RUTHFULLY YOURS

While Americans began to panic this week about the spread of Ebola in the United States, and Israelis mourned the tragic loss of young hikers killed in a snowstorm in Nepal, something with far more lethal consequences was taking place in Europe that barely elicited a yawn.

Representatives of Iran and the P5+1 countries (Russia, China, France, Britain, the U.S. and Germany) met in Vienna to hold yet another round of talks on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program. Key players in these negotiations were Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Though this was the eighth such gathering since the beginning of the year aimed at “ironing out” differences between the sides, it was highly significant.

In November, an interim arrangement was reached, according to which a final deal on curbing Iran’s nuclear capacity would be achieved during the six-month period between January and July.

Because Iran had no intention of curtailing its nuclear capabilities, but was keen on receiving the ease on sanctions it was rewarded for continuing to engage in bogus negotiations, none of the summits produced results. They did, however, enable the mullah-led regime in Tehran to keep the centrifuges spinning.

When the only progress made by the summer deadline was in uranium enrichment, the parties agreed to an extension of talks until November 24. What this really meant was that Iran was given an additional four months in which to proceed on its course of regional hegemony and world domination. It also provided President Hassan Rouhani with the further justification he needed to persuade Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that his stance as a “moderate” was paying off.

With a mere few weeks to go until the new deadline, neither side says it has an interest in prolonging negotiations past November. Rouhani gave a televised address ahead of this week’s talks to tell the Iranian people that reaching a deal by the end of next month would be possible.

Kerry was less committal. “Step by step,” he told reporters on Wednesday, before entering into six hours of talks, described by another State Department official as “about whether Iran is willing to take verifiable actions to show that their program is for peaceful purposes.”

These are the people the MPs declared have a “right” to a state.

In a spectacular display of ignorance, moral illiteracy and malice, Britain’s House of Commons this week unwittingly resurrected the specter of its own historical perfidy towards the Jewish people.

By 274 votes to 12, MPs voted to “recognize the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.”

Most MPs didn’t turn up for the vote at all. In the Middle East, it will make no difference on the ground. The prime minister, David Cameron, who abstained, says it won’t alter British government policy “to recognize a Palestinian state at the moment of our choosing,” whatever that means. So does it matter? Yes. Mahmoud Abbas is using unilateral recognition of “Palestine” as a weapon of war to isolate and choke Israel to death.

The Commons vote may encourage other countries to follow suit. It also threatens to deepen the Middle East conflict.

To head off a damaging split in the Labor Party, the motion was amended to support Palestine recognition “as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution.”

But a state of Palestine cannot precede a two-state solution. It has to be negotiated into existence, not least because of the evidence that its real purpose is as a beachhead to destroy Israel.

Unilaterally declaring a Palestine state tears up the Oslo treaty committing both sides to such a negotiation, thus destroying the peace process by its own lights.

Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly said (in Arabic) that the Palestinians will never accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. His Palestinian Authority glorifies those who murder Israelis, and teaches Palestinian children to hate and kill Jews.

Ministers wallop Kerry for linking stalled peace talks to rise of Islamic State
Naftali Bennett says ‘someone will always blame the Jew’; Gilad Erdan accuses US secretary of state of not understanding region

US Secretary of State John Kerry came under fire from right-wing Israeli politicians Friday after saying that the Israeli Palestinian conflict was fueling the spread of Islamic terror in the Middle East.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett indicated that Kerry was using an anti-Semitic canard and Communications Minister Gilad Erdan accused the top US diplomat of showing an unprecedented lack of understanding of the Middle East.

Speaking at an event marking the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha at the State Department Thursday, Kerry said it was “imperative” to restart stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks, since the conflict was helping the Islamic State recruit new members.

“There wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt –- and I see a lot of heads nodding –- they had to respond to,” he told gathered diplomats.

“People need to understand the connection of that. And it has something to do with humiliation and denial and absence of dignity,” he added.

Writing on Facebook, Bennett, who heads the nationalist Jewish Home party, a major coalition member, linked to an article about Kerry’s remarks, commenting in Hebrew that “Even when a British Muslim beheads a British Christian, someone will always blame the Jew.”
Gilad Erdan on July 8, 2013. (photo credit: Flash 90)

Gilad Erdan on July 8, 2013. (photo credit: Flash 90)

Likud minister Erdan, thought to be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pick to become Interior Minister, also blasted Kerry on Facebook, asking sarcastically whether anybody truly believes Islamic State fighters would put down their arms if Israeli-Palestinian talks were restarted.

We worry what people are being taught in madrassas and mosques. We should also be worried what people are being taught at Harvard and Yale.

On TV, Joe College was stopped on some campus. He was asked what year was it when Columbus discovered America. This took some thinking. Hmmm.

“1942?” he guessed.

“Right,” shrugged the what-the-heck interviewer.

We laugh. But this is not funny. On the Harvard campus students were asked their views on America. They responded that the United States is responsible for more terrorism than ISIS. This type of spiteful ignorance may not be typical. But it is not unusual, either. These are voters, or soon to be voters.

Their older brothers and sisters likely voted already…which is why we have Obama…and why soon we will have Hillary…and why we are doomed.

The United Kingdom Independence Party [UKIP] not only managed to halve the Conservative vote, but also the Labour Vote and the Liberal Democrat vote.

UKIP stands for small government, low taxes, and preservation of Britain’s identity and sovereignty, values that appeal to Conservative voters; and it wants to pull the United Kingdom out of the European Union. UKIP also stands for strong policies on law and order and immigration, which appeal to the traditional old Labour heartlands.

Strategically, to pick up Labour votes, UKIP would need to move to the left, but examples in France, Switzerland, Denmark and Geert Wilders’s PVV in the Netherlands, show that it is possible to attract voters from both the left and the right.

Last Thursday, the United Kingdom Independence Party [UKIP] won its first ever seat in the British House of Commons. For years, UKIP, led by the flamboyant Nigel Farage, has been a major party among the British contingent in the European Parliament, but winning a seat in the British national parliament had so far never succeeded.

Democratic evolution in China was being seriously considered. The failures of U.S. support for democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Libya gave new food for thought to those opposed to democracy. Lastly, the United States did not strongly oppose the anti-democratic coup d’état that overthrew a democratically elected government in Thailand.

On the other hand, Russia — dominated by Vladimir Putin, a new autocrat determined to stifle democracy in Russia — provided a new model.

The whole of Eastern Europe and most of Latin America, formerly in the clutches of dictatorships, are now efficient democracies. This seems to indicate that while democracy cannot be parachuted into a country, there is a broader, longer-term global trend toward democracy and that its growth depends on local conditions.

As economic development needed careful planning, political reforms need even greater planning. The question remains: is China preparing for these political reforms?

The current difficult situation and predicament in Hong Kong is not just about what is happening now or has been happening for the past decade in the territory, but also calls into question the future and overall political direction of China.