Saturday, March 29, 2014

To Release Murderers or Not to Release Murderers? That is the Question.

Michael L.

image host Within a day from the time that United with Israel, and other outlets, reported that the Palestinian Authority claimed that Israel was no longer intending to release Arab murderers of Jews - which the local Arab leadership considers to be a highly egregious example of Jewish intransigence and ill-will - we are now getting reports claiming something entirely different.

Although neither the Jerusalem Post, nor Y-Net, has taken note of this development as of 9:49 Pacific Standard Time, 3/29, both the Jewish Press and the Times of Israel are reporting that not only does Israel intend to release the next 30 murderers, but it is willing to give up an additional 400 violent thugs if Palestinian-Arab dictator, Mahmoud Abbas, continues to sit in a room with Jews beyond the April deadline... for sitting in rooms with Jews.

The Jewish Press tells us this:
A report on the Israeli news website, Walla, said that Israel informed the United States, that not only would it free the 30 terrorists that were supposed to be freed tonight (Saturday night), but also an additional 400 Palestinian Authority terrorists – if Abu Mazen agrees to extend the peace talks for another 6 months.

The 30 terrorists that were supposed to be released tonight include Arab citizens of Israel, and the release has met tremendous resistance in Israel as the names that Abu Mazen demanded released are among the most heinous of mass murderers.
I would think that it would be obvious that releasing Jihadi is probably not in the best interest of the Jewish people or the Jewish State of Israel or the non-Muslim West, in general.

But, what do I know?

If Netanyahu actually does think so then what I think is that it is time for the pro-Israel diaspora community - by which I mean actual pro-Israel people and not the faux J-Street / Peter Beinart-type - to make it exceedingly clear to the Prime Minister that he has made a highly significant mistake.  If Netanyahu hands out more murderers of Jews, to be hailed as heroes and financially recompensed by the PLO, then his government should fail and he would have no one to blame but himself.

Feiglin would walk.  Bennet would walk.  And only G-d knows what Lieberman would do given his recent ideological / strategic reconsiderations.  In any case, we could very well see a crumbling of the current Netanyahu coalition, which leads one to wonder if this was not Obama administration intention all along.  I do not know that it was, but it is certainly true that there was much speculation in the early years of the Obama administration that the US president hoped to overturn the moderate-right Netanyahu government in favor of a more complicit and weak left-leaning government.

The speculation was that Obama wanted to oust Netanyahu and thought that if he pressured Netanyahu and made his displeasure known to the Israeli public that they would turn on their PM.  If so, it backfired.  I have no idea if that is actually what Obama intended early in his administration, but it was certainly one of the theories floating throughout the media.  Nonetheless, Obama did show obvious hostility to Netanyahu and the Jewish Israeli public did not appreciate it and continue, by large majorities, to not appreciate this American president.

And who can blame them?

I certainly do not.

Friday, March 28, 2014

For $19 a Month

Empress Trudy

image host
Sad piano music. Mangy dogs in cages headed off to dog Treblinka. Glassy eyed kids with flies on their faces waiting to starve to death. Sarah McLaughlin. That guy who looks like Santa Claus for the Christian Children’s fund. You can help. Only you can help. I can never remember who costs more to save; pit bulls or "Palestinians" or Sudanese children. For less than the price of a Starbucks either way.

“Israeli Apartheid Week” has come and gone with what I gather was less noise than prior years. I don’t pay much attention to it because it’s the angrier version of PETA demanding people die for the sake of no animal testing (excepting of course the drugs that keep animal rights activists alive which were developed with animal testing). And in some ways they share some of the same values. Pick a cause and kill everyone on the other side of the issue. Because it’s easy to be self righteous and badly informed. Yes yes, it’s ‘apartheid’ to people who don’t know what that is. No more animal testing, mind you they don’t make a distinction between cancer drugs and cosmetics. Pick an ogre and hate it. And by all means when you boycott things pay no attention to your own hypocrisy. Ban animal testing as you inject yourself with insulin developed by animal testing. Tweet for the destruction of all Jews using your Israeli technology.

There’s an old joke from the Soviet Union. The CIA, the FBI, and the KGB all have a competition to see who’s the best at finding a target and retrieving it. They decide they’ll release a rabbit in the forest and whomever finds the rabbit first wins. The CIA goes first and after 24 hrs of satellite imagery, chemical analysis of the soil and waterboarding a park ranger they determine the rabbit does not exist. The FBI goes next and after 2 hrs a tactical team accidentally starts a forest fire and in the ensuing gun battle the rabbit is killed. The KGB heads off into the woods and 20 minutes later they come back with a dazed, beaten and bloody hiker who announces “I am a rabbit, my parents were rabbits”.

Israelis and Jews in general long ago passed into Soviet rabbit status. We are what our persecutors say we are. In fact a fairly good working definition of what anti-Semitism is, is a kind of burning hatred that supersedes reality or common sense.  That which survives logic, fact, truth or even the negation of all of those. We control all governments, who are all against us. We control all media which spends nearly its entire output condemning us.  We control all banks and yet need to suck the blood of everyone everywhere because we’re broke.  We’re at the heart of a 2,000 year massive global conspiracy that is so impenetrable, so dark, so secret that literally everyone on the planet knows about it.

“Israeli Apartheid Week” is an annual exercise in turning black into white. Jews are portrayed as illegal alien European invaders though more than half of all Israelis are the refugees of nearly 1 million Maghreb and Mizrahi Jews marched out of their own homes at gunpoint. Portrayed as an ‘apartheid nation’ where approximately infinity percent more Arabs, Muslims, Christians and any other non Jews are free to live however they wish compared to the Arab nations and how they treat non-Muslims. In fact were you to go to Iran or Libya you’d witness INTRAIslamic racism and persecution where Bedouins and Azeris are made into second class people.  And then to complete the fun-house picture the LGBTQ community jumps in to scream about….well no one really knows. They can’t say Israel treats their own LGBTQ unfairly. So they simply huff and puff and scream and whine that somehow those dastardly Jews need to be more like Hamas or Iran. Iran executed hundreds of gays in the past 12 months for the crime of being gay.  Add in another few hundred for the crime of being raped.

These are countries that still happily practice chattel slavery. Breathe that in. College students are marching around screaming about how the problem with Jews is that either they don’t die or they don’t practice slavery.  Meanwhile Syria is putting up near genocide numbers with about 200,000 dead, 4 million refugees.  Thousands of ‘Palestinians’ dead. Hundreds starved to death.

Fair enough. I don’t expect anyone to pay attention to arguments like that. There’s no point in pointing out such and such is a thousand or 10 thousand times worse.    Because we are the rabbits and the 'Palestinians' are puppies that have to be saved for the price of a donut. You don’t hate puppies, do you? You wouldn’t begrudge a dying child a donut, would you?

You’d be arguing with people who say a 17 year old with an assault rifle or a bomb vest is a ‘child’ in the same breath they scold you for protesting that some Arab country wants to lower the age of ‘consent’ to 10, or 9 or 6. Which apparently they wouldn’t have to do if Israel no longer existed.  And that is silly and pointless.  My dog responds to certain words and the tone of my voice. He doesn’t understand what I’m actually saying. And I did rescue him from dog Treblinka so should I anthropomorphize him and worry about his ingratitude?  Likewise there’s no reason to assume that Israel haters can even gain the capacity to understand. Why should they?  We’re rabbits, we've always been rabbits.

I was following, for a while this dust up about one or two Hillel organizations that decided amongst themselves that they couldn’t remain neutral on the point. So given the option between a mediocre ersatz Zionism and throwing open the doors to every crackpot loon who once dated a Marxist fascist ‘Palestinian’ they decided to go that way and embrace what they delude themselves is the agora of ideas.

As if.

Why is this silly fairness seemingly hardwired into American Jews? Why is that definition of ‘fair’ so warped? When did entertaining murderous psychopaths equate with ‘balance’.  What kind of ideas are worth buying and selling in this agora? Should we demand HBC’s (historically black colleges) welcome the Klan? Do we really need to hear what rapists and pedophiles have to say in the context of women and children’s rights? And yet Ramaz Orthodox High School in NY welcomes Rashid Kalidi to speak about how he hopes to see the extinction of Israel soon. Somehow in Starving Sudan Baby-world Jews’ own tikkun olam mutates into something horribly obscene.  All you have to do is welcome bigots into your tent. And it’s a mystery until you realize that some of the strongest adherents to anti-Semitic tropes are Jews themselves. Apparently we Jews have so much to spare we can easily afford being attacked by racists in our own home. Which is buying into the Jew hater’s lie of inscrutable Jewish power.  Because they’ve moved into the world of Soviet Rabbits. If your tormentor wants to come to your home to lecture you on how much your not being dead offends him, he must be partially right to get that worked up over it.

This is the agora of ideas we inculcate upon our young adults, where even the term “Orwellian” seems trite.

Breaking: Israel Cancels Terrorist Release Deal

Michael L.

United With Israel reports the following:
image hostIsrael has cancelled the scheduled release of 26 terrorists from prison on Saturday night.

“The Israeli government has informed us through the American mediator that it will not abide with its commitment to release the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners scheduled for tomorrow,” senior PA official Jibril Rajoub told AFP news service on Friday.
How we even got to the point where the Israeli government even considered, much less implemented, the release of the racist murderers of Jews is unfathomable.  The Netanyahu government needs more steel in its spine and must find the will to stand up to the hostile Obama administration.  There is no possible way that the Jews of the Middle East would release the murderers of their own were it not for the forceful and unfriendly intervention by the most anti-Israel president in United States history.

The bottom line, of course, is that if the Palestinian-Arabs actually wanted a state for themselves they could have had one at any time if only they would agree to it.  It is a surpassingly strange matter that the Palestinian-Arabs claim to want autonomy for themselves yet refuse to accept autonomy for themselves.  They then successfully convince those westerners ideologically inclined to their position, such as Barack Obama, that the reason they cannot accept autonomy for themselves on Jewish land is because Jews dare to build housing for themselves in Judea.

Despite the obvious racism of such a position, westerners lap it up like cream and somehow still believe that they hold the moral high ground.

They do not.

Privileged academics at western universities who smack the hell out of Israel through defaming it as a racist, colonialist, imperialist, apartheid, militaristic, racist regime - such as those at San Francisco State University - are not standing on the moral high ground.  On the contrary.  They are contributing to the centuries-long project of demeaning and defaming the Jewish people in preparation, consciously or not, for punishing those Jews.  They are standing in the same ideological line as the Nazis or the Klan or anyone who points the trembling finger of hatred and blame at a small, traditionally harassed minority group in a manner that leads to violence toward that group.

In any case, it is good news that Israel will not be releasing these murderers from Israeli prisons, if that actually turns out to be the case.  I find it rather sad and disappointing that I have to wonder whether or not it really will turn out to be the case, but such are the days that we live in.

The Jewish people have been so battered and beaten and snubbed and subjugated for so long that some honestly believe that if only we are craven enough toward those who hate us, only then will they leave us in peace - but this is false.

Holding up our hands like the victim of a mugger in a dark ally in order to demonstrate Jewish weakness, as Netanyahu did in the previous release of murderers, is not going to gain us the friendship of the malicious majority in the Middle East, nor will it ease the clamor among western anti-Zionists for the punishment, economic and otherwise, of the Jews in that part of the world.

The more Jewish leadership grovels in the face of hatred, the more hatred will be heaped upon the Jews of the Middle East and, therefore, the less likely that peace will ever arrive.

It is important for us to keep in mind the following:

The Day of the Dhimmi is Done.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

The New Three No's

Michael L.

{Cross-Posted at Jews Down Under.}

image host In 1967, meeting shortly after the 6 Day War in Khartoum, Sudan, the Arab League issued its famous "Three No's."  When it came to the Jews of the Middle East there would be no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations.  This is hardly surprising given the fact that for thirteen hundred years, from the time of Muhammad until the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Jews were a second and third class non-citizenry living under the submission of Islam.  Naturally the Arab League refused peace, recognition, and negotiations, because to do otherwise would be to recognize that Jews have rights to autonomy within their own homeland, a notion that directly contradicts al-Sharia.

Nothing much has changed in recent decades.  As we read in the Times of Israel:
Abbas rejected Netanyahu’s demand that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He also refused to abandon the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” for millions of Palestinians and their descendants — a demand that, if implemented, would drastically alter Israel’s demographic balance and which no conceivable Israeli government would accept. And finally, he refused to commit to an “end of conflict,” under which a peace deal would represent the termination of any further Palestinian demands of Israel.
How exciting!

These are the New Three No's! 

Notice, of course, that two of three of Abbas's "No's" are identical to the "No's" issued by the Arab League in Khartoum in 1967.  No peace and no recognition.

The third "no" is a little different.  Abbas is willing to sit across a table from Jews if it means the release of murderers and if he can blame his own intransigence on the Israelis for the purpose of undermining support for both the Jewish people and the Jewish State.  So, he is willing to negotiate in the sense that some of his people show up some of the time to speak mainly with Americans and others, rather than the hideous Jews.

Abbas's third "No" is his insistence on a Palestinian-Arab "right of return" for the purpose of undermining Israel's very reason to be.

But it's not as if we did not see this coming:
The Non-Peace Process 
1) The US and the EU demand negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. 
2) The parties agree to talk and then the PA, the US, and the EU demand various concessions from Israel for the great privilege of sitting down with the PA's foremost undertaker.

3) Israel fails to meet all the concessions, thus causing the PA to flee negotiations, which they never had any intention of concluding to begin with.

4) The PA and the EU and the Obama administration place the blame for failure at Jewish feet.

5) The EU and various European countries announce additional sanctions, thereby essentially joining the anti-Semitic anti-Zionist BDS movement.

6) Arabs seek to murder Jews.
So far everything looks right on schedule.

As Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary:
Having already released scores of Arab murderers, who have been subsequently honored and embraced by Abbas, there is little incentive for Netanyahu to keep letting them out if the Palestinians are not going to commit to peace talks whose purpose is an end to the conflict. If he is going to be blamed for the collapse of Kerry’s initiative no matter what he does, it would be a mistake to start making further concessions that will come back to haunt him later. The problem with injecting Pollard into peace talks is that it is the sort of American concession for which Israel will pay a disproportionate price with little prospect of receiving what it wants. That’s what happened the last time he offered to make territorial concessions in exchange for Pollard’s freedom. In the end, the Palestinians got the land, and Israel got neither Pollard nor peace.
That Israel releases the murderers of Jews is a betrayal of its mission and a betrayal of every single Jew on the planet.  We all understand why Netanyahu, under pressure from a hostile American administration, did so.  I am opposed to the releasing the murderers of Jews under virtually any conditions, but if there was some chance that it might help lead to a negotiated conclusion of hostilities then it is within the realm of reason.

The problem, of course, is that none of this is going to lead to the end of Arab government implemented hostility toward the Jews of the Middle East and therefore it is not within the realm of reason.  None of this is going to lead to peace and this is emphatically not the fault of the Jewish minority.  The theocratically-based hatred of the Arab-Muslim majority toward the Jewish minority is no more rational or decent than was white-Anglo contempt for Black people after the Civil War in the United States and in both cases the violence was preceded by the relative liberation of the targeted minority group.

image hostWhen we see these racists in Hamas or Islamic Jihad wearing their head-masks and holding aloft their rifles, think of Klansmen in white hoods on horseback, because what we are facing is a racist and violent political movement, just as the Klan was a racist and violent political movement.  One significant difference, obviously, is that the Klan was primarily domestic American, whereas political Islam is international in scope and contains far and away more membership and alliances than the Klan ever had.

The sympathy of American liberals and progressives turned away from the Ku Klux Klan long ago, but it has not turned away from political Islam, despite the fact that political Islam is a far larger and more deadly movement.  Furthermore, I see nothing on the cultural or intellectual landscape to suggest that it will do so anytime soon.

The opposite, in fact, seems more the case, as the American president inclines in their favor.

The irony is rich, exceedingly sad, and more than a little dangerous.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The Racist Harassment of Jewish College Students

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

The racist harassment of Jewish college students in western universities is a scandal.

image hostAt the University of Michigan, anti-Israel / anti-Jewish student politicos placed fake eviction orders on the dorm room doors of Jewish and pro-Israel students.  As Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary:
The movement to boycott Israel cloaks itself in the language of human rights. But when push comes to shove, the violent and discriminatory nature of their efforts is hard to disguise. That’s the upshot of a series of events taking place at the University of Michigan this month where advocates of BDS—boycott, divestment, and sanctions—against the Jewish state tried and failed to get the student government at the Ann Arbor institution to approve a divestment measure. But what was most remarkable about the process was the manner with which BDS groups protested their failure by seeking to intimidate those who opposed their efforts. As the Washington Free Beacon reports, a series of sit-ins at student government offices and other campus facilities by BDS supporters were marked by anti-Semitic threats directed at Jewish students. This followed previous attempts at intimidation at the school when pro-Palestinian activists placed fake eviction orders on the dorm rooms of pro-Israel students and Jews.

This is not the first time anti-Israel campaigners have behaved in such a manner at a major American university. Yet what is most distressing about these incidents is the lack of outrage expressed by university officials about these events as well as the refusal of the administration to publicly oppose BDS motions. The result is what may well be another instance of the creation of a hostile and discriminatory environment for Jews at the school in blatant violation of federal civil-rights laws and U.S. Department of Education regulations. By acting in this manner, the BDS movement is merely illustrating that it is a thinly disguised hate group rather than a protest on behalf of the oppressed.
Having recently come off the kerfuffle at San Francisco State University, I very much relate to stories such as this one.  The universities are a key battle-ground in fighting off anti-Semitic anti-Zionism and the heinous BDS movement.  I will never forget walking across the SFSU campus and seeing the Pan-African student organization, in solidarity with the Palestinian-Arab student organization, displaying a poster that showed the American flag filled with 50 little Stars of David.

That moment is seared into my memory, because it is the very first moment wherein I recognized that Jewish people were being driven out of the political home that we did more than most to build.

Since then, sadly, we have come to discover that San Francisco State is actually funding student organizations that call for the murder of "colonizers."  I am still unclear about just who these "colonizers" in need of killing include, but when members of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) hold aloft signs that read, "My heroes have always killed colonizers" they mean Jews.

Period.

Whoever else they might mean, they clearly mean the Jews of the Middle East who are daring to defend themselves from never-ending Arab aggression.

If you cannot grasp this obvious fact then you are simply refusing to acknowledge what is before your very nose.  I do not care if you are a university professor or just a run-of-the-mill schmuck.  If you cannot grasp what it means when Palestinian-Arab students publicly call for the killing of "colonizers" in broad daylight on a significant American university campus, then you are not facing reality.

But none of this is new.

Jewish students have been harassed and demeaned on American college campuses for decades if they dare to stand up in support of the Jewish State of Israel.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The Ongoing War

Michael L.

image host Western progressives like to think that everyone is more or less the same, and although the grubby masses are not nearly as enlightened as they are, ultimately everyone wants the same thing. This being the case it is obvious as day to most on the Left that what we are witnessing in Israel is a "cycle of violence" which is mainly attributable to pernicious Israeli political policies.

This is the primary, fundamental mistake of the western Left viz-a-viz Israel.

What we need to make people understand is that the opposite is true. The Jews of the Middle East, within Israel, have done a remarkable job of standing strong and tall despite the massive opposition of the great Arab-Muslim majority, a people which the western Left holds in racist contempt. Progressives think of Arabs as weak and childlike and, therefore, in need of protection from hostile westerners.

They fail to understand that the Arab nation is one of the great empires in world history and should be respected as such. Because they come from places that are comfortable and safe, western progressives discount the fact that the Jews of the Middle East are people under siege because they think of those Jews as comfortable, white westerners, just like themselves. 

They aren't.

In the mean time we read that the Arab League is intent on derailing the so-called "peace process":
Arab leaders whose summit begins in Kuwait Tuesday, March 25, are set to carry hard-line ultimatums for the US-sponsored Palestinian-Israeli negotiations as a means of derailing US Secretary of State John Kerry’s stubborn effort for a peace accord, and as a red flag for President Barack Obama three days before he lands in Riyadh.. DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report the Arab League summit’s two-day agenda includes a veto on recognizing Israel as the Jewish national state,a resolution that will be binding on all members including Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Another resolution would mandate the proclamation of all parts of East Jerusalem, including Al Quds al Sharif (Temple Mount) and the entire Old City of Jerusalem, the location of the shrines of three faiths, as the capital of a Palestinian state. This is diametrically opposed to US and Israeli positions. 
Another ultimatum the Arab leaders propose to issue would halt Jewish settlement on the West Bank and Jerusalem, freeze development and ultimately dismantle all traces of a Jewish presence in a future Palestinian state.

Yet another demand will be for “the immediate release of all the Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails” – by which they mean all Palestinians serving time after being convicted of terrorist crimes, including Israeli Arabs.
What we need at this particular moment in history is for the Jewish people throughout the diaspora to stand up in recognition that the Jewish people of the Middle East remain a people under siege and that these circumstances are emphatically not their fault.  Our faux-allies on the western Left tend to blame the Jewish minority of the Middle East for the Arab-Muslim aggression against them.

If the Arab League wants the Old City and if they demand that Jews no longer be allowed to build housing for themselves on historically Jewish land and if they are insisting upon the release of murderers (whom they call "political prisoners") from Israeli prisons, then they are signalling that nothing has changed in their stance since 1948.

It must be understood that Israel is not at war with the Palestinian-Arabs.  The Palestinian-Arabs merely represent the expendable front line in the larger and ongoing Arab-Muslim war against the Jews of the Middle East.

Until we understand that simple and obvious fact we can never relieve ourselves of this ongoing aggression.

Monday, March 24, 2014

American Weakness and the Israeli Minister of Defense

Michael L.

 {Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

imagebam.com
The ongoing kerfuffle over politically incorrect Israeli Minister of Defense, Moshe Ya'alon, is instructive.   Ya'alon argues that there will be no meaningful peace agreement with the Arabs and that American weakness makes the world a more dangerous place because it emboldens hostile powers.  Because power abhors a vacuum it becomes more likely that we would see Putin flexing his muscles in Crimea and Iran charging ahead toward its nuclear ambitions.

In a recent Y-Net piece by Alon Pinkus, Israel's former consul general in New York, however, we read:
The bottom line is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must fire Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon for the blatant, defiant, unbearable ingratitude he has shown the United States. At the very least, the prime minister should condemn the comments and put Ya'alon in his place...

This time, Ya'alon did not just offend the secretary of state. He inflicted direct damage on the US, on its ability to show strength in the midst of the crisis in Ukraine. Ya'alon is creating an image of an America that has no influence over its allies. And this is something the US will not take lying down.
I do not know the degree to which Obama's weakness represents a direct cause of Putin's behavior toward the Ukraine, but it is clear that Ya'alon is correct that there will be no meaningful peace agreement with the Palestinian-Arabs anytime soon and that Obama is enabling a nuclear-armed Iran.

Also writing in Y-Net, Hagai Segal tells us this:
Our defense establishment leader simply set the record straight when he said last week that the United States was showing global weakness and that its allies in the Middle East were disappointed with it. Every child in Damascus, Kiev or Manhattan knows that Obama's US is pursuing a spineless global policy. The opinion pages in the American press are filled with similar indictments against the Obama administration. According to all signs, even the administration itself knows it, but it's convenient to pull an insulted face when the Israeli defense minister joins the criticism.

Washington is now accusing Ya'alon of intentionally undermining the relationship between the two countries, no less. It is forgetting its own contribution to undermining the relations. Obama is the least pleasant American president towards Israel in the past 50 years, both in his words and in his actions. In his five years in the White House, the president insulted the prime minister more than two or three times, while the prime minister actually made sure not to throw insults back at him. Ya'alon is less strict, but is still quite polite. Despite the asymmetry between the sides, the American president should reflect on his own actions instead of imposing sanctions on our defense minister.
To say that the United States is showing global weakness is nothing other than to state what is obvious to everyone.  The United States under the current administration is weak.  The only question is whether or not American weakness is a good thing.  As someone who despised George W. Bush's "cowboy diplomacy," and who regularly marched against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I wanted the United States to stand down a bit.  That's part of the reason that I voted for Barack Obama in the first place.  In 2008 it seemed to many millions of Americans, including me, that it was time to withdraw from the failed militaristic policies of the past.

Not only were progressives, such as myself, thrilled that we had elected an African-American president, but also a president that would ease America's alleged imperialist tendencies.  Of course, I was entirely wrong to endorse Obama the first time around and the primary difference between myself and Obama's Jewish sycophants is that I was able to learn from past mistakes, while they are, for ideological and social reasons of their own, finding it much harder to do so.

Pinkus, however, is correct when he says that the White House will not take Ya'alon's truthfulness "lying down."  If there is one country in this world that the Obama administration likes to smack around it is the Jewish State of Israel.  After wrecking whatever small chance there might have been for peace through his racist demand for a "total settlement freeze" Obama then turned around and blamed the Israelis for the foreseeable outcome of his own misguided behavior and, furthermore, he has clearly learned nothing from his own experience and neither have his zombie-like followers.

While I cannot necessarily agree that American weakness under the Obama administration represents a direct cause for Russian aggression, it certainly seems likely as a contributing factor.  It presumably represents one factor among many others that Putin took into consideration.

The only thing to do at this point is simply ride out the Obama presidency and hope for something better in 2016.  The question is not whether or not the Obama administration has done damage to both the United States and Israel viz-a-viz its foreign policy, but how much damage it has done.  The United States, under Obama, has made two crucial mistakes that are harmful to both the United States and her allies.

The first big mistake was in backing the misnamed "Arab Spring."  High profile progressives, and the vast majority of low profile progressives, have refused to admit their mistake in doing so.  I very well remember the enthusiasm that the American Left greeted the "Arab Spring" and, thus, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.  I was hopeful at the time, as well, but I was also considerably more cautious and took the time to read up on the history of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that the Obama administration embraced and continues to support.  Did you know, that according to well-regarded historian and political scientist, Matthias Küntzel, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem:
In Egypt for instance, Nazi Germany invested more money in the Muslim Brotherhood than in any other anti-British organization. At the same time, they supplied money and weapons to the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini in Palestine.
What this means, obviously, is that the Obama administration backed a political organization favored by the Nazis.  It is hard to imagine and not a matter of interpretation, but a matter of fact.

The second big mistake was in buying into the "Palestinian narrative" of pure victim-hood and, therefore, accepting the racist Arab notion that Jews should not be allowed to build housing for themselves within the traditional Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria.

Thankfully, unlike, Mahmoud Abbas, Barack Obama is not a dictator.  Abbas is an old man and he may very well die sometime within the next coming few years, but there is little question that he will remain the head of Fatah and the PLO and the Palestinian Authority until that day.  This makes him entirely illegitimate as a voice for the Palestinian-Arabs because his democratic mandate to govern expired around 6 years ago.

Obama, on the other hand, is on his way out, no matter what, come 2016.

And for that, at least, we can be grateful.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Friday, March 21, 2014

The Western Betrayal of Middle Eastern Christians

Michael L.

In a recent piece entitled, Why the Media Doesn’t Cover Jihadist Attacks on Middle East Christians, American Christian of Coptic descent, Raymond Ibrahim, writes the following:
christianity1.jpg - Picamatic - upload your imagesReliable estimates indicate that anywhere from 100-200 million Christians are persecuted every year; one Christian is martyred every five minutes. Approximately 85% of this persecution occurs in Muslim majority nations. In 1900, 20% of the Middle East was Christian. Today, less than 2% is.

In one week in Egypt alone, where my Christian family emigrated, the Muslim Brotherhood launched a kristallnacht—attacking, destroying, and/or torching some 82 Christian churches (some of which were built in the 5th century, when Egypt was still a Christian-majority nation before the Islamic conquests). Al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised atop churches. Christians—including priests, women and children—have been attacked, beheaded, and killed.

Nor is such persecution of Christians limited to Egypt. From Morocco in the west to Indonesia in the east and from Central Asia to the north to sub-Saharan Africa to the south; across thousands of miles of lands inhabited by peoples who do not share the same races, languages, cultures, and/or socio-economic conditions, millions of Christians are being persecuted and in the same exact patterns.

Muslim converts to Christianity and Christian evangelists are attacked, imprisoned, and sometimes beheaded; countless churches across the Islamic world are being banned or bombed; Christian women and children are being abducted, enslaved, raped, and/or forced to renounce their faith.
One of the great puzzles for those of us concerned about the rise of political Islam and the persecution of non-Muslims throughout the Middle East, is just why it is that western Christian institutions and individuals largely ignore that persecution?

I do not know the answer to that question, but I have always assumed that it has something to do with prevailing white liberal guilt.  What Ibrahim argues is that the western media is obligated to ignore Muslim persecution of Christians in order to maintain the Muslim-As-Victim narrative.  He writes:
Consider it this way: because the Jewish state is stronger than its Muslim neighbors, the media can easily portray Islamic terrorists as frustrated “underdogs” doing whatever they can to achieve “justice.” No matter how many rockets are shot into Tel Aviv by Hamas and Hezbollah, and no matter how anti-Israeli bloodlust is articulated in radical Islamic terms, the media will present such hostility as ironclad proof that Palestinians under Israel are so oppressed that they have no choice but to resort to terrorism.

However, if radical Muslims get a free pass when their violence is directed against those stronger than them, how does one rationalize away their violence when it is directed against those weaker than them—in this case, millions of indigenous Christians?

The media simply cannot portray radical Muslim persecution of Christians—which in essence and form amount to unprovoked pogroms—as a “land dispute” or a product of “grievance” (if anything, it is the ostracized and persecuted Christian minorities who should have grievances). And because the media cannot articulate radical Islamic attacks on Christians through the “grievance” paradigm that works so well in explaining the Arab-Israeli conflict, their main recourse is not to report on them at all.
Diaspora Jews are constantly told by our friends on the Left that the reason that Palestinian-Arabs seek to murder Jews is because the State of Israel is a violent regime that penalizes and oppresses the "indigenous Palestinian population."

If that is the case, how is it that the larger Arab-Muslim world gets to oppress the small Christian minority with absolute impunity?

If the western media were to honestly cover Muslim oppression of Christians in the Middle East it would blow the Muslim-As-Victim paradigm that the media is entrenched within and enamored of.

Whatever the reason for the western betrayal of Middle Eastern Christians, it is a clear betrayal and one that must be noted.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Chapter Four Synopsis - Multiculturalism and the Betrayal of Universal Human Rights

Michael L.


On Settlements and Stupidity: General Outline

Chapter One Synopsis and Thesis Statement

Chapter Two Synopsis - Erasing and Confiscating Jewish History

Chapter Three Synopsis - The Palestinian Colonization of the Progressive Jewish Mind

The western Left, as a political movement, claims to believe in universal human rights.  It believes that people the world over, in every society, deserve to be treated in a decent and respectful manner consistent with contemporary western ideals of human justice as derived from the political Enlightenment prior to the American and French Revolutions.  Progressives also claim to believe in the ideal of multiculturalism.  As alleged anti-racists they refuse to condemn social practices or ideologies of "indigenous" peoples - by which they mean anyone who is neither white, nor Jewish - because to do so represents a white imperialist racist imposition onto the natural autonomy of other peoples.

This has led in recent decades to a generally unacknowledged tension between the competing ideals of universal human rights and multiculturalism.  The fundamental problem is that these are inherently contradictory notions.  If one believes in universal human rights then by necessity one must be opposed to, say, the stoning of women in Pakistan for violations of al-Sharia.  If a political movement fails to stand up for such an abomination than it cannot be said to stand for universal human rights.  The reason that the progressive-left fails to strongly stand against such practices in that part of the world is because in the ideological contest between universal human rights and the multicultural ideal, the multicultural ideal won the day.

It is thus considered "racist" to criticize non-white or non-Jewish peoples' cultural practices, including stonings, honor killings, female genital mutilization, and calls for genocide.

In this way the western Left has thrown the very concept of universal human rights into the toilet thereby paving the way for the western Left betrayal of women, Gay people, Jewish people, and the Christian minority in the Middle East, as well as its own essential values.

After all, if the western Left does not stand for universal human rights then what can it possibly stand for?


The Betrayal of Women

There was a time when western feminism stood up for women in the Middle East, but those days are long gone.  In the 1990s the feminist Left took the lead in opposing the Taliban in Afghanistan and the mistreatment of their women according to fundamentalist Islamic principles.  Since then, however, as the tension between universal human rights and the multicultural ideal has played itself out in the west, progressive-left feminism has decided that the burka might represent a form of liberation and that the Muslim Middle East treats their women in a manner that should not be objected to.  To the extent that there are feminists who are speaking up against Islamic misogyny, with the exception of pioneers like Phyllis Chesler, they are merely whispers in the wind.


The Betrayal of Gays

The only place throughout the entire Middle East where it is socially acceptable to be Gay is Israel.  The Muslim Middle East is probably the most homophobic place on the planet and Iranians hang Gay people from cranes for the crime of being Gay.  Nonetheless Queers Against Apartheid support the Arab aggressors over the Jewish defenders in that part of the world and do so out of concerns for "social justice."  Thankfully, Queers Against Apartheid, and other like-minded organizations, represent only a tiny proportion of western Gay people, but that doesn't change the fact that the western Left, as a whole, has failed to speak up in defense of a persecuted Gay minority in that part of the world.  For the same reason that they fail to speak up for women in the Middle East, so progressives fail to speak up for Gay people in the Middle East.  To do so would be in violation of the multicultural ideal and thereby considered racist.


The Betrayal of Jews

Because the Jews of the Middle East are considered imperialists, if not interlopers, on historically Jewish land the western progressive-left tends to view the tiny Jewish minority as the aggressors against the innocent "indigenous" Arab population.  In order to do this they must contract the conflict in both time and geographical space so that the tiny Jewish minority that is under siege by the great Arab majority is seen in the West as a hostile majority population persecuting a small native population.  Instead of understanding the conflict as it is, i.e., as a religiously-based conflict by the Arab-Muslim majority against the tiny Jewish minority, they portray it as a conflict between Jewish aggressors and largely innocent "Palestinians."  Likewise, instead of understanding the conflict in the full dimensions of its historical context they contract it in order to make it seem that Jewish hostility toward Arabs in the middle of the twentieth-century is the primary cause.  This is false.  Religious hostility towards Jews since the time of Muhammad is the primary cause and will remain the driving force for Islamic hatred toward Jews, and toward Israel, until such a time as Islam reforms itself.


The Betrayal of Christians

The rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East has meant a ramping up of Christian persecution throughout that part of the world.  The Christians under Arab-Muslim dominance today are being chased out of the Middle East, just as the Jews were chased out in the middle of the twentieth-century, thereby creating Fortress Israel.  Since the fall of Muhammad Morsi in Egypt, the Copts have been under very intense persecution.  Dozens of churches, perhaps as many as one hundred, have been set aflame in Egypt and the Coptic Christians are blamed for the well-deserved failure of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Christians throughout the country have been tortured and killed.  Much the same is true in Syria where the Christian population finds itself caught in-between a civil war between Shia and Sunni, secularist dictators and theocratic monarchists.  It is a very sad thing to witness the Christian west failing to stand up for Christians throughout the Muslim Middle East.  The sense of abandonment by Middle Eastern Christians must be profound.

.

What we are witnessing today is the erosion of contemporary western liberalism.

Western liberalism, as it emerged from World War II, became a political movement heavily invested in what we might call "rights liberalism."  If pre-World War II western liberalism was primarily about economic justice, post-war liberalism was primarily about human rights and civil liberties.  Liberals championed the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Rights Movement, the GLBT Movement, Brown Power, and so forth.  It championed the Anti-War Movement, Environmentalism, and issues of social justice across the board.

The movement always claimed to believe that such rights were universal, but we are now seeing that it does not have the will to actually stand up for what it claims to believe in.  Western feminism gave up its last breath in Afghanistan and the larger progressive movement is choking on the sands of its own internal contradictions as it studiously ignores human rights violations throughout the world, particularly in the Muslim Middle East and Africa.

Letter From Israel


 elinor        אלינור                          



Home Invasion

To begin with—not at the beginning, but closer to the front of this story—when I first married, I became a second wife.  In the flush of a brand-new (re)marriage, my then husband bought me jewellery.  Not much, but ‘good stuff’.  Amongst this stuff was a lovely jade pin, surrounded by diamonds.  Definitely good stuff.  Earrings followed, then more pins and earrings, although not of the same calibre. 

When my father died he left me his key chain, a lovely piece of braided gold, and his pinkie ring which, it seems, had a diamond of some significance in it.  More good stuff.

Everywhere I schlepped my jewels, from Montreal to Florida to Montgomery, Alabama back to Florida to Jerusalem to Melbourne, Australia and back to Israel, there were available bank safety deposit boxes to hire.  My only worry was bank safety deposit box robberies. 

I’d had just one experience with losing stuff, when I lived in Florida.  Eventually every building in the south, certainly up to the time I abandoned ship, became infested with termites.  Termites require poison, and the professionals know exactly how to do that.  Every living thing has to be removed from the residence—people, animals, fish, plants, whatever.  A giant tent is created, actually sewn together to suit, which covers the entire building. 

The individual apartments must be left unlocked so that the gas can escape after all the termites are dead.  Someone has the job of opening the apartment front doors at the appropriate time and once, a robber or two followed a door or two behind, scooping up the best of jewel boxes, small appliances and such.  It seems that the door-opener person either never looked behind him, or was one of the gang. 

I will never forget seeing the contents of my jewel box spread in a wide semi-circle on my bedspread.  Only the good pieces were missing, amongst which was my father’s keychain.  Ah, well.  These things are not given to us in perpetuity.

All that took place circa 1975.  Years later I was living in Israel, where the feeling of trust has lasted much longer than in other ‘more civilised’ countries where I’ve lived.  Doors used to be left open; windows still are.  And so, when I invited two of my grandsons to have a falafel dinner with me at the corner, I did not go around closing windows and locking them, did I.

We were gone for about half an hour.  In fact, the excursion was extended by about 10 minutes because I insisted that the falafel place up the street also served schwarma (which I prefer) and the boys said it didn’t.  So we walked up a few blocks, confirmed that the boys were absolute right and returned to the falafel place nearest home. 

Exiting the lift, I stopped short at the open door to the flat.  Didn’t I lock the door? I asked the boys, who assured me that I did.  Trusting their young memories, I stepped into the flat to see every kitchen cupboard door  open.

I stood in the hallway with my jaw hanging.  Wait here, said the bigger grandson (a champion MMA fighter because he’s larger than all his less courageous age-suitable opponents, who decline to fight him).  I never had the sense to say Don’t go in, let’s call the cops from here, but there was no one else in the flat. 

After awhile the police wandered by to see why we rang.  The boys asked, Why did you take so long to get here?  Well, there were two other robberies, one at #16—we’re at #20—and one on the street behind us, all unpleasantly recent, like our own.  We later found out that there are now organised gangs of criminals who drive into our town at sunset, burgle a series of flats and leave directly.

But I’ll tell you what I’m beginning to understand: Criminal profiling.  In the weeks that followed the break-in, instead of dwelling on my losses, I began to think about how this invasion was carried out.

Most notable was the window entry into the main bedroom, which is on the street side.  Interesting choice, because there are windows which open onto the shaded driveway side.

However, there is a building element—a narrow bar about 25 cm square—which goes from under the balcony to under the main bedroom and though the invaders could easily be seen by neighbours leaving/entering the building, why would anyone look up?  So, climbing onto the roof of a handily parked car, the thieves must have swung up onto the bar, kneeled on the window sill (knee marks can still be seen), slid back the shutters (which didn’t lock) and the window (which didn’t lock either) and entered the room.  There is about a hand-space between safety and knocking over a fragile lamp. The invader must have been quite slim.  According to the police, s/he opened the front door to an accomplice, then locked it against any other entry.

They did virtually no damage, despite my having to spend a week making order in the flat after they left.  The only damage I noted was a tiny loop in my empty jewel case, torn in the haste to grab anything that might be of value.  It had held a 1950s collar pin which will probably come back into style someday—remember them?  Awkward and uncomfortable, they went into the collar, under the tie and back out through the collar.  But apart from that, anything that once held jewellery was left behind, empty, unzipped and unharmed—ready for another lifetime of collecting valuables.  No way.

Some cupboards were rifled, a few drawers opened, not wasting time on closing them.  One drawer, known to be sticky, was kicked out of whack.  I often felt like doing that too.

My closet, the mother lode, no hanging space, just shelves.  Except for the one shelf that held cosmetic articles left completely untouched, the contents of every other shelf had been swept onto the floor, a space of not quite a square meter.  I try to imagine the sequence:  Top shelf first?  Unlikely shelves last?  Delve, then shove? 

Every box was opened and dumped.  The contents of my MEMORABILIA box, which held mostly papers, were scattered liberally.  No Latin students in attendance.

Cash, put aside in different places for different purposes, was gone.  They found it all.  The kitchen freezer, a popular location for hiding stuff, seemed untouched.  How did they know there was no reason to unload it? 

When I contemplated the missing jewellery I wondered:  Is there a small, portable metal detector available on the market?  Their skills were admirable.  It’s as though they knew where I kept the important stuff and all other effort at finding it was pro forma.

Gotta admit, I’m angry.  My pearl ring—too big after I’d lost some weight, but a real favourite—gone.  They could have left me something...

On the other hand, the feeling of relief was undeniable.  Not having to worry about this happening, to start with, then the freedom of not carrying my jewels from pillar to post any further. 


The home alarm system is being installed as we speak.   

Arabs Stone Jews at the Temple Mount

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

In a Y-Net piece written by Noam (Dabul) Dvir entitled, Temple Mount: Arabs hurl stones at MK Feiglin we read:
temple1.jpg - image uploaded to PicamaticHundreds of young Arabs gathered Thursday morning at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to protest the visit of Knesset Member Moshe Feiglin (Likud) to the disputed scene.

Several of the rioters hurled stones towards the lawmaker and policemen guarding the area. No injuries were reported in the event. Two of the rioters were detained and Feiglin was taken out of the compound. Following the incident, the Temple Mount has been closed to visitors.

After the incident, MK Feiglin said: "I went to the Temple Mount (Thursday) morning in full coordination and early notice with a group of 25 people. Immediately as we walked into the compound a well-planned Arab provocation ensued. At some point there were also pushing and stone throwing."
I fail to understand why the Israeli government puts up with this sort of violent racism from the local Arab population.   There is no moral reason why Feiglin should not be allowed to ascend the Temple Mount any more than there was moral reason why Sharon should not have done so.  If the mere presence of a right-wing Jewish political leader on the foremost Jewish holy site is enough to send the local Arabs into irrational spasms of violence and hatred then it says much more about ongoing lethal Arab anti-Semitism then anything else.

One of the things that bothers me about this matter is that the progressive Jewish Left will never side with their Jewish brothers and sisters on this question.  Criticizing Arabs or criticizing Muslims is essentially verboten among "progressive Zionists" because they consider any such criticisms to be a form of racism.  They will spit hatred at Evangelical Christians and conservative Jews in the most nasty manners possible, but they would never be caught dead actually opposing the rise of political Islam or standing with Jews against Muslims when the need arises.

It's a matter of guts, in the sense that they haven't any.  It's also a matter of allowing oneself to think beyond socially enforced ideological boundaries.
During the volatile discussion, MK Feiglin said: "Astonishingly, this is the first time the Israeli Knesset debates the question of the Temple Mount sovereignty in the plenum. Every terror organization can wave its flag there. But an Israeli flag? Unmentionable. I call on the government to realize the full sovereignty of the State of Israel on the entire Temple Mount. I call on the Israeli government to allow free access to every Jew to the Temple Mount from every gate, in order to pray on the site"
I agree with Feiglin in this matter.  The Temple Mount is not Judaism's third or thirtieth holiest site, but its foremost holy site.  The Jordanian Waqf, which for no good reason whatsoever controls the Temple Mount, has shown itself to be hostile to a Jewish presence there and has done much to ruin and destroy Jewish religious artifacts found in the area.  Thus it has shown itself to be an entirely irresponsible care-taker and should be removed in favor of Israeli administration.

All people of any faith should be allowed access to the site for the purpose of prayer.  Some devout Jews may choose not to ascend the Mount for religious reasons, but this does not mean that other Jews, or non-Jews, should be prevented from praying there.

Of course, not everyone agrees.

From the comments:
2. Alaqsa Mosque is not disputed territory

It is the third holiest mosque in Islam and it belongs to Muslims only, period. Proceeding with current path of Israeli provocation at Islam's third holiest site will eventually erupt a volcano no one dares to think of its consequences. Please use common sense and wisdom and do not tamper with this religious issue further for the sake of all of us and for the sake of our children. Just let us all live in peace...

Palestinian, Jerusalem, Palestine (03.20.14)
"It belongs to Muslims only."

So sorry, Charlie, but it most emphatically does not belong to "Muslims only."  In fact, if we want to have a competition of claims it is obvious that the Jews have a far, far longer attachment to the site than do Muslims.  "We got there first" as our friend, Stuart (a former participant at Israel Thrives), might say... although, of course, he would put it in such terms to undermine Jewish heritage and historical claims to Jewish land, for reasons that I continue to find unfathomable.
12. A bit of nitpicking, but... 
we should clear all small stones from the temple mount area. 
Jacob E, Holon, Israel (03.20.14)
I love this comment!

Indeed, it is such a commonsensical notion.  It doesn't seem to me that clearing the area of throwable stones should be very difficult.  I would have to assume that such an obvious idea would have already been thought of by the Israeli government, but who knows?

Finally, I've decided - for what little that may be worth - that what we need is something that I think of as The Mecca Initiative.  Jews from around the world should announce their intention of visiting Mecca and begin the process of making those arrangements for the purpose of seeing whether or not Saudi Arabia will allow a Jew to even step foot in Islam's holiest site.

After all, it seems rather unfair that the Muslim majority in the Middle East should not only be allowed access to Judaism's holiest place, but should administrate it and keep Jews from praying there, while they will not even allow Jews to step foot in Mecca.

Next year in Mecca!

{I hear the architecture is gorgeous.}

I will see you guys there.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Violence is Coming

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

In a piece for Commentary entitled Lying About Abbas Won’t Bring Peace, Jonathan Tobin writes the following:
war1.png - image uploaded to PicamaticIn short, peace process advocates believe the only way to plow ahead to an agreement is to keep the pressure up on Netanyahu to give the maximum while treating Abbas with kid gloves, all the while fearing to offend him or to give his enemies within Fatah, not to mention Hamas and Islamic Jihad rivals, any ammunition with which to attack him as soft on the Israelis. Anything else, they tell us, risks blowing up the process leaving no hope for peace.

But the problem here isn’t so much the double standard for Netanyahu or even the blatant dishonesty involved in American and Israeli officials attesting to the sincerity and good intentions of the Palestinian leader. It’s that this theory of peace negotiating has already been tried and failed with disastrous results.

I know it’s hard for many in the mainstream media to think back as far as last week or last month (ancient history in the news business), let alone 10, 15, or 20 years back. But the theory of negotiating with the Palestinians that is being employed by both the Obama administration and Israelis like Livni and Peres, was already tried in the 1990s.
Precisely.

We've already been down this road and we know where it leads.  It leads to a terror war against the Jewish people of the Middle East.  It leads to Jewish and Arab blood in the streets.  One place that the so-called "peace process" will not lead, sadly, is to peace.  The Arabs do not want peace, what they want is victory and until that victory is attained they will continue to do whatever they can possibly do to make life miserable for Jewish people on historically Jewish land.

It has to be understood, however, that this is nothing new.  The Arab-Muslim majority in the Middle East has made life difficult for the indigenous Jewish population since they conquered that land shortly after the death of Muhammad in the 7th century and placed us under subjugation.

What we are witnessing today is a small slice of a much longer process of displacement and persecution which has been ongoing for centuries, resulting in the decimation of the Jewish population in that part of the world.  The Jews of the Middle East today are the surviving remnant of a harassed and diminished minority that has been despised by the Islamic world since the Jews rejected the testament of Muhammad.

Tobin concludes:
The point here is that we have already seen this movie and know the ending. If the president is sincere about wanting to broker peace, he needs to lay it on the line and make sure Abbas knows that the U.S. will blame him–and not an Israel that has already signaled that it will, albeit with misgivings, agree to Kerry’s framework–for the collapse of the talks. But if the president continues to double down on a policy of letting the Palestinians off the hook, it is laying the groundwork for a repeat of the same disaster that ended the Oslo process. The resulting bloodshed should be blamed primarily on Abbas. But Obama, and those Israelis who continue to lie about Abbas for what they believe is the sake of peace, will also bear some responsibility.
The current American administration will not in any meaningful way pressure Fatah because to do so would violate progressive-left presumptions concerning who has power and who does not and thus who should be threatened and who should be sheltered.  It is for ideological reasons that Barack Obama refuses to pressure the Palestinian-Arabs into making peace with the indigenous Jews.

Despite the fact that around half the Israeli-Jewish population is non-Ashkenazi, and thus not "white," the western Left, including the Obama administration, tend to see Jewish Israelis, at best, as a dominating power, or, at worst, as a foreign imperial power continuing the nineteenth-century European tradition of imperial exploitation that employs methods akin to those of Nazi Germany.

Pressuring the Arab majority to end their never-ending siege against the Jewish minority is considered "racist," which is why the Obama administration will never do it.

Pressuring the Jewish minority into agreeing to what it has always agreed to - sharing the land - is considered a matter of social justice.  Thus the Obama administration pressures the Jews of the Middle East into accepting what they have always accepted and until they accept what they already accept he will keep the pressure on.

What we are looking at here, my friends, is a sucker's game and we're the suckers.