Freedom Line Blog

President Obama welcomes (if that’s the word) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on Friday. Oh, to be a fly on that wall.

The president chose to spend the day before his meeting with the head of the Jewish state’s government calling on Israel to return to its 1967 borders, meaning that it would give up all claims to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Golan Heights — all of which are essential to Israeli security as long as the nation is surrounded by enemies.

Don’t expect Netanyahu to roll over. As the New York Times reports:

Mr. Netanyahu said in a pointed statement just before boarding a plane to Washington that while he appreciated Mr. Obama’s commitment to peace, he “expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of American commitments made to Israel in 2004 which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress.”

Those commitments came in a letter from President George W. Bush which stated, among other things that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949,” another way of describing the 1967 boundaries.

The next time Obama chooses to be so imperious with his prescriptions for Middle East peace, he’d do well to remember one of the salient differences between himself and the Israeli Prime Minister: only the latter’s consent is essential for a deal.

Who says Iran’s leaders don’t know how to lighten the mood?  With tensions in the Middle East boiling over – and Iran rumored to be behind many of the region’s revolutionary protests – the Islamic Republic is trying to downplay the threat of its decision to send two warships through Egypt’s Suez Canal and emerge off the coast of Israel.

Hard to blame Israeli officials in Tel Aviv for fearing the truth of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad’s repeated promises to destroy the Jewish state after getting the news about his navy’s surprise trip.  But as proof of Iran’s peaceful intentions the government offered two assurances.  First, the ships won’t carry any weapons or nuclear or chemical material.  Second, the duo is headed to Syria for training.

Unfortunately for Iran, its dishonest record of nuclear enrichment and ties to terrorist organizations in Syria and elsewhere aren’t fooling anyone – except the weakened Egyptian government looking to avoid a confrontation.

It’s worth noting that an Iranian warship going through the Suez Canal under the Mubarak reign is unthinkable.  Now, Israeli officials must consider more unthinkable scenarios with its sworn enemy soon sailing within sight of the Jewish homeland.

On the heels of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s offer of an “historic compromise” Mahmoud Abbas rejected the notion of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s talk about an “historic compromise” and said there would be no compromises on core issues such as Jerusalem and borders.

Abbas also reiterated his rejection of Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. “We’re not talking about a Jewish state and we won’t talk about one,” Abbas said in an interview with the semi-official Al-Quds newspaper. “For us, there is the state of Israel and we won’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”

Regular news watchers in any of the last four decades will recognize this pattern.  Israel offers to negotiate a peace deal; Palestine refuses to negotiate any of the “core issues.”  You know; like borders, how to share – or not – Jersusalem, and perhaps the most important: whether one of the state parties to a “two-state” solution will be recognized as a state by the other.

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) refusal to recognize Israel seems grossly hypocritical when the biggest concession Palestinians demand is Israel’s recognition of Palestine as a state.

As for what the United States government should do about the impasse, probably nothing.  Rasmussen Reports found that 77% of Americans think any peace treaty between Israel and Palestine must include recognition of Israel’s right to exist.  So far, Abbas and the PA won’t even acknowledge that Israel as a state does exist, so it may be a while before they get around to saying it has a right to exist.

Let’s hope the Obama White House doesn’t dither on this issue while the country’s economic house continues to burn down.

The Obama Administration has gone out of its way to turn up its nose at America’s allies.  In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino says, “No nation has felt the sting of this rejection quite as severely as Israel. … What is at stake is the very future of that nation and its people.”

For decades, philosophy buffs have argued over whether Adolf Hitler’s appropriation of Friedrich Nietzsche was a logical extension of the German philosopher’s work or a bastardization of his core themes. Now, a new wrinkle in the debate about how philosophy informs international affairs comes courtesy of the Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes (full disclosure: Dr. Pipes was a professor of mine in graduate school) writing in today’s Jerusalem Post.

In a piece titled “Lion’s Den: Immanuel Kant vs. Israel”, Dr. Pipes argues that the post-nation state ideology advanced by the legendary Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant in his 1795 work “Perpetual Peace” is now being used to advance a new paradigm of perpetual war against Israel. In relevant part:

Under the old nation-state paradigm, the lesson of Auschwitz was “Never again,” meaning that a strong Israel was needed to protect Jews.

The new paradigm leads to a very different “Never again,” one which insists that no government should have the means potentially to replicate the Nazi outrages. According to it, Israel isn’t the answer to Auschwitz. The European Union is.

That the old-style “Never again” inspires Israelis to pursue the Western world’s most unabashed policy of self-defense makes their actions particularly appalling to New Paradigmers.

Need one point out the error of ascribing Nazi outrages to the nation-state? The Nazis wanted to eliminate nation-states. No less than Kant, they dreamed of a universal state. New Paradigmers mangle history.

The lesson — in Israel’s case, as in all others — is simple. As the monopoly of legitimate force, government is a necessary evil requiring the vigilance of free citizens to keep it in check. In order to protect human liberty and maintain responsiveness to the citizenry, that means government should be as limited and decentralized as possible. And nothing is more threatening to that goal than the “benevolent” internationalism envisioned by Kant, the United Nations, and all their fellow travelers on the post-nationalist left.

Back in March, after his speech to AIPAC, I offered the notion that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the last statesman left in the Western world.

Unfortunately, nearly six months later, nothing much has changed. Iran continues to develop its nuclear capacity, the United States continues to toothlessly chide the mullahs, and Israel continues to gird itself for a task that is only palatable in light of the alternative: to attack the regime in Tehran rather than to risk annihilation at its hands. Throughout all the world, only one man is treating this threat with the gravity it deserves. That man is the Prime Minister of Israel.

Netanyahu is tough, smart, and morally courageous: three things that you don’t see much of in politics these days. He deserves your respect and should gain even more of it in light of George Will’s profile of him in today’s Washington Post. From the coda of a piece that begs to be read in its entirety:

Arguably the most left-wing administration in American history is trying to knead and soften the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history. The former shows no understanding of the latter, which thinks it understands the former all too well.

The prime minister honors Churchill, who spoke of “the confirmed unteachability of mankind.” Nevertheless, a display case in Netanyahu’s office could teach the Obama administration something about this leader. It contains a small signet stone that was part of a ring found near the Western Wall. It is about 2,800 years old — 200 years younger than Jerusalem’s role as the Jewish people’s capital. The ring was the seal of a Jewish official, whose name is inscribed on it: Netanyahu.

No one is less a transnational progressive, less a post-nationalist, than Binyamin Netanyahu, whose first name is that of a son of Jacob, who lived perhaps 4,000 years ago. Netanyahu, whom no one ever called cuddly, once said to a U.S. diplomat 10 words that should warn U.S. policymakers who hope to make Netanyahu malleable: “You live in Chevy Chase. Don’t play with our future.”

The United Nations, that vast reservoir of righteousness and international justice, has once again defined absurdity downward.

In March, North Korea sank the South Korean Navy ship Cheonan, killing 46 in a bald and remorseless act of international aggression.  The U.N.’s reaction?  On Friday, the Security Council expressed “deep concern” without even bothering to name the attacking party, and urged “appropriate and peaceful measures to be taken against those responsible.”  North Korea naturally and rightfully labeled that U.N. evasion “our great diplomatic victory.”  In other words, the U.N. lamented the murder without daring to name the murderer.  In contrast, Israel was labeled “murderous” and “guilty” by U.N. officials earlier this year, and remains the most condemned target of the U.N. collection of dictators and kleptocrats.  Israel’s transgression?  Commandos firing in self-defense when attacked by knives, steel pipes and even guns taken by the mob from the commandos themselves.

The Obama Administration and liberals continue to dismiss the U.N.’s malfeasance as harmless, but the fact is that it isolates Israel, emboldens murderous dictators and only encourages similar future behavior.  Sadly, the U.N. continues to more closely resemble its failed predecessor, the League of Nations.

The Beatlemaniacs among us never would have predicted this, but what a refreshing antidote Elton John provides to Paul McCartney.

This month, McCartney put his foot in his mouth and provided even more evidence that John Lennon was the intellectual force behind the Beatles when he slurred President George W. Bush and mindlessly fawned over President Obama.  In public comments following his White House performance, and wearing a cheesy Members-Only style 1980s coat, McCartney said, “after the last eight years, it’s great to have a president who knows what a library is” before scurrying offstage.  This ignored Bush’s well-known prolific reading habit, and came one day after McCartney admonished reporters to “lay off” Obama.

Brilliant, Paul – the press’s primary job, after all, is to “lay off” the leader of the free world.

But now compare the case of Elton John.  This month, Sir Elton famously performed at Rush Limbaugh’s wedding, naturally upsetting the hyper-sensitive liberal chattering class.  Then, last night, John performed in Israel in defiance of other performers’ mindless boycott of that isolated nation.  He proudly stated that the other musicians’ boycotts “ain’t gonna stop me from playing here, baby,” and added, “we do not cherry-pick our consciences.”

No word yet on whether John will perform alongside Toby Keith at the next Grammy ceremony, but it’s nice to see some sanity among the pop music class.

It’s amazing in the modern era where information is so plentiful that news pieces more often look like a schizophrenic’s diary entry than a well thought out update on a continuing story.  Today’s example is courtesy of an article in the UK’s The Guardian.  The story begins with the serious, but by no means startling, news that Iran is publicly offering to escort future convoys to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Some readers may remember this is the same regime which sponsored a Holocaust denial conference, maintains a president who promises to destroy the Jewish State, and is the primary supplier of arms and rockets to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.

Iran also doesn’t have much love for the United States.  Neither does one of radical Islam’s most corrupt Western supporters, former British MP George Galloway.  An unrepentant Socialist, Galloway seems like many other A-list apologists for totalitarian governments, having secured his status with a speech praising Saddam Hussein in the dictator’s presence, and excoriating American foreign policy in an appearance before the U.S. Senate.

Given just that bit of information, you might think mentioning him at the end of a news story about the coming flare up between Israel and Iran would be adequate:

George Galloway, the founder of Viva Palestina, announced in London that two simultaneous convoys “one by land via Egypt and the other by sea” would set out in September to break the Gaza blockade. The sea convoy of up to 60 ships will travel around the Mediterranean gathering ships, cargo and volunteers.

The paragraph could have introduced Galloway as “Current Hamas financial contributor George Galloway,” or “Oil for Food profiteer George Galloway,” to give a much clearer understanding of the man organizing the September “solidarity” sailing trip.    At the very least, the article could have quoted the announcement from the Viva Palestina website detailing that the talks to plan the trip occurred in Istanbul, Turkey, with Galloway saying he wanted Egypt to guarantee safe passage for the next convoy.  But instead of linking Galloway to the corrupt groups running various Middle East governments, the article reads like he is unconnected from the people he gets paid to support.

Thankfully, David Horowitz and the folks over at Discover the Networks provide much more background and documentation than The Guardian’s Middle East editor.

So, the next time you read or hear a news story and wonder if you’ve heard the name, place, or group before, run it through Discover the Networks before moving on.  Within ten minutes you’ll be way more informed than most of the information gatekeepers in the MSM.

As a candidate for the White House, when it was easy to throw rocks at the Bush Administration from afar, Barack Obama falsely attributed international disaccord to Bush’s policies.  Obama famously raised eyebrows in 2007 when he promised to meet such leaders as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il “without preconditions.”  As he sanctimoniously put it, “the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”

At approximately the same time, Obama predicted that not only would Bush’s troop surge strategy in Iraq not succeed, it would somehow make things worse.

The scorecard three years later is not kind to Obama.  The Iraq surge has succeeded beyond anyone’s most optimistic expectations, while Obama’s doctrine of “peace through apology” is failing miserably.

Turkey now provides another vivid illustration of the continuing failure of this Obama Doctrine.

Not long ago, Turkey stood as an important pro-American ally.  Indeed, Turkey was Israel’s most friendly neighbor, and the site for one of Obama’s more disgraceful “Apology Tour” speeches.  Today, however, Turkey has shifted its friendly gestures from Israel to Iran.  Turkey also sanctions the militant group IHH that attacked Israeli commandos and attempted to run the Gaza blockade, and lectured Obama that his condemnation of Israel’s act of self-defense wasn’t strong enough.

Along with North Korea, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Syria, Turkey provides another instructive illustration that Obama’s spineless foreign policy has degraded, not improved, international relations.

With all the attention focused on the aftermath of the Turkish flotilla incident, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey enlarges the picture to encompass Israel’s most lethal foe: Iran.  He pens a sobering essay outlining the similarities between the rise of the Nazis in Germany to the increasing power of Iran’s mullahs.  Both faced restrained opposition from the West due to domestic economic concerns, and elite opinion that a civilized culture cannot produce a totalitarian, neighbor-terrorizing regime.  They’re too smart for that.

Maybe not.  Or rather, perhaps elite opinion shouldn’t run the risk of assuming that all governments represent the will of the people they govern.

So, what’s America to do?  According to Woolsey, there isn’t much time left.

But now, as was the case in the mid-1930s, we may have very little time left. There still may be a chance for the U.S. and at least a few of its allies to do something effective: to impose on Iran crippling economic sanctions orders of magnitude more severe than the modest ones used to date, to provide substantial and effective aid to the Iranian reformers, or otherwise to help bring about a tectonic shift in the nature of the Iranian regime. We may still have an opportunity to keep “engagement” from becoming the “appeasement” of our time, a synonym for “weakness leading to war.” The key determinant is whether our leaders decide to use Chamberlain or Churchill as their model of statesmanship.

Much will hinge on their choice.

Hopefully, President Obama won’t need a Bay of Pigs disaster to serve as a rehearsal for his own Cuban Missile Crisis.

H/T: National Review

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

Few events could better illustrate the moral and intellectual decadence of the “international community.”  To wit, a collective global yawn greets North Korea after sinking a South Korean naval ship and killing 46, while feigned outrage greets Israeli commandos’ self-defense against an attacking militant mob.

Let’s recap:  A flotilla of 800 militants, which The Wall Street Journal aptly notes “falsely billed itself as a ‘humanitarian’ mission – organized by a radical Turkish group with close ties to Hamas, the terrorist group that illegally seized pwer in Gaza in 2007,” belligerently steams toward Gaza.  Gaza, of course, stands subject to a mutual blockade by both Egypt and Israel to prevent importation of weapons.  That blockade already allows passage of food, medical supplies and other legitimately “humanitarian” materials, meaning that there would be no need for any truly humanitarian shipment to challenge it.  The Israeli Navy repeatedly warns the flotilla that it must either turn back or submit to inspection for weapons.  After repeated advisories, the Israelis announce that they will have no choice but to board the vessels, just as any nation would do with a convoy approaching its shores.  Israeli commandos then repel from helicopters to the ships, at which point a violent mob attacks them with clubs, knives and the commandos’ own weapons.  One Israeli is even beaten and hurled overboard.

And all of this is caught on video.

Threatened with potentially deadly force against their soldiers, the Israeli Defense Forces then respond in self-defense, ultimately killing nine attackers.

Predictably, the “international community” – composed predominantly by dictators, kleptocrats, anti-American and anti-Semitic thugs – expresses its outrage, and the United Nations Security Council convenes an “emergency meeting” to consider condemning Israel.

It’s all something to remember the next time one hears appeals to the United Nations or international consensus by Barack Obama or other fatuous leaders.

In one of the more bone-chilling videos I’ve watched in a long time, a member of the Muslim Students Assocation (MSA) at UC San Diego tells Jewish conservative commentator David Horowitz that she supports genocide against his people.   The video posted on The Daily Caller shows Horowitz asking a simple question of the young woman:

“The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we [Jews] will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. For it or against it?”

The student coolly replies:

“For it”

This is at an American university, coming from a very American sounding voice.  UC San Diego is actually in La Jolla, CA, one of the ritziest zip codes in the country.  Where did this young woman learn to hate Jews with such intensity?

Obama’s foreign policy has consisted of traveling the globe, apologizing to the Muslim world and scolding Israel.  Anyone noticed all the love we’ve been getting back?  Instead, we’ve spawned our own Jihad Janes.  Continuing down this path only emboldens radical Muslims and their sympathizers, some where we’d least expect them.

As I mentioned in a recent column, President Obama’s seeming contempt for the Israeli government — especially in light of his propensity for coddling hostile regimes — is an embarassment that undermines America’s traditional foreign policy values. Now, that judgment seems to be echoing through the corridors of power in the Democratic Party.

Chuck Schumer, the liberal New York Senator who may well succeed Harry Reid as Democratic leader in the upper chamber next year, had this to say about Obama’s Israel policy during an interview on a Jewish radio program:

I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk,” Schumer told Segal. “Palestinians don’t really believe in a state of Israel. They, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a two-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there.

“If the U.S. says certain things and takes certain stands the Palestinians say, ‘Why should we negotiate?'” Schumer said.

Given the strong ties that America’s Jewish community has to the Democratic Party, this could be the beginning of a widening fissure on the left. Politico has the full story.

In 1938, naive Western leaders fell for Adolf Hitler’s pretextual “land for peace” ruse.  Is the same delusion afflicting Barack Obama today?

Hitler had used the Sudetenland, an ethnically German region ceded to Czechoslovakia following World War I, as a synthetic grievance to justify his program of expansionism and rearmament.  Credulous leaders like Britain’s Neville Chamberlain believed that satisfying Hitler’s ethnic territorial grievance could resolve simmering European disaccord, so they agreed to allow annexation by Hitler.  In a lasting monument to weakness in the face of tyranny, Chamberlain waved the treaty proclaiming “peace in our time.”

Some things don’t change, despite cautionary pleas of “never again.”

Today, Israel stands in a position similar to Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Western leaders suffer a similar “land for peace” delusion.  Israel’s enemies want nothing less than Israel’s annihilation, but people like Obama somehow believe that the key to Middle East peace is forcing Israel to cede territory to its Palestinian antagonists.  Obama expresses more anger toward Israeli construction of apartments within its own territory than he does toward terrorist rocket attacks against Israeli schoolyards, sadly.  Just last week, Obama claimed that, “when conflict breaks out … that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”

The reality?  America has never once sent troops to shed blood for Israel, which has done quite well defending itself, thank you very much.  Moreover, Israeli surrender of strategic land will only embolden those bent on its destruction.

A tip for President Obama:  spend a little less time preparing your NCAA basketball tournament brackets for ESPN, and a little more time understanding rudimentary history of tyranny’s tactics.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Barack Obama simply cannot seem to muster the same anger toward America’s sworn enemies that he heaps upon our most loyal allies.

According to The Wall Street Journal’s David Luhnow, Obama said yesterday that he was “deeply disturbed” by Cuba’s latest human rights atrocities, including the starvation death of political prisoner Orlando Zapata.  In contrast, Obama was reportedly “livid” toward Israel following its decision to merely construct apartments in its own capital city.

The good news is that Israeli Prime Minister stood up to Obama’s backwardness during his speech this week to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), saying “Jerusalem is not a ‘settlement’ – it is our capital.” Nevertheless, how embarrassing and frankly pathetic that America’s President cannot exceed the “deeply disturbed” level on his anger meter for the death of a Cuban political prisoner, but erupts volcanically when our only true friend in the Middle East simply allows apartment construction in its own capital.

At a moment when the free world is shrinking from its heritage of limited government at home and quiet strength abroad, thank God for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In an address to AIPAC in Washington, Netanyahu gave one of the most honest reflections on the promise and peril of the Middle East ever to come from a sitting Prime Minister. The best passage:

Our soldiers and your soldiers fight against fanatic enemies that loathe our common values. In the eyes of these fanatics, we are you and you are us.

To them, the only difference is that you are big and we are small. You are the Great Satan and we are the Little Satan.

This fanaticism’s hatred of Western civilization predates Israel’s establishment by over one thousand years. Militant Islam does not hate the West because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the West – because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom and democracy that prevents them from overrunning the Middle East. That is why when Israel stands against its enemies, it stands against America’s enemies.

This speech is one of the most important of 2010. Read it here.

The Obama Administration continues its bizarre behavior in selecting targets for its wrath.

For reasons unknown, the Administration has ostentatiously and histrionically escalated its condemnation of Israel, our most loyal Middle East ally.  Why?  Merely because Israel announced preliminary approval (the fourth stage of a seven-stage bureaucratic planning process) to build housing units within its own municipal boundaries in Jerusalem.  Meanwhile, as The Wall Street Journal reminds us, the Obama Administration continues to treat such anti-American rogues as Libya, Iran, Venezuela and Syria with kid gloves.

Then yesterday, chief White House heavy David Axelrod characterized our First Amendment free speech and petition rights as “a threat to our democracy.” The First Amendment explicitly states that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or of the right of the people … to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”  Despite those protections, federal laws like McCain/Feingold literally prohibited, under penalty of imprisonment, political speech within 30 and 60 days of an election.  Fortunately, the United States Supreme Court struck a blow for First Amendment rights in January by overturning some of those restrictions in Citizens United v. FEC.

The Founding Fathers would not have taken kindly to McCain/Feingold’s unconstitutional restrictions on free speech and the right to petition Congress.  To them, abridgment of free speech was a threat to democracy.  In contrast, that towering intellectual and philosophical sage David Axelrod considers free speech itself “a threat to our democracy.”