Dry Bones: Iran Agreement

The Geneva deal - the scapegoat ceremony

By Shmuel Trigano

( an improved Google translation from the French)

            

University Professor

The scene of the signing of the Geneva Deal will remain in the annals of history. Kisses exchanged to celebrate a collective resignation of a consortium of superpowers facing a medium-sized power has something fascinating in it. In a few years we will see in this dizzying show the sign of the decline of the West as an international policy concept. In their fear of confrontation and their moral inability to name the enemy that threatens them,  these powers have yielded to the blackmail of the clerical regime whose apocalyptic convictions have proven to be stronger than their faith in human rights, so celebrated by the West.  What remains unclear in the announcement is what will Israel do now that the treason  by its American ally has become obvious.  The word is harsh but the evil and cunning of Obama’s policies is now clear to all.  Israel's existence is at stake from the lethal threat of both the Shi’a (whose anti -Semitism is stronger than the Sunni) and from the risk of being quarantined by the Western camp. It is this latter aspect that shines with clarity today.

This is one of the most astounding and significant aspects of this event. One of the main rationale  for the sanctions against Iran was supposed to have been the public threat of Iran against Israel.  But it is now Israel which if found isolated and on the margins, threatened by international condemnation.  If Israel decides to act against Iran it will be labeled as the global threat to peace and unanimously condemned.  If Israel fights this collective lie of this global alliance it will end up in a position Iran had been before the Geneva deal. The EU demands on Israel ‘s borders and the threat of  ostracism it would face if it does not submit ( see conditions of agreements signed between him and the EU )  shows the  credibility  of the spirit of  banishment that threatens Europe.

This potential turnaround is quite characteristic of the scapegoat crisis. The goat is indeed an ambivalent symbol crystallizing the unfairness and guilt, on the one side, and the purchase and redemption of the other. He who takes upon himself the impurity of all is the one who will purify everyone. This is why the "role" that Israel plays in this gathering  of  hypocrites  is volatile and can turn against him, as  can be predicted today.  The unity against Iran, built for years in the international arena, is transformed into a unity against the one whom Iran threatened.  Iran and Western powers, former enemies, renew their relationship in hugs and expel the supposed object of their conflict. This is the exact meaning of the shameful spectacle of Geneva. The celebrated result of the abandonment of Israel is “Peace”. The dividends of this group surrender are the juicy benefits in the form of Iranian economic markets that open to Westerners who are already competing with each other.

However, at the base of this transaction is a collective lie because if Israel  is directly targeted in the Shiite scenario ( the coming of the Mahdi ),  so is not only the whole Middle East  i.e. the Sunni enemies of the Shi'a but also Europe and  everything that bears an American flag . It is a lie to believe that it is (once more!)  only  Israel who is concerned and has a dog in the fight  and to believe that it is the American Jewish lobby pushing for war  that profits Israel alone.  In the logic of the scapegoat the choice of the scapegoat does not have a rational basis. The immense hostility against Israel in the Muslim world coupled with the history of Western anti-Semitism (the Holocaust) makes Israel a perfect scapegoat.  It  crystallizes the anxiety of the entire world against Israel.  

The lessons of this story (the confidence of the allies in  treaties, international resolutions) are very numerous and it is hoped that Israeli leaders will be strong enough to do what they have to do. More than ever, the words of the Tradition " Abraham  on one side and the rest of the world on the other " are true. That is the reason to trust the destiny of an eternal Israel.

Accords de Genève : La cérémonie du Bouc émissaire

Shmuel Trigano

Professeur des Universités

La scène de la signature de l’accord de Genève restera dans les annales de l’histoire. Les baisers échangés pour célébrer une démission collective d’un consortium de super puissances face à une puissance de taille moyenne ont quelque chose de fascinant. Dans quelques années on verra dans ce spectacle étourdissant le signal du déclin de l’Occident comme concept politique international. Par peur de la confrontation, par incapacité morale à nommer l’ennemi qui les menace, ces puissances ont cédé devant le chantage du régime des mollahs dont la conviction apocalyptique s’avère à cette occasion plus forte que la foi, tant célébrée par les Occidentaux, des « droits de l’homme ». L’inconnue de cette démission annoncée est de savoir ce que va faire Israël qui se retrouve dans une solitude épaisse et tragique parce que la trahison de son allié américain est devenue évidente. Le mot est fort mais la perversité et la rouerie de la politique d’Obama est désormais étalée aux yeux de tous. L’existence d’Israël est en jeu, à la fois sous la menace léthale de la folie chiite (dont l’antijudaisme est plus puissant qu’il ne l’est dans le sunnisme) et, désormais, sous le risque d’une mise en quarantaine par le camp occidental. C’est ce dernier aspect qui transparaît avec clarté aujourd’hui.

C’est là une des facettes les plus stupéfiantes et significatives de cet événement. La menace publique de l’Iran contre Israël était censée jouer comme la raison d’être des sanctions à son encontre. Or,  c’est Israël qui se retrouve en marge et solitaire, menacé d’une réprobation internationale. S’ il décidait d’une action contre l’Iran, il incarnerait vite la menace planétaire pour la paix et ferait l’unanimité contre lui. S’il troublait ce mensonge collectif d’une entente mondiale, il se retrouverait ainsi dans la position de l’Iran avant « l’accord » de Genève. Le diktat de l’Union européenne sur les frontières d’Israël, sous menace de mise au ban s’il ne se soumet pas (voir les conditions de signatures d’accords entre lui et l’U.E.), montre la crédibilité du vent de bannissement qui le menace en Europe.

Ce renversement potentiel de situation est très caractéristique de la crise du bouc émissaire. Le bouc est en effet  un symbole ambivalent cristallisant sur lui la faute et la culpabilité, d’un côté,  et le rachat et la rédemption, de l’autre. Celui qui prend sur lui l’impureté de tous est celui qui va purifier tout le monde. C’est pourquoi le « rôle » que joue Israël dans cette assemblée de faux-jetons est volatile et peut se retourner contre lui, comme on l’entrevoit aujourd’hui. L’unanimité contre l’Iran, construite depuis des années dans l’arène internationale, se transmue en unanimité contre celui qu’il menaçait. Les ennemis d’antan, Iran et puissances occidentales, s’unissent alors dans les embrassades et renouent leurs liens, en expulsant l’objet prétendu de leur conflit. C’est exactement le sens du honteux spectacle de Genève. La « paix » célébrée est le fruit de l’abandon d’Israël. Les juteuses retombées de ce deal, les marchés économiques iraniens qui s’ouvrent aux Occidentaux, déjà en concurrence entre eux, sont les dividendes offerts à la démission de tous.

Il y a, pourtant, à la base de cette transaction un mensonge collectif, car si Israël est directement ciblé dans le scenario chiite (la venue du mahdi), c’est non seulement tout le Moyen Orient – les ennemis sunnites du chiisme – qui l’est mais aussi l’Europe, sans compter tout ce qui porte un drapeau américain. C’est un pieux mensonge de croire que c’est (encore!) Israël qui est seul concerné et qui est l’empêcheur de tourner en rond, ou de croire que c’est le lobby juif américain qui pousse à la guerre aux bénéfices du seul Israël. Dans la logique du bouc émissaire, le choix du bouc n’a pas de fondement rationnel. L’immense hostilité dont Israël est l’objet dans le monde musulman, couplée aux antécédents de l’antisémitisme occidental (la Shoah) a tout pour le désigner à remplir un tel rôle. Il cristallise ainsi l’angoisse de tous en vue de son expulsion.

Les leçons à tirer de cette histoire (la confiance en les alliés, dans les traités, les résolutions internationales, etc) sont très nombreuses et il faut espérer que les dirigeants israéliens auront la force d’âme de les assumer résolument. Plus que jamais, la parole de la Tradition « Abraham d’un côté et le reste du monde de l’autre » est vraie. Ce qui est une raison d’avoir confiance dans le destin de l’Israël éternel.

A partir d’un article paru dans Actualité Juive, 5 décembre 2013.

Ignorance reigns – from the Obama administration to Tel Aviv restaurateurs

Only bungling stupidity can in the final analysis explain the support of not only Obama but his whole administration for a deal that is bound to lead to nuclear war. But stupidity and ignorance is everywhere. Yesterday in Tel Aviv we were starving and looking for a place to eat when we entered this packed place קוקיצה at Ben Yehuda 33 and it looked good. But when I saw the Che Guevara poster on the wall we got up and left the restaurant. 

The victims of Che Guevara

The poster on the wall in the  קוקיצה restaurant  and what they should have put:

Betrayal: American Jews, Israel, and a Nuclear Iran

Mishpacha  

JEWISH FAMILY WEEKLY

The failure of American Jewry during the Holocaust pales besides that of American Jewry today. By virtue of its unshakable adulation of Obama, American Jewry has watched calmly as he placed 6 million Jews in Israel under threat of extinction from an Iranian nuclear bomb. —

By Jonathan Rosenblum

The Jewish People are compared to a lamb: Just as a blow to any part of a lamb, which is a small animal, reverberates throughout its body, so a blow to any Jew is felt by every other Jew. It was said at the time of the Mendel Beilis “ritual murder trial” in the early 20th century: If you strike a Jew in Minsk, a thousand Jews cry out on the Lower East Side. 

But along with the rapid decline in religious observance over the last century so has there been a rapid decline in social solidarity among Jews. A few years back, sociologist Steven Cohen determined that half of American Jews 35 and under would not view the destruction of the State of Israel, and with it the death of over 6 million Jews, as a personal tragedy. That finding has been confirmed by American Jewry’s slavish worship of President Barack Obama, even as he has paved the way for Iran to gain nuclear weapons. 

FROM THE BEGINNING of Obama’s meteoric rise, there were good reasons to suspect that he is not, in the words of veteran peace-processor Aaron David Miller, someone “in love with the idea of Israel.” One early piece of evidence: the 20 years he spent in the pews of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an outspoken supporter of Louis Farrakhan. More evidence: his warm Hyde Park friendship with former PLO apparatchik Rashid Khalidi. 

None of this kept American Jews from supporting Obama more ardently than any demographic group besides blacks in 2008. During his first term, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was the only head of state subjected to a 45-minute harangue at Obama’s orders by his virago secretary of state or left to cool his heels in the servants’ quarters while the Obama family supped upstairs. But that did not bother American Jews because their bible, the New York Times, certified that Netanyahu is “right-wing.” 

In his 2009 Cairo speech, the president echoed the Arab line that the State of Israel came into being as recompense for the Holocaust and ignored some rather more ancient connections to the Land. That, too, was excused as rhetorical flourish to reach out to the Muslim world.

After once again gaining overwhelming, albeit diminished, Jewish support in 2012, Obama has enjoyed rubbing American Jewry’s nose in how little they concern him. First came the appointment of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense. In the Senate, Hagel was one of the two most outspoken opponents of Israel and the “Israel lobby,” and he has multiple ties to the Iranian lobby in America. 

Next came the appointment of John O. Brennan to head the CIA. Brennan, Obama’s former counterterrorism advisor, has demonstrated a remarkable penchant for finding moderate elements in Hizbullah and the Muslim Brotherhood, which he once described as a secular organization. As counterterrorism advisor, he ordered all references to Islam and jihad scrubbed from US antiterrorism training manuals. 

Obama pressured AIPAC to rally congressional support for American intervention in Syria after Assad trampled the president’s “red line” and employed chemical weapons. Then he left AIPAC out to dry and vulnerable to charges of urging America to go to war at Israel’s behest when he changed course. To show his gratitude, Obama sent Vice President Biden to give the keynote speech at the annual convention of J Street, an organization that has never discovered an Israeli government action worthy of support or an enemy’s action worthy of condemnation.

BEYOND HIS EVIDENT LACK OF WARMTH FOR ISRAEL, Obama has been fascinated by the idea of American rapprochement with radical Islamic regimes. He eagerly supported and facilitated the Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt, and had only the most muted criticism of the Morsi government when it allowed mobs to overrun the US embassy in Cairo. He opposed the military coup that ousted Morsi and took the unprecedented step of cutting American military assistance to Egypt, just as the new military government was engaging militant Islamists in Sinai.

 
And it now becomes clear that normalizing relations with the Iranian mullahs has long been a top foreign policy goal. Thus Obama ignored pleas from Iranian protesters during the 2009 mass demonstrations following the stolen presidential elections for some expression of American support. He backed down when Iranian client Bashar Assad crossed his own “red line” by employing chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war out of some fanciful notion that aiding Iranian hegemony in Syria will make Supreme Leader Khamenei better disposed to the United States. And we now know that for the last six months, the president has been unilaterally weakening sanctions by failing to report violators of sanctions — an effective green light to all would-be violators.

 
Even expressions of the most virulent Muslim anti-Semitism earned little reproof from the White House. Obama repeatedly called Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Erdogan, his “best friend” in the Middle East, despite the latter’s repeated expressions of hatred for Israel. Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi echoed the Hamas charter in referring to Jews as offspring of pigs and monkeys at no cost.

Iran’s supreme leader (fuhrer in Parsi) Khamenei recently called Israel a “rabid dog” that must be “annihilated,” without causing any pause in America’s rush to conclude an interim accord with Iran on its nuclear weapons program. The best the Obama administration could do in response was to offer some sickening equivalence about unkind things said in the United States about Iran and call on all parties to refrain from playing to local constituencies with unhelpful remarks.

 
It does not dawn on the Obama administration that Khamenei really means what he says about Israel, just as Hitler meant what he wrote in Mein Kampf about his plans for the Jews. 

THAT BRINGS US TO THE INTERIM NUCLEAR ACCORD negotiated through secret back channels between the United States and Iran. That accord would more properly be described as an agreement to constrain Israel from striking Iranian nuclear facilities than as an agreement to constrain Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. As long as the agreement is in effect — and it can be renewed indefinitely — Israel would be treated as a “rogue” nation for attacking Iran.

The accord gives Iran legitimacy and removes it from the category of rogue nations for pursuing nuclear enrichment. The interim accord explicitly grants Iran the right to keep enriching up to 5 percent and contemplates a final agreement concerning a “mutually defined enrichment program.” The accord thus explicitly recognizes Iran’s right to enrich uranium, overturning, in the process, six UN Security Council resolutions to the contrary.

 
The US administration touted Iran’s commitment not to produce a nuclear weapon, but that commitment is laughable and only makes Iran look more responsible. Many elements of the Iranian nuclear program have no conceivable civilian use: its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, the heavy water reactor at Arak designed to produce plutonium for use in a bomb. Over the years, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has amassed a large dossier on Iranian work on nuclear triggers and weaponization. Finally, the entire enrichment program is economically irrational for oil-rich Iran, since it could purchase all the enriched uranium needed for a civilian nuclear program at a fraction of the cost of producing it itself. 

Western nations entered the negotiations with the maximum leverage over Iran they are ever likely to enjoy. Yet rather than maintaining the pressure and even ramping up sanctions, the West provided Iran immediate sanctions relief worth billions. In return, Iran agreed to easily reversible steps that will do little more than increase the time needed for a breakout to a bomb by one to two months at most. 
The US and its allies negotiated as if they were the desperate party. Whenever Iran said no, the demand was dropped. Mark Steyn summed it up archly: Both sides got what they wanted. The West got an agreement and the Iranians got nukes. 

The longer an interim accord remains in place, the more difficult it becomes to sustain even the current level of sanctions. European companies are already chafing at the bit to resume business with Iran. Thus it is hard to envision Iran agreeing in the future to any steps that would materially set back the time needed to obtain a bomb. 

Nothing in the interim accord comes close to doing so. Iran will not dismantle a single centrifuge nor limit its production of new ones. It did not even agree to hand over its stock of 20 percent enriched uranium, only to oxidize half that stock to 5 percent, from which it can quickly be enriched again to 20 percent.

 
Iran agreed only to heighten inspections in the enrichment facilities to which it admits. (No Iranian nuclear facility has ever been disclosed voluntarily.) But the agreement is silent about inspection of sites where weapons research might be conducted, including nuclear triggers. No mention is made of the Parchin site, which the IAEA is convinced was used for weapons research and testing. Iran did not agree to dismantle the heavy water reactor at Arak or its underground facility at Fordow.

Either the US seeks to gain temporary relief from a current headache (much as was done with Syrian chemical weapons) or is operating on the entirely fanciful notion that Iran — guided by an expansionist Islamic theology and currently the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism — will become a building block of a new, stable world order.

 
Comparisons to the 1938 Munich Agreement were everywhere in the air last week. But as Bret Stephens pointed out, the comparison of Obama to Neville Chamberlain is unfair to the latter. Neither England nor France were militarily prepared to face Hitler in 1938. But the United States enjoys overwhelming military superiority over Iran, and Iran’s economy has been crippled by sanctions.

 
I couldn’t help but think of another Holocaust era analogy, however. I remember how my friends and I were shocked in our youth to learn of the apathy of American Jews to the plight of European Jewry. Yet the Jewish community of that time was far weaker than today — less integrated into American life, far less affluent, and more fearful of still widespread anti-Semitism.

 
The failure of American Jewry during the Holocaust pales besides that of American Jewry today. By virtue of its unshakable adulation of Obama, American Jewry has watched calmly as he placed 6 million Jews in Israel under threat of extinction from an Iranian nuclear bomb. —

Churchill at the Guest House of Mishkenot Sha'ananim

I wonder how many Israelis are aware that there is a bust of Winston Churchill in the garden of the Guest House of Mishkenot Sha'ananim

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Operating on the basis of limited perspective

I’d been reading George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis when I came across this paragraph, page 555, which really hit home:

But he was frightened. On the way from the airport, Kennan had stopped at the White House to see Arthur Schlesinger, now serving as a presidential aide – Kennedy was spending the weekend at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.  “You and I are historians,” Schlesinger recorded Kennan having said, “or rather you are a real historian and I am a pseudo-historian.” 

We both know how tenuous a relation there is between man’s intentions and the consequences of his acts…. I have children, and I do not propose to let the future of mankind be settled or ended by a group of men operating on the basis of limited perspective and short-run calculations. I figure that the only thing left in life is to do everything I can to stop the war.

Will the West withstand the Obama presidency?

By MARTIN SHERMAN

The really chilling aspect of the Obama-incumbency is that it is difficult to diagnose whether the abysmal results it produced—including the recent Geneva debacle—reflect crushing failure or calculated success

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. – Barack Hussein Obama, Cairo, 2009 

For anyone who understands that the US Constitution is not a Sharia-compliant document –neither in letter nor in spirit – it should be alarmingly apparent that the Obama-incumbency is a dramatic and disturbing point of inflection in the history of America and its “Western” allies. By “Western” I mean countries whose political practices and societal norms are rooted in Judeo- Christian foundations in a cultural rather than in any religious sense.

The devil is not in the details 

One does not have to be an expert in Islamic history or culture, or be familiar with the details of Koranic verse or Hadithic texts to realize that Obama’s characterization of the alleged affinity between America and Islam is entirely detached from any reality on the ground–particularly with regard to the matters he enumerates in the preceding excerpt from his 2009 Cairo speech.

All one has to do is follow the daily news that routinely convey reports of the Hobbesian horrors that flared across Syria, Libya, Egypt and other Arab countries once the Leviathan “cap” of tyranny, holding these bestial impulses in check, was “uncorked.”

Worse, in some parts of the Muslim world, blood curdling atrocities have become so commonplace they hardly make the news at all.

For when it comes to issues such as justice, progress, tolerance and respect for societal and/or religious diversity, a yawning chasm divides America from Islam. Indeed, American society, as a product of the values embodied in the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian values it draws on; and Islamic society as a product of Sharia and the Muslim values it draws on, are irreconcilably exclusive and antithetically opposed to one another.

No amount of convoluted scholarly debate on the intricacies of Islamic scriptures or benign interpretations of their “real” significance, can change the gruesome facts that prevail throughout Muslim-majority societies – from West Africa to East Asia.

Justice? Like stoning of female rape victims for “adultery? Progress? Like fathers slaughtering daughters to preserve their “honor”? Tolerance? Like summary lynching of “gays” because of their sexual preferences? Dignity of all human beings? Like butchery of non- Muslim “infidels” for practicing their faith? 

Pervasive and perverse 

Neither are these unrepresentative or isolated anecdotal instances of barbarity and bigotry that occur in Islamic societies. Indeed, they– and other manifestations of harsh brutality, totally foreign to American and “Western” ways –pervade much of the Muslim world. Extensive surveys of Muslim majority countries across Africa and Asia show that there is widespread endorsement for making Sharia the law of the land and adopting the severe practices prescribed in it.

A recent 2013 poll by Pew Research Center found that “solid majorities in most of the countries surveyed across the Middle East and North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia favor the establishment of sharia, including 71% of Muslims in Nigeria, 72% in Indonesia, 74% in Egypt and 89% in the Palestinian territories.”

An earlier pre-Arab Spring survey conducted in 2010 across seven major Muslim countries from Nigeria to Indonesia found that in most there were large majorities in favor of stoning for adultery, amputation of limbs for theft and death for apostasy (leaving Islam).

So while there is considerable country-to-country variation in the degree of support for the enforcement of the more brutal Sharia compliant prescriptions, it is clear that in terms of defining societal parameters – individual liberties, gender equality (including equality before the law), religious tolerance and socio-cultural pluralism – a gigantic gulf separates America from Islam.

One would be hard pressed to find any area where they do in fact “overlap and share common principles” in any significant manner.

‘Islam has always been part of America’s story’ 

In his Cairo “outreach” speech, with the Muslim Brotherhood seated in positions of prominence –much to the chagrin of his host Hosni Mubarak – Obama told his audience: “I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” Then extolling the alleged Muslim contribution to the development of the US he declared, no more than a few years after 9/11, when in the name of Islam, Muslims reduced the Twin Towers to a pile of rubble, he remarked: “Since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have... built our tallest building [sic].”

Admittedly, much water has flown under the bridge since Obama’s initial outreach address to the Muslim world in June 2009, shortly after his election. But precisely because it was delivered when he was still unencumbered by domestic constraints and foreign frustrations, it perhaps reflected most accurately the unfiltered essence of the political instincts he brought to the Oval Office and the inputs that have gone into shaping his geopolitical credo.

His interpretation of the international role the US should play, the nature of the country’s interests, and the manner in which they should be pursued; his perception of friend and foe and the attitudes that should be adopted towards them, all seem to entail dramatic and disconcerting departure from that of most of his predecessors.

In this regard, he is the first US president who is explicitly and overtly unmoored, both cognitively and emotionally, from the bollards of America’s founding Judeo-Christian heritage, and who somehow conceives that Islam is not inherently inimical to American values.

It is through this Islamo-philic prism that the Obama-administration’s attitude to, and performance of, its foreign policy must be evaluated–including last weekend’s acquiescence on the Iranian nuclear issue.

The chilling thing 

In the course of half a decade, under the stewardship of Obama, the US has had its standing shredded both in the eyes of its allies – and worse – in the eyes of its adversaries.

Debacle has piled upon debacle. Allies have been abandoned and enemies emboldened, worse, empowered. Inappropriate action has been complemented by equally inappropriate inaction. True, in 2009 Obama was handed an unenviable heritage from the preceding administration–a severe financial-turned-economic crisis and two ill-considered ground wars in Asia. But Obama has ensured that the latter will end in futile failure– even demoralizing defeat; while in dealing with the former he has precipitated soaring deficits, crippling debt and chronic and debilitating joblessness, coupled with burgeoning dependence on welfare.

But the really chilling aspect of the Obama incumbency is that it is genuinely difficult to diagnose whether the abysmal results we see represent a crushing failure of his policies or a calculated success; whether they are the product of chronic ineptitude or purposeful foresight; whether they reflect myopic misunderstanding, moronic incompetence or malicious intent.

This general conundrum is particularly pertinent with regard to what transpired in Geneva last Sunday, which appeared to many – including erstwhile Obamaphiles – to be an inexplicable US climb-down from what looked “suspiciously” like positions that heralded emerging success.

Some had little doubt as to what lay behind the move. In a forceful article, Caroline Glick asserted bluntly: “His goal is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power…The goal of Obama’s foreign policy is to weaken the State of Israel.”

Undermining allies, underpinning adversaries 

Others took a more general, less Israel-centric, perspective on Obama motives.

“Obama has no interest in weakening our adversaries while he does seem to have an interest in weakening our allies”, warned Dinesh D’Souza, adding: “If you were trying to find a consistent way to predict what Obama is doing in the ME it is very simple. He has been undermining our allies and allowed our adversaries to remain in power.”

D’Souza, who directed the 2012 highest grossing documentary, “2016: Obama’s America,” which made a number of troubling predictions as to what to expect in the second term of Barack Obama, has now released a new video, suggesting how the president, driven by his “anti-colonial mindset” he allegedly imbued from his father, plans to “take America down a notch.”

D’Souza warned that Obama would “promiscuously” increase the debt to mortgage the US to foreign interests and would purposely strive to shrink the influence of American foreign policy. He points to what he sees as a “double-standard” in US policy under the current administration in the Mideast, intervening when this seems to advance Islamist interests (as in Egypt in 2010) and refraining to do so when this does not (as in Iran in 2009); engaging in Libya to depose a largely reformed Gaddafi but not in Syria to topple an inimical Assad.

D’Souza concludes that “this is not the unintentional effect of a blundering president,” hinting darkly :” When an intelligent man does something contradictory, it’s not because he is a fool but it is because he is up to something else.”

‘Then, it all makes perfect sense’ 

Now while I would advise against uncritical acceptance of all D’Souza’s arguments and interpretations of Obama’s conduct, they paint a picture plausible enough to be taken seriously. They certainly provide a cogent context for interpreting the reason for, and the significance of, what longtime Obama supporter Alan Dershowitz dubbed the US’s “Chamberlain moment” in Geneva over the weekend.

The veteran Democratic stalwart condemned the P5+1 pact, forged with the Iranian theocracy, as “a deal which is bad for the United States, for the West, and for Israel…” He railed : “…all reasonable, thinking people should understand that weakening the sanctions against Iran without demanding that they dismantle their nuclear weapons program is a prescription for disaster. Have we learned nothing from North Korea and Neville Chamberlain?” 

By contrast, Bashar Assad lauded the accord! Indeed, with the ink barely dry on the agreement, it seems on the verge of falling apart, with Iran rejecting the White House interpretation of central clauses in it–regarding Iran’s right to enrich (with the Russians supporting Tehran’s version), and continued construction as the planned plutonium producing plant at Arak; and uncertainties as to the off-site development of components for its future operation.

Were all these flaws and ambiguities unintentionally overlooked? Or were they intentionally ignored? Was the agreement designed to prevent Iran from attaining weaponized nuclear capabilities? Or was it devised to sow dissension in the international front, assembled with such difficulty, to impose effective sanctions on Iran? 

So on the face of it Dershowitz’s exasperated query” Have we learned nothing from North Korea and Neville Chamberlain?” should be perfectly understandable. 

Unless of course, one assumes, as do Glick and D’Souza, that Obama’s “ goal is not to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power…[but] to weaken the State of Israel,” and that “Obama has no interest in weakening our adversaries while he does seem to have an interest in weakening our allies.”

Then, it all makes perfect sense! 

Fractured foundations?  

I do not pretend to know what Barack Obama’s true intentions are. I cannot determine with certainty whether he is a bungling novice or a brilliant strategist. I can only judge from his conduct and draw conclusions from my observations.

Now if I were asked: “How would anyone, who was purposefully aiming to undermine the Western world and bolster its antipodal adversaries, behave?,” I would be compelled to respond: “Much like Obama.” It is difficult to understate the long-term ramifications of the Obama-incumbency on what we have come to call the “West.” However it is becoming increasingly apparent that it will emerge from it severely battered, its spirit emaciated and its foundations fundamentally fractured.

Whether it will withstand the Obama legacy, only time will tell. But the outcome is far from certain.

***

Already in his Cairo speech President Barack Obama dissembled about Islam:

American Thinker

June 4, 2009

Obama quotes verse 5:32, omits 5:33

Mladen Andrijasevic

President Obama in his speech said " The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind."

I really find it odd that neither President Obama nor any of his advisors did not realize that the meaning of verse 5:32 is not clear until it is quoted together with verse 5:33 which follows it:

005.032

YUSUFALI: On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land

005.033

YUSUFALI: The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;

Update: Andrew Bostom writes:

Immediately following the murderous acts of jihad terrorism committed on September 11, 2001, Ibn Warraq highlighted the tragic irony of many apologists quoting selectively from Qur'an 5:32-"whoso slays a soul . . . shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether; and whoso gives life to a soul, shall be as if he has given life to mankind altogether"- attempting to demonstrate that the Qur'ran disapproved of violence and killing.

Firstly, these wonderful sounding words come from a preexisting Jewish text (Mishnah, IV Division 5, "Thus was created a single man, to teach us that every person who loses a single soul, it shall be written about him as if he has lost the entire world, and every person who sustains a single soul, it shall be written about him as if he has sustained the entire world."

And apologists for Islam-just like President Obama-quote the Koranic words out of context. For the very next verse offers quite a different meaning from that of 5:32, which was "laid...down for the Israelites," as stated in the next verse, 5:33, continuing:

"...Our apostles brought them [the Jews] veritable proofs: yet it was not long before many of them committed great evils in the land. Those that make war against Allah and His apostle [Muhammad] and spread disorder shall be put to death or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the country. (Qur'an 5:33)"

The supposedly noble sentiments of the first verse, taken from a Jewish source, are entirely undercut by the second verse, which becomes a bloodthirsty menacing by Muhammad of the Jews. (And as an aside the Muslim sources estimate Muhammad killed 24,000 Jews in his jihad campaigns against them). Far from abjuring violence, these verses aggressively insist that any who oppose the Muslim prophet will be killed, or crucified, mutilated, and banished.