World learns to manage without the US
The giant sucking sound you here, I said on August 15 on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report, is the implosion of America’s influence in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin’s August 17 offer of Russian military assistance to the Egyptian army after US President Barack Obama cancelled joint exercises with the Egyptians denotes a post-Cold-War low point in America’s standing. Along with Russia, Saudi Arabia and China are collaborating to contain the damage left by American blundering. They have being doing this quietly for more than a year.
The pipe-dream has popped of Egyptian democracy led by a Muslim Brotherhood weaned from its wicked past, but official Washington has not woken up. Egypt was on the verge of starvation when military pushed out Mohammed Morsi. Most of the Egyptian poor had been living on nothing but state-subsidized bread for months, and even bread supplies were at risk. The military brought in US$12 billion of aid from the Gulf States, enough to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. That’s the reality. It’s the one thing that Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel agree about. (Read more…)
Into the Fray: Muted, myopic, and moronic
It is difficult to know what would be more troubling: whether the US secretary of state believes the preposterous poppycock he presented in his “strategic assessment”; or whether he doesn’t.
By Martin Sherman
It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change.
– Alice in Wonderland
Almost five months ago in this column (April 7), I warned: “With US foreign policy everywhere beleaguered by failure and paralysis, the only hope of any foreign success for the administration is by pressuring a pliant Israel on the Palestinian issue.”
Yet despite the clear signs of the gathering storm on the horizon, no discernible steps were taken to prepare for it. There was no sign of preemptive evasive action, no sign of battening the hatches in order to weather the approaching tempest; no call to US Jewry to circle the wagons until the foreseen onslaught passes.
So like a rudderless ship Israel drifted – seemingly helpless – headlong into the raging gale that is now upon it.
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Jewish Births Way Up, Arabs Way Down
Livni’s Source of Desperation: A new report shows that the demographic predictions Minister Tzipi Livni has been basing her decisions on is incorrect.
As Minister Tzipi Livni et al are ending their second week of negotiations over how many Jews to expel from Judea and Samaria in order to receive from the Arabs recognition of our right to exist, new figures have emerged that might explain the sudden urge of Livni and the Israeli left to finish this thing quickly, set it in motion and be done with it. It turns out the “demographic bomb” everyone, from President Obama to the lowliest lackey at J-Street, have been warning Israel about, does not exist. Or rather, there used to be a bomb, but events and the economy and whatnot have turned it into a pitiful firecracker. Not only are there more Jews than Arabs in the entire territory between the Jordan River and the sea, but the Jewish numbers are becoming even greater, while the Arab numbers are in the dumps. (Read more…)
They Don’t Want to Be Alone with Livni
There’s supposed to be a news blackout from the reconvened Middle East peace talks going on this week. The Palestinians insisted on that lest their reluctant negotiators be branded as doing something that smacked of legitimizing the Jewish state. But one of their team broke their silence this week in order to complain about the fact that they have been called upon to actually talk one on one with their Israeli counterparts:
- “We had an agreement on three-way negotiations. The Americans from the beginning were supposed to be there. I don’t see why the Israelis don’t want the Americans there, as witnesses,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, told The Times of Israel. “These are not two-way negotiations,” she added.
Egypt: Freedom for Whom?
By Howard Rotberg
Here is an essay I wrote about Egypt as the Mubarek regime came under attack in the winter of early 2011. It appeared on the Canadian website Tolerance.ca at the beginning of February, 2011. Just think about all the ignorant commentators and politicians who mouthed the idiotic phrase “Arab Spring”. How many people are being killed as a result of the willful evil of the isolationist and relativist Obama, his Muslim Brotherhood-infiltrated government and the arrogant soft pacifists and multiculturalists who support him? How dare he equate America’s sense of Justice and Tolerance with that of the Arabs? Are we so eager for the love of our abusers that we feel compelled to say white is black and black is white? Why didn’t America rise up against him and vote him out of office after his first term?
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RESETTING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
Aside from the carnage in Benghazi, the most enduring image from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as US secretary of state was the fake remote control she brought with her to Moscow in 2009 with the word “Reset” in misspelled Russian embossed on it.
Clinton’s gimmick was meant to show that under President Barack Obama, American foreign policy would be fundamentally transformed. Since Obama and Clinton blamed much of the world’s troubles on the misdeeds of their country, under their stewardship of US foreign policy, the US would reset everything.
Around the globe, all bets were off.
Five years later we realize that Clinton’s embarrassing gesture was not a gimmick, but a dead serious pledge. Throughout the world, the Obama administration has radically altered America’s policies.
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A-G: Netanyahu Denies Terrorists-for-Housing Deal
Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has denied reports that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett have struck a deal in which the government will release terrorist murderers as a “gesture” to the Palestinian Authority in “peace talks,” and also approve construction of a large number of housing units for Jews inJudea and Samaria.
MK Merav Michaeli (Labor) demanded that Weinstein instruct the prime minister to make the alleged agreement public, but Weinstein replied to her and said that no such deal exists.
“After checking the matter vis-a-vis the prime minister’s office, it has been verified that there is no deal between the prime minister and the head of Bayit Yehudi or any other member in it, regarding the release of prisoners and the thawing of construction in Judea and Samaria,” a special assistant to Weinstein, Attorney Oren Pono, wrote MK Michaeli. (Read more…)
US won’t permit interim agreement
By Ted Belman
Newswise, there is not much to report today. But one thing I found of interest. Abbas met with members of Meretz and most online news sources reported it. Everyone had a different takeaway.
For me the most interesting thing is that Israel is in no hurry and is slowing the pace of negotiations. She has also barred the US from being present. I didn’t she had the right.
But WAFA reports:
- Abed Rabbo said the Americans did not participate in the talks “due to an
Israeli stance and demand,” adding that “this is one sign of how and where
the talks are heading if the US is not able now to assert itself in the
peace process.
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel
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