The New York Times’ editorial on Wednesday called the idea of using Jonathan Pollard as a bargaining chip for peace talks “a lamentable sign of America’s desperation to keep both sides talking.”

The newspaper does not dictate to Obama, but it more often than not reflects his thinking, or the other way around.

In this case, it is questionable if Obama was thinking, and the Times was unusually harsh in its criticism of him and his administration.

It stated that the proposal came from Washington, although it is not known whether the White House or Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu initiated the idea. It may be a moot issue because the general reaction in the United States has been negative, and the Palestinian Authority apparently shot it down.

Mahmoud Abbas and his aides reportedly were furious after hearing about the idea because there is no way they will let Israel get Pollard while arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti remains in an Israeli prison cell.

The emergence of the convicted spy Jonathan Pollard as a bargaining chip in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations is a lamentable sign of America’s desperation to keep both sides talking. Peace between Israelis and Palestinians can be achieved only if they want it for themselves, something that is very much in doubt right now.

The editorial called the proposals a “bad idea [that] would do nothing to advance progress on the core issues of a peace deal.”

The New York Times raised some eyebrows in the Jewish community earlier this month with a lengthy feature about four self-described religious Jews who oppose Israel. In an apparent attempt to legitimize Jewish anti-Zionism, the article stressed that Zionism “was not always the norm among American Jews” and that it was only “the persecution of European Jews [which] turned many American Jews into Zionists.”

Interestingly, one of the most famous “religious Jews” who opposed Zionism did not change his mind even after the Holocaust. That was the Times’s own publisher from 1935 to 1961, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.

Sulzberger was a devout adherent of classical Reform Judaism. In his view, Jewish identity should consist only of religious beliefs, not any sense of peoplehood, nationalism, or ethnic affiliation. He even rejected the existence of Jewish war veterans organizations on the grounds that they were examples of “Ghetto living.”

As Prof. Laurel Leff explains in her critically acclaimed book Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, Sulzberger instructed Times editors to bury news of the Nazi genocide on the back pages, and to tone down or eliminate references to the fact that the victims were Jews.

Sulzberger worried that if the Times reported what was happening to the Jews in Europe, someone might accuse it of being a “Jewish newspaper.”

As news of the Nazi atrocities moved many formerly anti-Zionist Reform rabbis and leaders to recognize the need for a Jewish state, Sulzberger pushed back. He was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of the American Council for Judaism, a group created by a handful of Reform rabbis in 1942 to oppose Zionism. The Times gave frequent and generous coverage to the activities of the tiny Council.

Even a visit to former Nazi concentration camps in 1945 did not alter Sulzberger’s anti-Zionist convictions. In a speech the following year, Sulzberger said that while he felt sorry for the Jewish survivors living in Displaced Persons camps in Europe, they were “but a minor percentage of the total of displaced persons” and therefore should not be receiving so much attention.

The Times publisher even went so far as to claim Zionism was to blame for some of the Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. He alleged, in that 1946 speech, that the refugee crisis during the war had been “a manageable, social and economic problem” until “the clamor for statehood introduced an insoluable political element” into the issue. “It is my judgment that thousands dead might now be alive” if “the Zionists” had put “less emphasis on statehood,” Sulzberger asserted.

One of the Jewish anti-Zionists profiled in the Feb. 14 New York Times article described himself as a fan of the late Judah Magnes, who advocated a binational Arab-Jewish Palestine instead of a Jewish state. Sulzberger, too, thought highly of Magnes. In June 1946, Sulzberger tried to organize a dinner at Manhattan’s Hotel Pierre to raise funds for Magnes’s work. The Times publisher invited 23 of his associates. Only three accepted. The dinner was canceled.

The increasingly isolated Sulzberger grew more and more frustrated. A pro-Zionist statement by the formerly anti-Zionist president of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in early 1947 prompted Sulzberger to write to a friend, “Apparently if you are a Jew you have to contribute Jewishly, eat Jewishly, think Jewishly, part your hair Jewishly…. Gosh I’m sick!”

On another occasion, Sulzberger was horrified to see the AJC and other Jewish groups listed as affiliates of the United Jewish Appeal in an advertisement in the Times. “The only thing I miss is the Jewish Chiropractors’ Society,” he complained. “In other words, J E W is to be the common denominator for everything we do. God help us!”

A Chinese businessman who is determined to buy an American newspaper said he is just as smart as the Jews who own some of those newspapers.

Chen Guangbiao, chairman of Jiangsu Huangpu Recycling Resources, who made his fortune in recycling construction materials in China, announced late last month that he would travel to New York to meet with shareholders of The New York Times in order to acquire the newspaper. His premature announcement led to the cancellation of the Jan. 5 meeting, according to Forbes.

Earlier this week, Chen said in an interview with Sinovision, a New York-based Chinese television station, that he was investigating whether The Wall Street Journal is for sale.

He said that he was aware that many American newspapers are owned by Jews, and that his IQ, or intelligence quotient, and EQ, or emotional quotient, are “equally competent” as those Jewish owners.

He also added that he is “very good at working with Jews.”

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.