RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/05/obama-administrations-three-pronged-attack-on-israel/

Obama Administration’s Threefold Slap in Israel’s Face Posted By P. David Hornik

Worried about losing some of the Jewish vote for 2012, President Obama has been sweet-talking American Jews lately and making some staunchly pro-Israel statements. In September he told the UN General Assembly:

Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, look[s] out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied.

Strong stuff—the kind of stuff really pro-Israel people really say, and think.

But no one should be fooled. In recent days, statements by two very senior officials and one lesser official have shown that this administration remains relentlessly anti-Israel in some of its basic attitudes.

http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2011/12/three-anti-israel-stooges-of-obama.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YidWithLid+%28YID+With+LID%29

This past week, Jack Rosen the head of the American Jewish Congress hosted a fundraiser for President Obama at his home in NYC. With a straight face Obama explained

“I try not to pat myself too much on the back, but this administration has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration,” Obama said. “We don’t compromise when it comes to Israel’s security … and that will continue.”

Joining in on the fun, Rosen added that:

“America has never been as supportive of the state of Israel as President Obama and his administration.”

One would expect President Obama to support his administration’s anti-Israel policies, but for the head of a Jewish organization such as the AJCongress to voice his support is nothing short of fraudulent. Just look at the past few days where three Stooges of the Obama administration spoke out against the Jewish State.

On the same day as Rosen’s little house party, the US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman, spoke to a EU conference on Antisemitism and after saying how wonderful Obama is for the Jews, he said Israel and the Middle East conflict was a major reason for hatred against Jews.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/39371#CurDomainURL#/blog.cfm The New York Times report in today’s edition about the missile test site explosions, “Explosion Seen as Big Setback to Iran’s Missile Program” underlines what we had written about Iran’s progress on silo-hardened solid fuel ICBMs, especially the 2,000 KM Shelj-2i and 3,500 KM MB-25 obtained from the North Koreans – see The Iranian […]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ML06Ak01.html

Israel’s immigration ministry stopped running television ads exhorting Israelis living in America to come home after American Jewish organizations complained, the New York Times reported December 2:

One video advertisement shows a Jewish elderly couple distraught that their Israeli granddaughter in the United States thinks Hanukkah is Christmas. Another shows a clueless American boyfriend who does not get why his Israeli expatriate girlfriend is saddened on Israel’s memorial day. A third shows a toddler calling “Daddy! Daddy!” to his napping Israeli expatriate father, who finally awakens when the child switches to Hebrew: “Abba!”

“While we recognize the motivations behind the ad campaign,” the Jewish Federations remonstrated in a December 1 statement, “we are strongly opposed to the messaging that American Jews do not understand Israel. We share the concerns many of you have expressed that this outrageous and insulting message could harm the Israel-Diaspora relationship.” The Jewish organizations complained after a liberal blogger, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly, denounced the ads.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/05/the-eus-big-kazoo

As Europe insists on still more socialism as a solution to its ill, the U.S. Fed is doing its best to help out — in deep secrecy, of course.

Europe has no time for clichés, so Europe’s currency crisis has skipped two cycles. Instead of allowing one cycle of history to complete itself before it is repeated — first as tragedy and then as farce — the Eurozone nations have decided to pass by the end of the current course, skip tragedy, and go directly to farce.

France’s President is pressing hard on the trigger to fire the EU’s “big bazooka” but he can’t fire because Germany’s PM has her finger stuck behind the trigger and isn’t budging. Meanwhile, Mr. Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s Foreign Minister, last week demanded German intervention to save Poland (and the euro). Sikorski said, “I demand of Germany that, for its sake and ours, it help the Eurozone survive and prosper. Nobody else can do it. I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to save this, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear its inactivity.”

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=955 Three slaps and you’re out? It has been a unique week in U.S.-Israeli relations. After first trying to kill a bipartisan Senate sanctions bill directed against Iran’s Central Bank, U.S. Administration officials decided to “work” with the two Senate leaders on the legislation – Bob Menendez and Mark Kirk – to “improve” the bill. […]

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ Leon Panetta, fresh from a stint as CIA director and off to his new job as Secretary of Defense, did his best to  butch up in the usual way of DC hacks “daringly” delivering the same utterances that have been current in the capital for generations. When Panetta, the man who looks like everyone’s […]

First Panetta, now Ambassador Gutman: When it Comes to US Policy towards Israel, Listen to what its Representatives Say, Not to the President’s Promises Posted By Ron Radosh URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2011/12/04/first-panetta-now-ambassador-gutman/   First it was Leon Panetta, and now it’s Howard Gutman. President Barack Obama, who just last week told Jewish groups that he […]

Obama’s Middle East Policy: A Unified Field Theory Posted By Barry Rubin

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/12/05/obamas-middle-east-policy-a-unified-field-theory/

Summary: Muslims good; Islamists moderate; No peace? Israel’s fault; ears closed. Have a nice day!

In the history of physics, the “unified field theory” was an attempt to bring together an understanding of all forms of energy in a single explanation. Albert Einstein tried and failed to discover this. I don’t know much about physics but I know about Middle East policy.

So here’s an effort to bring together all of Obama’s regional policy into a single analysis and explaining everything in 1100 words.

The first point is that the Obama Administration’s behavior must be divided into two phases. They overlap and feature the same kind of thinking but they are also quite separate.

Phase One, from January 2009 until December 2011 was characterized by an emphasis on Israel-Palestinian peacemaking. Obama’s Administration believed that it was possible to make rapid progress toward peace and also thought that this was essential to achieve anything else in the Middle East.

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/blog/gunwalker-justice-dept-violated-us-laws/

As we continue to watch the general uproar over the Operation Fast and Furious program, and specifically what Attorney General Holder knew and when he knew it, it needs to be noted that perjury is not the only apparent violation of law to have occurred.

I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities — to include departments and agencies of the U.S. government — and all foreign drug cartels.

I am familiar with these prohibitive statues because several years ago, while serving as the senior drug analyst for the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was tasked to initiate and became the principal drafter of legislation which became known as the Kingpin Act (21 U.S.C. §§ 1901-08). The Kingpin Act is an extension of the highly successful IEEPA sanctioning program specifically targeting Colombian drug cartels. It expands sanctions authority against various drug cartel operations worldwide — including Mexico — which have been determined by the president to be threats to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.

A violation of any of the IEEPA sanctioning programs or the Kingpin Act carries stiff penalties, both criminal and civil, and potentially totaling decades in prison and tens of millions of dollars in fines. It is not necessary that an individual or governmental entity be shown to have “knowingly” violated any of these programs: it is illegal for any U.S. entity or individual to aid, abet, or materially assist — or in the case of Operation Fast and Furious, to facilitate others to aid, abet, or materially assist — designated drug traffickers. There are no exceptions within IEEPA programs for unlicensed U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency operations.

Based on the July 5, 2010, memo to Eric Holder, it would appear that Fast and Furious facilitated the delivery of weapons to — at a minimum — the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. The U.S. Department of the Treasury, which administers both the IEEPA and Kingpin Act programs, has designated numerous members of the Sinaloa cartel under both programs. IEEPA prohibitions apply to the U.S. government as well as to individuals, and as stated there are no exceptions within IEEPA programs for unlicensed U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency operations.

There is a provision in the Kingpin Act for “authorized” law enforcement and intelligence activities, however the only procedure by which an Operation Fast and Furious program could have been “authorized” under the Kingpin Act was by the U.S. attorney general requesting a waiver (known within the Treasury Department as a Specific License), prior to any such operation being undertaken. To illustrate and emphasize this point: even during the run-up to war in Iraq, the U.S. secretary of Defense had to obtain waivers (specific licenses) from the Treasury Department to allow U.S. Special Forces and their necessary equipment (to include weapons, intelligence gathering, and targeting gear) to go into Iraq, as Iraq at the time was under separate IEEPA sanctions.