With more victories like this …

Posted on 09/23/2008 by Soccerdad

*This post is now complete*

Clyde Haberman starts off well:

Once a year, the Israel-threatening, Holocaust-denying, nuke-building and child-hanging president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, comes to New York for the opening ceremonies of the United Nations General Assembly.

Many New Yorkers don’t like having him around. But they have no choice. Foreign leaders must be allowed to attend these sessions, no matter how Israel-threatening, Holocaust-denying, nuke-building and child-hanging they may be.

Glad he recognizes what Ahmadinejad is.

However, the article goes down from there. Haberman leaves out the part that the organizers did invite Biden who was otherwise occupied. And it’s nice of him dismiss that the whole episode angered “some Jews on the right.” Nice way to disparage those you disagree with. But of course he doesn’t mention the organized effort by Democrats to sink the Palin speech. And then he offers this observation:

But people on the left saw no equivalence between the Democratic senator and the Republican governor. Only one of them is a candidate. Inviting Ms. Palin, they charged, tilted the rally toward the Republican national ticket — an impression not likely to be dispelled by the many signs on Monday supporting Senator John McCain and none backing Senator Barack Obama.

Game. Set. Match to the Left.

Not so fast. In reaction to the partisan tactics of the left, many on the right stayed away. That’s an observation that Atlas made. So if the right wing groups stayed away, how was it that there were more McCain signs than Obama signs?

1) As a reaction to the partisan maneuvering of those allied with the Obama campaign, quite a few protesters of Ahmadinejad registered their dissatisfaction with the campaign that politicized the event.
2) The left wing groups had little interest in attending if Sen. Clinton wasn’t speaking.

Overall Haberman’s observation is based on a false assumption that because there were more McCain signs after the flap, it meant that the protest was partisan in its planning.


Gateway Pundit has more.

Caroline Glick distilled things with doesn’t pull her punches when assigning blame to the likes of the NDJC and J-Street.

LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the environment. They care about securing American women’s unfettered access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and God out of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are than savage conservatives.

Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending, God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari’a legal code that treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their minds and their hearts.

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide, oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence Palin.

Solomonia writes somewhat more generally, but in the same vein.

And when it comes down to it, it’s not Jews in Israel that motivates Democrats, and it’s not Jews in America that motivates them either. It’s their own power. It’s their own little dinners, and board memberships, and their silly narcissistic college freshman platitudes…that’s what motivates them. And when they finally get around to looking out the window, their bogeyman isn’t an Iran armed with nuclear weapons led by a Holocaust-denying antisemitic America-hater…it’s “conservatives.” Ahmadinejad is, after all, an ocean away, but it’s conservatives here at home that prevent them from inflicting their peculiar vision of the worker’s paradise on all of the rest of us.

Instapundit observed

That may put an end to the gloating from J Street, anyway

That would be a good result from all of this.

Given that they claim to speak for American Jewry (and that was the pretext they used for opposing Palin’s speech, this result doesn’t look too good for them, does it? Too many more victories like this and that poll of Jewish New Yorkers may not be an outlier much longer.

Daled Amos links to an interview of Malcolm Hoenlein.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | Tagged | Comments Off on With more victories like this …

What kind of Iraq?

Posted on 09/23/2008 by Soccerdad

The Jerusalem Post reports:

First his two sons were murdered. Now he faces prosecution. The reason for Mithal al-Alusi’s troubles? Visiting Israel and advocating peace with the Jewish state – something Iraq’s leaders refuse to consider.

The Iraqi is at the center of a political storm after his fellow lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to strip him of his immunity and allow his prosecution for visiting Israel – a crime punishable by death under a 1950s-era law. Such a fate is unlikely for al-Alusi, though he may lose his party’s sole seat in parliament.

Because he had visited Israel, many Iraqis assume the maverick legislator was the real target of the assassins who killed his sons in 2005 while he escaped unharmed.

The State Department in its infinite fecklessness refuses to get involved, claiming that this is an internal Iraq matter.

Israel Matzav covered this first, so let’s quote him:

Is this what hundreds of American troops died for in Iraq? To create yet another Arab country that lives in the 8th century in eternal hatred of Jews (and rest assured that Christians will be next on the list).

Powerline seems resigned to the State Department’s refusal to say anything:

Meanwhile, the US Embassy has nothing substantive to say on the subject. This “is an issue for the Iraqi parliament, not the US Mission to Iraq,” said spokesman Armand Cucciniello. That’s not an unreasonable response, I suppose, as long as all we’re talking about is expulsion from parliament.

via memeorandum

But as Max Boot observed last week:

It is hard not to be a little awed by extreme courage like this. Some may say that Alusi is being foolish and counter-productive, and there is perhaps an element of truth to that charge, but every nation needs a few people like him who are willing to risk everything in the name of a higher cause without the slightest regard for self-preservation. In this case, his cause is our cause: He wants Iraq to be a Western liberal state that would be closely allied with the United States against Sunni and Shiite extremists. Although he may be a lonely voice in Iraq, he is hardly alone, as seen from the fact that he did manage to win a parliamentary seat as the only representative of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation which he leads. It is imperative that the U.S. government do what it can to help and protect him.

By assuming that the lesser punishment will be removal from Parliament is what’s being discussed and being quiet, the State Department is doing more damage than it (or Powerline) realizes. As Boot points out, Alusi was elected to a seat in Parliament. What does it say to those who support his party that the United States isn’t willing to speak up for them?

Israel Matzav also refers to the story of an Egyptian boy, who’s being denied medication on account of: that it will have to be imported from Israel, with much the same reaction:

Israel signed a ‘peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, and completed the turnover of every last inch of the Sinai Peninsula in 1982. As a result of that treaty, Egypt is now the third largest recipient of American foreign aid after Iraq and Israel. One has to wonder about the purposes for which the Americans are spending their foreign aid money, and what advantage is to be gained by Israel out of making peace with an Arab country (let alone the ‘Palestinians’) if this is the result.

Nearly 30 years later, Egypt despite the fact that it receives plenty of aid from the United States for making peace with Israel, still, in many ways treats Israel as an enemy. The United States remains quiet, not attaching any conditions to its aid. And this doesn’t even gain the United States goodwill on the Egyptian street.

If the United States really wants to see change in the Arab world, when will it start insisting on a change of attitude towards Israel instead of simply accepting Arab hatred of Israel as the natural order of things?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel Derangement Syndrome | Tagged , | Comments Off on What kind of Iraq?

FSB and its patron saint

Posted on 09/23/2008 by SnoopyTheGoon

A Russian religious group called Union of Russian Orthodox Citizens proposed promoting the Saint Alexander Nevsky to the role of the patron saint of FSB – the Russian federal security service, the main successor of KGB. Here is Alexander:

When you stop laughing at the mere idea of a saint overlooking the essentially dirty business of the (not so) august organ, consider the following:
Continue reading →

Posted in World | 2 Comments

The Heroes season premiere

Posted on 09/22/2008 by Meryl Yourish

No spoilers in this post. Let me just say: Wow. What a setup for the season. What a bunch of power-packed revelations. And yet, what utterly predictable dialogue. You would think that I would have annoyed my hosts by uttering the lines before the actors did, but no. They were amused. Especially when I picked the major piece of stolen artwork.

Yeah, it comes from years of reading comic books. I could write this stuff. (But I like watching it more.)

Boy, what a lot of questions to ask. But I’ll save that for the comments, which people don’t get in their RSS feeds.

Posted in Television | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Fair Diehl

Posted on 09/22/2008 by Soccerdad

I’m not a big fan of Jackson Diehl. Earlier in his career he was the Israel correspondent for the Washington Post. More recently, he’s been a foreign affairs columnist for the paper. As columnist he has consistently favored Arab “reformers,” even when said reformers are virulently anti-Israel. (He’s advocated talking with the Muslim brotherhood because they’re reformers.) But now he’s listening to someone else in “Peace from the Bottom Up.”

Natan Sharansky and Bassam Eid have been suggesting something different.

The timeline for success would be measured in years, not months. The goal would not be a document that Livni and Abbas could sign but the construction of a healthy and vibrant Palestinian civil society — that is, independent media, courts, political parties and nongovernmental organizations that could stand behind a settlement with Israel.

The former Soviet refusenik and Israeli political gadfly Natan Sharansky has been proposing this course for years — mostly to the irritation of peace-process supporters in both Jerusalem and Washington.

Why are “peace processors” skeptical?

Some suspect Sharansky of touting his strategy because it would indefinitely delay the necessity of Israeli territorial concessions. Others blame him for talking President Bush into a fleeting policy of supporting Palestinian democracy that led to the victory of Hamas in legislative elections.

Well, that’s been the problem. Sharansky was never invested in empowering the likes of Arafat or Abbas, so he was against “peace.”

Diehl even plays up a point that I usually only read about at Elder of Ziyon:

By the count of Eid’s Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, 2,000 Palestinians have been killed by Palestinians in the past eight years, but not one suspected killer has been charged or brought to trial. In August, it says, one Palestinian was killed by Israel and 36 by other Palestinians.

Of course the bottom line is that this means that the peace processors – in governments, in academia and in the media – will have to abandon their very premise. They’ll have to acknowledge that the bet on Arafat and the PLO was a poor one.

But for every peace processor who insists that an agreement must be reached now, Sharansky has an answer:

“People say we don’t have three years,” Sharansky said. “But that same idea caused them to favor Arafat over reform” — and that was 15 years ago. “The same idea continues all the time: ‘We must back the Palestinian leader over building civil society.’ And the result is always the same.” On that broken record, at least, Sharansky is right.

I don’t know if this could work. Recently I blogged about a New York Times report on some efforts near Jenin to form some governing authority on the ground. Of course that was also related to Abbas, so it suffers from the same problem as peace processing has until now.

I’d also argue that this is similar to the approach advocated by Menachem Begin while he was Prime Minister. Begin was against allowing the PLO a foothold into Judea, Samaria and Gaza. After he read an article by a Professor Menachem Milson in Commentary, he asked Milson to be the civilian administrator of the territories. Milson’s plan was to create “village leagues” with whom Israel would deal instead of the elected politicians who were affiliated with the PLO.

The Labor Party during the 70’s had changed its policies allowing the PLO linked politicians to push out Jordanian linked politicians among the Palestinians. Begin sought to empower those who remained free from the PLO. The effort was met with condemnation – after all Begin sought to ignore the “sole legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.” Those who joined the village leagues were often killed. And in the end Milson quit his position after the 1982 war in Lebanon started.

It’s important to note that the end point for Begin was not a Palestinian state but “autonomy,” presumably meaning that the Palestinians would have control over government services within their own cities, but would not be trusted with any security responsibilities. The idea of a Palestinian state at that time was reserved only for the left wing fringe in Israel. It’s a mark of how far Israel has come (for better or worse) that most of Israel now accepts a Palestinian state. It’s also a strong contrast to the Palestinian “moderates” for whom compromise remains a dirty word.

I’m aware that there are those who claim that Hamas evolved from the village leagues. I’m not sure that this is accurate. It makes a great story to say that Israel is responsible for Hamas, but the people designated for the village leagues were not as far as I know, Islamists.

Still the Sharanasky-Eid approach has the advantage of not following the same failed formula. The big problem is the number of people and institutions whose professional status and success is invested in failure and will, therefore, be unwilling to try something new.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, palestinian politics | Tagged , | Comments Off on Fair Diehl

Bad faiths

Posted on 09/22/2008 by Soccerdad

In his J-Street primer for American audiences (an op-ed in the Washington Post), J-Street’s founder, Jeremy Ben Ami wrote:

Grateful as I am for decades of U.S. friendship with Israel, I have to wonder, as the state my father helped found turns 60, just who is defining what it means to be pro-Israel in the United States these days.

In other words he’s asking, who gives others the right to claim that I’m not pro-Israel?

So now, guess what? Mr. Ben Ami has defined who can be pro-Israel.

But as Noah Pollak observed last week, that’s exactly what J-Street was doing with Sarah Palin. They declared – with absolute certainty – since Gov. Palin did not represent the views of most Jews, she couldn’t speak out against Iran!

So apparently, according to J-Street, you can define who is pro-Israel, if you have the correct political beliefs.

We see a similar hypocrisy with the NDJC – yes, for them Democratic comes before Jewish. During the past few years they took shots at Lincoln Chafee. I’m not saying they were undeserved. He was and is anti-Israel. But let’s look at one:

The New Republic’s blog notes the unprecedented nature of Republican rallying around anti-Israel Chafee:

So when the Republicans supported Chafee in a vain effort to hold onto the Senate, the NDJC saw fit to use this action as an indictment of Republicans. Fair enough.

So when the Obama campaign welcomed the endorsements of Republicans for Obama, led by one ex-Senator Lincoln Chafee what did we hear from the NDJC?

*crickets*

And when J-Street joined the NDJC from allowing Gov Palin to speak, did the NDJC distance itself from an organization one of whose advisory council members is the same, ex-Senator Lincoln Chafee? Did we hear a peep of protest? Again …

*crickets*

So for J-Street being pro-Israel is a privilege reserved for those who believe the same things they do. And for NDJC being anti-Israel is a disqualification – if you’re a Republican.

(I’m not going to try to square NDJC’s identification of Lincoln Chafee as anti-Israel with the apparent J-Street belief that he is pro-Israel. My head would explode.)

Speaking out against Ahmadinejad is as bi-partisan an issue as there could be. These two organizations pretending to be pro-Israel instead chose to make the even partisan and disqualified Gov. Palin from speaking at the event. But their hypocrisy regarding Israel is more proof that partisan politics for them came before confronting tyranny.

Regardless, at least one protest will go. An Iranian exile protest which will be protesting:

Ahmadinejad’s trip coincides with an appalling rise in public executions in Iran – victimizing juveniles in particular. In late July, in one day alone, 29 people were executed. His government continues to arrest and kill dissidents in prisons and crush anti-government protests. It is also conspiring to massacre nearly 3,500 Iranian dissident refugees at Camp Ashraf in Iraq. Ahmadinejad, isolated and despised by the majority of Iranians at home, is pushing Iran and the region toward war and crisis by fomenting terrorism in Iraq and developing nuclear weapons.

Not everyone is ill-disposed toward Ahmadinejad:

But for Quakers and Mennonites who’ll be at the table, breaking bread with this controversial dignitary means drawing deeply on the same spiritual roots that sustained their embattled ancestors long ago.

“Jesus ate with lepers and with tax collectors, and in the United States right now, Iran would be in that category,” said Arli Klassen, the executive director of the Mennonite Central Committee, an outreach arm for Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches in the United States and Canada.

“The criticisms levied at Jesus were that he ate with … people of ill repute, and we’re getting similar criticisms.”

I wonder if these folks would ask Ahmadinejad about the increase of executions or what treatment a citizen of his country could expect if he converted to one of their religions. If last year’s dinner is any indication, that will not be the case.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s smile at times turned to a grimace as the panelists prodded him, politely, about his record on the Holocaust, human rights abuses, Israel and nuclear weapons development. Also politely, he conceded nothing, and often deflected the inquiries by turning the spotlight on the policies of the United States and Israel.

“Who are the ones that are filling their arsenals with nuclear weapons?” he said. “In the United States they have tested the fifth generation of atomic bunker bombs, missiles that go as far as 12,000 kilometers. Who is the real danger here?”

The Times of course was impressed with the “friendly, even warm, exchange,” regardless of whether it accomplished anything positive.

That’s why these phony pacifist religions get criticized. They’re going to the dinner to commiserate with a tyrant, giving him the cover of ecumenicism, when, in fact, he is intolerant.

And we can also see how successful talking with Ahmadinejad has been. Not at all.

And that’s similar to the problem with J-Street and NDJC. They’re now congratulating themselves for getting Palin’s speech canceled. But they have not one word of criticism for the Iranian tyrant. They have no words of criticism for the so-called pacifists who’ll shake Ahmadinejad’s blood soaked hands.

I have a hard time believing that having Gov. Palin speak at a protest of a tyrant is worse than those who receive him warmly. But J-Street and the NDJC can’t work up any outrage over a true outrage. Not only are J-Street and NDJC hypocritical, they have no sense of priorities.

Meryl has more on the Ahmadinejad protests.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Iran, Israel, Politics | Tagged | 3 Comments

Ehud Barak – what is he up to?

Posted on 09/22/2008 by SnoopyTheGoon

“On the eve of Israel’s 60th Independence Day, the country’s population stands at 7,282,000”, says this site. Without arguing about this number – 7,281,999 of the citizens do not have a slightest idea what their minister of defense is doing lately. This quote summarizes how it looks from outside his feverish brain:

Senior Labor Party figures said Barak understands that he has to prevent Livni from consolidating her popularity from the prime minister’s chair, but does not want to be criticized for provoking elections. Barak is said to believe that Netanyahu will not join a Livni government, and this could be his pretext to call for elections. Livni’s associates said it was strange that Barak met with the opposition leader before finding time to meet with Livni, despite her attempts since Thursday to schedule such a meeting.

Oh well, hopefully he will understand eventually that after the elections he is pushing for he will not have a pot to piss in, politically speaking…

The other intriguing question is whether Barak knows what Ehud does… or vice versa?

More guesswork here. But no psychiatrists on the case so far.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

Posted in Israel, Politics | Comments Off on Ehud Barak – what is he up to?

Protesting Dinner With Mahmoud

Posted on 09/21/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Religious leaders who think that breaking bread with a man who has called for the destruction of Israel not once, not twice, but many times; a man who is perfectly comfortable with the tyranny that is Iran; a man who says the Holocaust was “a fake” do not deserve to have a peaceful dinner with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There will be a second protest, this one at the Grand Hyatt, where the religious leaders are hosting the dinner.

These religious leaders are about to betray their brethren across all religions, parties, and countries by “honoring” the tyrannical regime of Ahmadinejad and the Iranian mullahs of this terrorist state.

At the same time, Women United, the Jewish Action Alliance, Stand With Us, Center for Security Policy, the Catholic League, the Traditional Values Coalition, the Alliance of Iranian Women and over 20 other organizations of all faiths and political affiliations will hold an interfaith rally to counter this BETRAYAL, to protest Ahmadinejad’s presence at the United Nations, and to oppose Iran’s nuclear weapons program and outrageous threats against the USA and America’s ally, Israel. See the full list of participating organizations HERE , updated daily.

Governor Sarah Palin has been invited to speak at this protest.

If you’re in New York, please go.

Posted in Iran | 3 Comments

Two hours to NOlmert. Call for elections, Tzipi.

Posted on 09/21/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Actually, it’s less than two hours until Ehud Olmert ends one of the most disgraceful leaderships of the modern State of Israel. I have no real hopes that Tzipi Livni will be much different, but she’s going to have to work harder to keep that government coalition going, and with any luck, Bibi Netanyahu and Ehud Barak discussed ending the coalition and forcing new elections when they met the other day. It still won’t happen overnight. The earliest we will see new elections is three months from now:

The Knesset member tasked with the mission will be given 28 days, with a possible extension of 14 days. If this person fails, the president is authorized to order a different MK to form a coalition within an additional 28 days. Should the second MK fail to do so, the general elections will be moved up and will be held within 90 days.

That would be a good thing. Tzipi Livni will have been elected by fewer than 35,000 voters. Can you imagine a U.S. president being selected by less than half of one percent of the nation’s eligible voters? This is a government that should absolutely call new elections. She won with 16,936 votes. There are over five million eligible voters in Israel. Talk about selected, not elected. If the Israeli public stands for this—well, I’m going to stop here before I start hurting the feelings of my Israeli friends.

Posted in Israel, Politics | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

The connection betweeen J-street and the Obama campaign

Posted on 09/21/2008 by Soccerdad

One name: Alan Solomont.

I posted a comment about him at LGF.

There’s suspicion among some observers that the National Jewish Democratic Council was a significant player in the decision to cancel invitations to all politicians to speak at the Stop Iran rally.

Solomonia wrote:

…let’s be clear, I’m sure the real culprit for politicizing this was the National Jewish Democratic Council, not the still-fringe in all but funding, J-Street

Similarly Wizbang wrote:

Enter the National Jewish Democratic Council, which supports the Obama Campaign. They were enlisted and put to the front to apply direct pressure to the Conference of Presidents, also a Jewish organization. And it is not a stretch to imagine (though wholly my conjecture) that the Conference of Presidents has donors among the NJDC, and therefore more than simply conceivable that there were threats of significant funding halts and other future obstacles from among powerful NJDC members.

I disagree. I think that J-Street was the prime mover. That’s because of Alan Solomont.

Solomont was one of the main forces behind J-Street. Here’s Solomont on why he helped found J-Street:

“The definition of what it means to be pro-Israel has come to diverge from pursuing a peace settlement,” said Alan Solomont, a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser involved in the initiative. In recent years, he said, “We have heard the voices of neocons, and right-of-center Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals, and the mainstream views of the American Jewish community have not been heard.”

Solomont also saw in the current Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, a kindred spirit.

Solomont, however, approaches his work not as just helping a candidate but as furthering a cause.

“This is a mission-driven, value-laden enterprise, and I am philosophical about it,” he said during an interview in the memorabilia-filled conference room of his office in this Boston suburb.

Throughout the conversation, Solomont emphasized that raising money is a means to an end: getting politicians who share his goals of a more economically and socially just country. He said his work is deeply driven by the Jewish teachings he learned growing up in an observant household in the nearby town of Brookline.

There’s more:

“The war on poverty created structures for citizen involvement, and my work centered on getting people empowered through collective action,” he said.

After working as a community organizer Solomont, who has undergraduate degrees in nursing and political science, made his wealth in the nursing home and senior home health care businesses. He now devotes almost all his time to political and philanthropic work.

Solomont says working as an organizer helped him form an instant bond with Obama, who undertook similar efforts in Chicago in the 1980s.

Alan Solomont supports Barack Obama because he sees someone who holds the same values. J-Street’s participation in the effort to torpedo Palin’s appearance at the anti-Iran rally is what suggests that this was a coordinated effort run by the Democratic party to dis-invite her, regardless of cost.

In a profile of Solomont from four years ago, here’s how he’s described:

“The word ‘fund-raiser, fund-raiser, fund-raiser’ keeps repeating,” remarks Steve Grossman, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a longtime friend of the Solomonts. “But what I think people don’t understand as well about Alan and Susan is that they have a great strategic sense, so they can synthesize and bring multiple skills to the table.”

See that phrase “strategic sense.” The campaign against having Palin speak had a feel of being purposeful. Let’s go back to Wizbang again to understand the motivation:

Make no mistake that this was an Obama op and that it was Obama operatives directing the screenplay. Upon news of Palin’s invitation, it was assured that the event would garner a higher level of attention than it already commanded. And the images and footage of Palin speaking in protest (popular protest, it should be added) of Iran and the messianic Ahmadinejad upon the backdrop of the common perception of Obama’s weakness in foreign policy and national security simply could not stand. Furthermore, it would have provided endless campaign fodder with Palin shown standing against the world’s foremost state sponsor of international terrorism amid the audio-visual bites of Obama stating he would hold talks with Iran without preconditions. The effects would potentially be more than just stinging.

So I think it was J-Street that was the senior partner to the Obama campaign in torpedoing the anti-Ahmadinejad rally.

Tigerhawk sums it up nicely:

“Whether Barack Obama can be said to be ‘good for the Jews’ is too portentous a question even for this blog. It is now safe to say, however, that his campaign is not.”

(h/t Instapundit)

UPDATE: Lynn-B (In Context) writes in the comments:

You make a convincing case that Solomont had the motivation and the ideology to pull these strings but not that he had the clout. I don’t see it. J-Street is still a legend in its own mind. It doesn’t have the power to influence the Conference. The NJDC, however, clearly does. And it was quite transparent in its attempts.

Perhaps I’m guilty of allowing my distaste for J-Street exaggerate their true level of influence – and thus I’m helping them trumpet their reputation unnecessarily. But what I’m trying to argue is that J-Street is an adjunct of the Obama campaign not an allied movement and that J-Street is a lot more tied in to the Democratic party.

Look at J-Street’s advisory council. One name that sticks out is Debra Delee, who is not only CEO of APN but is also, like Alan Solomont, a Democratic superdelegate. My guess is that she’s not alone. So while the NJDC may promote the Democratic party, my guess (and it’s only a guess,) is that J-Street is – in large part – the Democratic party.

I’m willing to concede that I might be giving too much credit to J-Street. But I don’t think so. But I’ll have to admit I don’t have strong proof of that.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Iran, Israel, Politics | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Democrats threaten to kneecap Jewish nonprofits

Posted on 09/20/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Why is it, exactly, that so many Jews are Democrats? That’s right. Because Democrats are the champions of liberal, social causes. They’re against tyranny and all for liberty, freedom, and especially, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.

But heaven help you if you go against what the Democrats want. Like, say, having Sarah Palin appear in the same venue as Hillary Clinton, even if it’s to protest Jew-hater Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Because then, forget about your freedoms of association, speech, and assembly.

Sources tell CBS 2 HD that a decision to disinvite Palin from the high profile rally after Clinton pulled out in a huff came as the result of intense pressure from Democrats.

[…] Sources say the axes were out for Palin as soon as Sen. Clinton pulled out because she did not want to attend the same event as the Republican vice presidential candidate.

[…] The groups sponsoring the rally against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at the UN were reportedly told, “it could jeopardize their tax exempt status” if they had Palin and not Clinton or Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden on hand.

So all politicians were disinvited, most prominently, Palin.

Got that? Not only would Clinton not appear, but if the groups did not disinvite Palin, Democrats threatened their tax-exempt status. Why? Because they’d sic the IRS on them by calling it a political event. Who was threatened? Well, basically, every major Jewish group in America.

The thing that I hate the most about this? It won’t stop my liberal Jewish friends from voting Democrat in any way. It won’t even make them think twice about the tactics used by the Democrats. And it’s far, far worse than Soccer Dad wrote about the other day. CBS didn’t have the story about Jewish organizations having their tax-exempt status revoked for having Palin speak at the rally.

That’s not a political party pressuring groups to do something. That’s outright break-your-kneecap, Mafia-style blackmail threats.

In fact, those are precisely the kinds of tactics that the Jewish groups will be protesting on Monday. We just never expected them from the Democrats.

Update: Soccerdad has more on the Obama advisor that’s knee-deep in the disinvitation campaign.

Posted in Iran, Politics | Tagged , | 85 Comments

Diss-inviting Palin

Posted on 09/19/2008 by Soccerdad

I don’t know how many times I read at the NJDC website that support for Israel is bipartisan. But that’s been the mantra there. If anyone had temerity to criticize Democrats for their lack of commitment on Israel, that’s the cliche that NJDC would trot out in defense. Never mind that a lot more Democrats than Republicans are skeptical of Israel’s rights or are overly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, that’s the claim NJDC would make.

Now the mask is off:

Yesterday, NJDC said that Monday’s protest against Ahmadinejad was too important to be tainted by partisanship. Today, NJDC commends the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs for making the right decision by withdrawing their invitation to Governor Sarah Palin. This decision shows that bi-partisan solidarity against President Ahmadinejad has won out over partisanship – even in this highly charged election year.

NJDC had no problem with partisanship when Sen. Clinton was the scheduled speaker, so the issue isn’t partisanship. And contrary to NJDC’s claim this shows non-partisan support for the anti-Ahmadinejad rally, not bi-partisan support.

Similarly the anti-Israel group that calls itself pro-Israel, J-Street, protested Gov. Palin’s scheduled speech to the rally:

Sarah Palin is scheduled to headline Monday’s rally in New York of Americans Jews concerned about the threat Iran poses to the United States and Israel.

Sarah Palin at a rally to unify American Jews on Iran? Really?

Palin stands diametrically opposed to the majority of American Jews on nearly all issues – including on Iran. With just a few days left before the rally, we have no time to lose.

Now parse that statement. In what way is Palin’s stand on Iran contrary the views of American Jews? Because she stated that Israel had a right to defend itself?

More generally, the implication is that no one has the right to be pro-Israel (in J-Street’s anti-Israel way) unless they believe all the right things. Noah Pollak had it right.

This is appalling. When did abortion and the environment become issues of unique concern to Jews? They of course are not, any more than taxes and social security have any special relevance to Christians. J Street is attempting to bludgeon Palin with disapproval from the Jewish community when in fact it is the liberal community that detests her.

What does J Street want its few acolytes to do? Harass the organizers of the Iran rally until they disinvite Palin — you know, in the spirit of inclusiveness and democracy.

Hot Air:

She was willing to go but the Democrats didn’t want to share a spotlight with her. So rather than let her attend and use her presence to drum up attention for the cause they’re ostensibly there to advance, the left muscled the organizers into canceling all politicians’ invites.

Going back to the NJDC, shouldn’t the priority be the opposite? Shouldn’t the priority have been that the issue of standing up to Iran is so important that even Democrats would be willing to appear with a Republican to show American resolve. Messianic times might be marked by a lamb lying down with a lion, but apparently it will not include Democratic tolerance for Republicans.

At a time when Democrats fear that Jews might not vote for Barach Obama in the same proportions that they usually do, the Obama campaign takes a gimme and absolutely fumbles it.

Red State:

But that’s all right. This is the candidate that the Democrats wanted, this is the candidate that the Democrats deserve, and this is the candidate that the Democrats got; and I offer the pious hope that they fully experience every aspect of their choice, down to the very molecular level.

I hope the Republicans play this up. I listened to Ben Cardin the other night claiming how strong Obama would be against Iran. Now I see that Obama won’t even ensure that one of his proxies would speak at a rally to register his symbolic opposition to Iran. Do I really think he’ll do anything substantive as President?

The McCain campaign sees an opportunity and takes full advantage:

This issue is too important to fall victim to partisan politics. Instead of pressuring Senator Clinton to withdraw and pressuring the event’s organizers to disinvite Governor Palin, we hope Senator Obama will consider lending his own voice to this cause. And if Senator subsequently wishes to clarify any remarks that might be misconstrued, he will have the opportunity to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions after he speaks at the UN the folllowing day. After all, the last time Senator Obama took the stage to address a nonpartisan, pro-Israel audience, his call for Jerusalem to remain the “undivided” capital of a Jewish state was easily clarified the next day.

Still it’s puzzling as to exactly what’s going on. Shmuel Rosner offers some explanations.

The first question now is whether it was Sen. Clinton’s idea to withdraw or whether she did so on orders from the Obama campaign. I can understand that she was miffed that she wasn’t told about Palin’s invitation by the organizers, but Rosner didn’t think that was a reason for her to withdraw.

So did Hillary – looking to 2012 – see this as a way to make Obama look bad in the eyes of Jewish voters and the Obama campaign stupidly followed along with her faux outrage? Or was the Obama campaign so intent on preventing Gov. Palin from establishing pro-Israel credentials they wanted to force her out whatever the cost?

Regardless the campaign got its Jewish allies NJDC and J-Street – who are vastly more liberal than the Jewish community as a whole – to claim that the event ought to be “non-partisan” – figuring that those groups would inoculate the campaign against charges of playing politics by the wider Jewish community.

Jennifer Rubin has more tawdry details.

More discussion at memeorandum.

Was this a really good time to show that the Democratic commitment to stopping Iran was less than 100%? Uh, no.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Posted in Iran, Jews, Politics | Tagged , | 7 Comments

I guess he got a lot of iron in his diet

Posted on 09/19/2008 by Soccerdad

From the Telegraph:

Michel Lotito (France) (b. 15 June 1950) of Grenoble, France, known as Monsieur Mangetout, ate metal and glass from 1959 until his death last year. His diet since 1966 included 18 bicycles, 15 supermarket trolleys, seven TV sets, six chandeliers, two beds, a pair of skis, a low-calorie Cessna light aircraft and a computer.

If I have my French correct Mangetout = omnivore.

I guess you could say that he spun a record.

I’d guess that she’s not claustrophobic.

What a waist.

Starts here.

H/T Oyvay Blog

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Pop Culture | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Livni roundup

Posted on 09/18/2008 by Soccerdad

The Jerusalem Post reports that Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni won the Kadima primary by a narrow margin:

Livni clinched Wednesday night’s Kadima primary by a mere 431 votes, winning 43.1 percent (16,936 votes) while Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz won 42% (16,535 votes). Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit won 6.5% and 8.5% respectively.

(via memeorandum)

Remember that Mofaz thought that he had a pretty good chance based on his internal polling. It turns out that he was right as this was much closer than news organizations projected. Livni’s demand to keep the polls open looks even worse, given this narrow margin of victory.

The Hashmonean is disgusted.

Where does Kadima go from here? Our PM refuses to vacate, his replacement is coronated like a queen, negotiations & concessions steam forward with no mandate, now not once but a second time it seems, state affairs are not dealt with.. We are ruled it seems like a brothel – By a bunch of greedy corrupt prostitutes and their media pimps. Now Shas & Labor have seemingly even dropped their pre-requisites for remaining in the coalition, meaning nothing has changed at all.

Now that it is proven Livni is far from a winner the left’s GoldenGirl clearly cannot deliver, and the last thing that can be allowed is elections to drive this failure reality home.

Shmuel Rosner keeps alive the Ms. Clean reputation without focusing too much on the poll shenanigans:

And this will also be a very limited coalition. With barely 60 members of Knesset in her camp-half the parliament-every politician will be king. Livni, the Ms. Clean of Israeli politics, will have to cave time and again to all kinds of demands and pressures as not to lose the coalition. It can’t last for very long-and it’s not clear if Livni wants to take this path. Bottom line: as Shas goes, so goes the coalition.

Israel Matzav notes a historical parallel:

The news stories had been written, the champagne was on ice and then tourism minister Uzi Baram had just finished thanking the Arab voters for putting his candidate over the top when the candidate’s world came crashing to an end: Despite exit polls that had him winning by a wide margin over the challenger, Shimon Peres suddenly found that the actual vote count was giving the victory to his bitter rival: Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu. The polls had lied – or the people had lied to the pollsters. Is it happening again tonight?

In 1996, though, if you counted the projected seats for each party in the Knesset based on the polls, you’d have realized that Netanyahu probably would narrowly win.

Dion Nissenbaum focused on trivia notes that Livni is a vegetarian.

The NYT has some biting criticism from the Likud:

She has also said she would try to attract Likud. But Mr. Netanyahu, the Likud leader, said on Wednesday that joining Kadima in a government would be tantamount to joining the board of Lehman Brothers.

He has argued that Kadima, formed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in late 2005 less than two months before he fell into a stroke-induced coma, has no future because it lacks vision, identity and popular support.

Other Likud leaders said it was scandalous that a primary election of a small party like Kadima — 70,000 members were eligible to vote and about half did so — could determine the country’s next prime minister and policy direction.

Gilad Erdan, a Parliament member from Likud, said on television that the roughly 20,000 people who elected the head of Kadima could barely fill a soccer stadium, and added: “I have no doubt that a new government would be legal, but it would not be morally legitimate. This is not the government the people have elected; this is not the agenda that was put up to elections.”

In the link to its election story the Washington Post had this teaser:

Tzipi Livni handily wins the leadership of the main party in Israel’s governing coalition, exit polls show, giving her the chance to become Israel’s first female prime minister in more than three decades.

So how’d they correct that?

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Wednesday narrowly won the leadership of the main party in Israel’s governing coalition, exit polls showed, giving her the chance to become Israel’s first female prime minister in more than three decades.

Whoops. The narrow victory was known after the ballots had been counted! They only changed the result “handily” to “narrowly” but missed the reason for the change in result.

The Post tries to build her up:

In meetings and public appearances, Livni can come off as cold and detached, though friends say her unsmiling persona may in part reflect an effort to allay concerns that, as a woman in a political culture dominated by men, she is not strong enough to defend Israel militarily or go toe-to-toe with Palestinian negotiators.

“The fact that I’m a woman doesn’t make me a weak leader,” Livni told the Jerusalem Post last week. “I have no problem pulling the trigger when necessary.”

and

Her critics have long scoffed that Livni, a strict vegetarian out of concern for animal rights, does not have the requisite cunning to succeed in the often cutthroat world of Israeli politics. Many felt she had missed her chance at the prime ministership last year, when anger over Olmert’s handling of the Second Lebanon War was at its height and Livni could have forced his hand by quitting the cabinet. Instead, she stayed in office, and Olmert’s government survived for another year.

Among Palestinian leaders, Livni has won credibility and some respect for the seriousness with which she has pursued negotiations; she has been meeting chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei twice a week for secret talks since the U.S.-backed Annapolis peace process began last November. “They are talking substance. They have a healthy relationship,” said Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.

Of course to Baskin “talking substance” means “giving away territory without getting anything hin return.” That isn’t how the Post would want to portray her. And, of course, nothing about the crowning achievement of her tenure as Foreign Minister: UN Resolution 1701. The less said about that the better.

My Right Word contrasts the media coverage of the Israeli election with that of the American election. I have to disagree. The media in America is actively pulling for Obama. And it’s not my isolated impression.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | Tagged , | 3 Comments

What a perfect name

Posted on 09/17/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Get a load of this guy’s name:

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing

Talk about having the perfect name. That’s like being an Indy 500 winner named Driver.

Posted in Humor | 1 Comment