We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to: Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 –
Contents:
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Speech at the United Nations General Assembly, 2014: Algemeiner, Spet. 29, 2014 — Thank you, Mr. President. Distinguished delegates, I come here from Jerusalem to speak on behalf of my people, the people of Israel.
A World With Many Crises, Zero Leadership: Robert Fulford, National Post, Sept. 27, 2014 — Most of the world suffered from the economic crises that began six years ago. But it may be that the leaders of nations, and the potential leaders, were among the most deeply affected.
Obama’s Own JV Team: Max Boot, Weekly Standard, Oct. 6, 2014 — Last week brought a reminder of what the United States has lost since Bob Gates and Leon Panetta left the Obama cabinet. Both are straight shooters with a centrist, hardheaded sensibility.
Obama’s Containment-plus Strategy: Charles Krauthammer, National Review, Sept. 25, 2014 — Late, hesitant, and reluctant as he is, President Obama has begun effecting a workable strategy against the Islamic State.
Emerson on Fox News: The New Global Jihad and the Threat against the US (Video): Investigative Project on Terrorism, Sept. 27, 2014
Syria Airstrikes Roil Rebel Alliances: Siobhan Gorman & Maria Abi-Habib, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2014
From Pen and Phone to Bombs and Drones: Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Sept. 27, 2014
Is Obama Striking an Alliance with Iran?: Ron Radosh, PJ Media, Sept. 26, 2014
PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU’S SPEECH
AT THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, 2014
Algemeiner, Spet. 29, 2014
Thank you, Mr. President. Distinguished delegates, I come here from Jerusalem to speak on behalf of my people, the people of Israel. I’ve come here to speak about the dangers we face and about the opportunities we seek. I’ve come here to expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country and against the brave soldiers who defend it. Ladies and gentlemen, the people of Israel pray for peace, but our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace are in danger because everywhere we look militant Islam is on the march. It’s not militants. It’s not Islam. It’s militant Islam. And typically its first victims are other Muslims, but it spares no one: Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Kurds. No creed, no faith, no ethnic group is beyond its sights. And it’s rapidly spreading in every part of the world.
You know the famous American saying, all politics is local? For the militant Islamists, all politics is global, because their ultimate goal is to dominate the world. Now, that threat might seem exaggerated to some since it starts out small, like a cancer that attacks a particular part of the body. But left unchecked, the cancer grows, metastasizing over wider and wider areas. To protect the peace and security of the world, we must remove this cancer before it’s too late. Last week, many of the countries represented here rightly applauded President Obama for leading the effort to confront ISIS, and yet weeks before, some of these same countries, the same countries that now support confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They evidently don’t understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree. ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to impose well beyond the territory under their control. Listen to ISIS’ self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This is what he said two months ago: A day will soon come when the Muslim will walk everywhere as a master. The Muslims will cause the world to hear and understand the meaning of terrorism and destroy the idol of democracy. Now listen to Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas. He proclaims a similar vision of the future: We say this to the West — by Allah you will be defeated. Tomorrow our nation will sit on the throne of the world.
As Hamas’ charter makes clear, Hamas’ immediate goal is to destroy Israel, but Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists, and that’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered in 9/11, and that’s why its leaders condemn the United States for killing Osama bin Laden whom they praised as a holy warrior. So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas. And what they share in common all militant Islamists share in common. Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabab in Somalia, Hezbollah in Lebanon, al-Nusra in Syria, the Mahdi army in Iraq, and the al-Qaida branches in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere.
Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shiites, some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the seventh century, others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the ninth century. They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they even kill each other in their battle for supremacy. But they all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever-expanding enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no tolerance, where women are treated as chattel, Christians are decimated and minorities are subjugated, sometimes given the stark choice, convert or die. For them, anyone can be considered an infidel, including fellow Muslims. Ladies and gentlemen, militant Islam’s ambition to dominate the world seems mad, but so too did the global ambitions of another fanatic ideology that swept into power eight decades ago. The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith. They just disagree who among them will be the master of the master faith. That’s what they truly disagree about. And therefore, the question before us is whether militant Islam will have the power to realize its unbridled ambitions.
There is one place where that could soon happen — the Islamic State of Iran. For 35 years, Iran has relentlessly pursued the global mission which was set forth by its founding ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, in these words. “We will export our revolution to the entire world until the cry ‘there is no god but Allah’ will echo throughout the world over.” And ever since, the regime’s brutal enforcers, Iran’s revolutionary guards, have done exactly that. Listen to its current commander, General Mohammad Ali Jafari. And he clearly stated his goal. He said “Our imam did not limit the Islamic revolution to this country, our duty is to prepare the way for an Islamic world government.” Listen to its current commander, General Mohammad Ali Jafari. And he clearly stated his goal. He said “Our imam did not limit the Islamic revolution to this country, our duty is to prepare the way for an Islamic world government.”…
Ladies and gentlemen, the fight against militant Islam is indivisible. When militant Islam succeeds anywhere, it’s emboldened everywhere. When it suffers a blow in one place, it’s set back in every place. That’s why Israel’s fight against Hamas is not just our fight, it’s your fight. Israel is fighting a fanaticism today that your countries may be forced to fight tomorrow. For 50 days this past summer Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel, many of them supplied by Iran… Yet Israel faced another challenge. We faced a propaganda war because in an attempt to win the world sympathy, Hamas cynically used Palestinian civilians as human shields. It used schools — not just schools; U.N. schools — private homes, mosques, even hospitals to store and fire rockets at Israel. As Israel surgically struck at the rocket launchers and at the tunnels, Palestinian civilians were tragically but unintentionally killed. There are heartrending images that resulted, and these fueled libelous charges that Israel was deliberately targeting civilians. We were not. We deeply regret every single civilian casualties. And the truth is this: Israel was doing everything to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties. Hamas was doing everything to maximize Israeli civilian casualties and Palestinian civilian casualties. Israel dropped flyers, made phone calls, sent text messages, broadcast warnings in Arabic on Palestinian television, all this to enable Palestinian civilians to evaluate targeted areas. No other country and no other army in history have gone to greater lengths to avoid casualties among the civilian population of their enemies…
[To Read the Full Transcript Click the Following Link—Ed.]
A WORLD WITH MANY CRISES, ZERO LEADERSHIP
Robert Fulford
National Post, Sept. 27, 2014
Most of the world suffered from the economic crises that began six years ago. But it may be that the leaders of nations, and the potential leaders, were among the most deeply affected. It now seems that during those hectic and desperate years political parties and politicians experienced a failure of nerve. They watched with horror as the structures of modern life appeared to crumble. Today we are short of real leaders, people who can credibly embody the goals of their societies. Perhaps one reason is the force of blows received in 2008.
In Canada, national party leaders are playing defence. If you notice the tone and content of Justin Trudeau’s public statements, it becomes clear that his most passionate desire is to save Canada from the depredations of Stephen Harper. (Is that how the great Liberal tradition was built?) Thomas Mulcair wants to save as much as possible of the NDP program that has failed spectacularly at every federal election since it was first promulgated at the Regina Convention in 1933. Harper, who has surrendered or diluted every conservative principle he brought to Ottawa an eon ago, now seems mainly defending his right to remain prime minister, as if nothing else mattered.
Prime Minister David Cameron recently has confronted both the referendum in Scotland and the outrages of ISIS. No doubt both issues have been taxing, but does it not seem odd that he appears more rattled by these events than Winston Churchill seemed to be in 1940 when the whole German army was only a narrow channel away from England? The political friendship between Germany and France, the key relationship in the eurozone, is currently endangered by the inadequacies of their leaders. Angela Merkel is sticking to the austerity program she’s favoured since the debt crisis surfaced in 2009. But now France has said it won’t be able to meet the EU deficit goals until 2017, if then. President François Hollande, whose popularity polls rate him lower than any predecessor since 1958, believes he’s reached the limits of austerity and the limits of the country’s tolerance. Alfred Grosser, a German-French sociologist and journalist, a long-time expert on Franco-German co-operation, says that relations between the two governments have reached their worst stage in decades. What those people need is leadership, he told a reporter. Hollande is weak, Merkel cautious and determined. Resolving the relations of the two governments, who need each other badly, will require an imaginative approach. There’s no such idea in sight.
A journalist covering Barack Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday called his words “muscular.” After years holding a different opinion, he has indeed come to the conclusion that the United States must take world leadership, in this case against ISIS. But he seems still to be married to the idea that he can win by exhortation, as if terrorists and would-be terrorists might be swayed by his rhetoric. “You come from a great tradition that stands for education, not ignorance; innovation, not destruction; the dignity of life, not murder,” he said to young Muslims. “Those who call you away from this path are betraying this tradition, not defending it.” He sounds as if he’s running for another Nobel peace prize.
If Obama’s direction of American policy has seemed both erratic and reluctant to his dissatisfied fellow Americans, it looks even worse to the governments who might be America’s allies. Last week, his secretaries of State and Defence visited Turkey to ask for its collaboration. This won them nothing but outright rejection. Turkey will take no military action in Iraq. Not only that, it won’t let the Americans use the US air base in southern Turkey for bombing strikes. The Turks also declined to sign a communiqué urging stronger action against ISIS. Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952 but recently has shown considerable sympathy for terrorists. No one doubts that Turkey allowed foreign jihadis to cross its border when heading for Syria and Iraq. ISIS kidnapped 49 Turkish diplomats and their families in Mosul on June 11; after two months, the hostages were returned safely, leaving the Turks determined to avoid annoying ISIS. They are nervous, like the others. Could another president, having set out to enlist the leaders of a hoped-for coalition, have accomplished more with the Turks? Only if he had paid careful attention to relations with American allies during the last six years. Obama, and the world with him, are suffering for his belief that a foreign policy could be erected on good intentions.
Max Boot
Weekly Standard, Oct. 6, 2014
Last week brought a reminder of what the United States has lost since Bob Gates and Leon Panetta left the Obama cabinet. Both are straight shooters with a centrist, hardheaded sensibility. Panetta has been making headlines with his criticism of Obama on 60 Minutes for pulling out of Iraq too soon (“I really thought that it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq”) and not doing more early on to aid the Syrian opposition (“we pay the price for not doing that in what we see happening with ISIS”). Meanwhile, Gates has been critical of Obama for prohibiting U.S. “boots on the ground” to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: “The reality is, they’re not gonna be able to be successful against ISIS strictly from the air, or strictly depending on the Iraqi forces, or the Peshmerga, or the Sunni tribes acting on their own,” he told CBS This Morning. “So there will be boots on the ground if there’s to be any hope of success in the strategy. And I think that by continuing to repeat that [the United States won’t put boots on the ground], the president, in effect, traps himself.”
In retrospect, it is clear, the first Obama term—when Gates was at Defense (followed by Panetta), Panetta at CIA (followed by General David Petraeus), Hillary Clinton at State, Admiral Mike Mullen at the Joint Chiefs, and retired General Jim Jones at the National Security Council—was a golden age (by Obama standards) when there were grown-ups more or less in charge of U.S. foreign policy. Obama at first tended to accede to the advice of his more seasoned foreign policy hands because as a first-term senator he was acutely aware of his own lack of experience or credibility in the field. Thus, he delayed his Iraq pullout, maintaining 50,000 troops there until nearly the end of 2011; he tripled troop numbers in Afghanistan to pursue a more robust strategy against the Taliban; and he continued most of George W. Bush’s second-term counterterrorist policies while actually increasing the number of drone strikes in Pakistan. Even then, Obama’s caution often intruded in ways that undercut his stated goals: For example, he insisted on an 18-month timeline on the Afghanistan surge, which Gates, Clinton, Petraeus (then at Central Command), and others accepted only reluctantly as the price of having a surge at all. But, however reluctantly, Obama acted more toughly during his first two years in office than his campaign rhetoric would have predicted.
Ah, for those good ol’ days. Today, by contrast, U.S. foreign policy is shaped by Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, Susan Rice, and John Brennan, among others, with deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes the most frequently quoted spokesman. It tells you something that the most hawkish of the lot is Kerry, but he has dissipated much energy and credibility in futile efforts to jumpstart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. His major achievement to date is to broker a power-sharing accord in Afghanistan between Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah that may or may not hold together. Still, it’s hard to be too harsh on Kerry or any of the other cabinet members when clearly the driving force behind U.S. foreign policy is the president himself. Obama suffers from the not uncommon defect of the intellectually able: He imagines that he is always the smartest guy in the room and thus has trouble taking advice that does not accord with his own predilections. Driven largely by his own imperatives, the president pulled U.S. troops out of Iraq (after making only a token effort to reach a Status of Forces Agreement), failed for three years effectively to aid the Syrian opposition, declared and then ignored a “red line” in Syria, failed to provide assistance to the Libyan government after Qaddafi’s overthrow, did little to make Putin pay a price for his aggression in Ukraine, presided over a precipitous decline in defense spending that risks another “hollow army,” launched nuclear negotiations with Iran that relax sanctions while allowing centrifuges to keep spinning, and made numerous other unforced errors.
What happened? How did the centrist Obama of his early years in office give way to the dovish Obama of more recent times? My theory is that the turning point occurred on May 2, 2011. That is the day when Osama bin Laden was killed in a daring SEAL raid authorized by the president, who overrode the concerns of Gates and other more cautious advisers. This undoubted success puffed up Obama to think that he could manage foreign policy on his own and convinced him that he no longer needed to worry about attacks from the right: Who, after all, could claim that the president who “got” bin Laden was insufficiently hawkish?
OBAMA’S CONTAINMENT-PLUS STRATEGY
Charles Krauthammer
National Review, Sept. 25, 2014
Late, hesitant, and reluctant as he is, President Obama has begun effecting a workable strategy against the Islamic State. True, he’s been driven there by public opinion. Does anyone imagine that without the broadcast beheadings we’d be doing anything more than pinprick strikes within Iraq? If Obama can remain steady through future fluctuations in public opinion, his strategy might succeed. But success will not be what he’s articulating publicly. The strategy will not destroy the Islamic State. It’s more containment-plus: Expel the Islamic State from Iraq, contain it in Syria. Because you can’t win from the air. In Iraq, we have potential ground allies. In Syria, we don’t.
The order of battle in Iraq is straightforward. The Kurds will fight, but not far beyond their own territory. A vigorous air campaign could help them recover territory lost to the Islamic State and perhaps a bit beyond. But they won’t be anyone’s expeditionary force. From the Shiites in Iraq we should expect little. U.S. advisers embedded with a few highly trained Iraqi special forces could make some progress. But we cannot count on the corrupt and demoralized regular Shiite-dominated military. Our key potential allies are the Sunni tribes. We will have to induce them to change allegiances a second time, joining us again, as they did during the 2007–2008 surge, against the jihadists. Having abandoned them in 2011, this won’t be easy. But it is necessary. One good sign is the creation of a Sunni national guard, a descendant of the Sons of Iraq who, fighting with us, expelled al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) during the Anbar Awakening. Only they could push the Islamic State out of Iraq. And surely only they could hold the territory regained.
Syria is another matter. Under the current strategy, the cancer will remain. The air power there is unsupported by ground troops. Nor is anyone in Obama’s “broad coalition” going to contribute any. Perhaps Turkey will one day. But Islamist president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not just refusing to join the air campaign. He has denied us use of his air bases. As for what’s left of the Free Syrian Army, Obama has finally come around to training and arming it. But very late and very little. The administration admits it won’t be able to field any trained forces for a year. And even then only about 5,000. The Islamic State is already approximately 30,000 strong and growing. Not that air power is useless. It can degrade and disrupt. If applied systematically enough it can damage the entrenched, expanding, secure, and self-financing Islamic State, turning it back to more of a fugitive guerrilla force constantly on the run. What kind of strategy is that? A compressed and more aggressive form of the George Kennan strategy of Soviet containment. Stop them, squeeze them, and ultimately they will be defeated by their own contradictions. As historian David Motadel points out, jihadist regimes stretching back two centuries have been undone by their own primitivism, barbarism, brutality — and the intense hostility thus engendered among those they rule. That’s what just eight years ago created the Anbar Awakening that expelled AQI. Mahdi rule in Sudan in the 1880s and ’90s was no more successful. As Motadel notes, half the population died of disease, starvation, or violence — and that was before the British annihilation of the Mahdi forces at Omdurman.
Or to put it in a contemporary Middle East context, this kind of long-term combination of rollback and containment is what has carried the Israelis successfully through seven decades of terrorism arising at different times from different places proclaiming different ideologies. There is no one final stroke that ends it all. The Israelis engage, enjoy a respite, then re-engage. With a bitter irony born of ceaseless attacks, the Israelis call it “mowing the lawn.” They know a finality may come, but alas not in their time. They accept it, and go on living. Obama was right and candid to say this war he’s renewed will take years. This struggle is generational. This is not Sudan 1898. There is no Omdurman that defeats jihadism for much of a century. Today jihadism is global, its religious and financial institutions ubiquitous, and its roots deeply sunk in a world religion of more than a billion people. We are on a path — long, difficult, sober, undoubtedly painful — of long-term, low-intensity rollback/containment. Containment-plus. It’s the best of our available strategies. Obama must now demonstrate the steel to carry it through.
Emerson on Fox News: The New Global Jihad and the Threat against the US (Video): Investigative Project on Terrorism, Sept. 27, 2014
Syria Airstrikes Roil Rebel Alliances: Siobhan Gorman & Maria Abi-Habib, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 27, 2014—Thousands of civilians and rebels across Syria protested allied airstrikes against extremist militants that continued on Saturday, underscoring the challenge the U.S.-led campaign faces in dealing with complex ties among rival rebel factions.
From Pen and Phone to Bombs and Drones: Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Sept. 27, 2014 —The president was at the United Nations on Wednesday urging young people across the Muslim world to reject benighted values, even as America clambers into bed with a bunch of Middle East potentates who espouse benighted values.
Is Obama Striking an Alliance with Iran?: Ron Radosh, PJ Media, Sept. 26, 2014—Two new issues have emerged regarding the Obama administration’s policy towards ISIS, which was announced last week in President Obama’s speech to the nation. Both are connected to Iran: (a) the positions the administration will take regarding cooperation with it in fighting ISIS and (b) in negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.
Contents:
Visit CIJR’s Bi-Weekly Webzine: Israzine.
CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing is available by e-mail.
Please urge colleagues, friends, and family to visit our website for more information on our ISRANET series.
To join our distribution list, or to unsubscribe, visit us at https://isranet.org/.
The ISRANET Daily Briefing is a service of CIJR. We hope that you find it useful and that you will support it and our pro-Israel educational work by forwarding a minimum $90.00 tax-deductible contribution [please send a cheque or VISA/MasterCard information to CIJR (see cover page for address)]. All donations include a membership-subscription to our respected quarterly ISRAFAX print magazine, which will be mailed to your home.
CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing attempts to convey a wide variety of opinions on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world for its readers’ educational and research purposes. Reprinted articles and documents express the opinions of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research/ L'institut Canadien de recherches sur le Judaïsme, www.isranet.org
Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284 ; ber@isranet.wpsitie.com
