Political spin gymnastics where Axelrod et al. will try to twist and bend anything possible in order to make Obama appear and appeal to something approaching pro-Israel within a more populist context. By nature, he’s out of the comfort zone with the pushy, stiff-necked types who settle on the West Bank and those passionate and concerned about Israel’s response to threats both real and imagined; its way outside the strike zone of his sense of very secular post-Jewish, post-Zionist ideals he can grasp onto: The Thomas Friedman spin of Israel as a type of kosher Hong Kong that should make a mea-culpa, repent and dismember itself by turning both cheeks.
Obama’s not pro Israel and he is not required to be either. But the Jews of all variety who vote for him, a traditionally won vote since FDR, will be making some soul searching as to what’s important to them. And part of that discussion is that if Obama labored as resolutely to halt the seemingly near Iranian Bomb as he does to convey road blocks to israel’s response to it, maybe Israel wouldn’t have to play the tough guy persona as typecast role. In a larger, global sense Israel is also “resisting,” a point they have transmitted to China and on Putin’s Israel visit.
(see link at end) …A weekend editorial in the Wall Street Journal criticized the Obama administration over its ambiguous attitude to Israel. Claiming that on the one hand, it supports Israel while on the other actually seems more inflexible towards Israel than towards the Iranian nuclear program.
“Barack Obama is fond of insisting that he ‘has Israel’s back.’ Maybe he should mention that to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” the paper wrote then went on to quote General Martin Dempsey’s comments in last week’s Guardian newspaper.
—The Polish funeral company Styks recently announced plans to construct a commercial crematorium next to the site of the former Nazi concentration camp of Majdanek.
The Anti- Defamation League sent a letter to the mayor of Lublin, located in eastern Poland, calling the proposal “outrageously insensitive,” and urged the city to adopt new planning rules that would ensure that the area around the camp would not be used to build the facility.—Read More:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159459#.UERK5_Vb76M
Dempsey warned that any Israeli attack on Iran would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear programs.” He added that economic sanctions on Iran were having an effect and needed more time to work, but that the good they were doing “could be undone if (Iran) was attacked prematurely.”
And to underscore the firmness of his opposition to an Israeli strike, the Chairman added that “I don’t want to be complicit if they choose to do it.”
“We don’t know what exactly Gen. Dempsey thinks American non-complicity might entail in the event of a strike,” the article’s writers wondered.
“Should the Administration refuse to resupply Israel with jets and bombs, or condemn an Israeli strike at the UN? Nor do we know if the General was conducting freelance diplomacy or sending a signal from an Administration that feels the same way but doesn’t want to say so during a political season….
—What may be the world’s largest mezuzah was affixed at the gate of the upper entrance to the Kotel plaza Monday. The mezuzah was contributed by philanthropist Shmuel Flato-Sharon.
While the mezuzah is being touted as the world’s largest, it should be noted that a mezuzah said to be the world’s largest seems to pop up at least once a year. Another mezuzah donated by Flato-Sharon was placed…
The Kotel’s mammoth mezuzah was written by Sofer Rav Zalman Michaelshvilli, and checked by the Kotel Sofer Rav Israel Gottlieb. Its design was influenced by the work of surrealist Spanish artist Salvador Dali.—Read
e:http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159459#.UERK5_Vb76M
“The remarks were counterproductive and oddly timed, with this week’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear programs haven’t been slowed in the least by US or international sanctions. In fact, they are accelerating.”
Iran has nearly doubled the number of centrifuges at the Fordo facility near Qom and it is suspected that it is continuing to hide evidence of nuclear activity at a military complex near Parchin.
The editorial details Obama’s “head-in-the-sand performance” explaining that it is “why many Israeli decision-makers believe they had better strike sooner than later….
—A former colonel in the army said he would not have defected to join the rebels had he known he would end up in a refugee camp. “We thought the regime would collapse in two months,” said the colonel, who gave his name as Mohamed Sultan.
“The Syrians are getting killed in a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran,” he said, referring to regional supporters of the two sides. —Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/world/middleeast/airstrikes-push-syrians-to-refugee-camps-in-jordan.html
“Not only is there waning confidence that Mr. Obama is prepared to take military action on his own, but there’s also a fear that a re-elected President Obama will take a much harsher line on an Israeli attack than he would before the first Tuesday in November.”
This is why the paper claims it is no wonder “the Israelis are upset — at the US Administration. It’s one thing to hear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he wants to wipe you off the map: At least it has the ring of honesty.
“It’s quite another to hear from President Obama that he has your back, even as his Administration tries to sell to the public a make-believe world in which Iran’s nuclear intentions are potentially peaceful, sanctions are working and diplomacy hasn’t failed after three and half years.”
—Migron Expulsion.—And not being open about Israel’s nuclear weapons serves both U.S. and Israeli interests, Perkovich noted. If Israel were public about its nukes, or brandished its program recklessly — as North Korea does every time it wants something — it would put more pressure on Arab states to obtain their own bomb.
Among the less benign reasons U.S. sources don’t leak is that it can hurt your career. Said Perkovich: “It’s like all things having to do with Israel and the United States. If you want to get ahead, you don’t talk about it; you don’t criticize Israel, you protect Israel. You don’t talk about illegal settlements on the West Bank even though everyone knows they are there.”
I don’t think many people fault Israel for having nuclear weapons. If I were a child of the Holocaust, I, too, would want such a deterrent to annihilation. But that doesn’t mean the media shouldn’t write about how Israel’s doomsday weapons affect the Middle East equation. Just because a story is hard to do doesn’t mean The Post, and the U.S. press more generally, shouldn’t do it.—Read More:http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/patrick-pexton-what-about-israels-nuclear-weapons/2012/08/31/390e486a-f389-11e1-a612-3cfc842a6d89_print.html
The report notes: “If Gen. Dempsey or Administration officials really wanted to avert an Israeli strike, they would seek to reassure Jerusalem that the US is under no illusions about the mullahs’ nuclear goals—or about their proximity to achieving them. They’re doing the opposite.
In an editorial in the Washington Post Patrick Pexton (the Washington Post’s Ombudsman) says that his readers periodically ask “Why does the press follow every jot and tittle of Iran’s nuclear program, but we never see any stories about Israel’s nuclear weapons capability?”
“It’s a fair question,” says Pexton who writes that he reviewed the archives on Israel’s nuclear capabilities and believes that the US is co-party to the nuclear opacity. He then goes on to quote George Perkovich, director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Perkovich said “there are benign and not-so-benign reasons that US officials are so tight-lipped. The United States and Israel are allies and friends. ‘Do you ‘out’ your friends?’ he asked.
Yet Pexton stressed: “I don’t think many people fault Israel for having nuclear weapons. If I were a child of the Holocaust, I, too, would want such a deterrent to annihilation.
“But that doesn’t mean the media shouldn’t write about how Israel’s doomsday weapons affect the Middle East equation. Just because a story is hard to do doesn’t mean The Post, and the US press more generally, shouldn’t do it.” Read More:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4275867,00.html?fb_action_ids=10151151125822668&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582
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