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 – Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284; E-mail: rob@isranet.wpsitie.com
Breaking News: THREE ISRAELI SUSPECTS CONFESS TO KILLING PALESTINIAN TEEN (Jerusalem) —Three Israeli suspects in the killing of a Palestinian teenager last week confessed to the crime on Monday. The confessions came as tensions continued to rise along Israel’s front with the Gaza Strip. Israeli airstrikes, launched in response to persistent rocket fire, killed at least eight Palestinians. The Hamas terrorist group vowed revenge, saying “the enemy will pay a tremendous price.” The region has been on edge since three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in the West Bank. Last week, hours after the Israeli teens were buried, 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir was abducted from outside his home in east Jerusalem, and his charred remains were found shortly afterward in a Jerusalem forest. His death triggered days of violent protests in Arab areas of Jerusalem and northern Israel. The Jewish suspects have not been identified. (New York Post, July 7, 2014)
Contents:
How Obama Lost the Middle East: Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, July 3, 2013— In his first term, Barack Obama all but declared victory in America’s Middle East struggles.
The Daydream and the Nightmare: Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, July 4, 2014— I don't know if we sufficiently understand how weird and strange, how historically unparalleled, this presidency has become.
Obama Knows He Can Ignore Scandal With Impunity: Andrew C. McCarthy, New York Post, May 31, 2014 — President Obama’s record of lawlessness is prodigious.
No Moral Symmetry: David M. Weinberg, Israel Hayom, July 7, 2013— Muhammad Abu Khdeir’s murder is well on its way to becoming a core building block in the pantheon of anti-Israel propaganda, a central plank in the false argument that Israelis are just as murderous as the Palestinians. That Israelis are no more moral than the Palestinians.
Why the Arab World Is Lost in an Emotional Nakba, and How We Keep It There: Richard Landes, Tablet, June 24, 2014
Government by Fiat: Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, June 26, 2014
The Collapsing Obama Doctrine: Dick Cheney & Liz Cheney, Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2014
Obama Speaks Loudly and Carries a Small Stick: Amir Taheri, New York Post, May 31, 2014
HOW OBAMA LOST THE MIDDLE EAST Victor Davis Hanson
National Review, July 3, 2014
In his first term, Barack Obama all but declared victory in America’s Middle East struggles. As he precipitously pulled out all U.S. peacekeepers from Iraq, the president had his own “Mission Accomplished” moment when declaring the country “stable,” “self-reliant,” and an “extraordinary achievement.” Those claims echoed Vice President Joe Biden’s earlier boast that Iraq somehow would prove Obama’s “greatest achievement.” After the death of Osama bin Laden, and during Obama’s reelection campaign, the president also proclaimed that al-Qaeda was a spent force and “on the run.”
But what exactly was the new Obama strategy that supposedly had all but achieved a victory in the larger War on Terror amid Middle East hostility? Fuzzy euphemisms replaced supposedly hurtful terms such as “terrorism,” “jihadist,” and “Islamist.” The administration gave well-meaning speeches exaggerating Islamic achievement while citing past American culpability. We tilted toward Turkey and the Palestinians while sternly lecturing Israel. Military victory was caricatured as an obsolete concept. Leading from behind was a clever substitute. Middle Easterners gathered that a bruised America would limp away from the region and pivot its forces elsewhere, saving billions of dollars to be better spent at home. The new soft-power rhetorical approach sought to win over the hearts and minds of the Arab Street, and thereby deny terrorists popular support. To grade that policy, survey the current Middle East, or what is left of it: Egypt, the Gulf monarchies, Iraq, Iran, Israel and the Palestinians, Libya, Syria, and Turkey. It is fair to say that America has somehow managed to alienate friends, embolden enemies, and multiply radical Islamic terrorists.
So what happened? In short, the Obama administration put politics and ideology ahead of a disinterested and nonpartisan examination of the actual status of the 2009 Middle East. The more Obama campaigned in 2008 on a failed war in Iraq, a neglected war in Afghanistan, an ill-considered War on Terror, and an alienated Middle East, the more those talking points were outdated and eclipsed by fast-moving events on the ground. By Inauguration Day in January 2009, the hard-power surge had largely defeated al-Qaeda in Iraq. It had won over many of the Sunnis and had led to a U.S.-enforced coalition government, monitored by American troops. But there remained one caveat: What had been won on the ground could be just as easily lost if the U.S. did not leave behind peacekeepers in the manner that it had in all its past successful interventions: the Balkans, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea.
Likewise, the once-derided “War on Terror” measures — Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, military tribunals, preventative detentions, renditions, and drones — by 2009 had largely worked. Since 9/11, America had foiled dozens of terrorist plots against our homeland and neutralized terrorists abroad, killing tens of thousands in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama for a while privately accepted that truth and thereby continued many of the very protocols that he had once derided. But there was again one problem. Obama kept posturing to the world that he would close Guantanamo and substitute civilian trials for military tribunals. He continued to say that he did not enjoy using renditions or drones — even as he upped the latter’s deadly missions tenfold. The results were contradictory messages that encouraged radical Islamists. The conclusion radical Islamists drew was that even the Obama administration had admitted its anti-terrorism protocols were either morally questionable or ineffective. Blaming a video maker instead of immediately taking out the known jihadists who had murdered Americans in Benghazi only reinforced that mixed message. So did exchanging five terrorist kingpins in Guantanamo for an alleged American military deserter in Afghanistan.
A series of empty Middle East red lines, deadlines, and withdrawal dates likewise reinforced the idea of American abdication. We warned Syria of air strikes and then backed down. We surged in Afghanistan only to simultaneously announce a withdrawal date for our troops. We issued Iran lots of deadlines to stop enriching uranium, only to forget them and end sanctions in hope of negotiations. As was the case with Russia, at first there were few consequences to such reset diplomacy and promises of easy victory. Al-Qaeda had been nearly wiped out in Anbar province in 2007–08 and was still regrouping. Iran had been crippled by sanctions and was wary of U.S. intentions. Terrorists did not wish to end up at Guantanamo or in a military tribunal. But newly emboldened terrorists gambled that the old deterrence was stale and now existed mostly as Obama’s reset rhetoric. They gambled that it was a great time to go on the offensive. They may have been right. Once more in the Middle East, Barack Obama is looking to blame others for a mess that has grown since 2009. But mostly he just wants out of the lose-lose region at any cost and wishes that someone would just make all the bad things go away.
THE DAYDREAM AND THE NIGHTMARE Peggy Noonan
Wall Street Journal, July 4, 2014
I don't know if we sufficiently understand how weird and strange, how historically unparalleled, this presidency has become. We've got a sitting president who was just judged in a major poll to be the worst since World War II. The worst president in 70 years! Quinnipiac University's respondents also said, by 54% to 44%, that the Obama administration is not competent to run the government. A Zogby Analytics survey asked if respondents are proud or ashamed of the president. Those under 50 were proud, while those over 50, who have of course the longest experienced sense of American history, were ashamed.
We all know the reasons behind the numbers. The scandals that suggest poor stewardship and, in the case of the IRS, destructive political mischief. The president's signature legislation, which popularly bears his name and contains within it the heart of his political meaning, continues to wreak havoc in marketplaces and to be unpopular with the public. He is incapable of working with Congress, the worst at this crucial aspect of the job since Jimmy Carter, though Mr. Carter at least could work with the Mideast and produced the Camp David Accords. Mr. Obama has no regard for Republicans and doesn't like to be with Democrats. Internationally, small states that have traditionally been the locus of trouble (the Mideast) are producing more of it, while large states that have been more stable in their actions (Russia, China) are newly, starkly aggressive. That's a long way of saying nothing's working. Which I'm sure you've noticed.
But I'm not sure people are noticing the sheer strangeness of how the president is responding to the lack of success around him. He once seemed a serious man. He wrote books, lectured on the Constitution. Now he seems unserious, frivolous, shallow. He hangs with celebrities, plays golf. His references to Congress are merely sarcastic: "So sue me." "They don't do anything except block me. And call me names. It can't be that much fun." In a truly stunning piece in early June, Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown and Jennifer Epstein interviewed many around the president and reported a general feeling that events have left him—well, changed. He is "taking fuller advantage of the perquisites of office," such as hosting "star-studded dinners that sometimes go on well past midnight." He travels, leaving the White House more in the first half of 2014 than any other time of his presidency except his re-election year. He enjoys talking to athletes and celebrities, not grubby politicians, even members of his own party. He is above it all.
On his state trip to Italy in the spring, he asked to spend time with "interesting Italians." They were wealthy, famous. The dinner went for four hours. The next morning his staff were briefing him for a "60 Minutes" interview about Ukraine and health care. "One aide paraphrased Obama's response: 'Just last night I was talking about life and art, big interesting things, and now we're back to the minuscule things on politics.' '' Minuscule? Politics is his job. When the crisis in Ukraine escalated in March, White House aides wondered if Mr. Obama should cancel a planned weekend golf getaway in Florida. He went. At the "lush Ocean Reef Club," he reportedly told his dinner companions: "I needed this. I needed the golf. I needed to laugh. I needed to spend time with friends." You get the impression his needs are pretty important in his hierarchy of concerns.
This is a president with 2½ years to go who shows every sign of running out the clock. Normally in a game you run out the clock when you're winning. He's running it out when he's losing. All this is weird, unprecedented. The president shows no sign—none—of being overwhelmingly concerned and anxious at his predicaments or challenges. Every president before him would have been. They'd be questioning what they're doing wrong, changing tack. They'd be ordering frantic aides to meet and come up with what to change, how to change it, how to find common ground not only with Congress but with the electorate. Instead he seems disinterested, disengaged almost to the point of disembodied. He is fatalistic, passive, minimalist. He talks about hitting "singles" and "doubles" in foreign policy. "The world seems to disappoint him," says the New Yorker's liberal and sympathetic editor, David Remnick. What kind of illusions do you have to have about the world to be disappointed when it, and its players, act aggressively or foolishly? Presidents aren't supposed to have those illusions, and they're not supposed to check out psychologically when their illusions are shattered.
Barack Obama doesn't seem to care about his unpopularity, or the decisions he's made that have not turned out well. He doesn't seem concerned. A guess at the reason: He thinks he is right about his essential policies. He is steering the world toward not relying on America. He is steering America toward greater dependence on and allegiance to government. He is creating a more federally controlled, Washington-centric nation that is run and organized by progressives. He thinks he's done his work, set America on a leftward course, and though his poll numbers are down now, history will look back on him and see him as heroic, realistic, using his phone and pen each day in spite of unprecedented resistance. He is Lincoln, scorned in his time but loved by history. He thinks he is in line with the arc of history, that America, for all its stops and starts, for all the recent Supreme Court rulings, has embarked in the long term on governmental and cultural progressivism. Thus in time history will have the wisdom to look back and see him for what he really was: the great one who took every sling and arrow, who endured rising unpopularity, the first black president and the only one made to suffer like this. That's what he's doing by running out the clock: He's waiting for history to get its act together and see his true size…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link— Ed]
OBAMA KNOWS HE CAN IGNORE SCANDAL WITH IMPUNITY
Andrew C. McCarthy New York Post, May 31, 2014
President Obama’s record of lawlessness is prodigious. There is the assumption of a power to rule by presidential decree — unilaterally amending ObamaCare provisions, immigration statutes, and other enactments in flagrant disregard of Congress’s constitutional power to write the laws. There is rampant fraud on the American people — think: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan, period,” just for a start. In the Benghazi massacre, we see the arc of administration malfeasance: In the absence of congressional authorization, the president instigated an unprovoked and ultimately disastrous war in Libya, empowering virulently anti-American Islamic supremacists. He then recklessly failed to provide adequate security for US officials who, for reasons that remain mysterious, were dispatched to Benghazi, one of the most dangerous places on the planet for Americans. Finally, when four Americans including our ambassador were predictably killed in a terrorist attack on September 11, 2012, the president took no action to rescue them during the siege and then led a tireless campaign to blame an anti-Muslim video, rather than his wayward policy of empowering Islamists — even trumping up a prosecution against the video producer in violation of the First Amendment.
Making recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess. Ignoring court orders. Refusing to enforce the immigration laws. A Justice Department run amok: politicized prosecution, racially discriminatory enforcement of the civil rights laws, and Fast & Furious — a program that intentionally transferred thousands of guns to Mexican criminal gangs, resulting in the murder of a US border patrol agent. The list goes on. In fact, Obama’s behavior would easily satisfy the Constitution’s standard for removing a president from power. Yet, at this point, impeachment seems farfetched. In their wisdom, the Framers bequeathed us a Constitution that makes impeachment a political remedy, not a legal one. You can prove a thousand impeachable offenses, but absent the public will to remove the president from power, impeachment is a non-starter. The political case for ousting a president must be built. That is a good deal tougher than building the legal case.
As a matter of law, a president is impeachable for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” This is a standard borrowed from British law. Indeed, during the 1787 constitutional convention in Philadelphia, the delegates were following the sensational impeachment trial of Warren Hastings in London, involving abuses of power that Parliament alleged Hastings committed while the empire’s top official in India. The term does not refer to “crimes” and “misdemeanors” as we commonly understand them — i.e., to ordinary criminal offenses listed in the penal code. Instead, “high crimes and misdemeanors” are what Alexander Hamilton described as “the misconduct of public men, or . . . the abuse or violation of some public trust.” They are best understood, he elaborated, as “political” wrongs because “they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.” Ordinary criminal offenses may qualify, but the concept is broader. It comfortably embraces such military-justice offenses as dereliction-of-duty — which is fitting given the president’s role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Obama’s behavior would easily satisfy the Constitution’s standard for removing a president from power. Duty, in fact, is the critical ingredient. The president’s primary constitutional duties are to execute the laws faithfully and to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. He is even required to take an oath to that effect. Consequently, a chief executive who undermines our constitutional framework, who usurps the powers of the states or other branches of government, who intentionally misleads Congress and the public, or who obstructs other government officials in the performance of their constitutional responsibilities — such as Congress’s duty to conduct oversight of the departments and agencies it creates and funds with taxpayer dollars — commits high crimes and misdemeanors.
No man could be above the law, the Framers insisted, particularly that public official who, as George Mason put it, was positioned to “commit the most extensive injustice.” The Framers made the president the most powerful single official — reposing in his person all executive power — because they wanted him to be uniquely accountable. He is responsible not only for his own actions but for those of all administration officials. Misconduct and maladministration — whether it is ostensibly committed by Hillary Clinton, Lois Lerner, Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius, Eric Shinseki or some other underling — is the president’s misconduct and maladministration, especially if has encouraged and protected rogue subordinates rather than disciplining and firing them. The buck really does stop at the Oval Office. The legal grounds for impeachment are therefore easily established. What is quite difficult, by design, is the political decision to remove the president from power. The Framers understood that it might become necessary to oust a chief executive who abuses his authority. To leave in place a president who was incorrigibly lawless or incompetent would be an unacceptable threat to our republic. But they did not underestimate how socially disruptive impeachment could be, and they did not want it to become an exercise in factional or partisan hackery…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link— Ed]
David M. Weinberg
Israel Hayom, July 7, 2014
Muhammad Abu Khdeir’s murder is well on its way to becoming a core building block in the pantheon of anti-Israel propaganda, a central plank in the false argument that Israelis are just as murderous as the Palestinians. That Israelis are no more moral than the Palestinians. Without being too defensive, or in any way forgiving of the inexcusable kidnapping and gruesome murder of the young Arab boy from east Jerusalem, let it be said loud and clear: Comparisons that place Israeli and Palestinian societies on the same moral plane are evilly intended and utterly untruthful. No parallels can be drawn between Israel and the Palestinians when it comes to ethical standards. This is an asymmetrical conflict in every way: moral, political and ideological.
Israeli terrorists are few and far between. Over 100 years of conflict, they comprise a mere handful: Ami Popper, Jack Teitel, Yehuda Etzion, Baruch Goldstein, Yona Avrushmi and several others. This list of Palestinian terrorists fills fat ledger books across the globe, and the list of their victims fills even more. Israeli terrorists are denounced roundly and emphatically by Israeli society, caught quickly, and jailed fast. Nor are they released five minutes later. They are skunks, not heroes, of the Zionist movement and the Jewish people.
By contrast, Palestinian terrorists are celebrated widely by Palestinian society and feted by Palestinian leadership, sheltered methodically from justice, and rewarded generously. And if they're taken into custody, Palestinian terrorists are released just as quickly as international attentions turn elsewhere — the infamous "revolving door" record of the Palestinian Authority. And if Palestinian terrorists are held in Israeli jails, the Palestinians extort their release via kidnappings of Israelis, which again are celebrated. A perfect circle of perfidy. Note that Abu Khdeir’s murderers are already under arrest in Israel. They have nowhere to hide in Jewish-Israeli society. Whereas the murderers of Naftali Frenkel, Gil-ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach are still at large, hiding among their sympathetic and admiring brethren in the West Bank or Gaza.
When it became clear that Jews had murdered Abu Khdeir, for reasons of revenge or just ugly thugishness, the president, the prime minister, the chief rabbis, and all the political and cultural icons of Israelis society expressed deep shame at the killing, and spoke out immediately and without reservation in fierce denunciation of the crime. This killing does not represent the values or path of the Israeli people. When it became clear that Palestinians had kidnapped the three teenage Israeli boys, there was no shame in the streets of Ramallah, Hebron or Gaza City, only triumphant jubilation and defiance. A new three-finger stick-it-to-the-Israelis salute became the rave, and the pleased mother of one of the suspected kidnappers was lavished with hours of Palestinian television screen time. She told viewers that ("if he did it") she was proud of her son. Hamas and some Fatah leaders congratulated the kidnappers and promised them safe refuge and rewards, while promising Israel more kidnappings and murders.
The IDF arrested and jailed 10 soldiers last week who posted Facebook messages with calls for revenge. Contrast this with PA television, which broadcast a dozen sermons by local clerics, who get salaries from the Palestinian Authority, glorifying terrorism against Israelis and praising the kidnappers. All the while, the PA continued to pay salaries to the families of Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails and large reward stipends to terrorists released from Israeli jails. My point is that you judge a society not the by crimes of a few, but on the basis of the way that society deals with its criminals and who it celebrates as its heroes. In such a tally, there is no moral symmetry whatsoever between Israeli and Palestinian societies. Ironically, Palestinian propagandist MK Ahmed Tibi essentially affirmed the basic moral distinction between the two societies when speaking to Israel Radio this week before the killers in Jerusalem were identified. "Every Jew in this country," Tibi declared, "is praying that the murderer of Abu Khdeir is not a Jew. But I'm telling you for sure that he was a Jew." Tibi meant to curse and spit on Israeli society, yet didn't realize he was praising it. Indeed, every Jew in this country was praying that the murderer of Abu Khdeir would turn out not to be a Jew, because the very thought was reprehensible…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link— Ed]
Why the Arab World Is Lost in an Emotional Nakba, and How We Keep It There: Richard Landes, Tablet, June 24, 2014—Anthropologists and legal historians have long identified certain tribal cultures—warrior, nomadic—with a specific set of honor codes whose violation brings debilitating shame.
Government by Fiat: Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, June 26, 2014 —The Supreme Court this week admonished the Environmental Protection Agency for overreaching in regulating greenhouse gases.
The Collapsing Obama Doctrine: Dick Cheney & Liz Cheney, Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2014 —As the terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) threaten Baghdad, thousands of slaughtered Iraqis in their wake, it is worth recalling a few of President Obama's past statements about ISIS and al Qaeda.
Obama Speaks Loudly and Carries a Small Stick: Amir Taheri, New York Post, May 31, 2014 —Until last week, some had hoped that, having failed to develop a credible foreign policy, President Obama may at least be capable of engaging in serious debate with his critics.
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