Ralph Peters: Obama Regards Israel as a Strategic Liability and a Political Albatross.

Why did President Obama complete the nuclear deal with Iran? Video interview with Ralph Peters by Stuart Varney. Varney and Company. Fox Business, November 25, 2013.

Was the nuclear deal with Iran a historic mistake? Video interview with Ralph Peters. Lou Dobbs Tonight. Fox Business, November 25, 2013.

Peters:

I have said for a long time that President Obama will not, would not, come to the defense of Israel, and Israel is for me, on a moral and strategic basis, this is the crux of the problem. The Obama Administration, including Secretary Kerry, clearly regards Israel as a strategic liability, as a political albatross, and as a personal nuisance. And I’m sorry, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who can certainly be abrasive, is nonetheless 100% in the right on this. The Obama Administration, my God, Obama makes Neville Chamberlain look like a cage fighter.

In Iran, Obama Achieves 50 Percent of His Goals. By Jeffrey Goldberg.

In Iran, Obama Achieves 50 Percent of His Goals. By Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, November 24, 2013.

Munich II. By James Jay Carafano. National Review Online, November 24, 2013.

Let’s Not Celebrate This Iran Deal . . . Yet. By Aaron David Miller. Politico, November 23, 2013.

Why the Iranian Nuclear Deal Is Dangerous. By Eli Lake. The Daily Beast, November 24, 2013.

Pushing Peace on the Palestinians. By Jodi Rudoren.

Pushing Peace on the Palestinians. By Jodi Rudoren. New York Times, November 19, 2013.

Obama and the Crisis of Elite Education. By Walter Russell Mead.

Obama and the Crisis of Elite Education. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, November 24, 2013.

Obama’s Slow Learning Curve. By Peter Berkowitz. Real Clear Politics, November 20, 2013.

How Israel Can Minimize Existential Threats Against It. By Yehezkel Dror.

How Israel can minimize existential threats against it. By Yehezkel Dror. Haaretz, November 21, 2013. Also here.

Dror:

Israel, like many other countries, often uses the term “vital interests.” Yet this phrase is vague and is often a source of contention. This is precisely why the term is suitable for diplomacy and public relations, but when it is used in the context of government or state affairs, “vital interests” must be clearly defined, with a focus on critical interests.

 

Israel’s top priority, though not its only one, is to prevent existential threats to the country. Israel is among the few states in the world facing existential danger. Due to the fierce opposition to its existence among many in the Arab and Islamic worlds, the possibility exists of a lethal attack against Israel – in the event that a fanatical enemy gets its hands on nuclear or more innovative biological weapons. Therefore, minimizing this risk to the greatest extent possible is Israel’s top priority.

 

Achieving this requires four grand strategies: Preventing hostile groups from acquiring means that could endanger our existence; maintaining total deterrence – including sending an unequivocal message that anyone threatening Israel’s existence will be annihilated; preserving and strengthening Israel’s special relationship with the United States; and reducing the reasons for such threats against Israel, mainly by advancing real peace with our neighbors.

 

Israel is doing a good job with regard to the first three strategies listed above. It is making an impressive effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons (even if it may have been preferable to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities a year ago while pursuing a comprehensive peace deal). At the same time, Pakistan also has nuclear weapons, and without appropriate global enforcement, there is no long-term guarantee that fanatic states or terrorist groups can be prevented from obtaining weapons that pose an existential threat to Israel.

 

Hence the cardinal importance of deterrence. Israel’s ambiguity with regard to its alleged nuclear program is the correct policy and establishes a credible image of deterrence. However, the effectiveness of deterrence isn’t fool-proof, especially when facing enemies who will do their utmost – including sacrificing themselves – simply to kill Jews.

 

The special relationship Israel has with the U.S. remains strong, however it’s impossible to guarantee it will continue in the same vein under any and all circumstances. American interests are not always identical to Israeli ones – just look at the disagreements on the Iranian issue for example. U.S. support for Israel may decrease due to changes in the former’s global standing, changes in its domestic politics and opposition to Israeli policies. Therefore, we must acknowledge our dependence on the U.S. and work to strengthen ties with it – even if that entails steps that Israel may not like, so long as they don’t endanger Israel’s existence or core values. Overall, unless Israel makes any major missteps, it can rely on U.S. backing.

 

As far as the fourth strategy goes – seeking a comprehensive peace – Israel fares poorer. While the agreements with Egypt and Jordan have proven themselves in terms of security matters, Israel still does not adequately recognize the importance of a comprehensive regional peace as a critical component of its national security – even if its stability is not fully ensured in this volatile region.

 

It is doubtful whether Israel is willing to pay the price required for an agreement with the Palestinians, even if they back down from unreasonable demands. At the same time, the Palestinian issue, as important as it is, is not critical to Israel’s existential security. What is more critical is the absence of an overall Israeli strategy for achieving regional peace and improving its relations with Islamic nations and groups. Some efforts are being made, but they are far from the critical mass required for reducing the long-term existential dangers posed by the deep-rooted rejection of our existence in the “Dar al-Islam” (“Home of Islam”).

 

This serious failure stems from sharp disagreements about values perceived as critical for Israel’s future. Many regard the settlements in Judea and Samaria and exclusive Israeli control over all of Jerusalem as an existential interest, while many others regard the advancement of peace as a more important concern.

 

Israel’s Achilles’ heel is its inability to decide – socially, politically and among its leaders – on these difficult dilemmas, and this could pose its greatest existential threat. It leads to procrastination in terms of statecraft, instead of initiatives to seek a comprehensive regional peace that is essential to Israel’s long-term security. Eliminating this dangerous “black hole” in Israeli statecraft depends mainly on the leadership of the prime minister.

General Yossi Kuperwasser Analyses Palestinian Incitement.

Yossi Kuperwasser analyses Palestinian incitement. BICOM, November 17, 2013. Edited audio podcast.

Time to End Palestinian Incitement. By David Pollock. Fathom, September 13, 2013.

Brig.-Gen. [res.] Yossi Kuperwasser: The Culture of Peace and Incitement Index. Video. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, November 8, 2011. YouTube.




Yossi Kuperwasser: Prevention of Incitement in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process. Video. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, March 12, 2013. YouTube.




Kuperwasser (BICOM):

Increasing Israeli concerns over incitement

 

In the last few weeks, Prime Minister Netanyahu, when speaking about the peace talks with the Palestinians, has given much more emphasis to this issue of incitement. You cannot remain silent when you see what is happening.

 

In spite of having peace talks with us, Palestinian incitement goes on without interruption, and whenever we brief the Prime Minister, he goes ballistic, saying, “How can that happen? We are trying to speak with these people. How can they do that?” In the last few days, he spoke about the swastika in Beit Omar. There were two cases in the refugee camp of Beit Omar, between Bethlehem and Hebron, when a swastika was flown on the electricity wires. And all the Palestinian press is in favour of the “courageous” youngsters of Beit Omar who “dared” to put a swastika on the wire, causing Israelis a lot of work in trying to get it down.

 

And this drove Netanyahu crazy, but it was just once case, where again and again we see the same message. He wrote a letter to Secretary Kerry two months ago, and told him, “This cannot go on”. The letter was based on the Barcelona affair. When Barcelona Football Club came to Israel [on a trip organised by Israel’s Peres Center for Peace], instead of praising peace, the Palestinians turned this event into a show of hatred towards Israel, with incitement to get rid of Israel.

 

Then Prime Minister Netanyahu met Kerry for seven hours in Rome two weeks ago, and again, he came to him with examples, and said to him, “Something has to be done about it.” We notice that there is some lip service paid to the issue, but nobody in the international community, including the British, really take this seriously enough or understand that, for Israel, this is the core of the problem. I’m talking here as an intelligence officer, not only as somebody who follows incitement. I was for many years the head of the IDF Intelligence Research and Analysis division. The messages that are delivered here are the core of the problem, not anything else. That is why it is so important to understand the messages delivered through incitement.

 

Indirect as opposed to direct incitement

 

In analysing incitement we make a differentiation between several kinds. Regarding incitement for violence and terror we distinguish between two kinds. If somebody tells you “go kill this guy”, this is direct incitement. Indirect incitement is someone saying, “This guy really should be killed. I am not telling you to do it, but he should be killed, and killing him is a really noble deed.” The Palestinians are very cautious, and when it comes to direct incitement they try not to go too far. But in indirect incitement, what we call “building the atmosphere” that promotes violence and terror, they are very strong. Speaking about terrorist as role models, and things like that, is very strong in the Palestinian press and official presentations.

 

As well as promoting violence we see promotion of hatred, because hatred is the basis that gives legitimacy for carrying out violence and terrorist activities. Goebbels did the same thing. Before killing the Jews there was a massive effort to explain that the Jews are inhuman, and even if they are human, they are the worst of creatures. This provides the legitimacy for doing what has to be done about the Jews. If you go back to the famous Nazi propaganda movies, “Jew Süss” and “The Eternal Jew,” you see the kinds of efforts that Goebbels made to prepare the public for the final solution. Here too, there is enormous effort given to justifying hatred of the Jews.

 

A further issue is the denial of the rights of the Jews. The logic is that the Jews do not have a right to a state, and because of that, everything you do to deny them this right is justifiable. When Abu Mazen was speaking at the General Assembly he said, “We keep reaching out to the Israeli side saying, let us work to make a culture of peace reign.” It sounds so good because this is what he says in English. You cannot find anything wrong with what he says in English.

 

However, if you know how to read his words, you see that in English he does not say anything that contradicts what is said in Arabic. In English, for example, he never says “the Jewish people.” In this speech, he was talking about a culture of peace between the Israeli people, and the Palestinian people. For him, there is no Jewish people; there is only an Israeli people. All of Israel’s citizens are the Israeli people. By that, he avoids saying that there is something called “the Jewish people,” because in his mind there is no such thing.

 

The core messages

 

What are the core messages? First, Israel has no right to exist, certainly not as the nation state of the Jewish people, because there is no such thing as the Jewish people, and therefore they cannot claim any historic connection the Holy Land. Yes, Bani Israel, the Children of Israel, who practiced Judaism as a religion, were present here. About a third of the Quran tells stories of the Bani Israel, the Children of Israel. But according to the Palestinians, they are not the Jewish people that live today. It is a different group of people, and all that unites Jews is religion, nothing more. That is why they do not have any right to a state in this place.

 

Second, because of that, Israel’s disappearance is inevitable. On top of what is today Israel, a Palestinian state will be established.

 

Third, the Jews and Zionists are sub-human creatures. And they are some sort of environmental hazard that should be exterminated.

 

Fourth, because of all those three, all forms of struggle, including terror, are legitimate means to achieve the final goal. Even though, at times it might be more efficient to use other means. At times you would rather use political activity, such as what they call “popular, peaceful resistance.” I recommend looking at recent papers published by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center on popular resistance, including a recent piece about the involvement of British and European diplomats in promoting the so-called “peaceful resistance.” This resistance is not peaceful at all, of course. It is stone-throwing, Molotov cocktails, stabbing people, driving over people. All of these are considered to be “peaceful resistance”, as long as they do not use fire-arms.

 

The Palestinian National Charter

 

In 1998, the Palestinian National Council was forced to vote through changes to Palestinian National Charter, but they never actually changed it. If you look at the several websites of PLO bodies, you will find the charter as it was written in 1968. According to the charter the Jews are not a people, and should not have a state. That is article 20 of the charter, and it is still written there.

 

In their maps there is also no Israel, and even if there is a line, it does not say Israel on the other side of it, it is all Palestine. But mostly the maps show the country to be 100 per cent Arab. Israel is seen as some deviation from the way things should be, so it is not worthwhile to put it on a map because it is going to disappear anyhow.

 

Incitement as a barrier to peace

 

We say this is the main obstacle on the way to peace. If you want to make peace, first of all you have to take this obstacle away. There is no way to make peace when you sit in the evening with the Palestinians and tell them, “Let’s withdraw to here; let’s put security arrangements there,” and at the same time they are teaching the children to hate you and to want to kill you, telling them, “The Zionist must die.”

 

We are not trying to create another hurdle on the way to peace; we are trying to remove the hurdle. After all these letters and meetings, the Americans finally understand it. But the Europeans are in a much more important position than the Americans, because the Americans at best are considered by the Palestinians as honest brokers, but basically they look at them as Israel’s supporters. Europeans have here a golden position, as the friends of the Palestinians. If they tell the Palestinians this is totally unacceptable, this should worry the Palestinians, and maybe they will do something.

Israel Has Concluded There Is No Credible American Military Option. By David Horovitz.

There is no credible US military options, and 9 other pointers from Jerusalem. By David Horovitz. The Times of Israel, November 20, 2013.

The Netanyahu government is not certain the US would have its back if it resorted to force. But Israel has defied the international community before, and would do so again if it saw no alternative.

Why Saudi Arabia Hates the Iran Deal. By David Kenner. Foreign Policy, November 14, 2013. Also here.

Son of Israel, Caught in the Middle. By Dwight Garner.

Son of Israel, Caught in the Middle. By Dwight Garner. New York Times, November 19, 2013. Review of My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel. By Ari Shavit. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2013. 445 pp.

The State of Israel. By Leon Wieseltier. New York Times, November 21, 2013. Review of My Promised Land. By Ari Shavit.

The Old Peace Is Dead, but a New Peace Is Possible. By Ari Shavit. New York Times, March 12, 2013.


Garner:

“If you want everyone to love you,” Saul Bellow wrote, “don’t discuss Israeli politics.” Yet when Bellow went to Israel for several months in 1975 to research a nonfiction book, all he did was talk politics — and everything else. It was what he loved best about Israel, the “gale of conversation.”

 

Ari Shavit’s new book, “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel,” is a gale of conversation, of feeling, of foreboding, of ratiocination. It takes a wide-angle and often personal view of Israel’s past and present, and frequently reads like a love story and a thriller at once. That it ultimately becomes a book of lamentation, a moral cri de coeur and a ghost story tightens its hold on your imagination.

 

Mr. Shavit is an eminent Israeli journalist, a columnist for the newspaper Haaretz, a television commentator, a man of the left, the possessor of a well-stocked mind. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books.

“My Promised Land” combines road trips, interviews, memoir and straightforward history to relate Israel’s story. The book taps his existential fear for his country, and his moral outrage about its occupation policy. He dilates especially on Israel’s essential, combustible duality.

 

“On the one hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is occupying another people,” he writes. “On the other hand, we are the only nation in the West that is existentially threatened. Both occupation and intimidation make the Israeli condition unique. Intimidation and occupation have become the two pillars of our condition.”

His book takes its time to get going. We are introduced to his great-grandfather, a British Zionist who visited the Holy Land in 1897 and saw that the place was his people’s future. We meet Jewish orange growers who moved there in the 1920s, and pioneers of the kibbutz movement.

 

These pioneers are a heady success story, their collective work and brawny forearms an inspiration. Yet, in their labor, Mr. Shavit spies the seeds of the anguish that is to come, for Palestinians and Israelis both: “All this idealistic socialism is just subterfuge, future critics will claim. It is the moral camouflage of an aggressive national movement whose purpose is to obscure its colonialist, expansionist nature.”

 

Mr. Shavit chooses the people he interviews with care, and presents their stories Studs Terkel-style, as streaming oral histories. These don’t overwhelm the narrative but add depth and complexity. To comprehend people’s opinions, the author understands, he must allow them to relate the stories of their childhood. These childhoods, as they were for most of the world’s European Jews in the first half of the 20th century, tend to be harrowing to absorb.

 

“My Promised Land” shifts into higher gear in its middle sections, with the claiming of the Masada fortress in the 1940s as a symbol for Zionism, and with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. This book’s middle 200 pages are almost certainly the most powerful pages of nonfiction I’ve read this year.

 

It’s not just that Mr. Shavit lays out the story of Israel’s founding with clarity and precision. This is a story we’ve read before, in a stack of books that, laid end to end, would wrap 88 times around the outskirts of Tel Aviv. It’s that he so deliberately scrutinizes the denial he locates at the heart of Israeli consciousness.

 

This book’s central chapter is probably the one about how the Palestinian citizenry was driven from the Arab city of Lydda in 1948. Many were killed; some were tortured during interrogations. There was looting. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, long columns, were driven from their homes into the desert. In expulsions like this one lie his country’s original sin, the author argues, beyond the settlements of its later expansion.

 

“Lydda is our black box,” he declares. “In it lies the dark secret of Zionism.” Mr. Shavit is a powerful writer about denial. The miracle that is Israel, he says, is “based on denial. The nation I am born into has erased Palestine from the face of the earth.”

 

It’s among Mr. Shavit’s gifts as a writer and thinker that he can see this fact plainly yet condemn “the bleeding-heart Israeli liberals of later years who condemn what” was done in Lydda “but enjoy the fruits of their deed.”

 

A heartsick patriot, he adds: “If need be, I’ll stand by the damned. Because I know that if it wasn’t for them, the State of Israel would not have been born. If it wasn’t for them, I would not have been born. They did the dirty, filthy work that enables my people, myself, my daughter and my sons to live.”

 

There is so much more in “My Promised Land.” There are disquisitions on Israel’s wars, its nuclear program, its culture, its religious zealots, its intellectuals, its shifting demographics. The author writes with terrific feeling about Tel Aviv’s furious club scene in the 2000s, a generation dancing on the abyss.

 

With tragicomic wistfulness, Mr. Shavit captures an essential Israeli longing for peace. “We’d prefer our Israel to be a sort of California, but the trouble is that this California of ours is surrounded by ayatollahs.” About the Palestinians, he declares: “We squeeze, and they squeeze back. We are trapped by them, and they are trapped by us.”

 

I cannot say that “My Promised Land” is an optimistic book. It does not arrive with ready-made solutions. Its tone will entirely please neither side. Mr. Shavit’s gift is for seeing plainly, its own variety of sanity. He blames right-wing politicians for goading the Arab world with Israel’s expansionism. And he ends by taking a penetrating look at Iran’s nuclear program, one he fears will wipe his country from the planet.

 

About the prospects for peace, he leaves you feeling far worse than when you came in. The more you know, this book suggests, the closer the shadows creep.

 

In the end, he plaintively says: “I wonder how long we can maintain our miraculous survival story. One more generation? Two? Three? Eventually the hand holding the sword must loosen its grip. Eventually the sword itself will rust. No nation can face the world surrounding it for over a hundred years with a jutting spear.”



Shavit:

KFAR SHMARYAHU, Israel

 

HERE is the bad news: the Old Peace is dead.

 

It was first wounded in 1994 when, a year after the Oslo accords, Israel let Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, return to the West Bank, and a result was a deadly bus bombing in central Tel Aviv.

 

The Old Peace was injured again in 2000, when, at a Camp David summit meeting, Israel agreed to establish a free Palestinian state in Gaza and in nearly 90 percent of the West Bank, and Mr. Arafat refused. The outcome? The second intifada, with its suicide bombings and the loss of more than 1,000 Israeli lives, left the people of Israel again traumatized.

 

The third blow came in 2005, when Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip and the response was not the emergence of a prosperous, self-governing Palestinian territory, but the establishment of a Hamas-controlled rocket base that has periodically terrorized southern Israel.

 

The death knell for the Old Peace finally sounded in December 2010, with the start of the Arab awakening, which toppled secular dictators like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, while turning Bashar al-Assad’s Syria into a ghastly slaughterhouse. Corrupt yet stable tyrannies, which had supported a fragile peace with Israel, have been replaced by nascent Islamist republics and failed or failing states.

 

In these new circumstances, no Arab leader has the legitimacy needed to negotiate a lasting peace; no Arab government can be trusted to enforce it; and Israelis justifiably feel there is no reliable Palestinian partner who can guarantee it. The Old Peace, the dream of numerous direct talks from 1991 through 2010, died in the caldron of the Arab Spring.

 

But here is the good news: a New Peace is now a promising option. Having brought down tyrants who had paralyzed public life and public debate for decades, the peoples of the Arab world are focusing on the internal problems of their societies: poverty, corruption, lack of freedom and opportunity and an overall failure to establish a decent, functioning Arab modernity.

 

At the same time, an Israeli social justice protest movement that began in the summer of 2011 — filling the streets of Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard and then quickly spreading to mass demonstrations across the country — is quietly changing the political system. It has placed major pressure on the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and helped account for the January elections, in which the party of the television host-turned-politician Yair Lapid came in a surprising second.

 

Israelis are also focusing on their internal malaise: a dysfunctional government; a financial oligarchy; rising inequality, cost of living and pressure on the middle class; poor public education; and the disproportionate power wielded by ultrareligious parties — adding up to a failure to construct a functioning Israel that truly represents its citizens and provides for their needs.

 

Make no mistake: Arab and Israeli social conditions are not at all identical. Egypt remains an oppressive, developing society reliant on American aid, while Israel is a thriving, high-tech democracy. But there is an intriguing link between the Arab Spring sweeping the Middle East and the protest movement changing the face of the Jewish state. As both Arabs and Israelis look inward, the Old Peace is dead, but a New Peace might be born.

 

The New Peace will be very different from the Old Peace. There will not be grandiose peace ceremonies in Camp David or at the White House, no Nobel Prizes to be handed out. The New Peace does not mean lofty declarations and presumptuous vows, but a pragmatic, gradual process whereby the New Arabs and the New Israelis will acknowledge their mutual needs and interests. It will be a quiet, almost invisible, process that will allow Turks, Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis to reach common understandings. The New Peace will be based on the humble, pragmatic assumption that all the participants must respect, and not provoke, one another, so that conflict does not disrupt the constructive social reforms that all seek to promote.

 

New Peace might have all sorts of manifestations. A real Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank rather than a romantic Israeli-Palestinian final status agreement which is not feasible at the moment. An Israeli-Egyptian water-supply development project that would reinforce the fragile peace between the countries. An Israeli-Turkish gas deal that would bring together two of America’s most reliable allies and encourage them to work as regional stabilizers. A Saudi-Israeli-Palestinian program that would channel some of the riches of the Persian Gulf to keep the peace in Palestine. A secret Israeli-Hamas deal that would give Gaza more autonomy and prosperity while halting its rearmament.

 

Mr. Obama’s strategy must focus on designing and fostering initiatives like these. The United States alone can orchestrate this kind of regional cooperation. Its aim should be to prevent nationalistic crises and religious eruptions from endangering a new, tentative promise: Israelis and Arabs rebuilding their nation-states while creating healthy, middle-class societies.

 

As Israel forms a new government, it needs a new strategic concept toward the Palestinians. The Arab world needs new organizing principles for its fledgling states. And America needs a new Middle East vision — one aimed not at grand and unattainable all-encompassing solutions but at incremental steps to temper the flames of extremism, tribalism and hate.

Bill Maher Pays Tribute to JFK by Slamming Ronald Reagan. By Melissa Quinn.

Bill Maher pays tribute to JFK by slamming Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin. By Melissa Quinn. Red Alert Politics, November 23, 2013.

Bill Maher Contrasts “Sex Machine” John F. Kennedy with “Amiable Square” Ronald Reagan. By Matt Wilstein. Mediaite, November 23, 2013. YouTube.

How Britain Invented Freedom – and Why We Need to Save It Now. By Daniel Hannan.

How Britain invented freedom – and why we need to save it now. By Daniel Hannan. The Spectator, November 23, 2013. Also here.

ABC’s Amy Robach Discloses Breast Cancer Diagnosis, Plans Double Mastectomy.

ABC’s Amy Robach Discloses Breast Cancer Diagnosis on Good Morning America, Plans Mastectomy. By Evan McMurry. Mediaite, November 11, 2013. YouTube, YouTube.

ABC News’ Amy Robach Reveals Breast Cancer Diagnosis. By Amy Robach. ABC News, November 11, 2013.

ABC’s Amy Robach Has Breast Cancer, Will Undergo Double Mastectomy. By Jack Mirkinson. The Huffington Post, November 11, 2013.

ABC News’ Amy Robach Diagnosed With Second Tumor, Plans To Return To Work. By Catherine Taibi. The Huffington Post, November 22, 2013.

Ronald Reagan: How Can We Not Believe in the Greatness of America?

“How Can We Not Believe in the Greatness of America?” Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union, January 25, 1984. By Ronald Reagan. The American Presidency Project. University of California at Santa Barbara. Video at YouTube.




Reagan:

But we know that many of our fellow countrymen are still out of work, wondering what will come of their hopes and dreams. Can we love America and not reach out to tell them: You are not forgotten; we will not rest until each of you can reach as high as your God-given talents will take you.

 

The heart of America is strong; it’s good and true. The cynics were wrong; America never was a sick society. We’re seeing rededication to bedrock values of faith, family, work, neighborhood, peace, and freedom—values that help bring us together as one people, from the youngest child to the most senior citizen.

. . . .

 

People everywhere hunger for peace and a better life. The tide of the future is a freedom tide, and our struggle for democracy cannot and will not be denied. This nation champions peace that enshrines liberty, democratic rights, and dignity for every individual. America’s new strength, confidence, and purpose are carrying hope and opportunity far from our shores. A world economic recovery is underway. It began here.

 

We’ve journeyed far, but we have much farther to go. Franklin Roosevelt told us 50 years ago this month: “Civilization can not go back; civilization must not stand still. We have undertaken new methods. It is our task to perfect, to improve, to alter when necessary, but in all cases to go forward.”

 

It’s time to move forward again, time for America to take freedom’s next step. Let us unite tonight behind four great goals to keep America free, secure, and at peace in the eighties together.

 

We can ensure steady economic growth. We can develop America’s next frontier. We can strengthen our traditional values. And we can build a meaningful peace to protect our loved ones and this shining star of faith that has guided millions from tyranny to the safe harbor of freedom, progress, and hope.

 

Doing these things will open wider the gates of opportunity, provide greater security for all, with no barriers of bigotry or discrimination.

. . . .

 

Our second great goal is to build on America’s pioneer spirit— [laughter] —I said something funny? [Laughter] I said America's next frontier—and that's to develop that frontier. A sparkling economy spurs initiatives, sunrise industries, and makes older ones more competitive.

 

Nowhere is this more important than our next frontier: space. Nowhere do we so effectively demonstrate our technological leadership and ability to make life better on Earth. The Space Age is barely a quarter of a century old. But already we've pushed civilization forward with our advances in science and technology. Opportunities and jobs will multiply as we cross new thresholds of knowledge and reach deeper into the unknown.

 

Our progress in space—taking giant steps for all mankind—is a tribute to American teamwork and excellence. Our finest minds in government, industry, and academia have all pulled together. And we can be proud to say: We are first; we are the best; and we are so because we’re free.

 

America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain. Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade.

 

A space station will permit quantum leaps in our research in science, communications, in metals, and in lifesaving medicines which could be manufactured only in space. We want our friends to help us meet these challenges and share in their benefits. NASA will invite other countries to participate so we can strengthen peace, build prosperity, and expand freedom for all who share our goals.

 

Just as the oceans opened up a new world for clipper ships and Yankee traders, space holds enormous potential for commerce today. The market for space transportation could surpass our capacity to develop it. Companies interested in putting payloads into space must have ready access to private sector launch services. The Department of Transportation will help an expendable launch services industry to get off the ground. We'll soon implement a number of executive initiatives, develop proposals to ease regulatory constraints, and, with NASA’s help, promote private sector investment in space.

. . . .

 

America was founded by people who believed that God was their rock of safety. He is ours. I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it's all right to keep asking if we’re on His side.

. . . .

 

A society bursting with opportunities, reaching for its future with confidence, sustained by faith, fair play, and a conviction that good and courageous people will flourish when they’re free—these are the secrets of a strong and prosperous America at peace with itself and the world.

 

A lasting and meaningful peace is our fourth great goal. It is our highest aspiration. And our record is clear: Americans resort to force only when we must. We have never been aggressors. We have always struggled to defend freedom and democracy.

 

We have no territorial ambitions. We occupy no countries. We build no walls to lock people in. Americans build the future. And our vision of a better life for farmers, merchants, and working people, from the Americas to Asia, begins with a simple premise: The future is best decided by ballots, not bullets.

 

Governments which rest upon the consent of the governed do not wage war on their neighbors. Only when people are given a personal stake in deciding their own destiny, benefiting from their own risks, do they create societies that are prosperous, progressive, and free. Tonight, it is democracies that offer hope by feeding the hungry, prolonging life, and eliminating drudgery.

 

When it comes to keeping America strong, free, and at peace, there should be no Republicans or Democrats, just patriotic Americans. We can decide the tough issues not by who is right, but by what is right.

. . . .

 

How can we not believe in the greatness of America? How can we not do what is right and needed to preserve this last best hope of man on Earth? After all our struggles to restore America, to revive confidence in our country, hope for our future, after all our hard-won victories earned through the patience and courage of every citizen, we cannot, must not, and will not turn back. We will finish our job. How could we do less? We’re Americans.

 

Carl Sandburg said, “I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair . . . I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God . . . I see great days ahead for men and women of will and vision.”

 

I’ve never felt more strongly that America’s best days and democracy’s best days lie ahead. We’re a powerful force for good. With faith and courage, we can perform great deeds and take freedom’s next step. And we will. We will carry on the tradition of a good and worthy people who have brought light where there was darkness, warmth where there was cold, medicine where there was disease, food where there was hunger, and peace where there was only bloodshed.

 

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

 

Thank you very much. God bless you, and God bless America.

Was the Kennedy Assassination a Right-Wing Coup D’État? By Dick Morris.

Kennedy Assassination a Coup D’État? By Dick Morris. Video. DickMorris.com, November 22, 2013. YouTube.

Remembering JFK. By Dick Morris. Video. DickMorris.com, November 23, 2013. YouTube.

JFK conspiracy deniers are in denial. By Oliver Stone. USA Today, November 21, 2013.

The Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board Final Report (1998). National Archives. PDF.

The Gray Lady’s “Israel Lobby” Fixation. By Seth Lipsky.

Gray Lady’s “Israel lobby” fixation. By Seth Lipsky. New York Post, November 21, 2013.

Let’s Make a Deal. By Thomas L. Friedman. New York Times, November 19, 2013.

Friedman on the Israel Lobby. By Ira Stoll. Smartertimes.com, November 20, 2013.

George Will on “Cynical Lawlessness” of ObamaCare Delay.

George Will on “cynical lawlessness” of ObamaCare delay. Video. The Kelly File. Fox News, November 22, 2013. YouTube.




God, the Founders, and George Will. By Conrad Black. National Review Online, January 9, 2013.

The danger of a government with unlimited power. By George F. Will. Washington Post, June 3, 2010. Also here.

Religion and the American Republic. By George F. Will. National Affairs, Summer 2013.

George Will: Religion and Politics in the First Modern Nation. Video. johndanforthcenter, December 11, 2012. YouTube.

Leap of Faith: Israel’s National Religious and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Leap of Faith: Israel’s National Religious and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. International Crisis Group, November 21, 2013. PDF. Also here.

Can John Kerry Be a Great Secretary of State? By Aaron David Miller.

John Kerry, Confidence Man. By Aaron David Miller. Foreign Policy, November 18, 2013. Also here.

John Kerry has the skill, toughness, and ego to be a great secretary of state. But will the world let him?

Naftali Bennett vs. Christiane Amanpour on the Definition of “Occupied Territories.” By Joshua Levitt.

Israel’s Economy Minister Bennett Schools CNN’s Amanpour Over Use of Term “Occupied Territories.” By Joshua Levitt. The Algemeiner, November 19, 2013.

Bad Iran deal “will lead to war,” Israel minister warns. By Mick Krever. CNN, November 18, 2013. Video at YouTube.

Suez Canal Targeted as Egypt’s War in Sinai Spreads. By Richard Spencer.

Suez Canal targeted as Egypt’s war in Sinai spreads. By Richard Spencer. The Telegraph, November 17, 2013.

24,000-Year-Old Body Shows Kinship to Europeans and American Indians. By Nicholas Wade.

The remains of a boy from palaeolithic Siberia — shown here in a burial reconstruction at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg — revealed that he had European genes. Kelly Graf.

24,000-Year-Old Body Shows Kinship to Europeans and American Indians. By Nicholas Wade. New York Times, November 20, 2013.

Americas’ natives have European roots. By Ed Yong. Nature, November 20, 2013.

Upper Palaeolithic Siberian genome reveals dual ancestry of Native Americans. By Maanasa Raghavan et al. Nature, published online, November 20, 2013.

Mystery humans spiced up ancients’ sex lives. By Ewen Callaway. Nature, November 19, 2013.

Genome analysis suggests there was interbreeding between modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and an unknown archaic population.

Masada Still Excites the Imgaination. By Judy Maltz.

Aerial view of Masada. Wikipedia.

Half a century after the big dig, Masada still excites the imagination. By Judy Maltz. Haaretz, November 20, 2013. Also here.

Maltz:

Beyond the tale of heroic suicide, new items uncovered at the famous fortress tell the story of its real-life population.

 

 

MASADA − It looks like an ordinary lice comb, with wider teeth on one side for untangling knots and finer teeth on the other for removing nits. Except that this one happens to be made of wood, rather than metal. And it also happens to be about 2,000 years old.

 

Holding the recently unearthed artifact in the palm of his hand, archaeologist Guy Steibel notes that these are his favorite sort of finds, the ones that provide a glimpse into the other Masada story − not the classic narrative of death, destruction and suicide pacts, but the one about real people doing ordinary things, as ordinary as combing nits out of their hair.

 

“Yes, we have proof that the rebels who lived here, their heads were absolutely infested with lice, and not only their heads,” he says. “In fact, we’ve discovered in this comb remnants of lice eggs, strands of hair and the oldest louse in the world.”

 

Steibel, the head of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Masada excavation team, proceeds to pull out some other recent finds from a little plastic box, among them a piece of rope made out of date tree fibers and a shard of a clay pitcher that has the name of its owner inscribed in it in Hebrew letters: Shimon Bar-Yoezer.

 

“Seeing these Hebrew words pop out of the earth, words that my own children can read, that’s the most exciting thing in all of this for me,” says Steibel, who has been digging and researching at Israel’s most famous archaeological site for almost 20 years now.

 

To mark the 50th anniversary of the big excavations at Masada, led by the legendary Yigael Yadin, Steibel is guiding a group of Israeli journalists through what he describes as a “backyard tour” of the site to meet some of his “friends” who once lived here. “By now, I know many of them by name, and I also know where exactly they lived and how they made a living,” he says. “For me it’s the little things, like the child’s toy we found, the Roman soldier's wage slip, the seal used by the baker to mark his loaves − these are the things that make this place so alive for me.”

 

The ancient fortress overlooking the Dead Sea − where Herod the Great, the Jewish-Roman king of Judaea, built a magnificent royal retreat and where, later, 960 Jewish rebels who had found refuge there killed themselves rather than surrender to the Romans, according to the prevailing myth − attracts roughly 800,000 visitors every year. Among sites that charge admission (not the Western Wall in Jerusalem, for example, which is even more popular), it is the most visited in Israel. “And about 70 percent of the visitors we get are from overseas,” says Eitan Campbell, director of the Masada National Park.

 

According to Tsvika Tsuk, chief archaeologist at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, about 7,000 international volunteers from 18 different countries participated in the Masada excavations half a century ago, from 1963 through 1965. “The vast majority were from Britain, and they came because of an item that was published at the time in The Observer,” he recalls. “It was the first excavation to rely on volunteers, and many of them recall it as one of the most formative experiences in their lives. In fact, there were quite a few volunteers on the dig who found here the loves of their lives.”

 

The authority is planning to reach out to all those who participated in the Masada excavations (“the youngest are in their 70s today,” notes Tsuk) and invite them and their families to participate in a reunion in Israel in 2014.

 

The "$64,000 question,” as Steibel terms it, is did the Jews really kill themselves at Masada, as is widely assumed to be the case, despite little hard evidence to substantiate the story. “I believe that they did and that we will find remains of bodies in the future,” he says, noting that he has found corroboration for the historian Flavius Josephus’s claim of mass suicide in the writings of another ancient Roman historian, Pliny the Elder.

 

“But for me, whether or not they killed themselves is less important than how they lived,” he says.

 

Besides the bodies, is there anything else left to be discovered at Masada? “Yadin said that 97 percent of the site was excavated,” notes Steibel, “but although he was a great archaeologist, I’d say he was a bit weak in math. I believe that only 65 percent of what’s here has been uncovered and that there’s much more to find.”

 

Is there anything that would be particularly thrilling for him to uncover on this rocky plateau?

 

“A latrine,” says Steibel. “That’s the only big thing we haven’t found here yet. It surprises me because I would have thought we would’ve by now.”

How Afghans See America: The Cowboy That Divided the Village. By Nushin Arbabzadah.

How Afghans see America: the cowboy that divided the village. By Nushin Arbabzadah. The Guardian, November 21, 2013.

Why Netanyahu Won’t Yield. By Michael Oren.

Why Netanyahu won’t yield. By Michael Oren. Los Angeles Times, November 21, 2013.

The prime minister’s hard line on Iran reflects his deep sense of duty to defend the Jewish state against an existential threat.

What Americans Don’t Know About Palestinian Culture. By Jonathan S. Tobin.

What Americans Don’t Know About Palestinian Culture. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, November 20, 2013.

Tobin:

Some Jewish liberals got a terrible shock last week when British journalist Tom Gross broke a story about a fascist-style military rally held on the campus of Al Quds University. Al Quds is a Palestinian college located in Jerusalem and has had an academic partnership with both Brandeis University and Bard College in the United States. The rally was organized by the Al Quds branch of the Islamic Jihad group (though it was joined by much of the rest of the student body that joined the jihadi storm troopers in marching on an Israeli flag) and followed two other demonstrations sponsored by Hamas to honor suicide bombers at the school.

 

The story about the event, illustrated by a much-circulated picture of the Islamic Jihad group in black uniforms and masks giving a Nazi-style salute, posed a dilemma for Brandeis. While no one in charge at Bard seemed particularly exercised about the fact that their partner held pep rallies for terrorism the way a typical American school does for football or basketball, Brandeis is an avowedly Jewish institution and when the Washington Free Beacon posed a question about what it was doing in a relationship with such a place, the university was initially flummoxed and hunkered down, offering no comment about the story even as many of their students and faculty expressed outrage. It took more than a week, but yesterday Brandeis extracted its head from the sand and President Frederick Lawrence announced that it was reevaluating its relationship with Al Quds. Lawrence’s move came after he called on Al Quds President Sari Nusseibeh to condemn the rally in Arabic and English. Instead, the renowned Palestine “moderate” rationalized the rally, defended the students, and blamed the controversy on “vilification campaigns by Jewish extremists” leaving Brandeis no choice but to back out of their relationship.

 

But there’s more to this story than just this distressing exchange. The problem here is not just that terror groups are as accepted at Palestinian universities—even those that are generally respected abroad as Al Quds is—as sports teams are at their American counterparts. It’s that most Americans, including American Jews like those who run Brandeis, haven’t a clue about why this is so or how pervasive this trend is in Palestinian society.

 

If much of the discussion about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians on college campuses and throughout the rest of the American liberal world seem so skewed it is not just because Israel is often unfairly smeared as an “apartheid state.” It is also because many Americans simply don’t know the first thing about contemporary Palestinian culture. Websites like Palestine Media Watch and Memri, which provide constant updates about what is broadcast and printed by Palestinian sources, could give them a quick lesson about how deeply hatred of Israel and the Jews is embedded in popular Palestinian culture as well as its politics. But those who bring up these unhappy facts are more often dismissed as biased extremists who don’t understand the Palestinians.

 

But the point about campus activities at Al Quds is that there is nothing exceptional about large groups of students demonstrating their hate for Israel and their devotion not to Palestinian nationalism but its extreme Islamist adherents such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad that call for the death of Jews. Such groups are not just welcome at Palestinian schools but an essential part of the fabric of student life as well as the general culture.

 

Thus, the shock here is not that Brandeis (if not Bard) has been alerted to the true nature of their partner and even a respected front man like Nusseibeh. Rather, it’s that it never occurred to anyone in authority at Brandeis that this was the inevitable result of any cooperation with Al Quds. If it had or if more American academics got their heads out of the sand and realized the cancer of hate that is still the dominating feature of Palestinian political culture, the assumption that Israel is the villain of the Middle East conflict might be challenged more often.