RUTHFULLY YOURS

What to Say When You’re Handed the Obama-is-Good-for-Israel Talking Points

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/06/01/obama-is-good-for-israel-talking-points/

Many Americans, and particularly Jews, are starting to receive mailings encouraging them to vote for or donate to the reelection campaign of President Barack Obama by arguing that he is pro-Israel. Several readers have asked me to provide them with responses. Here is a brief answer.

These emails and mailings, though designed to look as if they were written by concerned individuals, clearly draw their texts from talking points posted on the Obama reelection site. The arguments are very thin and selective but are presented as if they represent the totality of Obama policy.

The main arguments are:

1. Obama says he likes Israel.

That’s nice but so what? Of course it is good when he says nice things (by coincidence, no doubt, usually to Jewish audiences) but one can also find a lot of nasty remarks by him, his advisors, and various officials appointed by him. Every president for the last half-century has said similar nice things; not all the presidents put together during this period have said or done so many hostile things. While it is a great exaggeration to say that Obama hates Israel or wants to destroy it, I think it is fair to say that no president (including Jimmy Carter when in office) has been so cold toward Israel and basically failed to understand its nature and interests.

2. Israeli leaders say Obama is great.

Yes, that’s nice but it’s not what they say in private. I can tell you authoritatively that not a single Israeli leader in any party has a high opinion of Obama with regard to Israel and its interests. But it is their job to lavish praise on America’s president. Their task is not to defeat Obama or to critique him but to get along with him as well as possible in order to protect Israel’s long-term alliance with the United States without sacrificing any of Israel’s vital interests. They’ve done it well. The one moment the truth emerged was when Obama betrayed Israel, on the diplomatic level, by announcing, without consultation, a new policy on peace terms while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was flying to Washington. You think Israeli leaders (and this is not ideological, not a matter of left or right) have a high regard for Obama? Read Netanyahu’s speech to the joint session of Congress.

Perhaps the equation can be summarized as follows: Obama just gave Israeli President Shimon Peres a presidential medal of freedom. He also has just helped give Israel a second Muslim Brotherhood-dominated regime next door and insists that this is a good thing.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=1985

“I love it when Arabs attack the leftist Jews who think that being their apologists will grant them immunity from being thought of as enemies. The irony here is that it’s not Glick or Beinart who wouldn’t agree to live in Moor’s building; it’s Moor who wouldn’t agree to live in theirs.Indeed, it has always been the Palestinians who refuse to exist in peace with Jews, not the other way around. The solution lies either in their altering their worldview or in our asserting our right to our country. No number of dead Jew-killers returned to their dispatchers on a silver platter is going to change that fact.”

Given the number of times the Israeli government has banged its head against brick walls (and security fences), is it any wonder that it has lost its marbles?

The latest case in point was Thursday morning’s “goodwill gesture” from Israel to the Palestinian Authority and “Hamastan.” This involved exhuming the bodies of 91 terrorists buried in Israel and transferring their remains back to the West Bank and Gaza from whence they hailed. There they were shrouded in Palestinian flags and welcomed home as “martyrs.”

Each of these paragons of Palestinian virtue had slaughtered innocent Israelis in restaurants, buses, hotels and shopping malls. Now that they’re back among the people who laud them for their actions, their families will be able to visit their graves, and school children will be taught lessons on their “heroism.”

The gaga Israeli government said that it hopes “this humanitarian gesture will serve both as a confidence-building measure and help get the peace process back on track.”

Yeah, righ

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=272258

Into The Fray: Peter Beinart has placed himself in precisely the same category as Richard Goldstone. He should be treated in precisely the same manner.

“A Palestinian family named the Ghawis lives on the street outside their home of fifty-three years, from which they were evicted to make room for Jewish settlers “– Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” June 10, 2010
In two recent articles, I made the following statements: “Peter Beinart [has] for all intents and purposes declared political war on Israel.” Indeed he has.And, “There are only two possible explanations for [Beinart’s] actions: He is either sincere or he is not. If he is sincere, he is merely a ‘useful idiot,’ and he should be treated as such. If he is not, then he is engaging in activities that are intentionally detrimental to Israel. He is, therefore, an enemy – and should be treated as such.” Indeed he should.

Beinart has placed himself in precisely the same category as another self-professed “dedicated Zionist” – Richard Goldstone. He should be treated in precisely the same manner – by both the Jewish establishment and Israeli officialdom.Noble or nefarious?

We don’t know what motivates Beinart – whether he is merely silly but sincere, or whether he is actually sly and sinister. We can only infer what drives him from what he does, and what he says – and perhaps more important, from what he doesn’t.But in the final analysis, his intentions are less important than the consequences of his actions, which are deeply detrimental to Israel, the professed object of his devotion and affection.

After all, for the vast majority of those who follow the Middle East conflict, there is little daylight between the charges Beinart hurls at Israel, Israelis, and the Israeli government and those of the Jewish state’s most visceral detractors.If any differences can be detected, they typically relate more to nuance rather than principle.

Even if he does occasionally level some perfunctory reprimand at the Palestinians for their “recalcitrant” (read “brutal”/“ bloody”/“barbarous”) behavior – as if reluctantly discharging some distasteful but obligatory chore –he studiously avoids any policy-relevant conclusions Israel might conceivably be forced to draw from that behavior.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/expedience/

Reading the book about the tortuous path to “The Balfour Declaration” written by Jonathan Schneer, one is struck by the duplicity of the British, who made contradictory promises to the Zionists, the Arabs, the French and even tried to make a separate peace with the Turks. At any rate, PM David Lloyd George, who was always one of my heroes, comes out looking less than a statesman. But, then I re-evaluated the situation and realized that that was expediency. He was prepared to double deal and double-cross as long as it got him what he wanted, namely a way to win WWI war as soon as possible, in order to reduce the terrible toll of lives lost in the trenches. What happened after the war to the Zionists and Arabs was of very secondary importance to him, it was just a question of which gambit in the east would help to win the war on the western front. So he made promises to both the Jews and the Arabs to get their temporary support.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301585/twilight-west-mark-steyn The developed world is all playing the same recessional. The Eurovision Song Contest doesn’t get a lot of attention in the United States, but on the Continent it’s long been seen as the perfect Euro-metaphor. Years before the euro came along, it was the prototype pan-European institution, and predicated on the same assumptions. Eurovision […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301611/romney-s-syria-problem-andrew-c-mccarthy His support for “opposition groups” is misplaced. Congratulations to Mitt Romney. In calling for “opposition groups” to be armed and trained for their ongoing jihad against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, the GOP’s presidential contender has managed to align himself with al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri and Muslim Brotherhood icon Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Like the legacy media, […]

Shimon Erem, a giant Jewish leader succumbed to cancer on Sunday, May 27th, 2012, at the age of 90.

The “buzz” term is that ‘they do not make them like Shimon anymore.’ And indeed, Shimon was part of a generation that have not been duplicated, i.e. David Ben Gurion, Shmuel Katz, Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Moshe Sharet, Yitzchak Shamir, et al. A generation of leaders who put their country, Israel, and the Jewish nation before their own life. Their dedication, devotion and commitment to defend and stand for the state of Israel had no boundaries.

So if they do not make them like Shimon Erem was, then either there is something wrong with the present generation or, we need not take this insult and show everyone that they do make them just like Shimon and his like today.

Shimon was like the watchman on the tower. Nothing that concerned Israel and the Jewish people passed him unspoken or, when needed, defended or rebuttal.

Shimon was a one man army; but we can be a collective watchman on the tower and an army of many and continue his legacy with more vigor and as much dedication. Shimon taught us the ropes, he opened the doors for us and he left us the instruction manual and all we need to do is run with it.

There is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, named ‘The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.'(http://www.amazon.com/The-Tipping-Point-Little-Difference/dp/0316346624). If each one of us does only one little thing for Israel and the Jewish nation, together, we will make a HUGE difference; we will be an army Shimon Erem would be proud of as his legacy will emerge stronger.

Shimon was among those who took upon themselves the crucial role in the founding and survival of the State of Israel. A man with many hats. Military, political, and community leader. He built the Golden Bridge for Jews and Christians to walk on, meet and cooperate. Take actions together that benefit mankind.

For the past 75 years Shimon devoted his life fighting for Jewish survival and the nation state of the Jewish people, Israel. He very well knew that Israel needs to have friends. A country that was established by many Holocaust survivors, the latest victims of the hate so many, world over, have for the Jews, needed allies. So for the past three decades Shimon worked tirelessly to bring Christians onto Israel’s side so they support the Jewish state and Jewish communities in their midst. When he saw his idea can work and work well, in 2002 he founded the Israel Christian Nexus-ICN (http://icnexus.org/), an organization its main goal is to unite and mobilize Jewish and Christian communities in the support of the Israelis, the people of the state of Israel.

Many of us are graduates of Shimon Erem’s university of community leadership and devotion to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Now we all need to take what we have learned and teach others to duplicate and do the same. Take the torch and run with it.

Today we are mourning the loss of Simon. Tomorrow we will celebrate that he has not left a world empty of cause behind him.

Shimon followed, Psalm 121:4, ‘Behold, he that keepeth Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.’

We owe him to do the very same.

Victor Frenkl said, everything can be taken away from a person, except one thing, attitude.

Goodbye Shimon and please watch over us from His heavens.

http://standwithus.com/app/iNews/view_n.asp?ID=2317 Farewell, Gen Shimon Erem – 1922 – 2012 The pro-Israel community has lost a giant supporter of Israel and a cherished symbol of Israel’s modern history.General Shimon Erem died on Sunday, May 27, 2012. When he was just 15 years old, Shimon Erem joined the Jewish underground. For the past 75 years since that […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/threats-deals-got-drug-companies-on-board-with-obamacare?f=puball

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/31/threats-deals-got-drug-companies-on-board-with-oba/?page=all#pagebreak

Top administration officials cut backroom deals with the nation’s top drug companies to win support for President Obama’s health care overhaul, threatening them with steeper taxes if they resisted and promising a better financial deal for the industry if they acquiesced, according to internal documents released Thursday by House Republicans.

In some of the key deals, Mr. Obama agreed to drop his long-standing support for letting Americans buy cheaper foreign prescription drugs — something the pharmaceutical industry vehemently opposed — and the drugmakers promised to mount a public campaign to sell the public on the health care legislation.

The drug industry financed the famous “Harry and Louise” commercials in the early 1990s that many credit with helping to turn public opinion against President Clinton’s massive health care bill. In 2009, the industry revived the fictional married couple — this time with words of praise for Mr. Obama’s bill.

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/115995/sec_id/115995

Guiltless in Guantánamo by Nidra Poller (June 2012)

It’s been years since I last bought a copy of the International Herald Tribune (New York Times abroad) and I don’t bother commenting anymore on its stylized bias, but I got a free copy the other day and, not being wasteful, tried to read it. Now here I am dissecting an article. Not just any article: a template “guiltless in Guantánamo” piece, featured four-columns wide on page two of the print edition. You can read it online here.

The innocence of the liberated Guantánamo prisoner is established in the first paragraph:

“IT was James, a thickset American interrogator nicknamed ‘the Elephant,’ who first told Lakhdar Boumediene that investigators were certain of his innocence, that two years of questioning had shown he was no terrorist, but that it did not matter, Mr. Boumediene says.”

The extent of the injustice is tallied in the second paragraph:

“The interrogations would continue through what ended up being seven years, three months, three weeks and four days at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.”

The cause of the injustice is the subject of the third paragraph: Mr. Boumediene, who was running an aid program for orphans in Sarajevo, was “swept up” in the post 9/11 panic.