RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/12/05/netanyahu-abbas-israeli-settlements/1749713/

Israel’s pugnacious prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems most comfortable when he’s in a fight. Sometimes he fights with justification, as he did last month in retaliating for rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza, where the ruling Hamas Party fervently denies Israel’s right to exist and caters to even more extreme factions in its midst.

But in the West Bank, where the more moderate Fatah leadership has tried to negotiate a peace accord, it is Netanyahu who is the aggressor.

Last week, in a remarkable act of arrogance, the prime minister announced that he would expand Israeli settlements on a pivotal strip of Palestinian land near Jerusalem. For good measure, he said he’d withhold $100 million in tax revenue paid by Palestinians and collected by Israel.

The move, precipitated by a U.N. vote upgrading the status of Palestine, is an assault not just on the Palestinians but also on decades of U.S. efforts to secure a Middle East peace and a threat to U.S. interests in the region.

If built, the new housing would separate East Jerusalem, the prospective capital of any future Palestinian state, from the rest of the West Bank. Palestinians, already geographically divided, would see their territory cleaved again, crippling chances for the “two-state” solution at the heart of the peace process and grievously wounding American hopes for stability and improved relations with the Arab world.

Netanyahu’s excuse for this foolishness is that the United Nations had the audacity last week to grant a request from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that Palestine be granted “observer” status, which Abbas sees as an alternative route to independence. In the short term, it could put Israeli tactics against the Palestinians under tighter international scrutiny.

In our view, Abbas’ strategy is pointlessly provocative. Regardless of U.N. status, he can attain a meaningful Palestinian state only by negotiating borders and other issues with Israel.

Hamas’ control of Gaza, meanwhile, has made peace much more difficult for Israel.

But that’s no excuse for further provocation, which Netanyahu rarely resists. Since reclaiming the prime ministership in 2009, he has significantly worsened peace prospects.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/12/05/israel-netanyahu-danny-danon/1749705/ Mahmoud Abbas has avoided negotiating with us at all costs.    In the days following the United Nations General Assembly vote granting the Palestinians non-member observer state status, the posture of the international community toward Israel has been nothing short of hypocritical. The prime minster was the first leader of the conservative Likud to […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ In Cairo, Morsi scribbles his decrees and in Washington DC, Obama scribbles his. There is an ocean between the two men, but there is a good deal that they have in common. Both are ideologues who piggybacked on public outrage over the national impact of international economic declines to climb to power and pursue […]

http://pjmedia.com/blog/maryland-state-police-fbi-swat-teams-thwart-guy-with-a-few-guns/?print=1 You are forgiven for thinking that a major terrorist attack was thwarted in Sharpsburg, Maryland, this past Thursday. A Maryland State Police helicopter was in the air over 4433 Mills Road most of the day, as police, FBI SWAT teams, armored vehicles, and K-9 units converged upon the residence of Terry Allen Porter, 46. […]

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/12/05/hillary-clinton-explains-the-israel-palestinian-conflict/?print=1

“The criticisms she make all fall into the current, dominant, Western view that the world’s problems are caused by greedy, aggressive, un-empathetic white people who oppress everyone else.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said some very interesting and revealing things in her appearance at the Saban Center’s gala dinner on November 30. They are, however, being quoted out of context. Let’s look at what she actually said in some detail for a sense of how the Obama administration’s highest-ranking foreign policy official and a likely future presidential candidate thinks about this issue.

Let me note also that the statement was made at an institution that might be considered friendly to Israel and thus Clinton might have skewed her remarks to be more fair to that country than she would do in a regular international forum.

In answering a question, Clinton went into some detail about the problems facing a two-state solution and peace. Remember she is speaking extemporaneously.

First, the Israeli perception:

I think Israelis have good grounds to be suspicious. And I would never be one who tries to rewrite or dismiss history. The Palestinians could have had a state as old as I am if they had made the right decision in 1947. They could have had a state if they had worked with my husband and then-Prime Minister Barak at Camp David. They could have had a state if they’d worked with Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Minister Livni.

Here Clinton is pointing out that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected getting a state and that’s why they didn’t have one years ago. I cannot imagine Obama saying this kind of thing.

Now, would it have been a perfectly acceptable outcome for every Israeli and every Palestinian? No. No compromise ever is. But there were moments of opportunity. And I will also say this. When Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month settlement freeze I flew to Jerusalem. We’d been working on this. George Mitchell had been taking the lead on it. And when Prime Minister Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month settlement freeze, it wasn’t perfect. It didn’t cover East Jerusalem, but it covered much of the contested area in the West Bank.

There’s something important in this passage that no one has noticed. For the first time ever, Clinton publicly and explicitly acknowledged that the freeze did not cover East Jerusalem. Why, then, did Vice President Joe Biden throw a temper tantrum when an Israeli zoning board cleared some future construction there? At the time, the U.S. government repeatedly implied that Israel violated the agreement, which it didn’t. Now Clinton admits that.

Incidentally, the Obama administration did nothing when the Palestinian Authority refused to negotiate seriously despite the freeze on construction.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/lessons-from-the-past-if-the-impossible-happened-can-we-let-it-happen-again?f=puball Hands up those who have heard of, let alone read, any of the books by André Suarès. Nobody? I am not shocked. Virtually nobody has, and his name hardly appears in the history of literature from the time of Marcel Proust, Romain Roland, Andre Gide, Thomas Mann and so on and on-yet they read […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/10-lies-about-the-israel-hamas-conflictA ceasefire between Israel and Hamas may have been reached on paper, but evidence already indicates that it is unlikely to hold. A top Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader has already warned that the ceasefire would be short and that a “new, more savage round” of fighting with Israel lies ahead. The agreement establishes Egypt as […]

http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2334/Petraeus-Poodles.aspx

No doubt in the spirit of the season, somebody bestowed an audio sweetmeat upon Bob Woodward — 13-plus minutes of an off-the-record conversation that took place in the spring of 2011 between Gen. David Petreaus, then ISAF commander in Afghanistan, and Fox News analyst KT McFarland, then visiting Petraeus’ Kabul HQ. The exchange under consideration comes at the end of an interview when McFarland announces she has a personal message for Petraeus from Fox News President Roger Ailes, part of which is: If Petraeus isn’t appointed joint chiefs chairman, he should resign from the Army in six months and run for president. Obviously, he Petraeus didn’t do. it And that’s the Washington Post headline — “Fox news chief failed attempt to enlist Petraeus as presidential candidate.” But there is more to the message than that.

The segment starts thus:

KT: I have something to to say to you, by the way, directly from Roger Ailes, OK? …

P: … I’m not running (laughs) …

KT: OK! … Roger Ailes, I told him I was coming.

P: I love Roger.

KT: I know and he loves you and everybody at Fox loves you. I’m supposed to say directly from him to you, through me, is, first of all: Is there anything Fox is doing right or wrong that you want to tell us to do differently?

This question is devastating to the Fox News brand. And it opens the door on the kid gloves and soft-lenses with which Fox has consistently handled demonstrably disastrous Petraeus counterinsurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. This remains true no matter how much both Ailes and McFarland now brush off the Ailes’ message to Petraeus as a gag McFarland took too seriously. “It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have,” Ailes told the Post. “I thought the Republican field [in the primaries] needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate.” Ailes now considers McFarland to have been “way out of line.” But what about Ailes himself? Wasn’t he “way out of line” by putting her up to this — or are we to believe McFarland was making the whole thing up?

As if to amplify this notion, McFarland penned a half-defensive, half-confessional response yesterday that carries the headline, “My Petraeus interview firestorm silly, off-base.” In a piece recasting audio we can all of us listen to for ourselves, she respins Woodward’s piece and media reaction to it as so much baseless hyperbole — a credulity-straining exercise. She writes:

A conversation that began in jest and that led to a passing comment at the end of my interview with General David Petraeus has turned into a firestorm of speculation and an attempt to denigrate Fox.

In jest? Passing comment? Later, McFarland writes:

As we were finishing the interview I told General Petraeus my boss, Roger Ailes, was a great admirer. General Petraeus, who knows Roger, interrupted to say, basically, Roger is a brilliant guy. He knows I’m not running for anything.

In a nutshell (as if hoping no one actually listens to the audio). She continues:

My comment was prompted by a conversation I had had with Roger before leaving for Afghanistan. We discussed many topics, most involving national security. On my way out, I casually told him, I’ll give the general your regards, shall I? Roger smiled and replied something to the effect of, tell him if they don’t make him chairman of the joint chiefs, he ought to jump into the presidential race to stir things up. I know now that Roger was joking, but at the time, I wasn’t sure.

Hello, When my campaign team planned our final budget, we knew our Get Out the Vote push was going to be BIG. But it was far bigger than anyone ever expected. This extraordinary effort was wonderful and it’s how we won, but it created some planning challenges. For example, we knew we would have to […]

http://www.timesofisrael.com/ecuadors-president-compares-jewish-center-bombing-to-nato-action/

PRESIDENT CORREA OF ECUADOR IS PART OF THE “BOLIVARIANS” THE NAME OF THE AXIS OF BOLIVIA’S PRESIDENT EVO MORALES, A LEFT WING COCAINE CHEWING MARTINET AND HUGO CHAVEZ THE BATRACHIAN TIN POT DICTATOR OF VENEZUELA WHO ARE ALL CASTRO WANNABES. IT IS A SHAME BECAUSE BOLIVIA AND VENEZUELA AND ECUADOR TOOK IN MANY JEWISH REFUGEES REJECTED BY THE WESTERN NATIONS IN THE PERIOD JUST BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST…..RSK

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, compared the bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center which killed 85 people to “NATO bombings of Libya.”

Correa made the remarks Tuesday during a television interview with Argentina’s C5N news channel. Correa, who was in the country to receive an award, made the comments before a scheduled meeting with Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Asked about the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Correa replied, “I am familiar with the case, which is a very painful part of Argentina’s history. But look at how many died in the NATO bombings of Libya. If we compare these two events, we can see where the true danger lies.”

At least 72 civilians died in the NATO bombings, according to reports.