Obama's security cabinet: anti-Semitic, anti-Israel

Clinton looks like a pro-Israel conservative when stacked up next to her team
Dec. 1, 2008

Prez-elect Obama just announced his cabinet picks a few hours ago - a slightly unnerving selection of candidates who make Hillary suddenly look like the darling of the right wing.

Approaches to the Middle East and the war on terror are broadly divided into two camps: Those who believe the Palestinian-Israeli issue is at the heart of all problems Middle Eastern vs. those who say militant Islam is the root of terrorism and causing uprisings, including the Palestinian intifadas.

Not only has Obama stacked the foreign affairs team with the former, most of them have confessed opposition to Israel and shown disdain to Jews and Christians who support Israel. I subscribe to the latter. Look at Mumbai: Terror with no connection to Palestine, albeit with the typical hatred of Jews, Israelis, and Westerners laced into it.

Sen. Hillary Clinton will be well received by Israelis as secretary of state. Israel had a swooning love affair with the Clinton administration and most Israelis wanted Hillary to win the elections this year.

“Sen. Clinton is a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish People and I am sure that – in her new position – she will; continue to advance the special Israel-US relationship," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.

But that's where the niceties end. Samantha Power, who called Clinton “a monster,” then resigned from the Obama campaign earlier this year is back, as a senior foreign policy advisor who will have to work with Clinton.

Let's deal with Samantha Powers first:

From the American Thinker: The problem for those who favor a strong US-Israel relationship is that Power seems obsessed with Israel, and in a negative way. Much like the authors of the Baker-Hamilton report, she believes resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to solving other problems in the Middle East. And it is clear that her approach to addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be for the US to behave in a more "even handed" fashion, which of course means withdrawing US support for Israel, and instead applying more pressure on Israel for concessions.

...Power also advocates that America send armed military forces, "a mammoth protection force" and an "external intervention", to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. This directly contradicts her criticism of the invasion and "occupation" of Iraq and her call for the removal of American forces from that nation. On the one hand, Power abhors American efforts to remake an Arab nation, but takes the contrary view when it comes to inserting American forces in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to impose a settlement. These troops, if sent, would be seen as occupiers and be sitting targets for Arab extremists. The colonial image of America and charges of imperial overstretch would echo throughout the Arab world.

If America sought to avoid being so tarnished -- which is presumably what Samantha Power would desire -- then the alternative would be for the United States to take a confrontational attitude toward Israel, so as to be seen as standing up for the Palestinians. Given her inclination to view Israel as guilty of war crimes she would probably look favorably on such an approach towards the Israelis and Palestinians.

Power's views on the problems caused by the US-Israel relationship also place her in the same camp as Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros (an influential supporter of Barack Obama's), who also oppose the so-called "Israel lobby" and reject the participation of American supporters of Israel, including Christians, in the foreign policy discussion. Power writes of her willingness to: "alienat[e] a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing...billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel's military, but actually investing in the state of Palestine."

She says more regardin Lebanon: "Israeli forces refused to comply with the spirit of international demands to withdraw and the major powers on the Security Council were not prepared to deal with the gnarly issues that had sparked the Israelis invasion in the first place: dispossessed Palestinians and Israeli insecurity".

The "spirit of international demands" to withdraw? Aside from wondering what that means and the enforceability of such a spirit, how about that phrase "dispossessed Palestinians and Israeli insecurity"? The dispossessed Palestinians had left Palestine mostly at the behest of calls by their Arab brethren to step out of the way as armed forces invaded Israel upon its founding. They and their descendants were denied rights by Lebanon and were unable to assimilate -- unlike the 600,000 Jews who were stripped of their possessions in Arab lands and whom Israel welcomed. The term "Israeli insecurity" makes it seem as if the Israelis were suffering from an emotional or psychological condition. In fact, it was not insecurity, per se, that the Israelis suffered from. It was Palestinian terrorism that the Lebanese government refused to prevent.

She quotes the subject of her book, about Sergio Vieira de Mello, a Brazilian diplomat with the United Nations who spent years tackling various humanitarian crises, until he was killed in Iraq in 2003, calling the Israelis "bastards."

Retired Marine Gen. James Jones as White House national security adviser

From The New Republic by Eli Lake: Jones, the retired commandant of the Marine Corps, has significant experience in the Middle East. Last November, Condoleezza Rice appointed him as her special envoy for Middle East security, with a particular emphasis on working with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinian security services. Last August, he drafted a report on security in the Palestinian territories that is said to have been highly critical of Israel's policies in the territories and its attitude toward the Palestinian Authority's security services. The White House and State Department opted not to publish the report.

In August, Israel's leading newspaper, Ha'aretz, reported that the draft report challenged Israel's conception of its security interests in the West Bank as being overly broad, and that the IDF in particular was too dismissive of the Palestinian security services. The newspaper quoted one IDF officer as saying he expected the report would be "very harsh, and make Israel look very bad." Steve Rosen, the former director of foreign policy for AIPAC who was dismissed from his post after the federal government charged him and a colleague with leaking classified information to the press and a foreign official, told me, "In my experience, when you take a 'deep dive' into security issues in the territories, you very quickly come to tradeoffs between Israeli security and Palestinian rights. Successful counter-terror preventive and pre-emptive measures require highly intrusive intelligence collection that is onerous for the population of the area under surveillance. ... A third party tries to balance Israeli security and Palestinian rights with a different valence than an Israeli security agency."

In his interview with Inside the Pentagon, Jones said that the Palestinians should be granted increasing degrees of local sovereignty over the West Bank until an independent state is born--with an emphasis on giving the Palestinians experience with governance. On Sunday, Ha'aretz reported that Jones favors dispatching a NATO force to keep the peace in the interim. That's a plan that the Israeli government would likely fiercely resist on the grounds that the Jewish state's defense doctrine has always spurned the presence of foreign troops on its territory and that it could be a reprise of the disasters of the U.N. mission to Lebanon.

EU wants Israel to reopen Arafat's Orient House

Building was synonymous with Palestinian rule in E. Jerusalem
Dec. 1, 2008

Ha'aretz reports that Israeli officials are concerned over European Union plans for an Israeli-Palestinian deal in 2009, which includes reopening Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem, including Orient House, which formerly served as the Palestinian Authority's headquarters in the city.

The Israeli newspaper obtained a copy of the document calling on the international community to closely monitor implementation of the first stage of the road map peace plan, which requires the usual: Israel must freeze settlement construction and remove West Bank roadblocks, and the PA must fight terror. But here's where it goes a step further:

"A key part of building the Palestinian state involves resolving the status of Jerusalem, as the future capital of two states," it declares. Therefore, "the EU will work actively towards the re-opening of the Palestinian institutions, including the Orient House."

The Orient House is symbolic of Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem. It was closed in August 2001 following a deadly terror attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria.

US equipping Lebanese army

Dec. 1. 2008

But why? The United States is supplying military equipment to the Lebanese army despite its largely Shiite make up and sympathy to terrorist group Hizballah, also Shiite. (HT to Israel Matzav for noting this issue).

Several months ago, I spoke with Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliyah, and expert on Lebanon. He said, as it stands, Lebanon is effectively a Hizballah state. Ergo, arms in the hands of the Lebanese army stand a good chance of making their way to Hizballah.

Since the Second Lebanon War, the terrorist group has been rebuilding its military forces plus shoring up its political positioning in Beirut. On July 11, Lebanon’s new government was formalized with Hizballah and its allies gaining effective veto power and 11 seats. Hizballah is now the main opposition force.

“This achievement represents success for Hizbollah's campaign of civil disobedience over the last 18 months,” Spyer wrote in an editorial. “Veto power will enable Hizbollah to protect the independent military infrastructure that it has developed with Iranian and Syrian help—for use against Israel at some future date.”

Now Israel is no longer dealing with merely a rogue terrorist organization planted in a country, but an official wing of the government. Even the Lebanese Armed Forces, the official army, has little hope of standing up to Hizballah, Spyer said.

Lebanon is also asking Iran to sell it midsized weapons. Now that alliance makes more sense. But as the International Herald Tribune noted on Oct. 26: “Some officials within the Pentagon and State Department have expressed concern about extensive military aid to a country so recently free of Syrian control and in which Hizballah, which has close ties to Syria and Iran ties, has continued to gain political power. And that has been a main concern for Israel, which has been lobbying for a lower level of support to remove the possibility that American tanks and helicopters might one day be used against it.”

Israeli, Jewish victims in Mumbai 'tortured beyond words'

Dec. 1, 2008

One can no longer deny the fact that Jews tend to draw more hatred overall than any other people/religious group. While many media outlets downplay the religion of the attackers (Muslim), the proof is in the torture:

From an Indian news site (redriff.com), Mumbai doctors who examined the bodies of the victims of the massacre said the victims were tortured before being executed:

"Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks," a doctor who performed a post-mortem told the Indian news website Rediff.com. "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks.”

"It was clear that they were killed on Wednesday. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again," he said.

Another doctor commented, "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatized. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Intelligence officials confirmed the doctors' observations. Ajmal Kamal, the only terrorist who was not killed after he and his gang had managed to murder nearly 200 people and wound hundreds others, told officials that the terrorists "were specifically asked to target the foreigners, especially the Israelis."

“It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.

The director of the Jewish community center, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, and his wife, Rivkah, were among the murdered. Their 2-year-old son Moshe was saved in a heroic rescue by his nanny who fled the building with the boy