RUTHFULLY YOURS

What you can do if you don’t care what anybody says. Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) was a vocal critic both of President Obama’s executive-action opening to Cuba and his nuclear non-proliferation talks with Iran. In the midst of his loud opposition, he found himself suddenly indicted by a federal attorney on charges that had aired much earlier without consequence. I think the message was not that the administration was worried over appearances, but rather that it wished to remind all of Washington that it actually welcomed the appearance of not being worried over the idea of federal prosecutorial power being used for tit-for-tat vendettas.

Malice is a valuable political tool for Barack Obama. Benjamin Netanyahu apparently bothered President Obama. What could that possibly entail, given the historic alliance between Israel and the United States? From the petty malice of Obama-administration aides leaking slurs that Netanyahu was a coward and chickens–t to the fundamental malevolence of community-organizing Netanyahu’s opponents in an effort to defeat him at the polls to leaking previously classified information about Israel’s nuclear deterrent, the message is again Chicagoan. Obama in adolescent fashion put it best in the 2008 campaign when he urged his flock, “I want you to argue with them and get in their face,” and when he later lifted a Chicago line from screenwriter David Mamet’s dialogue in The Untouchables to say to his base, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

Did the former secretary of state delete pertinent e-mails while subject to congressional investigation? Hillary Clinton’s lawyers confirmed what many have suspected since her remarks at a U.N. press conference earlier this month: She has wiped her server clean of any e-mails that she didn’t turn over to the State Department. In so doing, Mrs. Clinton has given her critics more reason to suspect that she is up to no good and yet further reason that Mrs. Clinton should keep those lawyers on speed dial. In the ongoing saga of Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private server at her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, the latest bomb was thrown by her lawyer, David Kendall (of Bill Clinton impeachment fame).

Late last week, Mr. Kendall wrote a lengthy letter to the Benghazi Select Committee to respond to Chairman Trey Gowdy’s demand that she turn over her server for inspection and analysis by a “neutral detached and independent third-party.” Mr. Kendall flatly refused the demand, suggesting that the committee lacked the authority to request it. But for good measure, Kendall explained that review of the server would be fruitless. After her personal lawyers reviewed the e-mails to determine which records Mrs. Clinton should return to the State Department, she “chose not to keep her non-record personal e-mails and asked that her account (which was no longer in active use) be set to retain only the most recent 60 days of e-mail.” To “avoid prolonging a discussion that would be academic,” Mr. Kendall adds, “no e-mails from hrd22@clintonemail.com for the time period January 21, 2009, through February 1, 2013, reside on the server or on any back-up systems associated with the server.”

At the signing ceremony for the Obamacare legislation, Vice President Biden memorably told the president, “This is a big f****** deal.” The foreign policy equivalent of Obamacare is about to be signed by Secretary of State Kerry. It’s an agreement that will ensure Iran develops nuclear weapons in secret and in safety.

The context of the deal is so clear that even the Washington Post got it right. In a Saturday editorial, the Post wrote that the agreement will reward Iran for more than a decade of ignoring UN Security Council resolutions that had the single purpose of preventing it from developing nuclear weapons. Iran has been lying and cheating so long, only those dedicated to ignoring the facts could believe they would live up to any deal that would prevent them from developing and deploying nuclear weapons.

There’s a lot more to the context than the Post wrote. Saudi Arabia didn’t notify us before it formed its own coalition of nations to attack Iran’s proxy forces in Yemen. The reason, according to NBC’s Richard Engel, is that they feared we would leak their plans to Iran. That is a precise measure of how much they dislike and distrust Obama.

“In this world, nothing is certain, except death and taxes:” A line usually attributed to Benjamin Franklin and with which it is difficult to argue; though I can state categorically that I am certainly the son of my mother. On the other hand, certainty in opinions is usually associated with a mule-like stubbornness, or unquestioning obeisance – neither a characteristic we would like to think of as being ours – but ones common among the political and pontificating classes, the latter of which I admit to being a member. Curiosity, openness and skepticism are as proper antonyms for certainty as uncertainty.

“We live in uncertain times…” is a quote from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1938 autobiography, The Summing Up, and has become boringly ubiquitous. Mr. Maugham likely got the idea from the old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times,” with “interesting times” being a euphemism for war. We certainly live in an interesting time. The world is dangerous, manifestly more so than it was six years ago when our newly elected President was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, not for what he had done, but for what the committee was certain he would do. That Mr. Obama has made the world more dangerous adds to uncertainty, raises cynicism and is, in part, responsible for the diminishing trust in our leaders and institutions.

Seventy years ago this month, Anne Frank died in the concentration camps of Bergen-Belsen, leaving behind, stashed in the rooms where she and her family hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam, one of the most valuable historic documents of our time: her diary.

But try telling this story in a Dutch classroom today. “Holocaust Classes? Bulls**t! Say the Students” declared a headline of Dutch newspaper AD. Indeed, large numbers of Dutch students, all of them Muslim, refuse to listen to lessons about the Shoah [the Holocaust], denouncing them as exaggerations and lies, and threatening their teachers. It is a capital example of the kind of exploitation one finds increasingly among radicalized and even non-radicalized Muslim youth in Europe: for even as many question the existence of the concentration camps, the efforts at genocide, they demonstrate in pro-ISIS and anti-Israel rallies chanting “All Jews to the gas” and “Hitler was right.”

A new video has gone up. “British Mandate Part 5: Step Ashore” is now available. You can see it directly via the following link:

http://zionism101.org/NewestVideoVimeo.aspx

Or log in at www.zionism101.org

“British Mandate Part 5: Step Ashore” describes how the Haganah focuses on illegal immigration in its fight against the British. England devotes vast resources to stopping Jewish immigration to Palestine, and is largely successful, but suffers a disaster in terms of world public opinion.

HERBERT LONDON IS PRESIDENT OF THE LONDON CENTER FOR POLICY RESEARCH

The champagne bottles in the White House remain unopened. Despite the vigorous efforts of the Obama team to unseat Netanyahu in the recent Israeli elections, he prevailed. President Obama made clear his vitriolic sentiments towards Bibi Netanyahu are undiminished.

In a stunning rebuke of a foreign head of state, Obama dispatched his chief spokesman to criticize Netanyahu’s campaign strategy, while anonymous administration officials hinted the U.S. could withdraw support for Israel at the United Nations. In an act of gratuitous pettiness, the president delayed the ritual call of congratulations.

President Obama contends that the rhetoric during the course of the campaign was deeply divisive, marginalizing Arab-Israeli citizens. The president neglected to mention the fact that his aides tried to encourage Arab voters even through the Arab party endorses Hamas, an avowed enemy of Israel. And this is the action and sentiment of a presumptive ally. “With friends like that… .”

The deadline for the Iranian nuclear negotiations is almost at hand, and the proposed deal appears to be even worse than expected. Number of centrifuges, decommissioning of Fordow, previous work on military applications — the Obama administration’s negotiators have backed down on issue after issue. The one thing that seems to be certain is that sanctions will be removed, sooner rather than later.

President Obama has said that he would rather see no deal than a bad deal, but the behavior of his negotiators is making a liar out of him. In fact, an Iranian press aide who defected to the West while covering the talks in Switzerland said that “the US negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal.”

A good deal makes the Middle East a safer place. A bad one makes matters worse. Here are some issues to keep in mind if nuclear talks lead to a provisional agreement.

I’m in Berlin, not Lausanne, and I haven’t spoken to anyone associated with the Iran nuclear negotiations in more than a week. Though there is a lot of good journalism being produced out of the talks, it is still difficult to discern what is actually happening at this moment. Those predisposed to believe that these negotiations will bring about a non-violent solution to the Iranian challenge, and also quite possibly encourage the Iranians to be more moderate in their approach to their neighbors, seem somewhat optimistic that the West will make the necessary compromises to win Iranian approval. Those who believe that the West is about to capitulate to Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, and set him on a path to the nuclear threshold seem to be praying that Iranian shortsightedness, or dumb luck on the part of the West, subvert these talks.

On Tuesday I spent some time with the reelected prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. I think he was happy to take a short break from his Herculean labors of putting together a government and dealing with controversies galore. So we engaged in some small talk and exchanged compliments and stories about our parents. I particularly enjoyed his fascinating account of his father’s work with the great Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the last year of Jabotinsky’s life, and his father’s subsequent efforts to rally support in the United States during World War II for European Jewry and for the creation of the state of Israel. His failure on the first front and his success in the second is a useful reminder of the extent to which, in politics, tragedy and triumph are not alternatives but cousins.

Speaking of triumphs, I did of course congratulate the prime minister on his reelection victory. But he had no interest in dwelling on that, and, indeed, his manner was in no way triumphalist or even exuberant. The prime minister was sober, and he was alarmed.