Fresno Zionism

There it is: four more years of Barack Obama. What does it mean for Israel? The bilateral talks with Iran run by Valerie Jarrett will continue. One can hope for the best, but it is very unlikely that an agreement will be reached that will include the effective dismantling of Iran’s bomb-building capability. It’s not at all comforting to think that Israel’s security will be in the hands of Jarrett, Obama’s Chicago fixer. One can speculate what Romney might have done differently, but that is not an option now.

An interview with Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak — thinly disguised as “the decision-maker” created a sensation in early August, when he suggested that an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was imminent. Barak explained that Israel could not depend on an American commitment to destroy the program in the future, even if it were made today. Suddenly, last week, Barak began to sing a different tune.

Part of my job — not my paying job, the one I do for the sake of shamayim — is to talk to my Jewish friends and try to explain why the existence of a Jewish state is essential for all Jews, wherever they live, why a good relationship with the US is essential for Israel, and why the support of American Jews is in turn essential for such a relationship. I meet a lot of resistance, which is unsurprising when you consider that if you leave aside Arabs and other Muslims, the worldwide movement to end the Jewish state is disproportionately led by people of Jewish descent.

Yes, Israel affords civil rights and freedom of worship to its many minorities; but it makes no attempt to deny that there is one specific people, one particular narrative, one religion to which is it most centrally committed. The State of Israel is, to paraphrase Lincoln, “by the Jews, of the Jews and for the Jews.” How could those who labored to create the European Union not consider the very idea of a Jewish state anathema?

Hamas is nourished by a worldwide network of governments, Islamic charities and individuals that support its goal of killing or dispersing the Jews. But the existence of the sources of nourishment isn’t enough. Since Hamas is a recognized as a terrorist organization and sanctioned by the US and other nations, there are impediments to transferring funds to it which can be translated into weapons, ammunition and jihadist expenses. Sometimes this is facilitated by ‘respectable’ enterprises that are officially opposed to terrorism and murder, but in fact do whatever makes them a buck. Like the Bank of China, according to the Israel Law Center — Shurat HaDin, which has filed a $1 billion lawsuit in a New York court accusing the bank of materially supporting Hamas terrorism.

News item: Muslim Brotherhood leader Ahmed al-Hamrawy resigned from the group and its Freedom and Justice Party to protest a letter introducing the new Egyptian...

In my last blog, I called attention to a report that the US and Iran had made a secret agreement to end sanctions in return for a halt or pause in uranium enrichment. I suggested that this could be an “October Surprise:” the Obama campaign could claim that the President’s policy of partial sanctions and “tough diplomacy” had forced the Iranians to back down from their march toward nuclear weapons.

Can we expect an October Surprise this year? We may already have one brewing. A former CIA operative calling himself “Reza Khalili” and claiming to have been an agent inside the Iranian Revolutionary Guards organization, who has previously made skeptically-received claims that Iran had already produced 90% enriched uranium, is now saying that the Obama Administration has struck a deal with the Iranian regime that will shortly be announced:

The so-called “Jenin Massacre” of 2002 — a massacre that never happened — is emblematic of the way the truth is violated, over and over in this conflict. The most shocking aspect of the affair, for me, was the cynical way in which many were comfortable with inverting reality for ideological reasons.

This is one of those issues that ought to be shocking, but about which nothing is done. For years — I’ve written about this before — the Muslim waqf that controls the Temple Mount has been systematically destroying archaeological artifacts of Jewish provenance at the site.

Many of you have been shocked by the story of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year old Pakistani girl shot in the head by a Taliban terrorist because of a blog she wrote and interviews she gave starting in 2009, criticizing the Taliban and calling for the education of women. This lovely, self-possessed girl, who speaks and writes on a level far above her age, and who planned to enter politics (video), may or may not survive. If she does not, it will be an enormous loss for Pakistan and for the world.

While events — the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the Second Intifada — have convinced the great majority of Israelis that a practical two-state solution is a fantasy based on wishful thinking, this has generally not penetrated the US media or political establishment. So Mitt’s remarks in May came as a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it seems as though Romney has now changed his mind.

I am a Zionist. That means that I support a Jewish state in its historical homeland. I oppose efforts to change it into another Arab state, or to kill and disperse its Jewish inhabitants. It does not mean that I think that Jews are superior to Arabs or anyone else.

Unfortunately, ‘respectable’ voices in our society, even — especially — among Jews, are unable to understand what the deliberately outrageous, over-the-top Geller sees clearly.

As Israel comes closer to a confrontation with Iran, we should note that Iran’s primary strategy is unlikely to be direct conflict with Israel. Iran’s air and missile forces, despite their bragging, are not sufficiently well-developed to support such a conflict. Instead, I expect that they will depend on their main proxy, Hizballah.

In the article on The New York Times interview with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, the Times wrote that the Camp David Accord "called for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and Gaza to make way for full Palestinian self-rule." this is quite false.

Imagine Jews reacted to slights the way Muslims reacted throughout the Middle East and Europe.

Israel, of all nations, can’t let the Arab street set policy for it.

The "Innocence of Muslims" film was a pretext to boost radical Islamists. The media are downplaying this angle, because it suggests that the administration policy toward the Muslim world expressed in the President’s Cairo speech of 2009 is dangerously wrong-headed.

The Western media are not the only ones who fail to see the symbolism of raising al-Qaeda’s banner on 9/11. Our President missed it as well.

Unwilling to issue an ultimatum, the U.S.will go no further than to repeat that “we will not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon,” but it will not say — publicly or to Israel — how far it will allow Iran to go.

We need to understand that a universalist civilization will not survive a contest with a tribalist one. If we don’t value our civilization, who will?

Students are drawn into psycho-political cyclotrons and are insulated from all other voices. What begins as a concern for human rights is amplified by contact with more and more extreme expressions of anti-Israel ideology.

Fein is wrong. The corruption of the Jewish soul did not begin in 1967. It began with the adoption of the idea that surrender is pro-Israel.

A strategy of stopping Iran by getting the US to promise to enforce red lines is only a promise; and nations — the US is not alone in this — do not keep promises when doing so is not determined to be in their interest.

My pro-Obama friends tell me that nothing’s changed, that this administration is as pro-Israel as any previous one, Democratic or Republican, and I needn’t fear that a reelected President Obama will punish Israel. With all due respect, they are full of it.

The interesting question is “why did they change it?” A platform is not a binding document; it is intended as a general statement of a party or candidate’s positions. Its planks are generally written to appeal the broadest possible constituencies. Most voters never read platforms or care about them. Is the change is intended to send a message to the leadership of the Muslim nations that Obama has been courting since his 2009 speech in Cairo that he is taking concrete steps to weaken the bond between the U.S. and Israel?

In March, President Obama said "when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back," but U.S. actions since have shown otherwise.

Evergreen State College, where Rachel Corrie attended college, is a paradigm of the progressive cause-based model of education and has produced a high number of the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement's activists.

You have chosen to honor your daughter's memory by taking her side. That's understandable, but it doesn’t validate the ideology that got her killed in order to further its goals of still more death and destruction.