental transformation involves a vast expansion of the entitlement state; the growth of federal administrative power at the expense of Congress and the states; the further subordination

That, at any rate, is the theory. Practice has proved to be a different story. If the United States were to go into retreat, to turn inward for the sake of building some new social democracy, just what would take the place of Pax Americana abroad? On this point, Obama has struggled to give an answer. “People are anxious,” he acknowledged at a fundraiser in Seattle in July:
Now, some of that has to do with some big challenges overseas…Part of people’s concern is just the sense that around the world the old order isn’t holding and we’re not quite yet to where we need to be in terms of a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity, that’s based on economies that work for all people.
A new order that’s based on a different set of principles: Just what could that new order be? In the absence of a single dominant power, capable and willing to protect its friends and deter its foes, there are three conceivable models of global organization. First, a traditional balance-of-power system of the kind that briefly flourished in Europe in the 19th century. Second, “collective security” under the supervision of an organization like the League of Nations or the United Nations. Third, the liberal-democratic peace advocated, or predicted, by the likes of Immanuel Kant, Norman Angell, and Francis Fukuyama.
Yet, with the qualified exception of the liberal-democratic model, each of these systems wound up collapsing of its own weight—precisely the reason Dean Acheson, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, and the other postwar statesmen “present at the creation” understood the necessity of the Truman Doctrine, the Atlantic Alliance, containment, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and all the rest of the institutional and ideological architecture of America’s post–World War II leadership. These were men who knew that isolationism, global-disarmament pledges, international law, or any other principle based on “common humanity” could provide no lasting security against ambitious dictatorships and conniving upstarts. The only check against disorder and anarchy was order and power. The only hope that order and power would be put to the right use was to make sure that a preponderance of power lay in safe, benign, and confident hands.
In 1945 the only hands that fit that description were American. It remains true today—even more so, given the slow-motion economic and strategic collapse of Europe. Yet here was Obama, blithely proposing to substitute Pax Americana with an as-yet-unnamed and undefined formula for the maintenance of global order. Little wonder that leaders in Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow quickly understood that, with Obama in the White House, they had a rare opportunity to reshape and revise regional arrangements in a manner more to their liking. Iran is doing so today in southern Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Beijing is extending its reach in the South and East China Sea. Russia is intervening in Ukraine. It’s no accident that, while acting independently from one another, they are all acting now. The next American president might not be so cavalier about challenges to the global status quo, or about enforcing his (or her) own red lines. Better to move while they can.

Then again, the next American president might not have options of the sort that Obama enjoyed when he took office in 2009. By 2017, the U.S. military will be an increasingly hollow force, with the Army as small as it was in 1940, before conscription; a Navy the size it was in 1917, before our entry into World War I; an Air Force flying the oldest—and smallest—fleet of planes in its history; and a nuclear arsenal no larger than it was during the Truman administration.
By 2017, too, the Middle East is likely to have been remade, though exactly how is difficult to say. As I write, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which had seized eastern Syria and most of Anbar Province in Iraq in June, is now encroaching simultaneously into Lebanon and Iraq’s Kurdish regions. It is too soon to tell what kind of nuclear deal the West will strike with Iran—assuming it strikes any deal at all. But after years of prevarication on one side and self-deceit on the other, the likeliest outcomes are that a) Iran will get a bomb; b) Iran will be allowed to remain within a screw’s twist of a bomb; or c) Israel will be forced, at great risk to itself, to go to war to prevent a) or b) because the United States would not do the job. As for Asia and our supposed pivot, a comment this spring by Assistant Secretary of Defense Katrina McFarland could not have been lost on Chinese—or, for that matter, Japanese—ears. “Right now,” she said, “the ‘pivot’ is being looked at again because candidly it can’t happen.” There just aren’t enough ships.

And these are just the predictable consequences of the path we’ve been taking under Obama. What happens if there’s more bad news in store? If Vladimir Putin were to invade one, or all, of the Baltic states tomorrow, there is little short of nuclear war that NATO could do to stop him, and the alliance would stand exposed as the shell it has already become. Or, to take another no-longer-implausible scenario, is it inconceivable that Saudi Arabia, unhappy as it is over the Obama administration’s outreach toward Tehran, might choose to pursue its own nuclear options? The Saudis are already widely believed to own a piece of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal; why not test one of the weapons somewhere in the Saudi desert as a warning shot to Tehran, and perhaps to Washington also?

Or how about this: What if inflation in the United States prompts the Federal Reserve finally to raise interest rates in a major way? What effect would that have on commodity-dependent emerging markets? And what if the crisis in the Eurozone isn’t over at all, and a second deep recession brings a neo-fascist such as Marine Le Pen to power in France? The depressions of the 1920s and ’30s were caused, not least, by America’s original retreat from the world after it soured on international politics and the promise of global democracy. Now Obama is sounding the same retreat, for many of the same reasons, and probably with the same consequences.

In a prescient 2004 essay in Foreign Policy, the historian Niall Ferguson warned that “the alternative to [American] unipolarity” would not be some kind of reasonably tolerable world order. It would, he said, “be apolarity—a global vacuum of power.” “If the United States retreats from global hegemony—its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier—its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what you wish for.”

For nearly 250 years it has been America’s great fortune to have always found just the right leadership in the nick of time. Or perhaps that’s not quite accurate: It has, rather, been our way first to sleepwalk toward crisis and catastrophe, then to rouse ourselves when it is almost too late. As things stand now, by 2017 it will be nearly too late. Who sees a Lincoln, or a Truman, or a Reagan on the horizon?
Still, we should not lose hope. We may be foolish, but our enemies, however aggressive and ill-intended, are objectively weak. We may be a nation in deliberate retreat, but at least we are not—at least not yet—in inexorable decline. Two years ago, Obama was considered a foreign-policy success story. Not many people entertain that illusion now; the tide of public opinion, until recently so dull and vociferous in its opposition to “neocons,” is beginning to shift as Americans understand that a policy of inaction also has its price. Americans are once again prepared to hear the case against retreat. What’s needed are the spokesmen, and spokeswomen, who will make it.
Since I am writing these words on the centenary of the First World War, it seems appropriate to close with a line from the era. At the battle of the Marne, with Germany advancing on Paris, General Ferdinand Foch sent the message that would rally the French army to hold its ground. “My center is yielding. My right is retreating. Situation excellent. I am attacking.” Words to remember and live by in this new era of headlong American retreat.

About the Author

Bret Stephens is the foreign-affairs columnist and deputy editorial-page editor of the Wall Street Journal. In 2013 he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. His first book, America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder will be published by Sentinel in November.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

8/2/2014 - What We Should Focus on Post-War

Dear Family and Friends:

I must admit that even I was relieved that there was this 72 hour cease fire on Friday morning even though I believe strongly we must destroy Hamas' leadership in order to truly stop this insanity.  So when Hamas used the cease fire to intentionally kill 2 of our soldiers and kidnap a third, a feeling of depression came over me that I had never experience before.  I cried.  The collective feeling in Israel for the loss of a soldier in a citizen's army -- where nearly every child serves -- was just devastating.  And I could see in the face of his father -- myself.  My children.  My loss.  I cried.  And then I got angry.  This was it.  That Israel would no longer be beholden to the machinations of the U.S. and Europeans -- Bibi said as much to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro.  And the idea of negotiating through corrupt, Islamic regimens such as Qatar and Turkey was completely immoral.

Since I wrote these words above we have found out that Lt. Hadar Goldin is dead.  To underscore how immoral and corrupt Hamas is you need to understand that people in Israel believe it was better that he is had been killed then taken captive and used as a bargaining chip. And I am sure these feelings were tinged with much guilt for even having been relieved in this way. What an enemy we have.  Talk about violations of the Geneva Convention for taking hostages... but what do you expect from a Terrorist organization who has committed suicide bombings against innocent civilians in Israel for over 20 years, rained rockets on our cities and use their own population for CNN and BBC performances. 

I believe that what Israel is now doing is very sound AS LONG AS we declare an open hunting season on any of  Hamas' leaders, cowards that they are, as they emerge from their caves.  My understanding is that Israel will not engage in any negotiations with Hamas. Perfect. We will move to a position within Gaza but away from the population centers but this has to be combined with the absolute directive to kill any of these leaders who emerge.  I have no idea whether this is our strategy but I hope it is.  We will then command the field of battle and the momentum going forward.  I just read that the IDF has dropped fliers that say in Arabic and calling on Gaza residents "to pass a message to your leaders hiding underground: The campaign continues. All of the leaders of Hamas and the rest of the terror groups are in harm's way."
IDF leaflet airdropped on Gaza during Operation Protective Edge 
This is the flyer 

We should also think about another profound issue resulting from this conflict.  Can Hamas, Fatah or any Palestinian leader be introspective as to their contribution to the failure of ideology and engagement with Israel when they hate Jews so much and want us dead -- even more than the successful development of their own society?  Come to think of it, have Palestinians ever risen up in revolt against their corrupt leadership engaged in their losing strategies. Since their elections are essentially a scam, there does not seem to be a democratic way to change the system unlike in Israel where this happens all the time.  Interesting to understand why this is so. Could it be that Palestinians have so externalized all their problems and issues to be the result of Israel and its "occupation" that there is no INTERNALIZED system to consider the faults of their social and ideological contributions to the problem (except as it relates to Israel and the Jews).  You see this, for example, in the psychology of people who are just incapable of seeing that they are part of the problem and a change in their attitude is part of the solution.  I believe that the Palestinian collective has this problem in spades and it is for this reason that no matter how many times they lose -- they continue to see the problem as resulting from the OTHER.   I believe that is why there has never been a serious revolution among Palestinians to change their leadership and direction of their community except with increased extremism towards Israel.  They are profoundly stuck. And with Hamas, the problems are exasperated by their Nazi-like blind ideological hatred of Jews.  In Israel, for example, after the Yom Kippur War and the horrific disaster and near loss of the country there was a deep soul searching as to the root causes of the problem and a special Winograd commission was set up to publicly evaluate and castigate those responsible.  Trust me, at no point did Israel ever think the reason was because the Egyptians were evil people.  We saw it as an internal problem to be understood and repaired.  That is what a vibrant society does. 

I want to cover a couple of issues that we must deal with in the aftermath of this war and getting ahead of what will happen to Israel over the next phase of our conflict with Hamas and radical Islam.  Clearly there are forces out there that want to paint Israel as the aggressor, violator of human rights  and perpetrator of war crimes.  This battle also has major implications on how important constituencies, such as American youth and European undecideds will think about Israel in the future. 

I may be completely off-base but I do not believe that the Israeli Government has either the resources or the necessary expertise to deal with this threat.  This approach will include litigation strategy -- both proactive and reactive, both in domestic (U.S., English, French and German courts probably) as well as international courts,  media and messaging, community research, and probably things I have not even considered.

I also believe the U.N. itself is a violator of many principles of human rights, such as the bizarre deliberation that occur in the Human Rights Counsel.  Navi Pillay, the U.N.'s High Commissioner of Human Rights, and one of the originators of the Durban III anti-Zionism conference, needs to also be unmasked via an appropriate legal and media strategy.  Lastly, UNWRA needs to change it's policy toward the definition of a refugee, which is against the usual definition of the UNHCR and may actually be illegal.  These efforts may also need to be part of our strategy.  Lastly, governments such as Qatar who directly fund organizations designated as Terror institutions by both the U.S. and EU need to be part of our strategy. We have enormous resources within the pro-Israel community (both Jewish and Christian) to deal effectively with this threat. 

Let's take, for example, UNWRA.   UNRWA has a number of major structural problems but at the heart of the issue is their unilateral and, I contend, illegal definition of a refugee. As I have extensively written, http://israeldefends.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/7282014-lets-talk-about-unwra.html, UNWRA, in 1965, created a new definition of a Palestinian refugee that has been denied to all over refugees in the world. This new definition became multi-generational and underscored UNWRA's mission to return refugees to Israel (they were not that blatant -- they just did not endorse "resettlement" which is the same thing). http://www.danielpipes.org/10695/unrwa-palestine-refugees.  I was just reading a reply from UNWRA to one of Daniel Pipes' articles written nearly 10 years ago (http://www.danielpipes.org/1206/unrwa-the-refugee-curse) where UNWRA claimed that Palestinians are somehow different from all other refugees and hence their unique definition and right for return to their homes in Israel. I quote: "Palestine refugees differ from other refugees because a majority of them continue to suffer the plight of dispossession and statelessness. Rather than their "status" as refugees creating "anguish and discontent," it is their dispossession and statelessness that lies at the heart of their predicament."  What hogwash. ALL refugees can claim this.  This response by UNWRA is about politics and employment.

The politics is simple to understand but you ask, why employment? It's amazing that there are 30,000 UNWRA employees and only about 5,000-6,000 for all of UNHCR throughout the world (UNHCR is the organization to cover ALL other refugees world-wide)  (http://cnpublications.net/2008/01/23/unhcr-and-unrwa-compared/).  It's employment for 30,000 Palestinians almost all funded by Western countries.

I need to stop here for a moment so you understand the full magnitude of this scam.  Here is the official website of UNWRA for all donors: http://www.unrwa.org/how-you-can-help/government-partners/funding-trends/donor-charts)  I have pulled out the full donor list for 2013 (https://drive.google.com/a/arizal.biz/file/d/0B4_jLzgwVn7dNG5UM3BBazRvQjg/edit?usp=sharing).  As you can see, almost all the money to OPERATE UNWRA, ie, employ Palestinians, comes form Western countries.  Saudi Arabia provides money but for special projects.  What is even more amazing is that you will see, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, these oil-rich Arab countries provide almost NOTHING to their Palestinian brethren.  Except to fund terrorism, of course.  Look at Qatar, the major funding source for Hamas. In 2013 they gave only $1mm to UNWRA while the rest (hundreds of millions) was "direct aid" and you know that means.  Money directly to Hamas to do what they want. That is how they built their rocket and tunnel arsenals.   You should be pissed that, as an American taxpayer, we are major participants in this elaborate fraud.  A fraud that creates co-dependency, a population locked into a belief that they will one day go "home" and that this belief is shared with every Palestinian regardless of when and where they were born.  When can I get on this gravy train?

You see the U.S. is the top funder of this scam - with the support of Israel. Israel feels it needs a place to "address" Palestinian support but this is totally self-defeating.   It has to stop.  All other refugees under the auspices of UNHCR DO NOT have these rights.  This is clearly discriminatory to all other refugees and I contend this violates the rights of all other refugees,  through this discriminatory practice, covered by the UN.  I believe there is a serious legal issue here that has never been properly addressed via the international courts and it is high time that refugee plaintiffs from other conflicts sue the U.N. for this discriminatory practice. http://cnpublications.net/2008/01/23/unhcr-and-unrwa-compared/ should make your blood boil. I am not sure what is the cause but it seems to be part tribute to pay-off the Barbary Pirates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates) and part Western guilt for the U.N. vote on the creation of Israel.  Otherwise, this is just crazy. The correct result will then be to fold UNRWA into UNHCR under the same policies and procedures. And this ludicrous and illegal "right of return" disappears since, at that point, it is clear that resettlement is the only approach as it is for all other refugees.  I believe that UNWRA is the single greatest contributor to the continuation of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.  Solve UNWRA and we have taken a major step to resolving  the conflict.  You need to argue this with every person you meet.  You stand on very firm ground.

Let's now look at Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navi_Pillay) I do not have the time to fully explore this South African's "jurist" attitudes which appear quite anti-Israel and racist (you will see an example below) (and for my friends who went to Harvard, did you ever meet her there?). Here is someone who helped organized the infamous and anti-Semitic Durban III conference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durban_III)  after admitting she was incorrect and naive regarding Iran's former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being the headline speaker at Durban II (http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2010/12/16/un-rights-chief-admits-being-wrong-on-durban-2-naive-about-ahmadinejad/) -- just shows that almost any jerk can get a law degree from Harvard!  Pillay's behind the scenes involvement in Durban from the beginning demonstrates her anti-Israel and, I believe, "neo" antisemitic attitudes (a term I have defined as antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism).  These conferences in South Africa produced the most anti-Semitic, anti-Israel venom imaginable and set the stage for the later vilification of Israel in nearly every international forum and the production, after our Cast Lead intervention in Gaza, of the one-side Goldstone report  which was later repudiated by Mr. Goldstone himself as biased and one-sided. An example of her racist sentiments is exhibited in her statement that  Israel's occupation is a significant cause of Arab men beating their wives -- come on Navi, why not just say that all sexual assaults among Palestinians is because of the Jews? (http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2014/04/08/un-when-palestinian-men-beat-their-wives-its-israels-fault/#more-5506 -- btw, www. unwatch.org is an excellent website to read about how crazy and absurd the UN is when it comes to Israel.)   She is supposedly a champion of woman's rights who seems to be unaffected by the unbelievable violations of woman's rights throughout the Arab world and with special consideration for Hamas. Her latest antics in the supposed Human Rights Counsel http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/Media.aspx and her one-sided judgement of Israel's conduct of the war without a full accounting for Hamas' activities in everything from the use of civilians as human shields, launching rockets to civilians cities in Israel next to schools, UNWRA facilities, etc., building tunnels to violate Israel's sovereignty, murdering over 160 children in building these tunnels, violation of woman rights, intimation and threats to journalists, etc.
http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Israel-must-be-probed-for-war-crimes-by-world-powers-UN-rights-chief-says-369589.  The NY Post recently ran this article on Pillay:  http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/meet-anti-israel-anti-discrimination-czar-navi-pillay-article-1.945254  It's time to expose this fraud.

And while we are on the subject of the U.N., it is a clear violation of UN Charter Chapter VII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_VII_of_the_United_Nations_Charter) for any UN Member threatening to destroy another U.N. member.  Iran's conduct is beyond the pale and they need to be hauled in front of the ICC for their behavior. Instead, they gave Ahmadinejad a platform to rant against Israel at Durban as well as his annual speech in front of the General Assembly.  Their incitement for the genocide of Israel continues (this is just one of many examples: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/23/iran-supreme-leader-the-only-solution-for-crisis-is-israels-destruction/) They need to be removed from every committee in the UN and censored by the UN. I doubt that will happen.  You can read more about this obsession with Israel at the expense of serious human rights violators: http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2011/06/07/study-un-rights-chief-navi-pillay-turned-blind-eye-to-worlds-worst-abusers/  Also for your enjoyment: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/the-united-nations-propaganda-war-against-israel/

And for the media in Gaza -- here is a simple question you should be asking every friend you have in the press.  Where are the pictures of Hamas fighters, funerals of fighters, weapons, missles next to schools, etc.?   Where are the pictures!!  There is a fascinating exchange between the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the NY Times when they were asked:  Where are the photos? Where are the articles? Where are the tweets?    http://www.jta.org/2014/07/31/news-opinion/the-images-missing-from-the-gaza-war and their reply http://www.jta.org/2014/07/31/news-opinion/nyt-on-why-no-photos-of-hamas-fighters-we-dont-have-any-1

Here are a bunch of questions one can ask of anyone in the media regarding biased reporting out of Gaza. http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/the-questions-that-paul-mason-channel-4.html#.U907h6MXITM

Elders of Ziyon has a alot on this media bias.  http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/why-are-only-stories-out-of-gaza-ones.html#.U907tKMXITO.  And once in a while, the truth comes out almost by accident. Of course, this reporter is now upset Israel is using this video for "propaganda" purposes.  You've got to be kidding. http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/01/finnish-tv-reporter-at-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-its-true-that-rockets-are-launched-here-from-the-gazan-side-into-israel-video/



Palestinian woman reacts at sight of damaged house in Beit Hanoun - 1 August
You have clear evidence of Hamas manipulating the media.  Intimidating them. Threatening them.  I have covered some of this in my prior writings.  Will the media come clean or, like CNN, they will try to whitewash their participation in the propaganda efforts by Hamas.  Here is BBC's picture on last week's website -- what do you think the news item was?  The caption was about the murder of two Israeli soldiers and the attempted kidnapping of a third.  What does this picture have to do with this caption?


Finally, we need to deal with Qatar in Congress.  It is time. If the U.S. holds that Hamas is a Terror group, and Qatar provides funding to this group, shouldn't Qatar's support be illegal?  How can Congress allow the sale of $11 Billion of military hardware to a country that directly supports a Terror organization.  How has the U.S. gotten so in bed with Qatar at the expense of many of its key allies -- not just Israel, but Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan?  Could that be why the King of Saudi Arabia just slammed Hamas without a peep about Israel? (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/08/02/Saudi-King-Publicly-Blames-Hamas-for-Gaza-War/) There is something terribly wrong here and I do not understand why AIPAC is not all over this issue.  I invite your thoughts or if you have better information on the subject, let me know.

Let me leave you with a wonderful article just written by our former US Ambassador, Michael Oren. It is a great read and he really nails it:  http://online.wsj.com/articles/in-defense-of-zionism-1406918952

As always, please pass my blog around.

Thanks and be well.

Sam





Thursday, July 31, 2014

7/31/2014 - The difficulty of perception, language and understanding

Dear Family and Friends:

As you know, I try not to just regurgitate the news since there is so much "gurgitation" on every website in the world it is hard to keep up.  I will tell you, however, to keep in mind a few things when reading or watching the news:

  1. War reporting makes no sense in real time.  Every aspect of it - who bombed whom, casualties figures, and analysis are deeply flawed by the fog of war.  Please keep this in mind.
  2. Understand that there is a lot of propaganda masquerading as facts.  The one most egregious is the "body count" of Palestinians.  These numbers are produced by the Gaza "Ministry of Health" a pure Hamas political organ.  They intentionally do NOT differentiate between fighters and civilians (I already wrote about this); those killed by Hamas vs. Israel (a serious number are killed by Hamas missiles or Hamas executioners), double counting and misreporting. I have written a nice portion of my last blog on this but I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to hold reporters and politicians accountable for spouting this nonsense.  From all the sources, I believe the number of civilian casualties are no more 40% of the total  (and those were, for the vast majority of the cases, due to Hamas' cynical use of civilian areas to launch their attacks).  Since I already covered much of the data, I will just add this one issue to consider -- the number of civilians being killed by Hamas' rockets landing in Gaza: http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/30/algemeiner-editor-dovid-efune-up-to-25-percent-of-hamas-rockets-fall-short-and-kill-gazan-civilians-video/ and the misfiring of rockets: http://www.worldtribune.com/2014/07/30/israel-says-10-percent-hamas-rockets-misfire-fall-gaza-strip/ By the way, it is reported that 36% of Hamas rockets landed in Gaza over the last day.  It makes sense as Israel pushing deeper in Gaza from the North, missiles need to be launched further South and in more of a panic hence the increased error rate. (http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=64534)
  3. Language, the order in which things are said and the use of pictures and videos produce incredible bias.
  4. We are at a real disadvantage not knowing Arabic.  Trust me, what is said in English is for Western consumption - in Arabic, it is a very different story; like the quotes by Abbas or Imams in Gaza speaking about killing the Jews (links later in blog) : http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=12198   
  5. There is clear evidence that Hamas is intimidating reporters who want to report the truth of Hamas brutality and its use of civilian areas to launch missiles and tunnels to attack Israel and its soldiers. Whether it is reporter bias, the desire for continued access in Gaza or fear, reporters are clearly not reporting even close to the real picture. Here are just a few examples:   http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/24/french-journalist-describes-interrogation-at-hamas-headquarters-next-to-emergency-room-at-gazas-al-shifa-hospital/#widget-zoom-video-cat-3 This incredible tweet where the reporter left the tweet in place (unlike the WSJ reporters who were pressured to remove their tweets:   ). Spend a few moments and read through the threats to this reporter in Gaza https://mobile.twitter.com/JohninJerusalem/status/491948431380738048 or this Italian reporter who needed to wait till he left Gaza to report what really happened: http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/30/italian-journalist-defies-hamas-out-of-gaza-far-from-hamas-retaliation-misfired-rocket-killed-children-in-shati/ or this recent Times of Israel article on the subject: http://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-threatening-journalists-in-gaza-who-expose-abuse-of-civilians/#ixzz38mds7ZY2.
  6. Humanitarian organizations have been hijacked by Hamas.  I have already written a full blog on UNWRA.  I mentioned last time that UNWRA employees, except for some management positions, are all residents of Gaza and they employ many with direct connections to Hamas.  There has been substantial documentation of indoctrination and bias in these schools against Israel and summer camps. (http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/53/how-unrwa-supports-hamas) It is appalling that these schools are used to house arms and missiles, that missiles and RPG's are fired from areas DIRECTLY ADJACENT to these schools and, we have learned last night, they have use UNWRA facilities (or the use of UNWRA signage) to hide tunnels and explosive devices with fatal results for three soldiers yesterday.  I have been watching the interviews of UNRWA officials, especially Chris Gunness, the UNWRA spokesman and  former "professional journalist" from BBC who cried on TV and has been giving one sided interviews (here he is being pressed on NBC on Hamas' role in this fighting: http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/meet-the-press/full-meet-the-press-interview-with-un-relief-official-chris-gunness-312742467771 -- here he describes this as Israel's problem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKlbEkQmFpY) .  You would think that Israel just woke up in the morning and started shelling. UNWRA cannot directly confront Hamas -- there is a co-dependent relationship here. UNRWA  and UN Palestinian advocacy hides the role of Hamas (watch, people will say they have no choice given they need to "work" with Hamas) and this is grotesque. ( At least there are two sides here:  http://www.newsweek.com/gaza-attacks-israel-and-palestine-blame-each-other-262196) Here is UN advocacy at work.  Define "attacking", Mr. UN.
View image on Twitter
Is there any explanation here?  Of course not.  The other part of this advocacy has been  --" Look Gaza is a dense place, where else will the civilians go?"  Ok. I get that.  That's not the question, though. Why is Hamas next to these facilities violating human rights of Palestinians and Israeli's?  Could it be that Hamas wants to hide there among civilians and use civilians as part of their media strategy? As religious fascist ideology? (http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=12117)  Hamas could be elsewhere even if civilians cannot.  Oh, come on, that is not even the question. The real question is why is Hamas spending its money and efforts, blood and treasure to attack Israel?  I will cover some of the reasons below but this requires the ability to keep these issues in your head while watching the misery on TV.  

Keeping complex issues in ones head is not easy. Dan Kahneman, who received  Nobel Prize  in economics (Israeli, of course), in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, discusses the concept of System 1 and System 2 thinking (http://bigthink.com/errors-we-live-by/kahnemans-mind-clarifying-biases).  He provides tremendous insight into the difficulty for people to keep complex issues and calculations in their head especially when they are engaged in basic emotional or physical activities -- but it is a challenge no matter what is going on.  At a most basic level it explains why the media is literally incapable of analyzing  complex issues or ascertaining context.  It's biology. Add to this the issue of information reduction due to the medium where only the most basic messaging may get through - dead babies.  victims,  it's his fault, etc.    Must tell you that my whole career as a jury consultant was to figure out how to re-message (we called it framing) complex issues to fit this behavioral challenge, the limitations of the medium, significant value-belief filters, group decision making dynamics and societal mimes.  And that was just for a group of 8 to 12 jurors!

Bias in the use of language is an area of personal interest as a jury consultant and I focused a lot on the use of language, the order that things are said  and the use of visuals aids -- these became core components of my persuasion toolkit.  So I am keenly aware of how these communications weapons are being used to misshape perceptions of Israel and the war.  A simple example of primacy and its use to subtly discredit is demonstrated by Jodi Rudoren, the NYT Jerusalem Bureau chief, and her recent article about the tunnels coming into Israel from Gaza.  Ah, finally something favorable after all the biased, liberal spin coming from the paper.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/world/middleeast/tunnels-lead-right-to-heart-of-israeli-fear.html?ref=world&_r=0  It's a small, yet great example of the her frame of mind. She writes that the military is showing the tunnels to reporters as a "propaganda push" which is clearly judgmental and is used to prime the reader for whatever they will read or see next. Could it be that the IDF is showing these tunnels to journalists so they better understand the context of why we are doing what we are doing in Gaza?  In contrast, the NY Times, when it mentions the count of Palestinians killed without mentioning how many of these are terrorists/militants (again language is king) or killed by Hamas itself, could say the source of these numbers being tallied is a "propaganda push" by the "Ministry of Health" in Gaza. I doubt it.

I have also written you about Islamic antisemitism.  It is scary and you need to force yourself to watch what is being said by religious leaders in mosques and on TV.  There a tons of examples on YouTube and you should help yourself but here are just two very recent examples:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdQTJKPeGj4   https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUpBvIBfZ-foo5ZbLH5O0N4g?autohide=1&v=R7WAoczRV_k#t=18   It is so important for you to read through Hamas' founding document.  It is CRITICAL that you read it.   The Wikipedia piece on it discuses whether this was repudiated or not. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant).  It reminds me of the debate on whether Hitler really believed in what he wrote in Mein Kempf or was it for "internal consumption".  This seems to be the constant game played by people who want to get Hamas out of their racist box.  It is nonsense and we all know it.  Here again is the charter but I must waste some ink pasting some quotes so you will see how completely Mein Kempf meets Protocols-like and antisemitic it really is.       http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html?chocaid=397 
I have written an intro sentence to each cite.  Again, their Charter is a worthwhile read.


 Hamas', a full member of the racist Muslim Brotherhood and the genocide of the Jews in Israel --

Article Seven: The Universality of Hamas
...Hamas is one of the links in the Chain of Jihad in the confrontation with the Zionist invasion. It links up with the setting out of the Martyr Izz a-din al-Qassam and his brothers in the Muslim Brotherhood who fought the Holy War in 1936; it further relates to another link of the Palestinian Jihad and the Jihad and efforts of the Muslim Brothers during the 1948 War, and to the Jihad operations of the Muslim Brothers in 1968 and thereafter. .. nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!

All of Israel is Occupied and is all part of the Islamic people
Article Eleven: The Strategy of Hamas: Palestine is an Islamic Waqf
The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it. No Arab country nor the aggregate of all Arab countries, and no Arab King or President nor all of them in the aggregate, have that right... This is the status [of the land] in Islamic Shari’a, and it is similar to all lands conquered by Islam by force, and made thereby Waqf lands upon their conquest, for all generations of Muslims until the Day of Resurrection. 


The world is controlled by the Jews. This is lifted from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
Article Twenty-Two: The Powers which Support the Enemy
The enemies have been scheming for a long time, and they have consolidated their schemes, in order to achieve what they have achieved. They took advantage of key elements in unfolding events, and accumulated a huge and influential material wealth which they put to the service of implementing their dream. This wealth [permitted them to] take over control of the world media such as news agencies, the press, publication houses, broadcasting and the like. [They also used this] wealth to stir revolutions in various parts of the globe in order to fulfill their interests and pick the fruits. They stood behind the French and the Communist Revolutions and behind most of the revolutions we hear about here and there. They also used the money to establish clandestine organizations which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests. Such organizations are: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai B’rith and the like. All of them are destructive spying organizations. They also used the money to take over control of the Imperialist states and made them colonize many countries in order to exploit the wealth of those countries and spread their corruption therein.
As regards local and world wars, it has come to pass and no one objects, that they stood behind World War I, so as to wipe out the Islamic Caliphate. They collected material gains and took control of many sources of wealth. They obtained the Balfour Declaration and established the League of Nations in order to rule the world by means of that organization. They also stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials and prepared for the establishment of their state. They inspired the establishment of the United Nations and the Security Council to replace the League of Nations, in order to rule the world by their intermediary. There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it...

Boy, we do get around!

 Lastly, here is the son of the founder of Hamas, who converted to Christianity and lives in the U.S, has to say about their theology (the movie "The Green Prince" was produced about this guy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KakxXN5Z-XI

Let me wrap up by touching on an article that hopefully will lead to a larger discussion on the subject of  occupation.Peter Beinart, who has developed somewhat of a Zionist bad-boy reputation in the last few years, wrote an article in Haaretz  the other day: "Gaza myths and facts: what American Jewish leaders won't tell you. Myth: Gaza is free. Fact: it has been under Israeli occupation since 1967 to this very day."  (https://drive.google.com/a/arizal.biz/file/d/0B4_jLzgwVn7dQVAwOW9ZNU1MYW8/edit?usp=sharing) Let me tell you, Peter is one really smart dude.  He is also the most intellectually dishonest people I know.  How is this possible?  Because he thinks that I will not read to the end of his article, reverse the order and them put primacy to his real agenda. Of course, he wants to stick it to the Jewish "establishment". What is going on here is related to what I described earlier about the power of language and order.  Peter lays out his facts and, for all I know, he may be technically correct.  I cannot tell because he does not describe his bias   until the end.  That is how you use order to prime an audience to what you want to say.  In fact, his title is the prime he wants to deliver: Myth: Gaza is free. Fact: it has been under Israeli occupation since 1967 to this very day.  At the very end of his article he writes: that Israel has repeatedly played into Hamas’ hands by not strengthening those Palestinians willing to pursue statehood through nonviolence and mutual recognition. Ahhh, that's really the premise of the whole article. That there are these incredible desire of Palestinians willing to purse statehood through nonviolence and mutual recognition if only Israel was not such a party-popper..  Really?  PA does not recognize Israel as a Jewish State, believes all Palestinians have a "right of return" (whether or not they do return) and that they always reserve the right to resort to violence. That as a society they are undemocratic, violent and racist.  Beinart, give me a break. Your whole article is built on this faulty premise buried near the bottom of the article.  Let's re-frame his title.  Myth: Gaza is free.  Fact: it would make no difference however one defines occupation.  Please don't get me wrong, I do not agree with a large portion of his "facts" but in the end, does that really make a difference?  Facts are never the issue -- it's interpretation of facts to fit a specific world view that is destructive to the State of Israel which does.

We are living in very tough times where evil is masked, good is unforgiven and pictures tell it all.  I am afraid.

Take care,

Sam/Shmuel