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Peter Fogel

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RE: HSIG - Mortimer Zuckerman A Staunch Supporter's View of BHO's First 365Days
3/13/2010 8:32:40 AM
Hello Friends,

I received an email today with a supposed article written by Mortimer Zuckerman Editor of US News and World Report. While reading the email I had a feeling that something might not be kosher and checked into the article before posting it.

It turns out that part of the email are direct quotes of Mort Zuckerman and the rest the opinions of a blogger without stating what part is a direct quote and which is his own personal opinion.

Upon checking the original articles one posted on The Daily Beast on 1/19/10 and the other an editorial in the US News and World Report I decided to post the originals rather then the email I received.

The crux of the 2 articles is that Zuckerman a staunch supporter of B Hussein Obowma during the campaign is a very disappointed camper today after a year plus in office.

He states his disappointments and what will eventually happen in his opinion. Seems as if it's taken out of a conservative publication by a staunch opposer of B Hussein while in fact he's a very disappointed supporter that is no longer a believer. While he's not denigrating him as the conservatives do you can understand his chagrin at the results of B Hussein's first year in office.

We've seen signs that other MSM media are starting to get the true picture of this sorry excuse of a President and are backing away from the total support they gave him in the past. It's as if the blinkers are being taken off.

Here are the 2 relevant articles.

Shalom,

Peter

He's Done Everything Wrong





Barack ObamaAObama punted on the economy and reversed the fortunes of the Democrats in 365 days.

He’s misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach. There’s the saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” He didn’t get it. He was determined somehow or other to adopt a whole new agenda. He didn’t address the main issue.

This health-care plan is going to be a fiscal disaster for the country. Most of the country wanted to deal with costs, not expansion of coverage. This is going to raise costs dramatically.

In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting.

Five states got deals on health care—one of them was Harry Reid’s. It is disgusting, just disgusting. I’ve never seen anything like it. The unions just got them to drop the tax on Cadillac plans in the health-care bill. It was pure union politics. They just went along with it. It’s a bizarre form of political corruption. It’s bribery. I suppose they could say, that’s the system. He was supposed to change it or try to change it.

Even that is not the worst part. He could have said, “I know. I promised these things, but let me try to do them one at a time.” You want to deal with health care? Fine. Issue No. 1 with health care was the cost. You know I think it was 37 percent or 33 who were worried about coverage. Fine, I wrote an editorial to this effect. Focus on cost-containment first. But he’s trying to boil the ocean, trying to do too much. This is not leadership.

More Daily Beast opinion on Obama’s first yearObama’s ability to connect with voters is what launched him. But what has surprised me is how he has failed to connect with the voters since he’s been in office. He’s had so much overexposure. You have to be selective. He was doing five Sunday shows. How many press conferences? And now people stop listening to him. The fact is he had 49.5 million listeners to first speech on the economy. On Medicare, he had 24 million. He’s lost his audience. He has not rallied public opinion. He has plunged in the polls more than any other political figure since we’ve been using polls. He’s done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things.

I don’t consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster.

One business leader said to me, “In the Clinton administration, the policy people were at the center, and the political people were on the sideline. In the Obama administration, the political people are at the center, and the policy people are on the sidelines.”

I’m very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.

I hope there are changes. I think he’s already laid in huge problems for the country. The fiscal program was a disaster. You have to get the money as quickly as possible into the economy. They didn’t do that. By end of the first year, only one-third of the money was spent. Why is that?

He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, “This is it. No changes. Don’t give me that bull****. We have a national emergency.” Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who can run circles around him.

It’s very sad. It’s really sad.

He’s improved America’s image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.”

The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, look what’s happening in Massachusetts. (my highlights)

It’s really interesting because he had brilliant, brilliant political instincts during the campaign. I don’t know what has happened to them. His appointments present somebody who has a lot to learn about how government works. He better get some very talented businesspeople who know how to implement things. It’s unbelievable. Everybody says so. You can’t believe how dismayed people are. That’s why he’s plunging in the polls.

I can’t predict things two years from now, but if he continues on the downward spiral he is on, he won’t be reelected. In the meantime, the Democrats have recreated the Republican Party. And when I say Democrats, I mean the Obama administration. In the generic vote, the Democrats were ahead something like 52 to 30. They are now behind the Republicans 48 to 44 in the last poll. Nobody has ever seen anything that dramatic.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Reportand publisher of the New York Daily News. He is also the co-founder and chairman of Boston Properties Inc. He is a trustee of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, and the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama

Posted January 21, 2010

The air is seeping out of the Obama balloon. He has fallen to below 50 percent in the poll approval ratings, a decline punctuated by his party's shocking loss in the Massachusetts special election.

Why?

Click here to find out more!

Barack Obama was undoubtedly sincere in what he promised, even if his promises were within the normal range of political exaggeration. The first trouble is that his gift for inspiration aroused expectations, stoked to unprecedented heights by his own staff, that he would solve the climate crisis on Monday, the jobs crisis on Tuesday, the financial crisis on Wednesday, the education crisis on Thursday, Afghanistan on Friday, Iraq on Saturday, and rest on Sunday. His oratorical skills were highlighted by the contrast with President Bush, who mangled words so much that his incoherence became, as Tina Brown wrote, "a metaphor for incompetence." Expectations were spurred, too, by Obama's recognition that Americans yearned for a new kind of politics, a rejection, as he put it, of "politics as usual."

Perhaps the inevitable outcome was disappointment—and on this Obama has not disappointed. Alas, he has accelerated the deflation of hope with his extraordinary volume of public appearances. In his first six months, he gave three times as many interviews as George W. Bush, four times as many prime-time news conferences as Bill Clinton, and more interviews than both combined: 93 for Obama and 61 for his two immediate predecessors. He appeared on five Sunday talk shows on the same morning, followed the next day by David Letterman, the first-ever presidential appearance on a nighttime comedy show. In another week, he squeezed in addresses to the U.S. Climate Change Summit, the U.N. General Assembly, the U.N. Security Council, and a variety of press conferences.

His promiscuity on TV has made him seem as if he is still a candidate instead of president and commander in chief. He—and his advisers—have failed to appreciate that national TV speeches are best reserved for those moments when the country faces a major crisis or a war. Now he faces the iron law of diminishing novelty.

Despite this apparent accessibility, Obama's reliance on a teleprompter for flawless delivery made for boring and unemotional TV, compounding his cerebral and unemotional style. He has seemed not close but distant, not engaged but detached. Is it any wonder that the mystique of his presidency has eroded so that fewer people have listened to each successive foray? The columnist Richard Cohen wryly observed that he won the Pulitzer Prize for being the only syndicated columnist who did not have an exclusive interview with the president.

Poor results. But Obama's problems are more than a question of style. There is doubt aroused on substance. He sets deadlines and then lets too many pass. He announces a strategic review of Afghanistan, describing it as "a war of necessity," only to become less sure to the point that he didn't even seem committed to the policy that he finally announced. As for changing politics in Washington, he assigned the drafting of central legislative programs not to cabinet departments or White House staff but to the Democratic congressional leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the very people so mistrusted by the public. Who could be surprised that the critical bills—the stimulus program and healthcare—degenerated under a welter of pork and earmarks that had so outraged the American public in the past?

Pelosi benefited from $54 million to relocate a Bay Area wine train, not to speak of a secret deal with the drug industry lobby to preclude negotiations on Medicaid drug prices and exclude drug imports from Canada, concessions that had previously been strongly rejected by Obama. Reid favored the gambling industry by arranging an earmark for a Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas high-speed monorail, even though it won't be built for years. Some components of the stimulus did help soften the recession, yet only roughly a third of the $787 billion stimulus has been spent, and too much was spent on programs supported by liberal Democrats, which explains why so much of the stimulus money went toward education, health, energy conservation, and other activities, mostly worthy but not geared to
achieving recovery and getting people back to work.

Taxpayers have thus come to see politics as usual masquerading as economic recovery. Indeed, both the stimulus and healthcare plans were voted on so quickly that the lawmakers had no time to read the bills. In both cases, the White House created the impression it was interested in passing anything, no matter how ineffectual. This was epitomized by Obama's chief of staff essentially asserting that a healthcare bill would be passed even if all it consisted of was two Band-Aids and an aspirin.

Most critically, Obama misjudged the locus of the country's anxiety: the economy. Instead of concentrating on jobs, jobs, jobs, he made the decision to "boil the ocean" and go for everything, from comprehensive health reform to global warming to a world without nuclear weapons ... and the beat goes on.

This was more than the Congress could absorb and more than the country could understand. Obama, the theoretician in a hurry, made no allowance for the normal resistance to dramatic change and the public's distaste for big government, big spending, and big deficits. He didn't seem to realize that Americans understand in the most personal terms that excessive debt has real consequences, given how many have mortgages that exceed the value of a home and credit lines that are too much to carry. Yet this was what the president seemed to be getting us into. Over 60 percent of the country believes that government spending is excessive; Obama's lowest approval ratings come from his mishandling of the present and future deficits.

Delayed stimulus. It is not as if the limited stimulus program has done the job either, since unemployment rates soared over 10 percent (compared with the 8 percent ceiling that was promised). Shelby Steele asked a good question in the Wall Street Journal: "Where is the economic logic behind a stimu lus package that doesn't fully click in for a number of years?" Yes, we might have just escaped a depression, but as the Econo mist magazine observes, voters will not thank the president for averting a depression that did not come but are "more likely to blame him for the recession that did." On top of all this, and not all Obama's fault, a financial crisis usually produces weak recoveries in jobs, so a good number of Americans are likely to remain furious at the spectacle of the financial world doing well while so many ordinary folks lose their jobs and their savings. This anger will not subside while households see net worth slump to where it was 20 years ago and debt reach close to record highs at about 130 percent of disposable income, and while the residential real estate crisis continues unabated and the official jobless rate doesn't come close to reflecting the true extent of unemployment and ... and ... and ....

The White House might have at least demonstrated that it cares about fiscal restraint and independence from the leadership in Congress, but consistently Obama has failed to veto spending while centralizing power. A majority of Americans think it a mistake at this time of economic distress to embark on a costly healthcare program. As it was, the program's apparently stalled trip through Congress turned out to be another fiasco of political corruption, with millions of dollars allocated to buy votes, such as those of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu and Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson. Anger with that process and the bill it produced helped fuel the stunning election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

The result is a widespread concern that progressive taxation to pay for the "nanny state" will snuff out future opportunities that Americans believe they deserve for themselves and their children. Obama misjudged the public's appetite for taxpayer-funded solutions; most people believe all the government does is waste money. In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, only 23 percent said they "trusted the government just about always or most of the time"—the smallest proportion in 12 years, and the all-important independent swing voters who decide elections now favor Republicans by 52 percent, up from 30 percent.

Unfortunately, there is not much solace in international affairs either, where, again, expectations were so pumped up. America's image is better, no doubt, but uncertainty and procrastination prevail. One major international political leader recently put it well: "Not only does the leadership of this region not think that Obama is strong enough to confront his enemies; they aren't sure he is strong enough to support his friends." The administration seems "hopelessly naive," according to one Arab foreign minister, and unable to face the full truth about Islamic terrorism. The public frustration over the administration's mismanagement of the latest jihadist attempt to blow up a plane with all its innocent travelers (on Christmas Day) was captured in the New York Daily News headline "Mr. President, it's time to get a grip!"

The consequence is that there isn't a single critical problem on which the president has a positive public rating. Only a minority of Americans now believe the president will make the right decisions for the country. Nor can he any longer take refuge in the rejoinder that "we inherited a terrible situation." Or blame it on fat-cat bankers and insurance companies. Blaming others, including Bush, for the country's predicament is less and less persuasive. "At some point you own your presidency," wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. "At some point the American people tell you it's yours."

More worrying for the administration is that while Obama gets the approval of 76 percent of non-whites, his approval among whites is down to 41 percent, according to Gallup. This is a huge change that literally puts the Democratic control of Congress at risk. The Republicans have hardly been stellar either, but there is now a renewed openness in the country to hear what they have to say. Obama's political realignment of America is over. We no longer believe that he will "change the world" and "transform the country."

This brings to mind why an adviser to President Roosevelt in the 1930s, Bernard Baruch, told electors to vote for the person who promised them less. In this way, he said, "you would be less disappointed." There is still time for Obama to change and turn things around. But the first year is the critical year, one in which the public defines the president, and it has to be said that broad swaths of the country are deeply disappointed.



Peter Fogel
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RE: HSIG - B Hussein's Private Army. A New version Of Hitler Youth?
3/13/2010 10:51:42 AM
Hello Friends,

We've discussed B Hussein's plans for a private army and now it appears it's going into action. BUT, they are recruiting 8 year olds and older.I wonder if he learned brainwashing tactics from Hamas and the Hitler youth?

I read this over at Atlas Shrugs and it's well worth reading and paying attention to. This man is dangerous and has to be put out to pasture as soon as possible.

Shalom,

Peter


Friday, March 12, 2010



Peter Fogel
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RE: HSIG-Biden's Israeli Fiasco And The Administration's Attempt to Bully Israel
3/15/2010 9:17:31 AM
Hello Friends,

VP Joe Biden's visit to Israel didn't bode well from the get go. Here we have a guy that never was a great supporter of Israel sent by the Muslim agent B Hussein to insure that Israel has no plans for a preemptive attack on Iran. What this administration wants is for Israel to "wait" for the results of the "negotiations" with Iran or for the substantial sanctions against Iran.

The negotiations are a bust and B Hussein's been b*itch slapped by the lunatic Ahmadinejad so many times it seems like he's become addicted to the beatings...........as long as it comes from a Muslim.

Sanctions won't happen since China and Russia are against serious sanctions. So, it appears that things are going according to B Hussein's agenda and he really has no problem with Iran becoming a nuclear power.

Back to Biden's visit to Israel. An unfortunate mistake in announcing the future building of 1600 apartments in Jerusalem while Biden was in Israel. He took that as a personal insult and saw fit to rebuke Israel for approving the building of apartments for it's citizens.

The "slap on the wrist" continued with Clinton and then Axelrod chastising Netanyahu and Israel for sabotaging the peace talks. Now this in itself is an interesting concept since Israel is the only side that's shown any interest in the peace talks ever since B Hussein took office. Only Israel made concessions and the Palestinians continually refused to sit down and talk peace. It's quite obvious it's not in their best interest to do so since they're interested in the whole pie and they believe B Hussein is their conduit to realize that goal. Considering B Hussein's Muslim agenda they're not far off the mark.

The problem is that PM Netanyahu foolishly "apologized" for the announcement made during Biden's visit. Biden, Clinton and B Hussein forget that they are part of the negotiation process and not the lord of the manor giving out marks for good behavior. If they were objective with their negative remarks it might be considered part of the process but the Palestinians like Ahmadinejad b*itch slapped him so many times in the past 14 months and not one condemnation from the administration.

One can conclude that the Palestinians are totally aware of B Hussein's Muslim agenda and that he's no friend of Israel. They allow themselves to continue with their terrorist activities, brainwashing, hatred and so much more and B Hussein's administration says and does nothing.

Biden is now bosom buddies with Abass and there is nothing new there. He allowed himself to interfere in a sovereign country's internal affairs which neither he, the great pretender or Clinton have the right to do. I remember well his (BHO) comment when the Iranian regime were killing their protesters after the elections he said he can't interfere in their internal affairs.

So, once again we see the double standard is strong and working well. "Scold" Israel and ignore all the really negative activities of the Palestinians.

They really went overboard this time sorta accusing Israel of causing the deaths of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now this is really pathetic but this whole affair is a ruse that he's using to get Obamacare that's been the main focus of the MSM, internet and all alternative news sources out of the headlines. It reminds me that Emanuel once said that when there is a "crisis" take advantage of it. A pure Ailinsky tactic which B Hussein dearly loves.

At this point I feel it necessary to remind B Hussein and all his goons that Israel is her only true ally in the Middle East. Remember 9/11? The Palestinians and Muslims in most Muslim countries were celebrating on the streets. They haven't changed their attitudes but know well how to take advantage of B Hussein's Muslim agenda. Don't let his agenda put blinders over your eyes and cause you to fall for the ruse he's using to cover up the Obamacare fiasco.

B Hussein and his goon squad will be here today and gone tomorrow and my prediction is that Israel will prevail. All we need is that Bibi Netanyahu gets a spine and not crumble whenever B Hussein looks at him cross eyed. He wasn't my preference for PM of Israel and my predictions that he'll crumble under pressure unfortunately turned out to be correct. Luckily he has a coalition government that won't allow him to cross red lines that no Israeli PM ever crossed.

Dry Bones has an interesting take on this issue. Please read his comment under the graphic. Menachem Begin was a PM to be emulated and Bibi tried to give the impression he was made of the same ilk but again unfortunately he's far from being a Begin.

Shalom,

Peter


I occasionally use these two characters in a bar somewhere in the U.S. They're Americans, and they're trying to understand what's really happening in Israel while watching the news on American TV. A real challenge.

Meanwhile, here in Israel, what we are watching is yet another Israeli Prime Minister being pressured by yet another American President. The hope is that Netanyahu will rise to the occasion, stand firm, and protect our sovereignty with the strength and backbone of a Menahem Begin. Most of our PM's have a moment of truth. And this, I think, is Bibi's.

* * *
Note: In December 1981, the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law extending Israeli law to the Golan Heights. In reaction the American administration declared that it would "punish Israel". Prime Minister Begin then issued a statement that he read to the US Ambassador to Israel and released to the public. It reads, in part:

"A week ago, at the instance of the Government, the Knesset passed on all three readings by an overwhelming majority of two-thirds, the "Golan Heights Law."

Now you once again declare that you are punishing Israel.

What kind of expression is this – "punishing Israel"? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don't behave properly, are slapped across the fingers?

Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with "punishments." He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments." …As regards the future, please be kind enough to inform the Secretary of State that the Golan Heights Law will remain valid. There is no force on earth that can bring about its rescission.-more

-Dry Bones- Israel's Political Comic Strip Since 1973
Peter Fogel
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RE: HSIG- More On The Administration's Attempt to Bully and Admonish Israel
3/15/2010 9:35:59 AM
Hello Friends,

Here's a bit more food for thought on the Administration's attempt to admonish and bully Israel.

Double standards and short memories galore.

Shalom,

Peter


Sunday, March 14, 2010


How Quick They Forget: A Short History of U.S. Policy and Israeli Construction in East Jerusalem

Please be subscriber 9,505 for free, round-the-clock, real-time, and original coverage.

By Barry Rubin

For more than four months the U.S. government has been celebrating Israel agreeing to stop construction on settlements in the West Bank while continuing building in east Jerusalem as a great step forward and Israeli concession deserving a reward. Suddenly, all of this is forgotten to say that Israel building in east Jerusalem is some kind of terrible deed which deserves punishment.

Israelis are used to this pattern: give a big concession and a few months later that step is forgotten as Israel is portrayed as intransigent and more concessions are demanded with nothing in return. Here is a short history of this round:

October 31, 2009: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lavishly praises Israel as making "unprecedented" concessions in stopping construction on West Bank settlements while it is still going to build in east Jerusalem.

November 1, 2009: The U.S. State Department cheers Israel’s announcement that it will stop construction on West Bank settlements but not in east Jerusalem: "Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

March 12, 2010: Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says that Israel building in east Jerusalem is an “insult” to the United States, jeopardizes the bilateral relationship, and damages the cause of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meanwhile, even though the Palestinian Authority has refused to negotiate for 14 months; made President Brack Obama look very foolish after destroying his publicly announced September plan to have negotiations in two months; broke its promise not to sponsor the Goldstone report in the UN; and rejected direct negotiations after months of pleading by the Obama White House, not a single word of criticism has ever been offered by any administration official regarding the PA's continuous and very public sabotage of peace process efforts.

Can people please point out that there's a bit of a contradiction here?

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood.



How Bad is the Quality of Media Coverage? A Small Example

Posted: 13 Mar 2010 10:22 AM PST

Here's an example of just how bad media coverage is. I'm not writing this as an example of anti-Israel media bias but of just poor reporitng which applies to lots of other stories.

1. Lack of understanding

Shas is a populist party whose constituency is poor Orthodox Jews of Middle Eastern origin. A Shas minister announced housing construction in such a neighborhood. He couldn't care less about international issues or the fact that it was five blocks across the pre-1967 border. He just wanted to show his constituents he was providing apartments for them.

Failing to understand this, prestigious Western media outlets claimed this showed how Israel was thumbing its nose at the US by the timing, Israel didn't want peace, etc. They didn't understand what was going on despite their highly paid correspondents, local stringers, pompous belief in their own brilliance, etc.

If they can't understand party patronage politics in a democratic society how the heck are they going to cover societies far more different from their own?

2. Short memory

A few weeks ago, Israel announced it was going to continue construction in east Jerusalem while stopping it elsewhere. The U.S. government cheered this step as a major concession. Now the media has basically forgotten about the content of this deal in accusing Israel of doing something outrageous. (The timing can be criticized, of course, but not the step in principle.)

All of this reminds me of an exchange in "Seinfeld," the comedy show. When Jerry Seinfeld confides in a priest (don't ask, it's a long story) that his dentist is telling Jewish jokes very badly, the priest says:

"And this offends you as a Jewish person?"

Seinfeld responds, "No, this offends me as a comedian."

In other words, what is so often irritating about this kind of coverage--thousands of examples can be provided--is not so much that it is an example of anti-Israel bias but that it is just pure unprofessional and low-quality work. It offends me as a journalist and a policy analyst.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His new edited books include Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict and Crisis; Guide to Islamist Movements; Conflict and Insurgency in the Middle East; and The Muslim Brotherhood.
Peter Fogel
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RE: HSIG- Educating Biden? Not sure It's Possible But Worth A Try
3/15/2010 4:19:15 PM
Hello Friends,

Here's an interesting article that I believe you'll find interesting. It's definitely an interesting read.

Shalom,

Peter




March 15, 2010

Exclusive: Educating Biden?

Vice President Joseph Biden was apoplectic in Jerusalem. Was it because of another Palestinian suicide atrocity against Israeli civilians, or that Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, had yet again announced that he would never accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state?
No, it was because those wicked Israelis announced preliminary tenders for planning and zoning permission to the Jerusalem Municipality for the construction of apartments in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo (Solomon’s Heights).
Building houses for young Jewish couples and families? Terrible! Shocking! How can such aggression be allowed to continue? Biden’s angst exposed the Kafkaesque and groveling acceptance by the Obama administration of Arab and Muslim demands that Jews not be permitted to live in the eastern suburbs of Jerusalem or, for that matter, anywhere in land once conquered by Muslim armies in the name of Allah – and for the Palestinian Arabs that ultimately includes every square inch of Israel.
No matter that Jewish patrimony precedes Islam itself and Muslim occupation by millennia. The Arabs, who call themselves Palestinians, demand that the world, and the United States in particular, ignore history. For them, as always, myths matter more than facts.
Obama’s Vice President, Joseph Biden, came to sweet talk Israeli leaders into thinking that President Obama would not countenance Iranian nuclear threats against the Jewish state. But the Biden visit to Israel, far from meeting its avowed goal of smoothing over the differences between the Obama administration and the Jewish state, left Jerusalem and Israelis more distrustful than ever of Obama’s intentions.
Of course, the same Obama administration has done little or nothing to stop the relentless drive by the mad mullahs of Iran to build nuclear bombs or the missiles to deliver them. Nor, in all reality, does this administration ever intend to use truly effective means to stop Ahmadinejad in his quest to unleash nuclear hell upon everyone in order to usher in the perceived Islamic messiah, the twelfth imam.
So now Israel, for daring to add one brick upon another, is excoriated in the national, international and state run medias as endangering the so-called “peace process.”
There was no mention by Biden of the ceaseless Arab aggression against the very existence of Israel or of the terror and destruction Israel has been forced to endure from the Palestinian Arabs. Instead, Biden tells Abbas, while embracing this unrepentant Holocaust denier, that these same Palestinian Arabs, despite all their violence “deserve a state.” Nor did he mention that it would be carved out of tiny Israel and created in the very biblical and ancestral Jewish heartland: Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). No mention either that Jews would be forbidden to reside in the new Arab state. Apartheid-Arab style.
Of course, Biden, clueless as ever, expressed displeasure at the decision by Israel to build houses in the East Jerusalem suburb, while failing to disclose that the land, as with other suburbs in "disputed" parts of East Jerusalem, was originally home to many Jews who were driven out in 1948 by the British-officered Jordanian Arab Legion.
This territory was finally liberated by Israel from its Jordanian Arab occupiers during the defensive June, 1967 Six Day War Israel was forced to fight, 19 years after the Jordanians had illegally annexed it.
In those 19 years from 1948, during which the Jordanians occupied the region, they never remotely considered it as anything but Jordanian. Certainly they never thought it belonged to another Arab people who later called themselves Palestinians. As it was, Jordan's illegal occupation of East Jerusalem, as well as of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), was recognized by only two countries: Britain and Pakistan.
But nevertheless, the Obama White House and the relentlessly anti-Israel State Department decided that they will echo the demands of the Palestinian Authority and call for Israel to stop building homes – not only in Judea and Samaria, but even within the very suburbs of Israel's capital city, Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to the Obama enforced freeze on home building for a 10 month period throughout biblical Jewish Judea and Samaria but not in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Arab settlement building has continued unchecked and at a feverish pace without a murmur from President Obama. Double standards? To quote Sarah Palin: You betcha! It matters not to Obama or Biden that Jerusalem – east, west, north and south – has been described as the eternal city of the eternal people.
Rabbi J.H. Hertz, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, who spoke in 1918 at the thanksgiving service for the British liberation of Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks, referred to the nearly 4,000 years of history that bound the Jews to every part of their spiritual and physical capital city and of their fate in defending it against its many would-be conquerors. He said:
“Like the Jew, this Holy City of Israel is deathless; fire and sword and all the engines of destruction have been hurled against it in vain. The Babylonians burnt it and deported its population; the Romans slew a million of its inhabitants, razed it to the ground, passed the ploughshare over it and strewed its furors with salt; Hadrian banished its very name from the lips of men, changed it to Aelia Capitolina and forbade any Jew from entering it on pain of death. Persians and Arabs, Barbarians and Crusaders and Turks took it and re-took it, ravaged it and burnt it; and yet, marvelous to relate, it ever rises from its ashes to renewed life and glory.”
Rabbi Hertz was talking on the very day on which, 2,080 years earlier, Judah Maccabee, the legendary Jewish hero, led his warriors against the Greek-Syrians to liberate the Holy City from its heathen occupiers, whereupon he entered the Temple and re-dedicated it to the glory of the One and Only God. Rabbi Hertz ended his speech by proclaiming the prophetic teaching of the Maccabean Festival, which we know as Hanukkah, in Zechariah, 4:6:
“Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.”
Now the Palestinian Arab mufti in Jerusalem denies that there ever were Jewish Temples in the Holy City or that Judah, Israel and Judea ever existed or that Jews even lived throughout the Land for millennia. In doing so, he also denies Christianity’s early history and theology. But, sadly, such fantasies are all too common for most members of the “religion of peace.” Even Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, who is rapidly Islamizing once secular Turkey, has denied that the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in Hebron and the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem, are Jewish. Erdogan parrots the Islamic myths by calling them Muslim.
Now there is a government and a Prime Minister in Israel under assault by President Obama, who demands that Israel abandon parts of eternal Jerusalem and give it away to those who hate the Jewish people and who have set their face against accepting any Jewish independence or sovereignty in the Land of Israel.
It is instructive to dwell on what has been said by both Jews and non-Jews in the past about Jerusalem, for Jerusalem and Zion are interchangeable. Perhaps, Vice President Biden will come to understand that one can go back for such affirmation through the mists of time to the towering words in Isaiah 2:1 and Micah 4:2:
“For out of Zion shall come forth the Torah and the word of God from Jerusalem.”
These are just two of the 821 times that Jerusalem and Zion appear in the Jewish Bible: Jerusalem 667 times, and Zion 154 times. The words also appear in the Christian bible, though fewer times. They do not appear at all in Islam’s Koran.
According to the much-loved correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, the late Moshe Kohn:
“Jewish sources speak of the seventy names by which Jerusalem is referred to in the classical Jewish sources. These include Ariel/lion of God (Isaiah 29:1); Kirya Neemana/Faithful City (Isaiah 1:25); Ir Ha'emet/City of Truth (Zechariah 8:3); Klilat Yofi/Paragon of Beauty (Lamentations 2:15); Yefay Nof/ Beautiful Panorama (Psalms 48:3); and the ancient commentary of Rabbi Akiva in Sanhedrin 58a on 1 Chronicles 29:11 Hanetza/Eternity.
But what of now? The modern State of Israel endures a world willing, even anxious, to divide Jerusalem again – even as it still celebrates the reunification of Berlin – and force it to give away ancestral and biblical Jewish lands to an enemy led by a Holocaust-denier, Mahmoud Abbas, whose own Fatah organization, alongside Hamas, continues to gleefully take credit for murdering Jews.
Israeli leaders may yet, foolishly and tragically, permit Jerusalem to again be divided with barbed wire and pill boxes marking a new and hateful border, just as it was before 1967 when Jordanian Arab snipers made life a living hell for the Jewish residents, with ancient synagogues destroyed and Jewish gravestones on the Mount of Olives desecrated and used as latrines for the Arab Legion.
If Barack Hussein Obama has his way, and his Vice President continues to do his bidding, the ancestral Jewish homeland in Judea and Samaria will also be lost – not by the ravages of an enemy host, but, to its eternal shame, by an Israeli government acquiescing in its own national suicide; its borders reduced to a mere nine miles wide at its most populous region from the Mediterranean Sea to the foothills of the Judean mountain range – a border, which the late Israeli statesman, Abba Eban, once described as the "Auschwitz borders."
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of Volumes One and Two of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.


Peter Fogel
Babylon 7
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