mostlymiddleeastandamerica.com

There is no question that President Obama’s threat to use reconciliation to enact his health care bill is an abuse of power and that another abuse will occur if he actually goes ahead and tries it. Obama’s health care bill is very unpopular with the American people, has no support among Republicans and Independents, precious little among Democrats and has absolutely no chance of being passed into law unless reconciliation is used.

Reconciliation was created as a deficit reduction tool and was never designed or intended for anything else. It has never been used for anything except budget measures. The fact that Obama is willing to use it to ram his health care bill down everyones throat in the face of virtually universal opposition speaks to his arrogance, desperation, incompetence, lack of respect for American institutions and willingness to abuse his power to get his own way. If successful, it also means that one sixth of the American economy will be reshaped as the result of a narrow partisan vote and that the entire legislative process has been violated, circumvented, neutered and repudiated, by the President no less.

All of which raises the question….is impeachment in the cards? If it is we can only hope that courageous legislators will start the impeachment process soon. Obama is clearly unfit for office and the health care fiasco is but one example among many that make this more than obvious. The last three years of his term could be even more disastrous for the United States and the world than his first year and the sooner he goes the better.

It is very encouraging to see that Geert Wilders Freedom Party has done so well in recent local elections in the Netherlands. Freedom is now the second biggest party in The Hague, Hollands capital and the biggest in Almere, the eighth largest city in the country.

With Parliamentary elections coming in June these results strongly indicate that Freedoms anti-Islamization platform resonates with the Dutch people and that Mr. Wilders will be a force after the elections whether or not the party can form a government. Wilders is also a champion of freedom of speech and freedom of expression and the importance of him being a prominent figure in the political arena cannot be overemphasized. The Netherlands may yet be able to overcome the creeping Islamization that has infected its culture and threatens its way of life…if it does it will be due in no small part to Mr. Wilders and the courage and foresight he has shown in his battle to keep Holland free and secular.

Heres hoping that the results of these local elections are replicated nationally in June and that a tidal wave of anti-Islamization engulfs Europe. Islamization is threatening the very fabric of the continent and must be stopped if countries are to retain their Judeo-Christian character and democratic institutions. Who knows, perhaps the people of Britain, France, Germany et.al. will thank the Dutch (and the Swiss who voted to ban the construction of new minarets in their country too for that matter) for leading the way.

Now that Hamas says that Egypt and Jordan were responsible for murdering Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai will the governments of Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain and Ireland apologize to the Israeli ambassadors who were hauled before them and upbraided for Israels supposed role in the affair? Will the Egyptian and Jordanian ambassadors be called in and treated the same way? Will the worlds press respond as hysterically as it did when Israel was accused? Will there be mea culpas all around?

Not a chance.

Why not, one wonders.

Israeli Apartheid Week is not only an affront to unbiased and knowledgeable observers of the Middle East, not only an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hatefest full of positions and statements that have no basis in reality, not only a terrible disservice to Palestinians because the false sense of victimhood it fosters precludes them from taking constructive measures to improve their lives and not only a violation of academic integrity by the universities that allow it to take place because it is very one-sided and unbalanced and contrary, more rational views are either ridiculed, discouraged or not permitted….no, awful and disgraceful as all of this is, it is much more than that. It is a frontal attack on two of our most fundamental, inalienable rights, freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

IAW organizers and participants are not interested in dialogue or the unfettered exchange of ideas. They know that they would come out a distant second if they were challenged and that no person with a sound and open mind would take them seriously. They would be revealed for exactly what they are: ideologues, fascists, religious fanatics, crazies, brainwashed, poorly informed, easily manipulated, unthinking, irrational, bigoted or any combination thereof. That is why anyone who raises his or her voice in protest at an IAW event is harassed and threatened and shouted down and that is why their pronouncements are trite and filled with cliches and hyperbole, or to put it more succintly, bull…. They have nothing else. They can’t compete so they have to demonize and villify and prevent others from speaking or otherwise expressing themselves.

Whatever one’s views are on the Middle East as people living in free, democratic, secular societies we have every right to express them in whatever way we see fit. The minute that someone prevents us from doing so and gets away with it is the minute we can no longer call ourselves free and the minute we come closer to having a totalitarian, theocratic state imposed on us. Israeli Apartheid Week brownshirts are attacking our freedom by trying, with some success I might add, to intimidate and shut up anyone who opposes them. We must not let them succeed. Rest assured, if freedom of speech and freedom of expression are lost, a free press, an independent judiciary, freedom of religion and all the other hallmarks of our way of life will be too.

Israeli Apartheid Week won’t bring down Israel or raise up Palestinians. The mentality behind it and the bilge it spits out diminish us all and pose a serious threat to our civil liberties however and it is incumbent on each and every one of us to counter its odious activities with energy and passion.

We should not automatically assume that the Israeli Mossad was behind the death of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. Several governments, Egypt and Jordan to name two, and rival terrorist organizations such as Fatah had ample reasons to welcome his demise and any one of them could have murdered him and let Israel take the blame. Like many other things in the byzantine world of Middle East politics we’ll probably never know for sure. Nevertheless, leaping to conclusions may be exactly what the actual killers want us to do and it is a trap that must be avoided if we are to consider the situation objectively and knowledgeably.

Some things we do know however.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a long time terrorist who was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people. He was in Dubai to purchase illicit weapons from Iran and then send them on to Hamas in Gaza. These weapons would have been used to maim and slaughter Israelis and to intimidate and silence Hamas opponents in Gaza and elsewhere. You can’t get much more illegal, or immoral, than that.

Whoever got rid of him did us all a favor. If it was the Mossad, they were more than justified and the real responsibility should be placed on the Arab and Muslim world and its apologists who make actions like this necessary in the first place. The central issue in this affair after all is not the use of forged documents as so much of the media has made it out to be. It is the Arab and Muslim worlds commitment to Israels destruction and the entirely negative effect this has on Palestinians, among many others.

The health care summit in Washington is indicative of what’s wrong with President Obama’s administration and why his leadership style makes him an exceedingly poor fit for the office he holds.

A President of the United States has to be able to make tough, hard, uncompromising decisions, very quickly at times. He or she is not supposed to take their cue from televised debates before embarking on a course of action. Obama always tries to seek consensus and be all things to all people, which makes true leadership impossible.

The health care fiasco is but one example. If a bill is eventually passed it will be nothing but a watered down series of compromises and nowhere near as comprehensive as it could and should have been. It will also contain many provisions which clearly contravene American values, may be unconstitutional and may not survive legal challenges. The American people deserve much better and a strong President who is able to lead instead of follow would have seen that they received it.

There are many other examples as well, the most egregious being foreign policy and the fact that this leadership style means the United States cannot stand up to regimes and organizations which threaten its existence and the existence of its allies, nor can it take serious measures against Jihadists who maim and kill Americans in the name of Islam, sometimes on U.S. soil. It is a weak, vacillating, slow moving style which makes us all much more vulnerable to attack and the world a much more dangerous place.

What would Obama do if another 9/11 type event took place? Call a bipartisan summit to decide how to deal with it? Probably. Whatever comes after that would be just like a potential health care bill…insipid, weak and reeking of appeasement and compromise because the President is really a lightweight who can’t or won’t act decisively.

Like I said, the American people deserve much better.

The Israeli government is launching a global public relations offensive called Making the Case for Israel which is designed to improve the countrys image outside its borders and show the world what it really is-a liberal, cosmopolitan democracy governed by the rule of law with a boisterous free press and thriving artistic, educational, technological, industrial, agricultural and other communities. It is a culturally advanced country with a strong desire to live in peace and security with its neighbors that can be a wonderful place to reside in or visit for people of all ages. While it certainly has its warts, it is young, vibrant and alive with an openness, tolerance and sense of joy that far outstrips the rest of the Middle East and compares favorably with virtually anywhere else.

Making the Case for Israel is long overdue and will provide a much more honest and realistic picture of the country than the one foisted on the world by its enemies. There is no doubt they have been winning the media war for some time now and that this has been detrimental to Israelis and Palestinians alike. It has presented a false picture of Israel to the world, has been a contributing factor in keeping Palestinians poor, backwards and in a state of servitude and has made peace impossible for those gullible enough to believe the lies and propaganda spewed forth by individuals and organizations that would like nothing more than to see Israels demise. Israels entrance into the media wars is most welcome because it will open peoples eyes to the true nature of the situation in the Middle East, because the real impediments to peace and prosperity will be exposed, because falsehoods will be countered and because the world will see what Palestians could become if only they would abandon their hatred of Israel and attempts to destroy it.

This campaign is a very unwelcome development for Israels opponents. Aside from anything else it cannot help but present them in a very unflattering light because the comparisons will be there for all to see. It could even lead to Israels detractors changing their opinions, to Palestinians throwing off their shackles because they want a quality of life comparable to Israelis and because they realize at long last that they will never get it until they change course and get rid of the ideologues and thugs among them, to an end to the vicious anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment that so debilitates Palestinian society and to peace, security and prosperity for all.

Of course, this is a real threat to Hamas, Hezbollah and others of their ilk so we can expect them to ramp up their efforts to use the media to demonize, villify and delegitimize Israel in order to reshape reality and keep themselves in power. It won’t work though because Israel will become very good very quickly at the media game and because in the end truth will triumph over fabrication. The Israelis will succeed at delegitimizing the delegitimizers as it were.

Like I said, long overdue.

What it should do and what it will do are two different things.

We have already seen that the world is not going to do anything substantial to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, even though this will be disastrous for everyone. Sanctions are a waste of time and always have been. Military action is the only thing that can stop the Iranians and the world, meaning the United States, is not going to attack because it doesn’t have the wisdom or sagacity to do so. The U.S. is a paper tiger that doesn’t realize a nuclear armed Iran would be a calamity for it as well as everybody else. Even if it did it doesn’t have the fortitude to use it’s military in any case. Iran of course has known this from the beginning, which is why it hasn’t let sanctions or anything else get in it’s way.

The Israelis harbor no illusions however and they will destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities on their own because they simply can’t allow the Iranians to possess nuclear weapons. Whatever else they may be they are not ignorant, willfully blind or suicidal and they know full well that Iran will launch nuclear armed missiles at them as soon as it can in an effort to remove them from the face of the earth. Since Iran is very close to becoming a nuclear power and since it is obvious the world will not prevent this from happening we can expect Israel to take the matter in hand any time now.

Rightfully so, good for the Israelis and the sooner the better. The world will thank them in the end, that’s for sure.

Even the Arab world. Even America.

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday “even a nuclear armed North Korea or Iran isn’t as great a threat to the U.S. as al Qaeda and allied jihad groups.” What this really means is that President Obama’s administration will not use military means to eliminate North Korea or Iran’s nuclear development program. It is a tacit admission by the administration that it’s attempts to prevent either country from developing nuclear weapons have been an utter failure, that it holds no optimism similiar attempts in the future will be successful and that America doesn’t have the stomach or foresight to use it’s military to stop them from becoming nuclear powers.

This also means that both countries will proceed full steam ahead in their quest to develop and possess nuclear weapons. It means too that an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran is inevitable and will take place soon because the Iranians are very close to achieving their aim, which Israel cannot allow.

War is coming to the Middle East and it is coming in large part because Obama’s administration doesn’t see that a nuclear armed Iran would be absolutely catastrophic for the U.S., because it is arrogant and foolish enough to believe that it can ‘isolate and manage’ the situation once the Iranians have a nuclear capability and because it doesn’t have the courage or sense to eliminate the problem the only way it can, by bombing Iran’s facilities into oblivion while it is still possible. Terrible as that sounds, it really is the lesser of two evils.

The situation is essentially the same regarding North Korea, although it is not quite as precipitous.

Make no mistake, al Qaeda and allied jihad groups are serious threats to the United States and no effort or expense should be spared to defeat them. That is a given. It is also a given that keeping nuclear weapons out of North Korean and Iranian hands is a fundamental part of this and that it is not an either/or scenario. There are many linkages involved and the administrations failure to recognize and act on them makes us all far more vulnerable.

Weakness, ignorance and willfull blindness won’t make us safe. Understanding our enemies, strength and the willingness to use it will. Israel knows this. To bad Clinton and Obama don’t.

Organizing and implementing Arab Idiocy Week as a counterweight to Israeli Apartheid Week is an excellent way for supporters of Israel to mobilize and strike back wherever IAW events take place. Since Israeli Apartheid Week events usually occur on university campuses Arab Idiocy Week events would provide students with a much different viewpoint than they would otherwise be given. The scales would be balanced as it were. Palestinian and Arab students would be subjected to exactly the same kind of activities as Israeli and Jewish students but from a very different perspective. It would be very educational for them indeed and for the general public as well.

Activities during the week would include physically harassing pro-Palestinian students, especially Muslims and Arabs, displaying intimidating and inflammatory placards and posters, holding rallies which demonize and villify Palestinians and call for an end to them and their institutions, shouting down and shutting up anyone who begs to differ, lying and historical revisionism, spewing hate and intolerance towards Palestinians based on their religion and ethnicity and other such actions which seem to have become acceptable when directed towards Israelis and Jews. If they can be subjected to them during Israeli Apartheid Week it’s only fair that Palestinians and Arabs be subjected to them during Arab Idiocy Week….what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, isn’t it?

There could also be various workshops and presentations based on the weeks theme. For example.

Hezbollah and Hamas: sick sons of sick societies and why the Arab world encourages and supports them despite the damage they do to everyone.

Arab refusal to recognize Israel and it’s right to exist and how this eliminates any possibility of peace and prosperity for Palestinians.

Tolerating the use of women and children as human shields and what this says about Palestinian society.

Buying into Islamist propaganda and the terrible effect this has on people everywhere, including Palestinians.

Why Palestinians allow thugs and villains to dominate and debilitate their lives.

Arab refusal to accept any blame or responsibility for the predicament Palestinians find themselves in and what this means for the world.

The futility of the boycott movement and how this harms Palestinians far more than it does Israelis.

The Goldstone Report as political theatre and propaganda and how it has backfired on Palestinians.

The list could go on ad infinitum….

Arab Idiocy Week. Why not? It’s no more ludicrous, shameful, odious, idiotic and self serving than Israeli Apartheid Week so let’s get on with it. Balance and fairness demand nothing less.