Obama’s Treachery Exposed

By Joan Swirsky

After watching all the pomp and circumstance of the presidential inauguration of January 20, 2009, I remember turning to my husband Steve and saying: “The sole mission of Barack Obama and his henchmen is to destroy Israel.”

Steve reminded me that there was a mountain of domestic issues awaiting the new, far-left regime, and I agreed. And sure enough, Mr. Obama and his minions proceeded to wreak havoc on job creation and on the American military, inflict strangulating regulations, amass crushing national debt, foist horrific healthcare and education systems on our citizens, and seed every government department with operatives from the Nazi-inspired terrorist organization Muslim Brotherhood, and then hand over control of the Internet to the United Nations—the most corrupt, tin-pot-dictator-driven, anti-American, anti-Semitic, American-resource-draining cesspool in our country.

But all that still left them plenty of time to enact a foreign policy that genuflected to our enemies and spit in the face of our most faithful allies, most particularly Israel.

Writer Mona Charen has said that Mr. Obama has a “genocidal hostility toward Israel.” As if to reinforce that opinion, he just engaged in his longtime habit of spitting on Jews—and also Christians—by launching his poison dart on December 23^rd, right in time for Chanukah and Christmas.

After the first vote proposed by Egypt to condemn Israeli “settlements”—meaning housing on Israeli land—was canceled after President-elect Trump intervened, the vote was rescheduled in the United Nation’s Security Council when New Zealand (10,000 miles from Israel), Malaysia (where the official religion is Islam), Senegal (which is 90-percent Muslim), and Venezuela (so impoverished that people are now scrounging for toilet paper) reinstituted the anti-Israel measure, and the United States, reversing decades of U.S. policy, refused to veto it.

Resolution 2334 demands that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the [so-called] occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” It also advised all states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”—what former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called “Auschwitz borders.”

Despite White House denials that it had anything to do with creating the Resolution, there is no doubt that this sneak attack was hatched and orchestrated directly from the Oval Office and involved Mr. Obama himself, Secretary of State John Kerry, Susan Rice, and other of his Jew-hating acolytes. Israel says it has “iron-clad evidence” of direct involvement, and leaked documents already confirm that claim.

TEAM OF JEW HATERS

Samantha Power is Obama’s Ambassador to the U.N. and it was she who delivered the curare-tipped pronouncement to not veto the vote. Her involvement is rich with irony, wrote Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, author of The Israel Warrior: Standing Up for the Jewish State from Campus to Street Corner (2016), ”For the duration of the seemingly endless Syrian civil war [Power] has figuratively fiddled while that country burns. Now, with one foot out the door from a tenure that has all but obliterated her once formidable reputation as an anti-genocide activist, she’s decided to kick Israel in the teeth. Earth to Samantha: 500,000 Arabs died in Syria. Do you really think the problem in the Middle East is Jews building extra bedrooms in communities in Beit-El? You couldn’t pass even one United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning Russia, Syria, and Iran for the slaughter in Syria. But you passed this motion condemning peace-loving Jews who live in the ancient Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria?”

Power, as far back as 2002, advocated an end all U.S. military aid to Israel and wrote of her willingness to “alienate a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import [American Jews]…” She also advocated, Ed Lasky writes, “that America send armed military forces,” “a mammoth protection force” and an “external intervention” to” impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.” Nice.

Power joins a long list of Jew haters that Mr. Obama has surrounded himself with. This is the short list and does not count the teeming swamp of anti-Semites like Israel-loathing Islamist professors Rashid Khalidi and Edward Said and others going back to his childhood:

• The “court Jews” who sold their souls to the devil in exchange for the seductive allure of access to power. One of many examples is Rahm Emanuel, who curried favor as White House Chief of Staff for his figurative 10-minutes of fame and effectively sold out his Israeli-born father and the land his father heroically fought for in the early years of Israel’s existence.
• Robert Malley, longtime security adviser to Mr. Obama and now his new ISIS czar, is a fan of Hamas and Hezbollah, and has often called for an end to all aid to Israel. Wikipedia says he’s the son of Simon Malley, an Egyptian-born Jewish journalist, and Barbara Silverstein, a New Yorker who worked for the U.N. delegation of the Algerian National Liberation Front. Both loathed Israel and apparently passed their toxic DNA onto their son.
• Dennis Ross, Mr. Obama’s former special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, which included Iran, participated in 12 years of failed Israeli-Palestinian “peace” efforts. He once suggested a plan that translated today would mean listening to the 22 hostile states that surround Israel and saying “majority rules!”
• George Soros, the Hungarian-born Jewish multibillionaire, has devoted his entire life to far-left causes. Perhaps as a dress rehearsal for bringing down big bad America, he was responsible for breaking the bank of England and also implicated in the Asian financial crisis that broke the bank of Thailand et al. He has also founded and funded numerous groups that work unstintingly to bring about Israel’s destruction. He is known as Obama’s “puppet master,” meaning that his money essentially calls the shots on both America’s domestic and foreign policies. According to Richard Poe’s book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, the Soros cabal is really “a network of radicals dedicated to transforming our constitutional republic into a socialist hive.” Read about the vast scope of the radical organizations Soros funds here, and why he is considered the “godfather of the left” here.
• Hillary Clinton, says Dick Morris, has had “relationships with terrorists [that] began in the mid-1980s when she served on the Board of the New World Foundation—which gave funds to the Palestine Liberation Organization [when] the PLO was officially recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.” As a lackey of and putative heir to Obama’s, ahem, legacy, Hillary’s rancid relationship with Israel is well known.
• Susan Rice, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and current National Security Advisor, advocated ending all U.S. military aid to Israel and has inspired dozens of articles with titles like these in CommentaryMagazine.com: “Susan Rice Is Doing Something at the UN: Targeting Israel” and “What Was Susan Rice’s Embarrassing Anti-Israel Tirade Supposed to Accomplish?”
• Lee Hamilton, former Indiana congressman, whom Ed Lasky calls the eminence grise of Obama’s Mideast policy and who has suggested that the U.S. should pressure Israel to surrender the Golan Heights and leave the West Bank, said not a word about dismantling Hamas or Hezbollah!
• Zbigniew Brzezinski, an Obama advisor and longtime Israel loather, suggested that the Obama administration should tell Israel that the U.S. will attack Israeli jets if they try to attack Iran.
• John Brennan, former Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and current head of the CIA, suggested that Mr. Obama & Co. “reach out” to Hezbollah. He has also said that jihadists and Islamists are not enemies of America because ”jihad is a holy struggle…”
• Valerie Jarrett, Iranian-born Muslim and Senior Advisor to Obama, is described in a riveting article by Karin McQuillan in American Thinker as the power behind both Obamas. McQuillan also elaborates on Barack Obama’s envy problem, which is central, I believe, to his Jewish problem. More on this below.
• And of course John Kerry, who on Wednesday, speaking directly for his boss, spent over an hour on TV engaging in egregious historical revisionism and fairytale bromides to essentially inflict a two-state solution on Israel, with partners who to this day do not—and have sworn they never will—accept a Jewish state in their midst. My favorite line was Mr. Kerry saying that Israel could be Jewish or democratic, but not both. Duh.

EYES AND EARS…THE OLD RELIABLE STANDBYS

Why was I was confident that Obama’s burning mission—his obsession—was to destroy Israel?

The first reason is that I trust what I see and hear.

Who can forget Mr. Obama’s claim that in the 20 years he sat in the pews of “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright’s “church,” he heard not one of the uncountable instances of virulent anti-American and anti-Semitic rants. But unless he was clinically deaf, of course he both heard and tacitly agreed with Wright—especially when it came to the Jews.

Impossible to forget the interview with George Stephanopoulos when Mr. Obama referred to “my Muslim faith”—which he did not correct but his host rushed to correct. I’m Jewish and I can promise you of the 14 million Jews in the world, not one would ever refer to “my Buddhist faith,” just as not one of the 1.3-billion Christians in the world would ever refer to “my Zoroastrian faith.” Plain and simple, it appeared that Mr. Obama experienced what old Sigmund would call a Freudian slip, i.e., when you accidently blurt out the truth.

In addition to his psychological inability to utter the words “Islamic terrorism,” Mr. Obama has consistently lectured us about Islam’s immense contribution to America (my history teachers strangely omitted this revelation). We know he was raised in his formative years in Indonesia, attended a Muslim madrassa, and even recalled as an adult that “the sweetest sound I know is the Muslim call to prayer.” Of course, he also said that, “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation” and, speaking at the U.N., “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.” That may play well in Indonesia, but it’s completely alien to those of us who believe in free speech.

Two other indelible events were when the Prime Minister of Israel came to the White House in 2010 and was left waiting for over an hour when Mr. Obama abruptly ended their meeting to eat dinner, sending the PM out the side door, and when he intrusively meddled in an Israeli election (while pontificating that there should be no meddling in the election that just repudiated his entire tenure in office). Just as indelible was the sight of Mr. Obama literally bowing deeply at the waist to the theocratic leader of Saudi Arabia and despots just like him.

We have good evidence that the Saudis paid for Mr. Obama’s education at Harvard Law School. And that the Saudis, until the Iran deal went through, were sworn enemies of Israel. Could Mr. Obama have orchestrated U.N. Resolution 2334 to please his moneybags benefactors?

But most compelling is what the book Mr. Obama studied, the Koran, says about Jews, none of it good. For instance: “Oh Muslim…there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”

This is a man who may call himself a Christian—in spite of the fact that when he spoke at Georgetown University, the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit school—he had the school cover up the name of Jesus Christ with black cloths—but it is clear that his heart and soul and politics lie squarely in the Muslim world—the world that loathes both Jews and Israel.

As I said, eyes and ears.

BEHAVIOR

The second reason for my conviction that Mr. Obama’s mission was to destroy Israel derived from two powerful lessons I learned from being a psychotherapist for over two decades. The first, simply stated, is that you are what you do. Not how you describe yourself or your lofty plans, but what you actually do in this life. Your behavior.

Everything I’ve observed about Mr. Obama’s behavior—what he does—from the anti-Israel, Jew-hating people he associated with in his past, to the anti-Israel, Jew-hating people he’s chosen for high positions in his administration, to the pastor whose pews he sat in for 20 years (with ears wide opened), to his indefensibly rude and contemptuous behavior toward the Prime Minister of Israel, to his anti-Israel benefactors—not only the Saudis but George Soros—to his latest treachery at the U.N., strengthens my conviction.

Finally, what I learned is that the strongest human emotion is not hatred, not anger, and not vengeance, but jealousy! When you peel back the layers of emotion—whether it’s in the commission of a crime like theft or even murder or hatred of Jews and Israel—jealousy is almost always the animating force.

Mr. Obama and his minions see the pathetic lack of creativity, of innovation, of an elevated standard-of-living, and of progress in the community of Arabs as maddening.

First, they were humiliated when at the founding of Israel in 1948 , powerful Arab armies attacked the fledgling state and were annihilated by the bedraggled survivors of the Holocaust,

Second, the arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat decided in the late 1960s to name the disgruntled Arabs “Palestinians,” effectively relegating them to perpetual victim status and allowing the world to watch them accomplish little more than sending their children on suicide-bombing missions and then naming a street after them and collecting a stipend for their “sacrifice.”

Third, to this day they remain pathetically dependent on another ineffectual U.N. agency—the United Nations Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA], which has exploited them in the same way that Democrat politics have kept African-Americans in abject poverty for over 60 years, with high crime rates and inferior education, while promising them the moon.

When Mr. Obama & Co. contrast this embarrassing history with the jaw-dropping evolution of the Jewish state—its trailblazing technology and medical innovations, its symphonies, sports teams, booming economy and military might—it’s infuriating to them. They get angry, crazed with anger, murderous with anger.

But under the fury is jealousy. They can’t help it. What you see is the anger because anger feels good and jealousy feels bad. It’s that simple.

MR. OBAMA’S IMPOTENCE

In the case of the latest punishing U.N. resolution, however, it is pure conceit on the part of Mr. Obama & Co. to imagine that it will make any difference at all.

First and foremost, the powerful State of Israel does not take its marching orders from anyone except its democratically-elected officials, certainly not from a body like the U.N. that has seen fit to condemn Israel dozens of times while true monster states only once or not at all. In less than a month, Israel will have a true friend in the White House with President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Pence, and virtually all of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and staff choices.

Personally, if I could offer Mr. Trump one suggestion, it would be to throw the entire, utterly useless, money-wasting United Nations out of the United States! This is exactly what Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer suggested the other night, to send this feckless excuse for an organization to Zimbabwe, and as for the “good real estate in downtown New York City…Trump ought to find a way to put his name on it and turn it into condos.”

Vic Rosenthal, aka Abu Yehuda, describes yet more impotence. Is the resolution binding? No. Does it make settlements illegal? No. It is a Chapter VI resolution, defined as a “recommendation.” Does it make settlements illegal? No. It just asserts that they are, but the legal case is weak. Does it mean that Israel is “occupying Palestinian territory? No…that is just the U.N.‘s opinion. In fact, there is no such state or territory or entity called “Palestine” and declarations by the U.N. can’t make it so.

How bad is this for Israel? It has no significance in international law, it will not cause Israel to withdraw from the territories, and it might even spur Israel to build more in the territories and Jerusalem or even extend Israeli law to parts of Judea and Samaria. [Read the entire riveting article to see that every attempt by Mr. Obama to “put it” to Israel is the very definition of impotence].

WHAT NOW?

Writer and editor Ruth S. King says that her “proposal for a daring act by Israel [is to] leave the United Nations. Pack up, close the Permanent Mission to the United Nations and find real jobs for all the bureaucrats, pseudo diplomats and ancillary staff.”

Writer Victor Sharpe asks: Is there any light in this bleak picture? He cites Professor Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center: “Israel is not going to allow a president with no credibility, who clearly doesn’t understand what’s at stake, fails to support his Arab allies, is soft on his Iranian and Syrian enemies, doesn’t learn from his past errors, is sacrificing U.S. interests in the region, and pays no attention to what’s happening in Egypt, to determine its future.”

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters sums up Mr. Obama’s Middle East policy quite nicely: “Praise Islam, ignore Christians, blame Jews.”

It is fitting to end with the prescient words of Mark Twain (aka Samuel Clemens), the great American writer who penned the following words in 1899 in Harper’s Magazine:

“The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away. The Greek and Roman followed, made a vast noise and they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up, and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

A New Strategy for Israeli Victory Daniel Pipes Commentary 12-19-16

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/a-new-strategy-for-israeli-victory/

Israeli–Palestinian diplomacy sadly fits the classic description of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The identical assumptions—land-for-peace and the two-state solution, with the burden primarily on Israel—stay permanently in place, no matter how often they fail. Decades of what insiders call “peace processing” have left matters worse than when they started, yet the great powers persist, sending diplomat after diplomat to Jerusalem and Ramallah, ever hoping that the next round of negotiations will lead to the elusive breakthrough.

The time is ripe for a new approach, a basic re-thinking of the problem. It draws on Israel’s successful strategy through its first 45 years. The failure of Israeli–Palestinian diplomacy since 1993 suggests this alternative approach—with a stress on Israeli toughness in pursuit of victory. This would, paradoxically perhaps, be of benefit to Palestinians and bolster American support.

I. The Near Impossibility of Compromise

Since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Palestinians and Israelis have pursued static and opposite goals.

In the years before the establishment of the new state, the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, articulated a policy of rejectionism, or eliminating every vestige of Jewish presence in what is now the territory of Israel.¹ It remains in place. Maps in Arabic that show a “Palestine” replacing Israel symbolize this continued aspiration. Rejectionism runs so deep that it drives not just Palestinian politics but much of Palestinian life. With consistency, energy, and perseverance, Palestinians have pursued rejectionism via three main approaches: demoralizing Zionists through political violence, damaging Israel’s economy through trade boycotts, and weakening Israel’s legitimacy by winning foreign support. 

Differences between Palestinian factions tend to be tactical: Talk to the Israelis to win concessions from them or not? Mahmoud Abbas represents the former outlook and Khaled Mashal the latter.

On the Israeli side, nearly everyone agrees on the need to win acceptance by Palestinians (and other Arabs and Muslims); differences are again tactical. David Ben-Gurion articulated one approach, that of showing Palestinians what they can gain from Zionism. Vladimir Jabotinsky developed the opposite vision, arguing that Zionists have no choice but to break the Palestinians’ intractable will. Their rival approaches remain the touchstones of Israel’s foreign-policy debate, with Isaac Herzog heir to Ben-Gurion and Benjamin Netanyahu to Jabotinsky.

These two pursuits—rejectionism and acceptance—have remained basically unchanged for a century; today’s Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Labor, and Likud are lineal descendants of Husseini, Ben-Gurion, and Jabotinsky. Varying ideologies, objectives, tactics, strategies, and actors mean that details have varied, even as the fundamentals have remained remarkably in place. Wars and treaties came and went, leading to only minor shifts. The many rounds of fighting had surprisingly little impact on ultimate goals, while formal agreements (such as the Oslo Accords of 1993) only increased hostility to Israel’s existence and so were counterproductive.

Palestinian rejection or acceptance of Israel is binary: yes or no, without in-betweens. This renders compromise nearly impossible because resolution requires one side fully to abandon its goal. Either Palestinians give up their century-long rejection of the Jewish state or Zionists give up their 150-year quest for a sovereign homeland. Anything other than these two outcomes is an unstable settlement that merely serves as the premise for a future round of conflict.

The “Peace Process” That Failed

Deterrence, that is, convincing Palestinians and the Arab nations to accept Israel’s existence by threatening painful retaliation, underlay Israel’s formidable record of strategic vision and tactical brilliance in the period from 1948 to 1993. Over this time, deterrence worked to the extent that Israel’s Arab-state enemies saw the country very differently by the end of that period; in 1948, invading Arab armies expected to throttle the Jewish state at birth, but by 1993, Arafat felt compelled to sign an agreement with Israel’s prime minister.

That said, deterrence did not finish the job; as Israelis built a modern, democratic, affluent, and powerful country, the fact that Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and (increasingly) the left still rejected it became a source of mounting frustration. Israel’s impatient, on-the-go populace grew weary with the unattractive qualities of deterrence, which by nature is passive, indirect, harsh, slow, boring, humiliating, reactive, and costly. It is also internationally unpopular.

That impatience led to the diplomatic process that culminated with the handshake confirming the signing of the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn in September 1993. For a brief period, “The Handshake” (as it was then capitalized) between Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin served as the symbol of successful mediation that gave each side what it most wanted: dignity and autonomy for Palestinians, recognition and security for Israelis. Among many accolades, Arafat, Rabin, and Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The accords, however, quickly disappointed both sides. Indeed, while Israelis and Palestinians agree on little else, they concur with near-unanimity on Oslo having been a disaster.

When Palestinians still lived under direct Israeli control before Oslo, acceptance of Israel had increased over time even as political violence diminished. Residents of the West Bank and Gaza could travel locally without checkpoints and access work sites within Israel. They benefited from the rule of law and an economy that more than quadrupled without depending on foreign aid. Functioning schools and hospitals emerged, as did several universities.

Yasir Arafat promised to turn Gaza into “the Singapore of the Middle East,” but his despotism and aggression against Israel instead turned his fiefdom into a nightmare, resembling Congo more than Singapore. Unwilling to give up on the permanent revolution and to become the ordinary leader of an obscure state, he exploited the Oslo Accords to inflict economic dependence, tyranny, failed institutions, corruption, Islamism, and a death cult on Palestinians.

For Israelis, Oslo led not to the hoped-for end of conflict but to inflamed Palestinian ambitions to eliminate the Jewish state. As Palestinian rage spiraled upward, more Israelis were murdered in the five years after Oslo than in the 15 years preceding it. Rabble-rousing speech and violent actions soared—and continue unabated 23 years later. Moreover, Palestinian delegitimization efforts cost Israel internationally as the left turned against it, spawning such anti-Zionist novelties as the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

From Israel’s perspective, seven years of Oslo appeasement, 1993–2000, undid 45 years of successful deterrence; then, six years of unilateral withdrawals, 2000–2006, further buried deterrence. The decade since 2006 has produced no major changes.

The Oslo exercise showed the futility of Israeli concessions to Palestinians when the latter fail to live up to their obligations. By signaling Israeli weakness, Oslo made a bad situation worse. What is conventionally called the “peace process” would more accurately be dubbed the “war process.”

The False Hope of Finessing Victory

Why did things go so wrong in what seemed so promising an agreement?

Moral responsibility for the collapse of Oslo lies with Yasir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the rest of the Palestinian Authority leadership. They pretended to abandon rejectionism and accept Israel’s existence but, in fact, sought Israel’s elimination in new, more sophisticated ways, replacing force with delegitimization.

This said, the Israelis made a profound mistake, having entered the Oslo process with a false premise. Yitzhak Rabin often summed up this error in the phrase “You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.”² In other words, he expected war to be concluded through goodwill, conciliation, mediation, flexibility, restraint, generosity, and compromise, topped off with signatures on official documents. In this spirit, his government and all its successors agreed to a wide array of concessions, even to the point of permitting a Palestinian militia, always hoping the Palestinians would reciprocate by accepting the Jewish state.

They never did. To the contrary, Israeli compromises aggravated Palestinian hostility. Each gesture further radicalized, exhilarated, and mobilized the Palestinian body politic. Israeli efforts to “make peace” were received as signs of demoralization and weakness. “Painful concessions” reduced the Palestinian awe of Israel, made the Jewish state appear vulnerable, and inspired irredentist dreams of annihilation.

In retrospect, this does not surprise. Contrary to Rabin’s slogan, one does not “make [peace] with very unsavory enemies” but rather with former very unsavory enemies—that is, enemies that have been defeated.

This brings us to the key concept of my approach, which is victory, or imposing one’s will on the enemy, compelling him through loss to give up his war ambitions. Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.

Thinkers and warriors through the ages concur on the importance of victory as the correct goal of warfare. For example, Aristotle wrote that “victory is the end of generalship” and Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “In war, there is no substitute for victory.” Technological advancement has not altered this enduring human truth.

Twentieth-century conflicts that ended decisively include World War II, China–India, Algeria–France, North Vietnam–United States, Great Britain–Argentina, Afghanistan–U.S.S.R., and the Cold War. Defeat can result either from a military thrashing or from an accretion of economic and political pressures; it does not require total military loss or economic destruction, much less the annihilation of a population. For example, the only defeat in U.S. history, in South Vietnam in 1975, occurred not because of economic collapse or running out of ammunition or battlefield failure (the American side was winning the ground war) but because Americans lost the will to soldier on.

Indeed, 1945 marks a dividing line. Before then, overwhelming military superiority crushed the enemy’s will to fight; since then, grand battlefield successes have rarely occurred. Battlefield superiority no longer translates as it once did into breaking the enemy’s resolve to fight. In Clausewitz’s terms, morale and will are now the center of gravity, not tanks and ships. Although the French outmanned and out-gunned their foes in Algeria, as did the Americans in Vietnam and the Soviets in Afghanistan, all these powers lost their wars. Conversely, battlefield losses suffered by the Arab states in 1948–82, by North Korea in 1950–53, and by Iraq in 1991 and 2003 did not translate into surrender and defeat.

When a losing side preserves its war goals, the resumption of warfare remains possible, and even likely. Germans retained their goal of ruling Europe after their defeat in World War I and looked to Hitler for another try, prompting the Allies to aim for total victory to ensure against the Germans trying a third time. The Korean War ended in 1953, but North and South have both held on to their war goals, meaning that the conflict might resume at any time, as could wars between India and Pakistan. The Arabs lost each round of warfare with Israel (1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982) but long saw their defeats as merely transient and spoiled for another try.

II. The Hard Work of Winning

How might Israel induce the Palestinians to drop rejectionism?

For starters, a colorful array of (mutually exclusive) plans to end the conflict favorably to Israel have appeared through the decades.³ Going from softest to toughest, these include:

• Territorial retreat from the West Bank or territorial compromise within the West Bank.
• Leasing the land under Israeli towns on the West Bank.
• Finding creative ways to divide the Temple Mount.
• Developing the Palestinian economy.
• Encouraging Palestinian good governance.
• Deploying international forces.
• Raising international funds (on the Marshall Plan model).
• Unilateralism (building a wall).
• Insisting that Jordan is Palestine.
• Excluding disloyal Palestinians from Israeli citizenship.
• Expelling Palestinians from lands controlled by Israel.

Trouble is, none of these plans addresses the need to break the Palestinian will to fight. They all manage the conflict without resolving it. They all seek to finesse victory with a gimmick. Just as the Oslo negotiations failed, so too will every other scheme that sidesteps the hard work of winning.

This historical pattern suggests that Israel has just one option to win Palestinian acceptance: a return to its old policy of deterrence, punishing Palestinians when they aggress. Deterrence amounts to more than tough tactics, which every Israeli government pursues; it requires systemic policies that encourage Palestinians to accept Israel and discourage rejectionism. It requires a long-term strategy that promotes a change of heart.

Inducing a change of heart is not a pretty or pleasant process but is based on a policy of commensurate and graduated response. If Palestinians transgress moderately, they should pay moderately; and so on. Responses depend on specific circumstances, so the following are but general suggestions as examples for Washington to propose, going from mildest to most severe:

When Palestinian “martyrs” cause material damage, pay for repairs out of the roughly $300 million in tax obligations the government of Israel transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) each year. 

Respond to activities designed to isolate and weaken Israel internationally by limiting access to the West Bank. 

When a Palestinian attacker is killed, bury the body quietly and anonymously in a potter’s field. 

When the PA leadership incites violence, prevent officials from returning to the PA from abroad.

 Respond to the murder of Israelis by expanding Jewish towns on the West Bank.

 When official PA guns are turned against Israelis, seize these and prohibit new ones, and if this happens repeatedly, dismantle the PA’s security infrastructure.

 Should violence continue, reduce and then shut off the water and electricity that Israel supplies. 

In the case of gunfire, mortar shelling, and rockets, occupy and control the areas from which these originate.

Of course, these steps run exactly counter to the consensus view in Israel today, which seeks above all to keep Palestinians quiescent. But this myopic viewpoint formed under unremitting pressure from the outside world, and the U.S. government especially, to accommodate the PA. The removal of such pressure will undoubtedly encourage Israelis to adopt the more assertive tactics outlined here.

True peacemaking means finding ways to coerce Palestinians to undergo a change of heart, giving up rejectionism, accepting Jews, Zionism, and Israel. When enough Palestinians abandon the dream of eliminating Israel, they will make the concessions needed to end the conflict. To end the conflict, Israel must convince 50 percent and more of the Palestinians that they have lost.

The goal here is not Palestinian love of Zion, but closing down the apparatus of war: shuttering suicide factories, ending the demonization of Jews and Israel, recognizing Jewish ties to Jerusalem, and “normalizing” relations with Israelis. Palestinian acceptance of Israel will be achieved when, over a protracted period and with complete consistency, the violence ends, replaced by sharply worded démarches and letters to the editor. Symbolically, the conflict will be over when Jews living in Hebron (in the West Bank) have no more need for security than Palestinians living in Nazareth (in Israel).

To those who hold Palestinians too fanatical to be defeated, I reply: If Germans and Japanese, no less fanatical and far more powerful, could be defeated in World War II and then turned into normal citizens, why not the Palestinians now? Moreover, Muslims have repeatedly given in to infidels throughout history when faced with a determined superior force, from Spain to the Balkans to Lebanon.

Israel enjoys two pieces of good fortune. First, its effort does not begin at null; polls and other indicators suggest that 20 percent of Palestinians and other Arabs consistently accept the Jewish state. Second, it need deter only the Palestinians, a very weak actor, and not the whole Arab or Muslim population. However feeble in objective terms (economics, military power), Palestinians spearhead the war against Israel; so when they abandon rejectionism, others (like Moroccans, Iranians, Malaysians, et al.) take their cues from Palestinians and, over time, will likely follow their lead.

Palestinians Would Benefit from Their Defeat

However much Israelis gain from ending their residual Palestinian problem, they live in a successful modern country that has absorbed the violence and delegitimization imposed on them.⁴ Surveys, for example, show Israelis to be among the happiest people anywhere, and the country’s burgeoning birth rate confirms these impressions.

In contrast, Palestinians are mired in misery and constitute the most radicalized population in the world. Opinion surveys consistently show them choosing nihilism. Which other parents celebrate their children becoming suicide bombers? Which other people gives higher priority to harming its neighbor than improving its own lot? Hamas and the Palestinian Authority both run authoritarian regimes that repress their subjects and pursue destructive goals. The economy in the West Bank and Gaza depends, more than anywhere else, on free money from abroad, creating both dependence and resentment. Palestinian mores are backward and becoming more medieval all the time. A skilled and ambitious people is locked into political repression, failed institutions, and a culture celebrating delusion, extremism, and self-destruction.

An Israel victory liberates Palestinians. Defeat compels them to come to terms with their irredentist fantasies and the empty rhetoric of revolution. Defeat also frees them to improve their own lives. Unleashed from a genocidal obsession against Israel, Palestinians can become a normal people and develop its polity, economy, society, and culture. Negotiations could finally begin in earnest. In all, given their far lower starting point, Palestinians would, ironically, gain even more from their defeat than the Israelis would from their victory.

That said, this change won’t be easy or quick: Palestinians will have to pass through the bitter crucible of defeat, with all its deprivation, destruction, and despair as they repudiate the filthy legacy of Amin al-Husseini and acknowledge their century-long error. But there is no shortcut.

The Need for American Support

Palestinians deploy a unique global support team consisting of the United Nations and vast numbers of journalists, activists, educators, artists, Islamists, and leftists. No obscure African liberation front are they, but the world’s favored revolutionary cause. This makes Israel’s task long, difficult, and dependent on stalwart allies, foremost the U.S. government.

For Washington to be helpful means not dragging the parties back to more negotiations but robustly supporting Israel’s path to victory. That translates into not just backing episodic Israeli shows of force but a sustained and systematic international effort of working with Israel, select Arab states, and others to convince the Palestinians of the futility of their rejectionism: Israel is there, it’s permanent, and it enjoys wide backing.

That means supporting Israel’s taking the tough steps outlined above, from burying murderers’ bodies anonymously to shuttering the Palestinian Authority. It means diplomatic support for Israel, such as undoing the “Palestine refugee” farce and rejecting the claim of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. It also entails ending benefits to the Palestinians unless they work toward the full and permanent acceptance of Israel: no diplomacy, no recognition as a state, no financial aid, and certainly no weapons, much less militia training.

Israeli–Palestinian diplomacy is premature until Palestinians accept the Jewish state. The central issues of the Oslo Accords (borders, water, armaments, sanctities, Jewish communities in the West Bank, “Palestine refugees”) cannot be usefully discussed so long as one party still rejects the other. But negotiations can re-open and take up anew the Oslo issues upon the joyful moment that Palestinians accept of the Jewish state. That prospect, however, lies in the distant future. For now, Israel needs to win.

1 I analyzed this topic for Commentary in December 1997 in “On Arab Rejectionism.”

2 Which, curiously, paraphrased the statement of a PLO leader, Said Hammami, 15 years earlier.

3 I reviewed these proposals in detail for Commentary in February 2003 in “Does Israel Need a Plan?”

4 Injuries and deaths from traffic accidents in Israel in the period 2000-2005, for example, came to 30,000 while terrorism-related injuries amounted to 2,000.

 The Near Impossibility of Compromise 

Daniel Pipes  12-16

Since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, Palestinians and Israelis have pursued static and opposite goals.

In the years before the establishment of the new state, the mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, articulated a policy of rejectionism, or eliminating every vestige of Jewish presence in what is now the territory of Israel.¹ It remains in place. Maps in Arabic that show a “Palestine” replacing Israel symbolize this continued aspiration. Rejectionism runs so deep that it drives not just Palestinian politics but much of Palestinian life. With consistency, energy, and perseverance, Palestinians have pursued rejectionism via three main approaches: demoralizing Zionists through political violence, damaging Israel’s economy through trade boycotts, and weakening Israel’s legitimacy by winning foreign support. 

Differences between Palestinian factions tend to be tactical: Talk to the Israelis to win concessions from them or not? Mahmoud Abbas represents the former outlook and Khaled Mashal the latter.

On the Israeli side, nearly everyone agrees on the need to win acceptance by Palestinians (and other Arabs and Muslims); differences are again tactical. David Ben-Gurion articulated one approach, that of showing Palestinians what they can gain from Zionism. Vladimir Jabotinsky developed the opposite vision, arguing that Zionists have no choice but to break the Palestinians’ intractable will. Their rival approaches remain the touchstones of Israel’s foreign-policy debate, with Isaac Herzog heir to Ben-Gurion and Benjamin Netanyahu to Jabotinsky.

These two pursuits—rejectionism and acceptance—have remained basically unchanged for a century; today’s Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Labor, and Likud are lineal descendants of Husseini, Ben-Gurion, and Jabotinsky. Varying ideologies, objectives, tactics, strategies, and actors mean that details have varied, even as the fundamentals have remained remarkably in place. Wars and treaties came and went, leading to only minor shifts. The many rounds of fighting had surprisingly little impact on ultimate goals, while formal agreements (such as the Oslo Accords of 1993) only increased hostility to Israel’s existence and so were counterproductive.

Palestinian rejection or acceptance of Israel is binary: yes or no, without in-betweens. This renders compromise nearly impossible because resolution requires one side fully to abandon its goal. Either Palestinians give up their century-long rejection of the Jewish state or Zionists give up their 150-year quest for a sovereign homeland. Anything other than these two outcomes is an unstable settlement that merely serves as the premise for a future round of conflict.

Red Russia, the red jihad and Israel under siege

Cliff Kincaid   December 29, 2016

Patrick Buchanan's provocative column, "Is Europe's future Merkel or Le Pen?" reflects a limited and bad choice for America and Europe. Both of these leaders serve Russian interests. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's pro-immigration policies have destabilized Europe, leading to the rise of pro-Putin right-wing political parties. Marine Le Pen of France's National Front party, one of those pro-Putin political parties, wants to destroy NATO, a long-time Russian goal.

The terrible choices facing the United States mean that we are in the biggest crisis the West has faced since World War II. The dilemma outlined by Patrick Buchanan means that the incoming Trump administration has to recognize that Germany, the most important country in Europe, is in the hands of a Russian agent of influence. Despite running as the candidate of the conservative-leaning Christian Democratic Union, Merkel has destabilized her country and much of Europe by facilitating a Muslim invasion. Her involvement in the Communist Party of East Germany, when it was a major base of Soviet espionage operations, goes a long way toward explaining her curious behavior.

In a column titled, "The Suicide of Germany," Guy Millière writes, "The attack in Berlin on December 19, 2016 was predictable. German Chancellor Angela Merkel created the conditions that made it possible. She bears an overwhelming responsibility." He notes, "When she decided to open the doors of Germany to hundreds of thousands of Muslims from the Middle East and more distant countries, she must have known that jihadists were hidden among the people flooding in. She also must have known that the German police had no way of controlling the mass that entered and would be quickly overwhelmed by the number of people it would have to control. She did it anyway." (emphasis added)

The "she must have known" formulation is more evidence of a deliberate policy to destabilize Europe. She intends to run for re-election in 2017.

Labeled a "populist" by Buchanan, Marine Le Pen, the leading candidate for the presidency of France in 2017, talks a lot about French sovereignty but acts like a tool of Moscow. The Russia Today (RT) propaganda channel highlights her call for "closer ties with Russia" and opposition to U.S.-led NATO.

In events that have shocked the liberal media, Trump and/or his advisers have been reported to be meeting with representatives of European right-wing political parties, some of them pro-Putin. However, Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, has written in his own book that there is a "Russia connection" to Islamic terror networks and "many of the KGB's safe houses, station headquarters, and secure communications networks were put at the disposal of terror groups." This implicates Vladimir Putin, former officer and head of the KGB, in the conflicts that have spilled over into Europe and Israel.

Meanwhile, as commentators in the U.S. criticize the Obama administration for abstaining on the anti-Israel United Nations resolution, it is no surprise that Russia and China both voted for it. Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich did not miss the significance of this anti-Israel vote, commenting, "So Russia having illegally occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine votes to condemn Israel for 'occupied lands.' We are supposed to be impressed." He might have mentioned China's own illegal seizures of territory.

"Russia has never ruled Israel," notes one Israeli commentator, Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, "but the Russian Army has never stood as close to Jerusalem as it does today." Professor Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies tells the publication, "It should be remembered that Russia sides with Iran, supports Hezbollah, and even has relations with Hamas."

Turkey, a member of NATO, has since joined with Russia and Iran, the new powers in the region, for talks. It has been forced into the arms of Russia because of the Obama administration's failure to save Syria from Russian aggression that propped up an unpopular and repressive dictatorship. In truth, Obama help accelerate the conflict when he ordered his CIA to support "rebels" against the Syrian regime that were linked to jihadist groups. They were no match for the superior Russian and Iranian forces which intervened on the side of the Syrian regime. Up to 500,000 were killed.

Trump's decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem will have symbolic value. But it does nothing to protect Israel from an attack by its regional enemies bearing Russian arms.

One way to turn the tide is to order the CIA out of the terror-supporting business and start shining the light on Russia's historical links to Islamic terrorism, known as the Red Jihad. These connections, which still exist, are not only a threat to Israel but demonstrate that "Red Russia" is behind the immigration crisis and the Muslim invasion of Europe.

Obama is leaving the White House. His ability to damage Israel and other U.S. allies will soon end. But Putin has only just begun to fight. What's at stake is the control of Europe and the entire Middle East.

If President Trump falls for Putin's offers of a truce, he will demonstrate to his political enemies and even his supporters that he was in fact a dupe of the Russians.