At times, complicated issues are most clearly understood in simple terms. Speaking before the Knesset in 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu captured, in two brief sentences, that which lies at the heart of the ongoing, centuries-old Arab-Israeli conflict: “The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms, there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms, there would be no more war.”
Indeed, how does one peacefully co-exist with those whose singular obsession is that one should not exist at all? Can a Jewish people who simply wish to live in peace ever do so while surrounded by those who view them as, in the words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “a cancerous tumor” – “the most detested people in all humanity” whose very nation must be “wiped out from the map?”
But according to the burgeoning worldwide Islamic caliphate, it’s not just Israel, the “Little Satan,” that must face annihilation. So too must America, the “Big Satan,” be destroyed: “And God willing, with the force of God behind it,” Ahmadinejad once promised, “we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.”
A nuclear-armed Iran is perhaps months away. It is folly most grave to believe that this Islamic regime – a regime which holds that there can be no greater honor than to destroy both Israel and America via nuclear suicide bombings – won’t deploy such weaponry at the earliest possible opportunity.
Yet today’s anti-Semitic axis-of-the-willfully-blind – the liberal intelligentsia, rank-and-file “progressives” and that elusive creature; the “moderate Muslim” – inexplicably, if not unwittingly, rally behind the principal Islamic cause: Death to the infidels (Quran 9.5).
“Free occupied Palestine!” they drone, while either disregarding the long history of deadly Arab aggression in the region, or laboring under obtuse ignorance of it.
By “occupied Palestine,” of course, Arabs and Arab sympathizers reference that portion of Israel achieved as spoils of her defensive “Six Day War.” In June of 1967, the tiny Jewish nation devastated the armies of neighboring Syria, Jordan and Egypt as the warring nations characteristically made ready to “wipe Israel from the map.”
By seizing the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the Old City of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of the Jordan River, Israel had gained a defensive stronghold in the region crucial to her very survival. Still, many of these territories remained very much occupied – and do to this day – by thousands of Arabs who now fall under Israeli governance.
Therein lies the struggle.
So, in truth, Israel no more occupies this fictional “Palestine” than do Californians “occupy” Sacramento.
Yet imagine the Mexican government launching dozens of rockets each day, for years, into Los Angeles neighborhoods, intentionally targeting innocent American citizens.
Or visualize a Mexican suicide bomber with full government authority strolling into a crowded Toys “R” Us in suburban Bakersfield, ripping himself and dozens of women and children to shreds.
Picture, if you will, a quiet, unassuming woman cleverly disguised as an expectant mother boarding a San Francisco trolley and blowing it up along with scores of innocent passengers.
Do you not think the international community would forcefully condemn such horrific acts of terror? Do you not think America would respond with that level of force necessary to eliminate the threat? Would she not have an absolute right – indeed an absolute duty to do so?
Of course she would.
Yet, despite a recent fragile cease-fire which Hamas violated within hours, this is exactly what peace-loving Israelis face each day. This is their reality.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – with Iran’s full economic and military backing – have been attacking innocent Israeli citizens in this very fashion for years, recently ramping up such attacks.
The only wonder is that Israel has shown such remarkable restraint in her response.
But respond she has.
“Iran has turned Gaza into an outpost of their nation,” Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. recently told a group of Christian leaders in a special briefing convened by Liberty Counsel. “More than 5.5 million of our citizens are now under threat of missile attack, and over 1,300 missiles have been fired at us since we took action against Hamas.”
To be sure, no reasonable, peace-loving person should have any sympathy whatsoever for the Iranian government, Hamas or the Palestinian Authority – all guilty of serial war crimes.
Indeed, we all mourn the tragic loss of innocent Arab life in Gaza and anywhere else it occurs. So do the Israeli people. So does the Israeli government.
That’s what separates the good from the evil.
Yet it is the Arab authorities who bathe in the blood of innocents. Responsibility for these deaths rests solely at the feet of those wicked men who intentionally shield themselves behind their own women and children – who deliberately place military launch sites and terrorist headquarters next to mosques, homes, playgrounds and the like.
They attack innocent Israelis and then shamelessly cower behind these human shields – their own people – as their intended victims answer back with pinpoint strikes against terrorists and military personnel.
It is purposeful. It is propaganda. And it works.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once said: “Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.”
But alas, their hate burns hot.
Like wild dogs, the Arab nations remain willing to eat their own young if it serves their evil ends.
And like wild dogs they encircle Israel, the Mountain Gazelle, intending to devour her.
Sometimes, we must see the future clearly to act boldly in the present.
Take a glimpse into the darkness of Obama's America in 2016.
High unemployment. Record high gas prices. The Middle East in chaos.
Religion on the run. Record debt levels. America downsized.
America downgraded.
LIBYA AND BENGHAZI - The Benghazi attack was symptomatic of bigger failings in the Middle East.
IRAN - The Obama administration has secretly agreed in principle to direct, bilateral talks after the election.
THE ARAB UPRISINGS - The rise of Islamic governments is an Obama administration failure.
RUSSIA - Barack Obama said, “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” “I understand,” Mr. Medvedev said. “I will transmit this information to Vladimir,”
The more Romney talks these days the better he sounds. While it may seem counter intuitive with less than a month to go until election day, Romney has finally found his voice in this presidential campaign and a backbone to support it.
After notching a “heavy weight” win against President Obama in last week’s Denver debate, Romney laid down another game changer in his foreign policy speech Monday at the Virginia Military Institute. Osama bin Laden might be dead but we are not safer was the theme of Romney’s speech. America isn’t shaping history but “leaving our destiny at the mercy of events,” said Romney.
Looking “severely presidential” at the Virginia Military Institute, Romney gave a searing indictment of Obama’s failures to lead abroad, naming incident after incident where Obama has sat on the sidelines as world events unravel.
Under Obama:
The planned terror attack on the USA consulate in Libya where American diplomats were killed and Obama first tried to blame it on an anti-Muslim video.
Daylight has been put between Israel and America.
Iran is going nuclear and when it tried to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in our nation’s capital Obama was silent when asked “Are you with us, or are you with them?”
Syrian President Assad butchered 30,000 of his people and attacked Turkey while Obama remains silent.
Al Qaeda is alive and well in Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Northern Africa.
No new trade agreements have been signed.
Romney said what is painfully obvious to Americans, “hope is not a strategy” and the nation’s security can’t afford for more years of Obama’s deliberate passivity. Because “if America doesn’t lead others will” like Assad and the mullahs.
Assuming the mantle of a president, Romney declared “Our friends and allies across the globe do not want less American leadership. They want more.” Romney outlined how under his presidency our country would rise up again.
In short order Romney warned the world would know if he became president, America would back up its words with deeds. Romney pledged he would not tolerate a nuclear Iran or thumb his nose at Israel. He would restore Obama’s arbitrary cuts in defense, show Putin no “flexibility” and make NATO nations pay their “fair share.” Today only three NATO nations pay the required 2% of their GDP to security spending.
Romney was unequivocal that USA aid to foreign countries would be predicated on nations’ respect for their citizens and protecting our diplomats and property abroad. He would send weapons to the Syrian rebels to prevent Iran from gaining a stronghold in the region since Iran is supplying weapons to Assad. Finally, Romney promised to pursue a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and work to ensure Afghanistan can effectively manage its own security against the constant threat of Islamic terrorists.
As Romney laid out his foreign policy goals, it seemed like a lot to promise but that’s because President Obama has done so little. When was the last time we heard, Obama defend the ideals of America: freedom, peace and prosperity, as Romney fiercely did?
Instead our president apologizes for America’s greatness, strives to appease our enemies and scorn’s success. After years of being lectured to about our shortcomings, Americans need a leader like Romney who believes “The 21st century can and must be an American century” and will accept nothing less. That’s the road to recovery.
If this speech was a tease of what Romney will unleash on Obama during the upcoming foreign policy debate, Obama may want to read some Cliff notes on foreign policy and liberals may want to brace themselves for a sequel better than the prequel.
During his speech before the United Nations on Tuesday morning, President Barack Obama eulogized the murdered U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, reiterated American values of freedom and tolerance, and condemned both the "crude" Innocence of Muslims video and the "mindless" violent protests that have swept across the region in the last few weeks.
It's clear that the recent embassy attacks in Libya and Egypt resulting in the death of a US ambassador were terrorist attacks. President Obama however continues to blame the US and a video from an unknown filmmaker. Is the video to blame, or are these attacks the result of Obama's policy of appeasing Islamic extremists? Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand institute and Terry Jones of IBD join Allen Barton to discuss Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East.
Originally posted at American ThinkerBarack Obama prides himselfon being a community organizer -- stirring up the disgruntled in Chicago was the sole skill set that earned him the esteemed title of Leader of the Free World.
Using Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals as a road map, Barack Obama not only community organized, but taught others how to follow his lead. Young Obama instructed students that to make a statement that would inspire change, they'd have to be well-practiced in the art of street-level confrontation, picketing, demonstrating, and all-out pandemonium.
He was very good at what he did. Saul Alinsky-style organizers were taught to be "an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions" which, ironically, is exactly what the world is witnessing as the Middle East is ablaze with street-level hatred.
For days the world has watched in growing horror as the fires of animosity have spread. Yet for those wondering why Barack Obama isn't addressing more firmly the upheaval in the Islamic world, a simple answer might be that one community organizer can't very well criticize another community organizer's style of community organizing, now can he?
Back in Chicago, Barack Obama encouraged the underprivileged to take action on their own behalf by reminding the already resentful of past injustices. Wherever and whenever there's strife, there is surely what Obama called "indigenous...charismatic leadership" nearby. There's always a ringleader in the group - an individual or a team that possesses the ability to make something happen by getting "people to understand the source of their social or political problems." In this case the source of the turmoil is rooted in religious zealotry.
Either way, wherever street-level organizing takes place and regardless of the extent of the mayhem, motivating people to unrest to make a point is really nothing more than a mob leader organizing a group of angry thugs and goading them toward hostile confrontation. Sometimes the resulting action takes place in American cities like Chicago, but other times it erupts in unstable pockets in the world like the ones Barack Obama commiserated with in his book "Dreams From My Father" when he said:
"[t]he desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair."
Barack Obama explained in a chapter he wrote for a 1990 book entitled After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois that the work of a successful community organizer is to devise and map out solutions and strategies with the express goal of moving protesters to "action through campaigns that win concrete changes." In Chicago, broken streetlights were facilitators to discuss jobs, education and crime. In Cairo, poorly made videos and American infidels are the torches that ignited the flames of unrest in an already unstable situation.
Think about it -- thousands of miles away from Chicago, people -- angry, vicious people - under the banner of the late al Qaeda leader Osama 'Alinsky' Bin Laden are rallying together under the Islam black flag of "common self interest."
In the Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, and even in Libya, the means to the end may be more violent and destructive than what went down on the Southside of Chicago, but it's the same philosophy at work. In Chicago, picketing opened the door to demanding stop signs be fixed and progressed from there. In Benghazi, it started with burning American flags; an embassy was then destroyed and innocent lives were lost as ancient grievances were resurrected from the hot desert sand to make a statement against America, the Great Satan, and Isaac, Ishmael's arch enemy, also known as the nation of Israel.
Whether residing in Chicago, Washington DC, or a remote compound in Pakistan, in their efforts to "make something happen," community organizers have their own unique ways of applying conflict for change.
Although the gripes and tactics are more primitive, what is actually happening in the Islamic world is simply this: common people with a common agenda are coming together, in their own uniquely violent way, to address a common concern. In Obama's Chicago, the goal was to whip up the community to a "fighting pitch" to address political and social justice. In this case, the goal is clearly to deliver "Death to America."
Similar to Alinsky's recommendations in his radical rules handbook, Middle Eastern protesters are merely exhibiting neighborhood empowerment in a culturally innovative way. From a tactical point of view, any community organizer worth his salt would have to admit that the community-organizing stratagem Barack Obama so closely identifies with is what is now crudely on display in the Arab world.
Maybe that explains why the perpetually fundraising Barack Obama is hesitant to criticize the chaos; he recognizes that what's going on thousands of miles from Chicago is an impressive show of "collective power," where a community vision has moved our Muslim brothers and sisters to action. It could be that our Community Organizer-in-Chief, who once praised people for "reshap[ing] their mutual values and expectations and rediscover[ing] the possibilities of acting collaboratively," actually believes that throwing stones, ambushing diplomats, and burning American flags is just another kind of neighborhood effort to foster lasting change.
At times, complicated issues are most clearly understood in simple terms. Speaking before the Knesset in 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu captured, in two brief sentences, that which lies at the heart of the ongoing, centuries-old Arab-Israeli conflict: “The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms, there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms, there would be no more war.”
