an enemy of peace.

Today, in Lebanon, Jimmy Carter repeated his attacks against the State of Israel.

This man is such a disgrace.

Some say that he is not anti-Semitic, but anyone who is that one-sided in his critique of the Arab-Israeli conflict is de facto an anti-Semite.

To say that Jimmy Carter is more precisely, anti-Jew would be accurate (since he seems quite fond of the Arabs he speaks for, and Arabs are Semitic).

Carter wrote a book recently entitled, “Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid”, a one-sided slur against Israel and her leaders.

Alan Dershowitz said of the book, “the book is so filled with simple mistakes of fact and deliberate omissions that were it a brief filed in a court of law, it would be struck and its author sanctioned for misleading the court. Mr. Carter too is guilty of misleading the court of public opinion.  “

Mr Carter reportedly blames his election loss on “the Jews”.

He failed to gain re-election because he was incompetent, and obviously, not a leader.

On a personal note, I really hate this guy.

Many people looked up to him.

He talked about protecting the planet before it was popular.

He was peaceful.

He seemed caring.

He helped the poor.

Then this betrayal.

To side with an avowed enemy of all that civilization stands for.

For Carter to mouth talking points for the Arab and Persian despots whose stated goal is the destruction of the tiny Jewish state is worse than traitorous.

He has become an embarrassment.

And an enemy of peace.

News Being Manufactured: A Graphic Example of How This is Done to Slander Israel

By Barry Rubin

October 11, 2010

It is understandably hard for people to believe the amount of violence that is staged and stories that are manipulated coming from the Middle East. Here is a bit of video from the eastern part of Jerusalem.

See what happens: Kids are ready to throw stones at passing cars with Israeli license plates, five of them run into the road, blocking it, ready to throw stones at an approaching Israeli automobile. Another car is  deliberately parked across the road, partly blocking it. Surprised by the ambush, the Israeli driver slams on his brakes but one of the kids is hit by the car and he flies up and over it.

Note the following:

1. The Palestinian and other media release a story saying the driver deliberately hit him. Here's a report in al-Jazira with a photo designed to lie about what happened.   This claim is clearly not true. If the driver had been speeding and wanted to do injury he could easily have hit three or four of the kids. Indeed, I've been told that Arabic-language news media is reporting that the driver killed two children (only one was slightly injured). The response to this could be terrorist attacks to get revenge. This is a common pattern.

2. There are a lot of reporters there filming (you can see them on the left and bottom edges). So this was set up for media coverage, as is so much violence in the West Bank particularly. Indeed, there are at least seven photographers visible and there are as many journalists, if not more, than there were rock-throwers.

3. At the end there is a very strange scene. The boy does not appear to have been injured seriously. (I was once hit by a car exactly in this manner and walked away. If you are thrown into the air you will just get some bruises, as long as you don't fall under the car.) But there is an ambulance which has just been standing there waiting for something like this to happen, a sign it is being staged.

4. Yet the boy is holding onto the ambulance door, trying to avoid being put into the ambulance. Why? It may be too much of a stretch to say he fears being made into a martyr by his comrades, or maybe he just wants to stay with his friends but he looks pretty desperate not to get in. If I've overreached on this point I apologize.

5. The Israeli driver's back window has been smashed in by a stone. The driver's young son is also in the car.  If the car is trapped there he and his son could be killed by the stones or dragged out of the car and murdered. As far as he knows, any second guns could start firing bullets through his windows. The reporters and cameramen standing and watching won't lift a finger to help him. The driver eases past the parked car and speeds away. He reported the incident to the police and didn't try to hide that it had happened.

6. Some of the driver's friends suggest that he may have been personally targeted for an ambush because he has been an activist on Jerusalem-related issues. They say his car is well-known and he often travels that road. This might be true since there is no evidence of rock-throwing at any cars before he arrived.

Here's a technical analysis of the incident.

If you see stories in your local newspapers or on television saying that an Israeli settler deliberately ran down and killed two Palestinian boys you now know the real story. But most of the readers or viewers won't know any better.

Multiply this story by hundreds of such cases, far too many to correct; add the fact that such clear proof of falsification is often lacking; and blend in the sympathy of many reporters with misreporting events. (Even after Israel released footage showing the soldiers landing on the deck of the Mavi Marmara were attacked and beaten, the New York Times implied that this didn't prove anything).

Now you get a picture of the situation regarding media coverage of Israel.

PS: I've been told--though I haven't confirmed it directly--that Canadian Ttelevision played the clip with the narration implying that he had run them over on purpose. So even if you see the opposite the viewer is conditioned to accept the anti-Israel propaganda line.
*               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), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go tohttp://www.gloria-center.org.  You can read and subscribe to his blog athttp://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.


Gloria Center depends on your contributions. To make a tax-deductible donation through PayPal or credit card, click the Donate button in the upper-right hand corner of this page. To donate via check, make it out to "American Friends of IDC," with "for GLORIA Center" in the memo line. Mail to: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10003.  If you would like to make a tax deductible donation from the United Kingdom or Germany please email us for more information here.

Shana Tova! To my Friend, Earl Leslie Krugel

Shana Tova to all, especially the families of Earl Leslie Krugel and Irv Rubin, OBM, who sacrificed so much for the Jewish people, and all free thinking people.

Earl Krugel suffered for his heroism, but he never spoke of it.
I treasure every word from him in the extensive correspondence we shared.
I have never known someone who could laugh and sing and care so much while under a death sentence from the state, and the Islamist community, and the Nazi's, (yimach shemo), who are, regrettably, still with us.
If there is a G-d, he is there with my friend.
G-d Bless you, Earl!

Barack Hearts Bibi

By Barry Rubin

September 6, 2010

We have entered into a new period of U.S. policy toward Israel for the Obama Administration. Basically, President Barack Obama needs Israel, requires its cooperation, and is eager to get along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. How long this will last is unclear but it should characterize, barring unforeseen events, at least for the next year.

What is the basis of this new era? When it came to office, the Obama Administration was in radical mode, determined to distance itself from Israel as a key to winning over Arabs and Muslims, assuming that peace could be achieved with sufficient pressure on Israel as the only requirement, and hostile to Israel’s current government.

A measure of reality eventually set in, involving a large number of factors ranging from the lack of Arab cooperation, to Iran’s intransigence, the lack of progress in engaging Syria, and the tasks of dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan. The administration’s head-on charge over demanding a freeze of construction on settlements only produced a one-year-plus delay on Israel-Palestinian negotiations. The Palestinian Authority (PA) was uncooperative. American public opinion was unhappy with the policy toward Israel. 

This is not to say that the situation is simple but by September 2010 things are very different. The Obama Administration is desperate for diplomatic successes, or at least the appearance of having them. What’s happening regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons’ drive cannot be concealed or ignored.

The U.S. government is also is aware of falling public support--including a sharp decline in Jewish backing though pro-Israel forces extend far more widely throughout American society—on the eve of American elections. In addition, it’s clear that Netanyahu’s government isn’t going away and there is no “dovish” alternative that will give Obama everything he wants for little or nothing in exchange.

So now Obama needs Netanyahu. He needs to keep the new peace talks going and looking good. The president also requires that Netanyahu keep things quiet on the Israel-Palestinian front so as—so he thinks—to make it easier to get Arab and Muslim support for other U.S. policies. And since Obama’s orientation is mainly domestic and his world view is horrified by power politics, he wants to avoid international crises generally. Anti-Israel officials in the administration are being ignored.

The truth is—and this is analysis, not a political statement—Netanyahu and his government, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, have performed brilliantly in facing this challenge. It has met U.S. requests without sacrificing Israeli interests, if nothing else secure in the knowledge that the PA isn’t going to make a deal any way and wanting to focus American attention on the Iranian threat. Whatever the U.S. government says in public it has to realize that the PA, not Israel, is the roadblock to peace. 

This kind of charm diplomacy may be what Netanyahu is best at doing. His speech in Washington was a masterpiece, praising Obama and making clear that his goal is a true and stable peace, not merely:

“A brief interlude between two wars…a temporary respite between outbursts of terror. We seek a peace that will end the conflict between us once and for all. We seek a peace that will last for generations.” He called Abbas, “my partner in peace….We recognize that another people share this land with us. And I came here today to find an historic compromise that will enable both peoples to live in peace, security and dignity.”

Netanyahu concluded: “I did not come here to win an argument. I came here to forge a peace. I did not come here to play a blame game where even the winners lose. I came here to achieve a peace that will bring benefits to all. I did not come here to find excuses. I came here to find solutions.” 

He made this approach without illusions: “We left Lebanon, we got terror. We left Gaza, we got terror. We want to ensure that territory we concede will not be turned into a third Iranian sponsored terror enclave aimed at the heart of Israel. That is why a defensible peace requires security arrangements that can withstand the test of time and the many challenges that are sure to confront us.”

Is the PA going to meet even a single one of Israel’s requirements? End of conflict; real security guarantees, demilitarization of a Palestinian state, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, resettlement of all Palestinian refugees in the state of Palestine? Of course not. Possibly there might be agreement on some minor border changes but even that is unlikely, much less giving even the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem to Israel or some other parts of eastern or northern Jerusalem areas.

What Israel has to do, though, is to continue to put forward reasonable demands, show itself cooperative and flexible, while letting the months of futile talks roll ever onward. He isn’t threatened by right-wing walk-outs from the coalition, which at any rate will be discouraged by the fact that he isn’t actually giving anything away. At any rate, he controls the Likud; the Labor Party has no alternative; the opposition Kadima has no leadership or program. At some point next year, Netanyahu will call elections and win a resounding mandate. 

Abbas will go along with the charades up to a point but increasingly, as he gives nothing himself, will blame Israel for the lack of progress. Even Marwan Barghouti, leader of Fatah’s West Bank grassroots’ organization, opposes talks publicly and much of the Fatah establishment opposes them privately. Abbas will be itching to walk out and insist that only a unilateral declaration of independence can “solve” the issue. But during this period, at least, that’s the very last thing the Obama Administration wants: a huge crisis, a difficult decision, potential mass violence stirring up the region, a likely diplomatic catastrophe.

All of this doesn’t mean the administration understands the extent to which Iran’s nuclear weapons pose a big and negative strategic shift in the area, the extent of the threat from revolutionary Islamists, how Iraq is at the brink of political anarchy, the futility of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, the at least temporary loss of Turkey, the capture of Lebanon by the Iran-Syria bloc, and all the other ills of the Middle East. 

But the current U.S. government understands enough about what’s going on to comprehend that it doesn’t want a crisis with Israel as well and that it isn’t going to achieve some dramatic breakthrough to Arab-Israeli peace. As for Obama, no politician desires anything more passionately—other than election—than having someone else making him look good, perhaps especially when he doesn’t deserve it. Consequently, now is the time for a somewhat belated Obama-Netanyahu honeymoon.

  

*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), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books, go to http://www.gloria-center.org.  You can read and subscribe to his blog at http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com.

The Gloria Center depends on your contributions. To make a tax-deductible donation through PayPal or credit card, click the Donate button in the upper-right hand corner of this page. To donate via check, make it out to "American Friends of IDC," with "for GLORIA Center" in the memo line. Mail to: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10003.  If you would like to make a tax deductible donation from the United Kingdom or Germany please email us for more information here.