The superintendent of a New York State school district that has been accused of anti-Semitic harassment said the district “has a long history of acceptance and tolerance.”

Joan Carbone, superintendent of the Pine Bush Central School District 90 miles north of New York City, acknowledged in a statement issued Sunday that the school is getting “much media attention” since a New York Times article published on Friday reported on the years of swastikas and anti-Semitic behavior on the part of students there.

The alleged behavior caused three Jewish families to file a lawsuit against the school district and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to order investigations into the allegations of anti-Semitic harassment.

“We are confident that the investigations from the Governor’s office will demonstrate our intolerance for racism and acceptance of diversity in our District,” Carbone wrote in the statement.

“The Pine Bush School District has a long history of acceptance and tolerance and we appreciate all the support we have received from those who know our vested interest in creating a welcoming environment for all students,” it concluded.

Citing depositions in the lawsuit, The New York Times reported that Jewish students have complained of anti-Semitic epithets and nicknames, jokes about the Holocaust, being forced to retrieve coins from dumpsters and physical violence. Fellow students are accused of making Nazi salutes and telling anti-Semitic jokes.

“The reports of rampant anti-Semitic harassment and physical assaults at Pine Bush schools, if true, are deeply disturbing,” Cuomo said in a statement issued Friday.

“The public has a right to know the truth and parents across the state have the right to know that their children can attend our schools without fear of this reprehensible behavior,” the statement said.

Parents of the students who say they have suffered from the anti-Semitic incidents said that the school district did not take complaints seriously and that the complaints of anti-Semitic harassment were isolated, according to the Times.

The school district says it took the appropriate disciplinary actions and that anti-Semitic behavior is not widespread in the district.

In the 1970s, Pine Bush was the home of the grand dragon of a Ku Klux Klan chapter whose wife sat on the district’s school board, according to the Times.

Originally published at Rubin Reports.

In 1848, the new Communist movement issued a manifesto. It began with the opening line:

“A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism.”

For our purposes today, this threat might be reworded as:

“A specter is haunting the Middle East—the specter of America.”

For example, about a year ago Dubai’s police chief addressed a major international Gulf Arab security conference. He said that there were about three dozen security threats to the Gulf Arab countries. But this well-respected security expert said the number-one threat was the United States.

Since that time, this American specter has become vivid. For instance, The New York Times had a recent editorial which stated that the only protection for Egypt’s democracy–meaning Muslim Brotherhood participation in the next Egyptian government–was the United States and Europe. The Egyptian regime, Israel, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states were bad for wanting to protect their societies from Islamic ideology, revolution, and anti-Western Sharia states!

Might the United States and its allies rather be expected to battle Turkey, Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Hamas or otherwise might it support Islamists while Saudi Arabia fought Europe’s and America’s response as too soft on Hizballah?

But what if a crazy notion seizes policymakers, blessed with the mush of ignorance about the Middle East, that they can take control of the troublemakers? Perhaps Germany (World War One and Two jihads), or the Soviet control of radical nationalist regimes in the 1950s and 1960, or the French rescue of the Palestinian leadership in the late 1940s, or Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran during the 1970s, or America in the 1950s (Arab nationalism), or the 2010 Muslim Brotherhood would turn nominal extremists into friends?

Imagine, dunderheads in Washington, London, Paris, and so on thinking they are masterfully preserving stability, making peace, and harnessing Sharia in the cause of boosting democracy!

How smug would be the smiles when those who perpetrated September 11, 2001, were supposedly defeated by those mentored into power a decade later by the West in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, or in the Arab Spring or the Syrian revolution!

Look at it through the eyes of the Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Kurds, and Israelis who think they will try to impose a new order the region?

Consider a famous speech by Winston Churchill at Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. In contrast to the Communist Manifesto,100 years later, Churchill began, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain is descended across the continent.” It might be strange that these two statements are compared to the current situation in the Middle East. But actually, they make a lot of sense.

The intention of great powers seemed to impose one (European) system on the region. In the first case, it was Communism. In Churchill’s case, it was anti-Communism he advocated, which in parallel would be Anti-Islamism.

But today, what is the system that Arabs, Iranians, Turks, and Israelis think they will try to impose on the region? The answer for those who have been watching in recent years is revolutionary Islamism.

It might seem strange that this is the thinking, but it isn’t. The question is whether there is a system that Western Europeans want to impose. And the answer is that to the Arabs and others in the region–although this does not mean it has to be true–since the 1979 Iranian revolution, they have supported radical Islamism. In fact, it should be understood that after the Arab Spring, Arabs did not generally identify Western interests with support for moderate democracy, but with support for Islamism.

Incidentally, Churchill’s title was the Sinews of Strength, and he favored policy leading a coalition of the Free world which would be welcome today.

To summarize, in the 1930s, Churchill favored anti-fascism and advocated a united front against Nazi Germany. After World War Two, he supported an alliance of the Free World against the Iron Curtain.

Where is the Churchill of today?

Well, directly his bust was quickly chucked from the White House because he was the symbol for Obama of Western colonialism.

Who was the genuine symbol of anti-colonialism for Obama? The left wing anti-Western revolutionary ideological movement represented by the Muslim Brotherhood or Chavez, and other demagogues.

When  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry  again says that Mahmoud Abbas has stopped terror, he will not recall that the IDF does the dirty work for the Palestinian Authority, such as it did overnight Monday when soldiers trying to carry out an arrest were met with live fire.

The Israeli soldiers responded by killing one terrorist, wounding three others and achieving their objective of capturing the wanted Islamic Jihad member.

The Palestinian Authority is responsible for security in Jenin, as in most other areas in Judea and Samaria. It officially is responsible for “law and order,” which usually amounts to handing out traffic tickets and fighting crime and drug trafficking.

The Israeli army maintains security at the security fence that separates Judea and Samaria from the rest of Israel. It also is responsible for economic and civil coordination with the Palestinian Authority, cooperating with the PA army, officially known as a “police force,” and acting independently when necessary.

“When we identify an emerging terror attack, including plan s for an attack, or ongoing terrorist activity, the IDF together with other security personnel takes  matters in its own hands, IDF Spokesman Capt. Eitan Buchman told The Jewish Press Tuesday.

He added that is what happened in the overnight raid in Jenin early Tuesday morning.

The IDF, including the Kfir Brigade, the orthodox Jewish Netzach Yehuda regiment, and Border Police moved into Jenin, located in central Samaria, but were met with heavy resistance of approximately 50 Arabs, some of whom opened fire at the soldiers. They  wounded two of them, and also threw grenades.

The troops returned fire, killing one terrorist.

Foreign media reported the incident.

The missing part of the story is that the Palestinian Authority does not carry out its commitment, dating back to the Oslo Accords, to tear apart the terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.

If Monday night’s wanted terrorist was a Fatah member, one could make the excuse that the Palestinian Authority is not mature enough to arrest its own terrorists

But in this case the terrorist was a member of the rival Islamic Jihad. If PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas really wants to prove that he can provide security for Israel in a future Palestinian Authority country, one would think he would try to prove it instead of letting the IDF do the dirty work for him.

That is a question no one asks, for the simple reason that it would harm the “peace process.”

John Kerry and President Barack Obama have frequently praised Abbas for reducing terror in Judea and Samara, so they got half of it right. Terror has been reduced, but not because of Abbas.

If they continue to convince themselves that Abbas has fought terror, while inciting it, they should be asking why the IDF was operating in Jenin in the first place.

The answer, of course, is that the Palestinian Authority cannot exist without the IDF. Every Israeli army soldier and junior officer serving in Judea and Samaria knows that, but senior officers, wanting to win a promotion, toe the party line and boast of coordination with the Palestinian Authority security forces.

Indeed, there is cooperation to a certain extent, but whenever the IDF carries out a counterterrorist operation in Judea and Samaria, Abbas gets the credit and Israel is blamed.

PA media reported that the soldiers shot him “directly in the heart,” making the arrest attempt appear to be a cruel attack aimed at murdering Arabs.

The New York Times’ Jodi Roderon duly noted that Arabs shot at the soldiers while reminding readers that the victim was a Palestinian “man” and not a terrorist, and that “such killings are rare,” as if “killing” is an IDF policy when trying to arrest terrorists.

Rodoren reported, “Israeli soldiers killed a young Palestinian man early Tuesday during a confrontation in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, as troops arriving to arrest an Islamic Jihad member suspected of planning terrorist attacks were greeted by violent protesters.”

The newspaper, like virtually all foreign media, uses the same terms over and  over again to brainwash themselves and readers and perpetuating  the myth of an “Occupation Army.”

The “refugee camp” connotes some poor village of tents for poor Arabs who were uprooted by Israel, while they are in fact third and fourth generation Arabs of those who fled or were chased out of Israel in previous wars.

It ain’t looking good from any angle you look at him, but in a wide-ranging interview with BuzzFeed Monday night, Anthony Weiner appeared defiant and hopeful about his chances winning the New York City mayoral race this fall.

“I’m gonna fight, I’m gonna stand up strong,” Weiner said. “I’ve shown that I don’t back down very easily.”

“Remember the job you’re voting for. You’re voting for someone to be your mayor, OK? So what do you want for that job? If you want someone that has a spotless personal record, well, you haven’t had a good mayor in years,” Mr. Weiner said.

Asked by Ben Smith why voters are giving him a harder time than Bill Clinton, Mr. Weiner blamed it on the media’s coverage of his sexting scandal. “Coverage has been fairly brutal,” Mr. Weiner said. “I think that there’s this dialogue that goes on about the things in my private life and then there’s this conversation that voters want to have about issues and they’re always in competition. And to try to get the latter to happen you’ve got to clear out the former and to some degree, this has run a fairly predictable course.”

He accused some members of the media of going out of their way to write negative stories about him. The New York Times, he declared, “doesn’t want me to win.”

“The New York Times doesn’t want me to win… Their heads are exploding over the idea… I don’t have fealty to them. I’m not treating a New York Times endorsement as an end to itself…This is the same people that brought you a third term for Mike Bloomberg. I do not care. And it makes them nuts that I don’t care,” Mr. Weiner told Smith.

The New York Times recognized that its correspondent in Jerusalem, Jodi Rudoren, had gone too far this time in blithely vilifying Jews who live and breathe beyond the so-called Green Line.

Rudoren ascribed a position to the United States government about Israeli policy which was flat out wrong. That was the only part of the otherwise slanted and deceptive article which merited a slap on the wrist.  Rudoren wrote that the position of the U.S. is that Israeli towns and cities beyond the Green Line are illegal, when in fact this government has taken no position on the legality of Israeli Jewish towns in that region.  The actual correction appears at the end of this article.

Before we get to the begrudging but still humiliating factual correction, take a stroll through the rest of her article.

In this article headlined, “Israeli Decree on West Bank Settlements Will Harm Peace Talks, Palestinians Say,” Rudoren not only originally falsely stated that the United States believes the “settlements” are illegal.  Her language throughout the piece makes clear her hostility to Jews daring to live beyond what the esteemed Israeli statesman Abba Eban had termed the “Auschwitz borders,” the lines drawn in 1949 at the end of the war against the newly-reborn Israel, when surrounding Arab states attacked it rather than permit a Jewish State in their midst.

For one thing, she described the early stage approval of subsidies to homeowners in various places including in “Jewish settlements in the West Bank territory that Israel seized in the 1967 war.”  You’d never know that in 1967 Israel (again) fought a defensive war and gained the land in a battle for its existence.  The verb Rudoren chose, “seized,” suggests an aggressive action by the belligerent in military hostilities.

Given that the New York Times is treated like Torah from Sinai by most American Jews, no wonder they and the organizations those Jews tend to support believe that Israel should give away that territory to people who never possessed it,  and never – until Israel legally acquired the land – expressed any interest in owning or governing it themselves.

And it was not until the sixth paragraph of a 10 paragraph story that Israel is even permitted a voice to counter what Rudoren already set up as a move by the Israeli government to expand “settlements” which upset the Arab Palestinians and may now torpedo the “fragile peace talks.”

In the sixth paragraph the reader – if he is still reading – learns that all that happened is the Israeli government has made a completely routine and preliminary decision to provide assistance to homeowners in authorized towns and villages for things like “education, housing, infrastructure projects, cultural programs and sports, along with better mortgage rates and loans for new homeowners.”  Isn’t that what governments are supposed to do?  Take care of their citizens?

Rudoren distances her readers from identifying with Israelis who might otherwise be considered normal homeowners. She points out that, “Among the newcomers to the list are three formerly illegal outposts — Bruchin, Rachelim and Sansana — that obtained government recognition last year.”  Rudoren chose not to more concisely and correctly refer to those three towns as “legal and legitimate villages.”

But before Israel was permitted to offer a different point of view, Rudoren first ran condemnations of the move by the infamous Hanan Ashrawi, whose latest evidence of Jew and Israel hatred was the promotion on the website of an NGO she founded which claimed that Jews drink Christian blood on Passover.

In the space of three sentences, Rudoren paints a clear picture with Ashrawi’s words.  Ashrawi describes Israel’s move as a “confidence-destruction measure,” “attempts to grab more Palestinian land,” “provide settlers with preferential treatment” and the announcement that “the decision would have ‘a destructive impact’” on the current Israeli-Arab Palestinian talks.

Of course, Mark Regev was given a cameo appearance in the sixth paragraph.  But not to worry, because in the concluding three paragraphs of the article there is plenty to ensure that the lasting impression is one of an intransigent Israeli government filled with “many right-wing settlement supporters” which “refused to formally freeze settlement construction” in order to induce the oh-so-compliant, peace-supporting Arab Palestinians to even sit at the table with the Israelis.

The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief and a correspondent in Washington have woken up and realized that there are a few matters in the Middle East a bit more urgent than fawning over the fossil of the peace process.

Under the headline “Chaos in Middle East Grows as the U.S. Focuses on Israel,” Judi Rodoren and Mark Landler wrote that  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in “tranquil Tel Aviv” while Syria is embroiled in a bloody civil war and Egypt’s “democratically elected leader [is] fighting for legitimacy with many of his people.”

“With so much of the Middle East still convulsing from the effects of the Arab Spring, Mr. Kerry’s efforts raise questions about the Obama administration’s priorities at a time of renewed regional unrest,” they wrote.

Rudoren and Landler are a bit late.

Jewish Press’ editor Yori Yanover wrote on Sunday, “While in Egypt millions are getting ready for a clash that could bring down the Morsi government and wash Egypt in rivers of blood, and while Syria and Iraq are already awash in blood, and Turkey is about to implode, Secretary of State John Kerry is focusing all his efforts on the truly important thing – making sure that Jews who live in East Jerusalem won’t be allowed to close up their porch, as this would violate the Prime Minister’s decree against settlement construction.”

Originally published at Gatestone Institute.

Recent news is that both North Korea and Pakistan have sought help in developing EMP weapons; Iran has launched its missile tests in an EMP mode. The U.S. could, for a small additional expense, protect the country from EMP and nuclear threats through the production of short and medium defense radars and interceptors, now available and in the U.S. inventory.

In nearly two thousand stories and editorials since President Reagan identified missile defense as a critical new capability needed for America’s security, the New York Times has rarely found anything positive to say about America’s first line of defense against enemy missiles.

In the past few weeks, editors of the New York Times continued, announcing their opposition to the newly considered East Coast missile defense site, and describing it as “unnecessary.” [June 4, "An Unnecessary Military Expense"]

Contrast this to how they report on other offensive missile developments by America’s enemies.

North Korean threats to launch offensive rockets at America and its allies, for example, are described as “puzzling” [May 21, 2013, "N Korea Launches Missiles for Third Straight Day"].

Russia’s possible sales of anti-ship missiles to Syria are described as an “indication of the depth of support” of Moscow for Damascus (May 17 “Russia Sends More Advanced Missiles to Aid Assad”).

Hezbollah threats to use rockets against Israel are carefully described as in “retaliation,” implying of course any attack would be Israel’s fault. [May 10, "Hezbollah Threatens Israel over Syria Strike"]

In short, offensive missile deployments by America’s adversaries enjoy whitewashed explanations, while American efforts to defend itself and its allies from these same threats come in only for criticism.

The same New York Times logic was especially on display in 2002. Times Editor Bill Keller argued then that if President Bush withdrew from the ABM treaty the possibility of more nuclear arms control in the future would be very low. He described US missile defenses as a search for an “unfettered” US security policy that sought to “neutralize the power of countries such as North Korea and Iran”, (as if this was a bad idea!)

Keller approvingly referenced a speech by Jack Mendelssohn of the Arms Control Association in which he said that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could not be confronted unless the US had an effective missile defense, as Washington would “hesitate to come to the island’s aid because of Beijing’s nuclear weapons.”

Keller apparently is aghast that, if the US had a missile defense in place, America might actually defend Taiwan from invasion.

Keller claims the missile defense “schemers” [those supporting their deployment] just want to get into a war with China and might end up spurring an arms race as well.

Added to this is his claim that missile defense advocates are also “deceivers,” seeking secretly to end all arms control restraints on US nuclear weapons.

Is this actually how things turned out? Did arms control disappear as the US deployed protective missile defenses? Well, by the end of 2004, the Bush administration had deployed an initial series of missile defense interceptors against long range missiles, plus hundreds of short and medium range interceptors. To accomplish this, the US did have to jettison the ABM Treaty, which the Bush administration did in 2002.

At the same time, however, the US and Russia secured under the Moscow Treaty a collective reduction of 63% of US’s strategic deployed warheads, with both countries ending up with 2,200 deployed strategic nuclear warheads compared to the 6,000 allowed under the Start I treaty.

Progress on US-Russian arms control and US missile defense deployments continued. By the end of the decade, with the addition of the 2010 New Start Treaty, US deployed warheads fell to 1,550 while missile defense interceptors of all kinds rose to over 1,250. When allied forces are included, the number of defense interceptors, while the exact number is classified, probably exceeds 2,000.

Nuclear weapons down. Missile defense interceptors up.

What the New York Times concluded could never be accomplished had been in fact achieved. But the New York Times apparently never got the message.

During both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the growing capability of Iran missile forces eventually pushed NATO jointly to call for the deployment of better missile defenses.

The Bush administration secured agreement to deploy interceptors in Poland and complimentary radars in the Czech Republic.

Although nuclear weapons arms control had accelerated, simultaneously with the deployment of over 1000 defense interceptors, the New York Times continued to complain.

The Czech and Polish deployments, said the New York Times, would “anger Russia” [April 15, 2008]. A month later, an “expert analysis,” cautioned the Times, cast serious “doubt” on the capability of the proposed system [May 18, 2008].

The analysis of course turned out to be bogus. The two-stage interceptor being proposed for Poland worked and had been tested. The Czech-based radar was similarly qualified for the job.

The Russians ginned up media opposition to the NATO missile defense deal, and then used threats of nuclear-armed missile attacks to delay its deployment.

By the fall 2009, therefore, with a new administration, the Polish and Czech sites previously planned were abandoned by the new administration.

But ironically, new European alternative sites were suggested instead by the new American administration, such as Romania. And instead of a two-stage missile defense interceptor, it was proposed that a new land-based “version” of the Navy Standard Missile (SM) be developed and deployed at a new European site, but sometime after 2020. It became known as the fourth phase of the EPAA or European Phased Adaptive Approach, or SM-3 Block II-B, and was designed to deal with long-range Iranian rockets.

But even that plan eventually came unraveled. Following North Korea’s recent missile launch tests and its explosion of another nuclear device, the administration changed course again.

The fourth phase of the EPAA was redesigned, and in all likelihood cancelled. The Iranian missile threats to Europe appeared to no longer be taken seriously by the administration.

Instead, it was announced that 14 ground-based missile interceptors, originally scheduled for deployment in Alaska by the Bush administration (but cancelled in 2009), would in fact go forward, and provide some additional protection to the United States (but not NATO) from emerging missile threats from Iran and North Korea.

On March 15, trying to maintain its perfect record of hostility to missile defense, the New York Times, twisting itself, acknowledged that while the added West Coast deployment was indeed in response to North Korean “provocations,” such defense was probably not needed because even without any U.S. defenses, Pyongyang would “surely be destroyed” if it attacked the United States.

And, added the Times, such a defense response by the United States might give North Korea “the satisfaction of making the rest of the world jumpy.” (And we certainly could not have that!)

There are, however, bipartisan reasons why the Times is wrong.

As Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Congresswomen Yvette Clarke (D-NY) told a recent Capitol Hill conference, the missile threats emerging from Iran and North Korea now might very well involve an EMP nuclear device capable of rendering the U.S. electrical grid and infrastructure useless. Tens of millions of Americans would be at risk of dying, as two Congressional EMP Commissions had previously concluded in the last decade. These fears of former Director of Central Intelligence, Ambassador R. James Woolsey, echoed in a particularly passionate brief at the event.

Recent news is that both North Korea and Pakistan have sought help in developing EMP weapons; and we know Iran has launched its missile tests in an EMP mode.

Such threats could be launched from a missile at sea some hundreds of kilometers off of our coasts as well as from intercontinental distances. Such maritime threats—largely surreptitious—would be difficult to deter, as in all likelihood the adversary would be unidentifiable.

The U.S. could, however, for a modest additional expense, begin to protect the country from such maritime EMP and nuclear threats through the production of additional short and medium missile defense radars and interceptors, now available and in the US inventory. Upgrades in the future would probably be required as the threat worsened. But we could begin work now.

This could be part of a new phased East Coast missile defense site or system. Other threats, such as long range missiles from the Middle East, could be dealt with through the deployment on the East Coast of an advanced version of the current West Coast deployments, or a variant of the current sea-based BMD systems, including better sensors and kill vehicles or the final element of an interceptor that actually crashes into the incoming warhead.

Whether traditional nuclear or EMP nuclear threats, missiles have become the military technology of choice of both terror master nations and their terror group affiliates. Such threats may not be subject to the traditional notions of deterrence developed during the half century of the Cold War. Hamas, for example, late last year, launched more rockets on Israel than Nazi Germany launched in all of World War II. Israel defended itself with the deployment of the Iron Dome missile defense system, which was developed and put into place within just three years.

In short, real threats need real defenses. The “hope” of deterrence is not enough.

Can we build better defenses? Of course we can.

In Israel, the military made upgrades to the Iron Dome defense system even as it was engaging enemy rockets. Upwards of 85-90% of all targeted Hamas rockets were intercepted. Contrary to the same academic “experts” often cited by the New York Times, this missile defense system worked and worked very well. The intercepts were meticulously recorded and verified. When told of the key basis for the critics’ conclusion that Iron Dome hit only 15% of the targets—private cell phone pictures—a coterie of Pentagon civilian and military experts burst out laughing.

The US is now in partnership with Jerusalem to produce more Iron Dome batteries.

We should take our inspiration from Israel.

To defend the homeland and build better missile defenses simply follows our constitutional requirement to “provide for the common defense.”

Samantha Power, President Obama’s nominee to replace Susan Rice as Ambassador to the United Nations, “cares deeply” about Israel’s security needs, Israeli ambassador to Washington Michael Oren recently told The New York Times.

“Samantha Power and I have worked closely over the last four years on issues vital to Israel’s security,” he said. “She thoroughly understands those issues and cares deeply about them.”

Oren is as much a politician as he is a diplomat. He admitted he usually does not comment on presidential nominees until they are confirmed by the Senate.

So why did he have to go out of his way and tell The New York Times, Obama’s unofficial press agent, that Power is such a great fan of Israel, where 11 years ago she advocated calling for US troops to act as policemen?

Oren saw the need to defend the President and score points if she is confirmed by the Senate, even though the nomination of Power has left many Jewish groups and leaders on different sides of the fence.

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) did not surprise anyone by strongly opposing her nomination, while the Conservative Jewish movement came out in favor of her, as did the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The American Jewish Committee had no comment, and B’nai Brith said it was withholding approval of Power’s nomination until she addressed her earlier remarks under oath during Senate confirmation hearings.

“Israel has few real friends at the United Nations and at the top of the list is the United States, and it is really incumbent on the representative to be prepared, willing and able to rebuff and repel that kind of language,” said the group’s executive vice president, Daniel Mariaschin.

Power’s supporters have pointed out that she was on the front lines to work against anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations, particularly the Palestinian Authority attempt to win United Nations Security Council approval for becoming a full-fledged member of the United Nations. The Obama administration threatened to cast a veto, which in the end was not necessary because the PA was lacking one vote to win the necessary two-thirds approval for the motion to move to the floor of the General Assembly.

Power may “deeply care” about Israel. Every US political leader is “Pro-Israel” because every one of them knows what is good for Israel, much better than the dumb Israelis. The American government also knows what is good for Iraq, Egypt, Syria and almost every other place in the universe, including the moon.

Being “pro-Israel” is not a condition to be the American Ambassador to the United Nations. First and foremost, the Ambassador must be pro-United States.

But that is like being pro-Israel. Every one has his or her own meaning of what is good for America.

Samantha Power obviously thinks Obama is good for America, as did most of the electorate. She was one of his strongest supporters even before anyone heard of his becoming a presidential candidate in 2008.

She also thinks “engaging enemies’ is good for the United States. It is the “engagement” policy that helped bring then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to declare, two months after the beginning of the Arab Spring protests in Syria, that Assad is a “reformer.”

By the way, it was the same Clinton, when she campaigned against Obama for the Democratic party’s nomination for its presidential candidate, whom Power called a “monster.”

Power also has mouthed off at people whom she thinks are violating human rights.

She once not only called Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon violators of human rights, she also put them on the same level in her declaration against “Sharafat.”

When Power hears of human rights violations, she goes bonkers and always assumes the “other side” is to blame. That is why she backed the Muslims against the Buddhists in Burma.

The Canada Free Press wrote, “In her 2004 review of a book by the radical leftist Noam Chomsky, Ms. Power agreed with many of his criticisms of U.S. foreign policy and expressed her own concerns about what she called the ‘sins of our allies in the war on terror,’ lumping Israel with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan.

In 2007, she stated, the American government’s relationship with Israel “has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics….”