Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

…has been the press coverage. It has been hypercritical, to put it mildly. It started in England, where Romney’s observation that certain logistical issues relating to the Olympic Games were “disconcerting”–a judgment that has since proved resoundingly correct–was treated as a major diplomatic faux pas. Already forgotten, apparently, is the press’s attempt to make something sinister out of a Romney aide’s reference to America’s “Anglo-Saxon heritage” and its “shared history” with Great Britain. Of such thin gruel do liberal reporters and editors try to generate controversy.

–SNIP– . . . it is a useful reminder that the media-formerly-known-as-mainstream are still lying in wait, and will pounce on any opportunity to give the Obama campaign a boost. They they have had so few openings to do so is a tribute to the discipline of Mitt Romney and his campaign.

Read more by John Hinderaker at Powerlineblog.com

Breitbart News hereby announces a $50,000 reward to whomever can provide the complete video recording of the 2003 farewell party for radical Palestinian academic and activist Rashid Khalidi, at which then-state senator Barack Obama spoke–and which the Los Angeles Times has refused to release since reporting the event in April 2008.

Then-reporter Peter Wallsten (now with the Wall Street Journal) noted that the event was one of many signs that had encouraged Palestinian-Americans to believe “that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.”

Read more by Breitbart News

The Washington Post trod over some familiar territory this past weekend with a 7,000-word retrospective on the Obama administration’s Middle East peace process misadventures. The account strives to put President Obama in a favorable light. But even the most sympathetic narrative of this period must come to grips with the president’s blundering, most of which was rooted in his determination to distance the United States from Israel in a vain attempt to score points with the Arab world. For the first three years of his presidency, Washington was focused on pressuring Israel, a policy that alienated the Jewish state but did nothing to nudge the Palestinians to make peace.

Read more by Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary

US election season is clearly upon us as US President Barack Obama has moved into full campaign mode. Part and parcel of that mode is a new bid to woo Jewish voters and donors upset by Obama’s hostility to Israel back in the Democratic Party’s fold.

To undertake this task, the White House turned to its reliable defender, columnist Jeffrey Goldberg. Since 2008, when then-candidate Obama was first challenged on his anti-Israel friends, pastors and positions, Goldberg has willingly used his pen to defend Obama to the American Jewish community.

Trying to portray Obama as pro-Israel is not a simple task. From the outset of his tenure in office, Obama has distinguished himself as the most anti-Israel president ever.

Obama is the first president ever to denounce Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. He is the first president to require Israel to deny Jews property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as a precondition for peace talks with the Palestinians.

He is the first US president to adopt the position that Israel must surrender its right to defensible borders in the framework of a peace treaty. He has even made Israeli acceptance of this position a precondition for negotiations.

He is the first US president to accept Hamas as a legitimate actor in Palestinian politics. Obama’s willingness to do so was exposed by his refusal to end US financial assistance to the PA in the aftermath of last spring’s unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas.

He is the first US president to make US support for Israel at the UN conditional on Israeli concessions to the Palestinians.

Read more by Caroline Glick

Palin’s vision of US military policy: If we have to fight, we fight to win. To do that, we use overwhelming force.

In May, Governor Palin gave a speech at a “Tribute to the Troops” event at Colorado Christian University. As part of this speech, Governor Palin outlined a clear vision of American military policy, which has now become known as the Palin doctrine by many:

There’s a lesson here then for the effective use of force, as opposed to sending our troops on missions that are ill-defined. And it can be argued that our involvement elsewhere, say in Libya, is an example of a lack of clarity. See, these are deadly serious questions that we must ask ourselves when we contemplate sending Americans into harm’s way. Our men and women in uniform deserve a clear understanding of U.S. positions on such a crucial decision. I believe our criteria before we send our young men and women—America’s finest—into harm’s way should be spelled out clearly when it comes to the use of our military force. I can tell you what I believe that criteria should be in five points.

First, we should only commit our forces when clear and vital American interests are at stake. Period.

Second, if we have to fight, we fight to win.

Third, we must have . . .

Read more in an Op-Ed by Whitney Pitcher, a writer who is a member of Conservatives4Palin, writing 8/26/2011 in Israel National News

By BEN SMITH, politico.com, 6/29/2011

David Ainsman really began to get worried about President Barack Obama’s standing with his fellow Jewish Democrats when a recent dinner with his wife and two other couples — all Obama voters in 2008 — nearly turned into a screaming match.

Ainsman, a prominent Democratic lawyer and Pittsburgh Jewish community leader, was trying to explain that Obama had just been offering Israel a bit of “tough love” in his May 19 speech on the Arab Spring. His friends disagreed — to say the least.

One said he had the sense that Obama “took the opportunity to throw Israel under the bus.” Another, who swore he wasn’t getting his information from the mutually despised Fox News, admitted he’d lost faith in the president.

If several dozen interviews with POLITICO are any indication, a similar conversation is taking place in Jewish communities across the country. Obama’s speech last month seems to have crystallized the doubts many pro-Israel Democrats had about Obama in 2008 in a way that could, on the margins, cost the president votes and money in 2012 and will not be easy to repair.

Read more at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57983.html