Obama vs. Israel

By Alan Caruba

Is Obama a Muslim? Does Obama hate Israel? Will Israel be attacked again? Will Iran nuke Israel? Has Maghreb and Middle Eastern turmoil flummoxed the White House? Why did Obama bow to Saudi Arabia’s king? Questions, questions, questions?

Watching President Barack Hussein Obama try to pick winners and losers in the Middle East would be amusing if it were not so deadly serious. Not a word about Syria’s slaughter of its protestors. A demand that Libya’s Gadhafi step aside and a quick retreat behind NATO’s skirts. Throwing Egypt’s Mubarack under the bus when saying nothing would have sufficed. And then there was the infamous and inauspicious start to his presidency with the “World Apology Tour” that included a stop in Cairo.

A May 11th Reuters news article published in the Jerusalem Post was titled “Obama may preempt PM’s speech to U.S. Congress.” Benyamin Netanyahu, at the invitation of Speaker John Boehner, will address the Congress on May 24. If President Obama delivers a speech about “political change in the Middle East and North Africa” prior to the PM, it will be impossible to deny that it is a deliberate effort to rebut in advance anything Netanyahu says.

Israel just celebrated the 63rd anniversary of its founding. Successive American administrations have struggled and failed to secure any peace between it and its sworn enemies. The reason is simple and obvious. Only Egypt and Jordan negotiated peace treaties with Israel and then only after having been decisively defeated in war.

Neither the Palestinian Authority, nor Hamas wants peace, nor does Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy group based in Lebanon. Not all the handshakes, Oslo Accords, and other diplomatic dances will change this.

President Obama’s special envoy, George Mitchell, whose mission it was to fashion a peace between Israel and the Palestinians just rendered his resignation. He could have saved himself the bother by not even taking the job.

The Israelis have given up territory and made countless concessions to the Palestinians without any reciprocity. Now the Palestinians are counting on the United Nations to unilaterally declare them a sovereign state. When not killing Israelis, they kill each other.

The United Nations has a long, ugly record of hostility, passing endless resolutions condemning Israel while maintaining the Palestinians as the world’s oldest “refugee” group to the tune of millions via the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The European Union whose World War II member nations allowed their Jews to be frog-walked to Nazi concentration and death camps has also demonstrated its hostility.

America, to its credit, has always been Israel’s one true friend. During the campaign, Obama even visited the Wailing Wall to demonstrate his solidarity. Once elected, however, and to the astonishment of voters the new Obama administration was reluctant to even say that militant Islam was the enemy or to even use the word “terrorism.” It was renamed “overseas contingency operations”!

Call me a cynic but I believe that the decision to kill Osama bin Laden was not taken until the 2012 elections became a priority. Why? Because three terrorist attacks, including the Fort Hood murders, had previously been swept under the rug by the Obama administration. Moreover, the Obama Justice Department continues to threaten CIA agents with jail for the aggressive interrogation techniques that led to finding bin laden.

The Obama administration’s hostility to Israel and the rush to preempt the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech is a reflection the 180 degree reversal of all previous administration’s relations with Israel. The president’s national security advisor, John Brennan, has referred to Jerusalem as “Al Quds”, the Arabic name for the ancient and modern capital of Israel and the State Department continues to send funds to Hamas.

In a speech delivered in March 2010, Netanyahu said, “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem three thousand years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capitol.”

The Muslim “tilt” of the Osama administration would be obvious to a blind man. At one point the U.S. Navy was instructed to call the Persian Gulf the “Arabian Gulf.” Who can forget the President’s weak response to a proposal to build a mosque within a short distance from New York’s Ground Zero, the site of 9/11?

New voices out of Egypt are calling for the abrogation of its peace treaty with Israel. Hezbollah has been removing its cache of long-range rockets (courtesy of Iran) from Syria as that regime faces opposition. Hamas, designated a terrorist organization worldwide, has joined hands with the PLO, negating any possibility for peace with Israel.

It is bad enough when various nations openly declare their hostility to Israel, but it is very dangerous when the current regime in Washington demonstrates its hostility in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

President Harry Truman recognized Israel when it declared its sovereignty on May 14, 1948. At the time he said, “I have faith in Israel and believe it has a glorious future, not just as a sovereign nation, but as the embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.”

Israel and Americans who support it must wait for the November 2012 elections before the threat the Obama administration represents can be removed.

Israel’s enemies may not be willing to wait, seeing the present regime and time as the best and possibly the last opportunity to make good on their threat to “wipe it from the map.”

© Alan Caruba, 2011

From Hiroshima to Iran

By Alan Caruba

These days it is fashionable to decry the use of not one, but the two atomic bombs that were used to convince the emperor of Japan and his warlords that the United States would destroy its cities if forced to invade. Within days World War Two was over.

America, since December 7, 1941, when it was the victim of a Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, had been fighting in the Pacific theatre as well as in the European one. There was no doubt that, just as Germany had been reduced to rubble to achieve victory, so too would Japan if needed. Expectations of American casualties if an invasion was required were huge.

Long before September 11, 2001, war had been declared on America by Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of al Qaeda. The destruction of the Twin Towers shocked Americans. A decade later, however, they were debating whether Muslims have “a right” to build a mosque within a short walk of Ground Zero. That’s blindingly stupid.

Short memories can lead to big defeats. It is worth reminding Americans that our troops did not lose in Iraq. We went there to depose a psychopathic despot who killed his own people with impunity. We went there to see whether democracy could take root in a region where it never had. (Only a secular Turkey was the exception; its military kept the Islamists at bay, but that too is changing.)

In the midst of the turmoil that has taken much of the Middle East and northern Africa, along with the rest of the world, by surprise, it is worth noting that the only thing keeping Israel from being attacked and utterly destroyed and that is its nuclear arsenal.

A people who lost six million of their families, their brethren, whose motto became “Never again”, will not to fail to use them to defeat what has been grandly called “an existential threat.” There’s nothing existential about it.

The U.S. has developed a sophisticated arsenal of weapons in the years since 1945 and has become the world’s policeman, fighting a Cold War with occasional hot outbreaks in Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere. We have tolerated a Communist Cuba just off the border of Florida. We have watched Venezuela go Communist.

We have not used our nuclear arsenal and we presently have a President who wants desperately to reduce it in order to appease the Russians who are not our friends.

I have no doubt that Israel will use its nuclear weapons and I can think of no reason why they should not.

It is the barbaric leadership of Iran that is the enemy, not its people. Israel understands that. Thus, attacks would likely target Iran's nuclear and military facilities, not its cities.

Throughout its sixty-two years, Israel been repeatedly attacked by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Despite a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, both nations find themselves challenged by a largely Islamist movement. Israel watches and waits.

As the first Iranian warships recently passed through the Suez Canal the Iranian puppets, Hamas, celebrated by firing two long-range Iranian-made Grad missiles rockets at Beersheba and Netivot from Gaza . It is a signal of what is to come

Israel, a democracy whose population includes over a million Arabs, has thrived. All around Israel the threat to its existence has continued. In this decade, it has required Israeli military operations against Lebanon’s  Hezbollah and, in Gaza, against Hamas. Absolutely nothing Israel has done to secure peace has been successful and yet it is constantly importuned to do more.

Only the fact that it has nuclear weapons and a trained, dedicated defense force has kept its enemies at bay. However, as the Iranians creep toward nuclear parity, it will demand a Hiroshima to thwart another Holocaust.

The Second World War was one of unimaginable carnage, but the allies were able to rebuild and even our former enemy, Germany, was converted to an integral power in Europe. The American occupation of Japan left it a truly democratic nation and an ally. A South Korea under the protection of America is an economic dynamo. We have embassies in Vietnam.

There are the lessons of history that entire new generations of Americans need to learn and need to understand.

The war to protect, restore, and project Western values was worth fighting. A war against an Iran that has declared itself an enemy is one that Israel will have to fight. Just as in 1945, nuclear weapons will restore clarity and peace.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

The Lebanese Tinderbox

By Alan Caruba

Readers of the Old Testament know that Lebanon is mentioned in Deuteronomy, Judges and Joshua, Chronicles and Kings, in the Psalms, and the erotic poetry of the Song of Solomon.

Today’s Lebanon was one of several new nations that followed World War One when the Versailles Treaty divided up the Middle East, re-creating Lebanon by splicing it from Syria, while also creating Trans-Jordan for the Hashemite tribe, Iraq, and making Palestine a British mandate to administer. In 1948, Israel declared its independence and sovereignty.

A French colony until it was granted independence in 1943, Lebanon’s political system was created to make sure its Christians, Druze, Maronites and Muslims all had a place at the governing table. For decades it was known as the Paris of the Mediterranean, a place where multiculturalism actually worked.

That ended in 1975 when Palestinians, many of whom had been driven out of Jordan after attempting to overthrow the king, fled into Lebanon, and over time began to demand a larger role in the political life of the nation. A civil war that lasted fifteen years until 1990 ensued. It enabled Syria to insert its troops in Lebanon in the guise of peacekeeping.

Hezbollah, a Palestinian group and an Iranian proxy has been supplied with weapons for years. In July 2006, Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, setting off a 34-day conflict with Israel, despite the fact that Israel had previously withdrawn its troops from southern Lebanon in May 2000. That action led the United Nations Security Council to call for a withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2004.

The assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and twenty others in February 2005, widely believed to be by agents of Hezbollah acting for Iran and Syria, led to massive demonstrations in Beirut against the Syrian presence. The remainder of its military force was withdrawn in April 2005.

Hezbollah has been so fearful of the outcome of a current UN investigation into the Hariri assassination that it recently pulled out of the Lebanese government. Having been heavily rearmed since the 2006 conflict with Israel, Lebanon could be used to create a diversion from the expected verdict that it came to power via this murderous route.

All this is related in order to provide a brief insight into the way Lebanon has been used as a pawn of other nations in the region and prepared as a platform for Iran’s long stated intention to “wipe Israel from the map.” Israel, caught between Lebanon to the north and Gaza to the south where Hamas is also an Iranian proxy, will once again face another war.

Lebanon has its own small army, supported by French UNIFIL peacekeeping troops. The latter has been sporadically attacked in Hezbollah-controlled towns. They are there presumably to keep the lid on Hezbollah. The UN, however, will run when the first shot is fired.

The situation in Lebanon is now extremely volatile given the withdrawal of Saudi Arabia from efforts to mediate its political crisis. Observers believe that Hezbollah has gained control of Lebanon without firing a shot.

All this is happening as the Obama administration is about to show its true hand in the United Nations. If it fails to veto a Palestinian-Arab Security Council motion to condemn Israel for its settlement policy in the West Bank and Jerusalem, Obama will become the first U.S. President to let an anti-Israel motion stand.

Attention is understandably focused on Egypt, but what happens in Lebanon could have an explosive impact on peace in the region. Much depends on the position the U.S. takes in the U.N.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Waiting and Watching Egypt

By Alan Caruba

Today we watch events unfold in far off places often in real time. What we lack, however, is context. Most Americans and, I suspect, others in Western nations are frequently at a loss when it comes to knowing anything about the culture and history, past and recent, of nations in the Middle East, Africa, or Asia.

What we do know about the Middle East is that, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran along with the rise of al Qaeda and other jihadist organizations, things have not gone well for American and Western interests.

How different everything might have been if U.S. troops had occupied Tehran in 1979 and demanded the return of our diplomats after they had been taken hostage.

After World War One, what was once the Ottoman Empire that ruled the Middle East and areas of the Maghreb in northern Africa, the French and the British got out their maps at the Versailles conference to literally draw new lines on it and create new nations that were, in fact, colonies. They included Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and a strip of territory called the Palestinian mandate. The chief prize at stake was oil.

After World War Two was concluded many of the former British and French colonies, including India, and much of Africa declared their independence. The Saudi Royal family had already thrown in its lot with America. In Egypt, the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, was jointly owned by the British and French. The British called the shots there through its royal family.

The Egyptian defeat in the 1948 war in response to the establishment of Israel stirred discontent among its military leadership. Gamal Abed Al Nasser ultimately emerged as Egypt’s leader after a July 1952 bloodless coup against King Farouk and the royal family. In 1956 Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal.

Here’s what it gets very instructive. In 1956 the British and French, with Israeli involvement, sent troops to seize the Suez Canal. That operation was quashed by President Dwight Eisenhower who made it known that the United States would not support it. The era of colonization was over.

What had been occurring, however, was an era of pent-up anger throughout the Middle East focused on the establishment of Israel and resentment of the former colonial powers. The British had earlier installed a royal family in Iraq. A new component was opposition to the dictators like Hussein who emerged to run Iraq. Another example is the fact that first the British and then the Americans had controlled Iran’s oil through its royal family. Other royal families continue to control mideast oil.

Ironically, it took George W. Bush to rid Iraq of three decades of despotic rule by Saddam Hussein. However, this has to be balanced against the fact that the U.S. has also supported the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. It was, however, Egypt, as well as Jordan, who made peace with Israel.

Arab military defeats gave way to support for the so-called Palestinians as pawns in the war against Israel. The main support of the Palestinian "refugees" is the United Nations, sixty-three years after 1948 and subsequent wars to destroy Israel. Iran has funded two Palestinian terrorist organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas.

At the heart of the turmoil in the Middle East is a movement to restore Islam to its former glory when it literally knocked on the doors of Europe. The jihadists such as Osama bin Laden dream of a worldwide Islamic caliphate. As in the early spread of Islam, it would be achieved through war, but the tactic employed would be terrorism and the fact of Islam’s expanding population worldwide.

An irony of the Islamist movement is its opposition to the monarchies ruling Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, all of whom have proven to be good allies to the United States at the same time they have funded the spread of Islam. In Egypt, under Mubarak, the jihadists known as the Muslim Brotherhood were ruthlessly suppressed. The Saudis actually exiled bin Laden.

What the world has witnessed has proven to be very bad news for the West. The 1979 Iranian revolution has given us Mamoud Ahmadinejad and a regime plotting through proxies to control Lebanon via Hezbollah and Gaza via Hamas, while it plots to control Iraq and eyes the Gulf States as well. Its closest ally these days is Syria. It has long sought to become a nuclear power. Its proclaimed goal is to destroy Israel.

Democracy has not turned out to be much help in the Middle East. Rigged elections in Egypt kept Mubarak in power for three decades. Saddam Hussein used terror and the Baath Party to achieve and hold on to power. Elections were rigged in Afghanistan. Pakistan has been mainly ruled by its military.

Lebanon was a democracy and now its prime minister comes from the ranks of Hezbollah. Turkey has had a long run of real democracy, but only because its military ensured that Islamists did not take over.

Americans have a lot at stake and, of growing concern to many, a President, Barack Hussein Obama, whose first television interview was with Al Arabia, who bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, and whose first global lengthy outing was a tour of the Middle East to demonstrate how friendly he was to their cause.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Israel Holds Its Breath

By Alan Caruba

After more than three thousand years of varying calamities, Jews have perfected survival against the odds. There is a joke they tell about “Jewish Zen”:

“Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.”

Right now, Israel and those who support the Jewish State are holding their breath, watching events in Egypt. What is happening is not inconsequential, given that Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979 after a series of wars in which it had been soundly defeated.

When the flamboyant Gamal Abed Al Nasser died, Anwar al-Sadat became Egypt’s president and, together with Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, they turned a corner toward peace. The treaty was greeted with angry demonstrations throughout the Arab world. Sadat, the peacemaker, was assassinated by Muslim zealots.

At that point Hosni Mubarak became Egypt’s president and he has held the position for three decades as the head of what is essentially a one party system. There have been a half dozen assassination attempts on his life. He is 83 years old. Like most Arab nations and other third world nations, he ran an authoritarian regime.

The peace deal included the return of the Sinai desert to Egypt by Israel. Under former Prime Minister Arial Sharon, Israelis who had lived in the Gaza strip were forced to leave and it was turned over to the Palestine Authority in a “land-for-peace” swap. The peaceloving Palestinians turned Gaza into a launch site for thousands of rockets into Israel.

Today, Egypt shares a border with Gaza which features an unknown number of tunnels used to smuggle in weapons and goods. Gaza is run by Hamas, a terrorist Palestinian organization that drove the PA out at gunpoint.

So the fate of Egypt is of importance to Israel. To Israel’s north, another terrorist group, Hezbollah, has taken over the government of Lebanon without firing a shot. Christians, Druze and Marists, along with others in Lebanon have once again lost control over their nation, formerly peacefully governed by a constitutional coalition of Christians and Muslims.

None of this bodes well for Israel as it looks around at Middle Eastern and northern African nations in which governments are being overthrown for being noxious oppressors.

Of great importance to Israel at this time is the question of what action the United States will or will not take regarding the current turmoil. Since the Egyptian uprising appears to be a genuine people’s rebellion, the question is who ends up with the reins of power there? My bet is on the military.

Meanwhile, however, yet another United Nations resolution aimed at Israel like a guided missile is making its way through the Security Council and, at this point, only the U.S. can shoot it down with a veto.

The UN resolution declares that any construction in the West Bank by Israel is illegal, even if it is in its capitol, Jerusalem.

No American administration has been able to broker peace between Israel and the so-called Palestinians, the oldest existing group of “refugees” in the world.

Following the end of a failed war against the then new state of Israel, the Arab population that fled became the sole object and purpose of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). No other refugee group in the world enjoys this status.

There is a Palestinian problem because there is a United Nations problem.

The United Nations is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of its Middle Eastern and Islamic members.

What was to be a UN emergency response in May 1950, UNWRA has cost American taxpayers billions since then. Today, UNRWA continues to operate in both the Palestinian Authority-ruled West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza, taken from the PA in June 2007. As noted in a recent article by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, in 2007 UNRWA employed more than 29,000, all but 200 of whom were Palestinians. Its “facilities and personnel have been tied to numerous terrorist attacks on Israel.”

Sixty years of stalled and failed peace talks, as well as terror campaigns against Israel, have deligitimized Palestinian claims.

Following Israel’s operation Cast Lead in December 2008 to stop Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket attacks, the Obama administration promised $400 million for Gaza and $600 million for the West Bank.

Though not confirmed, the rumor-mill in Washington is saying that the Obama administration will not veto the latest in an endless succession of anti-Israel resolutions.

If true, President Obama would become the first U.S. President to not defend Israel’s sovereignty.

If true, it would signal to the entire Middle East and the world that America is abandoning the only true democracy in the region and its longtime ally.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 after World War Two. It has since become a cesspool of corruption and an international cancer determined to become a one-world government. The time is long overdue for the U.S. to stop funding it and, indeed, to withdraw from it.

If Obama does not veto the Security Council resolution, the U.S. will pay for that decision for decades to come. Israel will be in ever more certain peril.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Iranian Hostage-Taking is Old News and that's the Problem

By Alan Caruba

Am I the only one who thinks it is absolutely bizarre that America, Great Britain, and the rest of the world views the Islamic Republic of Iran’s history of hostage-taking as just another problem to be dealt with by diplomats?

Kidnapping is one of the worst crimes committed in any society, but the Iranians do it with impunity. The latest news concerns the release of Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans along with Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer, who we’re told strayed too close to the Iranian border while hiking. The two men are still being held.

Still unaccounted for is Robert Levinson, an American who disappeared in Iran in 2007. In the September 14 edition of The Wall Street Journal, his daughter had a letter published. “My father was in Kish Island, Iran, on private business when he disappeared without a trace on March 9, 2007.” She noted that Press TV, an Iranian media outlet reported that he was “in the hands of Iranian security forces.” Sarah Lawrence is planning her wedding and her letter pled with the government of Iran “to do everything possible to find my father and send him home to me, my mother, and my six brothers and sisters.”

American relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran were determined on November 4, 1979 when 66 of our diplomats and embassy personnel were taken hostage. They were held for 444 days until the hour that Ronald Reagan took the oath of office for the first time.

Name a nation other than North Korea that routinely takes foreigners hostage. There simply could not be any comity between nations if hostage-taking was the rule instead of the exception. The taking of U.S. diplomats in 1979 broke centuries of tradition in which even ancient cultures understood that diplomats are engaged in missions determining issues too important to permit them to be imprisoned or killed.

The expression, “Do not kill the messenger” comes from this tradition.

What does this tell us about the ayatollahs running Iran? It brands them as little more than common gangsters, blackmailers, and thugs.

It was not for nothing that former President George W. Bush included Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea in his “Axis of Evil.” Such bold, clear identification of criminal nations was refreshing at the time and remains so today.

It comes as no surprise that Iran’s Intelligence Minister, Heydar Moslehi, recently told reporters that the three U.S. hostages are spies even though no charges have been brought against them since last July. Instead, Moslehi and other Iranian officials have let it be known that that there are eleven Iranians in custody in the United States and other nations that they want released.

Last September, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly suggested that the three Americans could be released for Iranians currently held in Iraq, members of the Revolutionary Guards who were captured while posing as “diplomats.”
The United Nations Security Council Resolution 579 was adopted unanimously on December 18, 1985, in a meeting called by the United States. The Council expressed its deep concern at the prevalance in incidents of hostage-taking, primarily by Iran, knowing that this thuggish behavior has grave consequences for the international community and relations between states.

Except for the formalities, Iran has been at war with the United States since the day it took our diplomats hostage in 1979.

The UN Security Council resolution asked member states that were not party to the International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages to participate. The resolution identified hostage-taking as "manifestations of international terrorism."
Iran is the epicenter of international terrorism these days and has been for years. It is the sponsor of two internationally recognized terror organizations, Hezbollah and Hamas, and has had its hand covertly involved in countless acts of terror. It is widely believe that Iran is playing host to Osama bin Laden as it is known his family has been given sanctuary there.

And now Iran moves relentlessly toward acquiring nuclear weapons. There can be no good end to this scenario and it must be one that initiates the destruction of the leadership of Iran and its nuclear potential.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Israel's Next War Begins

By Alan Caruba

As this is being written, the news is about an Israeli effort to interdict a “humanitarian” flotilla of ships that refused to dock at its port of Ashdod to have its passengers and cargo checked. When Israeli troops boarded a Turkish ship in international waters on Sunday they were met with violent resistance that led to casualties.

The Israeli navy stopped six ships ferrying 700 people and 10,000 tons of supplies toward the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave.

I don’t know what the flotilla was delivering, but it is likely that among its passengers were Hamas terrorists and that there are weapons hidden among its cargo. That is why they refused orders to proceed to the Israeli port where tons of cargo routinely docks before making its way to Gaza.

The flotilla was a deliberate provocation. Naturally, much of the world will blame Israel.

Having been in a state of war since its founding, Israel routinely has interdicted shipments of weapons to the PLO and Hamas. One of the most notable was in January 2002 when the Karine-A, a Palestinian ship, was found to have more than fifty tons of Iranian weapons and explosives.

Largely unreported are the fierce battles Egyptian Special Forces are waging in central Sinai with Bedouin tribesman smuggling weapons and fighters into Gaza on behalf of al Qaeda. As always, the Middle East is an asylum for the insane who, when not trying to kill Israelis, stay busy killing one another.

I believe that war will come again soon and will originate in Lebanon. In the end, the decision will be Iran’s, not Syria’s, its sock puppet and stalking horse. Syria has reportedly provided the Lebanon-based Hezbollah an estimated 1,000 Iranian-made rockets and missiles, all aimed at Israel.

The last time the Israelis had to deal with Hezbollah aggression from Lebanon was in 2006. The conflict lasted 34 days. It is widely agreed that the Israeli Defense Force performed poorly and, not surprisingly, the most criticism came from the Israelis themselves.

Part of the problem at the time was an indecisive Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who has since been replaced by Benyamin Netanyahu. If “Bibi” gets any intelligence regarding a pending attack, he will not wait around for it to start. On word of the confrontation with the flotilla, he cancelled a June 1 meeting with President Obama and returned to Israel.

You may recall that in March Barack Obama accorded Netanyahu one of the nastiest receptions ever given an Israeli Prime Minister. Only the Dalai Lama fared worse, being ushered out the White House back door.

One might reasonably assume that the president is no fan of Jews after having spent twenty years in the Chicago pews of the Trinity United Church of Christ listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright say hateful things about them and about America.

Obama has many close ties with black nationalists and anti-Semites such as Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan. One of his longtime associates is Palestinian apologist Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University professor.

There is ample reason to believe another attack on Israel is likely. The Syrians have reportedly moved the number of their army units to the Israeli border and have been supplying arms to Hezbollah ever since the last war.

Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been saying ever more crazy things of late. He even lectured the United Nations on the coming of the Twelfth Imam, a Shiite spook whose return will require massive worldwide death and destruction. More recently Mahmoud got into a fight with the Russians over the proposed UN sanctions. Iran is running out of friends even if its oil is not.

The Israelis have been practicing war games that include long distance flights, the purpose of which may have something to do with dropping some very big bombs on places with Persian names.

While all this is going on, the United States is significantly building up its fighting strength in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf regions. Carrier Strike Group 10, led by the USS Harry S. Truman, pulled up anchor on May 21st and headed to the Middle East. That will put two carrier groups in the area. More vessels, including guided-missile cruisers and destroyers will be there as well.

No matter how it plays out, the Middle East is going to turn into a shooting gallery again. The Iranians, Syrians, and Palestinians in Hezbollah and Hamas are living testimony to why all those people demanding that Israel make peace with them are clueless or worse.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

War & Peace at the Car Wash

By Alan Caruba

I was waiting for the crew at my local car wash to finish drying my car when a young man approached and asked where he could get the US Army decal that I display on the rear window. “The Army gives them to people who have served, veterans, and I assume to active duty members as well,” I told him.

“You were in the Army?” he asked. Oh yes, a very long time ago before you were born, I replied, noticing a distinct accent. He was joined by another young man. “Did you fight in the Middle East?” No, I said, but there has never been an absence of wars for America. We have never been free to ignore the rest of the world even if we wanted to.

In a similar fashion, as much as Israel may yearn for peace, they have never been permitted to function as a normal nation. From the hour that Israeli sovereignty was proclaimed, the nation was attacked by its “neighbors” and has, for all intents and purposes, been on a war footing ever since.

The two young men talking with me said they were Palestinians. Both came to America to find peace.

I think that tells you everything you need to know about the reality of Israeli-Palestinian relations—--if one can call the one-sided determination of the Palestinian leadership to “drive the Israelis into the sea.” Or the Iranian pledge to “wipe Israel off the map.” Or the Hezbollah forces in Lebanon being re-armed by the Iranians for whom they are a proxy army against Israel.

In the course of our chat, they said they were both from Gaza and I was reminded that the Israelis, in their futile quest for peace, had forced out their own people from the Gaza strip and turned the area over to Fatah, also known as the Palestinian Liberation Authority.

What they got in return was an endless cascade of rockets from Gaza, not just for a few weeks, but for months and years. Meanwhile, in Gaza, Hamas forced Fatah to retreat to the West Bank where they could have the protection of the Israelis who continue to desperately look for anyone with whom to negotiate a real peace.

In January of last year, the Israelis initiated Operation Cast lead in which their military targeted the sources of the Gaza rockets and looked for Hamas leaders who cravenly hid in the midst the population. The rocketing has largely stopped since then, though ugly individual attacks on Israelis have continued.

The Israeli solution has been to build a very high wall between them and the Palestinians and to maintain tight control over who passes through it. To do otherwise would be to subject their people to suicide bombers and other killers.

“Would you accept peace with Israel?” I asked. I was greeted with broad smiles. Yes, Palestinians want peace I was told, but “Hamas will not permit it.”

So, there you are. It has nothing to do with Washington’s foreign policy with regard to Israel and it has everything to do with the bad intentions of those who continue to use the Palestinian people as pawns of resistance to any Western presence in what they regard as their sacred lands.

The Islamic jihad knows no boundaries, killing Jews, Christians, Hindus and even Muslims with abandon. It took President Obama a year to say out loud that the U.S. is at war with al Qaeda. It took three days to say anything about the Christmas bomber.

Israel was sacred to the Jews for two thousand years before there ever was an Islamic religion. It was sacred to Christians for a thousand years before Islam existed. Jerusalem is never mentioned even once in the Koran, but, for reasons known only to Israel’s “neighbors”, they cannot find any reason to make peace with them.

The two young Palestinians were very happy to be living and working in America. They treated me with the greatest of respect and with good will. That’s the way it should be.

Editor’s note: The photo that accompanies this post is of a young Israeli girl attending the wedding of a friend. Note the automatic rifle slung over her shoulder. Israelis, particularly members of their defense force, never go anywhere without them. Too bad that wasn't the case at Fort Hood.

Obama's War on America

By Alan Caruba

While the debate rages about the White House policy regarding conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, a very real war is being waged here in America…by President Obama and his appointees.

It was particularly noticeable to anyone paying attention that Obama has yet to have called the Fort Hood massacre an act of Islamic “terrorism” despite ample evidence that it was.

Within his administration, some very strange appointments are occurring, not the least of which is the presidential appointment of Arif Alikhan to a top job in Homeland Security. Alikhan is a Muslim and a former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor.

In his new job, Alikhan will be the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Policy Development. In his former job, he was in charge of public safety for the city and observers noted that he was responsible for derailing the LA Police Department’s plan to monitor activities and individuals within the Muslim community.

Vincent Gioia, a retired patent attorney, living in Palm Desert, California, first called this to public attention in late September on his blog. Gioia noted that Los Angeles is home to “numerous radical mosques” and where “some of the 9/11 hijackers had received support from local residents. “Alikhan is strongly anti-Israel; he has referred to the terrorist organization Hezbollah as a ‘liberation movement’” despite the fact that is on the U.S. official terrorist list.

If Alikhan was opposed to law enforcement authorities monitoring individuals, organizations, and local mosques in Los Angeles, one must assume that it will become the policy of the Homeland Security Department on a nationwide basis.

The failure of law enforcement and national security agencies to alert the military that the Fort Hood murderer was known or suspected of being a jihadist suggests that failures of this sort on a national basis will guarantee more 9/11s.

In late September, Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security Secretary swore into office Damascus-born Kareem Shora, the national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, to a position on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, a group of “national security experts that advises the Secretary. One can only imagine what kind of advice she will be receiving from someone heading up an organization whose purpose is to whitewash the continuing record of Islamic terrorist activities in America.

Samantha Power is a member of Obama’s National Security Council and is widely known for her anti-Israel views including the notion that everything the U.S. does in the Middle East reflects Israeli influence. Responsible for shaping national security policies, Power reportedly doesn’t believe Iran is developing nuclear weapons despite the fact that it is obvious to everyone that it is…and bragging about it. Presumably her advice to the president will favor America’s and Israel’s enemies.

What is apparent to anyone paying attention is that Obama has surrounded himself with the most radical advisors and members of the administration imaginable. It was bad enough that FDR’s and Truman’s administration had been thoroughly infiltrated by Soviet agents, but Obama’s is blatant about its choices.

There’s Chief Diversity Officer, Federal Communications Commission, Mark Lloyd, who formerly worked for George Soros, the billionaire who funds anti-America groups. Lloyd publicly praised Venezuelan Communist dictator, Hugo Chavez. He’s no fan of the First Amendment or of conservative radio and television news commentators.

Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, who has been oblivious to the failings of the UN. She is on the board of the UN Fund for UNICEP, an agency that has reportedly been “repeatedly caught giving aid to terrorists.” She is the epitome of see no evil, hear no evil.”

Another appointee with ties to George Soros is Rosa Brooks who used to work for a foundation funded by him. She has never seen a terrorist group that wasn’t the fault of America’s war on terrorism. No fan of the war in Iraq, one must assume this applies as well to Afghanistan. She is the Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy!

This is the pattern at this point, barely a year into the Obama administration, and it is confirmation that Obama is more involved with his war on America than any other enemies on his radar screen.

Israel in the Crosshairs

By Alan Caruba

There are few nations on Earth other than Israel with a greater claim to exist as a homeland for a specific people. Along with China and India, Israel reaches back thousands of years, predating both Christianity and Islam.

For some 3,500 years, Jews have lived in Israel. In good times and bad, Jews have always identified themselves with Israel even when, as a Diaspora, they spread for their survival to many other nations. The re-establishment of Israel on May 14, 1948 led to two immediate events. Within eleven minutes after the announcement, President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation. Within hours, the Arab League declared war.

With only six hundred thousand Jewish residents at the time, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq joined together to destroy Israel. They failed. They tried again in 1967. They failed. They tried in 1973, attacking on one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. They failed.

Following the 1967 war, eight Arab nations gathered in Khartoum and issued their “Three No’s.” No peace with Israel. No recognition of Israel. No negotiations with Israel. In time, Egypt would sign a peace treaty; though not abandon its animus. Jordan would make its accommodations. The others remained hostile.

To understand Israel’s situation, it is necessary to understand that (1) Jews had lived there since the days of Moses, (2) the early Zionist movement members that moved there purchased land on which to farm and live, (3) the land which was captured in successive wars had always been part of Israel, and (4) both the United Kingdom and the U.S., for their own reasons, have not been honest brokers, particularly so far as their demand that Israel negotiate with people who never had any intention to negotiate peace.

The Israelis did not steal their own land, nor are they illegitimate “occupiers” of their land regained as the result of having been attacked. What they gained in wars against them historically was always theirs and had been denied to them by the Arab nations that claimed them.

Israel has never known a day of true peace in just over sixty years of its modern existence. In his latest book, “The Late Great State of Israel”, Aaron Klein spells out why Israel is closer to destruction than anyone might imagine except for its implacable enemies.

I want Israel to exist and to thrive, but I find it unsurprising that a totally Muslim region, the Middle East and throughout the Maghreb, the Islamic northern nations of Africa, would see Israel through their xenophobic lens as in invasion by the West; by European Jews who began settling there in the early 1900s, by the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, by the host of Russian Jews granted permission to leave the former Soviet Union, and even the many Jews who felt compelled to flee Arab nations following Israel’s founding.

While Jews had always lived in Israel, the Arabs who lived there prior to its establishment identified themselves loosely as citizens of pre-World War One Syria. The land had known many conquerors, dating back to the Romans who renamed the nation Palestine in a vain effort to remove its Jewish history. Muslims fought many wars, including the Crusades, to extend and maintain their control over Jerusalem Their utter scorn and contempt for Israel and the Jews is found in the Koran and infuses Islam as does its core belief that all religions must bow down to Allah.

Christians know the fall of the Jewish state to present-day Muslim invaders would mark the end of any opportunity to visit the birthplace and ministry of Jesus and would be taken as a sign that Christianity was vulnerable wherever it is practiced. In many towns and cities of Israel where Christians had lived for centuries, they have been forced to flee before the hostility of Muslim “neighbors.”

Herein is the warning that Klein issues in his book. Those who would destroy Israel are not just external, they include (1) the Arab nations surrounding it and the so-called Palestinian “refugees” laying claim to it, (2) the United Nations that has supported the Palestinians since 1950 along with its endless resolutions singling out Israel as racists, and (3) even the largely unreported aid that the U.S. has given to Fatah, the alleged Palestinian Authority with whom Israel is supposed to negotiate peace.

Other than (4) Iran that has openly threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”, the latest threat is (5) the Obama administration that is demanding a two-state accommodation with the Palestinians that they have always refused to accept because their goal is Israel’s destruction.

To put the U.S. demands that Israel stop building settlements in the disputed West Bank and other areas, consider that, according to the World Almanac, Israel is comprised of 7,849 square miles. By comparison, New Jersey is 8,721 square miles. Imagine, then, if the federal government insisted that New Jersey cede Delaware all the area from Atlantic City to the Delaware border?

Internally, from its founding, Israel has been divided between its socialist and largely secular Jews, the men and women who took up Zionism as an answer to the bigotry Jews faced in Europe pre-dating the Holocaust, and the religious Jewish community who see Israel is the fulfillment of the Torah prophesy and as the center of world Judaism. This latter group has always felt the scorn of Israel’s secular Jewish government.

Without delving into the complexities of Israeli politics, Klein makes a strong case that Israelis in recent times have been ill-served by the secular Likud and former PM Ariel Sharon’s Kadima parties. The withdrawal from southern Lebanon and the 2006 short war led by Hezbollah shattered the image of Israel’s impregnable and powerful military capabilities.

Israel’s forced removal from Gaza of its longtime Jewish residents, its abandonment to the Palestinians, and the recent military action against Hamas simply demonstrates that the Palestinians have figured out a way to demoralize Israelis with constant rocket attacks. Giving Gaza to the Palestinians merely created a new staging area for attacks.

Klein documents how several U.S. administrations have provided weapons and financial aid (through the United Nations) to Fatah. Fatah and now Hamas have used both to kill Israelis and yet successive Israeli government has participated in this lethal charade.

For now I will take some small comfort that Benjamin Netanyahu is once again Israel’s Prime Minister, but unless Israel is prepared to assert its right to its ancient and re-conquered land;

Unless it destroys the Iranian nuclear facilities for an America too weak or unwilling to address this necessity;

Unless it refuses the wrongful demands to turn over Jerusalem, its holiest sites, and other Jewish cities to their control;

Israel’s future may disappear in a nuclear cloud. There has been one Holocaust in my lifetime. I do not want to witness another.

At stake is more than Israel’s right to exist. The failure to support and protect Israel puts the entire basis and future of Western civilization at risk.

Who Should Fear Israel?

By Alan Caruba

On Thursday Jews in Israel and around the world will celebrate Passover. It is devoted to the story of their escape from slavery in ancient Egypt.

It took three millennia for the Jews to reestablish Israel as their homeland and they have not enjoyed a day of true peace in sixty years. The world shuns the Israelis, but they have learned the true meaning of “Never again” and it is a lesson the world needs to learn as well.

In December 2008 Hamas felt the sting of retaliation for firing more than six thousand rockets into Israel from Gaza over a period of several years. Then, of course, they declared victory.

To the north, Hezbollah has brought ruin to Beirut and parts of Lebanon by taking on Israel in 2006. Though the Israelis did not perform up to their usual standard, they nonetheless inflicted enough damage to discourage further attacks since then. The exercise in Gaza was masterful, demonstrating they had learned some new tactics.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah have reason to fear Israel.

The Palestine Liberation Organization, also known as Fatah, is kept alive by the Israelis in order to have someone with whom to negotiate, but Fatah, headquartered on the West Bank, barely escaped alive from your typical internecine Arab warfare when Hamas kicked it out of Gaza.

Iran, long on fiery and provocative rhetoric will soon get a taste of what happens when you threaten Israel with nuclear annihilation.

When Syria tried to build some kind of nuclear facility, the Israelis made a parking lot out of the place in September 2007, but Iran’s ayatollahs and its annoying president, Mamoud Ahmadinejad, probably think Israel will not attack their nuclear facilities.

Iran should fear Israel.

The United States will not be consulted, primarily because it cannot be trusted not to tip off the Iranians or anyone else for that matter. The latest blather out of Foggy Bottom, otherwise known as the State Department, is the same old sad stuff about not building more settlements on the West Bank and working harder with Fatah for a two-state solution.

Well, it’s a new day in Israel and two men in particular are going to write some history together. One, of course, is the estimable Benjamin Netanyahu, the new prime minister, and the other is Avigdor Lieberman, the new foreign minister. These are two Jews of a generation that grew up during the many early wars that Israel had to fight for its very survival. They have a very different world view.

In taking his new office, Lieberman said, “The fact that we say the word ‘peace’ twenty times a day will not bring peace any closer.”

Lieberman had some advice for the free world. “The Westphalia order of states is dead, replaced by a modern system that includes states, semi-states, and irrational international players.” That is as neat a summation of the way things are as you will hear from any statesman.

As for the irrational players, one has little doubt he is referring to al Qaeda and Iran.

Almost always ignored in any comments directed at Israel are the herculean efforts it has made over decades to engage the Palestinians in an effort to achieve peace and a two-state solution of which the Oslo Accords are perhaps the best known.

Lieberman and Netanyahu are no fans of concessions. They saw what happened after Israel pulled out of South Lebanon and after the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. It did not bring peace. From Lieberman’s point of view, the only thing concessions have brought Israel is further isolation on the world stage and more death to Israelis.

Masterminding and leading that isolation has been the United Nations. We shall watch it in action during Durban II later in April. The first such conference was infamous for its anti-Semitism and the second is likely to be a repeat.

Of the entire world’s population, the Jews represent about 0.03 percent. Israel, a tiny spot on the map of the Middle East with some seven million Jews (and more than a million Muslim citizens as well) will do what it must to survive against enemies that deny the Holocaust, defile them daily with rank condemnation, and want them all dead.

When the Israelis are through ensuring their safety and the smoke clears, the world will pay attention. The most fundamental right of individuals and nations is self-defense.