Foreign News and Analysis Since April 2005 -- Formerly China Confidential -- For America and Israel and Their Friends Abroad "Silence is filth." - Ze'ev JabotinskyForeign Confidential ™
Friday, May 27, 2011
Turkey Again Warns Israel on Flotilla
Saudis Seek Muslim Alliance to Counter Iran
AJC Leader: America and Israel are Inseparable
OBAMA PUSHES G-8 FOR AID TO EGYPT, TUNISIA
Axis of Evil Reps Meet in Bali
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Abbas Must Decide — Peace or Conflict?
Obama's Foreign Trips Seem Cursed by Disaster
Egyptian FM Tires to Placate Mob Regarding Mubarak's Fate
Palin-Christie in 2012?
Sarah Palin seems to be getting ready to run for President.Islam's Deadly Inferiority Complex ...
Is Obama Incompetent or Anti-Israel?
Click here for Jennifer Rubin's timely analysis.
Friday 27 May 2011
Saudi Arabia, as reported here, is "unhappy" with the United States and "nervous" about Iran--its meddling in neighboring nations and its menacing nuclear program.
EDTIOR'S NOTE: David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), is a frequent contributor to Der Tagesspiegel, one of Germany's leading newspapers. It asked him to write about the contrasting reactions in the United States and Europe to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington. Harris says that AJC, including the organization's office in Berlin, has grown increasingly concerned about Europe's general drift away from understanding Israel's yearning for peace and profound security dilemmas.
By David Harris
Six days of high-profile Middle East drama have just ended in Washington. Framed by President Obama's speech on the region, on May 19, at the State Department and Prime Minister Netanyahu's remarks to Congress on May 24, observers were taking careful note of words, temperature and body language in the complex interplay between the two leaders.
But the overarching story remains the same as always: The United States and Israel have forged a unique relationship, supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans. Whatever the occasional differences in policy, normal even for the closest of friends as we have seen between Washington and Berlin, the key point is what unites, not divides, the two countries. The rousing ovation by the Congress for the prime minister said it all – shared values, outlook and threats.
Some observers in Europe see it differently. They scratch their heads when Democrats and Republicans alike give repeated standing ovations to an Israeli prime minister they view with suspicion. They despair that Israel, in their eyes the main obstacle to "perpetual peace" in the region, is lauded for its pursuit of peace and right to defend itself in the Congress. And they offer theories of "Jewish power" in a vain attempt to explain America's identification with the Jewish state.
Those observers are missing the bigger story. America does not support Israel just because of American Jews, who comprise only two percent of the population. Rather, it is because Americans of many backgrounds identify with Israel as a liberal, democratic society in a sea of tyrannies; understand Israel's struggle, from day one, to defend the Jewish people's right to self-determination in a tough neighborhood; and grasp that Israel seeks peace and a two-state solution, but its main problem today is the absence of peace-seeking partners.
But then again some of those observers missed earlier stories.
They believed in Yasser Arafat long after it became clear that he was a corrupt, duplicitous leader.
They refused to see the change in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, whom they despised, when he came to power in 2001 and that later led him to withdraw Israel from Gaza.
They insist that the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is settlements, thus putting the entire onus on Israel, when, in reality, the crux has always been the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own.
And they won't give Prime Minister Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt, though it will take someone with his credentials to persuade Israel to take risky steps for peace, if peace is possible.
Meanwhile, Americans see a country, Israel, seeking peace and, with committed partners, as in the case of Egypt and Jordan, ready to pay the territorial price. They also see a country faced with existential threats to which there are no easy answers, no alluring "soft-power solutions." Hamas seeks Israel's elimination. Its charter makes that amply clear. So does Hezbollah. So does Iran. And the Palestinian Authority sends mixed messages – peace one day, glorification of terrorists the next; compromise one day, reconciliation with Hamas the next.
On June 1st, Israel will mark ten years since a terrorist attack on a Tel Aviv discotheque. Twenty-one Israeli youngsters were killed. Joschka Fischer, then Germany's foreign minister, happened to be near the scene. He rushed over and saw the carnage. He understood what Israel faces when suicide bombers want to kill Israelis anywhere, anytime.
No country desires peace more than Israel. No other country faces calls for its destruction from another UN member state. No other country has its right to defend itself so microscopically challenged.
If any part of the world should understand Israel and its journey, it is Europe. If any part of the world should understand the Jewish people's vulnerability, it is Europe. And if any part of the word should understand the need to support liberal, democratic societies as a foundation for peace, it is Europe.
ORDINARY AMERICANS DIE AND SUFFER
Not to worry, the liberal media assure Americans. Their Commander-in-Chief is in constant contact with his minions back home.
BLOODTHIRSTY ISLAMISTS AIM TO HANG
FORMER PRESIDENT, ABANDONED BY US
Run, Sarah, run!
Rumor: she is considering asking New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to be her running mate. Favored by many Republicans as a Presidential candidate, Christie has repeatedly ruled that out, at least for the next election. But that doesn't mean he would not consider the Veep slot.
A Palin-Christie ticket, our analysts assert, could win New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and, possibly, New York and Florida if the candidates can reassure seniors that they will not ruin Medicare. Contrary to the view of rightwing ideologues, there is no serious sentiment across the land for privatizing Medicare.
What is needed is a conservative-leaning, populist ticket ... candidates with clear, well-thought-out ideas about energy independence, job creation and prosperity, and the most pressing national security issues: defeating radical Islam at home and abroad; preventing Iran from acquiring atomic arms; and securing America's borders.
... And How it Fuels Persecution of Mideast Christians.
UPDATE: And click here for Charles Krauthammer's must-read essay on Obama's speech and how it undermines Israel's negotiating position. "The only remaining question," Krauthammer says, "is whether this perverse and ultimately self-defeating policy is born of genuine antipathy toward Israel or of the arrogance of a blundering amateur who refuses to see that he is undermining not just peace but the very possibility of negotiations."
This reporter ... a lifelong American Zionist of the Jabotinsky/Betar/Revisionist/Herut/Likud camp ... a New York Jew born and reared on Manhattan's ultra-progressive Upper West Side ... hence his politically conservative orientation, having experienced firsthand the horrors of Left/liberal lunacy ... believes that Barack Hussein Obama, America's most leftwing-ever (and first Muslim-born-and-reared) President, is actually anti-Israel, that at best he regards the miraculous rebirth of the Jewish State in its ancient homeland as an understandable mistake, given 2,000 years of Jewish homelessness and suffering culminating in the Holocaust, meaning something that ideally should not have happened in the first place--a country destined from the get-go to be on "the wrong side of history," in Obama's view, a fundamentally alien entity stuck in the heart of what he insists on calling "the Muslim world."
Here's a taboo question that no liberal or mainstream reporter would dare ever ask Obama: Mr. President, given the history of the Middle East since the establishment of Israel, do you think it would have been better if instead of a Jewish state in Palestine coming into being, a binational, democratic state of Palestine had been created, consisting of a Jewish minority and an Arab majority?
Of course, Obama will never answer such a question honestly. He can't. But this Jew knows in his head and in hiskishkes what Obama would answer if he felt he could talk freely, without concern for the political ramifications of his remarks. Not for nothing did Obama sit for two decades in the church of Reverend Jeremiah ("GD America") Wright.
Obama's Middle East advisors, however--the viciously anti-Israel, leftwing radical Samantha Power and the notoriously pro-Islamist Zbigniew Brzezinski--might be more inclined to share their true opinions of Israel. Perhaps a reporter for a European or Arab media outlet will ask them.
It's time that Israel's friends--including American Jews, who, ironically, voted overwhelmingly for Obama in 2008--got a real sense of what they are up against. The time for denial about his ideological bias ... his entire world view ... is long past.
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