RUTHFULLY YOURS

Michael Hayden led the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009 and the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005. Olli Heinonen is a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ray Takeyh is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As negotiations between Iran and the great powers press forward, Secretary of State John F. Kerry seems to have settled on this defense of any agreement: The terms will leave Iran at least a year away from obtaining a nuclear bomb, thus giving the world plenty of time to react to infractions. The argument is meant to reassure, particularly when a sizable enrichment capacity and a sunset clause appear to have already been conceded. A careful assessment, however, reveals that a one-year breakout time may not be sufficient to detect and reverse Iranian violations.

E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) is the phrase on the Great Seal of the United States. It was adopted (appropriately), by Congress in 1782 as the fledgling nation’s de facto motto. It held that position until 1956 when Congress enacted a law that designated “In God We Trust” to be the official motto for the U.S.

While we are a God-trusting people, in my opinion E Pluribus Unum more accurately reflects our citizens. We are a nation of immigrants – a pluralistic country – a people that have arrived from all over the world. In 1664, when the British acquired Manhattan from the Dutch, there were 18 languages spoken on the Island. In 1776, when colonists first met in Philadelphia, there were over 40 languages spoken in Pennsylvania. The Founders, all of whom spoke English, avoided any reference to language in the Constitution. It was only in 1906 that English-speaking ability became a requirement for naturalization. (It still is, unless one gets an exemption or waiver.) Nevertheless, immigrants continue to arrive. At the Julian Curtis Magnet School in Greenwich, which four of my grandchildren either attend or have attended, over 50 languages are spoken. More than 200 languages are spoken in New York City today, and half the households in the City speak a language other than English. Collectively we are a polyglot nation.

There can be no free society without trust. ‘Can I trust what the president says? That’s a yes-or-no question.” So inquired U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in response to having been lied to by the Obama administration. The administration wants to use a presidential decree to enact an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants; half of the states have rallied behind Texas in arguing that this is unconstitutional, that the president is arrogating to himself a legislative power that is properly Congress’s. Lawyers for the Justice Department, led by Kathleen Hartnett, assured the court that no action on DAPA — Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents — would be taken until Judge Hanen had made a ruling on whether to issue an injunction against it. “Like an idiot, I believed that,” the judge says. The Obama administration, being what it is, ignored its promise to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas and began handing out reprieves as fast as it could, issuing more than 100,000 of them.
When the annoyed judge demanded to know why the Department of Justice had lied to a federal court, Hartnett argued that the reprieves were being handed out under a different set of guidelines. The judge was not buying it. Among other things, the administration is offering three-year grants of immunity, which are not authorized by the earlier authority under which it purports to be operating. It is easy to understand why the administration is in a hurry to sign up as many people for its illegal amnesty as it can: The more beneficiaries there are, the more difficult it becomes to revoke the amnesty, even when it is confirmed as being illegal and unconstitutional. Judge Hanen already has sided with the states on a substantial issue, handing down that injunction he had been considering. That Barack Obama and those he holds near have a funny way with the truth is not news. The president famously claimed in a speech in 2007 that the great civil-rights march in Selma, Ala., led to his conception: “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge.

Is President Obama reassessing America’s stance toward Israel because of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s congressional address and campaign statements? Or is Obama simply using Netanyahu’s actions as pretexts to undercut an American-Israeli alliance that he has never truly supported to begin with? NR’s editors suggest that Obama has largely “manufactured” the current crisis in the special relationship between America and Israel. John Podhoretz argues that Obama is twisting Netanyahu’s words to create a wedge between liberal American Jews and Israel: “a wedge to give him space to make a major policy pivot from the special relationship—one for which he has hungered since he came into office.”

The man who leapt to congratulate election winners such as Vladimir Putin has had a markedly different attitude toward Israel’s newly elected leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. After delaying a congratulatory phone call this past week, Obama then used the call to lecture Netanyahu and threaten a change in U.S.-Israel relations. First, the lecture. The New York Times reported yesterday that Obama gave a strongly worded lecture [to] Mr. Netanyahu about an Election Day Facebook posting in which the Israeli leader warned that Arab voters were going to the polls “in droves,” an assertion widely interpreted as an attempt to suppress the Arab vote. “We indicated that that kind of rhetoric was contrary to what is the best of Israel’s traditions — that although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly,” Mr. Obama said. “If that is lost, then I think that not only does it give ammunition to folks who don’t believe in a Jewish state, but it also, I think, starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country.”

How anti-Semitic is Germany? The Central Council of Jews is warning members of the community against wearing traditional head coverings. It is a precaution that 26-year-old Mark Krasnov has been taking for some time.

Before Mark Krasnov leaves his Berlin home, he always asks himself: Should I play it safe or should I wear the kippah? “I don’t want to provoke anyone or for people to get any silly ideas,” says the 26-year-old Jewish man. The result is that he hardly every wears the headgear when he goes out. He feels it’s too risky.

The question of Jewish safety in Germany became the subject of public debate on Thursday after Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, wondered in a radio interview whether it “really made sense” in “problem neighborhoods with large Muslim populations to make oneself recognizable as a Jew by wearing a kippah?” He suggested that in “might be better to choose a different head covering” in such instances.

The one area Germany has been particularly docile in is building a military presence in Europe and beyond. Although Germany’s army, the Bundeswehr, intervened in 1995 in the former Yugoslavia as part of a humanitarian mission, it has been reluctant to send its army elsewhere. Now, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told the Welt Am Sunntag newspaper on Sunday (March 8, 2015) that forming an EU army would be one of the best ways for the bloc to defend its values, as well as its borders. Juncker posited that, “An army like this would help us better coordinate our foreign and defense policies, and to collectively take on Europe’s responsibilities in the world.” He added, “Europe’s image has suffered dramatically and also in terms of foreign policy, we don’t seem to be taken entirely seriously.” Britain and France reject the idea of an EU army, fearing it will jeopardize NATO. Germany though, favors it, and supports the idea. As NATO ties are weakening and a volatile and aggressive Russia looms large upon Europe, Germany is seeking a new national and regional defense framework, and an EU army appears to be its answer.

Racist students in Oklahoma are expelled — but what about those who attack Jewish students?

The University of Oklahoma cut all ties with the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity chapter on campus after a video surfaced in which fraternity members were chanting a racist song on Monday, March 9th.

A statement from SAE’s national headquarters apologized for the “unacceptable and racist behavior.” The University of Oklahoma’s SAE chapter closed, all members have been suspended (including those not in the video), and those recognized in the video have been expelled. I applaud University of Oklahoma President David Boren’s message calling students involved in the incident, “disgraceful.”

Last month sophomore Rachel Beyda applied to and stood before UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Associate Council (USAC) to become a member of its Judicial Board. She was questioned for a reported 40 minutes about anything but her qualifications for the position. Questions about Beyda’s religion were posed such as, “given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community,” Fabienne Roth, a member of the Undergraduate Students Association Council, asked, “how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remark about the dangers of a Palestinian state has sent advocates of Palestinian statehood into a rage so hysterical that you would think he had questioned somebody’s sacred religious beliefs.

On second thought, maybe he did. The Palestinian statehood crowd has become so inflexible and doctrinaire, and so oblivious to the changing realities of the Middle East, that their political positions are starting to resemble a set-in-stone religious faith.

Here’s what the prime minister said: “Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving a base for attacks to the radical Islam against Israel. This is the true reality that was created here in the last few years.”

His point was simple and straightforward. His logic was impeccable. The response of critics has been exactly the opposite.

Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party got its best numbers not in Jerusalem, where it only won a quarter of the vote, or Sderot, the city under siege where it still got less than half, or Maaleh Adumim, a city of some 40,000 known as a “settlement” because it is located in ’67 Israel where it also took less than half.

Its best numbers appear to have come from Arab-al-Naim, a Bedouin settlement, where it scored three-quarters of the vote.

The residents were uninterested in any of the accusations of racism being aimed at Netanyahu by the media. Instead they were interested in housing. As one resident put it, “I used to sleep in a cave with my goats. Now I ask my daughter what wallpaper she wants in her room.”

Netanyahu’s election comment about Arabs being bused in to vote has been seized on as a useful excuse to explain how the media’s poll numbers that showed Netanyahu losing align with the actual results by claiming that a rash of racist Israelis rushed to vote. But that fails to explain why the exit polls were still badly wrong. A more realistic explanation is that the media’s polling was biased against Netanyahu. But it’s easier for the media to accuse Netanyahu of racism than admit to its own biases.