THE DEATH OF ISRAEL

[Teresa Heilevang]

THE DEATH OF ISRAEL
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann  

From Caroline Glick, deputy editor and op-ed writer for the Jerusalem Post, comes alarming news. An expert on Arab-Israeli relations with excellent sources deep inside Netanyahu’s government, she reports that CIA chief Leon Panetta, who recently took time out from his day job (feuding with Nancy Pelosi) to travel to Israel “read the riot act” to the government warning against an attack on Iran.

More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, “…we have learned that the [Obama] administration has made its peace with Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Senior administration officials acknowledge as much in off-record briefings. It is true, they say, that Iran may exploit its future talks with the US to run down the clock before they test a nuclear weapon. But, they add, if that happens, the US will simply have to live with a nuclear-armed mullocracy.”

She goes on to write that the Obama administration is desperate to stop Israel from attacking Iran writing that “as far as the [Obama] administration is concerned, if Israel could just leave Iran’s nuclear installations alone, Iran would behave itself.” She notes that American officials would regard any harm to American interests that flowed from an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as Israel’s doing, not Iran’s.

In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map if Iran acquires the bomb.

Obama’s end-of-the-year deadline for Iranian talks aimed at stopping its progress toward nuclear weapons is just window dressing without the threat of military action. As Metternich wrote “diplomacy without force is like music without instruments.” By warning only of possible strengthening of economic sanctions if the talks do not progress, Obama is making an empty threat. The sanctions will likely have no effect because Russia and China will not let the United Nations act as it must if it is to deter Iranian nuclear weapons.

All this means is that Israel’s life is in danger. If Iran gets the bomb, it will use it to kill six million Jews. No threat of retaliation will make the slightest difference. One cannot deter a suicide bomber with the threat of death. Nor can one deter a theocracy bent on meriting admission to heaven and its virgins by one glorious act of violence. Iran would probably not launch the bomb itself, anyway, but would give it to its puppet terrorists to send to Israel so it could deny responsibility. Obama, bent on appeasement, would likely not retaliate with nuclear weapons. And Israel will be dead and gone.

Those sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama must realize that we, as Jews, are witnessing the possible end of Israel. We are in the same moral position as our ancestors were as they watched Hitler rise but did nothing to pressure their favorite liberal Democratic president, FDR, to take any real action to save them or even to let Jewish refugees into the country. If we remain complacent, we will have the same anguish at watching the destruction of Israel that our forebears had in witnessing the Holocaust.

Because one thing is increasingly clear: Barack Obama is not about to lift a finger to stop Iran from developing the bomb. And neither is Hillary Clinton.

Obama may have held the first White House seder, but he’s not planning to spend next year in Jerusalem.

Obama is the most dangerous enemy the United States is faced with!

[Teresa Heilevang]

Commentary: Does Obama want to change Israeli government?

By Aaron David Miller
Special to CNN
   
(Editor's note: Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington since 2006, served in the State Department as senior adviser for Arab-Israeli negotiations and in other roles under six secretaries of state. He is working on a book about presidential greatness.)

* Aaron David Miller: U.S. has shied away from confronting Israeli prime ministers
* He says Barack Obama has shown signs of confronting Netanyahu
* Miller: The tough stance on settlements is a risky move
* He says U.S. may have decided there's no chance of peace with Netanyahu in office


WASHINGTON (CNN - June 2, 2009) -- President Obama has embarked on what could represent a radical departure in America's Mideast policy, at least on settlements.

Having worked for Republican and Democratic administrations, I took it for granted that the current president and secretary of state would first try to invest in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before publicly confronting him.

After all, even the toughest secretary of state, James Baker, who initially had no confidence in the hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, found common ground with him in an effort to pull off the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991.

Unlike his two immediate predecessors (Bill Clinton and George W. Bush), the president has decided to draw the line with Israel and push for a comprehensive freeze on settlements on the West Bank. The president seems unwilling to yield ground and to allow the Israelis any of the traditional loopholes that would have permitted some settlement construction. If the U.S.-Israeli brouhaha leads to a real confrontation, even the fall of the Netanyahu government, President Obama may not feel too bad about it.

Fighting with Israel is a normal occupational hazard if you want to be an effective mediator. Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter and James Baker knew this. But tension with Israel was designed with a purpose under prior administrations. You didn't pick fights with an Israeli prime minister because you were frustrated or to make nice with the Arabs, but to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations that made you, America and the peace process look good.

As President Obama heads to Saudi Arabia and Egypt this week, his strategy is not altogether clear. The logic appears to be to get Israel to freeze settlements, the Arab states to offer up partial normalization and together this will somehow get Israel and the Palestinians into a successful negotiation on the toughest issues -- Jerusalem, borders and refugees. The president would presumably be prepared to lay out his own peace plan if necessary.

To make this work, the sun, moon and the stars would need to align almost perfectly. Netanyahu has already rejected an airtight freeze on settlements; the prospect of the Arabs, already scared of Iran, giving visas to Israeli entrepreneurs is unlikely. And the idea that a conflict-ending agreement can be reached between a Palestinian national movement so broken that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas share control over the guns, people and legitimacy of Palestine, and a right-wing Israeli government almost seems fantastical.

I can only conclude that the administration -- filled with talented and experienced people -- understands the long odds, too. In fact, both White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have seen the Netanyahu movie before (he was prime minister from 1996-1999) and may well have advised the president that getting an agreement with him will be almost impossible.

If the prime minister gave in on a freeze, he would be too weakened in his own country (without stunning concessions from the Arabs) that he couldn't go on to do an accord that divides Jerusalem and has Israel returning to borders very close to those of June 4, 1967.

So what's the administration's real objective? Certainly, to improve American credibility and demonstrate its commitment to peace. But there is a backstory here that points strongly in the direction of pressing Netanyahu either to change his behavior or his government. The president and secretary of state have come out early and tough on settlements, and they're denying Israel any wiggle room.

President Obama may be banking on the fact that no Israeli prime minister can afford a confrontation with America, particularly with a popular president at a time when Israel needs America to deal with Iran. And the president may also have concluded that if the prime minister decides to hang tough, well, we'll let the chips and his government fall where they may. The problem is the next Israeli government may be no more willing or able to do what the president and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would demand.

It's a risky play so early in his administration. I hope the president has thought through the consequences, because what's left of the peace process depends on it.


The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Aaron David Miller.

[runstowin]

Who would have thunk it a person with a the middle name of Hussein being anti-Israel?

As long as there are Muslims there will be no peace in the middle East. Their purpose is to destroy Israel, it is integral to their culture.

[tombogan03884]

"He says U.S. may have decided there's no chance of peace with Netanyahu in office"

They would be correct if they DID make that decision, Netanyahu is a hardliner and along with Sharon was one of the sponsors of the West bank settlements.
This of course is beside the fact that there will be no peace with out him either because the Palestinian leadership has no other way to distract their f*%#ked over population than by blaming everything on the evil Zionists, even though it's their own leaders who have been screwing them and mismanaging the area for centuries.
 

[ccd]

The death of Israel is coming no matter what. As long as the Jewish population there continues in it's adoption of "modern" family life i.e. 1. something kids per family, while the average Arab Muslim family in the region is above 3. something. The numbers don't lie and there are no prospects for mass immigration of any more Jews coming into Israel as happpened after the Soviet Union "collapsed."

[Sponsor]

[twyacht]

Israel will not go down quietly, in fact, the country that has the mountain named for Armageddon, will just flat out make powdered glass out of most of the region, if threatened and pushed far enough.

They have held back, been more "politically correct" in fighting Hamas, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, and Muslim mercenaries, and one day the line in the sand will be crossed, BHO and the UN are going to get a big F-You from Israel, and they will do like they always have, kick ass by themselves.

Hamas fired rockets into Israel everyday. Israel responds with an ass whoopin', what do the terrorists and the world (UN) do?

Make em' stop (say it like a 5 year old), make 'em stop.....

I say let em' rip.

Oh and BTW, the Middle Eastern Apology Tour continues this week with BHO going over there to spread apologies for American Arrogance..

(Decorum prohibits my response to this on this forum)

[Pathfinder]

Israel will not go down quietly, in fact, the country that has the mountain named for Armageddon, will just flat out make powdered glass out of most of the region, if threatened and pushed far enough.

I hope that's right, but Israel is a socialist country and has a huge anti-war and pro-peace movement. One can only hope that there are no atheists in foxholes, and if Iran looses a missile - or one of its minions sets off a bomb - the peaceniks will finally see the light.

One can only hope. And pray . . . . for all of us at this point.

[tombogan03884]

I hope that's right, but Israel is a socialist country and has a huge anti-war and pro-peace movement. One can only hope that there are no atheists in foxholes, and if Iran looses a missile - or one of its minions sets off a bomb - the peaceniks will finally see the light.

One can only hope. And pray . . . . for all of us at this point.

Your wrong, if Israel gets hit like that it will unleash hell. Syria will get a couple nukes Iran will get the rest, Lebanon will be over run and the Palestinians will be massacred while the Egyptians and Jordanians try to remain invisible.

[TAB]

There has been fighting in the middle east, since the start of civilization... until there is no more middle east, thats never going to stop.

[fightingquaker13]

And pray for the day of energy independence. Mock "green" power all you want, object to drilling all you want, but the day we can meet our energy needs here at home is the day we can wash our hands of the whole mess. I look forward to the day when we can summon the ambassadors of Saudi Arbia, Egypt, Dubai, Israel and the rest and say "Good Luck, send us a post card, and let us know how it all works out because its no longer our problem".
FQ13