Daled Amos

I'm unmoved by the hand-wringing over Israel's "isolation." When I came to the country 30 years ago, Israel had no relations with the USSR (and Eastern Europe), China, and India. There was no foreign investment and a UN General Assembly resolution still stood, condemning Zionism as racism. It will take more than a Cairo mob, a truculent Turk, and another UN resolution to make me feel "isolated."
Middle East expert Martin Kramer, quoted by Todd Warnick in The "Isolation" Canard

For decades, claims are periodically trotted out that Israel -- by virtue of its actions -- is being faced with the threat of being isolated.

In describing Jerusalem's Decreasing Isolation, Efraim Inbar delineates 3 ways to measure a county's isolation:

• The number of states that have diplomatic relations with a particular country. 
• Membership in international governmental organizations and agencies. 
• The amount of negative attention a state receives in international forums and public opinion. 

The claim that Israel is isolated on account of lacking friends and allies on the international stage is constantly being debunked. Just this week, Arsen Ostrovsky wrote that Israel not as isolated as many people think.

He notes that on Monday alone:

• Netanyahu met the new Egyptian Ambassador, after a three year absence, and relations between Israel and Egypt are at a recent all-time high.
• PM Netanyahu also announced a trip to Kenya and Africa, following the Kenyan President’s successful visit last week
• The Knesset launched a new Israel-Africa caucus to strengthen ties with Israel, after Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed was quoted as saying that most African countries “see Israel as a very close friend.”
• Both a senior delegation from the Bundestag, as well as the Italian Defense minister, visited Israel.
• There are reports that Israel and Turkey are on the verge of normalizing diplomatic relations

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with new Egyptian Ambassador
Hazem Khairat in Jerusalem, February 29, 2016. (photo credit:KOBI GIDEON/GPO)
That is just within a 24 hour span on Monday.Ostrovsky notes Israel's other diplomatic successes over the longer term:

• Trade relations with India, China and Japan are at record high
• The Governments of Britain and Canada as well as the EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini have strongly denounced the BDS Movement, with a number of states in the US doing likewise
• Israel has been forming close strategic ties with Greece and Cyprus
• Israel continues to have strong diplomatic relations with Germany, where Netanyahu and Chancellor Merkel recently headed government meetings.
• Relations with Russia are good, with cooperation on the situation in Syria
• The threat of ISIS has improved relations between Israel and the Sunni Arab states.

Obviously, things are not nearly as good when you turn your attention to Israel's involvement with international agencies and organizations:  there are always problems at the UN, and Israel has problems with the EU, especially in connection with the labeling of Israeli products from Judea and Samaria ("The West Bank"). Getting back to Inbar, who was writing in 2013, he contends that while Israel's relations with the UN have not improved -- they have not gotten worse either. In fact, Israeli diplomats feel that in some ways, the UN has actually become less hostile.

After becoming a temporary member of the Western European and Other States Group in 2000, Israel became more integrated into the UN and has more involved in its agencies. Jerusalem has hosted UN-sponsored conferences and its international aid agency, Mashav, is supported by both the UN and other international agencies. In May 2010, Israel was also admitted to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, consisting of the 33 most developed countries in the world committed to democracy and the market economy. Israel is also an associate member of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), ensuring Israel's involvement in scientific projects in Europe.

Prime Minister Netanyahu (third from left) joined hands in Paris with leaders
(left to right) Andrus Ansip, Estonia; Felipe Larrain, Chile; Silvio Berlusconi, Italy;
Borut Pahor, Slovenia, and Angel Gurría, secretary general of the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development, when Israel was formally admitted
into the exclusive organization. Credit: MEF
Inbar notes that "Israel's enhanced position is based on European perceptions of its own self-interest rather than ideological alignment."

International forums and public opinion are another matter, what with the attempt to isolate Israel by delegitimizing it as an apartheid regime. The success of this 'Durban strategy' is not clear, with the effectiveness of the BDS movement debatable at best. Inbar suggests that some of Israel's isolation is the result of the Obama administration, specifically the diminishing clout of the US during his term as president.

Also of concern is the escalation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses, not only because of the increase of the  phenomenon itself, but because of the lack of a strong response from the college and university heads as well. Yet even here, the fight on campuses is being joined. BDS campaigns there have not been as successful as in the past, with the defeat of divestment resolutions now making headlines.

Israel is not isolated.

Saying that obviously does not mean the threat of isolation does not exist. It does exist, and on all three levels -- diplomatic relations with other countries, international governmental organizations and agencies and  in international forums and public opinion. However, Israel is making headway in all three areas.

Yet, Israel to some extent will probably always fulfill the words of Balaam, who called the Jewish nation "a people that dwells alone".



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Technorati Tag: Israel and United Nations and European Union and Isolation.

There seems to be a new trend developing in the face of the growing incidents of antisemitism reported on college campuses -- outright denial along with claims that such reports are mere exaggeration.

Take Vassar for example, where the president of Vassar, Catharine Hill claims social media misrepresents tensions as incidents of antisemitism.

What kind of "tensions"?

Legal Insurrection has been tracking the spread and increasing appearance of antisemitism on college campuses. At Vassar, here are some examples:

• In 2014 Jewish students were mocked and jeered by a crowd of students and faculty at a campus-wide forum
  
  
• A class involving a trip to Israel and the West Bank was picketed, forcing a professor to cross a picket line of shouting students
  
  
• Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) posted a Nazi cartoon on social media, and pro-Israel displays were vandalized.
  
  
• Recently, a Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign was kicked off by SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace, followed by an event sponsored by the faculty where Israel was accused of  experiments to “stunt” Palestinian bodies
  
  
• In response to a pro-Israel post by the Vasser Jewish Student Union on Facebook, a student replied "F*ck Jews" via Yik Yak
  
  
• SJP promoted the sale of t-shirts honoring Palestinian terrorist Leila Khalid, the first female plane hijacker:

Catalog image of shirt honoring Palestinian terrorist Leila Khalid,
the first female plane hijacker. Credit: Legal Insurrection

The New York Post reported on antisemitic attacks at another campus just a few days ago, under the headline ‘Jew haters’ spread fear at CUNY colleges, with the following list

• At John Jay College, which specializes in criminal justice, Jewish students have been the target of so many slurs that at lease three have transferred. One John Jay administrator responded to a Jewish student’s concerns by saying, “What are these white kids complaining about?” (emphasis added)
  
  
• On Nov. 12 at Hunter College, during a demonstration for free tuition, Jewish students were denounced as “racist sons of bitches,” “fascists” and “Nazis” and were greeted with comments such as “Jews out of CUNY.” One student tweeted at the time, “Full-blown anti-Semitism allowed at my college . . . I witnessed this and froze in fear.”
  
  
• At Brooklyn College, the pro-Palestinian group disrupted a faculty meeting last week and called a professor wearing a yarmulka a “Zionist pig.” Brooklyn College slammed the “hateful” comments and the disruption.
  
  
• At The College of Staten Island, a pro-Palestinian demonstrator told a Jewish student last November, “I don’t hug murderers.” Swastikas also defaced the college’s desks and walls.

ZOA President Morton Klein is quoted as commenting that CUNY was not doing enough, and that the “hateful, anti-Semitic and violence-inciting conduct” of SJP needed to be addressed in order to protect the safety of the Jewish students:
Such bigotry would never be tolerated by CUNY if it were being directed against another ethnic, racial or other targeted group,” Klein wrote. “CUNY should not be tolerating it when the bigotry is directed against Jews.Jews are not immune at Oxford University either, contrary to the attempt to whitewash what is happening there. UK Media Watch debunks a letter in the Guardian that accuses those who complain about antisemitism as merely "crying wolf." This, in the face of these incidents at Oxford:

• Members of the Labour Club’s committee have been known to sing the song “Rockets over Tel Aviv” and have specifically expressed support for Hamas’ tactic of launching indiscriminate attacks against Israel’s Jewish citizens.
  
  
• One Labour Club member stated specifically that it was “not antisemitic” to allege the existence of a “New York – Tel Aviv axis” that rigs elections, and said that “we should be aware of the influence wielded over elections by high net-worth Jewish individuals”. He also stated that it was “not antisemitic” to allege the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy, even though he did not endorse the idea himself.
  
  
• One Labour Club committee member stated that all Jews should be expected to publicly denounce Zionism and the State of Israel, and that nobody should associate with any Jew who fails to do so.
  
  
• Several individuals, some who have been on the Labour Club committee, repeatedly used the word “Zio” (a word normally only found on neo-Nazi websites) to refer to Jewish students.
  
  
• Several Labour Club members have alleged that US foreign policy is under the control of the “Zionist Lobby” and when asked if by “Zionist” they simply meant “Jewish” they did not answer.
  
  
• One member of the Labour Club was formally disciplined by their College for organising a group of students to harass a Jewish student and to shout “filthy Zionist” whenever they saw her.
  
  
• In a public discussion on the Labour Club’s Facebook group, one member argued that Hamas was justified in its policy of killing Jewish civilians and claimed that all Jews were legitimate targets. Several other members, including two former Labour Club co-chairs and one then on committee, defended the member as making “a legitimate point clumsily expressed”.
  
  
• Two Labour Club members argued that Jenny Tonge, a peer expelled from the Liberal Democrats over antisemitism, should be encouraged to join the Labour Party.

Ignoring these very real incidents of antisemtism and incitement at Oxford, the writers of the letter go on to lecture:
Those who deliberately confuse antisemitism and anti-Zionism give comfort and aid to the real antisemites in our society. Like the boy who cried wolf, they ensure that if antisemitism does rear its ugly head, people will assume that this is just another false accusation. And therein lies the essence of this growing trend to deflect reports of antisemitism by claiming that Jews are merely overreacting.

Thus we have another claim of overreacting -- this time by Haaretz, about Crying wolf on campus anti-Semitism: The Vassar College talk was no blood libel, claiming that
Jasbir Puar's claim that Israel harvested Palestinian body parts was irresponsible and unsubstantiated – but it wasn't anti-Semitism.What is unclear is whether those who defend these antisemitic attacks would respond the same way if they were directed against any other group. Contrary to others on campus, who are deemed deserving of safe places from microaggressions, Jews are expected to quietly submit to macroaggressions - to all the accusations, intimidation and assaults that are thrown at them. Something heinous is brewing on college campuses, and the one thing Jews cannot and will not be is silent.

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Joel Fishman writes that UN Resolution 3379, claiming that Zionism is a form of racism, did not just appear out of nowhere. Though passed in 1975, the roots of the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism can be found in the UN in 1964. Back then, the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities was engaged in discussions aimed at recognizing Antisemitism as a form of racism -- along with apartheid and Nazism.

At the time, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency had the story of what happened next:
Russia Asks U.N. to Condemn Zionism Along with Anti-semitism, Nazism

The Soviet Union called formally upon the United Nations today to condemn Zionism along with anti-Semitism, Nazism and neo-Nazism as a policy of “colonialism and race hatred.” The step was taken in the General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee where a draft convention was being debated calling for the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination.
UN General Assembly (November 1965) UN Photo/TC
The amendment introduced by the US and Brazil, according to which the states would “condemn anti-Semitism and shall take action as appropriate for its speedy eradication in territories subject to their jurisdiction” would not see the light of day.

Instead, it would be replaced with:
“States parties condemn anti-Semitism, Zionism, Nazism, neo-Nazism and all other forms of the policy and ideology of colonialism, national and race hatred and exclusiveness and shall take action as appropriate for the speedy eradication of those misanthropic ideas and practices in the territories subject to their jurisdiction.In the end, Russia's ploy served its purpose. A different amendment was proposed by Greece and Hungary, removing all reference to any specific kind of discrimination.

In her article "Equating Zionism with Racism: The 1965 Precedent", Dr. Ofra Friesel outlines the various motives that surrounded the push both for and against the amendment condemning Antisemitism as racism:

• The United States wanted to include the issue of religious persecution with racial discrimination in order to deflect international attention away from African-Americans discrimination -- and focus it instead towards the persecution of religious groups in Soviet Russia
• Soviet Russia wanted to protect itself from international criticism, while at the same time keeping international public opinion focused on the problem of race relations inside the US
• Israel and Jewish organizations also wanted to use the mention of religious persecution in order to criticize the USSR -- for its persecution of Jews.
• African and Asian countries did not want to be sidetracked by the issue of religious persecution. They were more concerned with racial discrimination
• Arab countries saw a religious persecution clause as an attempt to protect Israeli and Jewish interests

If accurate, the US and the USSR appear to have been using their particular amendments to embarrass each other. Thus, it could even be that this time around, the real target of the USSR in thwarting the original amendment by attacking Zionism was the US, and not Israel.

According to Dr. Yochanan Manor, while they occasionally claimed that Zionist leaders cooperated with the Nazis, Soviet Russia did not accuse Zionism of being racist -- instead defining Zionism as chauvinistic, bourgeois and reactionary. They reserved the term "racist" for the non-Slavic national movements which attempted to form ties with ethnic movements outside of the USSR, in an attempt to discredit them.

That all changed in 1967, after the Six Day War, when the Soviets saw the influence of the war on Jewish nationalism.

By 1971, Yakov Malik, the Soviet ambassador was openly lecturing the UN Security Council that Zionism was parallel to Fascism, and the UN was well on its way to UN Resolution 3379, just 4 years later.

Though repealed in 1991, UN Resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism served its purpose. It tagged Zionism, and by extension -- Israel, with a slur that continues to be exploited by both virulent anti-Israel critics and by antisemites. While the association may have initially been utilized to thwart the US, ultimately it has been a tool against Israel and will continue to be resorted to by those who deny Israel's right to exist.
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"Moreover, all journalism is a form of activism. Every journalistic choice necessarily embraces highly subjective assumptions — cultural, political or nationalistic — and serves the interests of one faction or another."
Glenn Greenwald, quoted in "Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News?"

If the future of journalism really is that it will be reduced to emotional assumptions instead of fact-based assertions, we can also ask if that is the future of other formerly respected endeavors as well.

Take for instance Steven Salaita, described by Wikipedia as an American scholar, author and public speaker currently holding the Edward W. Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut.


Steven Salaita Credit: Alalam News Network
Surely being a scholar means that this Salaita is a smart fellow -- that's what a scholar is, no?
Maybe not.

When I did an online search for "scholar," I got the following:
Apparently, it is passe and downright archaic to say that someone who is called a scholar is actually smart or educated. Instead of being defined by what he is, a scholar today apparently is defined by the position he holds. Also a scholar is distinguished. And what distinguishes Salaita?

Here are 3 snapshots of the many tweets by Salaita about Israel (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection, who has many more of Salaita's tweets):





One definition of a "distinguished" person is one who "commands respect" -- obviously, that is not what we are dealing with here.

Salaita was recently among a number of speakers at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London.

UK Media Watch covered the Apartheid Week panel hosted at SOAS, and Salaita made himself at home.

Among his claims:
He said that “humanising Palestinians undermines the Zionist project” and so Zionists associate Palestinians with Hitler and “have a fear of binationalism which is actual democracy” (this drew huge applause and cheers).This claim Israeli demonization is quickly debunked by a look at the EoZ posters for "Apartheid Week", which features poster of prominent Arabs in Israel, including in the Israeli army, judiciary and Knesset -- and check out Elder of Ziyon's post for many, many more such posters.




Salaita also claimed that
“Israel directs so much of its violence at children and takes more Palestinian land for water and agriculture”.Unlike Hamas, which instigates terrorist attacks on unarmed civilians, Israel has only attacked Hamas in response to terror attacks. Even then, Israel does not target civilians, let alone children. Israellycool notes that during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, Israel's care in avoiding children was supported by the Gaza Health Ministry-based list of casualties featured on Al Jazeera

Israellycool put together a chart based on that list:


That chart clearly shows that the Al Jazeera list indicates that to the degree that any age group was targeted, it was the age group associated with terrorists.

As for Salaita's claim about water, myths about the water issue are addressed in The Myth of the Thirsty Palestinian.

A third claim by Salaita is his whitewashing of Palestinians throwing stones:
He then mused on the symbolism of Palestinians throwing stones. He said there’s a miniscule chance of harm from stones (although tell that to the family of Asher Palmer who was killed along with his one year old son when a Palestinian thrown rock smashed through their car windscreen).

He said Israelis see stone-throwing as “an act of rejection” and that “stones assume primordial importance and an existential anxiety”.The Palmers are not the only casualties of stone-throwing Palestinian Arabs. According to Wikipedia, "at least 14 Israelis have been killed by Palestinian stone throwing, including 3 Arabs mistaken for Jews."

And a look at the long history of Arabs throwing stones at Jews indicates that anxiety has nothing to do with it.

In 1955, S. D. Goitein, in his book Jews and Arabs: Their Contacts Through the Ages, wrote:
In former times--and in remote places even today--it was common for Muslim schoolboys to stone Jews. When the Turks conquered Yemen in 1872, an envoy was sent from the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul to inquire what grievance the Yemenite Jews had against their neighbors. It is indicative that the first thing of which they complained was this molestation by the schoolboys. But when the Turkish Governor asked an assembly of notables to stop this nuisance,there arose an old doctor of Muslim law and explained that this stone-throwing at Jews was an age-old custom (in Arabic 'Ada) and therefore it was unlawful to forbid it. [p. 76, emphasis added]In the book Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846-1855, Israel Joseph Benjamin includes among the multiple indignities regularly suffered by Jews at the hands of the Muslims of Persia:
Under the pretext of their being unclean, they are treated with the greatest severity, and should they enter a street, inhabited by Mussulmans, they are pelted by the boys and mob with stones and dirt.[p 212]Andrew Bostom gives another example in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History:

• The British Jerusalem Consul, James Finn, reported in 1858 about the dangers faced by Jews in then-Palestine in the city of Hebron:
  The rural district is left entirely to peasant Sheikhs, with one responsible over the rest.The streets of the town were paraded by fanatic Dervishes—and during my stay there a Jewish house was forcibly entered by night, iron bars of the window broken, and heavy stones thrown by invisible hands at every person approaching the place to afford help. One of the Members of the Council affirmed that they were not obliged to obey orders from the Pasha’s deputy—and another declared his right derived from time immemorial in his family, to enter Jewish houses, and take toll or contributions any time without giving account. [p 89]

Contrary to Salaita, the "primordial importance" of stone throwing was as a means to persecute Jews, who then --- and now -- are the ones who are feeling the "existential anxiety.”

Whether in journalism or academia, taking a profession that used to be respected for honoring truth and twisting it into a form of activism inevitably leads to subjective conclusions, error and outright sloppiness. Regardless of whether it is inevitable or not, even if what one writes, reports or teaches serves the interests of a particular faction that should not be an excuse for tossing out all sense of propriety and standards.

But Steven Salaita apparently doesn't feel that way.
At least in Lebanon, home of Hezbollah, he can find a faction that appreciates his "work".
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Technorati Tag: Israel and Steven Salaita and Gaza and Stone throwing.

The following by Efraim Karsh is reposted here with the permission of The Middle East Forum:


Obama's Middle East Delusions
by Efraim Karsh
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2016 (view PDF)



Iran's nuclear facility in Arak. Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons is, perhaps, the foremost threat to Middle Eastern stability, if not to world peace, in the foreseeable future. President Obama's policies have allowed Iran to move ever closer to producing nuclear weapons.As the only person to have won the Nobel Peace Prize on the basis of sheer hope rather than actual achievement, Barack Hussein Obama could be expected to do everything within his power to vindicate this unprecedented show of trust. Instead he has presided over a clueless foreign policy that has not only exacerbated ongoing regional conflicts but made the world a far more dangerous place. Nowhere has this phenomenon been more starkly demonstrated than in the Middle East where the Nobel laureate has abetted Tehran's drive for regional hegemony and brought the regime within a stone's throw of nuclear weapons; driven Iraq and Libya to the verge of disintegration; expedited the surge of Islamist terrorism; exacerbated the Syrian civil war and its attendant refugee problem; made the intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict almost irresolvable; and plunged Washington's regional influence and prestige to unprecedented depths,[1] paving the road in grand style to Russia's resurgence.

Duped by the MullahsConsider Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons, perhaps the foremost threat to Middle Eastern stability, if not to world peace, in the foreseeable future. In a sharp break from the Bush administration's attempts to coerce the mullahs to desist from this relentless drive, which culminated in five U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing a string of escalating economic sanctions,[2]Obama opted for the road of "engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect"[3] with the presumptuous aim of mending the 30-year-long U.S.-Iranian breach and reintegrating the Islamist regime in Tehran into the international system.



President Obama is interviewed on al-Arabiya network, January 27, 2009. Two months later, in a videotaped greeting on the occasion of the Iranian new year, he reassured Iranians of his commitment "to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us." Obama's appeasing demeanor cast him as weak and indecisive.
In his first major presidential interview, given to the al-Arabiya TV network a week after inauguration, Obama promised that if the mullahs agreed "to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us." Two months later, in a videotaped greeting on the occasion of the Iranian new year, he reassured them of his commitment "to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us," claiming that reciprocating this "new beginning" would win Tehran substantial international gains and "demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization."[4] He amplified this claim in his celebrated June 2009 Cairo address to the Muslim world going out of his way to empathize with Iran's supposed nuclear sensibilities.[5]

Rather than win him the mullahs' goodwill and admiration, Obama's appeasing demeanor cast him as weak and indecisive, and this image was further reinforced by his knee jerk response to their brutal suppression of popular protest over the rigging of the June 2009 Iranian presidential elections. That the U.S. president—who had made a point in his inaugural address to dismiss "those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent" as being "on the wrong side of history" and who lectured Muslim regimes throughout the world of the need to rule "through consent, not coercion"[6]—remained conspicuously aloof in the face of the flagrant violation of these very principles did not pass unnoticed. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded Washington's apology for its supposed meddling in the elections while Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i, ridiculed Obama for privately courting Tehran while censuring it in public. "The U.S. president said that we were waiting for the day when people would take to the streets," he stated in a Friday sermon. "At the same time, they write letters saying that they want to have ties and that they respect the Islamic Republic. Which are we to believe?"[7]

Iran's supreme leader ridiculed Obama for privately courting Tehran while censuring it in public.Khamene'i was not the only one baffled by Obama's real intentions. In a secret memorandum to top White House officials on January 4, 2010, Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that "the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability." He was particularly alarmed by the absence of an effective strategy to prevent Tehran from amassing all the major parts of a nuclear bomb—fuel, designs and detonators—while stopping just short of assembling a fully operational weapon, thus remaining within the bounds of the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (NPT) while becoming a "virtual" nuclear power. "If their policy is to go to the threshold but not assemble a nuclear weapon, how do you tell that they have not assembled?" he cautioned in a nationwide television interview. "I don't actually know how you would verify that."[8]

Apparently unperturbed by this danger, in 2011, Obama passed a secret message to Khamene'i (via Oman's Sultan Qaboos) expressing readiness for nuclear talks based on a U.S. recognition of a nuclear Iran.[9] As Tehran was unimpressed, the president was forced to authorize harsh sanctions at the end of the year. But he did so with the utmost reluctance under heavy congressional pressure and with the Damocles sword of a preventive Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities hovering over his head.[10] While the European Union followed suit with similar measures that further afflicted the Iranian economy, Obama refrained from carrying the sanctions to their logical conclusion, instead capitalizing on the August 2013 inauguration of the supposedly-moderate Hassan Rouhani as president to offer an olive branch to the mullahs. This approach culminated in the interim agreement of November 24, 2013, known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), between Iran and the great powers—France, Germany, Britain, Russia, China, and the United States (or P5+1 as they are commonly known)—whereby Tehran agreed to curb some of its nuclear activities for a period of six months (e.g., to stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent) in return for some $7 billion in sanctions relief.[11]

No sooner had the ink dried on the accord than it transpired that for the Islamist regime it was but a clever ploy to loosen the economic noose around Iran while holding fast to its nuclear ambitions. "In this agreement, the right of [the] Iranian nation to enrich uranium was accepted by [the] world powers," Rouhani told his subjects in a nationwide television broadcast. "With this agreement ... the architecture of sanctions will begin to break down." Two months later, as the JPOA was about to come into effect after two more months of haggling, Rouhani described the accord as "big-power surrender to the great Iranian nation" and pledged to defend Iranian rights and interests in the ensuing negotiations over the country's nuclear future.[12] While Western commentators and diplomats whitewashed this assertion as a ploy to deflect domestic criticism, Tehran did not moderate its stance regarding the permanent settlement thus forcing the extension of the designated negotiating period by another four months to November 24, 2014.

Why should it have acted differently at a time when the Western powers were bending over backward to reach an agreement even if this failed to address the problem it was designed to solve? This was evidenced among other examples by the U.S. administration's obstruction of congressional legislation authorizing new sanctions in the event of noncompliance with the JPOA; by the rapid breakdown of Tehran's diplomatic isolation and economic strangulation;[13] and by the apparent readiness to leave substantial parts of Iran's nuclear infrastructure intact thus allowing it to resume its nuclear weapons drive at will.[14]

The Obama administration showed a distinct lack of appetite for the military option against Iran.Above all, despite its lip service to leaving "all options on the table," the Obama administration not only showed a distinct lack of appetite for the military option but went out of its way to forestall a preventive Israeli strike, especially in 2010-12 when it seemed to be in the cards.[15] Indeed, as the extended deadline for nuclear negotiations loomed large, the mullahs were reportedly mulling over a U.S. proposal that would allow them to keep many of their enrichment centrifuges intact in return for a reduction in their stockpile of low-enriched uranium, thus prolonging the time needed for building a nuclear weapon but not eliminating this possibility altogether as demanded by the Israelis and the U.S. president himself for that matter.[16]

As if to dispel any doubts about his appeasing intentions, in mid-October 2014, without telling any of Washington's regional allies, and at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s director general warned that "we cannot provide assurance that all material in Iran is in peaceful purposes," Obama passed yet another secret letter to Khamene'i proposing U.S.-Iranian military collaboration against the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) after the conclusion of a nuclear agreement—only to be peremptorily told that "Iran will not accept having an [uranium] enrichment program that is nominal or decorative."[17] Small wonder that the November 2014 deadline had to be extended yet again, this time for a longer period of seven months to June 24, 2015.

When the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was eventually pronounced on July 14, 2015, it contained a string of glaring loopholes enabling Tehran to seamlessly sail to nuclear weapons after ten to fifteen years at the latest. These included, among other things, acquiescence in Iran's right to continue enrichment activities and to retain up to 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges (and a smaller number of newer centrifuges) to this end. It also provided for deeply flawed monitoring measures such as a two-week notice for verification of "the absence of undeclared nuclear materials or activities inconsistent with the JCPOA" and non-interference "with Iranian military or other national security activities," including a reported secret permission to Iran to inspect the Parchin military base where it had experimented with nuclear weaponization.[18]

Small wonder, therefore, that thousands of jubilant Iranians took to the streets to celebrate the JCPOA's announcement while Rouhani triumphantly declared that "this is the day on which all the large countries and the superpowers in the world have officially recognized Iran's nuclear activities."

He further elaborated on Tehran's four goals in the negotiations:
The first goal was to continue the nuclear capabilities, the nuclear technology, and even the nuclear activity within Iran. The second goal was to lift the mistaken, oppressive, and inhumane sanctions. The third goal was to remove all the U.N. Security Council resolutions that we view as illegal. The fourth goal was to remove the Iranian nuclear dossier from Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter and from the Security Council in general. In today's agreement, in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, all four goals have been achieved.[19]Destabilizing Iraq

Islamists parade through Fallujah. With the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in December 2011, the country that was left behind was anything but a "sovereign, stable, and self-reliant" state as Obama claimed. Some two years later, in January 2014, ISIS captured Anbar's capital of Ramadi (though parts of it were subsequently retaken by the government) and the key city of Fallujah, where U.S. forces had fought two bitter battles a decade earlier.
In fairness to Obama, the Iranian fiasco was not wholly of his making but was largely a corollary of Washington's ongoing entanglement in Iraq, which diminished its appetite for fresh foreign engagements. Yet the president's ingrained and highly publicized aversion to the use of force in pursuit of foreign policy goals undoubtedly made a bad situation worse, not merely by effectively eliminating the military option—the ultimate barrier to Tehran's nuclear quest—but by creating a power vacuum in Iraq that brought the country to the verge of disintegration. For although it was President Bush who delineated the U.S. exit strategy in his November 2008 status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi government, Obama's eagerness to make good his electoral promise to leave Iraq within eighteen months led to a rushed departure in total disregard of its detrimental consequences.

By the August 31, 2010 deadline for the completion of the withdrawal's first stage (i.e., removal of all fighting brigades from Iraq), it had become evident that the country was beset by renewed anarchy with parliament failing to form a government in the wake of the latest elections, near-daily terror attacks exacting scores of fatalities, and dilapidated public services stirring widespread restiveness. Ignoring this grim reality, Obama went out of his way to present the Iraq withdrawal as a "powerful reminder" of the "renewed American leadership in the world" and boasted of "leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq" ruled by "a representative government that was elected by its people."[20]

In fact, the Iraq that was left behind was anything but a "sovereign, stable and self-reliant" state. Rather it was a hopelessly polarized society oppressed by a sectarian and brutal Shiite regime that retained power through ruthless, underhanded methods in the face of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's electoral defeat and used it to restore the all-too-familiar pattern of one-man rule characterizing Iraq since its inception.

Matters came to a head on July 23, 2012, when more than one hundred people were murdered and another 250 injured in Iraq's worst day of violence since 2010. A similar number of people were murdered on September 9, 2012, in retribution for the death sentencing of exiled Sunni vice president Tariq Hashemi (tried and convicted in absentia of operating death squads). By March 2013, most of the country's Sunni areas were mired in violence; by the end of the year, some 7,800 civilians had been murdered, and another 18,000 were wounded, making it Iraq's bloodiest year since 2008.[21] Meanwhile, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, implemented a series of measures—e.g., passing a separate budget, separating the region from the national electricity grid, independently exporting oil via Turkey, and intensifying relations with foreign countries—that significantly enhanced Kurdistan's autonomy and edged it toward statehood.[22]

To make matters worse, a number of jihadist groups, notably the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) capitalized on the swelling protest to style themselves as protectors of the oppressed Sunnis. In January 2014, ISIS captured Anbar's capital of Ramadi (though parts of it were subsequently retaken by the government) and the key city of Fallujah where U.S. forces had fought two bitter battles a decade earlier, and five months later, launched a major offensive in northern and western Iraq. On June 9, the group conquered Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, and two days later, captured Tirkit, Saddam Hussein's hometown. By the end of the month, ISIS had established control over many of Iraq's Sunni areas and the Syrian northeastern province of Deir Ezzour; proclaimed a caliphate headed by its leader, Abu Bakr Baghdadi; and changed its name to the Islamic State (IS) to reflect its claim to leadership of the worldwide Muslim community (umma).[23]

Obama presented the Iraq withdrawal as a "powerful reminder" of the "renewed American leadership in the world."When, in August 2014, U.S. fighter planes bombed IS targets in northern Iraq, the organization responded by posting YouTube videos showing the decapitation of two captured U.S. journalists and a British aid worker. Yet while this ghastly PR exercise enticed further European Muslims into IS's ranks and drove the CIA to concede that the group "mustered between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria" (rather than the 10,000 as previously believed),[24] it failed to achieve its intended deterrent goal as the international revulsion sparked by the beheadings drove a grudging Obama to declare that "the U.S. is at war with ISIL in the same way the U.S. is at war with al-Qaeda."[25]
And so it is that four years after triumphantly announcing the end of the Iraq war, the president who had made disengagement from the conflict a key electoral promise and the hallmark of his first term in office found himself sucked again into the Iraqi quagmire. While Obama has thus far managed to avoid deploying U.S. ground forces while somewhat degrading IS's military capabilities (killing some of its top leaders and apparently wounding Baghdadi), the air campaign has neither dimmed the group's appeal to Western Muslims nor prevented it from making substantial gains that further exposed the administration's impotence.
Springtime DelusionsThe failure to anticipate the rise of IS was emblematic of the total incomprehension of the administration (and Western governments more generally) of the real nature of the revolutionary tidal wave that has cascaded across the Middle East since December 2010, toppling in rapid succession the long-reigning Tunisian and Egyptian autocrats, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, and kindling euphoric talk in the West of an "Arab Spring" that would usher in an era of regional democratization.

While Obama claimed that these events "should not have come as a surprise,"[26] Washington was totally overwhelmed by their occurrence and reduced from the outset to the role of a hapless spectator. By the time Obama condemned on January 14, 2011, "the use of violence against citizens peacefully voicing their opinion in Tunisia" and urged "all parties to maintain calm and avoid violence"[27] the crisis had blown over, and Ben Ali had fled the country.

Obama's impact on the subsequent Egyptian crisis was not much greater. To be sure, in an abrupt u-turn from established U.S. policy, he prodded Mubarak to step down so as to initiate a "meaningful" and "peaceful" transition process.[28] Yet this very public betrayal of one of Washington's staunchest regional allies was little more than a quintessential Obama grandstanding aimed at taking credit for events he had not set in motion and over which he had no control. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor and onetime Obama foreign affairs mentor, put it: "The rhetoric is always terribly imperative and categorical: 'You must do this,' 'He must do that,' 'This is unacceptable'... [But] he doesn't strategize. He sermonizes."[29]

Sermonizing was very much in evidence in Obama's May 19, 2011 speech enunciating his vision of the "Arab Spring" where the president had no qualms about telling local leaders how to conduct themselves in the face of the regional turbulence. "The Syrian people have shown their courage in demanding a transition to democracy," he categorically stated as if the predominantly Islamist rebels had the slightest interest in the idea and as if the Damascus dictator was taking his marching orders from Washington. "President [Bashar al-] Assad now has a choice: He can lead that transition, or get out of the way."[30]



Obama warned Assad that the use of chemical weapons was a "red line" that could trigger a U.S. military response. When the regime gassed more than a thousand of its citizens to death, Obama grudgingly announced his intention to launch a punitive air strike. But Assad's acceptance of a Russian proposal for dismantling Syria's chemical weapons allowed Obama to call off the strike though the regime managed to maintain much of its chemical arsenal.
In the coming years, Obama was to reiterate this refrain ad nauseam while at the same time doing practically nothing to facilitate its implementation. Time and again, he warned Assad that the use of chemical weapons against the civilian population was a "red line" that could trigger a U.S. military response, only to be repeatedly rebuffed.[31]Even after the regime's gassing to death of more than a thousand of its rebellious subjects forced Obama grudgingly to announce his intention to launch a punitive air strike, he went out of his way to clarify that "this would not be an open-ended intervention" and "would not [involve] boots on the ground."[32] While Assad's acceptance of a Russian proposal for the dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal allowed Obama to call off the strike while claiming victory, the incident not only ensured the survival of the Syrian regime (and much of its chemical arsenal) but gave it a carte blanche to continue slaughtering its citizens provided this was done with conventional, not chemical, weapons. Indeed, with U.S.-Soviet relations ebbing sharply over the 2014 Ukraine crisis, and IS becoming the foremost international scourge after its public execution of Western hostages, the ongoing Syrian bloodbath has fallen off the Western radar allowing Assad to resume chemical attacks on its subjects with impunity.[33] By way of adding insult to injury, at a time when the astounded U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee was told that the $500 million effort to raise Syrian forces to fight the Islamic State had resulted in the training of "four or five" fighters,[34]newly deployed Russian forces in Syria began an air campaign against alleged IS targets as part of a coordinated effort with Damascus, Tehran, and Baghdad to defeat the jihadist organization.[35]

Western leaders and observers massively downplayed the significance of the regional Islamist surge they unleashed.In a desperate bid to salvage whatever was left of his credibility, in late October 2015 Obama announced the dispatch of up to fifty special operations soldiers to Syria while stressing that they would not be put "on the front lines fighting firefights with ISIL" but would rather "train, advise, and assist" anti-ISIL forces.[36]

Even the Libyan intervention—the first and only military attempt by the Western powers to sway the "Arab Spring" in their idyllic vision—exposed the glaring dissonance between Obama's "imperative and categorical" rhetoric and its timid implementation as the president left it to Paris and London to orchestrate the international intervention on behalf of the fledgling uprising with Washington reduced to "leading from behind." While the intervention overthrew Libya's long reigning dictator Mu'ammar al-Qaddafi—albeit at a far greater effort and cost than expected—the nascent "new Libya" has been a far cry from the showcase, Western-propped, democratized society it was supposed to become. Instead, the collapse of the Qaddafi regime, which had skillfully kept the country's disparate components intact for forty-two years, gave rise to general anarchy with a multitude of mainly Islamist militias, notably IS, controlling various parts of the country and vying for power with the central government as waves of refugees seek to flee the country en route to Europe.[37]

Reluctant to concede that the regional upheavals had never been the liberal awakening they were taken for, Western leaders and observers massively down-played the significance of the Islamist surge they unleashed: denying its very occurrence (as with the U.S. administration's astounding characterization of the Muslim Brotherhood as "largely secular,"[38] which perhaps helps explain its warm embrace of their short-lived rule in Egypt); attributing it to the Islamists' organizational superiority and the secularists' failure to provide compelling alternatives; or predicting the Islamists' inevitable moderation due to their newly-assumed governing responsibilities.[39]

Obama portrayed the "Arab Spring" as an antithesis to Islamism and to the militant brand offered by Osama bin Laden.In his May 2011 speech, Obama portrayed the "Arab Spring" as a regional antithesis to Islamism in general and to the militant brand offered by Osama bin Laden and his ilk in particular. "Bin Laden and his murderous vision won some adherents," he argued. "But even before his death, al-Qaeda was losing its struggle for relevance, as the overwhelming majority of people saw that the slaughter of innocents did not answer their cries for a better life."[40]Small wonder that when a year later, al-Qaeda affiliates attacked the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the administration responded with customary obfuscation. Ignoring both the attack's deliberate timing and a Libyan forewarning of its imminence,[41] U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice described the incident as a spontaneous retort to a U.S.-made, anti-Muslim video clip that spun out of control while White House press secretary Jay Carney argued that "we don't have and did not have concrete evidence to suggest that [the attack] was not in reaction to the film." Obama tacitly amplified this misrepresentation a day after the attack: "We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence." Becoming more explicit in a U.N. address two weeks later, he said, "I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video ... [Yet] there is no video justifying an attack on an Embassy."[42]

This was of course a deliberate misrepresentation. As early as the night of the attack, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton emailed her daughter that "two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al-Qaeda like group." In an email to the Egyptian prime minister the next day, Clinton was far more forthright, saying that "we know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest."[43]

But whatever the administration was prepared to concede in private, it would not acknowledge in public even if this meant lying to the American people (and the world at large). After all, was not al-Qaeda supposed to have faded into oblivion after the killing of its founding leader?
Exacerbating the Arab-Israeli Conflict

In open rebuff of Jerusalem and Washington, Mahmoud Abbas, above, and the Palestinian leadership sought an international imposition of Palestinian statehood without a peace agreement with Israel. In November 2012, Abbas obtained General Assembly recognition of Palestine as a "non-member observer state" to the undisguised dismay of the U.S. administration.
No less disastrous has been Obama's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By the time he took office in January 2009, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had been engaged in fifteen years of negotiations in the framework of the Oslo "peace" process. Within months of his inauguration, the Palestinian leadership, buoyed by his sustained pressure on Jerusalem, dropped all pretenses of seeking a negotiated settlement and opted for an international imposition of Palestinian statehood without a peace agreement with Israel.
When, in June 2009, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu broke with Likud's ideological precept and agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state provided it recognized Israel's Jewish identity (as required by the November 1947 U.N. partition resolution, which the PLO had professed to accept in 1988), Washington did nothing to disabuse the Palestinian leadership of its decades-long rejection of Jewish statehood—the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict—and instead pressured the Israeli government for a complete freeze of building activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This culminated in an Israeli announcement on November 24, 2009, of a ten-month construction freeze aimed at launching "meaningful negotiations to reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians."[44]

Nothing of the sort happened. Watching the deepening schism in U.S.-Israeli relations with undisguised glee in anticipation of substantial—and unreciprocated—concessions, the Palestinian leadership dismissed Netanyahu's acceptance of the two-state solution out of hand. Chief peace negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that the prime minister "will have to wait 1,000 years before he finds one Palestinian who will go along with him" while Fatah, the PLO's largest constituent organization and Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas's alma mater, reaffirmed its longstanding commitment to the "armed struggle" (the standard euphemism for violence and terrorism) as "a strategy, not tactic ... in the battle for liberation and for the elimination of the Zionist presence. This struggle will not stop until the Zionist entity is eliminated, and Palestine is liberated."[45]

Nor did Abbas have any qualms about walking away from the negotiations table upon the expiry of the construction freeze in September 2010 in defiance of Obama's buoyant prediction earlier that month that peace could be achieved within a year. Asked by Netanyahu to reconsider, in return for a renewed settlement freeze and recognition of Israel as a national home for the Jewish people, the PA president reiterated his rejection to ever sign "an agreement recognizing a Jewish state" and threatened a unilateral declaration of statehood were the peace process to remain stalled.[46]

Abbas made good on his threat in September 2011 when, in open rebuff of Jerusalem and Washington and in flagrant violation of the Oslo accords that envisaged the attainment of peace through direct negotiations between the two parties, he sought to present Israel with a fait accompli by gaining U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood. Having failed to garner sufficient support at the Security Council, in November 2012, Abbas obtained a General Assembly recognition of Palestine as a "non-member observer state" to the undisguised dismay of the U.S. administration, which condemned the move as "counterproductive" and an obstacle "in the path [to] peace."[47]

The stark warning by Secretary of State John Kerry that "the window for a two-state solution is shutting" made no impression on the Palestinians.[48] To be sure, in apparent deference to Kerry's tireless efforts to jumpstart the stalemated talks, the Palestinians agreed to return to the negotiating table at the end of July 2013. Yet, this was a transparent ploy to drive a wedge between Israel and the U.S. administration, which seemed to have recognized the futility of its first term strategy and adopted a seemingly more conciliatory tone toward Jerusalem. The Palestinians also hoped to lay the groundwork for a renewed unilateral drive for U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood.

This strategy bore the desired fruit before too long. At the end of April 2014, Abbas walked out of the talks yet again, having rallied the Arab League behind his "absolute and decisive rejection to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state," and formed a "unity government" with Hamas. The U.S. administration blamed Israel for the debacle while the EU indicated the possible boycott of Israeli entities that operated beyond the 1967 lines.[49] Three months later, when Israel was grudgingly drawn into a third war with Hamas in five years, the U.S. administration collaborated with Hamas's foremost patrons—Turkey and Qatar—in an attempt to organize a ceasefire amenable to the Islamist terror group; endorsed the suspension of U.S. flights to Israel thus triggering an avalanche of suspensions that left the Jewish state briefly cut off from the rest of the world; and withheld certain weapons supplies in an attempt to rein in Israel's military operations.

When, in October 2015, a tidal wave of Palestinian terrorism swept across Israel, Kerry ascribed the eruption to the (non-existent) "massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years" (in fact, by Netanyahu's own admission, his government has built less in West Bank neighborhoods than its immediate precursors) while a State Department spokesman attributed it to Israel's (imaginary) disruption of the status quo on Temple Mount, accusing the Netanyahu government of using "excessive force" to curb Palestinian attacks.[50]

Obama's persistent snub of Washington's longest and most loyal Middle East ally bought him the distrust of most Israelis."The thing about Bibi is, he's a chickenshit," an anonymous senior White House official lambasted the Israeli prime minister. "[H]e won't do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he's interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He's not [Yitzhak] Rabin; he's not [Ariel] Sharon; he's certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He's got no guts."[51]

Appeasement of one's enemies at the expense of friends whose loyalty can be taken for granted is a common—if unsavory—human trait, and Obama is no exception to this rule. His persistent snub of Washington's longest and most loyal Middle Eastern ally bought him the distrust of most Israelis: At the end of the 2014 Gaza war, only 4 percent of them found the president more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, compared to 31 percent upon his 2008 election.[52] However, his tireless pandering to the Palestinians ("You will never have an administration as committed ... as this one" he told Abbas[53]) also failed to buy him their sympathy and appreciation. On the eve of the 2012 U.S. elections, a mere 9 percent of Palestinians viewed his reelection favorably, and nearly four times as many thought it would have adverse implications. And as if to add insult to injury, a comprehensive 2013 survey found Palestinians more hostile to America than any other national group with 76 percent considering it an enemy (compared to one percent of Israelis) and only 4 percent viewing it as a partner.[54]
ConclusionAs world attention focuses on the latest spate of Middle East fiascos—from the migrant hordes swamping Europe, to Russia's Syria intervention, to the latest flare-up of Palestinian terrorism—for which the U.S. administration is partly culpable, the Iran nuclear deal will undoubtedly remain Obama's foremost foreign policy folly. For the real issue is not whether the JCPOA irrevocably blocks Tehran's road to the bomb (which it does not), or whether the administration could have attained a better deal (which it could), or even whether no agreement is better than a bad agreement (as initially argued by Obama) or an assured recipe to war (as he later claimed). Rather the question is whether an agreement with a murderous, messianic, Islamist tyranny, reigning over one of the Middle East's most powerful nations and committed to the world-conquering agenda of its founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,[55] should have been sought in the first place.

In a similar way, when seventy-seven years ago British prime minister Neville Chamberlain was about to leave for the German city of Munich to negotiate the agreement that would shortly trigger the worst war in human history, the London Times lauded the move as "water in the wilderness" that would "bring a sense of relief and profound satisfaction to all but the very few for whom any sort of intercourse with a dictator is incomprehensible and anathema."[56]

The problem with this analysis is, of course, that Hitler was no ordinary dictator, who could be bought at the right price, but a maniacal tyrant in control of one of the world's most powerful nations and bent on world domination. Yet while the full extent of Hitler's ambition was rarely recognized at the time, no such vagueness exists with regard to the Islamist regime in Tehran, which in its thirty-six years at the helm has consistently subverted its neighbors, triggered the longest and bloodiest war in the Middle East's modern history (with Iraq, 1980-88), transformed Iran into the world's foremost sponsor of terrorism, and poured billions of dollars into its nuclear weapons program at the expense of the economic wellbeing of ordinary Iranians and at the cost of sustained international isolation.

Hence, while Chamberlain could genuinely believe that the agreement he signed brought "peace for our time,"[57] Obama has been kicking the nuclear can down the road in the clear knowledge that the JCPOA is at best a delay mechanism in the mullahs' steady drive to the bomb. As he admitted in an uncharacteristic moment of candor, "in year 13, 14, 15, they have advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point, the breakout times [to nuclear weapons] would have shrunk almost down to zero."[58] At a time when the international community trembles at the infinitely lesser threat of the Islamic State, the implications of this inevitable scenario are too horrendous to contemplate.
Efraim Karsh, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King's College London and professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University where he is also a senior research associate at the BESA Center for Strategic Studies.[1] See, for example, "Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted," Pew Research Center, Washington, D.C., June 13, 2012.
[2] U.N. Security Council resolutions 1696 (July 31, 2006); 1737 (Dec. 23, 2006); 1747 (Mar. 24, 2007); 1803 (Mar. 3, 2008); 1835 (Sept. 27, 2008).
[3] The Washington Post, Mar. 21, 2009.
[4] Ibid.; The Times (London), Mar. 21, 2009.
[5] "Remarks by the President on a New Beginning," at Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary [hereafter, OPS], June 4, 2009.
[6] "Text of Barack Obama's Inaugural Address," The New York Times, Jan. 20, 2009.
[7] CBS News, June 24, 2009.
[8] The New York Times, Apr. 18, 2010; Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York: W.H. Allen, 2014), pp. 391-3.
[9] Khamene'i's speech, June 23, 2015, in Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Special dispatch 6131, Washington, D.C., Aug. 10, 2015; A. Savyon, Y. Carmon and Y. Mansdorf, "Iranian Officials Reveal that Secret Negotiations with U.S. Began in 2011," MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis, no. 1185, Sept. 16, 2015.
[10] "In Heavy Water: Iran's Nuclear Program, the Risk of War and Lessons from Turkey," Middle East and Europe Report, no. 116, International Crisis Group, Feb. 23, 2012, pp. 11-3.
[11] "Communication dated 27 November 2013 received from the EU High Representative concerning the text of the Joint Plan of Action," International Atomic Energy Agency, INFCIRC/855.
[12] The Guardian (London), Nov. 24, 2013; BBC News, Nov. 24, 2013; Y. Mansharof et al, "The Geneva Joint Plan of Action: How Iran Sees It (1)," MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series Report, no. 1050, Jan. 13, 2014; U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 14, 2014.
[13] See, for example, "The Iran Primer: Western Countries Flood Tehran," United States Institute of Peace, Apr. 29, 2014; Kenneth Katzman, "Iran Sanctions," Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., Oct. 23, 2014, pp. 57-8; Lee Smith, "The Collapse of Sanctions on Iran," The Weekly Standard, Mar. 3, 2013.
[14] Olli Heinonen, The Iranian Nuclear Programme: Practical Parameters for a Credible Long-Term Agreement(London: Henry Jackson Society, 2014), pp. 6-7, 17-8.
[15] Jeffrey Goldberg, "The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here," The Atlantic, Oct. 2014; Haaretz (Tel Aviv), Aug. 21, 2015.
[16] Haaretz, Oct. 16, 2014.
[17] The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 6, 2014; Yukiya Amano, IAEA Director General, "Challenges in Nuclear Verification: The IAEA's Role on the Iranian Nuclear Issue," address at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., Oct. 31, 2014, p. 4; CNSNews.com, Nov. 13, 2014.
[18] See, for example, "Full text of the Iran deal," Politico, July 14, 2015, pp. 1, 6, 27, 29, 42-3; "IAEA Document Reveals: Iran to Carry Out Own Inspection of Suspected Nuclear Site in Parchin," Haaretz, Aug. 19, 2015.
[19] "Iranian President Rouhani Describes Nuclear Deal, Says: The Superpowers Have Officially Recognized a Nuclear Iran," TV Monitor Project, MEMRI, July 21, 2015.
[20] "Weekly Address: Renewing America's Global Leadership," OPS, Oct. 22, 2011; "Remarks by the President and First Lady on the End of the War in Iraq," OPS, Dec. 14, 2011.
[21] "Quarterly Report to the United States Congress," Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), Washington, D.C., Apr. 30, 2013, pp. 5-6; "Final Report to the United States Congress," SIGIR, Sept. 9, 2013, pp. 66-7; "Civilian Casualties," United Nations, Iraq; "Toby Dodge: Iraq's renewed political violence—Is the country heading back into civil war?" Manama Voices, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Manama, Bahrain, Dec. 7, 2013; Zachary Laub and Jonathan Masters, "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria," Council on Foreign Relations, New York, Aug. 8, 2014.
[22] "Quarterly Report to the United States Congress," SIGIR, Oct. 30, 2012, pp. 9, 61.
[23] Al-Jazeera (Doha), June 30, 2014; Abdelwahed al-Ansari, "How did 'Islamic State' proclaim caliphate," al-Monitor (Washington, D.C.), July 7, 2014; The Telegraph (London), July 1, 2014.
[24] CNN, Sept. 14, 2014.
[25] "Statement by the President on ISIL," OPS, Sept. 10, 2014; NBC News, Sept. 12, 2014.
[26] "Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa," OPS, May 19, 2011.
[27] "Statement by the President on Events in Tunisia," OPS, Jan. 14, 2011.
[28] "President Obama on Transition in Egypt," OPS, Feb. 1, 2011.
[29] Ryan Lizza, "The Consequentialist: How the Arab Spring Remade Obama's Foreign Policy," The New Yorker, May 2, 2011, p. 34.
[30] "Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa," OPS, May 19, 2011.
[31] "Remarks by the President to the White House Press Corps," OPS, Aug. 20, 2012.
[32] "Statement by the President on Syria," OPS, Aug. 31, 2013.
[33] Brig. Gen. Itai Baron, outgoing head of the IDF's intelligence research department, interview, Israel Hayom (Tel Aviv), Jan. 15, 2015.
[34] The Guardian, Sept. 16, 2015.
[35] Al-Jazeera, Sept. 27, 2015; CNN, Oct. 1, 2015.
[36] "Obama: No U.S. troops on Syria front lines," Al-Jazeera, Nov. 3, 2015.
[37] See Yehudit Ronen, "Libya Descends into Chaos," Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2016.
[38] ABC News, Feb. 10, 2011.
[39] See, for example, "Democratic Transition in the Middle East: Between Authoritarianism and Islamism," National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D.C., July 12, 2012; Samuel Tadros, "Egypt's Elections: Why the Islamists Won," World Affairs Journal, Mar./Apr. 2012; Marc Lynch, "Islamists in a Changing Middle East," Foreign Policy, July 8, 2012; Gregory Gause, III, "The Year the Arab Spring Went Bad," Foreign Policy, Dec. 31, 2012.
[40] "Remarks by the President on the Middle East and North Africa," OPS, May 19, 2011.
[41] The Independent (London), Sept. 18, 2012.
[42] Face the Nation, CBS, Sept. 16, 2012; "Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney 9/18/2012," OPS; Fox News, Sept. 21, 2012; "President Obama on Death of U.S. Embassy Staff in Libya," U.S. Department of State, Sept. 12, 2012; "Transcript: President Obama Talks to the U.N. about Mideast Peace, Iran," ABC News, Sept. 25, 2012.
[43] "These 3 Emails Show What Hillary Was Really Saying about Benghazi," Fox News Insider, Oct. 23, 2015.
[44] Haaretz, Nov. 25, 2009.
[45] Independent Online, June 14, 2009; "Fatah's Sixth General Conference Resolutions: Pursuing Peace Options without Relinquishing Resistance or Right to Armed Struggle," MEMRI, Aug. 13, 2009.
[46] The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 10, Dec. 10, 2010.
[47] CBS News, Nov. 30, 2012.
[48] Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA, New York), Apr. 18, 2013.
[49] Haaretz, Mar. 26, 2014; The Times of Israel (Jerusalem), Apr. 8, 2014; Ben Birnbaum and Amir Tibon, "The Explosive, Inside Story of How John Kerry Built an Israel-Palestine Peace Plan—and Watched It Crumble," The New Republic, July 20, 2014.
[50] "Conversation with Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Professor Graham Allison," Secretary of State John Kerry, Charles Hotel, Cambridge, Mass., U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C., Oct. 13, 2015; "John Kirby Spokesperson, Daily Press Briefing," U.S. Department of State, Oct. 7, 2015; "PM: I have built less in settlements than Olmert, Barak, Sharon," Ynet news.com, Oct. 20, 2015.
[51] USA Today, July 25, 2014; The Washington Post, Aug. 23, 2014; Goldberg, "The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations."
[52] The Jerusalem Post, Oct. 30, 2014.
[53] Birnbaum and Tibon, "How John Kerry Built an Israel-Palestine Peace Plan."
[54] "Palestinian Public opinion poll no. 45," Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Ramallah, Sept. 13-15, 2012; "America's Global Image Remains More Positive than China's. Chapter 1: Attitudes toward the United States," Pew Research Center, May 18, 2013; "Global Opposition to U.S. Surveillance and Drones, but Limited Harm to America's Image," Pew Research Center, May 14, 2014.
[55] As Khomeini put it in his day: "The Iranian revolution is not exclusively that of Iran, because Islam does not belong to any particular people ... We will export our revolution throughout the world because it is an Islamic revolution. The struggle will continue until the calls 'there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah' are echoed all over the world." Farhad Rajaee, Islamic Values and World View: Khomeini on Man, the State and International Politics (Lanham: University of America Press, 1983), pp. 82‑3.
[56] "A Bold Initiative," The Times, Sept. 15, 1938.
[57] "Ovation in London," ibid., Oct. 1, 1938.
[58] "Transcript: President Obama's Full Interview on Iran Nuclear Deal," National Public Radio, Apr. 7, 2015.
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J Street's activities extend from politics and advocacy -- to education:
J Street University is circulating a map that restores the Green Line and working to get it into synagogues, Hebrew schools, and summer camps. Good for them. Of course, fighting (nonviolently) over maps is preferable to shooting over the borders of the territories they represent, but there’s no substitute for a one-map solution.Here is the map:

J Street has a lesson plan to go along with the map. I embedded a copy of the lesson plan at the end of the post.

The introduction in the lesson plan introduces what they see as the issue behind maps of Israel today:

The disappearance of the Green Line from our maps is a clear symptom of a larger problem. The vast majority of Jewish Americans, including our communal leaders, claim to support a two-state solution,recognizing that it is the only way to safeguard Israel’s future. Yet we often talk about and teach about Israel in a way that physically erases the Green Line, which forms the basis of that solution. When the Green Line disappears from our maps, it is also eroded from our consciousness.The plan then goes on to describe J Street's goal in a pretty straightforward way:
The goal of this lesson plan is to help learners, 9th graders and up, understand the realities of the status quo in Israel and the Palestinian territory. Recognizing that maps play an important role in reinforcing cultural narratives and national identities for both Israelis and Palestinians, and their supporters, we’ll look at various maps of this area that reflect different hopes, aspirations, and political perspectives.In order to frame those differing perspectives, J Street divides them into 3 groups in terms of whether the Green Line should appear on the map:

• Why the Green Line should not appear: map labels entire area as Israel
• Why the Green Line should appear: labeled as "Joint Perspective"
• Why the Green Line should not appear: map labels entire area as Palestine

Putting aside how the lesson plan organizes and structures how the actual discussion is carried out, there is the larger issue of how J Street frames the issue and the information it intends to pass on to the participants as fact.

On page 10 of the plan, is the section labeled: All About The Green Line, where the overall background on the Green Line is given as "the original armistice line of the 1948 Arab-Israel war." However, J Street writes in their lesson plan that among the consequences is that:
These territories [Gaza and the West Bank] are viewed by the international community as being under “military occupation,” although their status is more complicated within Israel.On the contrary, the fact is that the issue of "military occupation" is complicated -- period, regardless of whether you are Israeli or not. There is legal precedent for saying Gaza is not occupied and arguments that can be made about the West Bank, under control of the Palestinian Authority, as well. One doesn't have to going into details or surrender a balance of views in order to convey the complexity of the the issue of "occupation", but surely it should not be ignored either.

Another J Street claim in the general background of the lesson plan is:
All past negotiations over the future Israeli-Palestinian border have been based on the Green Line with land swaps.Not exactly all negotiations. After all, it was Abbas himself who turned down the idea of land swaps when he declared:  "No to Israel as a Jewish state, no to interim borders, no to land swaps" at the Fifth Fatah Revolutionary Council Convention in December 2010. The lesson plan thus overlooks the fact that the idea of land swaps itself is a new idea: the Palestinian Arabs did not accept the idea of land swaps -- and only "minor" swaps at that -- until 2013.

A final note on the general background section of the lesson plan is in the segment entitled "How Is Israel Blurring The Green Line?" Keep in mind that legally the Green Line is nothing more than an arbitrary armistice line indicating where the fighting stopped in 1948 -- in no way is it a border.

Despite this fact, J Street claims:

• Since 1967, Israel has politically and economically encourage Jewish settlement over the Green Line
• This is considered illegal according to Article 49 of the Geneva Convention

Actually, Article 49 of the Geneva Convention specifies the forcible transfer of populations -- a response to the Nazis who conducted massive transfers of people into occupied territories. Also, based on the British Mandate, the area given to the Jews included Judea and Samaria -- the area they were illegally forced to flee, the area that became known as "the West Bank" based on 19 years of Jordanian control. J Street is the blurring the facts, declaring as absolute, what is at best debatable

The lesson plan gives a historical time line in accordance with the Israeli, Palestinian and "Joint Perspective". According to the time line of the "Israel Perspective:
1920-1948: Mandatory Palestine, the British Mandate for Palestine transfers power from military rule to civil rule. The British rule continues to face resistance from both Palestinian and Jewish forces.This is how J Street summarizes how the League of Nations granted Britain the Mandate for reconstituting the Jewish homeland. But in fact, the fact sheet does not mention the League of Nations even once, and only uses the word "league" once -- in reference to the Arab League. The students are never told the basis for Britain's Mandate giving it control in then-Palestine. This omission not only denies context to the Arab opposition to the Mandate, but also the Jewish opposition -- which was based on changes made to the Mandate and on opposition to the 1939 White Paper. Surprisingly, mention of White Paper is also omitted from the lesson plan.

 According to the time line of the "Joint Perspective":

• 1916: Sykes–Picot Agreement, the UK and France promised Arab control over Palestine
  Not true: As someone corrected me, here J Street is confusing the Hussein-McMahon correspondence with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. About the latter, there is no argument and it is not related to the issue. Regarding the former, the claim that Arabs were promised Palestine is hotly debated, and the British government insisted that then-Palestine was not included.
  
  
• 1920s and 1930s: Violent clashes begin, as Jews continued to immigrate to Palestine, Zionist-Arab antagonism boiled over into violent clashes among Jews, the Palestinians, and the British Police.
  So according to J Street, even then it was a cycle of violence? This ignores both the initiation of the Arab massacres of Jews and the long history of Arab persecution of Jews during Ottoman rule
  
  
• 1920-1948: Mandatory Palestine, the British Mandate for Palestine transfers power from military rule to civil rule. The British rule continues to face resistance from both Palestinian and Jewish forces.
  There is no mention of Transjordan, which was cut out of the area originally part of the Palestine Mandate
  
  
• 1949: Armistice Lines are agreed upon. Gaza is under Egyptian control and The West Bank is under Jordanian control. The Green Line is drawn, which will become the basis for any future peace agreement.
  This misleads by implying that Egyptian control over Gaza and Jordanian control over the "West Bank" was internationally recognized, when in fact only Great Britain and Pakistan recognized the annexation as legal. Also, the Green was not the basis for all future peace agreements, since the current peace agreements Israel has with Egypt and Jordan are both based on the British Mandate -- not on the Green Line

In all three perspectives, the lesson plan claims:
1947: UN Resolution 181, partitions Palestine into two states: Arab and Jewish.This is not true. The UN did not create 2 states. After all, the British continued executing the Mandate into 1948. What the resolution did do was recommend a partition, as the resolution itself makes clear.

J Street is entitled to their opinion, but in their rush to push the idea of the centrality of the Green Line, the omission of important facts and the distortion of others prevent the balanced view that they claim as their goal. Instead of a lesson plan about a significant issue affecting Israel, J Street's project has been reduced to propaganda for their political agenda.

Hat tip: AB, for pointing out additional J Street errors.

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Last year, in the midst of the Iran negotiations that Israel so strenuously opposed, Kerry came out with the claim that not only was the Iran deal actually in Israel's interest, but that continued Israeli opposition to the Iran deal would further isolate her. But increasingly, the more pressing question is not so much whether Israeli  is really isolated from other countries, but rather whether the time has come for Israel to distance itself more from the United States.

Brett Stephens writes that Israel Looks Beyond America -- and is doing so very successfully:

• This past Sunday, at the Munich Security Conference, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon publicly shook hands with former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal.
• Last month, Israeli cabinet member Yuval Steinitz went to Abu Dhabi, to be present at the opening of an office at a renewable-energy association.
• Turkey has indicated a willingness to reestablish ties with Israel. 
• In October, Indian President Mukherjee was in Israel for a three-day state visit and has indicated that it is about to spend $3 billion on Israeli arms.
• Last year, in June, Israel and Saudi Arabia revealed they were involved in strategic talks
• In March, Egyptian President al-Sisi said in a Washington Post interview that he speaks to Netanyahu “a lot.”
• Japan sees Israel as a model for economic reinvention. 
• Chinese investment in Israel rose from $70 million in 2010 to hit $2.7 billion last year.
• Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is urging cooperation on terrorism and refers to Jerusalem as Israel’s “historic capital.”
• The government of British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced it will move to prevent local councils from passing BDS measures against Israel.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon (R) shakes hands with Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal
 at the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2016 (Ariel Harmoni/Defense Ministry)
In fact, Netanyahu has been trying to publicize Israel's improved relationship with some countries in the Arab world. Turning around the usual formulation, Netanyahu says that instead of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being the key to peace in the Middle East -- it is the improved Israeli ties with Arab countries that can lead to reaching an agreement with the Palestinian Arabs.

The United States, of course, is still viewed as Israel's primary ally, in terms of support in the UN, as a source of weapons and especially in terms of financial aid. While the stories of friction between Netanyahu and Obama over the years raise questions about the status of the US-Israel relationship, the status quo seems to remain basically unchanged.

But while the issue is usually framed as whether Obama and the US are making changes to the relationship, there are hints that maybe it is time for Israel to be the one distancing itself from the US.

Eli Lake has written that Israelis as well as pro-Israel supporters are supportive of the idea of major decreases in the amount of aid that Israel gets from the US. Noah Pollak of the Emergency Committee for Israel sees support for that aid as providing US leverage over Israeli decisions, as an easy way for politicians to claim to be a friend to Israel -- deserving of political support from the Jewish community and as "easy fodder for critics to claim that the alliance is a burden on the United States or that it’s a one-way street"

Israel's actual need to rely on US military aid is even more questionable. Lake quotes Naftali Bennett, Israel’s minister of economics that “Today, U.S. military aid is roughly 1 percent of Israel’s economy. I think, generally, we need to free ourselves from it."

However, the problem of Israeli reliance on US military aid goes beyond financial considerations.

As doubts about Obama's foreign policy continue, those doubts extend to the ability of the US to enforce the policies it chooses to follow. Caroline Glick writes that Israel cannot afford to continue dependence on US inferior Weapon Systems. She notes a report by Great Britain’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, warning about the erosion of the West's longstanding military technological superiority over Russia, China and other countries.

The F-35's that the US insists Israel purchase instead of their F-15's are an even bigger problem.  Because the F-35 relies on the Internet in order to update data files on computers in the US before and after each mission, the planes are open to sabotage. Fiber optic underwater cables are used for that Internet connection, and The New York Times has reported that Russian submarines have been detected near those cables.

A further security issue is the idea of planes that are used by Israel being open to US control and possibly even interference.

Glick suggests a possible solution could be to utilize the changing dynamic of Israeli alliances in the 21st century, as India and Israel are finalizing a series of arms deals that are expected to total $3 billion. That deal is expected to include missile and electronic warfare systems. Glick sees this as the perfect -- and necessary -- opportunity for Israel and India to jointly develop a next generation fighter based on the Israeli prototype of the Lavi jet fighter.

US F-35 Credit: Youtube / Military Online
Obama once famously declared that "When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states." In light of the fact that Obama has succeeded on his own to eroded US credibility -- and ability -- in the eyes of the Arab world, it is in Israel's interests to put some distance between herself and the US, to be less dependent on the US and to take advantage of the various alliances and friendships that are available to it around the world.


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During a speech in 1958, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser entertained his audience with a story about a meeting he had with the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood 5 years earlier. He claimed the first request of the Muslim Brotherhood was to enforce the wearing of the hijab among women. Nasser's response to the leader had his audience roaring with laughter (English subtitles are in yellow at the top of the video).



Today, of course is a very different matter.


Not only is the wearing of the hijab and full burka found all over the Muslim world, but Islamic law itself -- administered by Sharia Courts -- can be found applied in the West as well.

In Europe, official recognition of Sharia Courts does not appear to be that widespread.

• In Great Britain, instead of actual Sharia courts there are councils and tribunals, where decisions can be made on purely religious matters, and they cannot overrule the regular courts. These tribunals in Great Britain are voluntary, but legally binding.
  
• In Germany, Sharia Courts are reported to be operating in all of Germany's big cities.
  
• In Albania, as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sharia is part of the civil law system

Needless to say in countries such as Great Britain, Germany and France, the idea of imposing the authority of Sharia law, albeit only on Muslims, has been controversial.

But there is one non-Muslim country where the use of Islamic courts has been expanded, without an outcry.

Just yesterday, Rivlin welcomes Israel’s new sharia judges in Jerusalem ceremony:
President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday welcomed Israel’s newest qadis (Muslim judges), telling them that the existence of state-supported Muslim religious courts highlights Israel’s commitment to upholding religious freedom and diversity.

“The authority of the sharia courts – as assured by Israeli law — to me reflects the fundamental principle that an attachment to faith, to tradition, to a culture and community, is not solely the issue of the individual,” Rivlin told the seven new qadis, who are appointed to sharia courts across the country, during a ceremony at his official Jerusalem residence.President Reuven Rilvin and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (center front) pose
with new Israeli sharia judges during a ceremony at the President's Residence
 in Jerusalem on Tuesday, February 9, 2016 (Mark Neyman/GPO)
The only limitation is that no women have been appointed as of yet. Last year a bill was proposed by the Zionist Union and Meretz along with the Joint (Arab) List faction to allow female appointees--but it was blocked by ultra-Orthodox ministers who feared it would set a legal precedent that might lead down the road to the appointment of female rabbinical judges in the religious Jewish courts.

Historically, Sharia Courts have always existed in Israel and date back to when the Ottoman Empire exercised control on the area. When the British took over, the courts remained, with jurisdiction limited to personal status issues among Muslims. With the re-establishment of Israel, Sharia Courts were recognized per the Law and Administration Ordinance and the Qadim Appointments Approval Law recognized the jurisdiction of the Qadis who served in the Sharia Courts before the State of Israel was created. Today they are under the authority of the Ministry of Justice.

And while in the West, Sharia Courts are a subject of controversy...

@Ostrov_A Fascinating that while Americans and Europeans are up in arms about this happening in their countries, Israelis couldn't care less— David Ha'ivri (@haivri) February 10, 2016
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With all the talk of boycotts, especially talk of the BDS movement against Israel, it has been a given that boycotts work. So leave it to Freakonomics to ask the question: Do Boycotts Work?. The entire broadcast is embedded below at the end of this post, but there are some key points worth highlighting.

The podcast starts with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in response to the treatment of Rosa Parks, quoting a political scientist on the difficulty of tracing a causal connection between the boycott and the Supreme Court decision declaring bus segregation to be unconstitutional:
the bus company was ready to cave in early. It was the politicians who held out. The holdout was followed by more and more press coverage, which was followed by the Supreme Court case, which was followed by desegregation of the Montgomery buses. So how much credit should be given to the boycott?
The bus on which en:Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat sparking the
Montgomery Bus Boycott Credit: Rmhermen, Wiki Commons
Another boycott with even more questionable effect is the one carried out against Chic-fil-A, where the boycott led to a pushback -- a buycott -- which had the opposite effect of leading to record-breaking sales numbers for the company. Buycotts have been used to counter boycotts of Israel as well.

Which leads to what is arguably the mother of all boycotts: the boycott against South Africa, which is generally assumed to have had a significant effect on change in that country. After all, the boycotts and divestments called for against South Africa were wide-ranging and intensive. According to Ivo Welch, a professor of economics and finance at the Anderson School at UCLA:
In the early 1980s and before then, it was a very large movement to divest all sorts of holdings and break all sorts of business and sports ties with South Africa. South Africa, at the time, had an apartheid regime that was institutionalized racism and about as abominable as it gets. So there were a lot of protests by students on campuses — at Columbia, which is where I was at the time. There were sit-ins. There was a big movement to divest the pension holdings. Banks actually had to have different requirements if they wanted to invest in South Africa. The tax laws were changed. There were all sorts of coordinated actions that were not just in the United States, but all over the world, all designed to bring the South African regime to its knees. Or to at least have an influence on the perception of the public about South Africa.Credit: Djembayz, Wiki Commons
But Welch is not convinced that boycotts had a significant effect. He was involved in a 1999 study in of the South African boycott that concluded:
In sum, despite the publicity of the boycott and the multitude of divesting companies, political pressure had little visible effect on the financial markets.Why not?

Because despite the public outrage and the apparent vigorousness with which it was pursued, the boycott was never fully enforced and it was relatively easy to get around it. Not only was the divestment movement relatively ineffectual, the South African companies were not really hurt -- the minute one stockholder got rid of his shares, there was always someone else willing to snap them up.

This of course is relevant to the issue of anti-Israel boycotts too, and how effective they can actually be.

Another question of course is how boycotts targeting Israel can have a negative effect on the Palestinian Arabs who are employed by Israeli companies. This can be assessed by comparing to another example of a boycott. During 2003, there was a backlash against the French who refused to support the US during the war to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That is when people referred to French fries as “freedom fries” -- and others starting boycotting Le Cirque, the famous French restaurant in New York.

The problem? The French restaurant was actually owned by Italians. 90% of its employees were New Yorkers, who themselves were from all over the world. The restaurant suppliers were likewise from all over. The boycotters completely missed their target -- and hurt others.

So if the effectiveness of boycotts is so uncertain, why are they still being used as a tool of protest? The answer to that may be pretty straightforward, and have as much to do with those publicizing boycotts as with those actually carrying then out:
boycotts get a lot of attention — they’re a good, easy, spicy story for journalists to cover — which gives the impression that the outrage is larger than it really is.That is why on more than one occasion the BDS has been accused of jumping the gun and bragging about divestments from Israel based on their influence, when in fact purely business considerations were involved.

This smaller impact of boycotts is consistent with the general failure of the anti-Israel BDS movement, where their greatest influence is with institutions driven by emotion as opposed to those whose actions are dictated by rules and results. As Alex Joffee notes, Healthy Institutions Don’t Boycott Israel.

• Global industries have shown no interest in excluding Israel. Instead investment in Israel is rising, especially from Asia -- and even trade with Europe is continuing.
• Universities and corporations have not sold their stocks in companies doing business in Israel, such as like Intel or Caterpillar -- claims by the BDS movement to the contrary
• The backlash against boycotts is growing at the state level, where legislators in Florida, California, Ohio, Illinois and South Carolina are proposing laws to prohibit anti-Israel discrimination by state agencies
• In Europe, the Conservative Party in Great Britain proposed restrictions on local councils and pension funds from discriminating against Israel based on political grounds.
• Despite successes where the BDS movement has manipulated the passage of boycott and divestment resolutions by student governments, the university administrations have denounced the resolutions rather than follow suit.

All one has to do is  read the list on UK Media Watch for specific examples of failures of the anti-Israel BDS movement in the political, economic and cultural areas.

This is not to say that boycotts have zero impact or that boycotts directed against specific companies cannot have an effect, but the bottom line is that there is no way to really know how much effect a boycott can have:
Here’s what the evidence seems to suggest: The typical boycott is more smoke than fire. And it doesn’t often seem to financially hurt the targeted company. But, humans being human, and the court of public opinion working as it does, a boycott can color the reputation of a given firm..There is nothing here that is going to dissuade anyone who is intent on boycotting -- or to convince anyone opposing it to just sit back and ignore it.

But by the very least, here is an opportunity to rationally view the history and concept of boycotts without the hype, especially when it comes to the BDS movement against Israel.

Below is the complete podcast.
You can also read the complete transcript of Do Boycotts Work?




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Antisemitism in Europe reaches a new low when a representative of the law can openly defend the right of someone to openly praise the death of Jews at the hands of the Nazis as a legitimate form of criticism of Israel.

Benjamin Weinthal writes Austrian prosecutor: Call to kill Jews is legal criticism of Israel, noting that a Turkish man posted on his Facebook page a quote falsely attributed to Hitler: "I could have annihilated all the Jews in the world, but I left some of them alive so you will know why I was killing them." -- this in the context of criticism against Israel’s war against Hamas last summer.


Credit: AFP/file

This follows a similar claim after a firebomb attack on a synagogue in Germany. In a verdict delivered last February, a German court ruled that the attack on the synagogue was actually motivated by a desire to bring “attention to the Gaza conflict” and was not Antisemitic. [Hat tip: Aiden Pink]

Stefan Schaden, a member of the advisory board of the Austria-Israel Society remarked:
This position [of the prosecutor] is, unfortunately, becoming more popular. Everything passes as so-called criticism of Israel. Anti-Semitism seems to have been officially abolished. In view of the climate in Europe, it is a dramatic development.There may be more truth to what Schaden said than he realized.

Just over this weekend we are seeing vicious hatred expressed as "criticism" in a way not even related to Antisemitism.

Twitchy has a post featuring a variety of tweets by people on Twitter not just rejoicing in Scalia's death but wishing the same for Clarence Thomas.

Other people on Twitter stopped short of wishing for Thomas's death:
Degenerates--on Twitter--are using "puppet master" #AntoninScalia's death to make hideous, racist slams about Clarence Thomas#LiberalRacism— Larry Elder (@larryelder) February 14, 2016All in the name of criticism?

Peggy Noonan notes a decline in respect for US institutions:
All this goes hand in hand with the general decline of America’s faith in its institutions. We feel less respect for almost all of them—the church, the professions, the presidency, the Supreme Court. The only formal national institution that continues to score high in terms of public respect (72% in the most recent Gallup poll) is the military.This is more than just a lack of respect, it is anger -- and during this presidential campaign it is being channeled into support of one candidate in particular, who is known for flying off the handle and calling people names.

This is more than just being anti-establishment, and it is being seen in more than just the US -- as we  see malevolent attacks launched with increasing ease against a widening array of "enemies," with the same vitriol we see aimed at Jews.

It is irrational.
It is hateful.
It is dangerous.
And it is growing.

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"After prophecy and righteousness there is no status Allah has exalted more than Shahada (Martyrdom)... ''And think not of those who have been killed in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they are alive (and) are provided sustenance from their Lord.'
...'The Shahid - his sins are forgiven with the first gush of his blood from his wound... The Shahid advocates on behalf of 70 members of his family, and saves them all from hell. The Shahid lives together with the prophets and the righteous ones.'"
[Official PA TV, Nov. 8, 2013]

Yesterday, in light of the possibility of punitive action against 3 Arab MK's who visited parents of Palestinian Terrorists, I posted about the question Are These Israeli Arab MK's No Less Deserving of Expulsion Than If They Were Congressmen?

Today, a decision was reached by the Knesset Ethics Committee to take action as Knesset Suspends Arab MKs for Meeting Palestinian Terrorists’ Families. Of the 3 members of the Balad Party, Hanin Zoabi and Basel Ghattas were suspended for 4 months and Jamal Zahalka for 2 months. While they are banned from participating in Knesset committee meetings and plenum discussions, they will be allowed to vote in them.


Hanin Zoabi, Basel Ghattas and Jamal Zahalka -- suspended for their meeting
with parents of Palestinian terrorists. Credit: Yonatan Sindel, Flash90
The Balad Party is part of the Joint Arab List, which condemned the suspension as ‘miserable, anti-democratic’, accusing Netanyahu of a "campaign of incitement"

Somehow, however, the 3 MK's neglected to address their own incitement of hatred and terrorism. the Balad MK's deny that their visit to the families was a show of support:
Zahalka claimed the visit was not a show of support for the families. He said that he and the other MKs condemned the violence committed by the dead assailants. “We went to hear from the families about the issues of transferring the bodies. That’s it. There was nothing else in this visit.”

Asked why the MKs had observed a minute of silence at the meeting on Tuesday in memory of the dead killers, Zahalka said many meetings among Palestinians begin with a minute of silence “in memory of all Palestinian dead” and that the lawmakers were not honoring the terrorists themselves. “We stood in silence for a minute,” he said. He denied a report that the MKs had called the dead terrorists “martyrs.”Itamar Marcus of the Palestinian Media Watch presented documentation to the Ethics committee that contradicted Zahalka's claim that they did not call the terrorists "Shahids"- Martyrs. In addition to the Balad Party and Ghattas calling the terrorist murderers "Shahids," the Joint Arab List did so as well, with a post on its Facebook page that referred to the murderers as "Shahids" three times.

There is more than an emotional issue here -- their use of the word "Shahid" touches upon a point of law involved as well.
This may prove to be very significant, since the very act of calling terrorist murderers "Shahids" actually fulfills one of the requirements of a criminal offense. Assistant Attorney General Ron Nizri, also at the Knesset session, referred to Israeli law, explaining that in order for a person's action to be a criminal offense of incitement, it needs to meet two conditions:

1. There must be call to commit acts of violence or terror, or praise or glorification of an act of violence or terror
2. There must be a real possibility that what is said will lead to the perpetration of an act of violence or terror

Using the term "Shahid" for a terrorist fulfills the first demand of the law: "praise or glorification of an act of violence or terror."Here are the references from Facebook:

Joint Arab List calls terrorist murderers term of highest honor - "Shahid":
"The Joint [Arab] List condemned the wild and racist incitement campaign against Balad Party legislators as a result of their national and humanitarian attention to the issue of the
Shahids' bodies being held by the Israeli government. The Joint List stated that the fascist incitement campaign against the Balad delegates Jamal Zahalka, Hanin Zoabi, and Basel Ghattas is not only a hasty response shrouded in emotions and nationalist and racist tendencies, but also a pitiful attempt by the occupation government to hide the crime of holding the bodies... It noted that it is important to increase the official and non-governmental efforts to release the Shahids' bodies.

The Joint List noted that in everything connected to the Shahids' bodies, Israel is violating international law and the conventions, treaties, and norms of human rights, which emphasize the need to honor the dead and to consider rituals of their religion during burial, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention."
[Joint Arab List Facebook page, Feb. 6, 2016]
Arab MP Basel Ghattas calls terrorist murderers term of highest honor - "Shahid":
"I say to all the hesitating [Israeli Arabs], or the embarrassed, or all of those who have begun to be scared so that according to what they say they were confused and began to make apparent criticisms such as: 'better to be smart than right,' or direct criticisms such as 'What do we have to do with the return of the bodies' and 'The meeting with the Shahids' families was a mistake': The day we begin to refrain from meeting with the Shahids' families to help them regain their sons' bodies due to fear of the Israeli racist incitement campaigns, we become politically, morally, and humanly unacceptable, and will lose our right to represent the people and lead them. We in [the] Balad Party are good at connecting our citizens' rights, for which we work day and night, and our national rights, as an indigenous group. We will not give up one bit of our honor, [national] affiliation, and identity for crumbs that some people who are deluding themselves dream of achieving."
[Balad Facebook page, Feb. 6, 2016]
In an interview with Channel 2 News on Israeli TV, one of the points Itamar Marcus emphasized is that there was no attempt by Balad to maintain any sort of balance, project any sort of sympathy with the victims of the terrorist attacks:



While the Ballad MK's were not accused of actual incitement of terrorism, their clear and one-sided sympathy for the families of the perpetrators was provocative.

While the Joint List noted that "it is important to emphasize that burying the dead is a human and religious commandment in the three religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity" -- it is unfortunate that they neglected to mention that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a commandment as well.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Balad and Palestinian Terrorism.

There was an uproar when it was reported that members of the Balad Party visited the parents of 10 Palestinian terrorists who had attacked Israelis.

The three MKs who made the visit were Jamal Zahalka, Haneen Zoabi and Bassel Ghattas, and among the parents they met was the the father of Baha Alian, who, along with an accomplice, stabbed and shot to death three people on a bus last October.The MK's rebuffed Netanyahu's criticism of their visit by claiming that their goal was a humanitarian one -- to push for the return of the bodies of the terrorists to their families.


Lawmakers from the Joint Arab List stand in front of the Dome of the Rock
during a visit to the compound in Jerusalem's Old City, July 28. (photo credit:REUTERS)
At issue is the degree to which the MK's exceeded their supposed humanitarian concerns and made a point of empathizing with the terrorists -- and their goals.
The Balad Facebook page, brought to light by Palestinian Media Watch, called the terrorists shaheeds (martyrs) and featured a video of Alian’s father calling the meeting “warm and productive.” Ma’an, a Palestinian news agency, said the MKs took part in a moment of silence for the terrorists.Among the possible punishments mentioned:

• Suspensions of up to six months from all Knesset activity but voting – which is a punishment that was already meted out to Zoabi when she made comments sympathizing with Hamas during Operation Protective Edge
• Docking their salaries.
• If the attorney general finds their actions to be criminal, the Knesset House Committee could vote to remove their immunity, and they could be put on trial.

Considering recent claims that Israel is abandoning democracy when attempting to hold NGOs responsible to reveal foreign influence, what are the chances that again there will be an outcry that punitive measures to punish these Arab members of the Knesset who sympathize with terrorists are undemocratic?

The point was raised when Netanyahu compared Israeli MK's with US Congressmen:
"We invest great [efforts] into integrating Arab citizens in Israeli society, and they do the opposite. They build walls of hatred. I'm trying to imagine what would have happened in the British Parliament or the U.S. Congress if members would stand at attention in memory of those who had murdered British or American citizens. There would be a great outcry, and it would be justified."In fact, the punishments suggested for the Arab MK's actions are no more than what the US Constitution allows. According to Article 1 Section 5 Clause 2:
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.In fact, while the Constitution requires a two thirds majority in order to take action, suspending members of the Knesset requires three quarters (90 out of 120 legislators).

It remains to be seen how far Israeli government is willing to go to punish the Arab MK's -- and how ready others may be willing to go to defend their actions.

Hat tip: AB

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Balad and Palestinian Terrorism and Knesset.

In a recent article countering media bias in general and New York Times bias in particular, Stephen Flatow invites us: Let’s play the ‘blame Israel game’ with The New York Times, examining on how the game is played by Steven Erlanger. Erlanger focuses on Sa'ir, a Palestinian Arab town where 12 Palestinian Arabs have been killed, a town where he claims Anger in a Palestinian Town Feeds a Cycle of Violence

Here is one of Erlanger's examples that Flatow examines:
Erlanger describes a recent funeral for another local fatality: Moyyad Jabarin, 19, who was “killed at the Beit Anoun checkpoint after trying to stab a soldier.” The Times reporter then quotes Sakit Jaradat, father of the aforementioned Raed, saying that his son and the others were angry because “they have lost hope and dignity, they are humiliated at the checkpoints, and now we are afraid.” Erlanger notes that Palestinian leaders see “the young dead as martyrs to the cause of Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.”Flatow then breaks down the convenient memes journalists unquestioningly parrot (emphasis added):

They have “lost hope”? But Raed was “an accounting student from a well-to-do family” (as Erlanger notes in passing). And Jabarin was a gainfully employed plumber. They were not impoverished, desperate, unemployed men driven by their poverty to commit murder. Their futures were entirely hopeful — if they had opted to lead normal lives.

They are “humiliated at the checkpoints”? Since when it is “humiliating” to be checked for bombs? Millions of airline passengers are checked for bombs as they pass through checkpoints every day in airports around the world, and that experience does not inspire them to stab people.

“We are afraid”? Afraid of what — being shot while trying to murder Israelis? Well, here’s a radical idea: stop committing murder, and you won’t have anything to be afraid of.

“Israel’s occupation”? But Sa’ir is under the occupation of the Palestinian Authority, not Israel. Way back in 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin withdrew from the areas where 98 percent of the Palestinians reside. That includes Sa’ir. The “Israeli occupation” line is a myth.Sa'ir, in the "West Bank." Credit: Bryan Denton, New York TimesThese memes are unquestionably accepted, repeated and are an expected part of what passes for media analysis of the Palestinian Arab situation.

Another aspect of journalistic laziness is contained in a fifth meme,  addressed by Seth J. Frantzman who writes in his Terra Incognita column that it is time to Stop Pretending Terror Attacks Don't Target Jews. He points out that Palestinian terrorist attacks are sanitized by ignoring admissions that "I sought to kill Jews," with the media helpfully translating these into attacks on "settlers". The Palestinian media then picks up on this and refers to stabbing attacks in Tel Aviv and Beit Shemesh as “the process of attacking settlers” and “the martyr so-and-so stabbed settlers in Beit Shemesh” -- despite that neither place is located in the West Bank. Why? Because the Palestinians have picked up on the distinction the West has handed them: Jews become acceptable targets when they are "settlers".

The common use by Palestinian cartoons of Orthodox Jews to depict Israelis illustrates Frantzman's point that more than targeting Israelis or "settlers," the Palestinian terrorists are targeting Jews:







Frantzman makes it clear:
It is obvious that the stereotypical depiction of Israelis is as Orthodox Jews. Many Palestinians who seek to target Israelis therefore will try to choose targets that they think symbolize Jews or Israel the most. Sometimes that is soldiers in the West Bank. If soldiers were the only target, then the commentators who claim it is only “resistance”, might be correct. But the vast majority of Palestinian attacks are not against soldiers, they are against others. Often these attacks have targeted Orthodox Jews.The whitewash by the West and the media, claiming that it's all about "settlers" allows Palestinian terrorists off the hook -- and lets the West off the hook as well, seeing how skittish the West is about putting any pressure on the Palestinian Arabs to stop killing Jews.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Media Bias and Antisemitism and New York Times.

Shulamit Lando has overcome Multiple Sclerosis and, through her success, has learned how to help others:
32 years after the original diagnosis, (and the traumatic aftermath of both, the actual diagnosis and the symptoms of the devastating illness) I have no symptoms whatsoever and I am totally functional. Since then I wanted to learn how to help others with challenging situations.

I became passionate about helping people in distress, those who felt lost and “paralyzed” in their lives. I help them learn how to overcome any challenge through understanding our essence and purpose, our drives, needs and emotions; and essentially, not giving up! Together we learn to trust that doing the best you can is always good enough.

By using the different tools that I have learned in my own journey towards recovery and growth, I am able to inspire, assist, guide and cheer people to achieve whatever they want in their lives.



Read testimonials here.

Now, Shulamit Lando has written a new book: Hope Beyond Illness: A Guide To Living Well With A Chronic Condition:
HOPE BEYOND ILLNESS -- A Guide to Living WELL with a Chronic Condition, is a gripping memoir. Shulamit Lando recounts her experience with Multiple Sclerosis, MS, a serious, debilitating, and allegedly incurable disease. She describes how she refused to let conventional medicine dictate its depressing message to her and how she used her body and her mind as a healing laboratory to combat the illness. After every chapter, valuable tips give you the most effective tools from different therapeutic approaches.

Through her guidance and experience you learn many ways to deal with overwhelming feelings and be able to allow calm and healing into your life.

This guide will:

• Empower you with hope
• Find the steps that are best suited to your recovery
• Give you the support you need to make your journey to wellness
• Present "Pearls of Wisdom" to help you heal
• Give you tools to affect mind, body and spirit
• Help you achieve a creative, functional, meaningful life, despite chronic illness.

Before you read the first chapter of her book, embedded below, here is the interview I was fortunate to have with Shulamit Lando via email. Here are my questions and her responses:

You write that you learned about "the mind-body connection" because of MS. What were your interests and goals before your bout with MS?

I was a theatre actress, I was in a play actually, in a national theatre company in Mexico City, when the first symptoms started and was not able to continue.

You write that at heart you are an artist. What kind of artistic qualities do you have that have helped your development as a therapist?

I love this question. Before this whole journey with the MS started I was an actress, a dancer, a singer/song writer. Somehow the integration of what these activities require—the discipline, the coordination, the memorization, it is all about the brain's plasticity. Today I am much more than a "therapist" as such; I became a very creative integrative healer, coach, medical coach and therapist. I used to write songs and now, after so many years, I became an author too. So my songwriting is part of what now also helped me become an author. I call myself a TheraCoach.  All those artistic qualities have been essential in the whole development of who I became.

You note that humor is a great healer -- in what way, and why do you think that is?

Humor is a great healer indeed. As the saying goes: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.” Even in the Old Testament we're told: “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

Physiologically speaking we know that laughter reduces pain, because when we laugh our bodies produce endorphins which is a pain-killing hormone. It also strengthens immune function because of the production of T-cells, interferon and immune proteins that are secreted in the body when we have a good belly laugh. Laughing decreases stress because it significantly lowers the cortisol (stress hormone) after which the body is able to relax easier.

But mainly, I say it because humor impacts our attitude so much! This in turn affects our intellectual and emotional functioning. Isn’t it true that when we laugh we are able to put our life’s problems and suffering into a healthy perspective? It somehow makes you feel that your problems are smaller and therefore, more manageable.

Also, when we laugh we are better able to overcome fear. This to me is a huge one! Besides laughing triggers our creativity.

There is a lot of research that supports laughter therapy, that is one of the reasons why hospitals accept clowns to visit and play around with patients, and why Medical Clowning has become such an accepted and growing health profession.

You use a variety of different strategies with the people you help -- what do you do to keep proficient and knowledgeable in all of them?

I study all the time. I learn, I constantly am taking some courses. Thanks to the Internet I have kept up with the most advanced research and therapeutic modalities and healing options. As I mentioned before, part of my strict discipline as an artist in the past became more of a way of being, a pastime of always being interested in something new. If it isn’t because I have symptoms then someone else does. Besides I am all about growth and I am always hungry for more and new things that inspire and stimulate my mind's health process.

What have you found most helpful for yourself in coping with MS?

This is a huge question! I wrote a whole book just to be able to answer it! But if I have to shrink it all, I would say that since the process is inside out, since it implies an integration of body/mind/emotions/spirit, then doing whatever works for you to keep all these elements nurtured and aligned would be the answer. I can tell you that I meditate daily and that is a given, a must. I try to have a healthy diet as much as I can, I exercise some (slow pleasurable exercise) a few times a week. It is more a matter of quality rather than quantity. There is really no one answer and certainly not one that fits all especially with such an individual and capricious illness as MS. That is precisely what I do in my professional work, I help the person discover what would work for him or her in each area and help them create a program or a formula to apply in a way that they can find and keep a balance between it all.

You write, "My highest joy is to help people get out of their own way!" In what way do people get in their own way?

Oh, sadly, in so many ways! We judge ourselves, we dismiss ourselves, we put ourselves down… all those things have a huge effect in our minds, emotions and body all the way down to the cellular level. Every time I say "this is horrible" or "I will never get out of this" the mind hears it as a hypnotic suggestion, an order really, and acts accordingly—keeping things just as they are. We have to become aware and change our self-talk in order to change our life around.

An important and huge way we get in our way is when we double guess ourselves. Through regularly doing this, our intuition's voice is quieted down. So if my intuition is telling me how to deal today with this particular situation and I double guess it and doubt it all the time, there is no access to our own inner doctor and we become 100% dependent on someone else's opinion or theory. And sadly, the others don’t know much about our own particular way to heal.

Do you have a particular program that you use for all, or is each case different?

Just like the uniqueness of the illness, each of us is unique in their healing. But we all have the ability to contact that "inner doctor" (to call it somehow). What I do with people, is that by basing myself on my own life's experience and my own inner journey and backed up and supported by the many techniques that I have studied, along with the client, we make a tailored-made suit. I am able to perceive in each moment and each session what is what your inner wisdom is asking from me and with what tool your body wants it. That's what I apply with each one.

Is there an average number of therapy sessions that people require?

There is no "average" in illness, just as no "average" in people either. We are all individual in our needs and in this case too. But I must say, what I do is not an endless battery of sessions like the old school psychotherapies. What I offer is effective, and how long and how many sessions depends not only on me or on the tools we use but also —and probably even mainly— on the commitment and drive of the person's will to turn their life around. I put my whole mind, soul and intention on it and it took me some time but I went from living my whole life around my symptoms to literally forgetting I have anything going on in my brain.

Do you have any final thoughts you would like to share?

I would love for people to read the book. I know it will be hugely beneficial to anyone that is dealing with any physical discomfort and is open to new perspectives. I would also love people to read it because it is my memoire, my legacy. I know I came to this life in order for me to go through this experience with illness, to let it transform me, and tell the tale for others to use and get inspired. I deeply believe that it is that transformation what really healed me. What I learned about life, about spirit, about who we really are in this life… all that is what I knew I had to share with people. In this book I spilled my guts out. It is very original since most of the story happened when I was living in Mexico and I had access to very unique an even strange therapies and I went for it all… it is also entertaining so hopefully it's a good read. But most of all, I share so much for people to try, to experiment on their own, so much to learn online for themselves, easy concrete steps, so many easy creative tips in that guide that I hope it gets to every pair of eyes and heart that may benefit from it. That is my highest wish.

The first chapter of Lando's book is now available for free.

Take a look at it for yourself and see what you think.
Hope Beyond Illness: A Guide To Living Well With A Chronic Condition (Chapter 1) by Shulamit Lando

Thank you, Ariella Brown, of Write Way Productions, for her help in assembling the questions for the interview.

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Technorati Tag: Multiple Sclerosis and Chronic Illness and Shulamit Lando.

Looks like it was all just a simple misunderstanding, as the BBC reports that Lebanon returns Israeli vulture cleared of spying:
A huge vulture detained in Lebanon on suspicion of spying for Israel has been returned home after UN peacekeepers intervened, Israeli officials said.

The bird, which has a 1.9m (6ft 5in) wing span, flew over the border from an Israeli game reserve and was caught by Lebanese villagers on Tuesday.

They became suspicious as the griffon vulture had a tracking device attached to its tail.

It is part of a conservation project to reintroduce raptors to the Middle East.
The vulture is now being treated at a wildlife clinic near Tel Aviv for minor injuries.
Credit: AFP
According to the report, the vulture was being treated for "minor injuries" -- a result of its grueling interrogations?

Of course, this is not the first animal accused of spying for Israel. Besides the vulture accused of spying by Saudi Arabia in 2011, there have been dolphins, sharks and a stork accused of being enlisted by Israel. And let's not forget about the time, back in 2007, that Iranians arrest 14 squirrels for spying, an accomplishment Iran justifiably bragged was "thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services."

Credit: scoopempire.comBut getting back to our vulture, surely the vulture was about to retire anyway, what with the advancements Israel has made in drone technology!?

But then again, in view of recent news of the US and the UK spying on Israeli drones for years, perhaps Israel will be rethinking that move and will instead bring the vultures (if not also the dolphins, sharks, storks -- and squirrels) out of retirement:
@daledamos @BBCWorld now probably kicking themselves, though, because it was harder for US, UK spooks to read minds of vultures— Citizen Wald (@CitizenWald) January 31, 2016Time will tell

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Technorati Tag: Israel and vulture and dolphin and shark.

“We are not oppressing people and people can speak loudly, can criticise the government, can criticise Hamas. We never put anyone in jail who criticizes Hamas or write something against Hamas. We have different organisations, political parties, even writers, they have full freedom to write what they want.”
Hamas deputy foreign minister, Ghazi Hamed, January 2014
And of course, if Hamas says it -- it must be so. After all, how often do we read or hear in them media about any human rights abuses by the Hamas terrorist group. If the media is inclined to not report on Hamas rocket attacks until after Israel retaliates, what is it supposed to take before the media will report on Hamas humanitarian rights abuses?

That is what makes it so unusual to read in The Times about Three nights of torture: the price for criticising Hamas:
Two Palestinian journalists who were vocal critics of Hamas have told how they were arrested and tortured by the group in an apparently successful attempt to silence them.

“I was blindfolded and forced to sit down on a tiny chair for three nights in a row. It was extremely cold and I was denied sleep,” Ramzi Herzallah, 27, told The Times. He and another Gaza-based journalist, Ayman al-Aloul, were held for more than a week this month.

Mr al-Aloul, who is editor-in-chief of the Arab Now Agency, said that he was beaten, blindfolded and forced to sit all day long during his captivity. He joked that he would now focus on sports, food, literature and fashion reporting. “I’ve decided not to talk about the general situation any more,” he said, adding that Hamas had accused him of harming “the resistance” against Israel.Ayman al-Aloul was held for more than a week MAHMUD HAMS/ Getty Images
The article goes on to note a correlation between Hamas's crackdown on the media and signs of broader public protest. Both journalists had criticized Hamas on domestic issues such as tax increases and blackouts as well publishing pictures of Gazans looking for food in garbage dumps. Herzallah reported that he "was told to shut up because the Hamas government has enough to worry about.”

The domestic problems of Hamas are the result not only of its own misgovernance,but also as a result of its deliberate terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, without regard for the safety of its own Gazan civilians.

While the media has not held Hamas responsible for precipitating war with Israel, at least we have an instance here of the media holding Hamas responsible for intimidating and torturing journalists.


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Technorati Tag: Human Rights Abuses and Gaza and Hamas and Freedom of the Press.

Remember those heady days of the Arab Spring in Egypt in 2011?
Do you recall the pictures of protests in Tahrir Square and the promise of democracy and change made possible with Facebook and Twitter?

Demonstrators on Army Truck in Tahrir Square, Cairo Date: 29 January 2011
Photographed by: Ramy Raoof
Things did not quite turn out the way they were supposed to.

The Muslim Brotherhood was able to co-opt the popular protests and in June 2012, Morsi became president of Egypt.

The Egyptian Revolution began in January 2011 -- but by the November of that same year when disillusioned protesters reappeared in Tahrir, the effectiveness of social media in general and Facebook and Twitter in particular, was being questioned.

At the time, The Atlantic asked about: What the New Protests in Egypt Mean for the 'Twitter Revolutions'
The past several days have been hard ones for those who cheered the fall of Hosni Mubarak less than a year ago. More than 30 people have been killed protesting the continued rule of the military council, and the Egyptian cabinet has tendered its resignation. Tahrir Square, once a symbol of the possibilities for a new Egypt, has now become a stage for the revolution's unraveling. These developments (and others since last February) have provoked a simple thought: What if the combination of social media and mobile devices does make revolutions more likely, but do not in turn make republican governing any more possible? What then?

Of course, it's not been settled that these new communications technologies do make revolutions any easier. It never will be. Fast-forward to today and it looks like in Egypt they have practically given up on asking the question.

Ih Al Ahram Weekly, Mohamed Abdel-Baky asks why social media appears to have lost its power to mobilise large demonstrations:
Five years after 25 January Revolution, social media may still play a role in political life but its ability to mobilise anti-government supporters has been eroded, particularly in the last two years.

As the fifth anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak approaches, popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter have seen limited activity, most of it focussed on calling for the release of detainees. Online demands for massive demonstrations to return to Tahrir Square have been few and far between, and the online response muted.

The Twitter hashtag #Ragain lel maidan (“We are back to the square”) attracted a few thousand Egyptian users but interest quickly waned.

“There is a lot of activity on Facebook and Twitter demanding the release of detainees and complaining about the way the revolution’s goals have been abandoned but it is far from turning into a mass movement on the ground,” says Ahmed Ragab, a researcher at the Egyptian Centre for Public Policy Studies.
Back in 2011, social media seemed to give Egyptians the kind of power and voice they lacked at the ballot box. Just five years later, social media just isn't playing as strong a role.

Ahmed Ragab, a researcher at the Egyptian Centre for Public Policy Studies, is quoted giving 2 reasons for this:

• In 2010 a majority of social networkers opposed the Mubarak regime. However today, the Al-Sisi administration has millions of supports on both Facebook and Twitter.
  
  
• Egyptins have lost confidence in the ability of protests to achieve political and social change.

But is that confidence in achieving political and social change any stronger back here in the United States? After all, the US is a real democracy. In the US, we have a real voice through the ballot box.

Right?

The answer may not be so enthusiastic, according to Glenn Reynolds, who writes in USA Today of a Forecast of distrust with a chance of revolution. Noting that Americans have more faith in the military than in the "political class", Glenn writes:
According to a recent Associated Press poll, the public lacks confidence in government. And by “lacks confidence,” I mean “really lacks confidence.” Specifically, “More than 6 in 10 respondents expressed only slight confidence — or none at all — that the federal government can make progress on the problems facing the nation in 2016.”

And this isn’t just Republicans in a sour mood after seven years of Obama. As the AP noted, “Perhaps most vexing for the dozen or so candidates vying to succeed President Barack Obama, the poll indicates widespread skepticism about the government's ability to solve problems, with no significant difference in the outlook between Republicans and Democrats.”Reynolds traces this to a variety of US failures. To name a few:

• Middle East chaos
• Putin's increased influence in in eastern Europe and Syria;
• Saudi Arabia desire for nuclear balance with Iran
• Seven years of economic “recovery” and record deficits.
• The IRS scandal
• The botched ObamaCare rollout

Reynolds adds to the list "a seemingly endless array of similar screwups. When they’re not crooks, our leaders all too often seem to be incompetents."

And if there is no longer any confidence that the Republicans are up to fixing the problems -- if voters are not confident they can vote themselves out of this mess, then, as Reynolds notes, people will look to other solutions. Suddenly, Americans are as disillusioned with the ballot box as Egyptians are with social media. It's tough when the public consensus if being consistently frustrated.

Which may go much further than voting for Donald Trump.

Reynolds points to a YouGov poll from last fall that found that 29% of Americans could imagine supporting a military coup and Newser reported: “Some 71% said military officers put the interests of the country ahead of their own interests, while just 12% thought the same about members of Congress.“

Suddenly, The political situation in the United States doesn't seem so different from from Egypt.


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Technorati Tag: Egypt and United States and Social Media and Elections2016.

It was less than 2 years ago that we read that Ban Ki-moon Admits United Nations Anti-Israel Bias, going so far as to say, "Unfortunately, because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel has been weighed down by criticism and suffered from bias and sometimes even discrimination."

It should not be surprising that Ban shows the same bias when he claims It Is 'Human Nature' to React to Occupation:

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon commented Tuesday on the recent wave of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, saying it was part of "human nature" to react to an occupation.

Addressing the UN Security Council's periodic Middle East debate, Ban condemned rocket fire from militant groups in Gaza into Israel and called for an end to incitement, but said that "As oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation."Ban Ki-moon. Credit: World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0 ],
via Wikimedia CommonsThis is no so different than the claim that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedeom fight" -- a silly statement that tends to overlook the fact that the only place where you find the killers of unarmed civilians extolled as freedom fighters is among the Palestinian Arabs.

As Netanyahu points out, Ban's excuses stoke Palestinian terrorism:
“There is no justification for terrorism. The Palestinian terrorists don’t want to build a state; they want to destroy a state, and they state that proudly. They want to murder Jews everywhere and they state that proudly. They don’t murder for peace and they don’t murder for human rights.”Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid notes the double standard between treatment of Palestinian Arabs and others with hard lives:
There are millions of people in the world whose lives are harder than those of the Palestinians. In Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world for whom the UN didn’t create a special body and to whom the UN didn’t send billions of dollars (and then stood to one side while a corrupt government stole it).

“For some reason those people don’t think there is anything, anything at all, which gives them license to take a knife and stab a mother of six. To take a knife and stab a woman who is five months pregnant. To take a knife and stab a wonderful 23-year-old woman who had never harmed anyone.Terrorism against innocent civilians can not be justified. No-one should provide excuses for it, especially not the UN Secretary General. Terrorism against innocent civilians is the result of nothing except the murderous insanity of the perpetrators.”If the best that Ban can do is caution both sides equally and refuse to acknowledge the incitement of hatred and violence by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, then both Ban Ki-moon and the United Nations have once again proven  that their incompetence is exceeded only by their anti-Israel bias.

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Technorati Tag: Ban Ki-moon and Palestinian Terrorism and United Nations.

On December 9, 2015, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg posted on the need for Muslims to feel welcome on Facebook:
I want to add my voice in support of Muslims in our community and around the world.

After the Paris attacks and hate this week, I can only imagine the fear Muslims feel that they will be persecuted for the actions of others.

As a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities. Even if an attack isn't against you today, in time attacks on freedom for anyone will hurt everyone.

If you're a Muslim in this community, as the leader of Facebook I want you to know that you are always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment for you.

Having a child has given us so much hope, but the hate of some can make it easy to succumb to cynicism. We must not lose hope. As long as we stand together and see the good in each other, we can build a better world for all people. It is hard to argue with Zuckerberg's sentiments -- but his double standard is an issue.


It is all well and good for him to declare that Muslims "are always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment for you."

The question is: why don't Facebook in general and Zuckerberg in particular feel the same way about protecting the rights of Jews and creating "a peaceful and safe environment" for them?

Just how peaceful and safe an environment can Facebook be when there is a community dedicated to propagating the blood libel of "Jewish Ritual Murder"?

Why does Facebook propagate the blood libel of "Jewish Ritual Murder"? Credit: snapshot
This is more than just an issue of free speech. Shurat Ha-Din recently revealed that Facebook's double standard when it comes to Muslims also applies to the Israeli-Arab conflict:



In covering the experiment, Arutz Sheva reported that Facebook discriminates against Israelis:
The two Facebook pages, "Stop Palestinians" and "Stop Israelis", were opened by members of Shurat Hadin on December 28, 2015, the group said in a statement Monday. The next day, on December 29, posts with similar content began to appear on both pages simultaneously.

...[After Shurat Ha-Din reported both pages] The results were not long in coming and Facebook's management worked quickly indeed. That same day, Facebook shut down the page which incites against the Palestinians, and even thanked the complainants for the report. Members of Shurat Hadin who ran the page received a message from Facebook which said the page had been taken offline because it published abusive, threatening and violent content which “violates Facebook’s community standards".

At the same time, however, the anti-Israel page was not shut down by Facebook, despite the fact that all the content on this page was identical to the anti-Palestinian page. In this case, Facebook's management sent the opposite message, indicating that the page did not violate the social network’s terms of service.While Facebook eventually took down the anti-Israel page as well, there are indications of Facebook's attempts to avoid facing the issue of balance head-on by resorting to deception:
Here’s what’s going on. A number of years ago people reported a page on Facebook called “Jewish Ritual Murder”. It was also know as “The Truth About Jews”. It consistently ran the classical old blood libel that Jews, ordered by their Torah, kill non-Jews (especially children) and use their blood for various invented rituals.

Well this Facebook community did appear to go away. Certainly if you’re in Australia or in Israel, you can’t see their page. But if you’re in most of the Arab world you can. So how is this deception by Facebook helping anyone, when the people most likely to be incited to go out and stab a Jew can still see the lies, while those most likely to report it can’t see it? I don’t know.


Certainly there is no perfect solution -- see Israel seeks international support to force social media giants to be more responsible for a new attempt at a solution.

But as long as Facebook hosts a community that propagates blood libels against Jews, Zuckerberg's promises of a peaceful and safe environment for Muslims will continue to come across as hypocrisy.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and Antisemitism.

One of the issues in the wake of the labeling of Israeli products from Judea and Samaria ("The West Bank"), is the double standard of the European Union refusal to label products from occupied territories such as Cyprus (occupied by Turkey) and the Western Sahara (occupied by Morocco).

Now we read that Palestine Supports Morocco’s Sovereignty Over Western Sahara:
Palestine reiterated its support for Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara on Thursday at a diplomatic meeting between both countries, held in Rabat.


...USFP leader Driss Lachgar discussed the Moroccan Sahara with Abbas Zaki [Mahmoud Abbas], member of the Fatah Central Committee.

According to the daily, both leaders agreed that “the issue of the Moroccan Sahara and that of Palestine will now be at the center of their diplomatic cooperation.”Abbas meeting with King Mohammed VI of Morocco. Credit: Morocco World News
The United Nations does not recognize the Moroccan attempt to annex the Western Sahara and a report to the UN Security Council in 2006 noted that "no States Member of the United Nations had recognized that sovereignty" (paragraph 37) -- a status that has not changed.

None of this stops Moroccan Minister El Maliki, who assures us that “There is no need to make any comparison between the Palestinian cause and the Moroccan Sahara issue.” -- though he doesn't quite have an explanation as to why no comparison should be made.

Neither the US, nor the EU nor any other democratic state supports Morocco's illegal occupation of the Western Sahara, nor its practice of settling Moroccan settlers in the occupied territory. But it is the hypocrisy of requiring separate labeling of "West Bank" products but not of Moroccan products from the occupied Western Sahara territory that allows this Palestinian hypocrisy to pass without blinking.

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Technorati Tag: Israel and Morocco and Western Sahara and Occupation.