RUTHFULLY YOURS

In his lengthy interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, President Obama makes many statements about Israel’s security and how the proposed deal with Iran enhances it. These words from the interview are key:

I have to respect the fears that the Israeli people have,” he added, “and I understand that Prime Minister Netanyahu is expressing the deep-rooted concerns that a lot of the Israeli population feel about this, but what I can say to them is: Number one, this is our best bet by far to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon, and number two, what we will be doing even as we enter into this deal is sending a very clear message to the Iranians and to the entire region that if anybody messes with Israel, America will be there.

What does “messes with Israel” mean? No one has the slightest idea. The President unfortunately uses this kind of diction too often, dumbing down his rhetoric for some reason and leaving listeners confused.

“Both in America and in Israel, the liberal faith of too many Jews has imperiled the Jewish future. Needed is a serious, thoughtful, and authentically Jewish alternative.”In the end, for all Jews—religious and secular—the will to survive likely rests upon a belief that Jewish civilization is not only “my” civilization but a great civilization; that the Jewish people is not only my people but a special people, whose heritage, teachings, story, and achievements matter on a scale greater than what census numbers and square miles alone could ever rationally suggest. Jewish continuity is thus connected to an idea of Jewish exceptionalism: moral, political, intellectual, and, for some, divinely elected and divinely commanded. To be a Jew is to be a defender of a transcendent idea and a unique people, with the odds stacked against it but with history, faith, courage, pride, heroism, and sheer perseverance on its side: a purpose like no other.”

Compared with the bleaker moments in Jewish history—and woefully there are many—the present age of Jewish life offers many grounds for celebration and gratitude.

In America, Jews are free to build communities and educate their children, free to study and worship without fear, free to pursue the good life without discrimination or disadvantage. In Israel, Jews are sovereign: keepers of their own land, speakers of their own language, shapers of their own national destiny. In these two great centers of modern Jewish life, Jews have the dignity of liberty, and in Israel they enjoy the dignity of Jewish self-government. The old-world problems of the Jews—living in segregated conditions, burdened by humiliating legal restrictions, often impoverished and dispirited—are no longer Jewish problems on any mass scale. Most American Jews have means, and many are wealthy; the Jewish state is strong; and despite the faith-shaking trauma of the Holocaust and the faith-challenging seductions of modernity, many still believe that Jews have a unique purpose in the world.

But it would be misguided to indulge in heedless good feeling. The threats that Jews now face are real and possibly deadly

The president and his surrogates are working hard to sell whatever you want to call what came out of Lausanne, Switzerland last week between the P5+1 and Iran. The major media outlets seem to have settled on calling it a “framework agreement,” which may be somewhat overstating the reality, since the Iranian version of what has so far been agreed to contains only modest overlap with the four pages the Obama administration has released to tout their achievement in the negotiations.

This difference in the presentation of the deal’s points has been described as something that should not be surprising, since each side needs to convince skeptics or hardliners in their own country that they did not surrender but in fact won key concessions from the other side. The biggest difference between what is going on among the Iranians and what is now transpiring in the United States, however, is that our side has relatively little clue as to the degree of coordination that occurred during the negotiating process between the ostensibly hard-line clerics and the presumably more reform-minded negotiators and the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

A 2009 NCIS investigation into Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s activities while in Afghanistan reveal that there is clear evidence Bergdahl was “going over to the other side with a deliberate plan,” Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer said on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” Monday night.

Shaffer, a former military intelligence officer and Fox News contributor, said two senior sources told him that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation included a forensic review of his computer, which show Bergdahl’s apparent intent to travel to Uzbekistan.

“He was going to go off to Uzbekistan,” Shaffer told Fox News’ Bill O’

I confess to binge watching on the tube. My latest all nighter is Netflix’s “House of Cards” all about a venal and ruthless presidential couple….played by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. In season 3, the Prez’s wife is the Ambassador to the United Nations….and is consumed with brokering a deal with America, Russia, Israel and “Palestine” participating.

Imagine that! Netflix recognizes an independent Arab state- something that Presidents, Prime Ministers, American administrations since the “Rogers Plan” of 1972 and its clones Camp David Agreement, Oslo, Road Maps- have failed to do and which continued Arab terrorism and the present nuclear threats from Iran have thrust into the back burner if not the dust bin of history.

How ridiculous. Shame on them.

President Obama Monday dismissed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran recognize the state of Israel as a condition of a nuclear arms control pact, arguing Iran’s regime will not change that drastically, even if Tehran’s nuclear activities do.

The president’s remarks to National Public Radio, during an interview to air in its entirety Tuesday, offered another look at the simultaneous global and domestic pressures the United States is juggling just days after clearing interim hurdles in pursuit of a lasting agreement with Iran.

The Iranian threats to Israel are likely to remain, Obama said. The United States is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon via tough commitments, intrusive inspections and scientific oversight. By the same token, the United States remains committed to defending Israel, he added.

President Obama gives an exclusive interview to Thomas (“Meet the Flintstones”) Friedman, in-house thinker of The New York Times. It’s dispiriting stuff:

“What we will be doing even as we enter into this deal is sending a very clear message to the Iranians and to the entire region that if anybody messes with Israel, America will be there.”

Ask the Libyan and Yemeni governments how that worked out. Scott Johnson looks on the bright side:

At least he didn’t say that the destruction of Israel is a red line for him.

The most forlorn part of the Friedman/Obama encounter is this:

“Who knows?” he added. “Iran may change.” But if not, he said, the United States retains “the most firepower” to address any contingencies.

Apparently appointing people as ambassadors to countries because they gave you a bunch of money does not produce good results. So much for that smart, smart power.

Czech President Milos Zeman says he has “closed” the door of Prague Castle, the seat of the country’s presidency, to the U.S. ambassador because of comments he made about Zeman’s planned trip to Moscow.

U.S. Ambassador Andrew Schapiro told Czech television last week that it would be “awkward” if Zeman were the only EU head of state to attend a May 9 ceremony in Moscow marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Zeman told the news site Parlamentni Listy that he “can’t imagine” the Czech ambassador in Washington giving advice to an American president about “where to travel.”

One of George W. Bush’s worst decisions was failing to pardon Lewis “Scooter” Libby before he left the White House, as we and others urged him to do at the time. That abdication looks even worse today as the chief if reluctant prosecution witness against Mr. Libby, journalist Judith Miller, says she now believes her testimony at trial was wrong.
Peter Berkowitz recounts the story in detail nearby based on Ms. Miller’s revelation in her new book, released this week. She says she testified truthfully, but she now believes based on information she didn’t know at the time that she was led into a false conclusion about her notes by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The perjury case against Mr. Libby was always flimsy, hanging on uncertain memories from years earlier about noncriminal behavior. But if Ms. Miller’s testimony was false, then the conviction was an even worse injustice than we thought.

Why bring all this up now? Well, it is never too late to correct an unjust conviction, and Mr. Libby deserves to have his reputation restored. The episode also teaches lessons about the methods of modern prosecutors, as well as the pitfalls of Washington that the many Republicans running for the White House should want to avoid.

What Israel Wants

A complete end to Iran’s nuclear weapons research and development activity
An unspecified but significant reduction in the number of centrifuges
Closure of the Fordow facility as an enrichment site
Complete disclosure of Iran’s past nuclear work and research
Removal of Iran’s entire stockpile of enriched uranium from the country
Right of international inspectors to review any facility at any time

What’s in the Framework

No uranium enrichment over 3.67% purity—the level suitable for power plants but not arms
Reduction in the number of installed centrifuges to 6,104 from about 19,000
Fordow to be converted into a research center
Unclear if Iran would have to disclose past nuclear research
A reduction to Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium from 10,000 kilograms to 300
The right of inspectors to access all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and its supply chains